Power Plants - Which is the best? + How to get rich

General discussion related to the game goes here.

Moderators: Balthagor, Legend, Moderators

merlinx_at
Captain
Posts: 124
Joined: Oct 07 2016
Human: Yes
Location: Austria

Re: Power Plants - Which is the best? + How to get rich

Post by merlinx_at »

Conclusion:
- for a small country it makes already a difference... the daily cost for Maint. and Raw Mat. are not much but will hit the small budget
(eg. i start as Austria)
- build time?... i wait a little longer rather then burn money

... but - we are Supreme Ruler!
- in my actual game i loose 18,64 M per Day / 6.804 M per Year :o ... just to fire my plants = its like burning the money!
especially petrol (~13,7 M/d) hurts... i could sell it for much more + i import some of my petrol to cover my needs.
- i never repair damaged Power Plants like Coal or Petrol after annex and scrap them after some time (favored damaged one)
- i build just new small Other and Hydro Plants to cover my import - they are much cheaper then the big one and have just a little less output
- a complete switch from Petrol & Coal will take much time and is maybe not worth it nor possible... but i will reach a spread from under 20% for Petrol and Coal... but this damn country's in the east like petrol and coal :-?
Last edited by merlinx_at on Oct 23 2016, edited 1 time in total.
SRU 9.0.73.1 (Steam) / W7Pro-64 eng
merlinx_at
Captain
Posts: 124
Joined: Oct 07 2016
Human: Yes
Location: Austria

Re: Power Plants - Which is the best? + How to get rich

Post by merlinx_at »

Leafgreen wrote:Never thought about it, but I suppose the more high tech plants would raise GDP/c. Well, should. Found this today over on a different forum.
Cutting taxes will, OVER TIME, result in higher GDP/C. Also, what sort of work your people are doing determines how much they make, as well. Working in a nuclear power plant pays rather better than picking fruit on a farm. Finally, employers pay only as much as they have to in order to get people to work for them. The more jobs there are, the higher everyone's wages rise as competition for labor increases.

In short, build production buildings. The better they are, and the more of them that there are, the higher GDP will rise. This does, of course, make it more expensive to produce things in your country, so margins will decrease, and some low-priced activities such as agriculture and water production may ultimately become cheaper to import than to produce domestically.
You know... for the dozens of AI problems, commands/controls/techs that don't work they still made an incredibly complex, highly detailed and fun game with long-term replayability that did a million and one things right.
it would be interesting and looks not impossible... the ingame info shows no staff for Plants nor Goods... but Goods Ind, Cons & Mil have staff and the will also not be shown.
after i built some of these (and nothing else), i had become an info that my unemployment rate is dropping under 3% -- so i annexed Hungary :D
maybe Plants have it too, but much less which will have no big impact on GDP.
Goods ... 1.000-10.000? ... Plants 20-200?
SRU 9.0.73.1 (Steam) / W7Pro-64 eng
Avkin3g
Corporal
Posts: 7
Joined: Nov 19 2016
Human: Yes

Re: Power Plants - Which is the best? + How to get rich

Post by Avkin3g »

Would you say that Hydro is the best starting in 1936? Playing as USSR.
lorddrakenwode
Warrant Officer
Posts: 28
Joined: Sep 14 2010
Human: Yes

Re: Power Plants - Which is the best? + How to get rich

Post by lorddrakenwode »

One of the most vexing problems that I never could get conclusively answered is to what extent fuel costs are expressed in the unit production price of electric power (and all other goods that consume other goods, in point of fact). Does that figure of $223 per MWh include the price of the coal, uranium, oil, etc. that was consumed in its production?

Because if it IS, then it seems to me that we have a double-counting problem. After all, on the budget screen, if you sum all the "Production Price times Units Produced" on each screen, you get a number that should be very close to the "Production" number on your expense screen. However, if the price of, say, the coal burned in your power plants is included in the unit price for electric power, then you're paying once for the coal in the production price of the coal, and once AGAIN for the coal cost included in the electric power production cost. In fact, you're paying for it at least several MORE times, in industrial, consumer, and military goods, both for their own coal consumption, and also their electric power consumption, as well.

And if it is NOT, then we have an implicit difficulty in estimating the actual price of all goods that consume other goods to be produced. If that $223 per MWh DOESN'T include the cost of the coal burned, then in order to calculate actual cost, we would need to add in the value of the coal consumed, wouldn't we?

Never did get a clear answer, even from the developers, about which is true, or if I'm wrong somehow about this.

However, the circumstantial evidence I was able to gather suggests that the FORMER case is at play. The reason I say this is because, if you assess the power plants, the plants are ranked roughly like so for construction cost, cheapest to most expensive:
Petrol/Coal
(significant gap)
Fission
Other
Hydro

And like so for cost of fuel consumed per unit of power produced:
Other/Hydro
Fission
Coal
(ENORMOUS gap)
(Another enormous gap)
Petrol

Seriously, the Petrol power plant is awful. Even the Saudis should never use it.

Now, I played with using different plants, and found that when I was running Petrol plants, the displayed "Production Price" for electric power was a great deal higher than when I turned them off, under the same GDP/c and all other parameters. Shifting Petrol to Coal will precipitously drop unit production price. Shifting from Coal to Fission will drop it further, and shifting from Fission to Hydro will drop it even further. If you're the sort to play on into the future, I have found that it drops even further when you convert your entire power grid over to Adv. Solar, which is what I do as soon as I can get my hands on Stirling Solar Collectors.

This effect seems to propagate through all other resources that depend upon electric power, almost as though the cost of each consumed resource is also included in the production price of the resources depending on them.

Operating on that basis, I crunched some numbers, and found that no matter who you are, no matter what your situation, you should have scrapped all your Petrol power plants before you did, no matter how quickly you did. Seriously. They're THAT bad. The break-even point for converting Petrol power production to any other kind of power production is instant.

However, it gets a little more complicated for the rest. Coal is obviously cheapest out of the gate, but the second most expensive in an infinite time scale, because of the coal it has to burn. Meanwhile, a lot of the more advanced plants have no fuel costs at all, but varying maintenance costs. What this means is that if you imagine each power plant type on a price over time graph, a lot of the lines cross over each other at different points in the future. The bottom line that I found, though, is that coal STAYS ahead of all other power plant types for at least a few years.

If you're planning on playing a game for five game years or less, build nothing but coal. In fact, strongly consider scrapping Hydro plants in particular and converting them to coal, especially if you're starved for Industrial Goods at the beginning of a game - the IG cost of Hydro is off the charts, and thus the IG you get back from scrapping them can help a lot in getting your economy moving. If you're planning on playing for longer, I strongly recommend working toward Adv. Solar, as they seem to be one of the fastest to overhaul Coal for the top spot, and stay there for dozens of years, certainly longer than most players are likely to keep playing.

I could crunch more specific numbers if I could get a clear answer on exactly what is going on in the game mechanics, but until then, this is a little too much speculation for my tastes.
lorddrakenwode
Warrant Officer
Posts: 28
Joined: Sep 14 2010
Human: Yes

Re: Power Plants - Which is the best? + How to get rich

Post by lorddrakenwode »

Coincidentally, whatever power plants you choose to build, you should ALWAYS build them in CITIES ONLY, as long as room is available in cities. In fact, it is a good idea to scrap anything that is NOT a power plant in all your cities, and relocate those facilities elsewhere if necessary. Reason being, there are techs that apply percentage bonuses to power production in cities, and these seem to apply to all power production in all cities, including any power production that is done by power plants located in cities. Nice easy way to dramatically boost your overall power production capability and efficiency.
YoMomma
Brigadier Gen.
Posts: 768
Joined: Jun 27 2015
Human: Yes
Contact:

Re: Power Plants - Which is the best? + How to get rich

Post by YoMomma »

lorddrakenwode finally someone that understand the game :)

If i play a multiplayer game solo i always turn petrol into coal and few years later there are tons of nations with big treasury.

One thing to note, altho i said it earlier, i think hydro give you stronger gdp. Big maintaince, but no raw resource needed and big maintaince prolly mean good paying jobs.
Gameplay 1st
lorddrakenwode
Warrant Officer
Posts: 28
Joined: Sep 14 2010
Human: Yes

Re: Power Plants - Which is the best? + How to get rich

Post by lorddrakenwode »

In short, I don't think there is any such thing as "good paying jobs," apart from the total dollar value of all productive output of your economy. I have found it is better to think basically just in terms of your total "Production Cost" compared to your population, when evaluating impact on GDP/c. In these terms, the Petrol plants are actually BEST for GDP/c, but end up being worst for your treasury, because they make all the rest of your goods far less competitive for sale on the global market. Exporting is your friend, as basically anyone, and if you have high prices killing your trade profit margins, that will be bad for the bottom line. It is therefore in your best interests to find the cheapest, most efficient method of production, not worry too much about how that will affect GDP/c, as GDP/c will mostly take care of itself.
YoMomma
Brigadier Gen.
Posts: 768
Joined: Jun 27 2015
Human: Yes
Contact:

Re: Power Plants - Which is the best? + How to get rich

Post by YoMomma »

I know, but im pretty sure every expense, even facility maintaince improve your gdp, how much for everything that's the question. Just my experience, building hydro gives me strong gdp.
Gameplay 1st
Post Reply

Return to “General Discussion - SRUltimate”