best zone for building solar panels / ray receivers?

[andrewb]

What I'm mostly wondering about is whether tropical is better than summer. The game says summer zones have longer days, do tropical zones have even longer days?

[cswiger]

For planets with a low axial tilt, solar panels and ray receivers placed at the poles will remain in sunlight a goodly portion of the year.

Otherwise, it really doesn't matter. Planet orbits are all circular, so the length of day and night and of winter vs. summer all average out over time to 50% visibility everywhere.

[andrewb]

Originally posted by cswiger:

For planets with a low axial tilt, solar panels and ray receivers placed at the poles will remain in sunlight a goodly portion of the year.

Otherwise, it really doesn't matter. Planet orbits are all circular, so the length of day and night and of winter vs. summer all average out over time to 50% visibility everywhere.

Ooh I see...one of the planets in my system is exactly like that actually. Thanks

[Arcane]

Planet poles work really well. My Ray Receivers are almost always on. However I have to have a duplicate setup on North and South poles. In case one of them does not get direct sun. Otherwise the whole planet will be out of power.
This is the reason tidally locked planets are so awesome. You have half a planet to mount railguns, ray receivers and launchers.

[Zaflis]

Most planets don't have summer/winter rotation, at least i haven't noticed any dimming on poles.

There are 2 more kinds of planets that behave different from those, and they have an orange text below their name to show their significance:
- Tidally locked planets; these just practically don't rotate at all. Build solars where it shines.
- Horizontally rotating planets behave like our Earth with summer and winter. Poles dim and brighten, these are unpredictable and you gain nothing really for building on poles. With these it doesn't even matter where you build.

[Arcane]

Originally posted by Zaflis:

Poles dim and brighten, these are unpredictable and you gain nothing really for building on poles. With these it doesn't even matter where you build.

It does matter because you need to build on two opposite points of the planet. With duplicate setup on two opposite points you have a guarantee that at least of of them will have power always. Poles are just an easy way to find the opposite points in this case.

[Veny]

I reccomend distributing them evenly all around the planet so your energy input is pretty much stable. Me personally? I fill empty space between buildings with recievers to use space i would not use anyway.

[Enkido]

Originally posted by cswiger:

For planets with a low axial tilt, solar panels and ray receivers placed at the poles will remain in sunlight a goodly portion of the year.

Otherwise, it really doesn't matter. Planet orbits are all circular, so the length of day and night and of winter vs. summer all average out over time to 50% visibility everywhere.

you can counter high axial tilt with a larger dyson sphere. even with 15° tilt, all of my pole receivers have constant contact.

[Zaflis]

Originally posted by Arcane:

It does matter because you need to build on two opposite points of the planet. With duplicate setup on two opposite points you have a guarantee that at least of of them will have power always. Poles are just an easy way to find the opposite points in this case.

This is a little different for normal planets though where you can get infinite 100% "continuously receiving" buff for the ray performance even on non-tidally locked planets. If you keep losing sight of the sun then you lose the buff.

[Arcane]

Originally posted by Enkido:

you can counter high axial tilt with a larger dyson sphere. even with 15° tilt, all of my pole receivers have constant contact.

This is actually interesting. What do receivers have to see/target? I assume it is sun. I couldn't find any solid info about that though.
Are you claiming they are targeting something in a Dyson swarm? What is it, a specific point?

[Ri0Rdian]

Originally posted by Arcane:

Originally posted by Enkido:

you can counter high axial tilt with a larger dyson sphere. even with 15° tilt, all of my pole receivers have constant contact.

This is actually interesting. What do receivers have to see/target? I assume it is sun. I couldn't find any solid info about that though.
Are you claiming they are targeting something in a Dyson swarm? What is it, a specific point?

They should target any part of the Swarm not the star. They get the energy from collectors not star.

[Arcane]

Originally posted by Ri0Rdian:

Originally posted by Arcane:

This is actually interesting. What do receivers have to see/target? I assume it is sun. I couldn't find any solid info about that though.
Are you claiming they are targeting something in a Dyson swarm? What is it, a specific point?

They should target any part of the Swarm not the star. They get the energy from collectors not star.

From common sense perspective - yes. It should also scale with the number of sails visible for example, but it is receiving all of it at once.
How it was implemented in a game is a different story. I have a feeling that it is actually still sun because it is such an easy obvious point to track for "solar" power. Would be nice to know for sure.

[Mr. Fibble]

The dimming and long nights at the poles can be predicted simply by looking at the axial tilt of the planet you're building on. The larger the angle, the bigger the wobble as it orbits the star.

The more wobble a planet has the closer to the equator you want solar related things to be BUT the closer to the equator you get the more the circumference of the planet starts to play a factor in that you have to build more things to keep the daylight exposure closer to constant within the grid.

For planets with a lot of axial wobble the best bet is to look at laternate sources like shipping in filled accumulators, burning fuel of some kind or even going wind power.

[EmDriver]

Any solar panel you place anywhere on the planet is going to end up receiving sunlight 50% of the year. Depending on the tilt, a pole can have sunlight for half the year, but then be in perpetual darkness for half of the year. This is why you have to build on both poles. Building a line down the equator is great as well.
Dyson receivers can maintain their link to the swarm in total darkness using a gravitation lense.

[Veny]

Originally posted by Mythos Method:

Any solar panel you place anywhere on the planet is going to end up receiving sunlight 50% of the year. Depending on the tilt, a pole can have sunlight for half the year, but then be in perpetual darkness for half of the year. This is why you have to build on both poles. Building a line down the equator is great as well.
Dyson receivers can maintain their link to the swarm in total darkness using a gravitation lense.

Pretty much this.
Build few dozens of accumulators and you will be fine... with irregular power sources, you will need them anyway.

[Enkido]

Originally posted by Arcane:

Originally posted by Enkido:

you can counter high axial tilt with a larger dyson sphere. even with 15° tilt, all of my pole receivers have constant contact.

This is actually interesting. What do receivers have to see/target? I assume it is sun. I couldn't find any solid info about that though.
Are you claiming they are targeting something in a Dyson swarm? What is it, a specific point?

as long as any part of the swarm or sphere is visible