Debris Thermal Multiplier

[wachunga]

I've been experimenting with designs using the bug that occurs when a pile of debris has a portion of it removed. A brief summary is that the remaining portion of the pile behaves as if it still had the heat capacity of the original pile. This design uses conveyor rails, an alternate method is conveyor free piles sitting on tiles and/or in liquid. Both styles have their pros and cons in how to form the bugged pile and then in using it.

The turbine build on the right is using the bug. The left turbine is a bug free build just for comparison. Both start with 25 tons of 1600K igneous as the heat source. Flip the switches up top to start the demonstration.

The bugged debris packet is created by putting 981kg of the igneous into a conveyor loader. The first 980kg is returned to the igneous stockpile, only the last packet proceeds to the turbine. This 1kg packet behaves as if it was 981kg so we have multiplied our available heat energy by 981(!!!) times. It takes several cycles to fully saturate the rails in the bugged build, but the power of even just one bugged packet is quickly apparent.

Things to consider in further designs would be handling game loads. After a load, the bugged packets are corrected and will be dealt with properly. The bigger issue is the state of the buffer and filter gates which are needed to precisely load 981kg of igneous.

In this design the loader consumes quite a bit of power producing each bugged packet, but it's not a concern since the turbine is making way more in return. In a build multiplying the cooling potential, we would want to avoid excessive power usage. I have some ideas on a cooler utilizing free standing piles, but others are certainly welcome to chime in.

Debris Thermal Multiplier.sav

 

The original post discussing this bug:

 

[mathmanican]

18 minutes ago, wachunga said:

we have multiplied our available heat energy by 981(!!!) times.

Excellent showcase.  I thought you said you were going to avoid doing these.   I love the build by the way. This bug appears to be just another save/load bug that someday may get some (wanted) attention. 

[wachunga]

31 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

I thought you said you were going to avoid doing these.

It's been kicking around in my head ever since @Blazing Falken's fridge build last September. @ghkbrew's excellent work on the other debris bug motivated me enough to put something together worth posting. The hope being a marked trail soon turns into a super highway that demands a bug fix.

It's super annoying the hoops one must jump through for a build to work the way it should. I've taken to automatically recycling the last packet out of a loader since it's almost certainly bugged. Same method as in this build with a element sensor two rails away from a chute, but with a not gate so the good packets are kept and the bugged packet discarded. Even that isn't a solution since I think the dropped packet is still bugged unless it combines with an existing pile or is picked up again, which means more automation. It's infuriating!

[Gurgel]

4 hours ago, wachunga said:

This 1kg packet behaves as if it was 981kg so we have multiplied our available heat energy by 981(!!!) times. 

Hahahaha, excellent. Klei better finish the DLC fast, before you lot of underhanded hackers  excellent engineers invalidate any idea that there may be some resemblance between ONI Physics and real Physics!

[mathmanican]

18 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

invalidate any idea that there may be some resemblance between ONI Physics and real Physics!

I start with the axiom that ONI Physics and real Phyiscs are not the same. As such, any argument that leads to this as the conclusion is circular.  

We are just trying to illustrate the consequences of the choices the devs made on the ONI world.  If they are happy with the consequences, we will happily employ them. If we find these consequences quite offensive ourselves, we may go on a campaign eventually to expand a trail into a highway. 

3 hours ago, wachunga said:

The hope being a marked trail soon turns into a super highway that demands a bug fix.

 

[0xFADE]

Oh that must be what I was seeing when I was running my regolith melter.  Whenever I would turn it off to change some stuff there would be a final packet that wouldn't melt.  Not only wouldn't it melt but it had a much lower heat than the rest of it by the time it got to the end and would take forever to melt.  So I had set up a bypass to check the temp and redirect it somewhere else.

[wachunga]

Small Update

After a bit less than 60 cycles, the bug free turbine went through it's 25 tons of igneous rock. The bug build turbine is still working on it's first batch of 32 kg (4x8 rails in the diamond block). I didn't bother finely matching the turbines so a precise comparison can't be made, but the consumption rates are in the right ballpark for the theoretical 981 multiplier.

I gave a bit more thought on how to avoid the bug when using rails. I think a good solution would be to do the element sensor thing but 3 rails away from the chute. That way the last two debris packets will be recycled, ensuring the bugged packet has something to combine with. A buffered pressure plate beneath the chute would control a sweeper so that it doesn't try to move those 2 packets until a volcano (or whatever) has deposited more.

 

[DefectiveNu]

Oh hey, I ran into this a while ago and just thought the last item didn't transfer heat (since the sink I was using had too much capacity to notice)

note: screenshot is from a comment, my instance didn't involve mcg sized ice baskets

 

recently I saw it again but the last item did seem to change a little bit, I was wondering what was going on there...

[mathmanican]

6 minutes ago, DefectiveNu said:

I ran into this a while ago

I think you'll find that there are a lot of posts in these forums, on reddit, on discord, on steam, and lots of bug reports, that all have to do with this bug.  It affects pretty much any player who uses conveyor belts. You can't avoid it. 

Thanks for sharing. If you see more places where you can spot this, feel free to come back and share links. 

[Gurgel]

5 hours ago, mathmanican said:

I think you'll find that there are a lot of posts in these forums, on reddit, on discord, on steam, and lots of bug reports, that all have to do with this bug.  It affects pretty much any player who uses conveyor belts. You can't avoid it. 

Thanks for sharing. If you see more places where you can spot this, feel free to come back and share links. 

I just noticed this today for the first time. (Ice-melter on super-cold Rime mod). Nice to see I was not imagining things. 

[0xFADE]

I didn't check.  Does dumping it and picking it back up to an empty loader reset it?

[wachunga]

Yes, AFAICT a dupe or sweeper picking up the bugged debris will reset it. The visual size can be a good indicator of whether the debris is bugged or not.

Both piles were bugged. The one on the right was picked up off the pressure by the sweeper then immediately dropped due to automation. The one on the left I moved myself with alt-q (technically I moved both to their current positions, but the sweeper didn't do anything to the left pile). Placing both on a metal tile to test their thermal mass does indeed show that the bigger looking pile is still bugged while the smaller looking pile is fixed.

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 7/23/2020 at 12:14 PM, wachunga said:

 A brief summary is that the remaining portion of the pile behaves as if it still had the heat capacity of the original pile.

Well.. this explains why my copper volcano appeared to be producing too many DTUs.  Frequently the last packet on the rails would circle many times before reaching the appropriate temperature to move out into my base.  I simply thought it was a bug where the packet, due to its microgram size, wasn't doing thermal transfers.  Now I see that it was, instead, because it was holding the heat energy of the entire eruption.