Electricity Usage

[mystifeid]

Why is it that if I increase the warp, say while mining or converting ore, from 1x to 5x to 10x to 50x to 100x I use electricity faster and faster and usually quickly end up with flat batteries but if I can increase the warp to 1000x it becomes possible to instead generate electric charge?

[Serenity]

You run out of energy in 1000x as well but time goes so fast that you cant see when the batteries flatline and it looks like the solar panels can keep up(i am assuming you have panels).

I think thats the reason, been a little rusty on mining stuff.

Edited April 28, 2018 by Boyster

[mystifeid]

Yes I have solar panels and they more than keep up at 1000x warp. I don't run out of energy - instead my batteries very quickly become fully charged. This is in contrast to lower warp speeds where my batteries instead are depleted.

It is a good argument for keeping ISRU's out of low orbits.

And when mining or converting ore either on the surface or in higher orbits, getting to 1000x warp asap.

[Serenity]

5 hours ago, mystifeid said:

Yes I have solar panels and they more than keep up at 1000x warp. I don't run out of energy - instead my batteries very quickly become fully charged. This is in contrast to lower warp speeds where my batteries instead are depleted.

It is a good argument for keeping ISRU's out of low orbits.

And when mining or converting ore either on the surface or in higher orbits, getting to 1000x warp asap.

I think whats happening is when the energy runs out everything shuts off and batteries recharge.

But everything goes so fast that by the time the mining equipment restarts the electricity is already full and it just keeps going.

Still not sure, maybe there is a different/correct answer.

I agree that keeping them in orbit is a good idea although you get to battle with the task of building extra infrastructure.

Edited April 29, 2018 by Boyster

[mystifeid]

1 hour ago, Boyster said:

I think whats happening is when the energy runs out everything shuts of and batteries recharge.

But everything goes so fast that by the time the mining equipment restarts the electricity is already full and it just keeps going.

Usually when no energy is available lights turn off, however this does not happen at 1000x warp. The lights stay on.

Also, although the ISRU will automatically restart after a power out, the mining drills do not and must be restarted manually.

It is easy enough to look at energy levels as you increase warp. If I am starting with say 40,000 units of electric charge, the level drops with increasing speed as I increase warp but it does not appear to suddenly drop to zero when I hit 1000x warp and then zoom back up. I might still have 20,000 units when I hit 1000x warp and the charge level looks like it immediately increases.

But I could  be wrong.

1 hour ago, Boyster said:

I agree that keeping them in orbit is a good idea although you get to battle with the task of building extra infrastructure.

You might have lost me there. All warp speeds are possible on a surface. In orbit, 1000x warp is possible at an orbital radius that is dependent on the orbited object but from memory, for Kerbin it is 240km, for Duna 300km, etc.

It might be because my designs tend to be of the utilitarian flying brick class but I find it cheaper and easier to build orbital stations than bases.

[Serenity]

I am gonna have to do some testing, maybe there is something to help with such high warp speeds that bypass the normal electrical production, you got my curiosity.

As for the orbital fuel production i meant its good since you can avoid those weird kraken strikes that attack high part/multiple ground vessels but it has the disavantage

that you add the extra step of bringing ore to orbit.

Edited April 29, 2018 by Boyster

[Serenity]

Ok i did some testing:

First and most important(and you might know this, i totally didn't),

you can time warp as fast you want from the tracking station to produce the fuel and mine the ore.

Secondly when the battery ends, your radiators stop working,

causing the ISRU efficiency to drop and reduce its electric consumption(and fuel production) by a great margin.

Thats propably why you generate more electricty than you consume compared to when they are in full capacity.

Edited April 29, 2018 by Boyster

[mystifeid]

8 minutes ago, Boyster said:

First of all even if you warp from the tracking station you produce the resources, so you dont have to be switched to the station etc and limit yourself from its warp speeds.

Yeah I know. Typically when I dock with ore I switch to another ship/contract and let the conversion happen in the background.

10 minutes ago, Boyster said:

When the battery ends your radiators stop working and the ISRU looses efficiency and because of that they have reduced electric consumption, hence why you generate more than you consume

You lost me again. When an ISRU overheats it also stops working. At 1000x warp nothing stops.

Incidentally, this started because landing on Duna is part of my Kerbals five star training program and in addition to three Kerbals, my brick-as-lander can haul 4500 units of ore from the surface back to dock with a station at 130km. Where only 100x warp is possible for the ore conversion. Which is infuriating enough. But to run out of energy each time the station passes into Duna's shadow...

The first passage through the shadow with nearly full energy is ok but after that each transition into darkness brings a shutdown.

So I started to look into how much energy generation I'd need to never run out. However I'm playing with hard difficulty reward levels and a new station or even a new station component is a major investment.

Far simpler to move the station to a 300km+ orbit, bring less ore from Duna and rely more on the ore from Ike (landing on which happens to be also part of the 5 star program). At 300km and 1000x warp the station will always hit the shadow at full energy and never run out.

1 hour ago, Boyster said:

that you add the extra step of bringing ore to orbit.

This (Duna) station also has other ships permanently docked like a lander that can travel to the surface and back without refueling and another one with a grabber (which seems to be the only way of extracting Kerbals from inflatable airlocks) not to mention other ships passing through, so continuous fuel production is necessary.

[mystifeid]

8 hours ago, Boyster said:

You run out of energy in 1000x as well but time goes so fast that you cant see when the batteries flatline

On reflection, this is not unreasonable. If at 1x warp my energy deficit is 40 per second then at 1000x warp it will be 40,000. I should run out of energy in the first second. However when my energy starts to increase it does not instantly go to full charge. If I had run out of energy I should see it increasing from zero but I don't - it increases from the level it was at when I increased the warp to 1000x.

[Lisias]

There's also the calculation errors due the acceleration.

KSP, in normal time, runs things 10 times per second (or at least it's what I understood). So, each "tick" of its simulation clock (we call it a "heart bit") has a deltaT of 1/10 sec, 100 milliseconds. Anything that would happen in 150 ms would be "trimmed" to 100ms or 200ms, and we get a 50ms error on the event. No big deal. On a 1 to 1 basis.

When we accelerate time, KSP raises that deltaT. So instead of calculating 10 times a 100ms quantum, we do with a 200ms in time warp 2x. Now, each tick is 200ms, and the maximum error on events are now 100ms and not 50 anymore. Again, no big deal.

But in Warp 10x, that deltaT is now 1 "human second".  So the error on the calculations can be, now, anything less than a second.

On 1000x, things gets really interesting: on 1000x, each tick is now 100 seconds! So anything that would happen in a 99 seconds time frame is "moved" down or up by 100 seconds - or not detected at all: if a collision is going to happen in the next 50 "real seconds" at 1000x, the vessel will just pass through and nothing happens.

This rounding errors on physics take a toll on the electrics modeling too.

Disclaimer: KSP uses a "simplified physics model" on high time warps, so the figures I depicted above are not exact.

[Serenity]

At the end why you are worried how fast you can warp and how long you can go without electricity running out?

You can just go to the tracking station and warp as fast as you want(no matter if the vessel is on ground or at any orbit) and as long as you need.

No matter how ineffective the vessel is, it wont take more than few days to fill up and its systems wont need any manual input if you are on the tracking station.

And even if it takes a few weeks more, its Duna, time is not as precious there(Since the transfer windows take so long).

Ofcourse i understand the end goal to make a better and more sustainable system so there is always that.

Very interesting topic , made me discover some important things that i wouldn't otherwise or at least not so fast.

Quote ''You lost me again. When an ISRU overheats it also stops working. At 1000x warp nothing stops.'' Quote

It stops until it cooldowns, giving enough time for batteries to fill(since there is no consumption).

This makes the radiators to start working again hence going in the same loop i said before.

But everything goes so fast you just see the end result, overall more energy procuded than used(cause ISRUs keep overheating when batteries flatline).

Welp at least thats what i think its happening.

Edited April 29, 2018 by Boyster

[mystifeid]

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

This rounding errors on physics take a toll on the electrics modeling too.

Thank you. This seems much more likely. Although it is strange that energy usage from the use of the ISRU or the drills might essentially become cost free but energy generation from panels/rtg's/etc still functions.

[mystifeid]

1 hour ago, Boyster said:

At the end why you are worried how fast you can warp and how long you can go without electricity running out?

If the next contract involves a ship from the same station and I can warp at 1000x it may very well be faster to do this than switching to some other location and back especially if I've been playing for a few hours when these switches tend to take longer and longer.

This is just Duna - for all my bases and stations further out, if I can set them up better or learn to manipulate the game so there is less waiting and more playing then more fun for me.

[Lisias]

5 minutes ago, mystifeid said:

Thank you. This seems much more likely. Although it is strange that energy usage from the use of the ISRU or the drills might essentially become cost free but energy generation from panels/rtg's/etc still functions.

It's a wild guess, but perhaps the event in which the drill would be shutdown would be in the middle of that "100 secs deltaT", and so not detected. 

Something like:

• In the simulation time 100000 (in game secs), you have 90 U of eletricity, your solar panels feed 5U por sec and your drill eats 6.
  • So you will run out of E in 90 game secs
• You set warp to 1000. Now each tick is 100 game secs
• Now the physics will calculate the world for the simulation time 100100
  • You run out of E in 100090, but since this is "inside" one of that "dead zones" of deltaT, the event was not issued so the drill continued to work
  • The game calculate the solar panel production, adds the E to the battery, and subtracts what the drill consumed
    • But the drill theoretically had run out of juice in 100090, so it didn't subtract this 10 secs of consumption. 
    • Congrats! You just earn 60 U of Electricity for free! :-)

[mystifeid]

7 minutes ago, Lisias said:

It's a wild guess

Sounds pretty reasonable though. Again, thanks for sating my curiosity.