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And don't forget that we can put up roofs easy now. So you only need a wall every now and then to completely roof your wires from lightning.

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Too busy! Deploying construction crews!

So I have geothermal generators way outside of my base. I can run a 5 tile wide concrete strip down to my base with a powerline in the middle, but lightning seems to be really attracted to these things, getting direct hits somewhat frequently. I can run redundant lines, but the conduits are flammable and the fire can travel all the way back to the generator. This doesn't happen *that* often, but I was hoping there was some way to protect the power line without just running a stone wall over everything.

You can't get 100% Safety. However you're on the way to mitigating the risks.

What I do (and what everyone else has said):

1: Run the wire down a five wide flooring type (any will do its main aim is to remove nearby vegetation and prevent it from re-growing).
2: Place blocks of two walls every ten spaces. So if you do loose a section you only need to replace ten wire conduits, a pretty easy job
3: Have a circuit. Where possible I try to have all the geothermal tied in to each other. So you have two lines running directly to eitehr the base or to another geothermal.

Also just noticed there's no toggle power option. So I've now over extended myself on power, and I either loose pump progress and resources by dismantling them, or leave them in place.

The much loved fertiliser Moisture pump has returned! And I thought that it'd be fun to try them out, so a I rolled a Arctic forest as that has the highest chance of swamping itself....

My first observation was that they take far too long. You either need colossal amounts of them to make any headway, or you're gong to be waiting a very very long time. After being on the rock for a year its still taking forever to make even remote amount of headway, and the construction and up keep cost is quite punishing for a colony.

So could we speed it up? Maybe half as long, or even only a quarter?

I've built some self-contained "greenhouses" before.  However, what I do is I connect the sun lamps to solar panels.  As plants only grow in the day there's not much point powering the sun lamps overnight.  By keeping this on its own power grid the draw of the lamps doesn't mess up the rest of your colony power.  No need for batteries on that grid either so keeps the risk of your sun lamps blowing up low.

Additionally, I like to chuck some heaters in there too if I'm playing in a cold area.  These are connected to my main power grid though to make sure the heat lasts overnight.

I've seen this suggested before, but never looked into it myself. What would you say is a good ratio of solar panels to heaters/sun lamps?

For 100%, or close to it of the daily "Growing time" then you need three to one ratio of Sunlamps. For good enough two to one works.

Two other dodges:
Mount all the sunlamps on one circuit so that some Sunlamps will come on first, then others as more power becomes available.

A trick with the two to one ratio is to include a battery in the circuit. That way excess power is stored during the day and used in the down time at the end of the day. Of course it does guarantee a short circuit in your green house.

Personally I just use three to one, and large numbers of them.

I loaded your save file, and the problem is that the hot air from all four AC's are directing into the same 1x1 unroofed tile room. The temp of that tile room is ~115C, so that will have an adverse affect on the AC's ability to cool.

And that's the change I was missing... Thanks.

Its also bloody silly. Two 1m Square coolers managing to output enough heat to raise a 1m square to boiling point. I've been on roofs with 18x 2x2m cooling units, and I didn't die!

edit:
Still feels appallingly hard to cool things now. Needing 5-6 coolers where as before you'd need three. This is due I suspect to the imperfect insulation.

17x8 is an extremely large freezer. I need 2 coolers to reliably cool an 8x8 freezer.

Just remodelled the base. Three coolers for an 8x8 room. 11 deg inside, 24 deg outside...

Here's the link to the files, so anyone can have a play.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6gjpg9lspe2bfh9/Cooling%20problems.rar?dl=0

Just tested. Yeah coolers got smacked, and smacked VERY hard.

Before you'd need ~4 to keep a Orbital trade beacon frozen. Now eight won't even keep it below 0 deg, and that's on a 20 degree day.

Essentially meaning another bullet to the face for large colonies. As before, power was always an issue for towns. Now it seems insurmountable. I used to end up having to build ship power cores to get enough reliable constant power.

edit:
One also wonders how I'm meant to supply enough cooling for colonist rooms now? Before a few banks of Coolers could keep most colonist rooms, and even Hospital rooms at a comfortable temperature, to avoid the mood de-buffs for slept in the heat. After ten years on this rock and I'm now unable to climate control my settlement, but I can build a spaceship...?

17x8 is an extremely large freezer. I need 2 coolers to reliably cool an 8x8 freezer.

Four coolers can reliably keep the area of an orbital trade beacon cooled in previous games (I think I'll test that now). And its about the same size as my normal freezers, which were fine.

So, hello! I've been thinking about this when playing in Tundra biomes where the cold could literally kill you, I wonder if anyone has actually made a successful heat or cold trap? I remember it being on the front page, but I've watched many a let's play and in my hundreds of hours of play time, I've never actually made one to help kill raiders. Since they always bash down doors, I didn't think it was doable. Can it be done?

I have theory crafted one, but I've never implemented it.

Recipe for baked Raider
Take a room, made of stone, not to large though.
Place stone doors front and rear.
Place something flammable, such as a bed inside the room (Originally the idea was to use a single tile crop field with an unroofed section which you close off as the raid starts. Maybe it can still be done, but I'd need to play about with the roofing mechanics. Its jsut Raiders seem to set crops on fire more consistently).
Place fuel sources inside the room.
Place low health item in the doorway that's set to "close", clothing is ideal.
Await raiders.

Raiders rush into the room, one will invariably set fire to the bed. This acts as your trigger. The fire would then spread to the item holding the door open. When this burns away the door should, theoretically close. Trapping the raiders inside with a huge fire.

As I said that's my Theory. No idea if it works. Never needed too try it out, as I just blow them up with HME.

Edit: Changed the title.

I took a break for the first time since A6 or so last alpha and have only just gotten back into it.

Started a new colony, by the numbers, go. Made a few boobs with planning, but those were fixable. Then I got my freezer up and running... Or so I thought.

Its 26 deg inside the Freezer, with three coolers set to -9! Out side is 38 deg. So check list, all are correct and ticked:

• All vents are outside (unroofed chimney).
• There's an insulating corridor.
• The room is listed as "indoors".
• All the coolers are powered.
• The room isn't large (17x8).

What am I missing? Did coolers take a unbelievably massive nerf in the last patch or two? Or can you now only vent one cooler per square?

I see youtubers [...]

Watching Youtubers play Rimworld is an exercise in raising your blood pressure. Watching them make mistakes, squander resources or just get mechanics wrong.

I have to keep reminding myself "my way of playing isn't the only one! See how the other half Lives..."
Then my little internal Rimworlder ruins it by adding "..briefly, as what they've just done is going to come back and bite them in the ass!"

A lot of you talk about Electricity, could one do a Tribal colony on an ice sheet without it? IE, start and stay at the tribal tech level?

So with the Wiki down, I'm curious...

Is there any benefit to hunting/taming Boomrats and Boomalopes, or is it best to give the volatile gasbags a wide berth?

As far as I can tell: Absolutely none.

So that's why I've decided to start a Boomalope farm in my new Rimworld play though...

I could see a point if you needed Boomalope juice to make artillery shells.

Yes, please.

With the checkbox 'on' by default, it wouldn't break current behavior for those who don't want to micromanage to that extent, and would give more control to those who do.

Exactly my thinking.