While I do not want more challenge (I find my challenge from other sources), I can give you a much softer nerf to solar power.
If you don't want a challenge making energy then why are you even bothering building generators? Just TMI your energy if you want to spend more time on other challenges?
When you make a solar panel you need a generator. You know a generator that burns coal or other things... Solar power is more electronic then this, so for the sake of something slightly more realistic, drop this component from the blueprint. Replace it with a single circuit. Add a machine and a cable on one side and you have your new blueprint for a solar panel. IE: The bottom row is a machine, cable and circuit, the top is the same.
The way i see it, drop the generator and the two circuits. In it's place put two tin cables and an advanced circuit. That would make sense to me as far as the recipe goes.
The second, softer nerf. In real life, solar cells still operate during cloudy days (I worked at the florida solar energy center when I was younger). Yes they are not as efficient, but they do work quite well. So in this game when it is regular rain, they produce 0.5 EU / tick. If it is the thunder storm then you can say they drop to 0.25 or 0 EU.
I don't mind solar panels producing power during rain or thunderstorms. Heck, they could even produce small amounts of energy in moonlight. (And MC should introduce lunar cycles IMHO)
The problem i have with solar panels is (partly) this:
That is the Olmedilla Park Solar Power Plant, Spain which is a 60 MW Solar power plant.
vs this:
which is the Didcot Power Station, UK. It produces 1958 MW.
Given, i haven't included a picture of a coal pit but for the sake of simplicity, let's say they take the same amount of space.
So, coal power produces 32 times more energy than solar power in real life per space consumed.
In industrial craft, a generator produces 20 times more energy, but to run one generator non stop we would need (if we include the night downtime for solar power) 15 coal per minecraft day. We would of course be running it on charcoal so we need to use a furnace of some sort to burn logs into coal. Once again, for the sake of simplicity lets go with 2 coal to produce 15 coal so that's 17 coal (17 logs) that needs to be harvested each day to keep such a generator running non stop.
In my experience, to meet demands you thus need at least 8 tree spots (with 2 tiles spacing in between then, using pinewood) for a total of 200 tiles consumed per generator. Then (since cutting trees each minecraft day is a true bore) you also need to set up an automated system that cuts them down and sends them to the furnaces, as well as replants them. This takes space AND energy. (unless you use redpower2's free work block breakers, which i don't because i don't like free energy)
Not to mention trees grow tall, i think it is 12 tiles high?
So in the case of solar panels, you can have 200 solar panels in that same space. Thus you get 200 active EU/t when it's sunny. (100 effective EU/t)
No matter how you twist and turn that, solar power is producing more power than generators per space consumed. Sure they are expensive but once you have them set up you never need to touch them ever again and they take no time at all to set up if you compare it to the time it takes to set up an automated coal plant.
So opposed to what you would expect from a real life situation (where burning fossils is WAAAAY more effective then catching sunlight), in IC² it's completely the other way around.
Even if it's raining 1 day out of 5 (which isn't the average at all) you still get an effective 80 EU/t per day out of a solar park whereas you can only dream about that in a coal based generator automated farm.
To make any sense then, solar panels should have it's output reduced to say 0.1 EU/t...!
I still do not understand why people think it needed to be nerfed. So someone can build a giant solar array and get 1000s of EU. So what? Why do you care? How does it hurt you that someone else in another game is doing this? If you do not like it in your game, then don't build a giant solar array.
It's called SMP, have you ever played it?
If someone builds 1,000 solar panels the server will DIE under the CPU load. I don't mind people building 1,000 solar panels in SSP. They are free to use whatever they want (including TMI, WorldEdit and Equivalent Exchange) in SSP. (Even though cheating yourself doesn't make much sense now does it?)
Back to the point then... Multiplayer! I can make a 1740 effective EU/t nuclear reactor. All i need to do is find 45 uranium ore every 2.7 hours (Unless i make a breeder too) as well as build A LOT of buckets and pipes and expensive machinery etc etc to make one. I would employ my designing skills every step of the way to achieve that goal and i wouldn't lag the server.
Yet, someone else on the same server can make 1,000 solar panels (and thus reach >50% of my reactors output) using somewhat more iron in exchange for the more advanced materials. They lag the server for everybody and they never have to re-fill their solar panels. They can use the time saved to make other things happen. I bet that they will even be finished with their solar farm long before i finish my reactor if we started at the same time and had one half each of the world to ourselves.
You still wonder why I think solar panels are OP and should be nerfed?
On a side note, for SSP/SMP there should be config entries to determine how much energy each generator can produce. As well as the energy costs of all machines, this way if one generator or machine is OP/UP then it's simply a matter of altering the config entry for that specific generator/machine.
(Finally, payback)
