Solar flare side-effect

[Cassey]

I noticed one side effect of solar flares:  my hydroponic farms deep in a mountain all die out from lack of power & light.  Seems like a bit of a double whammy.

Has there been any talk about protecting items deep under rock from any such effects?  Anything strong enough to effect electronics below a 100 feet of rock is going to kill lifeforms in the real world...

[Toggle]

Uh... well it happens in real life... and do we even know the depths of the mountain? Could be like, 2 feet of rock.

[killer117]

If it tough enough to take an infinite number of lightning strikes and mortar shots then i seriously doubt that its 2 feet think

[Axelios]

Conducting materials absorb the ElectroMagnetic radiation from the solar flare hitting the atmosphere.

What does this mean for RimWorld?
Long conductors (like power conduits) have huge currents induced in them, overloading power systems, and hence knocking out the power.
Mountains do nothing to block the effects, because they're mostly just rock, which isn't especially conductive.

The only way to shield against it is to use a metal box. Using a conducting material as an enclosure is an effective defense against EM - that's why if you break open a cellphone you'll see a metal box on part of the circuit board - it's there to block external radio signals from interfering with it. Using an insulating box doesn't do anything to stop EM.

So it actually isn't unrealistic to have solar flares ruining your power system. You might say that the plants should live longer without power and light, and I'd agree with that. But in terms of the effects of big solar flares on your power system - it should cause actual damage to your power structures, like blow up your batteries and make your generators catch fire. I would imagine that your colonists have been super clever with the design and have managed to get the systems to shut off fast enough to prevent damage.

Any questions? I'm in University doing an Electrical and Electronic Engineering degree, so matters of electricity interest me.

[killer117]

Id like a way to counter solar flares and how they turn off my electrical grid. Any real life way i could do so. And yeah i just think that ur hydroponic plants shouldnt die in 30 seconds. It should take like, a week to die.

[Toggle]

Id like a way to counter solar flares and how they turn off my electrical grid. Any real life way i could do so. And yeah i just think that ur hydroponic plants shouldnt die in 30 seconds. It should take like, a week to die.

Eh... If you want plants that grow fast, they'll die fast.

[killer117]

Not nessicarilly. The plants we get could be gene modded in this futureistic enviroment to grow faster, that in way implys that they would die faster

[christhekiller]

Would be nice if the harder to grow crops could last, like Xerigum and the like. But eh, Solar Flares don't happen frequently enough that all my crops are killed. Otherwise surely you have a stockpile sufficient enough to outlast the solar flare

[Havan_IronOak]

Having lived in Florida and watching years of newsbroadcasts of all the way orange and strawberry growers make enormous efforts to save their crops, the solar flare snafu just bothers me. I'd like to suggest that the event be changed to NOT affect things QUITE so drastically. How about allowing us to build metal impregnated walls to protect parts of the base? Batteries inside those areas (especially those protected by fuses) would be immune to this catastrophic event.

[Kaballah]

If this bugs you super bad, there's one or two mods that add ways to cope with solar flares.

[killer117]

My only problem with them is that they kill hydroponic plants. It makes it impossible to grow devilstrand with hudroponics

[porcupine]

Am I the only one who thinks that solar flares should muck with bionics, and moreover the scythers and centipads?

[Euzio]

Actually, I kinda prefer it if the solar flares simply screw up all the electrical generating devices (geothermals, solar, wind). So we're forced to rely on batteries for the duration of the solar flare. That way there is a much strong incentive to charge and keep batteries so that we can allocate devices which need it (like our fridges, hydroponics, and turrets) urgently.

[A Friend]

Actually, I kinda prefer it if the solar flares simply screw up all the electrical generating devices (geothermals, solar, wind). So we're forced to rely on batteries for the duration of the solar flare. That way there is a much strong incentive to charge and keep batteries so that we can allocate devices which need it (like our fridges, hydroponics, and turrets) urgently.

Interesting.
But, if so, then the solar flare would need to last longer than a day since batteries can store a helluva' lot of power and most people have rows of full of it. With the way I use power right now, it would barely affect me.

[Devon_v]

Mountains are infinity thick.

Hydroponics are handy for growing fast things faster, but I find greenhouses much safer in practice. Obviously that doesn't apply to ice sheets, but anywhere else you should find some room for a sun lamped interior growing space that you can run year round with no worries from fallout or flares. Even a mountain base can use void spaces for this purpose.