My award goes to Smelter. You get a whopping 8 steel for smelting something, it requires steel to build (a long time to break even!), power to operate, and there aren't that many metal slags. Newbie trap.
Tailor - people who raid me always seem to leave some rags behind, I don't see much point.
Smithy - I guess I'll try to sell them, but for using them directly, bleh.
I thought the smithy was going to have guns, i misread somthing in the changelogs, super excited comes alpha 9 NOOOOO Just pilas :(
I get it though gotta code materials building the gun and all that jazz, plus im sure tynan will invent some sort of different bench for ranged and melee, ranged being the more later game costing research points
Smithing table is the only one I don't build.
I've yet to experiment much with melee weapons and personal shields, I could see a use if a fight moves indoors. Guns are introduced early enough in the game that I see no place for the more primative ranged weapons.
The smelter got hit pretty hard in A9.
Previously in A8 colonist skill increased smelting efficiency quite significantly, to the point where you could exploit it to gain more steel out of a destroyed structure than you put in.
Of course now you can at least turn it off with a power switch. I personally don't build it until I've got enough slag for it to yield a profit.
Keep in mind that almost every random-resource-drop-pod comes with some slag.
As for the tailor - you ought to look into Devilstrand clothing, high quality devilstrand clothes can have 30% or more sharp resistance. It's very useful armour.
As for the smithy - I've played exclusively melee colonies and they've all been quite successful (100/130/160% difficulty, usually 30+ colonists) so it certainly has its place.
Can't imagine crafting bows/pilas though.
smithy definitely is the worst, it would become a lot more useful if it could craft advanced weapons but so many knives, clubs and other melee weapons drop off of enemies there is almost no reason to craft more unless you want to try to make some incredibly leet weapon for your powerhouse melee fighter.
I want to be able to build mechanoids that can act as guards, if you require like an AI core or something to make them it will prevent people from building mech armies, but just having the possibility of making some friendly death machines would be very fun.
The smelter is the most useless for me too. But building your own mech would be awesome.
Smelter isn't quite useless, it serves as a garbage disposal for all the slag that accumulates, like the corpse disposal of dead turrets. But the Smithy, that is pretty useless. Exactly how many junk melee weapons do you need, and how is it that you don't have enough from all the dead raiders you kill?
But the most useless? The beer brewery. A tiny buff that barely lasts, and it ultimately causes a penalty? What is this good for again? I've never, not once, felt the urge to build it. The production pipeline is too long and labor intensive and it causes a mood penalty, when colonists are flakey enough as it is. Maybe the system is just underdeveloped at present.
Tailor doesn't win high marks either, as far as necessity goes, given how much drops from dead raiders, but I suppose I have to do SOMETHING with their skins.
Quote from: lusername on March 04, 2015, 06:55:44 AM
But the most useless? The beer brewery. A tiny buff that barely lasts, and it ultimately causes a penalty? What is this good for again? I've never, not once, felt the urge to build it. The production pipeline is too long and labor intensive and it causes a mood penalty, when colonists are flakey enough as it is.
Come to think of it, efficiency-wise i agree. I'd guess it's the same with bedrooms, 3x3 or even just 2x1 for the bed alone is more space-efficient to put anywhere than 5x5, and since the cramped penalty only lasts while they sleep in the room, it's not bad enough to force you to build larger rooms. Still i build 5x5 mostly, and sometimes stuff art and flower pots into them because that's how i play the game, not just crunching numbers as to what's most
effective. So i research and build the brewery too because
i can.
In the end it's up to everyone to do as they please anyway.
Quote from: lusername on March 04, 2015, 06:55:44 AMthe most useless? The beer brewery. A tiny buff that barely lasts, and it ultimately causes a penalty? What is this good for again? I've never, not once, felt the urge to build it. The production pipeline is too long and labor intensive and it causes a mood penalty, when colonists are flakey enough as it is. Maybe the system is just underdeveloped at present.
A brewery can be good to make beer. If one of your colonists is near a mental break you just feed him a beer, which gives him a +10 mood boost.
They all have their uses.
Smelter - I have slag piling up all over from the masses of turrets that have been destroyed.
I was running out of metal nearby too, so the smelter is very useful here.
Brewery - I haven't tried a brewery, but that would be very good for combating the AI persona that drops near your colony. I know it took me a while to mount an assault on it since I only had 5 colonists.
Tailor - Very useful for making devilstrand gear - either to wear or sell for profit.
That armour is WAY better than anything I find on raiders.
Smithy - Again raiders drop crap weapons - If I want something decent I need to make it myself.
Doesn't it also craft shells?
I'm liking the combo of using personal shields with a strong melee weapon - it kicks ass over ranged raiders unless there are many - still need ranged to thin their numbers first (turrets will do!)
Me thinks, most of the Workshops are a bit useless.
So I didnt even build one single Nutrition Paste Dispenser in all my games so far...didnt like the idea to feed this stuff and get a moral malus.
I crafted one single meele Weapon, for testing, and build some clothes...took far to long. I use stonecutting if I have enough workers left, and the butcher, cooking table are always running.
In fact, you can get around everything except cooking.
Beer is nice and all, but the weak colonists tend to abuse it so much, I dont craft it anymore.
Later you can use the mechanics table, but you get far to less raw materials (droidcorpses) for it.
Ah and I forgot the crematory. Number 2 in usefulnes lategame. Always burning ^^
As Im coming from the Gnomoria department over here, the workshop system there is something it wouldnt be a bad idea to take a look for inspiration there ^^
I tend to run nutrient paste dispensers until about.. 30 colonists.
And they're always in my prisons.
They use like 1/3rd the food and the mood debuff is tiny (-4) and doesn't stack.
You can spend the time you would otherwise be farming food farming cotton or Devilstrand or Wood for clothes/armour/sculptures respectively.
The machining table is incredible if you're getting constant mech attacks which you can deliberately force by becoming neutral with all human factions.
And there's no reason to use the crematory since you can Butcher humanoids for a TINY mood penalty (-4, doesn't stack) and get human meat + human leather for selling/clothing->selling respectively :P
Gotta think Gnomoria style, don't just kill the goblins, kill them, butcher them, and then turn them into sandwiches! And wear their skulls!
And make armour out of the ogre-hides :P
Once you have a decent sized colony and are in need of income, ALL the workshops are good. Because the key to income, I've found, is -always- being able to sell enough to whatever trader comes by to get all their silver, you want to have a large variety of stuff. Wood weapons (wood isn't checked for weapons by default, but I always have them only make from wood) Wood sculptures (and I restrict my artists to wood as well), stone blocks, clothes, basically keep everything that doesn't spoil going until you have a good amount.
Beer is useful if you don't have anyone who's prone to binges, and if you have a teetotaler to handle the brewing room and beer freezer, they give a decent sale. Just lock the door to keep the colonists out.
Smelter is the only one I don't find much use for. It gets turned off from the power grid and left that way 90% of the time, if I even build it.
If i had no smelter my whole map would be littered with slag from those turrets, so its really useful even after the nerf. (i only loose 1-3 turrets per raid but it sums up)
Tailor, devilstrand clothing nugh said. (also i like to keep it semi rp and have them wear cowboy hats and dusters before i outfit them all with power armor)
Smithy, easy to make money of it at the start and it trains your crafters, so useful in the beginning even if you are not using melee.
Quote from: MsMeiriona on March 04, 2015, 11:58:47 AM
Once you have a decent sized colony and are in need of income, ALL the workshops are good. Because the key to income, I've found, is -always- being able to sell enough to whatever trader comes by to get all their silver, you want to have a large variety of stuff.
Yeah, but eventually you start requiring a ludicrous amount of storage space just to store all the silver...and you still have nothing to buy.
Quote from: lusername on March 04, 2015, 01:47:36 PM
Quote from: MsMeiriona on March 04, 2015, 11:58:47 AM
Once you have a decent sized colony and are in need of income, ALL the workshops are good. Because the key to income, I've found, is -always- being able to sell enough to whatever trader comes by to get all their silver, you want to have a large variety of stuff.
Yeah, but eventually you start requiring a ludicrous amount of storage space just to store all the silver...and you still have nothing to buy.
Silver stacks to 400, doesn't it? That doesn't end up requiring all
that much room to store.
And what do you mean nothing to buy? Aren't you upgrading things? Making things less flammable, more health?
With clothing deterioration such a big deal this alpha build, you all still find tailoring useless? Maybe it's the setting I'm playing and lack of large numbers of raiders but their clothing dropped after we kill them isn't enough right now for my colony so tailoring is important to keep everyone's weeble butts covered.
I agree with all the other statements that some workshops seem more useless than others depending on your playstyle but there again is the beauty - some players really like a busy colony with lots of worker bees doing things and so each workshop can provide another extension of 'work' for the colony's livelihood even if it's not a big money maker. Honestly this build there doesn't seem to be much you can do to make tons of silver other than build massive devilstrand plantations. I'm hoping and confident Tynan has better crafting for profit ideas on the way.
Quote from: Vexare on March 04, 2015, 03:54:24 PM
With clothing deterioration such a big deal this alpha build, you all still find tailoring useless? Maybe it's the setting I'm playing and lack of large numbers of raiders but their clothing dropped after we kill them isn't enough right now for my colony so tailoring is important to keep everyone's weeble butts covered.
I agree with all the other statements that some workshops seem more useless than others depending on your playstyle but there again is the beauty - some players really like a busy colony with lots of worker bees doing things and so each workshop can provide another extension of 'work' for the colony's livelihood even if it's not a big money maker. Honestly this build there doesn't seem to be much you can do to make tons of silver other than build massive devilstrand plantations. I'm hoping and confident Tynan has better crafting for profit ideas on the way.
I find stone statues are a good source of income, in the last two games i ended up with 2 artists and had tons of money (100k silver+ and colony worth well over 700k) when i got bored and abandoned the colonies.
Quote from: lusername on March 04, 2015, 01:47:36 PM
Quote from: MsMeiriona on March 04, 2015, 11:58:47 AM
Once you have a decent sized colony and are in need of income, ALL the workshops are good. Because the key to income, I've found, is -always- being able to sell enough to whatever trader comes by to get all their silver, you want to have a large variety of stuff.
Yeah, but eventually you start requiring a ludicrous amount of storage space just to store all the silver...and you still have nothing to buy.
Power Armor and Weaponry
Steel, Plasteel, Medicine, Munition,
Hyperweave/Synthread/Devilstrand
just wish those merchants had more Power Armor and Sniper Rifles.
Quote from: MsMeiriona on March 04, 2015, 03:52:33 PM
Silver stacks to 400, doesn't it? That doesn't end up requiring all that much room to store.
500, and you'd think, but then you try storing 500K silver. There's not enough ROOM down here for this.
Quote from: MsMeiriona on March 04, 2015, 03:52:33 PMAnd what do you mean nothing to buy? Aren't you upgrading things? Making things less flammable, more health?
I can mine my own granite just fine, so making things less flammable and more healthy doesn't involve buying anything.
Quote from: Daemoneyes on March 04, 2015, 08:15:43 PM
Power Armor and Weaponry
Steel, Plasteel, Medicine, Munition,
Hyperweave/Synthread/Devilstrand
just wish those merchants had more Power Armor and Sniper Rifles.
There's never enough of these things that you can actually buy enough. In fact, not once have I seen them selling a serviceable weapon. It's always something inane like uranium shivs, or the item is in crap condition and thus not worth purchasing. Even when I buy every single one I can, they're so rare that the pile will continually grow. Hell, usually I can buy anything off the barter and still have change left over.
Why do so many people HAVE trouble with sustaining power, If you run out, build or batteries or as i find, Solar panels, Look, its not that hard to keep something powered for a night and if its left on, you might have a need of it suddenly, Might as well leave it on, if you do that you also have a object that you can turn off in a moment if you start using more power then your creating.
Because you're limited in power by the number of geothermal spots available. Wind and solar can only be placed on the open surface, and to be on the surface is death. Wind is also extremely unreliable in its output, and solar only functions during the day. Batteries will destroy your base, and are therefore useless unless you want your base constantly exploding.
I can't really think of when you would "suddenly need" a crafting table, anyway, especially some of the more disused and situational ones, and need this more suddenly than having the guy who is to use it turn it on and use it.
Quote from: lusername on March 05, 2015, 02:22:58 AM
Batteries will destroy your base, and are therefore useless unless you want your base constantly exploding.
People say this all the time, but honestly you must be misusing them because I
never have this problem, even with up to 15 batteries on my ultra-large colonies where geothermal was a pain in the arse INSIDE MOUNTAINS, the explosions are a tiny annoyance at best.
Are you all making your structures out of wood and turning off firefighting on all your colonists? Are you all making 3x the batteries you need to thereby increasing the explosion size? Have none of you considered battery isolation with the new power switches?
I just don't get it, what's the deal?
The average damage caused by a 6-8 battery explosion in my colonies is 1 destroyed conduit, maybe a small amount of bench damage if it happened in my crafting room.. and a single minor burn? Once every... three months?
Especially with the new firefighting AI... colonists just hammer fires into oblivion in a matter of seconds, the biggest risk is inside mountain bases where the temperature can rise too quickly in small rooms if the conduit explosion happened in an unlucky location but.. apart from freezers and bedrooms, the latter of which shouldn't have any conduits in them anyway, there are no rooms *that* small to be *that* dangerous.
Quote from: Boboid on March 05, 2015, 03:22:10 AM
I just don't get it, what's the deal?
A constantly recurring annoyance for which there is no counter beyond the removal of all batteries? Everything else can be dealt with by throwing more of something at the problem or simply ignoring it until it goes away. There is no counter for this attack aside from removing the batteries that cause it. Everything else in the game has a counter. Crazed animals? Stay in the base, deploy turrets. Raiders? More turrets. Sieges? Large battery of 10 mortars. Soar flares? Heat waves? Cold snaps? Just ignore them until they go away. The counter for battery-inflicted explosions is...not to use batteries.
Quote from: Boboid on March 05, 2015, 03:22:10 AMOnce every... three months?
Three months? Try three minutes. If it only exploded every three months, I probably wouldn't see this happen until alpha 12. In game, this was pretty much a daily occurrence until I removed all the batteries and converted to geothermal.
The damage inflicted by battery explosions is *tiny*, the overall productivity loss is probably on-par with the psychic drones but lasts 1/10th of the duration.
There's a perfectly reasonable counter to it, extinguish it and stop designing your buildings out of flammable materials :P
To be clear I'm referring to in-game months. I get probably 3x the crop blights that I do battery explosions, and the crop blights are a larger productivity hit by orders of magnitude.
You're not doing something crazy like putting your batteries outside are you?
Quote from: Boboid on March 05, 2015, 03:53:15 AM
There's a perfectly reasonable counter to it, extinguish it and stop designing your buildings out of flammable materials :P
Extinguishing it does not undestroy your base, nor does it prevent the problem from happening again in about 3 minutes.
Quote from: Boboid on March 05, 2015, 03:53:15 AMTo be clear I'm referring to in-game months. I get probably 3x the crop blights that I do battery explosions, and the crop blights are a larger productivity hit by orders of magnitude.
Crop blights have a counter, though: Crops you allow to go feral outside of a grow zone don't apparently get blights. Additionally, crop blights don't require that the player take any action to resolve. You just ignore them and they go away on their own, as your colonists are capable of resolving this without your assistance.
Quote from: Boboid on March 05, 2015, 03:53:15 AMYou're not doing something crazy like putting your batteries outside are you?
Heavens no, I know how to play the game. I don't put batteries at ALL, because they CONSTANTLY EXPLODE. I don't think batteries even have enough HP to survive being outside. With only 100 HP, they are instantly destroyed the moment any siegers show up. Assuming they haven't wiped themselves out with an explosion before the siegers set up their mortars. Both such events are roughly equally likely.
If i can avoid batteries, I will, but as long as they are not completely full with still excess power, you should not get explosions, right? So the solution is more batteries :)
On topic:
The most useless workshop for me is the crematorium. I butcher raiders so I can make parkas out of their skins and sell all of their clothing.
Quote from: Apophis on March 05, 2015, 04:36:11 AM
If i can avoid batteries, I will, but as long as they are not completely full with still excess power, you should not get explosions, right? So the solution is more batteries :)
I can't find anything that indicates they're caused by batteries being full, but I don't think adding more bombs to your base is the answer.
Quote from: Apophis on March 05, 2015, 04:36:11 AMThe most useless workshop for me is the crematorium. I butcher raiders so I can make parkas out of their skins and sell all of their clothing.
You can't butcher the rotten raiders and animals, they will hang around forever. The Crematorium is not a really a workshop, anyway, it's more of a garbage disposal.
Quote from: lusername on March 05, 2015, 04:32:17 AM
Quote from: Boboid on March 05, 2015, 03:53:15 AM
There's a perfectly reasonable counter to it, extinguish it and stop designing your buildings out of flammable materials :P
Extinguishing it does not undestroy your base, nor does it prevent the problem from happening again in about 3 minutes.
Quote from: Boboid on March 05, 2015, 03:53:15 AMTo be clear I'm referring to in-game months. I get probably 3x the crop blights that I do battery explosions, and the crop blights are a larger productivity hit by orders of magnitude.
Crop blights have a counter, though: Crops you allow to go feral outside of a grow zone don't apparently get blights. Additionally, crop blights don't require that the player take any action to resolve. You just ignore them and they go away on their own, as your colonists are capable of resolving this without your assistance.
Quote from: Boboid on March 05, 2015, 03:53:15 AMYou're not doing something crazy like putting your batteries outside are you?
Heavens no, I know how to play the game. I don't put batteries at ALL, because they CONSTANTLY EXPLODE. I don't think batteries even have enough HP to survive being outside. With only 100 HP, they are instantly destroyed the moment any siegers show up. Assuming they haven't wiped themselves out with an explosion before the siegers set up their mortars. Both such events are roughly equally likely.
I can't understand how you're suffering from the kind of damage that anyone would reasonably lable a " Destroyed base " , and the frequency ( while certainly random ) just isn't that bad.
As to your crop-blight-counter, that's really nothing more than an exploit, removing the growing zone out from underneath crops does indeed exempt them from blights but that's a silly amount of micromanagement and really those crops ought to be blighted like the rest.
The notion that you have to in some way " resolve " conduit explosions is a bit crazy frankly, you're talking about replacing a single power conduit, that's it. Your colonists deal with 99% of the situation.
And to be perfectly clear, batteries DO NOT explode(Unless placed outside in the rain).
Conduits do
if you have stored power and the resulting fire is proportional to the amount of power stored.
Quote from: Apophis on March 05, 2015, 04:36:11 AM
If i can avoid batteries, I will, but as long as they are not completely full with still excess power, you should not get explosions, right? So the solution is more batteries :)
Nah that's not the case, conduits failures happen *if* you have stored power and scale accordingly but the batteries do not need to be full in order to trigger them.
Quote from: Boboid on March 05, 2015, 06:12:41 AM
I can't understand how you're suffering from the kind of damage that anyone would reasonably lable a " Destroyed base " , and the frequency ( while certainly random ) just isn't that bad.
It happens constantly, nearly as often as crop blights. The difference is, crop blights are basically ignorable. You can counter the problem simply by throwing more crops at it, as crop blights only kill a proportion of the crops, something like 80 or 90%. So, you just write that off and figure that 1 in 10 survive, as no crop generally makes it to completion anyway. None of this requires any additional annoyance on your part: The crop blight resolves itself, you just zone a sufficiently large area to compensate for the fact that 80-90% of all crops will always be lost.
The battery-induced conduit explosions, on the other hand, cannot be counteracted in any other way, it will always destroy chunks of your base, unless you remove all the batteries and run exclusively on wind and geothermal. Of course, the final nail in the coffin for solar plants is that they must be placed outside, which means they're going to all be destroyed in the first siege. You're going to have to do without them anyway, may as well start sooner rather than later.
I noticed that if I use 2 or less batteries I dont get the power fault at all (or very rarely), maybe you should run critical stuff on a separate circuit with just 2 batteries, worked for me at least.
I dont understand the hate the smithing bench is getting. I use it to level crafting and it is a good income source, on maps where wood is abundant I have my crafter make wooden swords all the time, so I dont get crappy quality clothing later on when I get devilstrand.
Wow man. You seem to be having some major difficulty a with the game. I only build outside and rarely loose anything to raids or sieges - hell seigers barely ever even get to deploy their mortars - just go out and snipe the mortars while they are building them. Battery explosions barely even register on my radar. Some small localised damage which is auto repaired by the colonists and I have to place 1 or 2 conducts (eventually - just make redundant wiring in your circuit and it has no effect) - hardly worthy of the rant.
I find Crop Blights are not less or more anoying as shortcuts.
And I had lots of shortcuts where a worker got on fire coz he stands on the wrong tile. Ok thats more anoying than a blight...
And its not always soo easy to simple get out and snipe the siegers ^^ My actual play I started with Bows only(mod), got attacked only by tribesmen for a long time. Now I have 6 pps with bows and they are facing the first pirates with assault, pistol, shotgun and sniperrifle. mh ;)
But back to Workshops, I like the Idea to Butcher Humans for leather, but It doesnt feel right for my colonists. Before I get a -4 mood from the food dispenser and another -4 from butchering human, I better stay with farming and hunting. Its a little stress in the first year to get always enough food.
But even if I dont use some workshops, I build all of them (except dispenser, its too big) just for "completenes".
I'm skeptical about Crematory. Maybe there are lots and lots of raiders in later game, but in my 2nd year on Rough, raids are well below 10. Graves are quick to dig, a corpse is instantly buried once hauled there (so I can't imagine crematory being faster), require no resources and no tech. The only downside, I guess, would be that graves use space.
The colony mentioned above is successful by building outside. I always have between 2 and 4 people with rifles ready to clean up siegers. I only lost a colonist once or twice while doing this. The main worry is being able to prepare a push before your fighters get hurt. Stone constructions are sturdy and it would take 2-3 direct hits to destroy a piece of perimeter wall. They seem to shoot all over the place, they can't do too much harm unless you let them shoot for days. I prefer wind turbines - no eclipses and they work in nights, so they tend to charge batteries more evenly. They're just a bit fussy with trees, so I tend to surround them with wooden floor.
Quote from: Boboid on March 05, 2015, 03:22:10 AM
Quote from: lusername on March 05, 2015, 02:22:58 AM
Batteries will destroy your base, and are therefore useless unless you want your base constantly exploding.
People say this all the time, but honestly you must be misusing them because I never have this problem, even with up to 15 batteries on my ultra-large colonies where geothermal was a pain in the arse INSIDE MOUNTAINS, the explosions are a tiny annoyance at best.
I have a feeling if we could see his base layout (screenshot of areas with batteries) or examine his played game, the culprit or real story might be revealed why batteries are exploding so much because like you Boboid, I rarely have battery explosions unless I forget while building and one's left without a covered/roofed area. I even have some outside but under stone roof overhangs near the edge of my mountain and they've never blown up either.
I used to have conduit faults a lot and I learned you cannot rely on only one conduit from your batteries or power source into your base. Some redesign and safety measures have eliminated all battery explosions and this current saved game I have about 16 batteries because we're too far from geothermal and so far no disasters at all.
My advice for battery safety:
1. Encase the battery on all sides but one short end where conduit comes out, one block wide for them to build it inside.
2. Always encase each battery separated from the next by a solid rock or stone wall of higher end material (marble/granite)
3. Never put batteries right next to turrets (obviously) or anywhere they might be exposed to gunfire.
4. Only directly connect a few things to a battery. The more loose wires you have running across the ground from lamps, turrets, etc, the higher the shortage chance. It's better to run connections to conduits in walls, not the battery itself.
5. Always use at least 2 conduits running from a battery bank and preferably 2 at each end of your battery 'banks' to even distribution load.
6. Never build batteries out in exposed areas to heat, cold, rain. Always cover them with a roof at least, preferably indoors.
7. Do not build batteries on wood or carpet floors and try not to use wood walls except at first if you have no stone options yet.
I'm attaching a screenshot of the entry to my base's 'courtyard' (growing space) which has 5 solar panels and a wind generator and primarily only powers the turrets and a few rooms at that end of the base. It's completely separate from the main part of the base further in which has it's own battery storage as well. They are not on the same circuits to prevent overloads and separate during surges. I currently have NO geothermal at all, relying only on wind/solar (the banks further in are larger but harder for me to screenshot). As you can see, I have 7 batteries in this entry area. 4 on one side and 3 on the other. They are all neatly separated by stone walls and there are two conduit circuits from each battery bank to the solar panels and wind generator line. This has been my most successful power line setup to date and I have had exactly ZERO shortages and fires even when my solar panels took a direct lightning strike. We are building in an extremely rainy tropical biome so we get storms a LOT. I think this is proof that proper planning and electrical safety works.
[attachment deleted due to age]
The problem is likely having batteries touching each other/conduits/conduit walls and not having multiple grids. I know if you have you whole base on one grid, a single short can be a problem because you've lost ALL your stored power, plus you have fires, and if you have a lot of batteries together your colonists may not be able to get to them.
Keeping batteries all in their own little stone cells away from any attackers, with only one conduit touching them, and each "group" of batteries should be on a switch so you can make sure to optimise power use.
I haven't tried putting wind turbines like in the image above - wouldn't it be blocked by solar collectors ? A tree in that spot would reduce effectiveness.
Nope, solar panels are considered " short " and don't obstruct wind turbines.
Quote from: Boboid on March 05, 2015, 03:32:28 PM
Nope, solar panels are considered " short " and don't obstruct wind turbines.
And the nice thing about this efficient way of building, the solar panels block anything from growing under them so you don't have to worry about trees re-growing there or putting down concrete first. It's a very handy way to line up power production. :)
Quote from: Vexare on March 05, 2015, 12:32:53 PM
My advice for battery safety:
1. Encase the battery on all sides but one short end where conduit comes out, one block wide for them to build it inside.
2. Always encase each battery separated from the next by a solid rock or stone wall of higher end material (marble/granite)
3. Never put batteries right next to turrets (obviously) or anywhere they might be exposed to gunfire.
4. Only directly connect a few things to a battery. The more loose wires you have running across the ground from lamps, turrets, etc, the higher the shortage chance. It's better to run connections to conduits in walls, not the battery itself.
5. Always use at least 2 conduits running from a battery bank and preferably 2 at each end of your battery 'banks' to even distribution load.
6. Never build batteries out in exposed areas to heat, cold, rain. Always cover them with a roof at least, preferably indoors.
7. Do not build batteries on wood or carpet floors and try not to use wood walls except at first if you have no stone options yet.
... Most of this is kinda wrong/unnecessary/for the wrong reasons.
1/2. This doesnt prevent them from exploding from a short - granted if the short happens at THIS battery it will protect nearby stuff - but it does mean if they catch fire you will probably lose them because colonists cant path to the 'back' of the battery. That said, batteries themselves don't explode, the 2 in-build conducts in them is where the explosion happens, IF it happens at the battery unless its from rain.
3. Well yeah, obviously ya dont put things you dont want to lose in the way of fire
4. More conducts don't make the chance for short higher, only more places for the short to happen.
5. While I wish loading was a thing in-game, the reason you have more then one way for electricity to get anywhere is so that in the event of a short knocking a conduct out, it doesnt break the connection to anything.
6. Yeah this works. Being in squares marked as 'outdoors' is bad for a battery. I'm pretty sure that they receive rain damage even if under roofs, which can cause a batteries to explode.
7. Floors don't burn. A wooden floor fire break is as good as a concrete one or carpet one - most of the time I don't even floor battery rooms, I mean how often do colonists go in there?
Quote from: b0rsuk on March 05, 2015, 03:30:21 PM
I haven't tried putting wind turbines like in the image above - wouldn't it be blocked by solar collectors ? A tree in that spot would reduce effectiveness.
This is one of the best ideas. You can fire 3 or so solar panels in a wind turbines footprint - building these in banks works great for non-geo power to space ratio.
I disagree with all the smelter hate. In my current game, attacks are so big that I always lose at least 2-3 turrets every way. At some point I had 3 full stockpiles of slag and was running out of steel. Smelter solved both problems. Although it took A LOOOONG time for it to really be useful.
Quote from: vendox on March 06, 2015, 02:33:44 AM
I disagree with all the smelter hate. In my current game, attacks are so big that I always lose at least 2-3 turrets every way. At some point I had 3 full stockpiles of slag and was running out of steel. Smelter solved both problems. Although it took A LOOOONG time for it to really be useful.
So maybe make it a high tier tech ? 1500-2000 to research, to discourage people from investing into this piece of crap before they take care of more important things...
As with anything else, the smelter is very useful, the player just needs to prioritize. Brick making has the same problem. Particularly if you like to tunnel, you wind up with a ton of rubble to either pack into bigger and bigger stockpiles, or turn into brick and sell in bulk, however if you focus too much on it in the early game, you're going to find yourself short in more important areas. You have to know what and when to prioritize.
As for the furnace, I don't know where I'd put all of the bodies without it! You can only put graves in arable soil, which is a waste, and I rarely have enough incendiaries lying around to cremate them that way. The only real problem I have with it is that it uses power (I'd rather it burned wood, honestly), but I just turn it off when it's not in use, like turrets and A/C in the winter.