How do you use solar panels?

[DaLagga]

So I noticed that their position relative to the sun heavily influences their power yield (makes sense). So naturally, my main goal was to use rotors in order to get them facing in the perfect direction. By using two rotors in a sequence, I was able to point a solar array any direction I wanted. Sweet, right?

Well, all was going perfectly until I started on my 6 or 7th solar panel when the rotors starting "jiggling" just like landing gear do. I had no idea that this bug affected rotors attached to stations so now I'm at a loss as to how to properly position solar panels. Is there a workaround for this or am I just going to have to settle for sub-par power output per panel?

[𒀀𒂵𒉡𒆠.n0 m3rCy☣☠]

1 rotor + staff connected with several rotors & several panels works fine for me o.0 how are you connecting your panels ?

[maninredagain]

I usually build a "tower" of 4 blocks high, then 1 rotor for horizontal movement, on top of that 1 light armor block (seems to get a little better stability), on the side of that another rotor for vertical movement (i like to call them Rotor-Horiz and Rotor-Vert in the menu), on "top" (which faces sideways) of that 6 light armor blocks onto which I put 6 Solar Panels (more become wiggly).
This can be varied i.e. into building a T-shaped tower with a set of panels pointing "left" and one pointing "right" and probably in other ways I haven't thought of yet.
I would have added a screenshot, but I actually don't know how to add it.

[DaLagga]

Like I said, rotors seem to suffer from the same bug as landing gear. They start shaking violently and kill anyone and anything that gets close. So rotors are not an option.

[maninredagain]

They are as long as you aren't too greedy and put too many panels on them.
Which for me makes sense since rotors aren't holding the increasing amounts of mass by magic or wishful thinking.
And now let's see if I just learned how to add a screenshot:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=402394755

Edit: Yay, I did.

[DaLagga]

So as long as you don't put much on them, they don't bug out? What's the limit? Six panels or can you fit more? The thing is, I want to build enough of them to power my main factory/base which is currently eating up around 50mw of power meaning that I'd need over 400 panels. So as you can probably guess, breaking them up into clusters of 6 would be rather troublesome.

[maninredagain]

Ouch, that would be troublesome. Six is maximum as far as I experienced it.

Another idea I had when thinking about it was maybe build a large ship consisting of just a few armor blocks, the minimum thrusters/gyro for movement, a connector on two rotors which you can attach to another connector on your station and as many solar panels in a big field as you like (maybe some batteries on the ship as well). This should get you the power you need.
The thought on that is to move the ship to the right angle and connect it to the station which will share power.

[Rubi]

Originally posted by DaLagga:

Like I said, rotors seem to suffer from the same bug as landing gear. They start shaking violently and kill anyone and anything that gets close. So rotors are not an option.

If it weren't a very annoying bug, the wiggling looks pretty funny

[Lothos]

I thought rotors did better if you provided them more mass to balance the vibes out. Heavy armor blocks especially. matter of fact there's one mining ship with pics out there that has a massive mining head on it. the moving end of the head is probably 50 blocks in diameter and 5 or so blocks up from the rotor end as well as 5-6 blocks down

[VanGoghComplex]

My best luck with rotors (for everything, not just solar panels) has been to double them up. Without fail, once I secure both ends of the moving part, along the axis of rotation, and set the offsets properly, it becomes reliably stable.

It also occurs to me that since solar panels do not need to move once built, you could set them up to be supported like so:

ARPSS
A___SS
A___SS
ARPSS

Wherein A represents armor, R represents a rotor body, P represents a rotor part, and S represents your solar array. Install the first rotor and rotate the panel to the desired rotation, then install the second rotor and part and attach them, locking those panels in place. This will be incredibly secure and strong.

You could theoretically use the same approach to adjust the panel's yaw.

[2000]

I typically have over 50 panels hanging on my rotor mounted arrays with no shaking or exploding and they are quite strong. In the beginning, I had shaking and out of control madness. By going slow and methodically, I arrived at the method I use today which is very similar to VanGogh's method described above. I have had zero issues since and all of my panels stay right on 120kw output consistantly. There may be more than one way that works, just work it out - throw out what doesnt work and take note of what does.

[DaLagga]

Thanks for the tips. One other thing I've noticed though is an issue with batteries. Put simply, they don't seem to work right. I can set them to charge or to an automatic mode where they start charging when they're completely dry but this causes a lot of issues. Like what if I want them to start charging automatically even if they're aren't empty? Do I really have to keep toggling the charge option depending on the situation?

Also, when charging batteries they seem to implement their full drain on the solar panels/reactors at all times. This causes a lot of issues though. For example, I've got a ship that eats up around 4mw of power while idle and half a dozen refineries going. So I put 60 solar panels on the thing which provides me with 7.2mw of power. No problem, right? Well, at max with most of the thrusters going my ship draws about 70mw of power. So because I want to do away with reactors entirely and not waste Uranium, I threw on 20 batteries which can output a total of 80mw.

All good so far, right? Well, here's the problem. When I go to charge the batteries while idle, rather than just using my spare 3.2mw it tries to charge all of them at 100% simultaneously which means that my power usage soars to ~84mw (batteries + other idle ship functions + 6 refineries). What this means is that other ship components function poorly or not at all and my refineries don't get enough power.

In short, is there a way to just have my batteries charge from excess power instead of having them suck my ship dry? This would seem to make logical sense and is actually exactly how they work in Factorio (another early access game that you should all play if you haven't). In fact, in Factorio they're fully automated and work exactly as they should - charging only with excess power and supplying power only when it's absolutely needed and there's no need to toggle settings or mess with options because they simply function as they should.

[AlexMBrennan]

In short, is there a way to just have my batteries charge from excess power instead of having them suck my ship dry?

I'd imagine that programmable blocks could do that. Start looking here

Edit to add: Or just subscribe to this workshop script

[Chucky Dickens]

Try using Advanced rotors, I dunno why, but they seem to be more stable in every application for me.

[maninredagain]

Well, after trying some stuff apparently the easiest way to stabilize more than 6 panels is to add a frame of armor blocks around them. Currently I have a frame with 10 panels inside, staying nice and still, and am waiting for the stuff to be refined for a larger one with room for 40 panels.

[DaLagga]

Well, I found a good solution to the problem a few days ago. If you simply build a ship with loads of solar panels you can then just attach a connector on the station attached to a couple of rotors. Line the ship up with the sun for maximum yield and then use the rotors on the station to position the connector right next to the ship's. Connect them together and now you're able to supply your base with power from the solar ship and not have to worry about components jiggling themselves apart because the station rotors are technically only supporting a connector block and not the actual array of solar panels. As an added bonus, you can remove the solar ship later if necessary and use it for other purposes.

Unfortunately, as I pointed out in another thread, using a low of solar panels completely destroys your game speed. It seems that they're quite CPU intensive and once you get hundreds of them your game will slow down to a crawl. I used 3 solar ships with over 200 panels each to power my main factory (still was only able to output ~80mw of power which is less than a single large reactor) and my game speed dropped into the 50-60% range on a high end CPU. So it seems like solar panels have to be used relatively sparringly which is a bit of a problem because their low power output means that you need tons of them to do much good.