Make solar panels late game

[Syrchalis]

TL;DR
Solar has barely any disadvantages (free, rather cheap, no pollution), so any new energy that gets implemented will probably not be able to compete. Just make solar (or just accumulators) a late game technology, so that other energy sources can fill the gap between steam and solar.


SyncViews and me discussed this topic a lot while playing. We feel energy is a very unfinished section of the game with very little depth. You build steam, once you get solar you can start with solar and once you get accumulators you switch entirely. Need more energy? Build more. Layout? 1:14:10 or 25:21. No variations or choices required.

We talked about potential other energy sources, but everything just felt "meh" versus solar, because solar is just reliable, strong and free. Plus it's also pretty cheap. All our attempts to think of an end-game energy source and leave solar as mid/late game transition were futile, because why would you switch to anything else ever? Nuclear has waste or at least uses resources, solar is free.

The only solution we saw was to make solar the "ultimate" energy source. Make it late-game (or at least accumulators). Finding better energy sources than steam is easy as pie, because it uses a lot of coal, isn't space efficient, has negative feedback loop as disadvantage, creates lots of pollution. Beating solar is hard, as explained above. So steam makes a good early game source, solar makes a great late/end game source.

This would do one thing: Open up the mid-game to many many energy sources. There could be wind, nuclear, oil, thermal energy etc. - it doesn't matter what it is exactly. But it is easy to beat steam and have distinct advantages and disadvantages. And as I already said, beating solar is very hard because of it's lack of disadvantages. If it was late game and expensive then there would at least be something allowing other energy sources to be viable.

Bonus idea: Keep solar panels themselves as they are, just make accumulators expensive and available only via lots of high-tech science (0.15 science system). This way you can use solar to get your day-time energy during midgame already, but you would still rely on other things during the night (that's a cool and interesting drawback). And once you get accumulators you can switch to mostly or full solar.

[aober93]

Just wanted to say, make akku's more expensive to expand the solar/steam only phase. But you need solar early to reduce the coal consumption. Its really high ,tho not so much with basic settings ,and the game would suck if you had run out of coal ,had no more power, cannot expand to get more coal etc.

[Syrchalis]

That depends a lot on your map settings. I never had a trouble with coal running out. Most important plus of making accumulators late-game is that other energy sources can take over mid game. I believe solar is not suitable as a mid-game energy source (at least not on it's own - it's great as supplementary energy source without accumulators tho). It just has too many upsides to be anything than late-game.

[Rseding91]

Solar has barely any disadvantages (free, rather cheap, no pollution)...

It's this way by design. Power production is not meant to be annoying. The game is about designing and building a factory - not Power Plant simulation 2017.

[Yoyobuae]

Just wanted to say, make akku's more expensive to expand the solar/steam only phase. But you need solar early to reduce the coal consumption. Its really high ,tho not so much with basic settings ,and the game would suck if you had run out of coal ,had no more power, cannot expand to get more coal etc.

Could use wood instead.

[Syrchalis]

Solar has barely any disadvantages (free, rather cheap, no pollution)...

It's this way by design. Power production is not meant to be annoying. The game is about designing and building a factory - not Power Plant simulation 2017.

I agree, no one wants that. I just want there to be some decision making.

Imagine mid game you had the option to do nuclear, but you need uranium ore for it and the one-time setup is expensive. Running costs are low and the reactors creates tons of energy though and you need to build only one for a long time. Alternatively you could keep using steam and use solar panels (without accumulators) it uses coal, causes pollution and you constantly have to upgrade, but the setup is cheap and you don't need any rare ores (or can use them for other stuff). You will also have a lot of panels built for later already.

In other words: Energy shouldn't be hard. It shouldn't be annoying. It should offer some meaningful interesting choices though.