Mobile Solarpanel

[Skydock Command]

Vheicals WILL NOT have a power limitation in my oppinion. I wouldnt realy like to play OP3 if they did.

[White Claw]

Vehicle power was already discussed in another thread. I was really just trying to say we shouldn't completely rule out the idea of a mobile power source yet.  

[Skydock Command]

Well, it might work. But WHY? WHY would they need one? The satalites are moblie, just not the reciver. The recever CANT be moblie, because the power is beamed down using a small laser or something, so if the recever moves, no power.

[Freeza-CII]

Well to have a solar power vec you need a solar sat.  I doubt you would beable to get one all the time in single player and this units seem to be useless in Multi.

A nice simple solution to this is to have the missions programed with Tokamak or greater instead of just tokamak.  I think it uses tokamak because there the fastest to set up and dont require a sat and there cheap.  MHD and Geo Cons dont need a sat but there a little more costly and a Geo con needs a vent.

[Sirbomber]

That's the point of the Mobile SolarPANEL - it's a solar panel with wheels and an engine.
No sats required.

[Freeza-CII]

Solar panels arent very effient there is a reason why Solar panels power plants take up acres and acres of land.  It would either have to unfold into some thing bigger then a starport or have a sat in orbit.

[Skydock Command]

That is why I said it needs a sat, but in the unit discription thing it says:

The satellite in high planetary orbit collects sunlight and converts it using photovoltaic cells into electricity, which in turn powers an array of MASERS, the microwave equivalent of a laser.  These produce a narrow, high-energy beam of microwaves that must be aimed precisely at the small target the Solar Power Array provides, but which can be collected by a relatively small antenna array with negligible losses.  This antenna converts the beam back into electricity, which in turn is broadcast for use by colony structures and vehicles.

We cant use a mobile one. If it didnt need a sat, it would have to be 4 starports and only work half the time.  

[White Claw]

Part of why current solar collectors are so large is because existing photo cells are still very inefficient. I would imagine that solar cells of the future would be more efficient.

BUT - all of this is pointless anyway if we're talking about a planet that has heavy cloud cover. (Another case of WTF is our goal for "design discussions"?)

[Freeza-CII]

Since the Solar sats beam there energy down with a focused Microwave it would go through the cloud cover.  The photographed venus using microwaves i believe and microwaves go through clouds here on earth i would imagen ones powerful enough to carry significant loads of power would blast right on through.

[White Claw]

I suppose my comment about the cloud cover was about having a mobile solar collector/panel instead of a mobile solar receiver.

And I think they actually mapped Venus using radar... I suppose it could be a microwave powered radar.

[Freeza-CII]

But to have a sat up for some thing that is mobile it seems alot easier to just build a tokamak since a panel array wouldnt work.

[Skydock Command]

There wouldnt be any sun for it to coloect. The cloud cover on Venus is THICK. Miles thick. You cant get much good sun though that, but all sun that does get though is trapped, and thats why venus is so hot.

[White Claw]

I'm not really sure that I see an advantage to a mobile power source either. I know you could move it around during an attack, but it would have much less armor and hit points than a building. If it was jumped by armed vechs, it wouldn't have a chance.

I can see the "keep away" advantage, but that's the only one I can think of. Unless it becomes part of the campaign somehow.

[Skydock Command]

I dont see how it would. Its to useless.