Who would use a UPS recharge station?

[Duhuh123]

I have just installed a UPS recharge station in an electric car.
As a test, I use it to recharge a soldering iron.
It seems to convert 800 charge from the car’s battery to 200 charges on the soldering iron.
That is quite inefficient.

I was hoping I can use UPS to recharge a welder instead of installing a welding rig to save a few spaces in the vehicle. But the UPS recharge station is just too inefficient. I have to wait for half a day to get enough electricity from the solar panels just to recharge a soldering iron.

What is the point of using a UPS recharge station?

[darktoes]

Last I checked it was 1/10 as efficient, but that may have changed.

Midgame they’re mainly useful to recharge things that only use UPS, mainly UPSes and the Control Laptop. Lategame it’s far more convenient, since you end up having LOTS of upgraded solar panels and not using that much energy anyway, so just having one tile with all your tools and a bunch of storage space on top of that is really nice.

[kuros]

I tend to use the car battery mod on my welder and soldering iron, and then pack my solar station with car batteries. It gets irksome trying to make sure the right batteries get installed in the car, but it seems much more efficient than the UPS recharging station, which I use to power the UPS for guns, tazers, etc.

[Robik]

The 1/10th efficiency is for balancing reasons - at least that is what we are told. Sadly we are told that in RL, but not in game, so it is sort of a noob trap. If you don’t know about the inefficiency, you might convert your tools and later find that your batteries were unexpectedly sucked completely dry.

[mlangsdorf]

You could add a note about the inefficiency to the vehicle part description. That would at least give the newbies a warning.

[DeWolf]

Doesn’t it already say it is inefficient in the item description. Also this is why we have emergency solar panels and foot pedals.

[Robik]

Doesn’t it already say it is inefficient in the item description.

It does not…

“A recharger for UPS devices. When turned on, drains power from the vehicle’s batteries and transfers it to any UPS devices in the cargo space.”

While in reality, it should be like…

“A recharger for UPS devices. When turned on, drains power from the vehicle’s batteries. On top of that, it drains even more power and transfers only a fraction of it to any not fully charged UPS device in the cargo space.”

[mlangsdorf]

Go ahead and submit a PR to change it, please.

[Robik]

Okay, my elaborate response is waiting for approval, maybe because of use of synonym of the word complain targeted at myself. Whatever.

The gist of it is, I’l do it once the backlog of PRs is shorter, as I don’t want to waste time of the people with merging rights on something trivial.

[ecchi_squid]

Personally, I’d set up an array of about 3 upgraded solar panels devoted to UPS charging. That way I don’t have to worry about it draining my main solar array.

[DeWolf]

There are someitems that can only be recharged by the charging station. (aside from batteries except usually you’ll want to keep those separate)

[TheZoneWizard]

IRL a Power Bank has around 80% of a charge even when it says 100%. Unless you use the battery immediately. The charge lowers 15-25% for such batteries. Sucks but true.

Also, it is sadly common that unless you investigate a quality battery. Some are literally filled with sand to screw people over. Look up cheap cells on youtube. Plus, some batteries just suck @$$ by poor design…or rather the board they are attached to. They maybe good cells, but the people attaching badly design boards to them will end up discharging the power irregularly. Which means the battery will seemingly not be as powerful.

In game terms most of this matters nigh, but good info when buying batteries. Look up what you need and see what is considered better and why.

[Vastin]

The efficiency of the UPS recharger is pretty irrelevant 90% of the time because your tools require such a tiny fraction of the power that a vehicles motor requires that it just doesnt make a real dent, unless your vehicle has a woefully inadequate number of solar panels.

[ecchi_squid]

Gotta have that heavy duty flashlight powered up in case I need it. Not sure if you can use it with an Mp3 player and game system, but seems like a good way to keep your entertainment readily available lol