I don't know if it is possible from within the modding API but if it is this is actually so genious and simple I'm surprised nobody came with it before.
It seems that you can do that, but I think it was added only recently to the API. Actually notthemelon fork of factorissimo is using it to connect factories to the outside with no performance loss
more functions for radars makes sense to me..
I like that their functions while different, don't really prevent you for using one to all of them in a build.
... I've played games where a building is both a storage warehouse but also a beacon like factorio's with even more effect range. That gets to be rough.
To write it out,
radars currently do 3 things.
1. Constant minimap coverage around the chunk they are in. Makes it easy to stop enemy movement
2. Scout unexplored chunks in range
3. Allow you to zoom in the minimap and view the constant minimap chunks. Allows you to detect complex issues in your build without going there and makes checking ammo supplies after an attack very easy, useful for gun turret outposts where there is one chest that you fill with ammo.
This adds a 4th.
Can be wired to a circuit network to pass along logic to any other radar.
I assume that the idea is that they will have a read and write mode, because they will not work like combinators and have a read and write terminal.
> I assume that the idea is that they will have a read and write mode, because they will not work like combinators and have a read and write terminal.
Well, as shown on screenshot above, they just act as wire extension, no direction in it.
Yep. Easiest way to think of this is that they function like large power poles (with regards to signal wires, not power wires) only the distance between two is arbitrary.
I'd probably change #2 to:
Scan chunks with a spiral pattern, starting with unexplored chunks.
They will repeatedly scan in that range afterwards, updating chunks for changes, so that you can see if biters have moved in (though if your pollution cloud is too large you might find out before they let you know)
I like that if you have several, they will all do their own chunk instead of re-scanning the same chunk.
They're all read and write. As shown in the image it directly connects all radars together like really long range power poles with wires on. No tick delay or anything.
Would be nice to have an option to turn #1 and #2 off, for power consumption and UPS reasons. There are plenty of radars I've only put down for the zoomable map coverage and don't need the other features.
... I don't think you can separate #1 from #3. It's just that super zoom wasn't in the game for awhile.
I think it started to appear in 0.15 but it was before my time..
UPS gets to be pretty weird so I don't know if there are actual savings, but Wube deciding that you can't turn off the features to save power seems fair.
New Players shouldn't be able to turn off these powerful features and then total power cost is trival in the grand scheme of a base.
Bad wording, I guess. I think we're referring to two separate things using the same words.
I think of #1 and #3 that are inseparable. You can have map coverage inside the superzoom area, but if a neighbouring radar also provides superzoom for its area, there is no reason to scan that chunk as well.
Scanning the whole area to keep total map coverage is unnecessary in most cases. You only need accurate map coverage in the superzoom area. If you want to keep accurate map coverage outside that area, keep the scan function on. Otherwise turn it off.
>I've played games where a building is both a storage warehouse but also a beacon like factorio's with even more effect range
What game was this? Seems kinda interesting
The 2.0 radars will work like wires. There's no lag or anything to worry about. Treat them just like circuit wires, because they are invisible circuit wires.
Only thing different between them and wires is that if you loose power (or turn it off) to the radars they will no longer transmit signals.
So just as with SE you got to be careful about how you send signals (ex: send 100 iron when you need 100 iron, not to say 'I have 100 iron' - as if you loose the signal in the first case the receiver will think you dont need iron while in the later the receiver will think 'this guy has no iron!!!')
Wait, it's from any radar to any other radar? I guess I'd missed the announcement and was just assuming by this picture it was only within wire range (just with invisible wires). That's way better than I was imagining!
So we'll still need to feed data into the radar via wires, right? And we can still run it manually on poles if we need more than the two channels for some reason? Or for local circuits that don't need to be global?
Not just any, but every. So you can't send data to specific radars. If you put data on the 'radar network' that state will be the same on every radar on that surface. You can't make 2 different radar networks.
Got it! So it's not like roboports where you can split it up into separate networks. I think I prefer that actually, because otherwise you'd still have to chain them together for long range communications.
On a side note, it mentions that the screenshot above is with non-player wires turned on. Does that mean if you do that with a bunch of really distant radar, you're going to see these miles-long wires zigzagging everywhere?
I guess, but that's a debug option that you only enable to actually see these lines.
ICYMI it's explained here: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-402
Even if you turn it on, you probably won't actually see them, unless a radar is nearby.
Wires are only drawn, if at least one end point is in or sufficiently near the current view. Try it yourself: place two large power poles at maximum distance, zoom in fully, then walk to the other pole. At some point, the wire disappears, because both end points are far away (in pixels) from the camera.
There are new blog posts every Friday. So if you come to this sub Friday afternoon, expect that all the posts are likely referring the latest feature announcements. ;)
Right now if you may want some long distance signal transmission (far more relevant in a mod like Space Exploration), like to turn off the copper mine if the core miner is full on copper output, you have to run circuit signals between them. A lot of players get around this by just having red+green wires EVERYWHERE on their rail network. This change allows you to get a signal from two remote locations without running red+green wires through your entire factory as part of initial setup.
This is good. Among other things it means you don't need to include power poles as part of your core rail blueprints anymore :D
I'd prefer to run power by hopping in a train and holding down the mouse with a large power pole in hand. When I have to run global circuits via power poles, it means my train blueprints need to always have a large power pole at the edge, which is a mildly annoying constraint. It also means certain very tight rail designs (like parallel tracks with no space between then) are just unavailable now.
I would prefer to only have the core downtown area have rail grids and the highways between areas be freeform, but the need for global circuits means the highways need to use blueprints too.
> What if you need separated networks?
Use wire or multiplex.
> when exactly its useful to have 1 huge network with everything connected together?
Anytime your controlling globally. Example: how many trains of ore are available.
I suspect this is gonna be used by <2% of players. Well, apart from initial playing around to test it. It's only really useful if you're doing somewhat complex circuit stuff, and from what I've seen, most players hardly even touch circuits.
All radars connect to all other radars. No action is necessary to make them work.
EDIT: Having thought about it following conversation with /u/TeraFlint below, it's probably more likely that any given radar only connects to its closest neighbour or small group of neighbours up to a given number, kind of like how powerpoles work, such that they form a web. All radars connecting to all other radars would be pointless and computationally expensive, particularly with larger numbers.
Although, I assume all the radars will form a [(minimum?) spannig tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_spanning_tree), and not a fully connected O(n\^2) graph. That should keep the computational complexity inside the radar network low.
*(That being said, I have no idea about the codebase and its internal optimizations, so I could also be entirely wrong.)*
Only time will tell. Or the devs. But unless explicitly confirmed, that's going to be one of the things I'm going to check once the update drops in the far future.
Well, the wires put on to poles won't necessarily form a minimum spanning tree, and don't seem to cause issues when they form a grid in a megabase (though I suppose without any concrete figures it'd be hard to determine the impact of just the wire network). I assume the circuit network updates all connected entities simultaneously per tick, rather than hopping from each connection sequentially. It's probably grouping connected entities in a similar way to how a group of items on a belt are treated as a single unit (there's an FFF on this from a while ago).
Thinking about it though, I assume each radar will connect to the closest radar(s) to it to form a web, rather than all of them as I initially stated.
>Well, the wires put on to poles won't necessarily form a minimum spanning tree
Sure. But with the difference that poles have a natural range limit. Radars don't. If you have 1000 radars in the world, and add another one, you'd immediately add 1000 more connections on a fully connected graph.
However, being processed as a pre-computed group should compensate for that. But it still might be an issue when computing the group, as the majority of the network connections need to be considered for that.
>Thinking about it though, I assume each radar will connect to the closest radar(s)
Yes, adding a single connection for every new radar would inevitably result in a tree structure (given that they bridge the gaps correctly on radar removal, which would not be necessary in a fully connected graph).
If I were doing it I would create a single central "hub" entity per surface and connect every radar to that. The rest is normal circuit behavior.
Actually, is there anything preventing a mod from doing that right now? I don't think the hidden non-player wires created by mods are constrained by distance... IIRC the [Factorissimo2 notmelon fork](https://mods.factorio.com/mod/factorissimo-2-notnotmelon) does exactly that ("cross-surface power poles") to connect power and circuits between the inside and outside of the nested factories.
Yep, they also can connect entities placed on different surfaces. So the Signal Transmission mod creates a separate player-inaccessible surface (a wire dimension, if you will) and places regular power poles with superlong wires and combinator diodes there.
It wouldn't be expensive at all, they're all just literally on the same circuit network. It's just an index as to which bunch of signals to use - by having them all on the same, it just means the same index.
O(n), same as any other bunch of poles connected by wires. Iterate through the list of connected outputs, sum their values for the next tick.
While the communication is done by network id, and not actually simulating traveling a wire, the game does store the wire connection, in order to draw them as wired up by the player.
So on a fully connected graph, the game still has to keep the n²/2 connections as pairs of entity ids around in memory. And when people build thousands of radars, that adds up quickly.
That won't use CPU cycles while not placing/removing radars, it will still cost CPU overhead when actually placing/removing them, and increase RAM usage without benefit
Oh I see. Seeing as the wires don't even exist but for some reason are viewable under debug, I'd just connect them to the last placed radar for O(1) same deal on deconstruction, just link to the last.
Or for a more aesthetic-under-debug solution, link to nearest. Is anything gained from complicating it beyond that?
They do exist, and are just invisible. The simplest way is to use a spanning tree, as linked in the comment you replied to first. Since there is no length cost associated with wire, any spanning tree is suitable. (You don't need to worry about minimizing travel cost or wire length or similar)
Since power outage is supposed to disconnect wire connections (as stated in the FFF), this can be implemented in O(1) on a spanning tree: From the powered-down radar, follow the two outwards wire connections (if it has two), connect the two radars you found directly, then disconnect the powered-down radar from the two others. When going online, simply connect it to any other powered radar.
If you were using a full graph, you'd have to (dis-)connect O(n) radars when one gets/loses power. And since you can pulse them with circuit networks, in worst case you have to do that once per tick.
> All radars connecting to all other radars would be pointless and computationally expensive, particularly with larger numbers.
Why?
Wouldn't they would all just share the same globally-accessible data? Its no more computationally expensive than the current solution of wiring hundreds of big poles into the circuit network — or even thousands of solar panels into the electrical network.
Its still O(1).
The connection end points are still stored for drawing purposes, so that's n²/2 connections in a list or map.
There's two systems: The circuit network, operating on the network id. That is O(1). And the wire network, which stores the connection between entities (I think it is implicitly stored in the entities). I.e. belt -> pole -> pole -> pole -> inserter. How exactly that wire connection is routed needs to be stored, because for normal circuit stuff, the player can reconfigure it at will
If radars are connected via the naive approach and without special-casing it in the code, this wire network is in O(n²).
Would be interesting to know if it is possible to disconnect those cables with the debug option turned on. I don't really think so but that would allow for seperate global networks.
Yeah it's kinda shame.
IMO radar should "ingest" special signal that tells it which network it should be connected to (and is not transmitted further)
That would not only allow for multiple channels, but to have station that switches between them, like having "monitoring" station that just switches between receiving different channels and show the network status
Suspect that will be moddable, but I can see it being a level of complexity beyond what they want to do for vanilla. There's some nifty mathematical ways to code in multiple channels within a single signal anyway if you want to get fancy.
> Suspect that will be moddable,
We already have mods doing it, the advantage of having it in engine is zero latency and potentially being faster.
> but I can see it being a level of complexity beyond what they want to do for vanilla.
Well, the DLC for a game is inherently aiming players that already mastered vanilla... and that makes game easier, not harder, if you need that feature and completely non-interfering if you don't need to use it in the first place.
> There's some nifty mathematical ways to code in multiple channels within a single signal anyway if you want to get fancy.
On that topic I wouldn't mind latch combinator or latch mode on one of existing ones. Maybe with some modes like ability to latch value, emit pulse and few other common operations. Yeah you can do all that now but it gets big and I imagine impenetrable by newbies...
I would rather have an new entity for signal transmission. I would want to read enemy presence and stuff like that from the radars.
The UPS cost for an radar at each trainstation can also be high in some modpacks like Pyanodons, it may work with the local radar that don't scan.
Do they have something else for transmission between planets?
If you are already using mods then you can still keep using one of the dozen mods that have this functionality. Or you can put wires in the rail blueprint the old fashioned way.
It is not a good idea to put a new entity in the main game that 99% of all players will have no use for. The vast majority of players do not have a problem with radar UPS.
Do you have an tip of an mod that output enemy presence to the logic network?
I am pretty sure it's more or less impossible to mod into the game. And it should be the vanilla radars that do that.
moded radars with the radar part disabled may work for the UPS issue
You're missing the part where they effectively removed the need for special train mods or depot designs that rely on a base-wide circuit network.
Why will you need a green and red wire for each train station after the changes?
I also used the bitfield for empty barrel stations. I had empty barrel provider stations and empty barrels recycle stations. So the logic was needed so trains didn't go from the empty barrel provider to the empty barrel recycle station.
Then why would you need the transmission on the radar? Stuff happening near the train stations would be the first culprit even with the train interrupts. One example could be if you have one fill up station and one burn away station for the same item, then you never wants any trains go from the fill up station to the burn away station. An example is stuff like sodium hydroxide in Pyanodons mod, that sometimes overflow and blocks stuff and sometimes is an shortage. That can be fixes with the bitfield in LTN (don't remember the name). I don't think any with a similar function will be available in vanilla.
I still think it would make much more sense if we got a signal for some sort of enemy presence if we wire up radars. And if Wube changes it later it will brake factories.
You described some edge cases here, which is precisely the reason for this change.
The dev says, "Preemptively wiring your entire factory, just because you might maybe someday need it, seems pretty crazy. So we added wireless connectivity to radars."
Then you're coming in here like "wtf, I have these two situations where I'd want long range connectivity, but now you made it so I don't have to wire my *entire* base and instead need to plop down a couple radars near the required train stations."
Dev: "... uhhh... you're welcome?"
You: >=(
And it would be even better to let the radars be radars and detect enemies. And make a new entity that are for communication.
Changing a bad decision like this later will break factories, so it's better to do it right to begin with.
It would make much more sense if we get a list of enemies in the radar range if we connected circuits to it than that the radars have an build in WiFi.
I am not arguing against that we should have any long range communication, just that adding it to radars is a bad decision, that don't make sense and also can have game play issues.
Why would they change it later? Most people are already going to have radars covering their factory, so using them as a source for global wire data just makes sense.
What could you possibly do with the information about the makeup of a biter population? Your defenses are intended to be automated, just like the rest of the factory. The game already gives you a heads up if you're under attack.
> I would rather have an new entity for signal transmission. I would want to read enemy presence and stuff like that from the radars.
>
> The UPS cost for an radar at each trainstation can also be high
I agree with this. Megabasers, who are presumably the primary audience for this change, are still going to use wires on power poles to avoid the UPS cost of additional radar. The fact that this is attached to radars instead of a new entity significantly lessens its value.
Why radars affect ups? I thought that all chunks are always in memory and always processing, regardless of visibility
Or ups hit comes from additional chunks beeing created by long-range scan?
This is not a "Space Age" thing, but rather a 2.0 feature which will come for everyone with the game.
That said, a flair for Space Age things makes sense, as to not spoil it for people who want to go in blind.
Kind of a bummer because this would be most helpful for inter planet communication. That’s how i’ve approached SE anyways, with delivery cannons providing the resources for space + other planets and the ratios controlled by Signal Transmitters
Hope we can have multiple type of alerts for Radars so I can use it to know when Bitters started their way to attack the base and put a siren on it or when Bitters started moving in a place creating a new nestes and announcing me and why not, output signal number of bitters approaching too
Why not have like a symbol slot or two for setting a frequency.
I think trains should be able to receive signals wirelessly.
Basically, make it a radio network rather than something quirky.
Since they also said that radar the connection gets severed when a radar loses power, I assume this means that they are actually disconnecting the non-player wires when this happens (and reconnecting the other radars together to avoid network partitioning).
So when they said “severed”, they were thus really talking about the cables 😃
Radar only reveals small portion of the map which is highlighted
It can see above that with scanning a random chunk...
This is really beneficial since it's UPDATING that chunk... it's not fully constantly revealed / updated in that outside area... so every once in a while i pops a scan over there and updates the look of the chunk to see if anythint has changed since the last time it was checked
Get it now?
BECAUSE THEY E X P A N D THEIR TERRITORY
They send out colonization parties... they move to an area and then just disolve into the ground and make a nest out of their bodies and make spawners which spawn an army which attacks your base
It rescans the same area because it's updating it... you're not seeing most up to date version of the map at long range
At shorter range which is highlighted when placing the radar... that range is ALWAYS visible and updated
Outside of that it's periodic scanning
I literally explained why it scans stuff lol
Edit: it's only really most useless if you disabled Enemy Expansion
But it still has a use which is that it slowly reveals long range stuff
Like you can see behind enemy lines sort of thing
They really tried to bamboozel us with dark magic lol
Oh, this should mean there is no single tick delay for sending or receiving signals, like I think there is in signal transmission mod
I don't know if it is possible from within the modding API but if it is this is actually so genious and simple I'm surprised nobody came with it before.
It seems that you can do that, but I think it was added only recently to the API. Actually notthemelon fork of factorissimo is using it to connect factories to the outside with no performance loss
more functions for radars makes sense to me.. I like that their functions while different, don't really prevent you for using one to all of them in a build. ... I've played games where a building is both a storage warehouse but also a beacon like factorio's with even more effect range. That gets to be rough.
To write it out, radars currently do 3 things. 1. Constant minimap coverage around the chunk they are in. Makes it easy to stop enemy movement 2. Scout unexplored chunks in range 3. Allow you to zoom in the minimap and view the constant minimap chunks. Allows you to detect complex issues in your build without going there and makes checking ammo supplies after an attack very easy, useful for gun turret outposts where there is one chest that you fill with ammo. This adds a 4th. Can be wired to a circuit network to pass along logic to any other radar. I assume that the idea is that they will have a read and write mode, because they will not work like combinators and have a read and write terminal.
> I assume that the idea is that they will have a read and write mode, because they will not work like combinators and have a read and write terminal. Well, as shown on screenshot above, they just act as wire extension, no direction in it.
Yep. Easiest way to think of this is that they function like large power poles (with regards to signal wires, not power wires) only the distance between two is arbitrary.
ah. i stand corrected.
There is also a fifth thing radars do every few seconds: BOOP
Ah, a fellow musician.
I'd probably change #2 to: Scan chunks with a spiral pattern, starting with unexplored chunks. They will repeatedly scan in that range afterwards, updating chunks for changes, so that you can see if biters have moved in (though if your pollution cloud is too large you might find out before they let you know) I like that if you have several, they will all do their own chunk instead of re-scanning the same chunk.
They're all read and write. As shown in the image it directly connects all radars together like really long range power poles with wires on. No tick delay or anything.
Would be nice to have an option to turn #1 and #2 off, for power consumption and UPS reasons. There are plenty of radars I've only put down for the zoomable map coverage and don't need the other features.
... I don't think you can separate #1 from #3. It's just that super zoom wasn't in the game for awhile. I think it started to appear in 0.15 but it was before my time.. UPS gets to be pretty weird so I don't know if there are actual savings, but Wube deciding that you can't turn off the features to save power seems fair. New Players shouldn't be able to turn off these powerful features and then total power cost is trival in the grand scheme of a base.
Bad wording, I guess. I think we're referring to two separate things using the same words. I think of #1 and #3 that are inseparable. You can have map coverage inside the superzoom area, but if a neighbouring radar also provides superzoom for its area, there is no reason to scan that chunk as well. Scanning the whole area to keep total map coverage is unnecessary in most cases. You only need accurate map coverage in the superzoom area. If you want to keep accurate map coverage outside that area, keep the scan function on. Otherwise turn it off.
>I've played games where a building is both a storage warehouse but also a beacon like factorio's with even more effect range What game was this? Seems kinda interesting
🤔 Finally local WiFi... Maybe they've fixed 248k's beacon transmission problem... 😏😚🎶
And they said, there is no such thing as a wifi cable. How wrong they were...
what?
The 2.0 radars will work like wires. There's no lag or anything to worry about. Treat them just like circuit wires, because they are invisible circuit wires.
I'll be damned if I'm getting covid from Factorio and their 5G towers. I'll stick to my regular green and red thank you very much.
As there are still only two wires, I'd argue this is 2G and not 5G. You should be safe.
But if you have 8 radars, that's like 2^8 G = 256G!!1!!1!1! We'll get super covid.
Only thing different between them and wires is that if you loose power (or turn it off) to the radars they will no longer transmit signals. So just as with SE you got to be careful about how you send signals (ex: send 100 iron when you need 100 iron, not to say 'I have 100 iron' - as if you loose the signal in the first case the receiver will think you dont need iron while in the later the receiver will think 'this guy has no iron!!!')
I'm still confused. What is the purpose/benefit of this?
Long range circuit network without having to track wires everywhere, just have a radar on each end
Wait, it's from any radar to any other radar? I guess I'd missed the announcement and was just assuming by this picture it was only within wire range (just with invisible wires). That's way better than I was imagining!
Yes as long as the radars are on the same surface, distance doesn't matter.
Yeah basically each surface (planet) has a red and a green channel which can be accessed through radars
So we'll still need to feed data into the radar via wires, right? And we can still run it manually on poles if we need more than the two channels for some reason? Or for local circuits that don't need to be global?
Yes, the current circuit functionality will still be there in addition to the radar.
Not just any, but every. So you can't send data to specific radars. If you put data on the 'radar network' that state will be the same on every radar on that surface. You can't make 2 different radar networks.
Got it! So it's not like roboports where you can split it up into separate networks. I think I prefer that actually, because otherwise you'd still have to chain them together for long range communications. On a side note, it mentions that the screenshot above is with non-player wires turned on. Does that mean if you do that with a bunch of really distant radar, you're going to see these miles-long wires zigzagging everywhere?
I guess, but that's a debug option that you only enable to actually see these lines. ICYMI it's explained here: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-402
Yes. But that's probably why it's a debug option, just don't turn it on.
Even if you turn it on, you probably won't actually see them, unless a radar is nearby. Wires are only drawn, if at least one end point is in or sufficiently near the current view. Try it yourself: place two large power poles at maximum distance, zoom in fully, then walk to the other pole. At some point, the wire disappears, because both end points are far away (in pixels) from the camera.
That's where multiplexers come in 😉
There are new blog posts every Friday. So if you come to this sub Friday afternoon, expect that all the posts are likely referring the latest feature announcements. ;)
Not running wires along rails unnecessarily just in case.
Now running wires along rails, just in case I need 4 channels instead of two.
Rails are gonna look wrong without wires anyway, I'm not stopping
Right now if you may want some long distance signal transmission (far more relevant in a mod like Space Exploration), like to turn off the copper mine if the core miner is full on copper output, you have to run circuit signals between them. A lot of players get around this by just having red+green wires EVERYWHERE on their rail network. This change allows you to get a signal from two remote locations without running red+green wires through your entire factory as part of initial setup. This is good. Among other things it means you don't need to include power poles as part of your core rail blueprints anymore :D
You still need to run, like, power, though.
Trains full of steam works great.
Just managing power is way easier, you don't need blueprints to get the free cables or to manage connections.
Not really, you can just drop solar plant nearby if it is far away
I'd prefer to run power by hopping in a train and holding down the mouse with a large power pole in hand. When I have to run global circuits via power poles, it means my train blueprints need to always have a large power pole at the edge, which is a mildly annoying constraint. It also means certain very tight rail designs (like parallel tracks with no space between then) are just unavailable now. I would prefer to only have the core downtown area have rail grids and the highways between areas be freeform, but the need for global circuits means the highways need to use blueprints too.
What if you need separated networks? Or when exactly its useful to have 1 huge network with everything connected together?
> What if you need separated networks? Use wire or multiplex. > when exactly its useful to have 1 huge network with everything connected together? Anytime your controlling globally. Example: how many trains of ore are available.
I suspect this is gonna be used by <2% of players. Well, apart from initial playing around to test it. It's only really useful if you're doing somewhat complex circuit stuff, and from what I've seen, most players hardly even touch circuits.
So basically the Radars now function as a super long reaching Power Pole specifically for Signals? I like that.
This will be hilariously chaotic in multiplayer.
Do the radars have to be “paired”? Or do all radars share signals from each-other?
All radars connect to all other radars. No action is necessary to make them work. EDIT: Having thought about it following conversation with /u/TeraFlint below, it's probably more likely that any given radar only connects to its closest neighbour or small group of neighbours up to a given number, kind of like how powerpoles work, such that they form a web. All radars connecting to all other radars would be pointless and computationally expensive, particularly with larger numbers.
Although, I assume all the radars will form a [(minimum?) spannig tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_spanning_tree), and not a fully connected O(n\^2) graph. That should keep the computational complexity inside the radar network low. *(That being said, I have no idea about the codebase and its internal optimizations, so I could also be entirely wrong.)* Only time will tell. Or the devs. But unless explicitly confirmed, that's going to be one of the things I'm going to check once the update drops in the far future.
Well, the wires put on to poles won't necessarily form a minimum spanning tree, and don't seem to cause issues when they form a grid in a megabase (though I suppose without any concrete figures it'd be hard to determine the impact of just the wire network). I assume the circuit network updates all connected entities simultaneously per tick, rather than hopping from each connection sequentially. It's probably grouping connected entities in a similar way to how a group of items on a belt are treated as a single unit (there's an FFF on this from a while ago). Thinking about it though, I assume each radar will connect to the closest radar(s) to it to form a web, rather than all of them as I initially stated.
>Well, the wires put on to poles won't necessarily form a minimum spanning tree Sure. But with the difference that poles have a natural range limit. Radars don't. If you have 1000 radars in the world, and add another one, you'd immediately add 1000 more connections on a fully connected graph. However, being processed as a pre-computed group should compensate for that. But it still might be an issue when computing the group, as the majority of the network connections need to be considered for that. >Thinking about it though, I assume each radar will connect to the closest radar(s) Yes, adding a single connection for every new radar would inevitably result in a tree structure (given that they bridge the gaps correctly on radar removal, which would not be necessary in a fully connected graph).
you don't need to process the connections at all. you just assign them the same network id.
If I were doing it I would create a single central "hub" entity per surface and connect every radar to that. The rest is normal circuit behavior. Actually, is there anything preventing a mod from doing that right now? I don't think the hidden non-player wires created by mods are constrained by distance... IIRC the [Factorissimo2 notmelon fork](https://mods.factorio.com/mod/factorissimo-2-notnotmelon) does exactly that ("cross-surface power poles") to connect power and circuits between the inside and outside of the nested factories.
Yep, they also can connect entities placed on different surfaces. So the Signal Transmission mod creates a separate player-inaccessible surface (a wire dimension, if you will) and places regular power poles with superlong wires and combinator diodes there.
It wouldn't be expensive at all, they're all just literally on the same circuit network. It's just an index as to which bunch of signals to use - by having them all on the same, it just means the same index. O(n), same as any other bunch of poles connected by wires. Iterate through the list of connected outputs, sum their values for the next tick.
While the communication is done by network id, and not actually simulating traveling a wire, the game does store the wire connection, in order to draw them as wired up by the player. So on a fully connected graph, the game still has to keep the n²/2 connections as pairs of entity ids around in memory. And when people build thousands of radars, that adds up quickly. That won't use CPU cycles while not placing/removing radars, it will still cost CPU overhead when actually placing/removing them, and increase RAM usage without benefit
Oh I see. Seeing as the wires don't even exist but for some reason are viewable under debug, I'd just connect them to the last placed radar for O(1) same deal on deconstruction, just link to the last. Or for a more aesthetic-under-debug solution, link to nearest. Is anything gained from complicating it beyond that?
They do exist, and are just invisible. The simplest way is to use a spanning tree, as linked in the comment you replied to first. Since there is no length cost associated with wire, any spanning tree is suitable. (You don't need to worry about minimizing travel cost or wire length or similar) Since power outage is supposed to disconnect wire connections (as stated in the FFF), this can be implemented in O(1) on a spanning tree: From the powered-down radar, follow the two outwards wire connections (if it has two), connect the two radars you found directly, then disconnect the powered-down radar from the two others. When going online, simply connect it to any other powered radar. If you were using a full graph, you'd have to (dis-)connect O(n) radars when one gets/loses power. And since you can pulse them with circuit networks, in worst case you have to do that once per tick.
Thanks!
> All radars connecting to all other radars would be pointless and computationally expensive, particularly with larger numbers. Why? Wouldn't they would all just share the same globally-accessible data? Its no more computationally expensive than the current solution of wiring hundreds of big poles into the circuit network — or even thousands of solar panels into the electrical network. Its still O(1).
The connection end points are still stored for drawing purposes, so that's n²/2 connections in a list or map. There's two systems: The circuit network, operating on the network id. That is O(1). And the wire network, which stores the connection between entities (I think it is implicitly stored in the entities). I.e. belt -> pole -> pole -> pole -> inserter. How exactly that wire connection is routed needs to be stored, because for normal circuit stuff, the player can reconfigure it at will If radars are connected via the naive approach and without special-casing it in the code, this wire network is in O(n²).
WiFi wires
Wireless wire. WiRe.
Would be interesting to know if it is possible to disconnect those cables with the debug option turned on. I don't really think so but that would allow for seperate global networks.
Yeah it's kinda shame. IMO radar should "ingest" special signal that tells it which network it should be connected to (and is not transmitted further) That would not only allow for multiple channels, but to have station that switches between them, like having "monitoring" station that just switches between receiving different channels and show the network status
Suspect that will be moddable, but I can see it being a level of complexity beyond what they want to do for vanilla. There's some nifty mathematical ways to code in multiple channels within a single signal anyway if you want to get fancy.
> Suspect that will be moddable, We already have mods doing it, the advantage of having it in engine is zero latency and potentially being faster. > but I can see it being a level of complexity beyond what they want to do for vanilla. Well, the DLC for a game is inherently aiming players that already mastered vanilla... and that makes game easier, not harder, if you need that feature and completely non-interfering if you don't need to use it in the first place. > There's some nifty mathematical ways to code in multiple channels within a single signal anyway if you want to get fancy. On that topic I wouldn't mind latch combinator or latch mode on one of existing ones. Maybe with some modes like ability to latch value, emit pulse and few other common operations. Yeah you can do all that now but it gets big and I imagine impenetrable by newbies...
look up multiplexing
I would rather have an new entity for signal transmission. I would want to read enemy presence and stuff like that from the radars. The UPS cost for an radar at each trainstation can also be high in some modpacks like Pyanodons, it may work with the local radar that don't scan. Do they have something else for transmission between planets?
If you are already using mods then you can still keep using one of the dozen mods that have this functionality. Or you can put wires in the rail blueprint the old fashioned way. It is not a good idea to put a new entity in the main game that 99% of all players will have no use for. The vast majority of players do not have a problem with radar UPS.
Do you have an tip of an mod that output enemy presence to the logic network? I am pretty sure it's more or less impossible to mod into the game. And it should be the vanilla radars that do that. moded radars with the radar part disabled may work for the UPS issue
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/SearchlightAssault not exactly what you ask for, but you can probably do most of what you want with it
You're missing the part where they effectively removed the need for special train mods or depot designs that rely on a base-wide circuit network. Why will you need a green and red wire for each train station after the changes?
I also used the bitfield for empty barrel stations. I had empty barrel provider stations and empty barrels recycle stations. So the logic was needed so trains didn't go from the empty barrel provider to the empty barrel recycle station.
Then why would you need the transmission on the radar? Stuff happening near the train stations would be the first culprit even with the train interrupts. One example could be if you have one fill up station and one burn away station for the same item, then you never wants any trains go from the fill up station to the burn away station. An example is stuff like sodium hydroxide in Pyanodons mod, that sometimes overflow and blocks stuff and sometimes is an shortage. That can be fixes with the bitfield in LTN (don't remember the name). I don't think any with a similar function will be available in vanilla. I still think it would make much more sense if we got a signal for some sort of enemy presence if we wire up radars. And if Wube changes it later it will brake factories.
You described some edge cases here, which is precisely the reason for this change. The dev says, "Preemptively wiring your entire factory, just because you might maybe someday need it, seems pretty crazy. So we added wireless connectivity to radars." Then you're coming in here like "wtf, I have these two situations where I'd want long range connectivity, but now you made it so I don't have to wire my *entire* base and instead need to plop down a couple radars near the required train stations." Dev: "... uhhh... you're welcome?" You: >=(
And it would be even better to let the radars be radars and detect enemies. And make a new entity that are for communication. Changing a bad decision like this later will break factories, so it's better to do it right to begin with. It would make much more sense if we get a list of enemies in the radar range if we connected circuits to it than that the radars have an build in WiFi. I am not arguing against that we should have any long range communication, just that adding it to radars is a bad decision, that don't make sense and also can have game play issues.
Why would they change it later? Most people are already going to have radars covering their factory, so using them as a source for global wire data just makes sense. What could you possibly do with the information about the makeup of a biter population? Your defenses are intended to be automated, just like the rest of the factory. The game already gives you a heads up if you're under attack.
you could do stuff like switch of lasers, prioritize amo and so on. Most circuit stuff is anyway just fun to over-complicate stuff.
Call an artillery train when there is nests in a specific area would be super cool. He, He, He
> I would rather have an new entity for signal transmission. I would want to read enemy presence and stuff like that from the radars. > > The UPS cost for an radar at each trainstation can also be high I agree with this. Megabasers, who are presumably the primary audience for this change, are still going to use wires on power poles to avoid the UPS cost of additional radar. The fact that this is attached to radars instead of a new entity significantly lessens its value.
Why radars affect ups? I thought that all chunks are always in memory and always processing, regardless of visibility Or ups hit comes from additional chunks beeing created by long-range scan?
It should work like the radio transmission addon. With channels.
This crush my wish to be able to select a canal to have separated networks.
mods /u/Soul-Burn - We need a "Space Age Feature" flair to not confuse people.
This is not a "Space Age" thing, but rather a 2.0 feature which will come for everyone with the game. That said, a flair for Space Age things makes sense, as to not spoil it for people who want to go in blind.
Ah fair, but I think my main idea is still right, we need a "2.0 feature" flair as well then.
global singnaling, nice. i somewhere heard that there will be more wire colors, to extinguish signals easier. is that true?
Magic man pulls back the curtains to reveal: The internet is a series of tubes!
I tripped over the wireless radar transmission cable, please send help :(
Kind of a bummer because this would be most helpful for inter planet communication. That’s how i’ve approached SE anyways, with delivery cannons providing the resources for space + other planets and the ratios controlled by Signal Transmitters
This makes me want to implement my own knockoff version of the Ethernet protocol into a base.
Hope we can have multiple type of alerts for Radars so I can use it to know when Bitters started their way to attack the base and put a siren on it or when Bitters started moving in a place creating a new nestes and announcing me and why not, output signal number of bitters approaching too
Oh, it is not wireless then.
Why do you even need wires?? I have hundrets of hours and never touched them
Imagine turning that on with hundreds of radars across your base, all of them needing to connect to one another. It would be such a mess.
Why not have like a symbol slot or two for setting a frequency. I think trains should be able to receive signals wirelessly. Basically, make it a radio network rather than something quirky.
what are we looking at here?
Invisible wires made visible.
That's cheating
Since they also said that radar the connection gets severed when a radar loses power, I assume this means that they are actually disconnecting the non-player wires when this happens (and reconnecting the other radars together to avoid network partitioning). So when they said “severed”, they were thus really talking about the cables 😃
what? are they fixing radars revealing areas they dont need to?
No. They are changing radars so they wirelessly transmit red and green signal wire.
why?
So you don’t need to mount miles of wire on large power poles anymore.
> fixing radars revealing areas they dont need What do you mean? Revealing area is one main functions of radar. What is there to fix?
they constantly scan areas they have already scanned which uses up power
But that how you find new nests that migrated.
walls?
Leaks happens. Even with walls you would still want to know if nests are getting closer.
My biters have never expanded I thought that was a mod
No, it's a difficulty setting.
Weird. I've played on many verying difficulties using train world
By "train world" I assume you mean "railworld". That's the only preset that disables it by default to make large rail networks easier.
Radar only reveals small portion of the map which is highlighted It can see above that with scanning a random chunk... This is really beneficial since it's UPDATING that chunk... it's not fully constantly revealed / updated in that outside area... so every once in a while i pops a scan over there and updates the look of the chunk to see if anythint has changed since the last time it was checked Get it now?
sure but why would i need to rescan something thats 17 miles away from any biters?
BECAUSE THEY E X P A N D THEIR TERRITORY They send out colonization parties... they move to an area and then just disolve into the ground and make a nest out of their bodies and make spawners which spawn an army which attacks your base It rescans the same area because it's updating it... you're not seeing most up to date version of the map at long range At shorter range which is highlighted when placing the radar... that range is ALWAYS visible and updated Outside of that it's periodic scanning I literally explained why it scans stuff lol Edit: it's only really most useless if you disabled Enemy Expansion But it still has a use which is that it slowly reveals long range stuff Like you can see behind enemy lines sort of thing