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It's weird because you can get better energy generation out of a bunch of wafer panels stacked together than a real energy generator block, but at more cost and far more fragile.
This has diminishing returns though - below a certain size _every_ block costs $1 and 1 iron (or whatever material you're using). Which means if you place 100x as many blocks (because they're all 1/100th of the size) your cost is 10x higher for nowhere near 100x the gain.
Also, as block counts soar, performance plummets.
So it's kind of a YMMV kind of thing.
If you stack 0.01 thin solar panels, you get an incredible ratio of energy/mass/volume without bloating processing power. It's a borderline cheating exploit you can use to make ships with significantly better stats. Though it might cause the game's performance to suffer.
It's enough that I actually think solar panels should just be removed. Outside of the exploit, they're basically obsolete the moment you pick up titanium and can build generators.
I think what would be needed is a rebalancing of the entire progression tree, along with restructuring the galaxy inside-out so that the initial content takes up the smaller part, leaving more space to explore as the player progresses.
In other words, "Avorion Part II: Through the Black Hole"
And I'm only half joking ;)
The exploit completely breaks ship balance if used, has negative impacts on game/server performance, and doesn't seem intended given it's not alluded to or used in any of the NPC designs. Nobody would use a solar panel past Iron if you removed it either, as "realistic" usage of solar panels is terrible and generates negligible energy compared to a single 1x1x1 generator block. Unless fixed by a complete rework of both its stats (making them generate more energy) and use (making them only work if uncovered and on the exterior of the ship), it's a useless, redundant block type.
A counter question: Why have two blocks in the game that do the exact same thing, but one is just plain better than the other? Would it make sense to have two types of armor, and one type has ten times the HP with half the mass? Not at all. If you want to have cosmetic "solar panels" or "solar sails", you could still easily make them with the glass or holo blocks - or even leave the solar panel block in as a cosmetic, non-functional option.
Don't do this stupid "It's a single player game so game design doesn't matter at all" thing. That's never been a real argument and destroys the entire field of game design.
They do the exact same thing inasmuch they both provide power. If that is all, then why have different types of weapons that "all do the same" in that they deal damage... or have armour, when you could just as well use hull, just put on some more...
The answer is immersion, variety, personal choices, player identification with one style over another, creativity, role play, or probably another dozen other reasons.
Avorion IS a single player game after all, where people play in ways you might not ever imagine. It is of course ALSO a multiplayer game, where server performance matters and exploits hurt other people.
So fix the exploits, and leave the options in, as redundant as they may seem to some. Heck if anything, add more options.
If you fix the exploit, you end up with two blocks that both provide power. Just one is really bad at it. Having two options that both do the same thing, with one demonstrably worse than the other, is bad game design. You're just leaving trap options for new players who are going to assume the bad option is there for some reason.
No, the answer is not "immersion." The answer is that weapons don't all do the same thing, just as armor and hull don't do the same thing.
Every weapon works in a different way and has advantages and disadvantages. Chainguns are short range, mid-DPS weapons that can double as PDCs in a pinch. Lasers are pinpoint accurate but burn out and recharge. Railguns are long range and excel against hull, but are terrible against armor. Cannons are great first-strike weapons with immense range, but have bad DPS and accuracy issues.
These are not "all doing the same thing." These are, to your point, all ways to make personal choices and express yourself through the game.
Solar panels and generators do the exact same thing if you remove the exploit, as the exploit is tied to the unique way they generate energy as a function of surface area instead of volume. You're going to put the one that gives more energy/mass on your ship.
You could rectify this by making solar panels only work as external blocks, but that goes against the developer's wish that blocks don't perform different based on their location (the reason thrusters and engines don't need to be external either).
I can't see what leaving terrible options in adds to the game, except confusing new players and making the game look sloppy. Without the exploit, I'm not sure a solar ship is even viable, they generate that little energy.
Just a reference for how bad they are:
A titanium solar panel at 100x1x100 gives 20.4 GW of energy.
A titanium generator at 100x1x100 gives 825 GW of energy.
A solar panel is literally 2% as efficient as a generator block. And generators scale with material where solar panels do not! A trinium generator of that size would be 1087 GW!
If you have ideas on how to make solar panels work differently enough that they provide an actual unique alternative to generators, I'd be interested in hearing it. But as it stands, they don't contribute to player expression. They're just bad. The equivalent of having chainguns in the game and also "lameguns" that have the exact same fire rate, range, and requirements, but they do 0.1 DPS. That's not something interesting to build a ship around, that's just a confusing and bad version of the first one.
if one would reduce to more usual sizes things would get also a tad better for the solar panels
1x20x20 gen makes 33gw
panel gives 880mw - gives ~25% of the gen ressource wise
a nifty thing, that puts the solar panels a tad far off, is that the gens produce energy out of love and thin air.
however that is numberpicking.
solar panels can be built without a shipyard generators cannot, so if i would happen to be a tad away from the next shipyard and i want to slap some energy generation on my ship so i could jump quicker i can do so. mostly that would happen early game, as many things do.
generally speaking the solar panels give a good early game alternative to the titanium generators.(duh) it generates progression and upgrade potential for the player to achieve early game .simple, i would think. its a leverage. a rescue to slab more energy if needed.
if you would do every game as a math test there would be a lot of unneccessary things as there will be only so many ways to achieve a maximum. no?
I'm lost on the math here. 33 GW is 33,000 MW. 880 MW is 2.6% of that, not 26%. It's slightly more efficient than my example, but far from effective.
The issue with saying they're an early game thing is that, in this case, "early" means about the first 15 minutes of the game. The moment you find a single titanium rock floating in the starting sector and you find the building knowledge in your mail, you're done with solar panels.
I guess the point about being able to quickly slap a solar panel on your ship for a small bit of extra energy stands. Though you can get better results just by turning off flight assistance before a jump. The extra mass added by a solar panel (assuming an exploit-fixed world where they have a minimum thickness to them or something) is going to negatively impact hyperspace energy enough to offset the minimal energy gain.
I honestly have no idea how to fix them and make them an interesting, relevant block. I guess you could make them better than generators but restrict them to only external blocks - the idea being that you get better energy efficiency but they're more vulnerable and prone to breaking in combat - but I feel like shields and integrity fields would make that a moot point quickly.