Factorio Forums

From https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 070#p72419 :

ssilk wrote:In my opinion green/red wire should cost nothing. Instead they should be part of the poles. They already include normal cables, they could also include red/green cables. Much less hassle.

Here the practical use-cases:
Go into the reach of a pole. Hover the pole (not only the bottom, the whole pole): A mini-requester appears, showing, that you can now drag wires/cables. Looks for example like so:
The mouse is over "Electric cable".

If you now click & drag to another pole, you hear "zzzzzziiiip" and a cable is placed. While you do that, the poles in reach are highlighted.

In the hovered min-requester you can choose also red- and green wire. Same function: choose the function, click & drag now from this pole to another pole or from this pole to a smart device, "zuuuooooppp" red or green wire is placed. Also here: When you do that all reachable entities (poles+smart devices) are highlighted.

In my opinion this makes total sense, cause there is no sense in producing single amounts of wires, but you don't get any back. I always have one left.
It would also speed up the construction of simple circuit networks. And removes the fear to rebuild everything: Just shift-click a pole to remove all cables/wires and then redraw them quickly by simple click&drag instead of first producing all the needed cables/wires.
And lastly, this is much more logical alltogether, even if the fact, that the poles contains the wires are a bit "magic".

Perhaps instead of using wires overhead for the red / green wires, maybe use an underground version instead, like they do in Prison Architect and several other games? This could be be a researched item that you need to learn first.

This could perhaps add some depth to the game as well as you would have to manage a new level that is seperate from the ground level.

So I'm assuming that basically you're "Mini-requester" is something like the assembler GUI?

Here's a thought: Make the wire tool a part of the electric grid screen; There's some free space up top for it and it makes sense in the context of all other intractable items. Furthermore, If copper cable is available from the start and you just can't click red and green wire until advanced electronics are researched, new players will get curious.

Rather than dragging from each pole you can have a wire tool for each type of cable: You click and you have wire tool in your hand until you dismiss it via, pressing Q, or picking an item off your hotbar, or any other method that works with dismissing an item. That would allow you to keep going with the same color cable until you don't need it any more rather than clicking back into the interface each time.

So basically it works like it does now, it's just accessed differently and still costs nothing.

Wire tool would be also a good idea. But I don't like to the thought, that I need another inventory stack for that. Or 3 inventory stacks (one for the cable- and two for the wire-tools).
Practically I don't see a big difference, if the wires are in the poles or coming from a tool, or falling from the sky or placed by flying biters. I think this is implementation detail, we don't need to discuss it.

What this suggestion really says is: Let's have the cables/wires for cabling/wiring for free, cause it has no game-play-value to to craft them before usage.

Edit:
@dinodod: I think an underground layer for Factorio will not be in the same way as for PA. The reason for the underground-layer there is: It's mainly inside a building and the space is quite limited. In Factorio this is not the case, the basic looking is this "wired, cluttered stuff". The poles underline that. If you put the power supply into underground, some of that get's lost. Well, that's of course not a good reason, and I guess here strongly into a direction I cannot know. But in the end I think this will not come, cause it changes one of the basic principles of the game.

ssilk wrote:Wire tool would be also a good idea. But I don't like to the thought, that I need another inventory stack for that. Or 3 inventory stacks (one for the cable- and two for the wire-tools).
Practically I don't see a big difference, if the wires are in the poles or coming from a tool, or falling from the sky or placed by flying biters. I think this is implementation detail, we don't need to discuss it.

What this suggestion really says is: Let's have the cables/wires for cabling/wiring for free, cause it has no game-play-value to to craft them before usage.

Oh, I think there's a misunderstanding: I wasn't talking about the wire tool being an inventory item at all. Just to have it work like one: You pull it into your hand with the abovementioned gui or special hotkey, and as soon as you're done with it it disappears.

An inventory item would work pretty well.
The wire it'll deploy will simply be set by it's mode,
allowing you to wire the same kind of wire at many places at once without any switching.

if someone wants to know where the cable came from,
perhaps that item could be "fueled" by an item "roll of copper wire", which would lose it's HP until used up

That was a good explanation: a tool like the axes. That would make wires/cable nearly free. Much cheaper than now, but you need eventually to research it, and you need to craft it. Both takes some time, which I see as questionable, cause where is the "game" in doing that?
I won't say this is useless, maybe it makes more sense, when we can use this tool for much more, like repair, or other stuff, we don't know yet? in that case I would say ok, good idea. For several reason I find the first suggestion (free cables/wires) quite matching into this. I would say this is also the finished suggestion: both ways are useful, they express the need for removing the need to craft wires/cables, there is currently no game-sense behind it. Let the devs decide...

Moved out of backlog, create(d) a list of suggestions.

I would actually really like a different item for red/green/copper cable. I was going to make a new suggestion thread, but then found this! Seems like this hasn't been implemented or definitely said "no", from what I could search, so I'm going to +1 this suggestion thread. (Even though it's several months old.)

Personally, my vote would be for the simple option - just call the item "spool of cable (red)", "spool of cable (green)", "spool of cable (copper)". It's basically identical to what's in the game right now, but infinite use, so it would be nearly free to put in the game (depending on if it had a new graphic). The cost of 3 inventory slots is negligible IMO, compared to the huge benefit of not needing to re-craft the cables when you're working on circuits. :)

I would like to see the Red Wire and Green Wire recipes/items removed, and replaced with a Red Wire Tool and a Green Wire Tool.

Since red/green wire is basically added for free via blueprints, I suggest we just take the next step and remove the cost entirely. Plus, it's not refunded when deconstructed (and I don't think it's refunded when manually cut either?) Allow us, using these tools, to string circuit wire freely. Thank you!

If your suggestion were implemented, then the same should be done for copper wire, which is used for connecting/disconnecting power poles.

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=30845 About Cables and Wires / Make Wires Free / Power Poles Contain Cables

I don't understand the costs of the wires. A wire is nothing more than sending a signal through. I wouldn't mind if a colored wire was simply 1 copper wire.

+1 to wire-tools being in the game!

Interesting idea. But I don't find the wires expensive, and if I use a lot I just get them delivered by drone so I have a full stack of each colour in my toolbar. Having a red/green tool in each slot instead wouldn't make much difference for me.

I'd even suggest not to have them as items in the inventory, but as tools as the iron/steel axe : permanently accessible when needed, but without the need to actually craft them : the cost is so negligible, that it wouldn't change much, but it would prevent, for example, to have single unpaired copper wires in the inventory each time one crafts one red or green wire for a circuit : not everyone uses 100s wires, I only craft mine by hand on demand.

I agree. Streaming the whole red/green wire colouring by making it definable on selection of normal copper wire. Then when deconstructed it either disappears or goes back into the inventory as copper wire. Circuit wire is just for sending signals, its no different than normal copper wire other than aesthetically for the player to have it defined in a different colour for the purpose of differentiating it from other wires.

TL;DR

Make the functionality of this mod part of the base game: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/WireShortcuts

What ?

Remove red and green wires as items and put circuit connections on hotkeys.

Why ?

Wire behaviour at the moment is sort of weird and inconsistent. You need to make red and green wires with circuits to connect them manually, but if you place down a blueprint then you get circuit wires for free. If you disconnect a wire it just vanishes and you don't get it back. They're *sort of* consumables but also not really?

This mod makes them consistent. You get the same behaviour with manual placement as you do with blueprints. You aren't constantly burning circuits when you're experimenting with different wiring systems. The hotkey is really helpful (I recently had to turn all mods off to chase down an incompatibility and it was astonishing to me how much more faffy the game was without it.)

[Koub] Merged into older topic with same and similar suggestions.
Also : +1