[Poll] A more diverse, TA inspired Energy System (Wind-Tidal-Solar-Geothermal-Nuclear).

I generally really like the idea of a more diverse energy generation system (just more variety and options in general), So i'm in full support of this.

*GASP*
Guys, I just thought of something really cool for the nuclear plant!
As we all know, the way nuclear power works is that uranium cells are put under immense pressure which releases stupid amounts of energy, as well as stupid amounts of heat.
Thus, a large amount of water is needed to cool the uranium, no cooling water and big boom happens, which makes people sad. And you know, somewhat dead.

The wonderful thing about these nuclear reactors is that they have like, eighty failsafes, if the machine is so much as 1 degree Celsius too hot, the entire thing shuts down.

Sooooo, maybe the reactors could have multiple "states", and in order for this to work it'd need to have A LOT of health (say, 7500.)

And of course, to keep with Uber's design philosophy, none of them are random and all of them follow WYSIWYG.

Some examples:

1: Critical Damage: when the reactor is down to ~10% health, it ceases functioning and requires repairs before it can continue generating power again.

2: Meltdown: okay, you know how infernos use flamethrowers? Well seeing as how fire is hot and uranium reacts poorly to hot things, when infernos deal a large amount of damage to it in a short amount of time, it causes a small nuclear explosion. It'd be interesting if this could also be caused by other hot things like nuclear missiles and planet smashes.

3: Overheated: this one's slightly different and goes against wysiwyg a little bit, but on lava planets they are less efficient and generate less power (also require less inferno fire to cause meltdown)

4: Chilled: reverse of the above, on ice planets the generator is more efficient and generates more energy, also takes more inferno fire to cause meltdown

Wind, solar and tidal power does not a Sim Annihilation make. Sorry, Brian, I have to disagree.

You can see an orbital body floating around the planet, so you already know you're going to have a field of gravity for water since most people who play this game know how tides work because of our moon. That's pretty damn WYSIWYG to me.

Also, solar panels on the ground turning off at night is a literal example of WYSIWYG, not the opposite, as you don't expect solar to work at night because the sun isn't there, thus turning off.

Wind is a harder nut to crack, as it's not visually seen. That said, we rely on many things in the game we can't see such as arbitrary numbers for movement, damage, and armor. I don't think it's any different.

Wind can be shown in the game screen along with the amount of moons, the planet's orbital layer in the corner in-game, as well as by how quickly clouds move, presuming they have clouds. I'm sure others can come up with better ideas on that, though. I don't expect for a metal 'planet' to have clouds nor wind as it's metaphorically 'man-made' in the PA-verse. Metal planets may in the future have dedicated power stations that you can capture on the field, though, so that may even the ground a little bit in that respect.

But the reactors are almost certainly fusion. No uranium there.

SCREW THE CANON. NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS, SON.

It wouldn't be the nuclear side of things since it's not the same reaction happening.

BUT the storage of energy and immense amount of technology going into storing that energy just for the plant itself (not for your eco), could be volatile and give the same explosive effect.

I want nuclear explosions too, but energy in PA doesn't make sense like that. :/

SCREW THE RULES I HAVE GREEN HAIR.

No but seriously, yeah it wouldn't make sense, unless for some strange reason fusion was never discovered in PA s universe, which isn't the case.

But it'd still be pretty interesting if there was some kind of volatile pgen in the game.

Well if you're desperate we could have a "trans-dimensional quantum energy funnel". That sounds like it might be unstable.

question:

what if a solar is placed directly on the pole. Is it scripted in generation time? Does it go constantly or none? If planet daytimes vary on distance and rotation, how do players know how much energy storage? Trial and error on a per planet basis?

would moon biomes be balanced? They have no geothermal or tidal or wind.

would orbital solar on a completely controlled planet need micromanaged? Can't you also stick it far off the planet pole where it should intuitively recieve power all the time?

I was thinking this myself, and had the presumption that it's always on if it's center is directly in the middle of the day/night cycle, but realistically only generate a certain percent of power all the time instead of being full *on* or full *off* I'm thinking that solar panels like TA had wouldn't work based on the planet's round surface, so you'd need building that follows the sun's path.

Imagine, if you will, that you had a building like this, but instead of being aimed in one direction, acting like a massive radar dish to aim at the sun instead of satellites :

It would make solar power at the poles more viable, while the closer to the equator would likely have higher wind speed and more geothermal deposits. IE: the closer you are to the poles, the longer your solar stays online. Planets are weird that way.

Technically, if you have no thermal, tidal, or wind on a moon, and everyone used solar, everyone would tend to spawn as close to the poles as possible. That and everyone's using the same resource, so it wouldn't be as worrisome on what kind of energy generation to use to gain an advantage, and instead focusing your base and expansions on the map itself, which is what you already do anyway with metal, and it creates more base expansion choices.

There's somewhat a problem since the moon eventually falls in the shadow of the planet it's rotating, and noone would have power, but if we ignore that the main planet eventually ends up in between the moon and the sun based on the moon's rotation, we don't need to make the economy even more complex.

The main issue I have with moons is that they're desolate and difficult to bring up to speed since they have so little in the way of generating resources, so I think going orbital for extra solar power would be a viable tactic for anyone near the equator. The viability of that tactic right now is unbelievably bad, but that's simply a balance issue, not a mechanic issue.

I think that solar would have a much longer timespan for generating power than land-based because of it's distance from the surface, but yes, around the poles, I would presume it theoretically gets power all the time.

Micromanaging is a difficult thing to say since there's many things said for and against it, but I'm not really one to pick sides on the subject because I'm not a fan of micro, but I don't have a problem with moving my orbital solars to the poles, either.

Edit'd because English is difficult.

I'm not a fan of the idea that solar deactivates at night, it should always produce power, unless attacked. It could produce some power at day and charge batteries up at the same time, and spend that battery power at night. Solar should be less efficient (produce less power or cost more) than wind and tidal, but more effective on planets with a thin or no atmosphere and orbital solar wil of course ignore atmosphere.

That way moon biomes should be little more balanced (?)

But I'll give a strong yes towards geothermal, that asks for more map control, which is good. And add a special flavor to lava planets.

Tidal and wind seem good for variety.

I really like tehtrekd's ideas for the nuclear power. Maybe they should deactivate when at <50% health? A nuclear reactor needs to be in perfect condition to operate, realistically speaking. A reactor near where I live was shut down because there was minuscule crack in it somewhere.

Also why has nobody said anything about metal planets? They exist too, y know. Maybe metal planets have generators on them which you could reactivate and draw energy from. (Or use it for the death star weapon).

I still don't understand the logic behind building anything besides fusion. Fusion is just flat out better. This isn't Simcity, we don't need reskinned powerplants with different stats. Why the hell would you build a geothermal plant when on the same lot of land and with the same materials you can build a fusion generator which produces a million times the power using fuel so abundant it will last longer than the estimated lifetime of the universe?

Because anti-matter is better.

Because the Geothermal would be a lot cheaper and get you power sooner?

"I don't like how the sun turns off at night!" Yeah... the sun really couldn't care less whether you want to live in eternal daytime, and it's not even the sun's fault either. Planets gonna rotate, and solar doesn't work at night. Sorry that physics doesn't do the impossible?

Actually, wind on the ground isn't going to be as efficient based on a solar furnace idea. Now if you had an airborne wind generator, like for example :
http://www.altaerosenergies.com/bat.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/12/tech/innovation/big-idea-airborne-wind-turbines/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innov...-A-New-Path-To-Clean-Energy-180950509/?no-ist
Take the concept and futurize it, then you've got efficient wind power. Oh wait, that may already have been done :
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/solar-wind-power/
There's a lot of things you can do with wind and solar, and I doubt we're even touching the surface because we only know what current science can think about. In reality, concepts we simply don't understand should be running the energy system for PA.

Again, that's because nuclear fission tends to be obscenely volatile in most mainstream media, but in reality it's much less so. You won't be getting mushroom clouds from a destroyed nuclear fission reactor, but it's dangerous for us right now nonetheless because of the radiation that can leak, IE Fukushima in Japan.

Power right now in PA is Nuclear Fusion, not Nuclear Fission. It's a different process that uses a different fuel in the opposite way for even more power.
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Nuclear_Fission_vs_Nuclear_Fusion
http://chemistry.about.com/od/nuclearchemistry/a/Nuclear-Fission-Nuclear-Fusion.htm

Metal planets are 'man-made' in the PA-verse, and as far as I know (unless I missed something), the plan is for capturable structures that appear on the planet which may or may not give you resources or weaponry. Whether it's going to help power your base or simply power the superweapon the metal planet holds, I don't know.

In my opinion, when you build power and/or metal on a metal planet, it should be more efficient than a natural one. Metal should be more efficient and slightly more spread out, energy should be able to physically connect with the planet itself in order to.. how you say.. overclock their potential ability? And by that I mean because you built your power generators on a metal planet instead of a natural planet, it generates slightly more power because it's being supported by an outside source. Maybe they're bad ideas for PA, but I don't expect a man-made planet to not support buildings that are built on it.

Gonna take a crack at this one.

Nuclear fusion creates a massive amount of energy, yes, more than it costs to make it, but the base costs of it are enormous, absolutely massive. You could build much cheaper and less efficient energy quicker. Also, it takes an immense amount of power and precise handling to contain a fusion reaction. That's not something I expect to see in a building smaller than a commander in your basic technology. It's barely larger than a few trees. Not buying it.

I support nuclear fusion as a resource, no questions, but as an advanced and expensive resource, not a basic and cheap one.

I think you're forgetting this takes place several thousand years in the future. We're almost capable of it today. Fast forward a few thousand years and building a fusion plant is child's play.

1 When I was talking about solar I meant gameplay speaking, not realistically. I support thetrophysytem because it would just be silly to have a major disadvantage if you didn't spawn on a pole (especially on moon biomes), where the sun shines much longer. And I feel like scripting that would be more complicated rather than having it produce at all time, like it does now with the orbital solar arrays.

2 I never said anything about mushroom clouds or nuclear explosions whatsoever, I just said they would be vulnerable from attacks, and deactivate when damaged.

3 metal planets.... agreed, I guess?

4 Also agreed, nuclear stuff should belong to T2.

I think it would be great to have some kind of power generator (probably solar) that generates a lot of energy for its metal cost but takes a lot of space up and is easy to attack.

However on the flip side having more ways of energy generation may overcomplicate the game and make balance much more difficult.

Another concern is if the planet is on a tilt, where does the pole lie? If the planet rotated as Earth does then where the horizon is would vary and people would be less inclined to go for the poles. We already have planets on tilts.

I liked the idea of Solar having batteries that charged in day and provided constant power at night - that's one solution if using Energy Storage is too problematic. That said, high yield, cheap Solar Power would suit pushing for more constant forms like Nuclear.

Moon Biomes would be less enticing than the other biomes. There's a reason we haven't got any moon colonies going at the moment - there's not much up there. If the moon had an atmosphere and tides and tectonic activity then we'd want to live there, not use it to smash into another planet. I think it's a good thing if some planets are more disposable than others in Planetary Annihilation.

Again with Solar Orbital, if the planet's horizon changed then it'd be difficult (or impossible if the Array folds up into a pod whilst moving) to chase the sunlight. Solar Arrays would be in the light for longer though, so would produce energy into a portion of the night.