Thanks! They certainly do take quite a while to make but hopefully that helps them stand out.

@@GCFungusThey definitely stand out from the other videos as really high quality.

And for old players (namely me) too!

i just found out theres a mod that allows the large transformer to be set to 2kw as it shouldve been in the first place

two small transformers take two more tiles compared to a large transformer. the benefit of using the large one is space and heat efficiency at the cost of some convenience where you need to employ some extra measures to deal with overloading. maybe set some curcuit breakers when power demands are too high, or maybe be mindful to limit the connected consumers to less than 2000 watts if youre sure theyll run constantly. this game is all about solving problems and the large transformer poses yet one out of the many problems you can find in the game, albeit feeling a little too artificial in this case. personally for me, my least favorite artificial problem is the tediousness of wild planting

You're right that the wires are in twisted pairs, so it does run both ways. The point I was trying to clarify is for new players who might reasonably think they need to run a wire in and out to make a circuit.

You are correct that if the power demand doesn't meet the draw then some will turn off, but I would suggest in most situations that batteries would be used to store power when needed. In that case the overloading is still a risk unless you set up the system robustly anyway. I'm not familiar with the transformer priority idea, but it sounds feasible. Generally I just try and make sure I always have enough power!

@@GCFungus Yeah. Enough power is best. For the most part it's just useful to make sure critical things don't choke unexpectedly, but we all get into habits that prevent it anyway. Little things like building a dedicated power room early so that as soon as you have the metal you can put in the Power Control Station. A battery room close by connecting all manual generators and batteries with heavy watt wire. The seed of your future spine as you call it. Just keep throwing generating power at the batteries. A large transformer from the batteries ASAP, four small transformers connected to it also via heavy watt wire. Each of the four branch transformers is then a perfect 1kW power source in effect. Wires can never overload. And perfect, a bit later, for exactly two conducting wire lines supplied with a perfect 2kW power (each connecting to two of the branch transformers). I've tested the priority thing with three transformers cascaded like that, and a bunch of heaters and light bulbs up to 1kW on the wires going from each to be sure. Works as advertised. As you say. Not a deal breaker, but it is good to know you can just connect a transformer on the periphery of your grid to like... Pump water slowly or something, and it's just plug and play gonna only take power when available from the main grid. Not cause any choking for your life support, etc. I use it to do things like that, kickstart SPOMs, create vacuum in remote areas, what have you? Anything that you just want some power and be done... some time. Another notable function of transformers is also of course the ability to do a quick and dirty power feed into your spine. If you happen to have a little grid going somewhere off a geyser, then you can use normal wire up to the transformer from which the spine connects. Not what you want to end up with. You want to be able to use the gas in a proper power room eventually and store a lot for dormant times, etc, but it lets you get at least some useful power in quick and early. Letting you take your time afterwards to build out the utilities properly.

This is pretty wild, I thought deconstructing the rocket platform would deconstruct or at least disable the buildings.

@@justincapalbo6938 You can do a lot of crazy things with it. If you want, I can show you quite a bit

I think another commenter said very similar, and what I was trying to get at with the wiring is that you don't need to make a loop yourself. It's correct to say that the wire animation does have the twisted pair.

@@GCFungus oh now I see why some people might be confused. I was too, been using transformers even for short runs when I could've been using full heaviwatt in most short wiring runs. Damn this game has some nouances.

I'm glad I could help! It is an unintuitive topic and I do consider this one of my most important Tutorial Bites, even if that's not reflected in the view count.

There's no concept of resistance loss in the game so make the wires as long as you want. The power loss actually comes from the batteries but is fairly small.

I've never been 100% sure, but generators can send power from the low side to the high side. I'm not sure how the prioritization works, so would have to test. But in general I would recommend avoiding generators on the low side unless you're sure it's not going to overload and is significantly more convenient.

Thanks!

There are wire bridges and conductive wire bridges. The conductive wire bridges have the same 2kW limit as the conductive wires, so use them together for the higher limit as the normal bridges will overload at 1kW.

@@GCFungus Oh I did not know there is a conductive wire bridge! And the normal wire bridge dont specify that it has a maximum load. Now it makes sense, thanks for this info!!

You should not mix wires as the circuit is limited by its lowest rated type. Use the heaviwatt for the generation side, and use transformers to make lower powered circuits for consumers.

No, with the exception of window tiles so you could wall off a heavi-watt spine to counter the penalty.

use a wattage sensor and power cut off as automation. Then set the wattage sensor to 2000 Watts. The power circuit will now cut off if the wattage sensor senses it has exceeded 2000 Watts

Maybe but given that you can simply use 2 x 1kW transformers it does seem a bit pointless.

Yep, or carefully assign the large transformers.

Large tranformers are useful when you lack space, or need to produce less heat there

Maybe, but the phase changes of materials is really a key part of the game and loosely based on real world physics. Given that you can get the same solution with a double normal transformer, it just seems a bit odd to me.

@@GCFungus I use large transformers to seperate always-on power like Solar and Plug Slugs that feed a bank of jumbo batteries on the producer side. The consumer side is the power spine with the regular power. The jumbo batteries push their power to the smart batteries and keep them topped up, guaranteeing that you're cyclical power is never wasted.

No one has to me yet!

Would be really cool if it was an adjustable transformer instead

You can use them to push banks of jumbo batteries connected to always-on cyclical power (solar and plug slugs) and then send that power to your power spine on the producer side. Normally jumbo and smart batteries do not mix well, but with a series of large transformer you can do this. Think of an early game swamp start. You have 6 kW of Plug Slugs that is active during the night hours (three tame, four starvation ranched) charging 8 jumbo batteries every night. Then a large transformer pushes this power to your coal power plants, keeping the smart battery full. Your coal power does not run unless the slug power is completely used up. You save coal, and don't waste slug power capacity.

​@@kegheimergaming9283I do this as well in my current run.

Definitely not!

@@GCFungus I've used Smart batteries on the low side of the transformer with automation wire to shut down the transformer as a method to control the power consumption priority of a particular circuit. Seems to work quite well, but I am open to understanding why this isn't a practice you recommend.

@@ScottRutter Unless I'm missing something (and please let me know if I am), I don't think automating the transformer avoids the issue that batteries on the low side presents, which is potentially overdrawing the low power wires. It gives the consumers as much power as they want to draw.

@@GCFungus my understanding is batteries do not draw power as consumers do, so they shouldn't impact a wire's limit. What I typically do is adjust a smart battery's low threshold to reflect the priority of the consumers on the circuit - allowing the battery go lower on lower priority circuits so my producers will focus on supplying circuits I need to keep running. This may not be useful in all cases, as you point out consumers take as much available power as they need, but in some situations where power is limited (say when that dratted natural gas geyser goes dormant) being able to reprioritize where your power goes on the fly can be pretty helpful.

@@ScottRutter It's not about the battery drawing power, it's about the consumers drawing power from the battery. Having the battery on the low power side effectively defeats the transformers ability to limit power. You can test it out by having more than 1kW on a normal wire and the battery will supply it, ignoring the transformer. I understand what you are trying to do, but the way that I would recommend to do this is to have your generators, then a power shutoff linked to a smart battery, then the transformer. That way you can keep the battery on the high power side and achieve the same effect.

I am actually - does it show?!

@@GCFungus it shows like the sun in the sky :D Electrical engineer here. Your script and delivery is very technical as if you’re describing oil and gas construction best practices in a Shell or Bechtel corporate video :D

@@GCFungus For me it was getting to the part where you were like, oh, circuits don't work like in the real world and that's confusing, like I definitely totally know how circuits work yep absolutely 100%. 😆