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Is there a use for power transfer that I'm missing?

NDQ said:
Everyone at The Slog is a savant in Intelligence (11). I turned it into a massive nuclear plant that powers every other settlement in the commonwealth (haven't tried transferring to FH or NW)
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Does it really have that kind of range? I turned Zimonja into a mega power plant and set up a power transfer plot, but still can't get power at Starlight or Finch. They've all got caravan services and municiple grid pylon/boxes. I saw somewhere that both settlements need a power transfer plot to receive power as well, but adding those didn't seem to help either. In another thread I saw it speculated that they have a limited range, and you have to have a transfer plot in almost every settlement to get effective coverage? Any troubleshooting ideas people have would be welcome.

I really love the idea, especially for setting up outposts, just having a devil of a time getting it to work properly.
 
Think of the Powe transfer plots like caravan plots for power. Yes they have a range and yes one in every settlement is the way to go. Then once setup you can dial back and repurpose the actual power plots in settlements take out generators to save build limit etc.
 
o.Solei.o said:
Does it really have that kind of range? I turned Zimonja into a mega power plant and set up a power transfer plot, but still can't get power at Starlight or Finch. They've all got caravan services and municiple grid pylon/boxes. I saw somewhere that both settlements need a power transfer plot to receive power as well, but adding those didn't seem to help either. In another thread I saw it speculated that they have a limited range, and you have to have a transfer plot in almost every settlement to get effective coverage? Any troubleshooting ideas people have would be welcome.

I really love the idea, especially for setting up outposts, just having a devil of a time getting it to work properly.
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I'm not sure how the range on power transfer works. The Slog is my only settlement with actual power producing plots. I have working transfer stations in the Slog, Sunshine, Starlight, Vault 88, Croup, Taffington, and Egret. The Castle doesn't seem to be getting any power. I have no way of knowing if all the excess power is being used already or if I'm out of range based on the caravan path even though it's physically closer
 
I would like to see a terminal in the transfer station where you can pull up a screen telling you how much power is being transferred. I'm thinking of how IDEK's Logistics Station in SS1 gave a terminal screen with all kinds of info about the caravan network (something I wish the caravan services of SS2 had). I just started setting up power transfer stations and have no idea if they are even working!
 
IDEK's has a SS2 version and I agree with you on power transfer Station. They work. My Oberland station is ran completely on transfered power.
 
I still havent had a game last long enough without starting to get the "power grid crash" that ALSO "organically" unlocked this Transfer plot, so I havent done any testing of its "real world" usefulness yet.
 
So I've finally unlocked these things in a 'real' save, and I'm doing some tinkering with them now to see if they're even worth the effort (vs just building a Basic Powerplant in every settlement).
So far it's still seeming like a no - just not worth the cost to build. But then, I've not gotten any High-tech buildings in yet either, from memory when I looked into it those cost a lot of power to run. And I haven't checked the maintenance costs.
Also not sure what letting the Transfer plot 'level up' would actually achieve.
 
I am using them. One example is Red Rocket. It's packed full of plots and still doesn't seem to have enough power, despite a level 3 power plant. So I managed to squeeze in a power transfer station and the settlement is happy now (Sanctuary has more power than it needs).

I think, in general, this is more of a role playing or Commonwealth planning aid. I would choose three or four large settlements, like Starlight Drive-In, or Sunshine Tidings, etc. where you could build 2 or 3 (even 4!) hi-tech power plants. Those become your power hubs. Then every settlement in the 'wealth has a power transfer station so that the smaller settlements don't need to build multiple power plants to meet their needs. It allows you to simulate how cities do it in real life. There's a huge power production facility somewhere, transmission lines bring it to the city, then the city has power transfer stations in key areas to distribute it to businesses and home. That's how I see using the transfer plot.
 
Yeah, I get it. It's obviously mostly for "meta-planning" purposes, so you can have a "power plant" settlement, etc. It just seems kind of meh in practice, at least for my own personal playstyle.

What I'd like, though, is the ability to distribute excess Defense around the network...
 
It would make more sense if different locations offered buffs to various production values so you could slam a ton of production into the settlements that give you a boost, but as is it only seems to be useful for tiny settlements.
 
MsBathory said:
It would make more sense if different locations offered buffs to various production values so you could slam a ton of production into the settlements that give you a boost, but as is it only seems to be useful for tiny settlements.
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I could also see it being more noteworthy if Leaders had a lot bigger impact; imagine a set of Leader Traits something like "powerplants at this settlement have +x% output". Thatd also make Leaders more worth using even if not using a City Plan.
 
I still haven't figured out where the sole survivor got the technology to build a power transfer station. Most of the vanilla game has power lines run everywhere. My head-cannon says if such a technology existed, the BOS would have "procured" it and locked it in a vault somewhere. I figure the only reason we have radiant power is Bethesda didn't want a flood of hate mail if we had to wire up every light bulb.

Are we supposed to pretend the settlers buried a power line between settlements? Are we supposed to hope the molerats don't chew on it? :scratchhead
 
msalaba said:
I still haven't figured out where the sole survivor got the technology to build a power transfer station. Most of the vanilla game has power lines run everywhere. My head-cannon says if such a technology existed, the BOS would have "procured" it and locked it in a vault somewhere. I figure the only reason we have radiant power is Bethesda didn't want a flood of hate mail if we had to wire up every light bulb.

Are we supposed to pretend the settlers buried a power line between settlements? Are we supposed to hope the molerats don't chew on it? :scratchhead
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I like to think they jury-rigged something up to all the stray transmission lines we see all over the commonwealth and only undergrounded it from one of those on either end. I like the idea of having a leader bonus like @yaugieLC suggested. It's kind of annoying how many of the leaders that have bonuses to help industrials are also pacifists - kind of defeats the purpose because on the one hand your industrials are supposed to advance faster - on the other hand they can't because their security needs are never met because the security plots advance slower. It's sort of a self-defeating combo that cancels each other out.
 
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So they're very much not "cheaper than just building another Basic Power Plant"...
However as this pic also shows, Mechanist's Lair is doing more than alright on power (considering it's only using like... 20? And that's with only two bots on generation plots) so might as well distribute it.
ScreenShot116.png
 
yaugieLC said:
So they're very much not "cheaper than just building another Basic Power Plant"...
However as this pic also shows, Mechanist's Lair is doing more than alright on power (considering it's only using like... 20? And that's with only two bots on generation plots) so might as well distribute it.
View attachment 13999
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Oh wow - yes that's actually really expensive. Odd that the thing that transfers the power is more expensive than the thing that produces the power. I know that's the case in the real world, but in the real world you can't build a power plant on every block.
 
Captain LaserBeam said:
Oh wow - yes that's actually really expensive. Odd that the thing that transfers the power is more expensive than the thing that produces the power. I know that's the case in the real world, but in the real world you can't build a power plant on every block.
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On the plus side, thanks for making a 1x1 version of those at least - much easier to cram that into places! (Even if I personally wouldn't trust walking within 30 feet of something putting that many sparks out)
 
yaugieLC said:
On the plus side, thanks for making a 1x1 version of those at least - much easier to cram that into places! (Even if I personally wouldn't trust walking within 30 feet of something putting that many sparks out)
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Lol yeah - that's the idea. Once it levels up it looks a little less like an accident waiting to happen.
 
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