Headdesk...

[Limdood]

Recovering from a raid, no serious damage except apparently i hadn't ACTUALLY drafted everyone, so the pirates arrived as my tamer and his animals were leaving the base...the tamer got out of range, but his pet grizzly was nearly killed.  pure luck he pulled through.

Anyways, finish cleaning up bodies, resetting traps, extinguishing fires, and finally the colonists go to bed.

ZZZZT happens along a bedroom wall, immediately setting fire to a colonist's bed, and the very first burn scars an eye.   

that colonist wakes up and starts putting out fires, and another nearby colonist walks in to put out fires...and promptly stops to start a social fight with the burned colonist BECAUSE SHE'S DISFIGURED 

A wee bit frustrating, a lot amusing.  Luckily no real damage from the fight and i have a spare bionic eye in storage.  I'd have been genuinely annoyed (at least until i savescummed) if that social fight (caused by the burn scar the colonist received from the fire that the other pawn was coming to extinguish) had caused a death.

[dkmoo]

This is a survival simulation afterall right? I guess in the sake of realism something like that could happen:

Pawn A wakes up b/c a short-circuit lit up his bed b/c he put his Galaxy Note 7 charging on his bed and a spark went into his eyes.
Pawn B rushes into the room: "I SMELL SMO... HOLY S#$T WTF happened to your eye??"
Pawn A (already not liking B, and in a lot of pain): "WTF do you think happened you idiot"
B: (apparently took it the wrong way and was high on wake-up): "Yeah? what if I put my fist in it as well"
A: "That's it..."
*Fights each other*

a few minutes later...
B: "we should probably put the fire out before we both burn"
A: "Ur right"

*Puts out fire*

A: "we cool?"
B: "yeah we cool, lemme go grab that spare bionic eye for you so the doc can patch u up)

[Yoshida Keiji]

I always leave one tile between beds and walls.

[Stormtrooper]

This is a survival simulation afterall right? I guess in the sake of realism something like that could happen: (...)

I really like your explanation. In that way otherwise frustrating event seems more natural and logical. If only I could come up with such a story every time something really stupid happens...

[Limdood]

I always leave one tile between beds and walls.

There was....Zzzt explosions are sized based on amount of energy.  I only had 6 batteries, but that's still a 3 tile radius explosion....i think the default is at least 2 tiles radius explosion

[Rearden]

some of those zzzt explosions can be incredible. I used to keep three batteries until I had a huge explosion that set fire to half the base.

rt fuse is one of my favourite mods at this point.

[fuchboh]

I remember there was a post on the subreddit of a colony with something like 15-20 batteries (all in one circuit and fully charged) and had a zzzt that wiped his colony off the map.  Just had a picture of the tooltip, admiring the size of his explosion as everything was gone in the blink of an eye.

[Rearden]

I remember there was a post on the subreddit of a colony with something like 15-20 batteries (all in one circuit and fully charged) and had a zzzt that wiped his colony off the map.  Just had a picture of the tooltip, admiring the size of his explosion as everything was gone in the blink of an eye.

given the damage three fully charged batteries can do that doesn't surprise me at all. that had to be a spectacular explosion.

[ColonistGirl]

I always leave one tile between beds and walls.

I don't generally run power through the bedrooms, just on the edge that lies along the hallway, so that there are lights in the hall. The bedrooms are typically kept dark. Though the other day I did have a kind of amusing Zzzt, it went up in the deep drill I had that was down a REALLY long series of mining tunnels I'd dug into the mountainside, while the colonists were all asleep. It was happily burning along the conduit by the time they woke up, walked over and went "oh hey, one little fire, I'll just put that out...hey, where'd that mile-long power line go...?"

[Limdood]

yes, my bedrooms are 5x5, pods of 4, 6, or 8 (2x2, 2x3, or 2x4).  The power runs inside the hallway wall.  beds are generally kept in the center of the room.

i'm not complaining about the zzzt event or the fire AT ALL.  it happens.  that explosion was probably going to hit someone.

[Nameless]

If you don't want zzt to happen, don't build any batteries at all and just always keep power output higher than usage if possible.

[RequiemFang]

Sounds like your using Random Randy :p

[erdrik]

I always leave one tile between beds and walls.

There was....Zzzt explosions are sized based on amount of energy.  I only had 6 batteries, but that's still a 3 tile radius explosion....i think the default is at least 2 tiles radius explosion

Stone walls, Conduits under the walls, and anything flammable away from/ hidden from conduit laden walls.

90% of my Zzzt explosions are funneled into a cone due to surrounding walls, and that cone doesn't go very far due to room or hallway size.
Makes Zzzt collateral damage far easier to plan for and prevent.
In my experience.

[TheMeInTeam]

Unless you're over-using batteries, zzzzt should be very minimal (typically 1-2 battery explosion at most) with good design.  Outdoor bases can ignore zzzt outright with good planning (no conduits, separate circuits with planning around how much power draw is used), but mountain bases can't centralize power production spots as easily since the best sustainable early power relies on being unroofed.  It's a hidden disadvantage to mountain bases...to avoid zzt they have to either spam wood hauling (generators), rely entirely on geothermal (delay for using electricity), or haul batteries instead of wood (lots of micromanagement but can use any power source, I normally only haul batteries this way for trade beacons and deep drills but you CAN do it for other things if you like to play slowly).  Battery hauling like that also carries an efficiency penalty due to 50% store rate on batteries.

I don't like the "social fight during fire" dynamic, especially because as far as I can tell you can bypass it via drafting, which makes the already false-choice aspect of automated fire fighting even less desirable than it already was (drafted pawns fight fire more efficiently when micro'd well).

[Limdood]

Oh my god guys....seriously.

The point of the post was a funny story.  I know how to deal with zzzt events.  Seriously half the posts in this thread are mansplaining batteries and zzzt events.