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Stop a Heat-Deleting Bug from Stealing your Turbine Power


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I noticed the issue when my hot rocks were only driving about half as many turbines as they was supposed to. Cutting steam pressure below 20kg solved the problem, and I did not think much more about it.

TBH there's usually not much need for very high pressure that couldn't be sorted in another way. If you want thermal buffering igneous drywall (worth about 100kg water) or dirt tempshifts (about 3-400kg water) are great options. 

 

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6 hours ago, biopon said:

TBH there's usually not much need for very high pressure that couldn't be sorted in another way. If you want thermal buffering igneous drywall (worth about 100kg water) or dirt tempshifts (about 3-400kg water) are great options. 

 

Good idea.

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43 minutes ago, Tonyroid said:

Good idea.

Were you able to gain any more understanding into what specifically is going on? Given your reach you must get a lot of input. FWIW I don't think the person you stickied on youtube really understands what clamping means. 

@mathmanican might have some insight if he were around more.

 

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Have you tried to put a mesh tile directly beneath your vents and run the tests again?

I touched on this a while back in a few threads where people were having issues with deletion/odd behaviours in temperature loss.

The mesh tile changes how the liquid falls and so also how it interacts with the surroundings. (see mathmans bead pump threads for more explanation)

You may have to move the vent further from the turbine as it will impact the localised temperature much quicker as it instantly boils off in the atmosphere, rather than falling until contact with a surface.

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1 hour ago, biopon said:

Were you able to gain any more understanding into what specifically is going on? Given your reach you must get a lot of input. FWIW I don't think the person you stickied on youtube really understands what clamping means. 

@mathmanican might have some insight if he were around more.

 

I'm not getting good feedback on that pinned comment. I don't think it explains the issue but it's not a bad place to start looking into it. @mathmanican does indeed seem like a good source to ask about it. 

1 minute ago, Lifegrow said:

Have you tried to put a mesh tile directly beneath your vents and run the tests again?

I touched on this a while back in a few threads where people were having issues with deletion/odd behaviours in temperature loss.

The mesh tile changes how the liquid falls and so also how it interacts with the surroundings. (see mathmans bead pump threads for more explanation)

You may have to move the vent further from the turbine as it will impact the localised temperature much quicker as it instantly boils off in the atmosphere, rather than falling until contact with a surface.

I didn't try that. It's a good idea, I'm running some variations on the theme right now and I'll mess around with that idea too.

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Hi @Tonyroid and @biopon. My initial thoughts on this were @Lifegrow's comment about the mesh tile. It's definitely not that. 

Here is what I've observed (or my best guess). 

  • Every so often, two adjacent (left-right) tiles with the same element will swap temperature, without correctly combining mass.  

I'm not sure how often, nor what causes it, though I'm sure we can figure it out. Why does this cause the problems? Simple, the 2kg liquid water dripping in will transform to steam (often in several tiles). The newly converted steam does not immediately combine with the existing steam, and it takes a bit to raise to the correct temp. The temp swapping can cause 400kg of steam to drop almost 10C, instantly, while less than 500g of steam raises 10C. Kinda insane. The higher the pressure, the more lost heat.  

First hypotheses (things to build experiments with):

  • This requires a liquid-gas change to recreate reliably (for now), but can probably work with any liquid. Why? You have to have something keeping the gasses at widely different masses. Liquids push gas sideways very easily. A door compressor of some sort might be able to cause the reverse to happen (heat small bits of gas, and then combine them with large cooler bits).  
  • The swapping happens on certain ticks of the game (gonna build a tick counter with liquid to find the exact ticks).

I'm currently building experiments to isolate, and reproduce reliably, this phenomenon. I've already witnessed it happen several times. If I can get it isolated perfectly, and it doesn't require liquid-gas phase changes, then the bug can be used in both directions (cool stuff, or heat stuff). And then we wait for a fix.

It is definitely a bug. To get it fixed, we've got to isolate it, recreate it, report it, and then unfortunately wait....

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Well, it might not be exactly a "swap" temperature issues. It's not too hard to recreate. 

test.thumb.png.bdcc42b4b7456b7584e593ba4888041e.png

I started with 10000kg of steam at 700K.  I'm pumping in 1kg/s liquid on the right. Notice how 5kg of newly created steam caused 10000kg to drop over 10K. A few moments later, another 5kg of steam caused the temp drop to 679K.  

How did 5kg of liquid, at any temp, even alter the temp of 10000kg of steam at all. :)  It's shear insanity. Can we do this in reverse, using large amounts of liquid with small globs of gas?  I tried several things, but was unable. The above idea is hopefully enough to help you track it down. It definitely seems to be a side-side swapping issue.

I can think of a way to fix this issue for turbines. Just prevent the cold steam from transferring heat sideways.

fix2.png.0e7d720b9e929a5fca66287ea8db4dea.png

 

@Tonyroid, try using the f4 layout to see what is happening. The material overlay is very useful, and I didn't see you use it at all in your video. 

  • The tempshift plates help because they get the temps closer together faster, hence preventing as much sideways shenanigan transfer. Maybe that's what I'll call this bug - "Sideways heat transfer shenanigans."
  • The liquid approach works because the liquid comes in and displaces the crude left. On the next tick, the liquid instantly combines with the steam above (you can see the contents raise 2kg if you are on slow speed). If you enable the material overlay, you can see this all very well. 
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The "fix" above isn't perfect. The tile above the vent is the coldest and fluctuates greatly in mass, and occasionally plays shenanigans with the tile left of it. I'm getting around 500W with that set up, with 400kg of steam in the chamber. In your vid, with that single tile deleted, the thing starts and stops repeatedly.  The single tile left of the vent gets things going, and raises quite high in temp (though not all the way to 555W).  The liquid option provides super fast heat transfer (as you get a double bonus for liquid-liquid transfer). The more equalized the temps, the less likely you'll encounter significant sideways shenanigans. 

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Here's one more build. I think this one gets more than the theoretical max of 567ish (that you mention in your vid), though I'd have to do some serious stress testing to verfiy that claim. I'm getting over 600W periodically, though it fluctuates between 540 and 620ish right now with about 20kg/tile in the room. 

more.png.2fee95a7f0079e497ec3b21bc039ded4.png

Assuming side-ways shenanigans is the real issue, then this build works in reverse. The high mass tiles are on the right (above the crude). Those also happen to be the cool tiles. So when temps swap around, you get cool temps overtaking low mas tiles, and high temps overtaking high mass tiles.  Gets you extra power for free. :)  The lower the pressure, in the room, the greater the difference in mass between tiles on the right and left, which yields more bonus power from temp swapping shenanigans. 

I dropped the pressure down to 4kg/tile, and now I'm getting this. (ignore the overheat issue. It occured from an intermediate step, but isn't an issue now). 

wierdness.png.1d55a8fba8754d9c3a890ec581b70f23.png

The 705W is not constant, as it fluctuates quite a bit as the side-ways shenanigans has it's fun. Rather than stress test it for 50 cycles, I decided to do a race.  Which build can fill 12 batteries first? 

Spoiler

race.thumb.png.67df20df8cea4096cbc3141ac11b7a6b.png

Looks like the one employing side-ways shenanigans wins. The left was at 19.5 (Tony's build in the video) when the right side reached full capacity.  They are pretty close. The right side was ahead the entire race. 

I'm pretty sure we could exploit this even more. :) Just have one row of cool steam open up to 3 rows of hot steam, for a better pressure difference.  Here is the build (and it wins now with the other batteries at 18.5 when the right hits 20). 

better.thumb.png.39f64cbe7789eed7577f927e2d51f862.png

I'm sure we can do even better. I think I'm getting the hang of this bug..... We can cool stuff down, or heat stuff up. Mwhahahahahahahahahah!

 

 

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For what it's worth this setup has been running for well over 1000 cycles and is definitely not heat negative, based on the number of turbines vs. amount of magma used:

image.thumb.png.ab947f18c98cb2a646e5bb3d6750feba.png

I originally added the "pit" under the vents to prevent the turbines stalling for 1 tick when they say they have their input blocked due to the temporarily appearing water. I also have the heat input on the opposite side - it does not much matter with such a narrow build but still, generally it's bad practice.

It looks like I accidentally did two things that mitigate the bug? Note I have 800+kg steam in these, as I'm using them for boiling pwater and it seems impossible to replace the correct amount of water with just math + a valve.

Observing these for a while, pwater boils to steam in 2000g chunks on a single tile, and on the next tick it's 60+kg steam at 197+ C. It keeps growing in mass and temperature up to 250kg and 198.5C, then it's 2000g pwater again. The tile above fluctuates between 600-800kg steam and no visible change in temperarure.

So in any case, this seems safe from the bug, even if it does not exploit it for a beneficial effect.

 

 

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Your analysis and experiments live up to your reputation @mathmanican I love that you may have found a way to reverse the process and generate extra heat. With your feedback and all the other buzz that is happening I think I may have to do a followup video to fill in all the new information for a more complete picture.

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9 hours ago, mathmanican said:
  •  

It is definitely a bug. To get it fixed, we've got to isolate it, recreate it, report it, and then unfortunately wait....

You forgot one step. Exploit the F out of it. :D

But seriously, what I'm getting from a quick review of your posts and Tony's video is that to minimize the impact of the bug, have a solid tile to the left of where the liquid water gets input and to keep the steam pressure down at more realistic pressures somewhere in the 5-20kg range? Correct? 

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Just now, biopon said:

You can do either, no need for both. Steam at 20kg or less seems to marginalize the effect, and limiting water to one tile probably mitigates it completely.

Sweet, thanks. I've been sick the past few days so my brain is a bit fuzzy still. 

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Just to report in on a multi-turbine setup, this has been working reasonably well for me:

image.thumb.png.ca558d18345b724938685a3d7635e400.png

From left to right, I'm getting 850W, 820W and 740W. Given that 2 SC ATs should almost, but not quite, run three turbines full on (they come short with 270kDTU or so) this is pretty reasonable. I seem to be generating 10 more watts than I'm spending on the ATs.

The metal tiles and tempshifts (alu & copper) are sort of a first attempt at drawing heat towards the cold side. It's working OK with the cold turbine on the right pulling in 185C steam, the hot one on the left draws 200.5C.

Thanks @Tonyroid for highlighting this bug. So much power would have been wasted...

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