So, I have just found out that putting a Sensor above the Transporter, to switch it on and off does not work. The Sensor stays ON once you have transported, keeping the Transporter switched on, using lots of power. I've done a test on this. Results in this thread. What do people do to get round this?
Sometimes I have the transporter in it own independent building with it own power supply. I leave the fuel tank more or less empty. When I need to teleport then I stick a fuel cell in to give it power for a short time. The other option for less used teleporter is solar power as well - a charge capacitor will give you long enough to browse and select a destination before its charge runs out. The problem seems to be the playfield gets unloaded immediately in single player (I assume that is where you encounter this issue) with the result that the sensor never gets a chance to register that the person triggering it is no longer there and so disable power before the playfield is unloaded. Something else I have to wonder if it will ever get fixed given that it has been known for several months.
Are you playing SP or MP? Using a sensor to shut it off when warping works in MP but doesn't work at all in SP. In SP you warp away and the playfield unloads before the teleporter can be switched off. The devs still don't have a fix for this. In SP if you don't edit the config files to lower the power usage then it will use up all your fuel since it never gets switched off. Which brings up the question of why aren't the devs lowering the power draw until they actually fix this bug?
Wish they would do something like they have in Minecraft. When you use a Nether Portal it keeps the chunk you have come from loaded for 15 seconds. This would fix the problem., even if it was 1 second.
This would be like treating an appendicitis with a shotgun blast... Much easier and simpler to just lower the power usage!
I have to ask - how are you testing this in SP? Not that I don't think this is potentially a problem, but it seems to me, if you're unloading a playfield when you teleport away, you'd have to load said same playfield to return and see if the sensor turned off the teleporter. Kind of seems like opening the refrigerator door to see if the light goes out when the door is closed. I suppose a completely valid workaround for this would be to simply construct a second tiny base near your base that is fully solar powered and contains only the teleporter and the solar array and batteries to power it.
If you go to the link in my post #1, there you will see how I did the test. The problem was consumption of fuel, so that is what I monitored. I have just done the test again and the Sensor now switches off after teleporting.
Seems reasonable enough. Was curious as to your methods. Also good to hear that it seems to be working correctly now.
One thing I DO NOT understand in the design philosophy of this game is: WHY do the developers seem to think it is beneficial to user experience that players are constantly having to hustle to maintain power supply? It makes sense for very beginning game. Finding that first couple plant fibers to make one bio-fuel to power your chainsaw to get MORE plant fibers to make MORE bio-fuel etc., is CLEARLY an important part of the "survival game" experience. Moving on to "early not yet mid-game" experience . . . the general pattern here also seems reasonable. As you move up from using strictly porto contructor to either HV, SV or BA you do have to continue to pay attention to acquisition of energy and processing it for use. But then moving on to mid-game: If I have reached level 20, I have installed a small concrete "Emergency bunker" on the nearby moon as a respawn/resupply and storage depot as I undertake "conquesting" the resources and POIs on the moon, I really should NOT have to worry about leaving the grow lights on and going away from the base for . . . 10 or 20 play hours or 4 or 5 in-game days, should I? The fact is: I WILL come back to find the power cells run dry and that is simply a result of the background demands of the installed devices and lights. I find this to be absurd. It does not seem to promote good user experience, it does not promote fun gameplay and it defies belief! This is 25th century technology we have here! Are you telling me that just having a few constructors, weapons, sensors and lights installed on a base (and advanced computer system too) is going to cause it to run out of power in a matter of DAYS!? How the hell did Humanity make it to the 25th century with that level of crappy power management!? ALL OF THE POWER DEMANDS IN THE GAME NEED TO UNDERGO A DRAMATIC DIAL BACK TO 'BACKGROUND' DEMANDS. Keeping the current dynamic of 'constantly hustling for juice' for early and even into early-mid game seems fin, but there needs to be a point around about level 15 or 20 where the player can literally power up a small facility, turn everything that can be turned off OFF, and leave it for literally 40 hours and still come back go grow lights shining and a modicum of practical illumination running and still some power in the tanks. ADDIT: what I might suggest . . . a Level 15 one block item that is unlocked which has subsantial though not extravagant material demands. A bit like the "wireless" block. Call it a "Power Supply Manager." Plop this thing into a construct and it reduces all background power use by say . . . I dunno? 90%?
I... I dunno. I rarely have problems with power supply. Food storage, sure, but keeping the lights on? Not really an issue for me. I have to wonder if you're one of those folks who find it necessary to include 36 Advanced Constructors, 36 Large Constructors and 36 Small Constructors in every base - and then leave them all on all the time. I've been more than comfortable in purely solar-powered bases that have consumption rates between .1 and .4 on average - and still have everything I actually NEED. Yes, I do a bit of creative signaling to help conserve power, and yes, I turn off the things I'm not actually using. What I DO see a need for, a genuine need for, is some control over what is powered by what. Lights, Fridges, Doors - all great candidates to be run from Solar Batteries. Shield generators, Constructors, Furnaces - this is the stuff Generators are made for - but we should have control over what powers which devices. I think this would go light years to shoring up the shortcomings of Power.
I believe idle power consumption should be *significantly* lower for pretty much everything. There is no reason why a furnace, a constructor or a repair block should not completely power down when not in use.
because even when not in use, they are connected to the wireless network . That takes some power to maintain connection
Hmmm, yeah, like a food processor would take 5x as much power to maintain a wireless connection as a turned on grow light? If that were true, my early 21st century cell phone would be dead in less than a minute. "Wake-up-on-remote-request" is a common function and it consumes very little power. Compared to the advanced tech we are dealing with, it should be trivial.
Furnace - as the owner of several cruibles, forges and smelters, I can tell you exactly why they don't completely power down when not in use - because the heating elements (for the small electric ones) have to stay pretty warm to keep them from taking hours to come up to temperature. The larger ones (gas and coal) still have plenty of electronics for operating blowers, thermostats, and other components. They're just power hogs. Shut them all the way down, and sure, they don't use any power, just don't be in a hurry to use them. Constructor - just like a 3d printer, they're still sucking up power to keep the heads warm, for similar reasons. Mix in all the displays and powered connections, and they're pretty good about eating power too. Repair Block - I can buy this one. If there's nothing to repair, there's nothing to do, so yeah, shut it down all the way. I do tend to make use of signals a lot though - and the "P" panel control board on nearly everything I build winds up with more than few things assigned - "Recycling", "Furnace", "Standard Lighting" are things I typically have assigned here. I turn them on when I need them and off when I don't. Kind of like household appliances.
as a wise man once said " you play the game you got, not the game you want" but really I know what you mean. Also, I just said "some power" I did NOT state how much power (yes it should be less)
I think I might have found a solution to this problem in SP, but it still requires some testing. I noticed that the teleporter window stays open if the base runs out of power and devised a logic setup that will: - switch the teleporter on if you stand on it - switch the teleporter off after 3 seconds You have 3 seconds to open the window, then the teleporter switches off again. Sounds great, but... it sill STILL drain your power reserves even if switched off. I tested it with two bases, one ran on solar panels alone and one only on generators. The one with the solar panels survived teleporting away with its power reserves intact, plants growing and oxygen ventilating when I came back. The other, running on generators, was dead. So, if you switch off your generator and have enough solar power reserves to activate the teleporter for 3 seconds, you are good to go. You still need the logic to switch the teleporter back off after 3s, though. The first image shows the teleporter control panel open with the teleporter shut off. The second image shows trhe logic setup. The motion sensor has a signal "S MS Teleporter", which is delayed for 3s and XORed with the motion sensor's signal. This creates a logic pulse which switches the teleporter on and then off again. The exit signal of the XOR "L Teleporter" is used to switch the teleporter on.
