What happens to unpowered living quarters and storage rooms?

Question

Food/Water Next to Power Plants

Rooms like living quarters, med bays, and training facilities should never touch a power plant. Such rooms do not belong next to, underneath, or on top of a power room. Try to have the closest rooms be food production and water production rooms. If the power goes out, the closest rooms (production rooms) stay lit and the non-essentials go dark.

I've seen a fair amount of advice like this re: vault layout. The idea is to put storage and ability rooms farther away from the power source, so non-production rooms lose power first in case of a blackout. I understand that a room's production shuts down if unpowered, but what about rooms that are normally left unstaffed anyway.

• Will my maximum headcount dip if the associated living quarters lose power?
• Will I lose any stored items if the storage rooms shut down? Or do I just lose the ability to store any more over the unpowered limit?
• Are there any other non-production rooms that have similarly inscrutable effects when powered down?

Answer 1

If the rooms are unoccupied, nothing happens. You gain nothing from populating Storage Rooms or Living Quarters, other than potentially affecting Vault Happiness. (Some Dwellerss can gain happiness from being assigned to rooms). If the power goes out, they'll just wander around the room doing nothing (unless you are trying to get dwellers to hook up - they won't when they power goes out).

Obviously, for rooms like training rooms, or the armouries, etc, those rooms will stop production, but it won't cause any real issues. The radio room will either stop broadcasting, and it can affect Vault-wide happiness.

Other than that, losing powers to these rooms will not affect your vault to any real degree. You won't lose storage or Vault Capacity or anything like that.