Solar panels less of a no-brainer

[The Phoenixian]

Replacing solar electric with solar thermal could be a neat thing. There are some pressing issues however.

1) Closed liquid loops don't function very well. I've seen the nuclear mod attempt it and it's not pretty as the fluid system seems to need air bubbles to work properly. That's a major reason why steam engines consume their water in the first place, so players don't have to concern themselves with loops.

2) Lack of sensors to supplement the system. This system makes it very important that cold liquids get excluded from storage containers and heat exchangers. Otherwise the player is moving cold oil, which is pointless, or storing up cold water, which will devastate the system with every sundown.

3) Map starts with only starting water become completely invalidated. There is an absolute limit to the player's water supply, after which they can no longer generate energy using steam power, after which they reach total peak energy. They will need another energy source.

4) You can already store supplemental energy in the form of hot water tanks. It's relatively pointless because regular fuel boilers can cook on the fly just fine, and aren't a huge issue to have.

What if both systems exist? If the player still has electric solar, then they'll just like use that and not care about thermal solar. Sure there may be a price point where one thing excels over the other, so at the best it becomes a matter of personal choice. But if the player chooses electric, nothing changes.

Sorry for the wait, in any case, you have good points here:


1) I think there are two ways around this. As things stand now, you can have a small pump between the production and a storage tank wired up to stop the inflow once a certain limit is reached. (Say 1.5k to 2k in the tank)

Alternatively, you could make it more new player friendly via having heat exchangers consume,"denature", a small amount of heating oil for every 10-100 degrees of temperature exchanged down to 100 degrees. So it's not perfect but it's more forgiving of mistakes.

Heh, you could even have a way to graduate players from the easy method to the slightly harder one via a technology to make heat exchangers consume less and less of the oil that flows through them. So the more forgiving it is the higher the maintenance cost but you can cut that cost, or even remove it entirely, once you know how to work the game.

2) Yes, some kind of temperature or day/night sensor is absolutely necessary for fluid energy storage in a system like this. That said, I think you might be able to build a ghetto version of a temperature sensor via having a boiler after the heat exhangers or solar panels, and monitoring it's fuel consumption. (As in: if it uses any fuel at all, deactivate the pumps leading into the storage tanks for a few minutes.)

For a non-storage system you can still use boilers for night and once again it's less efficient but it's easier.

3) This isn't something I'd normally think of. Hmm...

Ultimately, I think this is the same case as megabases, and this style of gameplay simply needs a power system tailor made for it. Like Nuclear. Alternatively: groundwater wells. But yeah, without giving the player other options then, unless you're keeping your base below a certain limit set by the size of those starting ponds, I can't see a way around this.

4) Yes, that was the inspiration. Oil storage just means you have 3 times the energy storage per tile.

As far as having solar-thermal and PV together you're quite right: For the two to exist together they would need to be balanced very differently.

[Zhab]

I have yet to see a competitive speed runner even consider the idea of using solar panels. I guess that for them it is actually steam that is a no brainier.

You can mass produced steam power WAY cheaper and WAY faster and WAY sooner than solar hands down no contest. While the power that single coal patch can provide is not technically infinite... as far as the needs of a normal play through are concerned (launching 1 rocket and that is it), it might as well be. Furthermore, it is not like getting a second coal patch connected back to base is a hard and painful task by any stretch of imagination. Consider instead the extreme resource and time cost of solar vs steam...

A typical steam setup (1 pump, 14 boilers, 10 engine, 14 inserters, 50 belts and 2 drill) cost:
70 stones
396 Iron Plates
30 Copper Plates
Tech needed: none
Easily crafted from pocket

The equivalent in solar power (not even counting the power poles needed to interconnect everything):
5838 Iron Plates (lots of it actually steel)
3892.5 Copper Plates
1530 Petroleum Gas (which need to be process all the way up to batteries)
Tech needed: 10-13 (depending on how wasteful/efficient you want to be with oil)
Needs factory complete with oil setup

I think that it is not hard to see why speed runners can't possibly be bothered with something so ridiculously more expensive.
The upfront cost of solar power is not trivial people. As a matter of fact, when you really think about it, going super heavy on solar power only ever make sense when you plan on playing this game for way longer than it was designed to be.

A megabase for example. That thing where you launch a rocket every 60 seconds. Or that megatrain thing that Steejo is doing where he need 1 full wagon for every item types in the game. There is nothing wrong with spending 100+ hours within the same map/save building monstrous thing. Really, it is ok and fun to do.

But I don't think that the devs should be balancing the game around that. I think that the people complaining in this thread may have lost track of that somewhere along the way while building their over sized factories. They have reached a point where they are having trouble finding something to do and they notice that solar is maintenance free while steam require slight maintenance but they forget what it toke to build that epic solar array.

PS: I would like to mention in passing that solar power is not 100% pollution free. Because actually using that power usually produce way more pollution than the boilers would have. Especially with a big base making extensive use of speed and production modules. Solar is only a discount on pollution and not as much as people might imagine. Now if you start spamming efficiency modules everywhere that is an other story. But from what I have seen from the community few people actually do that.

[bobingabout]

I have yet to see a competitive speed runner even consider the idea of using solar panels. I guess that for them it is actually steam that is a no brainier.....

And you forgot to even mention Accumulators

[Zhab]

And you forgot to even mention Accumulators

Well... When I said solar I really meant solar and accumulators. I don't think that using solar panels by themselves is much of a thing that experienced players do. It is an other story with accumulators, but by saying no solar it kinda also strongly implies no accumulators as well. At least in my book. Sorry if I was no clear enough.

[Afforess]

I've been thinking about the problem of solar panels for a while, and this seems the perfect forum for discussion.

This type of discussion is comming every 2-3 month. My answer is simple: Change the solar input in a way, that it is more random.
In the moment you do that Solar Panels are no no-brainer anymore. You need to calculate: Will the next solar eclipse be so big, that I come through with my solar power?

See
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=80&t=183
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=6181

I think the mentality here is highly concerning. Any time you try to solve a balance problem by increasing the amount of grinding in the game, you haven't solve the original problem and instead created a new one. It takes me only a few seconds to see the outcome that will occur if ssilk's proposal is implemented - players will build 10-20x extra solar, so they can survive eclipses. This is not interesting. This is not fun gameplay. This is just adding more grinding. If people want grinding, they can go install the Marathon mod, but it shouldn't be part of the design of vanilla gameplay. Randomized power generation is a solution looking for a problem, not a solution to the solar problem.

----------

I have yet to see a competitive speed runner even consider the idea of using solar panels. I guess that for them it is actually steam that is a no brainier.

I don't think Factorio developers or the community should look at speed-runners for balance. Speed runners are not representative samples of average players, nor play the game the way it was intended to be played.

----------

I think the wrong approach is to try to balance or fix solar panels at all. Solar power has been in Factorio too long, and has created too many cached thoughts on how power generation should work. It's probably a lost cause. Ax it. Maybe a year or two after solar power is removed from the game, with new players who have never used it, it will be possible to have a productive discussion on how to include it.

I suspect the entire discussion here about solar power is asking the wrong question. The wrong question is how to fix the balance of solar power. The right question is: If we were designing a new power source from scratch for Factorio, what power sources would be iterative, technological advancements over coal-fired steam boilers?

[Zhab]

I don't think Factorio developers or the community should look at speed-runners for balance. Speed runners are not representative samples of average players, nor play the game the way it was intended to be played.

I am of a contradicting opinion where I believe that speed runners actually reveal what is truly efficient vs what is just cool to play with. Factorio isn't a twitch reflex action game. Clicking fast with precision will only get you so far. Underneath that speed is hidden the real secret to speed running. Being efficient... as efficient as you possibly can get. Fast clicking will save you minutes however "factory layout" efficiency and build order efficiency will save you several hours. Here we are arguing that solar power is OP as all hell and yet players obsess with effectiveness can't care less about it. I see a damning contradiction here. Indeed if solar is that effective, great, amazing or better than steam in any which way imaginable why is it ignored by speed runners ?

Side note: Playing with an optimized map does change things somewhat. But does not really affect power generation. But even if you think it does speed running with default map value is a thing. At which point the game style is the same only faster and optimized.

But fine, you believe that speed runners do not reveal anything whatsoever about the game balance. That is alright. You disagree with that fine. I only used speed runners as a contradicting example. It was not actually my argument. Did you read the ressource cost comparison from my previous post ?

Do you deny that solar is overwhelmingly more expensive than steam ? Yes you might run out of coal if you use a lot of steam engines and and lot of steel furnaces. However, getting an extra coal patch connected to base represent only a fraction of the extra upfront cost of solar power. If your base need around 40 GW that is over 40000 extra iron plates needed if you use solar vs steam (there is copper and petroleum too). That is a lot of ressources. Consider if you please all the things you can do with all that iron and copper if you do not need to use it for power. (You would think that speed runners playing on an optimized map would have an easier time coming up with those extra ressources and yet they still think it is pointless)

In my honest humble opinion... You do not need to be a speed runner to care about spending over 20 times more ressources, energy and time... gathering, smelting and building and then placing down just so you wont need coal for power anymore. This game isn't that long people. Launching a rocket isn't that hard. Even a beginner taking his or her sweet sweet time getting there will still launch a rocket quicker and easier by using steam power. With that being said. This is a game. Building a solar array can be a fun thing to do. Messing around different solar panel and accumulators layout and what not. It can be a cool little project that can certainly entertain a player (especially for the first few times).

But that doesn't make solar OP. As a matter of fact, only when you are going out of your way to make the game longer than it should does solar power actually becomes truly worthwhile. Like challenging yourself to be able to launch a rocket every 60 seconds or something.

Now if you are going to claim that speed runners have nothing to do with game balance... then I would argue that "megabase" builders are not any better in that regard.

Ax it. Maybe a year or two after solar power is removed from the game, with new players who have never used it, it will be possible to have a productive discussion on how to include it.

Are you for real ? Because some players feels there is a problem with solar power while plenty of others are fine with the way it is... your big solution to satisfy a portion of the community complaining about a feature (that they do want) is to remove it entirely ? For a full year no less ? You would be a fun dev to deal with...

I suspect the entire discussion here about solar power is asking the wrong question. The wrong question is how to fix the balance of solar power. The right question is: If we were designing a new power source from scratch for Factorio, what power sources would be iterative, technological advancements over coal-fired steam boilers?

In my opinion the better question to ask even before that is "is solar panel actually OP or does it only feel OP to some people based on their gut feeling rather than math ?". Indeed the first question to ask here is "Does it even need fixing ?". Some say yes, some say no. My personal answer is a firm no. When your automated factory is building stuff for you it is easy to lose track of how much stuff actually cost and I think that this is what is happening here. People are under the impression that they get 100% free power but totally forgot about the build cost. Only by spreading that enormous build cost over a longer and longer still period of time does solar eventually becomes profitable. Eventually...unity.

[Koub]

The problem with this discussion about how something is OP or not is that everybody calls OP something different. Just because people have uneven skills, some of them might find something OP while others still struggle with that supposedly OP thing.

Why not remove combat bots, tank, shotgun, smg and pistol ? they are all OP, just give us a knife - hell even a butterknife. Well for some people, maybe, but even after hundreds of hours of play, I have yet never done a single playthrough without cheating with the console because at some point, I was ganked by early biter coming when I wasn't prepared. That's for me. Now there are people who play games with maximum biters, maximum nests, scarce ressources, just because they find the "medium" maps too easy.

I think Vanilla should be mediumly balanced, and for people with extreme needs, modding should be the way. As it is, you have :
- One non renewable energy source (boilers+steam) which is very cheap to build (research, ressource and space wise), but you have to take care of fueling, and can burn tons of ressources on the long run
- One renewable energy source (solar+accus), which is very expensive to build (in research, space, and ressources), but you can place and forget, and dont use up more than their initial building costs.

Both are complimentary and allow whatever playstyle you choose. I would be eager to see new options be added for diversity, with new balanced advantges and disadvantages (wind, geothermic, nuclear fusion and/or fission, ...), but not cripple one option until it's just not used by anyone anymore because it's too useless.

[The Phoenixian]

I think the wrong approach is to try to balance or fix solar panels at all. Solar power has been in Factorio too long, and has created too many cached thoughts on how power generation should work. It's probably a lost cause. Ax it. Maybe a year or two after solar power is removed from the game, with new players who have never used it, it will be possible to have a productive discussion on how to include it.

I agree with much of what you've said but this bit? Is very silly.

You do not need to destroy a part of the game completely and bring in an entire new generation of players simply in order to hold an honest discussion about it.

Simply engage in debate with the intention of learning, exposing yourself, and exposing your ideas to the new ideas, new modes of thinking, and criticisms of others, respectively, as much as espousing your own thoughts is enough to overcome most preconceptions*. Pulling ideas from a wide variety of sources and thinking long and hard will do the much of the rest.

For example: Getting bobucles input on my solar-thermal concept was quite welcome.

*A bit of light research into what the word "cached thought" actually meant showed that it was basically a more "rationalist" way of saying "preconception." From said same research I can't tell if what the author of the Less Wrong article did there was slightly silly or very sinister.

I suspect the entire discussion here about solar power is asking the wrong question. The wrong question is how to fix the balance of solar power. The right question is: If we were designing a new power source from scratch for Factorio, what power sources would be iterative, technological advancements over coal-fired steam boilers?

I would heartily disagree with the first part of this statement but as to your chosen "right question"...

By all means, explain your thinking and where it would lead you. I wish to pick it apart so that I may use the choice bits improve my own ideas.

I don't think Factorio developers or the community should look at speed-runners for balance. Speed runners are not representative samples of average players, nor play the game the way it was intended to be played.

-snippped: the merits of speedrunning as a playstyle to be balanced against-

I think what speed runners, or megabase builders, or any other playstyle have to bring to the table is different ideas of "What is efficient?" and "What is powerful?" along with different needs to support their playstyles.

For megabase builders, efficiency is "What's cheap to maintain in vast numbers?" For speed runners it's "What's fastest?"

Speed runners aren't so much the "right" solution as "one of many" solutions. Certainly by their idea of efficiency Solar power is underpowered, but at the same time someone less focused on time and more on maintenance costs, coal and oil supply, or pollution will find Solar power to be quite potent.

I do agree with Afforess though that we shouldn't balance Solar power around a speed runner's perspective but that is simply because solar isn't meant to support the speed runner's playstyle. Nor do I see any reason for it to be.


Which also brings up the question of "what playstyles is solar meant to support and what is needed we support other styles if we alter the balance?"

For example, my "solar thermal" idea could be made better for "Water only in the starting region" maps by introducing a Rankine engine that had water flow in a cycle without being used up.

...Incidentally, I am beginning to understand why my mentor hated supporting more than one way to play his game. Though I still disagree with him.

The problem with this discussion about how something is OP or not is that everybody calls OP something different. Just because people have uneven skills, some of them might find something OP while others still struggle with that supposedly OP thing.

The problem is that simple "power" is not the only thing about this problem. Certainly it's not the core of the solar problem.

The problem with solar, from my perspective, was that it's not so much "overpowered" as "powerful in it's realm, but very boring." It's a plug and play item that just works in a game where everything else is a giant logistics puzzle. There's one part, the solar to accumulator ratio, that you might fiddle with once but beyond that? There's very little puzzle to it.

Worse: There isn't even anything viscerally appealing about solar. Thus you don't fiddle around with the interesting mechanics of Solar power nor do you marvel at the vast quantities of stuff you placed down every time you drive by on the way to the outposts.

[Zhab]

The problem with this discussion about how something is OP or not is that everybody calls OP something different. Just because people have uneven skills, some of them might find something OP while others still struggle with that supposedly OP thing.

I fully agree. Which is why various play styles should be considered before labeling something as OP.

I think Vanilla should be mediumly balanced, and for people with extreme needs, modding should be the way. As it is, you have :
- One non renewable energy source (boilers+steam) which is very cheap to build (research, ressource and space wise), but you have to take care of fueling, and can burn tons of ressources on the long run
- One renewable energy source (solar+accus), which is very expensive to build (in research, space, and ressources), but you can place and forget, and dont use up more than their initial building costs.

Again... exactly. Where is the problem ?

Both are complimentary and allow whatever playstyle you choose. I would be eager to see new options be added for diversity, with new balanced advantges and disadvantages (wind, geothermic, nuclear fusion and/or fission, ...), but not cripple one option until it's just not used by anyone anymore because it's too useless.

New options for power generation would be nice. I believe it is a frequent suggestion and is something often added by mods. Must be a reason why.

I do agree with Afforess though that we shouldn't balance Solar power around a speed runner's perspective but that is simply because solar isn't meant to support the speed runner's playstyle. Nor do I see any reason for it to be.

Well that is fine and dandy... however, it should not be balanced around megabase builders either. I'm convinced that the most common play style is fumbling your way through factorio until you manage to launch a rocket. These players play the game once and then maybe replay a few times to try different things or see if they can do thing slightly better. Then they close factorio and move on to other games. They may come back after a major update or to try out a mod. Once this game hit steam I guaranty you that we'll see a bunch of these players popping for a while asking questions.

Those who stick around the forum, post pictures of epic builds or argue about game balance are the minority (factorio addicts).

Side Note: If the devs finally get around to implementing the space section of the game... then what ? You are not bringing your base (and it's power generation) with you in space now are you ?

The problem with solar, from my perspective, was that it's not so much "overpowered" as "powerful in it's realm, but very boring." It's a plug and play item that just works in a game where everything else is a giant logistics puzzle. There's one part, the solar to accumulator ratio, that you might fiddle with once but beyond that? There's very little puzzle to it.

Worse: There isn't even anything viscerally appealing about solar. Thus you don't fiddle around with the interesting mechanics of Solar power nor do you marvel at the vast quantities of stuff you placed down every time you drive by on the way to the outposts.

This is something that I could possibly agree with. What you are saying here is that it's not that solar panels are overpowered and are in dire need of a nerf... That is not the real problem. The problem is that they quickly become a boring element of the game after you've figured them out and played with them for a while.

This doesn't call for a nerf of solar power but rather a mechanic change to make them a more exciting element of the game to play with. I'm ok with that.

From my point of view steam isn't that much more exciting. I mean how complexe is feeding coal to boilers can be... I easily imagine that this too can quickly become tedious after a lot of play through. Yeah yeah... feeding coal to boilers... been there done that. What else is new ? In this case solar becomes a way to "get done" with power and forget about it. Allowing you to spend more time on other game elements that you do still enjoy messing around with without periodically having to worry about that damn boring power thing again.

I'm guessing that some people reach a point where they are so desperate for something to do that even taking care of coal supply is better than nothing... At which point it might be more worthwhile to start over or better yet start over with mods to freshen the game a bit. But maybe that is just me.

But basically adding content to the game by making solar more exciting ? Yeah ok. Why not ? Why just solar thou ? Why not steam as well or better yet new forms of power generation ?

[The Phoenixian]

I do agree with Afforess though that we shouldn't balance Solar power around a speed runner's perspective but that is simply because solar isn't meant to support the speed runner's playstyle. Nor do I see any reason for it to be.

Well that is fine and dandy... however, it should not be balanced around megabase builders either. I'm convinced that the most common play style is fumbling your way through factorio until you manage to launch a rocket. These players play the game once and then maybe replay a few times to try different things or see if they can do thing slightly better. Then they close factorio and move on to other games. They may come back after a major update or to try out a mod. Once this game hit steam I guaranty you that we'll see a bunch of these players popping for a while asking questions.

I agree with you on megabases in theory, but in practice the thing for them is that solar is their only real option where as for speedruns solar is quantifiably worse (and even then, the note in this thread is that solar for megabases is just less unacceptable). Adding nuclear power or some such power source designed specifically for working well in bases with super massive power requirements and a lot of other things to take care of could fix that though.

The problem with solar, from my perspective, was that it's not so much "overpowered" as "powerful in it's realm, but very boring." It's a plug and play item that just works in a game where everything else is a giant logistics puzzle. There's one part, the solar to accumulator ratio, that you might fiddle with once but beyond that? There's very little puzzle to it.

Worse: There isn't even anything viscerally appealing about solar. Thus you don't fiddle around with the interesting mechanics of Solar power nor do you marvel at the vast quantities of stuff you placed down every time you drive by on the way to the outposts.

-snip-

But basically adding content to the game by making solar more exciting ? Yeah ok. Why not ? Why just solar thou ? Why not steam as well or better yet new forms of power generation ?

One reason and one reason only: This is a solar thread.

But yes, other forms of interesting power generation would be nice. I would say though that while steam is boring in concept, the fueling of it does make it interesting to newer players in the Chinese sense of the word. Basically it's not a complex process, but between problems like running out of fuel in the mines or outgrowing your electric supply and having your mines shut down in a death spiral, steam has quite a bit of potential to go wrong in the best ways. So it helps provide an impetus for expansion and a reason for watching out for your base.

[Rahjital]

I think the actual underlying question here is not "Why is solar so OP?", it is "Why does the majority of players gravitate towards solar?" The same thing happens with steel and electric furnaces, most people go for electric furnaces even though steel ones are either more efficient or have far lower up-front cost, depending on whether you use efficiency modules or not.

Why? Because they are far nicer to use. You can place them anywhere without the need to be close to water, you don't have to defend them because they don't pollute, there's no need to worry whether the belts bringing them coal still have enough throughput, etc. You just plop them down with a blueprint somewhere and done, let's move on. Most importantly, solar hugely reduces the need to build new outposts, one of the most boring parts of the game. Most people don't enjoy laying long railroad tracks or building 8-lane belt highways; if you gave them hugely inefficient transport aircraft they would use them almost exclusively just to avoid the tedium of connecting outposts to the base.

That's what makes solar 'superior' - player's time and patience is a resource as well, and solar scales much better than steam does. Ideally we would get an option to automate outpost-building, or something like a nuclear fission reactor. Speaking of which, if we want to avoid a "Nuclear reactor less of a no-brainer" topic in the future, the reactor should be mechanically complex, modular and present trade-offs between efficiency, complexity and power (and possibly the danger of Chernobyl-like steam explosion if something goes wrong). The game would then present an interesting decision - should you go with the easy-to-use but expensive solar, or the cheap but complex nuclear?

[SirRichie]

I think the actual underlying question here is not "Why is solar so OP?", it is "Why does the majority of players gravitate towards solar?" The same thing happens with steel and electric furnaces, most people go for electric furnaces even though steel ones are either more efficient or have far lower up-front cost, depending on whether you use efficiency modules or not.

Why? Because they are far nicer to use. You can place them anywhere without the need to be close to water, you don't have to defend them because they don't pollute, there's no need to worry whether the belts bringing them coal still have enough throughput, etc. You just plop them down with a blueprint somewhere and done, let's move on. Most importantly, solar hugely reduces the need to build new outposts, one of the most boring parts of the game. Most people don't enjoy laying long railroad tracks or building 8-lane belt highways; if you gave them hugely inefficient transport aircraft they would use them almost exclusively just to avoid the tedium of connecting outposts to the base.

That's what makes solar 'superior' - player's time and patience is a resource as well, and solar scales much better than steam does. Ideally we would get an option to automate outpost-building, or something like a nuclear fission reactor. Speaking of which, if we want to avoid a "Nuclear reactor less of a no-brainer" topic in the future, the reactor should be mechanically complex, modular and present trade-offs between efficiency, complexity and power (and possibly the danger of Chernobyl-like steam explosion if something goes wrong). The game would then present an interesting decision - should you go with the easy-to-use but expensive solar, or the cheap but complex nuclear?

While I agree with the general statement, that solar is mostly about convenience (see my early posts in this thread), I disagree with some of the points.
I do not think that "most" players do *not* enjoy creating outposts. In fact, RSO and some other mods that favor outpost creation and train track management are very popular. Also, I am pretty sure that electric furnaces pollute.

That being said, I noticed that the whole discussion starts to repeat, so I'll try to summarize and hope that this leads to a more directed discussion:

• it is agreed that solar power is a no-management, place-and-forget power source
• some say it is thus OP, others say that if it is OP depends on your goals and the style in which you play the game
• if this is a "problem" that should be fixed
  • simply increasing the cost is rejected as it does not solve the original cause of the "no-management" tech
  • active suggestions are making the layout challenging (mainly through making size a problem), making solar unpredictable (randomized output / outage times), and introducing mechanics similar to the rest of the factory (supply of resources, incoming and outgoing flow management)

[bobucles]

It takes me only a few seconds to see the outcome that will occur if ssilk's proposal is implemented - players will build 10-20x extra solar, so they can survive eclipses. This is not interesting. This is not fun gameplay.

Yes, someone could brute force their way through a solar shortage. But why brute force something that doesn't want to happen 100%, when steam power already exists and does? Why run the factory at full tilt when the power isn't available? A player COULD spend 10x or more resources making sure their renewable energy NEVER runs out, but going from 100K to 1million solar panels is an incredibly HUGE leap. It would be far simpler to master an AUTOMATED answer to the occasional bad day.

It's not about punishing the player. If it was about punishment then the answer is to simply multiply the raw expense of solar. Any idiot can do that. The goal is to make the player consider more problems and find more solutions for building their power supply. A random eclipse doesn't have to cut the net use of solar power by more than 10% to perform that function. Actually you can increase solar panels to 100kW AND have the eclipses and end up with an overall BUFF in the energy supply. Isn't it a strange thing indeed where you can increase overall solar output yet STILL create a situation where solar isn't the de factorio answer to a long lasting base?

"Complex" nuclear power

Uh. Blueprints. Your complexity argument is invalid. It may be fun to solve the puzzle once or twice, but after that point the player is free to automate the setup.

Speedrunners

Speedrunners care about reaching their end goal as quickly and efficiently as possible. Solar panels take a few game days to pay off. Steam power pays off almost immediately. Solar panels allow coal deposits to last for a vastly longer amount of time. Speedrunners quit at the goal target. That's why solar panels don't get used.

[MeduSalem]

Phoenix' suggestion with Solar Thermal energy instead of Photovoltaic is probably the best solution the community came up with yet.



I would have done something similar by fiddling around with the accumulators instead by implementing something like a wear-off system based on charging/recharging. The batteries would degrade over time depending on how often they have been charged/recharged.

The process would have involved swapping "degraded" batteries with "renewed" batteries in accumulators every now and then.

The "degraded" batteries would then have to be emptied of their electrolyte, which has to be reprocessed and then refilled into the empty battery shell again or something like that.

During the process some new sulfuric acid has to be added to the electrolyte again but that's purely optional. I'd change the way Sulfuric Acid is created for that so it doesn't require Iron Plates.

The battery shells are an one time investment and would be re-used infinitely, but the little drain on sulfuric acid to refresh the electrolyte every now and then could be similar to the loss of heating oil in Phoenix' approach.

Might not be the most realistic production cycle but it would also provide a similar puzzle effect. The thing I don't like about is that it could put Steam Engines in an even worse spot because if one uses Steam Engines together with Accumulators for whatever reason (I have not found a reason to do that yet but doesn't mean there is no reason) you'd be double punished. That's why I held back on the idea for so long because I thought of it as an obvious flaw.

The fun part is, that I came up with this solution because I looked for a way to deal with the Solar Energy problem AND the Laser Turret balancing problem (the Laser Turrets are as boring as the Solar Energy in that matter). The Laser Turrets would then have to face the same process as accumulators. The batteries would degenerate there as well (due to discharge/recharge) and they'd have to be swapped with renewed ones every now and then, basically being their "ammunition" (even if it doesn't cost as much resources as bullets do).

People will probably hate on this idea because it would make things a lot more difficult for Solar energy users AND laser turret users (and maybe even Robots)



Overall I think Phoenix' suggestion is probably still the better solution because it would only require 2 new items (heat exchanger, heat oil) and the solar panel sprite could be repurposed with some additional coding.

Maybe Phoenix' approach and mine could be combined in some way so that there is a puzzle element and/or trade-off element to everything.

[The Phoenixian]

Phoenix' suggestion with Solar Thermal energy instead of Photovoltaic is probably the best solution the community came up with yet.



I would have done something similar by fiddling around with the accumulators instead by implementing something like a wear-off system based on charging/recharging. The batteries would degrade over time depending on how often they have been charged/recharged.

The process would have involved swapping "degraded" batteries with "renewed" batteries in accumulators every now and then.

The "degraded" batteries would then have to be emptied of their electrolyte, which has to be reprocessed and then refilled into the empty battery shell again or something like that.

During the process some new sulfuric acid has to be added to the electrlyte again but that's purely optional. I'd change the way Sulfuric Acid is created for that so it doesn't require Iron Plates.

The battery shells are an one time investment and would be re-used infinitely, but the little drain on sulfuric acid to refresh the electrolyte every now and then could be similar to the loss of heating oil in Phoenix' approach.

Might not be the most realistic production cycle but it would also provide a similar puzzle effect. The thing I don't like about is that it could put Steam Engines in an even worse spot because if one uses Steam Engines together with Accumulators for whatever reason (I have not found a reason to do that yet but doesn't mean there is no reason) you'd be double punished. That's why I held back on the idea for so long because I thought of it as an obvious flaw.



Overall I think Phoenix' suggestion is probably still the better solution because it would only require 2 new items (heat exhcanger, heat oil) and the solar panel sprite could be repurposed with some additional coding.

Maybe Phoenix' approach and mine could be combined in some way so that there is a puzzle element and/or trade-off element to everything.

Interesting! This is a good way to think about a decay mechanic that doesn't have you just spam repair packs (and reminds me a lot of LFTR type nuclear power.) The one thing I'd add is that what batteries fluid decays into doesn't necessarily need to be sulfuric acid. If needed it can be it's own type in order to isolate working with it from the general production chain.

I think something good to add here would be Rwn's interesting idea in the Electric energy dev proposals a bit ago. To put it short, it would give each type of power a limited ability to change it's power output and add some consequences, usually fuel inefficiency, if it had too much power supply and not enough consumption.

Now in all honesty I think this idea is best suited to nuclear power as it can be rigged so you need to keep a consistent, MASSIVE baseline power demand or something violently explodes*, but when combined with your idea it could work very well for PV solar too.

For example, if --- as Rwn suggested --- PV solar cannot supply less than it's total available power and overcharging accumulators is what makes their batteries decay either in addition to or instead of when charged/used.

Now, I take it your intent is for battery decay to work a bit like damaging a power plant in the typical RTS: It loses max power storage first and only much later does it completely shut down. And if so I think that's an excellent way for it to work because it means that, while there is an ideal solar to accumulator ratio, you also get a problem where having a little too much power one day will denature the batteries so it's just a little easier to overcharge them the next day.

Which makes it a little easier to overcharge, which makes it a little easier to overcharge.

So you get this exponential effect going on: You can sort of cheese the system by having a secondary, more flexible, power supply** but in the end the higher your solar power fraction the easier it is to overcharge, the faster your accumulators decay, which forces you to have a bigger battery renewal system.

So a system that's near parity with production to consumption or one which has a high steam fraction will experience little to no battery loss.

A high solar fraction or a base that has far more power than it needs will need a massive renewal system.

And a base that's total solar needs a massive battery renewal system or it will have trouble expanding without the extra flexibility that a steam sector provides.

You can also have a secondary advantage: With accumulators soaking up as much power as they're given, they'll help to reduce decay in other inflexible systems. So if your nuclear reactor or solar panel takes damage if it can't find a source for it's power, the accumulator takes the brunt of that first, and it's far easier to renew the batteries than to repair the nuke plant or the solar panel.

*Nukes: Awesome for Megabases, far more situational for everyone else.
**Although, is it really cheesing the system if it's by design?

[MeduSalem]

Interesting! This is a good way to think about a decay mechanic that doesn't have you just spam repair packs (and reminds me a lot of LFTR type nuclear power.) The one thing I'd add is that what batteries fluid decays into doesn't necessarily need to be sulfuric acid. If needed it can be it's own type in order to isolate working with it from the general production chain.

Well the idea came alongside when I tried to come up for a solution that fixes the boring "plop&forget" aspects for both Solar Energy and Laser Turrets. For me Laser Turrets vs Gun Turrets is exactly the same problem as Solar Energy vs Steam Energy. Both Laser Turrets and Solar Energy don't need any ammunition or sophisticated production cycles to keep going.

I thought that maybe both problems could be solved with one and the same feature: Having to swap deteriorated batteries in Accumulators/Laser Turrets.

To make it work in a way that doesn't annoy players to hell I wanted to have something that should be still somewhat "self-sufficient" or at least manageable so it doesn't cost too much additional resources to keep the stuff going. The additional complexity for the re-processing of batteries and the overall increased one-time investment would be already enough to keep people on their toes.

Of course the Energy required to fire a Laser Turret can be lowered then because some of the energy would be already required to re-process the batteries and I might even argue that the consumption could be lowered even further than that to repay the player for having to deal with the more sophisticated setup.

But it would work perfectly with existing defense systems before one reaches Laser Turrets. After reaching laser turrets one doesn't have to tear down the ammunition belts, but rather one would use the near side of the belt to deliver "renewed" batteries and the far side for the "decayed" batteries.


And yeah, of course the fluid extracted from a decayed battery can be it's own waste material other than sulfuric acid of course. The waste fluid might even be useful for some additional byproducs other than pure reprocessing, who knows? I just wanted to keep it simple for the first suggestion.

For example, if --- as Rwn suggested --- PV solar cannot supply less than it's total available power and overcharging accumulators is what makes their batteries decay either in addition to or instead of when charged/used.

Now, I take it your intent is for battery decay to work a bit like damaging a power plant in the typical RTS: It loses max power storage first and only much later does it completely shut down. And if so I think that's an excellent way for it to work because it means that, while there is an ideal solar to accumulator ratio, you also get a problem where having a little too much power one day will denature the batteries so it's just a little easier to overcharge them the next day.

Which makes it a little easier to overcharge, which makes it a little easier to overcharge.

So you get this exponential effect going on: You can sort of cheese the system by having a secondary, more flexible, power supply** but in the end the higher your solar power fraction the easier it is to overcharge, the faster your accumulators decay, which forces you to have a bigger battery renewal system.

How the decay-mechanic exactly works is of course up for discussion. I only centered around how to re-process the batteries for the most part.

If there is a way to accidently overcharge the accumulators and thereby make the batteries decay even faster then it might lead to a death spiral. So that's something that has to be tweaked very, very well otherwise people get sick of the mechanic pretty soon because they can't counterfight the deterioration effect. Especially if the Laser Turrets would be tied into that system as well.

But that's really something people could fiddle around with when coming up with circuit network stuff. A sensor on an accumulator sending a signal to a power switch could do the trick. It would cut off the solar panels from the accumulator grid once the grid reached a certain threshold so it doesn't overcharge. It would be pretty much the same as creating a priority control for oil processing with circuit network. Steam Engines with Solid fuel have the Refinery Deadlock and Accumulators would have a death spiral. People have to become creative to solve that.

[Afforess]

@ssilk: I still do not think that this is a good solution. Making things less reliable (e.g., random power generation) will just force players to build more. You basically calculate with the minimum. It's the same as increasing the cost.

You don't know the minimum, that's the point! (*)

Consequence: All those threads about "What is the right amount of solar panels vs. accumulator-ratio?" are then useless.

No one except the most perfectionist player uses those. Players just overbuild and go "ehh, good enough".

So as a player you have a choice: You have a very reliable power generation, with extreme costs, cause - if you want to make it safe - you need to produces 4-8 times more energy than yet (and/or store 4-8 times more) and that still doesn't make it sure that you will come through with it, or - also a good choice - not so reliable power generation, but either a good defence, that is able to hold down enemies for a while, until you get power again. Or - much better! - intelligent power management: You switch off the parts of the factory, that are not needed - with 0.13 we will have that new element.

You want to discover an even more controversial change than the current complaints about the circuit system changes in 0.13 - well this is it. I expect the mod that disables reverts the "realistic" solar power reliability to be the single most popular Factorio mod yet. That's bad, because if most players disagree with the direction of the game design, then the developers have failed.

Unreliable solar power is a terrible solution, worse than doing nothing at all.

[MeduSalem]

Consequence: All those threads about "What is the right amount of solar panels vs. accumulator-ratio?" are then useless.

No one except the most perfectionist player uses those. Players just overbuild and go "ehh, good enough".

True story.

The golden ratio for Solar Panels vs Accumulators is completely useless anyways because normally the player will face one of three situations (even when built in the golden ratio):

1. There are much more Solar Panels and Accumulators than power needed.
   Meaning the ratio is worthless.
2. There are almost exactly enough Solar Panels and Accumulators to match the power demand.
   Meaning you are inflexible to spikes in demand, but that's the only point where the ratio kicks in and makes the solar farm efficient.
3. The power demand is greater than what the Solar farm is able to provide
   Meaning the ratio is worthless.

Typically the player will face either 1) or 3) and rarely the equilibrium point at 2). At least I find myself pending between 1) and 3) almost all the time when building my base and doing all the research, so you have to expand the solar farm constantly anyways due to increasing power demand. After launching the Rocket I always face 1) because the power demand usually drops to a fraction as there are almost no consumers except the Biter Attacks every now and then, but at that point you won't go ahead and tear down the entire solar farm because it is not working efficiently.

So the golden ratio is just a pure hypothetical discussion in my opinion because the real world application then tends to diverge from one extreme to another.

That said, making Solar Power less reliable in the first place by turning it into a game of chance just sucks big time ( It's just a personal war I am having with chance based systems, so no offense intented ssilk ) like any game mechanic that is based on pure chance in any other strategy game out there. In strategy games "chance" is always used as an easy workaround when a gameplay mechanic is flawed in its foundations. Normally it always causes the player to feel being uninvolved in the process and not being able to influence the outcome.

Really, almost nobody would ever want to deal with that because of its near to unpredictable behavior. Maybe some ultra hardcore elitists who exploit the inner workings of the game engine and are therefore able to create a circuit network to make a prediction might not see a problem, but I highly doubt that majority of the playerbase is willing to do such a thing, not even with the proposed blueprint books. It would literally kill all the fun if one has to rely on the contraptions other people made and not being able to understand why it works because it would require more insight into a nebulous game mechanic.

Transparent/Straightforward Game Mechanics > Nebulous/Chance-based Game Mechanics

That should be a design rule for every game developer out there. If more games would follow that rule they wouldn't necessarily boil down to excel-spreadsheet and/or calculator-website wars.

So I am against turning solar power into rolling the dice. And it wouldn't solve the plop&forget behavior at all:

• Elitists build a ridiculous complex circuit network to make predictions once and then resume to plop&forget strategy.
• The average player builds a solar farm multiple times as big as now to store enough energy to cover even the ugliest gaps the game might throw down your way due to not knowing exactly what you need.

If it doesn't make the players stop using Solar Farms completely in the first place, the players at least wouldn't stop plastering the landscape with more of the same boring stuff. That said I stopped doing that a long time ago because of how braindead boring it is and turned over to Solid Fuel+Steam Engine anyways because it offers more gameplay challenge and thereby greater gameplay value.

So after turning the Solar Farming into gambling and eventually overcoming the problem by either "cheating" the mechanic by making predictions or brute force methods by making solar farms even bigger we would be back the same question: "How to make it a more interesting experience compareable to Solid Fuel/Steam Engines?"

And that's where I think it will eventually boil down to either:

• Phoenix' suggestion of turning Solar Farms from Photovoltaic into Solar Thermal and a cycle based around that incorporating Heat Exchanger and reusing the Steam Engines.
• My solution with implementing a production cycle that deals with deteriorated batteries for Accumulators based on Charge/Recharge
  (which would also offer a possible solution to Laser Turrets being as boring as Solar Farms, because swapping batteries might be like having to deal with ammunition)
• A combination of both above.
• Somebody else comes up with an even superior, but still similar approach to the two above.

Both solutions above turn the problem into a puzzle-solving, logistics- and layout-bound problem, where the complexity increases with the size of the contraption, which is exactly the way it should be because that's what Factorio is all about.

[Zhab]

Anyone here ever used a depleted oil well as an infinite power source ? A single depleted well can provide just about 1 MW of power. Not to shabby. The one problem with this is that you can't just get 200 wells just like that but this is otherwise drastically cheaper and more compact than solar.

As a mega base builder you could start off with coal and maneuver to secure lots of oil. Then you switch to oil power and continue to get more oil wells as you get more iron and copper. The more oil wells you burn through the less you need to find new ones as your infinite supply is gradually becoming big enough to run everything.

Did any of you ever consider that possibility ? If solar becomes much of a hassle it might stop being used entirely.

[MeduSalem]

Anyone here ever used a depleted oil well as an infinite power source ? A single depleted well can provide just about 1 MW of power. Not to shabby. The one problem with this is that you can't just get 200 wells just like that but this is otherwise drastically cheaper and more compact than solar.

As a mega base builder you could start off with coal and maneuver to secure lots of oil. Then you switch to oil power and continue to get more oil wells as you get more iron and copper. The more oil wells you burn through the less you need to find new ones as your infinite supply is gradually becoming big enough to run everything.

Did any of you ever consider that possibility ? If solar becomes much of a hassle it might stop being used entirely.

Well yeah, that's basically what I have been doing for the past 1.5 years now, though I still split the Petroleum Gas off from the depleted wells and run solely on Light Oil where possible. But that works because I am using a centralized Oil Refining rather than distributed. I only burn Petroleum Gas to avoid deadlocks in Refineries when the Factory doesn't use the Petroleum Gas. But that's easy to control ever since tanks and pumps can be hooked up to the circuit network.