[DLC] Thoughts on passive cooling.

[AliBob]

I've been playing for just under 500 cycles, deliberately keeping my base as low tech as possible, while still having some automation around. For all those cycles, I've not build a single turbine/aquatuner. For all my cooling needs I've just piped hydrogen around that lovely, borderline infinite -30 - -40 degC rock at the top of the map. My glass forge, refinery, even my water geyser's cooled by this. Sure it's not a throughput factory, and I don't use a lot of water for my 7 dupes, but that's not really the point.

Now I'm guessing people will say; "...but you can do that with the normal tundra biome aswell!".
I'd argue the opposite. Sure, you can cool stuff temporary, but eventually the biome will melt. The rock at the top of the map doesn't melt at +1degC, there's no cleanup from water/P-water, and it keeps the cooling for a lot longer.

I'm fully aware that I'm abusing the heck out of the cool rock at this point, but my question is; Was all that free cooling intended?

Have anyone else tried experimenting with this?

Boring SPOM:

Spoiler

Passively cooling output to a balmy 9-15 degC.

Glass Forge:

Spoiler

I can't run it on full auto, but I've got enough time to let a batch cool, before I run the next.

Refinery:

Spoiler

This one I have to fiddle with. When the water gets to hot, I have to run a couple of batches of gold to let the water cool back down.

Water geyser:

Spoiler

My only active geyser. The water in this pool is around 60 degC.

I move it to this pool to cool it to around 20-30 degC before storing it. I don't use the second geyser yet.

Cooling loop for second tank.

 

 

[JaxckLl]

Had this thought as well. What I've found in practice is that it doesn't really matter that there's so much "free" cooling. By the time you have the resources or the incentive to properly exploit the super chilled rock, you also have access to Aquatuners & Steam Turbines. Therefore it's largely just as straightforward to set up a manual cooling loop.

Personally I think it's extremely important to make the vanilla late game resources available more reasonably in Spaced Out. It's very laborious to set up new asteroids, so having the ability to drop some glass & steel from orbit to get things going is very nice.

[AliBob]

I didn't think about that. I'm still messing around with my main rock. All I've done so far is getting lead & diamond from the teleporter, and I've sent one rover to the Pip dominion.

 

I can absolutely see the logic you're getting at, and will probably change my original stance, when it's time to conquer the system.

 

Happy new year!

[JaxckLl]

Happy 2021 to you too!

It's important when discussing game design, and thus game feedback, to always consider the objective of a mechanic first. What is the design trying to get the audience, the player, to experience? So far I feel Klei has done a relatively good job of making the Space Biome both more accessible and more attractive to explore. Rockets are still not in a viable state (in the sense that currently they serve as a resource sink instead of any investment. We need some easy-to-access resources on the space map to make exploring with rockets and manually flying them fun. The gains from building rockets need to be garnered earlier, especially if Sucrose & CO2 are meant to be viable), and the benefits of Space are still not perfect.

[larkvi]

I generally like the less dangerous and micro-intensive space biome, but I find the mechanic confusing. There is nothing obvious about the fact that the cooling there is essentially infinite, even if it does solve all kinds of problems that were practically crippling to newer players before (all of the hot gasses melting everything at the top of the base before I understood that aquaturner + steam turbine = delete heat). Similarly, there's some apparently renewable source of heat above the oil biome on the oil asteroid in one of my games that made the map more or less an instant loss as soon as I spilled water down there. Even pouring all the cold water I produce from the marsh asteroid, I cannot cool down the entrance to the oil biome, making everything a steamy mess.

[JaxckLl]

On 1/14/2021 at 7:21 AM, larkvi said:

I generally like the less dangerous and micro-intensive space biome, but I find the mechanic confusing. There is nothing obvious about the fact that the cooling there is essentially infinite, even if it does solve all kinds of problems that were practically crippling to newer players before (all of the hot gasses melting everything at the top of the base before I understood that aquaturner + steam turbine = delete heat). Similarly, there's some apparently renewable source of heat above the oil biome on the oil asteroid in one of my games that made the map more or less an instant loss as soon as I spilled water down there. Even pouring all the cold water I produce from the marsh asteroid, I cannot cool down the entrance to the oil biome, making everything a steamy mess.

Yeah Steam bombs are a classic newbie mistake. You need exosuits and gas-based thermal locks to properly exploit the Oil Biome.

I agree that it would be nice to have more direction for newer players. Even a "suggest a tech" feature would go a long way to making the initial bases much more viable.

[2tallyGr8]

On 1/18/2021 at 2:44 PM, JaxckLl said:

Yeah Steam bombs are a classic newbie mistake. You need exosuits and gas-based thermal locks to properly exploit the Oil Biome.

Not when you a dropping thousands upon thousands of tons of water into the oil biome like I do, so much mass is added that the main issue is getting the oil separated from the water, but that can be done easily with a filter.

[EricS]

You most certainly can melt the ice at the top, though, at least in Spaced Out.  I've done it on my first successful playthrough.  I may have been trying to use it more heavily than you did, however, but I doubt that I did it by much, I was at a population on the starting asteroid of 6 until close to cycle 900, with two more on each of the next two asteroids.

 

[MachineryMan]

On 1/14/2021 at 6:21 PM, larkvi said:

aquaturner + steam turbine = delete heat

It is not deleted. It is transformed into electricity. Here, if you don't connect the turbines to the grid, even then you are not eliminating heat, you are just wasting electricity.

On 1/14/2021 at 6:21 PM, larkvi said:

the map more or less an instant loss as soon as I spilled water down there. Even pouring all the cold water I produce from the marsh asteroid, I cannot cool down the entrance to the oil biome, making everything a steamy mess.

What kind of instant loss? Have you tried flying to the third asteroid and getting back to oil biom with the suits? You're just lazy and don't have the will in you. At least, you could do something like this.

Spoiler

 

From 250 to 90 degrees.

 

 

On the subject of the topic, the main problem with the game as a whole is that energy is too readily available, there are too many energy sources. That's why you can mindlessly shove in Tuner-Turbine systems, there's still enough power for everything. If energy was scarce, people would immediately understand the difference between heat capacities and thermal conductivities, and think through their cooling systems better. I personally know a dude who puts cycle sensors on aqua tuners so they don't run at night, but keeps using oil as a refrigerant in the system pipes because "P.Water can boil". Even if it cools the gas generators. After all, saving electricity is a very important thing!!!