Surely, an underground laboratory must have used lights in it and probably has a generator.
Possibly because it’s been five days since the Cataclysm, and generators require upkeep. They could have also shut it down before attempting to evacuate or abandon it.
Such technical things need permanent maintenance. Let something run for quite a few days and it will break. Proven to be true SO MANY TIMES in reality.
And why do gas stations work then?
A good question. Most likely, it’s in the interests of making the game interesting, since a modern/post apocalyptic game without cars isn’t as cool, and we don’t have any other long term source of fuel.
To my knowledge, the gas pumps are Manual, you are pumping the gas yourself.
They work manually, until they go silent with a clang and shudder. :þ
Even the modern high tech pumps you may use from time to time have a manual pumping system inside. Electric power is not guaranteed and fuel may be required to re-establish electric power.
If gas pumps work manually, that brings us to the next question: why do electric enemies work? Don’t batteries need to be recharged from time to time?
Regarding the topic, it’s because it hasn’t been implemented. I think we had emergency lights in the labs at some point, but they seem to have been lost in a merge. We have medium-term plans to add functionality for labs and other compounds to be “reclaimed” by repairing generators etc to make them operational again, but no one is working on it at the moment. Shoes is poking at lab improvements, maybe he’ll shift from making them more hostile to making them reclaimable at some point 
The functioning electronic enemies are ones that are designed to operate long-term autonomously. I’d like to add “charging stations” for them to more solidly represent them in the world, these would be caches of reserve power the player could use for various things.
Regarding gas pumps, yea it’s pretty much an issue of playability. We could make recovering gas from the pumps a more involved process, and we could actually do so now that we have gas siphoning from wrecked vehicles.
That sounds great, adding more realism and atmosphere. Maybe you could add even non-working light-sources to the houses, that people could at least disassemble, or maybe power from a battery, or generator. How 'bout the power station supplying the place shutting down randomly some time in the first 1-10 years?
All I’ve ever done is make things hostile… I suppose I could do something that players might like for a change… A novel concept, for sure.
I was expecting this thread to be discussing why we don’t find lamps in buildings, obviously not working. Would be a pitiful weapon, but rather imagine rigging it up to run on batteries. Don’t know if that’s possible with a real lamp and batteries.
Actually modern power plants require pretty much constant operation or the computers automatically shut them down. At the moment in the US every single power plant except nuclear ones will automatically shut down if it’s not maintained within the space of a single day. At the 5-10 day point nuclear power plants burn down or explode due to the lack of replenishment of cooling water on stored rods. Meaning that by the time out game starts, the only things left running would be self powered battery things, any generators that are still running and haven’t run out of fuel, and directly solar powered things.
Actually modern power plants require pretty much constant operation or the computers automatically shut them down. At the moment in the US every single power plant except nuclear ones will automatically shut down if it’s not maintained within the space of a single day. At the 5-10 day point nuclear power plants burn down or explode due to the lack of replenishment of cooling water on stored rods. Meaning that by the time out game starts, the only things left running would be self powered battery things, any generators that are still running and haven’t run out of fuel, and directly solar powered things.[/quote]
From what I’ve heard nuclear power plants automatically shut down in case of danger and the Hoover Dam could last 50 years without human interaction.
There are potentially some exceptions, but we’re talking about the general case, power plants generally are NOT designed to be autonomous, they’re already super-expensive to build, and automation would add a lot to that.
Well I do believe it would make sense for labs and military installations to have power and illumination, afterall, they have the turrets computer and key card readers online, and its not very far off to think that they should have some backup generators. Now, no other place that wasn’t selfsufficient should be powered 5 days after a cataclysm of the magnitude depicted in the game, mostly due to problems and damage in the power grid (no mattering if the actuall plants where still operating)
I think that there would be a priority system in place for labs and such. Computers running important programs and with central data caches are top, followed by turrets, then card readers, then emergency lighting (the one light in every six or whatever), then non-essential PCs, then non-emergency lighting. Or something like, anyway. This could be a nice tie-in to repairing “broken” consoles - making sure there is a powered generator in the vicinity.
Rambling aside, I’d like to see places like shops, labs, bunkers, etc getting lighting and consoles that can be repaired and powered. The trick would be dealing with whatever got in (or out) while restoring power. Also I like the idea of useless lamps in houses and furniture stores - like cell phones and laptops, good only for parts.
- It’s not the power plants itself that are causing the problem, it’s the temporary on-site storage that holds the used fuel rods for the first 10 years or so. Those will boil dry in a matter of days without maintenance, at which point they will most likely cause fires and the release of various nuclear stuff into the atmosphere.
- Yes, there are a few large hydro-dams that will remain functional for years. However for the U.S. all of these are pretty much located in the western US, which means that it doesn’t matter that they are still running, since New England doesn’t draw power from them anyways. (New England mostly draws it’s power from other sources or hydro-dams that are designed to require human interaction).
Lastly keep in mind that supposedly the US still exists in the western US, and I doubt that any remaining power companies are going to be extending their grids to cover areas that have been abandoned and no longer contain people.
Endgame goal: Oregon Trail.
Make it to the West where supposedly civilization and power still remain.
To add a little cream to the Bone, there’s been much talk about luminous flora recently, mostly about photoreceptors emitting soothing light in absolute darkness. Genetic engeneering proves to be helpful when it comes to such, and we’ll have shinin’ bright trees around our cities in mere decade(s).
And to your bareBone, yet again - self-sustaining communities, houses that recycle everything into energy via incineration for both heat and power, solar power collecting,and wind energy usage.