[MOD 0.14.2] Electric vehicles

[zebediah49]

1st, a bug (?) -- I loaded up my game with version 0.2.3 (lib 0.2.2). Transformers aren't accepting electricity (bar is empty) in tank and car; still works correctly in train. They used to before I updated.

2nd, I agree that the trains are a little underwhelming. The big benefit I see is that they have equipment grids, but that's not super useful for the train (at least not yet). The acceleration is nice, but a little weak. As for top speed -- let me get this straight, it uses 60% more power, delivered to the wheel by an energy conversion system more than 100% more effective... and still goes exactly the same speed? At least cut the power draw down when traveling at full speed or something. Having a top speed limited by the rails is entirely reasonable (if you run a train too fast, its wobble will make it derail), but it shouldn't really be pushing more than three times the power of the vanilla engine to its wheels to achieve that.

3rd, is it possible to change the power consumption of a vehicle? It would be really cool if the transformers were power-limited -- so the small one is 2x2 and can do 100kW (so you need two to fully power a car), while the big one stays 3x3 and can do 1MW. This would mean that one could run a train off of a couple small coils, but it would have terrible acceleration, while investing in the big one would provide full power to both the train and tank. Alternatively if someone was willing to burn twice as many slots (and approximately as many resources) building 10 small transformers, they could use that to run their train instead. (Also, you could increase the maximum power of some or all vehicles, so that a greater grid-space investment in power would give a return in the form of increased performance. It might be worth it to me to have a tank with better acceleration.)

[mknejp]

1st, a bug (?) -- I loaded up my game with version 0.2.3 (lib 0.2.2). Transformers aren't accepting electricity (bar is empty) in tank and car; still works correctly in train. They used to before I updated.

Try re-equipping them. Haven't seen this happen yet.

2nd, I agree that the trains are a little underwhelming. The big benefit I see is that they have equipment grids, but that's not super useful for the train (at least not yet). The acceleration is nice, but a little weak. As for top speed -- let me get this straight, it uses 60% more power, delivered to the wheel by an energy conversion system more than 100% more effective... and still goes exactly the same speed? At least cut the power draw down when traveling at full speed or something. Having a top speed limited by the rails is entirely reasonable (if you run a train too fast, its wobble will make it derail), but it shouldn't really be pushing more than three times the power of the vanilla engine to its wheels to achieve that.

So are you saying 60% higher acceleration is "weak"? Have you compared the two running side-by-side? The trains are equally efficient in-game. Both the diesel and electric locomotives have a fuel conversion rate of 100%. Making the electric more efficient would make it create energy out of thin air and I'm not going to nerf the vanilla engine. I'm not sure you understand how power consumption works. It has a 60% higher power output, that doesn't mean it consumes 60% more energy to reach top speed. The energy required to get a certain number of carriages to top speed is the same for both engines but the electric does it *quicker*. That means it reaches top speed faster and stays at top speed longer compared to the diesel locomotive therefore reaching its destination sooner.

Regarding top speed, the game doesn't take place in a vacuum. Friction is a thing. The trains have a top speed of 259.2 km/h. That is considered a high-speed train in the real world. Freight trains are significantly slower so I don't understand what your complaint is. That's what the devs chose it to be and I simply followed suit.

3rd, is it possible to change the power consumption of a vehicle? It would be really cool if the transformers were power-limited -- so the small one is 2x2 and can do 100kW (so you need two to fully power a car), while the big one stays 3x3 and can do 1MW. This would mean that one could run a train off of a couple small coils, but it would have terrible acceleration, while investing in the big one would provide full power to both the train and tank. Alternatively if someone was willing to burn twice as many slots (and approximately as many resources) building 10 small transformers, they could use that to run their train instead. (Also, you could increase the maximum power of some or all vehicles, so that a greater grid-space investment in power would give a return in the form of increased performance. It might be worth it to me to have a tank with better acceleration.)

The vehicles have only a very tiny internal buffer and if it doesn't get filled the thing slows down to a crawl and you get the red flashing "missing fuel" icon. If it wasn't for the stupid icon I would have done this already. However the max power remains fixed.

[zebediah49]

Try re-equipping them. Haven't seen this happen yet.

That was about the second thing I tried -- no luck.

E: Tried a new game -- new game works fine. I guess my save is just messed up and I don't get my death-tank any more :/

So are you saying 60% higher acceleration is "weak"? Have you compared the two running side-by-side? The trains are equally efficient in-game. Both the diesel and electric locomotives have a fuel conversion rate of 100%. Making the electric more efficient would make it create energy out of thin air and I'm not going to nerf the vanilla engine. I'm not sure you understand how power consumption works. It has a 60% higher power output, that doesn't mean it consumes 60% more energy to reach top speed. The energy required to get a certain number of carriages to top speed is the same for both engines but the electric does it *quicker*. That means it reaches top speed faster and stays at top speed longer compared to the diesel locomotive therefore reaching its destination sooner.

- Yes, it is.
- You appear to be unaware that the fuel-to-electricity conversion rate is 50% in this game. 8MJ of coal produces 4MJ of electrical energy. So, if you are powering both trains off the same combustion power source, the electric train consumes 3.3 times more fuel per unit time than the vanilla.
- I'm not suggesting you nerf vanilla.
- I am well aware how power consumption works

My complaint here is with the much, *much* higher fuel consumption. It's not that it needs to "pull energy out of thin air" -- it's that it needs to not hemorrhage it so badly. To give you an idea what this actually is (you said you haven't tested it specifically), I built a testbench, to numerically compare. This consists of an oval track with five segments of straight track on either side, capped with the tightest loops the game will allow on the ends. On the bottom edge of the loop I constructed a pulse-counter attached to a pair of rail signals, making a lap-counter. For a given fuel supply, the fuel was either placed into a vanilla train, or placed into boilers connected to an independent power grid driving a rail charge-pad to charge the electric train. I then ran two variations on the test:

Variation 1: 10 coal, long distance manual drive. I loaded the trains up, got in, and held down 'w' until they ran out of fuel.

Electric train: 34.5 laps
Vanilla train: 108.5 laps

Variation 2: 10 coal, short distance repeated. I placed a train stop on either side of the loop, set the train to stop for 0s at each one, and let it go.

Electric train: 18 laps
Vanilla train: 43 laps

So.. yeah. The electric train performs best in short-haul settings when it spends as much time as possible accelerating. In long-haul settings, it uses approximately three times more raw-fuel energy to travel a given distance, which is consistent with my math above. Especially given that modern fossil-fuel burning trains are disel-electric series hybrids, because they are more efficient than direct-drive, this makes no sense.

There is no good reason why burning the fuel outside the train (which should be a higher-efficiency setting, if any different) should be less efficient -- three times less efficient -- than doing so inside the train.

This 10 coal corresponds to 40MJ (electric), which is two full batteries by the way. My track is approximately 42 track-pieces (84 tiles) long, which means the train should be able to go approximately 1450 tiles on a single full tier-1 battery.

Regarding top speed, the game doesn't take place in a vacuum. Friction is a thing. The trains have a top speed of 259.2 km/h. That is considered a high-speed train in the real world. Freight trains are significantly slower so I don't understand what your complaint is. That's what the devs chose it to be and I simply followed suit.

Regardless of model (sliding/rolling, low-Reynolds drag, high-Reynolds drag), a higher power consumption equates to higher speed. If it has the same top speed, it should have the same power consumption at that speed. Taking into account the fuel conversion cost, the electric train should pull 300kW to cruise at max speed, rather than 1MW.

As an implementation idea, since you can't "starve" the train (as discussed below), perhaps you could use a rebate system? If the train is at (or with some delta of) maximum speed, it rebates 700kW back to the transformer object (or wherever is convenient). That way the game thinks it's fully powered, but it's only actually pulling 300kW from the batteries.

The vehicles have only a very tiny internal buffer and if it doesn't get filled the thing slows down to a crawl and you get the red flashing "missing fuel" icon. If it wasn't for the stupid icon I would have done this already. However the max power remains fixed.

I meant changing the actual prototype's power consumption statistic on the fly... it sounds like that's not even close to possible though :/

[mknejp]

- You appear to be unaware that the fuel-to-electricity conversion rate is 50% in this game. 8MJ of coal produces 4MJ of electrical energy. So, if you are powering both trains off the same combustion power source, the electric train consumes 3.3 times more fuel per unit time than the vanilla.

That is a problem for energy production, and is reflected in the real world as well. Electric cars are only as efficient as whatever is producing the electricity. To me that sounds more like the vanilla train shouldn't have a 100% fuel-to-energy conversion rate, but it has, so I have to deal with it. It is outside the scope of the mod to account for losses during energy production and I see this as a drawback that players either accept and work with or don't.

My complaint here is with the much, *much* higher fuel consumption. It's not that it needs to "pull energy out of thin air" -- it's that it needs to not hemorrhage it so badly. To give you an idea what this actually is (you said you haven't tested it specifically), I built a testbench, to numerically compare. This consists of an oval track with five segments of straight track on either side, capped with the tightest loops the game will allow on the ends. On the bottom edge of the loop I constructed a pulse-counter attached to a pair of rail signals, making a lap-counter. For a given fuel supply, the fuel was either placed into a vanilla train, or placed into boilers connected to an independent power grid driving a rail charge-pad to charge the electric train. I then ran two variations on the test:

There is no "hemorrhaging". The energy in batteries is supplied 1:1 lossless into the train's internal buffer. I cannot change how the game calculates consumption and I simply give it as much as it is asking for to keep going.

Variation 1: 10 coal, long distance manual drive. I loaded the trains up, got in, and held down 'w' until they ran out of fuel.

Electric train: 34.5 laps
Vanilla train: 108.5 laps

Variation 2: 10 coal, short distance repeated. I placed a train stop on either side of the loop, set the train to stop for 0s at each one, and let it go.

Electric train: 18 laps
Vanilla train: 43 laps

So.. yeah. The electric train performs best in short-haul settings when it spends as much time as possible accelerating. In long-haul settings, it uses approximately three times more raw-fuel energy to travel a given distance, which is consistent with my math above. Especially given that modern fossil-fuel burning trains are disel-electric series hybrids, because they are more efficient than direct-drive, this makes no sense.

You're just confirming what should be common knowledge about battery-driven electric vehicles. Their range sucks. That's why car companies spend so much money on battery research. But in the end, as said above, the vehicle can be only as efficient as whatever is producing the electricity. I consider it a mistake that the vanilla trains have a conversion rate of 100% but that is the setting I have to work with. But my argument was never consumption, but time. The electric train should finish the same track in shorter time. That is basically the benefit you're paying for. Whether it's worth it or not everyone has to decide on their own based on the factory they have.

There is no good reason why burning the fuel outside the train (which should be a higher-efficiency setting, if any different) should be less efficient -- three times less efficient -- than doing so inside the train.

You're right, but unfortunately the diesel locomotive is as efficient as it can be. There is no beating 100%.

Regardless of model (sliding/rolling, low-Reynolds drag, high-Reynolds drag), a higher power consumption equates to higher speed. If it has the same top speed, it should have the same power consumption at that speed. Taking into account the fuel conversion cost, the electric train should pull 300kW to cruise at max speed, rather than 1MW.

*If* the game implements power consumption properly then the electric train should only consume as much power as is need to maintain top speed, which should be exactly the same as the diesel engine. If it doesn't I would consider that a bug in the game. And to end the discussion about top speed I now simply postulate that the normal rail has an allowed top speed of 259.2 km/h for safety reasons in the context of my mod. Lampshading ftw.

As an implementation idea, since you can't "starve" the train (as discussed below), perhaps you could use a rebate system? If the train is at (or with some delta of) maximum speed, it rebates 700kW back to the transformer object (or wherever is convenient). That way the game thinks it's fully powered, but it's only actually pulling 300kW from the batteries.

I would rather rely on the game requesting the proper amount than fiddling with some hacky magic numbers. If you look at the mod there is even code for energy recovery during regenerative braking but I wasn't able to find a proper balance, especially for the car and tank. And the game's "weight" prototype entry doesn't make a lot of sense.

I meant changing the actual prototype's power consumption statistic on the fly... it sounds like that's not even close to possible though :/

No it isn't.

[mknejp]

That was about the second thing I tried -- no luck.

E: Tried a new game -- new game works fine. I guess my save is just messed up and I don't get my death-tank any more :/

That shouldn't happen. Can you provide the save so I can take a look?

[mknejp]

That shouldn't happen. Can you provide the save so I can take a look?

What should also completely reset the vehicle logic is taking the transformer out, picking up the tank, placing it down and putting the transformer back in. If that doesn't help then something is totally broken.

[mknejp]

I agree that the fast coils are supposed to be expensive. The fast charging should come as a price. Charging a train using the slow coils works realistically slow. That seems ok. The main thing bothering me is that you have need an expensive train, and still stuff it with expensive coils, batteries and transformer. The train itself, without those electronics, is as good as a shell with electric motors. For early game, it might be interesting to have a train with a pretty small grid, with for example a max height of two tiles, while the fast coils are three tiles high. The limited width of the grid also doesn't allow much batteries. This would give an early game electric vehicle with limited range and slow charging, where more research is needed to get a better vehicle allowing fast charge and much larger range. That seems realistic.

I'm not sure about adding two tiers of locomotives. To me that just sounds like everyone is going to rush getting the second and skipping the first. Also, as you said the locomotive really is just a shell with motors so that would feel doing lots of research to make one with a bigger trunk. If anything the research should be in the more capable equipment.

[mknejp]

So it turns out it's true that locomotives consume power at full rate even when cruising at top speed. I opened a thread in general discussion to see what people think of this viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32476

[mknejp]

So this is how I intend to change the recipes:

• removed battery from low voltage transformer
• removed accumulator from high voltage transformer
• locomotive and car now take only one T1 speed and efficiency module each
• high power induction rail/station no longer need an accumulator

For one electric locomotive with basic equipment of one high voltage transformer, three low power coils and one basic battery this is the bill of basic materials compared to the diesel locomotive:

• 319 copper plate (× 21)
• 648 iron plate (× 1.9)
• 65 plastic bar (× ∞)

I find the significant increase in copper justified considering there is a lot more electricity and electronics involved in an electric vehicle.

[zebediah49]

So, all kinds of combinations of adding and removing the transformer, replacing the vehicle, etc. did not solve the problem.

What did solve the problem was removing and replacing the [3rd party modded] energy shields. Not sure how that happened (and it explains why my unshielded trains were fine), but my savegame works again.

... having made the save work properly again, it's not particularly useful for debugging. Oops.

The energy shields in question were the mk3 energy shields from mocombat, but I then updated to having mk3 shields provided by *both* mocombat and Power Armor Mk3 (Power Armor used to not include the item, and now does). I have no idea how that sequence of events results in a transformer that won't charge.

That is a problem for energy production, and is reflected in the real world as well. Electric cars are only as efficient as whatever is producing the electricity. To me that sounds more like the vanilla train shouldn't have a 100% fuel-to-energy conversion rate, but it has, so I have to deal with it. It is outside the scope of the mod to account for losses during energy production and I see this as a drawback that players either accept and work with or don't.

*If* the game implements power consumption properly then the electric train should only consume as much power as is need to maintain top speed, which should be exactly the same as the diesel engine. If it doesn't I would consider that a bug in the game. And to end the discussion about top speed I now simply postulate that the normal rail has an allowed top speed of 259.2 km/h for safety reasons in the context of my mod. Lampshading ftw.

- Track speed limits are actually the best explanation available. Neglecting that, there is zero reason why I shouldn't be able to push more power into a train and make it go faster. Given the ... dubiously sane ... choices made by the Factorio Engineer, it is entirely reasonable that he sizes his train engines to go exactly as fast as they can and not fall off the tracks. (Cornering should probably be ignored). So yes, maintaining a maximum speed makes sense.
- Yes, it would be nice if the train didn't consume full power at full speed. I support getting the devs to fix that, although I would prefer a workaround in the mod (since you designed it with the intent of getting to and staying at full speed for as long as possible, it exacerbates the issue).
- While the train has an effectivity of 1.0 (whatever that actually means, given the weirdness involved in vehicle weights), one should balance around vanilla, rather than around an interpretation of what vanilla should be.
- Still, that "efficiency" is not even something you have to change. You are very specifically saying that 1J of electrical energy is worth 1J of burner fuel. The only in-game evidence we have about this topic says that that conversion rate is wrong. When you buy electrical power with fuel, it is stated that 2J of burner fuel is worth 1J of electrical energy. Deciding that buying fake burner fuel with electricity should be done at a 1:1 rate is an entirely arbitrary choice. You would have a point about efficiency and power use if you were actually feeding power to the train wheels, and the core game engine was making that decision, but you're not. You're synthesizing fake coal out of thin air, and then burning it without creating any pollution.
- The recipe update seems reasonable. I found them a little bit expensive, but it didn't bother me too much.

[mknejp]

So, all kinds of combinations of adding and removing the transformer, replacing the vehicle, etc. did not solve the problem.

What did solve the problem was removing and replacing the [3rd party modded] energy shields. Not sure how that happened (and it explains why my unshielded trains were fine), but my savegame works again.

... having made the save work properly again, it's not particularly useful for debugging. Oops.

The energy shields in question were the mk3 energy shields from mocombat, but I then updated to having mk3 shields provided by *both* mocombat and Power Armor Mk3 (Power Armor used to not include the item, and now does). I have no idea how that sequence of events results in a transformer that won't charge.

That's weird. I'm specifically looking for equipment with the name "electric-vehicles-hi-voltage-transformer" so I highly doubt there is a conflict in item names. If you manage to reproduce it let me know.

- While the train has an effectivity of 1.0 (whatever that actually means, given the weirdness involved in vehicle weights), one should balance around vanilla, rather than around an interpretation of what vanilla should be.
- Still, that "efficiency" is not even something you have to change. You are very specifically saying that 1J of electrical energy is worth 1J of burner fuel. The only in-game evidence we have about this topic says that that conversion rate is wrong. When you buy electrical power with fuel, it is stated that 2J of burner fuel is worth 1J of electrical energy. Deciding that buying fake burner fuel with electricity should be done at a 1:1 rate is an entirely arbitrary choice. You would have a point about efficiency and power use if you were actually feeding power to the train wheels, and the core game engine was making that decision, but you're not. You're synthesizing fake coal out of thin air, and then burning it without creating any pollution.

That't not entirely correct. From my observations I conclude that burners have two internal energy buffers. One of them (A) has no size limit and is filled when fuel is converted to energy. The other (B) only has a capacity of 1/60 of the entity's max power output (be it vehicle or boiler) and is refilled from A every tick as needed. Mods only have access to buffer B. When A gets empty a new fuel item is converted to energy to fill it. Experiments with boilers show that the energy ending up in B already has the "effectivity" applied to it and is used 1:1 to heat the fluid so I assume the same holds for vehicles. The energy loss is either applied when converting fuel to fill A or when filling B from A. In either case by providing energy directly to B I circumvent the "effectivity" thing. So I am not in fact "synthesizing fake coal" but truly "feeding power directly to the train wheels" with no fuel burning involved. Another piece of evidence to this is that the red bar you see in burners seems to show the content of A because when I feed B directly the bar remains black.

[zebediah49]

It wasn't a conflict on the transformer object, it was a conflict on `energy-shield-mk3-equipment`, which is why I have no clue how it broke the transformer.

[Iorek]

What do I need to do to make all of Bobs mods Vehicles use this!!

[mknejp]

What do I need to do to make all of Bobs mods Vehicles use this!!

Make him add the category "electric-vehicles-equipment" to his vehicles' grids if this mod is present.

[mknejp]

It wasn't a conflict on the transformer object, it was a conflict on `energy-shield-mk3-equipment`, which is why I have no clue how it broke the transformer.

What *could* be happening is that the shield is draining all the energy because it is also a "primary-input" type and shields might have precedence over batteries. That's only a hypothesis, though, but the only explanation I could come up with.

[Iorek]

What do I need to do to make all of Bobs mods Vehicles use this!!

Make him add the category "electric-vehicles-equipment" to his vehicles' grids if this mod is present.

so If I change

equipment_grid = "bob-diesel-locomotive-2",

to

equipment_grid = {"bob-diesel-locomotive-2", "electric-vehicles-equipment"},


With your libs installed?

[mknejp]

What do I need to do to make all of Bobs mods Vehicles use this!!

Make him add the category "electric-vehicles-equipment" to his vehicles' grids if this mod is present.

so If I change

equipment_grid = "bob-diesel-locomotive-2",

to

equipment_grid = {"bob-diesel-locomotive-2", "electric-vehicles-equipment"},


With your libs installed?

Sorry that wasn't entirely correct. Each equipment grid has a list of categories it allows.

Code: Select all

  {
    type = "equipment-grid",
    name = "bob-diesel-locomotive-2",
    width = ...,
    height = ...,
    equipment_categories = { ... , "electric-vehicles-equipment"},
  },

But... why would you add it to a "diesel" locomotive

[Iorek]

aha found it, Sweet.
it was more for the shields and lasers on trains.

I also kinda wanted shields on bob's biblically powerful tank mk3.

also nice to be able to Poop a train/tank/car and just jump in and go without the need to carry fuel.

his mk2 and mk3 trains move faster up to 450! So if I wanted to move to pure electric I needed to add those.


Can use cars and tanks as Roboports by putting drones/consumables in the inventory. but loco's don't have an inventory. .. I wonder if the cargo train would work

[mknejp]

The new recipes are now out.

Code: Select all

electric-vehicles 0.3.0
===============================================================================
CHANGES
* Recipe for low voltage transformer no longer requires a battery
* Recipe for high voltage transformer no longer requires an accumulator
* Recipe for electric car only needs 1x speed/efficiency module instead of five
* Recipe for electric locomotive needs 1x speed/efficiency module instead of 5x speed/efficiency module 2
* Updated to electric-vehicles-lib 0.2.3

[DRT99]

Ill chip in with some feedback. Some of this no doubt belongs in the wireless charging thread but this one seems to be more active and they are meant to be used together anyways so ill just dump it all here.

So first off, As has been said before in this thread so i wont dwell on it,but i believe high power induction is too expensive, primarily in the processing unit requirement. I can understand it being complex to make in that it needs lots of different inputs, but the processing units just feel like a 'dump more materials into it' sort of expense.

Second the transformers, they are alittle awkward to work with. At 3x3 they are fairly large, and they are an item that must be present, ontop of any power generation (that also takes up a fair amount of space) leaving little space for anything else. Honestly, i kind of like that they are a constraint that has to be worked around but i feel like they should contribute SOMETHING other than "yeah you need this or your train is basically an oversized chest" I think you stated somewhere else in this thread that they store power? how about bumping that up, so the low voltage transformer stores more power per tile than mk1 batteries and the high voltage transformer stores more power per tile than mk2 batteries? Balanced out by the fact that this power can only be used for movement. This would also make solar panels alittle more appealing for use on vehicles, as they get a 'built in' battery.

Also kind of on the topic of transformers, Would it be possible to have them as a second output with the vehicles? Seems alittle unecessary to have to 'pay' for the vehicle and then 'pay' for the gas petal for the vehicle. I feel like this may also clear up some of the 'my vehicle doesnt work' confusion someone who hasnt really played with the mod before may have.

So the charging stations, i absolutely hate the flashing 'no power' symbol when they have nothing to charge. I realize this may be due to technical issues so I cant legitimately complain about it. Just venting.

So as far as the vehicles themselves are concerned:

I like the train - it does what it says on the tin. I still have a problem with its cost but thats a high power induction / fusion reactor problem, not the trains themselvse (not after the most recent change for sure)

The tank i've been playing around with a bit and it seems underwhelming. Not as underwhelming as the vanilla tank but still not exactly stellar. I think part of the problem here is the grid. This thing needs a 3x3 item and a 4x4 item to move (even then its 50kw short) So the bare minimum is 2 fusion reactors and the transformer. If you want a decent amount of shields then its 3 fusion reactors and youre basically out of space and cant even fit a meaningful amount of shields. Induction stations simply do NOT work with combat vehicles as the number of batteries required combined with how often you have to recharge and the risk of being dead in the water in the middle of a hive are simply no feasable. I recognise that its cheaper than mk2 power armor and should therefore be less effective but i also think it should be a viable late game combat option. I'd consider upping its cost slightly, increasing grid size to 12x12 or 12x10

The car is also underwhelming. Honestly the regular cars fuel requirements are neglegeble, so the electric car fuel savings are irrelevant. The speed is nice but by the time you have the electric car youre not overly far from power armor mk2 with exos, which is faster and safer (for your factory) and also serves other purposes via roboports, shields, etc.
The only thing i can really think of is increase inventory space to 120 or 160 stacks and increase grid size to maybe 14x14. This could be loaded up with roboports and used as a construction vehicle, giving it a use even later into the game. Would definitely be my go-to outpost building vehicle.

Just some of my opinions. If any of it came across as negative it wasnt intentional, absolutely love the mod