Draw electricity straight from the Power Grid in Rust – on any map, be it a procedurally generated or a custom one! Ladder up the Power line Poles to upgrade their Transformers with components like Root Combiners (to replace missing/stolen/destroyed outlets that you plug into) and Tech Trash (to permanently upgrade power output level, up to a configurable point). Maintain the service with long-lasting Fuses. But most importantly, protect your precious part of the grid from vandalism, theft and sabotage that will inevitably come from those jealous players! Whatever you do, just be careful up there… high voltage happens to be highly dangerous. Always wear protective gear (like a hazmat suit) and don’t touch the wires while they’re live! As a bonus, this plugin also improves vanilla visuals with realistically hanging wires / hoses / Xmas lights, the slack of which (how loose they appear to be hanging) can be adjusted while placing.
Locating functional Transformers
Not all Power Line Poles were made equally. Only a percentage of them (by default, 33% on average) will be functional. How do you recognize a functional one? Look up – if you see a Button attached to the top of the Pole, and maybe even some pre-existing Root Combiner Outlets, that’s it!
Laddering Up
Now that you have located a functional pole, you need to climb it.
Normally you cannot deploy Ladders on Power Line Poles and many other places (but oddly enough, you CAN deploy them on the horizontal planks at the top of a Pole!). However, Grid Power re-implements all the client-sided deployment logic to allow bypassing of that arbitrary-seeming limitation.
If you try to deploy a Ladder on a Power Line Pole, don’t be discouraged by the fact that the “ghost guide” is red instead of blue/amber. Click anyway and it will force it through! Ignore the message in the chat saying that the deployment failed – just like the colour of the ghost guide, it’s all client-sided and as such there’s nothing the plugin can do about it, visually speaking. But trust me, everything works as intended, despite what the client messages are telling you.
The Ladders can then be destroyed/picked up to be reused.
Maintenance
A Transformer can have up to 4 Outlets (Root Combiners). That’s where the players draw the electricity from. Those Root Combiners can be damaged/destroyed/repaired/picked up with a hammer (if you have Building Privilege) any time.
If there’s less than 4 Outlets, right-click on a Root Combiner Item in your inventory or drag it into the Fuse Box of the Transformer. You will hear a deployment effect and the Root Combiner will be deployed on the pole.
In order to be able to draw power from that Transformer, you need to put a Fuse inside. Right-click a Fuse in your inventory or drag it directly to the Fuse Box. Don’t worry – inside of the Transformers, those Fuses will last for much, MUCH longer than inside regular monument Fuse Boxes. By default, a brand new Fuse inside of a Transformer Fuse Box will last you for 12000 seconds (= 200 minutes, = 3.33 hours). This value can be increased or decreased in the config.
You can see how much time a fuse has left in the Transformer GUI.
By default, the Power Grid will produce electricity between 8 AM and 8 PM. The power output will follow a smooth curve, being the lowest in the morning/evening, and peaking at 2 PM.
Exactly how much RWs will be produced on each Outlet is determined by the Transformer’s Tech Trash level. By default, each Tech Trash inserted increases the peak power output by 5 RWs (up until a certain point – by default, that level is capped at 50, which translates to 250 RWs per Outlet at peak hours). Upgrade the level by right-clicking the Tech Trash item in your inventory or dragging it directly into the Fuse Box.
Inserting Root Combiners/Tech Trash is still possible even if there’s already a Fuse inside of the Fuse Box. The Fuse won’t be replaced as the sole Item in the slot, since Root Combiners/Tech Trash are consumed immediately.
Hooking Up & Hanging Out
Once there’s at least 1 Outlet present, you have a Fuse at hand, and the Grid is currently producing power – you’re all set. Take a Wire Tool, pick your favourite wire colour with the [RELOAD] button, typically R, and connect to the outputs of the Root Combiner Outlets to your own electrical devices, usually a Battery or another Root Combiner.
You will notice the text on top of your screen telling you what the current Slack of your wire tool / hose tool is. You can increase it with the [DUCK] button, typically CTRL, and decrease it with the [SPRINT] button, typically SHIFT. Larger Slack value means that the wire/hose will appear to be hanging more loosely. Smaller values will make it look tighter. Values close to zero will make it look like they look in vanilla Rust – i.e. not so good in comparison 😉
The final Slack value will be applied the moment you finalise your wire/hose connection. This hanging improvement applies to anything you do with Wire Tools/Hose Tools, not just Transformer Outlet connections!
For the Advanced Xmas Lights, it’s even better: you can adjust the Slack of each segment individually! After you place the Advanced Xmas Lights segment down, and you’re just about to place the next segment, adjust the Slack of the segment you have just placed down with [DUCK] and [SPRINT] buttons. You will see a preview of what it will make the segment look like. Placing the next segment down confirms the Slack for the segment before it.
Danger! High Voltage!
If the Grid is currently producing Power (by default, during daytime) AND a Fuse is inserted in the Transformer, all Root Combiner Outlets are considered live on that Transformer.
You can tell whether a Transformer is live or not: first, check your electric devices plugged in directly to the Grid. If they’re not currently receiving any charge, they’re not live. Similarly, you can look at the diodes on the Root Combiner Outlets. If they’re not on, the Transformer is not live either. Lastly, it’s pretty clear from the Transformer GUI.
If a player tries to connect/disconnect a wire to/from a live Outlet, or they’re trying to pick up the Root Combiner Outlet with a hammer, and they’re not wearing one of the items on a pre-approved list (see the Advanced Config section below), there is a 1.0 (100%) chance they will get electrocuted to death. Another way to guarantee electrocution is trying to clear connections named INTERNAL. Leave those alone!
Wearing protective clothing reduces that chance to 1 in 10 (10%, according to the default permission profile – see below). You can set that chance to 0.0 (0%) if you want to give your players a peace of mind.
Another way to guarantee 0% electrocution chance is making sure the Transformer is not live: either wait for the Grid to stop producing Power or take out the Fuse before doing anything else.
Categories: Plugins
