Pylons are the new method of handling overdrive in CA economy. Connect your E economy with a grid and place special overdrive pylons near mexes to distribute the energy.
TLDR
- you only need the pylons system for overdrive
- connect mexes to E structures for overdrive
- mexes and all E structures link to each other
- connect new energy sources to grid if mex says "GRID MAXED"
- you CAN link to ALLIES - and communism is now forced, metal income from mexes is shared
Why aren't my mexes overdriving!?
You must construct additional pylons.
Right, so here's how to use the pylon grid to enable overdrive.
New system
The pylon grid consists of your energy structures and mexes. Each mex and E structure has an effect field; two structures are linked if their effect fields overlap. Linking econ structures together creates a grid; energy from all E structures on a grid can be used to overdrive all mexes on the same grid.
Selecting an economy structure will show the effect fields of all econ structures. The color of the field denotes its efficiency: runs from blue to red as it becomes increasingly inefficient; purple means unlinked.
(don't believe the screenshot below, it's out of date)
The radius of the field is proportional to the output of the structure. Wind and solar have tiny effect fields, while superfusions and moho geos have a huge area of effect.
Old system (disused)
The pylon grid consists of four components: Your E structures, transfer pylons, overdrive nodes, and your mexes.
All pylons can receive energy from nearby structures or pylons, and overdrive pylons can input the E into mexes within the same radius (indicated by the yellow field around the pylon when placing/selected). Energy structures that are not connected to an overdrive pylon either directly or through the grid cannot contribute their energy towards overdrive.
Two pylons are linked if their effect fields overlap (rather than needing to have one pylon within the other's radius).
Transfer pylons allow you to set up a grid cheaply (100 metal per pylon), although they cannot supply mexes directly. Overdrive pylons feed the energy into the mexes for overdrive. They also have the functionality of transfer pylons, but at 600 metal each they should be used strictly for overdriving mexes.
Efficiency Tips
The tooltips of Pylons and Metal Extractors have information to display how efficient your overdrive is. For example:
E source - Extra Metal: 15.17 Energy 63.21 / 70.00
The extra metal shows how much extra metal your team is receiving from the overdrive supplied by the pylon's power grid. The first energy number shows how much energy the grid is currently drawing for the overdrive and the second energy number is how much energy is attached to the grid. How much is attached to the grid is the maximum energy that can be used for overdrive.
Metal Extractor - Makes:2.28 + Overdrive: + 125% Energy:10.14
"Makes:" shows how much metal the extractor is producing without overdrive. The overdrive percentage is how much extra metal this extractor is producing due to overdrive. Energy is how much energy that metal extractor is draining. For example this extractor is producing (2.28 + 2.28 * 1.25) = 5.13 metal with (2.28 * 1.25) metal costing 10.14 energy. If an extractor says **GRID MAXED** then the overdrive of this extractor is being limited by how much energy is connected to the grid, in this situation connect more energy to your grid or spend more energy.
The overdrive equation for metal to energy is:
(extractor income)*( -1 + sqrt(1+energy*0.4))
Each metal extractor is overdriven separately so due to the nature of the equation more mexes being overdriven will turn metal into energy at a better exchange rate, in the case of different incomes on mexes the energy is distributed in such a way to achieve maximum efficiency.
Remember that if you have no mexes connected to a grid all your excess energy will be going to waste!
Why pylons
- Normal overdrive is too land sensitive and leads to slippery slope. 10% difference in mex count can mean 30% of metal income difference (when you are overdriving with lots of energy).
- Pylons allow use to make economy less territorial mid-game without sacrificing benefits of overdrive (diminishing results, low eco micro needed etc)
- Pylons add more economic decisions to otherwise very simplistic CA economy
- Pylons allow flanking/add new high impact economic targets and need more economic planning.
- Pylons make overdrive more visible.
