Reactors - Question for Virgil

[Karsten75]

Virgil, in an older thread you said

Each reactor produces a little energy.  When you build a reactor another number will appear next to the collection rate.  This number represents the energy produced by reactors.  So if your collection rate reads '5.5 +1.5' it means you have a total energy production rate of 5.5.  And 1.5 of that is coming from reactors.

I have never seen those two numbers appear in the energy bar? Is this something you took out on a revision?  It is something that I'd like to know, how much energy does a reactor produce?

Oh, and I didn't post on that thread since it's golden and not yet spoiled by the compulsive posters on this site. that thread has retained its very high signal-to-noise that many of the newer threads don't have.

[knucracker]

I remove that extra number in updates to the game.  It seemed really confusing to people.

Now as for how much energy a single reactor produces, let see...  (looking through code, hmmm that's weird, wow I didn't remember that... why did I do it that way, oh read the comment, ahhh there it is...)

0.3 each.  Note that the collection display rounds values so you don't always see it increase by 0.3 (you could see a 0.2 or a 0.4 increase).  I'm going to fix that in the next update.  It's super minor, but it bugs me.

[Karsten75]

That's great, thanks, but now the obvious question, an optimal collector collects how much energy?

[knucracker]

Each green square produces a whopping 0.004 energy!  (Doesn't sound like much does it)
An optimal collector will cover 45 squares for a total of 0.18 energy. (Those little squares add up fast).

So:
Reactor cost: 40
Reactor production: 0.3

Collector Cost: 10
Collector production (optimal): 0.18

Odin City optimally will project coverage over 69 sqaures.  It also has two reactors at its heart (bet you didn't know that) which produce 0.6 when it is on the ground.  This is why you start the game with 0.8 energy production (0.6 plus the area projected).

I was supposed to put all of this in the wiki somewhere and I got so busy I forgot to do it.... maybe somebody can update the wiki with his info...

[Karsten75]

Virgil, thank you so much for this info. Now I have more. (yea, even I can hear you groan! ;))

When a weapons unit is built, it has an ammo demand to fully charge up. It also has a discharge (or firing) rate. Do you have the numbers for those?

More questions on supply/demand:

Is my understanding correct.

Does each unit/building have a demand rate for supply of packets? So even if Odin City can produce 32 units/second, if I want to build a 20 unit mortar, Odin City will not dispatch 20 units in one burst?

If, OTOH, I build many different units, then Odin city will dispatch up to 32 units/second  but if the demand is more, then stored units willl not be dispatched even if they are available?

So there is an upper cap on production/storage whereafter it makes no sense to produce more or store more?

[knucracker]

Blasters fire up to 6 times per second.  They hold up to 10 ammo packets. Each time it fires, 0.2 ammo packets are consumed.  So a fully loaded blaster will fire 50 times total on a full charge.

Mortars fire up to 1 time per second.  They hold up to 30 ammo packets.  Each time it fires, 3.4 ammo packets are consumed.  So a fully loaded mortar will fire 8 times on a full charge (with a little bit of energy left over in the tank, but not enough to fire a new round).

SAMS fire up to 1 time per second.  They hold up to 8 ammo packets.  Each time it fires, 4 ammo packets are consumed.  So a fully loaded SAM will fire 2 times on a full charge.

Drones fire up to 0.9 times per second.  They hold 24 ammo packets.  Each time it fires (drops a bomb), 1.6 ammo packets are consumed.  So a fully loaded drone will drop 15 bombs. 

Thor is just ridiculous and makes its own energy...  it doesn't consume anything when it fires.


As for the build rate;
Every structure has a minimum build time.  Within the context of the game mythology you can think of it as the nano-construction bots  that build a structure can only build it so fast.  So they request construction packets on a schedule.  Kinda like I request ice cream on a regular schedule so I can get fat.... but regardless of how much ice cream exists in the world I can only process it so fast.

If you build structures in parallel, then Odin City will issue packets to each in on its own schedule and in parallel.  But, Odin City will never produce more that 32 packets per second.  This is a limitation of the 'packet factory' in Odin City.

It never makes much sense to have a Collection rate greater than 32.  Your total energy reserve can be as large as you want it, though.  There is usually a practical limit, but it depends on the map. 

[Ranakastrasz]

How often can a weapon receive packets? As fast as they are produced?

[knucracker]

Weapons request ammo packets once they drop below a threshold (around 1/3 1/4th full).  They will request packets at twice the rate that structures build (about once every half second).

[Dranar]

I've added all the info for the buildings that you've just said.

[knucracker]

Cool... thanks.

[Karsten75]

Each green square produces a whopping 0.004 energy!  (Doesn't sound like much does it)
An optimal collector will cover 45 squares for a total of 0.18 energy. (Those little squares add up fast).

So:
Reactor cost: 40
Reactor production: 0.3

Collector Cost: 10
Collector production (optimal): 0.18

So for the price of one reactor, if one can find the space, one can build 4 collectors and get 0.72 energy? Even allowing for some inefficiencies, collectors seem to be way better. But I can somehow do better when I construct a lot of reactors, I don't understand how?

There is no delay in transporting the energy back to Odin City, is there?  There does seem to be a small lag from when a production unit is competed until it's contribution is reflected in the gauges.

[hapes]

On reactors vs. Collectors:  A collector generates the energy from the ground around it (green squares).  The reactor generates energy inside itself.  Thus, it's cheaper to create collectors, but there's only so much space.  Reactors generate more power per area (4 green squares per, I believe), but take more energy to build in the first place.

The key point here is this:  A reactor can sit on the ground a collector is harvesting.  They don't pull from the same source.  Once you have the energy to build reactors, it's my strategy to spam the crap out of them.  I just finished Loki (without building Thor) and had probably 30 or 40 reactors running.

[knucracker]

Yes, collectors are usually the better deal.... especially in an early game.  They give you a better return on investment in the short term and they also form the backbone of your necessary base expansion.

But, note that collectors almost always overlap with each other (sometime 50% or so).  So building a chain of collectors doesn't get you the ideal production for each, but rather just the total green area production.

The little bar graphs update every second or two so there can appear to be a small lag between production coming online and when you see it.

As hapes said, reactors are very useful for tight spaces or when you need more energy than the land can produce.  I almost always expand to cover as much land as I can and defer reactor building until necessary.  If the map allows, I don't build reactors.  Many maps, though, pressure you to build reactors since they limit the amount of usable land.

[Karsten75]

Many maps, though, pressure you to build reactors since they limit the amount of usable land.

And then you get evil map designers (curse you Fenris I), that withhold nuclear tech. It took me a lot longer than otherwise to beat and most of the time I was operating at 180+ starvation level.  :(

OK, so I beat it, so I'm not too upset.

[Aurzel]

brain overload o.o
lot of info there and suprisingly some of it is useful, jk it's all useful :P
personally i spread out with as many collectors as i can, when i have excess energy i also like to make sure i fill up as much space as i can even if it means building a collector just to cover a couple of squares xP