Electric energy

[foxazazaza]

Hi. I would like to add 2 types of windmills, wooden and steel(wood in the initial stage of the game, and the steel to within stage and they will garazdo more than wood. Ps I love nature and I do not like pollution), they should be placed near water or in locations with good wind, and add in the factor wind, the wind will keep contamination, such as oil factory set he started to work and a place that would zagreznyat a certain radius of the pollution will move in the wind to one side.
I would also like to say that the wind in the game should be changed for example every 2-3 game days.

[coop0308]

I think adding wind power would be a cool addition and bring more ways to generate energy through the night without steam engines and making elaborate solar arrays with accumulators. You could also have different wind speeds to go with it. Another option could be hydroelectric if flowing rivers were added. But I really like the idea of nuclear generators. It would be cool if you had to manage the heat of them some how to prevent meltdowns and explosions. Those are my thoughts on new sources of energy.

[DerRichtige]

I cant wait 4 the Nuklear Option but i hope it comes with Radioactive Waste! and the Radioactive problems like Dammage over time ....

Another way to have Electricity more important would be electric trains... like update rails with catenary and no need to refill trains with cole and stuff..

[Syrchalis]

Please Factorio Team, add more energy options.

I know you are adding nuclear power, which is great. However, please make the energy setup a choice. Right now it is a clear progression without much choice:

You start with Steam Engines and eventually supplement them (or not) with solar panels. This is kind of the only real choice you have - use solar panels before accumulators or not to reduce pollution during the day and prepare your solar fields later on.

Then you move on to solar power and I guess in the new update to nuclear.

Please give players more options for all stages of the game.

Give an alternative to steam early on - maybe something expensive but clean like wind. Make wind turbines have reduced efficiency if they are not spaced out and wham, you got a perfect clean early game power source with enough drawbacks to make it impractical later on.

Maybe add a semi-clean alternative to solar panels (oil?) for the mid/late game and something along nuclear power for whatever stage you plan it on.

[engineer2]

I'd like to come round to your opinions with some additional suggestions:

* Losses when connecting wide areas. This could implicate different types of power (like in real life): active, reactive and complex power. Depending on what load you supply, ordinary lamps would consume active power, motors positive reactive power and accumulators negative reactive power. This could lead to power factor correction by capacitors or inductors or other means of influencing the power supply system.
* Transformers, which are e.g. necessary when coupling different electricity pylons. This would also lead to various voltage levels (low voltage, middle voltage and high voltage). Those offer different advantages and benefits (like in real life), which would be longer distances between the pylons or less power loss with higher voltage levels.
* Undergrounding for providing electrical power by cables under the surface. Those should be very expensive (late-game-content?) but would offer the advantage of consuming less area, which would offer more concentrated designs for production facilities.
* Random events like shorts between the phases, earth leakages or lightning strikes (different types of weather, rain and sand storms, etc...) would introduce the topic area of protection devices like circuit breakers, fuses and so on.

Would be interested to know what you think about that

[Hannu]

I'd like to come round to your opinions with some additional suggestions:

* Losses when connecting wide areas. This could implicate different types of power (like in real life): active, reactive and complex power. Depending on what load you supply, ordinary lamps would consume active power, motors positive reactive power and accumulators negative reactive power. This could lead to power factor correction by capacitors or inductors or other means of influencing the power supply system.
* Transformers, which are e.g. necessary when coupling different electricity pylons. This would also lead to various voltage levels (low voltage, middle voltage and high voltage). Those offer different advantages and benefits (like in real life), which would be longer distances between the pylons or less power loss with higher voltage levels.
* Undergrounding for providing electrical power by cables under the surface. Those should be very expensive (late-game-content?) but would offer the advantage of consuming less area, which would offer more concentrated designs for production facilities.
* Random events like shorts between the phases, earth leakages or lightning strikes (different types of weather, rain and sand storms, etc...) would introduce the topic area of protection devices like circuit breakers, fuses and so on.

Would be interested to know what you think about that

In my opinion this would be very interesting and would fit very well into Factorio. However, I think that great majority of players have not enough knowledge and interest about realistic electric networks and would feel details annoyingly complex and hard to understand. But if even part of that functionality was available as a mod, I would try it immediately.

[Complex]

Hello,

I have my to cent´s about the nuclear power:

1. Please don´t add an additional resource. Uranium could be extracted out of stones, which currently is a bit underused in the game anyways. Makes an interesting chain with extration and enrichtment.
2. I am also strongly voting for an atmoic waste managment implentation. I would go for a storage-building, which has to be constantly supplied by empty barrels ore else create a big pollution.
3. DU-Tank-Ammunition souds great - should release a lot of pollution on impact!
4. I also think wind would be a good addtion, letting players go green but with a lot of efford. For that a "priority mode" for accumulators would be crucial, to use at night before coal, but keeping some in basic mode for defence.
5. Buring wood should create less pollution than burning coal.

6. Power loss in the electricity-network sounds interesting, mainly because it forces me to use the bigger poles for long distance. Currently I mostly use small poles, cheap and fast to make with all the excess wood. Another way could be to only allow ~ 5-7 small poles in a row to carry power and after that it cut´s off, so you have to build a backbone of large poles.

Kind Regards,
Daniel

[impetus maximus]

+1 for windmills.
also geothermal could be fun/dangerous.

I'd like to come round to your opinions with some additional suggestions:

* Losses when connecting wide areas. This could implicate different types of power (like in real life): active, reactive and complex power.[snip]

In my opinion this would be very interesting and would fit very well into Factorio. However, I think that great majority of players have not enough knowledge and interest about realistic electric networks and would feel details annoyingly complex and hard to understand. But if even part of that functionality was available as a mod, I would try it immediately.

have it as an advanced option when creating a world? i would be so down for this. create a super conductor power line anyone?

[Engimage]

* Losses when connecting wide areas. This could implicate different types of power (like in real life): active, reactive and complex power. Depending on what load you supply, ordinary lamps would consume active power, motors positive reactive power and accumulators negative reactive power. This could lead to power factor correction by capacitors or inductors or other means of influencing the power supply system.

While all of it might be ineteresting for some people it is not any good for vanilla game for many reasons.
1. Computing power. Both CPU and RAM will get a major hit if you need to calculate all this stuff every tick. Even now on large scale bases it is a big problem and devs try to shave off every extra cpu usage to make things work faster.
2. The complexity of this will be quite high to be applied to a majority of players which is not acceptable for vanilla.
3. The coding effort for this feature while not being added to vanilla is just too high and will most likely never make it into the game. And you just can't mod it if the core game does not support it.

* Transformers, which are e.g. necessary when coupling different electricity pylons. This would also lead to various voltage levels (low voltage, middle voltage and high voltage). Those offer different advantages and benefits (like in real life), which would be longer distances between the pylons or less power loss with higher voltage levels.

This might be interesting a bit and can be theoretically implemented by preventing direct connections say between large poles and medium ones requiring say Substation which could connect to both. But I still don't see any game value in it.

* Undergrounding for providing electrical power by cables under the surface. Those should be very expensive (late-game-content?) but would offer the advantage of consuming less area, which would offer more concentrated designs for production facilities.

This idea is interesting. However it is not new.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=42522
This could be implemented by introducing electrical flooring which could conduct electricity or serve as underground power poles.

* Random events like shorts between the phases, earth leakages or lightning strikes (different types of weather, rain and sand storms, etc...) would introduce the topic area of protection devices like circuit breakers, fuses and so on.

This is a separate topic. Random events all around would be a nice addition to the game but it should be an option. I think it is a nice idea for a mod and we'll see if audience will be exited to get that. But when it comes to vanilla and Wube work I would not bother at this point. There are waaaaay too many fundamental vanilla stuff around that needs to be done first.

[ssilk]

About power loss:
This will not be implemented cause with different networks adds too much useless complexity (no new gameplay), and as resistance it would be implemented, but too much CPU usage; please read viewtopic.php?f=80&t=15546 Cable Resistance / Non-looseless Power Transmission

[noliVe]

could be working like the "tube system" you can add a pumpstation so its elektrical poweringup station

as i think about it you can archive this with a mod, so maybe ask a modder about creating a PIPE-Systemlike Powerline having a negative elektron (item) loadet and pass your way throuh pipes ... eheheh!

Energyloss calculation thrue pipes not really a CPU problem!!

[Engimage]

The tube system came in my mind as well as it reflects the behaviour as close as possible.
You would count big poles as a tubes with high throughput and 1 length per pole, while medium poles and small poles would have less throughput.
This would make electricity flow just similar to a liquid effectively implementing wire resistance.

However with all powered entities this tube system will be so complex that it will require a TON of CPU power to calculate. I am sure that devs already said they are going to simplify liquid flow algorithms to lower CPU load per tick and currently the amount of pipes used is nowhere near the total amount of powered entities.

[QGamer]

About the nuclear option:
I really like the idea of using nuclear power in the game, however, I feel that having only 2 choices to generate energy is not enough. I would also like to see choices for uses the depleted nuclear fuel aside from building myriads of storage tanks for them:

1) Some kind of disposal that would bury the depleted uranium a few miles underground. There would be a special building that would drill a hole in the ground, producing tons and tons of stone that would need to be stored somewhere (like 5000 units or something). The building would then become a disposal unit for the depleted fuel, but with a limited capacity. Once it's filled up, 90% of the stone needs to be put back in and the waste will be forever trapped deep underground. Then the player would have to build another one somewhere else, and the same location couldn't be used twice to store fuel.

2) Some way to turn the depleted uranium into radioactive bullets that would deal radiation damage, hurting enemies over time.

3) Some super-super-super high tech option to encase the fuel in a special box that nullifies radiation, acting as a lamp that consumes no electricity.

[GoldenPorkchop80]

2) Some way to turn the depleted uranium into radioactive bullets that would deal radiation damage, hurting enemies over time.

That wouldn't work.

U.S. Tank operators use DU tank shells for ammunition and they don't get radiation damage, simply because it's DU: Depleted Uranium. DU gives off much less radiation than active enriched uranium does, and even if you used enriched uranium as ammunition to get that radiation damage, it wouldn't be worth it, because you would need a cooling apparatus on your back to keep the ammo from going into meltdown and, well.... nuking yourself. Granted, the amount of enriched uranium required to make a single bullet would not be enough to make it go critical (editor's note: read about nuclear criticality here.), but I still wouldn't use it, because you would most likely get radiation poisoning before your enemy does, considering you are carrying your gun filled with nuclear bullets everywhere you go. Yay, hip cancer.

Still, it's a pretty interesting idea. I would use DU not for radiation damage, but for much increased kinetic damage. The thing about DU is that it is heavy. Really heavy. If you would somehow find a way to accelerate the DU bullet to a velocity similar to a AK-47 bullet, you would inflict a ton of damage. That is, if you can even get it to that velocity without blowing up your gun. Since DU bullets are so heavy, they need more propellant to get it up to speed. To get it up to a reasonable speed, you might need to add so much propellant that, if fired, might simply blow up the gun due to the stress exerted by the expanding gasses trying to push the bullet outwards. Of course, designing a stronger gun isn't much of an issue.

[lamhirh]

Uranium is very toxic, and when it hits something hard, it starts to burn, and thew fumes are also very toxic.

Radioactively, there is some chance of radiation damage if you eat a bullet (literary or metaphorically) and it stays in your body - alpha radiation is stopped by skin, and beta radiation is stopped by any solid clothes. When they are inside body they start damaging the cells which can cause radiation poisoning ( but woudl require quite large amounts), but as depleted uranium is not very radioactive, it is slow. More dangerous is the toxic effect of DPU. DUe to density of the buttlet and its pyrophoric properties it is not good ammunition against soft targets ( will penetrate without deforming, unless hitting vital organ, damage will be minimal. it is awesome penetrator tho.

[QGamer]

When they are inside body they start damaging the cells which can cause radiation poisoning ( but woudl require quite large amounts), but as depleted uranium is not very radioactive, it is slow. More dangerous is the toxic effect of DPU.

I have read that uranium is a poison. Does that mean that uranium bullets should deal poison damage to the biters?

[opencircut74]

"I have read that uranium is a poison. Does that mean that uranium bullets should deal poison damage to the biters?"



Not really, since when you shoot a Uranium bullet, even enriched Uranium, it will not immediately poison them as you think it might. That takes time. Even an Elephant's Foot amount of radiation still won't immediately affect the biters.

[impetus maximus]

uranium is used in projectiles because it is 68.4% denser than lead.

can we get back on topic now please?

[opencircut74]

uranium is used in projectiles because it is 68.4% denser than lead.

can we get back on topic now please?

Yes. I am all for different types of energy, including geothermal as well as wind. Both of these are alternatives to the classic steam, reactor power, or solar. Geothermal could work for a set amount of time and then run out, and wind could give you a dynamic energy supply. More options is (most of the time) better, and will encourage new setups instead of blueprintable solar arrays.

[eX_ploit]

There is no longer any need for other energy options since we already have nuclear. It's just to good.