[MOD 0.12.33+] Capacitors and Batteries (Accumulator mod)

[thereaverofdarkness]

This mod splits accumulators into two types:
Battery Accumulator: slow to charge/discharge but can store a lot of power
Capacitor Accumulator: doesn't store much but can charge/discharge rapidly

Long Description

This mod is intended to put more gameplay into constructing and operating your accumulators, by giving you some options. This is also similar to real-world energy storage units (though with some tricks, you can get around these weaknesses). The battery accumulator is great for pairing with solar panels to keep your base running throughout the night, though with high energy costs you may find yourself needing a very large accumulator farm. The capacitor accumulators are great for rapid bursts of energy use, such as laser turrets firing.

The mod was originally intended to go along with the mods Harder Energy and Day/Night Extender, but I've made two versions: one for vanilla and one for harder energy.

The mod changes existing accumulators into battery accumulators. Capacitor accumulators require the capacitor item to build. Capacitors use plastic in their construction instead of sulfuric acid and cost only half as much petroleum gas, but instead cost more copper. They are also constructed in assembling machines, and you can craft capacitors in hand as well.

This mod has a conflict with the Harder Energy mod because they both set attributes on accumulators, so I incorporated the changes of Harder Energy into the second version of the mod. Don't use Harder Energy with the second version of this, but do use Day/Night Extender.

Capacitors are unlocked with Battery research, and capacitor accumulators are unlocked with Electric Energy Accumulators research. This mod adds no new research topics.

If you use the harder energy version along with Day/Night Extender default settings (3x day/night cycle length, 21 minutes total), then the battery accumulators will work well with solar panels to provide steady power all night, assuming the accumulators are fully charged at sunset. It takes ten minutes to fully discharge the battery accumulator. The vanilla version allows battery accumulators to discharge in just five minutes, which is still longer than the night lasts.

Either version you play, the game will be a little more difficult, but you may find the accumulator options actually grant you some advantage in the vanilla version. The Harder Energy version will be especially difficult as each accumulator has the worst of both worlds: battery accumulators have the same storage as Harder Energy accumulators (rather 3x as much, for 3x day/night length), and capacitor accumulators have the same charge/discharge rate as Harder Energy accumulators.

Images

Vanilla Version

Alters:

• Accumulators
• Battery technology
• Electric Energy Accumulators technology

Attributes:

• Battery Accumulator energy storage: 15MJ
• Battery Accumulator input/output rate: 50kW
• Minimum charge/drain time: 300s (five minutes)
• Capacitor Accumulator energy storage: 1.5MJ
• Capacitor Accumulator input/output rate: 500kW
• Minimum charge/drain time: 3s
• Capacitor ingredients: 1 iron plate, 2 copper plate, 1 plastic bar

Harder Energy Version

Alters:

• Accumulators
• Solar Panels
• Laser Turrets
• Battery technology
• Electric Energy Accumulators technology
• energy output of all solid fuels: Wood, Coal, Solid Fuel

Attributes:

• Battery Accumulator energy storage: 9MJ
• Battery Accumulator input/output rate: 15kW
• Minimum charge/drain time: 600s (ten minutes)
• Capacitor Accumulator energy storage: 900kJ
• Capacitor Accumulator input/output rate: 150kW
• Minimum charge/drain time: 6s
• Capacitor ingredients: 1 iron plate, 2 copper plate, 1 plastic bar
• Laser Turret recipe: now requires capacitors instead of batteries
• Laser Turret firing cost increased from 800kJ to 1600kJ
• Laser Turret passive drain reduced from 24kW to 16kW. They pretty much only hurt your energy when firing.

[Qon]

My guess: capacitor accumulators will not be charged from battery accumulators. And since capacitors have lower capacity they will run out in the first attack wave and your base will be undefended at the second wave. But you can of course skip capacitor accumulators and laser turrets (or make enough battry accus to feed lasers) and use gun turrets instead (which use even more energy if you disregard laser drain).

[thereaverofdarkness]

There's a few wrinkles to smooth out. If all you do is throw down some capacitor accumulators, your lasers will be able to fire, but the capacitor accumulators will refill only as fast as your power network allows for. You can throw the capacitors and laser turrets onto a separate energy network and prevent your main power from being drained. Then your total energy throughput on that network can be just a fraction of what is needed to power the lasers. If they are shooting 10% of the time, you only need 10% of the power required to run them.

With 0.13 and power switches, more configuration options will become possible. It may already be possible to do this with a circuit network, but with power switches it'll be even easier: make the accumulators drain/fill in a controlled fashion. For instance you could set up a system that draws solar panel power to charge the battery accumulators during the day, and then discharges them at night, providing power to your base. You could have backup power systems that remain ready but generally off, soaking up the maximum potential from your solar panels.

Another trick could be backup capacitor accumulators which could prevent your base from losing power by supplementing it and triggering an alarm when main power goes offline, giving you time to fix the problem. You could buy even more time by stringing up mixed accumulator types such that the capacitor accumulators run your base, and the battery accumulators refill the capacitor accumulators, making them last a bit longer.

You could have your highest power cost facilities in one part of your base, and have them shut down during a power emergency. If the rest of the base is power efficient, it could run on a moderate-sized battery accumulator rig.

[Qon]

You could buy even more time by stringing up mixed accumulator types such that the capacitor accumulators run your base, and the battery accumulators refill the capacitor accumulators, making them last a bit longer.

So this is possible now in 0.12 (and verified) or only in 0.13? I don't see how power switches would solve the problem. You aren't very focused on the problems I brought up. I'm wondering if you are even adressing my post with yours...

From experience with other mods I don't think this works, unless you have done more than just altering their (dis)charge and capacity. Normally capacitors can not charge other capacitors in vanilla factorio. Did you think about that when making the mod and have verified that this actually works, or are capacitor accumulators worthless?

Ehh, screw it. Checking your source code.....

....done. You are making a modified accumulators by just changing the numbers from the base vanilla accumulator as template. It's not going to work. Capacitor accumulators are useless at night and your base will be eaten by natives if you use this to defend yourself, unless you build a stupid amount of them. But then you are probably better of with a stupid amount of battery accumulators instead since that will give you high burst capacity and enough energy to survive the night. In the late stage lasers are using less and less compared to your base anyways if you keep your borders clean and start building big.

[thereaverofdarkness]

They're only useless at night if you rely heavily on solar power. I didn't know that accumulators couldn't charge other accumulators, but I am aware that they need some work to enable more customization of power usage.

With steam engines for power, capacitor accumulators work well. They aren't very important using the vanilla mod with vanilla energy, but with harder energy and harder laser turrets the capacitor accumulators are a Godsend.

[Ron Albert]

My guess: capacitor accumulators will not be charged from battery accumulators. And since capacitors have lower capacity they will run out in the first attack wave and your base will be undefended at the second wave. But you can of course skip capacitor accumulators and laser turrets (or make enough battry accus to feed lasers) and use gun turrets instead (which use even more energy if you disregard laser drain).

i do agree with you but would you please share some evidence based reference that support this assumption!

[Qon]

My guess: capacitor accumulators will not be charged from battery accumulators. And since capacitors have lower capacity they will run out in the first attack wave and your base will be undefended at the second wave. But you can of course skip capacitor accumulators and laser turrets (or make enough battry accus to feed lasers) and use gun turrets instead (which use even more energy if you disregard laser drain).

i do agree with you but would you please share some evidence based reference that support this assumption!

What kind of evidence do you want, and for what? Accumulators don't charge eachother in vanilla, this is a fairly well known fact. And you can easily test this yourself. Place down a accumulator that is connected to a charged accumulator but not any other power sources and you'll see that it won't be charged.

His mod adds more accumulator types that have other storage and (dis)charge values so they will work like vanilla accumulators. You can also check this for yourself if you want. The mod is just zipped mod data structures with no lua code to alter their behaviour and their energy priorities are the same as vanilla accumulators.

The rest is just the consequences of the given behaviour.

[thereaverofdarkness]

In my playtesting I discovered that there was no need for the batteries to charge the capacitors. Once the capacitors were drained, the lasers would fire very slowly. If they were paired with enough gun turrets to fend off an attack wave, then your power would come back on pretty quickly if it even went down at all. If you didn't have enough turrets to take out the whole wave, a loss of power was the least of your problems.

In short, it works great!

[Ranakastrasz]

Main issue is that at night, if you use Solar power, the capaciters drain instantly. Need to figure out how, possibly circuit network manipulation, to have the capacitors only power laser turrets.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Main issue is that at night, if you use Solar power, the capaciters drain instantly. Need to figure out how, possibly circuit network manipulation, to have the capacitors only power laser turrets.

Yes, you need a way to switch the capacitor accumulator network away from your main grid.

It would work perfectly if power was drawn first from accumulators that were more full, but it draws from all accumulators equally regardless of their individual charge level. I don't have any way to fix it that I'm aware of.

[pofigismo]

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Penguin/transformer
Here's a way to force accumulators charge other accumulators. The transformer 'forces' electricity in one direction. Hook it all up with correct wiring and you should be good.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Nice! Too bad they don't do it by default, but I guess this is good enough!