Generator Damage and Wind Turbines

[ShadowR]

Hi fellow ARK players and Devs.

I have a serious issue with the way electricity works on Scorched Earth. The generator basically lasts 1 day then it's broken. Now do the devs seriously expect me to log in every single day to fix the generator ? That's absurd as i'm working long hours and don't have the time to maintain the base every single day and i'm sure many other players who work for a living and don't play ARK for a living feel the same way. Also i'm going away for a week ? what then ? On the normal maps this is no issue, just stack gas in the gennie. 

Current setup: Wind Turbine connected redundantly to a generator.

When the Wind turbine stops working (65% wind) my generator kicks in, but the issue is the generator does not turn off when the wind turbines are active ?? Seriously why have they not implemented something like this. Surely the generator will then last longer in the first place if it powers off when not needed.

Solution:

Either implement something like the above mentioned where the generator turns off when the wind turbines are active and/or at least extend the time it takes for a generator to take damage. I I have no issue with the generator taking damage as i enjoy the realism factor, but i can honestly not have an enjoyable experience with the thing breaking every day. Every time i log in the base is raided clean. Why ? because there is zero defense with the current way electricity works.

Thanks for reading and looking forward to your constructive replies.

[1nFamous]

Hi ShadowR

I am having the exact same issue.. i agree with you that it is impossible to fix the generator once a day. Maintaining your defenses like this is a pain. I would appreciate it if the devs pached this gennie deterioration  - even if it breaks once a week for example.. that should be fine. but not everyday. I hope the turrets do not lose HP aswell.. that will mean that your base is basically unprotected if you do not spend the entire day repairing everything.. 

 

Another solution will be to put capacitors or battery boxes in the item list. This can store your electricity and supply you for a few hours when your gennie breaks or when the turbines are not working.. 

I personally feel that this is just ONE of the major issues of this uncompleted expansion.. Let's just hope for the best

[madfretter]

A  few quesitons:

Where are your generators located?

What kind of walls are they behind?

Location on the map?

Height that generator is from the ground?

[BlackSoul]

5 hours ago, 1nFamous said:

Another solution will be to put capacitors or battery boxes in the item list. This can store your electricity and supply you for a few hours when your gennie breaks or when the turbines are not working..

It would make more sense to have batteries to store electric power (similar to water tanks). At the moment there's no point to have multiple wind turbines as they all shut down at the same time, with batteries it will work.

Some people suggest to put wind turbines on different locations, far from each other. But there's a limitation on cables range, can't really place them far.

Also generators enclosed in a house (sand protection) with multiple AC units (heat protection) shouldn't decay to my opinion, or at least not decay so fast.

[Argon]

I've got a life to live. 18 credit hours this semester and social obligations, and I've defended the devs vehemently on this DLC expansion numerous times. However, this issue is making it extremely difficult for me to continue siding with them on this. I can't always login every day, and even though I play on a PVE server this is causing issues with my fridges. Things spoil faster on this map, so the loss of power for a day basically sets me back immensely. 

[Multivitamin]

What are you storing in the fridges?  Don't make kibble until you need it. Eggs last longer. Farm meat when you need it and turn it into jerky for eating it will last longer. Most things you can toss in a preserving bin and keep for a long time. If your trying to mass store meat then I'm not sure why. It's going to be harder on this map to keep food longer simply as an aspect of the map. Don't expect the same ease you had on the island of doing a meat farm once a week. It's going to be a chore. 

[DeweyDecimal]

I feel like the obvious simple answer is to add an auto-shutdown feature when the turbines kick on. 

I'm trying to figure out how to set up my tribe's electrical needs. I'm afraid it's going to be an expensive arrangement of turbines and a couple backup generators. 

[Argon]

Well what would make the most sense to me (to give a reason for wind turbines in low wind areas). Tbh, I figured that's how it would work since you could hook them up to the same electrical cable network, but if we're talking about increased electrical functionality, I wouldn't mind that option being available for regular generators too. In that the backup generator(s) do not turn on unless the initial generator runs out of gas or gets knocked out. 

[ShadowR]

Glad to see that fellow ARK players feel the same about this problem. I really hope they implement some sort of fix soon. 

[madfretter]

Ok ,so I place mine last night and tried a few things to slow down the decay that didn't help...

- built it in the middle of my base so the storms dont get to it

- built a small adobe room around it as well

It still decays.... Tonight I am doing to put a few a/c machines around it to see if that helps... It's only 10 metal and 5 electronics to fix, but the timer is an issue.... Here's one small bright side, the timer seems to stop when in stasis mode.

 

[BlackSoul]

11 hours ago, madfretter said:

It still decays.... Tonight I am doing to put a few a/c machines around it to see if that helps...

That's the first thing I've tried, placed 8 AC units above the generator, they don't help.

[mrnotso]

Definintely one of tthe more frustrating issues in this DLC (aside from an early access game selling DLC, no kibble for vanilla dinos on scorched earth, etc). Hey devs create a new engram that costs twice as much as a normal generator but kicks on and off when turbines are up or down. Really quite simple sounding. The storms already kick the power out AND they decompose DAILY?????? Cmon guys, your shareholders must really love the "hours played" statistic. Page right out of the Destiny playbook. Lets get it together fellas

[madfretter]

I appreciate the added challenge, but the rate is way too much..And the penalty? Potentially losing all of your eggs, jerky and kibble... They should rename generators to griefers.. It doesn't even make sense. Any weather conditions that are so severe that they could completely destroy a metal generator in a day would also kill any humans near it in a fraction of the time. At the very least the generator shouldn't despawn when its at zero, it should just shut off until we are able to repair it again. I wonder if that's why the servers are so inconsistent..maybe they despawn when they overheat too.  At least give us an option to have generators linked so one clicks on if another goes.SInce the generators are the only item affected like this I'm hoping it was a mistake or they are testing this to see how annoyed we get. There is a reason that you have PRIMITIVE servers, for people who don't want electricity. Well, we WANT power, consistent power. You can make it hard to get, but it needs to be possible. You can't tell us that survivors can build a generator with found scraps, but can't build something to keep it saFe. Don't call your game "Evolved" if you are going to make it impossible for people to do just that. You have basically confirmed that people who play scorched are not allowed to miss a day, ever, at this risk of losing months and months worth of work. Not cool guys, not even close.

[madfretter]

Ok... So I gave up on the generators and decided to DE-evolve my self and use preserving bins... BUT, I found 2 turbines in drops and decided to give them a try... I put them on a high hill (not a mountain) above my base, BOOM, no power loss ever. Not sure if I just got lucky, but we have not lost power once in 24 hours, even during the lightning storms which I found odd. Theres nothing special about the set up, just two right next to each other and wiring running down to our base. Were in the Far north, maybe south is harder?

[DeweyDecimal]

1 minute ago, madfretter said:

Ok... So I gave up on the generators and decided to DE-evolve my self and use preserving bins... BUT, I found 2 turbines in drops and decided to give them a try... I put them on a high hill (not a mountain) above my base, BOOM, no power loss ever. Not sure if I just got lucky, but we have not lost power once in 24 hours, even during the lightning storms which I found odd. Theres nothing special about the set up, just two right next to each other and wiring running down to our base. Were in the Far north, maybe south is harder?

You must have a high wind % where you built. 

My tribe seems to be sticking to preserving bins for the moment, we've got a generator and a couple turbines built/found, but we're waiting to set up our 'grid'

[madfretter]

2 minutes ago, DeweyDecimal said:

You must have a high wind % where you built. 

My tribe seems to be sticking to preserving bins for the moment, we've got a generator and a couple turbines built/found, but we're waiting to set up our 'grid'

They do seem to move all day, not fast though... I don't even know how to check the percent that everyone keeps talking about .I dropped them and just figured it'd be a waste of time. How do you check the percent, is it through the turbine or menu?

[DeweyDecimal]

1 minute ago, madfretter said:

They do seem to move all day, not fast though... I don't even know how to check the percent that everyone keeps talking about .I dropped them and just figured it'd be a waste of time. How do you check the percent, is it through the turbine or menu?

On Xbox, you hold the 'back' button (left of xbox home button) and it shows in the top left of the screen. 

I don't know the PC keybind.

Been trying to work out a 'backup generator' system, where the generator only runs when the turbines fail. But there's no auto-shutoff for the gens, so it still requires a tribe member partying attention to how we're getting our power. 

If we didn't need it for the chem bench, I'd say we forget about electricity altogether. But we need it for that, and if we're going to have power, we might as well have fridges too.

[madfretter]

2 minutes ago, DeweyDecimal said:

On Xbox, you hold the 'back' button (left of xbox home button) and it shows in the top left of the screen. 

I don't know the PC keybind.

Been trying to work out a 'backup generator' system, where the generator only runs when the turbines fail. But there's no auto-shutoff for the gens, so it still requires a tribe member partying attention to how we're getting our power. 

If we didn't need it for the chem bench, I'd say we forget about electricity altogether. But we need it for that, and if we're going to have power, we might as well have fridges too.

I'm on xbox... I'll check tonight...

If it's just for the chem bench you don't need consistent power, It'll just cost you 2 gas to run it each time and you wont need to leave the gen running.

[madfretter]

Yup.... 100% for us.... We are in one of the most dangerous areas up north, maybe the game rewards tribe with constant power for dealing with the onslaught...lol

We moved up north to get away from all of the kiting in the south... They got us a few times, so we moved. Been great up north, it's tough to survive, but our animals and survivors level up quickly and resources are plentiful. My 120 argi tamed out at 145 and is already 195, it's been 3 days....lol

I took a flyby the kiters bases, they're highest animals are 40-50 and their base is crap. Maybe if they'd spend less time kiting and more time actually playing the game they'd be in better shape to defend their base from what's coming.

[ANTIASSASSIN25]

Wind Turbines take damage too

[ANTIASSASSIN25]

This needs to be their number one priority to fix

[ehuhoser]

33 minutes ago, ANTIASSASSIN25 said:

Wind Turbines take damage too

Mine have yet to damage, maybe yours is being attacked?

For the other poster, I can spend all day around my shop around 4 hours and I've notice around 400 damage done over various storms.  I can come back 24 hours later and its just fine.  However this might be the issue for you depending on your tribe members and how many and the time they are on.

First and foremost, the more you are around your genny, the more it takes damage over time so if you have more ppl like tribe members around the more it will damage and they should be helping repair it as well.  I repair mine once a day when it hits around 400 remaining.  I can come back and its just fine and close to where I left it.  Not sure but I'm on my own private online server with a tribe of 3.  I'm on that server on average about 4 hours a day.  

[Smash]

Wow, like 20 posts and no-one has cottoned on to the fact that you can have more than one turbine.

Constant power equals 0.35 x0.35 x0.35 x0.35 = 1.5% chance of all turbines in a 65% wind failing.

Too high?  5 will reduce the failure chance to about 0.5%

The only thing that seems to perhaps need fixing is that sometimes when the wind percentage gets rolled it occasionally catches all windmills that are close to each other.  Even then this could be by design to make people space them out.

[DeathLord]

i got the best solution to this prob since the devs dont want us to use generators we gotta build in the sand where there is 100% wind. you can go inland a little but the wind turbines seem to have about 20-25 tiles worth or range for their power so gotta build that base mostly in sand if you want power. also there are some water spots in the sand so you wont need to worry bout water or power and with crops you can get all the dino food you need just make sure you build it on metal and off the sand to avoid the Alpha Death Worm or your gonna have a bad day.

[UnSettled]

On 2016-09-18 at 0:51 AM, Smash said:

Wow, like 20 posts and no-one has cottoned on to the fact that you can have more than one turbine.

Constant power equals 0.35 x0.35 x0.35 x0.35 = 1.5% chance of all turbines in a 65% wind failing.

Too high?  5 will reduce the failure chance to about 0.5%

The only thing that seems to perhaps need fixing is that sometimes when the wind percentage gets rolled it occasionally catches all windmills that are close to each other.  Even then this could be by design to make people space them out.

From my research, the above is incorrect.  I have tried multiple windmills and they all turn off every (in game) day at the same time.  In an 85% spot all the windmills turn off every (in game) day @ 1100 and back on @ 1500.  i have done this with up to 5 wind mills placed at different times of the day. doesn't matter. I watched it though multiple game days and it was very consistent. it doesn't appear to be an odds roll at all. feels very scheduled.