Weird power drain when ship docked

[-_Tyger_-]

I have a small ship I use to get back and forth to the earth surface. I'm trying to track down a weird power drain and I just realized that when it docks at my station, the two draw a lot more power together than they did apart.

Separate
Ship: 8 kW
Station: 80 kW

Docked
Ship: 146 kW
Station: 439 kW

Any idea what's going on?

I tried docking another ship to see if I got similar results, but it had about the same power draw together and separate. I also disabled mods and I'm still getting a much higher power draw when the small ship is docked than separate.

[!?!]

Might be reloading batteries?

[-_Tyger_-]

Originally posted by !?!:

Might be reloading batteries?

No, because I turned off all the batteries except one each and both batteries are showing a load.

[Dan2D3D]

Hi, when a ship is connected with connector = it will provide power, Oxygen and Hydrogen if it got a O2/H2 Gen + power source.

= it will share the needed power of the station it is connected to.

Maybe your station uses a lot!?

I would test on a station that don't need power, maybe add just one large Nuclear Reactor full of Uranium on the station and connect your ship to see how it goes, well if it is the same.

I would create a Testing world or create a copy of your original save (change the save name with Save as), set it Creative and do more testing in that copy = this way you don't mess the original save

Doing so will give you more clues on what is going on.

[Psojed]

A screenshot of your ship and base would be helpful.

[M.Red]

looks like the power balancing that happens when you dock your ship to the base. all batterys are set to Auto right? try set the ships batterys to Charge this will increase the bases output when doch but if the ships batteryas are loaded it turns back to normal

it could also be broken mod related

[-_Tyger_-]

Originally posted by Psojed:

A screenshot of your ship and base would be helpful.

Here you go. Sorry it took awhile, but I just started a remodel on my base after I posted this. I moved a bunch of things around and the ship is now docking to a completely new connector, so it wasn't that.

Separate (56 + 181)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1909766969
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1909766982

Docked(184 + 552)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1909767003
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1909767024

Again, I turned off all the batteries except one on each grid and those batteries are in Auto.

[Psojed]

I see your ship has hydrogen tank, so my first guess would be O2/H2 Generator firing up when you dock. The power consumption is correct, because it starts filling up the H2 tank on the ship only when you dock. Power usage checks out:
736 - 237 = 499 kW; O2/H2 Gen has max input of 500 kW.

[-_Tyger_-]

Originally posted by Psojed:

I see your ship has hydrogen tank, so my first guess would be O2/H2 Generator firing up when you dock. The power consumption is correct, because it starts filling up the H2 tank on the ship only when you dock. Power usage checks out:
736 - 237 = 499 kW; O2/H2 Gen has max input of 500 kW.

Wow, great detective work, Psojed. This wasn't quite the answer, but it pointed me in the right direction. I had previously checked to make sure the hydrogen tank on the small ship was full before checking the power drain. I came back to this thread because another of my ships started doing this, but then I realized I had just connected the other ship's cockpit to the rest of the system via conveyors. So...

TL;DR - There is a bug: cockpits will (usually) continue to draw oxygen even if no one is in them. The O2/H2 Generator pulls the same kW at any load, so even a slight O2 pull will draw 500 kW.


I've been away from the game for a few months and I knew there was some zombie drain of O2/H2, but I couldn't remember what. I thought Hydrogen Thrusters would continue to draw a small amount of hydrogen even when parked, but that isn't the case, so maybe I remembered wrong or maybe they fixed that.

However, cockpits will continue to draw oxygen, even when no one is in them (I said usually above because I remembered that always being true, but now the second ship stopped drawing after awhile). Whether it's generating .11 liter (draw from cockpit right now which is equal to .01 L ice every 3.5 minutes!!) or the full 500L, large grid O2/H2 Generators will pull 500 kW. So their max input is also their min input. This is not how cracking water into O2 and H2 works in the real world - the power draw is proportional to the gas output. So this is really a bug or at least a design flaw.

What makes this even more stupid is that there is another oxygen bug with cockpits. Once they have even .01 L of oxygen in their tank, they will infinitely fill your suit oxygen when you are inside as long as you keep your visor closed. As soon as you open your visor, it will start to drain oxygen from the tank until it's empty. So if you're building a ship with a cockpit, you can connect it to an oxygen source once, briefly, and then refill your suit oxygen indefinitely. https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/general/topic/cockpit-refills-oxygen-without-generator-or-ice-in-inventory.

Digi's excellent BuildInfo https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=514062285 helped with a lot of troubleshooting on this issue.

I'm /ragequit for now.