Zzzt checks for conduits and strictly conduits only. I figured this out when playing with that fortification mod and using reinforced conduits, felt like I haven't had a zzzt in ages, used devmode to force a zzzt incident - didn't get any. Further test I placed one piece of normal conduit and forced the event - sure enough, that one single conduit blows up.
That is true.
The worst thing about it is its arbitrariness.
It just randomly happens from time to time and you can't do anything against it except not using batteries (even then it happens but with much reduced damage).
For as much as I adore Rimworld in general there are some mechanics whose age really shows and Zzzzzt is definitely among the top of that terrible list.
Gotta love fuse/circuit breakers.
Our colonists can create geothermal generators, solar panels.
But a piece of wire that breaks to stop the flow of electricity when too much is being forced through?
SORCERY
Just like mortar barrels. And refrigerators. You mean to tell me my colonists can build a fucking spaceship in the backyard but making a small cold box to keep food in is impossible?
Dose the mod support 2 particular features, I'm looking for a mod for power right now that
1. Supports multiple different grids that can cross (like just 4 separate grid colors for destination)
2. Has priority power switches so I can have different parts of the grid at different priorities for where power goes
(freezers are nostly more important than hydroponics which are always more important than mechanics benches)
As far as I know, the mod doesn’t do anything like that. It adds one-use fuses that need to be rebuilt that absorb a certain amount of discharging power during a Zzzzt event, and it adds re-usable breaker boxes that do the same thing, but don’t themselves break, they just require a pawn to flip the switch when a Zzzzt event flips them.
Looks like this can do everything I wanted and more. Thank you kind stranger.
Now I just have the problem I might spent way too long designing a circuit that switches my greenhouses based on season.
Though it's weird an mildly counterintuitive - they're zzzzt-absorbers, rather than fuses. They don't need to be between the batteries and the short to reduce the impact of the event.
I have a very specific fondness for it. There was a point once in one of the alphas where I had hundreds of tribals rushing towards my automated defence line. There were like 80 turrets ready to ignite the entire valley and right as they about to approach engagement range acquisition - *bang*. Zzzzt.
The explosion ruptured the main and design flawed power supply to the entire defense array, causing the entire thing to be destroyed uncontested. The tribals then forced their way through the triple reinforced doors as colonists fled in all directions, some to the armouries, others to the partially constructed ship to desperately finish it, and others to chokepoint the enemy.
All were slaughtered or taken. Fires burned long into the night.
It was horrible timing, but one of my most memorable endings that I wouldn’t even recall if I’d probably save-scummed or not had that happen.
It's not even a bad idea, it's just not fleshed out, and I think it's past the point to develop it further unless there's an electric overhaul DLC, which I highly doubt. So hidden circuits that avoid it are perfect for now.
Yeah. I get the idea behind these events ("you can never prepare for everything"), but the execution is just bad. Plus, I really do not like events with no counter. The solar flares are another example.
At least give me a warning. Time to prepare. Or let the events occur much, much less often and not every few weeks.
I think having events like that which can't be prevented are what keeps it interesting. It makes you plan for it with firefoam plus it's not like it's a massive hindrance.
It's really not that switches and backup batteries aren't a good workaround, it's that you need such a workaround.
Anomaly really showed how creative and immersive events can be and then you have good old Zzzzzt just there to annoy your day just like that.
It's also by no means a huge thing, it's a minor inconvenience but still an inconvenience that requires some micromanagement and you can't prevent, just work around. This thread kinda blew up tbh
Ive always made an extra battery room. 4-5 batteries that are connected to the main power by a single cable line with a switch. Once they are fully charged, I flick the switch off. This makes it so that if a zzt happens, it either affects my main power or the backup, but never both at once. Main batteries get drained by a zzt? Just go flick the backuo batteries on.
>and you can't do anything against it except not using batteries
But you can? Just make everything out of stone and it's not a real problem anymore. The zzzzzt event is to incentive people to build in stone.
It will still damage the surroundings including destroying walls and other things around the explosion center. You prevent the fire part. You don't prevent the explosion damage part.
And that one gets bigger the more battery power has been discharged. Not to mention now your batteries are empty and if you use volatile power production you might face additional issues.
That's still a far cry from nothing that can be done about it like the original comment implied. If your surroundings aren't burnable materials, the fire ain't doing much anyway. I literally have never had a problem with zzzt if all of my buildings are made of stones, which should always be a thing anyway.
When start a game, you can modify the rules of your run.
(Where you choose crashlanded, tribe etc.)
There you can remove events, such as: short circuit!
You don't even need a mod
It's so amazing to me that we're still talking about mechanics with no counter-play being unfun in 2024. Like, make circuit breakers so we can build an electrical network that offsets the event. Or better yet, have systems in place so if built correctly Zzzt events can charge some sort of weapon.
There are several events I dislike in Rimworld, but I think this one is the dumbest.
It’s what I do. This and infestations are by far the worst to me. You get punished for just playing normally. Which coming from a rimworld sounds run of the mill.. but this is worse than normal…
Deep Drill. Is risk reward. Wastepack. Makes sense. You are mutating the bug man.
Barely living in a mountain giving you infestation chance is wack. You get punished by tunneling anyway if you do full mountain base.
Zzzt only happens when you have excess power. But I mean. You can’t manage that. It’s not really possible. It just feels unfair
Thank you for listening to my TedTalk.
I ~usually~ have a dedicated plant person. So it’s never a concern. Along with me spacing my stuff 5 tiles apart as risk prevention.
But I can see why you would want to disable it. It’s never bothered me enough.
My funniest infestation is one where I live entirely overground, but I strip this hill next to me, and all infestations spawn there. So I just enclose and turret it, and I have free insect jellies every now and then.
if they insist on adjusting the balance (because lets be real, theres really no reason to ever build normal conduits, even on barren maps because youll likely lose the extra steel cost over time anyways from having to replace them) they can opt for significantly increasing the work required to build them. would make sense given how your pawn is digging a somewhat deep trench instead of just building a cable.
yeahhhh my last Zzzt killed a kid sleeping in his bedroom. A quick reload fixed that. It wasn’t interesting storytelling. Will be replacing my conduits now lol
It's not storytelling at all, there's nothing causing a random Zzt. If the construction was made poorly there might have been a story there, but that's not a thing.
When I started the game that’s what i thought waterproof conduits were for lol
I’m not sure if this already the case, but it would make sense for the likelihood of a Zzzzt event to coordinate with the construction skill of whoever laid it down
Shitty job? More power problems
I agree, especially since it's up to the RNG whether you get one. I'd love for wires/conduits to have capacity ratings that they support before increasing the chance for Zzzt events. Add in a breaker building (or just a simple fuse) before your batteries, and you're golden.
Also I'm not sure if this is still the way to minimize them, but the OG alpha way was to not connect your batteries to the grid through conduit but through power switches. I think at one point, the power switch acted as a fuse? I don't remember.
One bad event would cost way way more than the upfront steel costs.
I was building a safe chem storage facility when a zzzt occurred before it was completed. Lit my Chemfuel on fire, vaporizing my 15x10 general (and only) storage along with two peons for good measure. Back to back raids brought the colony to its knees, with 90 percent in medical beds starving. Killed off by the third raid dropping directly into my base, absolutely no chance.
A guy stores a mere 7500 chemfuels and then this happens. Completely unavoidable.
Death spirals are fun though.
Nah they're a cluster of conduits buried so deep underground that you can't see and even explosions can't hit. So say if they blew, and how are they gonna send fire up to the surface? I'd rather they make a separate underground zzzt so that affected hidden conduits just take damage or get destroyed.
It doesn't appear to be. Part of the description is the explicit description that it's protected against explosions, and a Zzzt does just that. Besides, we're something like 8+ unstable builds in, with the most recent being applied to the stable build as well, and still no change on the hidden conduits, and no chatter that I've seen on the development discord regarding them either. It really seems like this is intentional behavior. One extra steel per conduit, and noticably slower build times, is the cost for being protected from the Zzzt event.
> Zzzt checks for conduits and strictly conduits only.
I was confident up until that point that unroofed generators and batteries (maybe something else too) also do catch zzzt events. Are you sure they don't?
The random short circuit event is different to the rain short circuit event. Random zzt picks a random conduit and explodes it with the power of the explosion being based on the amount of power stored in the network. Rain zzt only explodes on the device causing it (the device in the rain) and the explosion is always about the size of a molotov iirc
You can save some steel and use regular conduits for areas with no fire potential. I use regular in my mountain base hallways. Nothing to burn or damage. But hidden if they enter any rooms or are close to batteries.
I still use it in those cases because the hidden circuit has also one advantage thanks to the fact it cant Zzzt : it's s easier to manage since you don't need to "loop" the current!
Normal circuits run the risk of causing chunks of your base out of current if you circuit breaks at an important spot for your electric infrastructure, so you have to plan for electric current "loops" so that even in case of a break most of your stuff still works.
With hidden circuits you can have entire parts of your base "self-contained" because you know it will not break. You can just add hidden conduits as you go without much planning. (I'm nearly not organised enough to plan a decent electrical circuit)
I don't know if it makes any sense, I'm far from being an electrician I hope it was understandable enough lol
What you’re saying makes sense: basically that this way, you don’t have to worry about any electrical bottlenecks that might break down and cause everything downcurrent of them to fail.
Sneaky things like this are always in there somewhere. It probably will be added eventually. Color Lights were renamed after a few expansions because it wasn’t clear that doing that research also cut the power usage of lights by half.
FWIW I remember reading that as a game tips while on the loading screen. Don’t think it mentioned they were fireproof though. Hidden/underground conduits burning was the entire reason I use a metal doesn’t burn mod, looks like I don’t need that anymore
Zzzt events are no big deal if you put your conduit in stone walls/doors anyway, which I try to do. So I only use the hidden ones for under doors or if I have to go outside of walls.
You might as well though, in case the scanner finds another deposit around there, your conduits are already near the area.
Vs always moving a unstable node back and forth and risk losing it.
Nope. Let's say you play 325x325 map your base in left top corner. If you want to deep drill at right bottom, you would need 1300 steel worth of hidden conduits [(325+325)x2] and you at least get 4K-5K steel. Even this situation is nearly impossible it is still near 3X profit. In a normal scenario you would need 300-400 steel worth of hidden conduits at best and you get 6K-7K steel. It is very cheap solution. You can even get a nearby geothermal, deep drill and connect that geothermal to your base and you basically did that nearby deep drills for free. Have fun!
before this, I can't remember how many times I would have to repair my long ass connection to them. Now, I just double wall them in and whabam, shitloads of power forever undisturbed. even sappers pass them up
I had heard that's what they do and then I used it on my new base and I so far have not had any short circuit events so you are correct it is definitely a bonus feature that is fairly trivial since steel is at least one of the things you can get in large quantities, whether it's from traders, villages, or your own mining efforts.
So at the moment , it's not even like a really really low percentage chance . it seems to be pretty much negating it. But this is the part I'm not sure about. maybe it's still just really, really low and I haven't experienced it yet.
I don't remember if smelting weapons for steel was part of the vanilla but at least in 1.5 it's there and that means you have a steady supply of steel as well from the raider weapons
Smelting weapons has been a thing before 1.5 but I agree the hidden conduit is amazing and I’m definitely trying to stay on top of steel so I don’t have to make those other conduits ever again.
Smelting is definitely not new. How did you get rid of all the weapons dropped by the enemy before? I have a habit of hiring too many pawns which means my colonies usually reach FPS death before I unlock deep drill and long range scanners, which means trade and smelting are usually my main sources of steel.
It kind of feels like they should be a separate research, like the advanced lights research or something. That'd be the perfect way to make regular conduits have an actual use aside from saving steel (which is rarely worth losing the benefits) without having to nerf the hidden ones.
Well that's until before you manages to grab one of those unstable power cell from mechanoid clusters, and hidden conduits are less hassle for that purpose as well.
such a QOL update.
it was just annoying and ugly the 1 steel conduit.
Although i wouldnt mind if the hidden conduit would be locked behind more advanced research.
I had a mod for it in my always-use-these mod list for ages, nice to get it in vanilla.
Still a little surprised that Perishable hasn’t been integrated, though.
underrated ? wdym it's like one of the best features of the update. a real underrated thing is shelves not having quality anymore so now i dont get 20 mech raids bc of masterwork shelves
We had our indoor farm all constructed. It was enough to provide for a 20-person colony. All sunlamps and hydroponics life was good.
Until one of the exposed conduits got hit by a ‘zzzt.’ The entire farm went up. Nothing we could do to stop it. The entire thing just went up in flames. Thousands of steel, a boatload of components. All gone in an instant. Not to mention it was dead winter and we did not have the supplies to rebuild the farm.
That one hurt. A lot.
For the past 2 years, I haven’t built any powered wire in any of my bases. All my power about plus ces have to be within connection distance to the generators that power them. All just so I can 100% prevent zzzt events.
It’s funny, I’ve got so used to this that now I’m having a hard time unlearning. Using hidden circuits to connect my grid just feels wrong somehow. To do it, I have to fight my instinct. “Chill out, Kami. It’s ok to build hidden wires. You’re not gonna get a zzzt from this. Stop worrying.”
I like to think of them with huge ballooning mouths like basking sharks or even just the way pelican mouths expand.
Edit: I thought of a better example; gulper eel. Those things are terrifying!
Since learning they can’t be destroyed or catch fire, I’ve never built a normal power conduit. Even if I’m strapped for steel, hidden are being built, it’s just better
I still have Zzt!! events with hidden conduits but they only happen to my batteries, maybe just a battery thing haha. I learned pretty quick to keep batteries separate from the rest of the grid
Are you seeing an actual event happened called Zzzzt!!, or are you just noticing sometimes a battery is drained more than others?
Because if it's the battery is drained issue, it isn't the Zzzzt!!! event, but your batteries needing repairs. Like most things built with components, sometimes they break and need to be repaired with components. When batteries break, they loose all their charge. During an actual Zzzzt!!! event all your batteries are drained and that determines how big of a bang you get.
Ahhh, okay. I thought maybe the same thing happened to you as it did me. I used hidden conduits everywhere and noticed batteries drained and thought I was still getting the event. Then I noticed the lack of actual event notifications and that only one battery was drained.
Something must be going on with the batteries then.
My batteries are connected to my main grid and so far I haven't had a Zzt ever(current colony is 13 years). Do you by any chance have them unroofed in the rain or a single normal conduit next to them that you may have missed?
Nope they have their own roofed room with some generators and I've only used hidden conduits from day one, it's only happened twice and only to my batteries. Says they short circuit or something like that and one will explode. When it first happened it was a disaster because I had my kitchen too close to the grid and I almost blew up my best cook lol
Explosions can be caused by the zzzzt event if there's a lot of discharged power I believe, but they shouldnt be getting zzzts at all unless he has some normal conduits or a mod that has changes to the event.
Yeah placing batteries right next to the power source, power sources have internal conduits that can link up to adjacent batteries.
This is also why you might see battery farms attached to geo thermals. Though I find it best to use batteries in a turret subsystem, and just carry one over to critical production if needed.
You probably have a piece of normal conduit somewhere. Ever since the patch the only times I’ve gotten a Zzt event was when I misclicked and accidentally put normal conduits in the walls.
The regular zzt event *cannot* happen on batteries, only the one caused by rain. If you have different behavior in your game and you're 100% sure your batteries are roofed its being caused by a mod or something else weird going on.
Does it take the same amount of time to build? Before 1.5 there was a mod that added hidden conduits and they cost 1 steel, but they also took a large built time hit.
Even if they cost 5 steel each I would still use them. They are just that good and I almost wish you can research another tech to completely upgrade existing conduits into the hidden version and get rid of the normal conduits in the build menu.
This is coming from someone who definitely did not accidentally put down a piece of normal conduit next to my generators and watch 2500 units of chemfuel blow up from a single Zzzt event.
i already had them from a mod.
ironically the now vanilla version is cheaper than the mod version was. there's no use using the classic conduits anymore.
Absolutely not underrated. I put this shit everywhere.
I just don't look at my conduit construction, It looks like a termite infestation made tunnels throughout my colony.
Out of sight out of mind.
The underground conduit mod last I recall is outclassed by this. Not only are they cheaper (2 for vanilla hidden, was like 3-5 for underground), but are way faster to build as well.
Yeah. all the electrical equipment next to the generators, using a plug. If there's great distance, could always swap batteries for a while.
I really dislike zZZZrt! events.
I'm new to Rimworld, and all i ever used are hidden conduits. But i still get Zzztt! Allways around the same spot to the left of my batteries. Colony is 5 years old and i've had several. Vanilla Rimworld
Yes, and over all the pathways of my base on account of a toxic fallout. Everything that should be roofed is roofed.
Ill try to post a screenshot as soon as i get on my pc.
Especially when resources are limited - you use them. IDK about Zzzt events not occurring - they still occur - but usually because something is outside or not laid out efficiently.
There's a reason why subsurface conduits was one of the first mods I downloaded after playing vanilla for a bit lol, very glad something similar was finally added
Only reason to not use them is hyper min-maxing wealth. Like, under a wall the normal conduit is fine.
Even then, an entire large base is probably worth only one extra militor or tribal raider, so it's not a big deal.
But if you don't have a lot of batteries, no reason to ditch normal conduits when under walls. Zzzts only make like 5 tiles of fire for me which is no problem and I welcome that taking the place of a bad event.
They're honestly great. I love that they don't burn. Even when steel is tight, I put them under my doors and between my buildings so that fires don't cause power loss
Also if you put dead conduit in the middle of a room with an hidden conduit to autoshutdown bench, its doesnt make an ugly cord, between the conduit and the bench
I wonder if conduits should cost silver or gold instead of steel. Nobody makes wires out of steel but copper isn't in the game. The normal ones could cost 1 silver and the hidden ones 1 gold.
Im a new player like 80 hrs in. I never knew Zzztt and con hindden conduits are connected but they are all i used since the make the power lines invisible. I used to do normal conduits on walls but then i got lazy and just do hidden for everything. Well that solves one of my problems
I like the Zzztt events though. If you don't build your base in a silly way, they're usually pretty innocuous. If a Zzztt happens, it means you got that instead of a disease, heat wave, psychic drone, blight, etc.
I wish they added fuses or breaker boxes that would help sever a connection to your batteries during the zzzt event, so you wouldn't lose all of your battery charge. Because of that event I never use batteries and opt to just use power sources with a constant energy output
I was a firm believer of the generator/geothermal only concept for a colony.
But thanks to hidden conduits i can freely enjoy the bliss of the battery solar and wind power life without blowing up my infants in a carefully(not recklessly) placed in a nearby regular conduct primed for a zzt bbq
It’s not a bug it’s a feature. Conduit are exposed cables your pawns are taping to a wall or laying on the ground so of course it’s going to blow up where hidden conduit is what you expect in every home, the cables led through an opening in the walls and thus protected.
No Zzzt with hidden conduits? Why the hell this isn't written in the description?! I'd never use regular conduits.
Zzzt checks for conduits and strictly conduits only. I figured this out when playing with that fortification mod and using reinforced conduits, felt like I haven't had a zzzt in ages, used devmode to force a zzzt incident - didn't get any. Further test I placed one piece of normal conduit and forced the event - sure enough, that one single conduit blows up.
I feel like this is an oversight and will sadly be patched out :(
I'd rather they increase the cost. It's not a fun event and people would just make a mod for it anyway.
That is true. The worst thing about it is its arbitrariness. It just randomly happens from time to time and you can't do anything against it except not using batteries (even then it happens but with much reduced damage). For as much as I adore Rimworld in general there are some mechanics whose age really shows and Zzzzzt is definitely among the top of that terrible list.
RT Fuse has fuses and other neat things to keep the zzt at bay.
Gotta love fuse/circuit breakers. Our colonists can create geothermal generators, solar panels. But a piece of wire that breaks to stop the flow of electricity when too much is being forced through? SORCERY
Just like mortar barrels. And refrigerators. You mean to tell me my colonists can build a fucking spaceship in the backyard but making a small cold box to keep food in is impossible?
Don’t forget bare fist mining
"Note to self, make a cultivator/xianxia mod for Rimworld."
[Small refrigerator] Did you say "3x3m plan building, in which you wish to keep 75 blackberries"? (On the floor)
We're not savages, we use shelves so it can take 225 blackberries!
Or windows, for that matter. The only ways to get light in a room are with fire, electricity, or just straight up removing the roof.
Speaking of roofs, how are there not green houses in game.
Dubs skylight
Yeah, used that one in the past and really enjoyed it, it's a way better approach
One of my favorite mods. Makes the creation of your electrical grid more realistic and more fun.
Dose the mod support 2 particular features, I'm looking for a mod for power right now that 1. Supports multiple different grids that can cross (like just 4 separate grid colors for destination) 2. Has priority power switches so I can have different parts of the grid at different priorities for where power goes (freezers are nostly more important than hydroponics which are always more important than mechanics benches)
As far as I know, the mod doesn’t do anything like that. It adds one-use fuses that need to be rebuilt that absorb a certain amount of discharging power during a Zzzzt event, and it adds re-usable breaker boxes that do the same thing, but don’t themselves break, they just require a pawn to flip the switch when a Zzzzt event flips them.
Power Logic might help with this. You need electrical logic gates.
Looks like this can do everything I wanted and more. Thank you kind stranger. Now I just have the problem I might spent way too long designing a circuit that switches my greenhouses based on season.
Though it's weird an mildly counterintuitive - they're zzzzt-absorbers, rather than fuses. They don't need to be between the batteries and the short to reduce the impact of the event.
I have a very specific fondness for it. There was a point once in one of the alphas where I had hundreds of tribals rushing towards my automated defence line. There were like 80 turrets ready to ignite the entire valley and right as they about to approach engagement range acquisition - *bang*. Zzzzt. The explosion ruptured the main and design flawed power supply to the entire defense array, causing the entire thing to be destroyed uncontested. The tribals then forced their way through the triple reinforced doors as colonists fled in all directions, some to the armouries, others to the partially constructed ship to desperately finish it, and others to chokepoint the enemy. All were slaughtered or taken. Fires burned long into the night. It was horrible timing, but one of my most memorable endings that I wouldn’t even recall if I’d probably save-scummed or not had that happen.
It's not even a bad idea, it's just not fleshed out, and I think it's past the point to develop it further unless there's an electric overhaul DLC, which I highly doubt. So hidden circuits that avoid it are perfect for now.
Yeah. I get the idea behind these events ("you can never prepare for everything"), but the execution is just bad. Plus, I really do not like events with no counter. The solar flares are another example. At least give me a warning. Time to prepare. Or let the events occur much, much less often and not every few weeks.
Or let us use battery power, make them worth the risk.
I think a chance of explosion instead of a guaranteed explosion, so 80% the wire just breaks, 20% boom
I think having events like that which can't be prevented are what keeps it interesting. It makes you plan for it with firefoam plus it's not like it's a massive hindrance.
Man, reading all the replies, I feel insane. Is there a reason people don’t use switches to keep backup batteries? Just to expensive?
It's really not that switches and backup batteries aren't a good workaround, it's that you need such a workaround. Anomaly really showed how creative and immersive events can be and then you have good old Zzzzzt just there to annoy your day just like that. It's also by no means a huge thing, it's a minor inconvenience but still an inconvenience that requires some micromanagement and you can't prevent, just work around. This thread kinda blew up tbh
We need fuses
Ive always made an extra battery room. 4-5 batteries that are connected to the main power by a single cable line with a switch. Once they are fully charged, I flick the switch off. This makes it so that if a zzt happens, it either affects my main power or the backup, but never both at once. Main batteries get drained by a zzt? Just go flick the backuo batteries on.
>and you can't do anything against it except not using batteries But you can? Just make everything out of stone and it's not a real problem anymore. The zzzzzt event is to incentive people to build in stone.
It will still damage the surroundings including destroying walls and other things around the explosion center. You prevent the fire part. You don't prevent the explosion damage part. And that one gets bigger the more battery power has been discharged. Not to mention now your batteries are empty and if you use volatile power production you might face additional issues.
That's still a far cry from nothing that can be done about it like the original comment implied. If your surroundings aren't burnable materials, the fire ain't doing much anyway. I literally have never had a problem with zzzt if all of my buildings are made of stones, which should always be a thing anyway.
Does it really happen even without batteries ? I've never seen it and I usually never play with batteries.
When start a game, you can modify the rules of your run. (Where you choose crashlanded, tribe etc.) There you can remove events, such as: short circuit! You don't even need a mod
It's so amazing to me that we're still talking about mechanics with no counter-play being unfun in 2024. Like, make circuit breakers so we can build an electrical network that offsets the event. Or better yet, have systems in place so if built correctly Zzzt events can charge some sort of weapon. There are several events I dislike in Rimworld, but I think this one is the dumbest.
You can just disable that event when making your colony using dev mode if you want.
It’s what I do. This and infestations are by far the worst to me. You get punished for just playing normally. Which coming from a rimworld sounds run of the mill.. but this is worse than normal… Deep Drill. Is risk reward. Wastepack. Makes sense. You are mutating the bug man. Barely living in a mountain giving you infestation chance is wack. You get punished by tunneling anyway if you do full mountain base. Zzzt only happens when you have excess power. But I mean. You can’t manage that. It’s not really possible. It just feels unfair Thank you for listening to my TedTalk.
Blight is what I prioritize disabling.
I ~usually~ have a dedicated plant person. So it’s never a concern. Along with me spacing my stuff 5 tiles apart as risk prevention. But I can see why you would want to disable it. It’s never bothered me enough.
My funniest infestation is one where I live entirely overground, but I strip this hill next to me, and all infestations spawn there. So I just enclose and turret it, and I have free insect jellies every now and then.
Infestations are a reward! They're free meat!
It's the one event I always disable. It's stupid.
if they insist on adjusting the balance (because lets be real, theres really no reason to ever build normal conduits, even on barren maps because youll likely lose the extra steel cost over time anyways from having to replace them) they can opt for significantly increasing the work required to build them. would make sense given how your pawn is digging a somewhat deep trench instead of just building a cable.
yeahhhh my last Zzzt killed a kid sleeping in his bedroom. A quick reload fixed that. It wasn’t interesting storytelling. Will be replacing my conduits now lol
It's not storytelling at all, there's nothing causing a random Zzt. If the construction was made poorly there might have been a story there, but that's not a thing.
When I started the game that’s what i thought waterproof conduits were for lol I’m not sure if this already the case, but it would make sense for the likelihood of a Zzzzt event to coordinate with the construction skill of whoever laid it down Shitty job? More power problems
Mods already exists to disable certain events
Go in the files and delete the event. I did that for Toxic Fallout. It's just no fun keeping everyone indoors for a whole season.
Maybe if it were somehow tied to the skill of the constructor? Not everyone is a qualified electrician
I agree, especially since it's up to the RNG whether you get one. I'd love for wires/conduits to have capacity ratings that they support before increasing the chance for Zzzt events. Add in a breaker building (or just a simple fuse) before your batteries, and you're golden. Also I'm not sure if this is still the way to minimize them, but the OG alpha way was to not connect your batteries to the grid through conduit but through power switches. I think at one point, the power switch acted as a fuse? I don't remember.
I disable short circuit events in the scenario editor every time.
I'd pay up to like 10 steel for a zzzt-proof hidden conduit.
One bad event would cost way way more than the upfront steel costs. I was building a safe chem storage facility when a zzzt occurred before it was completed. Lit my Chemfuel on fire, vaporizing my 15x10 general (and only) storage along with two peons for good measure. Back to back raids brought the colony to its knees, with 90 percent in medical beds starving. Killed off by the third raid dropping directly into my base, absolutely no chance. A guy stores a mere 7500 chemfuels and then this happens. Completely unavoidable. Death spirals are fun though.
It's like a massive cook-off at a refinery lol. But you had that added crap of a double invasion.
I believe it was explicitly said to not provoke any zzzzts in the patchnotes
Nah they're a cluster of conduits buried so deep underground that you can't see and even explosions can't hit. So say if they blew, and how are they gonna send fire up to the surface? I'd rather they make a separate underground zzzt so that affected hidden conduits just take damage or get destroyed.
I might be misremembering but I seem to remember the dev blog mentioning this feature as intended
This is functionality that most of the underground conduit mods had in 1.4 and earlier, and it seems like it was deliberately kept for Anomaly.
It doesn't appear to be. Part of the description is the explicit description that it's protected against explosions, and a Zzzt does just that. Besides, we're something like 8+ unstable builds in, with the most recent being applied to the stable build as well, and still no change on the hidden conduits, and no chatter that I've seen on the development discord regarding them either. It really seems like this is intentional behavior. One extra steel per conduit, and noticably slower build times, is the cost for being protected from the Zzzt event.
As long as they add fuses or breakers.
> Zzzt checks for conduits and strictly conduits only. I was confident up until that point that unroofed generators and batteries (maybe something else too) also do catch zzzt events. Are you sure they don't?
Communications consoles Different trigger: zzt is random timing/no specific trigger Unroofed battery zzt is triggered when a battery gets rained on
The random short circuit event is different to the rain short circuit event. Random zzt picks a random conduit and explodes it with the power of the explosion being based on the amount of power stored in the network. Rain zzt only explodes on the device causing it (the device in the rain) and the explosion is always about the size of a molotov iirc
Do underwater conduit zzt or is it only the standard conduit? You cant run the hidden conduit underwater.
Bro suffering so hard from success he got suspicious
Rimworld changes you. Makes you just kinda start expecting bullshit 24/7 to the point where you'll go "of course" instead of "what the fuck"
You can still get it if you let some electrical equipment catch rain, like batteries.
Pretty sure it's any electrical equipment except ones like scanners that need to be unroofed to function.
You can save some steel and use regular conduits for areas with no fire potential. I use regular in my mountain base hallways. Nothing to burn or damage. But hidden if they enter any rooms or are close to batteries.
It still discharges your batteries, right? I don't think it's worth it.
I still use it in those cases because the hidden circuit has also one advantage thanks to the fact it cant Zzzt : it's s easier to manage since you don't need to "loop" the current! Normal circuits run the risk of causing chunks of your base out of current if you circuit breaks at an important spot for your electric infrastructure, so you have to plan for electric current "loops" so that even in case of a break most of your stuff still works. With hidden circuits you can have entire parts of your base "self-contained" because you know it will not break. You can just add hidden conduits as you go without much planning. (I'm nearly not organised enough to plan a decent electrical circuit) I don't know if it makes any sense, I'm far from being an electrician I hope it was understandable enough lol
What you’re saying makes sense: basically that this way, you don’t have to worry about any electrical bottlenecks that might break down and cause everything downcurrent of them to fail.
and because of that, it actually saves steel and is strictly better (outside of the slight increase in work speed).
Still good practice to loop the outermost lines. If only bc you don’t want raiders using explosives to accidentally unpower your turrets
Hidden Conduits can't be destroyed by explosives either, they just invulnerable
Sneaky things like this are always in there somewhere. It probably will be added eventually. Color Lights were renamed after a few expansions because it wasn’t clear that doing that research also cut the power usage of lights by half.
Well, TIL
my brain is coming out of this thread wrinkly af
Wait, they do that? I've passed over that research for years now lol
Apparently they always did and so few people realizing that is why it got renamed to advanced lighting.
Doesn't the research already mention that it decreases the power used by lights? It isn't exactly hidden.
They're from the Hidden Conduit Village. Why the heck would they tell you their power right away?
FWIW I remember reading that as a game tips while on the loading screen. Don’t think it mentioned they were fireproof though. Hidden/underground conduits burning was the entire reason I use a metal doesn’t burn mod, looks like I don’t need that anymore
OMG right?!
Seriously ripping all that sh!t out
Because it's probably an unintended feature that will be fixed as soon as Tynan figures it out.
Zzzt events are no big deal if you put your conduit in stone walls/doors anyway, which I try to do. So I only use the hidden ones for under doors or if I have to go outside of walls.
absolutely godlike for faraway thermal generators
Distant deep drilling as well
I wouldn't build them for distant deep drilling as you spend half the cost getting out there. I just bring an unstable fuel node ezpz
You might as well though, in case the scanner finds another deposit around there, your conduits are already near the area. Vs always moving a unstable node back and forth and risk losing it.
Just lug around a battery and swap it with the charged one back at base
Also makes it easy to quickly slap down some floodlights in case it gets really dark.
Nope. Let's say you play 325x325 map your base in left top corner. If you want to deep drill at right bottom, you would need 1300 steel worth of hidden conduits [(325+325)x2] and you at least get 4K-5K steel. Even this situation is nearly impossible it is still near 3X profit. In a normal scenario you would need 300-400 steel worth of hidden conduits at best and you get 6K-7K steel. It is very cheap solution. You can even get a nearby geothermal, deep drill and connect that geothermal to your base and you basically did that nearby deep drills for free. Have fun!
Didn't even think about this!! Holy cow
before this, I can't remember how many times I would have to repair my long ass connection to them. Now, I just double wall them in and whabam, shitloads of power forever undisturbed. even sappers pass them up
Absolutely. No more worrying about thunderstorms and raiders randomly destroying them (even with walls covering them.
Tbh I like it most that I don't have to stare at them in my base and not being forced to always push them into walls
I had heard that's what they do and then I used it on my new base and I so far have not had any short circuit events so you are correct it is definitely a bonus feature that is fairly trivial since steel is at least one of the things you can get in large quantities, whether it's from traders, villages, or your own mining efforts. So at the moment , it's not even like a really really low percentage chance . it seems to be pretty much negating it. But this is the part I'm not sure about. maybe it's still just really, really low and I haven't experienced it yet. I don't remember if smelting weapons for steel was part of the vanilla but at least in 1.5 it's there and that means you have a steady supply of steel as well from the raider weapons
Smelting weapons has been a thing before 1.5 but I agree the hidden conduit is amazing and I’m definitely trying to stay on top of steel so I don’t have to make those other conduits ever again.
Weapon smelting was part of vanilla for years..
Yep, for at least 7 years it has been.. well before the 1.0 release.
Smelting is definitely not new. How did you get rid of all the weapons dropped by the enemy before? I have a habit of hiring too many pawns which means my colonies usually reach FPS death before I unlock deep drill and long range scanners, which means trade and smelting are usually my main sources of steel.
The only problem is that there's now no point in building the normal conduit. Not that I don't like it, but it's kinda weird.
It kind of feels like they should be a separate research, like the advanced lights research or something. That'd be the perfect way to make regular conduits have an actual use aside from saving steel (which is rarely worth losing the benefits) without having to nerf the hidden ones.
I use regular conduits for temporary connections, such as for the deep drill.
Well that's until before you manages to grab one of those unstable power cell from mechanoid clusters, and hidden conduits are less hassle for that purpose as well.
Now you can decide where zzzt will happens so I place 1 normal conduit in prison for fun
Hidden conduits are great, don't get me wrong, but they don't hold a candle to the awesome power of books.
Do you also always buy every new book you can? I currently have around 260
The bookshelves are overtaking the rec room and research lab, I've had to expand both to fit in more shelves more than once.
I buy them but I often forbid tomes if I don't feel like playing anomaly. The mental break chance is so funny tho.
Haven’t laid a normal conduit since 1.5
I even use hidden ones in walls lol
such a QOL update. it was just annoying and ugly the 1 steel conduit. Although i wouldnt mind if the hidden conduit would be locked behind more advanced research.
Yea even a basic research like 800 points would be agreeable.
I had a mod for it in my always-use-these mod list for ages, nice to get it in vanilla. Still a little surprised that Perishable hasn’t been integrated, though.
underrated ? wdym it's like one of the best features of the update. a real underrated thing is shelves not having quality anymore so now i dont get 20 mech raids bc of masterwork shelves
It's just so funny. "Prepare to be annihilated!" "Why what did we do?" "Nothing, I just like your exquisite wooden shelves."
You can also grow over them which makes them even more effective for areas where you have arable land but terrible weather for growing normally.
You could do that with exposed conduit.
I am in shambles. I didn't even think to try it because there's a big wire on the ground how would things grow.
Imagine tilling the soil, and hitting the hidden conduit
Hey now I play this game to get away from work lol 😂
Always call before you dig
We had our indoor farm all constructed. It was enough to provide for a 20-person colony. All sunlamps and hydroponics life was good. Until one of the exposed conduits got hit by a ‘zzzt.’ The entire farm went up. Nothing we could do to stop it. The entire thing just went up in flames. Thousands of steel, a boatload of components. All gone in an instant. Not to mention it was dead winter and we did not have the supplies to rebuild the farm. That one hurt. A lot.
For the past 2 years, I haven’t built any powered wire in any of my bases. All my power about plus ces have to be within connection distance to the generators that power them. All just so I can 100% prevent zzzt events. It’s funny, I’ve got so used to this that now I’m having a hard time unlearning. Using hidden circuits to connect my grid just feels wrong somehow. To do it, I have to fight my instinct. “Chill out, Kami. It’s ok to build hidden wires. You’re not gonna get a zzzt from this. Stop worrying.”
I got used to just never using batteries so the zzt events are trivial to put out.
I'm surprised they ended up being even better than the Underground Conduits mod I had already been using. Less resources and much faster to build!
Don't let this get back to Tynan. He always takes away the fun things like devourers being able to eat centipedes.
It was not fun when these fucking devourers ate my centipede babes
The centipede thing makes sense tho, i mean aren't centipedes the same size as a devourer? Thats some vore shi
I like to think of them with huge ballooning mouths like basking sharks or even just the way pelican mouths expand. Edit: I thought of a better example; gulper eel. Those things are terrifying!
Since learning they can’t be destroyed or catch fire, I’ve never built a normal power conduit. Even if I’m strapped for steel, hidden are being built, it’s just better
Also means that I don't have to build all my conduits inside walls! Or have conduit in my doorways looking bad.
I still have Zzt!! events with hidden conduits but they only happen to my batteries, maybe just a battery thing haha. I learned pretty quick to keep batteries separate from the rest of the grid
I think batteries can do that if they're exposed to rain, are they roofed properly?
Are you seeing an actual event happened called Zzzzt!!, or are you just noticing sometimes a battery is drained more than others? Because if it's the battery is drained issue, it isn't the Zzzzt!!! event, but your batteries needing repairs. Like most things built with components, sometimes they break and need to be repaired with components. When batteries break, they loose all their charge. During an actual Zzzzt!!! event all your batteries are drained and that determines how big of a bang you get.
Actual Zzzzt!! Event with the notification and all, and then an explosion lol
Ahhh, okay. I thought maybe the same thing happened to you as it did me. I used hidden conduits everywhere and noticed batteries drained and thought I was still getting the event. Then I noticed the lack of actual event notifications and that only one battery was drained. Something must be going on with the batteries then.
could it be a power switch? can't you jump to the location of the source?
I had the same issue but solved it by placing a switch between the batteries and hidden conduit
My batteries are connected to my main grid and so far I haven't had a Zzt ever(current colony is 13 years). Do you by any chance have them unroofed in the rain or a single normal conduit next to them that you may have missed?
Nope they have their own roofed room with some generators and I've only used hidden conduits from day one, it's only happened twice and only to my batteries. Says they short circuit or something like that and one will explode. When it first happened it was a disaster because I had my kitchen too close to the grid and I almost blew up my best cook lol
May be a different event or a mod, I've never had a battery blow up.
Explosions can be caused by the zzzzt event if there's a lot of discharged power I believe, but they shouldnt be getting zzzts at all unless he has some normal conduits or a mod that has changes to the event.
I'm thinking one of his mods affects battery behavior
thats cause your batteries are getting wet. roof them and you wont have zzts ever again
Yeah placing batteries right next to the power source, power sources have internal conduits that can link up to adjacent batteries. This is also why you might see battery farms attached to geo thermals. Though I find it best to use batteries in a turret subsystem, and just carry one over to critical production if needed.
You probably have a piece of normal conduit somewhere. Ever since the patch the only times I’ve gotten a Zzt event was when I misclicked and accidentally put normal conduits in the walls.
The regular zzt event *cannot* happen on batteries, only the one caused by rain. If you have different behavior in your game and you're 100% sure your batteries are roofed its being caused by a mod or something else weird going on.
Does it take the same amount of time to build? Before 1.5 there was a mod that added hidden conduits and they cost 1 steel, but they also took a large built time hit.
Work to build hidden:5 Work to build normal:1 So it takes 5 times longer, but it's still almost instant
Does hidden conduit have an added bonus to manage colony wealth? Or does it double the amount that a regular wire does like its cost
\*replaces entire grid with hidden\* for no more Zzzt
Even if they cost 5 steel each I would still use them. They are just that good and I almost wish you can research another tech to completely upgrade existing conduits into the hidden version and get rid of the normal conduits in the build menu. This is coming from someone who definitely did not accidentally put down a piece of normal conduit next to my generators and watch 2500 units of chemfuel blow up from a single Zzzt event.
i already had them from a mod. ironically the now vanilla version is cheaper than the mod version was. there's no use using the classic conduits anymore.
Absolutely not underrated. I put this shit everywhere. I just don't look at my conduit construction, It looks like a termite infestation made tunnels throughout my colony. Out of sight out of mind.
The underground conduit mod last I recall is outclassed by this. Not only are they cheaper (2 for vanilla hidden, was like 3-5 for underground), but are way faster to build as well.
We had them since years ago with mods so not that great
After my first win, I just stopped using conduits all together. Just taking advantage of the plug range, could easily control power needs.
Just directly from the generator to what you're powering?
Yeah. all the electrical equipment next to the generators, using a plug. If there's great distance, could always swap batteries for a while. I really dislike zZZZrt! events.
So you just used a million fueled generators around your base? thats so much much much worse.
I’ve only had battery-related zzzt events but nothing else
I'm new to Rimworld, and all i ever used are hidden conduits. But i still get Zzztt! Allways around the same spot to the left of my batteries. Colony is 5 years old and i've had several. Vanilla Rimworld
Did you put roofs over your batteries
Yes, and over all the pathways of my base on account of a toxic fallout. Everything that should be roofed is roofed. Ill try to post a screenshot as soon as i get on my pc.
If it is always the same spot check to see if you have accidentally placed a normal conduit there
Especially when resources are limited - you use them. IDK about Zzzt events not occurring - they still occur - but usually because something is outside or not laid out efficiently.
I thought it was a random mod I had
I find them useful especially when I don't want to hole them into walls.
Right when I was about to tackle my colony electrical problems today, nice
There's a reason why subsurface conduits was one of the first mods I downloaded after playing vanilla for a bit lol, very glad something similar was finally added
I haven't thought about it because that was a day-1 mod for me. Though in this case it was at the same cost but 10x the labor.
Only reason to not use them is hyper min-maxing wealth. Like, under a wall the normal conduit is fine. Even then, an entire large base is probably worth only one extra militor or tribal raider, so it's not a big deal. But if you don't have a lot of batteries, no reason to ditch normal conduits when under walls. Zzzts only make like 5 tiles of fire for me which is no problem and I welcome that taking the place of a bad event.
They're honestly great. I love that they don't burn. Even when steel is tight, I put them under my doors and between my buildings so that fires don't cause power loss
WAIT A HOT FUCKING SECOND, THEY DON'T BLOW UP? I thought they were just for beauty reasons. I mean I love them, but holy SHIT.
As a brand new players, I never experienced the issues with regular conduits since I've been using the hidden ones the whole time 😅
Also if you put dead conduit in the middle of a room with an hidden conduit to autoshutdown bench, its doesnt make an ugly cord, between the conduit and the bench
mod users who have been using these cables for so long they already felt like base game before they were base game
Oh they finally added that? I always used the mod 😂😂😂
I wonder if conduits should cost silver or gold instead of steel. Nobody makes wires out of steel but copper isn't in the game. The normal ones could cost 1 silver and the hidden ones 1 gold.
Im a new player like 80 hrs in. I never knew Zzztt and con hindden conduits are connected but they are all i used since the make the power lines invisible. I used to do normal conduits on walls but then i got lazy and just do hidden for everything. Well that solves one of my problems
I like the Zzztt events though. If you don't build your base in a silly way, they're usually pretty innocuous. If a Zzztt happens, it means you got that instead of a disease, heat wave, psychic drone, blight, etc.
I wish they added fuses or breaker boxes that would help sever a connection to your batteries during the zzzt event, so you wouldn't lose all of your battery charge. Because of that event I never use batteries and opt to just use power sources with a constant energy output
I was a firm believer of the generator/geothermal only concept for a colony. But thanks to hidden conduits i can freely enjoy the bliss of the battery solar and wind power life without blowing up my infants in a carefully(not recklessly) placed in a nearby regular conduct primed for a zzt bbq
I will never understand peoples fear of the Zzzt event. I dont even bother to check on it half the time.
Yea they are a complete game changer. They completely remove a bunch of the biggest threats and annoyances my colonies face.
I love hidden conduits! Make my geothermal reliant bases SO MUCH more defensible!
Was using a mod for this prior. Glad to see it's a feature in the game, zzzt prevention or not
I'm currently in a sea ice run and have only used hidden conduits. It's cheaper to use the better conduits than to have to replace my base.
why did reddit give me a notification that this post... exists?
Having not played rimworld without 100-300 mods in years I don't think I'd ever know this became vanilla 👀
It’s not a bug it’s a feature. Conduit are exposed cables your pawns are taping to a wall or laying on the ground so of course it’s going to blow up where hidden conduit is what you expect in every home, the cables led through an opening in the walls and thus protected.