Factorio Forums

I was trying to debug my nuclear reactor in /editor mode, and added electric energy interface with these settings: Now, there is 1 normal accumulator and a circuit based SR-latch set to operate between 20 to 90 range. But because the interface has some weird priority and it's not an accumulator, power never goes from accumulators to the interface. And neither do they try to balance their storage capacity. So what happens is that turbines stop because accumulator goes above 90, even though turbines generate at most 1.1GW (interface wants 2.4GW).

So what i had to do for workaround is to override SR-latch with a constant combinator to always draw power from turbines. Obviously i can't include that in the blueprint though.

And yes the accumulator and energy interface are in same connected electric grid always, without power switch between.

When I want a power drain that will draw down accumulators I use a Big Bank o'Beacons.

Zaflis wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 08, 2019 11:09 pm

But because the interface has some weird priority and it's not an accumulator, power never goes from accumulators to the interface.

I believe this statement is incorrect. The interface is an accumulator, just one with at huge capacity and a huge maximum output. Accumulators will never draw power from one another, which is exactly the behavior you're describing.

The power drain is something else though. Should we expect it to draw power even from itself? So if you set production and usage same, it should produce 0. In that sense they would be mutually exclusive and one should only need a toggle there, that it's a power producer or consumer, can't be both.

Edit: After more testing i can say that accumulators and energy interfaces don't work on same priority when used just as power storage. The interface fills up first and then accumulators start charging.
I mean this makes it quite useless for its intended purpose, debugging lategame power setups.

darkfrei wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 7:09 am

viewtopic.php?t=73078

Duplicate of that report - electric energy interfaces (the one the base game defines) has the same usage priority as accumulators so it will never consume power from them. You'll have to define your own with a different usage priority if you want them to do that.

Rseding91 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 5:15 pm

You'll have to define your own with a different usage priority if you want them to do that.

Is the tertiary priority by the accumulators not hardcoded?

darkfrei wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:46 pm

Rseding91 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 5:15 pm

You'll have to define your own with a different usage priority if you want them to do that.

Is the tertiary priority by the accumulators not hardcoded?

It is, you change the priority on the electric energy interface.

Rseding91 wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 10, 2019 3:06 am

darkfrei wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:46 pm

Rseding91 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 5:15 pm

You'll have to define your own with a different usage priority if you want them to do that.

Is the tertiary priority by the accumulators not hardcoded?

It is, you change the priority on the electric energy interface.

To the tertiary priority?

Rseding says "electric energy interfaces (the one the base game defines) has the same usage priority as accumulators". Why would you then need (or want) to change them to be the tertiary, the same as the hardcoded value for accumulators?

What do you mean by "tertiary" or "change priority? If it comes down to using it in a mod, why is it in the base game at all if we need a creative-mode mod anyway?

Zaflis wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 10, 2019 8:11 pm

What do you mean by "tertiary" or "change priority? If it comes down to using it in a mod, why is it in the base game at all if we need a creative-mode mod anyway?

It's in the base game because:

• Every prototype needs at least one instance
• It's used as a power provider in tests
• It's used as a power consumer in tests
• It's used as a power provider in base game scenarios
• It's used as a power provider in base game mini tutorials
• It's available for scenario/mod writers as a power provider/consumer

Zaflis wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 1:20 am

I mean this makes it quite useless for its intended purpose, debugging lategame power setups.

I don't think that "player power setup testing" is "the intended purpose", especially not when it was added way back in 0.13.0:

changelog wrote: Added a new entity type "electric-energy-interface" that can consume, produce, and accept energy while also allowing all of its electric network parameters to be configured runtime.

What about this test then? Try blueprint:
You get a setup like this: ... with energy interface buffer 300kJ, other values 0.
To test, remove powerpole from radars and watch as energy interface starts filling up. Accumulators remain 0. To be sure now, this is not a bug? And why? How do i change energy interface to use same priority as accumulators? To what i looked in sources, they are both using "tertiary" priority in energy_source. Where is "tertiary 1" and 2 etc...

If you look at the power graph when you remove the substation in the radars, you will see that the accumulators and interface both start charging immediately upon removal of the load.

They may be drawing a tiny amount, but never linear as expected in any of my tests. You can see it with mods that add extra tiers of solar panels and accumulators, they will always grow relatively 1:1 and make straight growing line graphs, if you mix several different tiers of accu/panels in same network.

If i set interface with same input capacity as regular accumulator: