How do you solve your early/mid game power shortages?

[Shavanna]

Hey everyone,
i just started a new game some hours ago, with all yellow research done for now. Soon, my first planet is covered by wind turbines and i have no thermal power going on for now. In my last games, i heavily used thermal energy by burning raw coal or excess hydrogen, to cover my rising need, but is there a better alternative to this, if you havent left your startig system yet? How do you solve those power shortages before you have end game solutions, like artificial stars or antimatter cells (a huge waste of antimatter in my POV, a better use is for white matrixes)

[LorDC]

For midgame it is either fusion or dyson swarm. It's pretty much the fisrt thing you should make after yellow cubes and logistics. They are more or less the same in terms of resource efficiency and energy density and beat any "conventional" options by a mile. (Although in my eyes fusion is way more felxible and convenient in terms of deployment.)

As for anti-matter - dyson spheres never disapper or run out of juice so you will very soon come to the point where you have way more antimatter than you can use for science. Not to mention that unlimited upgrades have diminishing returns in terms of their efficiency. So scaling up your science becomes pointless after some time.

[8Kuula]

Do not know is this optimal but on starting system I have done.

1.) solar / wind rings around planet to equator, and between 1 and 2 zones so total 5 rings. If starter planet has solar >100% have made only solar rings, if wind >100% wind turbines close as possible, and solar between.
2.) thermal, burns energetic graphite or hydrogen.
3.) dyson swarm up. Nothing insanely big, 40 guns has worked for me. That I have put farthest planet in system.
4.) fusion.
5.) dyson sphere, slowly at first, even with 1 launcher, helps. Point I have had, is just to get it going so it builds itself in background.

As sphere gets up and running, I have removed first thermal and then fusion.

I think idea is not to build too fast, so your energy generation can keep up. First times I had no energy problems, but now that after multiple starts it has come an issue, because it is a lot faster put too many factories up just using blueprints and energy requirement goes up way too fast.

[Dirkels]

Normally I play with unlimited resources and then use windmills at first and later graphite (yes its worth converting coal into graphite) and excess hydrogen powered thermal power plants.

This time I started a 1x resource, no proliferator, game and so far (all color cubes) only used windmills and solar panels to not waste my now limited coal supply. Although I do use coal and excess hydrogen to produce, with new reform recipe, more refined oil to cut down on the need for crude oil.

Plan on reaching the end reseach goal like this without even leaving my home star system. Will be a bit slow, only producing on cube per second, but its just a way to get me out of my comfortable unlimited resource zone. Once done with that the expansion to other systems and unlimited white cube production should follow....

[LorDC]

Originally posted by Dirkels:

This time I started a 1x resource, no proliferator, game and so far (all color cubes) only used windmills and solar panels to not waste my now limited coal supply. Although I do use coal and excess hydrogen to produce, with new reform recipe, more refined oil to cut down on the need for crude oil.

As someone who did my first playthrough on 1x I can say that you shouldn't really worry about coal supply. Unless you go for coal only or purposefully delay fusion you should be fine.

[Dirkels]

Originally posted by LorDC:

Originally posted by Dirkels:

This time I started a 1x resource, no proliferator, game and so far (all color cubes) only used windmills and solar panels to not waste my now limited coal supply. Although I do use coal and excess hydrogen to produce, with new reform recipe, more refined oil to cut down on the need for crude oil.

As someone who did my first playthrough on 1x I can say that you shouldn't really worry about coal supply. Unless you go for coal only or purposefully delay fusion you should be fine.

Well I have a very relaxed (read slow) play style, often leaving game runnning overnight, and if I use coal for power it would burn needles resources to supply the standby load.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by Dirkels:

Well I have a very relaxed (read slow) play style, often leaving game runnning overnight, and if I use coal for power it would burn needles resources to supply the standby load.

Real power plants are burning extra fuel to keep your computer running when you sleep.

Caring about burning virtual coal in a game but not caring about wasting power for real is a pretty clear case of misplaced priorities.

[Nekogod]

Originally posted by cswiger:

Originally posted by Dirkels:

Well I have a very relaxed (read slow) play style, often leaving game runnning overnight, and if I use coal for power it would burn needles resources to supply the standby load.

Real power plants are burning extra fuel to keep your computer running when you sleep.

Caring about burning virtual coal in a game but not caring about wasting power for real is a pretty clear case of misplaced priorities.

Reminds me of a meme I saw:

Lamps in video games use real electricity.

[Jahaga]

After building tons of Wind Turbines, I transition to building a belt of Solar Panels and Wind Turbines along the equator. It follows a pattern due to Wind Turbine spacing; 1 Wind Turbine, then 2 Solar Panels. Repeat until you go all the way around the equator. I do this until I have 7 full rings.

Roughly 60% of the Solar Panels will be facing the sun to generate power, then the Wind Turbines obviously have 100% up time. In total, it generates about 450 MW of power.

I obtain the high-purity silicon by smelting stone into silicon ore. I also automate foundation in order to pave the way over water.

After this, I switch to fusion power. Not too long after fusion power, I'm constructing my Dyson Sphere and will transition over to Ray Receivers on another planet powering Energy Exchangers to transport power all over the cluster via Accumulators. Then in the end game I switch to anti-matter fuel rods and Artificial Stars.

[lokieid]

Just use a bunch of thermal power plants burning energetic graphite, then when you get titanium make hydrogen power cells and burn those, I only use maybe 50 wind turbines on the starter, that's just to get thing up and running. I ended up on this game, before I built a dyson swarm. my starter planet was pushing over 1.1GW supplied by hydrogen fuel cells and energetic graphite alone. I'm at standard settings, 1x resources 64 stars or whatever. There is tons of coal out there so don't worry about conserving it. Just burn it all into the atmosphere!

[Azythromycin]

NEVER NEVER NEVER burn resources on "dyson swarm" TOO early... honestly you don't even need hydrogen power cells... you can research the tech but you don't have to use em... i skip it every time... proliferated hydrogen is def 1 answer... you gain an extra 3-4 mj of energy per each 1

[LorDC]

Originally posted by Azythromycin:

NEVER NEVER NEVER burn resources on "dyson swarm" TOO early... honestly you don't even need hydrogen power cells... you can research the tech but you don't have to use em... i skip it every time... proliferated hydrogen is def 1 answer... you gain an extra 3-4 mj of energy per each 1

Well, if you actually USE dyson swarm for energy generation it is pretty resource efficient actually. Obviously, just launching sails into the void is a waste.
As for hydrogen cells, yeah, I skip them every time too. THey are pointless for energy generation: rod itself is worth 54 MJ, while hydrogen it needs is 90 MJ. You actually lose energy by converting hydrogen into rods. Not to mention that they need titanium, and when you have it you are one step away from fsuion anyways. They are kinda okay for powering mecha because they allow for more energy density per item stack but early on, but you dont really need them - graphite is just good enough to get the job done.

[Qiox]

In my current game, I start by building a strip around the equator 3 wind generators wide, with all the gaps in between them filled with solar panels. That typically gives around 450M on a starter planet.

Then the planet closest to the star had 130% solar, so I put a belt of panels around the equator there and got an excess of 1.4 G that I export back to the starter with accumulators. That gives me 1.8 G to work with on the starter planet which easily got me to being ready to produce white cubes.

I put a swarm around a nearby blue giant which produces 9 G, but I don't actually need any of that power yet. I just use it for photon creation for white cubes. Starter planet still running fine on the original setup of 1.8 G from in system generation.

I never burn anything for power. It just isn't needed in the early or mid game.

[kris44dad]

Thermal ASAP, screw the turbines. Higher level belts to feed thermals, ASAP. Fusion. Spheres (ray and ant-matter).

[Kyrros]

Originally posted by Shavanna:

In my last games, i heavily used thermal energy by burning raw coal or excess hydrogen

Converting coal into Energetic graphite will always be a more efficient solution, if you're just burning raw coal.

If you are burning Energetic Graphite, I would highly recommend spraying your fuel rods with Mk2 Proliferator as well. Both the Fuel and the Proliferator only need coal as the base ingredient so you can feed both from the same coal patch, enhance it, then burn it for an immediate 20% bump in power over regular Energetic Graphite (which, itself, is a nice bump over coal). A single coal patch can easily feed 20-30 Thermal Power Stations for a while (at least until you get better fuels, like FireIce, Deuteron Rods, etc...

Originally posted by Shavanna:

is there a better alternative to this, if you havent left your startig system yet?

Two words... "LAVA" "PLANET"
The recently added 'Geothermal Power Station' is a boon to your power grid if you have a Lava planet in your starting system. If you're lucky or plan it right, your lava planet could produce excess power that you can ship back home via Accumulators and Energy Exchangers. (Fill empty accumulators via exchangers on the planet with extra power, then ship the full accumulators back home via logistics, then use more exchangers on the low power planet to extract the power into your local grid, send the empty accumulators back to the extra power planet, rinse/repeat in a constant cycle.)

The other thing I use every game (on almost every planet early on) is the above mentioned 1-3 rings of solar panels around the equator of planets.

There is also a bit of variation in the strength of Wind and Solar for each individual planet (when looking at its info panel) - when at all possible, try to work with the planet's stronger renewable candidate first before moving on the 2nd renewable source.

FireIce, once you get enough Orbital Collectors and Vein Utilization levels, can be obtained infinitely from an Ice Giant if you're lucky enough for your home planet to be orbiting one in your particular game (as opposed to a regular Gas Giant which only gives Hydrogen and Deuterium). Can simply run excess of both FireIce and Hydrogen from an Ice Giant straight into your TPSs.

[Qiox]

Geothermal generators are trash. Take the area they cover, including the exclusion buffer around them and fill it in with landfill, and cover with solar and you come out way ahead on power.