[v1.106] Wind Mill Problems

I've searched through the forums and found nothing about any sort of bug with wind mills. That may apply also to solar panels though I've not personally tested them (friend on server said he couldn't get any power for them)

Basically from what I've experienced: It SEEMS that whenever I leave the area the windmills I've created stop working (as usual, they're unloaded when i'm far enough) but when I come back they do not start back up. They work normally it seems until I leave from setting it up, charging batteries and batbox attached. This I have experienced TWICE (once on my single player game at a height of around 100-150 tops and currently on my SMP server at the 250-255 range.) I want to highlight the fact that it works normally when placed. I will do more testing on dissaembling the mills and then placing them tos ee if this "refreshes" it and kickstarts the eu trasnfer. This seems to be a really annoying bug i've discovered and my friend thinks it extends to solars as well.

Does anyone else have trouble with this? Its strange, you'd think the same bug would also plague the passive water mill but that is the only reliable source of passive power for me. I am almost postive this is not "just because" of wind being ridiuclously low / nonexistant. I have sat around the batbox for a while and not gotten a single EU from them.

Quote from CrafterOfMines57

It seems like whenever people have problems with windmills not producing energy, that is them mistaking the feature of variable wind speed (as in wind can = 0) for a bug. I think this is your problem and it is purely coincidental that it occurred twice upon you returning.

No I refuse to believe that it is simply the wind not being strong. If I sit there for half an hour at level 250 is it even possible NOT to get a single EU from the windmills?? I will, like I said, do more testing on this.

Update: Test 1 only makes me more suspcious. On a shiny new creative world, i created multiple wind mills connected similarly to a batbox as before. Not a single thing happened. No charge from over 5 windmills on a batbox placed at height 250. I tried a couple different configutarions, tried replacing the batbox and adding a new line and multple lines to said batbox but was unsuccessful. I logged out, logged back in, and bam batbox was beginning to charge.

Now it doesn't solve anything as of yet, I realize it still theoretically be wind = 0 as you mentioned crafter. The biggest unknown for me is when it calculates the initial wind speed. If on loadup it randomly starts a new windspeed it still COULD be normal and not a bug.

Quote from RawCode

mills BREAK and turn into simple generator on height above 190 at random.

I'm sorry what? I've had wind mills working numerous times, including my creative tests. I've read its possible for them to generate TOO much eu but I'm not sure how thats relevant.

Quote from CrafterOfMines57

Well, you could consult our resident windmill specialist

I will see if I can get his help thank you.

Second test- After logging out for the night, i returned today to my test setup of 1 batbox connected to 2 sets of windmills (6 total windmills.) and 1 batbox about 5 blcks away from the first connected only to 1 windmill at a short distance. The setup with 6 windmills is not producing ANY eu (stuck at 21994) while the other batbox connected to only 1 windmill is producing eu still. (all at same world height)

I placed yet another windmill and connected it to the batbox that wasn't getting any eu from the six and the batbox immediately started getting charge. So it was almost ignoring the six already connected.

Strange Occurance: before test 3 & test 3. While I was watching batbox #2 (the one that was still working, connected only to 1 windmill) it stopped receiving anything and stopped around 10k. (batbox # 1 is still not getting anything). So I connect another widmill and wire to batbox 2 and after a few seconds delay, it starts getting a charge again. I quickly remove the second windmill so it has only 1 windmill attached and the batbox manages to charge up to around 20k before stopping again.

This time I add another setup (batbox #3) 2 blocks away with attached 1 windmill, exactly as batbox #2. This batbox immediately starts charging. This leads me to believe it is NOT a wind issue. Batbox #1 and #2 both are not charging while very closeby batbox #3 is charging. Correct me if I'm wrong but wind is a global variable and does NOT change from chunk to chunk.

Currently, batbox #1 is still not charging and is stuck at 23k. batbox #2 just stopped again at 29k. batbox #3 is still charging with only 1 stoppage. I replaced the mill setup and after a few seconds it began charginng again.

All the while, my testing with solar panels has found zero errors so far, they seem to be functioning normally.

Thoughts?

Quote from Sliderpro

this is something with wind caliculatins
at some point, they freese untill block that makes game caliculate wind strenghth is updated.

So would this be a bug? It doesn't seem right to me that they freeze ever unless wind is at zero. Otherwise the mills should be producing constant energy.

Quote from SteveofDoom

I can confirm this as well. I started placing wind mills from the surface (y=64) every 8 blocks. The ones in the upper middle generated most EU unlike the ones on the very top and bottom. If my assumption is correct wind mills too high up don't generate ANY EU unless it has some obstructions to lower it's effective height. I had that bug back in #103 for 1.2.5

Interesting. I will play more with obstructed and non-obstructed mills. I wish there was a machine or something you can build (maybe a weather vane or whatever) that measures wind. Not the most useful thing but would be nice to have. Is there something else that needs to be done to help report this bug as its being confirmed by enough people or what?

Test 4.1: I restarted again based upon Steve's observation. I created a "tower" of mills, placing them at increments of 8, hooking them up to an MFSU. Each had an effective height divisible by 8, starting at 8 all the way to 255. Along the way as I was placing I could tell that after around the 224 mark, i noticed stoppages that did NOT occur below.

To start, any windmill below 72 did not produce a single eu. Don't ask me why... I think it should be possible no matter what level, but maybe I'm missing something. At level 64, I get NO charge. Adding more mills to MSFU's at 64 or below gave no charge, either.

Secondly, despite my timing not being the best, the charges on all boxes show that level 208, at least for the first five minutes, is the best for mill placement. (To reset the MSFU's for test 4.1 & 4.2, I got rid of all boxes first then went UP [since according to the math the top boxes should be faster, and therefor should catch and surpass the lower boxes] placing the boxes just about as fast as possible) It seems the upper levels caught up with 208 around 10 minutes but I give it a reset before letting it go too far.

Test 4.2: I decide to focus on levels 200+ since they show the most promise for obvious reasons. So I reset all the respective MSFUs. After 20 min I can see of no stoppages and therefor, as expected the uppermost MSFU has the highest charge. Its late now though so tomorrow I will retest to see if I can "create" these stoppages that plagued me before.

Quote from mijnboogje

an wind vane? u mean like in an control tool or applicable placed block?

anyway, i smell an good suggestion there. special tool for measuring wind strength, just like the miner uses an scanner to scan for ores, i suggest if you really like this to work it out and make an suggestion. i have an feeling it might just be implemented. (also helps for debugging.)

okey, to topic. have you tried breaking the cable and replacing it, and restart the game? most of the bugs i get with things like that get solved by doing this. only temp.

i can see this not working on an server, but il do some testings. if i find anything unusual ill add it here with some information.

nite nite

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I will be sure to put that in the suggestions topic. I've tried a number of things and no one thing seems to alleviate this bug. As I mentioned with my earlier tests, sometimes 1 batbox will be fine and a batbox connected to 6 mills won't charge at all. Most tests if they "break" (stop charging) I will rewire the entire setup. But this isn't a fix at all.

I am very heavily into survival mode and a not working turbine setup (Which i've dealt with in two seperate worlds, one SMP one SSP) really is a huge let down. I spent a lot of time rigging up the first set up especially only to really NEVER get a charge from it at all. (Once I went all the way to the top and broke and replaced the mills, which restarted the charging only to have it stop a short time thereafter... once it stopped that second time I gave up)