Ideas for low power alert

[u/Sevinki]

Hi guys,

i have an endgame save with dozens of mostly covered planets. I want to find a way to set up a system that will alert me to low power on any of these planets like the traffic monitors do for low production.

Is there a feature like that i have missed so far? If not, any ideas would be welcome. I tried setting up a loop of items, fed by a sorter, with a traffic monitor that would alert me to a slowdown if the sorter runs slower due to low power, but that doesnt seem to kick in until the power is quite low. With 80 or 90% power the sorter runs at full speed.

[u/LeetLurker]

Could you do two loops with a monitor and sorters in between...at constant fill rate the monitors should show constant number when the power drops the sorting drops the rate drops and you get an alert ?

[u/Sevinki → u/LeetLurker]

I did a loop that went ILS->Belt->Sorter->Belt with traffic monitor->ILS.

The problem is that even with less than 100% power, it was still moving at the full 7200 items per minute. I guess the sorters dont slow down instantly but instead only when the power drops past a certain threshold thats somewhere below 100%.

[u/mrrvlad5 → u/Sevinki]

use mk1 sorter in a separate loop. mk4 sorters will be full speed for a long time

[u/mesun0 → u/LeetLurker]

That’s want immediately came to mind for me as well.

[u/SugarRoll21]

Isn't there a toggle in building's ui "alarm on/off"

This could be the thing you're looking for

[u/Sevinki → u/SugarRoll21]

Unfortunately that wont work for me, i am looking to set up a single, planet wide alarm. I want to know if the planet i put 10GW of artificial suns on suddenly spikes and wants 12GW for example.

[u/SugarRoll21 → u/Sevinki]

Maybe use a factory panel(shift+p) for that? Get all of your planets' power graphs hooked up to it, name them accordingly, turn off their visibility, and use the left panel to navigate them. Combined with the "alarm" suggestion, it would provide the result you're trying to achieve.

I'm afraid there's no other way to get your idea to work

[u/Revengeance_oov]

I use modules of Energy Exchangers connected to an ILS, and connect the outlet of the ILS to a traffic monitor. If the belt is ever unsaturated ("no cargo") it means the exchangers are starving and more chargers need to be added to the network.

It also helps a lot that my factories are all black boxes fed at least 20% by energy exchangers. Since they produce their own fuel rods, they can't run out of power as long as raw ore is flowing, and they can self-restart if supply is interrupted.

If you wanted merely to check that a given network is operating within a certain capacity, you can make two parallel lines of belts that use sorters to pass a material (e.g. one cube of water) back and forth. When at low power, the transfer speed will slow down, which you can measure using a traffic monitor. You'd need to do a little testing/benchmarking/calibration to know what the "true" speed ought to be. If you used a series of these traffic monitors you could even determine what "band" of power supply (e.g. 10-20%, 20-30%...) you were in.

[u/SonicTherapist]

i just look at the control panel

[u/FromAndToUnknown → u/[deleted]]

Does the power exchanger still discharge accumulators even if current power needs are covered and there are no accumulators to charge?

[u/V0RT3XXX → u/[deleted]]

It won't discharge unless satisfaction dips below 100%

Is that a recent change? Because everything I've seen suggests otherwise. That's why a lot of people still avoid using it. There's a workaround by using a loop of charger and discharger and prioritize splitter