Wire Mismanagement

[Saffron]

This issue annoyed me so much I sent it to the devs as a direct bug report, but I figured I'd post it again here because of the truncation limit enforced on the bug report feature.

There REALLY needs to be "internal" wiring within buildings. It could even be another research-able technology. But this is how I put it to the devs.

Imagine in real-life, within your own home, what it would be like if each and every one of your appliances, from your HDTV to your bedside lamp, to your hair dryer to your cellphone charger to your baby monitor to your refrigerator ... must have it's own wire running to the electrical pole outside. There are no power strips, no extension cords. Each appliance must have a cord long enough to plug into the pole outside.

The wire/cable management with that alone would be a nightmare. Not to mention a fire hazard. But what happens when SOME rooms cannot have electronics, not even a lamp, because none of the wires will reach the pole? Yeah, you guessed it. You have to plop down another unsightly pole on the other side of your house. If you have a separate garage you might need a third pole for that. If you have other outbuildings you'd like powered, now you need even more poles -- until you have an ugly, seemingly random forest of power poles scattered all over your property.

But it gets even worse. Because you can't control which wires are connected to which pole. The wires essentially "decide for themselves" where to connect themselves. Which means you end up with a whole mess of redundant connections with wires running every which way until they nearly blot out the sky itself.

And if that weren't bad enough, some wires come in right through your wall, across your living room, into your bedroom, and out a different wall to a pole outside (because wires often clip right through buildings.) But despite having high tension electrical wires literally running through the interior of your home, you can't hook up any electronics to them because they have to be plugged into the pole ... not the wires.

See the utter god-forsaken mess this is? And how unrealistic?

What I propose is this:

First, players should be able to "draw" the wires from pole to pole so that WE can decide what poles are connected. It's far more efficient, there will be less redundant wires everywhere, and our bases will look far cleaner. In addition, by choosing ourselves where the wires go, we can avoid that horrible clipping so that wires aren't running literally right through our buildings.

Second, each building can have a pole constructed somewhere on it's walls or roof. One, single wire can be "drawn" from a nearby power pole to the pole on the building -- which will represent the power supply to that building. That's how it works in real life. This can even be a research-able technology. Call it ... "internal wiring" or some such.

Third, another research-able technology: power outlets. The kind that we have in our own homes. The power to these outlets will be supplied by the pole I just discussed in the paragraph above. ONE wire could be drawn from a nearby power pole to the pole attached to the building, thus supplying the WHOLE building with electrical power.

No matter how big a building is - or how many rooms it has - a power outlet placed in ANY wall will automatically have power. The internal wiring should be abstracted - we don't need actual lines running through the walls since that would be unsightly and unnecessary since the length of those circuits would be irrelevant. The ONLY time the length of a wire would come into play is plugging an appliance into an outlet. The cord may not reach, requiring a second outlet to be placed.

Outlets can come in a couple of varieties. Your standard two plug outlets like most of us have in our homes - but also a four, six, and eight plug outlet, as well -- which would work well for factories and work centers where a lot of electronics are used. The more plugs, the more resources needed to build it.

The challenge to the power grid has been -- and should be -- supplying enough stable power to keep everything online and functioning. It shouldn't be about having to place 3 or 4 poles around a building because every individual item running on electricity must be plugged directly into the pole outside. That's preposterous -- and a really good thing electricity doesn't work that way in real life. In fact, it NEVER has. Therefore, it shouldn't work that way in the game, either.

Sorry ... yes, it's a longer-than-normal post but ... oh well.

[Daedrius]

I actually like that they kept it relatively simple. Running wires throughout the different buildings is not my idea of fun.

[flo125]

the game consider that floors units already containts wires, if all floors are connected you need only one pole to bring electricity inside your building, the rest is abstract. you actually dont need to put poles all around the house..
And yes if you dont have enough energy production everything stops to work, unless you have enough power batery in reserv. thats not illogic for me. the batery sensor has been made to give ability to use a reserv source of power, what is great.
and for the outlets.. i dont see what they could bring to the gameplay.

[leonie214]

A floor area covered by ceiling/roof is fully electrified with one pole.