[0.18.14] Single steam engine shows 960kW available power

[astroshak]

I like how with the latest patch you can see the maximum available power production.

But I noticed something in one of my modded games ... the Steam Engine array I had set up (a pair of “standard 1/20/40 arrays on both sides of the belt, for 2/40/80 units in total) was telling me those 80 Steam Engines could produce 76.8 MW. 900kWx80=72MW.

So I loaded up a plain ol vanilla game, no mods. One isolated (but with a steam supply) Steam Engine has a maximum power generation of 960 kW.

The tooltip, and everything else I’ve seen in playing the game since 0.16, has indicated the thing should only produce that 900 kW, not 960 kW. What happened?

[Koub]

Are you sure your unmodded game is unmodded ?
I know my question sounds stupid, but :

900k Steam engine

2020-03-19 07_34_11-Factorio 0.18.14.jpg (135.18 KiB) Viewed 11787 times

What I find interesting is that the 60k you have in excess are exactly what a solar panel produces. Don't you have come modded item somewhere (or a solar panel you forgot) that produces 60k ?

[astroshak]

1 - absolutely no mods.

2 - steam engine was alone on the electrical network. I have not made (nor even researched yet) Solar Power in either game I looked at last night or today.

3 - just double checked, 960 kW.

This is very very strange. To see that 960 I moved one power pole in the corner of the steam engine array aside, so the steam engine was the only thing on that power grid. I look at the other power grid, which only has one steam engine making power, and its making 900kW.

I move the power pole back so they are (as they should be) part of the same network, and those two have a displayed production of 1.2MW / 1.9 MW.

That 1.9 should be a 1.8 should it not? Something funky is going on. I’m confused by this.

Knob, try looking at a steam engine that is NOT under a load ... one that is connected to steam, but has nothing else but that steam engine on its own power grid.

[astroshak]

Ok. Some screenshots, now that I'm home from work. All of these were at the *very* beginning of the game, no mods.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2027698114
Here you can see one Steam Engine, with a box of coal feeding its boiler. 0/960 kW produced.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2027698236
Here, you can see I added a second steam engine. Note the power that can be produced is more than a pair of 900 kW Steam Engines should be able to provide.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2027698300
I decided to see what happens when I put it under load. I removed the connecting power pole, so only the one Steam Engine was connected. I then put one Radar in place, but found that it was doing what was expected, 300 kW/960 kW. So I added two more Radars, for three connected to that one Steam Generator. Its producing 900/940 kW? where'd the other 20 kW capacity go? Where'd it (and the rest of that 60 kW additional capacity) come from in the first place?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2027707875
So I add a 4th Radar to that poor Steam Engine's load, and it goes back down to the expected 900 kW maximum capacity.

All in all, something is not right here ...

[Koub]

OK I'm moving this to bug report, if you could attach your save with the 960k steam engine and your logfile, it would help the devs find what's wrong.
[Koub] Moved to bug reports.

[Loewchen]

Here is a save showing what is described.

Additionally, if you place a single additional tier 1 assembly machine in the network it will bring the requested power minimal above 900kw and strangely now the demand is shown as 920kW while available power goes down to 900kW. The solar setup next by has similar behavior.

[Rseding91]

I suspect this is due to the buffering logic in entities. An artifact of showing numbers never meant to be shown and now people make nit-picking bug reports.

I'm going to move this to "not a bug" unless one of the other developers wants to go add a bunch of complicated logic to show different numbers.

[AntiElitz]

Well if the right side numbers were never supposed to be displayed and are known to be wrong, why just not remove them again? I rather have no number than wrong numbers. There is no point in communication precision where is none. It's very missleading like this.

[Rseding91]

Well if the right side numbers were never supposed to be displayed and are known to be wrong, why just not remove them again? I rather have no number than wrong numbers. There is no point in communication precision where is none. It's very missleading like this.

Because they're still useful, but they generate reports like this where in edge cases you see the game mechanics of the system working instead of the "how it would work in the real world" numbers.

[Mattizin]

I also noticed this bug in my current save and came here to post it until i found it here sorted to "not a bug"

Well if the right side numbers were never supposed to be displayed and are known to be wrong, why just not remove them again? I rather have no number than wrong numbers. There is no point in communication precision where is none. It's very missleading like this.

Because they're still useful, but they generate reports like this where in edge cases you see the game mechanics of the system working instead of the "how it would work in the real world" numbers.

I completely agree with the point that the statistic could be useful, but disagree with the opinion that it is usefull in its current, bugged, state.
Its not only that tha max. production is showed as too high and this effect scales in weight with the number of energy producers, the value also snips back to the correct one once the actual production hits the real max. production rate. This is 1. very confusing and 2. gives a false sense of safety for the player that he has a buffer in his energy net and suddenly the "buffer" is gone.

2 Steam Turbines each 900W = expected max. = 1,8 MW. Currently shown: 1,9MW
if you energy net now consumes 1,8 MW or more and you only have these 2 turbines the current production caps at the expected 1,8 MW, but also the value for max. prod. in the statistics tab now shows 1,8 MW and 100% 1,8MW/1,8MW. A second prior it may showed 1,7MW/1,9MW. Imagine this scaled with much higher number of tubines and it really starts to hurt the experience in my opinion.

I think this is definetly a bug that should be on a list to be fixed. Nothing critical but also not nice.

[Otaluke]

I have to agree this needs to be moved from "not a bug" to a higher level, at least a low priority to eventually be addressed. It is very misleading.

I can understand your frustration with: "An artifact of showing numbers never meant to be shown and now people make nit-picking bug reports."
You have to admit that your team has set the bar high for precision and nit-picking with this game.
You put an extreme amount of effort into making sure every tick is precise. You've built a persona for this game of precision. This obvious incorrect value isn't a hidden edge case, it's right out there in an obvious place for all users, including new users trying to understand the game mechanics.

Instead of adding "...a bunch of complicated logic to show different numbers." Is it not possible to calculate this number the way us humans do? Right below this meter is the count and type of power production entities and each has a precise maximum output. Simple multiplication after pulling their properties?

[StephenLynx]

How was this even considered "not a bug"?



How does the number goes to the correct value if it can't satisfy the demand if it's supposed to have that extra amount?

[AlexMBrennan]

How does the number goes to the correct value if it can't satisfy the demand if it's supposed to have that extra amount?

Because the reported 960kW isn't wrong - it works just like a normal accumulator: as long as it is charged its potential output power shows up in the power statistic but this hypothetical output power will disappear when they run out of charge.

The actual issue is that the steam engine includes a tiny accumulator the player isn't told about.

Is it misleading? Yes, but its not any more misleading than the power production statistics are in general - e.g. if you connect 100 steam engines to one turbine then the reported max peak power production is 90MW which is obviously not helpful even if it technically isn't wrong either.

[Brathahn]

Hi,
im not sure if this is a bug so i post it here in case i have overlooked something.

i took a look at my power setup and noticed something odd: the calculated maximum power in the electric network info window does'nt seem to be correct.

for example i have a network of 240 steam engines so i assume the maximum power would be 900kW*240=216MW but the window shows 230MW. where do the 14MW come from?

2020-09-07 19_52_07-Window.png (35.04 KiB) Viewed 9244 times

the same goes for my nuclear setup, where i have 80 Steam turbines so i would assume its 5,82MW*80=465,6MW (maybe rounded to 465 or 466) but the info shows 497MW. 31MW came out of nothing.

2020-09-07 19_52_35-Window.png (55.23 KiB) Viewed 9244 times

what also bugs me is that its both times about 6% more than the expected power... so maybe this is by design? but if so, where does that extra power come from?

[Brathahn]

I did some more testing and found out that the power of connected consumers is also wrong.
20 radars with 300kW each should summarize to 6MW.. but the info shows 6,4MW

2020-09-07 20_36_36-Window.png (22.96 KiB) Viewed 9233 times

also there is no extra power generated.. when i connect a single steam turbine to those radars it will max out at 5,8MW as expected.

2020-09-07 20_37_16-Window.png (44.32 KiB) Viewed 9233 times

one radar less and it will show the difference again (6,2 MW instead of 5,8MW)

2020-09-07 20_42_10-Window.png (42.93 KiB) Viewed 9233 times

[Serenity]

I think there is something about engines having some kind of undocumented internal accumulator for technical reasons. And that throws off the numbers.

[mmmPI]

I think it is related to this : viewtopic.php?p=493436

if you take 960 kW instead of 900, you will find 230 MW, 960kW is the value mentionned in the linked topic.

[CzeJacob]

hello manufacturers
I don't know exactly where to place my question.
it's probably not a bug, because it's the same for everything.
so it's probably part of the game design.
but i still want to ask if anyone knows why this is so ??
every electrical device has the stated maximum consumption, but when I go to the end, I find that the actual consumption is a bit higher.

for example, the radar states 300kW, but the actual one is 320kW
which is about 6.6 percent
for an electric furnace the difference is about 6.4%
etc ... it doesn't bother me much: D, but I would still like to find a reason

a few examples in the pictures

[Koub]

[Koub] Indeed, merged into older "Not a bug" thread with the same question/report.

[Edit] And ... a second "not a bug". This feature is clearly misleading.

[Brathahn]

I, for one, think this issue should be moved to either "minor issues" or "wont fix".
As this is clearly not a feature nor intended behavior.