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Thermal Update Coal generator problem.


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Thank you for saying something about this!  I agree it's super aggravating when you put a coal generator in the sub-zero temperatures of an ice biome and it still overheats within a minute of turning it on.  Having to set up this type of complex water-dripping system to keep them cool is overkill.

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Anyone noticing coal generators heating up after being deactivated? I placed one in the ice biome between 2 Wheezeworts obviously it overheated thus I turned it of but the temperature kept rising even tho I placed 2 hydrofans and the surrounding gasses were at below zero it just kept going up until the game crashed right before a few other random things started overheating all over the place even tho the ambient temperature was very low. 

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At first I struggled keeping them cool, couple dupes died. 300c carbon diox. lol.
Then I put them in the cold biome. Still over heated crazy.
I tried to cool the air around it. but that wouldnt work, costs to much power and the generator would build up pressure.
I tried the temperature switch but it didnt help me, probably not the correct setting.
Then I tried using the gen in combo with manual gens. it worked great of course.
next I added more 2 more coal gens far apart in cold biomes and my dupes would barely touch the manuals. 10 dupes aaround cycle 250.
I later try water cooling my coolers. I had to manually turn the valve on for a second but eventually the area got super cold and they run for ever. I assume I could do that for the coal gens too. Around this time I was finishing up my gas cooler tank using tips from the forum earlier. You super cool hydrogen only since it goes needs -280c to change state.  then inject any gas into the tank and it will freeze it.
Then I added a temp switch to that setup and my coal gens. and THEN the best part. I put a coal gen in my cooler tank and it runs 100% of the time lol. The tank is a bit complex for beginners but it something any1 late in the game should have for once you run out of sand. Also it does take a ton of power to get hydrogen cooled but once it is, its super easy to maintain. besides all my broken pipes. still havnt figured out how to stop them all from breaking but its decent. anyways. the dripping set up it probably the best to change dirty water to some thing clean. and is alot easier then the cooler tank. just a bit of manual work like harvesting. make sure u use a valve.

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Ten hours and 89 cycles later my whole base is freezing.

I built a wheezewort farm, a room around it and now use it to pump my air through it. It comes out at -15C to -30C. That air is then filtered and blown back into the base. That cooled the air to 18C within the base.

I retried ice stored in storage compressors. It takes a long time to melt, but after all it cooled the water from 40C to 7C.

While I waited for the ice to melt, I built a hydrogen freezer to produce liquid oxygen. It works, but cools my base even more!

So coal power is not a problem anymore.

Screenshot 2017-03-19 21.45.26.png

 

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On 3/17/2017 at 8:46 PM, kambing said:

Why would 200C break a machine which sole purpose is to burn stuff? This makes no sense.

You do realize that coal burns at nearly 2000 degrees C, right?  Not 200.   I mean, I hate to bring real world values into this simulation, but coal burns HOT.    Even ordinary "charcoal" briquettes burn over 350 degrees C.

If we do talk some real-world sense, coal generators should actually have a water intake and flow out, with a significant temp boost between the two.  They work by burning coal to turn water into steam, using that steam to turn a turbine which is attached to a generator, that makes the sparky stuff (AKA, electricity).  Inside the generator, a fixed amount of water is held, turning to steam reaching temperatures over 1000 degrees F and pressures up to 3500 psi, and is then condensed back into water using a significant amount of cool water coming up (and dumps the hot water out).  By the way, nuclear power plants work the same way, they just have a different heating element. :)

This game makes us do the cooling/condenser part manually, external to the machine itself.  Apologies for switching the conversion in mid-post, it was simpler to work from the source I found.

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On 3/17/2017 at 8:46 PM, kambing said:

Why would 200C break a machine which sole purpose is to burn stuff? This makes no sense.

Just game play purposes.  Also it only breaks at 200C because wolframite doesn't have overheat bonuses yet.  There are other debug stuffs that we also do not have on the map yet like aerogel and diamond that provide even more overheat bonuses.  Though I don't recall if diamond can be used for buildings, maybe just pipes, which I'd die to have some...It is godly good with heat conduction...80W(mK)-1

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20 minutes ago, Risu said:

If we're going for realism, the hydrogen generator AND coal generator are suppose to be taking in oxygen.

Hydrogen generator is also suppose to be making water/steam.
 

True, that's why I hesitated even mentioning it.   :) 

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Try building your coal generator in an ice dome on wolframite gas permeable tiles. thats what i have done and i dont have a problem with them overheating. at 70 cycles and never had to repair them and they havent gone above 24 Fahrenheit yet.

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5 minutes ago, TheKingDedede said:

At least it's unbreakable.

Has a hardness of 250 and strength of 5. Damn near unbreakable but not completely.

If the strength was set to 0 it'd get the special Unbreakable status.
 

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The coal gen is definitely broken right now. I don't have an issue with it making the area around it extremely hot (you should have to put something like that out of the way, and it already belches out huge amounts of CO2), but for it to break moments after turning it on is clearly far too much. I'd like to see the heat build up being much more gradual. If overheating is an issue it should be something that happens over the period of a few cycles, not in minutes. Players should be able to see if it's going to be an issue and have enough time to set up a cooling solution. I'd enjoy being encouraged to do things like circulating cold gas around equipment like this, while pulling the hot CO2 away so it can be cooled and scrubbed. Right now it's going to be far too much to manage for the vast majority of players.

I'm expecting this to get hot-fixed before the branch hits the rest of the alpha. Along with geysers - who knows what's going on there, seems like the world gen is spawning multiples of them on top of each other sometimes.

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6 minutes ago, Risu said:

Would be nice if convection was implemented. Give a nice breeze of death when you open the generator room door.
 

Definitely. I'm really hoping the devs are going to push the physics hard with this game. It already stands out from other colony builders because of that. I'm also hoping the incredibly viscous water is a performance compromise that will gradually lessen over time. Better fluids would really add a lot as well I think.

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I also had the Coal Generator overheat bug at first, then it runs normal afterwards.

Possible cause: overheat >> broken + disable bug (once broken it still continue to generate heat even when it is disabled)

Possible fix: cancel repair >> disable >> repair >> cooldown >> enable

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