Electricity: A Story of short circuts and overload

[Bolgfred]

Intro:
I remember when I started the game I kept my batteries on 100% and stacked them, as I mentioned energy as a ressource, which is worth to be gathered.
After I learned to understand the Zzzt-event I never used power conduits anymore to prevent short circuts
Since all this time I was scared of them, as I really really didn't want them to happen at any time.
Never was I thinking they have to be removed from the game, but they never felt fun.
This hasn't changed up to today.

Problem:
As mentioned above, short ciruits are a thread, which can be handled with countermeasures. Anyway none of these are any fun fun because you mostly try to avoid them panicly(appearently I do) which means denial of game content.

Rough examples of counter measures:
1. Build without using conduits
-> cheese / not working anymore
2. Cut off batteries off the net
-> micromanatement / not working anymore
3. Muiltiple circuts to minimize damage
-> micromanagement
4.stack batteries to stay below 50%
-> expensive / feels weird

Idea:
To make sure everybody can use eletricity the way they want to whenever they want to there could be a new building: the transformer!
The transformer is a researchable building which will allow to change the voltage of the circut they belong to, causing different effects.
These could be realized in different running modes:

1. Low Voltage
Immune to short circut
50% performance for electric infrastructure

2. Standard
->same procedere as every year

3. Slow Voltage
-> Immune to solar flare
-> short circut happen at 50% strength
-> 75% performance for electric infrastructure
-> 150% power consumption

4. Overcharge
-> 150% performance for electric infrastructure
-> 200% power consumption
-> 150% short circuit strength

5. OVERCHARGE!!!
-> 200% performance for electric infrastructure
-> 300% power consumption
-> 200% short circuit strength
-> 300% short circuit chance

conclusion:
With these power modes everybody can play they way that they want to. people who hate on flare can buy protection with higher maintenenance. He who builds with wood, goes slowly to prevent circuts and those who want to take the risk can buff their base, whilst in a very desperate situation you can push your engines to the limit, make your towers waste their barrels in seconds or use overcharged battery-batteries as a larger IED with a nice standing lamp.

BONUS:
In my head I see an Einstein sitting at the science table, smoke everywhere, trying to invent hydroponics while in the back people try to put our fires and repair cables, all because theyre hungry and the windwheel has a good day spinning.

[AileTheAlien]

This is a very complicated solution, for what isn't really a problem, because...

3. Muiltiple circuts to minimize damage
-> micromanagement

This is trivially easy to do. Just build all of your power wires in at least two of the walls in any given room / building. Then your electricity is never cut off from a single Bzzzt event, and your pawns can just put out the fires and repair the wires. Just look at how I build my colonies. (See attached.)

[attachment deleted due to age]

[lunaticneko]

I think ANY of the nonstandard voltage levels should result in risk of device failure.

Low Voltage => 4x failure risk
Slow Voltage => 2x failure risk
Overcharge => 4x failure risk
OVERCHARGE!!! => 16x failure risk

This is not about short circuiting but about device failure in general, the ones that require component replacement.

Also, there should be a way to increase frequency (Hz) of the power grid. This would cause 2x failure rate (in addition to voltage-based changes) but makes everything work 41% faster (a factor of sqrt(2) just because I like it). This increases not the power output of the grid, but the speed of the devices themselves. Turrets would fire faster. Research benches would perform at 141.4% speed. So forth.