Does Anyone Use the Heavi-Watt Wires?

[Swiss]

I find they're too much of a hassle to work with simply because they can't be placed within tiles.

I usually end up with spaghetti wiring because I'm trying to work this into my already built base.

Any tips?

[SportyHeadShot]

You can run a base perfectally fine with regular wiring it just turns into a game of placing transformers strategically so your not straining your wires leading to constant overloads.

[SKull]

Not needed and I rarely use them after the changes to NG. But in general: power production + batteries > transformers > base. That way you have no problems trying to fit the HWWs inside your base.

[Strygald]

The only time i'd use them is for places where dupes hardly ever go, ie* rooms with batteries, machinery, underwater, etc... saves on refined metal i'd have to use for conductive wire.

[Prometheus]

HWW are super useful because its difficult to match power output to consumption. Which means you need to use extra batteries and toggle the generators to not waste resources. This just gets more and more complicated and batteries lose charge gradually just for existing. So its not efficient.

Far easier to run HWW and run transformers off it. This isn't exactly hard. Just set up a corridor for it. I have started setting aside a 3 tile high corridor directly above the dupe printer from the start. I run the HWW through it and fill it with storage containers where I don't have transformers. 3 tiles high lets you do the wall connections and put in a door at the spots where you have a way for dupes to pass by or access the corridor. Deco slam the spots near the ladder to minimize the effect of that bit of HWW passing through and you are good to go.

[Doc Savage]

With the new baby Transformer I don't feel the need for heavy watt anything anymore. A little conductive wire for the Generator to Batteries (as insurance mostly, not really needed) to the small Transformer to what ever needs power.

I would think about using it for far away Generators to pipe power in. I find building a couple small Battery stations to Small Tranformers to the grid to be more flexible than trying to use the Heavy Wire anywhere near the base though.

Cheers..!

[Swiss]

So what I'm getting from this is don't try to wire up the whole base with it, and also actually use transformers instead of ignoring them.

Thank folks, this will help plenty!

[Hedning]

-Things that work without dupe work such as aquatuners and o2 production.
-Things that are rarely used such as the metal refinery.

All together near the power generators and all connected using heavi watt. It drastically lowers the amount of power hungry batteries or heat generating transformers you need to run the base. With all power production on the same line it also means they divide the work perfectly, so you can make sure no coal generator turns on unless your NG generators are all fully utilized.

Use tiles to shield duplicants from the ugliness and section things off so they never have to go to the other side of those tiles.

[Ddoge]

use it all the time behind a wall of small transformers (and a large transfromer for the jukebox)

[Xiphoris]

Heavi-Watt (HW) wires are super useful if you want to design your base as one big electrical system. Unlike regular wires which can carry only 1000 W before breaking, HW wires can carry 20,000 W!

The biggest problem with HW wires is not that they cannot go through tiles. They can, using the Heavi-Watt Joint Plate. The biggest problem is the -25 decor in a 6 tile radius. This creates significant challenges to keeping high decor in middle-game, which will make dupes stressed out.

To work around this, I've been creating dedicated access tunnels for my HW wire and transformers. The goal is to keep these wires and transformers in a sealed-off place that's separated from the rest of your base, perhaps on the edges, or in the center, and walled off to contain the negative decor. Then connect transformers to the HW wire and run regular wire from the transformer to your regular base buildings.

It does help to design your base with this plan in mind from the beginning. I've restarted a couple of times in the attempt to elegantly contain this infrastructure.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

HW wires are super useful. I run a single cable of this from top to bottom of my base and branch off with transformers as needed.

Their biggest perk for me is that they only require raw metals while the conductive wires use refined metals. Refining metal is really a pain because it either mean loss of metal or overheating your base.

[Swiss]

I've used regular wires for so long, especially for algea deoxydizers because they don't run above a certain atmospheric pressure, which means they don't comsume power; so you can hook a lot of them onto the same circuit (more than a wire should be able to handle), as long as you keep the pressure at max, they won't all consume power at the same time.

Other than that I just create multiple power sources for different circuits and two sets of batteries; when one set of batteries starts to become hot, I disconnect them and switch to the others until they heat up, by that time the first set has cooled down so I can switch them; this allows me to have batteries embedded into my base without heating the place up.

But I'm taking Xiphoris' advice of creating maintenance tunnels for the heavi-watt wires and transformers. There's a two tile high hallway under every room that requires power, and each room is going to have their own transformer.

It might be harder to do that in survival but I'm working in creative for now; partially because I want to plan this before I put it into practise, but also because I'm trying to figure out the best way to breach space and set up fully automated and protected solar panels.

I'll get there someday!

[Doc Savage]

The small transformers are very easy to use in survival. Only issue is maybe having to rebuild them if you can't get into gold early enough and you need the copper. Otherwise they actually work quite well, especially when it comes to battery bleed off.

Cheers..!

[SquarelyCircle]

There are two reasons I use heavy watt wire:
1) I have not discovered a refined metal volcano, and so refined metals are scarce and precious.
2) My base requires more than 1000 watts.

I don't know how you could possibly run a large base keeping it below the threshold for regular wires. That would be a feat of environmentalism right there.

Basically I run heavy (ugly/high wattage) wires in a special shaft on the side of my base, all the way from my batteries at the top, down to the very bottom. The wires need to be 8 tiles away from anywhere that dupes will spend a lot of time (e.g. beds). These connect to transformers at various levels, and those transformers run wires left and right on those levels and adjacent levels if power requirements are low enough.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1480802720

[Swiss]

I'm upset that I made this thread; I used to be able to maintain huge bases with regular wires, but ever since I started using heavi-watt wires as a result of this thread I don't know how I ever did it. xD

[Eagle_of_Fire]

See this as an opportunity to improvement that you have taken. You often learn more in failures than success.