Waterproof conduit
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Waterproof conduit
Insulated electrical cables for transmitting power under shallow water.
Base Stats
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. They require 10 Steel and 35 ticks (0.58 secs) of work.
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.
- 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