#Early to mid game power

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sick parrot
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I wanna know any good setups or tips for power

signal tree
sick parrot
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mid game is solar panals unlocked and an solid 2lane bus

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also very early oil

signal tree
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particularly me, before rocket, I wont bother much with other sources of power, I go steam all the way.

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solar power is very expensive to afford early on.

sick parrot
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alr so just spam steam?

signal tree
sick parrot
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hmn makes about sensce but thanks for the help

jolly bison
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I often have 2-3 banks of steam engines yeah

steel parrot
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You might see a "mantra" of 1:20:40 floating around/repeated.
This refers to how 1 offshore pump supplies enough water for 20 burner boilers, ergo enough steam for 40 steam generators.

Exaggerated spacing here, but this is one of the designs you can make, fairly compact when superfluous space/pipes are removed.

image.png
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Solar, there's optimal ratios, but you aren't beholden. That being said, the ratio comes from:

  1. Place as many Accumulators as you need to power your base during the night,
  2. Place as many solar panels as you need to power your base during the day and recharge the accumulators fully.
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+faq solar

formal cragBOT
steel parrot
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Finally, most will transition to nuclear simply due to its power density in a small space and rather ridiculously good raw-material --> power output ratio, better than burner-power, and miles more power dense than solar.

There's many, maaany designs for nuclear out there, but it too has optimal ratios of required heat-exchangers and steam turbines due to the linear increase in "bonus" heat power you get when reactors are placed adjacently.

You might encounter some flak about its supposed "UPS issues" due to its number of water/steam/heat-pipes involved, however when 2.0 comes around these issues will all but vanish with the improved piping system.

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+faq nuclear

formal cragBOT
lusty copper
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this is another solution for a coal power plant:

stray vigilBOT
lusty copper
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it's 2 power plants. one small for the coal mining patch and inserters, and a big one for powering the base. this way, when there is a power shortage on grid, your power plant still runs at 100%

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when going nuclear, this is some infinite power plant:

stray vigilBOT
lusty copper
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but it's missing circuitry to limit fuel cell usage, or even a steam buffer

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I suggest to take these ideas and build your own, as always 😄

sage marlin
# steel parrot Finally, most will transition to nuclear simply due to its power density in a sm...

I very recently played with nuclear and as new player myself can vouch for it. Based on what he said about when is early and mid game, i will say a 2x1 reactor has worked very nicely for me. The design is an interesting puzzle, but not overly complex and not too "spammy" in that you constantly have to add more steam engine, boilers, and coal miners to feed ever growing factory. You place 1x1, then upgrade to 2x1 shortly, and then you're basically set till post-rocket. For reference a 2x1 produces 160 MW which is HEAPs more what i needed to launch a rocket. I chose to spend all of it on speed beaconing since boiler pollution is no longer a concern and i had excess 100+MW energy than i had to deal with

Caveat: im still on my 3rd rocket launch play through. Looking to finish in 20hours. First play took 67 hours, second took 34

unique verge
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Back when I was a new player, I got real hung up on nuclear from trying to start out with maximizing efficiency, which was just overwhelming.

Took me a bit to accept that it's fine if I just have a single reactor, even if I'm "missing" the potential of having multiple reactors working together.

jolly bison
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The two big traps are bending over backwards to make Kovarex process not hold extra 235, and then trying to throttle the reactor to only run when it needs to

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Both have next to zero actual utility

steel parrot
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"yes but muh principle of it all" trianglepupper

Tbf, the savings with smart reactors and demand-fed kovarex are really only apparent once you scale to giga-base sizes. If you're running a 2x2n where n is 50, yeah it might be a good idea to not have them running when they don't need to.

But you're running this sweet little thing, then yeah, it hardly matters:

sick parrot
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This is way to complicatet for me lol

lusty copper
sick parrot
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basicly the most of them

jolly bison
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Well with that attitude

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If you keep approaching things as “this is too complicated for me” you’re just dooming yourself to be stuck in that mode forever

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Gotta break out and try stuff so you can learn and not be afraid of the complicated things

dull vortex
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The Extended Descriptions and Rate Calculator mods helped me sometimes when starting out and I still use them. Just reading tooltips and running the numbers will help. If you won't use mods, check out the wiki on buildings to get some more details on how they work.

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It may just be a game, but the process to actually testing, studying, and learning everything is good for the brain

pallid scarab
dull vortex
formal cragBOT
pallid scarab
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ty

thorn hedge
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It helps to break things down into smaller steps

lusty copper
# sick parrot basicly the most of them

just feed something burn-able (wood. coal) into a boiler and connect 2 steam engines to each boiler
2 water pumps and a yellow belt of coal will be enough for 34 boilers

sick parrot
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dang alr ty

placid glacier
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A little bit of early solar power can be nice. No more than 1 assembler before nuclear imo