Sun Lamp help?

[george constanza kinnie]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/693516138063331360/883433569131831356/unknown.png so I'm trying to make a greenhouse for when winter arrives but the sunlamps keep eating the battery's power at night. Have I messed something up?

[ᖇIᑎ]

Aside from having too many unneeded wires running all over the place, I can't see anything wrong with the setup. Is it just the sun lamps connected to this grid? If you click on one of the lamps, does it say it's using power at night? Do you have any mods that might alter sun lamp behavior?

Also, is it actually night, and not an event that blocks the sun so it seems like it's night during the day? ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

[BlackSmokeDMax]

If that is really 4 sunlamps in that one room, you are very, very much wasting power. The sunlamps take a LOT of power to run, and you have them completely overlapping. You'd be better off running just 2 of them and using every tile of each (with zero overlap) for planting. Using two lights completely will give you more planting ground than the 4 lamp setup you have now.

Also, the sunlamps do not run at night, as the plants do not take advantage of light at night. They automatically shut off for the night.

[george constanza kinnie]

Originally posted by BlackSmokeDMax:

If that is really 4 sunlamps in that one room, you are very, very much wasting power. The sunlamps take a LOT of power to run, and you have them completely overlapping. You'd be better off running just 2 of them and using every tile of each for planting. Using two lights completely will give you more planting ground than the 4 lamp setup you have now.

Also, the sunlamps do not run at night, as the plants do not take advantage of light at night. They automatically shut off for the night.

Ah okay. I was hoping the sunlamps would be on all the time just to keep the plants growing

[jscjml]

Yeah each sunlamp is like 2900W lol. You could probably consolidate all of those crops into 1 or 2 sunlamps too.

In general, 2 solar panels will power a sunlamp... so if you added like 2 or 3 more solar panels to the setup it would probably run regardless.

[RCMidas]

Also, just be aware that if any of those power conduits experience a Zzzt! Event, all those wood walls and crops will burn to ash inside of a few minutes and you'll lose everything. I HIGHLY recommend expanding that area by replacing the wood with stone and leaving at least two free tiles between anything flammable and a power conduit.

[Security Cam #7]

Aside from what others have pointed out I see no reason that would justify you building a greenhouse in the way you do. The biome is a forest with lots and lots of soil, many of it is also darker which means it is rich (not on the picture but it surely is on other parts of the map)

You mention winter, but even then it's rarely needed on a biome such as yours since you can stockpile tons of food during other seasons.

I also noticed you have quite a lot of stony soil inside of that greenhouse. That will reduce growth speed as fertility of stony soil is lower than regular soil. This will affect rice the most and potatoes the least.

It's also not heated (unless that steam vent gives heat through the generator, I don't remember if it works like that or not. Correct me if I'm wrong) which means it won't work in the winter anyways. You need heaters for that or any other heat source such as campfires.

If you really want to grow crops indoors you would be much better off with hydroponics which are researchable. Higher fertility than rich soil, rice grows extremely fast.

As for your question, do you run any mods? Could be something conflicting. Sun lamps should never use power at night.

Edit: Oh, and you don't need to mark grown plants for cutting. Colonists assigned to growing will automatically harvest fully grown plants and plant new ones.

These were my tips, in the end you decide how you play. Sorry if this comment came out a bit like an order or something along the lines of "you aren't supposed to play this way". It was not my point, I'm just bad at writing tips in a way that makes them sound appealing lol.

[ᖇIᑎ]

I think I misunderstood what the problem was, too. I thought OP didn't want the sun lamps to use power at night, which if they did it's a bug or a mod, but apparently they do want the sun lamps to run at night? So confused.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ Cheney's war crimes:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/693516138063331360/883433569131831356/unknown.png so I'm trying to make a greenhouse for when winter arrives but the sunlamps keep eating the battery's power at night. Have I messed something up?

Don't overlap sunlamps, as noted above.

Also, that's a lot of sunlamps...

And, for my own added bit: I would never make one large greenhouse like that. At the most, I'd build a two-sunlamp greenhouse with maximized space, maybe one tile free around all of it. If I needed more, i'd build a new greenhouse.

A backup battery bank should, IMO, have no less than three batteries in it. It's just what I commonly do, though.

How many colonists are you supporting?

That's a good bit of food. You probably don't need that much for an early game population. For instance, you can fit four tiny plots under one sunlamp. That's plenty to feed five+ pawns, depending on what other resources you have, any special needs you've got, and what you're growing. (Potatoes and Rice, maybe double up on one or cotton/devistrand/whatever you need in the other two.)

I'm sure this doesn't have the latest values, but that should be easy to fix if you manually input the data using the info in-game. Then, you can get an idea of what you'll need to have to feed your colonists, provided all else is fine.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/7e9amv/food_calculator/

IIRC, there's a Guide in the Workshop, too, that might still be useful.

This has good basic infos: https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Food_production

However, not since my first couple of playthroughs did I ever try to min/max food production using "numbers."

Having "big" greenhouses is good for labor efficiency, but they're high-risk for failure points. If "something happens" that compromises that one greenhouse, the results could be catastrophic. (Fire, combat damage, failed heaters, sets of doors that end up getting open/closed too often when pawns adjust their pathing due to new construction and going unnoticed by the player in a harsh biome, animal pack infestations if they get in and can't be quickly controlled, Blight, etc.) If something happens to a smaller greenhouse, but you have two others, it's not such a bit deal.

That's why I try to make them small and then try to juggle efficiency until I know I've got growers covered.