Solar power, a complaint...

Eh, I just do whatever the hell I want on my worlds. Usually start with a 32x solar flower that feeds into a batbox, then MFE then MFSU. The time I spend screwn' around building stuff fills these up nicely so it powers my workshop (typically 2x Rotary Macerators, 2x IFs, Singularity Compressor, Centrifuge Extractor, 2x Recyclers, T3 Charging Bench, and a Canning Machine). Then the stack of copper blocks that always finds it's way into my resources chest turns into a Mark-I Nuclear Reactor that feeds into Teleporters/Mass Fabs. Then comes experimentation with new things and the usual endgame derping.

Whether or not wind-gens are less resource costly doesn't matter to me. If you end up with more resources than me in a shorter time, good for you; but I don't think an argument should be caused over that. If I don't want to use wind-gens for personal reasons I won't. But I certainly won't try to convince others that my reasons should be accepted and they should see everything like I do, that just causes trouble.

I like solars, always have, always will. The nerf wasn't really a nerf, just an undo of a buff that wasn't needed in the first place.

EDIT: 100th reply, booyah.

I don't really think the solars needed a recipe change in the first place. Making it less expensive caused the "Solar OP" wave and changing it back to the original cost started this thread. So no, I do not think the so called "nerf" was too much. It is impossible to please everybody, if the devs changed the recipe again to be less expensive, those who cried nerf will do so again. At which point if their needs are met another thread like this one will be started. If you are that mad about solars being returned to the original recipe then just use one of the other methods of energy generation such as wind or nuclear (or the Advanced GeoGen in Power Crystals power converters, but since the 1.4 update that kinda broke it). Complaining about it will only piss others off, not change anything.

I still use solars. I just went back to my old IC1 way of doing things, which is just keep my starting gens a bit longer to compensate for the rate I can make solars.

Quote from Blue_Sogekihei

I don't really think the solars needed a recipe change in the first place. Making it less expensive caused the "Solar OP" wave and changing it back to the original cost started this thread. So no, I do not think the so called "nerf" was too much. It is impossible to please everybody, if the devs changed the recipe again to be less expensive, those who cried nerf will do so again. At which point if their needs are met another thread like this one will be started. If you are that mad about solars being returned to the original recipe then just use one of the other methods of energy generation such as wind or nuclear (or the Advanced GeoGen in Power Crystals power converters, but since the 1.4 update that kinda broke it). Complaining about it will only piss others off, not change anything.

I still use solars. I just went back to my old IC1 way of doing things, which is just keep my starting gens a bit longer to compensate for the rate I can make solars.

But the real issue is with a MULTIPLAYER world, not a single player world. I don't bitch and moan about people playing with EE in SSP (though i poke at them for being lame) and i don't mind people using TMI to test stuff with. Like making insane CASUC reactors that would otherwise be pretty much impossible to make in a normal game within the first couple of days of non stop playing.
The solar panels are not balanced for multiplayer worlds and as such server admins either choose to disable solar panels or they choose to leave them in and everybody is using them to the point the game becomes a lag fest and the world is abandoned.

You wont fix the lag issue by making solars more expensive. Ppl who prefer solars still make them even through windgens are WAY cheaper. You have to change the solars so that they become less laggy thats the only way to fix the lag issue.

Quote from Rick

You wont fix the lag issue by making solars more expensive. Ppl who prefer solars still make them even through windgens are WAY cheaper. You have to change the solars so that they become less laggy thats the only way to fix the lag issue.

There are several fixes for the lag issue of solars. While they do involve the use of add-on's/outside mods, they are still available and easily fix this problem...

The amount of fail arguing over solar panels is so facepalm-able that I'm surprised that I still have eyeballs, much less a nose present on my head. The reason Solar panels exist in IC is because they exist in real life. The reason they exist in real life is for MANY different reasons that solely game mechanics which, quite frankly, have little to no influence as to how people play Minecraft as a whole. Sure, it may just seem like an exploitable source of free EU to you, but to some of us who work with renewables, Solars are a low grade energy source that doesn't damage the environment in THIS world. Sure, Carbon emittions don't exist in Minecraft, but that doesn't mean renewable options shouldn't exist either due to this, and don't need to follow some unnecessary 'balance mechanic' just because they are easier to setup than nonrenewable energy sources (that, btw, output far greater energy yields than the former).

So no, solars are fine. The lag is fixable at points, and no, they are not OP because they are FoF energy collectors. Water and Wind generators do the same thing with longer uptime, yet you don't see people complain about them (mostly because people do the 'bed run' for solar, lol). Quite honestly, if ANY energy generator is really op, it's the Nether-Geothermal one. As such, there is no further reason to complain about solar generation in regards to EU production: the generators are more expensive than before, the up-time has to constantly be manipulated for efficiency, AND (here's an overlooked variable) many of the components for solars are neither renewable nor 'cheap'. In many respects, it's better to use cheap water towers or wind energy than solars, due to the additional convenience of not having to sit on the bed all the time...

And if you STILL have to argue about the 'free energy' of the panels, then you desperately need a lesson in resource/energy management, and not of 'game design philosophy'...

Let's break the condition for "sunIsVisible" down to it's core elements:

if(!worldObj.isDaytime() || worldObj.worldProvider.hasNoSky || !worldObj.canBlockSeeTheSky(xCoord, yCoord + 1, zCoord) || !(worldObj.getWorldChunkManager().getBiomeGenAt(xCoord, zCoord) instanceof BiomeGenDesert) && (worldObj.isRaining() || worldObj.getIsThundering()))

First, we need to know the values of the world you are in...

!isDayTime = False
hasNoSky = False
!canBlockSeeTheSky = False (Assuming you have done this right, and it is NOT can see sky )
!(getBiomeGenAt(xCoord, zCoord) instanceof BiomeGenDesert) = False (This is, Are you NOT in a desert biome)
isRaining = True (Rain is global, you just don't see it visually in a desert)
getIsThundering = False (You never mentioned anything about thunder)

So now, the if statement becomes:

if(False || False || False || False && True || False)

Because of precedence we evaluate the "False && True" statement first... Which is False and thus we get:

if(False || False || False || False || False)

So, there is no logical reason (in code) as to why your solar panel shouldn't produce energy using the conditions you specified.
However, if there is thunder then the compressed statement becomes:

if(False || False || False || False || True)

In which case your generator will not produce power. (Thunder in a desert biome is a sand storm i assume? Never experienced thunder in the desert before)
So maybe you walked into another biome but never heard or saw thunder?

EDIT:

AHA! After some additional checking, isDayTime is directly related to the subtractedSkyLight value. When it's raining and/or thundering the light level drops (and as such the subtractedSkyLight value increases) and if the subtractedSkyLight value is greater than 3 then isDayTime becomes false. (Thus making !isDayTime evaluate to true)

Quote from Plystire

I live in a desert... no rain over here, so my solars aren't nerfed in that regard (unless it's a thunderstorm, in which case they are, but that's fairly rare). It makes sense, doesn't it? No sunlight, no solar power, right?

Still... the only reason people are/were yelling "OP! OP! NERF!" is because they either run an SMP server or play on one... just nerf them for SMP by providing config files. In all honesty, if they're worried about lag, I would suggest a config entry for removing solars from the game entirely. There, problem solved.

I thought it was overpowered even in SSP. When I got to the point where the resources to build a nuclear plant, my first thought was "why?" my solar plant produces just as much and it's already made and it won't require me to refill it with anything.

This is a sign that it was OP. It doesn't even have to do with SMP. If nukes are not worth it, and they require MUCH more effort the solution is makes nukes better and make solars worse/more expensive. That's what was done. Even if you ignore SMP altogther it's a good game design decision.

Quote from Mason11987

I thought it was overpowered even in SSP. When I got to the point where the resources to build a nuclear plant, my first thought was "why?" my solar plant produces just as much and it's already made and it won't require me to refill it with anything.

This is a sign that it was OP. It doesn't even have to do with SMP. If nukes are not worth it, and they require MUCH more effort the solution is makes nukes better and make solars worse/more expensive. That's what was done. Even if you ignore SMP altogther it's a good game design decision.

Just because you build your solar farm (which was btw much more expensive than a nuclear reactor with same output) before you made a nuclear reactor and not having any need to get more eu (because you already invested shitloads in it) doesnt mean its op. Even a basic nuclear reactor costs like 8x less iron than a solar farm producing the same output. Thats a HUGE diference.

So here are the numbers
My starting reactor (and yes there is a even more resource efficient reactor which is also in my sig):
40eu/tick
100 iron
2,5 iron/eu

Solars:
10 iron
0.5 eu/tick
20 iron/eu

8x diference in iron not counting the fact solars dont work with rain/thunderstorm and they cost much more space. Solars are really underpowered.

Quote from Rick

Just because you build your solar farm (which was btw much more expensive than a nuclear reactor with same output) before you made a nuclear reactor and not having any need to get more eu (because you already invested shitloads in it) doesnt mean its op. Even a basic nuclear reactor costs like 8x less iron than a solar farm producing the same output. Thats a HUGE diference.

So here are the numbers
My starting reactor (and yes there is a even more resource efficient reactor which is also in my sig):
40eu/tick
100 iron
2,5 iron/eu

Solars:
10 iron
0.5 eu/tick
20 iron/eu

8x diference in iron not counting the fact solars dont work with rain/thunderstorm and they cost much more space. Solars are really underpowered.

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When I said they were OP, I'm referring to how it previously was, where solar panels worked during the day even in rain.

Besides your Nuke numbers are ignoring the other materials that are necessary, tin/copper for example, and the fact that it isn't free energy. Nuclear plants need uranium, which is far more valuable and harder to find then iron. Nuclear plants needed the bump up and solars needed to be more expensive/less powerful because nuclear plants can't run continuously generating power, they at the very least need mining for uranium and manual refilling, which meant that there wasn't a great reason to set them up when you could just use solar.

Now (thanks to the changes which I'm defending here) solars are more expensive, and not as effective, while nuke plants are more effective. This naturally leads players to build solars for small operations but when a lot of power is needed they build nuclear plants, and by that time they'll have the uranium to do so.

Even with old cost for solars nukes are still much more resource efficient

1 solar will cost (old cost):
8 iron
2 redstone
4 tin
1,5 copper
3 rubber
8 cobble
3 coal
3 glass

You needed 40 solars to match the output of my starting reactor (which is btw not the most resource efficient design). Costs for 40 solars are:
320 iron
80 redstone
160 tin
60 copper
120 rubber
320 cobble
120 coal
120 glass

For the costs of my reactor go here:
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…c0=1p10101001501521s1r11r

Even with old solar cost and old nuclear output solars are very expensive. I understand they buffed nuclear power because it wasnt that good but i dont see a reason to nerf solars. They didnt even nerfed it a bit but with a huge nerf smash by turning 2 cables to circuits. I really wanna know why.

Rick, how much does the cost for 1 billion power units cost, including tin and uranium, if using 500 solars versus a nuke reactor; go ahead and pick any non CARUC/CASUC design you like.

Solar:
3 glass
3 coal
12 iron
6.5 copper
13 rubber
8 redstone
8 cobblestone

500 eU/t over 27.7 Hours of RL, 'daylight in game', hours in minecraft (during this time you could make an even larger array)

Let's be conservative and say that you game for 1 hour a day on average, but that you are using a bed; lets also say you built in a desert to maximize sun use; that's more or less a month.

500 Solar:
1500 glass
1500 coal
6000 iron
3250 copper
650 rubber
4000 redstone
4000 cobblestone

Quote from MJEvans

Rick, how much does the cost for 1 billion power units cost, including tin and uranium, if using 500 solars versus a nuke reactor; go ahead and pick any non CARUC/CASUC design you like.

It would take 3 nuclear reactors (http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1o10101001501521s1r11r10) to match the output (ok just ignore the 10 eu/tick diference). Each uran cell makes 4 million eu so you would need 250 of them to get 1 billion eu which is quite easy to get in 21 cycles (58hours).

500 solars cost:
LAGLAGLAG
5000 iron
do i really have to continue?....

Obliviously non-micro stuff will be better when you got masses of them than micro stuff. Thats what they are made for in the first place...

Quote from Rick

It would take 3 nuclear reactors (http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1o10101001501521s1r11r10) to match the output (ok just ignore the 10 eu/tick diference). Each uran cell makes 4 million eu so you would need 250 of them to get 1 billion eu which is quite easy to get in 31,25 cycles (87 hours).

500 solars cost:
LAGLAGLAG
5000 iron
do i really have to continue?....

Yeah, I was asking for Tin and Uranium use. You've outright ignored the tin.

Edit: My own math on fuel...

As a suggestion, you might want to build an average 250 eu/t of these (5 of them total) in a single chunk with the timing circuits (should barely be possible if sharing water for reactors): http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1l10101001501521s1r11r10

Run at a 1:11 ratio it averages 53.33eU/t as noted in the table here: http://forum.industrial-craft.…page=Thread&threadID=3189

I'll accept a total of this, plus the non-redstone ore count for the 5 reactors + sufficient breeders to feed them at the drawn-out rate. Since the energy produced is constant you can skip the timing check (your eU/t is a little better using this setup so you'd win here) and just go right for the fuel costs; we can even assume you run a perfect breeder and manage to swap the cells instantly to get 16 out of 1 input.

Actually why don't I just do the tin numbers for you.

Eff 4.0 means each end-product uranium cell produces 8 million eU in it's lifetime.
1000000000/8000000 = 125 cells used (though each reactor takes 16, so that's 128 total)

128 takes 32 breeding clusters to complete, which means we need a total of 160 uranium cells in-system. Lets say that 8 of them are made from uranium raw and the remaining 152 are enriched; further let's state that 24 will be residue from the reactor. Now, this process will consume some coal, but we'll say that you've found it while mining the other stuff you needed and saved it.

2 tin for 8 cells * (the other 8 go to the miners)
8 batches of 4 tin each for the 128 primary cells.
16 uranium + 8 uranium = 24 uranium (easily realistic)
32 tin doesn't sound so bad either.

Ok, the fuel is manageable, but what about the reactors, including glowstone dust and lapis luazi?

you want the tin use for 250 cells?...Thats 62,5 tin almost nothing compared to the other costs which is why i ignored that in the first place. 500 solars cost 2000 tin.

Unless you get a serious amount of solars running for a really long time (in this example 58 hours with 500 solars) nuclear power will be better.

You know, thinking about it; I didn't notice the material cost for solars back when they used copper wire instead of circuits (which bumped up the iron count too BTW); The awesome thing is, you can make 64 solar panels at /once/ -bam- done.

The major problem with the nuclear reactors is that /nothing/ stacks except (the one reactor you make) and chambers which is an end product. None of the 3 chests full of cooling cells / IHDs stack, even when undamaged. If they'd just do that empty battery thing of stacking it'd be way less annoying.

About the reactor costs they are alot less than what the solars would cost (you most likely will be below 1k iron with nuclear reactors and solars are like 5k..). Almost same story for tin/copper.
Some glowstone and lapis isnt that hard to find. By the time you get the other resources you have more than enough of them.

So far solars suck compared to windgens and nuclear power. Solars really need a buff.

How about basic a solar panel's output on a sliding scale. Mounted at wind-gen max level it can produce a whole 4 eU/t, at 111 produce 3 eU/t; at height 63 it produces an average of 2 eU/t and at bedrock it produces 0.5 eU/t (Well something like that; a curve based on height).

The explanation for that would be access to more radiation.