Lights use way too much power

[Nicolas]

Lights using power comparable to the base miner is ridiculous. They're a quality-of-life feature, they shouldn't collectively use up the full power output of multiple coal generators.

Lights should use kW instead of MW.

Or even simpler, no power at all — connect them to a power grid they're on. in case of power trip they go off.

(Frankly I'd extend this suggestion tu jump pads, u-jelly, hypertubes: as quality-of-life features, they shouldn't tax your power grid this much.)

[Aven]

One nuclear power plant can power 1,250 ceiling lights.

[Wolfgang]

To expand on what @Aven said:
One biomass burner (not the HUB ones) can power 15 ceiling lights.
One Coal power plant can power 37.5 ceiling lights.
One fuel power plant can power 75 ceiling lights.

If you have too little power to power your ceiling lights then maybe you need to either back down on lights or expand your power infrastructure.

[Nicolas]

I'm saying the game would be better if lights consumed less power. Do you disagree with this?

[Stress Tensor]

Originally posted by Wolfgang:

To expand on what @Aven said:
One biomass burner (not the HUB ones) can power 15 ceiling lights.
One Coal power plant can power 37.5 ceiling lights.
One fuel power plant can power 75 ceiling lights.

If you have too little power to power your ceiling lights then maybe you need to either back down on lights or expand your power infrastructure.

It does seem ridiculous that an entire power plant would generate only enough power for 35-75 ceiling lights. If this is true, I tend to agree with the OP that the power requirements for lights may be off by a couple orders of magnitude.

EDIT: I just looked up the power requirements for Satisfactory lights. Depending on the type, they range from 1 to 6 MWs -- so yeah, that seems extremely high. Now I'm curious about how these numbers compare with the real-world.

[Aven]

Originally posted by Nicolas:

I'm saying the game would be better if lights consumed less power. Do you disagree with this?

The first question you should be asking is: why is the current power usage set at what it is? What testing was done to establish to current usages? Is there an ulterior reason for the settings, i.e. are the devs trying to limit the use of light sources without setting a physical hard cap? Do the lights negatively affect simulation performance when used excessively?

Before demanding change, seek the why.

[()mega]

Originally posted by Stress Tensor:

EDIT: I just looked up the power requirements for Satisfactory lights. Depending on the type, they range from 1 to 6 MWs -- so yeah, that seems extremely high. Now I'm curious about how these numbers compare with the real-world.

Real world flourescent factory lighting is calculated as a max of 100W per lamp. I'd say the ceiling lights in Satisfactory are using 2 lamps per section, with 8 sections in each light, totals 1600W, or 1.6kW.
Modern LED lighting would be about 30-50W per lamp, so less than half that total.
1MW is 1000kW, so yea, Satisfactory lights have some pretty ludicrous power requirements.

[~\\Savarast//~]

In regards to the OP; yes they are costly, no their power impact isn't an issue. To be honest, it irks me that the signs don't require power. If I were to meet in the middle on this topic, I'd just say all lighting and signs should just consume a flat 1mw each.

But the more interestingly...

Originally posted by ()mega:

Real world flourescent factory lighting is calculated as a max of 100W per lamp. I'd say the ceiling lights in Satisfactory are using 2 lamps per section, with 8 sections in each light, totals 1600W, or 1.6kW.
Modern LED lighting would be about 30-50W per lamp, so less than half that total.
1MW is 1000kW, so yea, Satisfactory lights have some pretty ludicrous power requirements.

From most of the cursory research I did we'd probably expect a consumption rate closer to 500-1000w per light fixture since most industrial lighting still uses sodium or mercury halide bulbs due to being overall more reliable and brighter.

For my, uh, tomato farm, one Halide bulb is 250w and would in no way produce enough lighting for industrial spaces.

Now I know the ceiling lights look/are tube lights, so if we use that as the comparison we need to know how big they are. Wiki says foundations are 8mx8m, or 26ftx26ft. industrial tube lights I found that are 8ft long generally consume 75-100w each. So, looking at the in game light, we'd need 3 tubes per length, and there are 5 lengths. Total consumption being 15 tubes at either 75w (1125w) or at 100w (1500w).

[Quanterfuntumph]

I wouldn't look too much into real world vs game here. The slowest vehicle has a 20 or 30 THOUSAND hp engine and does like 60mph. It does hold about infinity tons of concrete though, so maybe it should use even more fuel. Plus it sounds like a diesel and can run on plants

A handful of game leaves would power your house for about 8 hours.

The lights use hundreds of times more power than they should. I think they should use less power, but not realistic power levels. Maybe 2 or 3 times less power.

Get back to project assembly. You are biomass and capable of powering the lights if need be.

[mike17032]

I agree that lights should not use any power, unless there is a game engine reason that they need to be limited.

[XsilverwaterX]

hope the devs read this and make the sun-based light bulbs into flash grenades or tossable glowsticks. it would help so much with nighttime exploration!

[Veeshan]

Originally posted by Nicolas:

I'm saying the game would be better if lights consumed less power. Do you disagree with this?

Well obviously that'd be purely subjective. I tend to think more power consideration is more interesting. Better wouldn't really be appropriate.

[Huren Ogeko]

Just turn the lights off during the day...I mean come on where you raised in a barn (phrase taken from my mother)

Me personally dislike the way lights are implemented and almost never use them unless I need accent lighting for something, and half the time signs do that for me better. I am sure a mod out there somewhere has been made (or will be made) to balance the lights power consumption.

[Die Hand Gottes]

Originally posted by Nicolas:

Lights using power comparable to the base miner is ridiculous. They're a quality-of-life feature, they shouldn't collectively use up the full power output of multiple coal generators.

Lights should use kW instead of MW.

Or even simpler, no power at all — connect them to a power grid they're on. in case of power trip they go off.

(Frankly I'd extend this suggestion tu jump pads, u-jelly, hypertubes: as quality-of-life features, they shouldn't tax your power grid this much.)

There is nothing easier than to generate electricity in this game maybe not nuclear power but coal and fuel generators are easy to build.
I don't know how far you are in the game, but if a few lights bother you now, you will complain about other things in the later game.

[Stress Tensor]

Let me get this out of the way to prevent an onslaught of replies about realism or lack thereof:

I know this is a game, and this game needs many things to be unrealistic for the sake of playability, e.g. the build gun, undepletable nodes, the fact that we carry around many tons of supplies, etc., etc.

But in general I prefer if the things that can be realistic in the game (again, without sacrificing story/playability) should be implemented at least somewhat realistically. So it's not that I can't build more power generation to handle the lights -- yes, building is fun -- , it's just that it seems to be needlessly very unrealistic without adding anything in return.

To @Aven's point in his second post above, I wonder whether the excessive power draw of lights was deliberate by the developers or simply an oversight.

This was never a hot-button issue for me, and yes it is a relatively minor issue -- this thread just got me thinking about it, and so I'm commenting. :)

[Nicolas]

We all look forward to things in Satisfactory; I was looking forward to lighting, and unlocked it while still on biomass. I was disappointed by how weak the lights were, and even more when I noticed how much power they consumed. At first I tried segregating them with power switches like I did with hypertube cannons, but soon I just gave up on good lighting, it wasn't worth the trouble. The situation generally soured me on aesthetics.

It's possible that the power requirement serves to avoid players overwhelming the game engine with light sources... but then again, at some point you will be generating enough powers that light can't make a dent.

If the lights have to consume this much electricity for a good reason, I see two possible improvements:
• individual lights should shine much farther out;
• adding a "player proximity" option to the lights control panel.