Long power lines management

[Axilos]

Hi everyone, I think I'm missing something. I try to pull cable over long distances. I quickly found out that big poles are much more efficient than small poles... HOWEVER I have no way of checking the max range between two poles which is very frustrating because I am running back and forth "hoping" that my poles would actually connect or something. But I never know if its the UI or the pole placement or something else... Is there a way to see the "range sphere" when building poles ? Or automatically create a medium pole when drawing lines ?
Thanks 4 your help !

[Fenix]

There is no way to really tell, but;
Power Tower: 300m (37.5 Foundations)
Power Pole: 100m (12.5 Foundations

[Maehlice]

Use Alt-click and ping your previous tower to get its distance so you can stay within 300m.

[Daerious]

With the smaller mark I power poles, if you start a wiring operation the hologram of the power pole will change from blue to red when you have exceeded the maximum distance. I have not yet tried using the power towers but I would hope that it would be similar.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by Daerious:

With the smaller mark I power poles, if you start a wiring operation the hologram of the power pole will change from blue to red when you have exceeded the maximum distance. I have not yet tried using the power towers but I would hope that it would be similar.

It is similar, but you have to aim at the right place on the tower to get the thing you want. If you aim at the top when selecting the tower you get another tower, if you aim lower you get power poles.

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by Daerious:

With the smaller mark I power poles, if you start a wiring operation the hologram of the power pole will change from blue to red when you have exceeded the maximum distance. I have not yet tried using the power towers but I would hope that it would be similar.

It is. Dragging a power line from a tower creates another tower hologram if you selected the upper connection, or a regular power pole from the lower connection.

The placement range on power towers is also much longer, as is the selection range for connecting a power line if you wanted to deconstruct and adjust the tower placement afterwards.
You can very easily traverse areas using Ziplines by placing a long range power tower.

[Gal Kraft]

If you start with a MK2 pole, then when you create a power connection from it it prepares you to place another Mk2 by default. If you're starting with mk1, and want to upgrade it, then use MMB to "copy", then press E to change to Mk2, then left click on the highlighted mk1 pole to upgrade it to mk2. You can do the same thing with conveyer belts and lifts btw.

On my hotbar for power, I use the "power connection" hotkey 99% of the time and the "power pole" hotkey 1%. It's easier to just place the first pole then use connect to create the rest.

Lastly, I found that I didn't like them spread too far from each other, once I got my hover pack.

[shoopy]

Have the zip line. Build towers with platforms on them, stand on the platform of a tower, hook up a wire to the top of the tower and you'll get a tower hologram that you can aim wherever you want to max distance from the tower you are standing on. Then you can zip line to the new tower you just built and repeat it. If you keep them high up you have clear line of sight and can build a power line highway across the map.

[Jabroni]

As long as you're cloning them but connecting at the top (and not accidentally using the sockets at the bottom) then there shouldn't be any issues. They're the easiest thing to set up in the entire game

[shoopy]

Also what I often do is run one tower from the top of another tower, zip line to the new tower, delete it, put foundations where it was located and rebuild it on the foundation and hook it back up to the previous tower.