Short Circuits

[Stickle]

The way shorts work right now frustrates me, because they feel like more of an annoyance than anything, and they're completely unrealistic. A short wouldn't instantly drain your entire battery array; it would drain energy until the explosion or whatnot removed the short... And unless we're talking about superconducting cables, that would only draw a finite amount of energy.

I would like to see either short circuits work a little differently, or new infrastructure to mitigate the amount of micromanagement required to safely store power. Either short circuits should drain a limited amount of power (it could be somewhat random), and not all of it every single time, or give us circuit breakers to protect our power grids.

The only thing the short-circuits do at this point is make me charge my battery banks one at a time, disconnecting them before moving on to the next; and then in the case of a short, or a power shortage, to reconnect those banks one by one... It's a pain.

[Thubin]

http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=520.msg10411

Check out that link as there is some information/discussion already going on about this :-)

[Produno]

The way shorts work right now frustrates me, because they feel like more of an annoyance than anything, and they're completely unrealistic. A short wouldn't instantly drain your entire battery array; it would drain energy until the explosion or whatnot removed the short... And unless we're talking about superconducting cables, that would only draw a finite amount of energy.

I would like to see either short circuits work a little differently, or new infrastructure to mitigate the amount of micromanagement required to safely store power. Either short circuits should drain a limited amount of power (it could be somewhat random), and not all of it every single time, or give us circuit breakers to protect our power grids.

The only thing the short-circuits do at this point is make me charge my battery banks one at a time, disconnecting them before moving on to the next; and then in the case of a short, or a power shortage, to reconnect those banks one by one... It's a pain.

Well, just to make you feel a little better about the game. The curcuits in Rimworld are open curcuit, meaning you have no switches, relays, solonoids or anything else to 'halt' the electrical current. Electricity will always go through the quickest path to earth, so an open curcuit would actually drain anything connected to that cable, in our case all our batteries. So it is actually pretty realistic. Though as you say, a way to stop this would be to limit where the electrical current can go by ways of switches or curcuit breakers.

Also i like your idea of charging seperate batteries. I might have to start doing this for back up .

[Stickle]

Well, just to make you feel a little better about the game. The curcuits in Rimworld are open curcuit, meaning you have no switches, relays, solonoids or anything else to 'halt' the electrical current. Electricity will always go through the quickest path to earth, so an open curcuit would actually drain anything connected to that cable, in our case all our batteries. So it is actually pretty realistic. Though as you say, a way to stop this would be to limit where the electrical current can go by ways of switches or curcuit breakers.

That's not really true, though. Unless our backworld colonists are building some seriously high-tech cables, so much current would fry the wires (especially if we're talking about explosions, like what happens currently). Short-circuits are self-limiting because the materials can't withstand those conditions, and fail. But honestly the realism is largely irrelevant - this is a game. What's important is that it in no way prevents large battery back ups, it just makes it a micromanagement nightmare. I would rather there be a streamlined method to do so. Like circuit breakers, which would be yet another thing to spend metal on.

[Produno]

That's not really true, though. Unless our backworld colonists are building some seriously high-tech cables, so much current would fry the wires (especially if we're talking about explosions, like what happens currently). Short-circuits are self-limiting because the materials can't withstand those conditions, and fail. But honestly the realism is largely irrelevant - this is a game. What's important is that it in no way prevents large battery back ups, it just makes it a micromanagement nightmare. I would rather there be a streamlined method to do so. Like circuit breakers, which would be yet another thing to spend metal on.

Of course, yes the generated heat from the extra current would fry the cables all the way along the length of run, but that would depend on the CSA of the cable being used. But I mentioned before to go into this much detail would require stuff like resistance within the cable with volt drop and power factors.
So as it stands I think its pretty realistic (or enough anyway) for a game. Though as you said, being able to fit circuit breakers would make sense and actually make it even more realistic whilst helping the current situation, meaning the cable could get damaged and catch fire all the way along the run back to your circuit breaker depending on what power the end product is running. Then any resistor (machine or such) could get damaged with a chance to explode .