[0.11.x] Electricity (More Accumulators&SolarPanels) by XyLe

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

The mod seems to work great for me.
I made a small change so that you have a small added advantage power-wise when upgrading.

Thanks!

[Qon]

I like your mod Xyle! Works in 0.12.29 for me with the update at page 2. You should update your OP and title so more people can find and enjoy the mod and not be turned off by the apparen't 0.11-only tag. Maybe you could work with viewtopic.php?f=93&t=19836 in some way? His mod has mark 3 substation but not as high mark accus and solar panels. Would be nice to have best of both.

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

I also got it working with v0.12.29.

I did make some changes for myself though. I simply have :
solar panel -> 4x solar panel = mk2 -> 4x mk2 = mk3 -> 4x mk3 = mk4
So, I only have the space advantage. Everything else is identical (so one mk3 is exactly the same as putting down 16 vanilla solar panels).

I did the same thing with the accumulators :
basic accumulator -> 4x basic accumulator = mk2 -> 4x mk2 = mk3 -> 4x mk3 = mk4

Thanks for this mod!

[Fedorrro]

MK3 Solar Panel don't charge any accumulator in isolated network, but simply solar panel do.

Screens

1.PNG (222.4 KiB) Viewed 8950 times

2.PNG (285.19 KiB) Viewed 8950 times

[Qon]

MK3 Solar Panel don't charge any accumulator in isolated network, but simply solar panel do.

Screens

1.PNG

2.PNG

Have you read this?

Any chance on getting a 0.12 version?

In the zip file if you replace /prototype/entity-solar-panels with
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zred2ls7cs61s ... s.lua?dl=0

it will work for 0.12

Have you tried the MK 2,4 and 5 if they work?
Mark 3 works for me.

[Fedorrro]

Have you read this?

Yes, it helped. I did not notice this solution. Thank you so much!

[Arduino13]

So the mod does not work for some reason, the solar panels do not output power, not shure about the accumulators, but all the basegame stuff still works. Il work on troubleshooting more, though. Is it going to be updated soon?

[Fedorrro]

So the mod does not work for some reason, the solar panels do not output power, not shure about the accumulators, but all the basegame stuff still works. Il work on troubleshooting more, though. Is it going to be updated soon?

Solution at the two posts above

[V453000]

Hello, I really like this mod idea - to invest resources for not having to build as large solar fields.

I was playing with it for a while now, and there were a couple things that disturbed me:

- one less level of accumulators (mk4 max) than solar panels (mk5 max)
- max level accumulators have different colour than max level solar panels
- purple solar panels look weird
- old 32x32px technology icons

So, I made a new version for myself. I do not see any mention of licensing so I am not sure how "free" is it to share it, but here you go.

My edits:

TL;DR
- works with factorio 0.12.x
- one more level of accumulator
- different colours, blue being best
- new substation mk2 graphics
- 128x128px technology icons (consistent with current vanilla)
- slight tweaks to item stack sizes

Longer description
- works with factorio 0.12.x - uses the fix from the posts above
- one more level of accumulator, recipe for it is 5x mk4 accumulator + 3x mk2 battery from military tab (kind of consistent with the fusion reactor being required for mk5 solar panel)
- different colours: mk2 is now yellow, mk3 is red, mk4 is green and finally mk5 is blue. The sense is that yellow is like the most basic belt, rust-ish thing. After that red is like red belt, meaning power and strength. Green means ecology etc, which the solar panels are for. And finally blue is just electricity, I believe having the top tier blue is nicest.
- new substation mk2 graphics: instead of red cylinders, there are a couple electric-ish elements just to give it the difference from mk1 substation, and a more futuristic electric feel. It also has a new item icon.
- 128x128px technology icons - just recoloured icons from latest vanilla, but nice to have in compare to the old 32x32px versions.
- slight tweaks to item stack sizes - mk2 25, mk3 15, mk4 10, mk5 5 ... I felt like stack size of 2 is insanely low. I know, the things are powerful, but ...

Picture preview:

Electricity-XyLe-v1.1.0.png (463.91 KiB) Viewed 8894 times

Here goes the .zip. I dared to call it Electricity_XyLe_1.1.0 ... if you are not comfortable with me sharing this, please let me know...

V

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

I see you are Factorio staff. If this mod is so useful, why not integrate something like this in the main game?

As it is now, solar panels are hugely wasteful regarding to space.

[V453000]

I consider it useful as a mod, but I wouldn't consider it as a good idea to put it into the main game, there we will probably put something else eventually.

And yes, they are hugely wasteful regarding to space, but it kind of makes sense, solar energy should be space inefficient. If you don't like that, you can use this mod.

[Qon]

My edits:

TL;DR
- works with factorio 0.12.x
- one more level of accumulator
- different colours, blue being best
- new substation mk2 graphics
- 128x128px technology icons (consistent with current vanilla)
- slight tweaks to item stack sizes

Longer description
- works with factorio 0.12.x - uses the fix from the posts above
- one more level of accumulator, recipe for it is 5x mk4 accumulator + 3x mk2 battery from military tab (kind of consistent with the fusion reactor being required for mk5 solar panel)
- different colours: mk2 is now yellow, mk3 is red, mk4 is green and finally mk5 is blue. The sense is that yellow is like the most basic belt, rust-ish thing. After that red is like red belt, meaning power and strength. Green means ecology etc, which the solar panels are for. And finally blue is just electricity, I believe having the top tier blue is nicest.
- new substation mk2 graphics: instead of red cylinders, there are a couple electric-ish elements just to give it the difference from mk1 substation, and a more futuristic electric feel. It also has a new item icon.
- 128x128px technology icons - just recoloured icons from latest vanilla, but nice to have in compare to the old 32x32px versions.
- slight tweaks to item stack sizes - mk2 25, mk3 15, mk4 10, mk5 5 ... I felt like stack size of 2 is insanely low. I know, the things are powerful, but ...

The accumulators being lower level isn't that bad. Accumulators take 37% the space of a solar panel (you need 0.84 times as many as solar panels, area is 4 tiles^2 qompared to 9 for solar). So with accumulators at 1 level lower you need 4 times as many which means that you need 1.49 times the solar panel area as accumulator area when accumulators are one level lower. With the low amount of space these take using a bit more area than the solar panels is enough. But it won't hurt either so lets go with equal tech levels for both q:

Unlike you I really like the purple solar panels. So I modded in mark 6 solar panels so that I could still have them. And to not destroy your equal tier feature I also had to mod in mark 6 accumulators.

So my version:

• Up to mark 6 solar panels and accumulators.
• Fixed V453000's missing item descriptions! And the new ones have a description too of course
• Fixed max health progression for the items V453000 and I added.
• All solar panels now use icons from Better Icons mod! It's under MIT license so I hope it's compatible, but since Xyle hasn't posted license info I guess the default is compatible? viewtopic.php?f=144&t=23287
  These icons also match the panel entity a bit better in color as well.
• Made the mark 5 blue panels a bit more blue than cyan. Maybe they got a bit dark but that can be fixed in next version q:
• Will get rid of even more of your excess science packs.
• Almost tested properly. Seems to work for me.

I consider it useful as a mod, but I wouldn't consider it as a good idea to put it into the main game, there we will probably put something else eventually.

And yes, they are hugely wasteful regarding to space, but it kind of makes sense, solar energy should be space inefficient. If you don't like that, you can use this mod.

I agree. I use this mod because there is not way to automate blueprint placing and space qonquering with automated war and terraforming robots. So my space is limited and my patience for putting down more solar has run out qompletely. Always a single tree, rock or water spot in the way of my blueprints, so I have to spend minutes to stamp down a few more prints. With this I never run out of space for energy and since it uses massive amounts of resources it doesn't feel so cheaty. And it's nice to be able to fit all your 1GW energy production at once as a single blueprint around a single substation q:
But when I can automate factory building so that I don't even have to place blueprints myself then I will do that instead. Because huge solar fields are also kinda cool, automated building is awesome and what factorio is about and I can spend my time doing what what I like most in factorio. That is, designing the perfect blueprints. Right now it's just about perfect ratios and making blueprints that are compact and take simple ingredients and make several levels higher items as output. But with automated building there's also a bit more focus on tesselation patterns and similar.

[SamyLerari]

I confirm that, for non functional solar panels in 0.12.X version, replacing /prototype/entity-solar-panels solution works.

Thanks for this amazing mod

[Qon]

I confirm that, for non functional solar panels in 0.12.X version, replacing /prototype/entity-solar-panels solution works.

Thanks for this amazing mod

Or use v1.2.0 of the mod.

Maybe I should post in unofficial patches section? People will still keep missing that there are plug-and-play updated versions but it at least might help some.

[Qon]

Version 1.2.1 is here!

• Fixed glitched accumulator mark 6 discharge animation.
• The mark 5 blue solar panel color isn't much darker than the other panels now.
• Regular solar panel (mk1) now uses the "Better Icons" icon without the need to use that mod. Better Icons is still recommended for some other icons though viewtopic.php?f=144&t=23287

Read my post on v1.2.0 above if you want to know more about what differs from XyLe's original but outdated version.

[orzelek]

I'd recommend posting this in unofficial updates section.

[Qon]

I'd recommend posting this in unofficial updates section.

Done!
Working version is here: viewtopic.php?f=120&t=23899

[XyLe]

Sorry guys, I've been absent for a few months, i wasn't actually playing factorio, nor was i paying attention to the forums. I'm waiting for 0.13 now so i'm back for a few days to play some factorio and check out the last changes.

The thing is - the last time i checked this mod it had about 3000 downloads (hopefully i remember correctly) but the activity in the topic was barely present. Basically this means not a single "thank you", so i figured maybe it's pointless to keep track of this mod, and then people started to complain below my youtube video about some 0.12 issues, i didn't care that much though.

But as i can see now, probably quite a few people liked my mod and i haven't gotten any complains about the balance (which i find weird because i've tweaked things a while ago) so i intend to re-post this stuff again. Hopefully the mod is good enough and it deserves some more of my time spent on this forum thread. I'm really grateful to everyone giving actual feedback! FINALLY! So thank you all )) i'll do my best and update the mod for you again.

I actually made some changes regarding balance, i think the accs&panels are too cheap in this version. And i've added something for steam power too. I look forward to seeing what you think of that.

[XyLe]

I consider it useful as a mod, but I wouldn't consider it as a good idea to put it into the main game, there we will probably put something else eventually.

And yes, they are hugely wasteful regarding to space, but it kind of makes sense, solar energy should be space inefficient. If you don't like that, you can use this mod.

I see your point. Let me explain about the tiers. They actually go well with tiers of science packs. But i found it pretty cool to have a fusion reactor involved in this power-related mod. There's nothing like that for accumulators in my opinion. I kinda like having different amount of tiers, makes it unusual and unexpected. But I think it's not that good to have it in the "solar panel" recipe because it has nothing to do with being "solar", clearly. So maybe it should be removed. There's enough upgrades without it But you really have a good point so i'd like an advice on that.

"- max level accumulators have different colour than max level solar panels"
Obviously, since there's a different amount of tiers. MK2, MK3, M4 colours match.

I think i've mentioned it somewhere about the graphics that it's just placeholders, i was intended to make it look better but it kinda feels tideous to me so i never got to do it really. I liked your graphics a lot, very pretty, especially the substation, just amazingly well done, maybe we include that in the new version of the mod? I'd also like to make more sense to the colours themselves. Maybe make Mk1 -> Mk2 etc progression follow the solar spectrum, good idea? So that would be red -> yellow -> green -> blue. Or maybe match the colours of science packs? Mk2 = red, Mk3 = green, Mk4 = blue, Mk5 = purple or remove Mk5? I'm kinda thinking maybe it could work with purple science packs and some of the modular armor upgrades... Like you made with portable batteries, could be portable panels for mk5 panels..

I already said that i was completely absent, and i have no idea where to post the new version... I'm gonna need some help with that, may i bother you personally? I'd ask you to tell me specifically which section i should post the mod in, and then if i can use the 1st post in this topic as a template because i'm not sure if it matches the new rules... thank you in advance.

[Toxic]

I downloaded your mod today, and I don't think the green solar panels are producing power? The accumulators work fine, but the solar panels are not raising my power level at all.

Also it is pretty awesome if the panels would work! This is exactly what i was looking for!