Factorio Forums

Hi,

how do you find the idea to split the powergrid in an AC and a DC grid?

AC is produced by the generators and is used for power up the machines and inserters.

DC is produced by solarplants and can be stored in batteries.

To use AC and DC together you need converters and inverters.


And to make the game a bit harder, whats about a limit for the throughput for the powerpoles?

And some nice effects if some poles are overload and explode like cars in american movies

I think that such oversimple solution would be more annoying than interesting. I would prefer more realistic electricity model with two voltage levels (low voltage (for example 400 V) for entities and medium voltage (20 kV) for long distance lines (big poles)), transformers, dissipation, maximum loads and overload damage etc., but I understand very clearly that it is extremely unrealistic hope to convince devs that it would be a good idea to put work hours. I think it is relatively impossible to mod with lua. Simplified simulation of typical electric networks of Factorio megabases would probably be possible to program fast enough (especially if wiring would be more clever) (it could use another thread) but it would need efficient programming with C.

Hannu wrote:Simplified simulation of typical electric networks of Factorio megabases would probably be possible to program fast enough (especially if wiring would be more clever) (it could use another thread) but it would need efficient programming with C.

The "would probably be possible" is a feeble assumption. Is clear that the reason Factorio doesn't simulate a proper electric network is the computation cost.

Out of curiosity does any game simulate AC/DC and voltages and so on that isn't an outright circuit simulator program? When I first learned about the different poles in Factorio I was worried that I was going to have to learn all of it, but my fears were quickly abated when I actually placed one

Patashu wrote:Out of curiosity does any game simulate AC/DC and voltages and so on that isn't an outright circuit simulator program? When I first learned about the different poles in Factorio I was worried that I was going to have to learn all of it, but my fears were quickly abated when I actually placed one

There is a mobile game called "Balance"

You need to wire up power stations and cities.
There are three types of power poles and substations. The different pole types can carry different amount of load.
You can't connect different types of poles directly because they have different voltages.
Only possibilty to connect different types is through a substation.

I always liked the idea of a power transport limit for the different power poles, but it has been deemed too performance taxing for too little gameplay.
AC/DC differentiation sounds even less practical imo.

I had an idea of just assuming the entire grid was AC, but introduce transformers/rectifiers as a new intermediate item. Entities that need DC power would have a transformer added to their recipe. This would be a simple mod to make.