Factorio Forums

When placing Electric Poles, especially Medium and Big ones, I have to sit there and squint at the screen to determine whether there is or is not an ultra-thin copper-coloured line going from one already-placed Electric Pole to the one which I'm now trying to place.

That's bad UI design. The UI already makes use of various coloured overlays to show the "power coverage" of each placed Pole. There should be a similarly vivid and unmissable colour-indication to make it clear to the player whether the Electric Pole he's trying to place will or will not be connected to a powered grid if he puts it down on the tile he's currently pointing it at.

Yes, I know about the run-with-shift-held-down -thing or whatever it is it is, but that's only a solution for some of the cases. This suggestion here applies to a different set of cases, that of precise Power Pole placement, as opposed to maximizing resource-utilization when trying to connect distand "islands of industry" to the power grid.

The game already has a graphical UI utilizing colours. It should be utilized for this aspect of the game as well.

What would you suggest? Something like this crude mockup?



I personally only have any trouble with this when it is long pylon wires, since they get very thin at far zoom levels.

I think it might be better if the square around the held Electric Pole changes colour, e.g. from blue'ish to red.

While I don't recognize the problem of not being able to see whether or not the new pole is connecting (except perhaps when zoomed out past a certain point, when the wires simply don't show anymore), I can see this being a useful feature. It might be most consistent if it would display the blue box around the base of the pole being placed and all poles it'd connect to (just like when placing other structures, it will place that box around the pole(s) it's connecting to)

Especially with building ghosted, this enhancement for the power wires is needed, cause it is really difficult to see.

Boogieman14 wrote:It might be most consistent if it would display the blue box around the base of the pole being placed and all poles it'd connect to (just like when placing other structures, it will place that box around the pole(s) it's connecting to)

Basically, yep.