Rename "Solar Energy Boost" to "Sunlight Intensity"

[Ezer'Arch]

I was working on the planets' infoboxes on the wiki, example http://wiki.micdoodle8.com/wiki/Mars (the box on the right with a red header), and I was wondering about the "Solar Energy Boost" value. What about Venus or any other cloudy or distant planet? I'd guess the "Solar Energy Boost" would be negative since the sunlight would be "weaker" or blocked by the atmosphere and the solar panels would produce less than on the Overworld.

To avoid negative numbers, as "boost" and negative percentage don't go well together (oxymoron as in like "negative growth"), I propose that "Solar Energy Boost" be renamed to "Sunlight Intensity", varying from 0% (total darkness), 100% (Overworld, no boost) and above 100% (Overworld + boost).

 

[JakXLT]

Or just use kW per square meter, which is the actual unit of measurement used for sunlight intensity, 1kW being the intensity at the surface of the Earth and 1.366 kW being the orbital intensity.

Nasa actually already has a lot of values for these on other planets.

Orbital solar intensity of Mercury is 9.127. Venus is 2.164. None of these account for the atmosphere though. Venus would probably be significantly lower, but I doubt Mercury would change much if at all since Mercury only has a thin shell of hydrogen and helium gas.

 

[Ezer'Arch]

Or just use kW per square meter, which is the actual unit of measurement used for sunlight intensity, 1kW being the intensity at the surface of the Earth and 1.366 kW being the orbital intensity.

One of the things that keep me playing Minecraft is the engineering aspect of the techmods I can use in the game (*). I like all those stuff like joules, watts, ohms, flow, kinematics, to calculate the estimates etc... but I'm afraid all this would complicate things too much for players and scare them away (on the other hand, Minecraft with a techpack would be an excellent educational tool, but.......).

Galacticraft already dropped watts in favor of galacticraft-joules per second (gJ/s). A player who actually read the specs will know a solar panel produces 44gJ/s (which gives 4.88W/m², whereas W = gJ/s) on the Overworld, all he needs to know henceforth is how each dimension affects the efficiency of the solar panel, if as much as on the Overworld (100%), less then on the Overworld (< 100%) or more (> 100 %) and do a simple math.

EDIT: We could use this table (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#Intensity_in_the_Solar_System) as guideline for our solar panels, not forgetting the atmosphere counts too (albedo, density and composition). For example, according to that table, the asteroids were supposed to have ~15% of Overworld's sunlight intensity, but in the game they produce nothing.

In game design, we use science as an excuse, not as ruler.

EDIT2:
(*) - I like Minecraft not because of what it is, but because of things the game allows me to do in the game.

 

[Hanakocz]

No other units needed, just put there config for every dimension, not only letting Overworld being 100% and orbital base configed %. I would love to have same config for every planet, moon etc.

 

[radfast]

You are correct that 1 gJ/s is intended to be equivalent to 1 Watt in real life, and that's how I have balanced this new gJ unit in GC3. It is a little different from any of the other units which have gone before in Minecraft, but I hope more realistic. A typical Galacticraft machine requires between 900 and 1500 gJ/s of power to run constantly - that's low compared with any real-world industrial equivalent, but the machines in Galacticraft are on a 'domestic' scale so they have around the power level of tools you might find in a workshop, for example a lathe or a bench saw.

GC Advanced Solar Panel in full sun produces 44 gJ/t. That's 880 gJ/s or 880W. The area of the panel is 9 m², or a bit less than that because some of the area is its support frame, so let's call it 8 m². So it is generating 110 W/m². Compare that with the real-world: solar irradiation is a theoretical 1361 W/m², less on average in reality for three reasons: dispersion and other losses in the atmosphere, cloud cover which varies from day to day, and that's a full spectrum power figure but a solar panel cannot respond to the whole spectrum, only a part of it. Typical real-world solar panel calculations use 1000 W/m² as a rule of thumb for the usable solar irradiation at noon on a cloudless day. Panel efficiency is 11-15% for commercially available solar panels. So Galacticraft's advanced solar panel gets it about right.

Thank you for the link to the table, we should use that. I agree with you it's a good idea to use accurate science data in the game, as long as the detail is hidden from players who are not interested in it.

Generally the planet data and its presentation is under review, but right now the priority is to get it so that players can go to each others' space stations.