Steam Engine and Boiler Troubles

[Archibald Meatpants]

Hi there!
My steam engines and boilers seem to be bugging out pretty bad.
Some of the values/stats you see when hovering the mouse over them keep flickering, like steam output or consumption, etc. The boiler keeps flickering the message output full.
I'd like to state that my boilers have an adequate amount of coal being fed into them, and they have an unbroken pipe giving them fresh water.
I have a total of four steam engines, and two of them are working just fine. The two to the right are the ones bugging out.
Picking them up and putting them back down again gets them to work for a few seconds, but they quickly return to bugging out again.
What's going on here?


Here's the screenshot:
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198320432199/screenshot/2415691257118197483/

Thanks!

[malogoss]

Clicking the screenshot link does not work for me.

However, what you describe is often caused by a power grid being in fact 2 or more separate power grids. Caused by a pole connection missing somewhere. Usually, you'll see smoke/steam coming out from some steam engines while others are idling. Normally, they should all idle or all work to the same % of their capacity.

A simple way to spot the problem is to go in map view, toggle power line view on and see where the power grid is broken. It's often somewhere right in the middle of the steam engines, or right next to them.

If that is not the problem, then I'd need to see a screenshot. It could be one of many other things.

[Archibald Meatpants]

That's weird, but I did forget to mention something you brought up. Steam clouds are only coming from the two that are working. It's difficult to really say or capture in a screenshot, but a lot of the text from hovering my mouse over the boilers just flickers really quickly.

Also, it appears that I left the screenshot on private by mistake. I have changed its availability to public.

[malogoss]

It looks like the power pole, the one in the middle with 2 engines to its left and 2 engines to its right, is very weird.

In fact it looks like 2 poles, but one is a ghost item or something? When you hold shift and build an item, it places a ghost item instead. If you hold shift and click an existing power pole, it removes all the wires connecting that pole to other poles. Something of that nature seems to have happened there.

All the rest looks clean, the belt, the inserters, the boilers.

So try this. Deconstruct all the 4-5 poles i can see in the screenshot. No real pole, no ghost poles, nothing. Then build them again. It should work.

[malogoss]

I looked at the SS again, I think you are holding a pole and the one on the ground is a ghost item, not a real pole. As I said, this happens when you hold shift while building something. You can build on top of it, no problem. Then all should work.

[Archibald Meatpants]

You were right, it was the ghost pole. I probably would not have caught that in a really long time, thanks for the help.

[malogoss]

Yeah, when some engines work at the same time that others don't, check the poles.