this is the single greatest tutorial on power systems i've ever seen. i wish i had this two years ago when i was puzzling over how to use transformers (and confused by the game's lack of a 2kw transformer).
A couple of years ago i read an explanation about the large tranformers that gave a very clever thing to do with them, but i totally forgot what it was and cant find it anymore. Currently the only thing i know about them, is that they save space and heat. And there is an edge case where you need them: When you want to have a battery bank - for storing large amount of power in jumbo batteries, like from solar or slugs. You wire them with heavy watt, then put a couple of large tranformers toward your regular power producers and power spine, and a smart battery to turn on/off the tranformers. This way you wont mix up jumbo and smart batteries, and you will still use the power stored in the battery bank before turning your power generators to save resources
Been playing for years never been able to achieve “the great escape”, but this is my first time ever hearing the term “heavy watt spine”. Makes so much sense just never occurred to me! Thank you!
FINALLY! a clear explanation of how everything works and not some fancy high tier design with some trick using the mechanics. You just nailed it. Here you provide all the information one needs to start tyring out setups to make it work for each individual case. Thank you
You have such nice tutorials man! I'm finally in at cycle 200 and have successfully avoided heat death for the first time (so far) thanks to your tutorials. Idk why but all other tutorials are an hour or even longer ): these sub 10 minute videos are so clear and to the point, I love it.
Been enjoying this tutorial series and am looking forward to more. It's easy to see how much effort and thought went into making the videos as concise and informative as possible.
two small transformers take two more tiles compared to a large transformer. the benefit of using the large one is space and heat efficiency at the cost of some convenience where you need to employ some extra measures to deal with overloading. maybe set some curcuit breakers when power demands are too high, or maybe be mindful to limit the connected consumers to less than 2000 watts if youre sure theyll run constantly. this game is all about solving problems and the large transformer poses yet one out of the many problems you can find in the game, albeit feeling a little too artificial in this case. personally for me, my least favorite artificial problem is the tediousness of wild planting
You can double up and split transformers, in the example at 7:30 one conductive wire could have been could have been joined to both transformers to reach 2k then run though all 5 pumps
@@inkjamplaythat is what they HAD to do. And they did. They had to use 2 normal transformers for the conductive wire. Instead of how a large transformer should've had the correct wattage allowance for the conductive wire.
I can't put links here without comment review. There is a Reddit thread explaining why 4K transformers are still a thing. It's about directionality, space economy etc... But not about protecting your system against overload. You're not supposed to rely on this protection after a while, you're supposed to design your electrical system to never been able to overload in the first place. Then 4KT can help you to move from heavy-watt wires to no-decor-penalty wires where it's needed. Also with automation there must be things to do as well... EDIT : I tested it with automation, it's possible to run two 2k grid on a single Large generator without overloads ! You need 2power shutoff, 2 smartbatteries and 1 NOT gate. Simple : when one grid is demanding power from the generator, the other one is cut off. And viceversa. Working for consumers asking continuous 2k, and they don't get interrupted because the battery is charging faster than it discharges. Hard to explain without picture link.
You do have a wire going back. That's why even the simple smallest wire has 2 wires in the sprite. I find that makes it the easiest to keep in mind when dealing with wires because it makes it obvious why wires take damage when they're not even connected. Because it's still running in a circuit down the wire and back up, so it still has electricity running in it. Basically everything on the circuit is in a line running through all wires, to the thing, and back. Not really how things work in the real world either but makes it easier to wrap my head around.
You're right that the wires are in twisted pairs, so it does run both ways. The point I was trying to clarify is for new players who might reasonably think they need to run a wire in and out to make a circuit.
You covered most everything. I think it is worth mentioning that using automation, and power switches, you can create a flip-flop power injector. That is, you charge one battery while the other is connected to the main battery bank via transformers; then, when one battery depletes (or fills), the switches flip. This let's the other battery charge from the generators and the one that was charging can now inject to the battery bank. Using this setup, you can put all of your generators on normal 1kw wire, because there are never any consumers, because the flip-flop is isolating them. And thus comes in the usefulness of the 4kW transformer. Transferring large amounts of power from the isolated battery to the battery bank would be awful with 2kW transformers. I would have to chain twice as many together to get the same throughput. If you are having trouble keeping the conductive wire circuits from overloading, then feed them with two 1kW transformers instead of the 4kW transformer.
Great guide. One thing though. It's useful to understand, and I hope I'm remembering right here... That buildings will always safely turn off when they exceed the wire capacity - IF the combined power sources are also less than or equal to the wire capacity. In the 5 pump example if you had one coal generator some pumps would simply not turn on I think. Consumers suck, and they will always suck as much power as they need. If the power is there to be sucked. Wire be damned. A super duper useful use for them is also when you cascade transformers and get power draw prioritisation. A transformer on a line will only pass through any excess power available. Bit like the pipe bridge priority overflow really, but for electricity. That transformer could already be on a lower priority wire.
You are correct that if the power demand doesn't meet the draw then some will turn off, but I would suggest in most situations that batteries would be used to store power when needed. In that case the overloading is still a risk unless you set up the system robustly anyway. I'm not familiar with the transformer priority idea, but it sounds feasible. Generally I just try and make sure I always have enough power!
@@GCFungus Yeah. Enough power is best. For the most part it's just useful to make sure critical things don't choke unexpectedly, but we all get into habits that prevent it anyway. Little things like building a dedicated power room early so that as soon as you have the metal you can put in the Power Control Station. A battery room close by connecting all manual generators and batteries with heavy watt wire. The seed of your future spine as you call it. Just keep throwing generating power at the batteries. A large transformer from the batteries ASAP, four small transformers connected to it also via heavy watt wire. Each of the four branch transformers is then a perfect 1kW power source in effect. Wires can never overload. And perfect, a bit later, for exactly two conducting wire lines supplied with a perfect 2kW power (each connecting to two of the branch transformers). I've tested the priority thing with three transformers cascaded like that, and a bunch of heaters and light bulbs up to 1kW on the wires going from each to be sure. Works as advertised. As you say. Not a deal breaker, but it is good to know you can just connect a transformer on the periphery of your grid to like... Pump water slowly or something, and it's just plug and play gonna only take power when available from the main grid. Not cause any choking for your life support, etc. I use it to do things like that, kickstart SPOMs, create vacuum in remote areas, what have you? Anything that you just want some power and be done... some time. Another notable function of transformers is also of course the ability to do a quick and dirty power feed into your spine. If you happen to have a little grid going somewhere off a geyser, then you can use normal wire up to the transformer from which the spine connects. Not what you want to end up with. You want to be able to use the gas in a proper power room eventually and store a lot for dormant times, etc, but it lets you get at least some useful power in quick and early. Letting you take your time afterwards to build out the utilities properly.
I like to refer to systems in games like this as "pseudo realistic." They take part of the realistic, but simplify it or change it to make it a viable game. While transformers in real life change voltage, and not directly capacity, they are used the same way: to connect local networks to the main grid. It is interesting how you can't have regular wires anywhere, even going nowhere, on a higher wire. You could otherwise put low draw lights at the end of a high draw industrial circuit. IE, lights using regular wire at the end of a conductive wire because the high draw items only load the wire up to that point... This could be a simulation limitation, or a choice because allowing you to "funnel down" your lines would get crazy complicated in an already complex game. Or it's following another real life idea: You'd never build a 20A circuit with 12 gauge wire, and then say, ok, the last outlet can just be 15A, and we'll just connect it to the penultimate outlet with a 14 gauge wire. The breaker limits the whole circuit to its rating. If you put in a 20A breaker, you HAVE to have all 20A capable wiring connected to it so that the protection is always the limiting factor. So I feel like the random burning up - oops I forgot one segment of unused regular wire - is them trying to gameify the above. Or not. I'm bored.
I use a power shutoff and a wattage sensor set at 2K instead of 2 1K transformers. I'm still new so I don't actually know if this is a good or bad idea, but I don't have to build 2 transformers in this case.
Just got into the game 2 days ago and found your tutorials invaluable. Tho this you got wrong, they kinda follow real life. There's no return wire because they are parallel life as shown by the A type plug in power equipment. Currents are represented by the wattage and the thing I found different to real life is that the whole wire overloads instead of the section that consumes most power. I struggled to find current isolation devices until I found the transformers, that act like those
I think another commenter said very similar, and what I was trying to get at with the wiring is that you don't need to make a loop yourself. It's correct to say that the wire animation does have the twisted pair.
@@GCFungus oh now I see why some people might be confused. I was too, been using transformers even for short runs when I could've been using full heaviwatt in most short wiring runs. Damn this game has some nouances.
I'd add about DLC rocket battery. You can place those, deconstruct rocket platform and here you have a little tower of best batteries in the game. They contain 100kWt in 6 tiles, which is 5 times of smart battery, while having same lost of power over time and not heating surroundings Also dont add batteries on the low-power side of transformer, since it can cause a damage
One more tip. Power generators, and battery cannot overload each other. With automation you can create an infinite capacity spine with just conductive wire.
I'm glad I could help! It is an unintuitive topic and I do consider this one of my most important Tutorial Bites, even if that's not reflected in the view count.
What happens when you add a generator to the low side of a transformer? Does it add to the total power generated, or is it somehow lost on the low side? Or does it prioritze any consumers on the low side, then any temaining power draw comes from the transformers?
I've never been 100% sure, but generators can send power from the low side to the high side. I'm not sure how the prioritization works, so would have to test. But in general I would recommend avoiding generators on the low side unless you're sure it's not going to overload and is significantly more convenient.
8:06 maybe to make game more difficult. 1kW transformer can't overload 1kW wire circuit (unless you have a battery attached to that circuit). Large Transformer (4 kW) can still overload conductive wires without battery attached to it, causing damage.
There's no concept of resistance loss in the game so make the wires as long as you want. The power loss actually comes from the batteries but is fairly small.
I still don't know why is there no 2kw tranaformer or 4kw conduct wire in this game, it's so inconvenience to wire a conduct wire from the generator brick.
use a wattage sensor and power cut off as automation. Then set the wattage sensor to 2000 Watts. The power circuit will now cut off if the wattage sensor senses it has exceeded 2000 Watts
Hi there, you did not mention anything about wire bridges and how they overload, I am confused why my wire bridges can overload when I was using conductive wire and the load was under 2000, The wire bridge was used so my conductive wire could cross my regular wires so they stay in different circuits. I made sure to check all my wires were conductive wire and only the wire bridge was overloaded. Do you know why this happens?
There are wire bridges and conductive wire bridges. The conductive wire bridges have the same 2kW limit as the conductive wires, so use them together for the higher limit as the normal bridges will overload at 1kW.
@@GCFungus Oh I did not know there is a conductive wire bridge! And the normal wire bridge dont specify that it has a maximum load. Now it makes sense, thanks for this info!!
You should not mix wires as the circuit is limited by its lowest rated type. Use the heaviwatt for the generation side, and use transformers to make lower powered circuits for consumers.
I believe the 4kw transformer to 2kw wire is an intentional failure mode designed into the game, it’s not supposed to be easy and perfect, instead it is designed to make you think and problem solve. Similar to liquids and gasses moving through pipes evaporating or condensing.
Maybe, but the phase changes of materials is really a key part of the game and loosely based on real world physics. Given that you can get the same solution with a double normal transformer, it just seems a bit odd to me.
@@GCFungus I use large transformers to seperate always-on power like Solar and Plug Slugs that feed a bank of jumbo batteries on the producer side. The consumer side is the power spine with the regular power. The jumbo batteries push their power to the smart batteries and keep them topped up, guaranteeing that you're cyclical power is never wasted.
You can use them to push banks of jumbo batteries connected to always-on cyclical power (solar and plug slugs) and then send that power to your power spine on the producer side. Normally jumbo and smart batteries do not mix well, but with a series of large transformer you can do this. Think of an early game swamp start. You have 6 kW of Plug Slugs that is active during the night hours (three tame, four starvation ranched) charging 8 jumbo batteries every night. Then a large transformer pushes this power to your coal power plants, keeping the smart battery full. Your coal power does not run unless the slug power is completely used up. You save coal, and don't waste slug power capacity.
@@GCFungus I've used Smart batteries on the low side of the transformer with automation wire to shut down the transformer as a method to control the power consumption priority of a particular circuit. Seems to work quite well, but I am open to understanding why this isn't a practice you recommend.
@@ScottRutter Unless I'm missing something (and please let me know if I am), I don't think automating the transformer avoids the issue that batteries on the low side presents, which is potentially overdrawing the low power wires. It gives the consumers as much power as they want to draw.
@@GCFungus my understanding is batteries do not draw power as consumers do, so they shouldn't impact a wire's limit. What I typically do is adjust a smart battery's low threshold to reflect the priority of the consumers on the circuit - allowing the battery go lower on lower priority circuits so my producers will focus on supplying circuits I need to keep running. This may not be useful in all cases, as you point out consumers take as much available power as they need, but in some situations where power is limited (say when that dratted natural gas geyser goes dormant) being able to reprioritize where your power goes on the fly can be pretty helpful.
@@ScottRutter It's not about the battery drawing power, it's about the consumers drawing power from the battery. Having the battery on the low power side effectively defeats the transformers ability to limit power. You can test it out by having more than 1kW on a normal wire and the battery will supply it, ignoring the transformer. I understand what you are trying to do, but the way that I would recommend to do this is to have your generators, then a power shutoff linked to a smart battery, then the transformer. That way you can keep the battery on the high power side and achieve the same effect.
@@GCFungus it shows like the sun in the sky :D Electrical engineer here. Your script and delivery is very technical as if you’re describing oil and gas construction best practices in a Shell or Bechtel corporate video :D
@@GCFungus For me it was getting to the part where you were like, oh, circuits don't work like in the real world and that's confusing, like I definitely totally know how circuits work yep absolutely 100%. 😆
I still don't understand the power numbers in this game. I have like 3k hours in and never really understood the need for the 50-watt wire. 50, 20 for the heavys, 2 and 1 for the lows, and 4 and 1 for the transformers. Its like they need a 50 to 20 transformer and a 4-5 watt wire.
U DONT USE 4K TRANSFORMER COS U THINK IN 2 LVL POWER SYS HIGH+LOW its bothering that you cant grasp the large transformer. Its the same problem with the heavy watt tipe: decor is not the main reaso..., you cant run heavy watt thru each other! Only 1-2k wires can cross other wires. You dont think about this cos why would you run 2 heavys right? also passing thru walls and insulation is a nightmare. 4k generator uses: getting power to a 2k wire where there is less then 2k consumers. obvious. BUT by separating consumers: the perma consumers in 2k groupes (with 4k transformer), and ocasional consumers in like 8-10k groupes(with 2x1k trensformer) you will have like half the circuits, and transformerspace. moveing power from heavy generator circuit(like sauna wire) and feeding it to the heavy wire. not having all the generators feeding the main circuit deirectly you can make power with them whenever and only feed it to the main if you need. feeding 10-20k from heavy generator wire to main heavy wire moveing power from 2k generator circuit with 2k wire and feeding it to the heavy wire. like put 5 hamsterweels in the middle of the build, and carry the power away to a heavy main circuit by a 2k wire or just use a 2k circuit with a battery in a tamer with les than 2 k consumers and only let power in or out if needed with 2x4k transformes and shutoffs insead of 4x1k
this is the single greatest tutorial on power systems i've ever seen. i wish i had this two years ago when i was puzzling over how to use transformers (and confused by the game's lack of a 2kw transformer).
A couple of years ago i read an explanation about the large tranformers that gave a very clever thing to do with them, but i totally forgot what it was and cant find it anymore.
Currently the only thing i know about them, is that they save space and heat. And there is an edge case where you need them:
When you want to have a battery bank - for storing large amount of power in jumbo batteries, like from solar or slugs. You wire them with heavy watt, then put a couple of large tranformers toward your regular power producers and power spine, and a smart battery to turn on/off the tranformers. This way you wont mix up jumbo and smart batteries, and you will still use the power stored in the battery bank before turning your power generators to save resources
Been playing for years never been able to achieve “the great escape”, but this is my first time ever hearing the term “heavy watt spine”. Makes so much sense just never occurred to me! Thank you!
FINALLY! a clear explanation of how everything works and not some fancy high tier design with some trick using the mechanics. You just nailed it. Here you provide all the information one needs to start tyring out setups to make it work for each individual case. Thank you
This is going to be a gem for new players
And for old players (namely me) too!
You have such nice tutorials man! I'm finally in at cycle 200 and have successfully avoided heat death for the first time (so far) thanks to your tutorials. Idk why but all other tutorials are an hour or even longer ): these sub 10 minute videos are so clear and to the point, I love it.
Been enjoying this tutorial series and am looking forward to more. It's easy to see how much effort and thought went into making the videos as concise and informative as possible.
Thanks! They certainly do take quite a while to make but hopefully that helps them stand out.
@@GCFungusThey definitely stand out from the other videos as really high quality.
Honestly, the fact that the large transformer is 4kw makes me so mad that i just use two normal ones out of protest
i just found out theres a mod that allows the large transformer to be set to 2kw as it shouldve been in the first place
two small transformers take two more tiles compared to a large transformer. the benefit of using the large one is space and heat efficiency at the cost of some convenience where you need to employ some extra measures to deal with overloading. maybe set some curcuit breakers when power demands are too high, or maybe be mindful to limit the connected consumers to less than 2000 watts if youre sure theyll run constantly. this game is all about solving problems and the large transformer poses yet one out of the many problems you can find in the game, albeit feeling a little too artificial in this case. personally for me, my least favorite artificial problem is the tediousness of wild planting
You can double up and split transformers, in the example at 7:30 one conductive wire could have been could have been joined to both transformers to reach 2k then run though all 5 pumps
@@inkjamplaythat is what they HAD to do. And they did. They had to use 2 normal transformers for the conductive wire. Instead of how a large transformer should've had the correct wattage allowance for the conductive wire.
These tutorial bites are absolutely fantastic. Clear and informative, well edited, and to the point. Excellent work! Subbed!
I can't put links here without comment review. There is a Reddit thread explaining why 4K transformers are still a thing. It's about directionality, space economy etc... But not about protecting your system against overload. You're not supposed to rely on this protection after a while, you're supposed to design your electrical system to never been able to overload in the first place. Then 4KT can help you to move from heavy-watt wires to no-decor-penalty wires where it's needed. Also with automation there must be things to do as well...
EDIT : I tested it with automation, it's possible to run two 2k grid on a single Large generator without overloads ! You need 2power shutoff, 2 smartbatteries and 1 NOT gate. Simple : when one grid is demanding power from the generator, the other one is cut off. And viceversa. Working for consumers asking continuous 2k, and they don't get interrupted because the battery is charging faster than it discharges. Hard to explain without picture link.
Thank you for the videos! I've seen other videos as well and you've made the the game A LOT easier.
You do have a wire going back. That's why even the simple smallest wire has 2 wires in the sprite. I find that makes it the easiest to keep in mind when dealing with wires because it makes it obvious why wires take damage when they're not even connected. Because it's still running in a circuit down the wire and back up, so it still has electricity running in it. Basically everything on the circuit is in a line running through all wires, to the thing, and back. Not really how things work in the real world either but makes it easier to wrap my head around.
You're right that the wires are in twisted pairs, so it does run both ways. The point I was trying to clarify is for new players who might reasonably think they need to run a wire in and out to make a circuit.
You covered most everything. I think it is worth mentioning that using automation, and power switches, you can create a flip-flop power injector. That is, you charge one battery while the other is connected to the main battery bank via transformers; then, when one battery depletes (or fills), the switches flip. This let's the other battery charge from the generators and the one that was charging can now inject to the battery bank. Using this setup, you can put all of your generators on normal 1kw wire, because there are never any consumers, because the flip-flop is isolating them.
And thus comes in the usefulness of the 4kW transformer. Transferring large amounts of power from the isolated battery to the battery bank would be awful with 2kW transformers. I would have to chain twice as many together to get the same throughput.
If you are having trouble keeping the conductive wire circuits from overloading, then feed them with two 1kW transformers instead of the 4kW transformer.
Great guide. One thing though. It's useful to understand, and I hope I'm remembering right here... That buildings will always safely turn off when they exceed the wire capacity - IF the combined power sources are also less than or equal to the wire capacity. In the 5 pump example if you had one coal generator some pumps would simply not turn on I think. Consumers suck, and they will always suck as much power as they need. If the power is there to be sucked. Wire be damned.
A super duper useful use for them is also when you cascade transformers and get power draw prioritisation. A transformer on a line will only pass through any excess power available. Bit like the pipe bridge priority overflow really, but for electricity. That transformer could already be on a lower priority wire.
You are correct that if the power demand doesn't meet the draw then some will turn off, but I would suggest in most situations that batteries would be used to store power when needed. In that case the overloading is still a risk unless you set up the system robustly anyway. I'm not familiar with the transformer priority idea, but it sounds feasible. Generally I just try and make sure I always have enough power!
@@GCFungus Yeah. Enough power is best. For the most part it's just useful to make sure critical things don't choke unexpectedly, but we all get into habits that prevent it anyway.
Little things like building a dedicated power room early so that as soon as you have the metal you can put in the Power Control Station. A battery room close by connecting all manual generators and batteries with heavy watt wire. The seed of your future spine as you call it. Just keep throwing generating power at the batteries.
A large transformer from the batteries ASAP, four small transformers connected to it also via heavy watt wire. Each of the four branch transformers is then a perfect 1kW power source in effect. Wires can never overload. And perfect, a bit later, for exactly two conducting wire lines supplied with a perfect 2kW power (each connecting to two of the branch transformers).
I've tested the priority thing with three transformers cascaded like that, and a bunch of heaters and light bulbs up to 1kW on the wires going from each to be sure. Works as advertised. As you say. Not a deal breaker, but it is good to know you can just connect a transformer on the periphery of your grid to like... Pump water slowly or something, and it's just plug and play gonna only take power when available from the main grid. Not cause any choking for your life support, etc. I use it to do things like that, kickstart SPOMs, create vacuum in remote areas, what have you? Anything that you just want some power and be done... some time.
Another notable function of transformers is also of course the ability to do a quick and dirty power feed into your spine. If you happen to have a little grid going somewhere off a geyser, then you can use normal wire up to the transformer from which the spine connects. Not what you want to end up with. You want to be able to use the gas in a proper power room eventually and store a lot for dormant times, etc, but it lets you get at least some useful power in quick and early. Letting you take your time afterwards to build out the utilities properly.
I like to refer to systems in games like this as "pseudo realistic." They take part of the realistic, but simplify it or change it to make it a viable game. While transformers in real life change voltage, and not directly capacity, they are used the same way: to connect local networks to the main grid.
It is interesting how you can't have regular wires anywhere, even going nowhere, on a higher wire. You could otherwise put low draw lights at the end of a high draw industrial circuit. IE, lights using regular wire at the end of a conductive wire because the high draw items only load the wire up to that point... This could be a simulation limitation, or a choice because allowing you to "funnel down" your lines would get crazy complicated in an already complex game. Or it's following another real life idea: You'd never build a 20A circuit with 12 gauge wire, and then say, ok, the last outlet can just be 15A, and we'll just connect it to the penultimate outlet with a 14 gauge wire. The breaker limits the whole circuit to its rating. If you put in a 20A breaker, you HAVE to have all 20A capable wiring connected to it so that the protection is always the limiting factor. So I feel like the random burning up - oops I forgot one segment of unused regular wire - is them trying to gameify the above. Or not. I'm bored.
I use a power shutoff and a wattage sensor set at 2K instead of 2 1K transformers. I'm still new so I don't actually know if this is a good or bad idea, but I don't have to build 2 transformers in this case.
Just got into the game 2 days ago and found your tutorials invaluable.
Tho this you got wrong, they kinda follow real life. There's no return wire because they are parallel life as shown by the A type plug in power equipment. Currents are represented by the wattage and the thing I found different to real life is that the whole wire overloads instead of the section that consumes most power. I struggled to find current isolation devices until I found the transformers, that act like those
I think another commenter said very similar, and what I was trying to get at with the wiring is that you don't need to make a loop yourself. It's correct to say that the wire animation does have the twisted pair.
@@GCFungus oh now I see why some people might be confused. I was too, been using transformers even for short runs when I could've been using full heaviwatt in most short wiring runs.
Damn this game has some nouances.
wire bridges will always be damaged first when overloaded so they kinda act as a fuse
I'd add about DLC rocket battery. You can place those, deconstruct rocket platform and here you have a little tower of best batteries in the game. They contain 100kWt in 6 tiles, which is 5 times of smart battery, while having same lost of power over time and not heating surroundings
Also dont add batteries on the low-power side of transformer, since it can cause a damage
This is pretty wild, I thought deconstructing the rocket platform would deconstruct or at least disable the buildings.
@@justincapalbo6938 You can do a lot of crazy things with it. If you want, I can show you quite a bit
Like a video on use of autmation with power and the differences of metal wires? The best method so there is no wire overloading/break.
One more tip. Power generators, and battery cannot overload each other. With automation you can create an infinite capacity spine with just conductive wire.
Very nice tutorial, dude :)
Thank you so much for this video!
Great Tutorial, Thank You!
Thanks for the tutorial!
Omg this is the first time I understood it
I'm glad I could help! It is an unintuitive topic and I do consider this one of my most important Tutorial Bites, even if that's not reflected in the view count.
does the low decor effect travel through walls?
No, with the exception of window tiles so you could wall off a heavi-watt spine to counter the penalty.
What happens when you add a generator to the low side of a transformer? Does it add to the total power generated, or is it somehow lost on the low side? Or does it prioritze any consumers on the low side, then any temaining power draw comes from the transformers?
I've never been 100% sure, but generators can send power from the low side to the high side. I'm not sure how the prioritization works, so would have to test. But in general I would recommend avoiding generators on the low side unless you're sure it's not going to overload and is significantly more convenient.
Thanks!
8:06 maybe to make game more difficult. 1kW transformer can't overload 1kW wire circuit (unless you have a battery attached to that circuit).
Large Transformer (4 kW) can still overload conductive wires without battery attached to it, causing damage.
Maybe but given that you can simply use 2 x 1kW transformers it does seem a bit pointless.
Are wires ohmic or do they have 0 resistance? Can i connect very very long wires without worrying about the power loss of the wire itself?
There's no concept of resistance loss in the game so make the wires as long as you want. The power loss actually comes from the batteries but is fairly small.
So, basically, never use the big transformers, and use two small transformers for each circuit, or straight up heavy wires.
Thanks!
Yep, or carefully assign the large transformers.
Large tranformers are useful when you lack space, or need to produce less heat there
I still don't know why is there no 2kw tranaformer or 4kw conduct wire in this game, it's so inconvenience to wire a conduct wire from the generator brick.
use a wattage sensor and power cut off as automation. Then set the wattage sensor to 2000 Watts. The power circuit will now cut off if the wattage sensor senses it has exceeded 2000 Watts
Hi there, you did not mention anything about wire bridges and how they overload, I am confused why my wire bridges can overload when I was using conductive wire and the load was under 2000, The wire bridge was used so my conductive wire could cross my regular wires so they stay in different circuits. I made sure to check all my wires were conductive wire and only the wire bridge was overloaded.
Do you know why this happens?
There are wire bridges and conductive wire bridges. The conductive wire bridges have the same 2kW limit as the conductive wires, so use them together for the higher limit as the normal bridges will overload at 1kW.
@@GCFungus Oh I did not know there is a conductive wire bridge! And the normal wire bridge dont specify that it has a maximum load.
Now it makes sense, thanks for this info!!
could you run a heavy watt wire and just use the leaser lings to connect to power producers? or is mixing wires like that a big no no
You should not mix wires as the circuit is limited by its lowest rated type. Use the heaviwatt for the generation side, and use transformers to make lower powered circuits for consumers.
is this still relevant right now ? like changes ?
Yes, there haven't really been any power changes so this all still applies.
I believe the 4kw transformer to 2kw wire is an intentional failure mode designed into the game, it’s not supposed to be easy and perfect, instead it is designed to make you think and problem solve. Similar to liquids and gasses moving through pipes evaporating or condensing.
Maybe, but the phase changes of materials is really a key part of the game and loosely based on real world physics. Given that you can get the same solution with a double normal transformer, it just seems a bit odd to me.
@@GCFungus I use large transformers to seperate always-on power like Solar and Plug Slugs that feed a bank of jumbo batteries on the producer side. The consumer side is the power spine with the regular power. The jumbo batteries push their power to the smart batteries and keep them topped up, guaranteeing that you're cyclical power is never wasted.
I never understood why people don’t just use the two smart battery loop and automation breakers. Then you never have to use heavy watt wires ever.
Has anyone ever explained why the 4kw transformer exists?
No one has to me yet!
Would be really cool if it was an adjustable transformer instead
You can use them to push banks of jumbo batteries connected to always-on cyclical power (solar and plug slugs) and then send that power to your power spine on the producer side. Normally jumbo and smart batteries do not mix well, but with a series of large transformer you can do this.
Think of an early game swamp start. You have 6 kW of Plug Slugs that is active during the night hours (three tame, four starvation ranched) charging 8 jumbo batteries every night. Then a large transformer pushes this power to your coal power plants, keeping the smart battery full. Your coal power does not run unless the slug power is completely used up.
You save coal, and don't waste slug power capacity.
@@kegheimergaming9283I do this as well in my current run.
Soooo no smart battery after the transformer? XD
Definitely not!
@@GCFungus I've used Smart batteries on the low side of the transformer with automation wire to shut down the transformer as a method to control the power consumption priority of a particular circuit. Seems to work quite well, but I am open to understanding why this isn't a practice you recommend.
@@ScottRutter Unless I'm missing something (and please let me know if I am), I don't think automating the transformer avoids the issue that batteries on the low side presents, which is potentially overdrawing the low power wires. It gives the consumers as much power as they want to draw.
@@GCFungus my understanding is batteries do not draw power as consumers do, so they shouldn't impact a wire's limit.
What I typically do is adjust a smart battery's low threshold to reflect the priority of the consumers on the circuit - allowing the battery go lower on lower priority circuits so my producers will focus on supplying circuits I need to keep running. This may not be useful in all cases, as you point out consumers take as much available power as they need, but in some situations where power is limited (say when that dratted natural gas geyser goes dormant) being able to reprioritize where your power goes on the fly can be pretty helpful.
@@ScottRutter It's not about the battery drawing power, it's about the consumers drawing power from the battery. Having the battery on the low power side effectively defeats the transformers ability to limit power. You can test it out by having more than 1kW on a normal wire and the battery will supply it, ignoring the transformer. I understand what you are trying to do, but the way that I would recommend to do this is to have your generators, then a power shutoff linked to a smart battery, then the transformer. That way you can keep the battery on the high power side and achieve the same effect.
Bro you’re an engineer right?
I am actually - does it show?!
@@GCFungus it shows like the sun in the sky :D
Electrical engineer here. Your script and delivery is very technical as if you’re describing oil and gas construction best practices in a Shell or Bechtel corporate video :D
@@GCFungus For me it was getting to the part where you were like, oh, circuits don't work like in the real world and that's confusing, like I definitely totally know how circuits work yep absolutely 100%. 😆
I still don't understand the power numbers in this game. I have like 3k hours in and never really understood the need for the 50-watt wire. 50, 20 for the heavys, 2 and 1 for the lows, and 4 and 1 for the transformers. Its like they need a 50 to 20 transformer and a 4-5 watt wire.
U DONT USE 4K TRANSFORMER COS U THINK IN 2 LVL POWER SYS HIGH+LOW
its bothering that you cant grasp the large transformer. Its the same problem with the heavy watt tipe: decor is not the main reaso..., you cant run heavy watt thru each other!
Only 1-2k wires can cross other wires. You dont think about this cos why would you run 2 heavys right? also passing thru walls and insulation is a nightmare.
4k generator uses:
getting power to a 2k wire where there is less then 2k consumers. obvious.
BUT by separating consumers: the perma consumers in 2k groupes (with 4k transformer), and ocasional consumers in like 8-10k groupes(with 2x1k trensformer) you will have like half the circuits, and transformerspace.
moveing power from heavy generator circuit(like sauna wire) and feeding it to the heavy wire. not having all the generators feeding the main circuit deirectly you can make power with them whenever and only feed it to the main if you need.
feeding 10-20k from heavy generator wire to main heavy wire
moveing power from 2k generator circuit with 2k wire and feeding it to the heavy wire. like put 5 hamsterweels in the middle of the build, and carry the power away to a heavy main circuit by a 2k wire
or just use a 2k circuit with a battery in a tamer with les than 2 k consumers and only let power in or out if needed with 2x4k transformes and shutoffs insead of 4x1k
It really bothers me that large transformer don't have two outputs at 2k each. It always feels like a waste having to chain multiple of them 🫤