So i make in experimental alpha 12 a base with solars , now i spawn this base on EU official , and i dont have any colar energy in battery. So i go to creative mode to check and the same nothing Then i put core of base and some blocks put wireless conection battery and solars to check .... and nothing zero energy storage
Solar panels are useless. Basically all you can do with them is run a fridge. Whatever small amount of power your constructor or whatever is draining is keeping your battery at 0.
Turn off anything that isn't being used. Have more then one battery and max out the number of cells. I have ran food and advanced constructors, de-constructors and forges along with a 36 plot farm and fridge. It can be done you just have to remember to turn things off when not in use. If your on a snow planet it might not work well as you have far less clear skies. IMO
I have made some tests, both in creator mode and in survival. With base on equator, one flat panel has max energy gain of 5PU. That's in the middle of the day. Sloped panels, when correctly turned, have 6PU. Best gain I was able to get, tested with 15 panels, middle of the day, equator, sloped panels (flat had worse characteristics, hard to say if it's worse all day long or only at midday), I got 98PU total. That's... not much. My base - with very little infrastructure - has standby power consumption of 182PU. So, why should I even build solar power as things stand? Please, at least increase the gains so bases can stay charged in standby. Empyrion build 12.2.1 . 4 Sentry Guns 4 Minigun Turrets 1 Advanced Constructor 1 ATM 1 O2 tank 1 O2 Station 1 Medic Station 1 Fuel Tank 1 Fridge 1 Armor Locker 5 Automatic Doors 1 Cargo Box 1 Ammo Box 1 Core 1 Container Controller + 5 Extensions 1 CPU Extender T2
First point- solar doesn't work in default creative because it isn't updated for how things changed with the galaxy implementation. It sucks, because you can't test well Second- with solar, you need to focus on power management more. Turn devices off where possible when not using them. Make sure you build a reserve before you start making heavy draws Third. The planet itself can make a huge difference. Not just in where on the planet you are, but solar takes into account distance from the sun (inverse square law) and both the density and cloudiness of the atmosphere Fourth, orientation matters, and is wonky. It's all about getting the panels as close to perpendicular to the sunlight. Flat is best at the equator, mild slope mid-latitudes, steep slope at poles. Above the equator, face south, below, face north. East and west orientations don't help because while you may get more early or late in the day, output will be so reduced the rest of the time that north/south will produce overall greater average Here's the wonky part. Currently on a swamp planet at the equator, and I've noticed that my flat panels, when oriented longways north/south, output about 25% more than if they are longways east/west. It shouldn't matter, but it does Fifth, solar is 2-3x more effective in orbit of any given planet than it will be on the surface between no night and no atmosphere Hope that helps
My question is, why this level of "realism" in the first place? Seems to me that the processing required for this is almost entirely wasted and worse, new players will not understand any of it. Personally, I think it should be based on available sunlight only and disregard the orientation of solar panels entirely (thus making sloped panels an artistic choice alone). The model they are using is clearly insufficient and just doesn't work in practice. Make it simply have solar panels? Then you get this amount of sunlight, based only on where the sun is in the sky (not AU and certainly not where on the specific orientation of the panels and if a shadow happens to strike it). For a massive game, simple is better. Keep the processing cycles low on things that just don't matter.
