[MOD 0.18.x] Realistic Power

[BlueTemplar]

Have you tried burning power poles? ^^

2018-06-24 (1).png (2.15 MiB) Viewed 6664 times

(not with Realistic Power, but might work there as a loophole?)

[Kenira]

Take this, i attached a version where you should still be able to produce power with wood with bob's greenhouse.

EDIT: Yeah, making power poles out of them should work too i think. That doubled the fuel value compared to burning just wood, right?

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, who knew copper burned so well !? ^^

[Broskev]

Hello there! I tried your mod, but there is obviously some problem with integration with Deadlock Crating and Stacking for Bio Industries. Check this out if you can, please

RealisticEnergy.png (17.26 KiB) Viewed 6633 times

[Kenira]

Thanks for the report, fixed in 1.0.7.

[Broskev]

Thank you!

In the meantime, I found problem with two other mods.

Scanning Radar
Logistic Train Network

I am not any lua programmer, but I was able to fix Scanning Radar. The problem there was that as your mod decreases the energy consumption of all objects, it also decreases their electrical capacity (the amount of internal electric energy they have stored). The Scanning Radar by default uses 10 MW of energy. I found out in the code of the Scanning Radar, this condition:

Code: Select all

if entity.energy < 160000 then

. If that was true, it made the radar not working. When I changed this line to

Code: Select all

if entity.energy < 40000 then

, all got fixed. I assume that you decreased both the consumption and the internal capacity by 75 %.

As of yet, I was not able to find the fix for LTN. The lamp on the train station indicates it does not have enough power and thus trains are not dispatched. The lamp appears to be working as it is shining, but it flashes that it does not have enough power and I was not able to find anywhere in the LTN mod files, how to remedy this. Here is how it looks like. The original consumption is 10W - I don't know why it got decreased only by 50 % instead of 75 %.

RealisticEnergy2.png (177.38 KiB) Viewed 6628 times

I hope there is some fix available Thank you for looking into it.

[Kenira]

Both LTN and scanning radar should be fixed in new version, at least the 2 entities, the train stop input signal, and the scanning radar now work again. Not sure there are other entities in these mods that are affected.

And i made my life a bit easier for future mod incompatibilities, i added a blacklist where you can just write the names of entities to be excluded from being changed by Realistic Power. Side effect being, not only is it easier for me now, but also much easier for you as players to maybe fix issues yourself because you literally just have to add another entry in the list.
(Usually it's some accumulator entity or something that's used to transfer power. I probably should not have gone the road of adjusting power consumptions in the first place, it's making so much trouble and doesn't really add anything except that it feels better with solar panels having a realistic power output while not being completely useless....)

[Broskev]

Great job, Kenira! I personally think that you should do what you feel is best with your own mod. Even though you "brought problems" upon yourself by messing up with power consumption just to have realistic power outputs of all the solar panels, it's a nice touch to have it all calculated like you do. I will manually lower the consumption of the radar to 2.5 MW for myself, though, as having it on 10 MW because of the item being blacklisted now makes the consumption four times higher in effect (due to the lowered energy I can get from energy sources).

I do have some bad news for you as well, though. It seems that the last update excluded not only blacklisted entities, but virtually all of them. Now my power consumption does not change at all (or rather it changes from 200 MW to 190 MW for my current factory) when I turn on the mod - just the fuel capacity is lowered.

[Kenira]

Sorry about that, yes i may have skipped proper testing this time around and lua may have tripped me up / i did something that would have worked in C++, but not in lua. Whoops. Should all be fixed in new version.

And yeah 10MW is a bit much, although it is quite a strong radar. How exactly did you reduce the power consumption? I tried setting it to 5MW, but without changing some files in the scanning mod itself, if i only adjust the power consumptions with my mod it stops working. So it looks like i'll be stuck not being able to change it with my mod.

Also 10MW is only quadruple if you rely on fuels. Generally, it's only twice as expensive with Realistic Power now because i can't change it, just fuel values of fuels have been nerfed a lot to encourage using renewable energies more Or nuclear power which is actually twice as dense as it is in vanilla, although it also uses more nuclear fuel.

[Broskev]

When I originally "fixed" the radar, I had to do it directly in the radar mod itself by alternating the lines in my first post. I did not need to alter the energy consumption itself, as that one got adjusted by your mod automatically. I just needed to fix the condition that would let the radar function only if it had the internal energy stored in sufficient amount. It is a strong radar and I personally have it capped on 10 MW, otherwise it can easily take like 10 GW I think and I use it to slightly cheat on the radar infrastructure Me personally, I would probably remove it from the blacklist of your mod and fix it by doing the same as before as that would make the consumption lower. So far I rely solely on steam engines in my game and I will move to solar gradually. I would love to keep using your mod as it does provide extra challenge and a real feel to solar power being rather weak in real life (compared to space requirements).

As I said, great work

[Broskev]

Hey, it's me again

For some reason your mod resets the stack sizes of some items that are adjusted by some other mods. So where I can still have my lead plates in stacks of 200 pieces, iron plates and copper plates are reset to 100.

[Kenira]

That's by design. Do you need the large stack sizes for something specific? Are you handcrafting a lot?

[Broskev]

Well, I do, but the bigger concern is my storage. But never mind, I can take care of that one myself. As I said, this is your mod and you should do as you please I just wanted to ask if it was intentional.

[Kenira]

You shouldn't handcraft much anyway, so that's incentive to automate things more

And storage, what exactly do you need that much storage for?

As i see it, too large stack sizes or also storing too much materials makes you adopt bad practices. But yeah, you can just increase the stack sizes yourself if you want to, i'm not judging, but for a more hardcore experience which this mod is meant to be for, stack sizes should be smaller if anything because it forces you to think and plan more. So i will stick with the stack sizes as they are right now and it's intended.

Thanks for the feedback though, i do appreciate hearing other's opinions on this mod.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I haven't had any conflicts with ReStack yet, but I think that a mod for changing power shouldn't affect stack sizes. If I choose to install a mod which makes my stack sizes larger or smaller, that's up to me. How you design your mod is up to you, but many people will feel that changing stack sizes does not fit within the domains of a power mod.

[Broskev]

And I thank you for prompt responses to my queries, Kenira. It's a very pleasant experience to have a modder respond to you in such a timely and friendly manner.

I must agree on stack sizes point with thereaverofdarkness, he has a very good point. Power mod should probably not do something that people rightly don't expect it to do. The reason for me is that as I slowly progress through my game, I tend to need materials in huge quantities in bursts. There are times where I just design something not needing the resources and letting them slowly pile up. Then I take them all and craft all the machines I need for my designs. It's the way I play it.

I do not think that there is anything you can distinctly call bad practices in Factorio. The versatility is the most alluring element of the game - that you can play it thousands different ways and still enjoy yourself. In no small part thanks to very capable modders like yourself.

I have now finally put your mod to my list I play with, because now I am content with it (after removing the section that alters my stack sizes - I'm very sensitive on that one ). So thank you again and let the addiction continue!

[Kenira]

You are right. I'm not sure i want to push an update just for this though, but at the very least i'll change it with the next one.
I do mostly make these mods for myself, so that kinda shows occasionally "I have this mod already, why not fix this other thing too"

[Kenira]

1.0.10:
- updated for 0.17
- removed adjusting stack sizes for when playing with bob's mods or yuoki

[Aphlaptic]

Can't be used with Realistic Electric Trains, unfortunately. The locomotives just don't get enough power, the fuel icon flashes in-between overhead line poles.
Could something be done about this? I'd love to use both mods.

[Kenira]

Should be fixed in the new version, i haven't used that mod myself before so i am not 100% sure how to use it. If there are still issues do let me know.