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Unknown Reactor & Solar Panel Bug

CptSavarus shared this bug ago

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Been seeing a bug with Reactors & Solar Panels for a long time now. Have tried to identify & isolate it but it happens completely at random & for no reason and seemingly can't be reproduced deliberately.

My game version is current.

I've tested both with and without mods - the bug is prevalent either way.

Saving, exiting to the main menu & reloading usually fixes it for a short time but it always comes back.

Turning the blocks off & on (either individually or in groups) or hitting the R (reactors) key only seems to confuse the problem.

I'm reporting it as one bug, even though it affects both Reactors and Solar Panels because one is never affected without the other also being affected.

This screenshot shows a reactor that contains fuel but is powered off. As you can see it's still generating 61.26 MW

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1574913741

This shot shows one of 40 solar panels on the same ship, all of which are pointed directly at the sun & all of which display 4 green squares in the indicator panel.

All 40 panels are generating the same 46.97 KW.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1574913176

I have the same bug

Replies (4)

Burstar ●

The Reactor image looks like a bug to me.

The Solar Panels will generate power up to the lesser of max power demand averaged over all the panels, or their individual max power available.

In your example, I would check your batteries. Are they full, or charging at max rate? That tells you that the solar panels aren't generating full power because it's not needed.

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CptSavarus ●

10 Batteries - all full at the time of the screenshot, turned off & with no charge-state checkboxes marked.... however this one also came on like a bug. The Solar Panels were reading max output 5 minutes earlier, at which time the batteries had already all been charged to max & turned off for at least an hour.

From what you say it sounds like the actual bug is that they were reading max output when they shouldn't have been (not as I'd thought, that they're now reading very little when they should be reading max).

The change in output reading happened when I turned on all the thrusters & gyros (I normally keep them all turned off to conserve power) and moved the ship slightly to test that everything was working. When I turned everything off again the reading changed to what you see - almost like moving the ship caused the Solar Panels to refresh their output status, where previously it'd been stuck.

I'm convinced the problem is larger than just a polling rate thing though. In another world I'm running 8 solar panels and one small reactor (no batteries yet) on a static grid. The solar panels are aimed at the sun via a pan/tilt device and sun rotation is disabled.

In that world I've tested with everything turned off and the solar panels cannot decide whether they're outputting anything or not. One minute they're outputting max & I have plenty of surplus power, the next minute they're outputting nothing at all and the HUD bar is reading overloaded - even though power requirement has not changed.

Again, toggling the reactor on & off or hitting the R key in that world also confuses the problem further.

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Burstar ●

That behaviour you describe with the HUD bar going red is a symptom of your grid being overloaded. What's happening is a block (*cough* Refineries and Assemblers) that demands more power than the Solars (which will show max power at the time) can supply overdraws, overloads the grid which shuts down the block making the demand, which relieves the power stress (solar output will plummet) and when the block tries to come back on again overloads the solars repeat ad nauseum.

This becomes more obvious with batteries because when the block is temporarily shut down, power will charge the batteries a little bit which adds a lag time between each overload.

Don't get me wrong, you could have a bug in there, but I think low power problems should be ruled out first.

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CptSavarus ●

I think you're misunderstanding me.

I say again, I tested with everything turned off. Assemblers & Refineries were off. There was very literally nothing trying to draw power except for the astronaught suit while sat in the control seat, yet one minute the power bar is reading surplus and the next it's reading overloaded.

The change seems to happen between entering & exiting cockpit / flight seat / control station and it will change both ways, seemingly at random & even when power demand has not changed.

Exiting to main menu & re-loading seems to fix the issue but often it comes back after a few minutes of gameplay.

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Keen Support ●

Hello,

Could you please provide us with more information regarding the issue you reported? To report a bug into

our system it is necessary to have reliable steps to reproduce in order for programmers to fix it.

Any additional information would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you.

Kind Regards

Keen Software House: QA Department

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CptSavarus ●

Thanks for the response.

Regrettably I'm unable to provide accurate steps to reproduce, as I have no idea what causes these bugs to begin with & have never been able to reproduce them deliberately myself. They appear & disappear at random and are common to every new world I create since many updates ago.

Every time I build anything that has both Solar Panels and Reactors, I see power-related bugs of varying description with multiple different symptoms that seem to change from one occurrence to the next, making the bugs extremely difficult for me as a player to isolate & identify.

I say bug*S* because the range of different effects seems to preclude the likelihood that all effects are caused by a single bug.

Here is the blueprint of the ship I used to capture the screenshots linked in my post above. Having both Solar Panels and Reactors it is a typical example of a build that's prone to power-related bugs.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1581488778

From what I've seen, Solar Panels would appear to be the problem.

I say this because Reactors on their own work fine nearly all the time, whereas with no batteries or reactors, Solar panels still exhibit strange behaviour at times.

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Ondrej Borz ●

Hello, CptSevarus,

as this thread is rather old now, as well as last comments here, and also the links do no longer work, so I can not try it on your exact affected ship, nor view the images. Are you still experiencing it nowadays (v197.181)? If yes, can you share more relevant info if the behavior changed anyhow through the time and various game updates and fixed? Can you share new BP, please?

Or if you are no longer experiencing it, thank you for confirming that this issue was fixed/solved meanwhile.

Thanks in advance.

Kind Regards

Keen Software House: QA Department

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CptSavarus ●

Hi again Ondrej,

As per our last exchange, I currently don't have a PC capable of playing SE, so am unable to confirm how the game is behaving for me at present.

I do remember that for some time before & after I submitted this report, there were a number of problems with solar panels being reported by many people and that their behaviour was being adjusted with each new update.

I don't recall any of the updates outright fixing the behaviour that I reported but certainly it became less pronounced of an issue with each subsequent update.

As you say, since this report is now very old, I'm happy for you to close it & mark as resolved.

Thanks once again for coming back to me on a report.

I imagine you have a lot of these old reports to wade through.

Keep up the good work!

Kind regards

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Ondrej Borz ●

Hello, CptSavarus,

thanks for coming back and confirming you did not experienced it ever since it any big reproduction rate. Will close this issue now. When you will be able to play again and will observe this issue or any other, please open a new thread with all necessary information.

Kind Regards

Keen Software House: QA Department

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