Current State of Power: a short epic on Skylight Design - Solar Panels and Light Wells -

[boohboomagoo]

[the soap box]

Team and community-

With the new update power generation gets considerably more limited with the sour gas nerf.  I want to address the elephant thats in the room, that is, in regard to the other options we have for mid game power generation-

In our previous updates Solar Panels were provided, and in theory, can be used to power your base.  When playing with them they end up being really, really, micro intensive.  Now that we're focusing more and more gameplay at the surface, nothing has been provided to resolve the massive amounts of regolith that ends up covering the upper parts of the comet.  

In the previous updates tools were created to notify - close and open gates/hatches, but really nothing was done in regard to removing, rebuilding or repairing the glass that does get damaged in order to repair some breaks.

[current state]

I need to turn on sandbox mode to just force clean out the area and continue elsewhere in my base (OR) spend a ton of time directing dupes to do deconstructing and reconstructing what I had already established

- which, i feel is a bit of a half baked idea conceptually.  Any game mechanic that just frustrates people to the point that they need to toggle sandbox mode to fix it is not exactly how one would recommend creating a good fluid experience -

[to the drawing board!]

it would be really great to build some sort of infrastructure to manage this massive amount of sand buildup that would happen over our glass clearstories, especially now that we're expected to utilize this concept further when considering production of natural gas with moos - (which are so charming, seriously)

[direct vs indirect solar light]

In architecture (#modernism) we provide saw tooth clearstories for factories and industrial buildings even homes! for the specific reason that hail is more unlikely to damage the glass that our owners so graciously allow us to put on roofs in these applications. 

create sawtooth modular skylight where repairs are easier to coordinate maybe two or three tiles tall so we can build a catwalk underneath to allow quick and expeditious repairs to already designed solar lighting considerations-

[the regolith redo]

*provide maybe a foreman's desk station where a miner dupe can be assigned to schedule auto cleanup a "room" where the desk is placed, currently wouldn't work though because if regolith hits their desk, there wouldn't be a path to the desk, Yarrrg - 

going way out on a limb here- dreaming of the auto roomba! to just grind it all up for me and throw it back out into space... (but you guys are obviously super critical of adding anything that's too easy so... forget that thought)

If players could design light wells considering 3 conceptual layers

- the first layer being the regolith cleanup layer* -
-and then the glass layers - 
-light farm/moo grass growing zone-

 the overall game design would function wayyy more smoothly and it would be way less tempting to use of sandbox as a management crutch -

[the conclusive zinger]

now I get it, I get it. - I do know that there will be people out there that think:

"dude, just get an exosuit engineer to just go out there and fix it! #sobfest"
(well)

Enginners are really, really limited.  It's not like you can have 5 or 6 engineers right of the bat;  They require tons of set up, mechanisms to provide oxygen and suit prep-  it seriously takes a ton of set up to get working.  so much so; that people just don't even use the content that was created for solar farming... and now to turn up the heat on the critique- If we're to nerf the already existent power generation mechanics; we need to diversify and solidify the game design in regard to other forms of power generation:

• Coal farms - almost work- but not exclusively, hatch poop is fun, but not viable
• solar power - straight up doesn't work - needs love
• steam power - is super annoying - and I have yet to see someone swear by it (another moan fest i guess)
• the natural gas system works - but when working only with a gas vent, supply its quite limited and vents are no longer eternally flowing... (face palm)
•      (nat. gas supplement) moo power - haven't considered it (new) so; not considered
•      (nat. gas supplement) gas bottling - (also new) in application its sorta like butterfly catching life sustaining farts... gotta see it in action
• oil power - never used it - but seriously, use water to get oil! pfffshssst waste water! i guess maybe worth going back to to see if it works.

In my very polite but critical opinion;  we missed the mark when the solar train came around; and I hope that we can generate some ideas to make it function a bit better, and the last 10 weeks of development we got smile emojis and scheduled dance breaks, rockets (which are awesome) -  buuuut I'm still wanting to revisit the solar concepts introduced earlier, now more than ever knowing that I'm going to be depending on grass crazy moos to keep my gas supply in check- 

Thanks all for reading!

I Appleigize if this is TLDR material for you- but bless this community. We're all, super nerds at heart! so- I'm sure my moaning will resonate with someone

 

[Sasza22]

9 hours ago, boohboomagoo said:

oil power - never used it - but seriously, use water to get oil! pfffshssst waste water! i guess maybe worth going back to to see if it works.

Someone did the math and you are actually positive on water if you sieve the water produced by the generators. Also the oil well produces nat gas (which it doesn`t say anywhere) so you get both oil and extra gas.