Brownout icon / Low power icon / Low power warning

[Kyralessa]

So, what exact event triggers the low-power tip?

[blazespinnaker]

Yeah, the trigger mechanics seem like a terrific idea, but I don't see them working very well. I get a few, but nothing else seems to get triggered.

Maybe they are time delayed though, I tend to play very fast / short games, and it could be they don't trigger until 1+ hours into a game. If so, I would recommend making that over all games, as new players may restart when things go south.

Screenshot 2020-12-19 060811.png (21.41 KiB) Viewed 1962 times

[IgiMC]

Maybe instead, one of those little Informatron updates could appear the first time a new player has a low power condition. That way it's clear what's happening without having to show a low power icon all the time everywhere.

Oh wait, but thats what already happens

Hmm, I tried it and I couldn't get it to trigger. I gave up around 10mw on a 900kw boiler. Interesting how the long handled inserters aren't that impacted by low power, at least relative to basic inserters.

Fast replace, pipette, entity transfer and a few others showed up tho. I'd add "z" drop to the list there, btw. So handy!

How does the mark as read logic work, btw? Pipette is smartly #1 but I don't think I ever saw it show up on the tooltip, just in the tips list. I never clicked mark as read either.

I'd also have an easier way to dismiss the tips, like in the settings. the unlock tips works, but also reveals all the tips!

In some ways, the tips are good (controls / shortcuts), but in others they are spoilers. It's a tough balance for sure. I can see why you'd put low power in the spoiler list, but I have to say it really does look like the game is having a problem processing a lot of entities.

There are some tips that only show when others are marked as read, maybe thats why you dont get it triggered? In the Lua file the 'low-power' tip has the 'electric-network' tip as a dependency, have you marked the second one?

[Nosferatu]

I got it recently on a very minor brownout

[blazespinnaker]

Hmm it says I have to complete the tips. I guess that's the same as marking read?

[ickputzdirwech]

[ick] Merged three threads about a low power icon.

[ptx0]

wow thank you for merging the threads and making it completely unreadable. good job, moderator.

[ickputzdirwech]

wow thank you for merging the threads and making it completely unreadable. good job, moderator.

I am still trying to figure out how all the moderation tools work and I am sure I don’t do always everything right. In this case I can’t figure out what I could have done wrong however. All post are ordered correctly by date. Even all three threads are one after another. If the discussion is a mess it’s not my fault.

[ptx0]

well, i guess there's that it's not nuclear launch codes. i am not too worried about it. just razzing you.

[blazespinnaker]

To summarize the discussion, tho it seems rather obvious to me, but I guess others are having difficulties.

Folks would like an icon indicating low power, but others I guess think that's too much of a gimme. (Added note: pipes have flashing, so it would be consistent)

New players may mistake low power for poor coding on the developers part due to slow moving graphics, thus spreading poor word of mouth about the game and the engineers who implemented it.

It was suggested to use tips at least to help new players, and someone said it's already implemented. There was very mixed results in getting this tip to show up, but maybe marking tips as read would help.

One thought, maybe move the meta discussion about threads to PM. Would help keep the discussion less 'messy' and more on topic.