Does tune-up wear off if a generator is idle?

[Master Miner]

I've noticed that dupes repeatedly go and "tune" coal generators that are idle and that were probably idle all the time since last "tune-up".

I'm not 100% sure - has someone verified if the "tune-up" wears off with time, no matter if the generator is in use or not?

Thank you!

[Arash70]

It'll wear off after a few cycles, no matter what.

[BlueLance]

To back Arash up the original value was 3 cycles from the moment it is upgraded regardless of its usage.

Time may have changed but the timer will always be ticking.

[Soulwind]

Does anyone actually use the tune up?  Metal is a limited resource and I at least am almost always out of copper well before I would really need a power bonus. 

[Luminite2]

Just now, Soulwind said:

Does anyone actually use the tune up?  Metal is a limited resource and I at least am almost always out of copper well before I would really need a power bonus. 

Yeah, I have no intention of using the tune-up in its current state; I don't like consuming non-renewable resources, and power generation is simple enough at this point that you can pretty much always just build another generator instead of tuning up the ones you have.

[Roboson]

Yeah no. The tune up is a waste of metal. For all the metal it costs to run over a few dozen cycles it's better to just build more power plants. 

[Arash70]

8 minutes ago, Roboson said:

Yeah no. The tune up is a waste of metal. For all the metal it costs to run over a few dozen cycles it's better to just build more power plants. 

Tune-up is a great idea to make efficient coal generator rooms.

1 smart battery + 1 tune-up + 1 coal generator = 1 great air system + much slower heating + a lot less coal usage

That small amount of metal use every 3 cycles is really negligible.

[Nativel]

I have small power plant room and only 1 petroleum generatorin it, and access opened there only if I starting some projects where I need more power. The rest generators are waste of time and resources.

[Roboson]

It is negligible if you think of it as 3 cycles. But if you think about it as how much you spend every 30, 90, 180, ect ect cycles, it's actually a ton of metal you have no way of replacing. Ever. 

[The Plum Gate]

I don't see what the big deal is - it's 5kg of refined metal per tune up - the real problem is how long the tune up takes finish. It's absurd, half a cycle tuning up the generator? Even my most experienced electrical engineers are taking forever to do this.

My solution has been to set a low priority on the power station - it simply gets tended less often, so fewer tune ups occur.

I have 4 coal generators in a generator room, and they run half as much - over all, they consume less coal and they produce less C02, and less heat as a result.

So one could surmise that the actual drawbacks of the tune up aren't that your loosing metal, but that the generator would ultimately run less often under normal circumstances - so there's time lost to being idle when optimising an energy set up - one usually opts out of tune-ups. 

[Roboson]

Yeah, Cheesehead (Guess that dupe :P) who has like 15 in tinkering still takes forever. That's a really good point Plum. There is a time cost in addition to the nonrenweable resource cost. 

[The Plum Gate]

I experimented with it as a supplement to power production - and it doesn't disappoint when needed, so giving the power station a really low priority helps mitigate resource losses. My primary refined metal type is Iron, and I don't know if this is how dupes supply the material to the power station or not... they seem to go after random stuff, which is a bit of an issue.

My original suggestion was to turn these stations into recipe driven stations - where you could que up the tune up materials using the metal of choice, and the number of 'circuit boards' to produce - This would allow definitive control over the resources used. I see they either ignored this or they were in feature freeze when it was suggested.

[Oozinator]

2 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

.. they seem to go after random stuff, which is a bit of an issue.

 

Door permissions? Lock down copper?

[PhailRaptor]

Question about the Power Station...  Is it exclusively the Tune Ups, or does it provide a passive increase to power generation through the Room bonus?  The tooltip for the Room indicates there is a standing passive bonus, but the Power Station tooltip doesn't support that.  The whole thing is rather ambiguous.

[The Plum Gate]

Only when there's a tune up.

[PickPay]

A situation where I find the Tune up useful (this is away from my base because of the Nullifier), 800W is just too little especially with inconsistant Hydrogen supply. This produces O2 for about 10 Dupes. Besides 500kg of metal for 300 cycles is reasonable

 

[Roboson]

19 minutes ago, PickPay said:

Besides 500kg of metal for 300 cycles is reasonable.

Per generator. Plus about half a cycle every three cycles to reinstall the microchip. 

So that's almost 50 cycles of dupe labor over 300 cycles, plus 500kg, plus transport and dig labor costs, plus time and power to refine those metals. For each generator. 

It's just better to build more power. 

[Luminite2]

2 hours ago, Roboson said:

Per generator. Plus about half a cycle every three cycles to reinstall the microchip. 

So that's almost 50 cycles of dupe labor over 300 cycles, plus 500kg, plus transport and dig labor costs, plus time and power to refine those metals. For each generator. 

It's just better to build more power. 

You're right in general, but @PickPay is pointing out a situation where he has a limited amount of fuel (hydrogen) available and needs to squeeze more power out of it. This is the only situation I can think of where tune-ups could be considered (though I still probably wouldn't use them personally).

However, it's also worth figuring out whether this specific problem could be fixed by having the engineer run on a wheel during the time they would have otherwise been doing the tune-up, and using the refined metal to upgrade the battery to a smart battery (or two) for decreased runoff.

[Roboson]

I'm pretty sure you mean @PickPay

[Lutzkhie]

i disable the station, and use it only and only if there is an emergency like having 1 or 2 tons of coal, i dont wanna use metals on that because metal are precious

[PickPay]

Yea didn't realise it was per generator, thought the station would affect all machines in the room

And the installation of the chip is slow... Something more that could be tweaked !

Besides another generator is also time/resource consuming.

[The Plum Gate]

I like tuneups - I really do, but they need to get rid of the static timer and only wear off as the machine runs.

And/Or

Resource selection would be nice - different resources with different qualities of time improvment would also ne nice.

[Master Miner]

Tune-up should require a microchip and some quantity of refined metal and perhaps plastic only once and then lubrication every x running minutes.
Lubricant should be produced out of crude oil. That would make sense and would be sustainable.

[BlueLance]

15 hours ago, Arash70 said:

That small amount of metal use every 3 cycles is really negligible.

It uses up copper first then other metals, so your already using a very finite resource, to make something which can be replicated permanently with another power gen of any kind.

[Soulwind]

6 hours ago, Master Miner said:

Tune-up should require a microchip and some quantity of refined metal and perhaps plastic only once and then lubrication every x running minutes.
Lubricant should be produced out of crude oil. That would make sense and would be sustainable.

Now this I could get behind.

On a side note, my colony has run out of fertilizer buffing my berry farms.  Guess I need to focus a bit more on fertilizer generators.