Liquid pipe material goof?

[psusi]

So liquid pipes are mostly made of raw minerals... except that instead of being able to use mafic rock, you can use wolframite.

[caffeinated21]

I think wolframite dates back to before radiant pipes, when it was the highest thermal conductivity material. I think they allowed it as a kind of ‘stand in’. 
 

My guess on mafic is that b/c it’s twice as good an insulator as igneous rock, it’d be a little OP and disincentivized folks from investing in ceramic production. 

[psusi]

7 hours ago, caffeinated21 said:

I think wolframite dates back to before radiant pipes, when it was the highest thermal conductivity material. I think they allowed it as a kind of ‘stand in’. 
 

My guess on mafic is that b/c it’s twice as good an insulator as igneous rock, it’d be a little OP and disincentivized folks from investing in ceramic production. 

Strange... you can use mafic rock and not wolframite to build gas pipes.

[DarkMaster13]

On 27/12/2019 at 12:34 AM, caffeinated21 said:

I think wolframite dates back to before radiant pipes, when it was the highest thermal conductivity material. I think they allowed it as a kind of ‘stand in’. 
 

My guess on mafic is that b/c it’s twice as good an insulator as igneous rock, it’d be a little OP and disincentivized folks from investing in ceramic production. 

That's not the only raw mineral you can build most mineral objects out of, but not liquid pipes and insulated liquid pipes.  Fossil can also be used to build any raw mineral object like tiles, ladders, cots, decorative objects, some stations, gas pipes, and even the rocket cargo container.  Regular and insulated liquid pipes are the only things that have this strange exception where they're allowed to be built out of wolframite and tungstan but not fossil or mafic rock.  Most likely because those types of mineral did not exist when the construction list for them was last updated.

Mafic rock isn't a great insulator.  It has a lower heat conductivity score than igneous rock, but has an extremely low specific heat capacity of 0.2.  So while it takes longer to transfer heat, it itself heats up or cools down very quickly.  You divide the conductivity by the SHC to find out how effective it moves heat.  That puts mafic fairly middle of the road for rocks, but on the side of being a better conductor than insulator.  There is no balance reason you shouldn't be able to make liquid pipes out of mafic rock or fossil, unless for some reason they want it to be very annoying to build liquid pipes in rust biomes you don't care about heat transfer on.

Mafic: 1 / 0.2 = 5 conductivity

Sandstone: 2.9 / 0.8 = 3.625 conductivity

Igneous: 2 / 1 = 2 conductivity

Sedimentary/obsidian: 2 / 0.2 = 10 conductivity

Granite: 3.39 / 0.79 = 4.29 conductivity

Fossil: 2 / 0.91 = 2.198 conductivity

Ceramic: 0.62 / 0.84 = 0.738 conductivity

Wolframite: 15 / 0.134 = 111.94 conductivity

Tungstan: 60 / 0.134 = 447.76 conductivity

[caffeinated21]

Dark master- where are you getting that formula from? If you care about thermal stability SHC matters. If you’re separating a hot area and a cold area, and want to minimize heat transferred, conductivity is what matters*.

Edit: decided to do a test out of curiosity: Materials are, from top to bottom: insulation, ceramic, mafic, and igneous; then repeated in their non-insulated variants. 1000kg of diamond on either side, starting at 0 and 100C. Tiles start at 50C. As you can see, mafic is a better insulator than igneous (holds up for the insulated varietals too). What surprised me a bit is that in this case, insulated igneous was still better than a regular tile of insulation.

 

[psusi]

5 hours ago, caffeinated21 said:

What surprised me a bit is that in this case, insulated igneous was still better than a regular tile of insulation.

That's because the net TC with the regular tile of insulation is the average of the TC of the insulation and whatever it is exchanging heat with.  Insulated tiles and pipes only care about their own reduced TC.

[Coolthulhu]

10 hours ago, psusi said:

Insulated tiles and pipes only care about their own reduced TC.

Is there a thread that documents it? In earlier versions of the game, lower TC was used for all heat exchanges, but this has changed since then.

[psusi]

3 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

Is there a thread that documents it? In earlier versions of the game, lower TC was used for all heat exchanges, but this has changed since then.

Oh, right... maybe it was the lower of the two... it's just that is normally the insulated pipe/tile.