Factorio Forums

Power lines should have different capacity for transporting electricity and higher tier power poles should have more cables on them to look like they carry more electricity.

My idea is this (i haven't played factorio much so numbers will be probably way off).

I know about 3 types of power lines (haven't played much).

My suggestion: basic wooden power line - 1 visible cable (as it is now) 1 or 5MW power limit for cable.
7x7 power line will have 2 visible cables when connected to each other and 5 or 25MW power limit.
Biggest power cables will have 3 visible cables when connected and 25 or 100MW power limit.

What do you say?
Sorry if it's already in game or suggested, i didn't find it when i was searching if it was already suggested or existed in game.

I've been thinking about this as well, but I think it might add too much complexity.
If added, it would need a very strong UI to show exacly what's going on.

A player could be building a far away base and wonder why he's not getting any power. The power being cut off by insufficient power lines near the power plant.

So maybe when you click power pole, you will see power flowing through it?

Maybe just eye candy to add more visual cables to each power pole tier.

It might be really harder to code since, you'll need to consider multiple redundant trees of power lines.
Or maybe 100% overloaded cable would start to spark like accumulator.
This thing would require path calculation for power line system, so it would either have to be threaded or it will eat performance from engine.

The power pole is not the power line!

You can remove all power lines from a pole (don't know the default key combination, I think shift left mouse) and you can drag own power lines, by using a copper wire and drag it from pole to pole. In other words: The power line is not depended from the pole and I would not like to have more types of copper wire and go on micromanaging something, which is already part of the game: The power network in whole must be balanced!