People, why do we need solar panels in the game? They are not able to give energy? They are not able to provide energy even a base in orbit with all devices turned off.
All devices on my base are turned off. However, it consumes 135 watts. 15 solar batteries, which the sun shines frontally, give 6 watts. 6 minus 135 is equal to their complete uselessness
Wait are you calling solar cells, batteries? You can have a max of 15 solar cells. I'm not sure what the limit is for solar batteries. I tend to use four on my bases. Now on the P menu, first page they did change how the incoming power is displayed. You have to look at the base stats page now to see just how much incoming power is being generated. I have a mini base with 2 solar cells and 1 battery. After 3 days in game time it's now up to 16% full and can power my fridge for 24 hours now. Each day it grows more.
You do know that many deco blocks use power. Those can't be turned off. If your taking over a poi and making it your own. Get rid of anything that is consuming power that doesn't have a off switch.
translation difficulties) solar panels, of course, I have 15 solar panels, 4 solar batteries and no benefit from them) because 6 minus 135 do not give plus
There are several factors that go into solar output (and some that you would expect to matter that don't) ... the lattitude, orientation, weather, atmosphere type, and the distance to the star all seem to matter. Is your base in the star's outer shell? Actual illumination as influenced by trees and obstructions don't matter- here's my current base, 4 yellow & 4 green, 280+ being produced by three panels and one capacitor. The panels makes a great raised floor inside the building.... One programmatic way to potentially deal with that would be to create a "looking up" virtual camera associated with each panel and capturing a single frame at some interval and then interpolating pixel luminescence to figure out an efficiency metric that reflects the sort of light that's actually hitting the panel.
I am trying to build a base/station in orbit with each panel displaying 4 yellow indicators and 4 green indicators and still only get 1 PU / panel. Further testing in Survival/Creative/Freedom modes reveal that this issue is only present in orbit. Not when on planet.
Mate you might want to post your own proper bug report as it sounds like you have investigated this to some detail. I'm sure the devs would like this information. As well as any logs, save game, etc.
Hi @Kumbaya. The two things I would think of would be the orientation of the panels to the sun and the distance of the planet from the sun- the recent mission to Pluto used a SNAP generator (a radioactive driven thermopile array) because of the inverse square law .. I built a panel, capacitor, and base builder block and then realized the rebalanced capacitor wouldn't fit in my SV, tacked on an additional 18 extensions (!) then went to orbit on my planet- here is a view of the system star from the front of the panel, system info shot of info about the sun, and a shot of the orbit map showing distance to the sun. Like you I am only getting 1PU and would have expected a lot more but the orbit map and info available in the system info has changed so I'm not dialed in anymore on what to expect ... so either- a) a G2 star producing a luminosity of 1 isn't a good match with the panel (skip that- they work on the planet); b) the distance to the sun is significant to the efficiency of the panel (skip this too- they work on the planet); c) a bug was introduced that unintentionally nerfed solar panels in orbit; d) a feature was introduced to "deal with the exploit" of free power in space ... expect "angry villagers rule" effect with pitchforks. Or others .. your milage may vary, objects in mirror are closer than they appear, etc. The only way to be sure would be to log a bug or hope that @Hummel-o-War could spare us a resubmit. Since I was able to repro the issue I'll post this in bugs (hi @RazzleWin- "yeah, what he said") and see if it gets classified as "not a bug" or "tracking" or left as "new" which is a weather dependent classification based on how busy the guys are. Later .. hahah .. this is posted as a bug- here's the header. Version: alpha 12.0.1 exp, 2879 Mode: Survival, Singleplayer Server Name: local Seed-Id: 104412 Reproducibility: always Severity: minor Type: solar panel Summary: solar panel base in orbit doesn't gen power Steps to Reproduce: create a one panel base on the planet and similar in orbit .. the orbit one will not generate more than 1PU / panel
That was a recent "feature" in a A11 update, where I had a decently running space based farm that was self sufficient and the next day I came in to see it was at 1% power in the caps. Needless to say I hurridly made a gen and a pile of t3 fuel tanks. Also you need to be carefull of ghost power. As a previous poster mentioned, alot of fixtures use power for some unknown reason. One thing to remember is that the biggest ghost power are the cargo extensions. they use 10 or 15pu per extension and it does not show up in the power manifest at all.
Was there ever a formal "bug/not a bug" verification or release notes from Eleon on this? I looked and couldn't find anything like that. Getting 80PU+ from a panel on a planet and 1PU from the same panel in orbit of the same planet is a pretty counter intuitive result. The test base I put up was only three blocks- core, cap, panel.
For now I will say we are aware of the very low output in orbits & will try to approach this at some point during A12 Exp.
Solar Panels still now working in Space as of A12 4.1 I will be patient, I'm sure it will get sorted out.
Alright Pantera! Let this be two lessons to me: 1. Proof read - now was supposed to be not. 2. My Space Dock only existed in Creative mode, and the solar power statistics read way too low. I took it into my Survival game and suddenly it seems to be doing okay. So I should not base such an observation on Creative. Seems to work fine in Survival. Thank you!
I confirm, my 15 panels in Creative were generating 0.1kPU in space and now generate 2.2kPU in space in a Survival game.
