Why does the sun lamp turn off at night?

[Gojak_v3]

So plants need a certain amount of light to grow. That's why they don't grow at night. I figured the sun lamp was put in the game so you can grow plants round the clock. But, what the hell is the point of it if it's just going to shut off at night anyway.

[HunterSilver]

As many have pointed out, plants only grow for ~13.5 hours per day. At around 19:30 every day they stop growing and begin growing again at 5:00. Sunlamps and hydroponics have a number of benefits, again most of which have already gone over in this thread, but I just wanted to add a few more.

Hydroponics: Reduce frontloading of necessary work to grow food for colonists and plant matter for productive purposes. While the same total amount of labor needs to be put in, growing at 100% efficiency vs. 280% efficiency reduces the number of crops you need to plant to feed 1 colonist from 28 tiles of rice to 10 tiles of rice, or if you're cooking these into meals 16 tiles to 6 tiles. In turn this means that the total work necessary to sow goes from ~87 to ~31. This means that a farmer working at 100% plant work speed for 12 hours a day can grow enough raw food for ~5 people per day with 100% dirt, or ~16 people per day with 280% hydroponics. If you're cooking rice into meals, it goes from ~50 work to ~19 work respectively, not including the 5 work necessary by a chef per meal. An amount of work equal to the sowing work is necessary to harvest food crops at the end of their grow cycle as well. So you save space and more efficiently distribute labor.

Sunlamps: Unshackle you from events and disasters. These are a necessity to create a colony that is resistant to fires, lightning, toxic fallout, heat waves, cold snaps, season changes, etc.. By allowing you to plant in roofed, in-door areas you can climate control your farms and maintain optimal growth temperatures and lighting year round. Lightning in particular is incredibly bad for outdoor farms as even if you put the fires out, damaged plants produce less food, so you get fewer nutrients for your time, space, and labor.

You absolutely can run a colony without either, but you'll need more space and a larger labor pool to grow the necessary crops and buffer crops needed to get you through hard times.

As you have also noticed, warmer climates are more much more forgiving for farming, so this substantially reduces the pressure on you. Crops won't grow during a heat wave, but in an arid shrubland they won't die from the heat either. Meanwhile in a temperate climate or anywhere that gets cold spells, the cold absolutely will just flat out kill your crops.

[Gojak_v3]

gimmethegepgun eredeti hozzászólása:

and protect your farmers from toxic fallout.

I have to ask, how does it protect farmers? I get crops will die from toxic fallout. And I get going outside is bad for animals and pawns. But, they would still have to go outside to reach the greenhouse building. I suppose I could try to connect them via hall, but again that would require being outside to build it. Is there some amount of tolerance yer pawns have to toxic fallout? Like if they just take a few seconds to get to the greenhouse the fallout won't have negative side effects? Just curious.

[desrtfox071]

Gojak_v3 eredeti hozzászólása:

gimmethegepgun eredeti hozzászólása:

and protect your farmers from toxic fallout.

I have to ask, how does it protect farmers? I get crops will die from toxic fallout. And I get going outside is bad for animals and pawns. But, they would still have to go outside to reach the greenhouse building. I suppose I could try to connect them via hall, but again that would require being outside to build it. Is there some amount of tolerance yer pawns have to toxic fallout? Like if they just take a few seconds to get to the greenhouse the fallout won't have negative side effects? Just curious.

So, yes colonists do have a tolerance, and depending on how you build your greenhouse, you don't need to go outside to do so. In any case though, you should have the greenhouse built prior to the fallout event, not as a reaction to it.

[HunterSilver]

Gojak_v3 eredeti hozzászólása:

I have to ask, how does it protect farmers? I get crops will die from toxic fallout. And I get going outside is bad for animals and pawns. But, they would still have to go outside to reach the greenhouse building. I suppose I could try to connect them via hall, but again that would require being outside to build it. Is there some amount of tolerance yer pawns have to toxic fallout? Like if they just take a few seconds to get to the greenhouse the fallout won't have negative side effects? Just curious.

You only need to be under a roof to be safe from toxic fallout, you don't need to be indoors. You can roof over the roads between your houses and greenhouse. And yes, you can withstand ~2 full days of being outside before toxic fallout will kill a colonist. You can see how much toxic buildup they have in their health tab. It decreases overtime if they are safely under a roof. I'd recommend against getting above 20% toxic buildup though.

Most importantly there, your colonists aren't working in toxic fallout if your greenhouse is properly roofed. This will substantially limit their exposure.