Power Shutoff Bug

Narrowed down the problem to the power shutoff:

 

Changed Status to Known Issue

Was this fixed by any chance in the big March update?

Notes from - March 2025 QOL - update 659901

• When the power circuits are rebuilt (e.g. network is disconnected or reconnected either via construction, destruction or circuit breaker):
  • The current load on all circuits is now set to an invalid value (-1)
  • the wire sidescreen will display this state as "?"
  • the wattage sensor will now not change its automation state until it receives a valid value from the wire it is monitoring.

I started my old map today, after a very long time to see what's changed. The power flickers exactly as before, but now there is a question mark '?' instead of zero or some insane value. So I broke the connection in the middle to create two separate power grids and they flicker together in unison...

At the risk of getting annoying... I miss playing some ONI. I bought the Bionic DLC, but haven't played the game since I found this bug, hoping it would be fixed. Now I see that another DLC is being released today with a substantial package of fixes and improvements. I understand that you are a small team and that there is a limit to what can be done, but is there any chance that this bug will be fixed sometime this year?

Recomputing the power conduit systems on every change rather than the next sim tick following any change would be detrimental to performance in many large saves, could you indicate what is prevented from working by the current state of things?

A more accurate description might be: Power Readout Creates Visually Misleading Flickering Behavior (Not a Functional Blocker)

I'm not sure we're talking about the same issue here.  I don't want 'real-time' recomputation, though yeah, that would be pretty cool. Recomputing the power conduit systems every sim tick is perfectly fine as long as it doesn't exhibit inconsistent behavior, like constant and unexplainable flickering to '0' or, since the March update, to a '?'.

I don’t remember all the exact details, but I previously tried to describe this issue in the thread “Known power bug?”.

To be clear (at least from what I remember): this doesn’t prevent anything from working, but I personally find it visually distracting and somewhat misleading. Here's why:

• At the start of the game, the power status (white = powered, blue = unpowered) behaves exactly as the game teaches—clean and informative. But later on, power lines start flickering (white/blue) without any obvious cause or warning, introducing a lack of consistency. It seems to correlate with larger or more complex grids.

• The flickering gives the impression something’s wrong with a power connection—even when everything’s functioning as intended.

• I’ve even observed a cable not connected to power showing values and flickering in sync with the powered grid, like wireless power (?!?).

• ONI is a game I enjoy for its careful, deliberate systems-building—something I approach with patience and precision. Sometimes, I just stand in awe watching different power grids merge and carry thousands of watts. But that erratic, unexpected flicker kind of short-circuits the sense of order I’m trying to create. Let’s call it my “OCD module” acting up.

• I deeply respect the creativity and engineering skill behind the game. This isn’t meant as a criticism of effort—just that, from an engineering standpoint, this looks a bit like sloppy behavior… unless it’s somehow an intentional optimization choice. If that’s the case, I just wish there had been some kind of heads-up to communicate that it is expected behavior.

• One last thing... Even if it’s there for performance reasons (I doubt it), it still just looks and feels off. It disrupts what is otherwise a very elegant simulation. I wonder if there might be a cleaner way to handle it.

Disclaimer: I understand that I might be the only one bothered by this. It could be due to a very real, but undiagnosed OCDONI condition. Who knows? If you think this is not something worth addressing, please feel free to ignore it and forgive my ramblings.

I can play for 1000 cycles without any issues, but then something seems to trigger 'the flickering' and I have no idea what it is. Power is plenty, smart batteries set at 20-95. Here's a short video I recorded just now: 

 

Edited June 17, 2025 by Dupe_626

Thank you for clarifying, we will take a look at what can be done for the visual flickering in the overlay.

After all this time, I got very curious about the cause of this. Since everything else seems to be working fine, it could be simply a reading/polling problem. Hopefully, this isn't indicative of a deeper fault in the game engine.

I am hitting the same issue. The problem isn't visual for me. Sweepers drop everything when this happens.

 

The flipping happens for the whole colony - including totally disconnected wires, so any power shutoff changing on/off state cause all sweepers in all colony drop whatever they was carrying.

@Darida can you provide a save effected by this, I am unaware of autosweepers being aware of the network state in a way that would cause that.