I think that the devs are making a quite good job on their own.
So I don't want to write suggestions or game ideas.
I want to write down some problems and possible strategic decisions of the energetics in real life, which can or cannot be implemented into the game.
(Why energetics? Well, it's the corner stone of every factory in factorio) The only goal I want to achieve is just to write down some semi-interesting stuff about energetics, and just play around with these real-life ideas and how would they affect a player's gameplay decisions.
IRL problems:
-Every power plant(PP) has an ideal output. If it works lower/higher than that, efficiency decreases. (it's much more complicated, but this way we can have for example a nice gaussian curve of output-efficiency
)-Storing energy is neigh impossible on an industrial size level. Accus are hard to make and they offer tiny capacity. The other option is a pumped storage plant, which offers small/medium storage capacity but it requires much more active machinery.
-Supply must meet demand at all times. If you produce less, or even worse more, the frequency of the whole grid will change. If you let the frequency slip away from your fingers you can have a blackout in a whole region.
This is such a pressure, that the ukrainian government even took a big risk in the past preventing the downfall of the grid.
!!SPOILER!!
(they lost the bet...and also Chernobyl...but at least it created some inspiration for GSC)
-Every grid has different type of power plants. Why? Every type has its own start-up time and max potential capacity.
In a normal grid you have these categories:
....Nuclear: High capacity, low price per kW, constant running
...Base load PP: same as nuclear, but it can be turned off without much risk, long transient time
..Peak PP: Mid-low capacity, high price per kW, short transient time
.The free spirits: In Europe because of those damn wind turbines there are times when they overload the grid(windy day), and the price of electricity becomes negative (yes, it means someone wants to sell you energy and he also wants to pay you for buying it...those weird europeans)
-In factorio electricity is given at day 0. In real life, during the industrial revolution a lot of PPs were in fact POWER plants. They supplied torque which was transferred by a shaft to sometimes multiple machines in a factory. The change from localized power supply to electricity supply was gradual.
Possible ingame choices:
-Nobrainer resource-heavy way of building accus or using Peak PPs and Base load PPs and constantly keeping an eye on your grid's needs(max peak volume, base load, max allowable transient time)?
-What is more valuable to you? Efficient output or more flexible output?
-Which is worse? 10-15 biters getting through the dead man's land because you don't have enough OP turrets or taking the risk of a blackout?
-If you stay too long on localized mechanical power the biters will outswarm you. But if you start to develop the electricity too soon, then you will be dependent on an unreliable system, and maybe you will put too much pressure on the grid making all your hard work collapse in a disaster.
(Disaster in details: Imagine a turbine. It's "propelled" by a steady flow of steam. The turbine is also connected to a generator which creates electricity from the mechanical energy of the turbine's shaft. Now comes a harsh frequency drop, which damages your electricity consumers. You run there to fix them. But in the meantime the steady-flow of steam couldn't give a bigger s*** on your demand shortage, so it propels your turbine, but because the demand stopped, the generator no longer acts as a "decelerator" to your turbine's shaft. This means that the shaft will accelerate reaching high-velocities. At high velocities the oscillation of the shaft will reach an unstable point. Think of the Tacoma bridge. The oscillation of the shaft will strengthen itself getting into a loop of enlarging oscillations, this is the cause of instability.
The best possible outcome is that your shaft will break (or yield to a point where it stops functioning as a shaft).
The worst possible outcome is that your shaft will come into contact with other machinery at the end of a short flying path.
/Before engineer Santa comes around bringing only charcoal... I know that these topics are more complicated than that. E.g. I know that you can accelerate the shaft through the unstable point, and you can have all sorts of stop mechanisms, but seriously, I don't want to get into fine details. And also we are talking on the forum of a game where you can make a gear out of an iron plate. With your bare hands./
My questions to you, dear reader, are:
-Do you think that any of these decisions/problems are interesting?
-Or do you think that the game is already complicated enough without these nonsense?
-Or maybe the tools/decisions (e.g. modules, crafting speed vs. consumption, pollution control) already present in the game satisfy your taste when it comes to electricity?
!
