Changes

• Decider combinator, arithmetic combinator and selector combinator are now primary energy consumers and have buffer size increased to make them more reliable in case of low power.
• Reduced selector combinator energy usage from 5kW to 1kW.
• When using "Entity tooltip delay", the timer is also reset when moving the camera or the character. Fixes blinking entity tooltip when moving.

Bugfixes

• Fixed "Entity tooltip delay" causing entity tooltips to never show in controller input method.
• Fixed turrets would clear "read ammo" when migrating a save file. (131362)
• Fixed that diagonal connected resources did not group in the map total-patch tooltip logic. (131405)
• Fixed a crash when cloning trees/rocks marked for deconstruction.
• Fixed a crash when using roboport requests with spoilable robots. (131326)
• Fixed electric poles would connect when checking pole buildability by script. (131450)
• Fixed double space in fuel pollution tooltip lines. (131453)

Previous changelog: Version 2.0.71

New versions are released as experimental first and later promoted to stable. If you wish to switch to the experimental version on Steam, choose the experimental Beta Participation option under game settings; on the stand-alone version, check Experimental updates under Other settings.

Decider combinator, arithmetic combinator and selector combinator are now primary energy consumers and have buffer size increased to make them more reliable in case of low power.

wait what about the constant combinator? isn't that one also kinda needed to have that? do you want us to use decider combinators AS constant combinators now or something? or did i miss constant combinators not having a power draw?

also gonna be funny when the speakers dont work from low power so you wont get notified something is wrong XD

GregoriusT wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 12:15 pm did i miss constant combinators not having a power draw?

You did.

Constant combinators don't require power.

GregoriusT wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 12:15 pm wait what about the constant combinator? isn't that one also kinda needed to have that? do you want us to use decider combinators AS constant combinators now or something? or did i miss constant combinators not having a power draw?

also gonna be funny when the speakers dont work from low power so you wont get notified something is wrong XD

Constant combinator, power switch, and display panel don't need power to work, as you can see here. The others do.

GregoriusT wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 12:15 pm also gonna be funny when the speakers dont work from low power so you wont get notified something is wrong XD

No it's going to sound terrible or very silent x) But on the other hand, the speaker is not a required piece of the factory, it only signal the player something, you could still see what's wrong without the alarm and fix, since it calls for a manual fix , it would not break a memory cell or corrupt some combinator memory if the speaker is unreliable, and you could have not heard the alarm before too , if you were looking away distracted or something.

That being said, i wouldn't mind the speaker being treated the same, seeing the display pannel not requiring energy

> Decider combinator, arithmetic combinator and selector combinator are now primary energy consumers and have buffer size increased to make them more reliable in case of low power.

131363

GregoriusT wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 12:15 pm also gonna be funny when the speakers dont work from low power so you wont get notified something is wrong XD

Then do what real life system does: Make a secondary electric network for important things that need constant power even on global power failure.

On my factories I usually put important combinators and speakers on a separate solar/battery network
As of 2.0.71, with poor calculation, if you put 2 solar panel and one battery you have stable 60kw, this represent 60 combinator or 30 speakers or 12 lamp or selectors (now 60 selectors with this update), 3 fcpu of the fcpu mod

y.petremann wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 2:07 pm Then do what real life system does: Make a secondary electric network for important things that need constant power even on global power failure.

On my factories I usually put important combinators and speakers on a separate solar/battery network

Yeah separating power grids is a pain though, because each time you put a power pole nearby it will just autoconnect the two networks and you need to undo it, making setups really hard to keep compact, which is likely the reason this change was implemented in the first place.

It also lags quite a bit to have multiple power networks. (i suffered from that one once while deconstructing a large solar farm, resulting in many disconnected power poles that halved by UPS, and i know wube didnt fix that one yet)

y.petremann wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 2:07 pm As of 2.0.71, with poor calculation, if you put 2 solar panel and one battery you have stable 60kw, this represent 60 combinator or 30 speakers or 12 lamp or selectors (now 60 selectors with this update), 3 fcpu of the fcpu mod

Actually that particular hypothesis does not work, because the accumulator would be drained by the other machines instantly if it were on the same network.

Unless the internal buffer size increase is enough to make them work over night, in which case you wont even need an accumulator in the first place, and can run them like a solar powered pocket calculator.

That said, if you have just a steam engine or two, you can rest easy that your combinators will still work.

"each time you put a power pole nearby" sounds like a great use for hazard concrete

im pretty sure theyre referring to keeping those things on a separate network from the factory

nova4x wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 4:37 pm im pretty sure theyre referring to keeping those things on a separate network from the factory

Yep, I just playfully brought up the idea of using hazard concrete more as a visual reminder to not to interconnect the two power networks as you can create a perimeter with it.

How much were the buffer sizes increased? What were they before and now?

Decider combinator, arithmetic combinator and selector combinator are now primary energy consumers and have buffer size increased to make them more reliable in case of low power.

I'm not seeing the buffer values in 5ab7a49559f59edb3527c52166055d00d8b7a92a.
I see the primary-secondary change, and the active_energy_usage changes.

I'm also not seeing the buffer sizes listed in the wiki; so I'm guessing they are calculated based on something but I don't see what.
Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places?

Thanks for any info/details!

kizrak wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 6:27 pm I'm not seeing the buffer values in 5ab7a49559f59edb3527c52166055d00d8b7a92a.
I see the primary-secondary change, and the active_energy_usage changes.

I'm also not seeing the buffer sizes listed in the wiki; so I'm guessing they are calculated based on something but I don't see what.
Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places?

Buffer sizes are hardcoded (in terms of being a formula on the c++ side) and as such they are not exposed on the prototypes.

GregoriusT wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 3:24 pm Yeah separating power grids is a pain though, because each time you put a power pole nearby it will just autoconnect the two networks and you need to undo it, making setups really hard to keep compact, which is likely the reason this change was implemented in the first place.

It also lags quite a bit to have multiple power networks. (i suffered from that one once while deconstructing a large solar farm, resulting in many disconnected power poles that halved by UPS, and i know wube didnt fix that one yet)

Yeah sure this is a REAL pain to separate network, I just placed this substation here without really thinking and any concern about accidental connnection ...
Also I don't talk about hundred of network, generally when you put such alarm, it's to say "HEY POWER FAILURE IS IMMINENT", for the rest of the factory I put it on classic power network.

Deconstructing a large solar farm, makes a lot of calculation because it need to restructure the electric network, and if it's large, the yeak you're gonna have lags, this is different from having a single secondary emergency network to ring a bell because you're gonna be out of energy.

GregoriusT wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 3:24 pm Actually that particular hypothesis does not work, because the accumulator would be drained by the other machines instantly if it were on the same network.

You make the assumption that it's on the same network, but HELL NO, imagine an hospital that put his peoples dependent to electricity to be alive to mix their networks ... If you are the hospital manager, I will never go in you hospital.

And also, with only one battery, and full usage of the 60kw (which I doubt an emergency alert circuit will consume), combinators will have a little hiccup for about 161 tick on 6 seconds because the battery dies 6s before the night ends and batteries can start charging again, but at 59kw this is totally fine and i you really need 60kw, you can add a secondary battery.

GregoriusT wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 3:24 pm Unless the internal buffer size increase is enough to make them work over night, in which case you wont even need an accumulator in the first place, and can run them like a solar powered pocket calculator.

That said, if you have just a steam engine or two, you can rest easy that your combinators will still work.

And steam engines can go faulty because of no more fuel, the solar/battery will never dies out

FactorioBot wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 11:08 am Changes

• Decider combinator, arithmetic combinator and selector combinator are now primary energy consumers and have buffer size increased to make them more reliable in case of low power.

Awesome!

FactorioBot wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 11:08 am Changes

• When using "Entity tooltip delay", the timer is also reset when moving the camera or the character. Fixes blinking entity tooltip when moving.

Finally, thank you!!
I had reported this issue five years ago and Kovarex supposedly had fixed it, but it hadn't actually been fixed in my experience:
viewtopic.php?p=545767#p545767

y.petremann wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 7:34 pm You make the assumption that it's on the same network, but HELL NO, imagine an hospital that put his peoples dependent to electricity to be alive to mix their networks ... If you are the hospital manager, I will never go in you hospital.

I think we got a lot of context mixed up there, when you said two Solars and an Accumulator it sounded like you meant that in the "on the same global network" context, ofcourse on a separate network they will work flawlessly.

And when i said separating the power grids is a pain, i meant more in the sense of "I like building random spaghetti nearby, and occasionally upgrading all power poles on the map to legendary even if not needed", which will inadvertently reconnect the separate power network by accident. It wasn't about making it separate, you can just shiftclick the substation for that, it was about keeping it separate in the long term and preventing accidents, especially when you cant just have a city blocks base, like on Fulgora. ^^

On a slightly unrelated note: i find it kinda sad that Nauvis-Outposting with military and everything, isn't really a thing anymore due to Planets/Lava discouraging/replacing that, so having grid separated bases on the same Planet is not really useful anymore.