APCs not charging

[Edgelord]

Bug Description:
APCs on Sulaco do not charge when fed a direct powerline (sometimes?)

Steps to reproduce:

Sorry but it's a bit hard to follow format on this one. I joined late as an MT (the round is still going on at the time of this posting) and apparently a CE sabotaged the Sulaco's power system. After painstakingly getting the engine online with 0 power, I noticed some APCs weren't charging. I used my multitool and checked the line, I checked all of the settings, I even rebuilt some of the non-functioning APCs and they still would not charge despite having every reason to. Maybe I'm an idiot, but whatever happened to the power grid before I joined prevented these APCs from charging. Maybe the logs could help find out what was wrong. Another engineer came to the same conclusion as I did.

Sorry if this is confusing I am very tired.

[HalfdeadKiller]

Did you use a T-ray scanner to trace all the power lines from the non-charging APC to the SMES output? Because there may have been a broken wire. Did the power line have power? How much power was in the line? Were the SMESs outputting? How much were they outputting?

[WyattH]

It would be interesting to know the whole power output and load at the time, I know temporarily(for about 2-10 seconds) APCs won't recharge when there are changes to the grid because of how it has to re-calculate flow across the grid(a problem worse in large stations with more wiring)

Besides that I know at least other servers calculate charging an APC vs running a fully charged APC as additional load to bring the APC back up to full power while running the stuff on its own circuit.

Neither of these things were probably the issue, but since I wasn't there it's the only input I can give ~_~

edit:

I just read the scrollback from the minichat and it seems like you couldn't get the pacman's to work

0) put on wired knot
1) bolted down
2) phoron fed in
3) APC in the room the pacman is in needs to be online
4) flip on the generator

[apophis775]

if the APC wasn't "on" it wouldn't charge. Also, if your only outputting say, 50k power, and you have 20 APCS each drawing 5k power, only 10 APCS are going to function.

Also, it put a generator on the "main power network" it feeds power to the entire network, not just the room your in, unless you cut a cable.

[Arachnidnexus]

But yeah it also depends on the SMES settings because if you draw in too much power on the SMES it starts leeching power from the APCs. For some reason atmos and medbay and engine room always seem to get hit first if the SMES pulls in too much power.

[Edgelord]

It would be interesting to know the whole power output and load at the time, I know temporarily(for about 2-10 seconds) APCs won't recharge when there are changes to the grid because of how it has to re-calculate flow across the grid(a problem worse in large stations with more wiring)

Besides that I know at least other servers calculate charging an APC vs running a fully charged APC as additional load to bring the APC back up to full power while running the stuff on its own circuit.

Neither of these things were probably the issue, but since I wasn't there it's the only input I can give ~_~

edit:

I just read the scrollback from the minichat and it seems like you couldn't get the pacman's to work

0) put on wired knot
1) bolted down
2) phoron fed in
3) APC in the room the pacman is in needs to be online
4) flip on the generator

I found out that I couldn't get the PACMANs to work because you need to have equipment enabled on the APC for it to work. That was my own fault, but to try and answer all of your questions the APC was completely on (it wasn't just one, it was several), I don't remember the specific load, but I know that the total power exceeded it. I used my multitool to test the wires in the same room as the APC and it said over 900k power. I fiddled with the APC settings several times and tried every conceivable combination of options. Out of desperation I wired the shard to the grid.

Knowing that the power directly going to the APC exceeded 900k, and that I had all of the settings turned on, what could it possibly be?

[HalfdeadKiller]

I'd have had to have been there. APCs in most of my time doing Sulaco Engineering never really gave me much trouble.

[RadiantFlash]

I was there, helping Edgelord with this. Certain APC's for rooms, were just straight up broken. They wouldn't register any power, despite as said by Edgelord, over 900K+ power in there wires. I even tried remove the APC, and building another to replace it, and it also would not register the power.

[RadiantFlash]

Ahah! I have found out the issue! So, the code for the powernet/smes's are out of date compared to current baycode. The way it is now, you have to set up the smes to not have tooo large of an input, even if you max the output. You just end up with brownouts. The best way to do it, is to have the SMES units set at 250KW input, and 200KW output, and it powers everything just fine. The APC's don't show "low power" because it's already being "Inputted" into the SMES. It's kinda finicky with that. But Yeah, I ran into this, and thats how to fix it.