Induction Charging
Are you tired of running around with solar panels for a long time until you can unlock those precious portable fusion reactors? Or did you perhaps ever wish you could just charge your power armor from your electricity network?
Then this mod is for you!
Features
Induction Charging adds five tiers of research, from early game to endgame. With the first tier you unlock the Induction Coil recipe, which is the only thing you will need to craft. The coil has 1x1 dimensions and not that much throughput on its own; luckily you can use as many as you like! From there on out you can just research the next tiers to get improved throughput and efficiency.
Did I mention they also work in other equipment grids? They do! They also work in Spidertron, or other equipment grids if you install a mod that adds those, such as the awesome Vehicle Grid mod by Optera!
Review
Xterminator was kind enough to review my mod! I don't think it's possible for me to embed the video here, but you can follow this link to watch the video: Factorio Mod Spotlight - Induction Charging. Thanks Xterminator!
Research
The research tiers are currently balanced as follows:
Description | Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Tier 3 | Tier 4 | Tier 5 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Throughput | 15 kW | 30 kW | 60 kW | 120 kW | 240 kW |
Efficiency | 10% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 50% |
Usage from grid | 150kW | 150kW | 200kW | 300kW | 480kW |
Note that in vanilla Factorio, the Fusion Reactor provides a throughput of 750kW / 16 = 47kW per tile.
Usage
Using the mod is as easy as inserting the induction coil into your power armor grid, and you're done! Now, whenever you stand within range of power poles, the induction coils will automatically charge the batteries in your equipment grid. Do note however that it comes at a price! Per the technology tiers table above, we can see that on Tier 1 you will only have 10% efficiency. This means that (at Tier 1) with a single coil you will drain 15kW (base throughput per coil) * 0.5 (coil throughput multiplier) / 10% (efficiency) = 75kW from your power grid, but will only charge your batteries for 75kW * 10% (efficiency) = 7.5kW. The rest is lost to the inefficiency of wireless power transfer.
Optimisation
If you're short on UPS and you'd like to get as much as you can, then you can change the mod settings (Settings > Mod settings > Map > Induction Charging
) to update less frequently. Here you can change either Update every ... ticks
or Update position every ... ticks
. The higher these values are, the less UPS-intensive the mod will be.
Feature / Change request
I'd love to hear your feedback! If you have some, or you would like to see a new functionality added, then please use the discussion page! I'm looking forward to reading what your thoughts are.
Credits
The following people can be found on the Factorio Discord server.
First, hats off to the amazing person by the name of IronCartographer. He's contibuted tons and tons to the development of this mod, from bringing ideas to the table, to balancing or helping me debug it. Be sure to thank him when you see him around!
Then, a big shoutout to the awesome people who helped me a lot with modding:
- Nexela
- Rseding91
- Bilka - Helpful Wiki Admin
- Gangsir - Head Wiki Admin
And last but not least the people who helped me here and there with small contributions:
- drch
- Rivers
- unique_2
- Rhamphoryncus
- Cruus
- JustTom
- FrozenCorgi
Let me know if I forgot you!
Changelog
Version | Notes |
---|---|
2.0.0 | Rewrite from scratch for the 1.1 update. |
1.5.14 | Removed forgotten debug message. |
1.5.13 | Fixed crash when interacting with equipment grids per 0.16.40 update. |
1.5.12 | Fixed technology research effects not being displayed. |
1.5.11 | Fixed incompatability from 0.16.25 onwards related to incorrect player detection. |
1.5.10 | Fixed incomplete validity check before deleting old GUI during model migrations. |
1.5.9 | Fixed crash when placing any vehicle. |
1.5.8 | Minor locale changes to be clearer and more in line with the mod description page. |
1.5.7 | Updated for 0.16 and fixed GUI not hiding when un-equipping power armor. |
1.5.6 | Fixed accidental dependency on Bob's mods. |
1.5.5 | Fixed incompatability with different types of equipment grids. You should now be able to place induction coils in vehicles added by Bob's mods. |
1.5.4 | Extended the changes of v1.5.3 to also apply to vehicles being driven by players. |
1.5.3 | Added automatic disabling of charging whilst the user has any form of power pole selected in order to prevent Factorio from having glitchy behaviour when placing rows of power poles. |
1.5.2 | Removed 10MJ charge capacity from induction coils, and released a separate mod to address power storage capacity concerns here: the Bigger Batteries mod! |
1.5.1 | Changed mod description. |
1.5.0 | Removed more logging messages (really?). Fixed GUI to be visible by default, and reduced GUI size from 5 lines to 3. Induction coils now have 10MJ of stored energy (included in GUI), and the recipe is changed to produce 2 induction coils, and now also costs a MK1 equipment battery. |
1.4.2 | Removed logging messages (again.. whoops), changed default hotkey for toggling the GUI to "i", and fixed bug when entity is unexpectedly invalidated (namely when using the Vehicle Wagon mod) |
1.4.1 | Changed default hotkey for toggling the GUI to U, and fixed 1.4.0 migrations not running. |
1.4.0 | Added hotkey to toggle GUI visibility (default key: F) and fixed bug where GUI would remain visible when equipped power armor was destroyed without the player dying. |
1.3.7 | Fixed accidentally recursive structure causing stack overflow during save file load when using a large amount of induction coils in a single equipment grid. |
1.3.6 | Fixed another crash related to code execution order. |
1.3.5 | Fixed crash related to code execution order. |
1.3.4 | Fixed several crashes related to userdata invalidation. This fixes the crash when using the Vehicle Wagon mod. |
1.3.3 | Fixed crash when loading game after the installed mods changed, removed unused startup settings |
1.3.2 | Fixed error when creating new game |
1.3.1 | Minor code cleanup and removed background logging |
1.3.0 | Added support for vehicle equipment grids |
1.2.4 | Fixed bug where the first research does not unlock 10% efficiency |
1.2.3 | Removed debugging code |
1.2.2 | Drastic overhaul of the mod. Added research tiers, multiple coils with throughput calculations. Also updated the mod portal page. |
1.1.0 | Added global state and (hopefully) full multiplayer support |
1.0.1 | Fixed technology recipe |
1.0.0 | Initial release |