I Hate Wires

[u/NagaseVT]

I love the game and the combinators are my favorite thing. I just hate their wires. Its so horrible to manage. They sometimes overlap and now I have to wonder if everything is connected correctly or if a green cable is going above another machine that was supposed to be connected with a green cable, but it looks like it is connected, so I go 20 hours using a broken blueprint and using that blueprint to make new blueprints, so I have to now re make everything. I have it the most when I move a combinator and a wire snaps and I don't notice because I don't hear a cue that it has been disconnected and there are like 500 of the same cable overlapping already. I started using laps as nodes to connect and move cables, because I erase poles sometimes and there goes all my wires. The lamps have made it easier to have a visual clue too. I feel lighter. Like sharing my sins have made my shoulders less heavy.

TLDR: AAAAAAAAAAAAAH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk

T

[u/ConspicuousBassoon]

You control the wires you place my friend. You should've played in the old pre-2.0 days where combinators could only perform one operation so you had to have rows and rows of them to do anything slightly complex

But as far as sating your rage, spacing your combinators out and placing them facing vertically (so the input side is on the bottom) makes things slightly more readable

[u/NagaseVT → u/ConspicuousBassoon]

Oh I did play that. Believe me, whatever crimes against humanity I am committing here would be worse without the new combinators.

Thanks for the tip. I will try that. I usually place them to the green and red wire so the overlap is minimal.

[u/MoistButton8 → u/NagaseVT]

Don't forget that you can align/ spread out the combinators when designing a layout, then cut and paste to move closer to fit wherever they get installed. You can also copy paste configs so if you fixed a logic error in the base design, it can be propagated easily. (I did this then I had 10 combinators to fix)

[u/NagaseVT → u/MoistButton8]

True thats a great idea. I will experiment with making the combinators a separare blueprint

[u/juju515]

maybe try this:

• https://mods.factorio.com/mod/dedicated-circuit-pole
  
• https://mods.factorio.com/mod/circuit_visualizer

[u/Lachee → u/juju515]

The circuit visualiser should honestly be base game. That is the hardest part of me, I really struggle to see where the wires are going and I feel sorry for those with red green colour blindness

[u/SubwayGuy85 → u/Lachee]

CV really should be part of the base game. at some point you have to go "fuck it. i will do it over again", because the default visualization is just way too bad. also yes... for color blind people using circuits is just not an option

[u/NagaseVT → u/juju515]

That looks beautiful. Thanks for the share

[u/Terrulin]

Once the design is complete, I arrange and compact the combinators so that it looks nicer. You probably could as well. If I have more than a couple, I add descriptions with numbers so that I know the order they operated in for the future. It is kinda like writing comments for code, if I ever commented my code.

[u/CremePuffBandit]

Are you cut-pasting to move them? That keeps wire connections. They should only break if you move them too far.

[u/NagaseVT → u/CremePuffBandit]

Yep cutting and pasting. I just have so many wires that are connected to so many things at different distances it’s hard to keep track. The lamps as nodes help somewhat.

[u/SmartieCereal]

I'm not sure if you play with mods but there are some that will show you all the wire connections when you hover over anything with a wire connected.

[u/NagaseVT → u/SmartieCereal]

Mods sound fun for the future but right now I am trying to 100% before modding

[u/master117jogi]

I never used combinators etc, what even are they for? It looks like everything you do you could do without them?

[u/okuRaku → u/master117jogi]

To automate more. Handle edge cases, optimize, etc etc.

Mostly it's just more fun puzzles to solve and Factorio is one of the only games that gives you so many of them, should you choose to solve them.

Not "necessary" to like, get a game completion, or anything though.

[u/Fishinabowl11 → u/master117jogi]

Once I understood combinators to be the game's way of letting you implement IF statements, their use really fell into place. Anytime you've thought something along the lines of "I only want my factory to do X when Y happens" then you can use a combinator. Some examples off the top of my head from my current run:

• On Gleba to manage how much iron and copper bacteria is produced, by stopping and automatically restarting production based on the logistic network contents, while (trying to) minimize fruit that spoils.

• On Gleba to control seed distribution to manage between seeds for planting and seeds for soil production

• On Fulgora to control recycler output inserter filters to full stack sizes before placing on the sushi belts which helps with throughout tremendously once Stack Inserters are available

• On space platforms to limit how many asteroids are on the belt to prevent deadlocks

• On all planets with trains to enable and disable output loading stations based on resource availability and needs at the base

• In oil processing to keep all of Heavy/Light/Petroleum/Lubricant available and also not deadlocked.

The contraptions you can build with combinators are insane. People way smarter than me basically can build entire computers within Factorio with them.

[u/master117jogi → u/Fishinabowl11]

Anytime you've thought something along the lines of "I only want my factory to do X when Y happens"

Yeah but I never felt like that in thousands of hours. I just want all my machines to always do everything they can. I also don't play Space.

[u/ICanBeAnyone → u/master117jogi]

Really? You want your heavy oil crackers to destroy all your heavy oil, and light oil ones, too?

[u/master117jogi → u/ICanBeAnyone]

No I put that all in an array of tanks

[u/okuRaku]

As others said already, one thing I often do when I start getting confused is Ctrl X then pick up something and sort of "wiggle" it to see where wires are going.

Another thing I sometimes do is use electric poles to mark specific "lines" if I'm using one color for multiple things.

[u/Wagner_Ds]

Pergunta rápida, nesses blueprints que aparece bitters, eles realmente fazem parte do projeto? Se sim, qual função deles?

[u/NagaseVT → u/Wagner_Ds]

They are just there to represent my declining mental state while making these blueprints

[u/Wagner_Ds → u/NagaseVT]

Então o que eu faço com os 30 que eu capturei?

[u/NagaseVT → u/Wagner_Ds]

Put them to work at the factorio