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Turbine Generator - Use petroleum gas as fuel, but also require lubricant and water(cold water, as a coolant) Generate much higher levels of power, but take time to reach full speed/production. The water must be cold, and is heated by the turbine. Has an input and output for water, similar to the boiler. Produces a lot of noise pollution.

Cooling tower - Cools water, allowing it to be reused by turbines and reactors.

Nuclear reactor - uses uranium as fuel (new resource). Produces no pollution, but if damaged has a chance to melt down, producing huge pollution increase. Also requires cold water.

Gas Turbines commonly don't require water cooling. Also their 0 to full load time is extremely short (2-3 mins from 0 to 20MW).

A typical Gas Turbine is just a modified airplane Jet Engine with a generator attached (often via air coupling).

Quick load changes are the tricky bit with gas turbines because they have light high-speed runners that carry relatively little momentum and thus a change on the load cannot be caught by the inertia (momentum) of the runner.

OTOH: modern gas turbines often are also dual-fuel which means that they can run on either gas or diesel (and with some clever programming also on both simultaneously).

The drawbacks with gas turbines are:

• relatively low power output (higher output can be achieved on cost of service hours: nominal load: 1 operating hour = 1 service hour, 20% increased load: 1 op hour = 1.5 service hours, 30% increased load compared to nominal: 1 op hour = 2 service hours)
• high maintenance (minimum every 10,000 equivalent service hours
• starts are fairly expensive since 1 start is equivalent to 20-30 service hours
• after stopping, the turbine can't be immediately restarted - needs a cooldown period where the turbine shaft is cranked
• sensitive to sudden load changes - either going into overspeed (upon load reduction) or into stall (upon sudden load increase)

I could see Steam Turbines (not steam engines - totally different principle) as alternative for late game power generation as Steam turbines yield higher power output than gas turbines. They would have fairly low pollution but a long startup time and they would require more space for their cooling towers.

I do think we need something other than solar and steam.

Wind would be a good start.

Wind would be also a good idea for relocating the pollution effects.

With wind, pollution could drift off - so if the wind blows in a direction that is away from the aliens, they could feel less effects from the pollution through the player, if it blows in their direction, it would worsen the pollution.

This would add a dynamic game element as attacks could come from different directions - even from aliens that normally wouldn't attack as they are outside the pollution zone under normal circumstances.

Windparks should also be possible to build in water - of course, by robots.

Wind as a game mechanic already exists in the game, and it does change in direction and strength.
I was merely suggesting that we make use of it with wind turbines as power generation, would be a pollution free source like solar, and would depend on wind strength, similarly to how solar panels depend on day brightness.

A wind turbine itself doesn't affect the wind in any meaningful way, it's just affected by it.

I was expecting a nuclear reactor at some point; when I saw the one you can insert into power armor. I really like the idea!

See viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5 Electric energy