Factorio Forums

Examples

• Different types of energy powered walls
• The fields will auto-heal if there's energy to do so
• If the emitter runs out of energy to do needed work all of the fields for that emitter collapse
• Different types of fields (unlocked with research) have different effects/tradeoffs
• [ b ]lue: normal health, normal re-spawn, normal power usage
• [ G ]reen: higher health, very slow re-spawn, below-normal power usage
• [ R ]ed: normal health, slow re-spawn, very high power usage. Damages living things that directly attack them
• [ P ]urple: low health, very slow re-spawn, high power usage. On death, heavily damages living things near-by
• Use the Forcefield Tool on an emitter to open the menu for it
• Heavily optimized - you can go crazy with the force fields and they shouldn't impact your game's performance much/at all

1.0.6: fixed script error related to failing to build fields.
1.0.5: fixed script errors related to death of purple fields and spawning new fields. Re-implemented purple field damage on death and tree-removal when can't build fields.
1.0.4: fixed script error with localized entity name
1.0.3: updated for Factorio 0.12.11
1.0.2: updated for 0.12 + a major refactor and cleanup of the code
1.0.1: fixed errors when removing upgrades and fixed not getting the right upgrades back when mining emitters
1.0.0: initial release

Kiapha wrote:I recall another mod very similar to this one before. Something it had that this seems to lack according to the picture is that you could create walls thicker than just one. Would it be possible for you to add a thickness setting as well? That would make it much more useful, in my opinion.

n9103 wrote:As with anything else stock, it was made for a completely different game.
The loading script could insist on setting itself behind the optional dytech mods, which would give you a few parameters on startup to see if you should be using DyTech level walls, or Vanilla.

Fatmice wrote:Why do emitters pulse the electrical grid when generating the force walls? I've got a 120 MW test grid with 5GJ of storage and there are many spikes in the electric demand graph when I connect an emitter to the test grid. Since emitters eat at a max of 100 MW, the 120 MW grid should be able to provide all the power needed to charge both the emitters and create the wall sections.

How much power is needed to generate each wall section?

vedrit wrote:One issue I ran into is when I drove into the wall (set as blue at the time) with a tank from Tankwerkz (Hydra) (not sure if it's a compatibility issue) it caused the game to force-close. I'll grab a log next time

Also, can we get an on/off switch in the emitter UI and for it to be off by default? That would allow players to place the emitter and modify it before it places a massive drain on the power network

Rseding91 wrote: You can look at the control.lua file and see the comments near the top that explain power usage.

Fatmice wrote:

Rseding91 wrote: You can look at the control.lua file and see the comments near the top that explain power usage.

Okay, I took a look. The variable definitions are a bit confusing. It still does not explain why there are energy spikes during wall section generation. The emitter has an internal reserve that requests energy at a constant rate (100 MW) until it is full. There were no spikes during this phase.

You are using a tick rate of 20, but the game run at a tick rate of 60 so, you walls tick at 3x a second?

I'm was testing red walls set at a length of 65 sections. According to the comments in control.lua, it should be using 200KJ (20*10000 J, which I am assuming you are using J here and not KJ) per generation per section, so all 65 sections will take 13 MJ per generation. Now does it generate all section at once or one at a time? It seems to do the former. The rate of generation is also not clear. I'm going to assume that it will do 3 generations per second so 13 MJ/(1/3) => 39 MJ/s => 39 MW. Since there are 65 sections at 300 HP each, it charges 3.5 HP per generation so 300/3.5*13MJ = 1114 MJ; this means it takes 28.6s to do the initial charge of 65 wall sections. Is this why it pulses? I see spikes of energy usage during wall generation. Isn't there anyway you could smooth out the energy request? Maybe have it use the internal reserves during wall generation then request more energy to fill itself up? Maybe my math is wrong?

Rseding91 wrote: That math sounds right. It does use the internal buffer during generation. The game its self re-fills the buffer every game tick (using the game-built energy net system). Because the fields run once every 20 ticks you see the pulses from it using energy every 20th tick and the game re-charging the emitter back to full. There's no good way to make it a smooth amount without running every tick and that would destroy your game's performance.

Fatmice wrote:

Rseding91 wrote: That math sounds right. It does use the internal buffer during generation. The game its self re-fills the buffer every game tick (using the game-built energy net system). Because the fields run once every 20 ticks you see the pulses from it using energy every 20th tick and the game re-charging the emitter back to full. There's no good way to make it a smooth amount without running every tick and that would destroy your game's performance.

Okay, I see, but then why does the emitter not pulse the energy network when it is charging its buffer? Is it acting like an accumulator then? Are you having it run every tick during that phase? I just want to understand what is going on.

Rseding91 wrote: When it's charging it is already drawing at the maximum rate. Once it's fully charged it draws at the idle rate until it ticks and uses some of the energy at which point it charges at the maximum rate until it's full.

Fatmice wrote:1/ When emitter is placed, charge emitter reserve at maximum power draw until full.
2/ Once reserve is full, only use reserve to generate walls and not request further energy from the grid until the reserve is empty.
3/ When reserve is empty, stop all wall generation and request more power until full then go back to (2).

Power request is therefore limited to when reserve is completely empty. This has the added effect that if you can not sustain 100 MW draw then you will be in trouble and wall generation will only start/restart when the reserve is topped off. This means the emitter will not even tick unless the reserve was marked as being topped off.