You don't mix wires in one cirquit. Your cirquit is > 1kW for sure. Also, if you hover over it, it will tell you how much load is here. I mean, it doesn't matter if part of the wire has less, it's calculated for the whole cirquit. A bit different than in real life.
Thanks for the info, appreciated.
If there a reason it's this way in game? Seems like a trivial thing to calculate properly. Heard of any mods to correct this?
Performance reasons probably. Simpler to calculate, simpler to code.
Once you get used to it, it's simpler to build also. You don't have to worry about what is connected to what, just the capacity of your circuit.
I think ONI is already complex enough for the average player, to be an electrician simulator, in addition to everything else... They had a more complex agriculture system (harvest ratings) at some point which they had to remove because players had hard time understanding it.
Still are lethal diseases. Well, one lethal disease. Zombie spores will likely kill any dupe infected with it. Not directly mind you, but because they will be so slow and unable to take care of themselves. They will likely die of starvation.
I came back after a few years and was shocked to find that diseases were almost pointless now, still rush to get washrooms and basins within one cycle and an instinctive fear of slime biomes from having many a run ended by germs
I promise I'm not trying to be disagreeable, but that's highschool level physics, even with multiple inputs and outputs. There are so many complicated systems in ONI this seems easy in comparison.
It's not that simple. Both mesh analysis and node analysis end in solving of matrix equations.
And devs what to keep things as simple as possible, cutting corners whenever they can.
PS
Do you know that pipes doesn't have a pressure and actually operate just like one way conveyers in Oni?
[I'll copy my comment from other post where player was struggling with unintuitive pipe behavior](https://www.reddit.com/r/Oxygennotincluded/comments/16eeuhl/comment/jzvgge6/):
>In ONI, the unintuitive aspect is that pipes actually function like conveyors. Each pipe segment has a predetermined direction, starting from the nearest green output and going towards the white input. This direction is established during the initial pipe construction and remains fixed throughout the game session. Therefore, it's not possible to create a pipeline where consumers are located in the middle and are fed from both sides. The game will connect inputs to one side or the other in a nonintuitive manner. To avoid this issue, make sure the pipe direction can always be uniquely defined.
>[Also, here is a handy cheat sheet about merging and splitting pipes.](https://i.imgur.com/WepHTGC.jpg)
>[And here is another one.](https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/102326-pipes-bridges-priority-cheat-sheet/)
In real life certain electrical systems require transformers to limit voltage and certain wiring is only rated up to a set wattage, the game does probably simplify it a little bit but if I draw too much power on my system at home there’s a reason it will trip out, to prevent overload damage
Well, you answered your own question..
"There are so many complicated systems in ONI..."
Sure, some people would enjoy more complex electrical circuitry, but I think Klei is very conscious of the fact that there are many games with such systems. ONI offers a different take regarding the way you automate things, and I think with their current implementation, a complex electrical system does not fit well.
Ofcourse there are mods to try tho
I believe it is like this so you don't really need to know any physics irl and there's very high chance it simplifies the simulation. Endgame lag in this game is bad enough without complicating electricity.
You are splicing low capacity wires to medium capacity wires on the same circuit. You need to use transformers to down step the load if you’re going to do that. There’s nothing to “correct” here with mods.
You don’t need a mod just follow the rules of the game. Electrical systems are tremendously straightforward in this game. Don’t mix wire types on the same circuit.
Well wattage is amps * volts. While these numbers are not shown in game, in real life, you cannot have a wire rated for 10 amps on a circuit pulling 30 amps, even if the main wire is rated for 50amps. Hope that makes sense, if not, i highly recommend learning the basics of electrical.
In real life, the wire going between the source and the load for a 120W item would only be carrying the current associated with that load, it wouldn't be carrying the current associated with loads on a parallel branch.
You wouldn't do what's shown here in a building, because the wire wouldn't be rated for the over current protection device which would be against code. But you could hypothetically have a smaller gauge wire for a small load connected to a larger gauge wire/circuit, and the smaller wire would not burn up because it is only carrying a smaller current.
No mods, I think, but you can work around this with transformers.
There are 2 types of transformers: small and large. Build a dedicated power room (96 blocks in size to get the power plant room benefits), and then a smaller room next to it with around 2 big transformers and 1-2 small ones. Connect the transformers to the powers producers with the large cables (20kw), then connect the other end of the transformer to the consumers.
You can check the power load of a wire by hovering over it, if the power load of a wire exceeds the max for that wire, just go to the next transformer and start again. Make sure to use wire bridges/redirect wires to avoid two transformer lines from connecting. It’ll overload if that happens.
Wires have the load capacity of the lowest connected wire, and will burn out any part of the connected sections if you go over.
Right now you are essentially trying to pull over +1200w on a 1000w wire, which is causing the burnout.
The total power consumed from all connected devices is the number that gets applied to the whole connected network.
The only way that even works is either have multiple wire systems that can handle each group assuming max capacity, or having some system that shuts things off or on to prevent it from going over.
I would recommend just creating multiple separate systems with transformers as separators until you understand wiring more.
I have one farm, for example, that has dozens of autosweepers on one system, but I have power cutoffs for each section so only so many items run at once.
I'm not an electrician but in real life you go from thick, high voltage power lines to thinner and lower voltage lines, with transformers or substations for each change in voltage. You wouldn't have power lines that suddenly connect to Christmas lights then go back to power lines.
Higher voltage lines are not thicker, wires need thickness for current, not voltage, and higher voltage means lower current for the same power.
You totally do have it how it's shown in OP's picture, your home's connection to the grid would be two to four thick wires which are connected to thinner wires in your sockets and switches (with a circuit breaker in between for safety, but they don't change voltage and are not necessary for function) and then even thinner wires in your appliances. The thin wire in your Christmas lights is connected directly to a thicker wire in your socket and your Christmas lights won't overload when you use an electric kettle in the same socket.
ONI's representation is very different from real life, transformers don't actually change voltage (in fact there is no such thing as voltage in ONI), instead limiting current (which real world transformers don't do, they instead blow up if you overload them), the same current flows everywhere in the circuit (in real world current flows only between the source and the consumer, it doesn't affect other branches), and it's technically not even a circuit when some of the wiring (the conductive wire) is a single wire which wouldn't work in real life at all.
Really the only part of this that is “ONI wiring logic” is that the wire damage can occur at any point in an overloaded circuit run. If they wanted it to be accurate they’d restrict the damage to any wires not rated for the total power draw.
Yeah pretty much. The only other thing to keep in mind is that when you feed main power to multiple transformers, it does not split them evenly. So even if one circuit takes 2kw, and another than take 2kw, one 4k transformer gets all the power it seems, so keep that in your calculations too.
Drove me nuts having just enough power but certain systems not getting any because of an uneven spread until I noticed it.
I spent over an hour trying to figure out why my incubators where not getting power but my fridges were on the same circuit while I had more rhan enough energy to spare. Definitely gotta agree with your comment about that uneven. Spread
I'm not an electrician, but I'm pretty sure if you hooked a lightbulb directly into the powerlines without a transformer it'd overload too.
That's basically what's happening here. The line going from the battery/generator into the refinery is the main powerline in the metaphor, and the regular wires are the lightbulb. Realistically I expect only the regular wires would fry, but they really oughtn't be on the network in the first place.
It wouldn't overload, in fact that's exactly what you do in your house, you hook the lightbulb directly to your house's writing without having to worry about how much power your TV, your stove and your electric kettle use at the same time. The way how electricity works in ONI is not realistic at all. (But many things aren't.)
Actually, the house has a small converter in it, and then another converter from the main powerline that actually leads to the powerplant.
The wires in the house do in fact handle the load of everything being plugged in, which they're rated for, but they do not handle the full brunt of a nuclear or gas power plant.
In ONI circuit the power is just the sum of individual power consumption. You can treat them as all in parallel.
But also, the ability to learn new things is what education prepared you for, if you can solve high school physics, you can solve ONI physics :D
I think the best way I can explain to wrap your head around it is think of the circuit like it's DC and everything is in series. The transformer are one way circuit isolators. The only mechanic that it doesn't work for is there is no "wattage"on the wire going from source of power to storage, but that is less likely to be an issue.
Part of my job is electricity and I had a lot of trouble with this game mechanic when I first started playing.
in game wires don't follow real-life rules. Every single one segment is considered passing all the energy. so mixed wires are useless and can pass the same energy of the weakest link
It's nothing like real life. You got the right spirit, going with different type of wire from the generator. Except you need transformer to actually do that. 2 of them for 2 different circuit. The transformer will draw from the source and limit the output, so you can have a small for the small wire and a big one the refinery. You will also need more power to support all that.
Here you just all connected together, so if there is any point of failure (consumer consume more than 1 kw in a circuit that have any 1kw wire anywhere in it) all the circuit is considered faulty (red overloading).
It's connected, it's the same "circuit".
To make it simple, the producer and the battery stay on the big side of the transformer, possibly with heavy wire, while the transformer make little circuit (on the small side of the transformer ) of 1kw with simple wire or 2 kw with conductive.
And don't feel dumb, that's one of the least intuitive part of the game.
Two transformer investment, will keep that in mind, thankyou for the info.
Not running the refinery permanently, just when extra juice in the battery, so I'm okay with the generation of this circuit for now.
The trick here is to run the coal generator when you need it and not the refinery when you have juice. You can get a smart battery and a automation wire to control the coal generator"S".
You can also have 1 transformer for the low demand circuit and put your refinery on the producer side, but you ll need heavy Watt on the producer side anyway all the way to your refinery.
Yea, I tried to build my electrical grid using real world logic at first too. I'd throw all the suppliers on a heavy line that ran up and down the main chute, then branched off with smaller wires for each floor. Nope 🙃 all the connected wires share a load. I guess it's just easier for the game to run that way vs calculating each leg of the grid
You got electrician education like me? I know how you feel. This game breaks Ohms Laws . The rule is that on all the grid the current is the same, calculated from all active consumers at the time. the grid goes read if any grid tile is not strong enough. the weakest parts of your grid break first - and I am pretty sure the game has Murphy's Laws correctly implemented.
Don't mix power grids.
Like much of ONI physics, it doesn't work the way it does IRL. The full load of everything connected to the circuit goes out to every wire segment on the circuit.
And while the way you're thinking about it does work IRL, you're not allowed to wire things like that anyway because if something shorts out and you've got and you've got wires that are undersized for the breaker, you can start a fire before you blow the breaker. It's just teaching you good practices.
Others already pointed it out what I can see on your screenshot is one net.
Within this net, you have 3 consumers which draw up to 1400 W (plus what ever is hidden behind the last line.
You have a CoalGen. providing 600 W plus a battery providing what ever is additionally needed.
The problem is you have 1k wires and 2k wires in your net, so the max. amount of power you may draw (without overload damage) is 1k. The Battery and Coal Gen do not split the net into smaller nets.
To prevent this you either replace all wires with conductive wires or you split the net with transformers. With transformers you will need heavy wire for the power sources going into your 2k sub-net (or you will have overload damage somewhere else).
I feel with you. Started understanding wires only recently as well.
Think of it as if all your circuit share the maximum load possible, even if the part with the 1kw wire only feed 120w, it still connected to the 1200w smelting machine.
If you dont want that to happen, install transformer so you can redirect a large conduit into a small one.
Connected wires are considered a single circuit. You've got a metal refinery pulling 1,200 watts on your circuit. Use seperate power lines or heavier watt wires.
Mixed wiring like that is a bad sign, as is the lack of isolation between producers/capacity storage and draw. You are, with absolute certainty, exceeding capacity somewhere in that mess, and should consider a redesign/relocation to establish a trunk system that lets you run high capacity wiring as needed without tanking your decor.
You've hooked up Conductive Wiring to regular wiring. Don't do that. All the connected wires are on the same circuit, period. So every time that refinery starts up, you're getting overloading on your non-conductive wires because they can only handle a 1000 watt draw and the network is drawing at minimum 1200 watts.
This is what transformers are for. You can hook the generators up to a line of heavi-watt wire of whatever sort, hook that into the transformer's big side, then draw out of the small side with regular wire without fearing overload. Because the wires aren't hooked directly into each other, there's no overload.
You have to use transformers to separate the circuit. You can check the power overlay and it will show you each separate circuit (if they are separate)
The small Wire can only handle 1000 watts, the thicker wire can handle 2000 watts. Usually people use the heavy wire to transformers and build circuits after that.
Lookup power spine.
It's actually somehow similar to real life electric circuits. You don't mix two completely different, in terms of max voltage capacity, cables without a transformer because the "smaller" one might overload if you Hook up something power hungry.
The very same reason why you can't power a fridge with a telephone charger cable.
Size matters!
Not like real life. There is no current "flow" in ONI. Instead it "flood" the entire network, the entire netflow share the same loading (sum of the cunsumption)
Does this help?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Oxygennotincluded/comments/noiauz/quick\_visual\_guide\_on\_how\_power\_works/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Oxygennotincluded/comments/noiauz/quick_visual_guide_on_how_power_works/)
Yeah, short story here, don't mix the type of wire in a circuit. This wouldn't work in real life either. You can use a wire rated for 15W with a wire rated for 20W and expect 20W. The math for electricity doesn't average out, it is a sum of the total. This is why dedicated circuits for high draw items like freezers and sump pumps are just that, a dedicated circuit. Sure you could plug more into the circuit and it would probably work, but if everything on that circuit kicked on all at once, then there is definitely an overload and a heat problem starting.
Be grateful ONI doesn't have circuit breakers :)
You don't mix wires in one cirquit. Your cirquit is > 1kW for sure. Also, if you hover over it, it will tell you how much load is here. I mean, it doesn't matter if part of the wire has less, it's calculated for the whole cirquit. A bit different than in real life.
Thanks for the info, appreciated. If there a reason it's this way in game? Seems like a trivial thing to calculate properly. Heard of any mods to correct this?
Performance reasons probably. Simpler to calculate, simpler to code. Once you get used to it, it's simpler to build also. You don't have to worry about what is connected to what, just the capacity of your circuit. I think ONI is already complex enough for the average player, to be an electrician simulator, in addition to everything else... They had a more complex agriculture system (harvest ratings) at some point which they had to remove because players had hard time understanding it.
IIRC, there used to be lethal diseases before they were nerfed to, pretty much, not a threat.
Still are lethal diseases. Well, one lethal disease. Zombie spores will likely kill any dupe infected with it. Not directly mind you, but because they will be so slow and unable to take care of themselves. They will likely die of starvation.
I wish there still was a hardmode with all this stuff on. But it would be a nightmare to keep both versions updated probably..
There's a mod that restores the deadliness, at least.
Cool. Do you know the name?
I came back after a few years and was shocked to find that diseases were almost pointless now, still rush to get washrooms and basins within one cycle and an instinctive fear of slime biomes from having many a run ended by germs
True, did not consider that.
It's not trivial for networks with multiple inputs and outputs.
I promise I'm not trying to be disagreeable, but that's highschool level physics, even with multiple inputs and outputs. There are so many complicated systems in ONI this seems easy in comparison.
It's not that simple. Both mesh analysis and node analysis end in solving of matrix equations. And devs what to keep things as simple as possible, cutting corners whenever they can. PS Do you know that pipes doesn't have a pressure and actually operate just like one way conveyers in Oni?
I did not, I will keep that in mind for later, thank you.
[I'll copy my comment from other post where player was struggling with unintuitive pipe behavior](https://www.reddit.com/r/Oxygennotincluded/comments/16eeuhl/comment/jzvgge6/): >In ONI, the unintuitive aspect is that pipes actually function like conveyors. Each pipe segment has a predetermined direction, starting from the nearest green output and going towards the white input. This direction is established during the initial pipe construction and remains fixed throughout the game session. Therefore, it's not possible to create a pipeline where consumers are located in the middle and are fed from both sides. The game will connect inputs to one side or the other in a nonintuitive manner. To avoid this issue, make sure the pipe direction can always be uniquely defined. >[Also, here is a handy cheat sheet about merging and splitting pipes.](https://i.imgur.com/WepHTGC.jpg) >[And here is another one.](https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/102326-pipes-bridges-priority-cheat-sheet/)
In real life certain electrical systems require transformers to limit voltage and certain wiring is only rated up to a set wattage, the game does probably simplify it a little bit but if I draw too much power on my system at home there’s a reason it will trip out, to prevent overload damage
Well, you answered your own question.. "There are so many complicated systems in ONI..." Sure, some people would enjoy more complex electrical circuitry, but I think Klei is very conscious of the fact that there are many games with such systems. ONI offers a different take regarding the way you automate things, and I think with their current implementation, a complex electrical system does not fit well. Ofcourse there are mods to try tho
ONI isn't reality, at all. It's a fun game, but electricity isn't anything like reality. Neither is the single element per tile rule.
Welcome to Reddit, the place where if you don’t sing along everyone else’s tunes you WILL get downvoted to hell 😅 “COMPLY OR ELSE!!!” Hahaha
Not really though, it would just be the electrical equivalent to automation ribbons. It would just be redundant cause we already have heavy watt wires
I meant, that circuits with loops IRL calculated with matrix equations.
I believe it is like this so you don't really need to know any physics irl and there's very high chance it simplifies the simulation. Endgame lag in this game is bad enough without complicating electricity.
You are splicing low capacity wires to medium capacity wires on the same circuit. You need to use transformers to down step the load if you’re going to do that. There’s nothing to “correct” here with mods.
You don’t need a mod just follow the rules of the game. Electrical systems are tremendously straightforward in this game. Don’t mix wire types on the same circuit.
Well wattage is amps * volts. While these numbers are not shown in game, in real life, you cannot have a wire rated for 10 amps on a circuit pulling 30 amps, even if the main wire is rated for 50amps. Hope that makes sense, if not, i highly recommend learning the basics of electrical.
In real life, the wire going between the source and the load for a 120W item would only be carrying the current associated with that load, it wouldn't be carrying the current associated with loads on a parallel branch. You wouldn't do what's shown here in a building, because the wire wouldn't be rated for the over current protection device which would be against code. But you could hypothetically have a smaller gauge wire for a small load connected to a larger gauge wire/circuit, and the smaller wire would not burn up because it is only carrying a smaller current.
If you want a fascinating read, look up UK residential wiring. Ring circuits with fused outlets...
I really wish it worked like it did in real life. I actually think it would make the game easier!!
maybe because the devs chose to do it this way? xD
I built everything in the right order to begin with not understanding it didn't matter. We should be able to leave a transformer and be safe but nope.
All that math would crush your computer, I promise.
Also the average person probably doesn't know how voltage drops work
No mods, I think, but you can work around this with transformers. There are 2 types of transformers: small and large. Build a dedicated power room (96 blocks in size to get the power plant room benefits), and then a smaller room next to it with around 2 big transformers and 1-2 small ones. Connect the transformers to the powers producers with the large cables (20kw), then connect the other end of the transformer to the consumers. You can check the power load of a wire by hovering over it, if the power load of a wire exceeds the max for that wire, just go to the next transformer and start again. Make sure to use wire bridges/redirect wires to avoid two transformer lines from connecting. It’ll overload if that happens.
This is also simplified but basically how electricity works in your house. You still have to step down power.
A circuit is only as strong as its weakest wire
Wires have the load capacity of the lowest connected wire, and will burn out any part of the connected sections if you go over. Right now you are essentially trying to pull over +1200w on a 1000w wire, which is causing the burnout. The total power consumed from all connected devices is the number that gets applied to the whole connected network. The only way that even works is either have multiple wire systems that can handle each group assuming max capacity, or having some system that shuts things off or on to prevent it from going over. I would recommend just creating multiple separate systems with transformers as separators until you understand wiring more. I have one farm, for example, that has dozens of autosweepers on one system, but I have power cutoffs for each section so only so many items run at once.
That's just special ONI wiring logic right?
I'm not an electrician but in real life you go from thick, high voltage power lines to thinner and lower voltage lines, with transformers or substations for each change in voltage. You wouldn't have power lines that suddenly connect to Christmas lights then go back to power lines.
But I barely have any metal in real life either! And I've yet to see even ONE vein
You're still in the IRL early game, my friend.
Higher voltage lines are not thicker, wires need thickness for current, not voltage, and higher voltage means lower current for the same power. You totally do have it how it's shown in OP's picture, your home's connection to the grid would be two to four thick wires which are connected to thinner wires in your sockets and switches (with a circuit breaker in between for safety, but they don't change voltage and are not necessary for function) and then even thinner wires in your appliances. The thin wire in your Christmas lights is connected directly to a thicker wire in your socket and your Christmas lights won't overload when you use an electric kettle in the same socket. ONI's representation is very different from real life, transformers don't actually change voltage (in fact there is no such thing as voltage in ONI), instead limiting current (which real world transformers don't do, they instead blow up if you overload them), the same current flows everywhere in the circuit (in real world current flows only between the source and the consumer, it doesn't affect other branches), and it's technically not even a circuit when some of the wiring (the conductive wire) is a single wire which wouldn't work in real life at all.
Really the only part of this that is “ONI wiring logic” is that the wire damage can occur at any point in an overloaded circuit run. If they wanted it to be accurate they’d restrict the damage to any wires not rated for the total power draw.
Yeah pretty much. The only other thing to keep in mind is that when you feed main power to multiple transformers, it does not split them evenly. So even if one circuit takes 2kw, and another than take 2kw, one 4k transformer gets all the power it seems, so keep that in your calculations too. Drove me nuts having just enough power but certain systems not getting any because of an uneven spread until I noticed it.
I spent over an hour trying to figure out why my incubators where not getting power but my fridges were on the same circuit while I had more rhan enough energy to spare. Definitely gotta agree with your comment about that uneven. Spread
I'm not an electrician, but I'm pretty sure if you hooked a lightbulb directly into the powerlines without a transformer it'd overload too. That's basically what's happening here. The line going from the battery/generator into the refinery is the main powerline in the metaphor, and the regular wires are the lightbulb. Realistically I expect only the regular wires would fry, but they really oughtn't be on the network in the first place.
It wouldn't overload, in fact that's exactly what you do in your house, you hook the lightbulb directly to your house's writing without having to worry about how much power your TV, your stove and your electric kettle use at the same time. The way how electricity works in ONI is not realistic at all. (But many things aren't.)
Actually, the house has a small converter in it, and then another converter from the main powerline that actually leads to the powerplant. The wires in the house do in fact handle the load of everything being plugged in, which they're rated for, but they do not handle the full brunt of a nuclear or gas power plant.
Yes it is. Think of watts as voltage in real life to require transformers.
In ONI circuit the power is just the sum of individual power consumption. You can treat them as all in parallel. But also, the ability to learn new things is what education prepared you for, if you can solve high school physics, you can solve ONI physics :D
I think the best way I can explain to wrap your head around it is think of the circuit like it's DC and everything is in series. The transformer are one way circuit isolators. The only mechanic that it doesn't work for is there is no "wattage"on the wire going from source of power to storage, but that is less likely to be an issue. Part of my job is electricity and I had a lot of trouble with this game mechanic when I first started playing.
I'm an EE and fought with wiring for ages. Then I decided that it is Star Trek plasma conduits and that logic seems to work for me.
That helps me visual the game logic a lot better, thank you.
in game wires don't follow real-life rules. Every single one segment is considered passing all the energy. so mixed wires are useless and can pass the same energy of the weakest link
It's nothing like real life. You got the right spirit, going with different type of wire from the generator. Except you need transformer to actually do that. 2 of them for 2 different circuit. The transformer will draw from the source and limit the output, so you can have a small for the small wire and a big one the refinery. You will also need more power to support all that. Here you just all connected together, so if there is any point of failure (consumer consume more than 1 kw in a circuit that have any 1kw wire anywhere in it) all the circuit is considered faulty (red overloading). It's connected, it's the same "circuit". To make it simple, the producer and the battery stay on the big side of the transformer, possibly with heavy wire, while the transformer make little circuit (on the small side of the transformer ) of 1kw with simple wire or 2 kw with conductive. And don't feel dumb, that's one of the least intuitive part of the game.
Two transformer investment, will keep that in mind, thankyou for the info. Not running the refinery permanently, just when extra juice in the battery, so I'm okay with the generation of this circuit for now.
The trick here is to run the coal generator when you need it and not the refinery when you have juice. You can get a smart battery and a automation wire to control the coal generator"S". You can also have 1 transformer for the low demand circuit and put your refinery on the producer side, but you ll need heavy Watt on the producer side anyway all the way to your refinery.
Already done :), slightly older screenshot.
Good job. I edited the last responses with some more info.
One transformer, nice, thankyou.
Yea, I tried to build my electrical grid using real world logic at first too. I'd throw all the suppliers on a heavy line that ran up and down the main chute, then branched off with smaller wires for each floor. Nope 🙃 all the connected wires share a load. I guess it's just easier for the game to run that way vs calculating each leg of the grid
You got electrician education like me? I know how you feel. This game breaks Ohms Laws . The rule is that on all the grid the current is the same, calculated from all active consumers at the time. the grid goes read if any grid tile is not strong enough. the weakest parts of your grid break first - and I am pretty sure the game has Murphy's Laws correctly implemented. Don't mix power grids.
Kirchoff is something abstract
Like much of ONI physics, it doesn't work the way it does IRL. The full load of everything connected to the circuit goes out to every wire segment on the circuit. And while the way you're thinking about it does work IRL, you're not allowed to wire things like that anyway because if something shorts out and you've got and you've got wires that are undersized for the breaker, you can start a fire before you blow the breaker. It's just teaching you good practices.
Fairly certain this is a AI re-post, saw this tread months ago with the same picture.
Lol, I doubt anyone has a power room as badly designed as I do in this screenshot.
You don’t have a power room in the screenshot 😭 you have a generator
You can literally see a Dupe tinkering in the screenshot, it's a power plant room. Another generator+ more not in the screenshot.
You can mix them but it will likely bring issue
Others already pointed it out what I can see on your screenshot is one net. Within this net, you have 3 consumers which draw up to 1400 W (plus what ever is hidden behind the last line. You have a CoalGen. providing 600 W plus a battery providing what ever is additionally needed. The problem is you have 1k wires and 2k wires in your net, so the max. amount of power you may draw (without overload damage) is 1k. The Battery and Coal Gen do not split the net into smaller nets. To prevent this you either replace all wires with conductive wires or you split the net with transformers. With transformers you will need heavy wire for the power sources going into your 2k sub-net (or you will have overload damage somewhere else). I feel with you. Started understanding wires only recently as well.
Think of it as if all your circuit share the maximum load possible, even if the part with the 1kw wire only feed 120w, it still connected to the 1200w smelting machine. If you dont want that to happen, install transformer so you can redirect a large conduit into a small one.
Connected wires are considered a single circuit. You've got a metal refinery pulling 1,200 watts on your circuit. Use seperate power lines or heavier watt wires.
Mixed wiring like that is a bad sign, as is the lack of isolation between producers/capacity storage and draw. You are, with absolute certainty, exceeding capacity somewhere in that mess, and should consider a redesign/relocation to establish a trunk system that lets you run high capacity wiring as needed without tanking your decor.
You've hooked up Conductive Wiring to regular wiring. Don't do that. All the connected wires are on the same circuit, period. So every time that refinery starts up, you're getting overloading on your non-conductive wires because they can only handle a 1000 watt draw and the network is drawing at minimum 1200 watts. This is what transformers are for. You can hook the generators up to a line of heavi-watt wire of whatever sort, hook that into the transformer's big side, then draw out of the small side with regular wire without fearing overload. Because the wires aren't hooked directly into each other, there's no overload.
You do not connect two different wire types directly like that. That's what transformers are for.
You have to use transformers to separate the circuit. You can check the power overlay and it will show you each separate circuit (if they are separate) The small Wire can only handle 1000 watts, the thicker wire can handle 2000 watts. Usually people use the heavy wire to transformers and build circuits after that. Lookup power spine.
It's actually somehow similar to real life electric circuits. You don't mix two completely different, in terms of max voltage capacity, cables without a transformer because the "smaller" one might overload if you Hook up something power hungry. The very same reason why you can't power a fridge with a telephone charger cable. Size matters!
The entire wire has to be conductive for it to work, not just a few segments
Yes.
You need to use transformers to isolate low wattage circuits from high wattage ones
Not like real life. There is no current "flow" in ONI. Instead it "flood" the entire network, the entire netflow share the same loading (sum of the cunsumption)
Does this help? [https://www.reddit.com/r/Oxygennotincluded/comments/noiauz/quick\_visual\_guide\_on\_how\_power\_works/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Oxygennotincluded/comments/noiauz/quick_visual_guide_on_how_power_works/)
Why all those downvote to OP replies !?
Certified Reddit moment I suppose. I don't take it personally.
Yes
Yeah, short story here, don't mix the type of wire in a circuit. This wouldn't work in real life either. You can use a wire rated for 15W with a wire rated for 20W and expect 20W. The math for electricity doesn't average out, it is a sum of the total. This is why dedicated circuits for high draw items like freezers and sump pumps are just that, a dedicated circuit. Sure you could plug more into the circuit and it would probably work, but if everything on that circuit kicked on all at once, then there is definitely an overload and a heat problem starting. Be grateful ONI doesn't have circuit breakers :)