[Suggestion]: Compact Solar Panel Arrays for performance.

Quote from raa1337

Because an air block is like a Diamond Block. It's THAT amazing. No cost would be enough, from what it seems.

I honestly can't believe people value it so much. If a server admin (of an average, or higher population) was to come in, and tell us the exact amount of Solar Panels (or, the Solar Panel Equivalent (SPE) in Arrays) people are using we could then divide that by how many fit in a chunk (Was in a post above, I believe).

On some servers, there wouldn't be any land, or any sunlight for a REALLY, REALLY LONG WAYS. This honestly wouldn't be an issue if the Mass Fabricator didn't exist- But it does. Therefore the problem exists and needs a reasonable solution. (That doesn't involve telling server admins to tell off their players or toggle them back.)

If anyone brings up the amount of cable and other supplies that are needed... If someone has 50,000 SPE then it's irrelevant.

(OT: Doom was the first Pineapple Sacrifice, it seems. :o)

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Well I guess today's your lucky day.

Hi there, I'm couchguy987, an admin on Axis Mundi, a public tekkit server.

Read through this thread to get a general idea of how many solar panels people tend to have: http://forum.axis-mundi.cu.cc/index.php?topic=47.0

We're preparing for the tekkit 2.0 upgrade.

Also of note, we have a limitation of a max of 18 solar panels per person, due to lag. http://forum.axis-mundi.cu.cc/index.php?topic=76.0

Another thought, I like Alblaka's idea of having flat panels as addons to the first solar panel.

I just had another idea that might be worth consideration. You may know how in Railcraft, they have the coke oven, which is composed of 26 coke oven bricks arranged in a cube, with the central block empty. http://railcraft.wikispaces.com/Coke+Oven+%28Device%29

The coke oven has to be properly assembled in order for the game to recognize it as a coke oven, and allow the user to right click it and open up the machine gui.

Well, what if you could arrange individual solar panels (9) in a 3x3 grid, and if they are arranged as such, they then count as an LV array, and only the middle block is checked for access to sunlight.

And then, if you arrange 9 LV's in a 3x3 grid (this ends up being 9x9 of individual solar panels), it becomes an "MV" array, and likewise, only the middle block out of all of them is checked for access to sunlight.

Further, in this arrangement, current would only run from that central block, negating the need for lots of tin wire to connect them.

The HV array would furthermore be 9 MV Arrays arranged in a 27x27 grid.

And another idea to balance this in terms of preventing people from having their entire solar array except for 1 block without access to sunlight, set it up so that there's a check whenever a user attempts to place a solar array, to ensure that there are no blocks except for glass blocks above it, and vice-versa, whenever a user tries to place a block besides glass above a solar panel, and prevent the user from placing the solar panel under a non-glass block, or placing a non-glass block above a solar panel.

Couchguy's 'Coke-Oven-Solar' is a pretty good idea... though I think that the individual oven blocks still have world checks to make sure they still are in formation with the other oven blocks, I think there is even a warning in the RailCraft docs that using Coke blocks as decoration will cause world lag for that reason. Basically it makes sure people don't complete the oven then remove the extra blocks.

But since the concern isn't SSP-worlds but SMP and reducing server lag... how about...

allow solar=true\false
max solar=(x)xx

allow lv solar array=true\false
max lv array=(x)xx

allow mv solar array=true\false
max mv array=(x)xx

allow hv solar array=true\false
max hv array=(x)xx

...and make them like personal safes and are linked to character name. The 'max' configs would be on a per player basis... could be used as motivation for players to pool their solar allotments on some servers even. Coupled with recipe requirements to assure some degree of paced-upgrade, of course...

Just an idea
You've seen how blocks can be communicating in the forcefield addon?
How about a solar generator core in the midle (which we could have more tiers of, tier 1 accept 32 EU/T, you get it later in the post).

Then we can have reflectors/mirrors around that generator. Then we have to create lots of "electrick compass" or something like that which will link the generator with the reflectors/morrors. Then in the generator will have a basic task that will be basevalue*amount of reflectors.

So if the base is 5 EU/T and I have 10 reflectors connected it will produce 50 EU/T, this would require a tier 2 core. If for example I place a tier 1 there it would simply explode.
This is how the real world works too:

For a noob in coding like me I don't know how much work this is. But this will solve the space problem (I hope atleast) and it's possible to make more tiers. Maybe more blocks need to be attached to the generator core to extract the EU? It's up to you guys

Linking idea is based from the Forcefield addon, and the mirror idea comes from a documentary on Discovery!

DanielPSp: that picture is basically what alblaka is doing i believe. if i read it right then you will be able to take one solar panel, and then make other Solar Flat Panels and attach them to the central Solar Panel to increase it's output, last i heard he was having alittle trouble with it but i'm sure he'll get it done when he can. he's just really busy at the moment.

Quote from Snoochy

DanielPSp: that picture is basically what alblaka is doing i believe. if i read it right then you will be able to take one solar panel, and then make other Solar Flat Panels and attach them to the central Solar Panel to increase it's output, last i heard he was having alittle trouble with it but i'm sure he'll get it done when he can. he's just really busy at the moment.

Okay, I just did get his idea wrong
Just tough mirrors would be awesome

Anyway, I know he's busy Hope he will be ready(or someone else on the dev team) when MCP for 1.2 comes

yeah i really hope IC2 and BC both get a functionaing reliable release at the same time cause i've been missing out on ALOT of GREAT stuff, like BC blueprints, and IC2 compatability as well as the Crop System, static boots, ect... it's making me a very sad panda.

haha, good to hear more people are feeling that way x)

Hope that 1.2 will stay for a while actually, so mods can get updated and get stable before 1.3 eventually comes...

It's actually quite balanced. For the hv array, it costs 3 stacks of copper, 4 stacks of insulated copper cable, 4 stacks of planks, a stack of refined iron, plus an hv transformer and 512 solars.

Quote from Shalashalska

It's actually quite balanced. For the hv array, it costs 3 stacks of copper, 4 stacks of insulated copper cable, 4 stacks of planks, a stack of refined iron, plus an hv transformer and 512 solars.

yeah but even then it's as much energy from a nuclear reactor that takes up 6 slots and will explode after rought 37 minutes of use and then would have to be shut down for 113 minutes to cool back down, and nuclear reactors reaquire a constant fuel source, once a solar HVSolar Array is made then you can use that to exponentially increase your solar farm untill you get like 8 of those hv solar arrays and never have to mine or do anything for another day in your life, even with reactors you have to hunt down uranium since you can;t make it with UUM, and once you get enough solar panels even a Nuclear Reator would become trivial withough the 512 block space requirement blocking out all your sunlight. the cost of mass producing solar panels if eternal darkness over your house forever. better set up a good anti creeper defence if you get a 500+ solar panels