Retroactive charging for solar panels

EkarusRyndren · 2014-02-26T01:00:20.000Z

[quote=“gtaguy, post:5, topic:5211”]Yeah, but it’s fairly shit when you are in swamps of Zeds and suddenly your car is dead because you can’t put a lightning rod on the damn thing.

New idea- Lightning rods. 1/3 chance to immediately fill a battery on the vehicle in a lightning storm. Also lowers the shocker’s effectiveness.

Not by much, but just a little help. Plus it’d be awesome to have a vehicle powered by lightning itself.[/quote]

You can’t charge a battery like that, lightning strikes are MASSIVE amounts of electric concentrated into one spot. You’d need a battery capable of accepting that flow of electricity all at once, as well as being able to put it all somewhere.

Think of it like dropping a whole olympic-sized pool of water on a shotglass at once. Sure, you’ll get some water in the cup, assuming it stays upright, or doesn’t flatout shatter from the force of the water.

system · 2014-02-26T01:07:54.000Z

I’d imagine you’d hook transformers and capacitors into the rod.

EkarusRyndren · 2014-02-26T01:22:40.000Z

gtaguy:

I’d imagine you’d hook transformers and capacitors into the rod.

Nothing we have right now is built to handle that much current and that much power in a single burst, transformers and capacitors have limits. All lightning rods are designed to do in reality is channel electricity safely to the ground so that a lightning strike doesn’t hit expensive equipment, burn down a building, or otherwise be a problem.

detahramet · 2014-02-26T01:57:01.000Z

EkarusRyndren:

Nothing we have right now is built to handle that much current and that much power in a single burst, transformers and capacitors have limits. All lightning rods are designed to do in reality is channel electricity safely to the ground so that a lightning strike doesn’t hit expensive equipment, burn down a building, or otherwise be a problem.

Thats just it though,
This isn’t "right now"
This is near future.
We have the ability to allow a man to swim through fucking magma, take a deep breath of gaseous oxygen, and then take a nap after eating an entire fucking chair to get the energy he needs to do this again!

Im not saying that something like this would be light.
Im not saying it’d even be practical,
hell it’d probably still massive and difficult to make,
BUT!
fucking hell it’d at least be interesting, if made appriatly heavy and multiple tile using.

system · 2014-02-26T02:12:39.000Z

[b]FUCK YEAH.

LIGHTNING POWERED ELECTRIC TRUCKS!
TAKE THAT HIPPIES!!![/b]

Inadequate · 2014-02-26T02:36:06.000Z

I’m not exactly sure why you think hippies would be against it. Any alternative power source that relies on making use of a replenishable natural phenomenon like lightning over traditional fuels seems like it would be fine by them.

That said, this is still a pretty stupid idea and throwing the word ‘future’ around only gets you so far.

system · 2014-02-26T02:38:45.000Z

I’d just imagine it’d be grounded but you’d draw off a bit of power from that bitch as it passes through.

Also that was because I would be fueling my car on pure lightning power, not the dumbass sun.

BollandP · 2014-02-26T10:36:42.000Z

You don’t need a lightning rod when the car is one partial Faraday cage, unless made of WOOD. You are safe from lightning inside a car due to the skin effect. I don’t know if the engine and batteries are insulated from the outer shell. If they are, they shouldn’t be discharged by a shock.

It’s funny how people take a topic here and run away with it, tho.

Cherry · 2014-02-26T15:33:21.000Z

We don’t even have lighting strikes in the game yet.
But they would make a great “nature hates you” event.

If you suggest that we can charge giant batteries from lighting strikes, than disastrous lighting strikes comes with the territory.

But then people would complain that random lighting storm is OP and makes the game too hard wahwahwah I’m on fire boohoo.

Inadequate · 2014-02-26T15:58:45.000Z

This already happened. Lightning strikes used to be a thing, and were literally taken out for that exact reason.

John_Candlebury · 2014-02-26T16:00:29.000Z

And they were annoying as hell, random explosions killing you above ground? Your building suddenly burning while you sleep?

Not very fun IMO.

Soyweiser · 2014-02-26T16:55:16.000Z

Inadequate:

This already happened. Lightning strikes used to be a thing, and were literally taken out for that exact reason.

Yeah, random strikes hitting the player != fun. Would not mind random strikes hitting everything but the player, and perhaps starting fires.

Inadequate · 2014-02-26T17:11:55.000Z

I think random lightning strikes used to mainly start fires, but even that would probably be going too far if implemented now. Especially since it’d make living in a stable base practically untenable, compared to a mobile base. In the current game where there’s no real way to fireproof a base and very little advantage to a stable base over a mobile one, there doesn’t need to be anything exacerbating that issue.

VVV Neither an educated and nuanced opinion nor a comment relevant to the discussion

HunterAlpha1 · 2014-02-26T17:45:16.000Z

[quote=“gtaguy, post:14, topic:5211”][b]FUCK YEAH.

LIGHTNING POWERED ELECTRIC TRUCKS!
TAKE THAT HIPPIES!!![/b][/quote]

[quote=“Inadequate, post:15, topic:5211”]I’m not exactly sure why you think hippies would be against it. Any alternative power source that relies on making use of a replenishable natural phenomenon like lightning over traditional fuels seems like it would be fine by them.

That said, this is still a pretty stupid idea and throwing the word ‘future’ around only gets you so far.[/quote]

No matter how “green” the energy source, the tree huggers will never be satisfied until all humans are living in caves and eating roots and berries. Oh, and not to mention there being less than 100 million of us worldwide.

system · 2014-02-27T01:02:32.000Z

[quote=“Cherry, post:18, topic:5211”]We don’t even have lighting strikes in the game yet.
But they would make a great “nature hates you” event.

If you suggest that we can charge giant batteries from lighting strikes, than disastrous lighting strikes comes with the territory.

But then people would complain that random lighting storm is OP and makes the game too hard wahwahwah I’m on fire boohoo.[/quote]
This, where can I re-enable lightning?

Rivet · 2014-02-27T08:11:26.000Z

Soyweiser:

[quote=“Inadequate, post:19, topic:5211”]This already happened. Lightning strikes used to be a thing, and were literally taken out for that exact reason.

Yeah, random strikes hitting the player != fun. Would not mind random strikes hitting everything but the player, and perhaps starting fires.[/quote]

They used to randomly strike around the current reality-bubble during thunderstorms. This lead to people fleeing their homes every time it started storming, so as to avoid having their house blown up by the not-so-random lightning strikes. If we had a system where lightning could be destructive but in a way that made sense and didn’t compel the player to avoid safe structures while it was active, we’d likely have it implemented already. As it stands, the current ‘flash of bright light’ thing we have going is a decent placeholder.

Zireael · 2014-02-27T08:19:28.000Z

How about reimplementing the random strikes in reality bubble so that they can only strike outside? The terrain tiles already have relevant flags, if the terrain is “inside” or has ‘roof’ then no thunder?

Inadequate · 2014-02-27T08:43:49.000Z

I don’t think the game needs any more reason for you to stay inside during bad weather. In between regular acid rain, the radioactive rain someone wants to implement and lightning strikes during regular rain, the player is pretty much forced to explore only during sunny weather, and I’m sure someone is promptly going to suggest scorching sunlight that burns flesh if the player stays out for too long. For people who want to encourage exploration, you sure seem to want features that take away from that stated goal.

infectedmochi · 2014-02-27T09:19:21.000Z

If lightning strikes are added back in the game, I think at least the occurrences themselves should be pretty rare, we can have “storm” and then “lightning storm”. Not sure how possible this is to code, but character can have a “conductivity” stat (judging on the material of clothes/equipments) that determined how easy it is to get stricken BUT the most important thing to consider is the height, so if you are standing on a hill or carrying a tall iron pole then the chance to get stricken will increase greatly.

Unfortunately since z-level isn’t there yet, the whole thing is a hypothesis of course.

Inadequate · 2014-02-27T09:27:20.000Z

You’re advocating hacking together yet another ill-considered mechanic and bolting it clumsily to the game for what essentially boils down to a chance to kill players at random. What’s the point?