Solar panels less of a no-brainer

[thereaverofdarkness]

Let's not forget, even though iron can be much more scarce than copper, they both take exactly the same amount of energy to process. Assuming your game has enough iron for you, copper and iron are the same price. Copper only becomes cheaper when you've overspent on copper mining tools. And when iron is scarce, it doesn't cost you more energy to produce, it merely costs you more exploration to reveal, and possibly more trains to ship it, though it's so cheap to build and run trains relative to the amount they can haul it's almost negligible.

So essentially iron and copper have the same value.

[BlakeMW]

The only way the map would have enough iron is if I cranked up the iron settings in world generation and/or turn off biters - there's nothing wrong with messing with the worldgen settings - but playing standard a big limiting factor is securing the iron patches from the biters. Once you've secured the iron patches, chances are you've also secured copper and coal patches in wake of the expansion and probably already have railway for bringing the iron back.

Train World is the closest default setting to iron and copper being equal: it can easily have like 25mil iron patches close to the factory and biter expansion is turned off, so you pretty much can mine as much iron as you can consume - sure you'll still leave lots of copper lying on the ground but I've found securing new iron is not a big deal compared with the mining, transport and smelting.

[Atraps003]

Solar panels are fine. Accumulators are op. Reduce the amount of energy they can store. Then introduce research that increases storage back to its current 5 MJ value. This should not have any ups impact on megabases that rely on solar/accumulator power once the initial research is complete.

[agmike]

Solar panels are fine. Accumulators are op. Reduce the amount of energy they can store. Then introduce research that increases storage back to its current 5 MJ value. This should not have any ups impact on megabases that rely on solar/accumulator power once the initial research is complete.

OP? They have by far the lowest energy density of all energy accumulation methods (steam tanks, heat pipes, fuel stacks). Even batteries for personal armor are better.

[Atraps003]

None of those have the ability to store solar energy.

[agmike]

So what is the problem with them? They are not very dense energy-wise compared to others, not that cheap nor simple to craft (requiring oil). Why do you think they are OP?

[mrvn]

What I'm really going with this whole discussion is, that the current handling of energy is in the long term boring, after you get solar. Steam engines are much more appealing.

And here is where the crucial point. It is boring in a low-maintenance sense. For a game about automation, I do not see a problem here, but as said, I like The Phoenixian's suggestions.

Also, I still find randomized power generation not that of a good idea. Either it is just a way of making solar/accu more expensive as I outlined. Or, if you introduce heavy randomization, as you just suggested, then it becomes a game of chance. This could very well mean that my 30+ hours factory is laid to waste because I was unlucky with the power generation. I think that would be flawed game design. Of course you can say that this is the price for solar, but then why have it at all?

If you had wind power then factorio could have cloudy/windy days. So while solar power is low wind power would be high. You would have to balance solar power, wind power and steam power.

[JimBarracus]

Solar panels are fine. Accumulators are op. Reduce the amount of energy they can store. Then introduce research that increases storage back to its current 5 MJ value. This should not have any ups impact on megabases that rely on solar/accumulator power once the initial research is complete.

Depending on world settings space is virtually free. It is the same like with bots. If they nerv bots you just have more of them.
Same for accumulators.
Plus accumulators are dirt cheap.

A possible solution could be making accumulators more expensive; they need a high-power ac/dc converter, the same for solar.
Either with an integrated one or even an external one, that needs to be connected to a dc grid, pushing the power in the ac grid.

Adding ac/dc for the sake of komplexity and to have something to tweak around like the ratio boiler to steam engine.

[4xel]

The balance between the three sources of energy is fine IMO.

Steam is good for growth, solar panel is the most expansive setup by an order of magnitude, but requires no upkeep, and Nuclear is almost best of both world and the most compact at the cost of higher tech requirement and highly complex setup.

You'll never see solar panel in a speed run, even for long ones like 100% achivement they may be dubious. Steam is the way to go, cheaper setup cost means faster growth. Also, it is not necessarilly a bad thing that low tech building are replaced by high tech ones. Who would say basic belt or assembler 1 are useless?

Marathon also helps greatly making solar panel a costly investissement to think about in normal games and not just in speedruns.

One nerf of solar panel I found find very interesting though is to make them loose power under a thick cloud of pollution. It would nerf solar + prodmodules annd speed beacons.


Accumulators could be nerfed, or reworked, and maybe windturbine and wheather introduced, to make complex composit power setups more attractive, while brainless solar setup still playlable.