Circuit Breaker structure object

[Coenmcj]

Did I miss something on the forums? All of a sudden "+1's" Everwhere.
Anyways.

Ontopic,

Breakers actually would be a good idea, especially to separate a group of batteries from the main circuit as backup power should the main circuit explode.

However, I think that the protective part of the thing (turning off upon short-circuits) should be called fuse and should require colonists to turn it back on.

Expanding on that, I think that most or all appliances should require a colonist to manually turn the power on or off when you click the toggle power button. Perhaps later on, research to build remote controls for power management instead.

And expanding on that again! But of course electrical items (Mainly lamps here.... the bigger stuff should be separate) should need to be set in a group, so you turn on one in the room and the rest turn on aswell, because at the moment it takes an insane amount of time to turn on the 50 or so lamps I have, and a lot of them are along my hallways, which are all interconnected without doors.

[StorymasterQ]

...
And expanding on that again! But of course electrical items (Mainly lamps here.... the bigger stuff should be separate) should need to be set in a group, so you turn on one in the room and the rest turn on aswell, because at the moment it takes an insane amount of time to turn on the 50 or so lamps I have, and a lot of them are along my hallways, which are all interconnected without doors.

Could you not just double-click on a lamp? It'll select all the lamps visible on screen.

[Thunder Rahja]

Zoom out and double-click on a lamp, or shift+click multiple lamps.

[keylocke]

Expanding on that, I think that most or all appliances should require a colonist to manually turn the power on or off when you click the toggle power button. Perhaps later on, research to build remote controls for power management instead.

agreed. forcing the colonists to manually turn off devices should make things more "realistic" since currently, if all i wanted to do was turn the lights off, all i have to do is zoom-out and double-click a light and turning that off will do the same thing with the others that are selected. same thing with doors.

but sometimes, i just want to turn off some lights or some doors while leaving others activated. which is why circuit breakers and other red-stone type mechanics should add a more intricate level of control to base design.


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other electrical devices i would like to see.

-conveyor belts : can have a switch to control direction and allows colonists to ride or drop items on the belt that could lead towards a stockpile. (raiders will shoot and destroy this)

-switchable walls : can be used as hidden entrance/exits for flanking maneuvers. (it is not considered a door so raiders will not prioritize attacking it)

[Coenmcj]

Could you not just double-click on a lamp? It'll select all the lamps visible on screen.

I do, But do you realize how long it takes if you turn on everything at once? everything slowly turns on, one appliance at a time. what if the stuff is on the same circuit anyway? shouldn't it turn on rather quickly instead of tremendously slowly?

[Monkfish]

Could you not just double-click on a lamp? It'll select all the lamps visible on screen.

I do, But do you realize how long it takes if you turn on everything at once? everything slowly turns on, one appliance at a time. what if the stuff is on the same circuit anyway? shouldn't it turn on rather quickly instead of tremendously slowly?

Selecting all the lamps and waiting for them to power on is still quicker than powering them on one by one, especially if you have a lot.

I'm not sure why they take so long to come on though. Is it by design or is there a bottleneck somewhere in the tasks/actions/updates/whatever process?

I'd like to see some zoning options coming in, either using the current zones system and being table to toggle the power of items within that zone, or a different control option (ctrl + click) to select all electrical items in the room the item clicked is in. This would allow fairly granular control over what parts of your base are on at a given moment in time and allow quick powering/depowering of items.

[Hexxagon]

+1
Great Idea! 

[Rokiyo]

Loving this thread, lots of good ideas in here.

I especially like the ideas about having colonists maintaining the power network, I hadn't considered that myself... Though I wonder about how the response times will feel with low numbers of colonists...

I've been quietly tinkering away in the background on some of this stuff, and this thread is very motivating.

[Mystic]

A very late +1 on this topic.  It's a bit surprising to me that it hasn't already been implemented ... seems like such a simple idea, but very, very useful on several levels in a game where power can be so important.

[skullywag]

Umm haplos power switch mod?

[Jaxxa]

That mod does part of this but I don't think it can reduce the "Faulty Power Conduit" events.