Windmills...Chance to break during Storm

[dartasan]

I feel like there should be a Risk/Reward for having your windmills running during a Storm

Reward:Increase Power Output.
Risk:Windmill breaking from hazardous winds

[Geertje123]

I think it will be a pain in the ass if you have to repair half your windmills each time there is a storm.

[dartasan]

True it would be, But it kind of breaks Immersion...No needed maintenance or anything?

Plus if you dont want your windmills to have a chance of breaking apart in a storm you just shut them off for the duration

[StorymasterQ]

True it would be, But it kind of breaks Immersion...No needed maintenance or anything?

Plus if you dont want your windmills to have a chance of breaking apart in a storm you just shut them off for the duration

I don't think shutting off windmills work against high speed winds. They'll still be turning, won't they? If you lock them stiff it'll just cause more damage.

[Johnny Masters]

It would be immersion breaking if windmills broke every storm. They should only break as an accident, a rare one, if for some reason the safety feathering burns out or the mill is unable to face the right direction. Big windmills are practically immune. If they were not, they wouldn't be built at all.

Besides, the amount of wind speed needed to begin to try and break one is the kind of wind that make people fly, and currently there are no amount of wind that make pawns fly (although that would be really cool, wouldn't? hehe).

BUT i do believe there should be some kind of maintenance, not daily, but every so often you should need to screw a few screws. So you could make a case and say that maintenance condition increases the likelihood of stuff breaking down, specially under stress.

[StorymasterQ]

but every so often you should need to screw a few screws.

Heh heh, you said screw.

...Sorry. I get what you mean, though. That said, solar panels don't have maintenance on them too, aside from the occasional fire.

Maybe just generate a fire on/near a turbine to simulate maintenance need?

[Johnny Masters]

Heh heh, you said screw.

Haha, well I'm actually all for having more screw...in the game. iuwim

Maybe just generate a fire on/near a turbine to simulate maintenance need?

I was thinking something more along these lines: Every 'tick', and a tick could mean hours or days, the building health goes down by one. Then, every hour the thing is working or being used, there's a chance of it breaking down. Breaking down meaning: Somenew mechanism: such as a "pistons got stuck" prompt, and the station starts working again after a cool-down or when brought to full health. OR it simply starts a fire. The chance of this occurring should be something like 0,01 for full health and i guess no more than 50% for a completely battered (1/100HP) station. It really depends on how often the check is done. There could be a threshold where it's really hard for HP to go down or maybe it just stops at half health (it could stop working then, too).

I dunno, i just grew accustomed playing strategy games where you need to keep your stuff maintained, so it's not a big deal for me, i actually feel the need for it. It would work well with a random map generation, where you could come across some abandoned machinery -unmaintained stuff could have some particular graphics, like dust, rust and cobwebs- and then you could hammer it a few times to reactivate it and claim for your own.

[MikhailBoho]

I suppose windmills could use a drawback other than foggy weather when you compare them to solar power. Windmills being hampered by foggy weather is not nearly as bad as solar's constant shut-down at night + being effected by eclipses. Solar has two drawback periods which completely ceases their power output while windmills only have a single event that lessens theirs.

[Johnny Masters]

I suppose windmills could use a drawback other than foggy weather when you compare them to solar power. Windmills being hampered by foggy weather is not nearly as bad as solar's constant shut-down at night + being effected by eclipses. Solar has two drawback periods which completely ceases their power output while windmills only have a single event that lessens theirs.

I don't think giving a drawback to windmills/turbines just out of symmetry is a good excuse. Wind Power and solar Power shouldn't be looked at as competing, but rather complementing, obviously they work under different conditions. Quoting the oracle: "Solar power tends to be complementary to wind. On daily to weekly timescales, high pressure areas tend to bring clear skies and low surface winds, whereas low pressure areas tend to be windier and cloudier. On seasonal timescales, solar energy peaks in summer, whereas in many areas wind energy is lower in summer and higher in winter"

Similarly, there could be a time (in future patches) when selecting a map influences which you should build: a region could be sunny but has stale winds, windy but always cloudy.   

That being said, these are a few possible drawbacks that i guess are inherent to wind power: It oscillates more than solar; requires more general maintenance, attracts more lighting?
Either way i still don't think current wind speeds are enough to damage the turbines, specially since it's built upon futuretech (and our mills are already pretty solid).