The REAL dev generator

[ZombieDupe]

This isn't even the best example of how well this can work, the battery can be integrated into the steam room and the new timer sensor makes it possible for the tepidiser to become active for a split second every other second if you just set it to red and green, no matter how hot the temperature gets as it activates for that split sceond before realising that the surrounding temperature is too hot and it should not activate. But this has always existed, ever since the introduction of the current steam turbine because the tepidizer creates like x4 as much heat as it takes power for some bizarre reason but cuts at 85C, which is a pretty stupid truncation on something that could be balanced correctly in the more obvious and more sensical manner (producing 960kDtus instead of 4000-something kDtus for 960w of power, which would actually be better for some builds as it tends to heat up liquids too fast sometimes). If you use this setup, power is just a minor inconvenience, much like slimelung. I really wish Klei would patch stuff like this but not in such a way that leaves other mechanics that you have to use being annoying.

At this point you can just use this for power, planter-pot exploit or starvation ranching with shove voles for food and (at the significant cost of duplicant labor) put duplicants in oxygen masks as when those run out, during out-of-breath animations with those on, they will consume no oxygen. What is the point of all the intricate mechanics when exploits like this make the regular game effectively debug mode? I have to actively try to avoid the want to use exploits because they are so convenient in the long term and trying to do things without them becomes a chore of micro-management. It's like choosing between putting a whole bunch of temp shift plates in an industrial sauna every other tile to save on half the resources used or just spamming them on every single tile because it's easier and more fun when you do it at the cost of more resources, except the latter costs less somehow and now there is only the incentive to do the latter and then the whole game falls apart unless you install mods or something to try and limit yourself properly. Klei, please address these exploits, there are simple solutions to fixing them!

[Ntr1cate]

2 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

 please address these exploits, there are simple solutions to fixing them!

If you have a issue file a bug report then move on.

And if you really don't like it, you could always decide not to the exploit.

Actually, there isn't a simple solution, by patching this you break other things or remove default timings for automation, changing the code even if it seems simple can affect the game in large ways.

As an example, they patched abysalite to not transfer heat with liquids, This is a bug that had been around for years but they thought they got it right and fixed it.

Wrong.

The patch broke another game mechanic so they made a judgment call and reverted the patch.

There was more gain in the original code than when patched, some people will be annoyed but that's going to happen with a game that updates instead of set and forget, more content is put in, code changes, more bugs appear, cycle repeats.

Klei has many games on their hands so there is only so many people available to work on this stuff, then you have small groups demanding for new content, others demanding this or that mod to be made vanilla, etc, etc, I can't imagine how depressing it is to listen to us saying that we know more about their own games coding (There are some but they actually mod what they want) and that this or that should be fixed right now because a specific person wants it..
 

[Saturnus]

3 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

 

Welcome to 2017.

[NewWorldDan]

30 minutes ago, Ntr1cate said:

Actually, there isn't a simple solution, by patching this you break other things or remove default timings for automation, changing the code even if it seems simple can affect the game in large ways.

In this case... there's already a community patch, has been for some time. 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1967921388

Klei probably views this as a low priority because it's more of an exploit than a bug. What I mean is that it doesn't affect anyone's ordinary gameplay; it's something that has to be intentionally used. It's largely a matter of personal preference how you want to game.

[Primalflower]

my immediate thought is that this exploit doesn't really harm anybody, because it stops working on reload and requires a rather specific combination of buildings and abuses of those buildings to work. I don't think its necessary to really care about this, and also yeah, if you want this fixed you should probably go and report it on the bug tracker, if you haven't already. If it doesn't get fixed, report it again.

[yoakenashi]

1 hour ago, NewWorldDan said:

What I mean is that it doesn't affect anyone's ordinary gameplay; it's something that has to be intentionally used. It's largely a matter of personal preference how you want to game.

 

2 hours ago, Ntr1cate said:

And if you really don't like it, you could always decide not to the exploit.

I agree.

Exploits are like mods, things each player can choose to use or choose not to use. It allows that flexibility in play style. Closing exploits would only hurt those players who choose to use them.

The concept what is or is not an exploit has been discussed many, many times on the forum. Personally, I used infinite gas/liquid storage all the time, but in my last play through decided not to. I saw it as a fun challenge, not an annoyance. Do I think everyone else should stop exploiting this or other things like the tepidizer? Absolutely not.

[blakemw]

12 hours ago, yoakenashi said:

 

Exploits are like mods, things each player can choose to use or choose not to use. It allows that flexibility in play style. Closing exploits would only hurt those players who choose to use them.

I largely disagree.

Exploits are typically exploiting an underlying bug. Take the debris temperature bug that I think has been "fixed" twice now by the devs yet is still in the game (but is fixed for real in the unofficial bugfix mod), this bug allows some fantastic exploits, but it also effects many naive volcano tamer designs, often negatively (as in you get less power and negates some of the challenge), sometimes positively (in that it makes volcano tamers easier by reducing the heat released), what it certainly does is makes the build behave in an unexpected way if you "run the numbers" and trust the tooltips and information, it might result in a metal volcano heating the environment by only half as much, or even far less.

In the case of the Liquid Tepidizer ALL of the language used starting with its name suggests that it makes things warm and not boiling hot, and in the information if you mouse over the "target temperature" it says clearly "stops heating when the surrounding average temperature is above 85 C", there's a little wiggle room in interpretation as it does say "average temperature" so taking this tooltip literally the building itself should be allowed to exceed 85 C, until the environment is above 85 C. The trouble is when it's used to clearly and unequivocally heat the environment over 85 C, it's then behaving in a way directly contradicted by its building information. The information also says "Must be fully submerged" and there's not much wiggle room in interpreting that for justifying using tepidizers as gas heaters. So the bugfix mod which brings its behavior into conformance with the building information, requires it to be submerged and prevents it heating over 85 C.

Now, Infinite Gas/Liquid Storage in general does not involve any bugs and does not contradict any in-game information (though it could be argued that those builds using a Vent are not respecting the Vent's overpressure limits, but those which use mechanical airlocks or bead pumps or such are not subject to such an argument). So it's not the same class of exploit, rather it's a class of exploit which is labelled an exploit simply because it conflicts with somewhat arbitrary "real world sensibilities". Now there are also many other things in this class of exploit, for example liquid duplication is not prohibited by any in-game information but most would agree that it's "not right", even though this is something one could sagely proclaim "this is just something the laws of physics permit in the ONIverse" (although for this particular exploit, it is tagged as an "known issue" in the bug tracker, which means it is exploiting a bug).

But I think few would disagree that buildings should act in conformance with their tooltips and information, either by changing the behavior of the building, or changing the information.

[Artorias36]

1 hour ago, blakemw said:

I largely disagree.

Exploits are typically exploiting an underlying bug. Take the debris temperature bug that I think has been "fixed" twice now by the devs yet is still in the game (but is fixed for real in the unofficial bugfix mod), this bug allows some fantastic exploits, but it also effects many naive volcano tamer designs, often negatively (as in you get less power and negates some of the challenge), sometimes positively (in that it makes volcano tamers easier by reducing the heat released), what it certainly does is makes the build behave in an unexpected way if you "run the numbers" and trust the tooltips and information, it might result in a metal volcano heating the environment by only half as much, or even far less.

In the case of the Liquid Tepidizer ALL of the language used starting with its name suggests that it makes things warm and not boiling hot, and in the information if you mouse over the "target temperature" it says clearly "stops heating when the surrounding average temperature is above 85 C", there's a little wiggle room in interpretation as it does say "average temperature" so taking this tooltip literally the building itself should be allowed to exceed 85 C, until the environment is above 85 C. The trouble is when it's used to clearly and unequivocally heat the environment over 85 C, it's then behaving in a way directly contradicted by its building information. The information also says "Must be fully submerged" and there's not much wiggle room in interpreting that for justifying using tepidizers as gas heaters. So the bugfix mod which brings its behavior into conformance with the building information, requires it to be submerged and prevents it heating over 85 C.

Now, Infinite Gas/Liquid Storage in general does not involve any bugs and does not contradict any in-game information (though it could be argued that those builds using a Vent are not respecting the Vent's overpressure limits, but those which use mechanical airlocks or bead pumps or such are not subject to such an argument). So it's not the same class of exploit, rather it's a class of exploit which is labelled an exploit simply because it conflicts with somewhat arbitrary "real world sensibilities". Now there are also many other things in this class of exploit, for example liquid duplication is not prohibited by any in-game information but most would agree that it's "not right", even though this is something one could sagely proclaim "this is just something the laws of physics permit in the ONIverse" (although for this particular exploit, it is tagged as an "known issue" in the bug tracker, which means it is exploiting a bug).

But I think few would disagree that buildings should act in conformance with their tooltips and information, either by changing the behavior of the building, or changing the information.

I find infinite gas/liquid storage a much worse exploit than this tiepidizer.

[ZombieDupe]

On 9/18/2022 at 5:05 PM, Ntr1cate said:

Actually, there isn't a simple solution, by patching this you break other things or remove default timings for automation, changing the code even if it seems simple can affect the game in large ways.

As an example, they patched abysalite to not transfer heat with liquids, This is a bug that had been around for years but they thought they got it right and fixed it.

Wrong.

The patch broke another game mechanic so they made a judgment call and reverted the patch.

There was more gain in the original code than when patched, some people will be annoyed but that's going to happen with a game that updates instead of set and forget, more content is put in, code changes, more bugs appear, cycle repeats.

Klei has many games on their hands so there is only so many people available to work on this stuff, then you have small groups demanding for new content, others demanding this or that mod to be made vanilla, etc, etc, I can't imagine how depressing it is to listen to us saying that we know more about their own games coding (There are some but they actually mod what they want) and that this or that should be fixed right now because a specific person wants it..
 

Don't see how changing the heat production of tepidizer to 960 kDtus (its wattage equivalent) and for it to check whether it should work before turning on could cause any issuea. I would advise to just setting its heat production to 960 kDtus and removing the 85C cap, then there is no way this could ever generate more power than it consumes even if you want it to reach higher temperatures. Anyone smart enough to use it will also always have a thermal sensor attached to it as well, so as to not heat things up too much anyway, or you can have a slider for all temperatures available for it attached that you can change. It might stop some builds from working unless tweaked (besides this exploit of course, which would stop working completely), if you don't have checks in place to account for that possibility, like for some sour gas boilers, but it won't break the game.

The fact it produced more heat than power it consumed in the first place was odd to me, there is no particular reason for it considering just how quickly it can heat up even water. The opposite could be said about the space heater, you're better off using small batteries for heat than that thing since they lose less power, it takes so much more power than it produces heat, like why couldn't it just generate 120 kDtus instead of the measly 18? With these kDtus production levels, both of these buildings would still be useful, just one for gas, the other for liquid, depending on a build and how quickly you need to heat something up or how space-efficient you really want to be with your heat production.

But I am not familiar with the abyssalite bug fix, what did it break? I know there is still the issue of debri of it exchanging temperature with gases, not sure if that's intended.

[Ntr1cate]

1 hour ago, ZombieDupe said:

 there is no way this could ever generate more power than it consumes even if you want it to reach higher temperatures.

They consume just short of a 1kw/s, that's not a little bit of power consumed, but that is a lot of power for a persons gameplay, having said that, there is a lot about this game that is non-scientific, so expect it.

Some people forget that this is still a game so it shouldn't be compared to real life. (such as hydrogen generators deleting mass and energy)

Its purpose is for water alone, not for steam, as such, it doesn't generate power when used correctly, only because it is exploited that it generates powers, that is why it is called an exploit.

1 hour ago, ZombieDupe said:

I am not familiar with the abyssalite bug fix, what did it break? I know there is still the issue of debri of it exchanging temperature with gases, not sure if that's intended.

I don't know what it broke exactly when they fixed it, I only remember the results of the complaints by a few players at the revert of the patch,

The update didn't last very long because Klei caught onto it fairly fast so it must have been serious.

[MrAnimaniac]

There is no necessity to scale up the consumed electrical power. You could scale down the thermal energy output to match the consumed electrical power. Therefore, no more stress on the power lines. Liquid heating would just take longer.

[Coolthulhu]

On 9/18/2022 at 7:05 PM, Ntr1cate said:

And if you really don't like it, you could always decide not to the exploit.

At a significant cost to enjoyment of the game that comes with having to hold back and not use the most effective mechanics and instead confining self to some set of ill-defined rules.

There is nothing inherently "cheaty" about exploits. Starvation ranching is not a bug, it's just an effect of an incomplete design that didn't predict the optimal solution to the problem.

On 9/18/2022 at 9:51 PM, yoakenashi said:

Exploits are like mods, things each player can choose to use or choose not to use. It allows that flexibility in play style. Closing exploits would only hurt those players who choose to use them.

100% disagree here.

Exploits are not mods, they are in the core game. Players who like this "flexibility" should mod the exploits back into their games, while everyone else should be playing a well designed game instead.

Not fixing exploits hurts everyone who wants to play a game that involves solving problems instead of a sandbox where all difficulty comes from self-imposed, arbitrary rules.

[Fradow]

Did you try to save & reload? As far as I remember, pulsing only works after you construct a Tepidizer until next reload (though there are conflicting reports of sometime working even after a reload that I was not able to reproduce).

There is actually a second way to exploit Tepidizer, by tricking it with a low temperature liquid cell that does not exchange heat with the gas you heat up (or very little).

Obviously, as Saturnus said, those bugs are very very old, well-known by the community. It's even mentionned on the wiki: https://oxygennotincluded.fandom.com/wiki/Liquid_Tepidizer#Bugs

[Ntr1cate]

1 hour ago, Coolthulhu said:

At a significant cost to enjoyment of the game that comes with having to hold back and not use the most effective mechanics and instead confining self to some set of ill-defined rules.

There is nothing inherently "cheaty" about exploits. Starvation ranching is not a bug, it's just an effect of an incomplete design that didn't predict the optimal solution to the problem.

then let me reword it.

In every game, there will always be things people don't like, be it intended or unintended, at the end of the day tho.

If you really don't like it, you could always decide not to use the current games optional use of mechanics

[Magheat2009]

Mad respect for the legends who did not back down against "don't like don't use it".