Ray Receiver

> *"Receives high-energy rays transmitted from the Dyson swarm or Dyson sphere. The received energy can be directly outputted to the power grid, or stored as photons in a critical state."*
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## Overview

The **Ray Receiver** is the planetary interface to the Dyson Sphere/swarm, producing energy and (eventually) Critical Photons, a key subcomponent of Universe Matrixes. It also has some of the most complicated mechanics of any building in the game.

## Usage

The Ray Receiver has two modes, **Energy Generation** and **Photon Generation**. The first is immediately available and produces 6-15 MW of power (see Mechanics), while the 2nd is unlocked by Dirac Inversion Mechanism and is needed for the production of Antimatter. Once Planetary Ionosphere Utilization is researched, Graviton Lens can be used as a consumable to boost both the output and strength (see Mechanics); lenses are consumed at a rate of one every 10 minutes.

### Tips

The Ray Receiver is unlocked relatively early, not even requiring Structure Matrixes to research. However, at this point you can only form a Dyson Swarm: A cloud of Solar Sails that provide energy, but each with a limited lifespan. In effect, you're "burning" Solar Sails for energy by launching them with the EM-Rail Ejector, just like you burn Coal in a Thermal Power Station. Sails in a swarm provide a nominal 36 kW each over 5400s, which is a respectable 194.4 MJ - but remember that the best efficiency you can get at this point (see below) is 42%, meaning only ~81.6 MJ is recoverable, and it costs 3.60 MJ to launch a sail to orbit. So you may be better off sticking to mundane sources of power like Hydrogen until you can build a Dyson Sphere.

In contrast, the Solar Sails in a Dyson Sphere provide only 15 kW (nominal) of power each, in the form of shell points, but they last forever.

## Crafting Recipes

view source editShow graphical recipes Show text recipes

### Crafting Into

Ray Receiver

18s202010520

### Total Raw Materials

540100806040

Crafting Energy (not including mining): **598 MJ**

## Mechanics

The Ray Receiver is made up of a complex variety of inter-related variables, which are displayed in the UI (see screenshot). Each of them are documented in more detail below.

### Output

The unlabelled number between Strength and Power Load, this is how much power is actually being produced. This is either

`strength * max_output`

(see below for those definitions), or if there isn't enough total power in the Dyson Sphere, the value is scaled down by

`total_power_requested / total_power_generated`.

Note that, unlike "burner-type" generators, there is no adjustment of output based on load. Energy from the Dyson Sphere/Swarm is a renewable resource that is lost if it's not used.

### Strength

This ranges from 0-100%, and expresses how well the Receiver is receiving from the sphere/swarm. The exact formula for this quantity is:

`100% * clamp(0.5 + 6.0 * (sun_x*x + sun_y*y + sun_z*z + 0.8 * (dysonSphere.grossRadius / (planet.sunDistanceInAU * 40000)) + (no_lens ? 0.0 : ionEnhance)))`

Where ionEnhance is `√(1 - planet_radius² / (planet_radius + 0.6 * ionosphere_height)²)`, (x, y, z) is the normalized position vector of the building, and (sun\_x, sun\_y, sun\_z) is the normalized sun direction in the planet's frame of reference.

Particular things of note that follow from that formula: building on the poles (or as close as possible) is a good idea, since (when the axial tilt is low) this causes the dot-product term to be near zero instead of fluctuating between 1 and -1. Also you want to maximize grossRadius, which is as simple as creating a new layer in the Dyson Sphere of maximum size - you don't need to define any nodes or physically build anything on it. (Still true as of 6.17.5831.) Due to oddities in the code, creating a large-radius Dyson Swarm orbit does **not** work as well.

Adding a layer with radius 20000 will guarantee full 100% Strength uptime at the poles with up to this much axial tilt, or this far away from the poles with zero axial tilt, or some combination of those two (technically the number that matters is `planet_axial_inclination - oribital_inclination + latitude_from_pole`):

The formula for the table is `sin⁻¹(.4/x-1/12)` in degrees. If you can create a larger sphere layer, you can scale the orbital radii in the table proportionally.

### Continuous Receiving

This also ranges from 0-100%, but unlike Strength it changes very slowly. It grows when Strength is > 75% and shrinks when Strength is < 75%. It starts at 0% on newly built Receivers, and you want to build it to 100% because of the positive effects it has on the other variables.

### Max Output

This is the current theoretical maximum output of the Receiver. Unlike most power generators, it is not a fixed number, but is determined by this formula:

`trunc((1 + 1.5 * continuous_receiving) * (no_lens ? 1.0 : 2.0) * (photon_generation ? 8.0 : 1.0) * 100000) * 60W`

This has several implications: With full Continuous Receiving, a Receiver can output 2.5x as much(15 MW) instead of the base 6 MW. Also, using Photon Generation mode boosts output by 8x (48MW up to 120 MW total), and Graviton Lens boosts it by another 2x. (96 MW up to 240 MW total) All of these boosts are multiplicative. Also, these boosts are only changing how much power a single Receiver can handle - they aren't making it more efficient (see below).

A Critical Photon requires 1.2 GJ of energy to be created. Thus, in Photon Generation mode you will have the following output rates:

 100% | 6/min | 12/min

### Ray Receiving Efficiency

This ranges from 0-100%, and is a measure of how efficient the power transmission is between the Dyson Sphere/swarm and the Receiver. Somewhat confusingly, you can always receive up to the maximum of your rated power (as given by Max Output), and inefficiencies are made up for by requesting extra on the *sending* side, such that

`requested_power = output_power / receiving_efficiency`.

Example: If you are receiving a full 6.00 MW with an efficiency of 30%, you will be requesting (and consuming) 6.00 MW/.3 = 20 MW from the sphere.

The formula for this quantity is:

`100% * (1 - solarEnergyLossRate * (1 - 0.4 * continuous_receiving²))`,

where solarEnergyLossRate starts at 0.7 and is multiplicatively reduced by upgrades:

`solarEnergyLossRate = 0.7 * 0.9^upgrade1 * 0.85^upgrade2`,

where upgrade1 is the number of upgrades in levels 1-6 researched, and upgrade2 is for levels 7+.

Efficiencies for the first several upgrades, at different Continuous Receiving amounts:

### Requested Power

This is broken into two parts, the currently requested power from the sphere/swarm, and the theoretical maximum requested power. The currently requested power is just

`output_power / receiving_efficiency`,

with output\_power shown to the left of Strength, while the maximum is

`max_output * strength / receiving_efficiency`

with Max Output, Strength and Receiving Efficiency all defined above.

### Dyson Sphere Status

This is the similar to Requested Power, but summed over the entire sphere/swarm. The first number is total power requested, the second is total power generated. A couple of oddities:

* Although it's labelled "Dyson sphere status," it is the sum of all requested/generated power for both Dyson Spheres and Dyson Swarms.
* Usually fractions of the form "X / Y" always have X < Y. However, when the sphere is underpowered in comparison to the Receivers' requests (which can happen easily), this field will have a larger "numerator" than denominator.