How would you solve this cooling design problem?

[ZombieDupe]

This will be a very specific look at a problem I have pondered for quite a while and I can't seem to come up with a solution. This involves changing ways in which some of the buildings in the game work. If you feel like my thoughts on how these buildings could be changed are not as good as some other approach, please share yours.

Something I have been really fond of especially since the introduction of guaranteed cool slush geysers in the DLC was alternative methods for cooling things in the game in general. Slush geysers could be used to cool both your colony and quite a bit for industrial machinery, might even be able to scrape by cooling LO2 or LH2 though probably not all things fully. Because I have seen and heard  a lot of players quit the game pretty early on and the issue usually coming down to heating in the base game, more comprehensive and readily available cooling solutions was something I thought it was imperative that the game provides. Slush geysers bridge that gap in one way, but we also have AETNs. Those buildings are limited and once deconstructed you can't replace them either. Some suggestions have been voiced before with a lot of approval to have some module drop for an AETN to be reconstructed elsewhere so you can move it to where you would rather prefer and extra modules to making more would be done through the requirement of some more end game materials for example. Personally it consuming more hydrogen and being more effective at cooling wouldn't hurt either. It never made sense to me, and to a lot of other inexperienced players for sure why a Steam Turbine, a building oriented around generating power in the game (and the real world) would be the building most used for cooling instead a lot more, so it would make more sense if it didn't delete any heat at all. Problems fixed, right? Well, there is one issue with changing these 2 buildings like this...

So, all that taken into account, if AETNs were to be balanced around decent cooling and Steam Turbines did not delete heat, we could find AETN's being used for cooling colonies and many machineries, including the excess heat that ST spew as they function. The problem is now you can just avoid the power dump of Thermal Regulators and Aqua Tuners by simply using AETNs heat deletion properties instead. There is really no more practical use of a Thermal Regulator or Aqua Tuner as they dump heat and consume power, you could just achieve the same effect with an AETN alone by running radiant pipes, liquid or gas, around it. No extra power necessary. You could have ST just delete heat, but the AQ + ST setup simply does not make sense as a build for someone to figure out unless they do some 200 IQ+ mental gymnastics. In future harder planetoid starts of the game, often oriented around deleting heat with limited resources, it would probably become balanced around this build, meaning that a player with 500+ hours who has not looked up much of anything but has been thriving at this point would get stuck and we are almost back to square one of "how do I cool my colony on X planetoid start?" simply because the cooling effect of the build makes no sense. Without the build in place some other more comprehensive potential cooling methods would need to be implemented and the need for a build would not linger around.

So, how would you go about solving this issue if you were to approach it as it is being rebalanced? How would you present an effective game design solution around cooling by preventing ST from deleting any heat while simultaneously not making Thermal Regulator and Aqua Tuner obsolete buildings because of AETN or the like? Maybe there is something I'm missing and there could be more niche use cases for these buildings still through something like a sour gas boiler, but still these buildings would probably be looked at as buildings specifically made for cooling in the game by someone who knows no better. Personally not a fan of TR and AT just straight up deleting heat themselves as they are not really sci-fi Gravitas buildings unlike AETN.

I suppose better and more dynamic radiation mechanics would be one approach, as space cooling is a real thing now employed in real life. This is already an effect you can kind of replicate differently (in a gamified way that doesn't actually make as much sense in reality) by putting TR or AT near the space area and dumping hot gas around it, which heats up even more and is then deleted by the space-exposed tiles (though I don't think anyone who isn't an engineer would be able to come up with this as a solution in the same the same as with ST + AT currently).

This was really complicated and a very specific train of thought about balance and design of cooling in the game, so I hope it hasn't been too difficult to understand what problem I'm trying to present here. Note that if you would rather things stay about as they are, none of this really matters that much I suppose.

[Unlikus]

I would not be a fan of implementing heat radiation, because I quite like how a vacuum functions as a perfect insulator.

In spaced out the space biom is quite cold, so maybe we just gradually delete heat out of tiles in space, like a passive form of the ATEN.

For the ST we could make it function when there is more than 25kg Steam pressure under it and it would emit the steam in a gas pipe and produce power. Then one would need to cool down the steam in order to insert is back to the steam chamber.

This would make "exploits" such as overpressurised vents and door compressors very powerful, because they would provide free energy.

A research reactor is probably nearly impossible to cool.

I think this would make a great challenge in a mod, but otherwise the powerful heat deletion of the Steam turbine has its place in ONI.

[darknotezero]

it would be nice for there to be multiple mid-late game cooling solutions rather than relying upon the AT/ST set up, kind of like how I'm completely ignoring the nuclear power aspect of the game but that's fine bc petro boilers are a thing.

One idea that was spurned by your posting is to allow for the AETN to be... upgradable and customizable via a combination of research and increasing material need, similar to how rockets work relating to distance and height.

So phase 1 is the base AETN functions as is or is maybe a little stifled.

phase 2 is, say, add a researchable device that can, say, connect to and amplify the AETN effect by injecting some wattage

phase 3 is maybe add a radbolt receptor that when rads are fired into it, it flashes a sudden burst of cold and has a cooldown period so it's not exploitable.

I think that whatever is done in that way should provide decent cooling, but it should also be still inferior to the AT/ST solution either in ability or in efficiency

[KonfigSys]

I would not change turbine-aqua tuner. If Klei removes the cooling function from the couple, you do not have anything else to build to cool down the area.

AETN - you may find one/two but some seeds are generated without any. I would not mind if it is more powerful. It was before but Klei reduced its heat deletion capacity a long while ago. I think it was too easy - as soon as you find AETN on the map, the heat problem was completely solved (just loop pipes with hydrogen to the AETN).

Also wheezeworts were very powerful in the heat deletion but not any more.

[blakemw]

I really wish the game had space radiators (i.e. radiators that discard heat to space).

Now obviously a full radiant heat transfer simulation would crush the CPU, but this game is no stranger to horrible physics hacks, and how I'd do space radiators is like this.

Basically I would piggyback on the sun beams, whatever tile ultimately gets hit by a sunbeam would be subject to radiant heat transfer to/from space. Each tick (or less frequently) a radiant heat calculation would be done, with the tile receiving heat from the sun and losing heat in accordance with the Stefan-Boltzmann law for blackbody radiation but using some made up constant which gives a reasonable seeming rate of heat exchange. This calculation is not very difficult and it'd only be applied to a number of tiles equal to the width of the map, it'd very likely have no measurable effect on performance. And now surface would heat up during the middle of the day and cool down at night and the temperature of the surface would actually be based on the sunlight received plus whatever extra heat the player dumps to the surface. Radiant space cooling would be more effective on planetoids with weaker sunlight.

A special white radiator tile that reflects most the sunlight (as is done in real radiators in space) could also be built, that simply eliminates about two-thirds the heat from the sun, allowing the tile to be a more effective radiator on planetoids with strong sunlight.

[ZombieDupe]

20 hours ago, KonfigSys said:

I would not change turbine-aqua tuner. If Klei removes the cooling function from the couple, you do not have anything else to build to cool down the area.

AETN - you may find one/two but some seeds are generated without any. I would not mind if it is more powerful. It was before but Klei reduced its heat deletion capacity a long while ago. I think it was too easy - as soon as you find AETN on the map, the heat problem was completely solved (just loop pipes with hydrogen to the AETN).

Also wheezeworts were very powerful in the heat deletion but not any more.

By the sounds of it the past AETN was just a resource-consuming version of slush geysers we have in the game right now and in DLC having them guaranteed by most start variations. By contrast to these geysers, even the old AETN doesn't sound all too powerful. To be fair I'm starting to think that removal of the ST + AT setup would not be a bad idea if it's simply replaced by radiation based or space gas deletion based, methods employable with an AT when you have limited or no access to heat deletion alternatives. For cooling I have seen people attempt to gravitate towards using space, but then being disappointed when that isn't something that would work as is. The gas deletion variation would still exist, but that's not something people seem to think of for some reason, probably because in reality it doesn't make as much sense and you are basically venting some gas resource out into space. Add a more involved radiation system much like the thermodynamic system in the game and this could become a viable strategy, especially for harder planetoids that would probably not provide you with any Wheezeworts or AETNs right off the bat.

As for wheezeworts themselves, I wish they were made at least several times more powerful than they are right now and several heat deletion exploits to be removed in some way. One thing I can think of that can also delete heat is the hydrogen generator, which heats up as it deletes hydrogen to generate power while slightly cooler hydrogen coming in from an electrolyzer, and the output heat of the hydrogen generator at a certain point will just become less than the heat it deleted within the hydrogen as the system stabilizes, which makes it like a miniature Steam Turbine in a way. Make the output heat of buildings like ST or HG the necessary kDtus (making them dynamic depending on the input temperature, rather than capped or static) to stop the heat deletion while making things that are supposed to delete heat more powerful and add a better radiation simulation and we might be a step closer to making sense of cooling mechanisms in the game by default.

20 hours ago, darknotezero said:

it would be nice for there to be multiple mid-late game cooling solutions rather than relying upon the AT/ST set up, kind of like how I'm completely ignoring the nuclear power aspect of the game but that's fine bc petro boilers are a thing.

One idea that was spurned by your posting is to allow for the AETN to be... upgradable and customizable via a combination of research and increasing material need, similar to how rockets work relating to distance and height.

So phase 1 is the base AETN functions as is or is maybe a little stifled.

phase 2 is, say, add a researchable device that can, say, connect to and amplify the AETN effect by injecting some wattage

phase 3 is maybe add a radbolt receptor that when rads are fired into it, it flashes a sudden burst of cold and has a cooldown period so it's not exploitable.

I think that whatever is done in that way should provide decent cooling, but it should also be still inferior to the AT/ST solution either in ability or in efficiency

Well you can just have it drop a module required for constructing one, and to manufacture more of those modules to require a specific rare resource like insulation (these things consuming more hydrogen the more you want to take use of them so now hydrogen gas becomes a valuable resource for cooling long term as well, so considering how much of it you can and need to take use of for rocket fuel, power production or cooling becomes a balancing act by default). We have a system for extra power production that consumes metal to output more power, the same mechanic could be applied to AETNs if that's something interesting to tinker with for extra cooling cushion at the expense of metal.

[tuxii]

On 10/9/2021 at 12:15 PM, ZombieDupe said:

You could have ST just delete heat, but the AQ + ST setup simply does not make sense as a build for someone to figure out unless they do some 200 IQ+ mental gymnastics.

I agree, the game should hit you with a tutorial about the AQ + ST setup once you've researched both the ST & AQ.  Players shouldn't have to go to Reddit, Youtube or these forums to learn what is basically essential ONI knowledge.

If they can add more cooling options that would be cool (ha!) but the system doesn't need an overhaul.  

[darknotezero]

40 minutes ago, tuxii said:

the game should hit you with a tutorial about the AQ + ST setup once you've researched both the ST & AQ.

to be fair, it's not like ONI does tutorials at all

[Coolthulhu]

On 10/9/2021 at 8:15 PM, ZombieDupe said:

So, how would you go about solving this issue if you were to approach it as it is being rebalanced? How would you present an effective game design solution around cooling by preventing ST from deleting any heat while simultaneously not making Thermal Regulator and Aqua Tuner obsolete buildings because of AETN or the like?

Heat radiation could be interesting, but also certainly "upsetting" to balance. Not that balance is tight or anything, just that it would get on its head for a moment.

Other options:

• Anything that depends on temperature difference to be efficient would work. Having AETN do proportional, instead of flat, heat deletion would make it work together with AT really well.
• Mass deletion machines are automatically heat deletion machines by default. Having more conservation of mass violations would make ST heat deletion less vital.
• Having certain reactions consume (delete) large amounts of heat could do the job. IRL, processes that generate hydrogen are often heavily endothermic: coal+steam->CO+H2, steam reforming, thermal decomposition of water.

[tuxii]

2 hours ago, darknotezero said:

to be fair, it's not like ONI does tutorials at all

I quit the game for over 2 years because of that, too.  ONI didn't bring me back to ONI, Youtube did.

[JRup]

Just now, tuxii said:

I quit the game for over 2 years because of that, too.  ONI didn't bring me back to ONI, Youtube did.

Now you're doing "evil" sour gas boilers... For research...

[tuxii]

1 minute ago, JRup said:

Now you're doing "evil" sour gas boilers... For research...

If you think my sour gas boilers are evil... you are in for a serious treat. 

[KonfigSys]

I asked Klei many times to re-introduce the bio-module for rockets (like in the vanilla game) and add seeds and eggs to POIs.

So we can get extra worts from the POIs rather than only from the printer.

Also we can get some missing species, plants - like arbor tree seeds and others in case it was not generated in the seed.

[Spoonwood]

On 10/10/2021 at 2:33 PM, tuxii said:

I agree, the game should hit you with a tutorial about the AQ + ST setup once you've researched both the ST & AQ.  Players shouldn't have to go to Reddit, Youtube or these forums to learn what is basically essential ONI knowledge.

If they can add more cooling options that would be cool (ha!) but the system doesn't need an overhaul.  

Liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen can get made using thermo regulators.  Cooling other than for liquid oxygen and hydrogen isn't always necessary to complete all of the game's achievements.  Francis John's achievement run on Rime is evidence of such (for the cycles before completing all of the achievements, he did cooling only for liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen so far as I recall).  Thus, aquatuners are not necessary.  Also, a thermo regulator can get made our of thermium, and the ice maker exists, is heat negative, and ice can get used for cooling in a local area also.  So, I don't think that steam turbines are necessary either.  Therfore, I don't see why the AQ + ST setup qualifies as "basically essential ONI knowledge".

[tuxii]

2 hours ago, Spoonwood said:

Liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen can get made using thermo regulators.  Cooling other than for liquid oxygen and hydrogen isn't always necessary to complete all of the game's achievements.  Francis John's achievement run on Rime is evidence of such (for the cycles before completing all of the achievements, he did cooling only for liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen so far as I recall).  Thus, aquatuners are not necessary.  Also, a thermo regulator can get made our of thermium, and the ice maker exists, is heat negative, and ice can get used for cooling in a local area also.  So, I don't think that steam turbines are necessary either.  Therfore, I don't see why the AQ + ST setup qualifies as "basically essential ONI knowledge".

Not everyone is a mad scientist willing to figure out every nuance in ONI.  While technically not "essential" the AQ + ST combo I call "essential" (aside from being essential to almost all of my videos) the AQ + ST combo is an accessible, simple and powerful solution to many problems.

Using Francis John's Rime playthrough as an example for other players is just silly, because Francis John has intimate knowledge of ONI and it was Rime so he could get away with no/minimal cooling.

Sure @mathmanican might be able to survive an Aridio start with abyssalite breaks leaking magma heat everywhere without using an aquatuner, so they're not "essential."

But to the average player the AQ + ST is an "essential" tool in their toolbox.  It might be their gateway to stabilizing their base to be able to play the game further rather than quitting ONI because their problems appear either insurmountable our the solution is too difficult to continue playing.

Nice chatting with you.

[darknotezero]

ONI's has a lot of strength in being a 'here's a lot of information, let's see what you do with it' game, allowing every player to create their own individualized solutions to the challenges that they encounter. The fact that the game is very forgiving in the short-term but very unforgiving in the long-term provides a great avenue for player discovery and innovation that I think would be lost if the game had 'tutorials', particularly for more advanced concepts.

It is true that there is a hump that has a steep comprehension curve. I would not be successful in how I play without FJ's YouTube channel helping me understand game mechanics and build concepts that I would not have been able to do on my own. That doesn't mean that I necessarily want that to exist in-game, however, at least not as a "here's a step-by-step of how you delete heat using a AT/ST set up"

What i could support, however, is to create, say, an incomplete framework of those concepts for players to explore and discover as they get deeper into the game.

Like, there are building artifacts that exist on a few of the other asteroids. With Classic Start, when you teleport to the second asteroid, there's one area where I found two coal generators that are hooked up to two jumbo batteries. That's pretty useless - it doesn't really reveal anything, you just deconstruct for the materials.

But what if you could evaluate where people are in game progress and plant seeds to help them get over the hump? For example, on the first asteroid you have to actually land on, you discover a broken or imperfect AT/ST set up, something you could play with. Putting it on the first 'by space' asteroid puts it in the game late enough that players hopefully understand that heat is a problem but maybe aren't sure how to fix it. The AT/ST set up they discover gets them closer to understanding it.

[tuxii]

1 hour ago, darknotezero said:

But what if you could evaluate where people are in game progress and plant seeds to help them get over the hump? For example, on the first asteroid you have to actually land on, you discover a broken or imperfect AT/ST set up, something you could play with. Putting it on the first 'by space' asteroid puts it in the game late enough that players hopefully understand that heat is a problem but maybe aren't sure how to fix it. The AT/ST set up they discover gets them closer to understanding it.

I really like this idea.

If not tutorials, more hints in game would be great.  Maybe a log entries could have partial build schematics, talk about synergies between buildings or, as you suggest, points of interest.

I just remember when I first played on my first game I was suffering through carbon choking my overheating base, my electrical system was a nightmare and always overloading, my dupes were all stressed out and half-starved.  Even though I had a lot of research done and I had scoured through the tutorials and read the in-game "wiki," I was completely lost.  Eventually I just stopped playing ONI altogether for 2 years and forgot about it until I stumbled across Francis John somehow thanks to the Youtube algorithm.

I think there has to be a middle point between holding player's hands and "here's how to plumb a toilet, you're on your own for the rest."

This could make ONI retain more players who then buy more DLC and we could have more DLC...

[thegroundbelow]

On 10/10/2021 at 2:43 AM, blakemw said:

I really wish the game had space radiators (i.e. radiators that discard heat to space).

Now obviously a full radiant heat transfer simulation would crush the CPU, but this game is no stranger to horrible physics hacks, and how I'd do space radiators is like this.

There's a mod called "radiates heat in space" that adds tiles that will radiate their heat into vacuum.  Other items will also slowly lose their heat in a vacuum, though much more slowly than the special tiles.

[ZombieDupe]

On 10/10/2021 at 6:33 PM, tuxii said:

I agree, the game should hit you with a tutorial about the AQ + ST setup once you've researched both the ST & AQ.  Players shouldn't have to go to Reddit, Youtube or these forums to learn what is basically essential ONI knowledge.

If they can add more cooling options that would be cool (ha!) but the system doesn't need an overhaul.  

The setup doesn't really make much sense though as these aren't even sci-fi buildings. I think it's better if the game taught you more realistic depictions of science and this setup really would do the opposite since ONI has the potential to teach you a lot of things more accurately like thermodynamics as it has taught me and some other people I've heard. This is why I've not been a fan of the current radiation system as not only is it super basic and easy to overcome at the moment, it also doesn't simulate radiation that is reflective of reality almost completely.

[babba]

Sounds great @ZombieDupe I think its time/budget restraints which made Klei implement radiation in the way they have - I`m a bit disappointed too. If Klei gets simple solution suggestions, then they perhaps could bend the radiation system in to whatever user desired direction.

Currently I`m just happy if I make it to cycle 1000-4000 without game crash.

P.S. Oh, its seems to be about heat radiation...Misunderstanding on my side  I believed it was about radioactivity My initial day one on experiencing heat radiation is still in my memory. Mhh, well...Klei needs to implement simple systems, in order to have a running game ( at decent speed  ) at some point. Simple suggestions may make Klei add auditions or bend it to desired user wishes

[mackhuffer]

I have wanted some kind of space radiator for a while. I find it tedious to have to build "trays" for equipment, make sure there's drywall and liquid coolant, plumbing, and so on. Yes, I could dig up the surface to avoid space exposure while still having access to space, but that's generally not how I play.

A good example might be a basic interplanetary launcher system for SO: a launcher and conveyor loader. I'd like a building that "attaches" to those and slowly dissipates heat. If you launched something every cycle, the radiator wouldn't be able to keep up, but for intermittent use, it would be a simple, stable system.

[ZombieDupe]

On 10/22/2021 at 12:58 AM, babba said:

Sounds great @ZombieDupe I think its time/budget restraints which made Klei implement radiation in the way they have - I`m a bit disappointed too. If Klei gets simple solution suggestions, then they perhaps could bend the radiation system in to whatever user desired direction.

Currently I`m just happy if I make it to cycle 1000-4000 without game crash.

P.S. Oh, its seems to be about heat radiation...Misunderstanding on my side  I believed it was about radioactivity My initial day one on experiencing heat radiation is still in my memory. Mhh, well...Klei needs to implement simple systems, in order to have a running game ( at decent speed  ) at some point. Simple suggestions may make Klei add auditions or bend it to desired user wishes

Well if that's the state they are going to leave the radiation system in, I don't think I'll want to play the game much or at least not want to engage with the radiation system at all unless necessary, and then that's just tedium for me. It's already absolutely unnecessary to do so many things that you can, efficiency can be done in other ways. The benefits of a better simulation would be insane however. Imagine if they half assed the thermodynamics system when they made that. I don't think I would have picked up the game in the first place if they dulled it down to that. If they are worried about new players not being able to learn things, there are better ways to do it than slapping together a terrible simulation. More and noticeable notifications for video clip tutorials of about a minute long that pop up when appropriate and POI setups come to mind for the current state of the game. I hope that's what they do as part of improving the quality of the game in the coming months.