Hydroponics Solar Flare protection?

[PyroMancer]

Hydroponics seem kinda pointless for anything that takes a long time to grow. This is because if you lose power the crops die. This seems to be a common issue with how often solar flares seem to be able to happen. Is there anyway to combat this as the idea of them is cool but I've lost so many harvest from random power outage events that you can't do anything to prevent that I've pretty much given up on using them all together.

Is there anyway to make them more reliable?

[conqueror_of_will]

Build more hydroponics and stockpile some food. Now if you get a solar flare and lose you harvest it's not a big deal.

[St3amfails]

honestly a greenhouse with a geyser is better for the long grow stuff. Far more dependable.
If you want to use hydroponics, use them for the short/medium grow stuff so losing occasional crops wont matter.
Realize that isnt really the answer you are looking for but different tools for different jobs, you know?

[Astasia]

The Solar Flare event has a 15 cooldown before it can even attempt to roll again, so realistically you can't lose that much to them taking out your hydroponics. For the most part though it's really only useful to use hydroponics when you have to, like on sea ice or extreme desert. They aren't meant to be worthwhile otherwise, compared to a greenhouse on fertile soil a hydroponic array produces about twice as much yield per day and consumes about twice as much power, all you are saving is a bit of space at the cost of all the steel and components that are used to build the hydroponics. Late game if you do want to save the space and you do have the resources, then the loses from Solar Flares don't noticeably diminish yields, as long as you haven't tried modding something in like hydroponic devilstrand or corn.

[brian_va]

Bad hygiene mod makes them dependant on water not electric, of course it brings in a lot of other stuff. Probably a mod out there that can make the basins work during solar flares.

The greenhouse setup is the way to go for consistency. At some point power production really isn't a huge barrier, so the sun lamps are easy enough to run. Of course skylight mods make that even less of an issue, and greenhouses can be setup very early.

[The Yeen Queen]

*Laughs in Tunneler*

[eMYNOCK]

Originally posted by Night Foxx:

*Laughs in Tunneler*

i see, you're a man of cultivated funghus too...

[Akadai]

If you want to go the mod route, the RT Solar Flare Shield mod might be up your alley (I'd grab the texture mod too). However if you have the VE Ancients mod, it wont work

The solar flare shield draws a small amount of power until it activates during a solar flare, which it then draws a massive amount of power (think it was like 20k or something). It's meant to be a late game tech, and will stop the effects of a solar flare

[The Yeen Queen]

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

Originally posted by Night Foxx:

*Laughs in Tunneler*

i see, you're a man of cultivated funghus too...

I am no man! *Stabs* ;)

[eMYNOCK]

"man" in the sense of human... like mankind.. *sigh*

[The Yeen Queen]

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

"man" in the sense of human... like mankind.. *sigh*

I was going for a Lord of the Rings joke. 'cause I'm a nerd.

[PyroMancer]

Originally posted by Akadai:

If you want to go the mod route, the RT Solar Flare Shield mod might be up your alley (I'd grab the texture mod too). However if you have the VE Ancients mod, it wont work

I'll have to take a look at that mod.

While Hydroponics are the first thing I encountered that annoyed me with it there are other things from other mods that have similar issue. The VE Cooking mod has soup which takes days on an electric slow cooker and when the power goes out all the soup is ruined. Because it takes days to cook i have a lot of soup pots out cooking.

Plus since late game all the machines require power your whole colony effectively shuts down during the period. So my colonist have practically nothing to do, all the cooking food spoils, and general hassle of having like a full day without power.

Honestly I'd prefer like any other events. Heat/Cold waves you can insulate buildings with proper temp controls. Raids be it standard, siege, or drop-pods you can setup defense for and equip pawns. Same goes for much of the other events.

But Solar flares there is not really anything you can do to mitigate them other than NOT USE curtain features of the game, or at least use them in a diminished capacity. There is no interesting interacts and responses to be done. It's just oh **** there goes my crops, soup, and etc.

[Akadai]

Honestly it was the soup pots from VE Cooking that made me look for solar flare protection. As annoying as solar flares shutting down the whole base is, losing tons of my soup pots was really upsetting me. I usually also have stew pots going, which don't require power to function

Since I do use VE Ancients, I've resorted to using a advanced soup pot mod that still functions in solar flares, so that is also an option

If you really want to get advanced, ships in space from SOS2 mod are also not affected by solar flares. So you could have like an orbital hydroponics bay if you wanted. Then transport food stuffs to the colony (if you didn't want to live on the ship). Though ship building is pretty late game, it's very resource hungry and requires a lot of adv components

[PyroMancer]

Yeah I had pretty much given up on Hydroponics but used as my example as I figured more people be aware of it. Losing my soup repeatedly is also what got me looking into solar flare protection. :)

I use a lot of VE mods but not the Ancients one. I'll check out advance soup pot mod as well in case i do decided to get VE Ancients in future as I was looking into some of the other VE mods to add.

I have SOS2 mods as well and mostly did wreck ship in space start for last few playthroughs. But wanted to go back to roots this time with more tribal start and lot of ground oriented stuff like the VE mods which I typically didn't see doing mostly space colonies with ship combat and raiding space locations.

I still have SOS2 installed but made a rule for myself not to R&D any of it's tech until I unlock ALL of the other techs as it will be my end game for this playthrough.

[Drackmore]

If you don't mind mods I recommend [KT] Solar Flair Shield. Its fairly balanced, requiring a fair bit of research to unlock initially, then you have the craft costs which takes a good bit of plasteel, then there is the energy drain which is kinda minor passively but when a flair hits it spikes to like 25kw/s and comms are still borked.