Page 1 of 1

Energy Balancing

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 11:57 am
by Hroch
Hi guys. At first I have to thank you for very entertaining game. Because this is very large forum, it is possible that my suggestion is alredy covered somewhere. Therefore I am sorry for possible mess.
Now to the topic. Let me describe my issue:

Problem
It may happen that there is not enough of energy. Reasons may vary. Aliens destroyed electric poles, depleted coal, some buildings consumes too much energy and so on. When this happends, I as a player have very small possibilities how to manage the situation and mitigate the blackout. I can increase electric production capacity, fix distribution network, or destroy some poles to cut some unimportant buildings from eating energy. This is very time consuming, may expose you to aliens or you may forget to fix removed poles again.

Solutions
Turning off buildings
* One by one Checkbox on each building to turn it off instead of destroying it. This could be quite complicated to manage by player.
* From electric overview - turn off all buildings of given type. Usecase: I do not need to produce now, just keep that laser turrets alive now!
Fuse
* In building - Specify if the building can consume energy from battery. I would set yes for laser turrets and roboports and no for Factories.
* Fuse building - Building which could connect with electric poles. Two places - input and output. energy can flow one direction but not other. Use case - use it on remote outposts connected to main power grid. My outposts have batteries but something in main base can drain it. I would connect the outpost with one main fuse. Energy can flow into outpost, recharge batteries, power all buildings, but can not flow back to main base. Then outpost can run on battery while I will handle problem in main base

Thanks in advance!

Re: Energy Balancing

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 1:20 pm
by ssilk
Please try the electric power switch, which is thought exactly for that. :)
https://wiki.factorio.com/Power_switch

Moved to won't implement.

Re: Energy Balancing

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 2:17 pm
by Hroch
Hi there, sorry for asking stupid question then. Switch will be very helpful.

Any chance how to turn off all buildings of same type or have "one way valve" for electricity?
It would allow me to automate the problem or fix it from general menu.

Traveling to switch may be time consuming.

Re: Energy Balancing

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 2:34 pm
by impetus maximus
run power poles from a single switch to the buildings you want to control.
you can set a circuit condition for the switch. why does it have to be one way?

need more info. ;)

Re: Energy Balancing

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 4:36 pm
by ssilk
You know you can remove cables by pressing shift-click on a pole and remove single cables by selecting a cable and shift-click on that cable.
https://wiki.factorio.com/Power_product ... d_Wires.29
Please have a look into your key-preferences. Further questions will be answered in Gameplay-Help board. :)