Managing mid-game power

[Cosima]

What strategies do people have for managing power mid-game? I've been noticing that my geothermal vents start really sucking after 200 days or so - even new ones that haven't been built on before. Outputting maybe 100 watts at a time, or 10, or 0. Lame!

Between that, eclipses, and the odd time the geothermal gen goes in the far negatives and drains the power, I just can't keep my batteries built up. This is usually with 8-10 solar panels and 1-2 geothermal gens.

Is there strategy for this? Or is this just kind of a buggy thing? It makes sense that it's built in, I suppose - power difficulties do make it more interesting, but also frustrating when there's no apparent solution

[SSS]

I believe the geothermal power decreasing is a bug. In any case, my current colony is going 300+ days strong and I haven't had problems with them.

Geothermal power is actually one of the things I look for when starting a new colony. If there's only one vent in sight, I don't take it (unless the map is crazy-awesome otherwise). Even though I have three, my base has become quite huge and power-consuming. I've nearly doubled the number of solar panels I have (23 as of now) and added a secondary battery room (I have 71 batteries now, and plan on adding 5 more).

Even with ridiculous power consumption, that much backup should carry me through any worst-case raid scenario, eclipse or no. For your case I would recommend lots and lots of solar panels and micromanaging of your more power intensive stuff. For example, if there's nothing in your hydroponics at the moment, cut the sun lamps. You don't need to power your turrets either unless you're being raided. You could even cut excess cooking stoves or nutrient dispensers that you aren't currently using.

If you're almost totally out of power, cut everything but the absolute essentials: ever how many cooking stoves/nutrient dispensers you need to feed your colony, your comms unit, and your trading beacons. You can even cut the power to your powered doors if need be. Just get your stored electricity built up as fast as you can.

[Damien Hart]

Personally, I don't utilise geo power unless it happens to be convenient. I build enough batteries to power the colony for several days, and enough solar generators to completely fill them after they deplete over night, and them some.

The problem with having so many batteries, however, is that when a power fault occurs, it goes off like a bomb! To compensate, I've been building smaller, independent circuits, each with their own power source and battery setup.

Check out this thread http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=2824.0 too, it should give you a pretty good idea of how some people set up their power.

[Cosima]

Ohhh yeah, I haven't been micromanaging my power - I'll definitely try that. I keep getting weird bugs with the geothermals, so I might leave them alone for now, it's good to know people can manage just with solar! I've mostly been building my colonies around/near a vent.

Useful forum link, SSS, thanks! I'm loving these forums, been reading how different people set up their colonies - so many ways you can play this. Hope to contribute more to the threads when I get my game a bit better.