Fix lasers to use watts instead of joules

[Good_Days13]

TL;DR

Edit: I created a mod that fixes the base issue, which is the lasers consuming joules instead of watts. I also changed the name of this post to reflect that base problem. It was a very simple variable change, so it shouldn't be hard to implement in base game. It'd be nice if it was so I can use better lasers while still having achievements.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/laser-constant-usage

The laser turret's max consumption listed should be the amount it consumes while charging between shots rather than average consumption over time while firing.

What ?

Edit: The new what is that laser turrets for some reason consumer joules for "shots" instead of watts.

The max consumption should be shown as 9.6 MW because that is the amount it takes while charging after each time it shoots. The max consumption currently shown is the joules per shot times shots per second plus the idle drain, but this only really gives the average consumption.

in game panel.png (21.2 KiB) Viewed 7582 times

low satisfaction.png (3.78 KiB) Viewed 7582 times

energy consumption graph.png (7.56 KiB) Viewed 7297 times

Why ?

Edit: basically every other electricity consumer in the game doesn't instantly consume joules, so this should match. Also, the animation looks constant and doesn't look like it takes individual shots. Also, it causes all the issues in the original post like an incorrect info panel and electric spikes.

I use the max consumption to know how much electricity I would need for me to use it, but since it can go higher than the number listed, it confused me when stuff started losing power. The actual max consumption isn't even shown in the game as far as I know. I feel like the max consumption is more important and has more use than the average consumption while firing, and if you need the average consumption then you can just calculate it yourself because it gives all the values. Also, the info panel says "Max. consumption," so it probably should actually be the max amount it can consume.

powerless radar.png (45.82 KiB) Viewed 7297 times

[Amarula]

I checked and the same applies to roboports. The tooltip states max consumption is 4.05MW, but when you place it and it starts charging, the draw is 5MW. This is much less of a concern as it only happens once when the roboport is placed, but it is still an inconsistency.

[Nosferatu]

Everything has an internal buffer and consumes more when it tries to refill that.

[Good_Days13]

Everything has an internal buffer and consumes more when it tries to refill that.

that seems like it wouldn't matter much for things that just use watts except for when placing them, unless there are times other than that when it isn't using electricity but its buffer is low.

a difference though is that the turret uses joules, so it just empties its buffer, so it doesn't really have a watt consumption other than the drain. at that point, do you consider the watts it refills the buffer with the max consumption? I think you should

[FuryoftheStars]

Everything has an internal buffer and consumes more when it tries to refill that.

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=102281

Laser turrets have an input flow limit of 9600kW so this is correct. The reason it's so high is; at higher research the laser shoots faster and uses more power. But the input flow limit is static for the lifetime of all turrets so it starts with enough input in mind to make sure the technology effects work when researched.

That said, I agree with the OP. If it's possible, under any condition, for something to consume more power than what is shown in the tooltip currently, then this should be corrected. Even when recharging the internal buffer, nothing should consume power faster than it's listed max consumption. If their true max consumptions can't be lowered for some reason, then the current tooltip "Max consumption" should be this true value, and if need be, a separate "operating consumption" value should be displayed.

[Nosferatu]

That would be more confusing then the current display.
Nothing can consume faster than displayed.
It's just the buffer that causes spikes in your stats.

Maybe we should rename it to average max consumption

[Good_Days13]

That would be more confusing then the current display.
Nothing can consume faster than displayed.
It's just the buffer that causes spikes in your stats.

Maybe we should rename it to average max consumption

for laser turrets, they never consume what is displayed. they consume joules (which if you think about it is infinite watts) I can't think of any other thing that does this right now, but it means the amount of watts it takes from your factory is determined only by the input speed limit

[FuryoftheStars]

Nothing can consume faster than displayed.

Except they do when the buffer is depleted.

Aside from the laser turret this thread is specifically about, here's another case example:

I designed a section of factory in map editor. Once I had it built the way I wanted to, I put it through its paces and got it going full tilt to see what kind of power it was going to consume. At full tilt, it was under 20 MW consumption. I then loaded up the save I was going to use it in, and built it in a remote area that was going to need it's own power generation, so built a 12-24 boiler-steam engine for power (peak power of 21.6 MW). As soon as I loaded the fuel in, the entire setup was consuming just shy of 100 MW. Needless to say trying to start the entire setup from cold failed like this. I had to replace the inserters for the boilers with burner inserters and had to remove a section of the coal miners to replace with burner miners and inserters just so the thing could continue generating power long enough to start filling the buffers. I think it took it about 5 mins to finally get enough buffers filled that it started to run more efficiently and eventually started consuming less than what it was generating.

Needless to say that was very frustrating and not intuitive.

This should either be annotated in some way, or changed so the buffers can't consume more than the max operating power.

[Bilka]

for laser turrets, they never consume what is displayed. they consume joules (which if you think about it is infinite watts) I can't think of any other thing that does this right now, but it means the amount of watts it takes from your factory is determined only by the input speed limit

They consume 800KJ per shot at x shots per second (affected by research). See https://wiki.factorio.com/Laser_shootin ... (research).
Quote from wiki: "Thus, the research raises their power consumption from 1.2MW (no upgrades) to 3.8MW (all upgrades)."

This are the values shown in the tooltip (+ drain). This (+drain) is the total consumption, there is no extra. Any higher draw is it filling up the buffer - but that energy is stored for later use, not directly consumed.

[Good_Days13]

I think it took it about 5 mins to finally get enough buffers filled that it started to run more efficiently and eventually started consuming less than what it was generating.

I kinda want to test this too now. But I feel like the buffer refill speed should be the same as the max it would consume. or maybe slightly more if being exact glitches something.
although, with turrets (and maybe other stuff maybe, I don't know) they can be upgraded and it increases consumption but the way they did the limits its permanent and can't be changed during a game I think, so it has to be enough for the most upgraded

[Good_Days13]

for laser turrets, they never consume what is displayed. they consume joules (which if you think about it is infinite watts) I can't think of any other thing that does this right now, but it means the amount of watts it takes from your factory is determined only by the input speed limit

They consume 800KJ per shot at x shots per second (affected by research). See https://wiki.factorio.com/Laser_shootin ... (research).
Quote from wiki: "Thus, the research raises their power consumption from 1.2MW (no upgrades) to 3.8MW (all upgrades)."

This are the values shown in the tooltip (+ drain). This (+drain) is the total consumption, there is no extra. Any higher draw is it filling up the buffer - but that energy is stored for later use, not directly consumed.

the consumption is never at what the tooltip says. its always either at 9.6 MW or 24 kW. even if its it filling up the buffer, thats the whole way it shoots. it shoots by filling up the buffer then firing. if we don't consider filling the buffer as consumption, then its real max consumption would be 24 kW. also, i already knew why the value is what it is, I don't need it explained again
honestly, I can't think of a real reason I'd have to know what the current value it shows is

[Bilka]

the consumption is never at what the tooltip says. its always either at 9.6 MW or 24 kW. even if its it filling up the buffer, thats the whole way it shoots. it shoots by filling up the buffer then firing. if we don't consider filling the buffer as consumption, then its real max consumption would be 24 kW. also, i already knew why the value is what it is, I don't need it explained again
honestly, I can't think of a real reason I'd have to know what the current value it shows is

I find it useful to know that having 2 steam engines + some accumulators will power my laser turret at shooting speed 1. The accumulators are needed to balance out the burst draw, but in the end the consumption over e.g. 1 minute is 1.22 MW, which the engines can supply easily. If the tooltip said 9.6MW instead, I would think that I would need 11 steam engines.

Basically, it tells me that this setup works without the assembler or inserters stopping:

[Good_Days13]

I find it useful to know that having 2 steam engines + some accumulators will power my laser turret at shooting speed 1. The accumulators are needed to balance out the burst draw, but in the end the consumption over e.g. 1 minute is 1.22 MW, which the engines can supply easily. If the tooltip said 9.6MW instead, I would think that I would need 11 steam engines.

Basically, it tells me that this setup works without the assembler or inserters stopping:

but with all the information it gives, I would think 2 steam engines and 4 accumulators would be enough, wouldn't it? shouldn't just 2 engines and nothing else be enough if it consumes 1.2 MW? in that pic, I can see that you have 9.9 MW of production. 2 engines and 27 accumulators provides the same watts as 11 engines

what is the burst draw? how many accumulators are needed to "balance it out?" why that amount?

also, if the max consumption on the panel was changed to 9.6 MW, you could still easily find the joules over a period of time; it's a really simple equation. but the 9.6 number is said nowhere. I only found it after testing in a world and then looking in the code

[Nidan]

It seems both numbers have their use. Maximum Consumption during normal operation, Maximum Recharge when an entity gets connected to power.

So... maybe display both? Or at least when they significantly differ?

[Good_Days13]

what about something like

Shot consumption: 9.6 MW
Extended consumption: 1.22 MW

[FuryoftheStars]

I find it useful to know that having 2 steam engines + some accumulators will power my laser turret at shooting speed 1. The accumulators are needed to balance out the burst draw, but in the end the consumption over e.g. 1 minute is 1.22 MW, which the engines can supply easily. If the tooltip said 9.6MW instead, I would think that I would need 11 steam engines.

For someone like me, when I read a tooltip that says "Max Consumption", to me that means that under no circumstances will its consumption exceed that value.

Instead, what you are describing is an average consumption.

As Good_Days13 said, without knowing that burst consumption value of 9.6 MW, there's no way for a player to know of this ahead of time.

[ssilk]

The same issue is with other devices, e.g. roboports, etc. Many devices have built-in accumulators. It makes a lot of sense to display the engine-part and not the accumulator-part by default. Or display the accumulator part as a “second engine”. But not display total max consumption of accumulators by default. That’s a one time event, which can be seen clearly only on roboports and/or under normal circumstances it has no effect on gameplay.

[Qon]

as it only happens once when the roboport is placed

That’s a one time event,

Wrong.

If you lose power the buffers of your roboports and other enties will drain. This affects you a lot every time you blackout and makes the brownout spirals after buffers have been depleted even harder to recover from.

[ssilk]

Why? I mean it’s very clear: if you produce less than the needed 1.2 MW per Laser, then you’ll brown out. But afterwards it’s accumulator is refilled with more or less the power you can deliver. More power, charge faster. Very simple.

Most electric cars can charge much faster than they can use that charged power. But if you plug it into the socket of the garage it will charge only with the maximum power of that socket. But nobody would come to the idea, that a car has only 3 kW power, if you load it with 3 kW.

The same is it here. IMHO it’s not difficult: accu involved means you have here two devices, one which uses the power, the other which stores it.

What’s surprising is the fact that the accu can be charged faster, than the laser. But is that really a surprise? Or did the player just forget, that the laser needs a lot of accus for crafting?

So or so, the maximum power of an electric car is what it uses while driving, and so the maximum power of a laser is it’s usage while lasering. This is simple. Everything else is an extra information, which can (and should) be added, but should not involve the main use case.

[jodokus31]

Why? I mean it’s very clear: if you produce less than the needed 1.2 MW per Laser, then you’ll brown out. But afterwards it’s accumulator is refilled with more or less the power you can deliver. More power, charge faster. Very simple.

Most electric cars can charge much faster than they can use that charged power. But if you plug it into the socket of the garage it will charge only with the maximum power of that socket. But nobody would come to the idea, that a car has only 3 kW power, if you load it with 3 kW.

That's nice, if you have a dedicated power supply for your lasers, which just refill them slower. But most of the time, the whole factory is in the same network, which slows down all machines and make brown out more likely.

OK, but how should the user know, that the consumption can be higher? And that you have a security problem, if you connect power to your lasers of the same network without accumulators?

what about something like

Shot consumption: 9.6 MW
Extended consumption: 1.22 MW

+1
maybe "Burst" consumption