https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1u3oiv/engineering_why_are_wind_turbines_spaced_so_far/
In real life, windmills can't be spaced too closely together or else they'll risk losing efficiency. This isn't the case in Surviving Mars and that can lead to efficient set ups looking visually quite busy.
While balance wise this isn't much of a bad thing (space vs. resources trade off is rarely an issue outdoors), perhaps it would add to the realism and immersion if windmills had decreased efficiency if there was another mill within one or two hexes of each other. Working similar to water vaporator. There would still be people who plop them down right next to each other but players would be incentivized to build wind farms that look more like this:
Or this:
While not all city builders take this into account (looking at you Tropico and Simcity) I've always enjoyed the learning potential games have when it comes to systems you'd otherwise never care about. Anno 2070 and Cities: Skylines taught me something new. Just as Surviving Mars has taught me that MOXIE is a real tool we're building for a probe as we speak and how you can actually get water out of the thin martian atmosphere. Speaking of which...
You still run the risk people thinking that the area shown is the area used and having players place their harvesters like how I used to put down water vaporators.
Which is admittedly a lot cleaner and more visually appealing than how I place them these days.
At least when it comes to building them. You can argue for how they look when you're admiring your colony.
I am someone who just wants this game to be deeper and more complex than current so take all this with a grain of salt. Worst case, I'm sure I can mod in a few changes.
Oh, and then there's the standard proviso that this is all on Mars. Wind turbulence could just work differently there but I kinda doubt it. If that were true, a more efficient design would simply be long tunnel with a whole whack of turbines inside rather than freestanding towers. Then again, there is this super cool thing: http://rj3sp.blogspot.ca/2010/11/mars-magenn-air-rotor-system-floating.html
Which I'd love to see implemented as a later game tech. I wonder how you'd find helium on Mars...
In real life, windmills can't be spaced too closely together or else they'll risk losing efficiency. This isn't the case in Surviving Mars and that can lead to efficient set ups looking visually quite busy.
While balance wise this isn't much of a bad thing (space vs. resources trade off is rarely an issue outdoors), perhaps it would add to the realism and immersion if windmills had decreased efficiency if there was another mill within one or two hexes of each other. Working similar to water vaporator. There would still be people who plop them down right next to each other but players would be incentivized to build wind farms that look more like this:
Or this:
While not all city builders take this into account (looking at you Tropico and Simcity) I've always enjoyed the learning potential games have when it comes to systems you'd otherwise never care about. Anno 2070 and Cities: Skylines taught me something new. Just as Surviving Mars has taught me that MOXIE is a real tool we're building for a probe as we speak and how you can actually get water out of the thin martian atmosphere. Speaking of which...
You still run the risk people thinking that the area shown is the area used and having players place their harvesters like how I used to put down water vaporators.
Which is admittedly a lot cleaner and more visually appealing than how I place them these days.
At least when it comes to building them. You can argue for how they look when you're admiring your colony.
I am someone who just wants this game to be deeper and more complex than current so take all this with a grain of salt. Worst case, I'm sure I can mod in a few changes.
Oh, and then there's the standard proviso that this is all on Mars. Wind turbulence could just work differently there but I kinda doubt it. If that were true, a more efficient design would simply be long tunnel with a whole whack of turbines inside rather than freestanding towers. Then again, there is this super cool thing: http://rj3sp.blogspot.ca/2010/11/mars-magenn-air-rotor-system-floating.html
Which I'd love to see implemented as a later game tech. I wonder how you'd find helium on Mars...
