I've been looking into new sources of mechanical powe... They're almost useless! (for multiplayer)

[Oktin]

First I want point out that full (currently) small variant of windmill is enough for one person IF the power generated is used just to progress. The problem starts to arrive when there is a constant need to run quern and helve hammer 24/7 because everyone want to eat, have armor, tools and several others! Solution is simple - MORE POWER! So more sails were made. And now the rabbit hole starts... Those were taking a lot of flax already and with halved yields it will be just much more. However bigger sails were introduced... but for as much as DOUBLE the material cost they provide a mere 25% increase in power - which means it's just a flax sink as if there's ever too much of it... at this point it seems better to just build dirt tower and start another "small" windmill or make the exitnig one uglier to avoid turbulences.
But not everything is lost! Waterwheels were introduced too and they are... okey... they do the minimum to be usefull... to make it possible for a second person to do their work too... a bit underwhelming but it has it's place... I guess?

In conclusion - quadwindmills will very likely be even uglier so the turbulences can be avoided and the bulk of the work still achieved alongside potential waterwheel as a bonus to slightly relieve the main power source of work when two or more seraphs happen to have a need for mechanical work at the same time.
Personally I would like to see a bit more oomph to waterwheels whilst bigger sails could use straight up double the output they already have.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 hour ago, Oktin said:

Personally I would like to see a bit more oomph to waterwheels whilst bigger sails could use straight up double the output they already have.

the tradeoff for waterwheels is that they're always available. They give you a choice.

Windmills make up for the sometimes-not-windy days by allowing you to get more work done when they are operating.

[LadyWYT]

First off, welcome to the forums!

1 hour ago, Oktin said:

Those were taking a lot of flax already and with halved yields it will be just much more.

Bigger farms, my friend. It's a very good idea to have a field or two set aside for grain crops specifically, and keep the other for vegetables. And those are farms that only need to be made once, no real maintenance after save for removing the weeds before planting. Finding the seeds to plant said farms with should be fairly easy as well, since wild grain crops have had their spawn numbers boosted, so they can be found in bigger clumps now.

 

1 hour ago, Oktin said:

However bigger sails were introduced... but for as much as DOUBLE the material cost they provide a mere 25% increase in power - which means it's just a flax sink as if there's ever too much of it... at this point it seems better to just build dirt tower and start another "small" windmill or make the exitnig one uglier to avoid turbulences.

To my knowledge, the bigger sails build much bigger windmills. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the statement here, but if the 25% power increase is just the comparison between one set of sails, keep in mind that the smaller windmills can only have five sets of sails attached at a time. The larger ones, I believe, have a lot more.

As for the turbulence factor, I think that's meant to stop the Frankenmill designs.

1 hour ago, Oktin said:

But not everything is lost! Waterwheels were introduced too and they are... okey... they do the minimum to be usefull... to make it possible for a second person to do their work too... a bit underwhelming but it has it's place... I guess?

As @Teh Pizza Lady already noted, the strong point of waterwheels is that they're an effective source of constant power. Wind is stronger overall, but the wind doesn't blow all the time whereas the water keeps flowing.

 

1 hour ago, Oktin said:

Personally I would like to see a bit more oomph to waterwheels whilst bigger sails could use straight up double the output they already have.

Seems a bit much to me, but of course, 1.22 is still being worked on, so there may or may not be changes like this before stable launch.

[MKMoose]

2 hours ago, Oktin said:

Those were taking a lot of flax already and with halved yields it will be just much more. However bigger sails were introduced... but for as much as DOUBLE the material cost they provide a mere 25% increase in power - which means it's just a flax sink as if there's ever too much of it... at this point it seems better to just build dirt tower and start another "small" windmill or make the exitnig one uglier to avoid turbulences.

Keep in mind that the 25% increase is in just one set of sails, but a single metal windmill rotor can take 10 sets of large sails, making the full rotor's power equivalent to 2.5 small sails (granted, at a flax equivalent of 4 small rotors, as well as 12 iron ingots - a very large cost for unimpressive returns). I would personally want the power from a single set of large sails increased to at least 40 kN up from 25 kN, considering how much space it takes up and the material investment necessary to build it, but for now we're still early into the prerelease and there's a lot of space for adjustments.

 

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Seems a bit much to me, but of course, 1.22 is still being worked on, so there may or may not be changes like this before stable launch.

The large windmill costs more than 4x as much as the small one (including 12 iron ingots, which is also a progression gate), visually has ~4x the effective sail area, and it takes up 8x the volume or 4x the area if you want to avoid wind turbulence. I think it would be quite reasonable to at least give it 4x the power as well instead of the current 2.5x, because what's the point otherwise? With the current balance, you can build a small quad windmill for a lower cost and just 20% lower return in spite of the turbulence, and optionally make it ugly and sprawled-out to avoid turbulence for 60% higher return than a single large windmill.

As an additional note: the two windmill sizes currently have the same rotational speed, so I think it would make a lot of sense to make the large windmill rotate slower, but with significantly higher torque (due to a longer lever that the force is applied on), to introduce a more meaningful difference between them.

 

In the current implementation of wind turbulence, a quad windmill needs 10 blocks of separation between the central axle and each rotor to avoid the penalty. Kind of hideous. I feel like the simplest way to improve wind turbulence is to make the minimum distance between windmills greater along the axis of rotation, as well as make the turbulence strength fall off with distance and accumulate with larger numbers of windmills. These changes would further encourage side-by-side windmills while disincentivizing hyperoptimization, and would also make the whole mechanic more approachable.

Edited February 21 by MKMoose

[Oktin]

54 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

the tradeoff for waterwheels is that they're always available. They give you a choice.

Windmills make up for the sometimes-not-windy days by allowing you to get more work done when they are operating.

For now with the amount of work that needs to be done they can supplement windmills, I would lie however by not saying that I am looking to seeing it's large variant

38 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Bigger farms, my friend. It's a very good idea to have a field or two set aside for grain crops specifically, and keep the other for vegetables. And those are farms that only need to be made once, no real maintenance after save for removing the weeds before planting. Finding the seeds to plant said farms with should be fairly easy as well, since wild grain crops have had their spawn numbers boosted, so they can be found in bigger clumps now.

Problem is we already plant any flax seed we have to the point going nearby those fields mess with the game - unloading models (including bears, rust creatures and traders), hovering in inventory stops working, ghost players appearing etc.

38 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

To my knowledge, the bigger sails build much bigger windmills. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the statement here, but if the 25% power increase is just the comparison between one set of sails, keep in mind that the smaller windmills can only have five sets of sails attached at a time. The larger ones, I believe, have a lot more.

Ah, I've should used there amount of power per flax used - which is 20/64 and 25/128 - and that's not only worse in terms of efficiency but it can't even challange the quadwindmill 250kN vs 4x100kN (not including wind speed and slight power loss over using extra axles to avoid turbulences)

Edit: Haven't noticed MKMoose replied while I was writing my own and with this reply as a whole I see the points but my conclusion is different - already ugly overworked windmills will need to get worse just to barely keep up

Edited February 21 by Oktin

[williams_482]

Wouldn't a very simple fix for the goofy quad windmill designs be to make windmills only work if they are facing the wind?

Wind currently has a direction, which is obvious visibly when it's blowing hard (thanks to particles) and quite consistent within a given region. That direction seems to always be in line with the cardinal directions. When I first started I assumed that would be relevant, and deliberately set up my windmill so that the wind would blow into it (before expanding to the standard quad design as power needs increased and I learned direction was irrelevant). 

If windmills would only work if place perpendicular to the direction of the wind, and suffered a compounding loss of power for each block placed between the windmill and the direction the wind is coming from*, then we would very quickly be in a place where the optimal windmill construction has the sails laid out in a fairly realistic manner, for realistic reasons. 

*I'd probably say the game should check twenty blocks out from the windmill at the same radius as is currently used to check if the windmill has an obstruction preventing it from turning. The actual impact of an obstructing block should have a roughly pyramidal distribution, with a block or two near the edges and 19 meters out from the sails having very little impact, but a block directly in front of the windmill hub significantly reduces efficiency all by itself.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

2 hours ago, williams_482 said:

Wind currently has a direction, which is obvious visibly when it's blowing hard (thanks to particles) and quite consistent within a given region. That direction seems to always be in line with the cardinal directions. When I first started I assumed that would be relevant, and deliberately set up my windmill so that the wind would blow into it (before expanding to the standard quad design as power needs increased and I learned direction was irrelevant).

Wind does have a direction!

I wouldn't put it past Tyron to eventually get around to making that wind change directions...

[Skala]

Honestly, it would be awesome to tech all the way up to spare faring :P

[Bumber]

9 hours ago, williams_482 said:

Wouldn't a very simple fix for the goofy quad windmill designs be to make windmills only work if they are facing the wind?

Wouldn't players just stack the windmills on top of each other instead?

[williams_482]

9 hours ago, Bumber said:

Wouldn't players just stack the windmills on top of each other instead?

That doesn't seem any easier than placing windmills next to each other, and doesn't seem like much of a realism problem either. We don't/didn't do that in the real world mostly for structural reasons that don't really apply in Vintage Story.