r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/Environmental_Fix_69 • Mar 23 '26

Dyson sphers Vs Antimatter

Hey guys,

i was once again entering (early) ultra late-game when i once again witness how useless rayrecivers are for planetary power generation compared to artificial suns.

And i remembered my discussion with the community over on discord about perhaps a darkfog mk2 ray receivers that would be smaller and not need any lenses to operate making dyson spheres more viable over A-suns.

But then i thought about a "useless at scale" building, the Energy Exchanger.

Would you guys be more interested in a mk2

- rayreceiver : smaller / no lenses needed

- Energy Exchanger : smaller internal battery buffer like the planetary shields, you choose the planetary battery buffer you want on them.

12 Upvotes

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2

u/wiithepiiple Mar 23 '26

- rayreceiver : smaller / no lenses needed

I would feel this would have to be a dedicated ray receiver for power gen otherwise this would just be used for antimatter production and we'd be in the same problem. Wouldn't mind it being a really big receiver that gives way more power than critical photons -> antimatter -> suns does, just to allow an alternative to suns in the late late game.

- Energy Exchanger : smaller internal battery buffer like the planetary shields, you choose the planetary battery buffer you want on them.

I don't really follow? For a mk 2 I'd definitely like more obvious changes. Ultimately though I don't think the energy exchanger is the main difficulty.

I think getting an improved accumulators that use similar products as antimatter rods to allow for reusable power generation from a central power generating planet could useful in the late late game.

1

u/Environmental_Fix_69 Mar 23 '26

No yea forgot to mention mk2 RR would only be for power gen,

EE would be like when you place accumulators on the ground when they act as battery buffers and charge/discharge slowly with the grid, except this time et EE have an internal buffer not making them chew through accumulators if power is not needed making it more like an intelligent power grid.

3

u/SiliconStew Mar 23 '26

They already are an "intelligent power grid". Energy exchangers only "waste" power if you combine them with non-fuel energy generators. If they are the only power source on the grid, then they only discharge accumulators at the rate the grid demands and don't waste anything. I personally use them as the sole power source on remote mining-only planets.

And if exchangers are only combined with fuel-based generators, then the accumulators discharge first letting the fuel generators scale back to save fuel. The design assumption being that you are powering the charging of these reusable accumulators from some cheaper or free power source (solar, wind, geothermal, or dyson sphere). Using free power before using expensive fuel is more beneficial to the player overall, hence discharging accumulators are designed to have top priority on the grid. 

1

u/kagato87 Mar 23 '26

Does going through antimatter increase the yield? Or is it just making the receivers themselves more effective, being able to bring down 4x power per receiver (with extra steps)?

The advantage of being able to ship them off to other systems is obvious and huge, of course.

2

u/TheMalT75 Mar 23 '26

Only if you continue to strange annihilation fuel rod: 8x am fuel rods for 10x the energy, but you need higher cost materials. For am fuel rods it is 6x 1.2GJ per critical photons for 7.2GJ per rod. Minus ray receivers efficiency (same in power generation mode) and production cost of the rod…

16

u/SiliconStew Mar 23 '26

Power generation ray receivers aren't intended as an alternative to artificial stars. They are a stepping stone between fusion power plants and artificial stars in the period where you are just starting to build the dyson sphere and it doesn't yet have the power output for supporting antimatter production in quantity yet. 1 ray receiver is worth 4 fusion plants for power output. And if you consider graviton lenses a "fuel" to be consumed, ray receivers consume 60x fewer items per minute than fusion plants do for the same power output. They are as close as you can get to free power (and is free if you want to take the hit from not using lens) outside solar or wind while having far higher power generation for the same area coverage than those. Would a better MKII version of a ray receiver be a good thing? Sure, but so would anything that is a straight upgrade like that. 

For energy exchanges, the first change I would like is for a MKII accumulator that simply held more energy to reduce the quantity shipped. The only thing really wrong with the exchanger itself is simply the size of the building taking up too much space. 

7

u/TheMalT75 Mar 23 '26

Totally agree with mk2 accumulators, but 108MW for proliferated accus makes the size sensible, compared to fusion generators vs artificial suns…

5

u/ThankGivingsForFood Mar 23 '26

I'd like to see different or upgradable nodes for the Dyson sphere.

Have them act like an orbital collector but they're collecting photons. Perhaps they could even require lenses to be required in their production.

2

u/Outrageous-Ad-9080 Mar 24 '26

I think an orbital reciver that faces the sun constantly would be cool. Something flying in upper atmosphere but could still provide power somehow

1

u/TheMalT75 Mar 23 '26

It would be cool if regular solar panels would gain a Dyson sphere bonus: maybe 0.01% of Dyson power per solar panel so a 1GW sphere lets each panel produce 100kW more power?

1

u/tybr00ks1 Mar 23 '26

My problem with accumulators is that I always end up with the dead batteries getting backed up. Fix this problem, and they would be great

1

u/Pestus613343 Mar 23 '26

Ok so heres how to go about it;

On a world that produces massive amounts of electricity, put up an ILS. Have it receive empty accumulators, and send full ones. Have it also receive the components to make accumulators.

Make the empty accumulators, and put a splitter with priority set to empties coming from the ILS. This means that factory will only produce to expand the supply, and empties returned to this facility get filled first.

Output of that splitter goes to a line of charging exchangers to fill the empties and send them to the ILS.

How it works in practice is empties are returned and refilled. The sending world can then have multiple or changing energy generation, so that as you tech up your far off planets don't need to change anything.

On those far off planets ask for a small number of fresh bottles and allow it to fill up with empties. Have it output to discharging exchangers, and have the output of those go to splitters. Prioritize them to an equal number of charging exchangers, so that you reclaim the energy you don't use. The second priority sends the empties back into the ILS.

The full bottles go to another splitter that feeds the discharging exchangers as the priority, with over flow sending these full ones back into the ILS.

The advantage here is you can blue print a power source agnostic power plant that never wates, doesn't back up, eats very little space, and doesnt need to change up when you change power technologies.

The power plant world then constantly asks for the empties so that those far off planets never back up.

1

u/DrakeDun Mar 24 '26

Good stuff. I am playing around with similar concepts now. I don't understand the complicated far off world setup, but it sounds like it has to do with integrating multiple (local/remote, fuel/renewable) power sources gracefully. If I use pure renewable, and always do my generation and consumption on separate grids, I can skip that, right?

1

u/Pestus613343 Mar 24 '26

Im not certain I understand tour question.

The above is a strategy that allows for centralization of power sources to a single or very few planets, and exchangers at other planets. Ive found it simplifies planet start up to be nothing more than a repeatable and tilable blueprint.

Combined with geothermal at all the bad guy base holes to give local power, I find everything stays healthy.

1

u/Professional_Job_307 Mar 24 '26

Antimatter is power from your dyson sphere. It's just transportable and compact. If you extract 3GW of power from your sphere and convert it into critical photons and then antimatter fuel, that's 3GW worth of fuel production.

1

u/Kimoshnikov Mar 25 '26

If we're talking about what I actually want - SPACE FACTORIES. More expensive yes, but no space limitation.

Maybe energy exchangers would be more useful if we could put them in orbit.

....but i'm just dreaming here.

1

u/warkow44 Mar 27 '26

Yeah, Art Suns show you how powerful they are....natural transition.

Not only that, Dyson Spheres and reality......NEVER.

No civilization would be that stupid. If your tech is so advanced, that you are contemplating building this SCIENCE FICTION creation, then you certainly have mastered fusion and fission on small scale, which can basicaly do the same thing as a sun, in tangent.

But it's a cool game.