Aren't the solar sail a bit underwhelming ?

[Aepervius]

To get the tech , you need to ivnest a lot. Yet, doing an equatorial line of solar panel give far more pwoer for a lwoer ivnestment. Sure 1/3 of the time tehy produce nothing, but you can produce them cheaply, I jsut spent 60 minutes, and now I got 3 lines of them going around a small planete (the first one you ened to go due to lack of titanium - i assume the first planet never has titanium). With a lot of effort I can produce a chain of solar sails, yet my solar panel produce now 60 Mw constantly day or night. And If I need more power I can just put another parallel line. I prdocue about 200 solar panel an hour. And the3y are infinite lived.

I need 6 silicon, and some copper and iron for the solar panel.

For the solar sail, they die off quickly, I need a launcher, and I need refined oil and other advanced stuff...

[Mister Veeg]

ah, but once you -have- a launcher it'll keep launching indefinitely provided you keep the sails coming.

There's tech to extend sail lifetime and sails are eventually eaten to form the dyson sphere proper, which doesn't have a time limit.

One ray receiver running at theoretical maximum output (100% efficiency/photon generation/full continuous/gravity lens) pulls as much power as like 70 solar panels.

[Mansen]

A third of the time they don't produce something?

Well... no? A specific planet might not be able to receive on all/any dishes at all times (like if you're trying to place them on your starter planet, which orbits a GAS GIANT blocking the sun more often than not)

Set up your sail guns on a planet that orbits the star (preferably closer to it than the gas giant if you're in the starter system and have a planet there) and you'll get much better shooting.

As for receiving...that's just how it is. It's not like sails are expensive at all. Four? base assemblers can supply more than 16 guns constantly (and I mean constantly) shooting sails at the "sphere". I've got over 5000 sails stable and it's giving me 150MW cheaper than burning fuels.

[Weeping-pirate</JAG\>]

I didnt now how fast i wanted to get a dyson swarm up and running, its was a sad day in history when i found out they only live for a short duration.

Yes its been underwhelming.
I think a having a life spawn in general is a cool concept but how its currently implemented/balanced it just feels like a waste of effort and resources.

[Mansen]

Originally posted by Weeping-pirate</JAG\>:

i found out they only live for a short duration.

Lifetime Research goes a LONG way.

[Aepervius]

Originally posted by Mansen:

Originally posted by Weeping-pirate</JAG\>:

i found out they only live for a short duration.

Lifetime Research goes a LONG way.

Probably a yellow research , right ? I got all blue and red and I find them short lived still. I need titanium for that, and at that point without titanium for yellow research a line of solar panel is better than the effort to make sail... At least in my opinion.

[Britty mitty]

I find solar sails cheap really and helps me plan for mass graphene production, since the other main input, mainly stone for glass and then moving up form there, well that's plentiful, easily got 8 assemblers producing them and well, so much juicy, yummy energy at that point, lets me move off mass thermals and shift the energetic graphite to other more needed things, seriously that stuff is burned faster then anything else.

[proXimo]

I'm 40 hours in, have most all research pre-purple done and most purple research done. Sails just don't last long enough.

I'm making mega factories that consume lots of raw resources, but these resources are going to permanent things. It's a lasting effect on the "empire." Burning fuel is a waste in the long run(unless it's a byproduct). I wasted so much coal on generators. Solar sails are the exact same thing, you're just burning other resources as fuel instead of coal.

Sails should be made permanent (let's be honest here, they give tiny power anyway that has to picked up by a reciever that cannot work at full power without late late game tech) and the solar life upgrades should instead upgrade the amount of power they give or allow them to store power like an accumulator that gets bigger the more sails you launch.

For a permanent source of power I make a huge dot of solar panels at each pole of the planet. They have 100% uptime ranging from 50% power on the dark side to 100% on the light side. If the pole is tilted toward the star then many of the center panels have full uptime all the time. I have a panel factory on the silicon planet in the starter system so they are plentiful and I can call them with logistics vessels to any planet if I don't want to make the flight myself.

[CaBhaal]

Originally posted by proXimo:

I'm 40 hours in, have most all research pre-purple done and most purple research done. Sails just don't last long enough.

I'm making mega factories that consume lots of raw resources, but these resources are going to permanent things. It's a lasting effect on the "empire." Burning fuel is a waste in the long run(unless it's a byproduct). I wasted so much coal on generators. Solar sails are the exact same thing, you're just burning other resources as fuel instead of coal.

I've gotten quite a bit of mileage from micro fusion reactors. 9 MW of output and the deuterium fuel canisters and extremely energy dense, lasting a long time.

Making deuterium is the only real use I have for hydrogen. Once you're importing titanium from another planet, the canisters are not hard to make.

[YouTube.com/StoneLegion]

Their a fun resource sink, but they are also underwhelming. I don't want them to be unlimited, but I feel their life is a bit short an hour with max research if I recall.

[Veny]

Well, there are plenty of things that seem unnessessary and pointless and expensive and ineffcient... but somehow, after few hours (or dozens of hours) scale of the game shifts and what was "expensive" now becomes "cheap", what was "slow" now becomes "fast" and what was "OK, i build hundred of these" becomes "FKC i am running out of space on my planet".
So yea, if you feel Dyson Sphere feels expensive, better expand your production, hoard resources, optimise... sooner or later you will run out of things to invest in anyway :D

[Britty mitty]

My solar sails currently and this is after doing all purple research and just getting ready to go to another system, my solar sails provide a possible maximum of 416 mw of power and that's with only 8 mk2 assemblers and 30 -40 emi rail emitters, tis not hard to do.

[SzTimo]

just build solar panels on the poles our equator. never have a power problem again