Is there any point to solar panels in this game?

[John Hadley]

I built a solar panel on my small vehicle and it only provides around 9 kW of power. The thing is huge, it costs a ton of resources, and I would need 4 of them to power even one small thruster. Why would I ever want to build one? In the time it would take me to find so much silicon I could mine enough uranium to provide 9 kW of power for days in a small reactor and it could power 3 small thrusters and take up only one small block of space instead of 18 or whatever this huge monstrosity takes. I don't get it. I feel like either the thing should cost less resources or it should provide more power or it should be smaller. It has way too many negatives to have any use at all right now.

[xx]

Yes, there is a point for them. Build a couple in to your station and it permently reduces the rate you use Uranium. If you run out of Uranium, they can be used to power the refinery to slowly refine some Uranium to bring your reactors on like.

If you build a few in to your base, you can power it in a standby mode (no refinery/assember/gravity on line) indeffiently.

Add a couple and a battery or 2 and you have a ship that can be used for infrequent travel that does not require a reactor.

Build a basic base, a couple of pannels (possibly salvaged) with a gravity generator (on low setting) and you have a easy way to gather all the ore near the start.

I personally use a mod that gives block sized solar panels, with any spare silcon to power my ships at stand by without having to turn everything off. Very handy for those big ships you cannot land/dock, so you can leave them safely in space while doing a mining run. The antena will always stay up because you have a steady (admittedly low) stream of power.

[dga8705]

Also, make sure the solar panel is actually facing the sun. They give different amounts of power based on how much sun they get. There are 1-4 green lights on them that you can use to check this.

[Xilo The Odd]

i use em in mass quantities with rotators to get max output from the sun. then i build about 6 battery backups on my station so if i were to EVER run out of power, i just switch my backup power source on then along side the solar panels i have a way to make lots of fuel again.

[Stinger]

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

bleh, ble-bleh

sorry, batteries are kinda awful i think

[Emerald Kithkin]

With 6 rotor arrays of 8 panels each I can power all my station needs without ever using up any of my precious uranium stock. Batteries can be a little hit and miss but They're helpful at least on my smaller worker craft and I can just dock up with connectors to keep them going.

[John Hadley]

Originally posted by xx:

Yes, there is a point for them. Build a couple in to your station and it permently reduces the rate you use Uranium. If you run out of Uranium, they can be used to power the refinery to slowly refine some Uranium to bring your reactors on like.

If you build a few in to your base, you can power it in a standby mode (no refinery/assember/gravity on line) indeffiently.

Add a couple and a battery or 2 and you have a ship that can be used for infrequent travel that does not require a reactor.

Build a basic base, a couple of pannels (possibly salvaged) with a gravity generator (on low setting) and you have a easy way to gather all the ore near the start.

I personally use a mod that gives block sized solar panels, with any spare silcon to power my ships at stand by without having to turn everything off. Very handy for those big ships you cannot land/dock, so you can leave them safely in space while doing a mining run. The antena will always stay up because you have a steady (admittedly low) stream of power.

Yes I discovered that the small panel can provide up to around 30 kW of power if it is aligned with the sun, but its still rather useless for the amount of effort needed to construct it. You yourself state that you use a mod that makes them smaller, which is exatly what I stated in the original post -- that they may need to be smaller or cheaper or provide more power to be useful. I counted the number of blocks a small solar panel takes and it is actually 45 and it doesn't even do the same job as a 1 block small reactor. If I'm worried about backup power I could just have a small container with some processed uranium stored in it and throw it into the reactor if it runs out.

There's no reason to be playing the game for a long period of time without mining because there's nothing else to do in the game. If I'm mining I'll get more than enough uranium to run all my reactors so I just don't feel like these solar panels serve any practical purpose. Just one of them practically doubles the size of my small ship. The effort needed to build one is greater than the effort needed to build a reactor and mine a considerable amount of uranium.

I can perhaps understand the use of solar panels on a station since you could run a gravity generator from it and gravity generators require a good bit of power over time, but I'm just not feeling like the ones on small ships have any purpose at all. Small ships just dont use much power except to power thrusters. A small amount of uranium and a few small reactors will power plenty of thrusters and keep a small ship going for quite a long time. If I'm using my thrusters I'm doing it because I'm on my way to go mine so I'm going to find more uranium. The ones on large stations do still cost a huge amount of resources so I probably won't bother to build one of those either unless I just find myself with an incredibly large amount of silicon that I can't find any use for. Thus far I've found silicon to be somewhat scarce.

[Illuminate Spy]

i use batteries charged by solars to give all of my ships a standby or reactor faliure mode

[Eviscerator]

You asked if there was any point to solar panels in this game. Clearly there is, and people have given you very good answers to support it. They certainly are not useless by a long shot, but now it seems you just want to nickpick their answers from the view point of a small ship problem.

There is not one holy grail answer for every problem in this game. Solar power very easily is the pyramid topper in power for stations, and even large ships that remain on station in a specific position for long periods of time. That doesn't mean they are the answer to small ship power needs, nor that they should be. The same could be said of large ship small reactors on a refinery ship or station. If one large reactor will do the job, why use small reactors? You would need a wall of them to do the same amount of work, which would ultimately cost more. And yet, why use a large reactor if a large solar array can power all my equipment, gravity, and even my life support mod stuff, and do it for FREE after the intitial investment.
But at the same time, if the station is just a small outpost, the solar investment may be an inefficient use of resources when three small reactors would do. You see? Claiming that one option is "useless" and " Why would I ever want to build one?", or " it should provide more power" or "has way too many negatives to have any use at all right now", these statements are just asinine and they show that you don't understand the engineering aspects of the game. Of course, you did say at the beginning that you "didn't get it."

If a small reactor works better for this application, then use it. Use the right tool for the job.

[John Hadley]

Well I was building a small solar panel on my small ship because thats what I can afford to build and relating my experience. I've never built a large one. Perhaps I needed to specify *small* solar panels in the thread title since that's what the whole discussion is about. I have a small ship and a small solar panel is what I can connect to it. I did that and found it to be completely pointless from any practical standpoint.

[Mr B.]

I would like a smaller (vanilla) version of solar panels for small ships available. If needs be scale down how much they produce - even if it's a tiny trickle, it'll mean I can build battery powered small ships without one of those big connectors.

It will also mean I can leave ships powered up, rather than having to turn off everything in case I get back and it's used a load of fuel.

[Eviscerator]

Originally posted by John Hadley:

Well I was building a small solar panel on my small ship because thats what I can afford to build and relating my experience. I've never built a large one. Perhaps I needed to specify *small* solar panels in the thread title since that's what the whole discussion is about. I have a small ship and a small solar panel is what I can connect to it. I did that and found it to be completely pointless from any practical standpoint.

I've actually found them quite useful for larger cargo shuttles built from small blocks. The reactor can be used to get my shuttle on the course and speed I want, turn off dampeners, then I can turn off the reactor. The solar panels keep everything powered up nicely.

Obviously they would be little use to something like a fighter, or other very small ship who's job is going to require constant thrust. For a small escape pod in a survival scenario they could be the ultimate, since it would give you free power enough to survive until you were picked up.
But even if a panel or two can only barely power a single small thruster, it would still be enough to get some speed on the course you want. Just remember to turn off the dampeners and coast so you aren't wasting your specific impulse.

[Eviscerator]

If only the game actually modeled active solar winds, particle waves, and orbital mechanics...

[n00bdragon]

Solar panels are amazing en masse. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them except the fact that you can't directly attach them to the shorter edge of a blast door piece.

[John Hadley]

I guess I just dont understand the point of saving energy in this game when uranium is so plentiful. I don't need to save energy over long travels because there's nowhere far to travel to. All the asteroids seem to be quite close to each other. I can only mine or build in the game and I need to mine to build so I'm always finding more uranium. To me this obviates the only benefit to having a solar panel (energy conservation) that is vastly more expensive, vastly larger, and provides less on-demand power than the alternative.

I have a small ship with one engine too. I mined uranium with my hand drill for less than 1 minute and after the uranium was refined I took 0.5 units of it and put it in my small reactor. It says my ship will run for 22 years when I'm not moving and it will be powered for 17 hours if I am using the thruster at full power continuously, however I will need to use the thruster no more than a total of 30 seconds to 1 minute to reach any of the other asteroids. I can probably explore the entire universe, which consists only of 7 large asteroids, without ever adding any more fuel to this ship.

[Eviscerator]

Uranium runs out, believe me. I've stripped a 16 asteroid sector of uranium.
When procedural generation is added, maps will be infinite and there will be plenty of places to go. Resources are also going to be rebalanced. Uranium will be a lot less plentiful.