So, we all know that power consumption in RA2 is really weird. There's the old adage: "Battery output == motor input for burst motors, battery output == half motor input for spin motors." But is that really true? How
exactly does power consumption work?
I did some research so I could balance the batteries better for DSL3, and I'm not sure I like what I found. No, wait, I'm 100% certain I don't like what I found.
First, a list of abbreviations I'll be using here.
MEMIOR == motor elecMaxInOutRate
BEMIOR == battery elecmaxinoutrate
PU == power units
The first thing I did is find out how using multiple batteries vs. a single battery works. Everyone has always assumed that total power and BEMIOR are additive, but no one has really tested it.
I found that total power and BEMIOR are indeed additive.
So 1 battery with 1000 total power and 100 BEMIOR is the same as 2 batteries with 500 total power and 50 BEMIOR.Then I moved on to some power consumption tests.
The most important thing that I found is this:
Spin motor MEMIOR has no effect whatsoever on battery drain. That's right, folks. Doesn't matter if it's a reverse angle motor, an HP Z-tek, a Dual Perm, or even a custom "gasoline" motor with -0.0001 MEMIOR. They all drain the same amount of electricity.
With infinite BEMIOR,
the battery drain is equal to 100 PU/second per spin motor. So if you have a bot with 2 motors and a battery with 2000 total power, your battery drain will be 200 PU/second and your batteries will last exactly 10 seconds.
With finite BEMIOR, things get more complicated. Perhaps it is easiest if I just show a graph here.
As you can see, with a lower BEMIOR, the battery drains more slowly, in a more exponential manner.
The bigger BEMIOR gets, the closer battery drain gets to a constant 100 PU/second. This data is with a battery with 1000 total power.
Now you might look at this and say, "Whoa! I should use batteries with as little BEMIOR as possible so my batteries last longer!" While it's true that less BEMIOR means longer lasting batteries, there are advantages to having high BEMIOR as well.
The higher BEMIOR is, the longer your spin motors stay at full power. Also, you need 100 BEMIOR per motor in order to achieve full power in the first place. So if you have two spin motors, you need a minimum of 200 BEMIOR to get full power out of them. However, at this minimum value, they will quickly start slowing down as your batteries drain. Using overkill BEMIOR keeps your motors running at max speed for longer.
Practical example: A typical HW HS with 6 HP Z-teks needs 600 BEMIOR for full power, and a typical LW HS with 2 angle motor drive and 1 HP Z-tek needs 300 BEMIOR for full power. So in theory, you can power Absolute Chaos with 6 small battery packs. The only problem is that they have low total power, so it's going to slow down very fast.
So what about burst motors? We already know they're different from spin motors, but how exactly do they work?
For burst motors, I found that
MEMIOR does have an effect on power consumption. So unlike spin motors, a DDT is going to drain more power than a Snapper2.
I started off testing on a battery with infinite BEMIOR again. With infinite BEMIOR,
a burst motor will drain a number of power units equal to its MEMIOR/1.6 each time it is fired. Why divide the MEMIOR by 1.6? I have no clue, that's just how it works. So a DDT with -500 MEMIOR will actually drain 312.5 PU each time it is fired.
With finite BEMIOR, burst motors behave much like spin motors.
The smaller BEMIOR is, the slower your batteries will drain, but the burst motors will stay at full power for less time. Also, you need BEMIOR equal to MEMIOR/1.6 per burst motor to achieve full power. Like spin motors, using more BEMIOR than necessary keeps the motors at full power for longer.
Practical example: For a typical MW popup with 2 HP Z-tek drive and 3 DDT's, you need 100 (x2) + 312.5 (x3) = 1137.5 total BEMIOR for max power, which is about 1 Supervolt and 1 Nifty. For a typical HW popup with 4 HP Z-tek drive and 4 DDT's, you need 100 (x4) + 312.5 (x4) = 1650 total BEMIOR, which is about 2 Supervolts. Remember that these are minimum values, however, and your motors may start slowing down depending on how much total power you have.
So what does all this mean for DSL3? It means it is impossible to balance spin motor battery drain fairly. The Dual Perm will always drain the same amount of power as a Piglet. This explains why the ant batteries are so effective in DSL2.
I don't know what I'm going to do as far as battery/motor balancing goes at this point. It's going to take some thought. I would have never expected power consumption to work like this.
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