Counterintuitive electrical power supply system (a professional insight)

[d_kovalchuk]

Hello!

To start with, I consider this game an impressive piece of modern game development and a true gem. Nevertheless, having played for 20 hours, my impression about the implementation is that it leaves a lot to be desired. On the one hand, being a power engineer, I gather that there was no intention to make a power system sim, on the other hand, I strongly believe that any simplification should either make the life of player easier or make more sense from a point of view of common audience. 

As for this, I am convinced that the selected avenue of the implementation of electrical feature do not help to achieve none of the purposes. Moreover, if one compared that to gas redistribution or heat propagation, they would be surprised by simulations the game can actually run and that it looks more than acceptable. Therefore, my take on this is that actual calculations should be made to represent the load of a particular branch of the grid even thought I admit that it might eat some CPU time. However, the game does not require such a depth, so it can only allow to use tree-like power system design since the opposite does not make much sense even in a current state of the game.

Last but not least, any look at an in-game power transformer just causes a strain of pain for me because the actual purpose to install a transformer is to transmit energy over long distances using a higher voltage class. Absolutely, there are techniques to limit power output of on a certain line, which can be classified to two main types. The first one, which is always used for protection purposes, is to break the circuit after according to some set control value, the second one implies lowering frequency of the system by the generator or some external electronic device when is there is not enough power, a good reference for that may be a situation in Factorio when every building starts to work more slowly in a case of a lack of generation.

To infer, I believe that even lack of any wire overload mechanic in Factorio is superior in comparison to what we currently have in ONI. Although I deem that, with this feature implemented, there could be no need for a function that transformer currently performs in a game, which, in turn, may allow to completely erase it from the game. Of course, there are so many interesting mechanics that could supplant the lack of transformers, for example, a frequency avalanche or even short circuits with circuit breakers. 

Please, feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need a consultation concerning the matter.

Have a great day,

Dzmitry