My Ray Receivers continuously lose power output, WHY?

[ApathicAlpaca]

I really don't understand how ray receivers are calculated.
I place more and more of them on my pole, they all have 100% efficiency/uptime but every time I check, the output shrinks. Each reveiver originally had like 5 MW, now they are already down to ~2.2 MW.

Since I don't fully understand the figures that are shown, this could be an easy root cause which I just don't see.
Can someone explain?

a) Does the output PER RECEIVER go down the more of them you place on the same planet, maybe? Like... the more receivers, the more the 'rays' from your satellites are spread over them instead of focused on few?

b) The system view says my ~2.4k satellites have a 'maximum output' of around 85 MW. Does that mean I can place receivers until they sum up to 85 MW (maybe affected by ray efficiency) and that's it? But then, see a), how do I get there if the output per receiver goes down all the time?


And to be clear, the output goes down even if I don't place any more of them. It's totally weird. Also, I am aware it will fluctuate depending on where the satellites are and where your planet is compared to its star. But rotation is ~ 1.5 hours for my planet and the output NEVER increases, ALWAYS goes down.

The # satellites stays relatively constant.


I am completely baffled. Anyone?

Thanks!

[Destroyer]

Your dyson swarm/sphere has a maximum power output you can see on the dyson sphere menu (press Y) you can never pull more than that, and at the start a lot less due to lower effectiveness of the receivers. So if you want to pull more power you'll have to get more sails around the star.

Edit: you can also see that number on the receivers btw, it'll show how much you are using and how much there is in total

[ApathicAlpaca]

Yes... but...
How does that work?

Max output of my swarm is 85 MW.
If I placed only ONE receiver, does it produce 85 MW (times effectiveness)?
If I place two, each goes down to 42.5 MW?

Because that's definitely not the case.
I think each of my receivers says something like 'maximum output' is 12 MW. So... should i place 7 of them to get 7*12 = 84 MW which is pretty much to most I can get? (times efficiency, again)

And, what, if I place more each single one goes down with output?

It's unclear to me.

PS: Getting screenshots to show.

https://ibb.co/ns1ckpJ
https://ibb.co/Dzs2vz4

Here are the figures. I have 20 placed so far.

[Overeagerdragon]

You have to look at Ray Receivers like they're amped up solar panels....when they have line of sight to your sphere or swarm they gather energy with their efficiency slowly going up over time.....when thei're out of line of sight with swarm or sphere they lose efficiency drammatically.

So if you build Ray receivers on a place where it's "dark" often; you lose more efficiency than you can gain. Conversely when you place them on spots that have frequent sunlight you can get massive power amounts from them (especially with a graviton lens attached to them).

From what I've noticed a "vanilla" ray receiver (without lens) will lose more efficiency during the dark than it will get during the light times. So planets with a high axial tilt placed on the dark zones is not a good idea....Likewise placing them on planets with orbital resonance 2:1 or higher make them high ineffective (because it will be light and dark more often and the dark draining more efficiency than the light gives them back)


As for how they interact with swarm or sphere; the sphere/swarm produces a maximum amount of energy which can be drawn (up to the maximum) between ALL ray receivers currently in LoS in that solar system. The tricky thing is that not ALL receivers will always be in LoS...

[Overeagerdragon]

Originally posted by ApathicAlpaca:

Yes... but...
How does that work?

Max output of my swarm is 85 MW.
If I placed only ONE receiver, does it produce 85 MW (times effectiveness)?
If I place two, each goes down to 42.5 MW?

Because that's definitely not the case.
I think each of my receivers says something like 'maximum output' is 12 MW. So... should i place 7 of them to get 7*12 = 84 MW which is pretty much to most I can get? (times efficiency, again)

And, what, if I place more each single one goes down with output?

It's unclear to me.

PS: Getting screenshots to show.

it has a MAXIMUM power output of 12.5 (25 with lens) further reduced by lack of upgrades....so no matter iff you produce 1.5GW...a single receiver will only draw 12.5Mw at max

[ApathicAlpaca]

Thanks so far, can you just quickly have a look here please?
https://ibb.co/ns1ckpJ
https://ibb.co/Dzs2vz4

As you can see 83.0 MW swarm max. output.

12.5 MW max output per receiver (I assume it's requested power * effiency, so 18*0,7 = 12.5, that fits nicely)

I have placed 20 receivers on my planet.
All of them are ALWAYS at 100%, no downtimes because of darkness or LoS. (I checked double, they are all on the poles and have no true night)


So please bear with me, what I would EXPECT as output per receiver:
83.0 * 0.7 / 20
Max. swarm output times efficiency (70%) divided by number of receivers.
What's the result?
2.9 MW per receiver.

But no! As you see on screenshot, it's only 2.13 MW.
Where's the rest?
Do the receivers not get rays from ALL sails? Is the planet body in line of sight of some sails <-> receiver line? Gotta say, this is driving me nuts :D


But anyway, right now if I just removed some receivers, the total output would stay the same, right? Because I have too many.
PS: Experimented and no, doesnt work. I had 20*2,13, now I have 10*3,37. So way less output than before. What the hell...?

Thanks for your help.

[DCC]

On your 2nd screenshot it says "Dyson sphere status 486 MW/ 82.9 MW" which means that the amount of Ray receivers you have installed (in the whole system, not just one planet) is trying to pull up to 486 MW, but your current dyson sphere configuration is only able to provide up to 82.9 MW.

Get more solar sails into sun orbit or improve your Dyson sphere to fix this.

Edit: Maybe some of your Ray receivers are set to produce Photons which requires a lot more power than regular Power generation

[Remedial Tester]

Originally posted by ApathicAlpaca:

Thanks so far, can you just quickly have a look here please?
https://ibb.co/ns1ckpJ
https://ibb.co/Dzs2vz4

As you can see 83.0 MW swarm max. output.

12.5 MW max output per receiver (I assume it's requested power * effiency, so 18*0,7 = 12.5, that fits nicely)

I have placed 20 receivers on my planet.
All of them are ALWAYS at 100%, no downtimes because of darkness or LoS. (I checked double, they are all on the poles and have no true night)


So please bear with me, what I would EXPECT as output per receiver:
83.0 * 0.7 / 20
Max. swarm output times efficiency (70%) divided by number of receivers.
What's the result?
2.9 MW per receiver.

But no! As you see on screenshot, it's only 2.13 MW.
Where's the rest?
Do the receivers not get rays from ALL sails? Is the planet body in line of sight of some sails <-> receiver line? Gotta say, this is driving me nuts :D


But anyway, right now if I just removed some receivers, the total output would stay the same, right? Because I have too many.

Thanks for your help.

Your number are off, that's what's wrong.
If we look at the dyson sphere status we see, you're requesting 486MW, and from Requested Power, we know each receiver is asking for 18MW. 486/18 is 27. You have that many not 20.

If we plug in more accurate values, 82.9 * 0.6938 / 27. We do get 2.13MW.

But yeah you do have too many Receivers cut back on them

[ApathicAlpaca]

Wow that may be the actual cause. I have some installed on a 2nd planet nearer to the sun. Let me check. I never understood that "dyson sphere status" number. That could be it!!

[Remedial Tester]

The requested value is for that receiver, not the whole network. But since you said they were all the same. I treated them as such. With that info, I could double check how many receivers you had.

[ApathicAlpaca]

Ok, no way this is working out. It was only ~8 on the other planet, I removed some but still dyson sphere is 414 MW / 83 MW.

How the heck is so much power requested? Damn, I don't get it :(

[--T-a-u-r-u-s--]

are you use lenses? if so remove them, try use only one ray receiver first and then add slowly more to check what is your demand on them
Probably you have somewhere more receivers than you should

[ApathicAlpaca]

No lenses. Will remove more but it's weird that the total output goes down. If I had too many I would expect it balance out and comes out to the same amount.

[Unregistered HyperCam 2]

Originally posted by ApathicAlpaca:

Ok, no way this is working out. It was only ~8 on the other planet, I removed some but still dyson sphere is 414 MW / 83 MW.

How the heck is so much power requested? Damn, I don't get it :(

Maybe because you're total power grid is requesting that much ? I'm not far into the game so i don't know for sure, but those 414MW aren't coming from nowhere that's for sure.

[Remedial Tester]

Maybe there not all acting the same, as you think? can you remove them all in the system to get a proper count and come back to us (or at lest down to 5 since that's max you Dyson swarm can handle)?

[ApathicAlpaca]

I think I got it. I reduced planet 1 to only 4 receivers. Before, I had 18 and each produced 3 MW ( = 54 total).
Now I have 4 producing 10 MW each, so 40 MW. So the total (on this planet) went down.

BUT remember that I still have some on the other planet. So I *GUESS* the total output went down on planet 1 but went UP on planet 2. Because the SHARE of total receivers in the system has gone up for planet 2 and down for planet 1.
Pretty sure if I went to both planets, I'd see that the SYSTEM total stayed the same.
It's the planet 1 total that messed up my head.

Anyway, obviously I placed WAY too many receivers. Gotta find a way to put MANY MORE sails into space somehow.

Thanks everyone, it has become much clearer. Now to see what happens if I put in lenses / photon tech :D


PS: Had a look at planet 2 power supply total, it definitely went up a lot. So yeah, gotta take into account the whole system.