[AddOn v1.15] Advanced Solar Panel 1.2

Quote from phaser

Hmmm next thing ubercharged solar panels???? Crafted with Iridium and the advance solar panels and a HV-Transformer cause it will put put 20 per tick and 10 at night

Thank you phaser for that very supportive attitude and helpful criticism. If only more people like you would show that kind of appreciation to modders for spending their free time to make these add-ons I am sure we would have so many more to play with.

[/sarcasm]

Quote from darenton2k7

im a lil on the fence about this... its a good idea, but also over powered (well to me it is) i probably wont use this (even tho i always use solar panels) think ill stick to the ones ingame and if im not mistaken solar panels produce more (normal ones) on desert biomes

How are they overpowered? Do they cost to little or do you think they just generate to much for solar no matter what the cost is? Some have suggest a power level of 8/2, would you use it at this power level with the current recipe? If not what kind of power do you think a tier 3 solar panel that costs this much metal, coal, and diamonds should output?

Also you are mistaken there is no code that I saw that lets the regular solar panels generate more on desert biomes.

First off and I don't mean to be rude here but please never again base any of your arguments on how you think physics works. Your understanding of how light works is appallingly wrong.

My original premise to make the solar panel out 12/1 was based on facts. There are a total of 16 light levels in minecraft from 0 to 15, 15 being daylight. Moonlight is level 4 which is about 8.5% the amount of light in the day time. (Note: It is never truly dark in minecraft according to the wiki, even at 0 the light level is still something like 3.5% light level.) This means if I had 12% efficient solar panel using the moon light I would be generating 1 EU/t in the minecraft world. Applying the 12% efficiency to the daylight levels means that I would output 12 EU/t. There was however a coding problem with doing 12 EU/t so I settled for 11 EU/t. To go even deeper into this, my advanced solar panel would probably be using IR wavelengths to make energy since that is what is mostly reflected from the moon. this means that these solar panels are meant to convert infra red with an efficiency of 12%. So the basis for these are sound. (The 11/1 was then change because people wanted base 2 numbers so that it would easily work with the base 2 storage units.)

Also every generator in IC2 stores some power just based on the way IC2 is coded. The base generator stores like 5k in EU. The Tier 1 solar panel stores 100 EU. Since a lapotron crystal is used in the creation of this item I think it is more than fair to say that it should be able to store some power. It also only store 16k EU that is less than half of the 40k a simple bat box stores. So I have no problem with this small amount of storage on a tier 3 power generation device.

As for change the output to 5/0: I think an average of 2.5 EU/t is a little low for something that requires this much heavily processed material requiring a lot of power and time to make and 1.12 diamonds. I would challenge you to go make 13 of these from base materials and then on top of that make the necessarily MFSU to and transformer to make use of these solar panels and then tell me how much you think it is worth (oh and don't use anything that was TMIed to do this challenge). Right now I m thinking I m going to be going with 8/2 in the next update which is about 5 EU/t on average.

Quote from darenton2k7

ok my physics does suck granted... but theoretically it shouldnt produce at night... but the recipe to craft suggests tier 2, not tier 3, so perhaps making it abit more expensive if its going to be tier 3, i really dont see the point in the lapatron crystal... perhaps where you got the output 512 eu/t thing... (ye i know mc isnt realistic... but i like realism to an extent XD)

Either A your haven't been reading the opening post and the rest of my posts in this thread or B your not understanding what I am telling you. So let me make this simple.

If a solar panel is efficient enough it will produce some electricity at night, preferably under the full moon. (It wont produce as much as it would in the day time but it will produce some.) This is absolute fact and there is no point in arguing over this.

The nights in the minecraft world are much brighter (more light = more power able to be generated) than they are in the real world and there is always a bright full moon. This is another fact.

About the recipe. I consider an advanced machine a tier 3 ingredient. It is only used in the very top most machines like induction furnaces, terraformers, MFSUs, and matter generators. The lapatron crystal is the tier 3 rechargeable battery. It is used in tier 3 energy devices like the MFSU and the matter generator (it turns energy into matter so I consider it an energy device for this argument sake). Every generator in IC2 has a tier 1 rechargeable battery in its ingredient list. So I followed the formula set by the creators of IC2 an used an advanced machine and a tier 3 rechargeable battery (lapatron crystal) in the ingredient list for the my tier 3 power generator. The rest of the ingredients are again following forumlas set by the IC2 creators. Coals dust upgrades to carbon plate. Glass upgrades to reinforced glass (if there was ever iridium reinforced glass I would use it here.) Copper cable upgrades to fiber cable.

Iridium is currently only used to make armor and there is no presidents for using it to make generators or a solar panel. Also the thing you are still not getting is that in order to make just 13 advanced solar panels for 1 solar flower you need 15 diamonds. You will then need 10 more diamonds if you chose to make an MFSU at the heart of your solar flower to collect the energy. I don't know about the worlds you play in but finding 25 diamonds takes a while for me in my worlds.

As far as why I chose to go with the tier 3 energy level with my tier 3 generator.... besides the obvious and besides the fact that I have already explained this in this thread a couple times now... Basically in the real world (you know that thing you are fond of but apparently are willing to make claims about that are completely fictional) higher voltage means higher efficiency. That is why they have high voltage power lines running from state to state and not just the standard voltage power lines. Also when installing a solar setup in the real world often the solar panels will be wired in a way to increase the voltage. Again because higher voltage is more efficient way to transfer power.

Finally EU is a fictional power measurement that is used to simplify electrical engineering in IC2. The basis in reality for EU is called wattage which is found by multiplying voltage and amperage together. The tier 3 energy level is referred to as High Voltage. You can run 1 EU across the high voltage energy level and have a perfectly valid reason for doing it that is based in the real world physics. Remember higher voltage equals better efficiency. The way it is possible to run higher voltages is simply by reducing the amperage. So even though the solar panels are not using the whole 512 EU on the tier 3 power level the reason why it is using it is based in reality. It also has the side benefit of increasing the cost of using the advanced solar panel which prevents them from being mobile power stations.

I am happy to answer any questions that you have about the mod just please do two things for me. A) Read my posts in this thread I probably have already covered it. B) Remember ASSuming about things you don't know about makes an a__ out of u and me.

Quote from ultimate_omega

Here's an idea, in addition to the T1 Solar Panel we have normally, create a T2 that uses the Energy Crystal as it's storage and appropriate materials (like the reinforced glass) and a T3 that uses the Lapotron as it's storage and it's own appropriate materials (sugestions?) Also adjust the collection rates accordingly.

Ex.
T1 - normal rate w/ no night collection
T2 - Doubled day rate w/ 1 eu/t at night
T3 - Tripled/Quadrupled(?) day rate w/ 2-3 eu/t at night due to epic materials using the sun's reflection off of the moon to create power.

Just suggestions though, please do take with a grain of salt.

I wouldn't be against the idea. However there are two main problems with this. First, once you include a crystal in the recipe to me the costs just skyrockets because now you need a diamond to make it. Secondly like I said in a previous post I just don't have the time now and probably not have it for another 60 days to make another generator. So there is really now point in discussing a T2 solar panel windmill or watermill at this time. However I am willing to discuss about the T3 panel. If there is a precedence or a logical reason to replace a material in the recipe or if you want to share the reasoning behind why you would make the day rate x and the night rate y, I am all ears.

New version (1.1) has been released.

Because of numerous comments about it being overpowered I have nerfed the night output down to 1 EU/t. I also fixed a small bug in the GUI.

Quote from Electrobob992

where is the 1.1 download the download on the op is the 1.0.1 version

The opening post has the new version, "1.0.1.1".

My version numbering system for the actual files are that the first 2 numbers are the IC2 version this add on is for. In this case "1.0". The last 2 numbers is the version of my add on. In this case it is "1.1"