Advanced Accumulators

[Chaelura]

(I tried to use Advanced Search but it said unavailable at this time; basic search found nothing other than mods. My sincere apologies if this has already been discussed! I tried!)

TL;DR: Advanced Accumulators with greater power storage per accumulator and accept modules

I originally thought when I saw the name "Basic Accumulator" that at some point I could research an upgraded version or two. As far as I can tell, this is not an option? It would be great to have accumulators accumulate faster or accept modules, and simply store more power in order to reduce the real estate footprint eventually (same with solar, really). Most of my base consists of solar panels and basic accumulators

GREAT GAME! I have 249 hours into it since getting it from Steam.

[bobingabout]

I suppose one of the issues there is that a lot of people already feel that having an accumulator at all is "Overpowered". I personally don't share this belief, I don't mind putting power generation struggle off as building the infinite energy system adequate for your needs, where those that think it's overpowered would rather have a power system that requires constant attention and maintenance, like the steam power system (Always needs fuel).

So with all those voices saying that the accumulator is overpowered, I'm not sure we'll see a MK2 of any kind in the base game.

However, there are a few mods around that add new power entities, including higher grade solar panels.
My power mod is one such mod. My take was to add multiple branches as MK2, the High Capacity Accumulator (Which basically is just the MK2+), the Fast Accumulator (Which is designed to even out those short high demand power spikes, like when inserters suddenly come to life when a train arrives, or when lasers start firing off at enemies, the latter can definitely kill power to the rest of your base), and the Slow accumulator (Designed to last all night long on default game day/night cycles, so if your main reserves fully deplete, you'd still have lower power to help things tick over).
It is usable on it's own, but for the most sensical recipes, it's designed for use with the rest of my mod suite.

[bobucles]

What would an advanced accumulator do that can't be done with a handful of regular accumulators? There's no extra purpose to it. It's just clutter, and there are plenty of clutter mods to play with.

I suppose one of the issues there is that a lot of people already feel that having an accumulator at all is "Overpowered".

Overpowered has nothing to do with it. Any energy system without accumulators has to deal with night dangers, energy conservation and grid switching methods. When accumulators are added to the mix, those issues disappear. All the potential energy grid problems and puzzles cease to exist because the all encompassing solution of "build more accumulators" is overwhelmingly superior to any other solution.

Any item should add to the overall options in a game, especially in Factorio where the name of the game is puzzle solving. Accumulators do the opposite. That's quite simply bad.

[bobingabout]

When accumulators are added to the mix, those issues disappear. All the potential energy grid problems and puzzles cease to exist because the all encompassing solution of "build more accumulators" is overwhelmingly superior to any other solution.

Which is just a more complicated way of saying... it's overpowered. I was trying to keep things short, not accurate.

[bobucles]

"Overpowered" implies that some set of attributes exist for accumulators which will magically fix them and somehow allow other power solutions to exist at the same time.

There aren't.

[Chaelura]

I don't feel it's an OP idea; there are tons of machines that you upgrade for storage space, speed, etc., in order to start making your base more compact. That would be the purpose for me in any case. And certainly I would be fine with them being complex/expensive to make.

[Chaelura]

I suppose one of the issues there is that a lot of people already feel that having an accumulator at all is "Overpowered". I personally don't share this belief, I don't mind putting power generation struggle off as building the infinite energy system adequate for your needs, where those that think it's overpowered would rather have a power system that requires constant attention and maintenance, like the steam power system (Always needs fuel).

So with all those voices saying that the accumulator is overpowered, I'm not sure we'll see a MK2 of any kind in the base game.

However, there are a few mods around that add new power entities, including higher grade solar panels.
My power mod is one such mod. My take was to add multiple branches as MK2, the High Capacity Accumulator (Which basically is just the MK2+), the Fast Accumulator (Which is designed to even out those short high demand power spikes, like when inserters suddenly come to life when a train arrives, or when lasers start firing off at enemies, the latter can definitely kill power to the rest of your base), and the Slow accumulator (Designed to last all night long on default game day/night cycles, so if your main reserves fully deplete, you'd still have lower power to help things tick over).
It is usable on it's own, but for the most sensical recipes, it's designed for use with the rest of my mod suite.

Wait, are you the "Bob's Mods" guy??? That mod/mods is all I ever hear about LOL

[bobingabout]

Wait, are you the "Bob's Mods" guy??? That mod/mods is all I ever hear about LOL

That's me. And yes, they appear to be quite popular.

[BlakeMW]

Advanced Accumulator would mainly make sense if the Basic Accumulator is nerfed.

An example might be that Basic Accumulator is 70% energy efficient (for ever 1.0 kJ you put in, you get 0.7kJ back out) while the advanced accumulator is 90% efficient.

[bobingabout]

Which is actually why one of the suggestions I keep trying to push is lossy accumulators, if it takes 1.5x the energy to charge it than it stores... or only 66% efficiency, which is realistic, and on top of that, you only get about 90% of the stored energy back, which is also realistic (So much ends up as heat!), then they would be less OP, and give more of a reason to have more than one type, Especially if these charge and discharge efficiencies were modable. I mean, you have an efficiency tag on burner powered things for a start, all you really need is a tag like that which works on accumulators, and you're half way there.

Though people argue with me that it doesn't really change anything, you just have to build more accumulators.

[ratchetfreak]

Which is actually why one of the suggestions I keep trying to push is lossy accumulators, if it takes 1.5x the energy to charge it than it stores... or only 66% efficiency, which is realistic, and on top of that, you only get about 90% of the stored energy back, which is also realistic (So much ends up as heat!), then they would be less OP, and give more of a reason to have more than one type, Especially if these charge and discharge efficiencies were modable. I mean, you have an efficiency tag on burner powered things for a start, all you really need is a tag like that which works on accumulators, and you're half way there.

Though people argue with me that it doesn't really change anything, you just have to build more accumulators.

the inefficiencies don't care where they are in the charge-discharge cycle

you would end up with a 2/3*0.9 = 60% reuse efficiency with nothing to show for it other than more complicated code in the backend. You may as well specify that the accumulator is 60% efficient.

Varying the charge/discharge rate would make things more interesting: if there were small fast discharge (to deal with laser bursts) and bigger but slower discharge accumulators (for overnight use) you would get more interesting setups even without lossy charging. IRL there is the same difference between capacitors and batteries for storing energy temporarily.