Space Power

Post your ideas and suggestions how to improve the game.

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Monster
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Space Power

Post by Monster »

Space Power

There is not really a solution in vanilla to power a Megabase, that requires 20GW or even more.
20x nuclear setup (each >1GW) --> performance issues.
>300'000 Solarpanels and >250'000 accumulators (without mods?, it is just work and not much fun that you want in a game).

Instead of laying down a incredibly high number of anything, it is more Factorio for me,
if you have to think out and try new concepts how to produce something, build it and then
automate and optimise it. This could be done with new stuff or higher tiers.

So i came to "Space Power".
After your first Rocket launch (because it has to be a endgame solution after solar and nuclear), you can research and build a costly power receiving station. Then you need to send up Solar-Satellites or nuclear reactors or something similar new to space. With each "Thing" you send up, you will receive xx MW more power in a steady flow to your power station. The power receiving station could be limited to maybe 2GW, then you have to build a other one or you can not use the additional generated power. You could automate this expensive production chain, what is all the way in Factorio.
From a other point of view, it is comparable with solarpanels and accumulators, but more
effective at higher cost and more complex assembling.

Alternative solutions could be just higher tiers, where are existing a lot of mods already.

MKII (or better) solarpanels and accumulators

MKII (or better) steam tubines

What you are thinking about Space Power or higher tiers?

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Re: Space Power

Post by eradicator »

I think nuclear power is exactly the solution your looking for. It's new, it is complex and requires to plan and automate a new system to your bases needs. Performance-wise the automated production of $what_you're_suggesting would most probably be as bad as having a reactor.

So i think the real issue is: How do we make nuclear power performant enough to be an actual option compared to no-performance-impact solar panals. If .16 optimizes fluid mechanics that might be a big step. And after that i guess it might still be a valid option to mod in much larger turbines/heat exchangers. Because the performance impact is mostly just due to the sheer number of things you have to build.

As for Mk.N type upgrades: i hate those. Not only do they require you to pointlessly replace parts of your base with exactly the same thing as before (except for the name), they also break immersion hard: You can't just "invent" something that does 2, 3 or 5 times the work of what you had before in the same space. Yes, assemblers already do this. But they're so early in the techtree that by midgame you use mk3 only and forget the others even existed.

PS: Also the thought of sending nuclear reactors up to space just to then recieve the power on the ground made me have a really good laugh. Wiki has some really nice pictures for space-based solar-power though, but that is more of a mod than a base-game thing imho.
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Re: Space Power

Post by Monster »

@ eradicator
Nuclear power is a good solution, but as i wrote i am voting for a solution (could be even nuclear), where you have to invest more in your production line than placing down 6000 steam turbines or 300K solarpanels. Performance-wise, space power would have almost no impact. You just have your assembling machines for the Solar-Satellites (or whatever), there are maybe needed 20 AM's (with all stuff an circuits needed, maybe a few hundred) depending on how fast you want to produce them. The power comes from the power receiving station, which are just a few (10-20). So there is the same little operating process as with the total number of your solar panels.

I am partly with you regarding Mk.N type upgrades... till we have an upgrade Tool, then you could automate the process with robots.

Yeah, the idea with the nuclear reactors came from anno 2070 (fusion reactors on the moon and power transmitter). It should be just something expensive to produce and a nuclear reactor is a existing item.

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Re: Space Power

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Monster wrote:Performance-wise, space power would have almost no impact. You just have your assembling machines for the Solar-Satellites (or whatever), there are maybe needed 20 AM's (with all stuff an circuits needed, maybe a few hundred) depending on how fast you want to produce them.
"A few hundret assembling machines" (+belts, inserters, chests, increased power demand, trains, etc) is quite the opposite of "almost no performance impact". I think you're also undererstimating just how low performance impact is for solar panels. They have been optimized to be O(1). Which means they always have exactly the same performance impact regardless of how many you build. The only difference is in the memory to store that they exist at all. Which means for the ups-sensitive megabase crowd you're aiming at it's gonna be pretty difficult to find a good solution. (Also there's the upgrade-planner mod - which i haven't tried yet - which supposedly lets you upgrade other things as well.)
Monster wrote:I am partly with you regarding Mk.N type upgrades... till we have an upgrade Tool, then you could automate the process with robots.
I realize that from a game design perspective Mk.N type upgrades are an established and easy way to create a feeling of progression, i just don't find it very interesting, just as you find placing solar panels uninteresting. And solar panels can already be "automated with robots".
Monster wrote:Yeah, the idea with the nuclear reactors came from anno 2070 (fusion reactors on the moon and power transmitter).
It was pretty ridiculous back there already, but they had the lore excuse of not having regolith (or whatever it was called) to make the reactors where they were needed. If you produce them on earth and you need them on earth there is no reason to shoot them into orbit first.

Don't get me wrong, i think i understand what you perceive as a problem here. It's just that your proposed solution reminds me very much of this: XKCD#927.

Did you look at the wiki link i posted above? I think the "Solar Tower" would make a good mod. (Being sort of a megastructure you could make the actual construction take time and possibly different resources at different stages of the construction.) But as this is the forum for discussing base game changes i just don't see any of that happen. Factorio has a mostly steampunky/realistic approach and microwaving down energy from orbit just doesn't fit in there imho. And then there's ofc the question if you actually want to make power part of the puzzle. Currently power + mining are more of an "infrastructure done once" thing and the main "game-loop" resolves about building the actual processing chains.

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Re: Space Power

Post by BlakeMW »

This sort of thing is more likely to make it as a mod, but can be discussed with that assumption in mind.

One idea on limitation would be to implement orbital mechanics... the solar panel farm or whatever actually orbits the planet, that means it is only overhead for about 1/3rd of the time and perhaps a night when the satellite is eclipsed (offset a bit from the normal night since the satellite is thousands of kilometers above the surface and can still be in sunlight when the surface is dark). Launching more satellites would improve the power quality by improving the odds a satellite is overhead and in sunlight.

Then a Microwave transceiver station could generate a large amount of power - say up to 1GW if there are enough satellites.

This would be reasonably straightforward to implement as a mod. For example the transceiver could be implemented as a Steam Engine which is by script filled with a fluid, the temperature of the fluid is set by the script to the required temperature (say 0-1000 degrees) to generate the appropriate amount of power (say 0-1000MW). This is how a number of generators in KSPower work. Scripting has overhead - but if one building is generating 1GW it is not a big deal.

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Re: Space Power

Post by eradicator »

BlakeMW wrote:This would be reasonably straightforward to implement as a mod. For example the transceiver could be implemented as a Steam Engine which is by script filled with a fluid, the temperature of the fluid is set by the script to the required temperature (say 0-1000 degrees) to generate the appropriate amount of power (say 0-1000MW). This is how a number of generators in KSPower work. Scripting has overhead - but if one building is generating 1GW it is not a big deal.
This is also a relic of the past and needs to die. We have electric-energy-interface now.

The thing i like about the "Solar Tower" concept is that after construction it can just act as a (giant) normal solar panel and thus needs no on_tick logic at all.
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Re: Space Power

Post by Monster »

Monster wrote:Performance-wise, space power would have almost no impact. You just have your assembling machines for the Solar-Satellites (or whatever), there are maybe needed 20 AM's (with all stuff an circuits needed, maybe a few hundred) depending on how fast you want to produce them.
eradicator wrote: "A few hundret assembling machines" (+belts, inserters, chests, increased power demand, trains, etc) is quite the opposite of "almost no performance impact". I think you're also undererstimating just how low performance impact is for solar panels. They have been optimized to be O(1). Which means they always have exactly the same performance impact regardless of how many you build. The only difference is in the memory to store that they exist at all. Which means for the ups-sensitive megabase crowd you're aiming at it's gonna be pretty difficult to find a good solution. (Also there's the upgrade-planner mod - which i haven't tried yet - which supposedly lets you upgrade other things as well.)
We have to steps, production and running. For a normal solarfield, you need solarpanels and accumulators, but to produce them you need also steel, electronic circuits, batteries, etc... After you placed your field, there is almost no impact. Same would be with Solar-Satellites, just in total more assembling machines for production (not a few hundred more, but in total a few hundred).
eradicator wrote: Did you look at the wiki link i posted above? I think the "Solar Tower" would make a good mod.
The "Solar Tower" could be interesting, but mainly, i am not looking for a mod. I played several games with different mods, but came back to vanilla.

What i am really searching for is a way that improves the production chain instead of placing down 1000-500'000 times the same building. When it is not with Mk.N types, how could this be done (hopefully someday implemented to vanilla)?
I think i should start a other thread for this.

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Re: Space Power

Post by JohnyDL »

I recall about 5 months ago someone suggesting something like solar power satellites and that it could easily be modded in, make a new type of satellite with a mod and when it's launched rather than space science you get a Microwave energy receiver the principle being huge solar power in space beams the power at the planet. You can then place the receiver anywhere and 'free' energy with compact design. But I'm personally against the idea that any single building/structure should eradicate the complexity of Factorio for nearly no benefit other than space saving, even mods like Factorissimo don't remove the complexity by cramming it all into one does everything building because you still have to build and design that building on the inside. Satellite power like Satellite radar just remove complexity, they don't add any gameplay.

I can see that for super megabases there might be UPS considerations but if that's your issue mod to sort it, megabases are past the end of the game for most people so why add something in to cater for a limited group of players in vanilla when a mod would do the job and there'd be no cost to playing the vanilla game to achievements and adding mods in as and when you need them.

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Re: Space Power

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Monster wrote:The "Solar Tower" could be interesting, but mainly, i am not looking for a mod. I played several games with different mods, but came back to vanilla.
Sounds very similar to the pinned thread: "I want to make suggestions, but I got links to mods!! :(". The jist is that anything that can easily be modded is highly unlikely to get into base. And as they just added Nuclear i very much doubt they're going to add yet another power option any time soon. I don't play heavily modded either, but i do have a very few selected mods (mostly my own :P). What's your reason for moving away from mods?
Monster wrote:What i am really searching for is a way that improves the production chain instead of placing down 1000-500'000 times the same building. When it is not with Mk.N types, how could this be done (hopefully someday implemented to vanilla)?
I think i should start a other thread for this.
I think most people playing vanilla view the whole "placing huge numbers of the same building" aka "scaling up", "building more" to be the very core of factorio gameplay. There's tons of other games (and mods for this game) that give you ad absurdum upgrades to increase production 100 fold with the same old buildings. If factorio went that way it would just be another one amongst many instead of the unique game that it is now.
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Re: Space Power

Post by Factoruser »

I'm not very satisfied with the fission reactors viewtopic.php?f=6&t=52070, but I definitely don't wish anything much more powerful.

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Re: Space Power

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Koub - Please consider English is not my native language.

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Re: Space Power

Post by Monster »

JohnyDL wrote:...But I'm personally against the idea that any single building/structure should eradicate the complexity of Factorio for nearly no benefit other than space saving, even mods like Factorissimo don't remove the complexity by cramming it all into one does everything building because you still have to build and design that building on the inside. Satellite power like Satellite radar just remove complexity, they don't add any gameplay.
I am too against single stuctures. My idea with space power was, that you have to build more / further production chains (Solar- Satellites) so you have to build less structures like solarpanels (-->Power receiving stations) or something similar. To build these complex and expensive stations, you will need to build up a entire new production chain.
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Re: Space Power

Post by Monster »

eradicator wrote: What's your reason for moving away from mods?
It is just for this playthrough. I like Bob mods, angels, 5Dim's and many small more :)
When you are going big in vanilla, you have a lot of challenges, mainly in logistic.
Monster wrote:What i am really searching for is a way that improves the production chain instead of placing down 1000-500'000 times the same building. When it is not with Mk.N types, how could this be done (hopefully someday implemented to vanilla)? I think i should start a other thread for this.
eradicator wrote:I think most people playing vanilla view the whole "placing huge numbers of the same building" aka "scaling up", "building more" to be the very core of factorio gameplay. There's tons of other games (and mods for this game) that give you ad absurdum upgrades to increase production 100 fold with the same old buildings. If factorio went that way it would just be another one amongst many instead of the unique game that it is now.
I am too for building more to scale up, but at some point, there should be just a better way than placing down N Numbers of buildings. I mean, it is ok to place 20K or even 50K solarpanels, but after... Other example: it is ok to place 10 nuclear setups, each 1GW (totally ~80 reactors, ~1100 heat exchangers, ~2000 steam turbines) but not 20-30 times. Nuclear is the best you have for now, but you can't power a big base with it (performance). With solar you are going nuts!

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Re: Space Power

Post by Monster »

Thank you, didn't know about that. Maybe i will give this or (advanced solar mod) a try if i can't advance without... but it would making me sad, because i started this playthrough to make everything 100% in vanilla.

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Re: Space Power

Post by eradicator »

Well. I have to admit i haven't had any bases that require 20GW+ yet. On the last MP map we did have 100K panels though. Which took one person about 4-8h to build with bots+prints+setting up automatic train supply? My calculator says you'd need about 350000 solar panels for 20GW. Given that you can have arbitrarily large blueprints and - when including roboports in the blueprint - comletely autonomous placement i don't see this as that much of a challenge. If you're buidling a megabase you're already spending copious amounts of time on everything anyway :P
Didn't realize that 20GW would be 4000 steam turbines.
JohnyDL wrote:...But I'm personally against the idea that any single building/structure should eradicate the complexity of Factorio for nearly no benefit other than space saving, even mods like Factorissimo don't remove the complexity by cramming it all into one does everything building because you still have to build and design that building on the inside. Satellite power like Satellite radar just remove complexity, they don't add any gameplay.
If we're trying to squeeze more UPS out of the game then reducing entity count while keeping the same output is pretty much the only option. Personally i wouldn't mind a mod that replaces solar-panel by "huge solar array" that is 100 times bigger and gives 100 times more power. There's no complexity lost there. Same goes for makine a "huge steam turbine" mod. As long as it's actually larger and not just a renamed thing...

Damn. I wish i had more time for modding. Then i could just have linked you to my mod and say "here use my $post_endgame power solution". Question tho: If theoretically there was a mod that added lots of solar options, like molten-salt based solar towers, geosynchronous solar towers, microwaving back solar energy from orbit... wouldn't you in the end just only use the most powerful option and ignore all the others? That's kinda the problem with modding. If i assume that 90% of the work i put into a mod will be ignored by 90% of the players then i might as well just skip those and polish the remaining 10%. Derailing...

PS:
Monster wrote:
eradicator wrote: What's your reason for moving away from mods?
It is just for this playthrough. I like Bob mods, angels, 5Dim's and many small more :)
When you are going big in vanilla, you have a lot of challenges, mainly in logistic.
I see. Part of my mind still wants to interpret that as: -> move away from mods to play base-> noticed base is lacking stuff that mods might give -> suggest changing base. So...more of a subconcious avoidance of the word "mod"... *cough*.

PSS:
There's a few other mods on the portal that add stuff to the space stage. Maybe you can find something fitting there if you search.
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Re: Space Power

Post by JohnyDL »

Like I said I don't mind the Mod of it, I'd embrace it. My argument was just against it being an Ideas and Suggestions topic and more a Request for Mods topic. It's not a vanilla thing it doesn't benefit 99% of players even if it benefits me it doesn't belong in the base game.

And not all mods are as comprehensive as Bobs, I'd much prefer a few very specialised mods than ones with broad strokes like Bobs, I mean I would love his inserters, but having to take his pipes belts and bots in the same stroke has made me not add it to my game cause I don't want that for my vanilla+ experience

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Re: Space Power

Post by Koub »

Actually I have wished for a long time rockets and satellites would have many uses like sending satellites for radar coverage, energy generation, ...
And I realized that they can already do all this, and many more things indirectly : the only needed thing is to add infinite research for the things we want to see upgraded, and require space science for them.
Want radar upgrade ? Add a radar upgrade infinite research, label it satellite survey enhancer.
Want better solar generation ? Add a solar boosting infinite research, label it Solar ray concentrator.
You can add virtually any effect based on only research and space science.
I only wish there could be a great variety of infinite science added into vanilla.
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Re: Space Power

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Koub wrote:Actually I have wished for a long time rockets and satellites would have many uses like sending satellites for radar coverage, energy generation, ...
And I realized that they can already do all this, and many more things indirectly : the only needed thing is to add infinite research for the things we want to see upgraded, and require space science for them.
Want radar upgrade ? Add a radar upgrade infinite research, label it satellite survey enhancer.
Want better solar generation ? Add a solar boosting infinite research, label it Solar ray concentrator.
You can add virtually any effect based on only research and space science.
I only wish there could be a great variety of infinite science added into vanilla.
Adding infinite radar or solar upgrades (or anything that is not inheritely supported by the API) is impossible regardless of what you call it lore-wise. Because the game has no support for changing those values on-the-fly. Ofc you could hack in a script that generates and silently replaces entities. But that is not "truely infinite", just "a large amount" (think 200ish). And it comes with all sorts of ugly hackish code and edge cases that tend to be buggy.
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Re: Space Power

Post by Koub »

I actually was hoping all the possibilities would be added to vanilla. Anything that would have a numeric value (or most things) could have a 1.0 "multiplier" that would basically do nothing except if a research augmenting that particular value was completed. These researches wouldn't even need to be added to vanilla if considered not "vanilla friendly", but at least modders could do whatever they wished with that (even if I also hope these researches would be added to vanilla).
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Re: Space Power

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Koub wrote:I actually was hoping all the possibilities would be added to vanilla. Anything that would have a numeric value (or most things) could have a 1.0 "multiplier" that would basically do nothing except if a research augmenting that particular value was completed. These researches wouldn't even need to be added to vanilla if considered not "vanilla friendly", but at least modders could do whatever they wished with that (even if I also hope these researches would be added to vanilla).
Every added hook costs a tiny bit of performance tho. Even if not used. For radars and solars it would probably be insignificant because radars are not used en masse and solars are just one giant entity calculation wise. Hm, assembler speed is already mostly dynamic i guess. So adding hooks for anything that's beaconable might be reasonable.

Write a request :P?

I'm not sure how fun it would be though if you could just research "assembler speed∞" "solar power∞" etc. Balancewise it's bound to have one of three outcomes:
A) The costs grow prohibitively expensive so it becomes unrealistic to use it
B) The cost grows at the same rate your production rate grows from the gained bonusses so it has no actual effect.
C) The cost grows slower than the bonusses gained increase production, leading to a singularity where you end up replacing whole production lines by a single super-speed super-productivity assembler fed by stacksize 200 inserters.

In conclusion the best endgame extention would be if someone had a really good idea for something actually new. Like botania or blood magic in minecraft. Not just increasing numbers.

I think a mod just made me derail a topic :P
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