Reading Power capacity and demand

[zOldBulldog]

I am trying to understand the Electric network information display.

My understanding is:
- Only as much power as can be consumed will be generated, regardless of capacity.
- Satisfaction: Of the power needed to power all of my things, how much is being provided.
- Production: How much power is being produced at the moment.
- Accumulator Charge: My reserve.

- The Consumption Tab is more useful, showing me how much power is being consumed by each type of device. I suspect the sum total is the Satisfaction value.
- The Production tab shows how much power is being provided at the moment by each device, with the sum total being the Production value.

But what I need is:

- What is the total that "can be" consumed by my devices... if they are not being choked by lack of production.
- What is the total that I am capable to produce.

Those last two values are critical to knowing whether/when I need to build more power production. I don't find it fun to do a lot of math all of the time, but that seems to be the only way to get a solid feel for how much / when I need to build more power. Sure, I have been doing OK by building by "gut feel", although I am certain that there are times when I massively over-build capacity and there are times where I catch myself with too little power.

Is there are way to get those last two values easily, so that I can plan my power expansions in advance?

Or is the only reasonably painless way to do this to build a backup power plant that runs when power is low, triggers an alarm, and to use the alarm as the indicator to build more power generation?

[bobucles]

I am trying to understand the Electric network information display.

We all are.

[zOldBulldog]

I am trying to understand the Electric network information display.

We all are.

Believe it or not, your little joke helps a lot, especially after the uncharacteristically long silence until the first reply (yours).

I suspect it means that I am not nuts (at least not because of my issues with the panel ) and that there is truly a problem with the panel being "pretty" but not displaying the information we most need.

I guess setting up backup steam power with an alarm as the method to alert us to when it is time to upgrade power... is the only "sort of" convenient solution. Will do, but I was really hoping for something better, I really hate "pointless polluting" structures.

[Koub]

There are quite a few topics in the ideas and suggestions subforum asking for changes in the electric network info panel. Some of them are old. Like really old :
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1820
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3723
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13266
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24249
here's an old "Frequently suggested ideas" topic around what your post is about :
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=25233

As you can see, you're far from being the first one puzzled by the electric network panel. I think the right time for the devs to tackle this, with many other gui issues, will be during last phase of development, when the game will be considered out of alpha and into beta : when it will be feature-complete in terms of contents, and the only thing remaining will be refining the looks and ease of use and polishing.

[zOldBulldog]

Thanks, there do seem to be plenty of puzzled and frustrated people.

The main issue seems to be that while the panel provides a lot of information it doesn't answer the player's most important question... "Do I have enough capacity?"

Maybe I'll add my suggestions to satisfy the needs of even the noobiest of noobs (and in this topic I include myself, even after a few hundred hours playing factorio):

1) Add a simple red/yellow/green indicator to the panel that represents the last day/night cycle:
- Green if demand did not exceed production even once.
- Yellow if demand exceeded production at least once but demand was satisfied to at least 80%.
- Red if demand was satisfied at less than 80%.

2) Audible alerts:
- A minimal one-time sound when yellow occurs. Maybe the sound of a charging accumulators that lasts one second. Does not repeat during the brownout, but will sound again in a later brownout.
- A more noticeable power alert if demand is satisfied by less than 80%. Again last about 1 second but repeated once a minute while the brownout persists.

The main advantage I see to this approach is that it will subliminally train even the most clueless of players in power management.

[Bauer]

For a solar/accumulator setup it's actually easy to answer your question: At the beginning of the day there is a phase in which the solar panels produce at their max to refill the accumulators. After a while production breaks down to a lower and unsteady level. If this happens AND if your solar panel / accumulators ratio is correct it means that you have sufficient energy. The point in time (how soon or later during the day) at which your accumulators are fully charged indicates how much head room is left; take care, though, this is not linear.

For a nuclear power plant you can measure the load rate by looking at the ratio of the burning time of a fuel cell compared to the actual filling intervals. I used this the last time I used nuclear to set-up an indicator bar.

For a steam power plant you can build a heater-pump-tank-pump-3 steam engines setup. I used this once to have a little reserve for lasers (turned out to be nonsense. it's much easier to use accumulators). However, if you have a relatively flat consumption you can read the filling level of the tank. If it's not 100%, you're in trouble.

I know, all this is not what you are looking for.
I would also prefer to see this information on the power info panel.
These are work-arounds until the GUI is up to our needs...

[bobucles]

The power graph can certainly use some reworking. Let's look at a typical power graph story:
I set up a base, everything looks fine and I'm expanding my power use. Everything looks perfectly fine for now, but what is ACTUALLY happening is my boilers are turning off one by one behind the scenes until this happens:

factorio power graph.jpg (169.2 KiB) Viewed 17961 times

Oh no! I'm 100kW short of a fully powered base! Clearly that means I'm suffering a catastrophic power shortage. I panic, because a big shortage like that means my miners are going to shut down and make a total blackout. I'm a smart guy, so I immediately unplug the rest of my base, restore power, and build accumulators so it doesn't happen again:

factorio power graph 2.jpg (217.54 KiB) Viewed 17961 times

Everything looks fine, I guess? It's all green. Green is good right? Well there shouldn't be any problem expanding my base. I can't wait to-

factorio power graph 3.jpg (216.46 KiB) Viewed 17961 times

Oh no, it happened again! But everything has fuel?!?! I better check out my power system and

Aha! I found the problem. I forgot a water pipe and everything was running out of water. All fixed now:

factorio power graph 4.jpg (204.71 KiB) Viewed 17961 times

Yep! Everything is in the green, therefore everything is good! Time to get back to-

factorio power graph 5.jpg (619.77 KiB) Viewed 17961 times

Um.

What.

I'm out of fuel. But production is still in the green?????

I hope you enjoyed that story! I learned something very important about the power graph this day. Mainly, the moral of the story is that you shouldn't try to learn anything from the power graph. It's a pretty useless graph that tells you everything is 100% A-OK right up until you die.

[Aeternus]

And another moral of the story is to use burner inserters for those pesky boilers... Blackout recovery is a pain in the neck without them.

[mrvn]

And the real moral of the story is that the production graph color has no meaning. It's amplitude is important and less is more.

Notice how in all your power failures the bar is at 100% and barely below it when you have enough power. It shows how much of your potential power you are using. You want to have it around 50% or below so you have a nice power reserve for expansion. Having it at 90% is certainly cause for concern.

[zOldBulldog]

And the real moral of the story is that the production graph color has no meaning. It's amplitude is important and less is more.

Notice how in all your power failures the bar is at 100% and barely below it when you have enough power. It shows how much of your potential power you are using. You want to have it around 50% or below so you have a nice power reserve for expansion. Having it at 90% is certainly cause for concern.

I don't think you can trust 50%... mine jumps from 5% to 100% and back all the time.

[Jap2.0]

And the real moral of the story is that the production graph color has no meaning. It's amplitude is important and less is more.

Notice how in all your power failures the bar is at 100% and barely below it when you have enough power. It shows how much of your potential power you are using. You want to have it around 50% or below so you have a nice power reserve for expansion. Having it at 90% is certainly cause for concern.

I don't think you can trust 50%... mine jumps from 5% to 100% and back all the time.

Laser turrets?

[zOldBulldog]

And the real moral of the story is that the production graph color has no meaning. It's amplitude is important and less is more.

Notice how in all your power failures the bar is at 100% and barely below it when you have enough power. It shows how much of your potential power you are using. You want to have it around 50% or below so you have a nice power reserve for expansion. Having it at 90% is certainly cause for concern.

I don't think you can trust 50%... mine jumps from 5% to 100% and back all the time.

Laser turrets?

Nope, solar/accumulator setup. Makes the graph almost completely useless.

I have the right ratios but it makes it very hard to figure out when to expand the array.

[Jap2.0]

And the real moral of the story is that the production graph color has no meaning. It's amplitude is important and less is more.

Notice how in all your power failures the bar is at 100% and barely below it when you have enough power. It shows how much of your potential power you are using. You want to have it around 50% or below so you have a nice power reserve for expansion. Having it at 90% is certainly cause for concern.

I don't think you can trust 50%... mine jumps from 5% to 100% and back all the time.

Laser turrets?

Nope, solar/accumulator setup. Makes the graph almost completely useless.

I have the right ratios but it makes it very hard to figure out when to expand the array.

Oh. Yeah, in that case you have to look at how long your solar is at max capacity - if it's only at that for 95% of the day, you barely have enough time to charge your accumulators.

[zOldBulldog]

I know, for solar/accumulator the useful definition of capacity is the amount of power available at the moment just before the panels kick in as the sun comes up.

[bobucles]

Don't get me wrong, I've set up my share of power systems in the day. But when everyone here is reading the same graph and getting something completely different out of it there's probably cause for concern. The biggest problem is that the entire state of the system is trying to be represented as two numbers which are almost always identical. What value is there in showing the same number twice? The power graph needs to show more useful data. So let's go into some severe flaws of the graph:

1) The Production bar doesn't actually indicate any shortage or flaws in production. If you have a shortage in SUPPLY then this bar is automatically green and locked at 100%. Daytime solar production is 100%, nighttime solar production is 100%, a steam array with no water and half the boilers out of fuel is 100% green. As an indicator of "is my energy production okay?", this bar is completely useless.

2) A smaller production bar indicates a more solid reserve of energy production. Uh. What? It doesn't make much sense that a smaller production bar means more production and it makes even LESS sense that a full bar means a shortage of production. This needs to be fixed.

3) Accumulator demand is shown in the satisfaction bar. Accumulators are not standard energy consumers. They are surplus energy storage. No demand is being satisfied.

4) Draining accumulators are shown in production. Once again Accumulators are not an energy producer. They are energy storage. No energy is being produced.

3&4) Because of these two flaws, the graph is completely unclear on whether you have surplus power going into accumulators or a power deficit due to a loss of production. Remove accumulators from the equation. That way if production is greater than demand, then energy is getting stored. If production is less than demand, batteries are being tapped.

5) The accumulator charge bar is always green and does not show any information on whether it's charging or discharging or what the heck it is doing. This information can only be determined by staring at the MJ number and doing math in your head. Here are some useful colors: Green- charging, Yellow- Discharging, Red- Overloaded.

[Hedning1390]

The satisfaction bar is great. Not only does it indicate how much out of power your base is but also changes color to emphasise how bad it is to be out of power.

The production bar is great. It shows your capacity compared to need.

The graphs are great as they can work as a diagnostic tool to find out what went wrong.

I think if the bars didn't just show level of fulfillment but gave hard numbers as well (like 60/120MW if at 50%) then they would be perfect.

...

1) No. It is up to you to find problems in your factory. The production bar for green circuits doesn't show if you only supply it with half of the iron it needs. The bars show actual production, not the production if you used perfect ratios everywhere.

2) Nothing needs to be fixed here. A shortage in production is shown in the satisfaction bar. Changing this bar like you suggest would make it redundant. As it is now you actually get good and useful info.

3) Accumulators are consumers, or rather they are delayed consumption. If it didn't show up in the satisfaction bar you would get very confused when suddenly your power turned off for no reason even though you had lots of spare capacity the moment before.

4) When they are draining they do supply power. Again it would get very confusing if your factory seemingly ran without power production.

5) Charging or draining can be seen in the graphs below. Yes, an indicator, like small arrows showing the direction it is moving would be an improvement.

[bobucles]

It's not the power graph bar's fault that you can't read it

Yes. It is. A display that should be easy to use and very straightfoward for identifying problems ISN'T. If a UI is unreadable or gives bad data or gives data that you have to discard and then reprocess into useful data, it is useless. I have spent many years trying to decipher useful information out of those little green bars and I assure you that it is a PITA every single time. The only intuitive information the power graph gives is identifying a power shortage right now. Even that information can be flaky at best as we learned that having 99% power satisfaction (36MW supply / 36.2MW demand) somehow gives us 20-30% satisfaction. Explain THAT one.


The power bars do not show problems or defects in the power supply. They do not show problems with accumulators and do not not give any numbers to indicate charging or discharging rate. Take a screenshot of your power bars and tell me what your system is doing RIGHT NOW. Protip: I already did and you literally can't. The UI is bad.

The production bar is great. It shows your capacity compared to need.

No, it's not. A bar that gets better by getting smaller is not a good bar. A bar that completely breaks when your supply is defective is not a good bar. A bar that says your system is overloaded when it is actually very comfortable and simply recharging accumulators is not a good bar. A bar that says everything is OK when your energy system is on fire and falling apart IS. NOT. A. GOOD. BAR.

[Hedning1390]

You have a very narrow and limited view of what a bar can show. A full bar doesn't have to be better. There's probably as many examples where a full bar means something bad as it does something good. Just an example on the top of my head: Stress in a myriad of games. When it gets full something bad happens. Maybe it's your generator exploding, or your character has a mental breakdown.

The production bar shows my current power output in relation to my maximum production capacity. It shows me what kind of margin I have to expand. Very useful.

It's not the power graph bar's fault that you can't read it

The only intuitive information the power graph gives is identifying a power shortage right now. Even that information can be flaky at best as we learned that having 99% power satisfaction (36MW supply / 36.2MW demand) somehow gives us 20-30% satisfaction. Explain THAT one.

Like the guy said, it's not the games fault that you can't read data. If you have 36MW supply and use (not demand) then 20-30% satisfaction means you are producing everything you can, but it is only enough to cover 20-30% of demand.

[zOldBulldog]

In software "fault" is irrelevant.

Specifically, in UI design what truly matters is whether at least 95% of users clearly understand the information presented and can use it effectively. Anything less is substandard.

When people complain about it, it is just an indication that the UI failed to meet that 95%.

The normal practice when that happens... is to redesign.

----
The real problem is that in the gaming industry (as opposed to the rest of the software industry) players are getting used to substandard product and often even defend it fiercely!!!

[bobucles]

You have a very narrow and limited view of what a bar can show.

I have a pretty good idea of what a bar can and can't show. What the production bar shows isn't useful. It was never useful. But the only way I came to this conclusion was through joining games and fixing many broken energy systems. The production bar simply doesn't help in diagnosing anything, even when the energy system is falling apart in front of your face. A very clear example is displayed in the pictures in this very thread.

The only time the production bar shows something remotely helpful is when your energy system already has no problems at all. An "everything's okay" alarm isn't useful.

The production bar COULD be useful, if it showed things that were important to diagnosing an electric system. What it shows right now is basically the same as demand except not helpful.

The production and consumption numbers aren't good. They are both the exact same number at all points in time. Why is the same number being shown twice? That is not useful.

If you have 36MW supply and use (not demand) then 20-30% satisfaction means you are producing everything you can, but it is only enough to cover 20-30% of demand.

I'm going to let you in on a secret. Try doing some math.

One pump gives enough water for exactly 36MW (200J * 150degrees * 1200/sec) of power. 75 beacons use 36MW of power. I placed 76. Tell me what my electric satisfaction should be. I'm no calculatition, but it might not be 20%. This is probably a bug with beacons more than anything, but it definitely doesn't do the electric graph any favors.

Like the guy said, it's not the games fault that you can't read data.

A skilled enough player can eventually get used to the graph and squeeze some useful information out of it. But anything you learned that you did not know in the very first 5 minutes you've ever seen the graph is not an innate quality of the graph. If it's not clear then it's not good.

Watching the demand bar flicker yellow and red and shrink while a disaster happens is very immediately clear. Watching the accumulator storage go up and down is also pretty decent, but it is not clear if you are charging or discharging or how much the accumulators are contributing to the system. Any other property of the electric system is a complete black box that has to be learned through hard experience.