Solar panel potential nerfs

[Unfawkable]

The currently trending consensus around balance is that since the maps are so smaller and meteors are no longer a danger, you get to space much more quickly and Solar Panels make for a lot more efficient power source making others pretty much obsolete. Even with the topside being smaller, it's still get way too much for how easy they are to make and that's even when you leave room for other rocket oriented buildings.

So here's some ways I believe they could be toned down, many of which were mentioned by other members (One of these, or combination of several):

1) Remove glass from POI windows. This is an absolute must, as it's a big shortcut to making a couple of Solar panels right of the bat with no investment.

2) The cost of Solar panels could go up, either doubling the glass requirement or adding a refined metal or even steel component to the price.

3) Make the Solar Panels wider. Currently they are 7x3, so increasing the width to 9 or 11 would make it so you can fit less of them (And of course reduce the Lux per tile required for full power since more tiles now). This would require redoing the model, but it should be possible to just scale it up.

4) Reduce the peak Lux amount during daytime. Currently on the starting Planetoid, the Lux amount is far above 50.000 Lux per tile required for full power, so you don't even need all tiles to be exposed to light. Reducing this on your starting Planetoid significantly would be an easy and straightforward fix, and would allow other Planetoid balance as some Planetoids could have more Lux exposure.

5) The good ol' reduction in power production. 240 Watts seems like a nice "round" number.

[n_t_p]

240 W seems OK since we don't have weather. I don't like the idea of wider panels, that's weird.

No POI glass is a no-brainer.

[pether]

3 hours ago, Unfawkable said:

4) Reduce the peak Lux amount during daytime. Currently on the starting Planetoid, the Lux amount is far above 50.000 Lux per tile required for full power, so you don't even need all tiles to be exposed to light. Reducing this on your starting Planetoid significantly would be an easy and straightforward fix, and would allow other Planetoid balance as some Planetoids could have more Lux exposure.

Lets add sun to our hexmap.

Starting asteroid could be far from it and as a result - with little lux and bad solar panels.

Other asteroids could be closer or more far away from it - each asteroid would have different efficiency for the panels (and maybe space radiation?)

We could have some rocket module to make use of sun - like we could land on it (during the night OFC) and gather some sunflowers from the surface. Or we could make very late game Dupson Sphere around it

[Unfawkable]

3 hours ago, pether said:

Lets add sun to our hexmap.

Starting asteroid could be far from it and as a result - with little lux and bad solar panels.

Other asteroids could be closer or more far away from it - each asteroid would have different efficiency for the panels (and maybe space radiation?)

We could have some rocket module to make use of sun - like we could land on it (during the night OFC) and gather some sunflowers from the surface. Or we could make very late game Dupson Sphere around it

This actually sounds really nice, but I think that lore wise in Oxygen, all the Planetoids are roughly the same distance from the Sun and they are all in Earth's Orbit since it blew up. If I'm wrong, this is something I definitely wouldn't mind seeing.

[pether]

2 hours ago, Unfawkable said:

This actually sounds really nice, but I think that lore wise in Oxygen, all the Planetoids are roughly the same distance from the Sun and they are all in Earth's Orbit since it blew up. If I'm wrong, this is something I definitely wouldn't mind seeing.

Oh, didn't know that. Then, 2 more ideas:

1) Nymph Asteroid, contains only sunbugs and light emmiting plants. Acts like little sun for purpose of solar panel efficiency on nearby asteroids

2) Atmospheres with different clouds affect total light reaching the asteroids

[Sasza22]

9 hours ago, pether said:

Lets add sun to our hexmap.

Can`t wait for people trying to land on the sun during nighttime.