Factorio Forums

Hello,

One of the first thing that I aim for, and I believe a lot of others (based on watching lots of youtube), is solar power, since it is maintenance free.. A quick look at the power consumption once in a while to make sure we're still generating enough, and then we move on our merry way. We do a lot of mining on that planet, and I'm guessing, generate a lot of dust as well. It appears that our solar panels are immune to the dust, as they never need to get cleaned/replaced. Could we have it so that they accumulate dust over time, making them less and less efficient as time goes by? Then, we would need to clean (repair) them to make them 100% efficient again. I'm thinking, either we could use the existing damage models, so that they get fixed by repair packs by hand, or maybe we can add scrubber-bots to go and do the maintenance on our behalf, consuming repair packs.

Thoughts?

The fact that solar has no long-term costs is an ongoing point of discussion. The problem is that most of the solutions invariably come down to one option: mandatory 100% roboport coverage, which is a bit of a gameplay dead-end.

See
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=37236 Maintenance Required
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=18613 Solar panels less of a no-brainer

How about pollution-dependent efficiency, would make sense logicically:
The more pollution in the chunk the panel is standing in, the less efficient it gets.
(In real life rain washes solar panels but everything in the atmosphere lowers light levels hitting the panel)

Two factors that make solar panels too easy:

* More daytime than nighttime
* No cloudy weather.

Each would increase the need for both panels and accumulators. Also if biters were more aggressive to the point of holding the large amount of territory required for panels, they would also be less appealing.

Please don't mix up this thread with balancing questions. I will lock it!




Dependency to pollution: already suggested a lot. See the other linked threads.

More day than night: this is just a question of balancing but definitely not a reason why it is easy. "Easy" is also your personal taste.