New wind generator grossly overpowered?

Agree too.
Too big output.

Quote from SpwnX

I agree. Ridiculously overpowered.

My idea of balance:
Wood: 1-5 EU/t
Iron: 2-10 EU/t
Steel: 4-20 EU/t
Carbon: 8-40 EU/t

I would cut even *these* values in half.

I'm curious, are the IC2 devs actually interested in this feedback? I don't follow closely enough to know if they've already said they like it as is, or are still fiddling with the balance.

Pretty sure the latter. But I haven't seen the two post in a while, although they are listening to feedback (TD updated the miner after someone suggested it last update)

erm, I think my values are better :

1-5 for wood
2-10 for iron
3-30 for steel
5-50 for carbon

Because carbon and steel are kinda annoying to get compared to iron/wood

And you guys haven't tried mekanism turbines

Quote from psusi

Definitely not. The new windmills are quite a bit more expensive than the old ones, and you have to keep replacing the rotor. A steel rotor takes 45 iron, most of which has to slowly burn in the blast furnace. I think that expense justifies at least as much output as a semifluid generator, just not nuclear power levels.

I would suggest that the tiers have a bit more overlap:

Wood: 1-10
Iron: 2-20
Steel: 4-30
Carbon: 8-40

Do you have any numbers on energy-costs versus energy-gains per rotor? That's the only valid argument I can think of to justify such massively high eu-rates.

We're talking about 1 wind turbine here, and they're easy to spam.

Edited as bolded. Duh.

Quote from Chocohead

Quoted from "Pyure"

they're easy to spam.
Not really. They do affect each other if they're near, and with cable loss, going down 100 blocks down from 160 to 60 does lose quite a bit of EU with cable loss and glass fibre cables being so expensive.

Fine. Reasonably spammable?

What cable loss are you speaking of? I thought IC2 cables were lossless now, unless you're converting to GT for transmission.

Yes, glass fiber is expensive, but the next tier down still transmits an awful lot of power (enough to cover a decent wind farm)

coal and iron are actually renewable, if you are a vanilla master like me, you can know how to make effecient iron and coal automated farm, and with mods, it's even easier

Quote from Chocohead

That was only intended to be temporary, and that is a config option to enable it again. Reasonably spammable is still too much, since they do take either lots of coal and steel, neither of which are really renewable.

So then I wonder what the actual cost-benefit analysis suggests.

I'm sufficiently lazy that I'm never going to dig into it myself ( and I don't do passive power generation anyway) but it would go a ways towards judging a balanced power production tiering.

from my setup with dual rods i got stable 1000 hu -> with stirlings gives about 500 eu/tick. Cost is ridiculous in comparison to wind turbine - set up home in mountains and you are set. I know they are disabled now (or not? ) but what i would suggest is to rotor blades be damaged/destroyed if hit by lightning. Also steam turbine is buggy in most recent builds giving out water during reactor startup as if output pressure valve was not there. (anyone experienced phantom explosions with steam generators during startup and shutdowns? - this is distiled water going out because it met water at receiver input..)

I managed to automate refueling and cooling with ic2nc tools giving backup safety shutdown, but this effort should be balanced with windmills being way more maintenance hungry. not only blades but also rotor hub itself with power level as psusi suggested.

btw - i woulld really love development in multiplayer experience - like laser towers (laser mounted on tesla coil with some adv circuits and nightvision googles), extra damage for quantum suits by tesla coils (and nerfing suit by 50%) force shield generators with power being somewhat square power of surface area and damage absorbed limited by power levels (separate power for maintaining shield and second draw for any breach attempt)
Detectors that trigger signal if player wears (or have in inventory) some items. fields that prevent certain items to be used (again dependent on field box volume)

Or making those items as addon mod for ic2 myself .. or helping guys code it into ic2 ?

I don't really see the loss of power in cables being a problem in the long run. Instead of moving the energi with cables (which leads to loss) you could instead move the energy by building a charging station up at the windmills that charges batteries. You then move the batteries without loosing power using some kind of item transporting mod (ender chest comes to mind). down On the ground you empty the battery into a energy buffer of choice. Then you send upp the empty battery again to be recharged in the charging station.
If i remember correctly direwolf did a setup like this in the beginning of their previous forgecraft series. Quite early game and unaffected by the power loss in cables and completly blows away all other alternatives for making early game power aswell as being better (AND CHEAPER!) than most late game power production.

Swing the nerfbat already

They are at some part extremly op because you can hook them up to an Enderchest... EnergyCrystal charging and co.
I personally think they should not make the poweroutput based on the material.
It should be based on the wind and the rotors are only differend in terms how long they last...
Like Foresty frames...

Quote from SpwnX

That is a very good idea in my opinion.
I wish we had to build tower foundations for each of the mills though... Hmmm... I got an idea.

I like where this is heading

Wind power is definitely OP... Consider the current version:

Wood turbine setup - I put them on a stone platform around 165 height like so (from behind):

--R--
C
t
t
tttttt
SSSSSSSSSSSS

R is rotor for the turbine, C is a CESU unit directly beneath, t is wire, S is the stone platform. From the side:
|
|
KR>
C |
t |
t
SSSSS

Horizontally, there is a 4 cube gap between rotor heads so that the propellers rotate, but almost touch.
The measurement of generated power for wooden rotor is 0-45 EU/tick, average being around 15-27EU/tick, and 35+ happening only during thunderstorms and doing large damage to rotors in the process.
If I took down the rotors during storms, they would last a total of 3 hours IRL, costing 18 wood logs (12 logs 24 planks) and 1 iron ingot. At 20EU/tick they generate 400 EU/second = 1.44 mil EU per hour = 4.32 mil EU per rotor in its lifetime.
One iron and 18 logs spent generate 4.32 mil EU.
Both are easily obtainable or renewable.

I tried same setup with carbon rotor, but placed it on 7th tile above platform (5 for rotor plus one extra just in case since I don't know it's clearance calculation).
This did an average of 130 EU/tick, with peaks well in high 200s. Practically as much as the best regular Mk1 nuclear generator possible (mine do 260 EU/tick with 3 quad fuel rods).
The difference is that carbon lasts 7 IRL days, while nuke fuel is spent in less than 3 hours.

So how much does a carbon rotor cost and how much does it generate?
It costs 288 coal dust and 9 refined iron, both of which are relatively easily obtainable.
It generates 130 EU/tick average = 2600 EU/second = 9.36M EU per hour = 1.57 billion EU during its 168 hours of lifetime.
If we take coal and iron as a material unit, that's 1572M EU per 297 material units = 5,29 mil EU per material unit.

You get similar gains in the highest efficiency nuclear reactor (one fuel rod = 4.33 mil EU in my best design) using uranium. So, this makes coal dust and iron ingots on par with uranium in terms of energy generation. A bit too high I would say.
Especially considering the difficulties in building and handling a nuclear reactor compared to building and maintaining a windmill. Also, this lasts for 7 days, while during the same time you have to replace your fuel rods a total of 60 times (you use ~360 uranium fuel rods to achieve what a single carbon rotor does).

Regarding power transfer - with power losses turned on - do what I did. Put an MFSU unit on the propeller. If you're not using power, it will be full in just 4 hours. Then from there run a high voltage iron cable to wherever you need it, and step down with HV/MV/LV transformer, possibly with additional battery after each. Your losses for a 100 long line will be ~100, but packets sent over the cable are 2048: which leaves 1948 EU still inside the packet. These are less than 5% losses, and you would have to have a 400 long cable before it just becomes more efficient to dismantle the MFSU using electric wrench and bring it to wherever you need it. Or you can use the new batteries.

Either way, even with 5% transport losses, wind power is so rediculously easier and better to do compared to any other source of EU that I just see no point in using other sources.
At first I build a regular generator, then added two geothermals, then 10 solars and 16 water mills. And all together just paled compared to using 3 wooden rotors for which I could grow rotors in my spruce orchard at a rate of many, many rotors per hour. No trips to get lava, no baking trees, no waiting for sun, no waiting for insanely small trickle from water mills...
Sure, wind goes down sometimes. But sometimes it goes up a lot. And if you have the capacity to store that extra power, you're good and supplied even during wind standstills.

So yeah, wind is currently the best power source by far (in terms of power / effort, in terms of efficiency, and easily obtainable).

I think the Windmills are not OP at all. The Mechanical idea is good. But there is a problem.
IC2 Has always 100% Windstrengh and goes maybe down to 80% or up to 120% Speed.
As i desinged the Spmodversion (fixed version) of Compact Windmills, i did add a Way that is not OP. The Windmills produce energy on the RotorSpeed so you have to build Windmills Differend. And based on the Windspeed the Rotor will adjusted the speed. Now i only need to fix the IC2 Wind. When that is done there is a noneOP version of Windmills.