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I think it is rather ok now. Although, I noticed I use very little normal wire, with 95% being heavy watt wire powering all kind of machinery away from my dupes. There's little use for normal wire outside of your base.

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1 hour ago, turbonl64 said:

I think it is rather ok now. Although, I noticed I use very little normal wire, with 95% being heavy watt wire powering all kind of machinery away from my dupes. There's little use for normal wire outside of your base.

I'd love multi coloured wires, or wire clusters that could be used within one tile space...

By mid-game my bases start looking like circuit boards, and excessive bridges become a nightmare..

This is a cycle 500ish base and it's already getting busier than i'd like... Haven't even started liquefying or boiling yet either :( 

image.thumb.png.2e74a5c768437cb62f19bc265e6dd216.png

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2 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

I'd love multi coloured wires, or wire clusters that could be used within one tile space...

By mid-game my bases start looking like circuit boards, and excessive bridges become a nightmare..

This is a cycle 500ish base and it's already getting busier than i'd like... Haven't even started liquefying or boiling yet either :( 

image.thumb.png.2e74a5c768437cb62f19bc265e6dd216.png

That's heavily organized. I think I am using 5-7 power transformers in total, with the heavy watt wire just going everywhere. Your set up is much more efficient concerning resources, although I have to say I never had a shortage of metal.

 

I'll post mine once I get around it.

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1 minute ago, turbonl64 said:

That's heavily organized. I think I am using 5-7 power transformers in total, with the heavy watt wire just going everywhere. Your set up is much more efficient concerning resources, although I have to say I never had a shortage of metal.

 

I'll post mine once I get around it.

I tend to avoid using heavy watt unless it's for large banks of machines, i.e. the 28x fertilizer makers to the south of the base, as it's just not needed for the most part.

As regards metal - take advantage of the abundance of igneous biomes, because unless you're wiring somewhere thats going to get crazy hot, iron is perfect for wiring. This saves your precious copper/wolframite/gold for your machinery (as they all have positive qualities for machines).

I know there's an abundance of gold on the map too, but early game especially, Iron is far easier to get hold of than gold.

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1 hour ago, turbonl64 said:

Although, I noticed I use very little normal wire, with 95% being heavy watt wire powering all kind of machinery away from my dupes. There's little use for normal wire outside of your base.

Heavy watt wires take four times the metal (and thus four times the dupe manpower to mine the metal) as normal wires.  Unless you need to run more than 1000 watts through any given circuit, I don't see why you'd use heavy watt wires over normal ones unless you've got a surplus of metal and/or manpower.

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29 minutes ago, goboking said:

I don't see why you'd use heavy watt wires over normal ones unless you've got a surplus of metal and/or manpower.

Which I have :D. Like lifegrow mentioned, iron ore comes in huge pockets. You can easily get 30t out of one pocket, and with luck even 60-75t.

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So this is how my power is managed:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kv1imlic4t3am54/Sticky Base Power.png

Very chaotic indeed, although it has its merit. Before anybody asks: yes, I did place some extra geysers in debug mode as I felt quite limited to test new stuff out. But that's beside the point. I basically build the heavy watt wires in crawl spaces around my walkways, so the decor impact is almost 0. This allows maximum flexibility in power deployment for me as I can change device set up at will (and I did that a lot). The first base has the heavy watt wire encircling the external wall. For the bottom base however, I decided to for more normal wire usage.

I think this also shows no intermediary wires are needed. Instead, just use the heavy watt wire and only go normal wire where you need power for places with high dupe presence. Not the most efficient solution regarding to resources, and it takes a good while to set it up, but it is very flexible.

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5 hours ago, brummbar7 said:

not so much 'unbalanced' as 'unnecessary complication'.

I personally like it. It's a more realistic simulation. Your house breakers are limited to 15 A of 120 V, 1800 W, electricity (US standard). The grid is limited to the thickness of the wire (heavy-watt wire, duh). Perhaps, when they develop the game to utilize 100 kW+, they can have limitless wires.

The annoyance is really placement because of the current non-overlapping state.

 

Transformers are messy, I agree. But that is because of the capacity of each transformer. They can change it to a circuitry utility box, taking 2x3 space. 1 input, 3 outputs. Each circuit allowing 2 kW (instead of 1). Input is 6 kW rating.

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4 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

I'd love multi coloured wires, or wire clusters that could be used within one tile space...

By mid-game my bases start looking like circuit boards, and excessive bridges become a nightmare..

This is a cycle 500ish base and it's already getting busier than i'd like... Haven't even started liquefying or boiling yet either :( 

image.thumb.png.2e74a5c768437cb62f19bc265e6dd216.png

Dam that is a clean power grid!

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42 minutes ago, CodingKitteh said:

I personally like it. It's a more realistic simulation.

If realistic is the standard we may as well agitate for actual voltages, with option for 3-phase.  Because right now these 'transformers' do not transform.   There's nothing *to* transform.  They are more akin to capacitors.  But none of that is necessary for the game, and would mostly agitate people with unnecessary complexity.

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I definitely like the idea of having more variety with wire size (I feel the same with pipe size but that's a separate topic)

5 hours ago, CodingKitteh said:

Your house breakers are limited to 15 A of 120 V, 1800 W, electricity (US standard).

While I of course don't know what it's like where you live, I did 95% of the wiring in my house here in New Jersey, and while the majority of my breakers are 15A as you point out, I also have 20A, 30A and 50A breakers performing various different functions, all with 220V (120V is also an option) service from the power line.  Maybe it's because I've done it in real life, but I do like the idea of having several gauges of wire to work with for purposes.

4 hours ago, brummbar7 said:

If realistic is the standard we may as well agitate for actual voltages, with option for 3-phase.  Because right now these 'transformers' do not transform.   There's nothing *to* transform.  They are more akin to capacitors.  But none of that is necessary for the game, and would mostly agitate people with unnecessary complexity.

While I do understand where your coming from in terms of stark realism, technically the transformers in the game act as both capacitors as you say (because they store energy to be used should the batteries run out) but they do also transform 20kW to 1kW.  Just because specific voltages/currents aren't displayed in the game doesn't mean that's not what it's actually doing since Watts = Voltage * Amperage.  I do agree with your final point though, getting that granular by adding Amps and Volts into the game I believe WOULD be unnecessarily complex.  You shouldn't need an electrical engineers degree to play :D 

However, having variable transformers that you can set the requested Wattage output as either base functionality or an advanced transformer in the research tree, and maybe two more wire gauges between basic and heavy-watt for maybe 5kW and 10kW loads, would provide loads of flexibility and organization for those who want it and would in no way actually be necessary for those who don't.

9 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

I'd love multi coloured wires, or wire clusters that could be used within one tile space...

By mid-game my bases start looking like circuit boards, and excessive bridges become a nightmare..

Love the idea of being able to color code your circuits in some way, perhaps a toggle-able filter on the wiring overlay that let you paint circuits.  A great solution to the problem your describing.  Unfortunately I think a wire cluster inside a single tile would cause the same kind of headache that excessive wire bridges do, just like a bundle of wires in real life :p 

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9 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

This saves your precious copper/wolframite/gold for your machinery (as they all have positive qualities for machines).

Pardon my ignorance, I know the positive qualities of wolframite and gold, but what is it for copper?

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19 minutes ago, manu_x32 said:

Pardon my ignorance, I know the positive qualities of wolframite and gold, but what is it for copper?

Copper is the only metal that improves decor, so you can use it on +decor buildings (that uses metal) to boost their decor further, or -decor buildings that requires dupes to be around a lot to lessen the blow.

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53 minutes ago, manu_x32 said:

Pardon my ignorance, I know the positive qualities of wolframite and gold, but what is it for copper?

Iron ore wires are also an option when you don't need anything special. Far more iron ore out there than copper ore.
 

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2 minutes ago, Risu said:

Iron ore wires are also an option when you don't need anything special. Far more iron ore out there than copper ore.
 

somehow I thought Iron was more precious, but looking at its stats, I guess it has nothing special apart from having the highest heat capacity after steel. ;)

 

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5 minutes ago, manu_x32 said:

somehow I thought Iron was more precious, but looking at its stats, I guess it has nothing special apart from having the highest heat capacity after steel. ;)


 

Iron ore is quite average really, only has slightly higher specific heat capacity than copper ore, but both of them are still less than granite.
 

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Just now, Risu said:

Not sure what you're expecting but it's been spawning in the jungle biome for months now if not since the first release.
 

You and I both know what you were inferring - needs me them refined metals.

Unless I've completely gotten the wrong end of the stick :D 

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2 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

You and I both know what you were inferring - needs me them refined metals.

Unless I've completely gotten the wrong end of the stick :D

Oh sure the refined metals would be nice, but they are functionally different than the ores and as such the distinction must be made.
 

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1 hour ago, mdallicardillo said:

technically the transformers in the game act as both capacitors as you say (because they store energy to be used should the batteries run out) but they do also transform 20kW to 1kW.  Just because specific voltages/currents aren't displayed in the game doesn't mean that's not what it's actually doing since Watts = Voltage * Amperage.

They clearly and explicitly act as capacitors, but transforming is merely implied by the name.  Is it transforming some unknown voltage?  Or is normal wire delivering X volts at Y amps, while heavi-watt is delivering the same X volts at Y*20amps?  The wire is thicker, after all (well, a thicker bundle), which benefits amperage, not so much voltage.  Heck, the colony area is small enough everything could be operating on DC power.   I can plug every and any generator or consumer into the same circuit - if we're talking realism that suggests they're all the same voltage, otherwise there would be problems.  That's why the abstracted and simplified system is sufficient, and moreover desirable imo.   Electrical realism is kind of a rabbit hole. 

The primary questions regarding ONI wires are, what is the decor penalty, and can it move through tiles?  We have two wires which each cover opposite ends of those questions.  To insert a third wire would require careful balancing of decor (since wall passage is simply yes/no). Adding a fourth type would start to get really superfluous.   

Now on the other hand, if there were eventually some kind of high tier superconductor wire that is basically heavi-watt that can pass through tiles, but has some kind of complex material requirement, that's a different matter.  It brings a third factor into the equation; material scarcity.  But as far as wires that can be built with just typical mined ores, I think two is plenty.

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