How should solar panels be addressed?

[lunazone]

With spaced out coming closer to release I was curious if they were going to fix solar panels, they currently make all other power sources obsolete due to the lack of meteors.

How do you think it should be fixed?

[pether]

I like how they require radbolt research to be unlocked. Currently this is too easy and can be gathered from single wheezewort, but if radiation was rebalanced to the point a player would need to make trip to 3rd planet and conduct research there, the solar panels would be rebalanced as well.

Or we could have sun (or other light-emmiting body, maybe temporal tear) on our hexmap, so only the closes planets would get full illumination. Starting asteroid would experience like half of it, and the farthest planets would be completly dark. In the effect, solar panels on the starting asteroid would be only half as good.

Another idea I saw on the forum and like is the sandstorm - weather condition that doesnt destroy solar panels but makes them dirty so they needed to be cleaned before reaching full potential again.

Increasing cost, plain decrease of power output, overheating, damaging etc are other options, but I don't believe them to be good ones. 

[crbd115]

personally I liked the suggestion I've seen passed around a few times where they would just extend the night part of the cycle which lowers their overall efficiency.

[Coolthulhu]

Longer nights would help a bit, but once the player gets enough batteries, they'd be equivalent to a flat power nerf.

I'd say that this is the problem: the batteries are just too convenient. IRL, solar panels are mostly "balanced" by batteries being a big problem. But I don't see a way of nerfing batteries with current energy system, we'd need to have smart batteries+auto wires from the start, or energy producers that adjust production based on needs.

8 hours ago, pether said:

Another idea I saw on the forum and like is the sandstorm - weather condition that doesnt destroy solar panels but makes them dirty so they needed to be cleaned before reaching full potential again.

Sounds hard to balance. It could easily turn into just a flat nerf as solars become too costly to ever clean. Or a micromanagement mess if dust accumulates indefinitely rather than being just binary "dusty" vs "clean".

Still, if it was done really well, it would essentially turn solars into stronger, limited hamster wheel equivalents.

[NeoDeusMachina]

I think removing a lot of the "free glass" from POIs was a good step towards making solar less accessible without at least researching and building the necessary infrastructure.

I don't think solar makes other power sources obsolete, unless your colony runs at very low power most of the time. If you start industrializing, building aquatuners and other large power consumers, you will end up spending most of the energy solar panels provide, and you will not be able to store much for the night. You might even start struggling during the day. Batteries also have their downsides, they require a lot of material if you want to mass produce them and you also need to cool them down. You will be using a lot of the available space on the surface to place the solar panels, which means less space for rocket infrastructure. You will also need a lot of space for the batteries.

Could you have a colony only using solar? Sure, probably. But to be fair, you could do that with any power source, they all have pros and cons.

I see solar as a good power source for mid game when your colony doesn't have huge power requirements, or when you colonize a new asteroid. Eventually, you will need something else than only solar. Anyway, that is what I have personally experienced in my different playthroughs since the DLC entered EA.

 

[ZombieDupe]

They should generate a small amount of heat when active, require refined metal and maybe some plastic in addition to the glass to build and that's it. The batteries you need to be able to take advantage of the gathered power already require a decent amount of cooling. But a longer day and night cycle overall would be good.

[Coolthulhu]

4 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

They should generate a small amount of heat when active, require refined metal and maybe some plastic in addition to the glass to build and that's it.

It would solve absolutely nothing. You already need metal for wires and plastic for research, so unless they consumed tons of it, the only thing that would change would be more hauling jobs.

[Sasza22]

Imo when there are no meteors there still should be regolith. It should slowly accumulate over time on the surface as debris and after it reaches a certain mass it would form a tile blocking the panel. Preventing this would require cleaning the panels regularly either via robominers, autosweepers or sweepy.

[JaxckLl]

Why is that an issue? Once you are at the point where you can build several Solar Panels and an accompanying Battery farm, you're also at the point where you could be boiling Petroleum or using volcano-based Steam. The power isn't "free" either. The player has to spend time & attention to develop Solar infrastructure and they need the accompanying Glass industry too. Once a player is launching rockets, they should be able to comfortably look away from their bases for several cycles without worrying they'll break. That means stable, easy to manage power. In the current design, that means Solar.

It's also really unfortunate that the amount of easy-to-access Glass is being reduced because it makes rocketry that much harder to tap. This game is dense beyond belief, doubly so in Spaced Out. Giving players straightforward solutions is important to streamline the experience for newer players. As with everything, there's nothing requiring that you use that glass for Solar Panels. Indeed if anything the issue is really that Glass is a mono-resource, used primarily for Solar and for little else.

I for one can comfortably get into the 4-6kw demand range by the time I'm hitting rocketry, so being able to add 1-2kw of straightforward power really helps to move forward. It would be an absolute drag to require Petrol boiling pre-Rocketry.

[NeoDeusMachina]

2 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

Giving players straightforward solutions is important to streamline the experience for newer players.

Why though? I keep reading this all over the place on the forums. Don't get me wrong, it is important to streamline things for new players. But why would everything need to be tailored for new players? I think there should be a balance between what needs to be streamlined for new players, then some things are perhaps for intermediate players, and then other things for more advanced players. If everything is being made easier for new players, the game will quickly become uninteresting and unchallenging for non-beginners.

I would think that managing multiple colonies, establishing rocket infrastructure and tackling space travel is not supposed to be meant for beginners. Their attention will probably be on understanding more basic stuff like, how do I set up my toilet, how do I build power circuits, how do I build piping networks, what is inlet and outlet ports? How do I feed duplicants? How do I produce O2? What do all those weird buildings I can see in the research tree do? Sweepy dock, is that important?

You get the idea.

I do, however, agree with you about how solar is currently not really an issue.

[Nebbie]

As far as dust covering them, I don't think that's a realistic problem for larger panels, because over time, new dust just displaces old. Any "active maintenance" stuff with the surface is probably a bad idea, as that's what really made meteor storms annoying, having this one part of the base that has to be messed with by dupes periodically.

So, in regards to cutting their power output, yes longer night, but also, I think building these absolutely gargantuan ones that make 380W needs to go. Something like the rocketry solar panel is more sane, where 200kg only gets you a dinky little 60W thing, and so you need to spend a lot of time making the glass for many more. I think if they were cut down to even 120W, but were only 3 tiles wide, things would be a lot better. They'd be less space efficient than now, and you'd need over 3x the glass for the same power.
Also, the game of "solar panel sine waves" has to go. Solar panels should block all light from going below, so that the surface really is more limiting and we don't need to do something weird and unintuitive to get high efficiency.

[blakemw]

9 hours ago, Nebbie said:

Also, the game of "solar panel sine waves" has to go. Solar panels should block all light from going below, so that the surface really is more limiting and we don't need to do something weird and unintuitive to get high efficiency.

Err they already block all light, the "sine waves" is because under intense sunlight a solar panel can reach its peak power with only some of its tiles exposed.

It is a dumb mechanism though, especially considering the "shadow effect" on real life solar arrays that destroys efficiency when partially shaded, a solar panel at very least should have the peak power calculated per tile, i.e. instead of summing the total power produced then capping it to 380 watts, instead cap the power per tile to (380/7) watts and sum the result.

[Nebbie]

2 hours ago, blakemw said:

Err they already block all light, the "sine waves" is because under intense sunlight a solar panel can reach its peak power with only some of its tiles exposed.

It is a dumb mechanism though, especially considering the "shadow effect" on real life solar arrays that destroys efficiency when partially shaded, a solar panel at very least should have the peak power calculated per tile, i.e. instead of summing the total power produced then capping it to 380 watts, instead cap the power per tile to (380/7) watts and sum the result.

Oh, right, I forgot how it actually worked, that is a dumb mechanism indeed.

[JaxckLl]

On 7/1/2021 at 9:45 PM, NeoDeusMachina said:

Why though? I keep reading this all over the place on the forums. Don't get me wrong, it is important to streamline things for new players. But why would everything need to be tailored for new players? I think there should be a balance between what needs to be streamlined for new players, then some things are perhaps for intermediate players, and then other things for more advanced players. If everything is being made easier for new players, the game will quickly become uninteresting and unchallenging for non-beginners.

I would think that managing multiple colonies, establishing rocket infrastructure and tackling space travel is not supposed to be meant for beginners. Their attention will probably be on understanding more basic stuff like, how do I set up my toilet, how do I build power circuits, how do I build piping networks, what is inlet and outlet ports? How do I feed duplicants? How do I produce O2? What do all those weird buildings I can see in the research tree do? Sweepy dock, is that important?

You get the idea.

I do, however, agree with you about how solar is currently not really an issue.

Solar panels are optional. There's multiple superb power sources that you could use instead. What they provide is a flat couple of KW which allows players to move on to something else. It's not about making the game easier, it's about making the game accessible.

Also, Spaced Out is paid content. That means it needs to be impactful to the experience as soon as the game is booted up. Arguably the Spaced Out starts & new resources do this, but Mud is hardly worth $10. The bulk of the DLC is flying around on the starmap. However flying around on the starmap is obtuse, fiddly, and extraordinarily difficult to achieve. It's a damn shame players like you don't see the problem with this.

[NeoDeusMachina]

9 minutes ago, JaxckLl said:

Solar panels are optional. There's multiple superb power sources that you could use instead. What they provide is a flat couple of KW which allows players to move on to something else. It's not about making the game easier, it's about making the game accessible.

Also, Spaced Out is paid content. That means it needs to be impactful to the experience as soon as the game is booted up. Arguably the Spaced Out starts & new resources do this, but Mud is hardly worth $10. The bulk of the DLC is flying around on the starmap. However flying around on the starmap is obtuse, fiddly, and extraordinarily difficult to achieve. It's a damn shame players like you don't see the problem with this.

You have no idea what kind of player, let alone person I am, so please let's stay away from judgments like that.

The base game is paid content, the DLC is paid content, but I don't think it means we should get access to all the new content and all the new mechanics instantly and without effort as soon as we generate a new world. I don't know about your experience, but in my case I can definitely say that I have felt the DLC as soon as the game started with the map layout, smaller asteroids, some resources hidden away on far away planets which means depending on what planet I started on, I had to plan differently. I have encountered new critters pretty much in the spawning area in the swamp asteroid. I personally have no issue with the rocketry, its "fiddlyness", or navigating on the starmap. Of course, that doesn't mean we all have the same experience, and other experiences are as valid.

[crbd115]

On 7/2/2021 at 12:03 PM, blakemw said:

It is a dumb mechanism though, especially considering the "shadow effect" on real life solar arrays that destroys efficiency when partially shaded, a solar panel at very least should have the peak power calculated per tile, i.e. instead of summing the total power produced then capping it to 380 watts, instead cap the power per tile to (380/7) watts and sum the result.

I think the easiest way to do it is just have it be 350/7 so its 50w per tile exposed.

[SharraShimada]

Solar panels are fine for me as they are now. I can put as many solar panels on top of my world as they fit, but it wont be enough. So for me they are not overpowered.

[crbd115]

10 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

Solar panels are fine for me as they are now. I can put as many solar panels on top of my world as they fit, but it wont be enough. So for me they are not overpowered.

I think they're fine other then the whole sinusoidal waves of panels make them too space efficient. I think its a simple thing to fix though

[ZombieDupe]

On 6/30/2021 at 4:00 PM, Coolthulhu said:

It would solve absolutely nothing. You already need metal for wires and plastic for research, so unless they consumed tons of it, the only thing that would change would be more hauling jobs.

Generating small amount of heat would require to have a cooling solution for them in the long run same as the batteries that store the power, so they then basically become like all the other generators in the game while taking up a lot of space without generating much power, just some extra for essential stuff. Additional materials like refined metal and especially plastic would limit the point in the game that you can build them further because you would need to get a glossry drecko farm going or refine oil. I don't see them as a huge problem or all that powerful, just a bit too early and easy to set up and I think this slight tweaking would balance them nicely. We are bound to get planetoids with meteor showers, maybe even some with starting planetoid as that, which would make solar power much more difficult to use and as a challenge starting world works, but not for easier difficulties or later planetoids you can land on that are further out. The notion that they are the only source of power you would ever use for everything is nonsense, you would probably just be slowing down progress in the game for yourself if you tried that.

[crbd115]

10 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

Generating small amount of heat would require to have a cooling solution for them in the long run same as the batteries that store the power, so they then basically become like all the other generators in the game while taking up a lot of space without generating much power

Solar panels don't generate heat because they are only absorbing energy they are not producing it. If the sun's rays in game were heating the planetoids surface then I would say sure, but they aren't. They are only producing light.

[degr]

sunlight is resource, but currently only solar panels use it (also beach chair). I have no idea how, but think it possible to create another type of consumers, which will be similarly valuable as solar panels, but would gave you another benefits.

From other hand, I can't understand what is wrong with meteor showers? Let's say, if you want quick and simple space expansion, run meteor showers on 3rd planetoid and further. Or just run meteor showers after 300 cycles. Something like show large red label "OHOHO, LOOK LIKE LARGE STONES WILL STRIKE ALL COLONIES AFTER 50 CYCLES, TIME TO BUILD BUNKERS ON SURFACE"

[Whitecold]

19 hours ago, degr said:

From other hand, I can't understand what is wrong with meteor showers? Let's say, if you want quick and simple space expansion, run meteor showers on 3rd planetoid and further. Or just run meteor showers after 300 cycles. Something like show large red label "OHOHO, LOOK LIKE LARGE STONES WILL STRIKE ALL COLONIES AFTER 50 CYCLES, TIME TO BUILD BUNKERS ON SURFACE"

Honestly just about everything is wrong with meteor showers everywhere. They made space builds annoying and monotonous, since bunkers are required everywhere, which btw also completely ruin the space feel for me.

Throwing timed threats is also very much not ONI, the only timer you get are resources you are using up, otherwise the game looks the same between cycle 1 and 1000

[degr]

29 minutes ago, Whitecold said:

since bunkers are required everywhere

You need them only you want them. Rockets are not damaged by asteroids, and I have no idea why people protect rockets with bunker doors. So, you need to protect surface with doors only in 2 cases - solar batteries, auto-regolith delivery. Both of them optional, so, you don't need bunkers everywhere.

 

41 minutes ago, Whitecold said:

otherwise the game looks the same between cycle 1 and 1000

I can't see problem here

[crbd115]

8 hours ago, Whitecold said:

Throwing timed threats is also very much not ONI, the only timer you get are resources you are using up, otherwise the game looks the same between cycle 1 and 1000

This statement makes no sense. The world already changes with how the player interreacts with it. Whether or not there is meteors doesn't change that. Meteors just made it so you had to make steel production before space travel and made the solar panels have a limit. There are reasonable arguments for and against meteors but this is just nonsense. The game already looks mostly the same between multiple playthroughs, almost everything is renewable and most of the important resources to be renewable are always guaranteed.

[ZombieDupe]

On 7/6/2021 at 7:54 PM, crbd115 said:

Solar panels don't generate heat because they are only absorbing energy they are not producing it. If the sun's rays in game were heating the planetoids surface then I would say sure, but they aren't. They are only producing light.

But it is one way to make them harder to set up. If the sunlight heated up the surface, there would also need to be respective cooling working as well unless we are fine with everything eventually overcooking and strange exploits coming to save your day for more experienced players. But this might require updating the radiation simulation for the DLC, which I don't know if Klei would even want to do at this point.