How do I use Night Vision Goggles?

[M6Hurricane]

I have the green battery (description says it gets inserted into armor) and night vision goggles. How do I use these items?

[The Chaotic Coder]

You have modular armor, and both the battery and nightvision goggles are in it, right?

The battery by itself isn't a power source, just power storage. So you need either a portable solar panel or portable fusion reactor to charge the battery up before you can use it.

[M6Hurricane]

Originally posted by jchardin64:

You have modular armor, and both the battery and nightvision goggles are in it, right?

The battery by itself isn't a power source, just power storage. So you need either a portable solar panel or portable fusion reactor to charge the battery up before you can use it.

Ok, I didn't realize I needed the Modular Armor in order to use personal equipment, thanks for the info!

[The Chaotic Coder]

Once you have modular armor equipped, you can right-click the icon in the lower-right (next to your weapons and ammo) to open up the armor's slots, then drag the equipment over into the armor to equip it.

[KatherineOfSky]

Also, you will need a power source -- either the personal fusion reactor or personal solar panels + batteries (the equpment batteries -- not the intermediate products).

[Eep²]

I have a portable solar panel (correct name), green battery, and nightvision but the battery doesn't ever charge (yes, even in daytime). What gives?

Edit: nevermind...had to wait a day or so before power started to show up. Sheesh.

[Q24]

If you have ONE portable solar panel it's going to take forever. Pack as much as you can.

[Eep²]

Quite unrealistic that a small (<1x1-tile) portable solar panel needs _5_ 3x3-tile solar panels and 5 large steel plates (I-beams), and then only outputs 10kW (1/6 that of a SINGLE solar panel) when it should output 300kW (60x5)...

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by Eep:

Quite unrealistic that a small (<1x1-tile) portable solar panel needs _5_ 3x3-tile solar panels and 5 large steel plates (I-beams), and then only outputs 10kW (1/6 that of a SINGLE solar panel) when it should output 300kW (60x5)...

It's not strange that it generates less electricity; it is, after all, much smaller. Solar panel energy production linearly depends on area. Going directly from that, it should generate only 1/9th of the large solar panel (one grid tile vs 9 grid tiles).

Since it generates 1/6th, we can conclude that it has a much better conversion rate. That means it uses only high quality components. You need multiple normal solar panels to get enough high-quality panel material to create one portable panel.

Similar reasoning can be made about steel; only a small percentage of the raw steel beams is good enough to use in the portable panel production.

Furthermore, when extracting high-quality panels and steel, the lower-quality residue is too badly damaged to reuse, and gets discarded.

----

There, how's that for reasoning? :D

[Eep²]

Science doesn't work that way. Something smaller doesn't take MORE material to make it. Come on...

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by Eep:

Science doesn't work that way. Something smaller doesn't take MORE material to make it. Come on...

Did you even read what I wrote?

First, it's not science, it's engineering.

Second, when you produce something, it doesn't come down from the production line perfect. There are always production defects. There is also tolerance. The product will work if the defects are within a certain percentage from the ideal. The amount of defects will change depending on the intended use.

---

Real world example: processors. CPUs are made on large wafers, which are then cut into many individual CPUs. There will usually be defects on the wafer. Let's say that a CPU was designed with 8 cores. If all cores of a CPU on the wafer are without defects, CPU is designated as 8-core. If some cores have defects, they are disabled and CPU can still be sold as a 6-core, or a 4-core.

If you're building a system that can use only 8-cores, any CPU with a defect is completely useless to you. So if a wafer has area for 100 CPUs, but only 10 of those are working as 8-core, you have 100 CPUs as input and 10 CPUs as output.

Oh look, we lost 90% of our wafer to make much smaller CPUs!

---

Getting back to solar panels...

Let's say each tile is one "base" panel. Then, normal panels are made from 9 such base panels each, and portable panel uses exactly one base panel. However, on average, only one base panel out of every 45 is good enough to be used as a portable. So we dismantle 5 normal panels, test each of the 45 base panels, and find the one that works. The process of testing is very demanding, and other 44 panels are damaged beyond repair, so we throw them away.

---

TL;DR: This is just a rationalization of a game mechanic that was likely made simply for reasons of game balance. However, it's emphatically NOT an unrealistic situation from engineering perspective.

If it bugs you that much, make a mod so each normal panel makes 9 small ones or whatever.

[Eep²]

Science and engineering are linked. Solar panels != CPUs so the defect loss is MUCH less (if not completely) irrelevant. Your solar panel testing hypothetical isn't real-world either.

[The Chaotic Coder]

You do realize you're talking about a game in which a 1x1 chest can hold 480 barrels = 120k oil but a 3x3 tank (which also appears to be taller than a chest) can only hold 25k oil. Realism < Gameplay balance, and I'm all for it.

I like to rationalize it this way: a Solar Panel consists of a large glass lense which focuses a 3x3 area of sunlight on a very small collector (some real-life solar panels do this, since manufacturing glass is much cheaper than the solar collector materials). You can't run around with a huge piece of glass attached to your backpack, so instead you only use the collector part. Without the lense, the light that's hitting it is no longer as concentrated, so it only produces a small fraction of what it would otherwise generate. So you mount 5 of them together to compensate for the loss of efficiency.

[N'fol]

If Eep thinks that the portable solar panels are unrealistic, don't tell them that you can make a portable fusion reactor with infinite fuel you carry in your amor, but can only power your factory using fission reactors that use uranium fuel. 8-)

[wyp020610]

But,the theroies above has a problem:Where do the discarded things go?Why can't we recycle them?Even if they get too badly damaged to reuse,we can melt them down again,and get the copper and iron out of them.At least part of them.

Also,1 tile in module grid != 1 tile on ground.
1 player is smaller than a 1x1 tile. 1 player can have 100 solar panels on him at max.That's 1MW in total.Solar panels on ground are 60kW,3x3 tile.They produce 6.67 kW per tile.How is it possible?
The batteries have the same problem.A 1x1 player has 5GJ storage in max,in 1x1 tile.A 2x2 accumulator has 5MJ storage,1.25 MJ per tile.

Originally posted by jchardin64:

I like to rationalize it this way: a Solar Panel consists of a large glass lense

You make lense with iron and copper?! Even if they are not glass,they should be at least transparent,like plastic(some plastic is transparent).

Then comes the battery storage mystery:
5 battery+2 iron=1 accu=5MJ storage.So 1 battery has 1 MJ storage.
10 battery + 5 steel=1 battery equipment=20MJ storage.So 1 battery has 2MJ storage.
I think this can only be explained by steel storing electricity.But,since we are already storing electricity with steel,why not make accumulators and battery equipments just from steel?

[Eep²]

Yep, lots of unrealistic gameplay mechanics in this game...