Reading Power capacity and demand

[Hedning1390]

Yes, it won't show if you have missed to connect a pipe, just like the production tab for all other production doesn't show eg if you connected your green circuits to blue circuits. How the hell is the game supposed to know what you intend or not intend to do? Are you suggesting it should always show the maximum capacity should you use perfect ratios? How is that going to work for something like nuclear which is not going to have perfect ratios. Also wouldn't it be kind of a lie to tell a player that you have 10MW capacity, but due to your choice in setup your maximum is actually 8MW (but we won't tell you that, sshhhh, because you don't want to know what you can actually produce, but what the optimum is). Also what should it even choose as the optimum? should it go on water capacity? boiler? steam engine? What if you use turbines for your boilers should it still count the turbines as if they had 500 degree water? Maybe your belt isn't fast enough for the fuel you are using. Do you want the power info screen to flash a warning to upgrade your belt?

Yes the power info screen isn't going to teach you everything about power, just like the production screen isn't going to teach you everything about setting up assembly lines. Nor should it.

It's funny how in your fanciful story you couldn't use screenshots from an actual game. So you found a bug? How about you report it in the bug forum if it hasn't already. It doesn't belong here, that's for sure. That scenario will never happen in actual game-play. Maybe that's why it hasn't been fixed yet even if they do know about it.

[Loewchen]

Idea for a new Electric network info GUI:

Fac_New_Pwr.png (69.96 KiB) Viewed 6464 times

[zOldBulldog]

Idea for a new Electric network info GUI:

Fac_New_Pwr.png

I like that, very clear.

I particularly like your backup power column. At first I thought it might be difficult to determine if a steam engine is regular or backup power, but I then realized that there are options for that... from detecting that a particular engine activates only rarely to putting it under played control by creating a new simple backup switch device that is placed between the main power line and the backup array, and allows power flow (and supplies a signal) when main power dips, then everything behind the switch is counted as backup power).

I would also suggest two bars for production and two for consumption. One measuring the current values and one showing the values calculated from the maximum power each device ever generated or consumed.

That way the first bar would show current production / consumption and the second would show capacity.

With such a UI design even the least skilled player would be able to determine when he needs to add power generation, for handling both regular consumption as well as spikes in demand.

[bobucles]

How the hell is the game supposed to know what you intend or not intend to do?

Very easily. If you build a steam engine or solar panel and plug it into the electric network, you intend to use it. You can't NOT use it. It's part of the network.

This isn't rocket science.

Also wouldn't it be kind of a lie to tell a player that you have 10MW capacity, but due to your choice in setup your maximum is actually 8MW

But it doesn't tell you that to begin with.

Steam power has a maximum output rate and as long as there's appropriate steam stored in the buffer it will output at maximum power. Your system may be "an 8MW system" but it can still give 10MW if it has buffered steam. That "above and beyond" surge is still part of what you CAN produce.

Maybe your belt isn't fast enough for the fuel you are using. Do you want the power info screen to flash a warning to upgrade your belt?

If your steam power can't output at full power, then something is probably wrong. There may be reasons why you can't use exactly 100% of your engine power (like ratio problems for nuclear power so it's 95%, oh no). But at every other time what you want from your energy sources is exactly what they're capable of.

If you can't get 100% production from your energy supply, then your production isn't 100%. It's pretty straight forward and there's no reason to show it any other way.

[Loewchen]

I particularly like your backup power column. At first I thought it might be difficult to determine if a steam engine is regular or backup power, but I then realized that there are options for that... from detecting that a particular engine activates only rarely to putting it under played control by creating a new simple backup switch device that is placed between the main power line and the backup array, and allows power flow (and supplies a signal) when main power dips, then everything behind the switch is counted as backup power).

The Back up power part would only be potential power production that is not needed right now, e.g. 3MW of steam if you have engines for 10MW but only use 7MW. Power in switch disconnected networks could not be found in this UI and other bottlenecks like not enough steam production for the engines would not be corrected either.

I would also suggest two bars for production and two for consumption. One measuring the current values and one showing the values calculated from the maximum power each device ever generated or consumed.

That way the first bar would show current production / consumption and the second would show capacity.

For the Production part the "Active" + "Back up" parts provide the info of the second bar already. I don't think the theoretic maximum consumption is useful information, most factories will never come close to reaching this value, e.g. you have lots of stuff like laser turrets all around the base of which only a fraction will run at the same time.

[bobucles]

I don't think the info bars necessarily have to show MORE information. Rather it needs to display its current information BETTER. It's not even that difficult:

- Satisfaction is largely okay as is. Fix the weird glitches like beacons having unusually low satisfaction when they are 99% satisfied. It's probably a bug related to its internal buffer.

- Production should show %used out of %total hypothetical production. Steam engines, turbines and solar panels are producers. Even if you have a backup system it is part of your maximum production. If it's part of the network, show it. Knowing if your energy producers are giving 100% or not is absolutely vital information.

- Production bar can change colors when steam power is vastly below their theoretical output. For example if steam engines can only produce 90% of their max it is caution, and producing 50% below their max is danger. Solar power cycles from day to night and this cycle is not considered dangerous. A steam engine that can not output at 100% is suffering a problem and thus the production bar should be yellow. (There is one case of turbines using low temperature steam which may need an exception). You can even get clever by making this color bright during the day/dark at night and using yellow/red to indicate steam problems.

- Accumulators are neither producers nor consumers. When extra production goes into charging accumulators, only show the increased production. When Accumulators are filling in the blanks, only display the increase in satisfaction. This makes the two MW numbers different in a meaningful way.

- Color code the accumulator bar. Green or blue when charging, yellow when discharging, red when accumulators are overloaded (can not satisfy demand).

That should cover the basics and make a simple display that is very easy to read.

[quyxkh]

I think the simplest improvement would be to split the network-info production bar into production and accumulator output. What accumulators do isn't really production anyway, it's more like regurgitation. If you want to know whether you're at capacity the current bar's meaning depends on the ratio of potential accumulator output to potential everything-else output.

Say you've got one solar panel and no accumulators: A 100% bar means you're producing all your producers can. Add an accumulator, 100% now means 360kW, you'll never see >16⅔% production with level demand, only if demand slacks off enough to charge the accumulators and then spikes enough to drain them while the generators are still running flat-out.

But if instead there was a separate "accumulator output" bar, you could always see what fraction of your actual energy production capacity was in use and also what fraction of your accumulator output i.e. how fast they're draining, 100% accumulator output will always drain full accumulators in 16⅔ seconds and so on.

I'm pretty sure a lot of the underlying math in this game is meant to be just a little hard to get right, the interplay of the various values is what gives it a lot of its subtlety, but I don't think the pretty summary graphs should intentionally leave you still having to do a bunch of multiplying and summing and dividing with memorized constants to get good information out of them.

If adding a second accumulator-output bar is deemed too much, how about adding a tint to the rightmost fraction of the current production bar, or a mark at the boundary, that represents potential accumulator output (so with one accumulator and one panel that'd mark the right 5/6 of it)?

[mrvn]

You already see this in the bottom right. You have steam engines, turbines, solar panels and accumulators producing power.

[quyxkh]

You already see this in the bottom right. You have steam engines, turbines, solar panels and accumulators producing power.

Yes, if you're at 100% of current production capacity and your accumulators have enough to cover the deficit. But that's just a binary you-might-already-need-more indicator masquerading as a percentage of ... something.

If it showed the potential real generating capacity you'd be able to use it as a decent quick check, you could see how close you are to needing more, before you need more.

As it is now, unless you're already over capacity you have to add up all your nuc/steam/solar capacity to find out how close you are to needing more, that 0-100% readout is meaningless without the sum and you can't even do the sum right for nucs without visiting them, because nuc count doesn't factor in neighbor bonuses.

Once you've got accumulators the existing bar doesn't mean what you want it to mean, the only information you can reliably get out of that 0-100% bar as it is, you can already get, as you point out, by looking at the output graph. . The percent the bar shows is of a number that gets increasingly difficult to determine and difficult to interpret. Even in just a pure-solar factory it's annoying, with enough capacity full production is about a quarter bar, 23.8%? Okay, fine. You've got a pure-solar factory. Your bar's showing less than a quarter bar. Do you need more capacity yet? How soon? What inferences can you draw from the ~18% usage it's showing? If you don't already know the answers, what the bar is showing you won't help you find them.

[bobucles]

Yes, if you're at 100% of current production capacity and your accumulators have enough to cover the deficit. But that's just a binary you-might-already-need-more indicator masquerading as a percentage of ... something.

Eh. Knowing how relatively hard your accumulators are draining isn't terribly important information. An overloaded accumulator will dry out in 16 seconds. Players typically want storage that doesn't blink out in mere seconds. That means building more accumulators, which means there will always be enough accumulator capacity to do anything worthwhile.

A long term accumulator charge graph is more useful for knowing how durable your accumulator storage is and whether it really needs an upgrade. But the answer to that is already solved by Factorio rule #1. Build MOAR.

Accumulator capacity simply shouldn't be shown as a part of the production bar at all. They are not producers. They are gapstops. Knowing if they are charging or discharging or overloaded is generally decent info, and knowing how many MW are going in or out (either as a direct number or indirectly by production being different from consumption) is good enough for immediate observation. Any other information you need to diagnose them needs a long term graph.

[quyxkh]

Yeah, I didn't think of removing accumulator output from the summary entirely, just splitting it out separately with a second bar or failing that a divider mark, but since the accumulator charge bar is already up there you can see if it's charging or draining, so just exclude accumulator output from the production bar graph entirely. Rename the "Production" _pane_ to "Output" and I think the result might be entirely OCD-compliant.

[Piroko]

I did a quick mockup of what I think could be a potential solution that is (hopefully) more intuitive, I took a bit of inspiration from Frostpunk:

Electric Network.png (46.09 KiB) Viewed 6205 times

The bar would be normed to the currently highest absolute value.
Peak production would be the maximum power output of Steam engines, Turbines and Solar Panels added up. Accumulators are split off from actual production through color indicator.

I would suggest that the Current Demand, Peak Production and Current Production names move with the white indicators.

[mrvn]

You already see this in the bottom right. You have steam engines, turbines, solar panels and accumulators producing power.

Yes, if you're at 100% of current production capacity and your accumulators have enough to cover the deficit. But that's just a binary you-might-already-need-more indicator masquerading as a percentage of ... something.

If it showed the potential real generating capacity you'd be able to use it as a decent quick check, you could see how close you are to needing more, before you need more.

As it is now, unless you're already over capacity you have to add up all your nuc/steam/solar capacity to find out how close you are to needing more, that 0-100% readout is meaningless without the sum and you can't even do the sum right for nucs without visiting them, because nuc count doesn't factor in neighbor bonuses.

Once you've got accumulators the existing bar doesn't mean what you want it to mean, the only information you can reliably get out of that 0-100% bar as it is, you can already get, as you point out, by looking at the output graph. . The percent the bar shows is of a number that gets increasingly difficult to determine and difficult to interpret. Even in just a pure-solar factory it's annoying, with enough capacity full production is about a quarter bar, 23.8%? Okay, fine. You've got a pure-solar factory. Your bar's showing less than a quarter bar. Do you need more capacity yet? How soon? What inferences can you draw from the ~18% usage it's showing? If you don't already know the answers, what the bar is showing you won't help you find them.

There are no (meaning full) bars at the bottom right and it has nothing to do with seeing weather you need more power generation or not.

You asked to see how much power is drawn from accumulators and that is shown at the bottom right. On the left you also can see how much power is used to charge said accumulators. By changing the timeframe you even get a nice daily average or even longer periods.

[quyxkh]

The point of asking for a separate accumulator-output bar wasn't to have that bar, it was to separate the accumulator output from the actual power generation/capacity. As bobucles pointed out, there's no reason to have the accumulator output up there at all. The pane on the bottom right doesn't, as you observed, have any bar graphs, but it does have line graphs,and I suggested retitling it "Output" only because accumulator output isn't really "production" in the same sense as steam engine or nuc plant output.

[vedrit]

I did a quick mockup of what I think could be a potential solution that is (hopefully) more intuitive, I took a bit of inspiration from Frostpunk:

Electric Network.png

The bar would be normed to the currently highest absolute value.
Peak production would be the maximum power output of Steam engines, Turbines and Solar Panels added up. Accumulators are split off from actual production through color indicator.

I would suggest that the Current Demand, Peak Production and Current Production names move with the white indicators.

It might be important to also include peak consumption, since many machines draw different amounts of power depending on whether they are active or idle.

[zOldBulldog]

I did a quick mockup of what I think could be a potential solution that is (hopefully) more intuitive, I took a bit of inspiration from Frostpunk:

Electric Network.png

The bar would be normed to the currently highest absolute value.
Peak production would be the maximum power output of Steam engines, Turbines and Solar Panels added up. Accumulators are split off from actual production through color indicator.

I would suggest that the Current Demand, Peak Production and Current Production names move with the white indicators.

It might be important to also include peak consumption, since many machines draw different amounts of power depending on whether they are active or idle.

I hat is exactly my thought, and it should not be hard to measure it, as the "peak" is simply the largest momentary measurement that any given machine generated or consumed at any time since it was constructed.

I would love to see "peak" and "average" over the last game day, as well as "current". I think that with those values even non-math players would be able to figure out production and consumption needs easily.

[bbgun06]

I think Piroko's mockup is brilliant. I suggest adding another bar for the accumulator charge state and capacity.

[Optera]

Piroko's mockup would be more informative with one single bar than the 3 bars we have now combined.

[JimBarracus]

how to display accumulator charging / discharging:

electric car gauges

Would show the charge/discharge rate related to the total power consumption in %.

For charging: x% are used for recharging of the total power consumption
Example: factory needs 50MW,accumulators are charged with 50MW, total possible poduction is 100MW, charge rate is 50%.

For discharge x% of the current power cunsumption come from the accumulators
Exmaple: factory needs 150MW, steam engines provide 50MW, accumulators provide 100MW -> 200% discharge rate.

Could be made as another bar which turns blue for charging and red for discharging, showing the percentage.
The total charge bar could stay the way it is.
Showing the charge/discharge rate in % is a good indicator to know how far your production is of the current power demand.

[bobucles]

There is a flaw in Piroko's proposed setup. Namely the third bar is wrong.

Peak production accounts for solar and steam producers. However accumulators do not always drain because of reduced production. They drain because demand is higher than production, and this can readily happen at 100% production. The graph will not display that kind of info properly.

Not a fan of the 5th bar either. It breaks the model of the production bar having a strict value. When demand goes above production, it's asking for the bar to dynamically change with it to show the energy shortage. Making the production bar dynamic is exactly why the current system is so horrible to read.