what's the methodology behind determining the material cost of an object?

[igtenos]

Recently started a new base for QOL2 and had to build some tempshift plates for a bristle blossom farm. It got me wondering: why do these things require 800kg of material to make for a tiny little one tile patch?

Is there a method in determining the material construct an object in the game?

[fishoutofwater]

11 minutes ago, igtenos said:

Recently started a new base for QOL2 and had to build some tempshift plates for a bristle blossom farm. It got me wondering: why do these things require 800kg of material to make for a tiny little one tile patch?

Is there a method in determining the material construct an object in the game?

actually the effect is 3x3

[Cypher-7]

If I am not mistaken the 800kg is the mass of the tile. If it was only 50 the amount of energy that tile could hold would be a lot less therefor making it bad at being a temp shift plate. I would have to double check in game though.

[SharraShimada]

Temp shift plates are there to make a huge improvement in heat transfers. They have to be expensive. 

And you can always see, what something will cost you, when you select the object, and move the mouse into the world. Under the cursor the material cost is displayed.

[MorsDux]

Tbh most of the tempshift plate applications dont need huge energy buffers, but we have no choice as there is only one.

this is not necessarily a bad thing, some systems need 20-30 cycles of running just to bring the insane amount of mass up to operating temperature. This can account for some kind of extra challange, but for one i would love to have a “radiant” type of tempshift plate with less mass. 

As i never use metal for tempshift, only diamond, i also never seem to run out of it, so resource management side of it would not get affected much as normally you get 200 tons or so of diamond on an average map. 

Also once the rail systems are available you can exchange heat at an insane rate using diamond packets transported through diamond window tiles. This makes you require only 1-2 tempshift plates per heat transfer chamber. 

All that in mind i think it wouldnt hurt the gameplay to have a smaller mass variant of plate available to use. 

[KittenIsAGeek]

11 hours ago, MorsDux said:

Tbh most of the tempshift plate applications dont need huge energy buffers, but we have no choice as there is only one.

Not entirely accurate.  You can test the  'energy buffer' effects on thermal transfers by choosing several different temp-shift plates that have similar thermal transfer properties but different heat capacities.  The total heat capacity is a function of mass and the Specific Heat Capacity of the material, but since mass will be the same, we can only change the SHC.  Anyway, my understanding is that heat energy transfer is something like this: Item A -> thermal plate -> Item B.  So energy transfer is a function of the thermal transfer rate and the amount of thermal energy that can be buffered at any one time.

For example, a refined copper tempshift plate has a SHC of 0.129 and a thermal conductivity of 60.  A refined iron tempshift plate has a SHC of 0.449 and a thermal conductivity of 55.  The copper plate, then, can hold 103.2k joules of thermal energy per degree C while the iron holds 359.2k.   So if you have an intermittent source of thermal energy, the iron will buffer 28% more thermal energy than copper while at the same time transferring heat at roughly the same rate.

Lets say you have a metal volcano spewing out super hot metal and spilling it into a pool of water.  In this case you have a huge amount of thermal energy that is introduced to the system periodically.  You want to disperse the heat quickly, so you want a high thermal transfer rate. At the same time, you don't want your water to boil off, so you need to balance the transfer rate with how much heat your system can buffer.  Lets suppose your pool is a 4x4 pool of about 1000kg water which will require 66.86 million joules of energy to raise 1 degree.  Lets say you also put copper thermal plates in.  That's another 1.6 million joules.  If you used iron, on the other hand, you add 5.75 million.  It isn't a lot compared to the entire pool of water, but it is the same as another full tile of water when you compare it with the copper.  It could make the difference between whether the eruption boils your pool away or not.

Of course, most people use Diamond for tempshift plates because they get the best of both worlds.  It has a SHC of 0.516 and a TC of 80.  However, it is important to show that the energy buffering capabilities of the plates are very useful and sometimes are the desired function.  The best buffer right now is dirt, which unfortunately has issues with high temperatures.  Cement and Sand Cement (available via Sandbox but not in the game normally) would definitely be the best.  To compare with the above example, using either one in the pool would add almost 20m more joules of thermal buffering -- an extra 30%.  That's pretty significant.

[MorsDux]

4 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Not entirely accurate.  You can test the  'energy buffer' effects on thermal transfers by choosing several different temp-shift plates that have similar thermal transfer properties but different heat capacities.  The total heat capacity is a function of mass and the Specific Heat Capacity of the material, but since mass will be the same, we can only change the SHC.  Anyway, my understanding is that heat energy transfer is something like this: Item A -> thermal plate -> Item B.  So energy transfer is a function of the thermal transfer rate and the amount of thermal energy that can be buffered at any one time.

For example, a refined copper tempshift plate has a SHC of 0.129 and a thermal conductivity of 60.  A refined iron tempshift plate has a SHC of 0.449 and a thermal conductivity of 55.  The copper plate, then, can hold 103.2k joules of thermal energy per degree C while the iron holds 359.2k.   So if you have an intermittent source of thermal energy, the iron will buffer 28% more thermal energy than copper while at the same time transferring heat at roughly the same rate.

Lets say you have a metal volcano spewing out super hot metal and spilling it into a pool of water.  In this case you have a huge amount of thermal energy that is introduced to the system periodically.  You want to disperse the heat quickly, so you want a high thermal transfer rate. At the same time, you don't want your water to boil off, so you need to balance the transfer rate with how much heat your system can buffer.  Lets suppose your pool is a 4x4 pool of about 1000kg water which will require 66.86 million joules of energy to raise 1 degree.  Lets say you also put copper thermal plates in.  That's another 1.6 million joules.  If you used iron, on the other hand, you add 5.75 million.  It isn't a lot compared to the entire pool of water, but it is the same as another full tile of water when you compare it with the copper.  It could make the difference between whether the eruption boils your pool away or not.

Of course, most people use Diamond for tempshift plates because they get the best of both worlds.  It has a SHC of 0.516 and a TC of 80.  However, it is important to show that the energy buffering capabilities of the plates are very useful and sometimes are the desired function.  The best buffer right now is dirt, which unfortunately has issues with high temperatures.  Cement and Sand Cement (available via Sandbox but not in the game normally) would definitely be the best.  To compare with the above example, using either one in the pool would add almost 20m more joules of thermal buffering -- an extra 30%.  That's pretty significant.

Ok but why wasnt I entirely accurate? I said most uses. I have on my map 10-12 places I am using tempshift plates, and I only have 1 that benefits from the current mass, the rest could produce the same results with 10% of the current mass. 

[SkunkMaster]

On 3/2/2019 at 2:14 AM, MorsDux said:

Ok but why wasnt I entirely accurate? I said most uses. I have on my map 10-12 places I am using tempshift plates, and I only have 1 that benefits from the current mass, the rest could produce the same results with 10% of the current mass. 

In which case you could just use the cheaper materials maybe ? Something like say mafic rock ? 

[MorsDux]

11 minutes ago, SkunkMaster said:

In which case you could just use the cheaper materials maybe ? Something like say mafic rock ? 

Mafic rock has a terrible heat transfer rate, why would it be acceptable in most cases? Some cases it could be ok and I use granite sometimes just to save some diamond but those are cases where the heat transfer rate doesnt have to be high. Most of my uses though slow heat transfer would make my builds bulky. Diamond is like 25 times as fast as granite. 

[SkunkMaster]

My argument was just that you could adapt the materials used depending on the task at hand? 

[MorsDux]

9 minutes ago, SkunkMaster said:

My argument was just that you could adapt the materials used depending on the task at hand? 

Yes I do adapt. I could just do with tsp version that is less mass. I said why. You seem a bit dense so im out