antenna power usage?

[Xscha]

why does the antenna cost so much power at long range, this makes it so you can't use drones effectively and it seems to be out of balance with everything else. a solar panel on a small grid was netting me 37kw. you're telling me I need upwards of 6 to just power a full range antenna? not to mention all the extracurricular attachments. it seems that, in multiplayer, long range drones would be balanced by the fact they are a literal beacon for people to kill, and in singleplayer/local/friends playing together, there's no reason for balancing an effectively only used for fun tool.

[Azrael]

afaik solarpanels can produce up to around 120-150 kw, when the Sun is shining fully onto them.

[Xscha]

Originally posted by Azrael:

afaik solarpanels can produce up to around 120-150 kw, when the Sun is shining fully onto them.

the small solar panels?

[Pa Chu]

The large one https://spaceengineers.fandom.com/wiki/Solar_Panel (is this wiki up to date?)

[Azrael]

I think the Fandom Wiki is outdated, but there is an official wiki.

I was thinking of the large solar panels, I don't use the small solar panels.

[ShadedMJ]

Heh....
Large grid solar panels have gotten 160kw for me lately. Haven't used the small grid ones for a while but they should get about 30kw. So you are both right.

I checked antenna on 2019-11-24 and they both used 4kw per km to a max range of 50km (200kw at max range).

@peepee man : Use batteries and bring them back for recharge?

[Azrael]

I don't know, for what you need a high range with the antenna exactly, but if you wanna build a drone for long range combat, maybe you should consider building it as a kamikaze drone, for it might not make the way back.

I've got the problem, where in my survival save with my friends, one of my friends and me freshly arrived in space (I've alrdy built stuff on an asteroid, but nothing too advanced) and now we're under siege by a pirate raider 20 kilometers away, sending combat drones to our asteroid every now and then.

I went so far that in the freetime, when my friend wasn't there to play, I went to creative mode to create remote controlled torpedoes, with the focus on them being cheap.
On max acceleration, these things only got juice for 15 minutes, which should be enough for a kamikaze attack (either by ramming the pirate ship at high speed or by exploding a warhead near it).

I figured, if I'd design a regular combat drone, if it survives combat with that pirate raider, it wouldn't make it back, so why waste ressources?

[Jawa]

So I ran some numbers and I think the comparison of the small and large grids with real life numbers is very interesting.

Solar panels in SE produce approximately 17.8 times what you would expect from a real solar panel their size.
Large Antennas at max distance deliver/require .0064 kw at the receiver
Small Antennas at max distance deliver/require 0.064 kw at the receiver
Actual Cell towers deliver approximately 0.038 kw to a receiver at the edge of their range. Beyond this is considered to be out of range (too low signal power).

That puts small antenna performance below real communication antennas, and large grid antenna performance above real antennas. The two actually average very close to real antennas.

Note: being able to communicate with lower power at the receiver means you are getting better performance (better technology).

So, while a small grid antenna is performing about 1.7 times worse than an actual antenna, solar panels perform 17.8 times better than real panels.