Redo the power bars.

[MrDoomah]

While this is a clear improvement over the current situation, I still don't see the need/use of two bars. I still think you can combine those bars into a single one with a marker for maximum power generation.

Could you explain why you need two bars?

[Vuliev]

Could you explain why you need two bars?

I think this response from ribsngibs explains things from the layman's POV pretty well:

Demand is a constantly moving target--it's not a fixed condition to satisfy and move on.

Are you arguing that because your maximum power generation capacity does not fluctuate (it only changes if you build more or have some emergency like biter attack or boilers run out of fuel), whereas your demand is all over the place, that it makes more sense to have the maximum power generation fixed on the readout while demand is the moving bar? That totally makes sense. I suppose with my method, it would not intuitively make sense to watch your "power" bar drop dramatically in relation to a fixed "demand" mark when a bunch of assemblers come online - it makes more sense for the consumption and generation bars to both move to the right in such a case, while the scale of the X axis remains fixed (with 100% on the far right).

Basically, it's better to definitively show the relationship between demand, current power generation, and capacity, all over a percentage-based scale. An appropriately detailed single-bar approach might be able to convey the same information as what I've shown, but it wouldn't do it as effectively.

[bobingabout]

The other thing they really need to do is change their energy units from joules to watt-hours, and add a game-time clock like the EvoGUI mod. Having energy in watt-hours is so much faster/easier to work with when trying to determine how much energy storage you actually have.

1 Watt is 1 Joule of energy consumed in 1 second. it makes sense.

Kilowatt Hours is basically a name made up because... if you consume 1kW of power for 1 hour, it would be 3600000 Joules consumed in that hour. It was basically done for one reason only... so that your electric meter doesn't show stupid big numbers. They could have tracked it in Mega Joules instead, and the number wouldn't have been that much bigger.

There is absolutely no reason why a game like this needs to use a "Dumb person's" name being used, the much more proper Joules and Watts is good, especially considering you can actually quite easily see Watts being used... My question would be, what would you use if thousands or millions of Kilowatt hours were being consumed? Kilo Kilowatt hours? Mega Kilowatt hours? that really does sound dumb, instead... you'd use Megawatts and Megajoules, Gigawatts, Terawatts etc.

[ssilk]

Cool how much new input this very, very old topic became. The problem exists from beginning and I think this last suggestions are really cool.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3723 Consumption/Production / Electric Network Info / Power Meter [The biggest thread around the power meters!]
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16967 The Electric network infoscreen is counter-intuitive [Also quite big discussion around the power meters]

I really recommend to read most of that old stuff (even if not always actual), before continuing!

Some pics from those threads:




And I made a linklist around the infoscreen in general:
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=25233 Electric Network Info (Power Bars...)

[Linosaurus]

Basically, it's better to definitively show the relationship between demand, current power generation, and capacity, all over a percentage-based scale. An appropriately detailed single-bar approach might be able to convey the same information as what I've shown, but it wouldn't do it as effectively.

Here is my take on this. It's similar to previous suggestions from you and ribsngibs, but hopefully more clear for new players. Not sure if this exact idea was in any previous thread.

A single bar for demand. It goes up to 150%, with a clear mark at 100% of capacity.

• It's identical to the current production bar until that hits 100%.
• When production is 100% and consumption bar is above 67%, you get the same information from the extended bar in this new system. (Because 100/150 = 66.67%)
• When the current consumption bar drops below 67% you get no further information at all. But you should be too busy panicking to look at bars.
• In particular - when you don't generate any power at all the bar should in theory be infinite. But again, you should be too busy panicking to care. (For sudden production crashes, the over time graph is more useful anyway in my opinion).
• It doesn't explicitly show current power generation, but that is sort of 'obvious' when looking at the bar.

The displayed numbers for consumption and current power generation (much better name than production!) should be the same as today, but not too close to the demand bar.

08a_greenbar.png (6.47 KiB) Viewed 4000 times

08b_redbar.png (6.5 KiB) Viewed 4000 times

Edit: Further thoughts on 'current power generation'. In factorio this is basically always exactly the lower of demand and available capacity, thus it doesn't add any information to make it part of the graphical representation of the moment-to-moment power situation. Besides, the fact that you are not actually producing more than you are using is shown as numbers. But I figure new players might ignore the numbers and just look for the bar. And of course this is my perspective, I know some players find the current bars perfectly intuitive.

[ribsngibs]

[EDIT] Here's an alternate version with hatching for excess capacity as well.

Btw I prefer the version without the excess capacity hatching. Again, from a layman'so point of view, if both bars are the same I am happy because I know my energy needs are met, and I can tell from the size of the bar in relation to the end of the graph what %utilization I am at. If the bars are different lengths, I need to doublecheck which is larger and make sure I am still ok. Well, I guess the color coding helps with that too. But I found your original diagram simplest.

[Vuliev]

If you consume 1W of power for 1 hour, it would be 3600 Joules consumed in that hour.

...yes, that's how unit conversion works.

It was basically done for one reason only... so that your electric meter doesn't show stupid big numbers.

No, it was done because it eliminates an unnecessary unit conversion. In power, the energy consumed by the system is the integral of power demand with respect to time, and time is measured in hours, not seconds. Average power demand multiplied by time equals energy consumed in that time. Even if your power meter measured time in seconds, it would in all likelihood use units of watt-seconds, because that's very simple to understand. Yes, 1J = 1Ws, but that's not the point--calling a watt-second a Joule is an abstraction necessary for higher science, not the layperson.

You want to talk about unhelpful units? Be thankful that your pumps, mining drills, boilers, inserters, pumpjacks, and exoskeletons are measured in kW instead of horsepower. Or that accumulators and batteries are measured in kJ rather than kAh.

There is absolutely no reason why a game like this needs to use a "Dumb person's" name being used, the much more proper Joules and Watts is good, especially considering you can actually quite easily see Watts being used...

...except for the fact that your power bill is measured in kWh, all news reporting on energy consumption uses kWh/MWh/GWh, and watt-hours as a measure of energy (as distinct from power) is a very simple concept to grasp.

My question would be, what would you use if thousands or millions of Kilowatt hours were being consumed? Kilo Kilowatt hours? Mega Kilowatt hours? that really does sound dumb, instead... you'd use Megawatts and Megajoules, Gigawatts, Terawatts etc.

...you'd use kW/kWh, MW/MWh, GW/GWh, TW/TWh, all the way up the SI prefixes. Just like the world has done for power generation for the past 90+ years.

A single bar for demand. It goes up to 150%, with a clear mark at 100% of capacity.

• It's identical to the current production bar until that hits 100%.
• When production is 100% and consumption bar is above 67%, you get the same information from the extended bar in this new system. (Because 100/150 = 66.67%)
• When the current consumption bar drops below 67% you get no further information at all. But you should be too busy panicking to look at bars.
• In particular - when you don't generate any power at all the bar should in theory be infinite. But again, you should be too busy panicking to care. (For sudden production crashes, the over time graph is more useful anyway in my opinion).
• It doesn't explicitly show current power generation, but that is sort of 'obvious' when looking at the bar.

I appreciate what you've done with this, but as a player that's already unsatisfied with the amount of detail in my power statistics, this would be extremely frustrating for me to use. There are other means of increasing accessibility without stripping out information/features/mechanics.

I know some players find the current bars perfectly intuitive.

Exactly, and that's I believe that simplifying the power bars will only make things worse--it really doesn't offer anything beyond the current "Consumption green = good, consumption not green = bad" approach of the existing power bars, and it strips out the implicit information therein.

Btw I prefer the version without the excess capacity hatching. Again, from a layman'so point of view, if both bars are the same I am happy because I know my energy needs are met, and I can tell from the size of the bar in relation to the end of the graph what %utilization I am at. If the bars are different lengths, I need to doublecheck which is larger and make sure I am still ok. Well, I guess the color coding helps with that too. But I found your original diagram simplest.

Excellent! I wasn't sure if people would prefer to see the capacity hatching or not.

[ssilk]

Some things to say:

First
It makes no sense in Factorio to count energy by hour. A game-day is about 7 minutes. A game-hour is 8.5 days.

The only useful time-base is seconds or minutes, cause the power consumption changes too much within an hour.
(Items are also counted in minutes, not hours)

Second
In my eyes it makes no sense to have a power-meter, which constantly changes the scale.
With v0.13 we will get the power switch. Which means: I can switch off whole construction streets. Which means: They don't even suck up standby-power. Which means: The minimum and maximum needed power can change within seconds a lot more than yet.

What that means: I don't know yet , but I think there needs to be much more clever way to display the power in a way, that everybody understands it.

[AutoMcD]

+1 to everyone, lots of good ideas in this thread. I agree the current method is confusing.
Current demand vs total production is all I really care to see as a simple meter.
The time chart I think is nice and fairly easy to understand.

[kann_]

Current demand vs total production is all I really care to see as a simple meter.

+1 here

The old system was kind of focused on the Power usage, which is just the smaller one of Current demand and total production.
I don't care about power usage!

Just use the SI units [energy]=J (joule) = W * s and [energy per time]= J/s = W (watt). In seconds, minutes or hours doesn't matter as long as it is consistent. It is just a unit... 10 W * h doesn't mean the system is running for one hour it just describes an energy of 10 J.

I like Linosaurus suggestion since it is true that production is more stable than consumption. Thus it makes a little more sense that the consumption is on the bar graph.
But please change the "100 %" label! 100 % of what? 100% means precisely 1, nothing else! Exchange it with "total production" or "100% production" or "available" or "available Power"

It doesn't explicitly show current power generation, but that is sort of 'obvious' when looking at the bar.

No it is not! That is exactly the problem with the old interface. As some seem to miss, the white indicator exactly shows the current power generation relative to the current demand. So please put an appropriate scale (label).