IC2 Experimental Wiring System Feedback

I'm not sure where else to leave IC2 Experimental feedback, so I'm leaving it here.

I've read about and tested the new wiring system in IC2 Experimental, and I have to say it seems like a huge step backwards. Rather than machines exploding when they have more voltage than they can handle, things explode when they receive more power than they can handle. So If I understand this correctly, I should expect the following problems:

• You cannot simply connect generators to power storage. You now need to calculate the power coming from your generators, separate your generators into clusters, segregating the wiring for each cluster, and have each cluster connect to its own individual power storage device.
• If you miscount your generators, miscalculate the power from your generators, or let a wire cross, your power storage will explode.
• You cannot upgrade generators on-site if they're already at the limit of their power storage device. You must tear up all your wiring, split the generator cluster into multiple clusters, recalculate the power from the new generator clusters, add new power storage devices, and re-wire the setup to connect to the additional power storage devices.
• If you want multiple machines to run at maximum power usage, you cannot simply connect them to multiple generators or multiple storage devices. If you are providing enough power for all of them to run at their respective limits simultaneously, sometimes more power will go to one of them and it will explode. Therefore you must attach a separate transformer to every single machine to throttle the power going to any single one.
• Whether a machine will explode is no longer deterministic. If there's a machine constantly drawing power, there's a good chance that your new machine might not explode...until you turn the other machine off.
• This system requires the player to perform calculations for each and every connection between each and every component.
• The system is a far less accurate model of electricity.
• The system requires players to remember far more information.
• At least right now, the system lends itself to catastrophic disasters. In the previous IC2, connecting a component with the wrong voltage would cause at most one machine or one wire to explode. One machine is not a huge loss. In this system, connecting ONE additional generator, or ONE additional power storage device, can cause ALL of your machines to explode.

In other words, it's far more complex, far more convoluted, far less intuitive, far less realistic, and far less predictable than the previous system. I cannot see any advantages whatsoever to this new system.

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The biggest question I have is "why"? Why in the world did you feel the need to change things? The previous system was incredibly simple. All you have to remember is not to plug things into voltages they can't handle.

Quote from TuxedoSteve

The current E-net system is still undergoing a large overhaul, so don't be surprised if most of this changes, also the MFE, and MFSU where bumped up a tier and therefore can take and output 4x the voltage they could beforehand, glass fiber cable can handle 8192Eu/t enough for 4 MFSUs on a single line.

A good setup is instead of transforming power at your storage units, transform it when it gets close to your machines, also transformer upgrades are one of your best friends now.

Do transformer upgrades throttle power? If not then in order for each machine to run at maximum capacity, it not only needs transformer upgrades, but it also needs its own actual transformer.

Quote from TuxedoSteve

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that... all they do increase input voltage by 4x, so if you have 2 transformer upgrades in a macerator for example, it will except 512Eu/t, 3x is 2048Eu/t etc etc.

In the new system, machines that receive more POWER (not Voltage, POWER) than they're rated for, explode. Voltage is no longer a factor at all. So if a Macerator is rated for 32EU/t, and it receives 33EU in a single tick, no matter what the packet size and no matter what the source, it will explode. Transformers in the new system throttle power to prevent machines from receiving more power than they are rated for. For example, a transformer would request 128EU once per four ticks, and output 32EU/t consistently.

Therefore, if you have a set of machines that can only handle 32EU/t, and you want all of them to be able to run at 32EU/t simultaneously, they would all need their own transformers connected directly to each machine in order to throttle the power to prevent them from exploding.

Connecting two transformers in parallel to a group of those machines would cause them all to explode. Each transformer would output 32EU/t, for a total of 64EU/t. If they both happen to supply the same machine in the same tick, that machine will have received 64EU/t, and will explode because it received more power at once than it is rated for.

Quote from BillJoehobo

In IC2 all power is in terms of EU (there are no volts, amps, watts, etc.)

It seems the only difference in the power system is that there are no packets anymore, 2 coal gens on a line is 20 EU/t not 2 packets of 10 EU/t.

So if your macerator has 2 transformer upgrades it CAN handle 512 EU/t

In standard IC2, Voltage is EU/p, Current is p/t, and Power is EU/t. Of course players don't need to know any of that. They only need to know EU/t, and whether voltage is High, Medium, or Low.

But anyways, that confirms my fears. I'll have to put transformer upgrades on all my machines to increase their power rating, AND connect each one to its own transformer block well to throttle the power, AND I'll have to bust out a spreadsheet to keep track of how much power is being supplied vs the power ratings of all my crap, and I'll have to separate my generators into clusters and run separate wires from each of them and all the other stupid unintuitive nonsense that I mentioned in the OP.

I just want to emphasize that I think this new system is terrible and it's going to make things far, far, far more confusing and unnecessarily difficult.

Quote from BillJoehobo

No you don't need block transformers, in my current world I have all my machines running off a MFE with out any block transformers.

And in Experimental all p/t=1, so 10 EU/t IS 10 EU/p.

It's not as complicated as your trying to make it.

For the sake of example let me make up numbers.

Let's say I'm supplying 2,000 EU/t. I have four machines rated for 500EU/t each. If I connect these machines to the power source, they all explode because they'll receive more power than they're rated for. I therefore need to put transformers on all of my machines to throttle the power. I could put one transformer for all of them, but then only one of them would be able to run at full capacity at a time. I could put four transformers in parallel, but then they'd just all explode. I could give them transformer upgrades to boost their rating from 500EU/t to 2,000EU/t, but that would be unsustainable if I later decide to scale up my power production. Say I decide later to scale up my supply to 10,000 EU/t. All of a sudden, even if my machines can now take 2,000 EU/t each, that won't be enough and they'll all explode.

Quote from BillJoehobo

No you don't need block transformers, in my current world I have all my machines running off a MFE with out any block transformers.

So then how do you keep them from exploding?

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And in Experimental all p/t=1, so 10 EU/t IS 10 EU/p.

It's not as complicated as your trying to make it.

I'm not understanding what point you're trying to make. If you mean that each generator/supplier outputs one packet per tick, then it was already like that in standard IC2. But you already said there are no packets in IC2 experimental, so that sounds like a contradiction to me.

Quote from BillJoehobo

I'm not saying a combined draw of all the machines.

The MFE outputs 512 so I give all my machines 2 upgrades (except for thermal centrifuge which has 1) so each can take the FULL 512, not divided between them all.

I already addressed that. If you do that then only one machine can run at 512EU/t at a time. If you want all of the machines to be able to run at 512EU/t simultaneously, then each need their own transformer block. Even if you want them to run at less than 512EU/t simultaneously, you still need block transformers because as you add more MFEs and MFSUs, unless you have the block transformers, you'll need more and more transformer upgrades to keep up.

I still have yet to see a single reason why this new system is better.

Quote from TuxedoSteve

Each machine doesn't need its own block transformer, a macerator takes 2Eu/t, so 1 lv transformer could power up to 16 unoverclocked macerators.

Edit:@Above: One solution to that is to have separate power lines, you could have, let's say, 16 MFSUs 4 pointed north, 4 east, 4 south, and 4 west. This would equal 8192Eu/t per direction, and 160,000,000 Eu storage per direction, then you could have separate sides of your base get 8192 from different powerlines, for a total of up to 32,768 Eu/t maximum supplied to your entire base.

That's just a partial workaround, not a solution. I'd still need to rip up all my wires if I wanted to upgrade things, and I'd still need to do a ton of calculations to make sure things are getting enough power without getting too much, and I'd still need to separate the power lines from each of my generator clusters, and all the other stuff I mentioned. It doesn't really solve anything.

Quote from BillJoehobo

I mean there is only 1 packet running in a wire at a time, if you have 2 gens they add together to form 1 packet, instead of being separate like in the old.

If you have a machine actually running at 512 you either have far to many overclockers or it's a UUM machine which you can give it it's own line or upgrade to 2048 or 8192.

Unless overclockers have changed in experimental, macerators can consume up to 3689 EU/twith the maximum number of overclockers. I also find your assertion of "far too many overclockers" offensive as you are claiming that the way other people prefer to play the game is wrong.

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The new system is more realistic, if you have seen someone run over a 64x64 grid of HV solar arrays (2097152) on 1 line you should know how broken the old way really was.

The original system is far more realistic. Machines explode if more voltage is applied to them than they are rated for. They don't explode just because the generator is capable of producing a lot of power.

If you wanted to fix the "tons of stuff on one line" problem, then you redo the limitations on cable, not on machines.

Quote from TuxedoSteve

As for being more realistic, both where pretty far from realism, the older one was more realistic but also more exploitable.

How was the previous one unrealistic? The only unrealistic aspects I can think of are the fact that machines don't consume power while idle, the extremely large amounts of power storage, and the fact that EU lost to cables doesn't create heat. If you wanna get nitpicky you could also ask why the system apparently runs on DC power instead of 3-phase AC, but that's kinda beyond the scope of the game.

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There is a new limit on cables a new limit 8192 EU/t (not packet).

I understand that. I'm saying that's the ONLY change that needed to be made. None of this other stuff involving machines exploding was necessary.

Quote from BillJoehobo

If your at the point of a world where the difference between 3/10 and 1/20 of a second is really worth that much power then building a grid for it shouldn't be that much of a problem.

A difference of 3/10ths and 1/10ths of a second is triple the speed. That certainly sounds like a very large distinction to me, and something that's worth spending a lot of power on.

How will building a grid not be a problem? What solutions are there to any of the problems I've proposed in the OP? As it is it looks like I'll have to run a separate wire to each machine, connect multiple transformer blocks to each machine, connect several transformer upgrades to each machine, do a bunch of calculations for each machine to make sure I've got the right amount of power supplied, then do the same thing all over again for all my generators. Of course I'll need a spreadsheet to keep track of all this nonsense.

I want to know why a system that requires all this busy-work is necessary.