Green energy potential?

[CJanitorC]

While thermal energy is already a thing in Satisfactory and thankfully it is something you can attain via research, however the thermal vents are often found extremely far from home base. I would hope to see different options come up much like Factorio.

There's already a Day/Night cycle, Solar panels would be expensive take space and only produce energy during the day but would serve as good backup in lategame especially if it is to build up reserves.

Wind power could be also implemented, though I would say the drawback would be expenses, and the height of their placement is what affects how effective they are and they produce very little power but rarely ever stop.

Water could also be one, though it would need to be put on a river or at least a lake that has a current and must be in deep enough water for functionality, while constant, it would be a detriment for water extraction.

Just some ideas with drawbacks so that the players do not rely only on those options alone, otherwise, it wouldn't be worth making Coal, oil and nucleary powerplants. Green energy should only go with the main sources of power as an extra boost, though I'd imagine when the game reaches release, it could be an achivement to make a fully functional factory relying only on green energy.

[Jack-o-Lantern]

Developer already stated that they haven't any plan for solar/wind energy for gameplay reasons.

[DrNewcenstein]

Coal is all-natural. Just sayin'

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

There would be no good way to balance how much energy solar generates for one simple reason. The sky is absolutely massive. You say it should only give a little boost so people dont skip the other types of power entierly, but because you can build things in the sky that means you can build a little "dyson sphere" all over the map. How much power would it generate if you litterally cover the entire sky in solar panels? Either a massive solar array would let players replace other forms of power, or you would haveto make solar panels so weak that you would haveto build something stupidly big to give that little "extra boost".

Only working during the day doesnt fix the inherent problem either since there are batteries quite easily available. Huge solar farm + big battery farm = either players can skip using other types of power or solar panels haveto be too weak to be usable at the scale you imagine using them.

A lot of thought and tuning has been put into how power works in this game, a system that entierly sidesteps and takes away from how the gameplay mechanics around power are designed is not a good fit for this game.

[John Hadley]

There's already a mod that adds wind and solar power to the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N55VDMghVA

[Exile «Foxy» (Ryder17z)]

The only thing that might make sense is hydro power, because it can be nerfed like geothermal generators.

If you want solar and wind power, there is a good mod called Refined Power.

[Ravenblade]

I've thought it about it, too. I know there are also mods for this, but from a mod-less perspective it's not as easy once you take a second look:

With solar the biggest issue would be that it would require a lot of calculations in regards where you could place them (Why not place them in caves or in the basement of your factories?) and in addition without weather effects it wouldn't matter where you'd place them, since sun shines everywhere at the same strength. With wind, you'd need weather effects to make the real work in a balanced way since wind usually fluctuates, and the same issue in regard to placements apply. So you'd be left with biomass (which we already have but is technically finite) and possibly hydroelectric power, and this would only work if there were some stream mechanics and the ability to build dams which would naturally limit the building locations.

So all in all as with green energy in reality you'd need environmental mechanics first to balance them out, since they don't require any additional energy to keep them running. Basically even at a low rate of energy generation they would have a higher return rate than any form of energy production in the game and the only thing that would counter them would be real estate and even that could be circumvented.

[Evil Tim]

The devs have said a fundamental principle of the game is that you can't get something for nothing, and so a power generating system can't just have a one-off cost. This means that something like photovoltaic cells, hydro systems or wind turbines that you just plop and are done with forever wouldn't fit: no matter how expensive you make them, they don't fit the vision for the game. I did, elsewhere, outline an idea for a concentrated solar power station megaproject which does have continuous costs (water and oil), but that's about the only way you'd find them accepting these.

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

And by the time you are making a building that requires oil and water to generate power it kind of begs the question why there should be two power buildings that run on oil. That would just turn solar plants into a reskinned fuel generator.

[Aven]

Copy/pasting my own previous response to the exact same request, again:

There is only one fact that matters: the devs don't want it. But, for the sake of argument, let's take a deeper look at wind/solar/hydro and how they would have to work in order to fit into the game's structure. Currently, you have the following power sources:

Tier 1) Biomass - 40 MW. Uses biomass which has many sources but must be gathered by hand and fed into the burner by hand. Only burns what is needed to meet demand.

Tier 3) Coal - 75 MW. Uses coal and water. Can be entirely automated. Burns at full production.

Caterium Research) Geothermal - 100-600 MW. Output depends on purity of node and varies 0.5x to 1.5x. Sources are also very limited.

Tier 6) Fuel - 150 MW. Can be entirely automated. More complex than coal setups.

Tier 8) Nuclear - 2500 MW. Produces waste that must be refined or disposed of.

Every power source in the game has its place, and one source is not immediately replaced when you unlock the next source. For wind/solar/hydro to work, they must fit somewhere in this structure, with their own weaknesses so as to not completely negate any other power source.

Looking at the above list, the problem with wind/solar/hydro becomes obvious: there is no limit to how many of something you can build, and the only limiting factor is the resource nodes available on the map. With wind/solar/hydro, even with highly variable or situational power production, you could effectively have unlimited power, especially when combined with the new power storage structures. To balance this advantage against each other power source, wind/solar/hydro would have to be limited in number by some means, either by requiring a resource that must be gathered and put into the generator by hand, requiring a resource that is limited by a specific number of nodes, or by only being allowed to placed on a limited number of nodes. Another option would be putting them in Tier 8 with obscene resource requirements as an endgame supplement to, but not replacement of, nuclear.

Given those balancing requirements, solar/wind/hydro would lose the advantages that you are likely seeking: an early game, fuel-less alternative to biomass burning, or a mid/end game alternative to the logistical requirements of fuel or nuclear. This is likely the same thought process the devs have gone through, and it is why they say that there will be no wind/solar/hydro. It is a balancing headache that just doesn't fit within the current power structure of the game, even if you just really want it.

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

Lets be honest, those still clamoring for solar after so many threads are just refuysing to listen to any of the actual arguments presented about the balancing issues of solar. They just want it because they want it. Other factory games (with entierly differently different systems for resources) have them and therefor they also want them in this game.

Solar power is precisely the kind of thing that fits best as a mod. Its completely unbalanced but its ok for mods to be unbalanced. They are not how the game is intended to be played, they are just a sandbox kind of tool. Get infinite free power, unlock all tech, spawn in resources, use flying mods, all of it is fine on a personal level. It just doesnt have a place in the vanilla version of the game.

[FDru]

Hydro I think would be a good fit for the game, given the limited amount of rivers available. And if it was even more limited by the distance between each water wheel (or whatever), that would make sense too. It would be nice to have an alternative to bio burners early game (and something else to use wood for), even if didn't provide much power.

But I guess it would be kind of complicated to implement that kind of thing...

[Xilo The Odd]

renewables wouldnt be impossible, but they do have a cost in real life, they arent simply ploped down and then we never worry about them again. Bearings in wind turbines go out all the time as well as hydro turbines. so unless the game wants to add some kind of repair mechanic for buildings where things eventually break down or wear out and need maintenence (which in a mega factory you would be running around CONSTANTLY after a point) renewables are kind of lame.

irl, renewables can help a power grid, each has their cost and upkeep and systems needed to function efficiently. in this game as is, they'd be broken and balancing the entirety of the game around them would be a huge setback.

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

renewables wouldnt be impossible, but they do have a cost in real life, they arent simply ploped down and then we never worry about them again. Bearings in wind turbines go out all the time as well as hydro turbines. so unless the game wants to add some kind of repair mechanic for buildings where things eventually break down or wear out and need maintenence (which in a mega factory you would be running around CONSTANTLY after a point) renewables are kind of lame.

irl, renewables can help a power grid, each has their cost and upkeep and systems needed to function efficiently. in this game as is, they'd be broken and balancing the entirety of the game around them would be a huge setback.

wait... are you saying IRL nuclear isnt a "set it and forget it" thing? :0 Ive gotta call Putin, I bet that was just a slight missundersanding they had about Tjernobyl.

[Zerobudgetman]

solar energy would be too overpowered only because the day is 45 minutes and night is only 5 minutes

[Evil Tim]

Originally posted by morrganstain:

And by the time you are making a building that requires oil and water to generate power it kind of begs the question why there should be two power buildings that run on oil. That would just turn solar plants into a reskinned fuel generator.

Well strictly speaking that's not true since the solar plant concept is using the oil for energy storage rather than to generate power (you might get some of it back in a form you'd have to refine to do anything with, "storage waste" or something, and have a blip where it replaces its oil stores at the start of a production cycle). Also they don't seem to mind multiple plants using the same resource in different ways: this would be the only one using straight crude oil (we'd say it processes it into its storage medium on-site), while fuel plants use fuel and coal plants use petroleum coke.