power visualisation change

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Sneaker2
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power visualisation change

Post by Sneaker2 »

There is a problem with way the power production is shown, which bothers me for quite some time now.

When clicking on a power pol, a gui pops up, which would show you the power production and consumption of your factory.

And yet one thing that I really need to know is the total power produced in constrast to the total power installed. It would help me a great deal in seeing if my power production gets close to 100% and needs me to add some more power to avoid shortage, than just seeing how much I produce. It bothers me especially, because the numbers behind the bars of (1.) "total power" and (2.) "production" would already be enough to indicate the difference, but they keep changing according to demand , which is quite useless and they only show different numbers, when I am already low on power (which is already too late).

I would hope for this to be changed in the future, because it doesnt seem to be that much of a change to the gui; either add a bar above "total power", which reads "total installed power" or just show it in a number behind the bar "total power" bar, like this (total installed power / total power produced).

This is a suggestion from my side, how this could look like:
Factorio proposal 19082017 3.png
Factorio proposal 19082017 3.png (3.09 MiB) Viewed 3544 times

d3x0r
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Re: power visualisation change

Post by d3x0r »

I can agree that having the number would be nice... if the production bar is lower than the max, then the max available is greater than the power being used, and you don't need power.
Although this can also be an issue, because accumulators can techinically 'generate' a LOT of energy at a time,

can't find a mod similar, but should be pretty easy to make a GUI that displays how much energy is available potentially....

JimBarracus
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Re: power visualisation change

Post by JimBarracus »

At this point you use over 100% of the available power because you drain power from the accumulators.
It is difficult to draw conclusions if the electric Setup is sufficent when you use solar.
Massive biter attacks can kick back and you loose all the stored power because of constant laser turret Action.

But I agree, there should be two indicators:
Total production capacity (accumulators excluded)
Total possible consumption, when every building is operating. (Laser turrets excluded)

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Mango
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Re: power visualisation change

Post by Mango »

+1

This bothered me for a long time before I got used to the current system but I would prefer this too.

I'm thinking about something like this:

Image
Hm.... so we have a mystery donor... intriguing.

Koub
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Re: power visualisation change

Post by Koub »

That's something that's already been suggested frequently :
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=25233

We hope it will be part of the polishing before 1.0 release :).
Koub - Please consider English is not my native language.

Omarflyjoemacky
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Re: power visualisation change

Post by Omarflyjoemacky »

Even a simple bar under the minimap that shows power available - when the bar reaches zero, you're out of power. Doesn't even have to be labeled. You could always glance at the minimap window without clicking on a power pole at all.

Or a percentage bar - 50% used, 75% used. 100% used. A glance is faster than a click... but that's me. :)
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Re: power visualisation change

Post by Koub »

That would not be doable : You may have as many separated electric networks as you wish. And showing overall power availability would be terribly misleading : imagine all of your networks but one short of power, and the only one excedentary overwhelmingly excedentary. Overall, you'd produce enough power, but all your factory would be short of power.

I'd rather have the ability to see all the electric networks at once, with the ability to name them so that in a glance, I can see what electric network is in shortage, enstead of having to "manually" get on one of the subnetworks power pole to have a look.
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Omarflyjoemacky
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Re: power visualisation change

Post by Omarflyjoemacky »

Koub wrote:That would not be doable : You may have as many separated electric networks as you wish. And showing overall power availability would be terribly misleading : imagine all of your networks but one short of power, and the only one excedentary overwhelmingly excedentary. Overall, you'd produce enough power, but all your factory would be short of power.

I'd rather have the ability to see all the electric networks at once, with the ability to name them so that in a glance, I can see what electric network is in shortage, enstead of having to "manually" get on one of the subnetworks power pole to have a look.
I've never even heard of people having two different power networks. Do you actually get two different Satisfaction meters then? If no, then why not just the Satisfaction meter then? It starts to drop you know you have a power issue.
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Koub
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Re: power visualisation change

Post by Koub »

You have the satisfaction meter when you click on a power pole. And that is for the electric network to which the pole you have clicked on belongs. You can test it for yourself : plonk down a power pole far from any power source, and click on it : you'll have information that you produce 0, and consume 0.

Having separated electrical networks is fairly common, and totally has its uses, for example if you want to power your main base with steam, and don't want to fall in the death spiral of power shortage that will lower your coal production, that will feed less coal to your steam setup, etc, you may want separate power grids, one for fuelling safely your steam engines, and another to power your base.

Or if you power separately your outposts, for example oil outpost that powers itself with solid fuel produced on-site.
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Selvek
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Re: power visualisation change

Post by Selvek »

Or a radar outpost with its own solar panels.

Unfortunately, however you do this it's ambiguous. Max instantaneous power production doesn't imply you can sustain that power production (for example, think of a nuke plant with extra steam storage - in a burst, you can use up steam and generate max power based on the number of turbines you have, but if you don't have the reactors to maintain that level, you'll run out of steam eventually). Solar is even worse, the only way to check how tight you are is checking how much of the day it takes to charge your accums and how much accum charge you have left at dawn.

So, I don't think there's any variation of the power bar that would be perfect. But putting an x/y label on the bars would make sense.

I use a speaker set on global attached to an accumulator to sound an alarm when I get below 25%. Since I'm on nuclear now, 90% might make more sense since my original accumulator network from the early game can support my factory for about 6 seconds now... lol! When you're using solar, this alarm tells you when you're getting tight. When you're on nuclear, it at least tells you immediately in case of blackouts.

Omarflyjoemacky
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Re: power visualisation change

Post by Omarflyjoemacky »

Koub wrote:You have the satisfaction meter when you click on a power pole. And that is for the electric network to which the pole you have clicked on belongs. You can test it for yourself : plonk down a power pole far from any power source, and click on it : you'll have information that you produce 0, and consume 0.

Having separated electrical networks is fairly common, and totally has its uses, for example if you want to power your main base with steam, and don't want to fall in the death spiral of power shortage that will lower your coal production, that will feed less coal to your steam setup, etc, you may want separate power grids, one for fuelling safely your steam engines, and another to power your base.

Or if you power separately your outposts, for example oil outpost that powers itself with solid fuel produced on-site.
Of course! (sheepishly slaps palm to forehead). I've always just gone gung ho and built huge power plants to run everything. More and more learned every day about this game.
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Nidan
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Re: power visualisation change

Post by Nidan »

Mango wrote:+1

This bothered me for a long time before I got used to the current system but I would prefer this too.

I'm thinking about something like this:

Image
I think this is the best option. Except that the numbers on the left (consumption) aren't really necessary as they'll always be equal to the smaller of the right ones (demand, max production).
Bonus points for showing the energy needed for / provided by accumulator (dis)charge in the top 2 bars.

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