Orca power management

[Tkachov]

Hi!

Me and my friends got Barotrauma a couple of days ago. Some of us played it before, back in the 0.8.2 days. We started in campaign mode as 3 guys on one of the ships. After a few missions we decided to switch ship, because the one we were using (I don't remember how it's called actually, I guess it was Dugong) didn't have deconstructor and fabricator.

We started a new campaign and selected Orca. We also invited a 4th guy and played a couple of missions. Again, don't remember exactly, but I guess 2-3 missions were very easy and then 3rd or 4th was a disaster where half of the crew died, reactor didn't work, but we managed to dock using batteries. Then we called it a day.

In all those missions that we played we never used manual control of reactor: we only put fuel rods instead of used ones and used automatic control. Also, always putting one rod, because otherwise it overheats. I don't remember we ever needed manual control back in the 0.8.2.

Today we played more, and in every mission we didn't have enough power to run the engine. When our captain uses batteries, it works fine, but when he switches to the reactor power, load goes like 4-5 MW while output is around 2, and we basically lose control and crash into a wall.

I had to put two fuel rods and be sitting on the reactor trying to make it not overheat but give enough power. IIRC, we were fine while output was about 3 MW, though load was closer to 4 (with "low output" signal on). I even could leave it for a while like that, but once load goes down (if we stop), engine overheats.

This brings us to my question: why did it all go well before with automatic control and one rod and now instead of helping on the ship I have to sit on the reactor (and also burn two rods)?

----

We spotted that as captain's skill of control goes up, our ship goes faster (btw maybe we are wrong and we were going faster because of something else?). Our theory is that our captain is now too skilled for the Orca, because he can go too fast, requiring too much power. Automatic control can't generate enough output from one rod and isn't fast enough to control overheat from two rods. Is that so?

I really don't want to miss all the fun sitting over the reactor. Is there anything that could be done to make automatic control work? Maybe we can put some special rods (I'm not sure how Thorium works, but Fulgurium seemed to overheat it fast)? Maybe we missed something (though we did fix the engine, the reactor, all the juncboxes and batteries)?

I never did learn how that electronic logic stuff in Barotrauma works, but maybe we can wire up some control scheme out of electronic components? Some kind of PID controller I guess?

[Tkachov]

OK, TL;DR:

In Barotrauma Legacy we always used automatic reactor control. It also worked fine for us for a while in the latest version of the game. But then suddenly automatic control doesn't give enough power for us to go on the max speed, and I have to do manual control (and I'm upset about it).

Is there a way to make automatic control work well? Or maybe some tips, best practices, workarounds?

[Kaileris]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/427654262453960724/655480640011239424/Capture.PNG

I am not sure. I was able to go 24/25 km/h with just one regular fuel rod on automatic control. although to be fair, nothing else was being used.

[Tkachov]

Yeah, our captain says we go on the same speed.

We probably found what's unusual in our setup: we set our batteries to 100% "so they are always full". I've stumbled on some tutorial on Undertow's forums saying that makes load higher (5 MW in our case, probably lower in yours).

[Tkachov]

Well, I tried to research that a bit in single-player.

Charging both batteries on 100% gives additional 1 MW to the load (charging on 50% does 500 kW).

So I tried to set them back to 50% and look at the load on the full speed (similar to Kaillera's screenshot, 24 km/h velocity + descent velocity around 10 km/h). It could be close to 4 MW in that mode. Batteries give 4 MW easily.

Reactor (one fuel rod on automatic control) -- wasn't really stable, I think it did give 3 MW, but what I do remember is that it kinda locked itself on 2 MW and couldn't give more (obviously, not enough when I need 4 MW).

Well, if batteries are full, no 500 kW load from them, so it's around 3.5 MW. If reactor isn't stuck on 2 MW and gives 3 MW, is should run fine.

Also, I'm not sure how exactly do junction boxes work and I didn't fix them during this test. It would be strange if they reduce the load, but otherwise I don't know why the load is so high (or reactor output is so low). I see not a lot of people read this thread, but maybe anyone has any thoughts?