Net energy from shipping accumulators

[VA gamer]

Several posters advocate use of high intensity solar planets to ship power to other planets.

Given that logistics vessels have to be charged, and may cost warper, to ship that power to other places, is there some point at which net energy cost makes shipping cost more than it's worth?

[Bobucles]

A full ship of accumulators holds 90GJ of power.
A tower holds what, 12GJ?
Yeah. Don't count on it(costing more than it's worth). I.E. don't worry about it.

[Nova]

An in-depth analysis would be interesting because in my mind it never made sense to ship them around.
Their capacity is so tiny man and for the time you unlock them they are incredibly expensive to craft.
If I want to provide even 45MW for an hour I need 1800 accumulators and that's for one tiny little mining outpost or whatever let alone any serious power amount and/or multiple planets.
And when you factor in energy for shipping them, manufacturing them in the thousands, warpers etc. it just seems like a hassle.
I don't know maybe this is one of those "you have to do it yourself to believe it" kinda deals but my brain just tells me avoid at all costs.
Maybe someone can show me some numbers to convince me otherwise and I kinda hope so because I like the idea of it but right now I can't justify it to myself to use them.

[Guts]

Originally posted by Weswyn:

I can't justify it to myself to use them.

The only reason to use accumulators is if you want to use solar power on a non tidally locked planet for some reason. And even then, you might as well just build a ring of solar panels around the equator rather than build a bazillion accumulators to take on the night time load. And then you'd have to recharge the accumulators, anyway. They're a pain in the ass. The only reason to make them is to build the gas giant collector, and that thing kind of sucks anyway. My 5 fractionator setup made more deuterium per minute than a single collector.

So, yeah. I don't actually see the point, either. But some people have beefy PCs that can handle any amount of machines on their planets, and I guess they've outdone manufacturing to the point where they're mass producing charged accumulators.

[Nova]

Production scale is actually of no concern to me but literally any other power option seems like less of a hassle and yeah there's a lot of people who seem to really care about not using up resources but even at 1x resource multiplier you literally have billions of resources available unless your galaxy is suuuper tightly packed and the furthest stars are really close to your starting planet and at least personally I don't plan on spending 10000+ hours in one playthrough where that would ever become an issue no matter of how irresponsibly I burn through my resources.
In my current playthrough I'm finishing up 30/s science and am working on 60/s small carrier craft and even that crazy ♥♥♥♥ doesn't make a dent into the universes resources unless I would keep on going for multiple thousands of hours.
Ironically the only thing I might "run out" of is hydrogen simply because there's only so many gas giants I can plaster with harvesters hehe. I think I might have to go deep into mining speed before I can actually finish the 60/s production. But I digress... xD

[marcusaddamsson]

My current starting system has a 150% wind planet, and I'm shipping accumulators from there to my main planet. It's helping me bridge the energy gap between swarm and soon-to-be sphere... I don't think it'd be worth it warping them tho.

[Operation40]

I was against them at first, but I definitely think they are worth it now.

not for the small mining outposts.. I usually just plunk down 30 turbines or whatever. but as I start moving actual production off-world, it's very handy to just power with accumulators. also, it looks cool, imo.

I start building accumulators pretty early, but I don't start using them for offworld energy until much later.. so having 5k in storage is really no issue at all.. ymmv.. often it's the opposite problem -- I'm having to be be careful not to produce too many, cause I need room in the tower for the empties to return.

[pat]

I'm glad I read this now. I found a tidally locked planet with 174% solar and was starting to ship accumulators back and forth. I've only got about 200 built, but I'm getting pretty bored with it already.

[Bobucles]

I'm having to be be careful not to produce too many, cause I need room in the tower for the empties to return.

Sounds like the job for a priority input system. Have the recharge station get its accumulators from the returning empties. When those run dry, new empty accumulators enter the system. A simple splitter with priority input should do the job.

[EmDriver]

It works so well and is actually much easier then spamming solar and wind on every planet, or thermal plants for that matter. I feel like the game just doesn't explain how to use them being early access and all.
One energy discharger is equal to 125 solar panels at 100% up-time at their base solar percent. Solar panels on the very middle line of the equator have 55% uptime meaning one energy discharger would actually equal 194 solar panels in that case. You have to make the energy packs anyways for orbital collectors, save yourself time by not spamming solar and wind and prepare ahead for orbital collectors. You'll faze them out when you get artificial suns.

[EmDriver]

Originally posted by pat:

I'm glad I read this now. I found a tidally locked planet with 174% solar and was starting to ship accumulators back and forth. I've only got about 200 built, but I'm getting pretty bored with it already.

YES! This is where you place all your solar panels to charge your energy accumulators from. This way, every planet in the galaxy gets 174% solar!

[sinoplez]

You better have to produce local energy as most of time it will only cost 1/8 max of the planet with solar panel or wind turbine to power an outpost. Which leave enough place to build the outpost and the product line.

If you have awful solar and wind power (both under 100%), you better have to send deuterium rod and build a nuclear power plant line instead of sending accumulator. Accumulator could be a workaround for people who really want to limit themself to infinite powersource.

If you really have no place the energy exchanger could be an idea as it is one of the best ratio "Mw/square" except the artificial sun. But actually "construction space" is a limitation nobody care about.

As long they don't make some change (double distant needed between windturbine, transportation which use stack size instead of absolute value, terraforming more expensive) it will be hard to defend those accumulator.

[EmDriver]

Originally posted by sinoplez:

You better have to produce local energy as most of time it will only cost 1/8 max of the planet with solar panel or wind turbine to power an outpost. Which leave enough place to build the outpost and the product line.

If you have awful solar and wind power (both under 100%), you better have to send deuterium rod and build a nuclear power plant line instead of sending accumulator. Accumulator could be a workaround for people who really want to limit themself to infinite powersource.

If you really have no place the energy exchanger could be an idea as it is one of the best ratio "Mw/square" except the artificial sun. But actually "construction space" is a limitation nobody care about.

As long they don't make some change (double distant needed between windturbine, transportation which use stack size instead of absolute value, terraforming more expensive) it will be hard to defend those accumulator.

It all depends how you want to play. Before artificial suns, planets that I would only mine from only needed ONE energy discharger. That's 6 average miners around every node on the planet. The point I'm at now, every planet in my starting system is completely filled up with industrialization. I cannot fit in any more builds and I'm still deficient of my goal of 100 science a second. It's getting close though! At first I thought there was a lot of space too, but if an entire solar system can't fit enough to only produce 100 science a second, then I was wrong. If you going the mega factory route (which is optimization and while it does take time to setup, you will within minutes surpass the person in production that just made a quick small build for everything), you'll want those accumulators or you going to plop down 1000s of solar panels and not have room to actually scale up your factory.

[Garma Cyro]

Honestly I love accumulators, and it's because of Dyson Sphere.
In my most recent playthrough I want to maximize the use from the single Sphere, as they produce insane amounts of power after construction.

I've currently got one set up around a type 0 star, and it produces 278 GW.
With a single planet dedicate for power I've borthered to collect 38 GW.
This is from 14 rows of ray receivers around equators, all of them getting a continous supply of Graviton lenses.
With 4 equator rows of Energy Exchangers I'm "only" able to extract 12 GW of power at any time.

Not efficient, but a single planet is feeding my entire galaxy with power.
If I need to settle a new planet I just plop down Intersteller logistic station, and hook it up to a Energy Exhangers. Request warp and full accumulators, supply empty accumulators.
I can run up to 45 MW of facilities without needing to expand.
Plus expanding just means adding more energy exchangers to the loop.

Downsides:
- Heavy start-up cost. You need to automate accumulators production and shipping for it to be viable.

Benefits:
- You only need materials whenever you need to scale up. Just running it only requires energy. Unlike other fuel.
- Highly place efficient. One sun + one power planet = Your entire galaxy has energy.
- Power death spirals isn't really a thing with it. Brown out can happen, which means your system needs more accumulators but that's it. The system is fully independent of spliters.

[Garma Cyro]

Here's screenshot of the power planet.
For the energy exchangers I got 8 interstellar stations handling import/export of accumulators. Distribution is based around sushi belts.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2422073051

[Gene R]

Had a use for them in one case. There's a system with several planets, one of them being lush and green, and contains copious amounts of oil. Another one is a barren desert.
I placed an equatorial solar belt on the desert planet, set up massive oil processing there. The green planet is only used for harvesting oil, way too pretty to mar it with buildings and supply chains. The barren planet provides accumulators that feed the oil rigs and the interplanetary station.