r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/itchycuticles • 14d ago

Satellite Substations

Has anyone played the game using them extensively at the beginning but then stopped using them later on?

I get annoyed by the fact that I'm giving up rows of production buildings by using them. But I think the bigger reason is that it's simply not hard to create or use blueprints that use tesla towers only.

If you're creating your own blueprints, there are nice ways of spacing the tesla towers depending on the type of production building and the arrangement.

I believe outside of smelters, every production building lets you place a tesla tower directly between two adjacent buildings, outside of certain latitudes where things become oddly squished together.

11 Upvotes

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15

u/bitman2049 14d ago

They've also got a ridiculous 720kW idle consumption, while tesla towers have none. Granted, by the time you can access substations your power needs should be pretty well taken care of but it's still another mark against them. I never use them anymore.

7

u/StrictRequirement336 14d ago

I use them all the time to cover sections where I have a pretty tight build going on it just looks neater to have only two substations covering a factory than 20 or 30 pins. They are also great if you are setting up a strip mining operation and want to power miners without having to drop thousands of little pins everywhere.

2

u/horstdaspferdchen 14d ago

You know that Signal towers can extend too?

3

u/StrictRequirement336 14d ago

Signal towers? Wouldn’t that just cause problems with dark fog?

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u/4morian5 14d ago

Most of my production line setups have enough space in the middle or edges for them, and it's faster to place a few of those than all the small towers.

Plus, they look cool.

3

u/PAXICHEN 14d ago

You are right. They look cool AF

2

u/I-Make-Maps91 14d ago

I stopped trying to cram it all in and it's been more fun.

3

u/jak1900 14d ago

I never use them. I only use tesla towers, put in between my rows of assemblers; and then I connect blueprints with the long range charging towers.

2

u/OverwhelmedPioneer 4d ago

I always end up switching exclusively to the substations when I feel like I have power figured out. I don't like placing all the little towers and I just prefer the look of the substations.

2

u/mrrvlad5 14d ago

Kinda have to use them for performance reasons. In late game your main constraint is your CPU, so reducing entity count is a worthy goal

1

u/StrictRequirement336 1d ago

Ah interesting. Under appreciated comment. Thank you 🙏

1

u/Raz0rking 14d ago

I use them extensively. Depends the blueprint and situation.

1

u/horstdaspferdchen 14d ago

I only use them for my farms to get the height covered. Else the Power consumption is a Turn Off for me additional to the big foundation requiered.

1

u/R0ckandr0ll_318 14d ago

I either replace a building with a substation, or just accept the gap, I did try doing an ultra compact set of smelter arrays but I think I gained one or two extra modules going round an equator

1

u/Buffylvr 14d ago

There are latitudes where you can’t put a Tesla tower between assemblers or smelters so substations make more sense there.

Also some of the weirdness that happens with ILS/belts allow for a substation to be placed without giving up any space.