I used to have a big bank of batteries, but very often they would get a short and suddenly discharge all their energy at once, causing an explosive fire somewhere.
It was causing such a mess I just got rid of them, but now I'm wondering if there's a way to prevent this from happening.
I put the batteries on the other side of a switch, let them charge, then flick the switch. It takes the batteries off your grid, but when a ZZZZT happens you flick the switch and still have the batteries that were off the grid.
Oh ok, thank you! Awesome idea. I'll do that right now. Cheers!
Mechanically, zzt is a punishment event for using unreliable power sources (solar is generally the cause), and secondarily for (over)using batteries.
If you use primarily reliable power sources (e.g. chemfuel/geo) for powering things that need to be on 24/7, and run things like sunlamps off solars in their own disconnected network, then you can carefully modulate your power use, even turning off generators as needed to avoid excessive power supply.
I have a ~400k wealth colony, and all my zzt events are one tile as a result.
Having a big bank of battery backups is bad practice in Rimworld? I'm surprised...I thought it was their intended purpose. How are batteries supposed to be used? Is there some reference material for how power should be generated/used? I don't want to get Zzzt punished for misuse.
I take my back up batteries offline and store them uninstalled... that way the component problem is also avoided... they are more a nuisance than they should be imo, and the events around batteries are just annoying imo.
I just avoid solar and wind if I can. I go right for water or geothermal, burning wood if I must and can. I'll frequently start out with one or two solar panels and a windmill with no batteries, and try to rush the better stuff.
The best way to keep your batteries from being drained is to not have any batteries.
Quote from: Thom Blair III on August 07, 2018, 10:15:29 PM
Having a big bank of battery backups is bad practice in Rimworld? I'm surprised...I thought it was their intended purpose. How are batteries supposed to be used? Is there some reference material for how power should be generated/used? I don't want to get Zzzt punished for misuse.
If you build balanced power supply you just dont need a big battery bank. Some solars to power sunlamps. Geothermals/watermills to power other stuff. With proper setup you can live with 1-2 battery. But having more not that scary. Im mostly stick to 2x8 battery banks(one online and one behind turned switch). Zzzzt not very destructive - just a few tiles of fire, and allow base to work some time even if external geothermals are cutted from main power grid by raids.
Firstly, yes permant energy is kind, meaning reactor, geothermal and generator, as they don't have spikes and furthermore don't need energy.
Nethertheless I am a big friend of solar power as you are able to calculate very good how many batteries are required. The trick is not to have them all connected together, instead, place them where they are needed. If you build smart, you won't need any wire, which will deny any Zzz-events at all.
Examples:
Freezer 10x10
-1 solar 1 battery 4 coolers
5 Bedrooms connected with vents in a row
-1 solar 1 battery 4 coolers (12°C), 4 heaters(30°C)
=> The room in the middle will have more extrem temperature, but within normal range whilst the more outside are normal
2 Sunlamps and 4 heaters
-Here does solar shine, as sunlamps have the same life circle than solar power.
you roughly need 2 solar per sunlamp to run. 4 heaters are also equivalent to one solar and one battery is enough to keep the heaters running in the night and give a starting boost at 6 am when the sunlamp need full power but the light level is still busy increasing.
If you place the batteries diagonally you can reach the lamp though the wall without a cable.
Thank you, that's very interesting. I never thought of having a battery for each location. So it's the power conduit that is the culprit in the short circuiting zzzt thing? That is very good to know. Thanks!
It's any circuit having battery power attached to it.
A less hardcore approach than bolgfreds is simply splitting your circuit into several large circuits. Zzzts scale with power in the batteries, so if you cut it in half it cuts down on the explosions. At 20 batteries, you will see whole rooms getting vaporized, but at 10 it's manageable, and at 5 you can probably just hit triple speed and ignore it.
Oh ok, that's good to know. Thanks!
Quote from: Bolgfred on August 08, 2018, 05:11:56 AM
I am a big friend of solar power as you are able to calculate very good how many batteries are required. The trick is not to have them all connected together, instead, place them where they are needed. If you build smart, you won't need any wire, which will deny any Zzz-events at all.
I've always heard of this but never tried it. I may copy your examples and use them in a game to see how the feel. However...
Quote
5 Bedrooms connected with vents in a row
-1 solar 1 battery 4 coolers (12°C), 4 heaters(30°C)
=> The room in the middle will have more extrem temperature, but within normal range whilst the more outside are normal
Do you mean the coolers are at 30 and the heaters at 12?
Quote from: Greep on August 08, 2018, 06:15:27 AM
It's any circuit having battery power attached to it.
I'll need to double check but I swear I've gotten this on a batteryless circuit that just had way too much power being pumped into it. Like, 2 geothermals added to 5-6 water wheels when the water wheels were enough power. Mabye then the geothermal vents hit at the same time.
You might be right, I didn't really look into it, just going by experience. Most likely, since the power was reliable, I just never had extreme excess because why would you outside of the first year right?
For dealing with the zzzt events, I sub divide my base into many sub circuits that are all connected to each other via switches, switches are defaulted to off, if one circuit explodes, i flip the switch and exchange power between 2 sub circuits, then flip switch again when its safe to do so, each sub circuit i generally use 4 batteries and at least 2 power sources.
A tip for dealing with the fires, try run your cables through stone walls and avoid routing cables through storage rooms where there are lots of things to catch on fire. They will still explode but you will have more time to put the flames out and less to repair and replace.
You have to go completely conduitless afaik to dodge the zzt event.
This is what I used to do in b18, but I think the efficiency gain from conduit setups + certain techs that require a very 'disorganized' base outweigh it.
2 battery banks, with like 6 each, locked behind switches. Just like previous people have described, it works well to limit the effects of the zzzt event.
Secondly, run all wires through stone walls where possible. These cannot burn and thus will contain the fires quite a bit.
Thirdly, build wires with redundancy in mind. This means that your whole wire network should not be a line, but instead a loop. Since zzzt can never strike two locations at once this means that you will never have a section suddenly without power because power will come from the other end of the loop instead.
Quote from: 5thHorseman on August 08, 2018, 06:53:15 AM
Quote from: Bolgfred link=topic=43165.msg425354#msg425354
u]5 Bedrooms connected with vents in a row[/u]
-1 solar 1 battery 4 coolers (12°C), 4 heaters(30°C)
=> The room in the middle will have more extrem temperature, but within normal range whilst the more outside are normal
Do you mean the coolers are at 30 and the heaters at 12?
Nono, coolers to 12 as it's the minimum temperature before the "slept in the cold" debuff pops out. Still it must be as low as possible as the adjacent rooms will only gain the temperature partially, resulting in 17 for the adjacent and 21 for the adjacent adjacent room. Same for the heater. "slept in heat" starts at 32 i think, but adjacents would be lower.
Surely you have to cannot run heater and cooler at the same time, but I suggest temperature devices always to be deactivated, because as long they have energy, they can break down, draining you component stock.
Simply deactivate heaters in the summer and coolers in winter.
Conduits built inside stone walls can't short or catch on fire. In mid game consider hardening your far-ranging conduits by overlaying them with stone walls, such as those connecting to geothermal vents. This has a side benefit of partitioning up the map and can slow the pathing of hostiles, which may save the lives of your colonists and livestock.
Quote from: Nainara on August 11, 2018, 12:35:42 PM
Conduits built inside stone walls can't short or catch on fire. In mid game consider hardening your far-ranging conduits by overlaying them with stone walls, such as those connecting to geothermal vents. This has a side benefit of partitioning up the map and can slow the pathing of hostiles, which may save the lives of your colonists and livestock.
Unless the event has changed after B18, this is not true. Wires can short just fine inside stone walls, but the effects of the explosion are minimized. Especially if you use non-flammable floors as well. Then all you have to do is replace the broken wire and repair some structural damage on the walls themselves.
It is still worth doing for all the other reasons you listed, however =)
Just to be clear: do fires now start from a conduit if stone walls are placed on top of combustible flooring in v1? (surrounding at least interior walls with non-combustible flooring makes gameplay sense.. but /under/ the wall..?)
Don't forget that as of B18, ZZtt can occur anywhere you're using power, regardless of battery charge (or even if you have no batteries). I /think/ it's triggered by an overvoltage in the power lines, but I'd have to science it to be sure & that won't happen until this version settles down a bit
Quote from: Snafu_RW on August 12, 2018, 05:27:26 PM
Don't forget that as of B18, ZZtt can occur anywhere you're using power, regardless of battery charge (or even if you have no batteries). I /think/ it's triggered by an overvoltage in the power lines, but I'd have to science it to be sure & that won't happen until this version settles down a bit
I can pretty much guarantee it is based on voltage. I had a drill attached to a geothermal vent, and forgot to attach the vent to my base so the vent was powering the drill. It Zzzt'd out 3 times in as many minutes.