Not really a bug, solar panels more efficient than genorators

[Quailow]

To reproduce:

• Start a new ship, or use and old one.
  
• Use "Modify Whole Ship" to double the size of the ship X3.
  
• create a solar panel of 8X.05X8
  
• Use "Modify Whole Ship" to halve the size of the ship X3.
  
• The solar panel should now be 1X.01X1:
  
• Copy paste to make a stack of the solar panels
  
• This stack of any material solar panel will now vastly out perform the same volume of any material generators
  

 

I hope it was appropriate to post this here. As over powered as this is, I feel like the fragility of solar panels would balance it out with any sort of shield penetrating weapons on the opponent's side, but only if solar panels were like hangars and would only function if exposed.

[Shrooblord]

What is the whole enlarge x3 and shrink x3 part for, in this case? Is this an exploit that only works if you perform those steps as well?

[Quailow]

To shrink one or more dimensions of the solar panels below 0.05. The panels energy production per volume climbs dramatically with their surface area per volume, in this case to truly astounding levels. I've whipped up an example: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1274825873

 

If you delete the avorion generator (2X0.05X2) you'll see the ship losing around 35MW. If you delete the blue iron solar panel (2X0.05X2) you'll see it loses around 9MW. If you delete the cluster of uncolored iron solar panels (2X0.01X2, total volume of approx. 2X0.05X2) you'll see it loses about 66MW.

 

[Shrooblord]

Oh. Well that's silly.

 

I feel like Solar Panels should only work if they're the outer-most layer of the ship, anyway. I don't see how Solar Panels embedded in Armour Blocks would catch any light, anyway, for instance.

 

This should also solve the stacking problem you highlight.

[Hammelpilaw]

Oh. Well that's silly.

 

I feel like Solar Panels should only work if they're the outer-most layer of the ship, anyway. I don't see how Solar Panels embedded in Armour Blocks would catch any light, anyway, for instance.

 

This should also solve the stacking problem you highlight.

If solarpanels only worked when at least one side is not covered, then it had to be the same for engine, thruster and so on. But I would not like it... A solution could be to change solarpanels, make energy only dependent by volume, not by surface: Technically it would make them absolutely senseless, but who uses it anyways for producing power? Imo the most important thing that they exist is visually (f.e. solar power plant need it). Maybe buff it a lil to make you able to produce a tittle energy when you just started a new game and only have iron (iron does not have generators).

Ps.: you can manually set the block size to any value (like 0.001) by typing it into block size window. No need to scale the ship.

 

[Shrooblord]

Oh, cool. I did not know you could tweak the values in the Block Info popup. I should experiment messing around with UI elements more. This game has so many hidden features!