Overpowered strategies

[Lallante]

I believe that batteries needing replacement would mean that if you have power problems because you run out of batteries and you are not producing them fast enough... then... you are dead or have to destroy half of power poles to get it working again.

With steam you only need to supply coal to boilers to get stuff running again, with accus and panels you need whole industry working to get those batteries and probably robots to supply them to accu farms.

"Use steam as backup"

Then why waste the time and resources setting accus if I need to build steam anyway?

Use solar during the day as backup. This only affects accumulators!

[Hexicube]

Battery swapping will just swap the problem to solar panels being far too complicated in comparison to steam. You end up with accumulators being considered a pointless resource drain (just use hot water storage instead), laser turrets being replaced with gun turrets instead of a mixture (because ammo is so much easier to automate), and at best a hybrid power system (which temporary degradation on accumulators would achieve without the other issues).

[MeduSalem]

I'm OK for that the exact day you can do all that recycling thing with exactly 0 pollution.
What you are doing right now is triple punishing people who use solar, roboports, and laser turrets.

1st, heavy pollution when you create tour first setup of solar, accus, build your laser turrets, build your building bots.


Let the infernal loop start
Then, for every accumulator, laser and bot, you'll need more electricity to power the infrastructure to recycle the batteries, which inturn need you to :
- add more solar+accus
- more robots (to go and get the used shells bring them to recycling facility or whatever

Building these will make you produce sh*tload of pollution. So you'll get attacked by more by biters. So you will :
- Add more turrets
- add more solar + accus to power these turrets.
Loop is complete, go back to the beginning, and watch your doom.

You've started a loop that is solely targeted at upkeeping your upkeep. Just tell me now, what is the advantage of green solar energy now ? Only cons. Might as well take it out from the game, or make it game over every time you plop one.

It should be clear that if a battery lasts like 30 recharge cycles or something that an accumulator would drop out a deteriorated battery every 30 game-days. (with random spikes it might differ)

That means a single accumulator, Laser Turret or Robot doesn't cause you to recycle batteries nonstop. Instead it would only become more noticeable the moreAccumulators, Laser Turrets and Robots you have.


Let's do some rule-of-thumb math for accumulators:

Currently a battery takes 5 seconds to craft. Let's say it would also take a Chemical Plant 5 seconds to process the deteriorated battery into its components, etc
A gameday lasts 416.6 seconds.
A Chemical Plant has a speed of 1.25 and requires 210kW power.
Let's say a battery lasts 30 full recharges. (might be too many recharges actually)
A single Chem Plant can reprocess 1.25 * 416.6s / 5s = 104.15 batteries a game day.

That alone means that every day 104 accumulators can dump a deteriorated battery that has to be reprocessed. But since they last 30 days you can basically recycle 3120 batteries with a single chem plant and have as many as 3120 accumulators before it becomes a bottleneck. That doesn't include a handfull of batteries that will be "in-flight" due to transport distance etc

It would take 3 machines in a simple setup to recycle a deteriorated battery: Dismantling into components, reprocessing Sulfur into Sulfuric Acid, assemble the components to new battery. If done in Chem plants then this requires 630kW of constant power. It's already negligible in comparison to how much energy the 3120 accumulators can store. With EM2's it would take 126kW.


In comparison Solid Fuel+Steam Power is far worse when it comes to how much it takes to power its own Refining/cracking process and Solid Fuel Plant.


So you see It really depends on the balancing... how much a "recharge" deteriorates a battery in each turn. If it would just take one recharge to deteriorate the battery then you are obviously screwed... but that's not what I had in mind. If they stand something like 30 cycles before finally succumbing then the overhead is most certainly manageable in my opinion, though I made no calculations for Laser Turrets and Robots, but I eventually they should work in a similar matter.

My goal would be that the first few hundred Laser Turrets, Accumulators or Robots shouldn't be to hard to accomplish with a simple battery recycling setup. I want it to be a fair approach that doesn't "triple punish" the player like you said.

But beyond that, like if you plan on using 10000 robots, 10000 laser turrets and 10000 accumulators then you are probably going to have a huge backend obviously. But you would also have to compare how much effort would go into creating a factory with the same capabilities only using Belts, Gun Turrets, Solid Fuel+Steam power instead. And that's why it becomes quite obvious that Solar Power (or any renewable energy in that matter), Laser Turrets and Robots need some balance because otherwise there is not even remotely something like an "option" or "choice".

With the deteriorating batteries you at least may think twice about going to solve a problem with a certain approach.

I believe that batteries needing replacement would mean that if you have power problems because you run out of batteries and you are not producing them fast enough... then... you are dead or have to destroy half of power poles to get it working again.

With steam you only need to supply coal to boilers to get stuff running again, with accus and panels you need whole industry working to get those batteries and probably robots to supply them to accu farms.

If you look at the approximated math above you see that if we are using reasonable amounts of recharge cycles for a battery then the throughput limit would mostly only target endgame players, which by that point should have enough knowledge of the game to circumvent the problem.

The average player probably will never go beyond a certain number of Accumulators, Laser Turrets or Robots so they probably won't have to invest a lot on the recycle process. And if they do go beyond the threshold of not being able to sustain as many entities they would at least learn an imporant thing from their mistake. Just because Solar Power/Laser Turrets/Robots are later in the tech tree shouldn't mean that they are no-brainers. On the contrary... more sophisticated technology should also require reasonable responsibilities in your actions and to think stuff through.

Besides that the same problem could happen to your Boiler/Steam Engine plants too if you don't plan the Refining/Solid Fuel production well. So priority management of who gets batteries first would be part of the deal the same way you have to manage Light Oil/Petroleum Priority.

And as for burning coal... that is the most inefficient way of power production in the game, by far. With a halfway decent Steam Engine setup (>400-500 engines or more) you would eat through your coal reserves in no time.

I also really like this idea.

Not only that, but the game-design concept of "recycling" products that feed back in to their own production chain's materials is a fantastic one and would really increase the options and depth of the system. Having more than one option to source raw materials would also be great.

Yeah, I think the "recycling" process of products could be extended to some other production cycles as well. It is an interesting approach on "fixing" overpowered gameplay features with a more "factorio-like" approach instead of trying to balance something just scaling up One-Time Investments or make something "worse" on purpose.

The recycling processes effectively turn the balancing/boredom problems into layout problems which can be automated and have to be scaled in order to take advantage of them.

Also it gives the player a bit more to play around with, which is mostly also a good thing.

Crafting recipes should be more modular in general... especially for the purpose of reprocessing/recycling stuff.

For example I can imagine Small Shells to be an item that has to be crafted before turning it into Regular/Piercing Rounds magazines or Regular/Piercing Shotgun magazines. So it adds 1 intermediate step, BUT... now imagine that with an upgrade to Gun Turrets the gun turrets may recover the empty ammunition Shells! That would at least get you back some of the investments you put into the ammunition and all you would have to do is recollect the empty shells and turn them into Piercing Rounds again. The fun part being that the shells are effectively one-time investments and first you use them for regular magazines and as you advance through the tech tree you can reuse them for Piercing rounds. Of course you can continue to dump the empty shells, but it would be more resource efficient to recycle them.

Stuff like that would open an entire new topic of factory optimization.

Battery swapping will just swap the problem to solar panels being far too complicated in comparison to steam. You end up with accumulators being considered a pointless resource drain (just use hot water storage instead), laser turrets being replaced with gun turrets instead of a mixture (because ammo is so much easier to automate), and at best a hybrid power system (which temporary degradation on accumulators would achieve without the other issues).

It isn't too complicated in my opinion.

Solid Fuel production also requires to be tricky to make it reliable, which can be quite complex for the beginner to comprehent. Especially with the stalling of refineries and that Light Oil is more efficient for Solid Fuel than Petreolum Gas. So it takes quite some effort to establish that as well.

And with the Battery Reprocessing you would basically lift the Solar/Accumulator Power to a somewhat equal level of effort that has to go into it. And if they are at least somewhat equal then people would have a REAL choice other than simply "Solar Power > Steam Power".

Also in my opinion Hot Water in tanks shouldn't stay hot forever. Filling a tank with Hot Water in reallife wouldn't stay hot forever either. They should consider including simulating that in the pipe mechanics.

[korda]

If you look at the approximated math above you see that if we are using reasonable amounts of recharge cycles for a battery then the throughput limit would mostly only target endgame players, which by that point should have enough knowledge of the game to circumvent the problem.

The average player probably will never go beyond a certain number of Accumulators, Laser Turrets or Robots so they probably won't have to invest a lot on the recycle process. And if they do go beyond the threshold of not being able to sustain as many entities they would at least learn an imporant thing from their mistake. Just because Solar Power/Laser Turrets/Robots are later in the tech tree shouldn't mean that they are no-brainers. On the contrary... more sophisticated technology should also require reasonable responsibilities in your actions and to think stuff through.

Besides that the same problem could happen to your Boiler/Steam Engine plants too if you don't plan the Refining/Solid Fuel production well. So priority management of who gets batteries first would be part of the deal the same way you have to manage Light Oil/Petroleum Priority.

And as for burning coal... that is the most inefficient way of power production in the game, by far. With a halfway decent Steam Engine setup (>400-500 engines or more) you would eat through your coal reserves in no time.

So it would be so cheap? So it's like... Make dedicated chem plant, prepare first setup, make blueprint... Place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint, place blueprint.

And then (surprise) place even more blueprints.

Sounds familiar?

Main difference is that it would be bit harder for outposts where you don't have resources to make batteries (I would end up sending power from elsewhere instead of trying to prepare separated power grid).

As I said in solar panels thread: you are trying to solve lack of big late game challenges not problems with current stuff that perhaps won't scale so great when game will be more complete (and there will be other power options, hopefully).

And IMHO you are now making accus complicated, not complex. For me changing charging process so it will waste some power sounds more interesting: easier to balance, simpler to understand and also giving some nice choices (should I invest in more accus so I will need even more power to charge them or perhaps maybe I should make more steam generators (or sth other, when it comes out) so I won't be so dependent on them and I will have bit more power to spare for charging existing accus...

[The Phoenixian]

How about that to deal with 3 overpowered strategies at once:

Battery Deterioration.png

Accumulators/Laser Turrets/Robots deteriorate their batteries and every now and then they have to be swapped with a new one. The deterioration of a battery could be similar to how repair packs/ammunition works with a progress bar and with every recharge the progress bar goes down a bit. Once the progress bar for an item is depleted it turns into a Deteriorated battery. The amount of Recharge cycles a battery can take before it turns into a deteriorated battery is then a matter of balance.

The deteriorated battery then would undergo a recycling process in which the Battery Shell is regained and also for example Sulfur. The Sulfur has to be reprocessed into Sulfuric Acid again. Then the regained components are once more made into a new battery, closing the circle. And pretty much lossless too, except some water.


Basically the approach makes it increasingly harder to scale the use of Accumulators/Laser Turrets and Robots due to binding them to a layout & puzzle solving problem.

This would be compareable to how scaling the Steam Power Plant depends on Oil Industry scaling, Gun Turrets depend on Ammunition and how Belts make layouts more difficult.

The fun part is... it would also automatically balance Wind Energy if it would be a thing or any other Power production having an uncertainty factor... Because they would obviously need Accumulators too to work reliable.



Of course this doesn't need to be in "easy mode"... the devs could perfectly implement a "hard mode" and in hard mode the layouts become increasingly more difficult because more and more things get upkeep elements or additional process cycles.

I wonder if someone could make a mod/prototype to try and see how it works out. If I would know how to mod I might do it myself...

I've been thinking for a while about this while I'm okay with battery decay for accumulators, I don't like it so much as a mechanic for lasers and robots.

In the case of Lasers, my thoughts are that the "slap down and forget" convenience is part of the selling point. (The other part being the visceral appeal of "FRIKKEN LASER BEAMS!"*) Which doesn't mean that Lasers don't need to be balanced, but rather that the convince of laser turrets needs to be taken into account as part of their combat balance.

I'd explore more basic options like swapping range with gun turrets, swapping health with gun turrets, reducing damage (so you need more laser turrets to do the same job and and more space for them with that), increasing power consumption and/or having armored or bulky enemy types that resist energy damage (More flesh = More water = More specific heat to suck up the cutting power from that laser) before exploring options that make lasers less user friendly. As a plus all but the last of these ideas are just values are very easy to tinker with: I actually made a (rather amateur) mod to do swap and make ranges relevant a while back, among other changes, and what I know about programming can be said in 10 lines. Which was the total length of the mod.

If you need more lasers to throw at the same problem, or if lasers need to be used in conjunction with other weapons, that strikes me as a way to balance lasers while still keeping much of their convenience.

It's also worth noting that anything that makes power management more difficult or uncertain also serves to nerf lasers incidentally. (The name of the game is large, unpredictable power spikes after all.)

---------------------------------------------------

As far as Roboports go, in all honesty though I'm not sure Robobots need a nerf: You already have a distinction between them and belts. Bots stand as a compact and versatile short range option that's not very precise. Belts meanwhile aren't all that versatile or compact but stand as an very precise short-medium range option that you can use to exactly proportion how much of what you want where in a way that you don't have to worry about shortages from a common pool. (If your bot network runs out of iron, it's out and it's gone to the biggest consumers, your only option is to reduce the demand or expand supply. If your belts run out of iron near the end, then you can do weird things like put a smeltery halfway along a high demand part of the belt to add more supply in a specific sector.)

If they do need a nerf though then battery life limits feels like a resource cost is on the right track for a nerf... but this type specifically is a little off. Where for laser it feels like it breaks a core part of the building, for Roboports I get the feeling it's not tuned to make the right problem given the advantages and disadvantages of the system.

I've yet to go modded or megabase, with any sort of long range roboport network but I have an inkling that any sort of logistic supply needs for roboports should be something that the 'ports cannot reliably supply to themselves, essentially requiring that distant networks be supplied through trains, pipes, or belts and thus relegating them to highly adaptable short range use. With depleted batteries it seems likely that the best means of delivering batteries to a roboport is the roboport's robots itself, though larger networks might eventually run into the rocket equation: Literally spending so much time hauling batteries that battery replenishment grows to dominate the bulk of transport. that said, I have no idea how soon that would be though without looking at the numbers and the electric costs are already quite high for a non megabase to look at a massive roboport infrastrucutre.

All things considered, my experiences tell me that power management problems would already be a kick in the teeth for massive numbers of roboports, doing everything battery depletion would and some things it wouldn't.

So all in all, while recycling is interesting, I don't think it's well suited to these two items.


*That you can, eventually, attach to your own forehead. That's where I hold that the personal laser turret in mounted and no one can convince me otherwise.

[MeduSalem]

...

I don't like decreasing accumulator efficiency just so people have to make even bigger Solar Fields to compensate for the loss in storing energy. It is even a more uninspired, unimaginative and brainddead solution, no offense intended. People came up with that before and the reason why it hasn't been implemented yet is because it doesn't solve the core issue, which is that Solar Power is absolutely boring and uninspired and at the same time overpowered too because there is no downside except high initial investment (which is no downside with infinite resources) and huge need of space (which is also infinite).

So you see we won't find a common ground here.

But it doesn't matter anyways... Because of how none of the dozens of proposals will be implemented anyways. In a few weeks I will probably be off to play Stellaris anyways and then I won't be as much around the forum anyways, but if there is something I am sure of then that once I come back for Factorio with 0.13 or somewhen later after some bug fixing, that the topic of Solar Power/Laser Turrets/Robots being overpowered will still exist and probably even 3-5 more threads about it because of how basically nothing will have changed until then. They probably can't look into the issue before 0.14 (if ever), which at the current speed of development isn't going to happen in 2016 anymore, if 0.14 even becomes a thing and the devs not getting tired of further developing the game before that and the team moving on to an other project.

Like I said, if I would know how to mod I would already have taken apart half of the game because how many things have been "begun" but never brought to a finish because other things came in the way down the road. And when people finally tried to come up with solutions one half is full "yay" and the other half the community "nay" due to people becoming used to how half-assed things are.

[Hexicube]

...which is that Solar Power is absolutely boring and uninspired and at the same time overpowered too because there is no downside except high initial investment (which is no downside with infinite resources) and huge need of space (which is also infinite).

Steam running on solid fuel is also infinite and takes less space, it's just a matter of powering the solid fuel production with solar power and having a source of oil. There's several interesting options with solar power, accumulators make them boring by proxy because it's more optimal to use accumulators than to build a hybrid system.

Also in my opinion Hot Water in tanks shouldn't stay hot forever. Filling a tank with Hot Water in reallife wouldn't stay hot forever either. They should consider including simulating that in the pipe mechanics.

Actually, hot water can stay hot forever. The issue IRL is we have no perfect insulator, but we can get pretty close by abusing vacuum pockets and highly effective insulation materials.

[bobingabout]

Accumulator charge, discharge, and retention should be changed to account for this, and make them less godly. Values should be modable too really. A typical NiMH battery takes 150% electricity to charge, discharge can be anywhere from a 20% to 100% efficiency, depending on current draw. They also have a charge retention decay ratio where they can lose as much as 20% over the first 24 hour period, which falls off to around 50% over 3 months.

Nope, nope, nope and nope. Any nerf you throw on accumulators can be solved by
- Building more solar panels
- Building more accumulators
Congrats. You can do the exact same thing by increasing the raw resource cost of either device.

The only way to change the actual META -the way players solve energy production- is to make the strategy of "overnight energy storage" untenable. This can be done in two major ways:
- make the energy source unreliable (such that attempting to store energy during the downtime is an obscene task, prompting alternative solutions)
- make the energy storage fruitless (such as getting rid of it entirely, as any solution which renders energy storage unable to hold out for FOUR HOURS is practically the same thing).

Half assed nerfs won't cut it. Complex rules only serve to change the ratios or resources required to take the easiest solution anyway. The gameplay won't change unless the game rules itself say it can't or shouldn't be done.

Did you actually read my whole post? I listed SEVERAL things that would make accumulators less godly, including making solar less reliable, and having a variable night length, yet you focus entirely on the accumulators.

If accumulators can't last the whole night due to the charge drain effect, then simply building more 2 hour max storage length accumulators won't solve the issue of a 4 hour long night.

Now your points making solar unreliable, oh wait, I sugested that already, and you said it can be solved by building more of them.
make energy storage pointless? well... the only way to make it pointless is to remove it as you sugested, but even something that only lasts half the night is NOT pointless, because while they're running, your steam doesn't have to.


To be honest, I get the impression that you just want the game to have steam power only, because any sugestions to make solar and accumulators less reliable, and more realistic, you just shoot them all down saying it can be accomplished by making them more expensive.

[Hexicube]

Accumulator charge, discharge, and retention should be changed to account for this, and make them less godly. Values should be modable too really. A typical NiMH battery takes 150% electricity to charge, discharge can be anywhere from a 20% to 100% efficiency, depending on current draw. They also have a charge retention decay ratio where they can lose as much as 20% over the first 24 hour period, which falls off to around 50% over 3 months.

Nope, nope, nope and nope. Any nerf you throw on accumulators can be solved by
- Building more solar panels
- Building more accumulators
Congrats. You can do the exact same thing by increasing the raw resource cost of either device.

The only way to change the actual META -the way players solve energy production- is to make the strategy of "overnight energy storage" untenable. This can be done in two major ways:
- make the energy source unreliable (such that attempting to store energy during the downtime is an obscene task, prompting alternative solutions)
- make the energy storage fruitless (such as getting rid of it entirely, as any solution which renders energy storage unable to hold out for FOUR HOURS is practically the same thing).

Half assed nerfs won't cut it. Complex rules only serve to change the ratios or resources required to take the easiest solution anyway. The gameplay won't change unless the game rules itself say it can't or shouldn't be done.

Did you actually read my whole post? I listed SEVERAL things that would make accumulators less godly, including making solar less reliable, and having a variable night length, yet you focus entirely on the accumulators.

If accumulators can't last the whole night due to the charge drain effect, then simply building more 2 hour max storage length accumulators won't solve the issue of a 4 hour long night.

Now your points making solar unreliable, oh wait, I sugested that already, and you said it can be solved by building more of them.
make energy storage pointless? well... the only way to make it pointless is to remove it as you sugested, but even something that only lasts half the night is NOT pointless, because while they're running, your steam doesn't have to.


To be honest, I get the impression that you just want the game to have steam power only, because any sugestions to make solar and accumulators less reliable, and more realistic, you just shoot them all down saying it can be accomplished by making them more expensive.

If I'm honest, I like the fact that accumulators perfectly retain their charge and charge at 100% efficiency, I'd prefer not to mess with that aspect of accumulators. They should be nerfed in a way that minimally impacts their ability to function as surge providers (covering power spikes, such as from laser turrets firing), whilst heaving impacting trickle discharging (providing for a whole night). Inefficient charging just messes with ratios, and draining ends up either forcing the player to make a lot more solar panels to handle the "idle cost" or wouldn't stop their usage for night providers; which one depends on how harsh it is, in order to be harsh enough to prevent covering the night it would need to fully discharge its 5MJ storage in under 2 minutes, which is a little over 40kW per accumulator and is an absurd upkeep for power storage (>100 inserter idle cost for each one).

I'll mention my solution that I proposed in the "solar panels OP" thread: Reduce accumulator total capacity at a steady rate during discharge, restore it during idle/charging. Make sure it reduces considerably faster than it restores so that it can't fully restore during the day, make sure it's independent of discharge rate so it doesn't hurt surge usage, and allow it to drop to 5% so that improper usage requires an inordinate amount.

Also, 2 'g's in suggestion. I'd chalk it off as a typo if it wasn't there 3 times.

[bobucles]

Literally the only reason accumulators exist is to allow laser turrets to function. Players using accumulators to run infinite overnight energy is an unavoidable side effect of this.

Give lasers their own ammo, and the energy spike goes away. The player no longer needs accumulators to partake in base defense.

Actually, hot water can stay hot forever. The issue IRL is we have no perfect insulator, but we can get pretty close by abusing vacuum pockets and highly effective insulation materials.

If that was actually true we would have no sun shining down on earth. Heat gets released through the process of radiation, which works in a vacuum. A higher Emittance allows more heat energy to escape.

Did you actually read my whole post? I listed SEVERAL things that would make accumulators less godly, including making solar less reliable, and having a variable night length, yet you focus entirely on the accumulators.

If accumulators can't last the whole night due to the charge drain effect, then simply building more 2 hour max storage length accumulators won't solve the issue of a 4 hour long night.

Now your points making solar unreliable, oh wait, I sugested that already, and you said it can be solved by building more of them.
make energy storage pointless? well... the only way to make it pointless is to remove it as you sugested, but even something that only lasts half the night is NOT pointless, because while they're running, your steam doesn't have to.

Being angry at me doesn't make a bad idea good. Observe:

- reduced accumulator charging efficiency
Place down more solar panels. Everything remains exactly the same.

- Reduced solar efficiency
Place down more solar panels. Everything remains exactly the same.

- More expensive accumulators/solar panels
Spend more resources for the exact same number of accumulators/solar panels. Everything remains exactly the same.

- Longer nights
Place down more solar panels/accumulators. Everything remains exactly the same.

- 2 hour accumulator charge
Recharging an accumulator 12 times a day? Are you serious? Accumulators literally take more than 2 game hours to charge, so you're suggesting more than 300kW of waste heat PER ACCUMULATOR to keep them loaded. Congrats. You've made accumulators less than worthless. Better off having nothing at all.

Now compare this to real ideas:

- No accumulators at all
Place down solar panels for the day, and build a steam backup for night. Or run targeted base shutdowns at night. Base defense needs to rely on gun turrets during the night. Or a secondary change could let laser turrets use their own prepackaged ammo.

- Sunless eclipse
Place down 5-10x the accumulators for a situation that doesn't always happen? Thanks, but no thanks. Build a steam backup for no solar days, or run targeted factory shutdowns for low points, or simply let it sleep at night.

To be honest, I get the impression that you just want the game to have steam power only, because any sugestions to make solar and accumulators less reliable, and more realistic, you just shoot them all down saying it can be accomplished by making them more expensive.

Do you see the difference yet? The BAD ideas are blanket nerfs that don't result in ANY change. The GOOD ideas force players to change, regardless of the resource costs implemented. Solar panels could be twice as powerful. They could be free. If the player can't rely on solar power 100% of the time, then they can't be used for 100% of base power. They have no choice but to ADAPT. It's really that simple.

Ta daa.

[Hexicube]

Actually, hot water can stay hot forever. The issue IRL is we have no perfect insulator, but we can get pretty close by abusing vacuum pockets and highly effective insulation materials.

If that was actually true we would have no sun shining down on earth. Heat gets released through the process of radiation, which works in a vacuum. A higher Emittance allows more heat energy to escape.

It was an exaggeration, but the point was that most heat loss from hot water in this scenario (a metal container) would be due to conduction. The hot water would stay hot for a pretty long time, long enough where it would basically stay at 100C through the night.

[Nasabot]

I cant agree more. Factorio is a great game but I wonder why there are a lot good games out there with VERY POOR balancing and finesse in its math and game mechanics. Factorio is such a game. Well, factorio has good game mechanics, but they were not thought through completly in a lot of aspects. I wonder: Programmer must be really smart people, as programming is very difficult, but why are they often not capable of distributing a well rounded balanced game with content a smart player has difficulty to optimize and adapt to(its good if a player has to think about which strategy is the best for a certain situation)

Actually, its not the balancing which is the problem in most games, but the lack of game mechanics which fit together in a smart way. Its difficult to explain, but imagine this:
If you have Option A and Option B and Option A is "better" than B, than it is ok, as long as Option B has a niche application. But if Option A is better in every aspect than B, B becomes obsolete and the game loses depth and "effective content". This is something a lot of games suffer from: They throw random content into the room(more items, more maps, more enemies etc), but if the content is useless, the content is basically non-existant and creating it was work in vain.

For this reason I made a mod, which might temporary solve some of the mentioned issues:

viewtopic.php?f=95&t=20479

[korda]

I cant agree more. Factorio is a great game but I wonder why there are a lot good games out there with VERY POOR balancing and finesse in its math and game mechanics. Factorio is such a game. Well, factorio has good game mechanics, but they were not thought through completly in a lot of aspects. I wonder: Programmer must be really smart people, as programming is very difficult, but why are they often not capable of distributing a well rounded balanced game with content a smart player has difficulty to optimize and adapt to(its good if a player has to think about which strategy is the best for a certain situation)

Actually, its not the balancing which is the problem in most games, but the lack of game mechanics which fit together in a smart way. Its difficult to explain, but imagine this:
If you have Option A and Option B and Option A is "better" than B, than it is ok, as long as Option B has a niche application. But if Option A is better in every aspect than B, B becomes obsolete and the game loses depth and "effective content". This is something a lot of games suffer from: They throw random content into the room(more items, more maps, more enemies etc), but if the content is useless, the content is basically non-existant and creating it was work in vain.

For this reason I made a mod, which might temporary solve some of the mentioned issues:

viewtopic.php?f=95&t=20479

1) factorio is not ready, don't expect it to be well balanced (because devs would have to balance it after every major update)

2) it's very hard to find balance in complexity, either you scare away too much players or risk rage of hardcore fans because 'you are dumbing things down' (seen this happening with some games). It's very hard to make gameplay mechanics 'simple to learn, hard to master'.

[Hexicube]

For this reason I made a mod, which might temporary solve some of the mentioned issues:

viewtopic.php?f=95&t=20479

Can you stop linking the same mod every time you discuss any form of balance? It's incredibly annoying.

[Berjiz]

Putting batteries that needs to be switched/recharged in Laser Turrets makes them a bit too much like Gun Turrets. Gun Turrets need much more bullets than Laser would need batteries but they would both require similair setups at the turrets themselves. I.e. something to get the bullets/batteries there(robots, belts) and somethign put them in the turret(inserters). How about only putting batteries that needs replacment in the accumolators instead?

Accumulators would then be worse off to be used in combination with Solar. But here is where a changed liquid+power system comes in. This also adds another level of complexity above the Steam Engines. All the liquids gets their own max temperature and introduce a new liquid, some sort of heating liquid that has the highest maximum temperature. We also need new buildings Electric Boiler and Liquid Engine. The Electric Boiler is like a normal Boiler but uses electricity instead. The Liquid Engine produces energy by taking a heated liquid and cooling it down. It outputs slightly less liquid(depending on research and liquid type) then what was put it so it's circuit need to be refilled sometimes.

Instead of using Accumulators for storing energy from Solar(or other future unreliable energy such as Wind) you can use Electric Boilers to heat a liquid and then put it to storage tanks. That liquid can then later be used in Steam Engines or Liquids Engines during the night. Accumolators are instead more focused on being used together with Laser Turrets and other energy spikes.

[Hexicube]

But here is where a changed liquid+power system comes in. This also adds another level of complexity above the Steam Engines. All the liquids gets their own max temperature and introduce a new liquid, some sort of heating liquid that has the highest maximum temperature. We also need new buildings Electric Boiler and Liquid Engine. The Electric Boiler is like a normal Boiler but uses electricity instead. The Liquid Engine produces energy by taking a heated liquid and cooling it down. It outputs slightly less liquid(depending on research and liquid type) then what was put it so it's circuit need to be refilled sometimes.

IIRC the current fluid system doesn't handle loops well, which is currently avoided by destroying fluids that enter steam engines. I'm not sure that it would be easily modified to pass liquids through.

Either way, water works well enough. I'd much prefer to only see the accumulators modified to be far less potent for night storage, so that players are encouraged to use solar power to make solid fuel to feed regular boilers for the night. Everything else is fine in my eyes, including accumulator usage as surge supply (for laser turrets), so that should be kept untouched where possible.

Also worth bearing in mind, if accumulators need the odd switched out battery, you nearly double (50%-75% more) the space requirement of every accumulator; each one now need 2 inserters and either belts or logistic chests to move items around, though accumulators can share belts/chests.

Finally, needing to swap batteries for solar wouldn't do anything to stop their usage, assuming it was implemented reasonably. The best suggestion I've seen was that the case could be recovered and the sulphur would need some water to return it to the acidic form, which means it would only require oil and therefore remains to be an infinite energy source that could be fully automated. I'd accept that as an experimental fix, since it would let me toy with the idea and solar power would remain upkeep free.
[edit] Quick check, I'm mistaken in regards to the sulphur recipe, it needs an iron plate. Either way, 40% of an iron plate is a lot cheaper than a new battery.

[joe_da_cro]

with accumulators i find what makes them OP is the reason why they put into the game. that is to help with spike power from the laser turrets. I Believe that if accumulators would act as capacitors where they can take almost 100% input in and discharge large amounts of power but applying a aoe reach like what power poles have. what this does is limit the area in which this large power output can go. then on the renewable energy front i would add a large scale "accumulator" which acted like a battery where it takes in more than it puts out for starters and has a limited output capacity. the idea with current real-world renewables is that if given enough investment they can be viable for 24-7 operation although economically there are much better alternatives. in the case of factorio, the game should be guiding the player in the same way steam via fossil fuels. Solar panels should be relatively easy to achieve as well for day time operation. But when it comes to night time usage of renewables should be where the challenge lies. And i think the best way to combat it would be having small output capacities of the battery type accumulators and designing them around the length of the night. so if in game the night is 4 hours long a battery should at full output capacity discharge itself in 8 in game hours. the charging times can be the same as current accumulators.

tl:dr

- laser Accumulator for laser turrets which have a aoe for laser turret power supply.
- Battery Accumulator, very limited discharge rate used for overnight base load power supply.

[starholme]

with accumulators i find what makes them OP is the reason why they put into the game. that is to help with spike power from the laser turrets. I Believe that if accumulators would act as capacitors where they can take almost 100% input in and discharge large amounts of power but applying a aoe reach like what power poles have. what this does is limit the area in which this large power output can go. then on the renewable energy front i would add a large scale "accumulator" which acted like a battery where it takes in more than it puts out for starters and has a limited output capacity. the idea with current real-world renewables is that if given enough investment they can be viable for 24-7 operation although economically there are much better alternatives. in the case of factorio, the game should be guiding the player in the same way steam via fossil fuels. Solar panels should be relatively easy to achieve as well for day time operation. But when it comes to night time usage of renewables should be where the challenge lies. And i think the best way to combat it would be having small output capacities of the battery type accumulators and designing them around the length of the night. so if in game the night is 4 hours long a battery should at full output capacity discharge itself in 8 in game hours. the charging times can be the same as current accumulators.

tl:dr

- laser Accumulator for laser turrets which have a aoe for laser turret power supply.
- Battery Accumulator, very limited discharge rate used for overnight base load power supply.

Could achieve this in a slightly different manner as well. Instead of a separate laser accumulator entity, that every laser turret needs, make it optional. Adjust the laser turrets to only charge from the grid slowly, like enough energy for a single shot every 5 seconds. Give the turret enough storage for a few fast shots(2?5?). Use the accumulator with it's limited AOE to directly fill the turret's energy, bypassing the slow charge rate, and putting that high energy demand on the power grid.

[bobucles]

Another way to bypass the system completely is to have laser turrets use ammo like anything else. Let accumulators be an ammo type that can be recharged and reused. Now you don't have the entire energy game being changed for the purpose of one turret.

[joe_da_cro]

Could achieve this in a slightly different manner as well. Instead of a separate laser accumulator entity, that every laser turret needs, make it optional. Adjust the laser turrets to only charge from the grid slowly, like enough energy for a single shot every 5 seconds. Give the turret enough storage for a few fast shots(2?5?). Use the accumulator with it's limited AOE to directly fill the turret's energy, bypassing the slow charge rate, and putting that high energy demand on the power grid.

yeah i was thinking that also after i posted.

Another way to bypass the system completely is to have laser turrets use ammo like anything else. Let accumulators be an ammo type that can be recharged and reused. Now you don't have the entire energy game being changed for the purpose of one turret.

what i posted doesn't really change the energy game. accumulators were included to supplement the laser turret, they are OP when used en mass with solar. personally if i was to make only one change to accumulators i would make their effect aoe meaning you can just whack accumulators anywhere. but still means you can use accumulators for any powered entity but you cant place the accumulator 10 miles away from the powered entity.