Waterproof conduit

See also: Power conduit and Hidden conduit

Waterproof conduit

Insulated electrical cables for transmitting power under shallow water.

Base Stats

Type

Building – Power

Market Value

19  ^[Note]

Beauty

-2

HP

80

Flammability

70%

Building

Size

1 × 1

Minifiable

False

Placeable

True

Passability

standable

Edifice

false

Terrain Affordance

Shallow water

Creation

Required Research

Electricity

Work To Make

35 ticks (0.58 secs)

Resources to make

10

Deconstruct yield

nothing

Destroy yield

nothing

A Waterproof conduit transmits power from generators or batteries to appliances up to six squares away. Waterproof Conduit can only be built on water.

The underwater conduit can be used to power or connect things on another side of a river such as watermill generators or deep drills.

Acquisition

Waterproof conduits can be constructed once the electricity research project has been completed. Each requires  10 Steel and 35 ticks (0.58 secs) of work modified by the construction speed of the builder.

Once constructed, they cannot be re-installed, they can only be deconstructed.

Summary

Short circuit

A conduit can short circuit, damaging a random piece of conduit and discharging all connected stored power from batteries, in an fiery explosion proportional to the amount of charge. This damage can be mitigated by building walls over your power conduits (preventing fires), keeping critical areas and storage away from conduits, and disconnecting charged banks of batteries from the network via a power switch.

Analysis

As an alternative to the waterproof conduit, bridges can be built over water and normal conduits built upon the bridges. This costs far less steel than the use of underwater conduits—ten times less to be precise. However, this technique has some drawbacks:

• Bridges are somewhat costly in terms of wood, which can be a problem in biomes where trees are scarce.
• The bridge-and-conduit combination takes far longer (1,535 ticks (25.58 secs) vs 35 ticks (0.58 secs)) to construct than waterproof conduits do (mostly because of the bridges), making this a questionable option for colonies short on building labor and a terrible option in emergencies.
• The length of bridge used for the conduits can provide an unwanted route to raiders who would otherwise be slowed by the body of water, though scattering spike traps on the bridge can turn this problem into a defensive advantage.
• The bridge-and-conduit combination is far more vulnerable to fire (from e.g. a short circuit). An underwater conduit that catches fire will go out almost immediately, while a bridge with a conduit on it will often continue to burn until the destruction of the conduit and possibly the bridge along with it.

Version history

• 0.19.2009 - Added.

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Architect

Power

Power conduit (Hidden, Waterproof) • Power switch • Wood-fired generator • Chemfuel powered generator • Wind turbine

(research)

Battery • Geothermal generator • Solar generator • Watermill generator • Toxifier generator • Bioferrite generator

(uncraftable)

Vanometric power cell • Unstable power cell

Related

Ship reactor • Electroharvester