meepmoop Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 As someone who looks to move on to another energy source beside gas, i check the old posts and see solar energy was bad some time ago. Did it change? is it still not useful? and if it is, what are some good methods of building them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nakomaru Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 Yep, not too hard to set up with door crushers. Lots of free power. Takes up lots of space for batteries. Good early space power source. Later I shut them down and use petrol or ng boiling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KILLABUDZ Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 Its passive, so once you build it its free power. Great to reduce the use of other power gen in the day time. AFAIK the ideal layout is a diagonal staggered with a single space. It does reduce the power per panel but gives more per surface area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caffeinated21 Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 I find solar to by an incidental byproduct of my scanner setup (the column(tm) could change that, but... if I want rockets I need a telescope. To have a telescope that doesn’t constantly break I need to know when asteroid season is. To do that I need scanners that are open to a large area. If I’m gonna build bunkers etc for them, why not put solar underneath? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coolthulhu Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 I wouldn't bother with them when not going for super sustainable achievement, as you need a lot of steel to set them up and a lot of refined metal to connect them to your main base. To get them to work well, you also need either a lot of batteries or a very "dynamic" energy usage, with non-essential, non-dupe-operated machines automatically shutting down at low battery. Still, they're good if you want a lot of free energy to waste on luxuries and sweeper-fed smart coal, petroleum (vent CO2 to space if you don't need it) and natgas is just not cutting it. Has a minor synergy with steam, since steam requires heating, which is costly but can be shut down. You can run solar in the day to produce steam and then consume it during the night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellilea Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 I don't know any funky mechanics that go against what seems logical, and in such case the solar panels are quite eh. The energy they produce will be used up by the autodiggers, sweepers, and bunker doors required to keep them from being obscured by regolith. Someone mentions door crushing here, I guess you may need this sort of tricks to make it flow nicely, but I prefer not to use them as doors don't tend to eradicate materials If that's what it means anyhow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mojo Filter Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 7 hours ago, caffeinated21 said: I find solar to by an incidental byproduct of my scanner setup... If I’m gonna build bunkers etc for them, why not put solar underneath? This.If you are going up to space anyway, why not set some up? I set up a bunch on my current map when I put up my scanner/telescope and honestly it brings in a ridiculous amount of essentially free power. Yes, it generally takes a big battery bank to make it work well, but I put them in the empty space in my big natural gas storage chamber. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rafker Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 5 hours ago, Ellilea said: I don't know any funky mechanics that go against what seems logical, and in such case the solar panels are quite eh. The energy they produce will be used up by the autodiggers, sweepers, and bunker doors required to keep them from being obscured by regolith. Someone mentions door crushing here, I guess you may need this sort of tricks to make it flow nicely, but I prefer not to use them as doors don't tend to eradicate materials If that's what it means anyhow. I am not sure about now (it was approx this spring), but I was not using sweepers and miners - I used some automation tricks that forced doors to re-close after meteor shower, which let the regolith fall and stay on the door and not block the sun. The only draw back - you need to build a diamond/waterflow tile right under the door, so the explosion from meteors breaks them a bit (which is really meh for a free power) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 They take heaps of setup time and a lot of materials. But, they are worth it given they are build on a large scale (across the whole width of the map). They'll power all of your surface operations. Also, I don't bother with auto diggers. Assign 2 dupes on it and you are getting the job done just the same. Yes, that does require a bit more micro management. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BT_20 Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 2 hours ago, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said: They take heaps of setup time and a lot of materials. But, they are worth it given they are build on a large scale (across the whole width of the map). They'll power all of your surface operations. Also, I don't bother with auto diggers. Assign 2 dupes on it and you are getting the job done just the same. Yes, that does require a bit more micro management. If you want to mine regolith with dupes have a row of drywall then block off the material like sandstone and the dupes will dig out the regolith no micromanaging. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psusi Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 11 hours ago, Ellilea said: I don't know any funky mechanics that go against what seems logical, and in such case the solar panels are quite eh. The energy they produce will be used up by the autodiggers, sweepers, and bunker doors required to keep them from being obscured by regolith. Someone mentions door crushing here, I guess you may need this sort of tricks to make it flow nicely, but I prefer not to use them as doors don't tend to eradicate materials If that's what it means anyhow. Door crushers take no power and destroy most of the regolith. If you want to save other fuel surces and have the steel for more bunker doors and other metal for the door crushers, it seems like a good thing to do. Also if your power grid is set up right you don't need a bunch of batteries... just have all the other generators shut down when solar is producing enough power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gurgel Posted December 26, 2019 Share Posted December 26, 2019 I have done this for ages with my own design for auto-miners. Can anybody give a quick rundown of the possible door-crusher approaches or post a link if there already is a summary? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psusi Posted December 26, 2019 Share Posted December 26, 2019 7 hours ago, Gurgel said: I have done this for ages with my own design for auto-miners. Can anybody give a quick rundown of the possible door-crusher approaches or post a link if there already is a summary? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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