Space platform "low power"

[CursedSilicon]

Hi team,

Playing with the new space platform. We built a 2 reactor nuclear setup (about 185 MW of total production capacity) on the platform

Despite this, laser turrets seem to constantly rapid-flicker with "low power" while destroying asteroids. This is despite the total power available being significantly more than is being consumed (see screenshot)

[mmmPI]

There seem to be moment when the ship doesn't have enough power for all the lasers shooting at the same time :

10-26-2024, 06-14-12.png (695.73 KiB) Viewed 2162 times

You can see on the left tab the consumption is higher than what the 32 turbines could provide during peak, and on the central tab that the blue curve can flat out on the top.

It is however weird than in such case the accumulator charge isn't dropping to compensate and that instead the laser turret are suffering temporary shortage. Instead it's just a tiny production in the orange curve in the midle graph. Maybe because the laser turret's internal buffer is like an accumulator, and can't be recharged by another accumulator and the accumulator only power the rest of the ship during that time.

I don't know if it's a bug, but i would 100% advise not using laser for spaceship, it's making the task much harder due to the laser resistance that the asteroids have ( especially if there's a bug on top of that ). It does look awesome though.

[CursedSilicon]

Using lasers is absolutely silly and was done mainly as a joke, though seems to actually work fairly well, at least at present!

Stuffing the ship full of accumulators was our first thought, as the power did spike past what the reactors could provide. But as you noted they don't seem to be providing extra capacity for the "demand spikes" despite this.

I've not tested it on 2.X on Nauvis, but in 1.1 I do believe the accumulators supplemented power requirements when laser turrets were used en-masse against biter swarms or bases

[Muche]

Normal quality assumulators have maximum discharge rate of 300 kW. 209 of them have 62.7 MW.
56 laser turrets have maximum draw of 216.16 MW.
To have fully backed turrets you'd need about 13 accumulators per 1 turret.

[mmmPI]

I tested in editor and the same thing happened with a thousand accumulator lazily pasted in editor at the back of the ship.

The laser still showed the yellow lamp from time to time and the accumulator had enough throughput for 300 MW.

I thought the nuclear power plant + the accumulator would have been enough to prevent the low power to show up on laser turrets even in the original ship due to the 209 accumulators ( 62.7 MW) adding up to the 32 turbines ( 32 *5.82= 186 MW) for a combined of 253 MW of potential drain during peak.

So i tested in editor, on nauvis, with a few laser on a large base and actually i think now that it is the normal behavior of laser turret to show this just after they "fire a shot". It doesn't show because they have a continuous beam, but they also have a firing rate, and it would seem that it is represented by how often they switch from low to normal power when attempting to fire continuously. I found clues for this when looking at the "damage inflicted" which seems to be updated in sync with the moment when the turret shows low power. ( if you slow down the time ).

I'm relieved to receive confirmation it was just a joke which i only suspected, i did the same but only in editor x), congrats for making a legit one

[CursedSilicon]

I wonder if the firing rate is a "left over" from when the turret would originally fire distinct "bullets" (similar to a blaster in Star Wars for instance) versus now where it's simply a continuous beam

It seems like it would make more sense that the turret can operate at 100% power continuously (if that power is available) rather than the weird flickering status it has currently

That does also bring up a second question that I'm not able to reliably test. Does the "low power" flickering cause the turret damage to become variable, despite being a continuous beam?

[mmmPI]

It seems like it would make more sense that the turret can operate at 100% power continuously (if that power is available) rather than the weird flickering status it has currently

but then what would the firing research increase ?

[CursedSilicon]

but then what would the firing research increase ?

Sorry, I should clarify. It would make more sense that it just shows "active" continuously while firing. Instead of rapid-flickering "low power". Increasing speed/damage should still increase the damage-per-second applied to targets however

[mmmPI]

"on cooldown" or something maybe, but there would still be a rapid flickering in my mind, as the frequency at which one can see it is an information, it is the rate at which the peak power are drawn, it is misleading that it could indicate something wrong like low power, but it is correct, that it flickers fast , not sure how to say x)