I have always wanted a mod that would add a little map reveal and make them act as a big power pole.
I would be very nice to not need to have radars and extra big poles to make a full robo coverage grid.

Does not even need to be a full radar, prob 1/2 would be fine.

Mmmm those are actually good ideas, im not sure if I can have a generic entity act as a power pole, but it should be possible to at least have an invisible dummy power-pole to work with...

As for the radar coverage, i think it should be feasible. Revealing as far as the logistic area should be enough; generally speaking, that's the max distance ppl usually place roboports anyway and i don't want to replace radars for good.

I'll look into them, thanks for the suggestions!

I know of lighted pole mod that puts lights on poles. I think if it could be somthing like that it would cool. Add a light to make a lighted port / add a radar to make a control tower or something.

I kind of wish I knew how to mod. I am glad people a making so many mods for the game, it keeps it going.

I've been able to add a "sort of" power pole behavior to the roboport, but i'm not sold on what i've been able to make...

As i suspected, only power pole entities may be connected by copper wire, so I had to go with the dummy power pole route, which adds yet another level of garbage entities to handle and quite a few minor issues:
- The cable connections are automatic and you can't do anything to them, unlike normal power poles where you could use a copper cable to wire/unwire them
- While building a new roboport, there's no "tell" on which power poles will be connected. You will see the connections only after the roboport is placed. This makes it hard for the player to tell whether or not the new port will be connected

Aside from all of this tho, it seems to be working. I've made them reach up to the big power pole radius, so if you want to benefit from this auto-power feature, you will have to build your ports closer together than the standard logistic network range. I feel this should introduce some kind of decision making by the player, instead of becoming the obviously better solution (game balance yadda yadda :D)

I'll be looking into the radar thingy next, i'll see how it goes!

I always make a grid with big poles, turrets, radars, and roboports to creep my base outward. Would be so cool to only need the between poles, ports and turrets.

i would love as part of the wiring research would also give one row of power around the port.

I can try and add another tier to the wire technology that gives the roboports a small power field around them. A 2 tiles zone should do it, so that structures can be placed 1 tile away from the roboport too, to avoid clutter.

It should be doable, but I'll know for sure when I'll start :D

Thanks!