Dear Frontier: Reboot the Power Grid

[UNSCSpartin]

It always bothered me that when I built a power plant that it would cost me 10000 dollars per minute to run even though I was only using a fraction of the power the plant was capable of generating. This ended up being a money real pain early in the game.

I understand that a base running cost makes since maintenance, employee salary, and facility consumables ect. Here is what I would suggest and facility consumables is the key. Have a small base upkeep (say 4000) that cost reduction upgrades could affect. However, you would also pay for how much power you are actually using. At 100 dollar per power unit, you would have a total potential upkeep of 10000. This could allow for Solar panel upgrades to be put on virtually any building and will/would reduce power consumption/production of power plants during the day during the day.

Snow and sand storms could nullify the panel upgrade benefits for a time after the storm as they would be covered by snow or sand. It would need to be removed. This doesn’t have to be visualized it could just be a cool-down timer on screen. With multiple plants green electricity reduction would be distributed equally with multiple plants

Other thoughts bellow

Geothermal Plants: Perhaps a geothermal plant could be a thing the upfront cost might be high, but might have a very low flat upkeep cost.

Prioritize Power: In a power outage it would be great to be able to prioritize what buildings get powered when power limits are exceeded. This is might get a bit complicated when you take into account multiple grids.

Facilities Active Hours

Some facilities have open/closed hours. Setting hours could determine when power is being used. Facilities could still have a base upkeep. Some facilities such as hotels, shelters, bathrooms, and research centers may just have a static upkeep as they are on or off 24-hour building.

Underground powerlines: More expensive to place than standard powerlines, but virtually impervious to weather damage. Earthquakes if that’s a thing, perhaps not so much.

Back Up Power Upgrade: In a power outage prevents complete power. This probably should not apply to sabotage. I imagine this power upgrade would take up all slots.

 

[Hykelion]

Just an addition or alteration to your Backup Power Upgrade.

Make it a researchable item, that can be applied to all core buildings with upgrade slots.
Functions would be:
1. Lowers the overall main power consumption if main power is on by, lets say, 50-75%.

2. If main power is off or insufficient, each building with a Backup Generator module would have power for a limited amount of time for like say, 5 minutes. 10 minutes for 2 Backup modules & so on.

3. Backup generator modules render core buildings that have them immune to sabotage, but only if half or more than half the slots are occupied with a Backup module.
Why not just 1? Because having just 1 slot occupied by the module & automatically making it immune to sabotage would render the item as game breaking/unbalanced.

4. If main power is on, have each installed Backup power module provide a small amount of excess power than can be supplied to the entire grid. Like say, 2-5 power units.

 

[Oxythief]

I don’t like the changing cost model. I prefer fixed.

It makes figuring out your cash flow easier because eventually, you will use up 100% or as close to it as possible. So fluctuating cost that will always be maxed in ideal settings away seems pointless. I would be annoyed watching my cost go up every time I place a building or fence, just more trouble with no reward. So, if this was instituted, I would like a switch that lets me set it to 100%.

This assumes linear scaling and not exponential with cost and output. Exponential would offer some interesting strategic gameplay options, but I feel that the modules already address this and create an adequate way to choose between cost and output. So in the end I think it would be redundant and annoying while failing to add anything of substance to gameplay.