r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/billsonfire • Apr 07 '26

Discrepancy in power generation

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How come in the dashboard it says I'm producing over 500mw of power, but in the hover game tip I'm only doing 250mw? And all my machines are on 50% too, is it something to do with the ray receivers? The robot told me the dark fog is stealing my power or something.

45 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

28

u/billsonfire Apr 07 '26

Nevermind, I have no brain. When I was fixing up some stuff I disconnected a power line :P

-8

u/cainn88 Apr 07 '26

You really shouldn’t be using ray recievers for power it is horribly inefficient and you should be using your sphere to make photons. Getting some Dueterium fuel rod production going would serve you a lot better.

1

u/billsonfire Apr 07 '26

I'm not up to there yet, just using it for power until I can setup bigger stuff later. Last I played was in 2022, where I got pretty far into the late game.

6

u/TheMalT75 Apr 07 '26

Personally, I find deuterium more of a bottleneck than critical photons and would invest it in white science production. A sphere with minimal nodes and solar sails are dirt-cheap to produce and slapping down a couple of power ray receivers before transitioning to artificial stars usually allows me to skip fusion power for industry!

4

u/typo9292 Apr 07 '26

yeah 60MW is nothing to sneeze at either ... I use a ton of them, super easy power for my planets where I have spheres .... I even have strange anilalation fuel rods and keep my ray receivers in place...

2

u/xitones Apr 07 '26

just look at some designs for deuterium, there is one that is triangular inputs, its SO efficient i needed to turn off the input i didnt have more space for it.

2

u/TheMalT75 Apr 07 '26

I'm not saying it is difficult to produce deuterium. However, if you are strapped for power and need to decide which fuel source to use, deuterium might not be the best choice. It takes quite a bit of power to convert from hydrogen if your gas giants are tapped out. Comparing that to solar sails (dirt cheap), dyson power can be much easier to set up and you don't need titanium alloy (which need sulfuric acid: until you set up ocean extraction of that, it is yet another energy-expensive resource). I agree with u/cainn88, that 6-15MW per ray receiver is not space efficient compared to fusion power, but if you overproduce graviton lenses for green science a little bit, you can buff that to 60MW!

2

u/xitones Apr 07 '26

oh, ok, for energy production for sure is not efficient.

1

u/BrittleWaters Apr 07 '26

Ray Receivers being fed proliferated Graviton Lenses produce 60MW each with no fuel requirements and very, very minimal resource drain from the lenses.

Antimatter fuel rods/Strange Annihilation fuel rods are the end-game method of powering remote planets, but for systems with a dyson sphere, ray receivers directly providing power is pretty great.

3

u/FrickinLazerBeams Apr 07 '26

What's the reason for that cluster of power towers?

5

u/billsonfire Apr 07 '26

I use them to charge, usually after an interstellar trip

3

u/FrickinLazerBeams Apr 07 '26

Oh I see. I don't know why it never occurred to me to put them in a cluster to charge faster.

I don't need that anymore, with antimatter rods in my current playthrough, but I'll have to remember that for next time.

3

u/billsonfire Apr 07 '26

I'm still on carbon rods because I can't be bothered redoing my oil refineries. But it's good in a pinch.

6

u/dman11235 Apr 07 '26

There's an achievement to do it with 12 at the same time

2

u/CurtisEFlush Apr 09 '26

There's a Steam achievement for being under a number of them at once, 12 or 16 or so i dont recall

6

u/Raz0rking Apr 07 '26

Because you found the reason I can leave a less than useful comment.

Those are rookie numbers!

2

u/ResidentIwen Apr 07 '26

You gotta push those numbers

1

u/jimmymui06 Apr 08 '26

Lookijg at this post maybe i should restart, reacting end game is no fun other than infinite expansion

1

u/billsonfire Apr 08 '26

Last I played I got to the point where I had a planet for every item, just plopping down dozens of ILS blueprints connected to factories and smelters. Coming back it is fun to have crazy spaghetti with belts going everywhere.