Wind turbine efficiency

[Daezz0r]

Am I the only one who thinks it's kinda ridicolous that ONE tile covered by anything (actually just tested with roofed area, but I suggest it's the same for everything else) reduces the efficiency by 20%? Considering there are 80 tiles, 50 in front, 30 behind it, this amount is drastically huge imo.

[Stormsong]

First, not true. Things that are "low" do not intefere with the windmill. Take a solar panel for instance, laying them inside the Windmill's zone does not hinder the mill nor the panel. In fact, it is considered efficient to set them up in exactly this manner where applicable.

If what you find ridiculous is that wind doesn't blow through structures with roofing as well as an open field, I disagree. That limitation makes plenty of sense to me.

[Daezz0r]

Yeah, I know that solar panels doesn't affect them, and I don't mind the limitation itself - of course it does make sense. I just think that 20% reduction (3000W -> 2400W) for one covered tile is little too much, thats all :-)

The reason i got onto this is simply my mountain colony. Due to space limitation at my spot I had to place a turbine near the mountain and one tile of the last row behind it is covered by the mountain's roof (which, as we all know, is not removeable in vanilla).
Just thought I ask for other opinions :-)

[Stormsong]

So, are you thinking a scaling malus, like as more tiles get covered it ramps up? That'd be interesting, might get complicated though. Would trees count the same as walls in regard to the effect it has on efficiency? Would the turbine still ignore low items completely?

[Daezz0r]

You say it, that would be complex if one would differ everything from each other affecting the efficiency.
To make it easy one could just lower that percentage and keep it linear, like 10% for each tile, wouldn't be that punishing if one simply got no choice.

While a scaling malus could be like 5% per tile + 1%(+2/+3/...) for each tile combined - let's say there are 3 tiles covered by something, then we would end up at 18%(21/24) reduction.

And yes i think low-hight items still shoudn't interfer with them - I mean, they don't do in real life too. Guess an item-depending solution is dry work to implement and hard to balance, not sure :-D