Solar panels less of a no-brainer
Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2015 6:01 pm
It seems this issue has already been discussed, but mainly from the accumulator side rather than the solar panel side. In short, when you discover solar energy, energy becomes a no-brainer : no pollution, no resource consumption, no upkeep, just some land is required.
I've thought of two suggestions that, together, should maker solar panels a nice and useful addition but less easy to completely replace steam machines.
First, decrease solar panel output depending on local pollution (think of smog if you want a real-life inspiration ). This means that building solar panels near your base will be highly inefficient, though on the opposite this can also be viewed as an incitation to run a low-pollution factory.
However, the counter seems obvious : build your solar panel farm far away from your base. Here comes the second part : make pylons an active target for aliens, similar to turrets and the like. This means that managing this kind of remote power supply will be very annoying since aliens will regularly disconnect it from your base. So, if you want solar panels, you'll have to build them near your base, though they will be rather inefficient and likely require keeping some steam as backup and some surprises as your pollution grows if you try to rely only on solar panels.
But what about remote mining outposts? Those will be hell to manage without pylons! Well, not if you precisely use local solar panels to supply those outposts: they would be ideal for that since they are very easy to place, there isn't as much pollution there compared to your base, you won't need to many of them to provide power to a few extractors and inserters and the outpost is mostly fine with some occasional power interruption (unless you want to use laser turrets, of course, but that's why you have gun turrets).
So, solar panels would be less powerful to supply your main base, but gain an essential new purpose of decentralized power supply - incidentally also one of the most underrated (to the public; companies are well aware of it) usefulness of solar energy in real life.
I've thought of two suggestions that, together, should maker solar panels a nice and useful addition but less easy to completely replace steam machines.
First, decrease solar panel output depending on local pollution (think of smog if you want a real-life inspiration ). This means that building solar panels near your base will be highly inefficient, though on the opposite this can also be viewed as an incitation to run a low-pollution factory.
However, the counter seems obvious : build your solar panel farm far away from your base. Here comes the second part : make pylons an active target for aliens, similar to turrets and the like. This means that managing this kind of remote power supply will be very annoying since aliens will regularly disconnect it from your base. So, if you want solar panels, you'll have to build them near your base, though they will be rather inefficient and likely require keeping some steam as backup and some surprises as your pollution grows if you try to rely only on solar panels.
But what about remote mining outposts? Those will be hell to manage without pylons! Well, not if you precisely use local solar panels to supply those outposts: they would be ideal for that since they are very easy to place, there isn't as much pollution there compared to your base, you won't need to many of them to provide power to a few extractors and inserters and the outpost is mostly fine with some occasional power interruption (unless you want to use laser turrets, of course, but that's why you have gun turrets).
So, solar panels would be less powerful to supply your main base, but gain an essential new purpose of decentralized power supply - incidentally also one of the most underrated (to the public; companies are well aware of it) usefulness of solar energy in real life.