User blog:WAZALIZALALI/Sunlight and Seamoth solar charger study

I just made a small study about the Day/Night cycle in the game and in different biomes as well as it's influence on solar panels, and about the Seamoth Solar Charger.

First thing first: the Day/Night cycle. I don't know if this has been done before, so anyway here are my finding:
 * A full Day/Night cycle lasts 20 min. It starts from 0 to 1, when it reach 1 it goes back to 0 (so 0=1, same as midnight in real life)
 * The D/N cycle has an influence on the sunlight as follow
 * From 0 to 0.25 the sunlight increases to reach 1 at the surface, so the light quantity increases during the first 5min of each ingame day.
 * From 0.25 to 0.75 the sunlight is constant, has a value of 1 at the surface. You always have 10 min of maximum light each ingame day.
 * From 0.75 to 1 the sunlight value progressively decreases.

Second study: the influence of the current biome on the daylight received.
 * While the surface has a sunlight value of 1 independent of the biome, the local value (when underwater) depend on the biome.
 * Some biomes have a local value equal to the surface value: Dunes, Koosh Zone, Mountain, Underwater Islands, Crash zone, Mushroom Forest. In these biomes the daylight received by solar panels and solar charger is maximum.
 * Some biomes have variating values: Grassy Plateau and Safe Shallows go from 1 to 0.967, Kelp Forest goes from 1 to 0.931.
 * Others have fixed values: 0.6 for Sparse Reef, 0.4 for Grand Reef.

Now for the interesting part: here are my finding about the Seamoth and more important the Seamoth Solar Charger. (All the value have been measured during the day, so Surface daylight = 1)
 * When stationary and with the player inside the Seamoth uses 1% of energy every 16s approximately.
 * The Seamoth Solar Charger  upgrade modules have cumulative effect !
 * At the surface (Daylight = 1), one solar charger gives 1% every second, so 4% per second with 4 modules. With such high charging rates the presence of the player inside the Seamoth barely slow down the charging.
 * With 3 Solar charger, and at the surface, a full electrical defense blast uses 15% of energy instead of 30%, because the Seamoth is charged while preping it's blast.
 * The effectiveness of the Solar Charger greatly reduces when bellow 200m.
 * When Sunlight=1 (surface or corresponding biome), 1 Solar Charger is enough to charge the Seamoth while moving up to 150m. 2 gives the same result up to 175m~200m.
 * Bellow 200m, no matter how much Solar Charger you have you cannot charge your Seamoth while moving.
 * In the Sparse Reef, a single Solar Charger gives 5% in 10s.
 * In the Grand Reef, Solar Charger are almost useless, two module can barely keep the energy level constant in a stationnary Seamoth.

Bug detected while investigating: the local sunlight value is not properly updated when inside the Seamoth. You can enter a big cave and keep receiving sunlight, and as soon as you exit the Seamoth the game will realize you're in a cave and cut the sunlight. Here are two screenshot:



TL;DR: Seamoth Solar Charger are OP when above 150m. While their effect are cumulative there is no real interest to have more than one: one module is enough to charge the Seamoth when moving. Below 200m and in the Sparse Reef and Grand Reef they are not very effective. The daylight detection works well on some caves (like the Jelly Shroom cave) but not so well in other.

Feel free to correct the values I put here, I didn't have the time to do extent "researchs" about this.