Making Solars Viable as a Power Source

[furrycactus]

What it says on the tin, essentially. As it stands, the solars are honestly shameful. There's three tiny arrays by telecomms, and a somewhat larger one on the roof, but even with them all active and outputting power, they don't make enough power to really be worth anything. They can barely power a single department on our absurdly huge and power-hungry map, and they're nearly worthless as emergency power. So my suggestion is to make them more viable one of two ways. Either increasing the overall amount of power a solar panel can create codewise, or just mapping the solar arrays to be bigger.

I don't so much know how to do the first one, but I can do the second one, which I've got examples below.

 

 

I tested the above changes locally, and each each array set up, roof included, it was enough to keep the station powered by itself, with the maximum output available being 1mw due to each solar array SMES bottle-necking power.

I believe this change is beneficial because, as mentioned earlier, solars in their current state are frankly useless, and this also offers more freedom for power generation options for the engineering staff. Having a third viable option for power can be helpful, because then there's power options that can cover the bases for most engineering roles. Those that specialise more in atmos can do the Supermatter, others could do the Tesla, and electricians can wire up the solars. Or it just simply lets people have the freedom to choose if they want to do something different or not. And given the somewhat unforgiving nature of both the Supermatter and Tesla, the solars can offer an easier and nearly entirely safe power generation alternative for engineers that don't feel up to setting up one of the big two, while giving a small but not crippling reduction to overall power the station can have.

Any and all feedback is welcome and encouraged, positive or negative!

[Doxxmedearly]

Furrycactus, you're becoming a champion of great engineering upgrades. Personally I love this, as having more options for power is never a bad thing. Solars are way more newbie friendly and might lead to people picking engineer more often. I love the idea of it. And I love that it's not as efficient as the other two options. It's a good backup in case of a delam, too.

From an antag perspective, this is a good way to mess up power temporarily, as it doesn't cause catastrophic damage like a delamination or freed Tesla. It's not a hard fix, but it takes time to get up there to do it, buying some time for whatever gimmick might depend on it.

I wonder if there's a way to knock it down a little more, though. I'd like for there to be incentive to building your own solar array, or expanding on the existing ones. Maybe it can power the station, but only for an hour or so, which gives some leeway and breathing room towards setting it up to where it can power the station indefinitely. What are your thoughts on that? Is that even possible?

[Butterrobber202]

Solars being viable is always a good thing. And it prevents the 'some newbie/Antag just blew the fucking engine core up' from ending a round's progression.

[Scheveningen]

The solars are a support power source, not the primary one.

The current power requirement without any modifications to pumps throughout the station (to think of two, i'd say atmos and toxins) is around 1.2 million watts minimum (more accurately it needs 1 million watts, but you need an amount over that to power the station at a reasonable rate without fluctuations).

So unless the solar SMESes get upgraded individually, they won't be able to output much as they each have a cap.

[DronzTheWolf]

The solars are a support power source, not the primary one.

The current power requirement without any modifications to pumps throughout the station (to think of two, i'd say atmos and toxins) is around 1.2 million watts minimum (more accurately it needs 1 million watts, but you need an amount over that to power the station at a reasonable rate without fluctuations).

So unless the solar SMESes get upgraded individually, they won't be able to output much as they each have a cap.

 

It's simple, stock extra SMES upgrade equipment in Engineering so they can grab some of it, and then upgrade the solar SMES on the way out.

[Asheram]

Another interesting alternative would be for remote control of APC's by engineering.

Attempting to manage with little power could be an interesting thing.

[Butterrobber202]

Another interesting alternative would be for remote control of APC's by engineering.

Attempting to manage with little power could be an interesting thing.

 

I’d say they should only be remote control 'main' apcs, like hallways and secure areas, but that sounds like another suggestion.

Anyways, with the solars it would be nice to be able to control their APCs and SMES's from a distance.

In regards to the primary versus secondary power source thing, yeah maybe the Solars are a backup, but the backup has to been at least as effective as an unoptimized SM so it can power the station.

[Trazz666]

Given the current trend of lack of engineering staff, I feel like this could be a welcome change. I feel a large barrier for some people (myself included) avoiding taking engineering jobs is the apparently difficulty and danger of setting up the supermatter. This could also lead to potential events involving nebulous dust clouds blocking out the star, leading to potential power outages.

Maybe as a balance, maybe make the solar power 75-90% of the station's full power requirements, requiring power saving practices from other departments to prevent brownouts.

[furrycactus]

I did keep in mind that they shouldn't be a godly form of energy generation. The maximum of 1mw output will only happen if you have each solar array set up. When completely unobstructed by the asteroid's rotation around the sun, each array will output a small amount over 250000W. Similar to how the old Tesla SMES worked before my previous mapping overhaul, some efficiency was lost because each SMES can only input and output 250000W at max. Again, I did locally test it, and I got an hour in on a station powered between 800000W-1000000W. There were minor fluctuations in a few areas, such as Toxins Hell, a Kitchen staffed by a god cooking like a madman with every piece of equipment they have, and an "oh god why has the atmos tech used high power pumps for everything" atmospherics setup. This limit was fully intentional. You need to set up all four solar arrays to be able to adequately power the station, and given that one or sometimes two arrays will be blocked from the sun, power will fluctuate between 800000W and 1mw, but it CAN keep the station powered, unless people start guzzling endless amounts of power, which will be a problem on higher pop rounds. It also gives an incentive for engineers to get creative for ways to get more power out of them, and on high pop rounds, keep them as a viable backup source. There are two or three crates for extra solar panel construction outside telecomms, on the roof, and I think inside engineering storage, so those can be used by engineers to make more solar panels (perhaps by extending the roof array since it has the most room) to increase energy production if more power is needed. The bottle-necking issue posed by the SMES can be bypassed either by upgrading it, or even additionally wiring the solars directly into the main grid. On lowpop, however, they can be more viable on their own.

The lower output was an intended tradeoff for relative ease and safety of the solars.

Also, for remote access, the Solars SMES units already can be remotely accesses through the RCON program, but APCs cant. I know on TG there is a console in the CE's office that allows remote access to APCs. Maybe someone better at coding than me could propose a port of that, however I'm clueless when it comes to that kind of thing.

EDIT: Jesus Christ I had to edit this post about five times because I tried writing that as soon as I woke up. Never do that, kids.

[Doxxmedearly]

Awesome. I have no complaints, then. I play engineer a decent amount, but there's a lot I wouldn't know, such as wiring the solars into the main grid. This could give me a chance to learn.

You know your stuff. I think this is an excellent idea and really expands the game in a positive way for everyone. Huge +1

[DronzTheWolf]

I don't want to have to set up an engine to keep the round from dying please. This would make me not avoid Engineering like a plague because one misstep won't end the round. +1

[elianabeth]

This is an excellent idea, I like setting solars as backup, but always felt they were kinda pointless due to their weak power output. +1

Also, since it looks like it'd take a ton of wires, would you consider adding anywhere else to obtain wires for solars?

[Chada1]

An idea I had is making Phoron glass output twice as much Solar power as regular glass. I still like this idea, but I would consider that one too.

+1

[Huenererschrecker]

I was going to make a suggestion like that or saying 'fuck it, just have the solars setup at roundstart for lol-pop rounds'. So yes, that's a welcome addition.

[Doc]

The solars are a support power source, not the primary one.

 

First I'd like to comment, this was never true for the Exodus, and for good reason. The entire Exodus could be powered by its mapped-in solars; maybe uncomfortably, yes, but it could be. This was intentional, because there was not always someone capable of setting up the engine, and lack of power would effectively end the round, as it currently does on the Aurora.

Secondly, I love this. I don't know what exactly led to the Aurora's solars being mapped in so insufficiently but this has been a change I've been pushing for for a long time now, for largely the above reasons. To be frank, I am not a fan of the strict "hands off" rule on the engine for antagonists, but I acknowledge that it's necessary because destroying the engine would simply end the round- this would essentially make that moot, because there would be an entirely functional back-up option to fall back to. This also makes it far more convenient for players who do not know how to set up the engine or characters that should not know how to set up the engine and find themselves alone in engineering.

In short, yes please.

[Huenererschrecker]

If the SM blows up then it would still be a round-ender. The solar's are too close to the SM engine, so if someone would mess with it, then it would still take out both backups. To be honest, I haven't understood the reason for the Solars to be this close together to all the other engines and (now that I think about it more) would enjoy it if the solars where more spaced out or somewhere else entirely.

[furrycactus]

If you eject the crystal, that isn't as much of a risk as the explosion won't reach them. If it does delaminate and damage solars, you don't need to do a full repair, just fix the necessary wires and panels, but yes, that will take a little longer. This won't solve all problems, because z-level explosions are absolutely fucked, but it will make the solars a bit more useful than they are now, which is entirely useless. In times of truly dire need, the Tesla can be set up as well, seeing as I fixed a few problems with the feasibility of that with my last PR.

[Arrow768]

Has been implemented here:

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/5268

Moving to completed projects