Mesh tiles need to be fixed

[Tenedas]

It's been a while since the devs nerfed the mesh and airflow tiles not permitting any drywall or tempshift plate to be built behind them.

This change seems consistent with other kinds of tiles but raised a problem for space buildings. These tiles would allow gases and liquids(mesh tiles) to flow into space without solution.

So, another round of balance changes took place to keep consistency among the different tile's types. Devs added a built-in "wall" behind mesh and airflow tiles and the problem seems solved.

All this iteration to reach consistency among tiles ended up there and seems there's no plan to re-iterate more the concept. Yet the mesh tile stays fairly unbalanced compared to the other.

Main concern to me are:

• Mesh and Airflow tiles blocks "zero" lumen in space making it better than window tiles (and i hope is unintended behavior)
• Placing a liquid vent on top of a mesh tile in space (vacuum) without drywall behind the vent allows the liquid to transfer heat to the mesh tile. 

What this mean for player is:

1. unexpected behavior from these tiles compared to the one everyone could expect.
2. make the window tile useless for it's main feature.
3. the mesh tile behavior with liquid in space is inconsistent with all the other space's interactions and furthermore with it's twin the airflow tile that doesn't allow gasses from a vent to transfer heat to them in space without drywall. Not to mention that the mesh tile it self placed in space in contact with another solid tile doesn't allow heat transfer.

i'm curious to know what other player thinks on the topic and if they feels like the mesh tile is acting as intended or not

[Nebbie]

The window tile is useful for providing a barrier to fluids that doesn't block very much light, useful if you want to pressurize your solar panel area, or have dripped water cooling your robominers.

The issue I have is that any tile you can't put drywall behind means that if you ever change anything, you get space exposure for a bit. They really should just let drywall happen behind tiles.

There is also a really hilarious feature of a patch about a week before launch, where because ladders were altered to act like solid tiles to enable build-over, they ended up acting like mesh tiles do, so you could use ladders in place of drywall in most places!

[Risu]

I assume they don't want to allow backwall buildings behind tiles because of tempshift plates, which would either effectively upgrade a tile's conductivity, or REALLY screw up an insulated tile.
 

[Tenedas]

5 minutes ago, Risu said:

I assume they don't want to allow backwall buildings behind tiles because of tempshift plates, which would either effectively upgrade a tile's conductivity, or REALLY screw up an insulated tile.
 

i understand that and i it brings consistency between mesh airflow tiles and the other types.

What i don't like is the fact that mesh tiles can transfer heat with liquids in the vacuum without drywall. Honestly doesn't even look as an intended behavior.

 

Furthermore in my advise both mesh and airflow should not allow 100% light to pass but block at least the same amount of light a window tile does. Again doesn't look like an intended feature to me but more like an unintended behavior.

 

[Segato]

2 hours ago, Tenedas said:

Placing a liquid vent on top of a mesh tile in space (vacuum) without drywall behind the vent allows the liquid to transfer heat to the mesh tile. 

I dont understand, if you do this the liquid will despair so how it transfer heat?

[Tenedas]

It shouldn't happen but it is happening. That the reason of the post^^

[nakomaru]

4 hours ago, Tenedas said:

i'm curious to know what other player thinks on the topic and if they feels like the mesh tile is acting as intended or not

I do! Mesh and airflow tiles and their very unique properties enable a variety of clever designs, which makes for a fun game!

[greydaze]

I did some testing in sandbox and there seems to be an interesting mechanics on how liquids drip and how they dissipate in space. Some things i found is that water dripping from a vent with a mesh tile directly beneath will instantly vanish within the tile. Place the mesh tile one space beneath the vent and the water drips right thru it.  A flat 3 wide regular tile surface the water doesnt make it the end tiles. As oppose to a diagonal setup of regular tiles where the water continues to drip several steps down the "stairs" before completely dissipating.

[nakomaru]

3 hours ago, greydaze said:

there seems to be an interesting mechanics on how liquids drip and how they dissipate in space.

Great find, reproduced.

Spoiler

[mathmanican]

5 hours ago, greydaze said:

Some things i found is that water dripping from a vent with a mesh tile directly beneath will instantly vanish within the tile. Place the mesh tile one space beneath the vent and the water drips right thru it.  A flat 3 wide regular tile surface the water doesnt make it the end tiles. As oppose to a diagonal setup of regular tiles where the water continues to drip several steps down the "stairs" before completely dissipating.

These are great finds. They are completely consistent with how liquids act everywhere else. The liquids act the exact same when not in space The issue is that the liquid "beads" when the mesh tile is directly under the vent. You can see the beads form in the material overlay (they only form on the right most vent). Beads don't form when falling down stairs either, unless there is too much liquid, or you have a second liquid under the given liquid. 

When liquid is in bead form, the liquid interacts with the environment (hence vanishes in space, interchanges temperatures, etc.). When the liquid is not in bead form, it does not interact with the environment. It essentially enters another dimension, teleports to the bottom of the fall, and then reappears there.  That's what you are seeing. You can find more details on the beads in the bead pump, bypass pump, and waterfall posts. 

Now, whether this is intended behavior or not is another question. What you have seen is 100% consistent with the rest of the world, not unique to space. 

1 hour ago, nakomaru said:

Great find, reproduced.

Ah!!!!! You bug reported my favorite mechanics.  Oh no............  Fingers crossed they'll miss this one.   Till then, we all get a tiny lesson in ONI liquid physics. 

10 hours ago, Tenedas said:

Placing a liquid vent on top of a mesh tile in space (vacuum) without drywall behind the vent allows the liquid to transfer heat to the mesh tile.

Because the liquid turns into a bead.  It's the same everywhere else in the world, not just space. This has some valuable uses. 

7 hours ago, Segato said:

I dont understand, if you do this the liquid will despair so how it transfer heat?

See above.

One more tidbit.  You can keep the water beads formed for as long as you want, cooling down mesh tiles the entire way down, by just building more mesh tiles. If you put a tile to the side (regular or airflow), then the beads will disappear at this level and teleport to the bottom. You can also extract heat (cooling) from this, as the liquid is there to conduct heat. So it allows you to somewhat cool things in space. 

Spoiler

 

[nakomaru]

Haha! Sorry, I should have checked in. I have no dog in this fight, I am just happy to understand it now.

We are doing some cross posting, but this image illustrates it very simply so I wanted to link it here too:

[Nebbie]

I would rather liquids always form beads, from a consistency perspective, although I would guess that quite a few contraptions rely on preventing them doing so. Ideally we wouldn't really want such contraptions because more intended mechanics and buildings would take their place.

[Tenedas]

2 hours ago, mathmanican said:

These are great finds. They are completely consistent with how liquids act everywhere else. The liquids act the exact same when not in space The issue is that the liquid "beads" when the mesh tile is directly under the vent. You can see the beads form in the material overlay (they only form on the right most vent). Beads don't form when falling down stairs either, unless there is too much liquid, or you have a second liquid under the given liquid. 

When liquid is in bead form, the liquid interacts with the environment (hence vanishes in space, interchanges temperatures, etc.). When the liquid is not in bead form, it does not interact with the environment. It essentially enters another dimension, teleports to the bottom of the fall, and then reappears there.  That's what you are seeing. You can find more details on the beads in the bead pump, bypass pump, and waterfall posts. 

Now, whether this is intended behavior or not is another question. What you have seen is 100% consistent with the rest of the world, not unique to space. 

Ah!!!!! You bug reported my favorite mechanics.  Oh no............  Fingers crossed they'll miss this one.   Till then, we all get a tiny lesson in ONI liquid physics. 

Because the liquid turns into a bead.  It's the same everywhere else in the world, not just space. This has some valuable uses. 

See above.

One more tidbit.  You can keep the water beads formed for as long as you want, cooling down mesh tiles the entire way down, by just building more mesh tiles. If you put a tile to the side (regular or airflow), then the beads will disappear at this level and teleport to the bottom. You can also extract heat (cooling) from this, as the liquid is there to conduct heat. So it allows you to somewhat cool things in space. 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I don't think is consistent with the vacuum interaction at all. All materials exchange no heat in vacuum i understand that mesh tile in space is working thanks to its built in dry wall but yet doesnt seems to be consistent with other built-in "drywalls" in space.

Let's take as example a mechanized airlock which have a built-in drywall after recent patches. Why no heat exchange happen there when i drop a liquid? Even with a closed dore in space there's no exchange.

Looks more as unintended behaviour to me even if i get your point: "the inconsistency is consistent within it self^^"

[PhailRaptor]

37 minutes ago, Tenedas said:

All materials exchange no heat in vacuum

That's the thing, though.  While the liquid as "beaded" inside the Mesh Tile, the Mesh Tile is no longer in vacuum.  It is in water.  The water becomes the transfer medium, filling what was previously vacuum, and re-engaging all thermal transfer properties in that tile space.

The big question is whether this is intended or not.  It doesn't seem intended, but only Klei can decide that.

[Tenedas]

Airflow tiles with gases passing through them doesn't act like this. I'm not sure which one is the "unintended" behaviour honestly but I'd bet kn the mesh tile.

What's the point to have drywall or complex system in space if i can just transfer heat with mesh tiles alone.

Furthermore more both airflow and mesh allow for 100% light passing and i'd bet is non intended either. I don't expect any new player to "intuitively" understand to build mesh/airflow tiles agains window tile to allow light to pass ^^

[nakomaru]

1 hour ago, Tenedas said:

What's the point to have drywall or complex system in space if i can just transfer heat with mesh tiles alone.

You can't... you still need a medium...

Of course airflow doesn't act like this with gas, because gas doesn't have drip physics.

The medium determines the light fall off, and if the medium is vacuum, it's 0. For glass, it's not. Is this unintuitive?

Mesh and airflow are magical in many ways because they allow for interesting and useful builds. I don't understand why you seem to want these mechanics removed from the game.

There is already a very good reason to allow drywall behind tiles @Nebbie said: to let you change designs in space. But even then, building in space means the stakes are higher in this sense, so I don't mind it the way it is. I guess we would need a background-buildings-overlay if they added this in again.

[addendum] I do think it's not obvious what the medium is based on tooltips, so I've added this suggestion.

[Tenedas]

Never talked about removing^^

I'd like to see them fixed, maybe with drywalls allowed, it's up to the devs.

To me the medium of a tile is the material it is built itself with.

The game does not simulate real physic and should use the same policy that doesn't allow two adjacent solid tiles to not exchange heat in vacuum for all states of materials.

The other possible change i see is allowing other types of heat transfers too in space vacuum.

I honestly can't see why the only case it should be valid is the one among solid meshtile made of metal and all the liquid states of matter and justify it only with the dripping mechanic.

Maybe a solution would be exactly change the way water interact with environment while dripping in space

[nakomaru]

8 minutes ago, Tenedas said:

To me the medium of a tile is the material it is built itself with.

Then we can't have mesh or airflow tiles. There are no shared elements per tile in this world.

[Tenedas]

I think on the contrary there's a lot of shared elements per tile^^

I can have liquid pipes, gas pipes, liquid bridge, gas bridge, cables, solid tiles etc... All shared in one tile.

Someone could argue it's layer based but yet if we take as example a liquid bridge it share within the same layer the out and in tiles with liquid pipes 

Ofc i m not pretending to enforce or defend any particular point. Just exploring the topic to understand the community and maybe the dev points of view on the matter

[nakomaru]

Those are buildings. We were talking about media. Yes, you can have multiple buildings and debris in one tile. That's precisely how mesh tiles allow for another medium to take it's place. They act as debris.

It seems they could easily add code to block light to nerf mesh tiles if they wanted. And it's not impossible to imagine them recoding the physics to allow for two media per tile, but that is probably an infeasible task at this stage.

[suxkar]

1 hour ago, nakomaru said:

Those are buildings. We were talking about media. Yes, you can have multiple buildings and debris in one tile. That's precisely how mesh tiles allow for another medium to take it's place. They act as debris.

It seems they could easily add code to block light to nerf mesh tiles if they wanted. And it's not impossible to imagine them recoding the physics to allow for two media per tile, but that is probably an infeasible task at this stage.

A (probably?) feasible solution would be to make mesh tiles treat what they contain as if they were a pipe. This way the mesh tile can behave as a proper tile and contain gas AND exchange heat with it. The main thing is: do we want this instead of what we have? I agree with what you said before. There are weird but useful builds that make use of how air flow and mesh tiles work that I would not sacrifice in the name of consistency or realism.

[Tenedas]

I agree on difference between tiles and media but if we think on how a gas pipe and a liquid pipe can share a gas and a liquid media in the same tile (maybe some solid debris too) i don't see it hardly achievable in practise.

What i am looking for is the perception on how and if it should be fixed to be consistent with the other space interaction or not.

To me, even if it stays like that, will continue to be a special case interaction shared among mesh tiles and all the matter in liquid state. 

The light nerf maybe is straightforward from the programming side and maybe based on the simplicity of the task I'm puzzled on if to consider it a bug or not. Either way it's counter intuitive.