Capacitor upgrade

[AngelBottomless]

There should be power upgrades as technology development, higher energy density & power density capacitors, and better energy exchangers. Actually energy exchangers does not act as capacitors(no stabilization effect). Shouldn't it act as capacitors at its default state? We can emulate capacitors with 2 energy exchangers but its actually nonsense that higher technology loses its original role.

[FMAylward]

I think they need both an upgrade and a downgrade. For me accumulators are too expensive "early" game so by the time I get to the industrial level to mass produce them I already have have a ring of solar making their "supposed" use of covering solar power during night time useless. A way to fix that would be to have weaker ones that are cheaper to build.

Then when it comes to later games with the way I play my biggest power annoyance
is logistics stations "irregular" extreme power usage requiring a large amount of accumulators to compensate (I'd prefer not to pave the planet in solar panels) . A way to fix that would be a higher level one or make it so you can stack them.

[Shahadem]

Originally posted by FMAylward:

I think they need both an upgrade and a downgrade. For me accumulators are too expensive "early" game so by the time I get to the industrial level to mass produce them I already have have a ring of solar making their "supposed" use of covering solar power during night time useless. A way to fix that would be to have weaker ones that are cheaper to build.

Then when it comes to later games with the way I play my biggest power annoyance
is logistics stations "irregular" extreme power usage requiring a large amount of accumulators to compensate (I'd prefer not to pave the planet in solar panels) . A way to fix that would be a higher level one or make it so you can stack them.

The accumulators are already TOO WEAK to be used to sustain production during the nighttime. An even weaker accumulator would be even more useless than the current ones already are.

Rather what needs to happen is that the accumulator recipie needs to be COMPLETELY revamped to DRASTICALLY REDUCE ITS COST AND COMPLEXITY.

[AngelBottomless]

Accumulators... um.. capacitors are too weak anyway, maybe good for really early game but its too expensive at that level... for late game 300MW shortage needs 500 accumulators so uhhhh

[FMAylward]

Originally posted by Shahadem:

The accumulators are already TOO WEAK to be used to sustain production during the nighttime. An even weaker accumulator would be even more useless than the current ones already are.

Rather what needs to happen is that the accumulator recipie needs to be COMPLETELY revamped to DRASTICALLY REDUCE ITS COST AND COMPLEXITY.

I'm not envisioning a mk1 accumulator as powering a base but just to power a temp or small interdependent setup. I know this isn't efficient but as a kind of example of how I would envision its usage is say leaving the first planet to get titanium you stick down just a single miner, smelter and storage as a stop gap while you start preparing for a logistics network.

But I'm not disagreeing that accumulators need a full balance pass, how much they can store along with its input/output and versions, I would say the current tech level accumulator should be the mk2 while you get the mk1 (and solar panels themselves) a lot earlier and it only needs "basic" resources.

Now that I think about it more maybe solar panels need an extra version or 2 as well as in my opinion you should get them alongside wind power and it would produce more power just be more complex due to needing to apce out accumulators for nighttime running.

[Shahadem]

The ones we have now already cannot power a temp or small interdependent setup. At that point you'd be better off using wind turbines which are simpler and provide continuous power.

I am just going to restate what I said.

The ones we have now are already too weak, require too many resources and too many production steps. An even weaker version would be completely worthless for any purpose. These need to be completely revamped to hold more energy, be produced from simpler resources with fewer production steps. Your idea of a mark 1 version that would be even more useless than the current ones is bad for that reason.

[Bobucles]

Accumulators, the planted building, are legitimately awful. There's no need to use them except as a way of manually crafting charged accumulators.
Accumulators, the energy exchanger fuel, are weird but work well. Batteries go in, batteries go out, not much to complain about.

[RichardTheTraveler]

I don't understand the confusion here, Accumulators are not supposed to be used as actual buildings. They're intended to be used in conjunction with the Exchangers & Logistics Stations.

[barbrady123]

Agree with the "too weak" comments....I only ever automated accumulators because I was building large amounts of orbitals and I was tired of building them by hand and running them through the charger. Too expensive/difficult to ship early game....not nearly powerful enough later on. People here (and reddit) seem to dislike artificial stars, but I think it's WAY easier to carry a stack of them around, setup a quick (and very LOW bandwidth) anti-matter fuel exchange, and be done (and get 100's of MW in a matter of minutes instead of messing around with 10s of thousands of accumulators).

Hell, I actually find it easier (and way more fun) to just distribute rockets/sails to another system and start building another sphere/swarm, rather than try to setup an accumulator 2-way network. Bleh...

[RichardTheTraveler]

Originally posted by barbrady123:

Agree with the "too weak" comments....I only ever automated accumulators because I was building large amounts of orbitals and I was tired of building them by hand and running them through the charger. Too expensive/difficult to ship early game....not nearly powerful enough later on. People here (and reddit) seem to dislike artificial stars, but I think it's WAY easier to carry a stack of them around, setup a quick (and very LOW bandwidth) anti-matter fuel exchange, and be done (and get 100's of MW in a matter of minutes instead of messing around with 10s of thousands of accumulators).

Hell, I actually find it easier (and way more fun) to just distribute rockets/sails to another system and start building another sphere/swarm, rather than try to setup an accumulator 2-way network. Bleh...

I don't understand this logic. I think you're setting up your Exchanger/Accumulator networks wrong.
It is WAY easier and cheaper for long term power to setup a single I-Logistics Station with Demand/Supply Accumulators, and just put a handful of Exchangers next to it in a row, run a belt of Full Accumulators in, and belt the empties back into the I-Station. Each Exchanger is a potential 45MW output (higher power output then an Artifical Sun), so place as many exchangers as you need to fit demand.
You're not 'messing around with 10s of thousands of acculators", they're just numbers in your I-Station spreadsheet, taking no time or effort at all. You're not placing them as buildings, so what's the problem? And once made, they are reusable, and can be infinitely recharged at a planet with high renewable energy. So you're not losing mass amounts of materials mass manufacturing Fuel Rods (both Deut and Anti)

Also your statement that an anti-matter fuel exchange is "Low bandwidth" is ridiculous. You're not accounting for the extensive manufacturing chain (& expended materials) required to produce those Fuel Rods. Fuel Rods are not energy efficient. You don't get more total MJ energy than the fuel that went into it, let alone all the energy and resources lost in the layers of manufacturing. Fuel Rods are storage dense, not energy efficient.

[FMAylward]

Originally posted by Shahadem:

The ones we have now already cannot power a temp or small interdependent setup. At that point you'd be better off using wind turbines which are simpler and provide continuous power.

I am just going to restate what I said.

The ones we have now are already too weak, require too many resources and too many production steps. An even weaker version would be completely worthless for any purpose. These need to be completely revamped to hold more energy, be produced from simpler resources with fewer production steps. Your idea of a mark 1 version that would be even more useless than the current ones is bad for that reason.

So I finally got around to testing this. Set up it up during the night so they were empty at sunrise and had a full day cycle to charge then discharge though the night. All of the miners were connected to 5 vaines if that makes a power usage difference. Surprisingly out of the 2 single solar panel setups it was the one in the north that shut down first, I didn't actually realise solar panels were so "underpowered" early game. Sure belts of them can power entire planets and I've seen people say they are overpowered for that but that isn't early game

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2452791373

Now ok if you add a smelter it won't run 24/7 with just a single accumulator and I'll agree that for storage level a mk1 shouldn't go below that but power in/out would be lowered. However right now excluding cost this is fit for the purpose I mentioned, your initial titanium income to get your logistics system up and running. You are dropping this off on a planet the moment you can, going home and unless you are speedrunning/magabasing from the start chances are by the time you return to pick it all up to use the box is going to be full.

[b0nehead]

Build panels on silicon planet, Ship to high solar planet. Build accum on first planet. Ship them to solar planet. Charge them at the building and ship them back to main planet. At main planet ship emty accumulators back to solar world.

Two energy conversion buildings is 90MW. Eventually you'll have thousands of accumulators. Once you build the "gas cans" the fuel is free forever. Can't get more efficient then that.