Sub Maker: Reactor does not provide power

[Ghostwish]

So I'm stumped. My reactor will not power the sub I've designed. Keep in mind: this is not my first sub. No far from it this'll be the fourth one I've sent out into the waters of Europa to die a horrific death. And, honestly, I've never had this problem. You set the reactor to on, you turn on automatic management, and you slap a fuel rod into 1 of the four slots. Then you wire it up to the ship, preferably to some junction boxes to provide power to the rest of the ship. In this case, it's wired to both life supports, the engine, and two junction boxes, using up all possibly 5 connections on the power out wiring node.

But nothing! It turns on, sure, the temperature gauge moves to the acceptable range between the two arrows, but.. nothing. The immediate junction boxes it is hooked to are unresponsive, and the O2 generators are offline (to say nothing of the engine because the command console isn't receiving power, though as I write this I realize I could run over and manually try the engine, but tangent~) I even went so far as to plop a text panel down, and wire it to the "power output" portion of the reactor. It reads 0.

I'm at a loss here. What have I missed?

[2D > 3D WEEB 4 LIFE]

You're able to edit the power output of the reactor by clicking on it and scrolling down on the menu with all the different tweaks.

[Ghostwish]

Please actually read the post before responding. Thanks.

[Dim]

How are we supposed to know what's wrong? Can you upload some screenshots of your wiring and the settings on the reactor to your steam profile, and provide links?
Also, yeah can you try resetting the reactor to prefab and try again? Cause you might have messed with a setting which could've caused this to happen.

[2D > 3D WEEB 4 LIFE]

Originally posted by Ghostwish:

Please actually read the post before responding. Thanks.

I'm literally answering your question with a possible fix. Did you check that the values are correct?

[Ghostwish]

Suits me. I did toss in a brand new reactor, settings untouched, set it to on, changed it to automatic, slapped a fuel rod in, and then (after unwiring the display from the first 'faulty' reactor) wired it to the display panel, to also show a read out of 0. Same result.

Nuclear reactor settings: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2225803037
Reactor settings: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2225803037
Light Component 1 settings: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2225803037
Light Component 2 settings: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2225804052
Connection Panel settings: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2225804416
Item container settings: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2225804703
Repairable settings: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2225804988
Reactor wiring settings: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2225805186
Reactor, in testing mode: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2225805186
Display panel reads 0, in testing mode: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2225805843
Junction box connected direction to reactor shows no activity: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2225806149

Originally posted by BAD RAT:

Originally posted by Ghostwish:

Please actually read the post before responding. Thanks.

I'm literally answering your question with a possible fix. Did you check that the values are correct?

Except it's not. Because even if the reactor was overwhelmed by its powerload, there would be something, SOMETHING getting power. Systems would be shutting off across the ship, yes, but, you'd see power in the junction boxes, you'd see, I would hope, SOME batteries getting charged. There is NOTHING happening on my sub. The reactor is turning on, it's reaching turbine speed, but as far as the ship is concerned it's like it's not. It's not even reading any power to the display panel.

But just to entertain you, I added a 0 and cranked the reactor's output up to 100,000 from its default of 10,000. Same result.

[Ho Chi]

you didnt scroll down on the reactor settings pics , none of them show the actual output numbers for the reactor.

Edit , the 0 voltage you highlighted was for the light components only.

[Mountain King]

Connecting the reactor to junction boxes isn't preferable, it's mandatory. Never connect it to anything else.

[Ghostwish]

Originally posted by Ho Chi Minge:

you didnt scroll down on the reactor settings pics , none of them show the actual output numbers for the reactor.

Edit , the 0 voltage you highlighted was for the light components only.

Yeah, oops, looks like my copy pasting was a little miswired too. buuuuuuut

Originally posted by Samael:

Connecting the reactor to junction boxes isn't preferable, it's mandatory. Never connect it to anything else.

Son of a mudraptor. That was it. I have learned a new thing today, and, honestly? I am a little astonished. How did I make 3 subs, and never create this problem before?

Welp. Now I need to rewire my ship entirely. Back to 50% done, I guess. :|

[FLX]

I'm rather new here but I've rapidly bumped into that problem when trying to make my sub.
I've managed to solve the overload problem with buffer batteries but my reactor end up powering 16000Kw of load with only 5600Kw of production because my grid is split into 3 parallel circuits.

Has there been any word of the devs concerning their intentions about this problem ?

[Dim]

Originally posted by FLX:

I'm rather new here but I've rapidly bumped into that problem when trying to make my sub.
I've managed to solve the overload problem with buffer batteries but my reactor end up powering 16000Kw of load with only 5600Kw of production because my grid is split into 3 parallel circuits.

Has there been any word of the devs concerning their intentions about this problem ?

You know you can change the maximum output of the reactor? Or to make it more realistic, just use the larger reactor which has a larger output or two smaller reactors.

[FLX]

I know, I have no problem powering the sub. It's the opposite, my problem is that the mechanic of shortage has disappeared.

I would like to have 3 circuits with a max load of 5000 and a generator giving you 10000.
That way you cannot power them all at once, you have to choose between using your engines and charging your batteries for instance.

In practice everything will be powered at once even with only 5000Kw from the reactor.

If I lower the output of the reactor even more everything will be in shortage and shutting down one circuit will not transfer the extra power to the others.

[Dim]

Originally posted by FLX:

I know, I have no problem powering the sub. It's the opposite, my problem is that the mechanic of shortage has disappeared.

I would like to have 3 circuits with a max load of 5000 and a generator giving you 10000.
That way you cannot power them all at once, you have to choose between using your engines and charging your batteries for instance.

In practice everything will be powered at once even with only 5000Kw from the reactor.

If I lower the output of the reactor even more everything will be in shortage and shutting down one circuit will not transfer the extra power to the others.

I've got time to spare so I might just make a system if i can be bothered to and give you a link, it might be easier this way.

[Dim]

Originally posted by Dimsim:

Originally posted by FLX:

I know, I have no problem powering the sub. It's the opposite, my problem is that the mechanic of shortage has disappeared.

I would like to have 3 circuits with a max load of 5000 and a generator giving you 10000.
That way you cannot power them all at once, you have to choose between using your engines and charging your batteries for instance.

In practice everything will be powered at once even with only 5000Kw from the reactor.

If I lower the output of the reactor even more everything will be in shortage and shutting down one circuit will not transfer the extra power to the others.

I've got time to spare so I might just make a system if i can be bothered to and give you a link, it might be easier this way.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2227885487
Alright, I think I made what you wanted? With this circuit only two of the circuits (each relay component is a circuit, wire the power through there) can be active at a time. You just press the button, and the inactive circuit will be switched, with the lights changing.

It didn't really take that long to make so it could be improved (especially in the lights, I could make it so a red light will turn on for only the circuit which isn't running which would take like 10 secs but whatever), however it gets the job done..

Also, I set it so each circuit can only handle 5000Kw, so change the relay components' "max power" if you want the relays to be able to supply more than that.

Oh yeah and you can choose which circuit starts off by changing the memory component's "value" to either 1 for system 1, 2 for system 2, 3 for system 3.

Lastly, don't forget that you can change what the text displays say, and you don't even need them so you could replace them with labels if you want.

[FLX]

Thank you for your interest, in fact what I'm trying to achieve is a bit more complicated than a switch.
I'm trying to make the engineer job more interesting than just using a screwdriver to repair objects that keep decaying.
I would like to make him the manager of the power supply of the ship in charge of providing the right amount of energy to the right part of the sub according to the situation. This is similar to what you do in star citizen when you balance power between weapons, shields and engines.

The 4 categories of my sub should be:
- mobility (engine, ballasts)
- armament (I've made custom supercapacitors and weapons which consume much more power)
- life support(oxygen, pumps and all the rest basically)
- battery recharge

For my engineer to have an interesting job the first requirement is that my reactor output isn't enough to power everything at once.
I also want him to choose wether each of the first 3 categories are powered by the reactor or the batteries.

The problem at the moment is that the power sent to each circuit seem to ignore it's load. So diminishing the load in one circuit will not provide more power to the others.

I will certainly have to rely on relays with different max load to simulate that but that would save me a lot of time if the logic of the game genuinely allowed parallel circuits.

I was wondering if the devs have talked about that somewhere as I would be interested in their opinion.

[Dim]

Originally posted by FLX:

Thank you for your interest, in fact what I'm trying to achieve is a bit more complicated than a switch.
I'm trying to make the engineer job more interesting than just using a screwdriver to repair objects that keep decaying.
I would like to make him the manager of the power supply of the ship in charge of providing the right amount of energy to the right part of the sub according to the situation. This is similar to what you do in star citizen when you balance power between weapons, shields and engines.

The 4 categories of my sub should be:
- mobility (engine, ballasts)
- armament (I've made custom supercapacitors and weapons which consume much more power)
- life support(oxygen, pumps and all the rest basically)
- battery recharge

For my engineer to have an interesting job the first requirement is that my reactor output isn't enough to power everything at once.
I also want him to choose wether each of the first 3 categories are powered by the reactor or the batteries.

The problem at the moment is that the power sent to each circuit seem to ignore it's load. So diminishing the load in one circuit will not provide more power to the others.

I will certainly have to rely on relays with different max load to simulate that but that would save me a lot of time if the logic of the game genuinely allowed parallel circuits.

I was wondering if the devs have talked about that somewhere as I would be interested in their opinion.

It ignores the load because the reactor is not capable of distributing the power it sends out. It can only send one fixed amount. You need junction boxes or relay components to distribute the power.

You have connected multiple parrallel circuits each with with their own seperate power demands. You need to either link the three circuits together or have them connect to the reactor through one main junction box. Or, you could connect them all to the same relay component. That would let you hide it somewhere.

I'm not sure if they've talked about this. I've never even seen them talk outside of their announcements and such, just their community representative dude which sometimes pops by the steam discussions.