Solar Panels mathed out

Started by Zaez_Cerebrate, August 19, 2020, 08:01:05 AM

Zaez_Cerebrate

Okay...so, this has been plaguing me for months. As most of you know, solar panels have been an issue for people for a long time. This has been particularly difficult to track because of the length of the run time of the item. There's been no easy way to calculate this, but today I will share my findings with you all. Be warned, there's going to be a LOT of math in this post. For the simplest answer though, I will give that first.

Solar panels run for approximately 5.52 to 5.818 real life days. Beyond that...unfortunately it starts to get a little bit muddy.

I will now list my raw data for those who wish to compare their own notes, but I truly wish for this to be put to bed for good. This will be broken up into four different segments. How a solar panel uses power, leading into trickle charge and day length, my own experiments with recording numbers, and my results.

The first topic is how and when a solar panel uses power.
So then, we all know that a solar panel produces the energy when the game is in its day cycle. The solar panel only eats up its durability when its being used in this way. Now, that's the easy part.

Next, day length.
The day officially starts at 7:48 AM. This is the time that a solar panel is starting to generate 100% power.
The day officially ends at 7:08 PM. This is the last minute that a solar panel stops generating 100% power.
Now, where it gets tricky is that there's small amounts of power generated before the morning starts and after the day ends. I'm going to be calling this trickle charge.
From approximately 6:06 AM it starts generating 10% power, and it climbs 10% approximately every 10 in-game minutes until it's maxed out at 100% at 7:48 AM.
The same thing happens at night, but in reverse. From 7:09 PM to 8:50 PM it drops roughly 10% until it shuts off for the night.

Now, I tried to use this information to just calculate how long a solar panel should run. This is where the math starts.
So, assuming that trickle charge DOESN'T affect durability I calculated that the length of pure run-time is 47.22%. (7:48 am to 7:08 pm is 680 minutes. 680/1440=0.4722)
Assuming trickle charge DOES affect run time, it would be 61.39% (6:06 AM to 8:50 PM is 884 minutes. 884/1440 is 0.613888)
Then, we can assume trickle charges affect the durability in the percentage that they take. So, for example, if it's currently giving 40% power, it uses 40% of the durability.

Now then, according to the code of the game, the durability of the item lasts for 3 real life days of constant charge.

https://github.com/AtomicTorchStudio/CryoFall/blob/master/Core.cpk/Scripts/Items/Generic/ItemSolarPanel.cs

However, as we just pointed out, it does not constantly use charge.
Using these percentages and the information we know from the game, we can safely say that a solar panel will run for these amounts:

6.35 days (3 days / 0.4722)
4.89 days (3 days / 0.61388)
5.52 days ((0.61388+0.4722)/2=0.54304. 3 days / 0.54304)

So once more, we can SAFELY say that a solar panel WILL run for at least 4.89 to 6.35 days. I wasn't quite satisfied with this, so I wanted a more hands-on data collection method.

Finally, I decided to measure the numbers as directly as I possibly could.

This is mostly going to just be a data dump, but I simply ran my solar panels and recorded every time (that I could) when a durability point ticked away. I failed a handful of times simply due to me not catching it at the precise minute. Here are my numbers though.

Rechecking solar panel viability

Starting the solar panels at exactly 9:10 am according to my alarm clock on 7/25/2020

Went from 100% to 98% at exactly 11:51 AM or 80.5 minutes/percentage

It hit 94% at 5:08pm!

From 9:10  to 17:08 7 hours and 58 minutes or 478 minutes. The change now is 79.67 minutes/percentage.

6:39 pm dropped to 93%

This means it's now taken a total of 7% in 9 hours and 29 minutes, or 569 minutes. This means it should be 81.29 minutes per percentage.

Turned to 90% at 10:48 pm!

This means it's taken 10% in 13 hours and 38 minutes, or 818 minutes. This means it should be 81.8 minutes/percentage

It hit 81% at 11:59pm

84.68

Hit 80% at 1:34 pm

This means that I now have an average of 85.2 minutes/energy

Turned to 79% at 3:08 pm

This means that the average is 85.62 minutes/energy.

Went to 78% at 4:44 pm

The average is now 86.09. I hate everything.

Just hit 77% at 6:20 pm (12:20 pm igt)

The average continues to increase. 86.52.

Hit 76% at 7:55 pm

This means my average is currently 86.46


Now then, the important part. The averages of all of these numbers is 83.783 minutes per unit of durability.
83.783*100 = 8378.3 minutes
8378.3 minutes/60 minutes per hour = 139.638 hours.
139.638 hours/24 hours per day = 5.818 days.

Analysis of the data

ALL of this to suggest that...we still honestly don't EXACTLY know how long the solar panels will last. Our BEST estimate is that they last somewhere from 5.52 days to 5.818 days. I know this isn't the answer that we're all looking for, but until we know for certain if trickle charge affects it per how much it's using, if the day cycle actually affects it at the same rate, etc etc. There are too many variables too account for to get truly accurate numbers. I tried my absolute best, and I hope you all can get some level of closure from this. Thank you and have a good day!

Lurler

Just want to add a small thing - in real world they last much longer than 5 days since your electric grid doesn't use power all the time when you are offline. And for most players (especially for solo players in PvE) they can easily last as long as two weeks. Even when I was playing and using them to get lithium and oil they still lasted around 10 days for me.

MGS

Quote from: Lurler on August 20, 2020, 05:56:57 AM
Just want to add a small thing - in real world they last much longer than 5 days since your electric grid doesn't use power all the time when you are offline. And for most players (especially for solo players in PvE) they can easily last as long as two weeks. Even when I was playing and using them to get lithium and oil they still lasted around 10 days for me.

yes my average was 10 days also