Factorio Forums

The laser turret uses 800 kJ every time it fires and by default fires 1.5 times a second and has an idle drain of 24 kW, which would mean it takes about 1.22 MW while firing, which is what it says in-game.
But in practice, it was confusing to me because it consumes a lot more than that and then stops consuming before the next shot. Seems to fill its electricity at a higher rate and then stop consuming when it has enough when I would expect it to fill at the rate it needs to, and it wouldn't spike. I tested this recently on a sandbox world by just putting down solar panels until I had just enough power for the listed max consumption then put down a laser turret and made it shoot at big enemies.

It seems like it tries to fill it at 9.6 MW until it's full then stops until the next shot, which I think overall would maybe be the same, but if you have enough don't have 9.6 MW available, then machines and lights in your factory will flash on and off from lack of power. Although, they flash off for less time the closer to 9.6 MW you have.
Apparently, there is an input limit that's set to 9600 kW, but I feel like it should be the same as the max consumption. Though someone said it can't be changed and that's why it's set high, or maybe it's intentionally set to that permanently. But the max consumption or something else could reflect that to tell me.

This is just the turrets internal storage charging.

Yeah, but it charges at 9.6 MW. Are they supposed to take 9.6 MW? Why does it take 8x the amount of power it says it should? What do you mean "just the storage charging," that doesn't really address anything in my post. If it's not a bug, then we should at least know it exists.

Laser turrets have an input flow limit of 9600kW so this is correct. The reason it's so high is; at higher research the laser shoots faster and uses more power. But the input flow limit is static for the lifetime of all turrets so it starts with enough input in mind to make sure the technology effects work when researched.

There should be something that says how much it is because for quite a while I didn't know how much electricity it used, so I kinda was against using them. The max consumption is kinda a useless value for it right now because it consumes a lot more. Technically the max consumption is actually 9.6 MW no matter the speed, so it feels weird it doesn't reflect that. I don't know why I'm repeating myself, I already said that in the original post. But I think it is the difference between needing 2 steam engines for a laser turret and 11 steam engines. And I think you could shoot 12/s with the energy you need.

This sort of issue has come up before in the context of energy production graphs. The energy numbers displayed accurately represent the internal state of the game, but aren't always useful to players without an intimate understanding of the game engine. The user-experience question is: What behavior is the player intended to change as a result of knowing this number?

I mean, you do need at least 9.6 MW for a turret or else when it's firing your factory's machines will flash on and off, but it doesn't say the 9.6 MW number anywhere in the game so there's no way to know how much you need to stop the flashing.

Ah, that's what you meant. The 9.6MW number isn't displayed but still has an impact on what you see in the game. But most people don't notice because the power spikes are handled by accumulators, placed in tandem with the solar panels. So the 9.6MW would confuse other parts of gameplay if it were shown and not very carefully labeled.

This is not a bug, make a feature request.