Does "Quality" Make Fusion Reactors Worse?

[spacedog]

Even on the easiest plant to use it on (Aquilo, as you don't have to ship anything other than holmium there to sustain fusion), I don't bother with it, because I can't get heat out of it that I desperately need on that planet.

I'm 100% with you on this one. Not having a plasma heat exchanger was a huge miss.

This is on brand for Space Age, though, and it's the thing I hate most about the expansion. "No no no, you're supposed to make solid fuel with all the extra ammonia and burn that in the heating towers plastered all over your base. That's how we intended for this planet to be played."

So many cases of this, where there's a clearly "intended" way to do things, and as a result less freedom to be creative in solutions.

Sorry, off topic.

[spacedog]

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[mmmPI]

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[Orum]

Because running a fusion reactor at 100% is super hard indeed

Not hard, just impractical. To do so requires large arrays of accumulators, and some fairly basic circuitry to make it all work. The circuitry is no big deal, but building large arrays of accumulators is just not worth it. I've done that on Fulgora to make use of the lightning, but it's not a particularly "fun" aspect of the game, and one I'd rather skip when I have other options for power.

[mmmPI]

Because running a fusion reactor at 100% is super hard indeed

Not hard, just impractical. To do so requires large arrays of accumulators, and some fairly basic circuitry to make it all work. The circuitry is no big deal, but building large arrays of accumulators is just not worth it. I've done that on Fulgora to make use of the lightning, but it's not a particularly "fun" aspect of the game, and one I'd rather skip when I have other options for power.

No it's not impractical at all, you just need to have a base that consume more than it can produce and rely on other source for the differential.

[Orum]

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[mmmPI]

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[fryyyy]

[Moderated by Koub : response to a since then moderated post]

[Orum]

No it's not impractical at all, you just need to have a base that consume more than it can produce and rely on other source for the differential.

Sure, and in those situations, you'll get more efficiency out of the fusion reactors by using lower quality reactors.

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[mmmPI]

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[mmmPI]

Sure, and in those situations, you'll get more efficiency out of the fusion reactors by using lower quality reactors.

No , they have the same efficiency when they have the same neighbour bonus and same 100% output (and they produce more power for the same footprint ! )


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[fryyyy]

No , they have the same efficiency when they have the same neighbour bonus and same 100% output (and they produce more power for the same footprint ! )

Nope, to produce that more power you need more footprint. You need more generators to capture the extra power and if you're making a design that buffers power with accumulators so you're always using 100% output, a huge portion of your footprint is going to be accumulators, and you're going to need more of them to capture that "more power."

Any design you make with quality in an attempt to have a smaller footprint will produce cooler plasma, and therefore less efficient use of fuel. Any quality design you make to match the fuel efficiency of a non-quality design will have the same footprint.

"Yeah but the quality reactor will produce more power." Yes, with a larger footprint.

No other quality item forces you to make trade-offs. Quality assemblers don't need more electricity. Quality solar panels don't need to be arranged a certain way or only be deployed at certain times of day. Quality ammo doesn't change their relative effectiveness between different creature types. The cost of quality is the industry to produce the ingredients and the logistics to handle different quality ingredients. All of the final products are just better. All except one.

In the only scenario where you get a benefit from quality fusion reactors, when you squeeze your two legendary reactors (with roughly the industrial cost to produce 8000 non-quality reactors) on your space platform with no space for 1300 legendary accumulators to buffer the power and are therefore burning 50% more fuel than a normal reactor setup (and saving only 6x6 grid squares in space) ask yourself if your power solution is really 150% better for using legendary.

Every Item, Entity, and Equipment has 5 possible qualities now, and each quality tier gives an improved bonus value, used for most of the stuff:

Normal: Base quality for everything, no bonus
Uncommon: +30% bonus
Rare: +60% bonus
Epic: +90% bonus
Legendary: +150% bonus

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[mmmPI]

"Yeah but the quality reactor will produce more power." Yes, with a larger footprint.

I see we are progressing here, now you are claiming quality need higher footprint to produce more power ?

[mmmPI]

No other quality item forces you to make trade-offs.

Quality fuel makes your trains faster but makes them require larger braking distance causing to potentially having less of them running at the same time which is a trade off.

If you apply your reasonning to nuclear reactor, then it's the same, if only upgrade the reactor you will start wasting fuel if you don't increase the number of heat exchanger or their quality.

[fryyyy]

"Yeah but the quality reactor will produce more power." Yes, with a larger footprint.

I see we are progressing here, now you are claiming quality need higher footprint to produce more power ?

Yes please show me your ultimate quality fusion power setup that produces x MW that is as fuel efficient as a non-quality set up and also takes up a smaller footprint. Don't forget you only make "well designed" fusion setups, so it needs to only run at max neighbor bonus (I want to see hundreds of accumulators.) Then I'm going to show you the non-quality version that either has the same footprint or is more fuel efficient while only taking up ~1% more space.

[fryyyy]

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[mmmPI]

[Moderated by Koub : response to a since then moderated post]

Yes please show me your ultimate quality fusion power setup that produces x MW that is as fuel efficient as a non-quality set up and also takes up a smaller footprint. Don't forget you only make "well designed" fusion setups, so it needs to only run at max neighbor bonus (I want to see hundreds of accumulators.) Then I'm going to show you the non-quality version that either has the same footprint or is more fuel efficient while only taking up ~1% more space.

I'm sorry but i don't understand your fixation on accumulator, i've already said there is no need to use any with fusion reactor.

1) Just take any normal quality fusion reactor, and upgrade both reactor and turbine by one tier of quality.
2) increase power drain to match the new generation
3) congrats, same footprint same efficiency, more power, thanks to quality

[fryyyy]

[Moderated by Koub : response to a since then moderated post]

2) increase power drain to match the new generation

This is fascinating, too. How do you arbitrarily set the power consumption to exactly 100% of your fusion reactors' output. Your factory always has a constant draw? Are you putting stuff down just to draw power and not actually produce anything just to get the "efficiency" out of your fusion? Are you constantly running back and forth between adding new factory production and adding more fusion generators to make sure you're matching power consumption and production?

Are you completely unwilling to back anything you say up with any numbers? Any pictures?

It sounds like you want quality to be a multiplier on the neighbor bonus instead of the max plasma/fuel rate.

I can see two solutions:

1.) Have quality increase the temperature of the plasma a reactor produces, not the volume. This would still increase max output for the people who need to squeeze every square out of their platform. It would let you drop in a quality reactor over a non-quality and always improve fuel efficiency in any setup. Neighbor bonus would still scale with the proportion of power used, offering the same logistical challenge to maximize efficiency.

2.) Have the neighbor bonus be based on the current output of the reactor, instead of the proportion of current output / max output. I.E. If a reactor of any quality outputs 100 MW, have it give a 100% neighbor bonus. If it outputs 150 MW, have it give 150% neighbor bonus, etc. Like the previous idea, you'd never encounter a scenario where you lose anything for upgrading to a higher quality. This does remove the (imo small but welcome) logistical challenge of trying to make your reactors work at max capacity for max efficiency, though.

[mmmPI]

[Moderated by Koub : response to a since then moderated post]

2) increase power drain to match the new generation

This is fascinating, too. How do you arbitrarily set the power consumption to exactly 100% of your fusion reactors' output. Your factory always has a constant draw? Are you putting stuff down just to draw power and not actually produce anything just to get the "efficiency" out of your fusion? Are you constantly running back and forth between adding new factory production and adding more fusion generators to make sure you're matching power consumption and production?
Are you completely unwilling to back anything you say up with any numbers? Any pictures?

It was already explained several time

you just need to have a base that consume more than it can produce and rely on other source for the differential.

What is that you don't understand exactly here ?

[fryyyy]

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