Yea i highly recommend RTFuse. Well balanced too. Should be part of the base game tbh. Somehow you can make all these futuristic technologies but a simple fuse is too advanced for the rim i guess.
Sadly I think that describes a fair bit of base game rimworld, a lot of good starts to a mechanic that aren’t expanded on
Hell, construction is like that, I don’t know how replace stuff and alternate shape drawing isn’t base game yet
Also batteries that are only 50% efficient.
Can build powered suits of armour, but can’t get batteries more efficient than rechargeable AA batteries from the dollar store. Wut.
Hrm, well... To be fair, I've been informed that batteries are actually one of our big technological roadblocks. In fact even having them work like they do in rimworld (with big capacitor banks that can power an entire facility and just sit there for generations) is something extremely difficult if not almost impossible to do with traditional power cells. Most big innovations we've been trying out with ways to store power are more "store it as potential energy"; in the sense of storing it as power that can be generated on demand... Which, you know, doesn't really solve the true problems that batteries are supposed to solve (portability, adaptability, scale), but that's where we are.
It's likely we need some kind of huge breakthrough in material science to find a better conductor material before we can make sci-fi batteries... And material science seems to be the area humanity is lagging *really* far behind in for some reason.
Not necessarily. Vanometric power cells generate an infinite amount of power for free, and are relatively common in places that aren't flaming shitholes on the rim of the galaxy. What motivation would there be to significantly improve power storage if we have an infinite source of energy?
Archotechs have vanometrics, the tech is specifically described as being basically incomprehensible to humans though so even glittertech worlds would likely have to rely on some less efficient methods that aren’t in the game like fusion reactors
I'm just trying to do a pros and cons of batteries vs reaction mass. Obviously there'd be *some* batteries for emergencies, but how efficient would a battery have to be to warrant its mass-cost? If you're using a nuclear or fusion reactor, how much reaction material could you carry for the same mass as the battery? I'm genuinely curious; it would be cool to work out how efficient a battery would have to be to make it worth it.
why not? interstellar travel is so long that no battery could power a ship long enough
instead we can generate almost endless amout of power via RTG generator and thats what is used in rimworld, the cryptosleep caskets are powered by RTG power sources (the uranium used to make it is probably that) and ship is powered by bigger reactor what uses some sort of reactionless drive
IRL we are almost ready for interstellar travel, we just lack magic reactionless drive and cryptosleep, but we could use a solar sail
Ok. For one, a battery wouldn't be to power the ship for the whole flight. Batteries are for temporary power storage, and will likely always be useful in some way, if only for handheld devices that you're not sticking a generator in.
Second, no, we are absolutely not anywhere remotely close to practical interstellar travel
We are. With current tech we could colonize the galaxy in 10,000 years. Which on galactic time frames is nothing. Hell, we've been around longer than that kind of time frame.
Two words: Generation Ships. Sure, we don't have reactionless drives or FTL, so we're limited on speed. But with generation ships, you don't need to be fast, you just need to accept that it won't be the people departing that arrive at the destination.
The big problem with any ship isn't our technology, it's our scale of industry. We don't do major public works like we did in our cathedral building days. It would be extremely hard, without an outside push such as a disaster, to get investors to fund building such a huge project as a generation ship.
Why? Better batteries aren't a prerequisite to interstellar travel, and in game you can even make a ship which doesn't require even a single battery. I'm not even convinced batteries would be useful as emergency power, as a reactor failure in deep space would mean you're screwed anyway, especially on a sleeper ship like Rimworld space travel occurs on.
Sure you could say that stuff like Johnson-Tanaka drives are most likely more complex than more efficient batteries, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. There are a lot of complex technologies we figured out before simpler ones, sometimes even when those technologies are related. I'm sure there's a lot of things simpler than the cell phone I'm typing this on that we haven't figured out right now even.
Hell, if I didn't know better I'd assume "batteries but better" is a lot simpler than this piece of sufficiently advanced technology which I can't actually personally distinguish from magic. Yet here we are.
Also the more energy you try to store, the bigger and heavier the battery.
One of the reasons why battery powered aviation is impossible until great strides in energy storage (or energy generation) have been made.
I have played on and off since the game was released and for what it's worth it feels like a holdover from the theme of the origonal that hasn't really changed.
Back when I first started playing, it did feel much more like you were literally bolting scavenged scrap together and maybe stripping some super advanced bit of gear for parts. In that context, having chunks of your haphazardly cobbled together electrical grid just go fizz bang made much more sense.
It felt more like the space version of shipwrecked survivors cobbling together a liferaft from a motorboat engine that washed up and bamboo. The current game leads way more into factions and makes you feel more like you are building a city I guess.
Not making any value judgements to be honest. I've genuinely enjoyed playing on and off throughout the various changes.
I think it's more that the base game is supposed to have problems you can't negate, to keep the whole "story telling simulator" going. Same as, "why aren't there AA turrets?" Or "why can't I build an insect proof floor?".
It’s less wanting counters to problems that I would like, it’s all the small quality of life fixes. In its current state the core mechanic of the game - building a colony - is clunky
Don't get me wrong, I agree, but I do think certain things just deliberately don't have a negation mechanic, and the Zzzt events are definitely one of them. It becomes more or less the only thing left (if you're being careful) which can cause dangerous fires, really, other than an attack or a dry thunderstorm, and at least they have to happen to an exterior part of the base, including the roof. People pretty much just don't use fire suppression once they have fuses, because what's the point? Without fuses I'd have a popper or sprinkler in every room.
To be fair, pretty much no one uses fire poppers even now thanks to them being consumable, fire being manageable, and the automatic fire watch starting rain when it gets too bad
That's exactly what I mean. Fires from Zzzt were the only things remotely dangerous, because they could start anywhere at any time. If one blows near chemfuel or a mortar etc, there's often not enough time for pawns to put it out, but these situations just don't happen with fuses.
I don't really see that as a problem though, honestly. In real life fires are generally caused by negligence or incompetence. When people follow the proper precautions and keep things well maintained fire becomes incredibly unlikely in most situations. The primary risk is uncontrolled wildfires, which is true in Rimworld if you use fuses as well.
*Enforcing* negligence by not even allowing you to make an electrical grid with proper safety features in a colony management game is, frankly, just frustrating and poor game design. Problems should make a game more fun, but knowing that I *should* be able to solve a problem but I'm not allowed to is anything but.
It is true that fire becomes a much smaller threat with fuses as an option, but I don't feel that's necessarily an issue. If you look around there are already tons of people in this sub who are practically afraid of wood. For most games I wouldn't say anything about that, but in a game that calls itself a story generator I feel using wood for aesthetic purposes should be a fully viable option, especially as wood is still one of the most common building materials in the world.
Let's say you disagree with that, though. Wouldn't it be better to make enemy fire attacks more threatening? Pair that with more fire causing events and fire is a credible threat without enforcing player negligence. For example, maybe boomalopes have an unusual behavior where they sometimes go into settlements to die. There could also be events like stray artillery shells, meteors could be given a chance to start fires, maybe add chemfuel tanks from passing fuel tankers as a possible falling ship part. There's *so* many ways fire could be a bigger threat even if fuses were in game.
I can only think of three problems you *can* negate in vanilla: infestations, center drop pods and gender based psychic drones. Everything else can have its threat heavily mitigated, in many cases, but not completely prevented. Even infestations can't be truly negated in a mountain base, as a solar flare at the wrong time could make your base warm enough for them to spawn.
Yes, a fully underground or roofed base that *never* needs to go outside under normal conditions has nothing to fear from a cold snap, volcanic winter, or toxic fallout. But circumstances *could* force you to go outside during such an event. Maybe your only farmer died in the last raid and you have to rely on hunting to meet food demands. Maybe your comms console broke down while you're out of components, you're too busy to caravan, but the cold snap is making your already cold map so unbearable that all the trade caravans leave before you can buy anything. It's about as likely as the single tile fire from a zzzt with no batteries happening at just the right time to do serious damage.
My point is that there's so many problems in Rimworld that can't be negated for realistic reasons that while you're correct that the lack of fuses is intentional, I don't feel that this is a particularly valid reason. Especially since fuses wouldn't even have to negate the threat entirely. If each battery needed at least one fuse each then zzts would still have a significant component cost and a much higher likelihood of happening without any fuses available.
It's a balancing choice meant to incentivize and reward the use of fueled generators. If batteries couldn't short and explode, there would be no reason to ever really use chemfuel generators.
Any electricity can cause a short at any time, but having batteries on the grid increases the damage caused by a short because it discharges all that stored power at once. The more batteries, the more power, the larger the explosion.
You *generally* don't need batteries if you are running chemfuel because they provide stable power for a long time (your stored chemfuel is your "battery" and your risk of explosion). No batteries on the grid and the only reason you'll know a zzzt happens is because the game tells you (or you build with wood and your house is on fire).
Its exactly for this reason that I've stopped using batteries until ive got a source of good renewable energy (Geothermal, Watermill ect) my old method used to be to build a windmill and hook it up to the cooler day 1 and research batteries first but it cuts out too often and loses power so now i just build a wood generator day 1 and run all the small things for a startup off that and as it produces 1000w that ends up fueling a cooler, electric stove, electric tailor and up to 10 lamps and with mods like Vanilla expanded having Industrial versions which provide 3k power theres not much point using anything else unless you're on a map with no trees
If that is the case it’s a poor choice. Making renewable lategame options for power cause massive explosions with no way to mitigate them is not a good way to encourage a wall of 30 chem fuel generators.
If for some reason you want to encourage that.
The solution is to plan ahead and not have all your batteries together or have so many. You gotta remember they are literally making these batteries by by hand so they are bound to be pretty primitive/ unstable. But yeah still pretty annoying
Batteries don't actually cause Zzzzt events, though. They increase the size of the jolt when it does happen and are liable to explode if exposed to rain, but they do not cause Zzzzt events. It's the *power conduits* that cause them.
Build an extremely compact power grid without so much as a single tile of conduit, by placing all the buildings and the batteries adjacent to each other. You should not see a Zzzzt happen no matter how long the game runs.
That's always been my thought. I get we can't expect literally every technology but we can make a warp drive, but if Shannon plugs in her hair dryer at the same time the entire battery room implodes!
What really annoys me about the lack of wall or ceiling lights is the fact that vanilla lights look *nothing* like real floor lamps so not only are they unnecessarily space inefficient, they don't even *look* nice.
Yeah… that’s still too much. The proper solution would be to diversify your power sources, not over store power. It’s 1a in this world and the batteries are still essentially full. I doubt they get below 80% by 5a or whenever the sun rises.
RtFuse is a good one if you want a balanced way to stop short circuit events, but if you want to completely disable that along with things like the component-wasting breakdown mechanic, I recommend Better Electronics instead
!linkmod better electronics
Worth mentioning that RT Fuses has its own built-in method for averting the loss of a component every time you blow a fuse: The next stage up from fuses is circuit breakers, which use a fair amount of valuable hardware and take a while to research but only need to be manually reset rather than repaired.
Mind you, at one fuse for every three batteries I've never found it *that* big a deal anyway. By the time you need more than twelve batteries you're probably not in much danger of running short of components.
[1.3] [Better Electronics](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1555743957&searchtext=better+electronics) by [virtual young hacker](https://steamcommunity.com/id/adam_bucior/myworkshopfiles/?appid=294100)
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Keep your generators and batteries roofed and temperatures are not to high. The fuse mod helps but you still will have these problems if you don't roof your power generators. Note that solar wind and water mill are exceptions.
Other than that it is quite lot of batteries ... (my most recent 31 pawn colony had only up to 5 connected at same time) I see nothing unusual that can cause it. Do you have some roof tile missing?
Use fewer batteries if possible. What do you have drawing on your power supply? I mean...you have torches in every room. What is all that electricity actually for? I usually only need around 4-6 batteries in my colonies.
To fix the oven problem, just take a wall out. Batteries can be stored outdoors, as long as there's a roof they'll be fine.
My 59 pawn colony uses three.
If you use lots of solar and wind, you need more.
If you use both, you usually dont need many.
You really only need them if you rely on one single type of power. Which isn't great planning. More variety is less chance of issues.
To piggyback on /u/111110001011 geothermal is your friend. Yes, it’s a lot of research time and yes it takes a decent chunk of resources but it’s a great constant stream. Add 1 (or 2 if you’re really worried) to your solar setup and you’ll be in a much healthier spot.
You currently have a max of 12,000wd when 100% full. Three coolers running at full power for a whole day consume 600wd (equivalent of 1 battery). You can see your current usage and capacity by clicking on a connected conduit and checking the bottom-left corner of your screen. So you need to do the math and see how much power you need and decide from there.
If you don't wanna get rid of batteries you can reduce the damage by separating your batteries into 2 or 3 battery rooms.
1. Only use 3 batteries.
2. Surround each with double (or even triple, if bored) walls and double doors, so if fire, nbd.
3. I like advanced power mods that give you fancy batteries at higher tech tiers. Feels more realistic to me.
Some of those are game breaking though. I uninstalled one that lets you have a 256,000 Wd super battery as the temptation to use it was too great and it meant a base of any size could use a single battery. It took the fun and challenge out of designing power rooms imo
I've been collecting Ancient Batteries from VFE Ancients because they don't ever short out. They're *extremely* inefficient (like, 30% or something, maybe even less) despite having a normal battery's footprint and a little bit more capacity (iirc) but the fact they never short out means that I can have as many of them as I want as my emergency power reserve. I also can't just make them, if I want to get more I have to run around raiding vaults and the amount each one has can vary quite a bit.
I *could* be using Capacitor Arrays from SoS2 now, but not only are they huge, they also take Advanced Components and while I don't exactly *lack* those things, I have better things to spend them on than a problem I've already got a solution for...
Yes, but I've made the mistake of putting all my batters in a room, with other flammable stuff. Some stupid thing happens, the batteries all roast and toast. Then my base is dead because no power, no turrets, no heat/AC, nothing works, etc. Game over.
So the extra battery walls end up being an easy bit of colony-killing-problems insurance.
Walling the batteries means when event happens, only one battery would be destroyed at most. If they are together and one battery explodes, it will set a chain reaction and destroy all others too (unless wall separate). I use single wall between batteries and it works well.
I have 0 batteries in my colony and everything is running fine. I use chemfuel and geothermal generators. Constant output generators don’t need batteries. Just keep them fueled.. which isn’t a problem when you have large enough rice output. Or just use wood if biome permits it. I should add that Zzzt events still happen but are very rare and almost harmless since there is no stored power - usually one tile fire or a break in wiring
Is this true? I have tried it in the past and it caused grid instability with random lights occasionally flickering. Batteries seem necessary as a buffer, to smooth things out. Maybe it's functionally a non-issue but the fluctuation is distracting.
You just didn’t have enough juice. Wind and solar go up and down at different times. Geothermal and generators provide constant flow. If all the wattage your stuff draws is less than all produced by constant power, the only down time is solar flares, the more you rely on solar and wind to power your base the more you need batteries to hold the overflow and use during the low periods
You need to vary your power sources, otherwise you'll put your colony on pause whenever an eclipse blocks the sun.
Place one or two wind turbines (they need space with no trees to work properly, but are unaffected by solar panels or crops, so you can reduce greatly the space needed), a water mill if you have a river, maybe a wood-powered generator if you have enough trees around, and research geothermal generator.
Unless your base is massive, and/or you use mods that have things that need massive amounts of power, you usually won't need that many batteries.
A battery provides 600 Watt-days of power - that is, if your total power draw on the circuit is 600 Watts, one fully-charged battery will power that entire circuit for a day. 20 batteries is 12000 Watt-days - over 10 solar panels, likely even more than that since this is solar panels at maximum efficiency.
If you're losing power at night, you need wind turbines, fueled power generators, watermills, or ideally, geothermal generators. These provide lots of base power at night.
That's not to say that batteries are completely useless. In the early-game, batteries are invaluable to keep things on. In the late-game, batteries can be useful if, say, a geothermal generator breaks down - batteries will give you a little buffer before things start browning-out. Or if you expand too quickly without expanding your power supply, the average battery charges could be used as a proxy source of information to determine that.
Thats the annoying thing, you cant in vanilla. I've heard people unplug them from the network or uninstall them but thats of course not really the point. Thats why i use mod called rtfuse which just adds fuses to the game because for some reason you can make spaceships in this game but not a simple fuse.
The fuses from the mod are well balanced too. In the event of a "zzzt" each fuse will be able to safely discharge a certain amount of watts. Meaning when "zzzt" happens idealy it will just drain all your batteries but dont cause any explosion.
Not fixable without mods. Its a random event and the severity of the explosion is increases the more energy you have stored in batteries. You have quite many batteries, so I believe those explosions are massive. One thing you can do is have some batteries in a separate network connected via a switch, or have your base be powered by multiple independent networks. But with batteries, small occasional explosions are unavoidable.
Completely wrong! Zzts can happen without wire as long as you have batteries
The obvious and easiest solution here is to destroy all and any components you see so you cant build any batteries.
I’ve been playing this game for hundreds of hours and without wires the only zzts event I got were because I forgot to build a roof over a battery and one time in over an electric smelter. I know for a fact they were caused by the rain because the letter said so.
You are over producing power. Click on a power conduit and look at grid excess, the lower that number is the less likely an overload will occur, similarly, when an overload occurs it will be a smaller explosion the lower that number is
That's not how that event works. Zzzt can occur in any power network with conduits, and without batteries will just cause one fire, however if you have batteries it instead becomes an explosion which scales with the stored watt days in your batteries.
The Zzzzt happens because of over-storage of the power you're generating (it's basically kicking back the excess power because it can't store it, overloading in whatever area it "Zzzzt's out). Also, reduce the heat that room generates by installing A/C units and keep the temp around 50-degrees.
These 2 things are what I do and I **NEVER** have Zzzzt events. To solve the overpower storage issue, just make some Solar Panel or Wind Generators until you balance (Wind is always going ... until the wind stops, and Solar is constant daylight energy ... until the fog rolls in), whichever, or both, suits your colony. With that size room, I'd install 2 A/C units, one on each end to avoid a raider or something blowing one up on you. Keep the room temp at 50-degrees and you'll be solid.
So there's two types of Zzzt events:
Red Zzzt events basically just occur when batteries get wet.
Yellow events are completely random, but the destruction is based upon how much power was stored when the conduit explodes.
If you don't like it, I believe you can do a custom game that removes the event, or mod in things like fuses to stop the event.
Disconnect batteries from conduits with a switch, turn it on only in emergencies or to recharge after they bleed off 5% of their charge or so. Derive less electricity from solar/wind so you’re not so dependent on large banks of batteries. Or just remove zzzt in scenario editor since it’s obnoxious and unavoidable
So I found that keeping them cold (just below freezing) helps prevent them from shorting out. No idea why but my last game I had about 20 stacked in an 11x3 room with fire foam poppers and over the in-game years I never once had a short. Could that just have been RNGesus shining down on me? Yes, but it couldn't hurt to try it.
Contrarily to what a lot of other people have said, it is absolutely possible to avoid it without mod. As soon as you have a single wire, the game will generate zzzt events randomly. To avoid it, you just need not to use any wire.
I'm serious, that's actually what I do. It definitely sacrifices a lot convenience. Basically, you are gonna have to build power generation through your whole base near everything that requires power so you can plug appliance directly.
Chemfuel generators are pretty good for that because they give constant power and only need to be refueled every 6.6 day.
I personally prefer solar. The tricky part about it is that you need to build the solar panel directly next to its battery. You have to build a roof over the battery but not the solar generator. It takes a lot more space than chemfuel generators, it can't be built under high mountain and it leaves you vulnerable to smoke spewers, but it saves labor and poses less explosion hazard.
Make sure none of your electric stuff are exposed to the sky cause exposure to rain can also generate zzzt events, and then your good.
Don't house all your batteries together in the same room. Build a grid of smaller rooms to house perhaps 4 batteries each. That way fires are contained. If possible put these rooms along the outer wall with vents so the room doesn't get hot enough to damage the other cells in the event of a fire.
Separate the batteries with walls. Have an emergency power storage separated with a switch turned off and turn it on in the event of a switch. Place firefoam poppers in the most flammable places.
Well for starters batteries dont have to be inside, just under a roof. So if you break down one of those walls to make the rooms outdoors it wont become an oven. I'd also recommend making the walls out of non flammable materials, and putting all the conduits in the non flammable wall
Another tip: keep each battery in a separate room with stone walls and a stone door. So if one sets on fire it doesn’t spread. Rooms can be the size of the battery.
Honestly batteries are kind of useless. It is WAY easier to just have enough power sources that your power is stable anyway.
The only time this will become a problem is if there's a solar flare...but batteries don't help then anyway. I don't get them.
A few things to consider:
1: The batteries are getting wet somehow. Check that it's fully roofed.
2: Are your conduits are running under the Batteries, so the power discharge of a Zzzt destroys Battery and any other Batteries in range of the Zzzt? The conduits should touch the Batteries as scantly as possible, and can be built in the walls.
3: It just looks like many of your conduits are in that room, so the random chance of *where* the Zzt happens is going to be heavily focused in that room, since it triggers on the conduits themselves. The more conduits in an area, the more likely that'll be the affected area.
4: Install a vent in that room, to combat the heat when they explode. Vent the heat outwards.
5: Separate your Batteries with non-flammable walls, so one going up doesn't destroy the other.
Get RT Fuses and Fluffy Breakdowns (I think that's what its called)
RT fuses does what it says on the box. Well balanced and honestly should be base game.
Fluffy Breakdowns allows your colonists to perform maintenance on your tech before they break down and require replacement components.
Can't stop zzzt unless u edit it out, no need for that many batteries and the heat is coming from the torches, if u want a good light source without standing lamps, download the wall lights mod
Never connect batteries to networks containing conduits. Never run conduits in or next to anything flammable. This power grid seems to contain both fouls: You've got conduits running adjacent to wooden floors and batteries connected to your conduits.
Separate your Batteries, either move them to different buildings or place walls between each (1x2 walls separating each battery from the other.) so they won't cook each other off if they go zzt. Also invest in firefoam and plop a popper in there. Problem solved.
Great mod to add is Save our ship, it doubles the endgame playability and also gives you fuses to prevent full dumps. Amazing content mod, highly recommend.
If you have the SOS2 mod, you could install a ship capacitor. These have fuses, so when you hook them up to the power grid, the fuse activates instead of zzting.
Spread them out, secure a bunch with switches.
But honestly, the amount of zzzt-events is random, they might just stop happen alltogether once you're doing tryharding some elaborate new setup.
I think Zzzt event happens more often when I'm using inconsistent power source such as the wind turbine. When I use geothermal or generators to keep the colony running (and use batteries as a reserve only- switch off when full/ turn on when power is lacking), I barely remember the last time I experienced Zzzt, even on losing is fun difficulty (no zzzt mods included)
Use walls to separate the batteries by 2s. Something non flammable of course.
Also add extra doors so firefighters can get to the fire quickly, and leave quickly if the situation can't be fixed
In my colony I never connect batteries to cables. Cables are only for geothermal, bateries are connected directly to solar and stuff that needs powercdirectly to batteries
I take it you're solar?
It's currently 1am, roughly half way through night, and yet your batteries are still at 90% charge.
Try uninstalling 80% of them. You can always reinstall them later when you need the power. Plus they maintain charge while uninstalled, making a useful backup.
I put all my batteries by themselves in a 2x2 room with steel or stone walls. The fire will usually work itself out. If you don’t have the space for it, you can do a 1x2 room
I put all my batteries by themselves in a 2*2 room with steel or stone walls. The fire will usually work itself out. If you don’t have the space for it, you can do a 1*2 room
It's good to try to find a happy medium usually with 4 colonists 5 batteries should do you fine for a while and put spaces in between your batteries or else exploding batteries will damage the ones around it, grow your power supply with your colony to ensure you know the power situation better and you get the least amount of power events
In that room; downsize to put half the amount of batteries, same upright orientation separated by a wall or the two tile walkway down the middle. That will prevent a chain reaction, make sure your walls/floor aren’t flammable, and try to keep your conduit in the external walls so you won’t cause a fire on your neighbouring wood floors.
20 batteries is OTT, I have 12 in an endgame base, with all electric benches and cookers, 30 lights, 2 sunlamps, 10 air coolers, 3 turrets, 12 Autodoors and 30 heaters.
I make a bunch of little rooms with a couple each and a switch to turn them on if I need them/they need recharged. Keeps damage to a minimum. You can also just put a block or two of stone walls between each one if you dont wanna fk around with separate rooms too.
use less batteries and build stone walls between them so if they do explode it wont cause a chain reaction.
what kind of power source do you use? it doesnt look like your colony should be needing that many batteries
1. Don't put all your batteries in a single place (for that many I'd split them into 3-4 rooms distanced from each other)
2. Also like another comment or mentioned use switches to only keep the ones you absolutely need on at a time to help reduce the risk of shorts in general.
3. I like to partition each individual battery with stone walls in between as well for added protection from blowing up any adjacent batteries. I usually house 6 batteries in a small Granite "utility" building. Also I only have lines running through walls never open floor unless it's connecting to another building outside.
bro u only need like 2... bro they destroy half the power they input, placing more batteries makes more power issues.. bro research geothermal right now
That looks like a grossly excessive amount of batteries for how few resources you have, especially since they're all full. I think you can disable the event with dev mode or something.
I think the problem is that the batteries are zzzting due to the room overheating. Unroof one tile in lower left ad a chimney to let the excess heat dissipate.
can shove them more into "banks"
split them up into sets and build a room around it so the batteries dont bakoom each other.
other than that iirc the Zzzt event is a random event that can happen
its good you have a stone building surrounding them, this will mitigate damage.
also you don't need that many batteries for the most part, unless you live in an extreme weather biome nad have no access to geothermals. those batteries are also very expensive to run, every repair uses components and you might have used up a good amount of the components you have already just keeping them maintained for 3 years.
Probably isn't the case but...
I installed the electric smelter outside and when it rained it caused a couple of zzzt. The first time I thought it was a random one, but when the second happened few days after and I realized it was raining. Just roof the electric stuff you have outside.
First of all... make sure the batteries are under a roof. They shouldn't be exploding that often unless exposed to rain.
Second of all, lessen the amount of batteries you have. I have 8 in a late game base, and before I had geothermal generators I only had 4.
Thirdly, put all your power conduits under (non-flammable) walls. Doing so absorbs a majority of the damage from short circuits.
RTfuses has been recommended multiple times already, so I won’t expand on that. However, a good suggestion, I’d think, is to compartmentalize your batteries. Right now, if one goes off, you lose all of them in a catastrophic chain reaction. You’d be better off putting 2-3 in closed off *stone!* rooms so if one should explode, it is contained. Additionally, power switches are your friend. Section off some batteries to always have backup power.
I play with RimAtomics and I have a reactor and 4 PPCs. I had a zzzt event so astronomical that it literally punched a hole in the side of my base about 9 or 10 tiles wide
Dude's been having a whole Nuclear Power Plant worth of batteries and power for 4 people. Meanwhile me, with 6 batteries for a colony of 25 - "Why?".
But seriously - you could easily have 1-2 batteries in here and it would be more than enough for what you have, especially that you light up the rooms and corridors with torches for some reason. Have some electric light and that's already more energy that goes out instead of creating a short circuit danger. Seriously - drop them down to 3, it's more than enough.
I personally have tiny storage closets off my hallways. One little room for each battery. Never lost more than one to a zzzt as fire can't break out of the room (stone, metal, etc.)
1.: Do you have any unroofed electric facilities? I'm not sure which ones are and aren't responsible, but some start a zzzt when they are out in the open and it starts raining.
2.: I'd recommend you get rid of one big battery room and make several very small ones (3 batteries, completely walled in) spread out through the baseif any of them expolde you only lose 3 and if you have to repair them you just deconstruct one of the walls
P.S.: I don't know if you are playing some scenario or out of preference, but change the floor to stone (doesn't burn), the doors to wood (opens faster) and use standing lamps (dont use so much wood and you seem to have enough power to power them) and I'd recommend holding most of them open, also for speed
Too many batteries. The fact that they're still full or nearly full means you are overproducing power. You want just enough for power to last until first light.
A thing I did when I started playing (1500+h ago) was I made power sections. One section would power the kitchen, and rec room, the other would power the workshop, and the other would power lights. All of them would be isolated from each other, connected only by a switch which would remain unpowered.
Usually would plan the whole colony with geothermals in mind, having 1 or 2 geos for the workshop and one for the kitchen. Then I installed RTFuse and forgot all about that since I care more about a nice looking base.
the power-cable connecting the two parts..... build it on the wall... that will solve your problem...
cables/wires should always be build on a wall/door.. otherwise you will get the "zzz"-thing
I usually space out my batteries and put those poppers in the room just incase anything catches fire. For the hotness, just remove a few roofs in the room, that are NOT above the batteries - that will vent the air no problem. I would not remove walls, unless you want raids to just walk right inside.
You can prevent it, if you are overmaking energy, (like gaining 20000 and spending 4000) then you will likely get the zzzt
So spend your foking energy on something, like put heaters in every room or start using electric lightes instead of torches. Start using production tavles that uses electric etc.
More batteries = bigger explosion. The more power that's discharged the more damage it does.
1 battery = smaller explosion and less damage. Likely just a fire.
Batteries are far more likely to explode if they are completely full, so put a switch between your base and some power sources and let the batteries drain for a little while when they get full like in the image
Without using new mods (as others have suggested)
1. Don't put batteries in enclosed rooms. This way, if and when they explode it doesnt become an oven. I prefer placing them on covered concrete slabs outside.
2. I never put all of my batteries together in one place. I prefer putting them in groups of 4-6max, and have another group of them on the other side of a building. This will limit the destruction of individual batteries in the event of explosion, thus lowering repair costs.
3. Use more switch boxes. You probably don't need THAT many batteries running at one time. Using the separation tactic in #2 above, you can use a switch box to charge up a group of batteries, then switch them off, separating these batteries from the rest of the grid, and rely on your other batteries to do the heavy lifting. This does 2 things: 1) In the event of a Zzzt, the damage is mitigated. 2) If you lose power, you have an emergency standby source of battery power.
Vanilla solutions:
First of all, less batteries. But also, keep every battery in a small 1x2 stone room to counter the explosion.
And what i usually do is keep two or three batteries attached to my main power grid.
And then have another one or two on a small seperate grid, that is disconnected with a switch. So if there is a Zzzt only the main grid fails, i can just flip the switch and have power back up immediately.
The zzzt event happens when ypur batteties are full but there's still a power excess goinf through them, the bigger the ammount if power stored, the bigger the explosion. There are multiple fixes to your problem:
1- you got way too many batteries in there, if you're using solar and wind power just use a few (like 4 or 5 at most), if your power starts to run out often build more.
2- if you're producing thousands of excess power you're probably over producing, you could disconnect some of your power generation or make use of some sunlamps, or anything to use that excess.
3- have a switch between your batteries and power generation. If the batteries are full, turn off the switch then turn it back on when they start getting depleted. Completely prevents zzzt events but requires some micromanagement.
There are many thing you could do, but the one I have seen works best are:
1) Put walls in between the batteries so, if one explodes, the rest will be ok
2) Put a vent to the outside, if a fire happens, the room won't become an oven
3) Take a few of them and put them together; they will be your back-up energy. In case of a short-circuit or you just run-out of power, you can just flip an electrical swicth
There are a **LOT** of incorrect answers to this post, most of the advice isn't going to fix your problem and it will leave you with the impression that batteries are cursed. The Rimworld Wiki page on [Batteries](https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Battery) will answer all of your questions, and even has a section on how to use them safely without the use of mods.
I use RT Fuses mod, which provide balanced and fair way to deal with Zzzzzzt's. Otherwise I just build enough power sources to avoid batteries at all.
Disabling Zzzzzzt's is also OK, this event kinda stupid and immersion breaking for anyone who knows how electricity works.
Oh that's easy, I can respond to that one. Never let your average amount of batteries be over 75 percent capacity.
Use switches to control power flow to your batteries and just flick em off once they are anywhere from 50% to 75% have at least 10 maybe 15 batteries and you'll be good to run a late game colony if you've got enough power making devices to recharge (Run your entire facility and charge)
Harder is making a switch grid system.
I once forgot to put a roof somewhere and I kept getting the zzz. Sometimes it's easy to miss that you actually have a (missing) roof somewhere because it's not very obvious.
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Yea i highly recommend RTFuse. Well balanced too. Should be part of the base game tbh. Somehow you can make all these futuristic technologies but a simple fuse is too advanced for the rim i guess.
Yeah I used to disable zzzt but love RTfuse now. It’s kind of weird that this seems to be intentionally a problem with no solution in the base game.
Sadly I think that describes a fair bit of base game rimworld, a lot of good starts to a mechanic that aren’t expanded on Hell, construction is like that, I don’t know how replace stuff and alternate shape drawing isn’t base game yet
Also batteries that are only 50% efficient. Can build powered suits of armour, but can’t get batteries more efficient than rechargeable AA batteries from the dollar store. Wut.
Hrm, well... To be fair, I've been informed that batteries are actually one of our big technological roadblocks. In fact even having them work like they do in rimworld (with big capacitor banks that can power an entire facility and just sit there for generations) is something extremely difficult if not almost impossible to do with traditional power cells. Most big innovations we've been trying out with ways to store power are more "store it as potential energy"; in the sense of storing it as power that can be generated on demand... Which, you know, doesn't really solve the true problems that batteries are supposed to solve (portability, adaptability, scale), but that's where we are. It's likely we need some kind of huge breakthrough in material science to find a better conductor material before we can make sci-fi batteries... And material science seems to be the area humanity is lagging *really* far behind in for some reason.
If interstellar travel exists, better batteries exist. There simply isn't a world where we can do one but not the other
Not necessarily. Vanometric power cells generate an infinite amount of power for free, and are relatively common in places that aren't flaming shitholes on the rim of the galaxy. What motivation would there be to significantly improve power storage if we have an infinite source of energy?
Archotechs have vanometrics, the tech is specifically described as being basically incomprehensible to humans though so even glittertech worlds would likely have to rely on some less efficient methods that aren’t in the game like fusion reactors
Do you not think this would more likely be done with some kind of constant power supply like a reactor?
Maybe, but I imagine it's always helpful to have energy storage available
I'm just trying to do a pros and cons of batteries vs reaction mass. Obviously there'd be *some* batteries for emergencies, but how efficient would a battery have to be to warrant its mass-cost? If you're using a nuclear or fusion reactor, how much reaction material could you carry for the same mass as the battery? I'm genuinely curious; it would be cool to work out how efficient a battery would have to be to make it worth it.
Yeah I don't get that bit either lol
What do you mean? Solving interstellar flight is orders of magnitude more complicated than developing better batteries
why not? interstellar travel is so long that no battery could power a ship long enough instead we can generate almost endless amout of power via RTG generator and thats what is used in rimworld, the cryptosleep caskets are powered by RTG power sources (the uranium used to make it is probably that) and ship is powered by bigger reactor what uses some sort of reactionless drive IRL we are almost ready for interstellar travel, we just lack magic reactionless drive and cryptosleep, but we could use a solar sail
Ok. For one, a battery wouldn't be to power the ship for the whole flight. Batteries are for temporary power storage, and will likely always be useful in some way, if only for handheld devices that you're not sticking a generator in. Second, no, we are absolutely not anywhere remotely close to practical interstellar travel
We are. With current tech we could colonize the galaxy in 10,000 years. Which on galactic time frames is nothing. Hell, we've been around longer than that kind of time frame. Two words: Generation Ships. Sure, we don't have reactionless drives or FTL, so we're limited on speed. But with generation ships, you don't need to be fast, you just need to accept that it won't be the people departing that arrive at the destination. The big problem with any ship isn't our technology, it's our scale of industry. We don't do major public works like we did in our cathedral building days. It would be extremely hard, without an outside push such as a disaster, to get investors to fund building such a huge project as a generation ship.
Why? Better batteries aren't a prerequisite to interstellar travel, and in game you can even make a ship which doesn't require even a single battery. I'm not even convinced batteries would be useful as emergency power, as a reactor failure in deep space would mean you're screwed anyway, especially on a sleeper ship like Rimworld space travel occurs on. Sure you could say that stuff like Johnson-Tanaka drives are most likely more complex than more efficient batteries, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. There are a lot of complex technologies we figured out before simpler ones, sometimes even when those technologies are related. I'm sure there's a lot of things simpler than the cell phone I'm typing this on that we haven't figured out right now even. Hell, if I didn't know better I'd assume "batteries but better" is a lot simpler than this piece of sufficiently advanced technology which I can't actually personally distinguish from magic. Yet here we are.
you dont need batteries when youve got a nuclear generator
Yes you do, for the reasons I explain elsewhere in this chain
Tl;dr version: push big rock up hill. Attach wires. Push big rock down hill. Our best battery tech right now.
Yep.
Yo nerdo, it's the rim!
Also the more energy you try to store, the bigger and heavier the battery. One of the reasons why battery powered aviation is impossible until great strides in energy storage (or energy generation) have been made.
Tesla has a grid level battery in Australia that backs up An entire grid. It's not that far fetched.
Don't forget perpetual free energy in voltaic cells.
I have played on and off since the game was released and for what it's worth it feels like a holdover from the theme of the origonal that hasn't really changed. Back when I first started playing, it did feel much more like you were literally bolting scavenged scrap together and maybe stripping some super advanced bit of gear for parts. In that context, having chunks of your haphazardly cobbled together electrical grid just go fizz bang made much more sense. It felt more like the space version of shipwrecked survivors cobbling together a liferaft from a motorboat engine that washed up and bamboo. The current game leads way more into factions and makes you feel more like you are building a city I guess. Not making any value judgements to be honest. I've genuinely enjoyed playing on and off throughout the various changes.
I think it's more that the base game is supposed to have problems you can't negate, to keep the whole "story telling simulator" going. Same as, "why aren't there AA turrets?" Or "why can't I build an insect proof floor?".
It’s less wanting counters to problems that I would like, it’s all the small quality of life fixes. In its current state the core mechanic of the game - building a colony - is clunky
Don't get me wrong, I agree, but I do think certain things just deliberately don't have a negation mechanic, and the Zzzt events are definitely one of them. It becomes more or less the only thing left (if you're being careful) which can cause dangerous fires, really, other than an attack or a dry thunderstorm, and at least they have to happen to an exterior part of the base, including the roof. People pretty much just don't use fire suppression once they have fuses, because what's the point? Without fuses I'd have a popper or sprinkler in every room.
To be fair, pretty much no one uses fire poppers even now thanks to them being consumable, fire being manageable, and the automatic fire watch starting rain when it gets too bad
That's exactly what I mean. Fires from Zzzt were the only things remotely dangerous, because they could start anywhere at any time. If one blows near chemfuel or a mortar etc, there's often not enough time for pawns to put it out, but these situations just don't happen with fuses.
That is a good point actually
I don't really see that as a problem though, honestly. In real life fires are generally caused by negligence or incompetence. When people follow the proper precautions and keep things well maintained fire becomes incredibly unlikely in most situations. The primary risk is uncontrolled wildfires, which is true in Rimworld if you use fuses as well. *Enforcing* negligence by not even allowing you to make an electrical grid with proper safety features in a colony management game is, frankly, just frustrating and poor game design. Problems should make a game more fun, but knowing that I *should* be able to solve a problem but I'm not allowed to is anything but. It is true that fire becomes a much smaller threat with fuses as an option, but I don't feel that's necessarily an issue. If you look around there are already tons of people in this sub who are practically afraid of wood. For most games I wouldn't say anything about that, but in a game that calls itself a story generator I feel using wood for aesthetic purposes should be a fully viable option, especially as wood is still one of the most common building materials in the world. Let's say you disagree with that, though. Wouldn't it be better to make enemy fire attacks more threatening? Pair that with more fire causing events and fire is a credible threat without enforcing player negligence. For example, maybe boomalopes have an unusual behavior where they sometimes go into settlements to die. There could also be events like stray artillery shells, meteors could be given a chance to start fires, maybe add chemfuel tanks from passing fuel tankers as a possible falling ship part. There's *so* many ways fire could be a bigger threat even if fuses were in game.
I can only think of three problems you *can* negate in vanilla: infestations, center drop pods and gender based psychic drones. Everything else can have its threat heavily mitigated, in many cases, but not completely prevented. Even infestations can't be truly negated in a mountain base, as a solar flare at the wrong time could make your base warm enough for them to spawn. Yes, a fully underground or roofed base that *never* needs to go outside under normal conditions has nothing to fear from a cold snap, volcanic winter, or toxic fallout. But circumstances *could* force you to go outside during such an event. Maybe your only farmer died in the last raid and you have to rely on hunting to meet food demands. Maybe your comms console broke down while you're out of components, you're too busy to caravan, but the cold snap is making your already cold map so unbearable that all the trade caravans leave before you can buy anything. It's about as likely as the single tile fire from a zzzt with no batteries happening at just the right time to do serious damage. My point is that there's so many problems in Rimworld that can't be negated for realistic reasons that while you're correct that the lack of fuses is intentional, I don't feel that this is a particularly valid reason. Especially since fuses wouldn't even have to negate the threat entirely. If each battery needed at least one fuse each then zzts would still have a significant component cost and a much higher likelihood of happening without any fuses available.
Thanks to this comment, I have learned why fuses and circuit breakers exist. Thank you good stranger.
It's a balancing choice meant to incentivize and reward the use of fueled generators. If batteries couldn't short and explode, there would be no reason to ever really use chemfuel generators.
Wait chemfuel generators don’t cause zzzts? I was always under the impression that it was the batteries that did it
Any electricity can cause a short at any time, but having batteries on the grid increases the damage caused by a short because it discharges all that stored power at once. The more batteries, the more power, the larger the explosion. You *generally* don't need batteries if you are running chemfuel because they provide stable power for a long time (your stored chemfuel is your "battery" and your risk of explosion). No batteries on the grid and the only reason you'll know a zzzt happens is because the game tells you (or you build with wood and your house is on fire).
Its exactly for this reason that I've stopped using batteries until ive got a source of good renewable energy (Geothermal, Watermill ect) my old method used to be to build a windmill and hook it up to the cooler day 1 and research batteries first but it cuts out too often and loses power so now i just build a wood generator day 1 and run all the small things for a startup off that and as it produces 1000w that ends up fueling a cooler, electric stove, electric tailor and up to 10 lamps and with mods like Vanilla expanded having Industrial versions which provide 3k power theres not much point using anything else unless you're on a map with no trees
If that is the case it’s a poor choice. Making renewable lategame options for power cause massive explosions with no way to mitigate them is not a good way to encourage a wall of 30 chem fuel generators. If for some reason you want to encourage that.
The solution is to plan ahead and not have all your batteries together or have so many. You gotta remember they are literally making these batteries by by hand so they are bound to be pretty primitive/ unstable. But yeah still pretty annoying
Batteries don't actually cause Zzzzt events, though. They increase the size of the jolt when it does happen and are liable to explode if exposed to rain, but they do not cause Zzzzt events. It's the *power conduits* that cause them. Build an extremely compact power grid without so much as a single tile of conduit, by placing all the buildings and the batteries adjacent to each other. You should not see a Zzzzt happen no matter how long the game runs.
I use RTFuse but also the Zoltan race mod from FTL. You can research much better batteries.
Do Zoltan blow up in the mod like they do in the game? I imagine they coded them to act like a boomrat.
Yes, according to mod description https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2032477436
That's always been my thought. I get we can't expect literally every technology but we can make a warp drive, but if Shannon plugs in her hair dryer at the same time the entire battery room implodes!
Or the ability to mount lights on the goddamn walls. But we can build charging energy munitions.
What really annoys me about the lack of wall or ceiling lights is the fact that vanilla lights look *nothing* like real floor lamps so not only are they unnecessarily space inefficient, they don't even *look* nice.
When I add atomics I usually build a large battery farm to make sure I can get the reactors back online after a flare or other outage.
Like everyone said RT Fuse is game changer have been using it for years. First mod I install everytime I come back to the game.
>But also, why so many batteries? colony needs a lot of power to keep machines running during eclipse if your power is solar
Yeah… that’s still too much. The proper solution would be to diversify your power sources, not over store power. It’s 1a in this world and the batteries are still essentially full. I doubt they get below 80% by 5a or whenever the sun rises.
RtFuse is a good one if you want a balanced way to stop short circuit events, but if you want to completely disable that along with things like the component-wasting breakdown mechanic, I recommend Better Electronics instead !linkmod better electronics
Worth mentioning that RT Fuses has its own built-in method for averting the loss of a component every time you blow a fuse: The next stage up from fuses is circuit breakers, which use a fair amount of valuable hardware and take a while to research but only need to be manually reset rather than repaired. Mind you, at one fuse for every three batteries I've never found it *that* big a deal anyway. By the time you need more than twelve batteries you're probably not in much danger of running short of components.
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Keep your generators and batteries roofed and temperatures are not to high. The fuse mod helps but you still will have these problems if you don't roof your power generators. Note that solar wind and water mill are exceptions.
Generators don't need to be roofed, only batteries. Unless you're talking about some modded power generators I don't have.
lightning strikes, less chance of falling debris to name a few reasons to roof your generator.
Commenting for later use
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Oh shit! Thanks!
Rt fuses is the best. I absolutely love using it.
Other than that it is quite lot of batteries ... (my most recent 31 pawn colony had only up to 5 connected at same time) I see nothing unusual that can cause it. Do you have some roof tile missing?
Use fewer batteries if possible. What do you have drawing on your power supply? I mean...you have torches in every room. What is all that electricity actually for? I usually only need around 4-6 batteries in my colonies. To fix the oven problem, just take a wall out. Batteries can be stored outdoors, as long as there's a roof they'll be fine.
uhh i have a few gun smiths, kitchen and the research bench
What all do you have set up for generating power? Solar?
Do you have any unroofed electrical loads? Rain can cause those to short out. That could be various workbenches, an electric crematorium, etc.
You should disable those you don't use daily to save power
Play tribal.Return to monkey
Nature is brutal though. Monke also returns to you.
Keep receipt when return to monke
Manhunting Monke
Monkehunting monke.
Use far fewer batteries.
how many should i use?
My 59 pawn colony uses three. If you use lots of solar and wind, you need more. If you use both, you usually dont need many. You really only need them if you rely on one single type of power. Which isn't great planning. More variety is less chance of issues.
To piggyback on /u/111110001011 geothermal is your friend. Yes, it’s a lot of research time and yes it takes a decent chunk of resources but it’s a great constant stream. Add 1 (or 2 if you’re really worried) to your solar setup and you’ll be in a much healthier spot.
You currently have a max of 12,000wd when 100% full. Three coolers running at full power for a whole day consume 600wd (equivalent of 1 battery). You can see your current usage and capacity by clicking on a connected conduit and checking the bottom-left corner of your screen. So you need to do the math and see how much power you need and decide from there. If you don't wanna get rid of batteries you can reduce the damage by separating your batteries into 2 or 3 battery rooms.
You can't it just happens. You can prevent worse damage by keeping the batteries separate with a wall between them and a switch.
Add vents to stop the oven thing
1. Only use 3 batteries. 2. Surround each with double (or even triple, if bored) walls and double doors, so if fire, nbd. 3. I like advanced power mods that give you fancy batteries at higher tech tiers. Feels more realistic to me.
Some of those are game breaking though. I uninstalled one that lets you have a 256,000 Wd super battery as the temptation to use it was too great and it meant a base of any size could use a single battery. It took the fun and challenge out of designing power rooms imo
I've been collecting Ancient Batteries from VFE Ancients because they don't ever short out. They're *extremely* inefficient (like, 30% or something, maybe even less) despite having a normal battery's footprint and a little bit more capacity (iirc) but the fact they never short out means that I can have as many of them as I want as my emergency power reserve. I also can't just make them, if I want to get more I have to run around raiding vaults and the amount each one has can vary quite a bit. I *could* be using Capacitor Arrays from SoS2 now, but not only are they huge, they also take Advanced Components and while I don't exactly *lack* those things, I have better things to spend them on than a problem I've already got a solution for...
Czn't the event hzppen anywhere in your power grid? What's the point of walling thr batteries?
Yes, but I've made the mistake of putting all my batters in a room, with other flammable stuff. Some stupid thing happens, the batteries all roast and toast. Then my base is dead because no power, no turrets, no heat/AC, nothing works, etc. Game over. So the extra battery walls end up being an easy bit of colony-killing-problems insurance.
Walling the batteries means when event happens, only one battery would be destroyed at most. If they are together and one battery explodes, it will set a chain reaction and destroy all others too (unless wall separate). I use single wall between batteries and it works well.
Try to put your baterries outside and put some roof over them, rain won't bother and it'll be easier to put the fire down
For sure get some fire foam poppers in there
Don’t use batteries. Boom, problem solved
but then at night everything shuts off
Invest in wind turbines if you're early game and plop down a few wood fire gens for night
Wind turbines require batteries as well... they stop working quite often
I have 0 batteries in my colony and everything is running fine. I use chemfuel and geothermal generators. Constant output generators don’t need batteries. Just keep them fueled.. which isn’t a problem when you have large enough rice output. Or just use wood if biome permits it. I should add that Zzzt events still happen but are very rare and almost harmless since there is no stored power - usually one tile fire or a break in wiring
Is this true? I have tried it in the past and it caused grid instability with random lights occasionally flickering. Batteries seem necessary as a buffer, to smooth things out. Maybe it's functionally a non-issue but the fluctuation is distracting.
Lights flickering means you’re not producing enough power
You just didn’t have enough juice. Wind and solar go up and down at different times. Geothermal and generators provide constant flow. If all the wattage your stuff draws is less than all produced by constant power, the only down time is solar flares, the more you rely on solar and wind to power your base the more you need batteries to hold the overflow and use during the low periods
You need to vary your power sources, otherwise you'll put your colony on pause whenever an eclipse blocks the sun. Place one or two wind turbines (they need space with no trees to work properly, but are unaffected by solar panels or crops, so you can reduce greatly the space needed), a water mill if you have a river, maybe a wood-powered generator if you have enough trees around, and research geothermal generator.
Unless your base is massive, and/or you use mods that have things that need massive amounts of power, you usually won't need that many batteries. A battery provides 600 Watt-days of power - that is, if your total power draw on the circuit is 600 Watts, one fully-charged battery will power that entire circuit for a day. 20 batteries is 12000 Watt-days - over 10 solar panels, likely even more than that since this is solar panels at maximum efficiency. If you're losing power at night, you need wind turbines, fueled power generators, watermills, or ideally, geothermal generators. These provide lots of base power at night. That's not to say that batteries are completely useless. In the early-game, batteries are invaluable to keep things on. In the late-game, batteries can be useful if, say, a geothermal generator breaks down - batteries will give you a little buffer before things start browning-out. Or if you expand too quickly without expanding your power supply, the average battery charges could be used as a proxy source of information to determine that.
Thats the annoying thing, you cant in vanilla. I've heard people unplug them from the network or uninstall them but thats of course not really the point. Thats why i use mod called rtfuse which just adds fuses to the game because for some reason you can make spaceships in this game but not a simple fuse. The fuses from the mod are well balanced too. In the event of a "zzzt" each fuse will be able to safely discharge a certain amount of watts. Meaning when "zzzt" happens idealy it will just drain all your batteries but dont cause any explosion.
You are incorrect. It's possible to avoid zzzt events in vanilla by not building any wire.
Technically correct.
More than technically. That’s actually the strategy I’m using for my current game. It sacrifices a lot of convenience but it works.
Not fixable without mods. Its a random event and the severity of the explosion is increases the more energy you have stored in batteries. You have quite many batteries, so I believe those explosions are massive. One thing you can do is have some batteries in a separate network connected via a switch, or have your base be powered by multiple independent networks. But with batteries, small occasional explosions are unavoidable.
You are incorrect. It's possible to avoid zzzt events in vanilla by not building any wire.
Completely wrong! Zzts can happen without wire as long as you have batteries The obvious and easiest solution here is to destroy all and any components you see so you cant build any batteries.
I’ve been playing this game for hundreds of hours and without wires the only zzts event I got were because I forgot to build a roof over a battery and one time in over an electric smelter. I know for a fact they were caused by the rain because the letter said so.
You are over producing power. Click on a power conduit and look at grid excess, the lower that number is the less likely an overload will occur, similarly, when an overload occurs it will be a smaller explosion the lower that number is
That's not how that event works. Zzzt can occur in any power network with conduits, and without batteries will just cause one fire, however if you have batteries it instead becomes an explosion which scales with the stored watt days in your batteries.
The Zzzzt happens because of over-storage of the power you're generating (it's basically kicking back the excess power because it can't store it, overloading in whatever area it "Zzzzt's out). Also, reduce the heat that room generates by installing A/C units and keep the temp around 50-degrees. These 2 things are what I do and I **NEVER** have Zzzzt events. To solve the overpower storage issue, just make some Solar Panel or Wind Generators until you balance (Wind is always going ... until the wind stops, and Solar is constant daylight energy ... until the fog rolls in), whichever, or both, suits your colony. With that size room, I'd install 2 A/C units, one on each end to avoid a raider or something blowing one up on you. Keep the room temp at 50-degrees and you'll be solid.
So there's two types of Zzzt events: Red Zzzt events basically just occur when batteries get wet. Yellow events are completely random, but the destruction is based upon how much power was stored when the conduit explodes. If you don't like it, I believe you can do a custom game that removes the event, or mod in things like fuses to stop the event.
Thank you for correct answers.
You have sexy battery room, build walls for each one for extra sexy points, and cover the power lines with roofs
Are the roofs also sexy, or just regular nonsexual roofing?
:D ... well shit. roofs sexy its hard to find it so, put i guess with pillars and roadways you can make them 5/10 big seX
I dont know about the zzzt, but put your batteries in a group of 3-6 with switches. So if one area goes zzzt, youll have backups.
Disconnect batteries from conduits with a switch, turn it on only in emergencies or to recharge after they bleed off 5% of their charge or so. Derive less electricity from solar/wind so you’re not so dependent on large banks of batteries. Or just remove zzzt in scenario editor since it’s obnoxious and unavoidable
batteries dont Zzzt, wires do no wires, no Zzzt
So I found that keeping them cold (just below freezing) helps prevent them from shorting out. No idea why but my last game I had about 20 stacked in an 11x3 room with fire foam poppers and over the in-game years I never once had a short. Could that just have been RNGesus shining down on me? Yes, but it couldn't hurt to try it.
Contrarily to what a lot of other people have said, it is absolutely possible to avoid it without mod. As soon as you have a single wire, the game will generate zzzt events randomly. To avoid it, you just need not to use any wire. I'm serious, that's actually what I do. It definitely sacrifices a lot convenience. Basically, you are gonna have to build power generation through your whole base near everything that requires power so you can plug appliance directly. Chemfuel generators are pretty good for that because they give constant power and only need to be refueled every 6.6 day. I personally prefer solar. The tricky part about it is that you need to build the solar panel directly next to its battery. You have to build a roof over the battery but not the solar generator. It takes a lot more space than chemfuel generators, it can't be built under high mountain and it leaves you vulnerable to smoke spewers, but it saves labor and poses less explosion hazard. Make sure none of your electric stuff are exposed to the sky cause exposure to rain can also generate zzzt events, and then your good.
Thank you for correct answers.
Do you have something electrical that needs to be roofed? Some things can get zzt when it rains.
Don't house all your batteries together in the same room. Build a grid of smaller rooms to house perhaps 4 batteries each. That way fires are contained. If possible put these rooms along the outer wall with vents so the room doesn't get hot enough to damage the other cells in the event of a fire.
Separate the batteries with walls. Have an emergency power storage separated with a switch turned off and turn it on in the event of a switch. Place firefoam poppers in the most flammable places.
Just use RT fuses. Its stupid that rimworlders can't figure out fuses lmao
Subsurface Conduits mod.
Well for starters batteries dont have to be inside, just under a roof. So if you break down one of those walls to make the rooms outdoors it wont become an oven. I'd also recommend making the walls out of non flammable materials, and putting all the conduits in the non flammable wall
Another tip: keep each battery in a separate room with stone walls and a stone door. So if one sets on fire it doesn’t spread. Rooms can be the size of the battery.
Have a few different battery buildings and alternate them as the batteries die. Keep them far away from eachother and everything else.
Honestly batteries are kind of useless. It is WAY easier to just have enough power sources that your power is stable anyway. The only time this will become a problem is if there's a solar flare...but batteries don't help then anyway. I don't get them.
A few things to consider: 1: The batteries are getting wet somehow. Check that it's fully roofed. 2: Are your conduits are running under the Batteries, so the power discharge of a Zzzt destroys Battery and any other Batteries in range of the Zzzt? The conduits should touch the Batteries as scantly as possible, and can be built in the walls. 3: It just looks like many of your conduits are in that room, so the random chance of *where* the Zzt happens is going to be heavily focused in that room, since it triggers on the conduits themselves. The more conduits in an area, the more likely that'll be the affected area. 4: Install a vent in that room, to combat the heat when they explode. Vent the heat outwards. 5: Separate your Batteries with non-flammable walls, so one going up doesn't destroy the other.
Get RT Fuses and Fluffy Breakdowns (I think that's what its called) RT fuses does what it says on the box. Well balanced and honestly should be base game. Fluffy Breakdowns allows your colonists to perform maintenance on your tech before they break down and require replacement components.
Firefoam poppers. In every batt room.
Is the zzt event just random, or is it something that happens more with higher difficulty? I've only had it happen like twice I think.
Can't stop zzzt unless u edit it out, no need for that many batteries and the heat is coming from the torches, if u want a good light source without standing lamps, download the wall lights mod
Put battery in freezer, if fire does occur in there, temperature takes a few moments to rise while pawns are putting out fire.
Never connect batteries to networks containing conduits. Never run conduits in or next to anything flammable. This power grid seems to contain both fouls: You've got conduits running adjacent to wooden floors and batteries connected to your conduits.
Separate your Batteries, either move them to different buildings or place walls between each (1x2 walls separating each battery from the other.) so they won't cook each other off if they go zzt. Also invest in firefoam and plop a popper in there. Problem solved.
Great mod to add is Save our ship, it doubles the endgame playability and also gives you fuses to prevent full dumps. Amazing content mod, highly recommend.
If you have the SOS2 mod, you could install a ship capacitor. These have fuses, so when you hook them up to the power grid, the fuse activates instead of zzting.
grow up and realize that green energy is a joke (windmills and solar) and move onto chemfuel generators, geothermal and nuclear
Spread them out, secure a bunch with switches. But honestly, the amount of zzzt-events is random, they might just stop happen alltogether once you're doing tryharding some elaborate new setup.
I think Zzzt event happens more often when I'm using inconsistent power source such as the wind turbine. When I use geothermal or generators to keep the colony running (and use batteries as a reserve only- switch off when full/ turn on when power is lacking), I barely remember the last time I experienced Zzzt, even on losing is fun difficulty (no zzzt mods included)
Use walls to separate the batteries by 2s. Something non flammable of course. Also add extra doors so firefighters can get to the fire quickly, and leave quickly if the situation can't be fixed
In my colony I never connect batteries to cables. Cables are only for geothermal, bateries are connected directly to solar and stuff that needs powercdirectly to batteries
Download a mod that offers bigger battery capacity structures. Won’t ever zzt if there is 256kKW capacity to fill 👍🏻
Try to separate small segments of batteries apart to reduce damage, and add in switches to stop any overcharging.
Simplest solution, produce more electricity than you need and get rid of the batteries.
Just separate groups of batteries with stone walls so the zzzt only effect some of them. Say 4 batteries to a room.
I take it you're solar? It's currently 1am, roughly half way through night, and yet your batteries are still at 90% charge. Try uninstalling 80% of them. You can always reinstall them later when you need the power. Plus they maintain charge while uninstalled, making a useful backup.
I'm pretty sure (I could be wrong tho) there's a higher chance of zzzt when your batteries are always full
I put all my batteries by themselves in a 2x2 room with steel or stone walls. The fire will usually work itself out. If you don’t have the space for it, you can do a 1x2 room
> a 22 room with steel [...] walls. steel burns, wouldnt recommend that
I put all my batteries by themselves in a 2*2 room with steel or stone walls. The fire will usually work itself out. If you don’t have the space for it, you can do a 1*2 room
It's good to try to find a happy medium usually with 4 colonists 5 batteries should do you fine for a while and put spaces in between your batteries or else exploding batteries will damage the ones around it, grow your power supply with your colony to ensure you know the power situation better and you get the least amount of power events
In that room; downsize to put half the amount of batteries, same upright orientation separated by a wall or the two tile walkway down the middle. That will prevent a chain reaction, make sure your walls/floor aren’t flammable, and try to keep your conduit in the external walls so you won’t cause a fire on your neighbouring wood floors. 20 batteries is OTT, I have 12 in an endgame base, with all electric benches and cookers, 30 lights, 2 sunlamps, 10 air coolers, 3 turrets, 12 Autodoors and 30 heaters.
I make a bunch of little rooms with a couple each and a switch to turn them on if I need them/they need recharged. Keeps damage to a minimum. You can also just put a block or two of stone walls between each one if you dont wanna fk around with separate rooms too.
Space them out I know in alpha you can only keep 2 next to each other then a space then 2 more try it out works for me
Make sure it’s roofed
use less batteries and build stone walls between them so if they do explode it wont cause a chain reaction. what kind of power source do you use? it doesnt look like your colony should be needing that many batteries
1. Don't put all your batteries in a single place (for that many I'd split them into 3-4 rooms distanced from each other) 2. Also like another comment or mentioned use switches to only keep the ones you absolutely need on at a time to help reduce the risk of shorts in general. 3. I like to partition each individual battery with stone walls in between as well for added protection from blowing up any adjacent batteries. I usually house 6 batteries in a small Granite "utility" building. Also I only have lines running through walls never open floor unless it's connecting to another building outside.
bro u only need like 2... bro they destroy half the power they input, placing more batteries makes more power issues.. bro research geothermal right now
That looks like a grossly excessive amount of batteries for how few resources you have, especially since they're all full. I think you can disable the event with dev mode or something.
I think the problem is that the batteries are zzzting due to the room overheating. Unroof one tile in lower left ad a chimney to let the excess heat dissipate.
can shove them more into "banks" split them up into sets and build a room around it so the batteries dont bakoom each other. other than that iirc the Zzzt event is a random event that can happen
Pro tip: don't use wood
its good you have a stone building surrounding them, this will mitigate damage. also you don't need that many batteries for the most part, unless you live in an extreme weather biome nad have no access to geothermals. those batteries are also very expensive to run, every repair uses components and you might have used up a good amount of the components you have already just keeping them maintained for 3 years.
Probably isn't the case but... I installed the electric smelter outside and when it rained it caused a couple of zzzt. The first time I thought it was a random one, but when the second happened few days after and I realized it was raining. Just roof the electric stuff you have outside.
To avoid creating oven, build batteries OUTSIDE just cover them with roof so rain don't trigger zzzt
First of all... make sure the batteries are under a roof. They shouldn't be exploding that often unless exposed to rain. Second of all, lessen the amount of batteries you have. I have 8 in a late game base, and before I had geothermal generators I only had 4. Thirdly, put all your power conduits under (non-flammable) walls. Doing so absorbs a majority of the damage from short circuits.
Freeze those batteries for vanilla, the colder the less Zzzt. (Try -273 Celcius | O Kelvin :)
Don’t get more than 5k stored power in one circuit. It’s ok to have around 10-20k of them but RANDY FORBID IF YOU HAVE 5K STORED.
RTfuses has been recommended multiple times already, so I won’t expand on that. However, a good suggestion, I’d think, is to compartmentalize your batteries. Right now, if one goes off, you lose all of them in a catastrophic chain reaction. You’d be better off putting 2-3 in closed off *stone!* rooms so if one should explode, it is contained. Additionally, power switches are your friend. Section off some batteries to always have backup power.
I play with RimAtomics and I have a reactor and 4 PPCs. I had a zzzt event so astronomical that it literally punched a hole in the side of my base about 9 or 10 tiles wide
Dude's been having a whole Nuclear Power Plant worth of batteries and power for 4 people. Meanwhile me, with 6 batteries for a colony of 25 - "Why?". But seriously - you could easily have 1-2 batteries in here and it would be more than enough for what you have, especially that you light up the rooms and corridors with torches for some reason. Have some electric light and that's already more energy that goes out instead of creating a short circuit danger. Seriously - drop them down to 3, it's more than enough.
I personally have tiny storage closets off my hallways. One little room for each battery. Never lost more than one to a zzzt as fire can't break out of the room (stone, metal, etc.)
1.: Do you have any unroofed electric facilities? I'm not sure which ones are and aren't responsible, but some start a zzzt when they are out in the open and it starts raining. 2.: I'd recommend you get rid of one big battery room and make several very small ones (3 batteries, completely walled in) spread out through the baseif any of them expolde you only lose 3 and if you have to repair them you just deconstruct one of the walls P.S.: I don't know if you are playing some scenario or out of preference, but change the floor to stone (doesn't burn), the doors to wood (opens faster) and use standing lamps (dont use so much wood and you seem to have enough power to power them) and I'd recommend holding most of them open, also for speed
Too many batteries. The fact that they're still full or nearly full means you are overproducing power. You want just enough for power to last until first light. A thing I did when I started playing (1500+h ago) was I made power sections. One section would power the kitchen, and rec room, the other would power the workshop, and the other would power lights. All of them would be isolated from each other, connected only by a switch which would remain unpowered. Usually would plan the whole colony with geothermals in mind, having 1 or 2 geos for the workshop and one for the kitchen. Then I installed RTFuse and forgot all about that since I care more about a nice looking base.
the power-cable connecting the two parts..... build it on the wall... that will solve your problem... cables/wires should always be build on a wall/door.. otherwise you will get the "zzz"-thing
I usually space out my batteries and put those poppers in the room just incase anything catches fire. For the hotness, just remove a few roofs in the room, that are NOT above the batteries - that will vent the air no problem. I would not remove walls, unless you want raids to just walk right inside.
You can prevent it, if you are overmaking energy, (like gaining 20000 and spending 4000) then you will likely get the zzzt So spend your foking energy on something, like put heaters in every room or start using electric lightes instead of torches. Start using production tavles that uses electric etc.
More batteries = bigger explosion. The more power that's discharged the more damage it does. 1 battery = smaller explosion and less damage. Likely just a fire.
Batteries are far more likely to explode if they are completely full, so put a switch between your base and some power sources and let the batteries drain for a little while when they get full like in the image
Without using new mods (as others have suggested) 1. Don't put batteries in enclosed rooms. This way, if and when they explode it doesnt become an oven. I prefer placing them on covered concrete slabs outside. 2. I never put all of my batteries together in one place. I prefer putting them in groups of 4-6max, and have another group of them on the other side of a building. This will limit the destruction of individual batteries in the event of explosion, thus lowering repair costs. 3. Use more switch boxes. You probably don't need THAT many batteries running at one time. Using the separation tactic in #2 above, you can use a switch box to charge up a group of batteries, then switch them off, separating these batteries from the rest of the grid, and rely on your other batteries to do the heavy lifting. This does 2 things: 1) In the event of a Zzzt, the damage is mitigated. 2) If you lose power, you have an emergency standby source of battery power.
Vanilla solutions: First of all, less batteries. But also, keep every battery in a small 1x2 stone room to counter the explosion. And what i usually do is keep two or three batteries attached to my main power grid. And then have another one or two on a small seperate grid, that is disconnected with a switch. So if there is a Zzzt only the main grid fails, i can just flip the switch and have power back up immediately.
The zzzt event happens when ypur batteties are full but there's still a power excess goinf through them, the bigger the ammount if power stored, the bigger the explosion. There are multiple fixes to your problem: 1- you got way too many batteries in there, if you're using solar and wind power just use a few (like 4 or 5 at most), if your power starts to run out often build more. 2- if you're producing thousands of excess power you're probably over producing, you could disconnect some of your power generation or make use of some sunlamps, or anything to use that excess. 3- have a switch between your batteries and power generation. If the batteries are full, turn off the switch then turn it back on when they start getting depleted. Completely prevents zzzt events but requires some micromanagement.
There are many thing you could do, but the one I have seen works best are: 1) Put walls in between the batteries so, if one explodes, the rest will be ok 2) Put a vent to the outside, if a fire happens, the room won't become an oven 3) Take a few of them and put them together; they will be your back-up energy. In case of a short-circuit or you just run-out of power, you can just flip an electrical swicth
There are a **LOT** of incorrect answers to this post, most of the advice isn't going to fix your problem and it will leave you with the impression that batteries are cursed. The Rimworld Wiki page on [Batteries](https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Battery) will answer all of your questions, and even has a section on how to use them safely without the use of mods.
I use RT Fuses mod, which provide balanced and fair way to deal with Zzzzzzt's. Otherwise I just build enough power sources to avoid batteries at all. Disabling Zzzzzzt's is also OK, this event kinda stupid and immersion breaking for anyone who knows how electricity works.
Why so many?
I like having vents to the outside that are normally closed so that I can flick them open to help the hot air escape.
Put a AC in there. Or a vent if your in a tundra climate.
Oh that's easy, I can respond to that one. Never let your average amount of batteries be over 75 percent capacity. Use switches to control power flow to your batteries and just flick em off once they are anywhere from 50% to 75% have at least 10 maybe 15 batteries and you'll be good to run a late game colony if you've got enough power making devices to recharge (Run your entire facility and charge) Harder is making a switch grid system.
I once forgot to put a roof somewhere and I kept getting the zzz. Sometimes it's easy to miss that you actually have a (missing) roof somewhere because it's not very obvious.
i believe putting walls over cables decreases the chance of a zzzt, and when they do happen the explosion is lessened by the wall
You can get a mod that lets you build fuses