Water Tanks are Irrelevant. And They Shouldn't Be.

[jbradhicks]

Dealing with a couple of heat waves/droughts reminded me of something I complained about even before the Bronze update. I understand how the system works even better now. Which means it bugs me even more: you can win this entire game without ever building a single water tank. Because if a water tank ever gets used, you're already losing.

Let me review what I think I understand about how water works in this game. There are many different water-producing structures: wells, drilled wells, water collectors, water pumps, and bore wells. Some require staffing, or power, some but not all work during various disasters.

Water is consumed in two ways. Buildings can only draw from water towers or large water towers. They have a fixed amount per time tick that they draw. It does not go up during disasters.

Water is also consumed (passively) by colonists. The amount of water subtracted per colonist per tick roughly doubles during heat waves. (I think it also increases during fallout clouds? Not sure.) But colonist drinking water, instead of coming out of water storage tanks, comes out of one, and only one, randomly selected water tower at a time, until that water tower is empty. Then it starts drawing down another water tower, repeat until the disaster is over or until you're back to net positive on water production/consumption.

I've never let it draw every water tower down to zero altogether. I'm guessing that if I did, then t would start drawing down water tanks?

But -- given that the amount stored in water towers and the amount stored in water tanks are displayed separately in the top bar -- why do colonists draw water from water towers first? Shouldn't they drain the water storage tanks FIRST?

[jbradhicks]

Related problem: manually operated water pumps and mechanical water pumps have entirely opposite disaster lockouts, and I have no idea why.

Nuclear Winter: water collectors shut down. Water pumps drawing from the same lake keep working, as long as they're heated.

Heat Wave: Water pumps fail. Water collectors drawing from the same lake keep working.

(If memory serves, they both shut down during Radioactive Fallout?)

The logic escapes me. At the very least, I feel like there shouldn't be any circumstance where water collectors work but water pumps don't.

[jbradhicks]

Other related problem: as a new player, it took me forever to realize that water towers behave differently from electrical transformers. If a transformer has to be connected to a solar panel, wind turbine, or battery bank, why doesn't a water tower have to be connected to a well, bore well, or water tank? I just had to explain to yet another new person, a couple of days ago on Facebook, that they work in entirely different ways.

(Given my druthers, the electrical transformer would work the same way that the water tower does now, we should just assume that there's invisible cabling connecting all the transformers just the way we assume there are invisible pipes connecting all the water towers to sources. But the real problem is the inconsistency.)

[iceflake_joanna]

Heya! Some really good feedback here - I will pass it on to the rest of the team. I've seen similar feedback before as well - honestly we simply have not yet had the chance to look at the water system again after introducing the Water tanks etc to the game originally, but as we are at the end of our roadmap, we can finally focus more on polishing the existing features in the game.

I will tell you that indeed, if all your water storages for buildings would be empty, then the water storages for colonists would start emptying. The key reason for why buildings will suffer first is that we want to first and foremost ensure that colonists live. It would seem counterintuitive if your colonists all died of thirst but the Cookhouse would keep running.

So this is why the storage for buildings is emptied out first.

Now as for the water producing buildings:
- Nuclear Winter - the Water Collector should keep working if it is heated - if not, please report the issue through the in-game bug reporting tool :)
- Water pump not working during Heat Wave is a bug, I'll highlight it again to ensure we get it fixed asap.
- And yes, they both get shut down during Fallout as the water in the lakes is tainted because of the Fallout.

And I can totally see why it is confusing that the Water and Energy system work differently - I believe the idea is that Water is a system that our players will most likely start using earlier - where as the energy is more advanced. And of course, a regular person could carry water to a tank where as energy would require a bit more :P

Hope this information helps - thanks for your post, I forwarded it to the rest of the team for a read through :)

[Dawnsteel420]

Again I find this unfounded and based on player error. I have never had a problem with water generation or water supply.

[timbuck]

On a side note, I had hoped in the future you'd be actually laying pipe and electrical lines between transformers and water sources. Like in Simcity 2000. :) It's a silly thing, but it's more immersion. But. The only issues i've had with water supply was if I didn't keep on top of consumption and water wells/water collectors.

[jbradhicks]

Originally posted by iceflake_joanna:

I will tell you that indeed, if all your water storages for buildings would be empty, then the water storages for colonists would start emptying. The key reason for why buildings will suffer first is that we want to first and foremost ensure that colonists live. It would seem counterintuitive if your colonists all died of thirst but the Cookhouse would keep running.

I'm not asking for the colonists to ONLY get their water from water tanks. I'm just asking for them to get it from the water tanks FIRST. When THOSE go to zero, then draw from water towers, instead of the other way around, please?

[iceflake_joanna]

Originally posted by jbradhicks:

Originally posted by iceflake_joanna:

I will tell you that indeed, if all your water storages for buildings would be empty, then the water storages for colonists would start emptying. The key reason for why buildings will suffer first is that we want to first and foremost ensure that colonists live. It would seem counterintuitive if your colonists all died of thirst but the Cookhouse would keep running.

I'm not asking for the colonists to ONLY get their water from water tanks. I'm just asking for them to get it from the water tanks FIRST. When THOSE go to zero, then draw from water towers, instead of the other way around, please?

No promises, but I will pass this request on :)

[Egobyte83]

Yeah, sorry for necroing this, but this is still a thing in 2023. Water towers get drained, even though I have seven large water tanks placed. I understand the reason for wanting to give colonists priority over buildings, but it doesn't really make sense that your buildings should suffer if you indeed have a massive water reserve that just sits there and does nothing while colonists go to drain the very towers that are only meant to be used for buildings.

The main issue is really that the buildings have a purpose which can not be fulfilled if they aren't supplied with water, but colonists, on the other hand, should really be able to just drink from any water supply. Having them firstly drain water towers is very backwards and counter productive and creates an unnecessary struggle because two things are competing for the same source. Robban Broberg sjunger "Hela stan är full av vatten".... men inte en enda jävel dricker av det.

Since water buildings are a mid to late game asset, it makes sense to give them high priority from a gameplay perspective. Plus the water tanks already have that neat look with a tap to use for people to go to and drink from... it is literally in the design of the model.

[PatchyToes]

I second this necro
I just got into the game last week, and it's been amazing!

The only frustrating moment was colonists died, because I had 10 000 water in tanks, but as soon as a pandemic happened in late game, instantly all my medical facilities lost all their water.

And even with 100 carriers (panic mode!) they refused to refill the medical tanks water until the pandemic was over and there was positive water income.

Right now the logic is:
- Colonists drink from water towers
- Colonists drink from water supply second
- Watertowers will not fill up if there is negative water income.

Logic should be:
- Colonists drink supply water first
- Colonists drink water towers second
- Water is collected into water towers, and excess goes to water tanks. This would fix the pandemic bug where negative water income literally shuts down all your water buildings.

There is literally nothing you can do other than have 5 towers per building, or always have double the income of your water... which defeats the whole point of having towers/storage.

[ellacharmed]

Originally posted by PatchyToes:

... have 5 towers per building...

I don't recall ever needing to build 5 towers per building.

Originally posted by Dawnsteel420:

Again I find this unfounded and based on player error. I have never had a problem with water generation or water supply.

I agree with Dawn's assessment of most of the reports in this thread.

understand the mechanism

When there's a race condition in this game, there is no mechanism where we, the players, can specify which one we want to have higher priority aka which building has precedence.
This occurs in the resources allocated to repair, the blight samples allocated to Terraformers versus Blight Lab, or the water distribution.

Water distribution was tackled by Devs by providing us with 2 storage solutions :
- for colonists use only, ie the tanks
- for buildings use only, ie the towers
and that negative water income would deplete the Towers first, always!

So, my suggestion is to always have water surplus or when you're caught out unprepared when Heatwaves/Pandemics hit, turn off the buildings that uses Water like Irrigated Fields since the crop is not growing anyway. If you have Food in surplus, also turn off the Cookhouse/Mess Halls. Put all your people to the Medical buildings. Pause production for buildings where you have Resources in excess amount and make them all carriers to run around and distribute Medication.


I mean,
- firstly understand the mechanism and
- secondly, work with the mechanism we are given, not against;
as at this time does not look like this game has any further developments planned for it. (I'd love to be proven wrong, though.)

[Thutmose III]

Originally posted by PatchyToes:

Right now the logic is:
- Colonists drink from water towers
- Colonists drink from water supply second
- Watertowers will not fill up if there is negative water income.

No, that's not how it works now, they have changed it. The colonists drink from the water supply, only buildings that use water draw from the water towers.

Originally posted by PatchyToes:

Logic should be:
- Colonists drink supply water first
- Colonists drink water towers second
- Water is collected into water towers, and excess goes to water tanks. This would fix the pandemic bug where negative water income literally shuts down all your water buildings.

There is literally nothing you can do other than have 5 towers per building, or always have double the income of your water... which defeats the whole point of having towers/storage.

You don't need have to five water towers per building, three maximum, overlaying them works best.

In a heat wave if all you have is heaps of water towers, your water usage buildings will continue to work, but you will get many colonists die from dehydration.

[Thutmose III]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3112797488

I did an experiment to see how this exactly works: I saved my current game just before a Heatwave and demolished all the water supply tanks, except the 300 storage at the HQ. This video clearly shows how the colonists draw water from the supply tanks and without those tanks you end up with at first, a lot of thirty colonists, then dehydrated, then lastly dead colonists.

Epic version, base game no DLC or Mods, all number 3 difficulty selected. Pre-heatwave population of 186, death from thirst (dehydration): 14.

You actually get a fair bit of time to start building water pumps and wells before colonists start to die, but I'm thinking that depends on your population and of course, if you've got the resources and spare workers.

The video goes for just over 14 minutes, so here's the important parts you can skip to:
2:20 Heatwave starts
3:37 Water shortage warning appears
4:16 Water storage runs out
5:15 First thirty colonists appear
5:59 First dehydrated colonists appear
11:35 Deaths from thirst (dehydration) start to appear
13:27 Building water towers shown not to be empty, all water-usage buildings continue to function as per normal, in spite of 14 colonists deaths from thirst (dehydration)