portable solar panels

[HurkWurk]

currently its 5 solar panels, 5 steel and 1 processor to make a portable solar panel. this doesnt make sense.
1 solar panel, 1 steel and 1 processor should make 5 portable panels.
you are basically reframing them for portability, then adding the processor to make them more intelligent on how they work.
recipies should not exist just to be resource hogs.

[BenSeidel]

1 solar panel = 60Kw max
1 portable solar panel = 10Kw max

1/6th the power for only 6+ times the cost!

[Deadly-Bagel]

Especially considering how little they're actually used in the base game. You already need processing units to make them so why not just save up 100 and skip straight to a fusion reactor? 75x the power and it goes all night long.

[nonstickfrypan]

Those portable solar panels are a waste of time. The last two games I've played I've skipped them altogether and just did other stuff until I could build fusion reactor (my research facility is sufficiently fast that it doesn't take all that long and while I'm waiting I just build something that I've been planning or just got the tech for)

[Deadly-Bagel]

I skip straight to MK2 armour. I'm not sure if I've even ever build MK1 armour, and I think I built one Modular Armour in my first game but had no idea what to do with it xD

It's just a waste of resources.

[Furcube]

For me night vision and personal roboport is high priority. It will greatly speed up construction of railways and outposts. And to power it you'll need solar panels.

[leoch]

Yep, the panels work okay for night vision and one roboport maybe, but not much more. I've found Modular Charge Packs a really good alternative.

Can we make this stock, please?

• Add a battery charger building
• Batteries should keep charge level in inventory

To make it practical to manage charged and uncharged batteries, do what Modular Charge Packs does and have a separate item for charged batteries vs uncharged. Partially charged batteries can still immediately lose charge when removed from the grid. Using a separate item for charged batteries allows logistics management.

If batteries are used one-by-one and autoreplaced with charged ones from the inventory, this would be powerful enough to replace the "portable fusion reactor" completely (possibly even battery capacity could be reduced, given that you could carry a whole stack of charged batteries in your inventory).

[Aeternus]

Given that you can get the modular armor out early, and that it can't use the fusion plant, these solar panels have an early use when combined with batteries and a single mk1 personal roboport plus mk1 shield. But their power production is very low compared to other power sources. Balancing wise, it wouldn't hurt to beef their production a bit.

[Engimage]

Fusion Reactor is pretty high in tech now. I have been using portable solars in 0.15 just for night vision and personal roboports a bit later paired with batteries.

However solars are so weak that it is not even funny. Maybe there could be a MK2 version at least or their power should be increased dramatically ot their cost decreased...

But for now I would say you just need a portable charger that would connect and charge your batteries from stationary electric network. So you could use as much power as you need for construction bots etc if you stand within powered area. Logical and awesome. Batteries for field work.
I would say such connector would be nice even in endgame when you literally become a walking industrial roboport.

[leoch]

PacifyerGrey: here's a charger for you (again!): https://mods.factorio.com/mods/DaCyclop ... hargePacks

Solar panels work okay if you add a lot of them and only use nightvision and one or two roboports. Trying to use shields early on I don't find useful unless you really need to do much combat, and then you're going to need a lot of batteries.

[BlakeMW]

In 0.15 (and before) I've found the portable solar panels to be perfectly serviceable. 0.15 just gives less choice about using them because the fusion reactor is so far ahead (especially on marathon/deathworld). Usually about 9-11 PSPs is a good number for Modular Armor, which generates 90-110kW, about 1/8th the output of a Fusion Reactor, or about 1/10th when accounting for night.

A single PSP generates 10kW and 10 generates 100kW, so these numbers can be compared with usages:

• A basic battery holds 20MJ and 10 PSPs will recharge it in 3 minutes 20s. (The advanced battery holds 5x as much with no downsides, being great for space-saving)
• Night Vision: consumes 10kW at night so requires a bit less than 1 panel since there is more day than night. (note: you can swap out the NV during the day for 4 more solar panels, or more likely, swap the NV back in if you find you need it, most the time I feel no need to have NV)
• Exo: 200kW while running: a lot of time in factorio is actually spent standing around, so 10 panels will probably provide enough power. You can run for 100s per basic battery - make that 200s during the day. Bad in combination with roboport, because the roboport will tend to bogart all the juice.
• Energy Shield: 20kJ per damage absorbed, this means each basic battery is good for 1000hp of shielding and as above it takes about 3 minutes to recharge the battery with 10 panels, so you can dramatically improve your durability with an energy shield and some batteries, and the downtime between fights is not that bad. Note the advanced shield consumes 50% more energy per hp so strongly consider sticking with the basic shield to make your charge last longer, only use the advanced shield if you care more about the burst damage absorb.
• Personal Roboport: Since each roboport has 35MJ of storage (compare 20MJ for basic battery) you don't need batteries for roboports, only other equipment. Actual energy use depends entirely on bot usage - if bots only make a short trip they don't charge at all, and after longer trips you can hoover them up to avoid the charging fee. If the bots do charge, they use 5kJ/m travelled so a PSP provides 2m/s for a bot. I've always found roboports extremely viable on solar, just don't freak out about the 6-10 minute initial charge time.
• Personal Laser Defense: 600kW while firing, a basic battery can sustain 33s of firing. Viable for personal defense (but shield might be a better use of charge), not really viable for offense.

I usually use a build along the lines of 1 Energy Shield + 2 Roboports, or 2 Energy Shields + 1 Roboport, or 1+1 with a Night Vision, then 1 or 2 batteries and 9 or 11 personal solar panels. While you're not swimming in energy, it's more than enough to use the shields and to use robots during excursions. It's plenty of energy for tank repair during combat. Modular Armor with energy shield is semi-viable in straight up combat with flamethrower, which allows you to tag biters to debuff them rather than tanking hits, it's truly excellent if you play "hardcore" and sincerely try not to die since a single shield is usually more than adequate for absorbing the burst damage of surprise spit volleys.

I think that the exoskeleton and personal laser defense use too much energy to be really worth it with with solar power, altough they are technically viable in Modular Armor. With Power Armor you can easily add enough panels to get 200kW to run an exoskeleton non-stop, PLD is still dubious since you'd probably prefer to save the charge for shields and use a weapon like flamethrower to inflict damage without consuming charge.

Finally I'd like to point out that 10 PSPs requires 1 stack of normal solar panels, even though the panels are ultimately discarded the cost of producing them is a pittance for any decent factory, and a roboport and shield can greatly improve quality of life.

[Ranakastrasz]

I personally agree, and honestly, find that 3x production makes a significant difference.
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Ranakastrasz/Pre-Fusion


Overall, I think taking the processing unit out of the recipe also makes as huge difference.

Its somewhat amusing that bobs-mod scaled up solar panels with tiers, but even t4 is weaker than t1 fusion reactor, and is still more expensive for 16 of them.

[bobingabout]

so why not just save up 100 and skip straight to a fusion reactor?

Because it costs 250 processing units now.

[Frightning]

The most revealing metric imo is space versus power generated:
In 0.14, PSP v FR we also have to account for the fact that your PSPs are only active by day, just like other panels, and you need at least one Battery to be able to have energy at night. Regular Solar panels produce a maximum of 60kW, but an average of 42kW, which is 70% of their max. Assuming the same holds true for PSP, then it produces an average of just 7kW (max is 10kW). Comparing to a Fusion reactor, which is always on, and produces 750kW in a 4x4 unit and we see just how disappointing PSPs are: 16 PSPs produce 16*7=96kW average power), less than 15% as much power as a Fusion reactor.

The PSPs do have a bit of an advantage, because they are 1x1, they can fit into places where the bulky 4x4 Fusion reactor cannot (e.g. even in Power armor (MK1), you can still only fit 1 Fusion reactor, even though it has a 49 tile grid). I think an average power rating, for 16, of up to around 300kW (maybe more like 200-250) would be fair. The max power rating would need to be more than doubled, maybe 25kW max (17.5*16=280kW v 750kW)?

[BlakeMW]

But the PSPs have the advantage of being dirt cheap and green tech. It's like comparing the power density of steam power with nuclear power. One is available at the start of the game, the other requires a massive amount of tech and supporting infrastructure.

The green tech can't be overstated - when on Marathon/Deathworld you really appreciate it's not complicated to unlock because it's a looooooong time before personal fusion reactors. Even on normal settings you can beeline it pretty quickly if you want personal shield or roboport.

[BHakluyt]

Since 0.15 I have started two maps, more or less railword and the difficulty is a bit above default. The problem is that it takes ages to get to the maxed armour and fusion reactor. In both games I just chased to get roboport, panels and modular armour as quick as possible. The problem is that it reallly still is a struggle to construct things with the current PSP output. It would make the game a fraction quicker (about 5 hours for me) to be able to actually use the first roboport with modular armour early in the game. Just pump up the PSPs a fraction. Like 5kw more.

Maybe add a PSP MK2 somewhere between the first PSP and unlocking the first power armour...?

A power armour MK3 with more slots will be awesome too, but make it require space science packs.

[bobingabout]

I have to agree though that the recipe (costing 5 full size solar panels) is way to expensive for what is effectively a piece of junk. I remember early games where I had an exoskeleton, shield and night vision, and assuming the shield was fully charged, the solar panels in the suit were barely even enough to power the exoskeleton.

You don't need to make them competitive with the fusion reactor, but they definitely need some kind of buff, and a cheaper recipe.

[Frightning]

Since 0.15 I have started two maps, more or less railword and the difficulty is a bit above default. The problem is that it takes ages to get to the maxed armour and fusion reactor. In both games I just chased to get roboport, panels and modular armour as quick as possible. The problem is that it reallly still is a struggle to construct things with the current PSP output. It would make the game a fraction quicker (about 5 hours for me) to be able to actually use the first roboport with modular armour early in the game. Just pump up the PSPs a fraction. Like 5kw more.

Maybe add a PSP MK2 somewhere between the first PSP and unlocking the first power armour...?

A power armour MK3 with more slots will be awesome too, but make it require space science packs.

This is more the reason why PSPs need buffs than anything else, in my last 0.14 world, I've been using Modular armor with 1x Nightvision, 2x Energy Shield (MK1), 3x Battery (MK1) and 5x Portable solar panels. The Batteries give enough reserves that I can clear about a half dozen biter bases (even 60 hours in, since I still haven't gotten to seeing Behemoths yet) before my Batteries run dry, but then I have wait for like 15+ minutes before the Batteries are recharged before I go out and do that again. At this point, the biters are expanding as quickly as I can push back, so I'm finding myself perpetually with biters within my pollution cloud because I can't clear them all out in one run, and by the time I'm ready for a 2nd run, they've made as many new bases inside my pollution cloud as I managed to remove last time. If they were even 2x the current 10kW max I wouldn't be having this problem, and as you can see, my setup draws almost no energy outside of combat, with a Roboport instead of one of my shields, I would be constantly starved of energy from charging bots, which is just sad.

[Foreros]

so why not just save up 100 and skip straight to a fusion reactor?

Because it costs 250 processing units now.

You forgot the amount needed for the research required for get it... It's a lot more than 250.

[Foreros]

Since 0.15 I have started two maps, more or less railword and the difficulty is a bit above default. The problem is that it takes ages to get to the maxed armour and fusion reactor. In both games I just chased to get roboport, panels and modular armour as quick as possible. The problem is that it reallly still is a struggle to construct things with the current PSP output. It would make the game a fraction quicker (about 5 hours for me) to be able to actually use the first roboport with modular armour early in the game. Just pump up the PSPs a fraction. Like 5kw more.

Maybe add a PSP MK2 somewhere between the first PSP and unlocking the first power armour...?

A power armour MK3 with more slots will be awesome too, but make it require space science packs.

This is more the reason why PSPs need buffs than anything else, in my last 0.14 world, I've been using Modular armor with 1x Nightvision, 2x Energy Shield (MK1), 3x Battery (MK1) and 5x Portable solar panels. The Batteries give enough reserves that I can clear about a half dozen biter bases (even 60 hours in, since I still haven't gotten to seeing Behemoths yet) before my Batteries run dry, but then I have wait for like 15+ minutes before the Batteries are recharged before I go out and do that again. At this point, the biters are expanding as quickly as I can push back, so I'm finding myself perpetually with biters within my pollution cloud because I can't clear them all out in one run, and by the time I'm ready for a 2nd run, they've made as many new bases inside my pollution cloud as I managed to remove last time. If they were even 2x the current 10kW max I wouldn't be having this problem, and as you can see, my setup draws almost no energy outside of combat, with a Roboport instead of one of my shields, I would be constantly starved of energy from charging bots, which is just sad.

I wont tell this as a cheat, but you can get the bots directly from air and they will instantly go out fully charged, if you have energy problems. I dunno if it work even in 0.15, but in 0.14 I have used a 4 roboport setup with power armor for go outside and clear woodlands for new bulding grounds. Protected by few big electric poles with 8 laser turrets I've been fully protected during this farming outdoor trips.