Generators not charging batteries

[Tankz745]

After trying my hand with advanced mode, I finally got around to making myself a decently fast speedboat, however, even with the generators outputting power according to the tooltip, the batteries don't charge.

Am I missing something really obvious?

[Stinger]

Extremely dumb: Is the generator electrically linked to the battery?
Less dumb: Maybe it's just not generating much power versus its consumption? Try running the generator through a gearbox.

[Tankz745]

Thing is; I've already checked for those two, I'm running 4 small generators off of a small engine, and they're all connected on the pipe between the gearboxes and the propellers. All 4 are also hooked up to the two medium batteries.

[Stinger]

Huh.. in that case, without the vehicle I can't really help further :(

[HardlyLivin]

Are you using any electric motors? Also do you think you can provide a link to the workshop for it? It would help us get a better idea of what issue you might have.

[Tankz745]

Ah, fair point. Here it is: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2077717930

[HardlyLivin]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2077729141
First I noticed the throttle and clutches were engaging at the same time stalling the engine. The throttle is needed to set an idle speed. I placed a throttle lever down just to connect the clutches to so they won't stall the engines at low rps. You can replace that if you want. Also the gearbox button was just toggling the reverse gears, I don't know if that was intentional or not but I renamed it just in case.

Second issue was the generators were placed after the clutch not allowing any charge when you were idling. So I moved two of them between the engine and clutches.
I also lowered the gearbox ratios back down for testing, they seemed really to high for that engine. But you can raise them back if you need to.

P.S The electric logic connections seemed alright to me.

[Tankz745]

Oh man, thanks a ton! Didn't really know too much about the clutch thing until now, and yeah, the gearbox button was meant to set reverse.

[HardlyLivin]

Originally posted by Tankz745:

Oh man, thanks a ton! Didn't really know too much about the clutch thing until now, and yeah, the gearbox button was meant to set reverse.

No problem at all dude. The clutch and engines in this game work similar to real life. Slowly increase throttle while slowly increasing clutch pressure. The engines have a torque curve as well.

[HardlyLivin]

Also I wanted to elaborate about the gear boxes. If you have to high of a gear ratio you will just stall the engine the moment the clutch is engaged.

[German_Norwegian]

i have the same problem, but none of these solutions seem to work, I have a large engine with a clutch and then a gearbox on 3:1 and then into 4 large generators which feeds 4 electric motors. what am I doing wrong?

[HardlyLivin]

Originally posted by German_Norwegian:

i have the same problem, but none of these solutions seem to work, I have a large engine with a clutch and then a gearbox on 3:1 and then into 4 large generators which feeds 4 electric motors. what am I doing wrong?

Any generators you have should be before the clutch and gearbox not after. If they're after you'll only generate power when the clutch in engaged, as the clutch is responsible for sending mechanical power to anything after it. That rule applies to everything capable of accepting mechanical power through pipes. Like propellers, wheels, rotors, and generators.

[GrumpyOldMan]

Originally posted by HardlyLivin:

Originally posted by German_Norwegian:

i have the same problem, but none of these solutions seem to work, I have a large engine with a clutch and then a gearbox on 3:1 and then into 4 large generators which feeds 4 electric motors. what am I doing wrong?

Any generators you have should be before the clutch and gearbox not after. If they're after you'll only generate power when the clutch in engaged, as the clutch is responsible for sending mechanical power to anything after it. That rule applies to everything capable of accepting mechanical power through pipes. Like propellers, wheels, rotors, and generators.

If you put generators before the clutch and gearboxes you might as well leave them out, because they generate barely any power at 0-20RPS, also depends how many mechanical devices you have to power.

A proper implementation would be to split the driveshaft off right after the engines, into a clutch, gearbox, then generator. Then control the clutch to engage when battery is low.
Most of the time engines are powerful enough to have a small generator with a 2x 3:1 ratio occasionaly engaged.

An even better solution would be to have a separate diesel engine and generator for power generation alone, will fit on all but the tiniest vessels and can feed from the main tank, so fuel shouldn't be an issue and once implemented it can be completely hands-off with no further worry about power.

[HardlyLivin]

Yes my mistake. I was assuming it was a small vehicle with a small generator, I overlooked where he said he had a large engine and large generators.

Yes, you can do either of those as well. It's dependent on power usage though. On small vessels with just basic electrical needs (lighting, buttons, doors...) I've never had an issue running one or two small generators before the clutch and gearbox. And as you pointed out, if you're running a lot of parts that consume a fair bit of power on their own, like the powered rotors. Then I would run some sort of aux generator also.

When it comes to the large generators and engines, I've always ran diesel electric systems on my large vessels. Despite them being nerfed to oblivion (but that's a dead horse at this point).
So the separate generator route has always been my go to.

[GrumpyOldMan]

Thing is to keep survival/rogue mode in mind, where a loss of electric power could easily be game over.

Seeing how even 4 small velocity pivots at !7%! power setting to rotate small spotlights will empty 10 medium batteries in ~30mins with nothing else going on, really makes you wonder how the devs estimated the individual power consumption of components.

As there's currently no way to get wattage/voltage or amps (according to deltars amp=batterycharge*batterydelta*60*60, generator amps=generator output*60*60, which makes no sense) you can't really plan it and have to guesstimate. Usually with a bad surprise in terms of a way higher power consumption than anticipated.

Especially if you adjust the individual power settings of pumps/rotors/pivots via select tool, to no more than absolutely necessary, it's still way too much energy consumed. Small batteries are useless because of this and should only be used if you're out of space or only have to power non custom doors and buttons/dials.

Bit weird if you ask me but the devs seem content about it.

[German_Norwegian]

Originally posted by GrumpyOldMan:

Originally posted by HardlyLivin:

Any generators you have should be before the clutch and gearbox not after. If they're after you'll only generate power when the clutch in engaged, as the clutch is responsible for sending mechanical power to anything after it. That rule applies to everything capable of accepting mechanical power through pipes. Like propellers, wheels, rotors, and generators.

If you put generators before the clutch and gearboxes you might as well leave them out, because they generate barely any power at 0-20RPS, also depends how many mechanical devices you have to power.

A proper implementation would be to split the driveshaft off right after the engines, into a clutch, gearbox, then generator. Then control the clutch to engage when battery is low.
Most of the time engines are powerful enough to have a small generator with a 2x 3:1 ratio occasionaly engaged.

An even better solution would be to have a separate diesel engine and generator for power generation alone, will fit on all but the tiniest vessels and can feed from the main tank, so fuel shouldn't be an issue and once implemented it can be completely hands-off with no further worry about power.

Well uh, I use a pretty large car ferry that is meant to have a lot of power so I need a lot of... well power. So I already have a large engine just for power generation which is the one I talked about, Large engine that goes into a clutch that engages with the engine when the system sees that my power goes below a certain level, then into a gearbox on 3:1 - 1:1 and then into the 4 generators. The Engine runs at 20 rps but when the whole power generation system automatically turns itself on when it detects low power, the whole engine seems to stall or something or at least the RPS isn't quite right