Improvements to new food refrigeration system

[ZombieDupe]

Have found that there is no particular reason to have a refrigerator as it doesn't keep food infinitely fresh at the end of the day. So how about make the fridge aim for deep freezing temperature of -20C as opposed to 2C, so some food may still rot at first until it is deep frozen. Kind of ridiculous to use sterile atmosphere gas in conjunction with a fridge to end up food still rotting, using a fridge should prevent the need for the low tech method of sterile atmosphere. Remember that you are always still limited by space and how much of these things you can always keep powered so while a few 100 kcl could be frozen forever, it would come at a power cost. Would also give more incentive to produce lots of power to keep the fridge power demands met, I have never really needed lots of power for most necessary things to the point where I can be good with just manual, hydrogen generators and a little solar or coal.

To remove exploit of keeping food behind simple blob of liquid you could make gases and liquids possible to exist in the same tile if the tile isn't fully filled with the liquid. This would not prevent you from setting up a room with a U shaped liquid lock, having duplicants go past it, possibly in an atmo suit and get the food inside a vacuumed room but the time it would take away from your duplicants just to get to food, you might as well use the fridges instead, which would now mean we actually have a good incentive to use them.

Some systems for airlocks would need to be implemented and visco gel would need to be changed to not become completey useless. This has been mentioned before, but adjusting the melting/boiling point of the gel so you could make pass-through tiles out of them instead could work, and while this would eliminate the need for refrigerators in very late game and back to square one with accessible vacuumed food sealing, at that point it could just be seen as the game rewarding you for getting so far and being creative with the new tiles.

[cokess]

 

On 5/18/2021 at 3:43 AM, ZombieDupe said:

Have found that there is no particular reason to have a refrigerator

My friend, I present to you.. my original most rudimentary design of the most OP coolant ever using a refrigerator, curative tablets and steel for conveyor rails. It's ridiculously easy to build.

Enclosed within the metal tiles is about 10000kg of liquid gold originally at 1727°C. It is now frozen at 900°C.

I used about 200kg or so curative tablets and conveyed them using steel rails along those metal tiles to cool the gold.

The refrigerator is totally OP as it is. In this test run, it deleted about 139,000DTU/s of heat (about -0.2°C/s or 139,000W). The refrigerator itself consumes 120W and took 400kg sandstones to construct.

For comparison an aquatuner running on water coolant deletes about 585,060DTU/s of heat, consuming 1200W and 1200kg of steel to construct.

If you ever had a speck of an incentive to build an aquatuner to violate thermodynamics, you should be ELATED about this humble refrigerator because it does it 3 times better than an aquatuner and can be powered using a single manual generator.

[gabberworld]

21 minutes ago, cokess said:

 

My friend, I present to you.. my original most rudimentary design of the most OP coolant ever using a refrigerator, curative tablets and steel for conveyor rails. It's ridiculously easy to build.

Enclosed within the metal tiles is about 10000kg of liquid gold originally at 1727°C. It is now frozen at 900°C.

I used about 200kg or so curative tablets and conveyed them using steel rails along those metal tiles to cool the gold.

The refrigerator is totally OP as it is. In this test run, it deleted about 139,000DTU/s of heat (about -0.2°C/s or 139,000W). The refrigerator itself consumes 120W and took 400kg sandstones to construct.

For comparison an aquatuner running on water coolant deletes about 585,060DTU/s of heat, consuming 1200W and 1200kg of steel to construct.

If you ever had a speck of an incentive to build an aquatuner to violate thermodynamics, you should be ELATED about this humble refrigerator because it does it 3 times better than an aquatuner and can be powered using a single manual generator.

time for todo some tests, as i understand correctly it possible also cool down base this way

[ZombieDupe]

7 hours ago, cokess said:

 

My friend, I present to you.. my original most rudimentary design of the most OP coolant ever using a refrigerator, curative tablets and steel for conveyor rails. It's ridiculously easy to build.

Enclosed within the metal tiles is about 10000kg of liquid gold originally at 1727°C. It is now frozen at 900°C.

I used about 200kg or so curative tablets and conveyed them using steel rails along those metal tiles to cool the gold.

The refrigerator is totally OP as it is. In this test run, it deleted about 139,000DTU/s of heat (about -0.2°C/s or 139,000W). The refrigerator itself consumes 120W and took 400kg sandstones to construct.

For comparison an aquatuner running on water coolant deletes about 585,060DTU/s of heat, consuming 1200W and 1200kg of steel to construct.

If you ever had a speck of an incentive to build an aquatuner to violate thermodynamics, you should be ELATED about this humble refrigerator because it does it 3 times better than an aquatuner and can be powered using a single manual generator.

Sure, use it for cooling and solids especially, that's not unexpected. Useless for food preservation still which was the intention I'm assuming.

[Vador]

8 hours ago, cokess said:

 

My friend, I present to you.. my original most rudimentary design of the most OP coolant ever using a refrigerator, curative tablets and steel for conveyor rails. It's ridiculously easy to build.

Enclosed within the metal tiles is about 10000kg of liquid gold originally at 1727°C. It is now frozen at 900°C.

I used about 200kg or so curative tablets and conveyed them using steel rails along those metal tiles to cool the gold.

The refrigerator is totally OP as it is. In this test run, it deleted about 139,000DTU/s of heat (about -0.2°C/s or 139,000W). The refrigerator itself consumes 120W and took 400kg sandstones to construct.

For comparison an aquatuner running on water coolant deletes about 585,060DTU/s of heat, consuming 1200W and 1200kg of steel to construct.

If you ever had a speck of an incentive to build an aquatuner to violate thermodynamics, you should be ELATED about this humble refrigerator because it does it 3 times better than an aquatuner and can be powered using a single manual generator.

Could you explain how it works exactly? Looks really interesting.

[nakomaru]

On 5/20/2021 at 3:36 AM, Vador said:

Could you explain how it works exactly? Looks really interesting.

When debris gets split, the remainder debris believes it has its original thermal mass. (bug patched out last week, thanks sakura_sk)

In addition, a powered fridge has infinite thermal mass. 

[sakura_sk]

20 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

When debris gets split, the remainder debris believes it has its original thermal mass.

Ehmmm... If this is how it worked , did anyone check if it still works after a certain (recent) update in DLC? Or is it not in the base game yet?

Spoiler

"Splitting ores now correctly updates the temperature transfer in the sim for both parts." update 463874 of DLC

I think usually this kind of updates go to both base game and DLC like the multiplying germ bug "Don't spawn more germs than are present for falling water" update 460672 (for base game) but I haven't checked the base game.

 

[cokess]

16 hours ago, Vador said:

Could you explain how it works exactly? Looks really interesting.

Out of deference to the original poster who was raising a legitimate issue about their gaming experience, it's likely that this is neither the time nor place for such a discussion. I posted the answer as a tongue-in-cheek response to make light of a situation that I am similarly experiencing and am frustrated about. But I haven't really tested that idea, it was mostly based just on-paper calculations, plus it's got nothing to do with food preservation . If or when others or I have finally come up with a tenable prototype, we'll be sure to share it separately in this forum.

[Sasza22]

On 5/17/2021 at 9:43 PM, ZombieDupe said:

Have found that there is no particular reason to have a refrigerator as it doesn't keep food infinitely fresh at the end of the day. So how about make the fridge aim for deep freezing temperature of -20C as opposed to 2C, so some food may still rot at first until it is deep frozen.

I have a strong feeling we will get an advanced fridge building that will keep stuff deep frozen but require more power. As for regular fridges they still do a fine job slowing spoilage so they`ll find a place in rockets and for earlygame food management.

[nipodemos]

i think make liquid and gas occupy the same slot won't happen, the game for the entire existence can have only one thing per tile, i doubt that this will ever change.

 

In my opinion the simple solution to make fridges useful again is to make food not have the deep freeze status on a vacuum

Should rot the food at the same speed as an unrefrigerated food on a sterile environment

Also, as you suggested, make a more energy and heat expensive fridge but that will cool your food to deep frozen

 

That way, the ONLY way to have a never rotting food would be the more powerful fridge on a sterile environment, but generating a lot of heat and consuming a lot of energy, to make a good challenge with a good reward

[ZombieDupe]

On 5/20/2021 at 4:03 PM, Sasza22 said:

I have a strong feeling we will get an advanced fridge building that will keep stuff deep frozen but require more power. As for regular fridges they still do a fine job slowing spoilage so they`ll find a place in rockets and for earlygame food management.

Not for me. If this is how the fridge is going to stay, I will never use it powered ever, period. If it deepfroze things gradually that would be acceptable as that would be a simple enough solution that is fair for both new and experienced players. Otherwise vacuum exploit all the way and you can forget about getting casual players invested. A completely new building that does that would just highlight the issue further, which is there is no reason to power fridges, something that is a big power consumer the more food you have as it is constant.

On 5/21/2021 at 2:02 AM, nipodemos said:

i think make liquid and gas occupy the same slot won't happen, the game for the entire existence can have only one thing per tile, i doubt that this will ever change.

It could be done, it's a mere suggestion, I don't see how saying "it won't happen" has any merit to discussion at all. Would probably prevent many more exploits with that implementation as well.

[Nebbie]

I think they're getting close to what they should be, as now you can't just put food in a CO2 pit and expect it to be fresh forever.

Here's what I think could be done to get food storage buildings up to snuff:

1. Make all of them, when not being opened by dupes, protect their contents from harmful atmospheres (this would be a pretty big deal on the swamp start).
2. Add a freezer.
3. Make upgraded versions of the ration box and fridge that use a CO2 reservoir to apply the sterile atmosphere buff until it runs out (when opened, the CO2 can escape over time to nearby tiles if pressure allows).

[ZombieDupe]

Since the food storage system and preservation has changed a bit yet again I thought I would share some thoughts about. I do think the refrigerator should be able to deep freeze all food, may be a slider for the temperature you want to get, so you could consume more power if you wanted to deep freeze it or less if you wanted to just keep it fresh for longer. This means that you could build your own complex system that is more efficient overall or just install the building and pay the power cost and it would be a long-term goal goal as you don't necessarily need to preserve food either.

The gas-liquid in same tile from not having max pressure would also be good to have for stopping some rather exploitative mechanics, provided we get some buildings as substitutes for that (a sealed vacuum airlock and some solid pass-through visco gel tiles).

It would also be interesting to see a microwave in the game for reheating the food and duplicants that eat cold food getting a debuff since we have a whole radiation system now.

EDIT: recently found out you can't get sterile atmosphere with gas chlorine, liquid chlorine and liquid CO2 at all. The former being a strange change, does it even make sense? Keeping food in liquid chlorine was a fun idea but it was thrown out of the window by the fact that it isn't a sterile atmosphere.

[kisukin]

I think is more a question about food production vs preservation. Once you stabilize the production the tendency is have millions of calories on late game. About preservation, since you have multiple options to preserve food ( low temperature materials , sterile gases , refrigerators ) , looks more a way to find a proportion. In early game is easy micromanage the food production and storage ( small numbers , few actions ) . Mid and late game things tends to scale ( a constant food production demands some sort of plans and/or automation ) . If the question is add a extra way to deep freeze the food, is possible add a "potency" button on the refrigerator ( at a high power consuption , since its already powerfull ).

About the refrigerator by itself , is a very powerfull way to conserve food at very low cost ( some stones , a little of power , no gases or coolant liquids )

[degr]

I can see two ways how to improve it - add toggle button to fridge - "deep freeze mode (-20)" <> "normal mode(+4)", normal active by default. 

Or it possible to add another type of fridge (may be with mod), which will freeze to -20