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Sense of future for too-clever systems?


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14 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

Herein lies the problem with Klei communication style - we (as consumers) don't know whether implementations are bugs or features. It bothers me that the only way to find out is to report them as bugs and find out if they get addressed. If they don't get addressed, are they features?

From development perspective, if you are already sure on all the features, then there's no point in open beta - if beta is there, it means developers want to adjust features based on feedback they get, directly (from forums) and indirectly (from usage statistics for example). And if they want to adjust, it means there are things about which they are not sure if they are good or bad for the end goal of the game - that is are they features or bugs.

And I remember that I noticed several times since developers started to reply in some threads here, it worked exactly as Ipsquiggle described as what they want to avoid - all discussion stopped right there. So maybe the case with the sieve is to let everyone continue talking and let Klei themselves to continue weighting if fixed output is good or not without committing here to a change or no change. Maybe more of the latter as so many arguments were made already it will be hard to come up with new ones.

Of course you can argue that the purpose is not feedback but bug reports to save QA effort, but I personally doubt that would get any profit.

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59 minutes ago, miauly said:

From development perspective, if you are already sure on all the features, then there's no point in open beta

Beta by definition is feature complete.

59 minutes ago, miauly said:

but I personally doubt that would get any profit.

Not having to hire QA certainly brings savings.

@simonchvz To reply specifically to your opening post I firmly believe that fixed outputs are here to stay as they are at the core mechanics of the game. Volcanoes, Vents, Regolith, creatures, dupes etc are also fixed outputs. The game violates conservation of mass and energy at every opportunity. 

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1 hour ago, Grimgaw said:

What if we had variable 'COLOUR_RED'. Would it be fair to assume that programmer wanted colour red? Would that be a better analogy? 

No.

First, unless you have the source code, you can't make this argument about an observed number as a player. You have zero idea what the variable names are.

Second, the programmer's intent is the not the designer's intent. That a large part of the point of my two anecdotes. Programmers don't always implement what the designers intended, and the designers don't always know how something was implemented.

Keep in mind that the fixed output temperature of the water sieve is an implementation detail, not a feature, and not necessarily that visible. As a new player I didn't know about it until I started reading forums talking about it. Lots and lots of things go unnoticed within a development team because it's only a handful of guys, and they're all busy. All sorts of stuff comes out once thousands of players have their hands on it.

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34 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

Keep in mind that the fixed output temperature of the water sieve is an implementation detail, not a feature, and not necessarily that visible.

It's not an isolated example though and unless the devs were ignoring feedback for past two years they are very privy to fixed output debate. Furthermore since they just (re)introduced another fixed output I'd wager that's indeed their intent and not some unfortunate misunderstanding.

39 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

unless you have the source code,

We, as players, do though. That's why mods like this exist. 

43 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

That a large part of the point of my two anecdotes

I agree with your anecdotes, they are good anecdotes. Thank you for your anecdotes.

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20 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

It's not an isolated example though and unless the devs were ignoring feedback for past two years they are very privy to fixed output debate.

That's an entirely reasonable argument, and one with which I agree. I just wanted to point out the dangers of drawing too many conclusions from the presence of a particular number or implementation detail. Those can misleading all too often.

As for the source - that's not how mods work. Providing an Application Programming Interface for player changes is not revealing the source code. Nor is making modifications based on decompiling code (which is a PITA, frankly), because decompiled code assigns arbitrary variable names, not the original variable names.

As far as I know, Klei has not released the source, and doesn't intend to. If they have, I'd like to see where they've released it. As a general rule, you're not going to have source access to most commercial games. Stuff like that's worth money, since often there's an engine or significant libraries involved that can be used for other projects. Generally you only get source with group projects hosted on GitHub or something similar.

2 hours ago, simonchvz said:

At risk of derailing my own thread - Have you considered a counterflow heat exchanger?

I've built them in the past, but that didn't cross my mind this time. I'm not sure I have the space. That sounds weird, I know, but it's still early enough that I'm struggling to expand past the starting biome without introducing lots of polluted oxygen and slimelung into my base.

I could of course ignore that stuff and just accept the slimelung. Maybe I'm being overly cautious.

I also don't have any wheezeworts. My starting setup is surrounded by hot biomes and slime biomes. I only recently discovered a cold biome, and it's fairly far away.

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The problem with the water sieve is that it's a massive newbie trap. Nowhere in the description on the machine it says that it significantly increases it's water temperature. Like Gus, I also learned about fixed outputs by reading this forum.

I think it's ok if newbies lose their colonies because they built they farm next to a volcano or whatever, that's how you learn, but when the game acts behind your back and kills you with mechanic you couldn't possibly know without looking them outside of the game, well, that's just wrong.

So, for those reasons, I hope fixed output machines are revisited before release. I know there are mods already that fixes these, but the mayority of new players will play without mods.

 

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4 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

Not having to hire QA certainly brings savings.

I highly doubt that there's no QA on the project. From a player perspective, ONI is buggy, but from developer perspective, I can tell you that this level of "buggy" takes hell a lot of testing. QA efforts we are supposedly saving Klei by bug reports, if estimated from the corresponding forum section, are not comparable to what it usually takes to get the software working as ONI does.

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27 minutes ago, CodexDraco said:

The problem with the water sieve is that it's a massive newbie trap.

It sure is. 40 C doesn't sound so bad, but it'll break your farms, and your colony can end up starving easily.

I thought I knew better because I had 1300+ cycles in my first colony and survived, but another takeaway from my prior experience was that gas doesn't propagate heat very fast. I wasn't sufficiently careful about where I was moving the resulting hot water, though, and that got me.

I think I could probably have built the colony in such a way that the temperature increase didn't matter. I just didn't lay it out right to avoid problems, and that's going to be really easy for new players.

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13 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

Beta by definition is feature complete.

14 hours ago, miauly said:

Yes, but we haven't been playing a complete game yet. Infact, we'll be doing that at the end of May. Maybe we are just using wrong terminology and we aren't actually beta testing.

 

On 24/4/2019 at 6:16 AM, mathmanican said:

With the modding community quite active, I see very little reason to make a change here. The mod that accomplishes this is already in Steam. If they get rid of fixed outputs, a mod can refix them.  At this point, this comes down to player preference, which is precisely what mods allow. So I'll put a "Big Shrug" on this one. 

There is precedence of game developers using modders assets and ideas down the road. For instance, Age of Empires 2 once had a mod called "The Forgotten" which than became official sanctioned.

IMO, the mistake for Klei would be to not look a the modding community and see what they can officially implement. Yes, a lot of mods will be down to preference, but there are guaranteed to be mods which will have a very wide support because they implement logic changes.

Anyway, regarding the list: I have not been active for a while actually playing the game (having more fun actually with making new assets for when the time comes we can implement new art and animations!), so a lot of that list is new to me. I have always been very much in favour to make the water sieve's output temperature match its input, but now I'm like "meh". it isn't that big of a deal for me. I don't exploit it. It usually is a bit of a nuisance when you are sieving slush geyser polluted water, but nothing that is dominating my gameplay. I think that is the important thing to take out of potential exploits: If they determine the way you play the game in a significant way, then it really should be changed. It used to be like that with the water sieve, but Klei luckily brought in more options to do cooling.

The resource change exploit with the geysers is worrying though. I'd say that'd be the only exploit that new players will pick up on quickly and become dependant on that. That has to be fixed before the official launch of the game, which I fear the game will not be ready for. Between the bugs/glitches/exploits we have now and undoubtly the new bugs/glitches/exploits introduced by the next content update, I'd say it would be better to postpone the launch for atleast another month.

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Look...

 

I'm genuinly not going to point fingers. I don't care about who is right or who isn't, and neither do I care about the argument itself, but what concerns me is that another such topic is now on the verge of going down on semantics displayed above. The topic starter @simonchvz literally warned about this in his very first sentence and asked people to be forgiving. 2 pages in and we are in a downwards spiral.

Again, not pointing fingers so anybody feeling adressed personally, that's on them. However, did anyone consider what the developers feel about this? Do you think it's more or less likely they take a topic serious where everybody sticks to the point and discuss the issues, or vice versa a topic where they have to filter bickering and bagger from actual useful discussion?

I'd rather not have made this post because somebody will end up taking this personally, feel the need to adress me and put me in my spot, all the while drawing further attention away from the intention of this topic, but you know... I had to try?

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7 hours ago, Daxterr said:

You can literally download a mod in 10 seconds that will make the water sieve retain the temperature. If klei was thinking about changing it, there sure isn't any point of doing it now lol. 

Not for the sake of arguing with your point here, but just to make a case on how some people (me) view this: there's a difference between a mod and a fix. I view the game as a challenge - can I make things work given the setup developers provided? If yes, how smoothly, fast, aesthetically pleasing, etc? Any mod that alters mechanics will remove this purpose from the game and to some it will remove the main reason why they play. I suppose that is one of the roots of these bug-or-feature discussions.

Take sieve for example. I have seen here arguments against fix-temp along the lines of "making the game too easy", and for example now I'd say that same-temp is "making it too easy" - early-game you'd prefer your starting water back from lavatories in same temp rather than go through the hoops of cooling when you are still juggling with oxygen, energy and food. So for me (at my current stage of progress with ONI) enabling a mod that makes the sieve fix-temp will be making things easier for me - so denying the whole point why I play.

Before the last changes to cooling, sieve question was more important, because it allowed (as I get it) for easier cooling setups than those without fixed-temp stuff. And then it leaves players who play for "solving the challenge" in a somewhat unhappy state - for some reason, I feel a difference between playing the game "right as I view it" and "by the rules set by developers", and I'd prefer the latter. Yes, anyone can set their own rules - for example I do not touch pacus and I do not build on doors, both mechanics hardly making it to a "bug" status here on the forum.

Yes, there are various difficulty settings. And yes, there's the sandbox mode. And still - there's that purpose of "solving the game as it is laid out for us", and people who play for this may feel like some mechanics are making this experience way less fun than it could be. And because that's an open Early Access (not Beta, if we want to put terminology straight here) - people are trying to help the game by reporting what they feel can improve the game, make it more fun. At least that is why I chimed in a thread on Ranching mentioning pacus. I want to solve pacus, not mod pacus to how I want them - but I feel like the pacus piece of the puzzle is now broken because solutions are ridiculous (to my feeling of the game, which anyone is free to consider silly, but then forums are for everyone's view).

So that is one reason why people may be so persistent here to ask what is a bug and what is a feature.

Well, not to mention the risks of building around something for 1000 cycles (maybe even unintentionally as some matter-involving bugs are hard to notice) and then see it fully or partially collapse when a fix arrives - of course when it's EA that's expected, but fixes may come after the release as well.

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We do know though that fixed output temps are intended, because klei told us so a long time ago.

Where's the source? I don't remember.

I don't like it because then all manner of unintuitive choices become the most efficient. Intentionally avoid cooling water after it's condensed, instead, pipe it in to your machinery at 97C. Put your ATs in PW and control its temp with a sieve. Really kind of artificial munchkin stuff.

But without these things the only way to "cool" your asteroid would be by dumping hot stuff out into space. Could be steam. Could be sour gas, or rock vapor, whatever you have the patience to set up. Except, now we have the ice machine, which is a special different kind of magic.

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32 minutes ago, avc15 said:

now we have the ice machine, which is a special different kind of magic.

What i about the ice machine that gets on people`s nerves? It was confirmed to take different time and output different energy based on the input water temperature as well as it was confirmed that it will see further changes. I don`t think it`s fair to use it as an example at this point. Similarly the new steam turbine - true it has a fixed output but based on the temperature of the input it produces more heat around itself. Even id it removes energy from the system it still has a feel that higher temperture matters.

It`s different for the sieve. No matter the input the output is the same and the machine heat production is the same as well. Maybe this is what should be done. Leave the fixed output but make the machine produce more heat based on th input water temperature.

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6 hours ago, ishakaru said:

@Gus Smedstad Were you around when the latrines/sinks had a fixed output? And what's your take on them changing that and not the sieve at the same time? 

I think the general take on this is that the fixed output on the water sieve was critical for many approaches of long term survival. So, it wasn’t removed. Either that, or the two inputs and outputs, made it a less obvious quick fix. With some new powerful and much more obvious heat temperature tools, I think the only reason it isn’t fixed is because it’s low priority and mostly overlooked.

it’s not super important that it does heat deletion if used right. I agree that the problem is it adds a surprising amount of heat if used incorrectly. That said, I don’t think a newbie would need a forum to notice how hot the water comes out at. They’d mostly need the forum to realize they could try hot water and have less trouble. That’s pretty counter intuitive.

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17 hours ago, CodexDraco said:

Nowhere in the description on the machine it says that it significantly increases it's water temperature

I think this is the right answer as far as I'm concerned.  It needs to say in the tooltip or description when you build it that it outputs water at 40c.  Then newbies have a chance to realize this is as much a heat delete machine as it is a polluted water to water machine.  I don't know if it says anything about not cleaning germs in the water but that's another thing that newbies do not realize.  I like using it, and it's always in my bases as a heat deleter, not really as a water cleaner.

That being said, my current map has three slush geysers and it might be nice to get cold water out if I put cold polluted water in.  Or even water at the same temp as the machine out.

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1 hour ago, Denisetwin said:

That being said, my current map has three slush geysers and it might be nice to get cold water out if I put cold polluted water in.

I hear ya. Because I wanted this, had the joy of learning how to create a counter current heat exchanger. Send in -9C PW, and then learn how to build a heat exchanger of the right length to get out 4C regular water (with a change from -9C to 40C midway through).

This was a very fun side project for me, and I got to learn tons about heat exchangers.  Most of that time was not ingame, rather spent reading, designing, computing, and comparing different alternatives, only to finally implement one in game and then see how theoretical and actual don't agree.  Fun times. 

I'm not saying this is what everyone should do at all, but for me this was a fun side project. If they got rid of the fixed 40C output, I wouldn't have had this fun at this point (though in petro/ng builds, I'd eventually have learned it). 

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This thread had some really good responses and good-faith discussions, but unfortunately has gotten a bit testy and myopic so it's probably best all around if we leave it here.  Thanks to everyone for the responses!

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Just now, mathmanican said:

I hear ya. Because I wanted this, had the joy of learning how to create a counter current heat exchanger. Send in -9C PW, and then learn how to build a heat exchanger of the right length to get out 4C regular water (with a change from -9C to 40C midway through)

I really do not get this well, even though I read your posts and @biopon and  @Saturnus etc on it. I thought I understood after the first few posts, but by page 3 I was confused and by page 6 I was lost in temp shift plates other debates etc.   I think I got it was best to make a hydrogen tunnel with both pipes inside? What about temp shift plates?  What IS the right length?  The map I'm playing has two steam and two slush right next to each other and would be perfect for this but I do not play in debug, and don't know much about debug and the idea of building and rebuilding something in Survival to figure this out is intimidating.  I have six dupes.  Do you know how long that would take?  LOL  The steam room's water is around 55-65 and the tank of slush is around -5 or so.  I get there are maths that will tell me.  And I also get that kind of maths is not my forte.  Since Polluted water has a higher SHC, if I use a valve to make the water line only have half the content of the cold polluted water line, will that allow me to make a smaller tunnel and get cooler water at the end?    You've inspired me to try this.  Crossing my fingers.  

For those wondering this is the post I reference: 

 

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@Denisetwin I can't offer you formulas or a simple blueprint to copy since it depends on a lot of variables. (mass flow, specific heat capacity, the materials used for pipes and the transfer medium etc.) So you can't really get around experimenting with them.

However i've made several counterflow heat exchangers in past projects so here's the general guidelines I use when making them.

There are many different ways to make counterflow heat exchangers, all that is needed:

  • Two streams of matter flowing in opposite directions. This can be any combination of solid matter on conveyors, liquids or gases in pipes as well as liquids flowing in the world due to pressure and gravity and gases being moved through a tunnel by a difference in pressure.
  • A way to transfer heat between the two streams. If one of the matter streams is a liquid or gas in the world, you can put the other stream inside the same tiles and transfer heat directly but in most cases you will need a transfer medium. (one or more gas, liquid or solid tiles that are connected to both matter streams)

Some points regarding the streams themselves:

  • Try to ensure a constant flow in both directions for optimum efficiency, otherwise temperatures will spike. This can be mitigated by having a higher specific heat capacity in your transfer medium or just a more massive transfer medium.
  • Slower flow in both streams increases efficiency without making it longer.
  • Increasing the length of the streams increases efficiency without slowing the flow.
  • You can add more streams in parallel to increase total flow, but that comes with an extra challenge in making sure the heat transfers well between all the streams.

Now a few notes on the transfer of heat. If you imagine the two streams flowing horizontally in opposite directions, then your goal is to accelerate heat transfer vertically, but slow it horizontally:

H =======> C
   ^^^^^^
   vvvvvv
H <======= C

Vertical heat transfer is what makes the temperatures swap between the matter streams, while horizontal heat transfer (through the transfer medium) works to equalize both ends of the heat exchanger and reduces efficiency.

Building notes:

  • Radiant pipes where you want to encourage heat exchange. (where heat is most likely to flow vertically)
  • Insulated pipes where heat is likely to flow horizontally (bridging gaps, making turns.
  • High conductivity materials such as diamond are great as the transfer medium between pipes.
  • Tempshift plates accelerate heat transfer both vertically and horizontally so they can be a double-edged sword.

So last but not least, here's what you might consider (in terms of efficiency) a nearly ideal counterflow heat exchanger:

image.png.1d12dcec2f67b60d34bae0c1a569c2b7.png

Radiant pipes and diamond tiles surrounded by vacuum. Each diamond cell allows strong vertical heat transfer and no horizontal heat transfer. The bottom version can be done if you are exchanging heat between a liquid and a gas pipe (or conveyor and a pipe) and is the same effective length, but more compact.

Now of course this is somewhat impractical to build in most survival games but you can easily substitute metal tiles for diamond and insulated tiles (igneous or ceramic) for the vacuum spaces between the diamond, then seal the whole thing in an insulated tile wall.

I would highly recommend creating a sandbox/debug mode save to experiment with heat exchangers like this to determine a good enough size that you're happy with. Good luck! :)

Here's what the metal & insulated tile version could look like:

image.png.e02f7faeabe47e51e0cbf59456eda827.png

I should also note that these examples are pretty short in effective length (7 tiles of actual transfer) because of the space between each transfer cell. If you need high throughput and are short on space or materials, you may want to forego having insulated spaces between transfer cells entirely and get more effective length that way and use the most conductive transfer medium you can afford.

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Addendum:

I've done some reading in that counterflow heat exchange thread you linked and it seems my notions of using high conductivity tiles like diamond or metal are surpassed by their experiments using (diamond) tempshift plates and hydrogen. If that is easy enough to build for you, definitely try that out!

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