[MOD] (Alpha 5) BetterPower+ (V5.0.0): Updated 16/07/14

[Architect]

I don't have long, so I'll be brief. There are some significant issues with AA turrets and batteries atm. Im away for quite a while currently so I cant do much about it, however as soon as I can ill be updating. I appreciate what everyone here has said and I have read it, but if you are after a reply from me atm, please PM me as I'm trying to priorities what needs doing in the little time the internet is up here.

Undecided, thank you for all your help so far, both in this thread and in the All in One modpack thread for finding issues and presenting solutions. A thank you I shall re apply once I can get access to proper internet.

[Undecided]

I don't have long, so I'll be brief. There are some significant issues with AA turrets and batteries atm. Im away for quite a while currently so I cant do much about it, however as soon as I can ill be updating. I appreciate what everyone here has said and I have read it, but if you are after a reply from me atm, please PM me as I'm trying to priorities what needs doing in the little time the internet is up here.

Undecided, thank you for all your help so far, both in this thread and in the All in One modpack thread for finding issues and presenting solutions. A thank you I shall re apply once I can get access to proper internet.

Hah, you're the one doing all the work! I just write complains about broken things. 

I have lots of experience as a modder and debugging myself -- but only in other games. I haven't really learned the Rimworld engine yet, otherwise I'd probably try and release hotfixes myself rather than dumping the work on you guys. Once I learn enough I'll try to lend you a hand if I can, since you sound pretty busy. Anyways, for the sake of easy reading and preventing duplicate reports by others in this thread, I'll compile the bugs so far:

Broken

- Nuclear lantern light: emits no visible light
- Nuclear waste hauling: cannot be hauled via stockpile settings, even though it can be hauled for lantern constructions. I suspect syntax-related error confusing "active" nuclear waste with "decayed nuclear waste."
- AA turrets mounts: The moving gun turret sometimes spawns off-center of the base -- as if the turret had been actually been built one tile south-west of its actual location, and occupies additional space. This can cause a second bug wherein demolishing the AA turret leaves a permanently blocked/unusable tile.
- AA guns functionality: don't seem to block drop-pod raids on top of you (the ones that land at your orbital trade beacon). Not 100% sure if this a bug with BP+ or AiO mod conflicts
- Conveyor Belts & Doors: Numerous instances of conveyor belt lines teleporting goods into nearby doors up to ~7 tiles away, even if the loading/unloading portions of the belt are nowhere nearby and there is a solid wall separating the conveyors and the doors. The items are still set to forbidden as if they had fallen off in transit.
- Hopper bug: Your future patchnotes suggest it may be solved already, but just in-case, I'll mention it. The AI keeps trying to haul food to my nuclear reactor's hoppers. While the hoppers are currently set to accept all item types, including food, they are also filled with uranium. This means the AI is trying to fill and already-full hopper with a different good. The result is the AI will "freeze" in one location, constantly trying and failing to deliver food to the hopper unless the reactor has no access (i.e., walling it off). Hopefully will be solved by your hoppers automatically changing goods based on where they're built.

Suggestions: Improves gameplay, but not necessarily anything "broken"

- Nuclear waste decay alert spam: The "A barrel of nuclear waste has decayed" alert can get pretty spammy, even with only one active reactor. I imagine it must get spammy if you run multiple reactors. Recommend disabling this.
- Disposal of nuclear waste: A quick stop-gap fix might be to allow incineration at the crematorium. A more realistic but harder to code solution (i.e., to do later on) might be to allow waste to decay further from decayed nuclear waste to metal or rocks (lead, basically). Or alternatively, add a breeder reactor which can remove waste and produce tiny amounts of uranium.
- Nuclear waste exploit: nuclear waste piles can have devastating effects on the morale of enemy besiegers and raiders. I'm sure some players will exploit this. I'm not sure if the game engine will permit it, but ideally you'd want to reduce the morale malus it has on raiders.
- Coal spawning: Coal spawns in one- unit stacks and spirals outwards, which not only makes creating conveyor chains confusing to players but can also clog up stockpiles if a conveyor chain dumps coal in the stockpile. (The AI seems to not bother stacking coal unless the stockpile is already full and/or it's manually hauling more coal to the stockpile). A system where coal spawns in one large stack rather than multiple 1 unit stacks would be far easier to manage.
- Visibility of conveyor direction: It's really hard to see what direction the arrow is pointing, even at max zoom. It only gets worse on snow-laden maps or when it's raining. Please make the arrows larger or brighter.

[Somz]

Yeah I'm modding rimworld as hard as I can but...
Is it just me, or the coal miner only generates 3k (-300 or so for running the miner)
while the geothermal generator produces 3,6-7k juice?
Because to hell with it, I ain't gonna build and haul no stuff if it only results in less power income.

[Jerethi50]

Yeah I'm modding rimworld as hard as I can but...
Is it just me, or the coal miner only generates 3k (-300 or so for running the miner)
while the geothermal generator produces 3,6-7k juice?
Because to hell with it, I ain't gonna build and haul no stuff if it only results in less power income.

not yelling or anything but HE ALREADY , lol j/k, but seriously this has been discussed before, the concept is that you can mine enough coal to run two coal burners, from one coal miner, and you can place those two burners anywhere you want, instead of having to plop them on a steam geyser, plus that is why there are conveyor belts, if you really don't want your colonists trekking across the whole map every time coal pops up, you can wait until you amass some, toggle the conveyor belt stockpile thingy on, and your villagers will go and load that, sending them on their way home, they make the trek out and back only once. ideally.

[Somz]

not yelling or anything but HE ALREADY , lol j/k, but seriously this has been discussed before, the concept is that you can mine enough coal to run two coal burners, from one coal miner, and you can place those two burners anywhere you want, instead of having to plop them on a steam geyser, plus that is why there are conveyor belts, if you really don't want your colonists trekking across the whole map every time coal pops up, you can wait until you amass some, toggle the conveyor belt stockpile thingy on, and your villagers will go and load that, sending them on their way home, they make the trek out and back only once. ideally.

Then I'm most likely retarded. Didn't notice the coal output is that much.

[Architect]

It's cool man XD It's not very obvious, and frankly needs a little more balancing anyway as a geothermal generator is possibly a better option depending on the size of your base anyway. It's on my to do list for the next update for sure.

[Mihil33]

will there be a thingy/machine/research that will round robin items on the conveyor belts ?

edit: Oh and i noticed that the Coal Miner doesn't want to output coal to  the conveyor belt nor the belt feed. Did that changed or what ?

[seonder]

First of all, I really love your mod!! i want to thank you for this very masterpiece!

Now the question :
A) what do I do with all depleted nuclear waste?
I really like to know something more bout it.

B) I'm struggling with conveiors  I put 'em in place but they cant carry any coal from my mine to coal burner. Pls enlight me!

Thank you all!!

[supruzr]

Yeah I'm modding rimworld as hard as I can but...
Is it just me, or the coal miner only generates 3k (-300 or so for running the miner)
while the geothermal generator produces 3,6-7k juice?
Because to hell with it, I ain't gonna build and haul no stuff if it only results in less power income.

not yelling or anything but HE ALREADY , lol j/k, but seriously this has been discussed before, the concept is that you can mine enough coal to run two coal burners, from one coal miner, and you can place those two burners anywhere you want, instead of having to plop them on a steam geyser, plus that is why there are conveyor belts, if you really don't want your colonists trekking across the whole map every time coal pops up, you can wait until you amass some, toggle the conveyor belt stockpile thingy on, and your villagers will go and load that, sending them on their way home, they make the trek out and back only once. ideally.

The amount of infrastructure required to actually get this working makes the geothermal generator objectively better in every way. The coal economy introduced by this mod is a joke.

[Architect]

The amount of infrastructure required to actually get this working makes the geothermal generator objectively better in every way. The coal economy introduced by this mod is a joke.
[\quote]

Which, as I have said on numerous occasions now, is a known issue born from the fact that this is my first ever mod of anything. It's on my list of things to fix as soon as I am home long enough to start working on it.

[fraz]

The research description for the coal feeder states, "Allows you to brutalise a hopper to force feed your coal plant with far less coal being wasted, and therefore higher output! May have a tendency to catch fire." However, when I look at the coal feeder's config file, it looks exactly like a hopper except that it's restricted to only hold coal. Is there any actual difference between a coal feeder and a hopper, aside from the coal feeder's restriction to coal only?

[Somz]

The research description for the coal feeder states, "Allows you to brutalise a hopper to force feed your coal plant with far less coal being wasted, and therefore higher output! May have a tendency to catch fire." However, when I look at the coal feeder's config file, it looks exactly like a hopper except that it's restricted to only hold coal. Is there any actual difference between a coal feeder and a hopper, aside from the coal feeder's restriction to coal only?

I guess the answer is "not yet" then.
In any case, leave the poor guy alone, guys, he's doing great considering everything, don't be too greedy.
Y'all folks help out if you can, or start modding his mod to your liking or anything but it'd be nice not demanding anything in my opinion.
Besides, coal or no coal, roof drilling and lazor drilling steam vents are alone worthy of praise... x)

[Architect]

That's because the difference can be seen in the actual code for the Coal Plant Using a coal feeder generates more power per piece of coal because 'less is lost during the loading process' or some other bull shit excuse I made XD You can use a hopper, but coal feeders will give you more bang for your buck.

[Jerethi50]

That's because the difference can be seen in the actual code for the Coal Plant Using a coal feeder generates more power per piece of coal because 'less is lost during the loading process' or some other bull shit excuse I made XD You can use a hopper, but coal feeders will give you more bang for your buck.

Ironically .... I didnt even know this, this makes coal a bit more useful

[Architect]

That's because the difference can be seen in the actual code for the Coal Plant Using a coal feeder generates more power per piece of coal because 'less is lost during the loading process' or some other bull shit excuse I made XD You can use a hopper, but coal feeders will give you more bang for your buck.

Ironically .... I didnt even know this, this makes coal a bit more useful

Well, unless that part has broken since alpha 3 seeing as that was the last time I tested it, but I dont see why it would have.