Jump to content

Recommended Posts

I added a large space to my base and since there were some nasty gases in that area before I made near vacuum there before I broke the barriers separating my base and that new room. The interior of my base consists of gas permeable tiles and ladders, there is nothing that obstructs gas flow, yet five cycles after I did so, there is still 1/3 pressure in the new area compared to the rest of the base.

I believe the problem is, there is no wind in the game. All gas tiles are stationary and the gas just diffuses around. That means if there is very small pressure difference, the gas diffuses very slowly even though on large distances the pressure difference may be rather large.

The game should support wind. That means, when the game balances pressures in two adjacent tiles by moving some gas from one to the other, it should remember it did so and next turn it should move similar, slightly smaller amount of gas between the two in the same direction again. Only after that it should compare pressures, balance them again and add this to the "wind" amount from the previous step. That means, if even after the "wind" acted there is still pressure difference in the same direction, it should add the new difference to the previous one, making the wind faster.

I am pretty sure this would allow equalizing pressures over large distances much faster than the current game supports. It would come with some natural effects, such as opening door to a vacuum chamber should fill it very fast and then even make overpressure in it. The effect needs to be dampened to prevent oscillations but that can be achieved by making the "wind" amount slightly smaller than was the original gas transfer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It sounds like it would be an issue with how there are multiple kinds of gases and how there can't be more than one in a square. Also vacuums get filled up awfully fast already.

If anything, doing what the game already does, but faster, would help a lot more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Yokhen said:

If anything, doing what the game already does, but faster, would help a lot more.

This whole suggestion is about how the game could do things faster.

If you have a row of 30 tiles, and the pressure at one end is twice the pressure at the other end, the difference between adjacent tiles is just 2%. That's why the game is so slow to equalize the pressure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To provide some evidence, I made a simple model in Excel sheet.

I simulated 30 tiles of gas. At start, first 15 of them had 1000 units of gas in them, and the other 15 had 2000 units of gas in them.

Here is how the pressure equalization goes on in standard "diffusion" case as it is implemented in the game:

FyEXaLC.png

Pressure is on vertical axis, cell number is on horizontal. Each line displays the situation around the row after certain number of iterations.

Notice that after 100 iterations, there is still quite a lot of difference between ends of the row. And the process gets the slower the smaller the pressure difference gets.

Now, here is a simulation how it goes when "wind" is included:

OgPCxLr.png

After just 20 iterations, the situation is already better than it was with standard diffusion. And at iteration 50, the pressure is already almost perfectly even around the whole row of cells.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/23/2017 at 11:19 AM, Kruleworld said:

I think the only way to move gasses around without a pipe is up/down because hydrogen rises and carbon dioxide falls. if you need to go horizontally, you'll need to pump it, i guess.

Which is the stupid part about this. In reality, if two rooms are right next to each other and one room has only 1/3 of the pressure it would equalize in a matter of minutes. Gasses move rather quickly irl.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Palpetinus said:

Which is the stupid part about this. In reality, if two rooms are right next to each other and one room has only 1/3 of the pressure it would equalize in a matter of minutes. Gasses move rather quickly irl.

To be fair it depends on the size of the opening relative to the size of the room, the length of the channel, and the position of the opening. You can create some pretty significant turbulence by suddenly opening a narrow channel between two rooms under a pressure gradient.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...