How to understand the solar sail system?

[Searry]

I built a railgun at both poles but I keep running into the pitch limit. How can I understand this system? It isn't explained really. Am I even supposed to use it early in the game? I was thinking about filling batteries with it since it said I can get 60mw.

[Rekal]

Yeah the geometry involved is not exactly intuitive. When you see the pitch limit warning, what this means is that the railgun cannot aim high enough by elevating the barrel or aim low enough by depressing the barrel to target the solar sail orbit it is assigned to.

If you haven't created any new solar sail orbits, then the default orbit is typically in the same plane as the orbits of most of the planets. The railguns on the poles should technically be able to hit this target but half the day the railgun will be on the opposite side of the planet from the target and won't be able to "Pitch" low enough to fire through the planet.

If you hop into the Dyson Sphere planning screen you can create additional sail orbits. This is what you'll want to do. Use the three settings to arrange the new orbit to be outside of the main plane of the star system. Loop them up and down at 90 degrees for example. Then on each of your railguns select the new orbit. This will make those railguns at the pole have to elevate their barrels to reach their target which means they can now hit it from both sides of the planet as it rotates.

I never really put any effort into figuring out exactly where the railguns will target in the new orbits. Perhaps someone else has and can give a more detailed explanation.

Your north pole and your south pole railguns will each need their own orbit to target if you want them firing constantly. There was a mod that gave the railguns the ability to auto-target an orbit they could hit, but I'd really like the Dev's to add that to the vanilla experience.

[josmith7]

Originally posted by Rekal:

I never really put any effort into figuring out exactly where the railguns will target in the new orbits. Perhaps someone else has and can give a more detailed explanation.

It might be the 'starting point' of the orbit; as shown when you create it, but I'm not sure.
What I do know is that, annoyingly, the game will use just a single point along the orbit as the insertion point for new sails -- so if a railgun can't see that point it won't launch (even when it has clear line of sight to other parts of the orbit)

And, as Rekal said, the vanilla game won't switch railguns to deliver to other orbits even when those orbits' insertion points are in the railguns' line of sight.

[Searry]

Thank you I didn't know what the new orbit thing even was.

[Searry]

Does it matter how far the solar sails are shot because for some reason that I can't understand when I set the exact same parameters but a lot farther the railgun could shoot actually. TBH this part of the game should be automated since nobody than a scientist can figure out how this sort of stuff works.

[josmith7]

It kind of matters; though there's no minimum or maximum range the railgun can shoot them.

However if you've got the same inclination and precession of target orbit, but you make its radius larger than means that the angles between your planet and the orbital insertion point change - and generally that means that the railgun is able to "see" the insertion point for more of the planet's day/year.

[Searry]

Does it matter in terms of energy collection? Thanks for explaining the radius thing.

[Dragonmaster]

No the energy for Solar Sails is completely dependent ONLY on the luminosity of the planet. Distance or density of the sails does not factor in.

Base is 1.0L = 36kw per sail

For the Sphere itself, same principle applies, does not matter distance or anything nly the Lumonsity value. Each Structure point on a 1.0L star gives 96kw and each cell point on a 1.0L star gives ~15k.


Solar Sail = 36kw * Luminosity
Structure Point on Sphere = 96kw * Luminosity
Cell Point on Sphere = 15kw * Luminosity

[Wiawyr]

Originally posted by Dragonmaster:

No the energy for Solar Sails is completely dependent ONLY on the luminosity of the planet. Distance or density of the sails does not factor in.

I heard a joke once about a guy ordering a pizza at a pizza place. The fellow working behind the counter asked him if he wanted a normal pie, sliced into six pieces. The guy replied, "No, make it eight pieces, I'm really hungry."

It's silly that it actually works like this.