Lightning Machine/Generator

1st Official Post

    Hi there...
    so yeah i'm not really expecting this to be implemented (or well someone or me might make it an AddOn at some point),
    but yeah.


    So this isn't even fully worked out yet, just some thoughts on the topic.
    And yes its gonna be a little complicated - but nuclear power is too, and people seem to complain about lightning rods being either useless or a set-and-forget-op-thingy


    Components:


    • Lightning Generator
    • Shock Absorber
    • Maybe Iron blocks


    Lightning Generator


    Well yeah it takes EU and generates lightning... so it will strike any blocks in a box ( e.g. 9x9) in front of it, randomly choosing a target.
    If a block is closer than a certain distance (e.g. 4 blocks) it is destroyed.


    It has settings: Charge and Speed, charge basically just means the charge of the bolts it fires and speed how fast it will fire them (provided it has enough energy for it anyway ofc)


    So it takes and stores EU and once it has enough storage to fire the set bolt it will do so and then wait until the delay (speed) is over - then fire another or wait until it has enough EU stored to do so
    (Note: should probably fire bolts without a global thunder sound, as that would be annoying as hell)


    Can be turned off by applying redstone/redwire.


    Shock Absorber (could also need an iron block next to it, to transfer the bolt charge into the absorber when the bolt hits the iron block)


    Well if one of those is hit by a lightning bolt (by the machine - maybe natural ones too) it absorbs the shock into its internal buffer.
    This makes it gain charge (and maybe heat). It will then start to slowly transfer the EU form its buffer into the energynet - provided it has a target ofc, else the buffer will store up more and more as it gets hit more and more.


    Now the buffer doens't last forever, if it goes beyond its maximum something could happen.
    e.g. its wrecked and spreads its charge to the surrounding blocks (thus giving a chance they'll get overloaded and wrecked too).
    If Heat is added it could dissipate over time (might need to have a cooling device too) (Or have water [see next section])


    They'll get more extra-charge if they already store a bit. So e.g. Charge added = Bolt charge + 4% of buffer charge


    Wrecked absorbers could get you scrap or maybe some of its buildings parts back if you remove them.


    The space between


    Could be air... or water... water could act as: If a bolt hits it the bolt charge is spread out to all the shock absorbers touching the water, but also losing a percentage of the energy in the water.




    So there it is
    High bolt charge or fast speeds? Bigger chance of overloading something or needs a cooldown period
    Water spreading to have less risk to strain one block? Less energy gotten (Cause water energy loss + absorbers getting less bonus charge)
    More aborbers to gather more bolts and gain higher energy? More resource cost
    Less space between the absorbers and the generator? Well nets you more focus on the absorbers (less absorbers to hit) but also means they'll get heat and charge much more quickly, thus needs more management to make sure they don't wreck
    Forgot to add off an automatic shutdown, so your MFSU is full and its still charging up the absorbers - which can't get rid of the charge and wreck in mass? - well thats bad
    etc


    Balance => maybe should be able to generate equal to or lower to nuclear => no chance of explosion but with poor management you'll lose a lot of materials on broken absorbers and such
    maybe the generator needs some material to generate the bolts.. blaze rods maybe, i dunno

    First thanks
    Second "nope"? I clearly stated its a thread to work out hte idea and see if maybe someone makes it into an add-on you cannot "nope" that; and tbh it's not quite a "lightning rod" either :p
    except if you maybe tl;dr'ed it

    Yeah but not the "put it up and increase chance of natural lightning strike"-thingy thats usually around :P


    hm not quite a weathermachine as it doesn't really generate weather - it generates targeted short-range lightning bolts
    I never heard anyone calling tesla plasma bolts weathermachines :o


    aside from fixed minds - what are the complaints against lightning rods?


    The ones i've seen:
    set and forget -> well you can do the same here and with nuclear power - for a lower EU yield than if you maintained it
    op or useless -> sounds like nuclear reactors right there to me :D non-maintaining design => low eu/t; better designs with higher eu/t need you to maintain it or build redstone stuff to do so

    Quote from Pinkishu

    Yeah but not the "put it up and increase chance of natural lightning strike"-thingy thats usually around :P


    hm not quite a weathermachine as it doesn't really generate weather - it generates targeted short-range lightning bolts

    Semantically true, it's a "put it up and increase chance of artificial lightning strike"-thingy instead. The end effect is the same - cause more lightning around the object.


    Quote from Pinkishu

    I never heard anyone calling tesla plasma bolts weathermachines :o

    Because, while no visual effect is shown, tesla shots are bolts of electricity. If this suggestion was to add a lightning visual to tesla shots, then I'd be in favour. Sadly, it's not, and we've seen way too many suggestions for machines that generate lightning, and others to convert lightning to EU.


    Quote from Pinkishu

    aside from fixed minds - what are the complaints against lightning rods?


    The ones i've seen:
    set and forget -> well you can do the same here and with nuclear power - for a lower EU yield than if you maintained it
    op or useless -> sounds like nuclear reactors right there to me :D non-maintaining design => low eu/t; better designs with higher eu/t need you to maintain it or build redstone stuff to do so

    Not so much fixed minds, more jaded by so many "Hmm, another post about lightning rods. Troll-radar just went into overdrive" posts. It's suggested so frequently that most of us just see someone who registered, checked denied ideas and decided to troll the forum with it. The concept itself isn't fundamentally bad, but it's quite complex so needs reasoned thought about it's effects, how best to implement it, and most importantly it's uses/benefits/drawbacks. If no sensible decision is reached, it joins it's three-toed brethren in the archive.

    None that copy the principles of nuclear reactors from waht i've seen though


    my point basically: it may have been brought often and have been denied as the simple idea of a lightning rod you put up somewhere
    yet that doesn't mean the essence of lightning power generation is bad - just needs to be tweaked in to the right way
    doing that by finding out why its disliked and changing that

    How often does lightning occur in your game? For a generator to convert lightning to usable EU, it needs (at least) to:
    1. Recieve a direct hit, or at the very least a strike needs to occur within a very short range. Storms are not particularly common, and a strike close enough to be useful is even rarer still.
    2. Generate enough EU to make building it worthwhile. Ligtning is pretty much instant, you'll most likely get a single tick of generation.
    3. Survive the strike at least long enough to output it's EU.
    4. Not generate so much EU that you win the game in your first storm.
    5. Have a large enough internal storage that it can release the EU at a rate that doesn't insta-melt iron cables/transformers/mfsu you connect to it.


    2 and 4 are effectively incompatible, since to create enough EU to make it worth building you would need to have an average output on par with another generator.


    Take solar as an example, 1EU/t. Let's be generous and assume that one strike in every 5th storm actually hits close enough to get the job done. Let's also round up and assume we get one storm per 4 real hours. Say your lightningrod generated 10,000 EU/strike. It would need to be struck on average every 500 seconds to generate the same average output as a single solar panel. Lightning is nowhere near this frequent.


    So lightning is rarer, lets make it generate more EU/strike? 100k? Needs a strike roughly every 80 minutes, still too frequent. Using the very generous averages, you'd need to generate around 1.4 million EU/strike to average out to 1EU/t over the 20 hours or so until the next strike possibly lands near enough.

    I'm alright with a lightning maker. Not with lightning rods, lightning is so rare it isn't worth it.

    1. OMG CREEPER RUN AWAY!
    2. Go away, you creeper wierdo!
    3. What ever, I'll just go around.
    4. Hup, over their heads I go!
    5. Okay Mister living grenade, I'm going to knock you into those skeletons, and I'll follow through with a nano saber. Understood? FOR THE ALMIGHTLY DRAGON LORD!

    How about a simple machine for you pricks who want OP lightning rods...
    A very expensive machine that "outputs 512 EU/t" (atleast that is what the wiki would tell you, of course... (along with ''WARNING: VERY EXPERIMENTAL TECHNOLOGY. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK'')) and it works by collecting lightning, but when it's struck with a single bolt, it suddenly sends 64 packets of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 EU into the E-Net and into any cables that are less than 64 blocks away, and at the same time explodes with the force of 1,337 Tsar bombs (google it: Tsar Bomba).
    That ought to shut 'em up... (in reality, no, they won't shut up - they'll just rage all over the forums/wiki, but that just means more people to add to the ban list - isn't banning people fun anyways?) (actually, now that I think about it, they'll be too busy ragequitting/crying (about their molten blob of overheated computer parts that used to be a computer, but melted from the heat of so many tasks and calculations running all at once, from the lag from the explosion of the lightning collection machine) to post anything anywhere. Not to mention the fact that they'd have to get a new computer to even post anything anywhere again, haha.)