Quote from: Mystic on September 07, 2014, 10:43:23 AM(E.g., rather than having a magic "anti-blight" research, I like the fact that I have to plan ahead to have enough raw foodstuffs to withstand such an event, or else have to go foraging for food in the wilderness to tide me over if I was not prepared.)
Ah, but I think you miss my point a bit. On normal setting, it shouldn't be possible to build all the (automatic) counters to all problems in a pace that makes you build them before the problem occur. But if you're really really tired of blights, then you should be able to first research an item that helps you against blights (fridges? pesticides?) and then spend enough resources on building these items. In the meantime, the storyteller will - probably - dump something else on you, that you now didn't afford to counter. But at least you have countered the annoying blights.
And as you say, having enough food stored is already a counter for blights. Having enough defences is already a counter for attacks. But when the game difficulty increases, they need to be looked after so you can have the possibility to have better and working counters - fridges, more efficient hydroponics, soylent green, artillery, your own mechanoids on infinite patrol routes...
Events that reoccur and just makes you sigh becaese you can't possibly do anything about them is just annoying and boring, and not very good storytelling, in my opinion.
Better storytelling would be to let me counter those things that already occurred, let me counter them automatically - ha ha! - and make up new things that I, as a base builder, didn't quite think of. Yet.
QuoteAlso, fuses shouldn't allow electricity to keep working if there is a solar flare.
I don't think so either. A fuse normally works by blocking very strong currents from occurring. So it's a counter from electrical problems - dumping all 100kWd into a single point - by triggering fuses. They most logical solution would be a square powerbox that breaks all incoming connections (2-4) if the current through it goes over a certain limit (right now in game that current is infinite, so it's easy to trigger) and releases again when repaired (repairing is already in the game).
When it comes to solar storms, a switch or fuse could possibly disconnect a mountain or indoors base electrical grid from the solar storm?
Also, the normal way of countering EMP (including solar storms) is to have shielded systems, Faraday's cages. This could be researched, and items and power lines could be built with EMP protection. For a cost. As usual.
So nothing should be for free. And you might fill your base with sprinklers, when you instead needed fridges.
What would be the fun otherwise?