Factorio Forums

Right now boilers increase performance instantly based on demand. Realistically it would take boilers time to increase production to meet demand. If this was implemented I think it would make a interesting gameplay element provide a little more balance.

Right now most players just put down a ton of boilers at once and it is efficient because they can scale to demand instantly and can quickly forget about power production. They don't really need accumulators until they switch to solar panels only. If boilers couldn't adjust to demand instantly this would require accumulators before progressing to laser turrets.

Also the visual effect would be pretty cool as well. Imagine placing down a new miner and seeing everything slow down for a few seconds while the power gradually ramps up.

pcmaster160 wrote:Right now boilers increase performance instantly based on demand. Realistically it would take boilers time to increase production to meet demand. If this was implemented I think it would make a interesting gameplay element provide a little more balance.

Right now most players just put down a ton of boilers at once and it is efficient because they can scale to demand instantly and can quickly forget about power production. They don't really need accumulators until they switch to solar panels only. If boilers couldn't adjust to demand instantly this would require accumulators before progressing to laser turrets.

Also the visual effect would be pretty cool as well. Imagine placing down a new miner and seeing everything slow down for a few seconds while the power gradually ramps up.

Well, let's be honest:
- This is not real life, it's a game, so unrealistic mechanics it's fine
- Energy producing companies produce more than what's consumed for dealing with cases like this
- They keep analyzing the data to try to prevent this from happening (it's a law where I live). They get heavily penalized if they fail due to their fault (in theory).
- IRL most of those cases will get covered by those excess production and backup plans.

It takes time to implement those new backup plans, and they will not add fun nor new mechanics to the game (there's one already), just a step that everyone must do to ensure their bases (lasers for example) to work. It seems you didn't build 3k accumulators yet. When you build those and place 800 solar panels you'll shoot your boilers down.

Rather than boilers, maybe steam engines should take time to adjust (because they have inertia). Effectively no difference to gameplay, but easier to think about, since steam engines have access to the electric network stats, and boilers only have access to the water temperature.

Either way, it would make accumulators a requirement to use laser turrets effectively, so it also helps on the "laser turrets are OP" front.

For everything else, you'd probably need a handful of accumulators at most. Steam engines could have internal accumulators, to smooth out power fluctuations when you don't have laser turrets.

Yeah that's actually what I meant but I mixed up boilers and steam engines.

immibis wrote:Rather than boilers, maybe steam engines should take time to adjust (because they have inertia). Effectively no difference to gameplay, but easier to think about, since steam engines have access to the electric network stats, and boilers only have access to the water temperature.

Either way, it would make accumulators a requirement to use laser turrets effectively, so it also helps on the "laser turrets are OP" front.

For everything else, you'd probably need a handful of accumulators at most. Steam engines could have internal accumulators, to smooth out power fluctuations when you don't have laser turrets.