Manual generator in Joules, consideration for athletics

[The Plum Gate]

The manual generator is a tier 1 item, and small batteries are as well - it can be a bit confusing to newcomers to try to guestimate the relationship between battery storage capacity and manual generator as a utility relation. Those of us with any experience in electrical theory know that this relationship is 1:1 - one watt seconds is equal to one joule in the battery, or 1 second on the generator is putting 400 joules in said battery. This particular mathematical relationship isn't directly portrayed.

I'm proposing the manual generator be given an energy production in terms of joules per second ( while taking into account the athletic performance of the operator ). It would therefore be a variable producer having a baseline equal to that of the duplican'ts athletics.  Therefore the anemic among them will not perform as well as the runners. Currently, operating the Manual Generator boosts a duplicant's tinkering skill - it stands to reason that players would not be inclined to keep one duplicant on the generator since doing so wouldn't have any positive effect on the performance thereon <- this is a sensible balance if I do say so myself.

The issue this creates is proper correlation between energy production and storage, but not one which does not create a correlation with energy consumption. Obviously this looks like a bad idea: A manual generator that outputs joules, while everything else is portrayed as consuming Watts.

Other thoughts are happening here:

Power in terms of Joules.

[chaos0720]

6 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

I'm proposing the manual generator be given an energy production in terms of joules per second ( while taking into account the athletic performance of the operator ). It would therefore be a variable producer having a baseline equal to that of the duplican'ts athletics.  Therefore the anemic among them will not perform as well as the runners. 

The issue this creates is proper correlation between energy production and storage, but not one which does not create a correlation with energy consumption. Obviously this looks like a bad idea: A manual generator that outputs joules, while everything else is portrayed as consuming Watts.

Other thoughts are happening here:

Power in terms of Joules.

The watt (symbol: W) is a derived unit of power in the International System of Units (SI) defined as 1 joule per second and can be used to quantify the rate of energy transfer.

 

I don't understand what your issue is? Watts are equal to joules per second

[The Plum Gate]

10 hours ago, chaos0720 said:

The watt (symbol: W) is a derived unit of power in the International System of Units (SI) defined as 1 joule per second and can be used to quantify the rate of energy transfer.

 

I don't understand what your issue is? Watts are equal to joules per second

Thanks for that cut and paste definition.  I've read it, but not everyone has nor should they be expected to know it. Too bad it's not in the game somewhere. That's my first issue. 

My second issue is that the manual generator doesn't take into account the skill or ability of a duplicant - the production is static.

Ignoring the notion of switching over to joules: one could make the manual generator a variable watt generator. - In which case there would only be the lingering lack of an in game explantion regarding power production vs the storage nomenclature.

[brummbar7]

I do think the notion of unifying the units between batteries and buildings is probably good.  Although it is educational to compel the player to try to understand the joule-watt relationship - not really Klei's goal with the game though I'm sure.   But I'm not sure scaling the manual generator based on athletics is all that great, given that it's easily the fastest trained skill in the game.   I would hope they'd at least extend the rate at which it trains up.  I'd suggest maybe 50x at least.

[The Plum Gate]

34 minutes ago, brummbar7 said:

But I'm not sure scaling the manual generator based on athletics is all that great, given that it's easily the fastest trained skill in the game.

Perhaps moving the relationship it has with tinkering over to strength might be a more compelling proposition. Maybe even take the power generation down to 300 watts and alter the manner in which leveling occurs.

The first thing I do is research level one power, I don't even bother with building tiny batteries unless I have some sort of resource distribution problem.

[chaos0720]

13 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

Thanks for that cut and paste definition.  I've read it, but not everyone has nor should they be expected to know it. Too bad it's not in the game somewhere. That's my first issue. 

My second issue is that the manual generator doesn't take into account the skill or ability of a duplicant - the production is static.

Ignoring the notion of switching over to joules: one could make the manual generator a variable watt generator. - In which case there would only be the lingering lack of an in game explantion regarding power production vs the storage nomenclature.

Well while you're on it, you should want thermal conductivity in explained in game. We should also have freezing points and melting points of everything in game. There are a lot of mechanics in the game that aren't explained.

[FistfulOfZen]

Fan of this idea, because it is realistic, though there should be a point at which the efficiency gain of higher Athletics powering the manual generator tops off because of a constraint of heat, friction, etc. Not all dupes should produce the same amount of energy. Great idea.