Despite the large reactor not being the best on paper. It is however, the best block for power output relative to it's PCU cost. A single large reactor can power your entire ship in most cases. Which is very helpful on last-gen consoles since PCU is very limited. Because of that it's my go-to pick power generation
You two are absolutely right. PCU was something I forgot to cover and I do apologize. Luckily the list was still fairly representative in terms of PCU values (Lowest on top and biggest on the bottom), but its still something I should have covered more closely.
Yes PCU is the reason why im using large reactors evryshere possible, specialy the official servers with 20k pcu limit is the 1 large reactor way to go for your base, mining ship and basicaly evrything with jump drives. I always swap to that so i can build bigger warship with remaining pcu
@@AliceDoesThings404 The term I always heard was "Voxel Locked." Calling voxel locked grids "Static" can be confusing because we can also go into the grid settings and set a grid type to static as well. Static grids (from the games perspective) aren't affected by things like gravity the way non-static grids are.
@@yamatokurusaki5790nope. The setting convert to ship/station has been around for years. It literally turns the grid into "voxsal" connected grid without touching any voxals
I think we need a new active power source. They need to add a treadmill we can run on to power our ship. Then we can make a battleship entirely powered by sla- willing volunteer labor.
Batteries however do contribute to the overall efficiency of pretty much every power system in the game, since they store power that otherwise wouldnt be generated during times of low power consumption, which is why they are present on most craft and why they are ranked on top
I know I'm late, but for others and newcomers : In SE you can actually "generate" power with batteries. Though, not in the... conventional way. There is a known secret related to these power storing units, namely that they come with 30% energy, whenever they are newly built. If you build 3, set one to recharge, while the other 2 to discharge, you can almost fill 1 battery up. It costs you 160 power cells or 160 kg iron, 16 kg silicon and 32 kg nickel ingots. (I only meant here the "lost" components, which will turn into scraps.) So yeah, they don't "produce" the power, but you can get some out of them. If you are on an atmosphere-less moon, without ice and sun light for the next 10 minutes, with power in your base for about 7-8 minutes, you'll have to get creative and attach some in a clunky way, which you'll grind down after they filled your original batteries.
Worse than 'store'. They are loan sharks that charge you 20% of all power you produce to store the other 80%. Not a biggie when paired with renewable energy (solar/wind), but never use reactor power to power a battery, and then run off the battery on a long term basis.
@@jube8835Yes, but they should be kept turned off on such vessels, until the auxilliary power is needed. Sitting there just on auto, constantly recharging 1% to stay at max is just throwing power out the window.
@@jube8835Also, when it comes to the idea of extra power only at certain times, something else should be noted: power generators like reactors and such never produce power that isn't used. You could have a huge reactor and if all you run on it is a small light, then that is all the uranium it will burn. So, batteries aren't needed to supplement a power generator in emergencies if you are doing that because you imagine the extra power would otherwise go to waste if you had no batteries. But, in terms of weight/mass on your ship, or size/space, then the 'supplemental battery' approach might be useful.
FYI you can place the wind turbine slightly higher than 8 blocks high, and then have ones coming out from the sides of it so you have 5 total off each tier of blocks. That heavily increases their efficiency and they don't reduce eachother's efficiency. Put a single armor block at the base of each one so they stick out and then you can have them all around
Whilst that is true and a very valid point, that does also increase the sheer size of a tower with windturbines. In addition, you would have to build it quite high, so the wind turbines on the side don't lose any efficiency from being too close to the ground. But still a valid point.
and you can also put them underground if you have a space of 8 to 9 blocks away from the voxels and it still works, this combined with their cost in terms of materials, for me personally makes them S tier, at one of my bases I had about 103 wind turbines underground
That is very true, it is somewhat cheesing, though still a valid point. 👍 My main issue with that approach is how much of a performance cost it has. Having to dig a large hole, before then stuffing it with blocks that take computing power. So for me personally, just too much of a performance hog in that scenario.
@@AliceDoesThings404 Performance in SE? what a good joke, almost made me laugh, this game is not optimized at all, and the engine is very old, it's a game from 2013. and when it comes to resources used, I think it's much more efficient to build a mobile base that you convert into a station when you want to recharge the batteries
Im curious as to the 371kw mentioned for wind turbines. Mine are getting 426kw output. Optimal is still a range and a couple more blocks clearance helps. As I'm getting back into it after a long break, I have weather disabled so no boost there. I usually use 10-11 spacing as opposed to the usually recommended 8-9. I'd assume that is why, but it would change the power calculations.
You can also combine multiple power sources . For example, wind and hydrogen, or solar and reactors. The nice things is the renewable power has the first priority to have power taken, which means it will be the first to supply energy. That allows you to not use fuel unless demand exceeds the renewables max power output
Personally have a 4 combo. Wind for renewable, hydrogen engine for when thats not enough, at late/end game having one or two small reactors all charging a battery network for when shit hits the fan xD
@@GamingPerks Since wind and solar are best used excusively on bases, I most often than not only use those as sources, possibly with 1 or 2 backup hydrogen generators. Otherwise I mainly leave hydro and nuclear as ship fuels, since it's the easiest to remain mobile with lol
there are scripts as well that makes it where reactors and engines only turn on when needed. i like having a mix of stuff. i aways have some batteries on stuff. if i can help it i use reactors as a jump start only
@GamingPerks 100%. I always make a battery bank in every base. Especially in early game when you're power consumption fluctuates a lot. Having that power stored up is really nice as a buffer
I have a massive rover with everything in it to process material and build things. Basically a rolling base. It has 4 large grid batteries, 3 large hydrogen tanks, and 2 hydrogen engines set up on my hotbar. That way when my batteries start to drain a bit, I just switch on the engines and I’m good to go. I also have 2 solar panels on top for passive charging. If I’m not processing ore, the range on that thing is insane with that setup. You’d have to be really careless and in the dark to be stuck without power. All that to say, I absolutely love hydrogen engines, especially with the supplemental trickle of power from solar panels and occasionally being hooked up to a station to offload.
Same here one of my first large plunge mining ships ive made uses like 14 or 16 of them with 8 h2/o2 generators and 4 batterys just so i could get a full cargo of Uranium as i got tired of doing runs with my small ship miners and now its one of my go tos for mining in space
The only thing I felt was missing from this was further comparison of the net power output of the hydrogen engine and small reactor. You went to the effort to mine the same volume(? unclear) of each ore and compare those all the way through the process but left out the last bit of info to sum up the final gains and compare their efficiencies. For those curious: some math extrapolates that the net power production of the hydrogen engine was 809.28 kWh (90.9% efficiency from ore to power), and the net power production of the small reactor was 9753.83 kWh (98.3% efficiency from ore to power). But what about time? The O2/H2 generator takes almost as much time to refine the fuel as the engine takes to burn it, so that's easy to balance: one ice processor per engine. The refinery took less than half as long to refine the fuel as the reactor took to burn it, so one refinery can serve two reactors and still have a little bit of time leftover to do something else. Also, the rector took much longer to burn through the total mass of the fuel but produced much more power (more than 11x as much). If you stop the reactor once it's produced as much power as the hydrogen engine, you'll find that it only took 1/3rd the time and you still have 91% of your fuel remaining. This all means that for every 1 ship load of uranium ore collected, you'd have to collect 11.14 loads of ice to produce the same amount of power. 1.014 of those ice loads would be wasted producing power for the O2/H2 generators while only 0.017 loads of uranium ore would be wasted producing power for refineries. Uranium power is far more dense than hydrogen power and takes less time and effort to collect and produce once you know where the ore is to be found. Then you have to consider that refineries can have upgrade modules to further adjust fuel and/or time efficiency depending on need while the O2/H2 generators are fixed at their base speed and efficiency. If you stumble upon a uranium deposit, it makes sense to collect it immediately since it's objectively a much better fuel than ice when you have it. You'd have to spend roughly 12x as much time mining and refining ice to get the same power. And offsetting the refining costs with renewable energy is much easier. When ore availability is not an issue, the small reactor is far better than the hydrogen engine.
hydrogen engine imo is ideal for planet locked base and rover mobile bases, while reactors are for everything up there. having to go to space to mine uranium, then go back to planet would need hydrogen thrusters or ion+atmos thruster combo and that would need a lot of electricity anyway, so in both situations you are forced to take the hydrogen route. basically for planet locked, its the best active generator full stop. for To Infinity and Beyond scenarios hydrogens are at best A tier
I can't imagine why it wasn't available to begin with. It's the very first thing I wanted to do with custom turret controller. I think the devs don't actually play their own game.
I do agree it should have been there from the start, but I can understand why. Given it was added with the "warfare 2 update", they had enough other things to work on, so it probably just slipped their mind.
@@AliceDoesThings404yeah, generally when you say “turret” in a video game, people are thinking stationary guns. But there’s always another use for a tool that wasn’t immediately intended.
I prefer reactors to hydrogen engines, but it is worth pointing out that you will be producing oxygen at the same time you produce hydrogen which may be a resource you needed anyway.
This is a serious problem though. It happened to me several times that I accidentally left the hydrogen engines running, they drained all ice on my ship and I later died of asphyxiation not being able to generate oxygen I needed. I find that they're more trouble than they're worth.
@@seushimarejikaze1337i dont remember who but a youtuber tested that 1 ice doesnt give you 2 hydrogen 1 oxygen, instead 1 ice produces either 1 oxygen or 2 hydrogen so even with tanks having an hydrogen engine will make you run out of oxygen faster
It feels worth mentioning that nobody would *ever* put Uranium ore into a refinery that didn't have four Yield Modules attached - so realistically, you'd get 20kg of ingots from 1000kg of ore, rather than 10.
One thing severely lacking in SE for batteries is the ability to set discharge to specific blocks, like for instance if I have a small bank of railguns, I want to have batteries tied directly to them, so that I don't have to power the charge for them directly.
Workaround; Could use event controllers to turn on and off groupings of batteries. How many fully charged batteries to fire a rail gun? That group is OFF until said rail gun is fired upon which the group is turned on. Stays on until fully charged then turns back off until railgun is fired again. Would that achieve the same effect? When the batteries are off they can't be used by anything, retaining their charge. When turned on once fired they will discharge their energy to charge the rail gun. Recharge and then shut off until needed again.
@@ender5817 This would only semi work, because though the event control could function in this way, you could also just group the batteries you wanted and turn them off and on as you fired the rail guns. The issue isn't really how the batteries are turned off, on, recharged, etc etc, it's their specific power usage. There isn't a way (at least as far as I am aware of) to isolate the power being transferred to the rail guns. The goal would be to have the rail guns only ever pull directly from a specific set of batteries. Unfortunately though, the rail guns are going to pull from every battery that's attached to the same grid it is. Turning some batteries on and off might save some time and power, but you're still gonna end up drawing from the batteries that you're trying to specifically NOT draw from. However thinking on it, you could I suppose have some event controllers with some timer blocks perhaps set up to power down the main batteries during the rail gun charge while only the rail gun batteries are on. Issue of course there is that the rest of the ships operations would still need power, and draw from the rail gun batteries. There might be an answer somewhere in that setup for this type of situation, but I get the feeling it would not still be what OP was looking for specifically. (That being a separated battery bank that is used solely to power the rail guns, while the other batteries only powered normal operations.)
I've always wanted more in-depth wiring in SE. Breaker boxes and the ability to put devices and rooms on different circuits. Now we can actually reroute the power.
@@DoubleJJizzlewith the weight and space used by those rail gun only batteries it seems to be a waste to have them off. With them on all batteries on your ship would just last longer. So, beside cool factor, what is the actual benefit to having a system as you describe?
@@inktitan as far as I am Aware of? Not a thing. There might be some arguments for stuff like having batteries specifically set aside for charging a jump drive, but for a railgun, I don't see one. It's mostly just a thought experiment on how you'd get a system to work like that. Real life of course does actually use these types of systems, usually isolating them for various reasons. Keeping redundant power supplies available for when they're needed incase main power is lost. Using power for specific systems that draw high/low amounts of wattage to keep strain off primary power sources. However this is a game and those kind of redundant systems aren't exactly efficient. Still could see an argument for jump drives though. Edit: In addition to Jump Drives, I would consider having additional batteries for other high draw blocks such as a refinery pretty useful. Normal standard operations would be essentially powered on all the time by a set of batteries. When you turn on some bigger power draining blocks, you turn on a second set of batteries/power generators. This would help keep your power drain and fuel usage to a minimum and be a bit more efficient during normal usage of a ship/station. While still giving you an option to push out more when needed. This would allow simpler power generators like solar panels and wind generators to have an easier time charging and keeping you operational, while you're basically not doing anything. However, even with all that, it still just seems like a lot of work, for something that's not really needed for a video game like this one. Considering power production is endless, resources are near infinite, and complicated builds aren't always what they're cracked up to be. Especially considering this would be a purely superficial upgrade to any build, that likely wouldn't anything of real hard value, but a few % points of efficiency.
The solar panels can be stacked in two layers. This is not known by most new engineers. Just flip it around when making your array and you'll be operating at 200% 😁
@@BaliAgha when you put 2 solarpanels with the collectorsides above each other both get full power, or to explain it the other way around a single "layer" of a solarpanel can only harvest 50% of the incoming light with its collectors and the rest is let through
Does this work with large grid? And/or with colored panels? I was trying to do it the other day and it didn't seem like both sides were producing, and yes I did have them back to back though I can't remember what the grid size was
I recently built a small grid hauler using atmospheric thrusters with a mixture of batteries and engines, the idea being the engines would allow the batteries to last longer. Works pretty alright, I did intentionally avoid hydrogen thrusters due to their big range of damage to grids, mainly with the design i went for too. Works well for ferrying goods between bases that are close by. Could be Way more better but its a fun experiment and giving different components adds to its beauty
@@spaceengineeringempire4086 Yeah! And I am loving the update, I used to rely on the P.A.M. script to get these tasks done, but good that we can now make hauling done without relying on scripts!
I know that you didn't cover mods. I just wanted to put this out there. A few years ago I was trying to find an alternative for power. It was right after they stole uranium from the planets. (How unrealistic!) So I found the Deuterium reactor mod. It uses stone and or ice to create deuterium containers for fuel (or both). There are large and small grid variants and they are POWERFUL. I do love the mod. There is also a positive thing about going to space. It's the only place to find pure deuterium deposits that is very rich when refined. So, the mod makes it very beneficial to go to space and has you actually looking to go there for that rich resource. Who doesn't want a 12GW reactor operating their base. All the power they would need FOREVER! OH! They are NOT cheap to build! You better be ready to mine a bunch of gold and other rare stuff to get the special components to build one. These things are a beast to build. The bigger they are the more expensive they will cost you to build. So, cost will depend on how much you are willing to go mine. It will be a grind just to build the low level one. I think one of the lower tier one take 2000 of the special components and it also requires like 500 or so superconductors also. Be ready to grind for some recourses. This mod does put in a really nice power gen option, but you are not going to get it easy. You WILL WORK FOR IT!
Given that you construct the block, and recieve energy, it counts in the very technical sense. In addition to the fact that you can take apart the battery, make a new one, and get more charge. Though it was more a comparrison between power blocks, a category which the battery belongs. But you raise a valid point 👍
keep in mind that there also is a way to create battery powergenerator by using a blueprint of a cross-setup of four batteries that are set on discharge while mounted on a rotor. the whole setup is quiet complex because you need some additional blocks Like timers, a welder and a grinder but at the end of the day it only consumes stone to generate power stored in batteries set on auto.
I like solar panels because it's aesthetically pleasing to look out and see a giant solar farm surrounding your base. Also, a trick I learned is you can double stack the panels to generate 2x the output during the day. If you want to make the panels automatically track the sun they do require extra work and resources. Hydrogen overall is the best source of electricity early-mid game because as long as you have a ready supply of ice you print out free electricity,
2 things One H2 generator produces exactly as much hydrogen as one engine consumes so you could run engines on just h2 generators and skip the tanks Also imo the combination of reactors and engines works best as they reactors can take over the basic load and you can switch on the engine once the reactor runs out
That is fair, I completely forgot about PCU, given for years not I have mostly used block-limits, and forgot it existed, I will remember that for next time. As for the batteries, I agree they aren't for power generation, they are in the power-blocks category in SE, meaning it fits into this power-blocks comparison 👍
You'll have to be a bit more specific. I am comparing different aspects of different power sources to determine which one is the overall best. ALL of them are good in their own way, but some are better than others overall.
@@AliceDoesThings404 I would still say in terms of 'power blocks' batteries should be F-tier, as they have the biggest disadvantage of them all - they dont generate power.
The wind turbine can be used on voxel locked subgrids, as well as static grids. This means you can put one on a vehicle, and then using rotors and pistons, deploy it. Simple designs just rotate the subgrid with the turbine and landing gear on it, and then lower vehicle suspension until locked. It's great for mobile drills, where you will be voxel locking to deploy a drill anyways.
its actually more space and weight efficient to store your hydrogen as ice and generate the H2 as you burn it. you can store vast amounts of power this way. though the power per block stat drops by 33%. but since you'd otherwise be wasting dozens of blocks on tanks the net power/block is higher.
Nuclear is absolutely king, especially when combined with a large battery chain. My main ship is a power hog, as it has 30, YES, THIRTY jump drives (I can enter a server in space, and in 8-10 hours straight, get the mats and weld it by hand, believe it or not). The ship has 62 batteries (2 for each JD, and 1 for general ship systems, and 1 backup battery set to recharge), and one large reactor. The power output is bonkers (measured in Gigawatts), but it means I can jump >40,000 KM in just 7 minutes 20 seconds if going full hog. It also eats uranium like a hobo wolfing down a ham sandwich, but I'm a jump addict, so it is what it is. The ship itself is actually propelled with H2 thrusters, and some small ions for docking procedures to save on H2. 4 large H2 tanks, along with 8 emergency small H2 tanks. The emergency tanks are to power 2 H2 engines long enough to get me to some ice, or, in a pinch, provide fuel for an emergency landing in high G, assuming the 3 parachute hatches are damaged, empty, or there's no atmosphere. The ship also has some solar panels, so you will never truly be dead in space when it comes to power. As long as you can find ice or uranium ore, the ship can process them into usable fuel. Every power generation system has its uses, but yeah, the battery is the greatest, and nuclear is the best for charging batteries quickly. A pro you missed about wind turbines is you can use them in underground caves, making them the best cheap power source for stealth bases on planets with atmosphere. BTW, if anyone is curious about the ship, the model a couple iterations behind my personal one (I'm on the Mk.VII) can be found here: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3029694875 100% vanilla, with industrial smuggler theme. A mobile base among the stars.
Just keep doing what you do, I love seeing a good bit of Q&A with the proper testing to prove/disprove the findings.. Wish Luca put as much effort into her videos when she makes a claim
I disagree with the ranking of the Wind Turbine vs the Solar Panel, if only because the Wind Turbine shines in early game while the Solar Panel shines in mid game. My power block recommendation would be: Wind power in the early game. This would provide most, if not all, of your early game power, and I would personally not exceed a total of three Wind Turbines. Once you outgrow those, I would recommend switching to solar arrays for the scalability. Space flight eventually necessitates the use of hydrogen for fuel anyway, so in space it can be very useful to generate power using hydrogen as well. The switch to Uranium, I would personally only ever conduct with large grids, as it seems to rare of a fuel source to use it on small grids. All of these would naturally be amplified by using batteries for power storage. But that's my idea of it.
That is very valid and I completely agree. The only reason the wind turbine really fell behind, was because its not usable on all the planets/moons, nor in space. As well as the differing performance depending on weather. Other than that, completely agree 👍
I built this large grid mining rover with a drill in the middle that goes down on pistons. I just put 2 hydrogen engines on it and use the ice it mines to fuel it. Somehow it runs two large refineries while also powering 6 wheels to move it and the Mf 100000 kilos of ore. I need to add more batteries tho.
Not as an objective measure, but subjective. I hate batteries the most and prefer Hydrogen engines the most. Often using the water mod and can set up bases with water scoops to readily get hydrogen. Since my preferred thing to build are rovers. It gives me the most enjoyment for my time in the game.
My killer problem is that hydrogen on vanilla sucks up too much hydrogen on one small tank. Yes, I got the mod to put an end to that but still. 15 gallon of gas will give me what about 8 hours of driving time in a car. A real hydrongen does about the same. Then again it is a 12-cylinder. Still, the hydrogen needs to use a little less gas.
Comparing Reactors to Wind Turbines? Well.... You don't take into account what's available and how to efficiently built in numbers, aka you need, say, 3MW for your base 24/7. how many solar panels + batteries or wind turbines (placed best) do you need. What is it for a mid/endgame 15MW? Next: How much continuous effort does it take to get whatever fuel if needed. Self building/extending ice drill rigs are fun to build - and way north of the average beginner while it takes 20min small grid miner to get all the uranium you need forever. Others already mentioned PCU costs per MW.
maybe someone else put this out there, but you can put 2 solar stacked so in the same " space " you have more energy. the " problem" is that still is the same energy per block, but since you dont have to put anything in front of a solar panel or near the array its kinda "cheating" the math , cos you have double per "block" , i dont know if i explain it well but i think its oks eitherway just found you channel and its great keep doing it
Comparing them like this makes no sense. What the things cost is only relevant in the early game. After that, you have more resources than you can ever use anyway. So the costs don't matter anymore. On servers you can't get around wind turbines / solar arrays if you don't play all the time. They cover the base turnover in the ships and bases and ensure that they remain constantly under power. My evaluation would be more like this: Wind turbines A Solar C H2 generator B Uranium reactors D Batteries are not power generation units for me and therefore do not count.
Battery power is not free, you had to take energy from somewhere and make the battery. The amount of power consumed should be factored in with the cost of the individual power generation blocks.
Batteries doesn't generate power... Batteries hold power.. Also panel and turbine doesn't require fuel source The problem with hydrogen engine is it is not making enough i think and many ppl use the hydrogen to power ships cuz it is most versatile sourse of movement
I try to use a mix of power sources never just 1 and if it is my base I tend to use all of them if I can. Just because I have a reactor doesn't mean I will get rid of my solar panels, I like the look of them with how I set them up
I like to use a main source and at least supplemental source. My main rover at the moment (large grid) runs on a couple of hydrogen engines that charge 4 batteries when they get low. However on top of the rover I have a couple solar panels that charge passively during daylight. Even if I’m stuck without power and without ice to make power, I can do whatever till daylight and get on the move to find ice or go to my fueling station. In other words, I agree. Combine them. Backups are a must.
Resource cost is meaningless when you know hot to play and scale up production. Weight means nothing. And you failed to mention the most important ranking factor: *** PCU *** By this factor alone Large Reactor is S Tier. Most of my ships have 1 reactor and 1 battery (for pipes).
Resource cost is important to begin with, and for those who don't necessarily know how to get vast amounts of resources quick. Weight is important if you are building ships or anything that moves. PCU I did forget yes, apologies. And that's fair, a decent setup.
If you place wind turbines side by side then shift one of then by one block you can get max power from both. Edit: packing example, note all turbines are in the same 3 block high plane. Bellow is looking from top of turbines down. . ┌┬┐ ├┼┤Turbine, ░ empty space └┴┘ ░░░░░░░░┌┬┐░░░░░░░┌┬┐ ░┌┬┐░░░░├┼┤┌┬┐░░░░├┼┤ ░├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘ ░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░ ┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤░ ├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘░ └┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░░ ░░░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤░░ ░░┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘░░ ░░├┼┤░░░░└┴┘├┼┤░░░░░░ ░░└┴┘░░░░░░░└┴┘░░░░░░ best space to power(+350kW each) packing
You missed some really important points: - All theses blocks have PCU, and this figures is really important on keen's vanilla official servers for instance. - Batteries have an efficiency coefficient of 80%. Meaning when you charge them with 1MWh you only get 800kWh of power stored. This really degrades them as the "ultimate" energy solution. - Your side by side comparison of H2 vs Uranium ingots production is biased as you can add power efficiency or yield modules to the refinery. Uranium is also more convenient to transport and transfer form grid to grid (you can even do this by hand). - The weight comparison between those two is also biased as the H2 Engine will also need tanks (and possibly H2/O2 generators and storage for ice) to be efficient. In the other hand, a lot of Uranium can be stored inside nuclear reactors. Another big issue with the H2 energy is .. the O2 production ! If you need to get a constant H2/O2 generation on your grid and you use a cryo pod for your AFK, the small O2 consumption will constantly drain your Ice storage only to refill your tanks at 100%. Problem is that its not really efficient unless you use the (new) event block to regulate the H2/O2 generators. The "rare fuel issue" of uranium is not a real problem once you reached space. You can find it quite easily once this is achieved. Myself I still consider the large nuclear reactor as king of energy production. No question asked !
All of these points are very valid, and I did forget about PCU, since most people usually talk about block limits instead of PCU limits. I am also not a math major unfortunately, so there is a lot of calculations I simply have not been able to do. As for if the comparison between H2 and Uranium is biased, no it is not. I am well aware that you can add modules to the refinery, but in a way, you can call that DLC. I was comparing the base produkts, and did not take extras into account. For instance, I could have also decided to fill the same space the refinery uses with more O2H2 gens, because then they use the same space. So the biased argument, is simply false. Also because I mentioned and even showed that a hydrogen tank was needed, and throughout the hydrogen engine ranking, I mentioned tanks several times. So not biased. Either way, thank you for raising these points of discussion. 👍
ya, no, forgot the time and effort you need to feed those engines and reactors while wind and solar well, build and done. Taking that factor in the list is basically upside down, ignoring the battery for that's a storage device, not generating power.
You might be right that solar and wind is build and forget, but I wish you good luck powering an atmospheric, hydrogen, or ion ship with solar panels. 🙃
Wind is at least B (your cons are mostly invalid). Batteries don't produce energy. And Hydo-Engine A? Never. It eats ice faster than you can bring it in. The only really valid option to power a base constantly and efficiently is a large reactor. Well, multiple reactors. So it's A tier. But it consumes quite some Uranium. That's why it's not S.
Thank you very much, and I appriciate it! As for uploading them to the workshop, I might make some imroved variants that I then upload, but we will have to see.
normal output for wind turbine is around 427kwh and its perfekt for early stations to charge your ships or rovers it belongs to B or higher just for how easy it is to build.
@@AliceDoesThings404 lol its ok! Honestly i loved solar for a while till i looked at the pcu cost for an array and i was like oooof. Hydrogen is still great.
Don't think I would put the battery on its own, but always put it as an option for passive power (ie Solar and wind), as the active power supplies will always give you power regardless of external factors such as darkness or wind drop. Nice Video, but please the 'unfocussed' cam was a bit overused.
You forgot a huge downside of the battery: It "loses" 20% of the power put into it. That is, if you put in 1 MWh of power, it only stores 0.8 MWh of power. This is really bad if you're charging batteries off of fuel sources like H2 or U.
Maybe I'm paranoid but I put rectors of every type throughout my ship so there is no localized kill shot that can be made save for shooting the pilot directly
Wind and solar for starting out in the first 20 minutes or so then hydrogen and solar for your first ships as they will most likely be hydrogen as you probably won’t have platinum for components then reactors for the endgame it’s not a problem of which is best its when you’ll get the most use out of them
That is true, very much so. It is honestly just most people focus heavily on what to reach as fast as possible, so they won't have to worry about the others. But you are absolutely right 👍
Not sure if they were out yet. But in the NEWest DLC the large turbine has a higher output. Also batterys store power they do NOT create power. they should not of been in this video
This video covers power blocks. The battery is a power block, and has the POTENTIAL to create power. I said it spawns with power, never that it makes it. But clever engineering can make a power generation system using batteries.
Honestly, you can still technically use the battery in the same way as before, you just have to spend iron, nickel and silicon to do so. Which, of course, can be produced literally anywhere where there's stone.
What do you mean uranium is rare. Its in like 1 in 20 astroids and respawns... its literally infinite. The hydrogen gen burns through gas so fast only produces 5points and has just 2 ports that arent even in line. Dude this list is cracked. Large reactor is the goat in any metrics that matter. Produces a stupid amount of power, is low pcu, has 4 ports, holds an absurd amount of fuel, and doesnt burn through it very quickly even at full output.... the batter is an s t power GENERATOR while producing exactly 0 power😅 What would you say the best thruster for space, the atmo thruster...
@@Black5heep_ exactly. Beyond 1 million kgs a damn warship definitely need reactor. Also with grav drive and all the fancy high powered gizmos you BETTER BE having them reactors. But for a corvette with no railguns or a plain Econ then go for hydrogen and fukton of batteries. If someone say its unlikely, my faction operate multimillion weight warships in a multiplayer vanilla server.
Wish I would have seen this when it was new... but I think you got the rankings pretty wrong, by the way I see things. The Hydrogen Engine, I'd place in the D tier. While it's great for Europa, where you're going to have masses of waste ice to burn, it's troublesome to transport masses of ice about. On Pertam, it's all but useless, as there's almost no ice to be found. The rare oasis is something you don't want to waste on generating electric power. It also has the disadvantage of making your hydrogen fuel gauge very deceptive on hydrogen powered ships. The hydrogen stored in the engine, which is not available for any other purpose, is still represented on the fuel gauge. I hoped the devs would have ended this issue by now, but they haven't. Also, the cost of running an O2/H2 generator greatly offsets the perceived efficiency of the hydrogen engine. The generator is too much a power hog. As far as batteries, they belong on C tier, because, simply, they are only storage. A power source that's dependent on another power source is not, by any stretch of the imagination, superior to the primary source. It only acts as an improvement to the original source. If would place the solar panel on A tier. While not a good choice to place on a combat vessel, it can generate power nearly anywhere you are, with no need for fuel. In space, stations could be set up to reasonably track the sun even before the custom turret controller, if you're reasonably smart. I've had a number of stations that I built a sun tracking solar array by just setting a rotor to rotate at the same approximate rate as the sun's movement. Every so many hours, I could make a slight adjustment to improve its alignment, since I couldn't match the rate exactly. Even while traveling on a ship, during long trips, I can adjust the facing to maximize solar output, while my heading remains the same. The wonders of drifting. S tier would be the combination of solar panels and battery. The C tier battery, as I said, improves the performance of other power blocks. Combined with solar panels, it allows a boost for times of high energy usage, as well as keeping power going when the sun goes down on planets. You get limitless free energy, with the downsides being the space it takes, and the vulnerability to attack. It is, fortunately, cheap to repair. There is a trick for power that many people don't realize, and it has to do with the hydrogen engine. If you find an exploration encounter ship (like all the Pirate Mayday ships) that's using a hydrogen engine for power, you can detach it and take it along. This is kind of an exploit. To keep these encounters functioning, those engines are made glitched so they don't use fuel. As long as you don't disturb them, they'll output energy without using fuel indefinitely. Keep them intact and attach them with merge blocks. Permanent free power. Just make sure to keep them out of view of your turrets, since they won't belong to you, and will show as being enemy blocks.
Issue with Hydrogen Engines is that they are competing with Hydrogen Thrusters for hydrogen, which are THE best thruster in the game. While hydrogen engines are, well, ok? Would rather have a reactor and uranium
Hmmm, this is a nice list and all but you forgot two things, PCU and total power produced, MWH is great if your using all the power that is produced but you have to factor in the cost to produce the hydrogen and well as refine the uranium subtract that from the total power produced, I don't know about anyone else but I rely on batteries mostly for output and have my power generators like the reactors and hydrogen engines on a scrip to only produce power when batteries are below X%
The wind turbine is actually relatively easy to scale *up to 5 turbines* Build a tower, (more than 7 high, say 10) Put a wind turbine on top On the one but highest block, attach a block on each outward facing side (i.e. 4 blocks total) These blocks then function as mounts for other (horizontally mounted) turbines. Now you have 5 turbines in optimal position (each turbine does NOT see the others, nor the mast). Of course, scaling further requires another mast.
Personally solar panels are B tier for me. If only because space stations need power and I normally turn a large asteroid into one giving me plenty of real-estate to put them on. Ye reactors are great but I use them as a backup power incase a npc flies by and shoots one of my solar arrays. Rarely need them as I have batteries as well.
An important thing to consider is pcu cost. And in this case the large nuclear reactor is only 25 pcu and produces 300MW. But if you are playing solo then pcu doesn't matter.
1 hit on H2 tank blows radius of 7 blocks thats diameter of 14 ..how long is your ship?!mhm and 15h combined for space of 4x3x3 exclusively for H2 PROVIDED THAT YOU DONT USE IT AS FUEL!! mehh.. i can store a month's uranium in 1x1x1 and run power grid 3 times stronger on another 1x1x1 ..and no blowup danger like with H2..and i dare you play SE without refinary go ahead ..coz i am sure i can play it without H2 gen or tank..leave your trash contient what are your hours ingame 100-200h coz it cant stand in front of 6000h exp i got..it can be seen by the way you carry yourself
Personally i end up using these power options pretty much every game: Ground bases: Solar Panels + Batteries for nomal running and Hydrogen Engines as Boosters (when producing or generally using a lot of energy) Tiny working ships: Batteries and maybe a few solar pannels as range extenders or to recharge in an emergency Small ships: Batteries for power, hydrogen for trust. Medium/Large Ships (anything with a jumpdrive pretty much): Batteries for normal running, small nuclear reactors for recharging batteries and jumdrives. I find uranium to difficult to find and refine to make it my main power source. Using ground stations with hydrogen engines being able to recharge docking ships tends to be a really good option.
If you play a space pirate, you can usually get away with not having to mine. I intercepted a freighter that had a bunch of large reactors and small reactors and a jump drive. The ship was probably 10 times larger than mine but I’m pretty sure I have enough resources to build a base on a moon or large asteroid now as a refueling station for my interceptor.
I make almost everything with batteries as they are available from the start and can be charged through any power source. Only downside is how many can be required to power everything without overloading the grid and the added weight as a result.
Practically speaking, once you get to late game, you will still be better off going all nuclear, supplement wind or solar, and ignoring batteries and hydro engine completely. It's more about how many in-game minutes you will spend on resource collection and how often. the hydrogen engine will KILL your game time, and batteries will take 20% of everything you produce.
I haven't played in a long time, but I have a couple of mods to suggest that make the game much more enjoyable for me 1. I forget the name of the mod, but there is one that puts uranium back on the planet, not just on asteroids, as it used to be. I think its ridiculous to make it available only in space. It is still a rare resource, and often hard to find. 2. Water mod. If there is ice on a planet, it's only logical that there would be a water table. I put the water level far below the ground. So, you have to work to get to it, but its nice to have when you get there. This completely eliminates the need to find ice once you are able to drill down far enough.
I agree the battery is great, but at the same time i believe it deserves an honorable mention since it doesn't produce power, but is more of an electric sucking mosquito that'll keep draining your power if you don't manage it.
I think my ranking would be almost completely opposite in all ways and I would leave off the battery because it only stores power, not generating. It's useful only in combination with other methods. But I use the mod that preservs power cells at the cost of batteries having 0 stored energy at creation. I have not made it to end game mode yet after months and months of playing, so don't have much experience with reactors. I do know that finding uranium in space can be a royal PITA.
hydrogen generator is just... not good for regular play. the sheer amount of hydrogen it eats means if you use it to generate power, you'll only be using that power to charge your drills to get more ice to get more hydrogen to burn to charge your drills to get more ice etc etc
The best energy system is clearly hydrogen due to performance and consumption, but nevertheless the reactor is useful as a backup, it has always been considered that it is imperative to have the 4 types of energy either in bases or ships, batteries, hydrogen panels and reactor , good video, greetings
Hydrogen engines are almost always my early game power source, but literally every base and long range transport I make has one or two as emergency backup power for a beacon or life support.
See my problem with rating Solar over Wind is that Wind is far more consistent with Solar only working during the day and if you want to keep going during the night which unless your in Space is 50% of your day you *have* to pair it with batteries. Plus it can be hard to realize you've expanded beyond your power generation if you only use Solar and Battery because you can slowly bleed power from recharging during the day and losing more at night than what you made during the day and not realize that is whats happening until your getting close to or have ran out of power
1 detail about hydrogen generators that has not been mentioned in the video or the comments, they need a jump start. If you place an empty Hydro gen attached to an empty h2o2 gen it will do nothing, even full of ice. You either need a power or hydrogen source to get the system working.
battery in the rating of power sources.... the battery stores but does not generate electricity. Moreover, a battery is mandatory in any other power circuit simply due to the fact that energy production and consumption may vary over time.
The hydrogen engine sound in a ship sounds so fucking good, and the block is killer too so I incorporate it as much as I can on small grid designs despite it's size
32.6% (approximately) increase in weight to power ratio for the 27 Small Reactor configuration. The fringe benefit of which would be that it doesn't require any Gold to achieve a 405MW output in the same space as the large reactor. The weight difference of 57,116kg is roughly an additional 79% the weight of a Large reactor, so I can see how only gaining the additional 105MW output (34% Approximate) increase for almost 80% the weight of a second Large reactor may seem like a major flaw overall. However, as stated earlier, it doesn't require Gold and its weight/mass is a negligible factor outside of planetary gravity. Given you will likely be in space by this stage, it's an acceptable trade-off if Gold proves difficult to procure or would be better used elsewhere. The PCU factor is likely the more pressing issue for such a Small reactor configuration, practically speaking. What would be nice is a larger battery array, similarly scaled to the Small and Large reactors. A Large Battery bank block, like a single 3x3x3 Battery block or other configuration that takes up the same Volume, with a higher storage and output capacity scaled similarly to the reactors would be a nice addition to the power options. Simply considering the PCU factor, having exponentially increased power to PCU "bulk" blocks would help with a lot of issues. Much like adding tiered or purpose built (as in high acceleration, high efficiency etc with drawbacks) Thrusters and ship tools would help alleviate many issues as well.
All forms of power depend on the situation, conditions, and etc. One excels in another area while it fails in another. A wind power and solar power systems wont be as good for powering deep underground facilities. That's when hydrogen or other reactors would be better. Just as wind would be better for high wind or stormy weather conditions or environment than a hydrogen or solar power plants would be.
Been playing on a server and I can tell you that while uranium is hard to find at the start, by the time you found it once, you're basically set for life. Reactors are so fuel-efficient that you can basically run a production-heavy ship that regularly jumps around for DAYS before the thought of your uranium running out even comes to mind, while hydrogen has the tendency to run out a lot quicker. And it doesn't help that H2O2 generators are sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo slow. So is processing uranium, admittedly, but uranium lasts for a lot longer than hydrogen does. The large reactor personally I suggest only for huge production bases or true warships that you will expect to be jumping around and firing railguns a lot - all activities that drink a LOT of power for short bursts. Another major vulnerability of the large reactor is that it's one big block - if it is taken out, that's a huge cut out of your ship's power, while small reactors, while more expensive overall, allow for more redundancy. All in all, I consider small reactors to be the true backbone of any good ship, solars to be a great mid to late game passive power generation tool for civilian ships and bases to integrate existing power consumption, and large reactors a specialized tool for the biggest, power hungriest battleships.
Main thing I don't understand is how are y'all using so much power? I used to play lots on big multiplayer servers (>1800hrs on steam) and most people would have ships of a couple thousand blocks or less.. I liked to build my main ship as a mobile base + luxury yacht so somewhere around 6k-12k blocks (no idea on PCU as this was a while ago) with refinery and manufacturing all on board. Despite this though with the manufacturing running full tilt, several fully upgraded versions of each block I'd still only use a couple MW passively And when you DO find a uranium asteroid, mining it for half an hour can provide enough uranium to sustain this ship for well over a month. The actual power sources I used always ended up as a single small reactor + a battery wall for capacitance. Jump drive recharges, flying with ion engines and all that would use the batteries and they could keep everything running for half a day easily then the tiny reactor topped it all up overnight while I slept Ground vehicle? small reactor + some batteries Planetary air vehicle? small reactor + batteries Largeish space vehicle? you better believe it's a small reactor + batteries! Only exception being very early game or a small grid miner that I'd park inside my yacht, which would just be a single battery, single H2 tank, 4 drills, and a couple small H2 thrusters in each direction. Also ~3 large storage containers to make it look like a burrowing worm as the servers I played on were typically 1/1/1 so I could easily fill those containers
Hydrogen tank is technically a warhead within your grid. A destroyed H2 tank can split your ship in half or blow up a chunk of your base. That's one of the flaw of hydrogen power.
Batteries have a HIGH discharge rate... 12mw in and out. lots of times though i find it best to have lots of batteries, because sure, if you are recharging 4 large batteries on a ship, you only NEED 4 large batteries on base to do that, but that can quickly cap out thing. asteroids, moons, place with no atmosphere, i'll use solar tracking cells, backed by ICE engines unless i find a large supply of uranium for bases. For crawlers and ships i tends to use reactors. atmospheric planets, i'll run Wind turbines.
i only ever use Hydro engines untill i get to the reactor stage.. no wind turbines.. no solar.. just hydro.. shut down EVERYTHING not being used (apart from spawn block ofc) and set the h.engine away.. sorted i spend all my SE time on public servers where power management/consevation is essential
Well you *could* consider batteries to be power generation. If you grind them down when they're depleted and reweld them back up, they effectively act as reactors that convert 720 kg of iron, 80kg of silicon, and 160 kg of nickel into 900 kWh of energy. And, of course, iron, silicon, and nickel are much easier to get than uranium - you could run it entirely on stone, if you wanted.
If I start on a planet I skip solar, I just plant a base next to ice with enough wind turbines and go directly to H2 engine and batteries. If I start on space(which I prefer) solar and batteries are about the only way to go, until you hit a jackpot and get uranium, ice in space is far more important to staying alive than generating energy. Anyway good list.
In my opinion, the best choice is situational. You definitely do not want reactor power on planetary bases and rovers, at least as primary power, because there is no uranium there and you will have to supply it from off-world. Bases, ideally, should be powered entirely by unlimited energy sources so you do not have to constantly maintain them. Rovers, on the other hand, should be powered primarily by a combination of hydrogen engine and battery, with a single reactor for emergency use only (hydrogen-powered vehicles cannot start themselves up if fully depleted, since they require energy to turn ice into hydrogen). Rovers not intended to go far from base can use purely battery power, however. How I like to set up my rovers is with a power management script (typically a slightly modified version of Isy's Solar Alignment Script). The hydrogen engine(s) will charge the batteries, then automatically shut off. They will reengage only when battery power reaches critical level or exceeds power output needs. The reactor is excluded and only set up for manual start, as you will need it to get the rover going again if you accidentally mess up and fully drain it.
1st off there is no end to se. 2nd you missed the small battery. Also the wind turbine is a beggining power block. Batteries are hard to make and carry. The small hydro engine can only rin one jet engine.
i wouldn't consider the battery a "power block" for ranking as the whole point is to determine which one PRODUCES the most energy vs its size and components. Batteries do not generate electricity, they just store and conduct electricity. It is related, but not the same. However, you NEED batteries to fly around in your ship. if you need to maneuver and all your thrusters starts engaging, you typically have bursts of power costs far exceeding what any of those generators could readily provide without the buffer of stored energy from batteries.
Practically I prefer reactors. Everytime I use hydrogen I find myself constantly having to go mine more ice to power things. In comparison I only have to mine uranium occasionally. Nuclear reactors are also far better for combat because they take up less space.
I think the battery grinding strat is still worth it tbh, the battery components can be made with only stone, so they're a lot more renewable that hydrogen engines or reactors
Despite the large reactor not being the best on paper. It is however, the best block for power output relative to it's PCU cost. A single large reactor can power your entire ship in most cases. Which is very helpful on last-gen consoles since PCU is very limited. Because of that it's my go-to pick power generation
or on servers, where PCU really matters.
You two are absolutely right. PCU was something I forgot to cover and I do apologize. Luckily the list was still fairly representative in terms of PCU values (Lowest on top and biggest on the bottom), but its still something I should have covered more closely.
@@AliceDoesThings404 everyone forgets about PCU until they actually need to care about it.
so don't feel too bad about it!
And you need 4 on each end of a Earth-Pertam Lazer antenna relay
Yes PCU is the reason why im using large reactors evryshere possible, specialy the official servers with 20k pcu limit is the 1 large reactor way to go for your base, mining ship and basicaly evrything with jump drives. I always swap to that so i can build bigger warship with remaining pcu
Large grids that are parked with magnetic plates onto voxels can produce power with windmills without having to convert to station BTW.
True, but when parked with magnetic plates/landing gears, they are technically static 🤔
@@AliceDoesThings404 The term I always heard was "Voxel Locked." Calling voxel locked grids "Static" can be confusing because we can also go into the grid settings and set a grid type to static as well. Static grids (from the games perspective) aren't affected by things like gravity the way non-static grids are.
That's new
@@yamatokurusaki5790nope. The setting convert to ship/station has been around for years. It literally turns the grid into "voxsal" connected grid without touching any voxals
You can't call a battery a power generator. It's a power storage device with losses.
i still like my wind turbine and solar powers
I think we need a new active power source. They need to add a treadmill we can run on to power our ship. Then we can make a battleship entirely powered by sla- willing volunteer labor.
If it's not the wheel of pain, it's not enough.
@@nazaxprime MOVE THOSE LEGS, ENGINEERS! LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT!
Imagine hunting down other players for their power value
Life is but a dream, eh?
What about those wheels where sla- I mean willing volunteers spin a wheel in a circular motion to generate power.
Point of Order: The Batteries don't produce power. They store power produced by one of the others for later use.
Batteries however do contribute to the overall efficiency of pretty much every power system in the game, since they store power that otherwise wouldnt be generated during times of low power consumption, which is why they are present on most craft and why they are ranked on top
I know I'm late, but for others and newcomers :
In SE you can actually "generate" power with batteries. Though, not in the... conventional way.
There is a known secret related to these power storing units, namely that they come with 30% energy, whenever they are newly built. If you build 3, set one to recharge, while the other 2 to discharge, you can almost fill 1 battery up. It costs you 160 power cells or 160 kg iron, 16 kg silicon and 32 kg nickel ingots. (I only meant here the "lost" components, which will turn into scraps.)
So yeah, they don't "produce" the power, but you can get some out of them.
If you are on an atmosphere-less moon, without ice and sun light for the next 10 minutes, with power in your base for about 7-8 minutes, you'll have to get creative and attach some in a clunky way, which you'll grind down after they filled your original batteries.
Worse than 'store'. They are loan sharks that charge you 20% of all power you produce to store the other 80%. Not a biggie when paired with renewable energy (solar/wind), but never use reactor power to power a battery, and then run off the battery on a long term basis.
@@jube8835Yes, but they should be kept turned off on such vessels, until the auxilliary power is needed. Sitting there just on auto, constantly recharging 1% to stay at max is just throwing power out the window.
@@jube8835Also, when it comes to the idea of extra power only at certain times, something else should be noted: power generators like reactors and such never produce power that isn't used. You could have a huge reactor and if all you run on it is a small light, then that is all the uranium it will burn. So, batteries aren't needed to supplement a power generator in emergencies if you are doing that because you imagine the extra power would otherwise go to waste if you had no batteries. But, in terms of weight/mass on your ship, or size/space, then the 'supplemental battery' approach might be useful.
FYI you can place the wind turbine slightly higher than 8 blocks high, and then have ones coming out from the sides of it so you have 5 total off each tier of blocks. That heavily increases their efficiency and they don't reduce eachother's efficiency. Put a single armor block at the base of each one so they stick out and then you can have them all around
Whilst that is true and a very valid point, that does also increase the sheer size of a tower with windturbines. In addition, you would have to build it quite high, so the wind turbines on the side don't lose any efficiency from being too close to the ground. But still a valid point.
and you can also put them underground if you have a space of 8 to 9 blocks away from the voxels and it still works, this combined with their cost in terms of materials, for me personally makes them S tier, at one of my bases I had about 103 wind turbines underground
That is very true, it is somewhat cheesing, though still a valid point. 👍
My main issue with that approach is how much of a performance cost it has. Having to dig a large hole, before then stuffing it with blocks that take computing power. So for me personally, just too much of a performance hog in that scenario.
@@AliceDoesThings404 Performance in SE? what a good joke, almost made me laugh, this game is not optimized at all, and the engine is very old, it's a game from 2013.
and when it comes to resources used, I think it's much more efficient to build a mobile base that you convert into a station when you want to recharge the batteries
Im curious as to the 371kw mentioned for wind turbines. Mine are getting 426kw output. Optimal is still a range and a couple more blocks clearance helps. As I'm getting back into it after a long break, I have weather disabled so no boost there. I usually use 10-11 spacing as opposed to the usually recommended 8-9. I'd assume that is why, but it would change the power calculations.
You can also combine multiple power sources . For example, wind and hydrogen, or solar and reactors. The nice things is the renewable power has the first priority to have power taken, which means it will be the first to supply energy. That allows you to not use fuel unless demand exceeds the renewables max power output
Personally have a 4 combo. Wind for renewable, hydrogen engine for when thats not enough, at late/end game having one or two small reactors all charging a battery network for when shit hits the fan xD
@@GamingPerks Since wind and solar are best used excusively on bases, I most often than not only use those as sources, possibly with 1 or 2 backup hydrogen generators. Otherwise I mainly leave hydro and nuclear as ship fuels, since it's the easiest to remain mobile with lol
there are scripts as well that makes it where reactors and engines only turn on when needed. i like having a mix of stuff. i aways have some batteries on stuff. if i can help it i use reactors as a jump start only
I add an event block and only have the hydrogen engines turn on if power is too low.
@GamingPerks 100%. I always make a battery bank in every base. Especially in early game when you're power consumption fluctuates a lot. Having that power stored up is really nice as a buffer
I’ve always liked the hydrogen engine, usually used as back up power since you can find ice pretty much everywhere
I have a massive rover with everything in it to process material and build things. Basically a rolling base. It has 4 large grid batteries, 3 large hydrogen tanks, and 2 hydrogen engines set up on my hotbar. That way when my batteries start to drain a bit, I just switch on the engines and I’m good to go. I also have 2 solar panels on top for passive charging. If I’m not processing ore, the range on that thing is insane with that setup. You’d have to be really careless and in the dark to be stuck without power.
All that to say, I absolutely love hydrogen engines, especially with the supplemental trickle of power from solar panels and occasionally being hooked up to a station to offload.
Same here one of my first large plunge mining ships ive made uses like 14 or 16 of them with 8 h2/o2 generators and 4 batterys just so i could get a full cargo of Uranium as i got tired of doing runs with my small ship miners and now its one of my go tos for mining in space
The only thing I felt was missing from this was further comparison of the net power output of the hydrogen engine and small reactor. You went to the effort to mine the same volume(? unclear) of each ore and compare those all the way through the process but left out the last bit of info to sum up the final gains and compare their efficiencies.
For those curious: some math extrapolates that the net power production of the hydrogen engine was 809.28 kWh (90.9% efficiency from ore to power), and the net power production of the small reactor was 9753.83 kWh (98.3% efficiency from ore to power).
But what about time? The O2/H2 generator takes almost as much time to refine the fuel as the engine takes to burn it, so that's easy to balance: one ice processor per engine. The refinery took less than half as long to refine the fuel as the reactor took to burn it, so one refinery can serve two reactors and still have a little bit of time leftover to do something else.
Also, the rector took much longer to burn through the total mass of the fuel but produced much more power (more than 11x as much). If you stop the reactor once it's produced as much power as the hydrogen engine, you'll find that it only took 1/3rd the time and you still have 91% of your fuel remaining.
This all means that for every 1 ship load of uranium ore collected, you'd have to collect 11.14 loads of ice to produce the same amount of power. 1.014 of those ice loads would be wasted producing power for the O2/H2 generators while only 0.017 loads of uranium ore would be wasted producing power for refineries. Uranium power is far more dense than hydrogen power and takes less time and effort to collect and produce once you know where the ore is to be found.
Then you have to consider that refineries can have upgrade modules to further adjust fuel and/or time efficiency depending on need while the O2/H2 generators are fixed at their base speed and efficiency.
If you stumble upon a uranium deposit, it makes sense to collect it immediately since it's objectively a much better fuel than ice when you have it. You'd have to spend roughly 12x as much time mining and refining ice to get the same power. And offsetting the refining costs with renewable energy is much easier. When ore availability is not an issue, the small reactor is far better than the hydrogen engine.
hydrogen engine imo is ideal for planet locked base and rover mobile bases, while reactors are for everything up there. having to go to space to mine uranium, then go back to planet would need hydrogen thrusters or ion+atmos thruster combo and that would need a lot of electricity anyway, so in both situations you are forced to take the hydrogen route.
basically for planet locked, its the best active generator full stop. for To Infinity and Beyond scenarios hydrogens are at best A tier
I did not notice that the custom controller had an always aim at sun option! Thank-you for this
It was added with the Automatons update, a handy feature!
I can't imagine why it wasn't available to begin with. It's the very first thing I wanted to do with custom turret controller. I think the devs don't actually play their own game.
I do agree it should have been there from the start, but I can understand why. Given it was added with the "warfare 2 update", they had enough other things to work on, so it probably just slipped their mind.
@@AliceDoesThings404yeah, generally when you say “turret” in a video game, people are thinking stationary guns. But there’s always another use for a tool that wasn’t immediately intended.
I have over 2000 hours in this game I still watch tutorial and ranking videos because I always end up learning something new.
I prefer reactors to hydrogen engines, but it is worth pointing out that you will be producing oxygen at the same time you produce hydrogen which may be a resource you needed anyway.
Forgot to include that part actually, but it is definitely a valid point. Well spotted!
This is a serious problem though. It happened to me several times that I accidentally left the hydrogen engines running, they drained all ice on my ship and I later died of asphyxiation not being able to generate oxygen I needed. I find that they're more trouble than they're worth.
I usually combine both
@@Nethan2000 make sure you build an oxygen tank then lol
@@seushimarejikaze1337i dont remember who but a youtuber tested that 1 ice doesnt give you 2 hydrogen 1 oxygen, instead 1 ice produces either 1 oxygen or 2 hydrogen so even with tanks having an hydrogen engine will make you run out of oxygen faster
It feels worth mentioning that nobody would *ever* put Uranium ore into a refinery that didn't have four Yield Modules attached - so realistically, you'd get 20kg of ingots from 1000kg of ore, rather than 10.
One thing severely lacking in SE for batteries is the ability to set discharge to specific blocks, like for instance if I have a small bank of railguns, I want to have batteries tied directly to them, so that I don't have to power the charge for them directly.
Workaround; Could use event controllers to turn on and off groupings of batteries. How many fully charged batteries to fire a rail gun?
That group is OFF until said rail gun is fired upon which the group is turned on. Stays on until fully charged then turns back off until railgun is fired again.
Would that achieve the same effect? When the batteries are off they can't be used by anything, retaining their charge. When turned on once fired they will discharge their energy to charge the rail gun. Recharge and then shut off until needed again.
@@ender5817 This would only semi work, because though the event control could function in this way, you could also just group the batteries you wanted and turn them off and on as you fired the rail guns. The issue isn't really how the batteries are turned off, on, recharged, etc etc, it's their specific power usage.
There isn't a way (at least as far as I am aware of) to isolate the power being transferred to the rail guns. The goal would be to have the rail guns only ever pull directly from a specific set of batteries. Unfortunately though, the rail guns are going to pull from every battery that's attached to the same grid it is. Turning some batteries on and off might save some time and power, but you're still gonna end up drawing from the batteries that you're trying to specifically NOT draw from.
However thinking on it, you could I suppose have some event controllers with some timer blocks perhaps set up to power down the main batteries during the rail gun charge while only the rail gun batteries are on. Issue of course there is that the rest of the ships operations would still need power, and draw from the rail gun batteries.
There might be an answer somewhere in that setup for this type of situation, but I get the feeling it would not still be what OP was looking for specifically. (That being a separated battery bank that is used solely to power the rail guns, while the other batteries only powered normal operations.)
I've always wanted more in-depth wiring in SE. Breaker boxes and the ability to put devices and rooms on different circuits.
Now we can actually reroute the power.
@@DoubleJJizzlewith the weight and space used by those rail gun only batteries it seems to be a waste to have them off. With them on all batteries on your ship would just last longer. So, beside cool factor, what is the actual benefit to having a system as you describe?
@@inktitan as far as I am Aware of? Not a thing. There might be some arguments for stuff like having batteries specifically set aside for charging a jump drive, but for a railgun, I don't see one. It's mostly just a thought experiment on how you'd get a system to work like that.
Real life of course does actually use these types of systems, usually isolating them for various reasons. Keeping redundant power supplies available for when they're needed incase main power is lost. Using power for specific systems that draw high/low amounts of wattage to keep strain off primary power sources.
However this is a game and those kind of redundant systems aren't exactly efficient. Still could see an argument for jump drives though.
Edit: In addition to Jump Drives, I would consider having additional batteries for other high draw blocks such as a refinery pretty useful. Normal standard operations would be essentially powered on all the time by a set of batteries. When you turn on some bigger power draining blocks, you turn on a second set of batteries/power generators.
This would help keep your power drain and fuel usage to a minimum and be a bit more efficient during normal usage of a ship/station. While still giving you an option to push out more when needed.
This would allow simpler power generators like solar panels and wind generators to have an easier time charging and keeping you operational, while you're basically not doing anything.
However, even with all that, it still just seems like a lot of work, for something that's not really needed for a video game like this one. Considering power production is endless, resources are near infinite, and complicated builds aren't always what they're cracked up to be. Especially considering this would be a purely superficial upgrade to any build, that likely wouldn't anything of real hard value, but a few % points of efficiency.
The solar panels can be stacked in two layers. This is not known by most new engineers. Just flip it around when making your array and you'll be operating at 200% 😁
this^ is so huge and not talked about enougth
I don’t understand what you’re saying, “stacked in two layers”
@@BaliAgha when you put 2 solarpanels with the collectorsides above each other both get full power, or to explain it the other way around a single "layer" of a solarpanel can only harvest 50% of the incoming light with its collectors and the rest is let through
All of my solar usage takes advantage of the panel double up twice the power half the space
Does this work with large grid? And/or with colored panels? I was trying to do it the other day and it didn't seem like both sides were producing, and yes I did have them back to back though I can't remember what the grid size was
I recently built a small grid hauler using atmospheric thrusters with a mixture of batteries and engines, the idea being the engines would allow the batteries to last longer. Works pretty alright, I did intentionally avoid hydrogen thrusters due to their big range of damage to grids, mainly with the design i went for too. Works well for ferrying goods between bases that are close by. Could be Way more better but its a fun experiment and giving different components adds to its beauty
With the modern update you can even automate the process of transporting materials
@@spaceengineeringempire4086 Yeah! And I am loving the update, I used to rely on the P.A.M. script to get these tasks done, but good that we can now make hauling done without relying on scripts!
Absolutely, the more power to create in vanilla, the better. 🙃
I know that you didn't cover mods. I just wanted to put this out there. A few years ago I was trying to find an alternative for power. It was right after they stole uranium from the planets. (How unrealistic!)
So I found the Deuterium reactor mod. It uses stone and or ice to create deuterium containers for fuel (or both). There are large and small grid variants and they are POWERFUL. I do love the mod. There is also a positive thing about going to space. It's the only place to find pure deuterium deposits that is very rich when refined. So, the mod makes it very beneficial to go to space and has you actually looking to go there for that rich resource. Who doesn't want a 12GW reactor operating their base. All the power they would need FOREVER!
OH! They are NOT cheap to build! You better be ready to mine a bunch of gold and other rare stuff to get the special components to build one. These things are a beast to build. The bigger they are the more expensive they will cost you to build. So, cost will depend on how much you are willing to go mine. It will be a grind just to build the low level one. I think one of the lower tier one take 2000 of the special components and it also requires like 500 or so superconductors also. Be ready to grind for some recourses. This mod does put in a really nice power gen option, but you are not going to get it easy. You WILL WORK FOR IT!
Ah yes i have that mod as well and i do agree that is by far the best reactor mod the mod is called Life Tech Energy pack.
technicly the battery doesn't create energy, it only stores energy. not sure if you can count the basic charge as energy generation
Given that you construct the block, and recieve energy, it counts in the very technical sense. In addition to the fact that you can take apart the battery, make a new one, and get more charge. Though it was more a comparrison between power blocks, a category which the battery belongs. But you raise a valid point 👍
@@AliceDoesThings404 ok, if you put it that way. but for me it'S stil more like the hydrogen tank for the hydrogen engine :)
Fair fair. Oh if only the tank came with 30% hydrogen when constructed, it would have been a dream! 😋
@@AliceDoesThings404 we need beans instead of clan cola, so at least the space suit will be filled with methane :D
keep in mind that there also is a way to create battery powergenerator by using a blueprint of a cross-setup of four batteries that are set on discharge while mounted on a rotor.
the whole setup is quiet complex because you need some additional blocks Like timers, a welder and a grinder but at the end of the day it only consumes stone to generate power stored in batteries set on auto.
I like solar panels because it's aesthetically pleasing to look out and see a giant solar farm surrounding your base. Also, a trick I learned is you can double stack the panels to generate 2x the output during the day. If you want to make the panels automatically track the sun they do require extra work and resources. Hydrogen overall is the best source of electricity early-mid game because as long as you have a ready supply of ice you print out free electricity,
solar pannel facing towards sun is so awesome to see :)
2 things
One H2 generator produces exactly as much hydrogen as one engine consumes so you could run engines on just h2 generators and skip the tanks
Also imo the combination of reactors and engines works best as they reactors can take over the basic load and you can switch on the engine once the reactor runs out
Appreciate the vid. Two things. PCU vs out put may have been a good addition. I consider batteries energy storage not power generation
That is fair, I completely forgot about PCU, given for years not I have mostly used block-limits, and forgot it existed, I will remember that for next time. As for the batteries, I agree they aren't for power generation, they are in the power-blocks category in SE, meaning it fits into this power-blocks comparison 👍
@@AliceDoesThings404but what are you comparing? You're comparing apples with oranges
You'll have to be a bit more specific. I am comparing different aspects of different power sources to determine which one is the overall best. ALL of them are good in their own way, but some are better than others overall.
@@AliceDoesThings404 I would still say in terms of 'power blocks' batteries should be F-tier, as they have the biggest disadvantage of them all - they dont generate power.
The wind turbine can be used on voxel locked subgrids, as well as static grids.
This means you can put one on a vehicle, and then using rotors and pistons, deploy it. Simple designs just rotate the subgrid with the turbine and landing gear on it, and then lower vehicle suspension until locked. It's great for mobile drills, where you will be voxel locking to deploy a drill anyways.
its actually more space and weight efficient to store your hydrogen as ice and generate the H2 as you burn it. you can store vast amounts of power this way. though the power per block stat drops by 33%. but since you'd otherwise be wasting dozens of blocks on tanks the net power/block is higher.
The great thing about battery is, they can double function as an armor during combat.
Battery is SSS tier
Battery? I think you misspelled "Nickel Reactor" lol.
Nuclear is absolutely king, especially when combined with a large battery chain.
My main ship is a power hog, as it has 30, YES, THIRTY jump drives (I can enter a server in space, and in 8-10 hours straight, get the mats and weld it by hand, believe it or not).
The ship has 62 batteries (2 for each JD, and 1 for general ship systems, and 1 backup battery set to recharge), and one large reactor.
The power output is bonkers (measured in Gigawatts), but it means I can jump >40,000 KM in just 7 minutes 20 seconds if going full hog. It also eats uranium like a hobo wolfing down a ham sandwich, but I'm a jump addict, so it is what it is.
The ship itself is actually propelled with H2 thrusters, and some small ions for docking procedures to save on H2. 4 large H2 tanks, along with 8 emergency small H2 tanks. The emergency tanks are to power 2 H2 engines long enough to get me to some ice, or, in a pinch, provide fuel for an emergency landing in high G, assuming the 3 parachute hatches are damaged, empty, or there's no atmosphere.
The ship also has some solar panels, so you will never truly be dead in space when it comes to power. As long as you can find ice or uranium ore, the ship can process them into usable fuel.
Every power generation system has its uses, but yeah, the battery is the greatest, and nuclear is the best for charging batteries quickly. A pro you missed about wind turbines is you can use them in underground caves, making them the best cheap power source for stealth bases on planets with atmosphere.
BTW, if anyone is curious about the ship, the model a couple iterations behind my personal one (I'm on the Mk.VII) can be found here:
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3029694875
100% vanilla, with industrial smuggler theme. A mobile base among the stars.
i always try to get to an ice planet, set up my ice quarry and have infinite fuel lol
Just keep doing what you do, I love seeing a good bit of Q&A with the proper testing to prove/disprove the findings.. Wish Luca put as much effort into her videos when she makes a claim
Oh no Luca is a she! Been miss gendering her 😅
I disagree with the ranking of the Wind Turbine vs the Solar Panel, if only because the Wind Turbine shines in early game while the Solar Panel shines in mid game.
My power block recommendation would be:
Wind power in the early game. This would provide most, if not all, of your early game power, and I would personally not exceed a total of three Wind Turbines.
Once you outgrow those, I would recommend switching to solar arrays for the scalability.
Space flight eventually necessitates the use of hydrogen for fuel anyway, so in space it can be very useful to generate power using hydrogen as well.
The switch to Uranium, I would personally only ever conduct with large grids, as it seems to rare of a fuel source to use it on small grids.
All of these would naturally be amplified by using batteries for power storage.
But that's my idea of it.
That is very valid and I completely agree. The only reason the wind turbine really fell behind, was because its not usable on all the planets/moons, nor in space. As well as the differing performance depending on weather. Other than that, completely agree 👍
I built this large grid mining rover with a drill in the middle that goes down on pistons. I just put 2 hydrogen engines on it and use the ice it mines to fuel it. Somehow it runs two large refineries while also powering 6 wheels to move it and the Mf 100000 kilos of ore. I need to add more batteries tho.
Not as an objective measure, but subjective. I hate batteries the most and prefer Hydrogen engines the most. Often using the water mod and can set up bases with water scoops to readily get hydrogen. Since my preferred thing to build are rovers. It gives me the most enjoyment for my time in the game.
My killer problem is that hydrogen on vanilla sucks up too much hydrogen on one small tank. Yes, I got the mod to put an end to that but still. 15 gallon of gas will give me what about 8 hours of driving time in a car. A real hydrongen does about the same. Then again it is a 12-cylinder. Still, the hydrogen needs to use a little less gas.
Comparing Reactors to Wind Turbines? Well.... You don't take into account what's available and how to efficiently built in numbers, aka you need, say, 3MW for your base 24/7. how many solar panels + batteries or wind turbines (placed best) do you need. What is it for a mid/endgame 15MW? Next: How much continuous effort does it take to get whatever fuel if needed. Self building/extending ice drill rigs are fun to build - and way north of the average beginner while it takes 20min small grid miner to get all the uranium you need forever. Others already mentioned PCU costs per MW.
maybe someone else put this out there, but you can put 2 solar stacked so in the same " space " you have more energy.
the " problem" is that still is the same energy per block, but since you dont have to put anything in front of a solar panel or near the array its kinda "cheating" the math , cos you have double per "block" , i dont know if i explain it well but i think its oks
eitherway just found you channel and its great keep doing it
Comparing them like this makes no sense. What the things cost is only relevant in the early game. After that, you have more resources than you can ever use anyway. So the costs don't matter anymore.
On servers you can't get around wind turbines / solar arrays if you don't play all the time. They cover the base turnover in the ships and bases and ensure that they remain constantly under power.
My evaluation would be more like this:
Wind turbines A
Solar C
H2 generator B
Uranium reactors D
Batteries are not power generation units for me and therefore do not count.
Battery power is not free, you had to take energy from somewhere and make the battery. The amount of power consumed should be factored in with the cost of the individual power generation blocks.
Batteries doesn't generate power... Batteries hold power..
Also panel and turbine doesn't require fuel source
The problem with hydrogen engine is it is not making enough i think and many ppl use the hydrogen to power ships cuz it is most versatile sourse of movement
I use nuclear for its scale size and power output only dependent on storage for its fuel
I try to use a mix of power sources never just 1 and if it is my base I tend to use all of them if I can. Just because I have a reactor doesn't mean I will get rid of my solar panels, I like the look of them with how I set them up
I like to use a main source and at least supplemental source. My main rover at the moment (large grid) runs on a couple of hydrogen engines that charge 4 batteries when they get low. However on top of the rover I have a couple solar panels that charge passively during daylight. Even if I’m stuck without power and without ice to make power, I can do whatever till daylight and get on the move to find ice or go to my fueling station.
In other words, I agree. Combine them. Backups are a must.
It's almost as if all these energy methods are scaling into the endgame.....
Large Reactor = S tier.
Resource cost is meaningless when you know hot to play and scale up production.
Weight means nothing.
And you failed to mention the most important ranking factor:
*** PCU ***
By this factor alone Large Reactor is S Tier.
Most of my ships have 1 reactor and 1 battery (for pipes).
Resource cost is important to begin with, and for those who don't necessarily know how to get vast amounts of resources quick.
Weight is important if you are building ships or anything that moves.
PCU I did forget yes, apologies.
And that's fair, a decent setup.
If you place wind turbines side by side then shift one of then by one block you can get max power from both.
Edit: packing example, note all turbines are in the same 3 block high plane. Bellow is looking from top of turbines down.
.
┌┬┐
├┼┤Turbine, ░ empty space
└┴┘
░░░░░░░░┌┬┐░░░░░░░┌┬┐
░┌┬┐░░░░├┼┤┌┬┐░░░░├┼┤
░├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘
░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░
┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤░
├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘░
└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░░
░░░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤░░
░░┌┬┐░└┴┘├┼┤┌┬┐░└┴┘░░
░░├┼┤░░░░└┴┘├┼┤░░░░░░
░░└┴┘░░░░░░░└┴┘░░░░░░
best space to power(+350kW each) packing
Isn't it more further away?
You missed some really important points:
- All theses blocks have PCU, and this figures is really important on keen's vanilla official servers for instance.
- Batteries have an efficiency coefficient of 80%. Meaning when you charge them with 1MWh you only get 800kWh of power stored. This really degrades them as the "ultimate" energy solution.
- Your side by side comparison of H2 vs Uranium ingots production is biased as you can add power efficiency or yield modules to the refinery. Uranium is also more convenient to transport and transfer form grid to grid (you can even do this by hand).
- The weight comparison between those two is also biased as the H2 Engine will also need tanks (and possibly H2/O2 generators and storage for ice) to be efficient. In the other hand, a lot of Uranium can be stored inside nuclear reactors.
Another big issue with the H2 energy is .. the O2 production ! If you need to get a constant H2/O2 generation on your grid and you use a cryo pod for your AFK, the small O2 consumption will constantly drain your Ice storage only to refill your tanks at 100%. Problem is that its not really efficient unless you use the (new) event block to regulate the H2/O2 generators.
The "rare fuel issue" of uranium is not a real problem once you reached space. You can find it quite easily once this is achieved.
Myself I still consider the large nuclear reactor as king of energy production. No question asked !
All of these points are very valid, and I did forget about PCU, since most people usually talk about block limits instead of PCU limits. I am also not a math major unfortunately, so there is a lot of calculations I simply have not been able to do.
As for if the comparison between H2 and Uranium is biased, no it is not. I am well aware that you can add modules to the refinery, but in a way, you can call that DLC. I was comparing the base produkts, and did not take extras into account. For instance, I could have also decided to fill the same space the refinery uses with more O2H2 gens, because then they use the same space. So the biased argument, is simply false. Also because I mentioned and even showed that a hydrogen tank was needed, and throughout the hydrogen engine ranking, I mentioned tanks several times. So not biased.
Either way, thank you for raising these points of discussion. 👍
ya, no, forgot the time and effort you need to feed those engines and reactors while wind and solar well, build and done.
Taking that factor in the list is basically upside down, ignoring the battery for that's a storage device, not generating power.
You might be right that solar and wind is build and forget, but I wish you good luck powering an atmospheric, hydrogen, or ion ship with solar panels. 🙃
hey, you had your tierlist upside down
Wind is at least B (your cons are mostly invalid). Batteries don't produce energy. And Hydo-Engine A? Never. It eats ice faster than you can bring it in. The only really valid option to power a base constantly and efficiently is a large reactor. Well, multiple reactors. So it's A tier. But it consumes quite some Uranium. That's why it's not S.
Please do a video about small-grid power generation, too!
I quite like what you made as a showcase here 9:12 and 1:34 there. Do you mind uploading these on the workshop?
Thank you very much, and I appriciate it! As for uploading them to the workshop, I might make some imroved variants that I then upload, but we will have to see.
normal output for wind turbine is around 427kwh and its perfekt for early stations to charge your ships or rovers it belongs to B or higher just for how easy it is to build.
you should also include pcu cost. im making this early in the video maybe you do.
I did forget including it, and was an oversight on my part. So apologies!
@@AliceDoesThings404 lol its ok! Honestly i loved solar for a while till i looked at the pcu cost for an array and i was like oooof. Hydrogen is still great.
Don't think I would put the battery on its own, but always put it as an option for passive power (ie Solar and wind), as the active power supplies will always give you power regardless of external factors such as darkness or wind drop. Nice Video, but please the 'unfocussed' cam was a bit overused.
You forgot a huge downside of the battery: It "loses" 20% of the power put into it. That is, if you put in 1 MWh of power, it only stores 0.8 MWh of power. This is really bad if you're charging batteries off of fuel sources like H2 or U.
That is something I did not know, and is a huge downside indeed. Thank you for notifying me 👍
Maybe I'm paranoid but I put rectors of every type throughout my ship so there is no localized kill shot that can be made save for shooting the pilot directly
Wind and solar for starting out in the first 20 minutes or so then hydrogen and solar for your first ships as they will most likely be hydrogen as you probably won’t have platinum for components then reactors for the endgame it’s not a problem of which is best its when you’ll get the most use out of them
That is true, very much so. It is honestly just most people focus heavily on what to reach as fast as possible, so they won't have to worry about the others. But you are absolutely right 👍
Not sure if they were out yet. But in the NEWest DLC the large turbine has a higher output.
Also batterys store power they do NOT create power. they should not of been in this video
This video covers power blocks. The battery is a power block, and has the POTENTIAL to create power. I said it spawns with power, never that it makes it. But clever engineering can make a power generation system using batteries.
@@AliceDoesThings404 how much energy does it take to mine and refine then assemble the parts for that 900 power? That's the real question
@woodzyfox4735 Good question. Might test it later.
The way you build graphs in game with blocks and block textures is excellent
Very informative
Can you also do this tier list for thrusters?
Hmmm, a tierlist for thrusters sounds interesting. Let me think about it! 🤔
Honestly, you can still technically use the battery in the same way as before, you just have to spend iron, nickel and silicon to do so. Which, of course, can be produced literally anywhere where there's stone.
What do you mean uranium is rare. Its in like 1 in 20 astroids and respawns... its literally infinite. The hydrogen gen burns through gas so fast only produces 5points and has just 2 ports that arent even in line. Dude this list is cracked. Large reactor is the goat in any metrics that matter. Produces a stupid amount of power, is low pcu, has 4 ports, holds an absurd amount of fuel, and doesnt burn through it very quickly even at full output.... the batter is an s t power GENERATOR while producing exactly 0 power😅
What would you say the best thruster for space, the atmo thruster...
Meanwhile my nuke reactor that lasted ages with 10 uranium= hello good sire!
I agree. Also when you get to capital ships, good luck charging multiple jump drives with H2 engines :)
@@Black5heep_ exactly. Beyond 1 million kgs a damn warship definitely need reactor. Also with grav drive and all the fancy high powered gizmos you BETTER BE having them reactors.
But for a corvette with no railguns or a plain Econ then go for hydrogen and fukton of batteries.
If someone say its unlikely, my faction operate multimillion weight warships in a multiplayer vanilla server.
Wish I would have seen this when it was new... but I think you got the rankings pretty wrong, by the way I see things. The Hydrogen Engine, I'd place in the D tier. While it's great for Europa, where you're going to have masses of waste ice to burn, it's troublesome to transport masses of ice about. On Pertam, it's all but useless, as there's almost no ice to be found. The rare oasis is something you don't want to waste on generating electric power. It also has the disadvantage of making your hydrogen fuel gauge very deceptive on hydrogen powered ships. The hydrogen stored in the engine, which is not available for any other purpose, is still represented on the fuel gauge. I hoped the devs would have ended this issue by now, but they haven't. Also, the cost of running an O2/H2 generator greatly offsets the perceived efficiency of the hydrogen engine. The generator is too much a power hog.
As far as batteries, they belong on C tier, because, simply, they are only storage. A power source that's dependent on another power source is not, by any stretch of the imagination, superior to the primary source. It only acts as an improvement to the original source.
If would place the solar panel on A tier. While not a good choice to place on a combat vessel, it can generate power nearly anywhere you are, with no need for fuel. In space, stations could be set up to reasonably track the sun even before the custom turret controller, if you're reasonably smart. I've had a number of stations that I built a sun tracking solar array by just setting a rotor to rotate at the same approximate rate as the sun's movement. Every so many hours, I could make a slight adjustment to improve its alignment, since I couldn't match the rate exactly. Even while traveling on a ship, during long trips, I can adjust the facing to maximize solar output, while my heading remains the same. The wonders of drifting.
S tier would be the combination of solar panels and battery. The C tier battery, as I said, improves the performance of other power blocks. Combined with solar panels, it allows a boost for times of high energy usage, as well as keeping power going when the sun goes down on planets. You get limitless free energy, with the downsides being the space it takes, and the vulnerability to attack. It is, fortunately, cheap to repair.
There is a trick for power that many people don't realize, and it has to do with the hydrogen engine. If you find an exploration encounter ship (like all the Pirate Mayday ships) that's using a hydrogen engine for power, you can detach it and take it along. This is kind of an exploit. To keep these encounters functioning, those engines are made glitched so they don't use fuel. As long as you don't disturb them, they'll output energy without using fuel indefinitely. Keep them intact and attach them with merge blocks. Permanent free power. Just make sure to keep them out of view of your turrets, since they won't belong to you, and will show as being enemy blocks.
Wow always aim at sun for turret controller... people used to use complicated scripts timing blocks or strategically placed ion thrusters before.
Issue with Hydrogen Engines is that they are competing with Hydrogen Thrusters for hydrogen, which are THE best thruster in the game. While hydrogen engines are, well, ok? Would rather have a reactor and uranium
Hmmm, this is a nice list and all but you forgot two things, PCU and total power produced, MWH is great if your using all the power that is produced but you have to factor in the cost to produce the hydrogen and well as refine the uranium subtract that from the total power produced, I don't know about anyone else but I rely on batteries mostly for output and have my power generators like the reactors and hydrogen engines on a scrip to only produce power when batteries are below X%
The wind turbine is actually relatively easy to scale *up to 5 turbines*
Build a tower, (more than 7 high, say 10)
Put a wind turbine on top
On the one but highest block, attach a block on each outward facing side (i.e. 4 blocks total)
These blocks then function as mounts for other (horizontally mounted) turbines.
Now you have 5 turbines in optimal position (each turbine does NOT see the others, nor the mast).
Of course, scaling further requires another mast.
Fix the O2 H2 thermodynamics issue and watch that engine fall flat.
Personally solar panels are B tier for me. If only because space stations need power and I normally turn a large asteroid into one giving me plenty of real-estate to put them on. Ye reactors are great but I use them as a backup power incase a npc flies by and shoots one of my solar arrays. Rarely need them as I have batteries as well.
An important thing to consider is pcu cost. And in this case the large nuclear reactor is only 25 pcu and produces 300MW. But if you are playing solo then pcu doesn't matter.
1 hit on H2 tank blows radius of 7 blocks thats diameter of 14 ..how long is your ship?!mhm and 15h combined for space of 4x3x3 exclusively for H2 PROVIDED THAT YOU DONT USE IT AS FUEL!! mehh.. i can store a month's uranium in 1x1x1 and run power grid 3 times stronger on another 1x1x1 ..and no blowup danger like with H2..and i dare you play SE without refinary go ahead ..coz i am sure i can play it without H2 gen or tank..leave your trash contient what are your hours ingame 100-200h coz it cant stand in front of 6000h exp i got..it can be seen by the way you carry yourself
Personally i end up using these power options pretty much every game:
Ground bases: Solar Panels + Batteries for nomal running and Hydrogen Engines as Boosters (when producing or generally using a lot of energy)
Tiny working ships: Batteries and maybe a few solar pannels as range extenders or to recharge in an emergency
Small ships: Batteries for power, hydrogen for trust.
Medium/Large Ships (anything with a jumpdrive pretty much): Batteries for normal running, small nuclear reactors for recharging batteries and jumdrives.
I find uranium to difficult to find and refine to make it my main power source. Using ground stations with hydrogen engines being able to recharge docking ships tends to be a really good option.
If you play a space pirate, you can usually get away with not having to mine. I intercepted a freighter that had a bunch of large reactors and small reactors and a jump drive. The ship was probably 10 times larger than mine but I’m pretty sure I have enough resources to build a base on a moon or large asteroid now as a refueling station for my interceptor.
I make almost everything with batteries as they are available from the start and can be charged through any power source. Only downside is how many can be required to power everything without overloading the grid and the added weight as a result.
Practically speaking, once you get to late game, you will still be better off going all nuclear, supplement wind or solar, and ignoring batteries and hydro engine completely. It's more about how many in-game minutes you will spend on resource collection and how often. the hydrogen engine will KILL your game time, and batteries will take 20% of everything you produce.
I haven't played in a long time, but I have a couple of mods to suggest that make the game much more enjoyable for me
1. I forget the name of the mod, but there is one that puts uranium back on the planet, not just on asteroids, as it used to be. I think its ridiculous to make it available only in space. It is still a rare resource, and often hard to find.
2. Water mod. If there is ice on a planet, it's only logical that there would be a water table. I put the water level far below the ground. So, you have to work to get to it, but its nice to have when you get there. This completely eliminates the need to find ice once you are able to drill down far enough.
I agree the battery is great, but at the same time i believe it deserves an honorable mention since it doesn't produce power, but is more of an electric sucking mosquito that'll keep draining your power if you don't manage it.
I think my ranking would be almost completely opposite in all ways and I would leave off the battery because it only stores power, not generating. It's useful only in combination with other methods. But I use the mod that preservs power cells at the cost of batteries having 0 stored energy at creation. I have not made it to end game mode yet after months and months of playing, so don't have much experience with reactors. I do know that finding uranium in space can be a royal PITA.
hydrogen generator is just... not good for regular play. the sheer amount of hydrogen it eats means if you use it to generate power, you'll only be using that power to charge your drills to get more ice to get more hydrogen to burn to charge your drills to get more ice etc etc
The best energy system is clearly hydrogen due to performance and consumption, but nevertheless the reactor is useful as a backup, it has always been considered that it is imperative to have the 4 types of energy either in bases or ships, batteries, hydrogen panels and reactor , good video, greetings
Hydrogen engines are almost always my early game power source, but literally every base and long range transport I make has one or two as emergency backup power for a beacon or life support.
See my problem with rating Solar over Wind is that Wind is far more consistent with Solar only working during the day and if you want to keep going during the night which unless your in Space is 50% of your day you *have* to pair it with batteries. Plus it can be hard to realize you've expanded beyond your power generation if you only use Solar and Battery because you can slowly bleed power from recharging during the day and losing more at night than what you made during the day and not realize that is whats happening until your getting close to or have ran out of power
1 detail about hydrogen generators that has not been mentioned in the video or the comments, they need a jump start. If you place an empty Hydro gen attached to an empty h2o2 gen it will do nothing, even full of ice. You either need a power or hydrogen source to get the system working.
battery in the rating of power sources.... the battery stores but does not generate electricity. Moreover, a battery is mandatory in any other power circuit simply due to the fact that energy production and consumption may vary over time.
The hydrogen engine sound in a ship sounds so fucking good, and the block is killer too so I incorporate it as much as I can on small grid designs despite it's size
32.6% (approximately) increase in weight to power ratio for the 27 Small Reactor configuration. The fringe benefit of which would be that it doesn't require any Gold to achieve a 405MW output in the same space as the large reactor. The weight difference of 57,116kg is roughly an additional 79% the weight of a Large reactor, so I can see how only gaining the additional 105MW output (34% Approximate) increase for almost 80% the weight of a second Large reactor may seem like a major flaw overall.
However, as stated earlier, it doesn't require Gold and its weight/mass is a negligible factor outside of planetary gravity. Given you will likely be in space by this stage, it's an acceptable trade-off if Gold proves difficult to procure or would be better used elsewhere. The PCU factor is likely the more pressing issue for such a Small reactor configuration, practically speaking.
What would be nice is a larger battery array, similarly scaled to the Small and Large reactors. A Large Battery bank block, like a single 3x3x3 Battery block or other configuration that takes up the same Volume, with a higher storage and output capacity scaled similarly to the reactors would be a nice addition to the power options. Simply considering the PCU factor, having exponentially increased power to PCU "bulk" blocks would help with a lot of issues.
Much like adding tiered or purpose built (as in high acceleration, high efficiency etc with drawbacks) Thrusters and ship tools would help alleviate many issues as well.
All forms of power depend on the situation, conditions, and etc. One excels in another area while it fails in another. A wind power and solar power systems wont be as good for powering deep underground facilities. That's when hydrogen or other reactors would be better. Just as wind would be better for high wind or stormy weather conditions or environment than a hydrogen or solar power plants would be.
Been playing on a server and I can tell you that while uranium is hard to find at the start, by the time you found it once, you're basically set for life. Reactors are so fuel-efficient that you can basically run a production-heavy ship that regularly jumps around for DAYS before the thought of your uranium running out even comes to mind, while hydrogen has the tendency to run out a lot quicker.
And it doesn't help that H2O2 generators are sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo slow. So is processing uranium, admittedly, but uranium lasts for a lot longer than hydrogen does.
The large reactor personally I suggest only for huge production bases or true warships that you will expect to be jumping around and firing railguns a lot - all activities that drink a LOT of power for short bursts.
Another major vulnerability of the large reactor is that it's one big block - if it is taken out, that's a huge cut out of your ship's power, while small reactors, while more expensive overall, allow for more redundancy.
All in all, I consider small reactors to be the true backbone of any good ship, solars to be a great mid to late game passive power generation tool for civilian ships and bases to integrate existing power consumption, and large reactors a specialized tool for the biggest, power hungriest battleships.
Main thing I don't understand is how are y'all using so much power?
I used to play lots on big multiplayer servers (>1800hrs on steam) and most people would have ships of a couple thousand blocks or less.. I liked to build my main ship as a mobile base + luxury yacht so somewhere around 6k-12k blocks (no idea on PCU as this was a while ago) with refinery and manufacturing all on board. Despite this though with the manufacturing running full tilt, several fully upgraded versions of each block I'd still only use a couple MW passively
And when you DO find a uranium asteroid, mining it for half an hour can provide enough uranium to sustain this ship for well over a month.
The actual power sources I used always ended up as a single small reactor + a battery wall for capacitance. Jump drive recharges, flying with ion engines and all that would use the batteries and they could keep everything running for half a day easily then the tiny reactor topped it all up overnight while I slept
Ground vehicle? small reactor + some batteries
Planetary air vehicle? small reactor + batteries
Largeish space vehicle? you better believe it's a small reactor + batteries!
Only exception being very early game or a small grid miner that I'd park inside my yacht, which would just be a single battery, single H2 tank, 4 drills, and a couple small H2 thrusters in each direction. Also ~3 large storage containers to make it look like a burrowing worm as the servers I played on were typically 1/1/1 so I could easily fill those containers
Hydrogen tank is technically a warhead within your grid. A destroyed H2 tank can split your ship in half or blow up a chunk of your base. That's one of the flaw of hydrogen power.
Batteries have a HIGH discharge rate... 12mw in and out. lots of times though i find it best to have lots of batteries, because sure, if you are recharging 4 large batteries on a ship, you only NEED 4 large batteries on base to do that, but that can quickly cap out thing. asteroids, moons, place with no atmosphere, i'll use solar tracking cells, backed by ICE engines unless i find a large supply of uranium for bases. For crawlers and ships i tends to use reactors.
atmospheric planets, i'll run Wind turbines.
i only ever use Hydro engines untill i get to the reactor stage.. no wind turbines.. no solar.. just hydro..
shut down EVERYTHING not being used (apart from spawn block ofc) and set the h.engine away.. sorted
i spend all my SE time on public servers where power management/consevation is essential
Well you *could* consider batteries to be power generation. If you grind them down when they're depleted and reweld them back up, they effectively act as reactors that convert 720 kg of iron, 80kg of silicon, and 160 kg of nickel into 900 kWh of energy. And, of course, iron, silicon, and nickel are much easier to get than uranium - you could run it entirely on stone, if you wanted.
Reactors are the only viable way to power ion thrusters for anything more than a short jump between asteroids. Also jump drives.
If I start on a planet I skip solar, I just plant a base next to ice with enough wind turbines and go directly to H2 engine and batteries. If I start on space(which I prefer) solar and batteries are about the only way to go, until you hit a jackpot and get uranium, ice in space is far more important to staying alive than generating energy. Anyway good list.
I notice you didn't use the term 'nickel reactor' when discussing batteries. 3/10, must try harder.
In my opinion, the best choice is situational. You definitely do not want reactor power on planetary bases and rovers, at least as primary power, because there is no uranium there and you will have to supply it from off-world. Bases, ideally, should be powered entirely by unlimited energy sources so you do not have to constantly maintain them. Rovers, on the other hand, should be powered primarily by a combination of hydrogen engine and battery, with a single reactor for emergency use only (hydrogen-powered vehicles cannot start themselves up if fully depleted, since they require energy to turn ice into hydrogen). Rovers not intended to go far from base can use purely battery power, however. How I like to set up my rovers is with a power management script (typically a slightly modified version of Isy's Solar Alignment Script). The hydrogen engine(s) will charge the batteries, then automatically shut off. They will reengage only when battery power reaches critical level or exceeds power output needs. The reactor is excluded and only set up for manual start, as you will need it to get the rover going again if you accidentally mess up and fully drain it.
1st off there is no end to se. 2nd you missed the small battery. Also the wind turbine is a beggining power block. Batteries are hard to make and carry. The small hydro engine can only rin one jet engine.
i wouldn't consider the battery a "power block" for ranking as the whole point is to determine which one PRODUCES the most energy vs its size and components. Batteries do not generate electricity, they just store and conduct electricity. It is related, but not the same.
However, you NEED batteries to fly around in your ship. if you need to maneuver and all your thrusters starts engaging, you typically have bursts of power costs far exceeding what any of those generators could readily provide without the buffer of stored energy from batteries.
Practically I prefer reactors. Everytime I use hydrogen I find myself constantly having to go mine more ice to power things. In comparison I only have to mine uranium occasionally. Nuclear reactors are also far better for combat because they take up less space.
I think the battery grinding strat is still worth it tbh, the battery components can be made with only stone, so they're a lot more renewable that hydrogen engines or reactors