Accumulators are too cheap

[oLaudix]

Accumulators should be more expensive.

I have already explained why your own suggestion doesn't even address your own concerns. Accumulators are "OP" because solar power is strong, efficient, and 100% reliable. Accumulators rely entirely on perfect solar power to achieve the "OP" status you proclaim. Making accumulators more expensive doesn't fix that. It pushes the exact same problem down the line.

Guess what? The huge problem with storing renewable energy IRL is the fact that renewable energy is UNRELIABLE. If we had guaranteed sun and tides and winds every single day of the year we would have battery farms to hold the night, every night, just like in Factorio.

Getting a household a few hours of night time energy, when everything powers down anyway is no big deal. A $2000 lead acid battery can do that. A full DAY of peak activity, gridless storage is BRUTAL.

This is not real life, this is game. I can't imagine factory suddenly slowing down or turning off at night, especially during attack, just because some stupid RNG decided to slap me in the face. Solar energy works fine as it is and the only problem is accumulators being stupidly cheap resource wise.

[StoneLegion]

What about some sort of liquid battery solution that is required refilling overtime or they lose their effectiveness?

[Smarty]

What about some sort of liquid battery solution that is required refilling overtime or they lose their effectiveness?

That could be a option but what if you have thousands of accus
That is going to give a lot of annoying jobs to keep the base running

[Rockstar04]

I would love to see some kind of lossy early game energy storage like flywheels take the current accumulators place, and then have the current accumulator moved up the tech tree and made significantly more expensive to make.

[bobucles]

Oh sure. First leverage the IRL angle, then argue the IRL angle isn't appropriate when it doesn't work out!

What about some sort of liquid battery solution that is required refilling overtime or they lose their effectiveness?

That could get pretty expensive for longer lasting bases.

You can already store energy as a liquid by boiling up some hot water. Setting up the system is a bit of a trick, as the switch and power sensors aren't in the game yet. They will be a big kick in the teeth to the utility of accumulators once they arrive.

[bobingabout]

I think the "Cost" should be in the charging...

I was researching batteries (Again) recently, this time nothing to do with factorio. Did you know it costs 150% of the energy to charge a NiMH battery than it actually stores? For example, if it can store 3000Ahs, it takes 4500Ahs to charge it.


Perhaps instead of saying we need to increase their costs, or make them more difficult to research, a better solution would be that we need a charging cost multiplier tag adding to the game's accumulator entity (so it is modable) with the default set something like 1.5, so it takes 50% more energy to charge them than it stores.


Here I am quoting NiMH values, the battery in factorio is closer to a Lead-Acid battery. It's a bit harder finding information for those, but I imagine they're more lossy to charge, but less lossy to leakage.

What do you think, is this a better solution?

[Rockstar04]

I think the "Cost" should be in the charging...

I was researching batteries (Again) recently, this time nothing to do with factorio. Did you know it costs 150% of the energy to charge a NiMH battery than it actually stores? For example, if it can store 3000Ahs, it takes 4500Ahs to charge it.


Perhaps instead of saying we need to increase their costs, or make them more difficult to research, a better solution would be that we need a charging cost multiplier tag adding to the game's accumulator entity (so it is modable) with the default set something like 1.5, so it takes 50% more energy to charge them than it stores.


Here I am quoting NiMH values, the battery in factorio is closer to a Lead-Acid battery. It's a bit harder finding information for those, but I imagine they're more lossy to charge, but less lossy to leakage.

What do you think, is this a better solution?

Yup, I would love a lossy energy storage option, My suggestion above went about it differently, but in the end if its moddable anything is possible

[oLaudix]

Except lossy charging would change nothing except solar panels to accumulators ratio ... which is nothing but increasing the resource usage. You could as well double or triple the resources needed for accumulator and the result would be the same.

[Nasabot]

I agree with the statement, that not accumulators are the problem, but the solar panels.

Personally I dont like the design of the solar panals, because it trivializes the game mechanic "energy" and trivilization is never healthy for any game.

What I would like to see is "energy progression" integrated into science like:

-limited number of solar panels you can build but
-research allows you to improve number and output of solar panels. Maybe even allow infinite research, which becomes more and more expansive, similar like the robot number research
-also allow research and improved efficiency of steam energy

For me its a pity, that all those flameable items, espacally coal, is pretty worthless because of its abundance, even if you produce tons of explosives and plastics.

Personally I like more challange and encouragement of having an eye on energy production instead of just placing more and more solar panels, which is just lame. Also for me resource scarcity is a big part of this game. The player should be encouraged to exploit even the smallest resource deposites and expand his train network in order to satisfy his greed for more resources

[ssilk]

You didn't say how you want to limit the solar panels, but I think it is the important question. I point to this, cause I don't think, that there should be ever any limit on any item or entity to craft or to built with the reason like "you are not able to built/produce more than X solar panels". The only limitations could be only "natural", like there are not enough resources (rare ores needed for example). That's not only for solar panels, anything should have no limit. Cause once you go and limit the game in a way, which has no game-physical reason, you might want to limit other stuff. That's the begin of the end; cause in the end the game will be not logical anymore, it's just a set of rules. Like so many other games.

I keep also at my opinion, that a simple change like including the angle of rotation around the sun, solar eclipses, a rotation around a gas gigant etc. brings in so much variety in solar power income, that the right way to produce energy will be only a healthy mix of all types of power generation.

That's what's needed: every type of energy has its usage case for the right time.

[Nasabot]

You didn't say how you want to limit the solar panels, but I think it is the important question. I point to this, cause I don't think, that there should be ever any limit on any item or entity to craft or to built with the reason like "you are not able to built/produce more than X solar panels". The only limitations could be only "natural", like there are not enough resources (rare ores needed for example). That's not only for solar panels, anything should have no limit. Cause once you go and limit the game in a way, which has no game-physical reason, you might want to limit other stuff. That's the begin of the end; cause in the end the game will be not logical anymore, it's just a set of rules. Like so many other games.

I keep also at my opinion, that a simple change like including the angle of rotation around the sun, solar eclipses, a rotation around a gas gigant etc. brings in so much variety in solar power income, that the right way to produce energy will be only a healthy mix of all types of power generation

Yes, that sounds reasonable, I agree to a big degree. Just limiting solar panels is not a good idea, but I still think that energy productions must not be trivilialized by free energy.

What if solar panels degenerate depending on produced energy? I think this is also a possibility. My point is, that the player should be encouraged to think about resource consumption and if solar panels degernate(which then are reproduced and delivered by drones) the player has the choice between FUEL and ORE.
Also this might make the consideration over MODULES more interesting, because then energy is also a "limited" resource.

That's what's needed: every type of energy has its usage case for the right time.

I think it would do the game well to provide the player with time-independent choice for his playstyle.

If you play your save file 50h you will probably end up with 5h played with steam energy and 45+h with solar+batteries. Unfortunatly mechanics like the solar panels make a game shallow, because they provide a "perfect solution" to a certain problem.


I know, many player dont think about things like these and they just start a game with maxed resources, but I am more the "survivalist" player and for this playstyle I need scarcity and unobvious choices

After the next bigger patch I will probably start a new game without solar panels, but I prefer CONSTRAINS given by the game, because its the game you want to beat as a player
The current situation is like an ARPG without a hardcore mode, where you have to delete your character after the first death in the softcore mode...

It strikes me as weird, that so many people do not understand the "concept of competition versus the game"(in general in all game forums) but rather completly rely on the "sandbox aspect" where every step is pretty much purposeless and you just build and build without serious limitations.

For me a game is most fun if you have different viable playstyles and you have to figure out which playstyle is best for a certain situation. But for this idea you NEED real CHOICE and also the possibility to lose a game

PS.: The more I thought about the solar module degeneration, the more I like it^^ I also did some math and I think its reasonable if each solar module provides ~600-1200 MJ before it breaks. (which is over 2,5-5h of functionality)

This would solve the "issue" with the unlimited energy. (at least for me its an issue)

But thinking ahead, my proposed solar module change would actually nerf accumulators, because the lame strategy of 100% solar-accu might not be the best solution anymore, as accumulators have 50% efficiency. Actually this is nice, because then the player has 2 playstyles:

-100% solar and 100% accumulor which is clean, but not resource efficient (You lose energy by the 50% accu efficiency and will have a lot of degenerated solar panels you have to reproduce)

-You may use solar panels to save coal and pollution but instead of accumulators, you use a 100% steam backup(or mixed with accus). This is a more resource efficient solution because you wont waste energy because of the 50% accu efficiency therefore saving resources reproducing solar panels, but as a downside you produce more pollution.


I TOTALL like my idea of degenerating solar panels
Its a nice balancing between 2 different playstyles.

Any suggestions why my proposal could be bad?

[Tev]

Personally I like more challange and encouragement of having an eye on energy production instead of just placing more and more solar panels, which is just lame. Also for me resource scarcity is a big part of this game. The player should be encouraged to exploit even the smallest resource deposites and expand his train network in order to satisfy his greed for more resources

Your posts, and especially this part feels like you're playing on very easy biter setting. Try RSO with very poor resources, or even vanilla with max biters and you'll have the challenge you want.

Solars seem more and more fine to me. Their size and cost and need for overnight energy storage makes them quite balanced. Maybe I play it suboptimally, but on max biters in vanilla I just don't have that much free space to plaster the world with solar panels. If you'd just tweak them a little, say reduce their energy production in half, they might actually become bad when compared with coal based steam generators.

Accumulators on the other hand are smaller, cheaper and more universal. And nobody has addressed that*. It's not balance problem that you play on too easy setting with too much space (RSO with standard biters) or with too many resources (vanilla with less than max biters).

*besides their possible obsolence in 0.13 for steam power networks, but you'll need accus anyway to cover peaks from laser defence.

EDIT: lossy energy storage actually might work out well for solars, because required size of solar fields will become unfeasible, but for other uses it doesn't do much. Building additional line of 10 steam engines will cover difference for A LOT of accus.

[cartmen180]

Accumulators should be more expensive.

I have already explained why your own suggestion doesn't even address your own concerns. Accumulators are "OP" because solar power is strong, efficient, and 100% reliable. Accumulators rely entirely on perfect solar power to achieve the "OP" status you proclaim. Making accumulators more expensive doesn't fix that. It pushes the exact same problem down the line.

Guess what? The huge problem with storing renewable energy IRL is the fact that renewable energy is UNRELIABLE. If we had guaranteed sun and tides and winds every single day of the year we would have battery farms to hold the night, every night, just like in Factorio.

Getting a household a few hours of night time energy, when everything powers down anyway is no big deal. A $2000 lead acid battery can do that. A full DAY of peak activity, gridless storage is BRUTAL.

This is not real life, this is game. I can't imagine factory suddenly slowing down or turning off at night, especially during attack, just because some stupid RNG decided to slap me in the face. Solar energy works fine as it is and the only problem is accumulators being stupidly cheap resource wise.

That is exactly what would make the game more interesting and solar panels/accumulators less cheaty. Relying just on renewable energy is plain stupid and you deserve to be slapped in the face when you do. Unfortunately doing that now is instant win instead of a risky strategy. Making accumulators more expensive is only a viable solution if they cost more (energy and pollution) than it would placing down a new steam boiler (if you would make them more expensive resource wise there would be no point in crafting accumulators anymore!).
RNG is an excellent alternative and very simple solution to this problem. +1

Loss on charging is also an interesting idea but doesn't solve the issue. You just place down more solar panels to compensate.

[cartmen180]

Solars seem more and more fine to me. Their size and cost and need for overnight energy storage makes them quite balanced. Maybe I play it suboptimally, but on max biters in vanilla I just don't have that much free space to plaster the world with solar panels. If you'd just tweak them a little, say reduce their energy production in half, they might actually become bad when compared with coal based steam generators.

Vanilla with minimum biters gives me plenty of space though. So they are incredibly op now. Playing with resource settings on max the increase in cost doesn't really seem a problem anymore.
My point is that game balancing should be discussed for standard settings (aka the settings most people use). From there everyone can make their game easier or harder.

[Tev]

Solars seem more and more fine to me. Their size and cost and need for overnight energy storage makes them quite balanced. Maybe I play it suboptimally, but on max biters in vanilla I just don't have that much free space to plaster the world with solar panels. If you'd just tweak them a little, say reduce their energy production in half, they might actually become bad when compared with coal based steam generators.

Vanilla with minimum biters gives me plenty of space though. So they are incredibly op now. Playing with resource settings on max the increase in cost doesn't really seem a problem anymore.
My point is that game balancing should be discussed for standard settings (aka the settings most people use). From there everyone can make their game easier or harder.

For game as complex as factorio it makes sense to make standard settings "easier", so newbs aren't slaughtered all the time. So once you're advanced enough to notice optimal patterns, try increasing difficulty.

Vanilla with minimum biters is really loleasy for anyone who played more than 25hours. I struggled (successfully, though) at max biters and solars frankly aren't that great*. Useful, but in a way that is kind of necessary.

*in RSO they are kind of overpowered though. And RSO is played by a lot of people . . . however in RSO you spend much more time with managing your logistics, so little more "automation" for energy production at extra cost doesn't distort difficulty too much.



And that all is still actually offtopic, as none of your points address the superiority of accumulators.

EDIT: sorry, missed this:

Making accumulators more expensive is only a viable solution if they cost more (energy and pollution) than it would placing down a new steam boiler (if you would make them more expensive resource wise there would be no point in crafting accumulators anymore!).
RNG is an excellent alternative and very simple solution to this problem. +1

RNG is just pointless difficulty increase which might make them useless on actually increased difficulty setting. Don't push for difficulty increase in the game when you yourself play on very easy.

Making accumulators cost more will offset their usefulness and make "fully automated" energy production more expensive. And I don't see why would people stop making them. Whole factorio is about designing system that will make you "win" once you finish it and tweak it well, challenge is in getting to that stage. And increasing cost (or maybe that lossy storage, which is imo inferior) will increase that challenge. Especially as it prolongs the polluting phase of your development (first steam engines), so pollution-free advantage of solar/accus will be a bit diminished. And it will also make not so easy to play with just coal+lasers.

And since solars are useless on their own, you can't really say stuff like "you just plop down more solars" or "you just mine more resources", since this rebalancing might affect a lot more things (think how many times you ran out of iron or something when expanding production and what you had to do to handle that . . .).

[cartmen180]

Solars seem more and more fine to me. Their size and cost and need for overnight energy storage makes them quite balanced. Maybe I play it suboptimally, but on max biters in vanilla I just don't have that much free space to plaster the world with solar panels. If you'd just tweak them a little, say reduce their energy production in half, they might actually become bad when compared with coal based steam generators.

Vanilla with minimum biters gives me plenty of space though. So they are incredibly op now. Playing with resource settings on max the increase in cost doesn't really seem a problem anymore.
My point is that game balancing should be discussed for standard settings (aka the settings most people use). From there everyone can make their game easier or harder.

For game as complex as factorio it makes sense to make standard settings "easier", so newbs aren't slaughtered all the time. So once you're advanced enough to notice optimal patterns, try increasing difficulty.

Vanilla with minimum biters is really loleasy for anyone who played more than 25hours. I struggled (successfully, though) at max biters and solars frankly aren't that great*. Useful, but in a way that is kind of necessary.

*in RSO they are kind of overpowered though. And RSO is played by a lot of people . . . however in RSO you spend much more time with managing your logistics, so little more "automation" for energy production at extra cost doesn't distort difficulty too much.



And that all is still actually offtopic, as none of your points address the superiority of accumulators.

I especially mentioned the point I am trying to make in my second post. I will go into more detail now then.
To balance a game you need a difficulty setting where you can say, now this is balanced. With all the options for amount, size and density of resources and biters it is impossible to make the game balanced for every possible option.
The standard settings are perfect for that, b/c standard should be the most balanced as that is the point where everyone starts. From there you can make the game easier or harder (aka unbalancing the game).
You cannot complain the game is too easy when you put resources on max and biters on min, or too hard when you do it the other way around. Your argument that solar panels are balanced on max biters is therefor false. You created an unbalance that resulted in the argument you are trying to make now.

Don't push for difficulty increase in the game when you yourself play on very easy.

I don't play on very easy. I used it as an example to make my point.

Now your point that accumulators are to cheap may be true, but not necessarily resource wise. You should also consider the environmental impact (longer crafting time for instance). To keep up with your factory's power demand you would need to allocate additional space and resources to accumulator production, which directly results in more pollution.

The thing is, and this is the point you continually dismiss as off topic, that the accumulator problem is directly tied in with the solar panels. Bobucles makes some excellent points about this. In short:

Accumulators rely entirely on perfect solar power to achieve the "OP" status you proclaim. Making accumulators more expensive doesn't fix that. It pushes the exact same problem down the line.

As you pointed out in big bold letters that nobody has addressed accumulators being smaller, cheaper and more universal, is b/c accumulators are not the issue.
Solar panels however are. They are cheap, don't consume resources like steam boilers, don't break down and produce reliable, unlimited, clean energy.
Solar power needs a fundamental change and only then can we start looking at accumulators and see if they are indeed "OP".

[Ohlmann]

Guess what? The huge problem with storing renewable energy IRL is the fact that renewable energy is UNRELIABLE. If we had guaranteed sun and tides and winds every single day of the year we would have battery farms to hold the night, every night, just like in Factorio.

Getting a household a few hours of night time energy, when everything powers down anyway is no big deal. A $2000 lead acid battery can do that. A full DAY of peak activity, gridless storage is BRUTAL.

Uh, you're badly wrong. Current technology can store enough electricity for a city in exactly one way : a gigantic hydraulic barrage where you pump. And that's insanely expensive, dangerous (if the dam break), and difficult to do. A 2000 lead acid battery isn't anywhere near to do that, and even less scalable enough for an entire city.

I am not even sure the electrical consumption is lower at night. People heat and light more things at night, so I would not be surprised that day electrical needs are in fact lower than night one.

Now, I agree that renewable energies are unreliable right now.

[cartmen180]

I would not be surprised that day electrical needs are in fact lower than night one.

We use about 30% more electricity during the day than at night.

[Tev]

Your argument that solar panels are balanced on max biters is therefor false. You created an unbalance that resulted in the argument you are trying to make now.

Well, that's true. But I also said that "normal" difficulty is basically for learning the game, because factorio is complex enough (and has little enough lategame) that you kind of need to increase the difficulty to get a challenge. Basing balance on "learning difficulty" seems flawed to me.

Now your point that accumulators are to cheap may be true, but not necessarily resource wise. You should also consider the environmental impact (longer crafting time for instance). To keep up with your factory's power demand you would need to allocate additional space and resources to accumulator production, which directly results in more pollution.

... same can be said about solar panels. So are you arguing against solar panels and accus being OP?

The thing is, and this is the point you continually dismiss as off topic, that the accumulator problem is directly tied in with the solar panels.

I've said numerous times why accumulators are at least as much of a problem as solar panels are. You can't say that accus are OP because solar are OP and at the same time ignore arguments pointing out superiority of accus to solar panels.

Accumulators rely entirely on perfect solar power to achieve the "OP" status you proclaim.

I barely ever have "perfect solar". I quite often have none solar panels. Yet accumulators seem OP to me, for reasons I listed.

As you pointed out in big bold letters that nobody has addressed accumulators being smaller, cheaper and more universal, is b/c accumulators are not the issue.
Solar panels however are. They are cheap, don't consume resources like steam boilers, don't break down and produce reliable, unlimited, clean energy.

That's ridiculous, you just repeat mantra "solar panels OP OP OP" and support it with arguments that can be used to accus as well. Seriously:

Solar panels however are. They are cheap...

As I said you would have to value oil insanely more than iron/copper to make accus more expensive.

...don't consume resources like steam boilers...

... accumulators do?

...don't break down...

My accus actually do!
--- when I run my tank into them.

produce reliable (...) energy.

Not without accumulators.

Not to mention accumulators are reliable, clean and with unlimited charge/discharge cycles.

You can start popping accumulators as soon as you research them, because they always will have some use (in worst case as a buffer against your mistakes), solars on the other hand need accumulators (unless you want to save coal in really expensive way, and efficiency modules are better for that). You can't claim accu/solar combo is overpowered and at the same time claim accus are ok. Soalr panels would have to be demonstrably cheaper and smaller and more versatile for that, but it's the other way around.

EDIT: this thread has actually convinced me even more of accumulators' superiority, because no one can apparently deny it with actual facts. Best arguments against "accumulators are OP" apply to solar as well, so root of the problem of solar panels' perceived brokenness is apparently in accumulators.

[cartmen180]

EDIT: this thread has actually convinced me even more of accumulators' superiority, because no one can apparently deny it with actual facts. Best arguments against "accumulators are OP" apply to solar as well, so root of the problem of solar panels' perceived brokenness is apparently in accumulators.

And there is your problem. The arguments you make in favour of "accumulators are OP" apply to solar as well!!