[Rseding91] Personal roboport "20kW transmission" does nothing
Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2017 12:42 pm
The Personal roboport is listed as having a 20kW transmission energy usage (in raws this is "energy_consumption"). To the extent of my testing I've been unable to discover any actual associated usage
I started by testing some reasonable hypothesis on what the transmission might be:
1. A continuous drain for maintaining the logistic area (as is the case for the full size Roboport). I tried charging a roboport with a single portable solar panel, it successfully charged indicating that roboports do not have an idle drain.
2. A drain while robots are active. I charged a roboport with a solar panel until it showed a sliver of green in the electricity bar, then I removed the solar panel and attempted to deplete the electricity bar by keeping robots busy but not charging*. The sliver of green bar did not deplete.
3. A drain while robots are active but which is unable to drain the stored charge: I started with an empty roboport, added a single PSP, then kept robots busy (but not charging), the roboport successfully charged from the PSP even while robots were active.
Finally in case the effect was real but too subtle to appear, I tried editing the raws to increase transmission to 2MW then 200MW and repeated the above tests, working on the theory that it should be not subtle when increased 10000x. I did not observe any difference.
My conclusion then is that the 20kW transmission energy consumption simply does not work. Either it should work or should be removed so as to not mislead players about energy consumption (for example a reasonable player might think you need 2-3 portable solar panels to cover the transmission cost). I did this testing in 0.15 but in previous versions I regularly used modular armor setups that simply would not have worked if the 20kW transmission did anything logical - such as 5 panels to 4 roboports.
* For the curious, I did this by having the robots perform nearby repair jobs which involved a distance too short for them to bother recharging. Basically I stood next to a tank and shotgunned it a lot.
I started by testing some reasonable hypothesis on what the transmission might be:
1. A continuous drain for maintaining the logistic area (as is the case for the full size Roboport). I tried charging a roboport with a single portable solar panel, it successfully charged indicating that roboports do not have an idle drain.
2. A drain while robots are active. I charged a roboport with a solar panel until it showed a sliver of green in the electricity bar, then I removed the solar panel and attempted to deplete the electricity bar by keeping robots busy but not charging*. The sliver of green bar did not deplete.
3. A drain while robots are active but which is unable to drain the stored charge: I started with an empty roboport, added a single PSP, then kept robots busy (but not charging), the roboport successfully charged from the PSP even while robots were active.
Finally in case the effect was real but too subtle to appear, I tried editing the raws to increase transmission to 2MW then 200MW and repeated the above tests, working on the theory that it should be not subtle when increased 10000x. I did not observe any difference.
My conclusion then is that the 20kW transmission energy consumption simply does not work. Either it should work or should be removed so as to not mislead players about energy consumption (for example a reasonable player might think you need 2-3 portable solar panels to cover the transmission cost). I did this testing in 0.15 but in previous versions I regularly used modular armor setups that simply would not have worked if the 20kW transmission did anything logical - such as 5 panels to 4 roboports.
* For the curious, I did this by having the robots perform nearby repair jobs which involved a distance too short for them to bother recharging. Basically I stood next to a tank and shotgunned it a lot.
So, I'm going to remove it.