How does electricity work?

[richv68]

In this game, obviously....

Here's where I come from: I have three solar panels so far. Two of them connect to the third, which in turn connects to a pole, which then connects to batteries and to power drawing machines. Now, if i look at the black connecting cables, they all have a cyan moving pattern that, to me, suggests direction of current flow.

But this flow makes no sense to me. The cyan flow moves from the solar panel connected to the pole towards both the pole AND to the other two panels. It should be that two of the panels move current towards the third panel, which then sends the sum of all the currents to the rest of the network. Other points (usually at poles) also make no sense, where batteries are fully charged yet direction of current suggests that they still get charged even when machines need to draw power elsewhere.

Are these cyan patterns in the cables just for display and thus have zero impact on actual power distribution? Also, so we have any way to figure out how power gets used and distributed in the network? Unless I missed something, I still have no idea how much power anything burns, nor how many power panels/batteries/generators i'd need to keep things running, but the game tries to make it important to use powered devices essential (like containment pods and powered farming devices). I think we need far more information regarding power use (or if i missed something, please share your methods here).

Cheers!

[Myakka_23]

I've noticed the pattern flow seemed backwards but as long as everything is working I just thought it odd. The minion wasn't keeping up with feeding the generator to the containment pod so I hooked up a solar panel to the generator so far the generator hasn't run out of power. I don't think this is as complicated as what you're talking about but I didn't want to subscribe to this discussion without leaving a comment.
Cheers

[Belrathius]

I do agree that it would be nice if we had a report on power, both production and consumption, broken down so we could easily see what needs what and how it contributes (under what conditions). I think a Smart Tower module would be ideal for this, rather than a new, always-available UI component. Due to the importance and nature, I would even make it a tier 1 module. Just my two cents.

[di eshor ribly]

Yeah, the cyan flow is just a visual representation that there is power connected and flowing, but otherwise it has no function. The power poles used to have an electrical discharge up near the transformers to show they were active, they changed that to the flow after they realized the "zappy zappy" was causing massive lag.

As for a power supply report... yeah that would be nice. The closest we can get to it now is manually adding up how much power each object uses (it'll tell you on the power connection screen), and manually adding up how much each generator/solar panel produces, and then finding the difference. Instead of running one massive power system I like to break mine up. I have my primary power system, and then any containment domes I make get their own personal solar generator/battery.

Not that you really need a massive power supply system, mind you. I have not run into any problems with power needs yet, and at most I have a medium biomass generator and one or two solar panels in my main system. Not even upgraded solar panels at that, though I will upgrade batteries all the way.