Water currents and turbines

I like the introduction of water currents and the hydroelectric turbines to generate power from them… but i think the system could use a bit of refinement.

Right now turbines are all or nothing (either 12 power or 0). That is a bit odd. They should work more like thermal plants where the placement matters and also currents should differ how much one can generate from it.

Turbines are also too powerful compared to other energy options specifically because how frequent water currents are. In reality currents are result of tidal forces and thermic gradients, thus their direction and power depends on the time of the day. It would make sense that this would apply to some currents in game as well and thus render turbines similar to solar - energy generation would change over the day. The currents near the observatory are different - quite slim and located in open water. they are setup like smoke from a chimney. It would make sense that parts of them to actually move over the day.

Totally agree. There needs to be a balance on stacking hydroelectic and thermal generators. Both are just way too efficient, cheap, and accessible in the early game that they make anything else pointless.

I think making currents move around could cause many issues, like technical ones as well as annoyance when building base near one (suddenly one may lead trouch base and player using them for transport will be crashing into it), however it could be surely interesting idea, especially if we could see where currents may lead, by some observatory station or such

however how I would nerf turbines would be, them needing space between other turbines in same current, or they would produce less power, each turbine takes energy of current, weakening it, so second one 5 centimeters behind wouldnt produce as much energy as first one, this would force turbine-powered base to spread at least turbines around

also thin currents from second zone (behind leviatan, alien observatory area) should produce less than huge currents encase by cliffs in first zone, they just seem more powerful, currently only benefit is that you can place turbines next to each other and not in line but it is merely cosmetic thing

this would leave turbines in middle of energy generation progression, better than solar pannels, but not as good as thermal reactors, however still leaving bioreactor in undesired category anyway