I'm sorry, but the coal generator uses way to much coal. (and it's bugged)

[nafeasonto]

The coal generator becomes useless almost every 30 cycles, even WITH a smart battery.  Unless you are super lucky and hit a gas vent in time, your power is going to start draining.  You are going to run out of coal very quickly, I have faced this in three different games, and literally had to rush myself to find a vent in my 4th game, that isn't fun for me (And probably others.)   

The amount of coal the generator uses needs to be lessened per tick. The generator runs out way to quickly. 

Also there is a huge bug with resupplying coal to the generator, i turned EVERYTHING off in priorities, and only had supply on.  AND had the coal generator on 9.  They still wouldn't put more coal in it.  I also tested this with NO mods to make sure.  The only way they resupply half the time is when I put it on yellow alert.  The coal power planet needs to be tweaked heavily, because as of now, it sucks. 

My friend who got the game is also having the same issue. 

If you want to balance it, just make it create double the carbon dioxide.  

[Lifegrow]

What is the % slider in your coal gens set to ?

I'm assuming you have them wired up to automation, but try setting the coal gen slider to 100%.

[Neotuck]

There are many ways to address this, first off coal was never meant to be a long term power source

Don't build power hungry bases if you only have coal, keep things simple until you find a gas vent (there are many options for this so explore varius energy saving builds for early game)

You can also ranch hatches early for extra coal

 

[abud]

If you don't mind using mod, I recommend this mod by @Nightinggale That would solve coal delivery problems when you didn't use sweeper arm for them. In description also explain how vanilla deliveries work.

 

[ONIfreak]

Coal gen is not long term power solution. It is emergency and remote statupns since it is very easy to setup. Try to move to solar, nat gas, hydrogen, steam - whatever is available in seed and do not relay on coal that much and problem solved. 

[Nebbie]

Coal generators are for pairing with hatch ranching to convert useless materials into power. In the early game, a manual generator will more than take care of power while you work to further research and explore the map to find your midgame power options (natural gas is guaranteed, and so are hatches).

[Neotuck]

Here's some examples of power saving tips most players do to save on coal:

Keeping food stored in a sterile gas instead of using refrigerators to keep food fresh

Use algae terrariums paired with deoderizers instead of oxygen diffusers and electrolyzers.

Build a gym (build a bunch of low priority manuel generators set to 100%)

 

[JahwsUF]

16 minutes ago, Nebbie said:

Coal generators are for pairing with hatch ranching to convert useless materials into power. In the early game, a manual generator will more than take care of power while you work to further research and explore the map to find your midgame power options (natural gas is guaranteed, and so are hatches).

Absolutely this.  In my current game, I'm at cycle 160 and still going strong on Coal Generators - with over 70 tons of Coal stored away!  That said, I've kept a few isolated circuits that use Manual Generators instead, and around cycle 120 I started linking a bit of Manual Generator power into the main grid.  Most of the early-accessible machines that can reasonably run from Manual Power do so.

Maybe it's that I'm on a Terra map, where Coal is relatively plentiful, but still.  The key is to optimize your use of Power and simply spend less.  I've never been close to running out of Coal, let alone so quickly, when using a Smart Battery - but then again, I never go past 4 Coal Generators.  They're perfectly fine and well-balanced, personally.

Now, about resupplying Coal.  Dupes will only resupply Coal when both of the following are true:

• The Coal Generator is "nearly out" of Coal - probably somewhere around 17% of original capacity.  Most other stations work similarly - Mealwood plants have a 'capacity' of 30kg Dirt and are only resupplied once at least 25kg Dirt is needed; for Mushrooms, that's 12kg Slime capacity and 10 resupply.  Even Oxygen Diffusers and Research Stations work by similar rules.
• The issue is that Coal Generators must be enabled to accept deliveries.  If they go disabled before a delivery is made, the errand is cancelled and the Dupe finds something else to do.  This is why Auto-Sweepers are extremely useful to pair with Coal Generators once available.

[Promethien]

There is a slider on generators that have a dupe interaction that says Battery Recharge Threshold. Mouse over it and you get a tooltip that says "Duplicants will operate this when battery falls below the selected percentage." This is easy to understand on the hamster wheel. However on the other two generators that have it, coal and wood, it isn't as immediately apparent what it does. The answer is the same as with the wheel though, dupes won't perform their interaction with the generator unless the batteries connected to the generator are below the threshold you set here. So for the coal that interaction is...supply coal to the generator. This is the problem of most people who complain about the generator not getting filled. They have a dupe pumping away on a wheel keeping your batteries above the default 50% threshold and thus coal delivery errands are getting canceled. The simplest solution is, set the slider to 100%. This actually completely solves the problem and you only need to do it once per generator.

[ONIfreak]

What i usually do is set manual generators first. After set natural gas generators (6 of them) with lots of smart batteries. So nat.gas-smart bat-transformer-smart bat(woth power **** off before transformer) - therefore nat gas generators charga smart bat. Which than sent power to transformers which charge smart bat. So all machines works on bats only and nat gas are just quich recharge. Saves a lot of nat fas ( usually have 30-40 reservoirs set before just in case. Usin coal generators for temporary outposts while clearing. Works for 600+ cycles with no problems. 

[xialeth]

The other thing about playing on Terra is that you have quite a bit of coal outside the starting biome in the pink biome (... the one where dreckos spawn). On my last base that got to 200-ish cycles ([1]), I had about three ... or four? coal generators and while I almost ran out of coal once, it was easily fixed by mining the surrounding biomes. Mind that I also hadn't figured out how to use hatches then.

[1] that base mainly failed because I hadn't realized oil spawned at the bottom of the map and once I found it, immediately cooked my base with a polymer press

[Nightinggale]

4 hours ago, abud said:

If you don't mind using mod, I recommend this mod by @Nightinggale That would solve coal delivery problems when you didn't use sweeper arm for them. In description also explain how vanilla deliveries work.

I know some people consider mods to be cheats and in some cases I would tend to agree. However I consider this specific mod to be a bugfix mod rather than a new/easier feature. I would also add that the wood generator shares the same code, hence same problems and the mod applies the same fix.

7 hours ago, nafeasonto said:

The amount of coal the generator uses needs to be lessened per tick. The generator runs out way to quickly. 

[snip]

If you want to balance it, just make it create double the carbon dioxide.  

Changing constant numbers like fuel usage per second, exhaust per second or watts produced while active is easily done with a mod. I won't do it, at least not with the existing mod, but if anybody makes a mod, which mods this the usual way (postfix to CreateBuildingDef and/or ConfigureBuildingTemplate), then the mods will be compatible. It would also be compatible with Piped Output.

[bobucles]

If the coal generator is disabled, the supply jobs ALSO get disabled. A duplicant will literally stop refilling the generator and drop coal on the ground if it disables in the middle of the task.

The similar thing happens with the hydrogen generator. The hydrogen will flow into the generator, but if the generator gets disabled at that moment it will reject being refilled and the gas simply disappears.

[nafeasonto]

5 hours ago, JahwsUF said:

 

• The issue is that Coal Generators must be enabled to accept deliveries.  If they go disabled before a delivery is made, the errand is cancelled and the Dupe finds something else to do.  This is why Auto-Sweepers are extremely useful to pair with Coal Generators once available.

I consider that a HUGE oversighted bug. 

[BeeClops]

You have to be doing some thing wrong, i rely on coal for quite some time as my main power source and rarely have issues, usually my main power supply with petroleum is not set until cycle 200 or so; depends a little if and where i find a nat gas vent, but assuming i don't at all it's still fairly easy to manage.

Do you keep storage units with coal next to your generatos? So dupes don't have to run across the map to fuel it until you get to sweepers.

Do you farm hatches? It's vital if u rely on coal. For me personally, i tend to have 2 ranches going pretty quick, like around day 30 to 50 max, and add another 2 later on, depending on coal demands. I have excess coal probably in 8/10 runs. That works for me.

[bobucles]

The most common way to witness the automation bug (it's not a coal bug, it's a fundamental behavior of automation) is if you give the smart batteries too narrow a range. For example if the batteries are set to on:30 and off:35 then the generator will rapidly toggle on and off. Duplicants will be completely unable to refill the generator as a result.

[NoQuitting]

2 hours ago, bobucles said:

The most common way to witness the automation bug (it's not a coal bug, it's a fundamental behavior of automation) is if you give the smart batteries too narrow a range. For example if the batteries are set to on:30 and off:35 then the generator will rapidly toggle on and off. Duplicants will be completely unable to refill the generator as a result.

What if you wanted automation to prevent the supplying of coal to these generators? I'm not 100% sure it is a bug...

[bobucles]

2 minutes ago, NoQuitting said:

What if you wanted automation to prevent the supplying of coal to these generators?

First, you'd have to start with a single situation where for some reason you bring coal to a coal generator yet don't want to fill the coal generator.

[NoQuitting]

1 minute ago, bobucles said:

First, you'd have to start with a single situation where for some reason you bring coal to a coal generator yet don't want to fill the coal generator.

Maybe you have 10 coal generators next to the same coal supply and half of the generators are hooked to a different automation logic and are rarely used like maybe once a week. But the extra little coal you would have in your storage bin might make this 'feature' not so worthy.

[axxionx12]

8 hatches will supply a single coal generator almost continuously. They'll also supply meat, surplus eggs, and help you delete lots of unused minerals!

[bobucles]

19 minutes ago, NoQuitting said:

Maybe you have 10 coal generators next to the same coal supply and half of the generators are hooked to a different automation logic and are rarely used like maybe once a week.

That's getting into a reallllllllllllllly narrow and kind of stupid edge case. If you have so little coal that you can't keep 10 generators full (not running, just passively full), then no amount of automation is going to save it. Also, automation can turn off autosweepers and lock out doors to keep dupes out. The tools for stopping useful tasks already exist.

There's no legitimate reason that automation should be interfering with a supply task.  The game can't know what's going to happen next, so the correct option is to keep the generator filled for any contingency.  If you want a machine totally disabled, send the order to disable it or dismantle it entirely.

[NoQuitting]

14 minutes ago, bobucles said:

That's getting into a reallllllllllllllly narrow and kind of stupid edge case. If you have so little coal that you can't keep 10 generators full, then no amount of automation is going to save it.

There's no legitimate reason that automation should be interfering with a supply task.  The game can't know what's going to happen next, so the correct option is to keep the generator filled for any contingency.  If you want a machine totally disabled, send the order to disable it or dismantle it entirely.

If automation stops supply then I don't understand why it doesn't stop the sweeper from supplying to that device though. You are right it is really narrow case but maybe we have to think is there any other machines in the game that maybe we can automation to stop the supply to because maybe the coal generator is just being consistent with everything else.

[Aelfled]

It's the lead time on dupes getting errands that is the difference, the sweeper is always there and ready to pounce, if a dupe is going to do the job then (unless you have idle dupes at all times) it needs to wait until a dupe finishes their current task (and isn't forbidden from supply errands), they then need to grab the nearest coal (to them, for reasons that only make sense due to cpu load) and march across the map, at any point in that process if the automation turns off then it gets cancelled.

[NoQuitting]

5 minutes ago, Aelfled said:

It's the lead time on dupes getting errands that is the difference, the sweeper is always there and ready to pounce, if a dupe is going to do the job then (unless you have idle dupes at all times) it needs to wait until a dupe finishes their current task (and isn't forbidden from supply errands), they then need to grab the nearest coal (to them, for reasons that only make sense due to cpu load) and march across the map, at any point in that process if the automation turns off then it gets cancelled.

I see so the Supply Arm doesn't Supply coal when it is disabled with automation. I think this lack of supplying to disabled buildings is a feature no? I understand that it can be frustrating to someone with coal not knowing it does this but it probably is a useful feature for other machines that need to be supplied?

[bobucles]

17 minutes ago, NoQuitting said:

why doesn't [automation] stop the sweeper from supplying to that device though.

If the sweeper is disabled, it should! If the sweeper doesn't obey signals properly, that's a straight up bug. Duplicants sniping jobs from an autosweeper is partially a game issue and partially a player issue. Locked rooms don't let duplicants steal jobs.

Quote

are there any other machines in the game that maybe we can automation to stop the supply to 

Many other machines get disabled when they run out of orders in the queue. Without any orders to perform, the player's reason to use them is exhausted and the machine automatically responds with no materials in storage.

 Coal generators always have an inherent order, Provide Power. There's no good reason to deny such a critical order when power is essential at all times. Players can still make all sorts of contraptions so the coal generator is impossible to refill, but that brings up the question of WHY the heck you would ever willingly make a generator impossible to refuel. If a player wouldn't build such a thing, automation shouldn't be doing it either.

Edit: Keep in mind that you still CAN make a coal generator impossible to refuel with external automation, just like you can make a Mr. Bones transit tube ride that dupes can enter but never leave.