Suggestion: Late game substitute for solar-panels: Satellites.

i rather liked the original idea, although maybe just have it as a "Microwave Generator" that you throw out in space and have a create a satalite dish to catch the rays? the more powerful, or amount of "satalites", the bigger the dish would need to be in order to be safe, if a microwave generator misses the dish then the would burn a hole 10 wide and 3 deep into the ground. so if someone didn;t build a big enough satalite dish to safely catch all the microwaves then you'd eventually get a crater burnt into the ground almost the size of a nuke. that way there is alteast some risk of these things, so if you had lets say 6 of these in "space" over a dish, then the dish would need to be about 30 by 30 in size. this would cause them to basically be very expensive and hazardous solar panels. and for every microwave generator you would have to increase the dish size by 5 in diameter, causing every addition to become exponentially more expensive.

yup, something like that, and every 60 seconds, if your Dish is not on par with your ammount of satalites then it will cause 1 Charged Creeper sized explosion every minute, which could also damage your Dish and cause even misses at an even more frequent rate, if you have no dish and there is a satalite then it would cause 1 charged creeper sized blast every 2-5 seconds. quickly destroying the landscape in a 25 by 25 area (+ 5 by 5 for each satalite) so say you have 10 satalites and your nuclear reactor nearby damages or destroys your Dish, then it would cause Charged Creeper sized explosions every second in a 75 by 75 area. until it blasts all the way to bedrock. the blast also destorys all items in the blast zone, this way players could not use these satalites as a mining tool for ores and also this would prevent strain on a server if someone forgot to set up a Microwave Collection Dish and let it destory the imediate area.

Quote from SpwnX

Whenever dish gets damaged it sends alarming sounds to everyone nearby it.
IF central block is destroyed, satellites will explode everything nearby as you said, but not forever. Until player deactivates satellites (by CPU or item) or redirects them to another dish.

Players could use satellites as global weapons haha. and that could only be prevented if enemy has forcefield or anti-microwave blocks or even another antenna

lol, true, perhaps using a FreqTrans that was previously used on the satalite to program it and then when that remote is used on a satalite dish it will aim for that one? or some king of control block that is at a safe distance from the blast zone so you can shut them off, i think the best solution is re-aiming the satalites with a FreqTrans though.

I only read the first page, ignore this post if this has already been addressed.

This method of energy collection is quite possible, and there are already plans made to make such a system in the real world. Basically, we shoot bigass fucking solar farms into geosynchronous orbit above a bigass fucking collection area. The solar farms operate by converting light energy from the sun into microwaves to be shot down towards the bigass fucking collection area. The reason that this method can even be considered practical is because just how much energy it produces, compensating for the very inefficient process of turning light of a certain wavelength into electrons* and then converted to microwaves of a certain wavelength and amplitude** to finally be shot down at the collectors, which then store the energy to send into the powergrid.

*current solar panels are specialized to only accept certain
wavelengths, and the way around this is the highly expensive process of
layering solar panels designed for different wavelengths, and then
separating sunlight to be shot at the various specialized photovoltaic
cells

**the microwaves are perfectly safe and you could walk around the collection area without any problems.

Quote from SpwnX

They are not Perfectly safe, at some time it will get dangerous. [More than one satellite sending microwaves to same target]

Nothing is perfectly safe, by perfectly safe, i mean as safe as talking on your cellphone for a day. Also, depending on the method used, a single large satellite with a single bigass fucking solar farm as opposed to a clusterfuck of smaller solar farms beaming to a single location, keeping radiation levels the same regardless. Then, of course, there is government regulation, which would definitely be in place if you're beaming microwaves down to earth, and not only that but people aren't too fond of the idea of getting cancer, and would therefore complain to the energy company until they make radiation levels safe enough that you could be around the receiver and be fine.

microwave generators and recievers are not safe lol. and they already do use them in real life. they have even been using them in games since like 1997. if you ever played SimCity2000, a microwave power plant was once of the best form of power but the satalite could miss fire causing a "natural" disaster and would destroy an area equal to about 64 square city blocks. causing fire, lava, instant death of civilians, ect. This is why i recommended a large reciever dish to catch the microwaves more effectively :).

Quote from SpwnX

Safety measures is something we could decide whenever this has the possibility to be implemented either to RS addon or Core IC.
Rarely i see replies from devs in my suggestions, that makes me feel sad , kidding. They have something better to do i guess.

yeah, i'm sure they are very busy trying to get IC2 working with MC1.2. i hope that it's done soon cause i REALLY want to test out some of the stuff i've been missing out on, mainly Crops, and the Recharging armor looks very useful.

also i hope they like this idea and don't beat it down with the "hype-bat" lol.

Space Based Solar Power is an actually viable idea. I am in debate in my high school and we have a good 500 pages of evidence just on SBSP, it is a real idea and can work.

Quote from Offboss

Space Based Solar Power is an actually viable idea. I am in debate in my high school and we have a good 500 pages of evidence just on SBSP, it is a real idea and can work.

they have already been doing it, they collect solar energy and convert it to microwaves, then shoot it to a collection dish on earth and use that to generate power.

Quote from Offboss

Space Based Solar Power is an actually viable idea. I am in debate in my high school and we have a good 500 pages of evidence just on SBSP, it is a real idea and can work.

Whats with all the debaters playing minecraft? Every tournament there are three people huddled in a corner searching for diamonds..

On topic: Space Based Solar Power is actually one of the more feasible forms of alternative energy. I think its addition in IC2 would be more than acceptable, but it has to be done well. But with the height limit being raised you could just make it a solar panel that has increased efficiency at higher elevation. It would make it more on par with the other forms of energy in IC2 currently.

I think this would best be an addon to the Rocketry addon (Insert Xzibit pic). ...Or a co-dependency with IC2, I guess...

A new payload component that you have to have to set angle and velocity correctly to maintain orbit as long as possible, eventually the satellite can drift out of or into orbit, if it re-enters orbit then there can be a chance of it burning up or crashing back to the surface- possibly leaving a crater.

Additionally 'decaying orbits' would introduce a 'maintenance factor' requiring launching replacement satellites. Later additions could allow 'advanced flight controls' for increased orbit time and 'advanced panels' for more power output.

Quote from Saul_Goode

A new payload component that you have to have to set angle and velocity correctly to maintain orbit as long as possible, eventually the satellite can drift out of or into orbit, if it re-enters orbit then there can be a chance of it burning up or crashing back to the surface- possibly leaving a crater.

Additionally 'decaying orbits' would introduce a 'maintenance factor' requiring launching replacement satellites. Later additions could allow 'advanced flight controls' for increased orbit time and 'advanced panels' for more power output.

i think it'd be better just to place the Collection Dish Center in the ground and have it throw the satalite at the very top of the world where it would be more exposes to sunlight (realistically) and maybe only have 1-2 minutes of darkness, and then you build your collection dish as large as you want or as needed and then keep "placing" satalite dishes "on" the Collection dish Center which would simply throw them directly above it at the top of the world, these would barely be able to be seen from the ground,if at all, now that the max height of the world is 256. this way you could also collect them if needed by climbing to the top of the world (alittle less realistic but steve is possibly the son of chuck norris so he can breath in near outer space like that).