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Electricity Mod Design Doc


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Start by making a Generator using a lot of copper wire by either painstakingly wrapping it around a coil, or having your windmill do it for you. Then do it again to make a Motor. You now have a means of converting wind power into electrical power, and then into shaft power. What can you do with it? Well first off, it's very convenient to transfer shaft power over wires instead of gaudy shafts. It's also easier to store and can even be used in a few unique ways.

Silicon, you may of heard of it. You can get it by grinding down sand in a macerator. It has magical properties, by imbuing this magic into components you can create what is known as a Smoke Fairy. If you overload your electronics the Smoke Fairy will escape and tease your inability to electronics properly. Catch it and it will repair your component. Kill it to shut it up. But wait, how do you even get this macerator? Well you have a motor right? Just hook that up to a spinny-bit and feed sand through it. Easy. So now you have silicon so you can use it to make 'intelligent' things.

Now that you have that, you must learn the art of Signals. Signals are like a type of power that is controlled. You use them to tell machines what to do. For example: A relay will only allow electricity to pass if the signal is high. This is good, now you can remotely control your stuff at the press of a button. You still have to wire them, but what if I told you that you can use up a little power to have WIRELESS!? That's right, WIRELESS. Wireless signals only need a transmitter and a receiver to deliver signals across the air via radio. They're short range but you can extend this with Signal Repeaters. Sounds great right? It really is, but they cost power to use and tend to mis-fire during thunderstorms, so probably avoid using them for anything reliant on reliable instructions.

So you have power, and a way to control it. Awesome. What's next? Build a computer. Well OK lets not get ahead of ourselves, we're going to want better ways to control signals first. This is where your silicon really comes in handy. You're going to make chips. Did you know that every single gate in a computer can be made out of NAND gates? Check out the NAND game, it's really cool. They're called Not And, these pretty much these have two inputs and one output, and blah blah just play the NAND game it explains all this. Point is, you can chain these together on a circuit board to make chips to control your electronics in advanced ways. Like building a computer. Anyway now that I've gone mask-off I expect to see full-sized calculators in the not-distant future.

With all of that out of the way, finally we can get to the fun part; power. Electricity comes in two flavors: Voltage and Current. If the Current gets too high then the wires will get too hot and the Smoke Fairy will escape. If the Voltage gets too high then the Smoke Fairy will be strong enough to break free. You want to keep both within the cable's limits which can be accomplished by using Resistors to restrict flow, Inductors to smooth inrush current, and Capacitors to smooth inrush voltage. Relays, Switches, Fuses and Breakers can be used to cut off power completely to an area. Ideally you want to have as much power go through a wire as possible without overloading it, so by using components in a smart way you can build what is called a DC-DC converter. This will step up or down the voltage while preventing the current from getting too high. You need to really plan this out because it's easy to make a mistake and have to start over. With clever Signal use, you can completely automate the DC-DC to produce whatever current/voltage you want whenever you want. If you'd rather, you can also choose to to make AC power instead. In these cases all you need is a transformer. By adjusting the winding ratios you can multiply or divide the voltage from one end to the other. Obviously this won't work as well with DC unless you switch it on and off to simulate AC.

How do cables work? Different metals have different conductivity; both for heat and power. Better cables have less resistance and therefore produce less heat, or can otherwise better transmit that heat away from themselves. In short, your cable material determines its current capacity. On their own, cables can just be exposed to the environment. As long as you don't touch them, you're fine. Just hang them in the air and the air itself will act like an insulator. Ideally though you'll want some material to cover them. The more insulator you add, the higher voltage you can go before things go catastrophic, but the less current you can handle due to the reduced ability for the cable to dissipate heat. In general, more insulating means less current and more voltage, and more power overall.

 

 

Features:

Generator/Motor - Converts motion into electricity or visa-versa

Electric Forge - Uses a large amount of electricity to heat up items

Heat Turbine - One side hot, one side cold, power out the side

Lead Acid Battery - Long-term storage which packs a punch

Single Use Battery - Oversized AA battery. Exciting results if you accidentally recharge it

Portable Tools - Extremely powerful tools, as long as you can keep them charged!

Tech Tree - Make machines to make your life easier as you make more machines to unlock new tools

LED Lights - Do you like RGB? Who doesn't. Use signals to make any RGB colored light you want. Except for black. Doesn't work like that

Regular Lights - Probably should have put this one first. Light up your life with bulbs that burn out over time. Bigger bulb = bigger light obviously

Arc Lighting - Extremely primitive light. Want some light without needing a lamp? Two wires across an air gap and VERY high voltage will do the trick.

Chargebugs - Eats electricity to multip- HEY!!! GET AWAY FROM MY WIRES YOU LITTLE PESTS! God damn it. These are worse than rabbits.

Power Armor - Don't get too excited, it's just coal plates. Provides no protection when not powered, so it's amazing if you can power it, otherwise it sucks really bad.

Tazer - The power of Thor in your hands. Deals little damage but anything not scared off by the noise it makes will be scared off by its seriously painful zap.

Plasma Rifle - Tazer with range. Super impractical but fun as hell. Do *NOT* fire in a thunderstorm unless you want to experience Thor's power first-hand.

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Cast 10 metal to produce 10 blocks worth of Low Current Cable (100 blocks per Ingot)

Low Current Cables are a pain in an ass to create, but can be made in extremely large quantities. They're also idea for long-distance signal transport due to their very cheap recipe.

2020-03-30_03-35-50.thumb.png.56a7ac7a8c2fed06edaf8f48a8419ad9.png

Cast 100 metal to produce 10 blocks worth of Medium Current Cable (10 blocks per Ingot)

The standard cable, Medium Current Cables are the main workhorse of your electrical grid. They can transfer a respectable amount of power and are pretty efficient at it.

2020-03-30_04-20-19.thumb.png.12caa371c8ae99d8778e6b6acb09850d.png

Smith 1 ingot to produce 1 block worth of High Current Cable (1 Block per Ingot)

Because you can. Insane current capacity and extremely low resistance and inductance.2020-03-30_04-15-31.thumb.png.b5973cda0f5461b886517ff546a9b280.png

Edited by Omega Haxors
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Macerator: Drop ore chunks inside to get nuggets without needing to use your hammer
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Widowmaker Log Splitter: Spins around dangerously. Place logs to cut them into firewood without needing to use your axe. Watch your timing or you'll take some heavy damage.
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Panning Machine: Drop sand on top, it will vibrate causing panning drops to appear in the tray
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Edited by Omega Haxors
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These ideas cause me to contemplate my next base location with ample acreage for a wind-farm full of windmills driving generators.

Those generators feed the high voltage lines running to my foundry supported by hammers driven by motors. All of which will reduce the mechanical shafts now cluttering my production area.

Where do I send the $?

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On 4/5/2020 at 8:41 PM, Anthony Mooney said:

These ideas cause me to contemplate my next base location with ample acreage for a wind-farm full of windmills driving generators.

Those generators feed the high voltage lines running to my foundry supported by hammers driven by motors. All of which will reduce the mechanical shafts now cluttering my production area.

Where do I send the $?

Not taking donations, at least not yet.

Just need to learn the API and set up the systems.

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Meet the chargebug, the primary pest and antagonist of your electrical network.

Sometimes when lighting strikes, it lands upon an insect instantly killing it. There's a chance however that instead of killing it, it will simply transform into a chargebug. They're only capable of staying alive by consuming electrical charges, but are thankfully decked out with electrically-sensitive antennae which allow them to track it out. Due to the time period they'll usually die before being able to find any, but there's a good chance they'll make their way to an electrical grid if one exists. If one reaches yours, they will take a little power to keep themselves alive.

Chargebugs rely on consuming electricity stored within improvised batteries their body. This process produces yellow light as a byproduct, which escapes out of their eyes letting them see in the dark. The more electricity they hold, the stronger this light is. You can quickly tell how healthy one how brightly its eyes glow.

 

Modes:

Sneaking - The chargebug is very quiet, and sneaks up to your electronics for a bite. Its light will usually be its biggest tell.

Walking - After having their fill they'll just harmlessly and chipperly walk about. They won't bother you and are actually quite friendly.

Running - If you attack one, it will go on fours and sprint away. They're very fast and if given the chance will fly away.

Hopping/Flying - When given good clearance, they can use their legs to hop into the sky and fly away from danger. If you can cancel this with an attack.

Desperation Attack - If cornered they'll consume a large portion of their energy to hit you with a hydraulic punch that does T3 damage.

Breeding/Bulking - Being consistently well fed will either cause them to reproduce or grow up by 1 tier. If comfortable it breeds, if threatened it grows.

Dead - Running out of electricity will cause them to suffocate to death. You can harvest them for metal shavings or rare items.

 

Either running dangerously high voltages (which it cannot safely harvest) or constantly attacking chargebugs will toughen them up, making them harder to deal with. You will have to choose how to deal with the creatures. You can either isolate your grid preventing them from ever getting to your electronics, you can tame them which will allow you to harvest them for resources, or you can attack them which will make them stronger and drop better stuff.

 

Here is a semi-complete model of the chargebug jumping away from danger

image.png.de38a0001c0f9e21877b71cd78689807.png

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