Factorio Forums

Hello devs! I hope this message is in the correct board index...

I play Factorio how I like to play, which is the draw of every player I think. Something that has always bothered me is the power range of power poles. I fully understand I'm in a minority and power ranges are one of the challenges of the game. But to me all those poles and wires just pollute the map of my beautiful factories...

Now, I play solo - I don't do many mods, and I don't play multiplayer - at all. So I'm comfortable editing the entities.lua. I've always gone to power poles (usually medium) and set the maximum_wire_distance and the _supply_area_distance to a reasonable number so I don't have power poles everywhere (like 100). I have a very high end system, so performance has never been an issue.

But now there are limits to the distance - 64. I understand the game mechanics and why the change was implemented (it must be performance, but why the limit at 64?). One of the dev's came up with the number, and I'm curious why. It's not a mod incompatibility, as all my mods are turned off.

I'm not upset or angry, not at all - 64 is certainly reasonable. And I certainly hope I didn't bring up an issue that gets that number lowered even further!

Perhaps a new pole is being introduced, or better yet - wireless power?!

And no sweat if that's the way it is, no explanation given. Just personally curious.

You have a mod that uses to big range on power poles.
Game limits it to reasonable values to prevent potential performance issues.

As posted, no mods in play.

Simply I got sick of mods putting crazy values for electric pole distances and then having people complain that their game takes forever to load and freezes when they interact with electric poles.

So, I limited it to a sane but still large value.

Omarflyjoemacky wrote:As posted, no mods in play.

It doesn't really matter. Limit is global so if you edit base files it also applies.

Rseding91 wrote:Simply I got sick of mods putting crazy values for electric pole distances and then having people complain that their game takes forever to load and freezes when they interact with electric poles.

So, I limited it to a sane but still large value.

Thank you! I was definitely not one of those folks, but it's nice to know the change was deliberate.

Thanks again.

So quick question, many months later...

With all the optimizations and improvements to the game, can this number maybe be increased to 128?

Omarflyjoemacky wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 03, 2020 5:56 pm

So quick question, many months later...

With all the optimizations and improvements to the game, can this number maybe be increased to 128?

No That logic has not changed in any way. It's still just as expensive. Also 128 is 4 times the area which means 4 times slower. Every single entity with electric connections built would have to scan a 256x256 area around itself for electric poles to connect to, and again on being mined/killed.

Thank you for the quick response. Understood!