NASA-like External Active Thermal Control System

[Explorifier]

 

Summary

Use some easy Unity engine workarounds to simulate thermal radiation and add a NASA-like heater/cooler building that would enhance the simulation and be very marketable.

 

The Problem--

Despite remaining around the top 100 steam games, ONI's unrealistic thermodynamics can discourage many would be players.

The thermodynamics realism chief issue for newer players is the fact that steam turbines are used as air conditioners despite any real-world equivalent, and players watching YouTubers are likely to see something highly bizarre and intimidating. A NASA like External Active Thermal Control System would help achieve Terraria-like sales, while improving game experience, by using the Unity Engine's mechanics to indirectly simulate thermal radiation.

 

Suggested Solutions

Thermal Radiation in Unity

Blackbody radiation dynamics are too complicated to directly simulate with the Unity Engine which means that ONI cannot use any kind of real-world space based heating and cooling system like EATCS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Control_System). There is a way to model thermal radiation using the existing engine's algorithms such as NASA's real-world EATCS can be used and gamified. Specifically, thermal radiation can be modeled with (A) Gas Dynamics code and (B) Heat Gun mechanics (AKA the rocket cone mechanic), without disrupting other latent mechanics.

(A) Gas Dynamics:

Blackbody radiation can be quickly and easily modeled in an indoor vacuumed space by simply passing the calculation for approximately 1 gram of oxygen to a vacuum tile that meets parameters for not being in space. Heat transfer is significantly slowed, but not stopped. To benchmark the effect, 300 grams of solid carbon at 3000K (a household heat lamp) should raise a critter sized mass by 4C like a space heater, whereas the same mass in a gas at 3000K would cook them into barbecue.In order to compensate for the effect of distance on the simulation, vacuum tiles surrounded by vacuum can have heat transfer further multiplied in order to achieve similar benchmarks.

In a tooltip, information about heat transfer due to radiation can be displayed likely with back-end calculation data.  For example, if the heat transfer calculation over a 2-second period is transferring 300 joules that tick, the heat transfer rate could be displayed as 150 watts (which I think is 150DTU).

(b) Heat Gun mechanics

On the surface of a rotating asteroid around the earth, moon-like temperature dynamics occur, i.e. a peak temperature at boiling 100+C and at night a freezing -100C. This is too extreme for gamification, since ONI beta tests indicate -50C and +50C is the range in which the simulation runs effectively as a game. The heat gun mechanics can be used to simulate the radiation mechanics on the surface of the space biome by adding and subtracting equal amounts of heat over the course of a day.

The tooltip on an exterior facing tile could display "gaining 2,000 watts of energy" at peak and "radiation 2,000 watts of energy" at the lowest point (or 2,000 DTUs). The heat gun code does not seem to use a lot of processor resources, but nobody would notice if it fired infrequently. Nothing special needs to be done with the heat gun, it could simply be firing an adjustment of something like +1c +0C -1C at different intervals so long as it reasonably matches the benchmark.

 

Putting it All Together

External Active Thermal Control System

The design overview for NASA's real-world cooling system is on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Control_System). Gamification of the system could be done using highly simplified logic. A game system / real world system overlap in that a fluid is pumped into a space-exposed radiator and massive amounts of heat are radiated out albeit relatively slowly. Water would freeze if used as a coolant, in ONI ethanol would be used as a reasonable alternative to ammonia.

The automation systems could work with an EATCS: if the system is receiving net heat gains, a reflective shield could open (animation) and the system is shut off and no longer gains/loses heat. Coolant has a real risk of freezing, and the amount of cooling gained/lost during a day is variable.

The main electrical power draw of an EATCS in ONI terms is the pump module, so it could draw the same power as a water pump while delivering somewhat improved energy performance compared to a steam turbine with aquatuners, with a drawback that placement locations are quite limited.

An additional challenge is added by the fact that meteors can blow up an EATCS and even worse cause coolant to shoot out into space.

EATCS spacefarer cooler ports and a module would enhance the space game, as players do occasionally accidentally put 20 tons of 90C gold into the spacefarer module.

Ideas for specific gameplay to showcase by streamers might include setting up a heat exchanger between an EATCS and a 95C water geyser (~approx 2 aquatuners of heat), and locating a SPOM close to EATCS to transfer heat into very cold oxygen packets because ethanol can get much, much colder than water.

 

Marketing Aspects

A quaint video could be made of duplicants watching a documentary about the ISS EATCS like that shown to engineering students at the University of Texas at Austin on the aerospace track. Duplicants then get the idea to make one, and hilarity ensues as pipes freeze, a coolant is tried, then pipes are smacked by fast moving space rocks. Eventually duplicants get their air conditioning working and their 40C bedroom is cooled to 20C.

 

[SGT_Imalas]

nah

realism!=fun

zero impact on sales in any way

[Charletrom]

The level of detail in your suggestion is great, but I think the problem with implementing radiant heat is that you would have to do so universally, meaning not just in vacuum. This would probably lead to a big performance impact and would break a ton of bases.

Regarding air conditioners, the game does have them. Thermal regulators/aquatuners function similarly to real world air conditioners. Steam turbines on the other hand use kinetic energy to generate electricity, both in game and in the real world.

[Explorifier]

I think delving a bit more into the evidence for why such a change could drive an increase in fun (across all players) would be helpful.

 

While data on general user experience is not very rich, there are a number of posts, reviews, and commentaries with qualitative opinions combined with the statistics on achievements. I had completed some of the achievements that have a 1% or .5% completion rate, which struck me as unusually low so I did take a look at the accumulated statistics. The achievement statistics tell a story of players reaching the mid-game then quitting in frustration significantly earlier than those same players would spend on other titles especially in the dwarf-like family of games (it looks like 1/3 to 1/2 of the time). There is in particular an unusually sharp dropoff after the oil biome and lots of energy and thus heat gets introduced into the experience.Qualitatively, there are a number of people who have shared confusion and frustration about this phase of the experience, and this even appeared in professional reviews. The comments indicate that a great deal of frustration occurs when extremely unintuitive mechanics without any kind of sci-fi story element are introduced; these players aren't logging into Francis John's videos to learn about Cheesology, they are simply quitting.

 

Financially, the data from a title with a similar background and strategy (DF-like, continuous development): Terraria, sales cycle saw a great deal of product evangelism and about only a 20% player dropoff from the mid-to-late game (i.e., the 30 hour vs 80 hour point), whereas ONI sees more like a 95% dropoff between oil power and nuclear power. This indicates few players find the thermodynamics cheeses to be a lot of fun. Moreover, the thermodynamics cheeses such as heat deletion and absolute vacuum insulation occur very abruptly in the experience, indicating that strategies be reasonably intuitive are fairly rare. Not including an intuitive, real-world way to solve a problem in a simulation game and instead having everyone relying on physics-breaking exploits doesn't really improve the experience for hardcore players and drives away the more casual audience.

 

I recommend taking a middle ground between "handle thermal radiation perfectly or don't handle it at all"--get a "good enough" approximation, enough to create an experience involving real-world insulation and space radiation. 

 

Moreover, it's a myth that not simulating physics and space accurately is not entertaining. Star Trek/Star Wars writers such as Ronald Moore have been very successful with introducing realistic space physics and even sounds, which have become popular in the sci fi genre. The Expanse shows you can add "space magic" side-by-side with realistic physics, and get a better response for audiences. When ONI was in development, vertical farms were not very well understood for example, but now they are everywhere in New York: they are an excellent example of using nighttime geothermal energy (beating the 'duck curve') to power aquatuners (water chillers) in highly insulated facilities. There are lots of liquid locks, and more importantly, gases can pass through the liquid locks and in reality the 950PPM indoor CO2 will be leached out through the toilet liquid lock to the 400ish PPM outdoors. 

 

What's in it for veteran players?

Increasing endgame accessibility by replacing the vast cheese game that sprang up around the fact energy cannot transfer in a vacuum would be beneficial for veteran players. To see proof of this, see how the food dehydrators recently added a whole lot of depth to the space game and is way better than the berry sludge cheese (i.e. a joke became a core strategy of space). Mixing it up, adding novelty, adding challenge is always +fun.  Secondly, revenues to develop all this stuff come from sales, and having an exclusive club of successful players is a revenue killer. A good example of this is Blizzard's strategy with World of Warcraft, hiring a veteran EverQuest player but with the mission of making EverQuest's clubby, elite, raiding world accessible across the playerbase (i.e. extending it from 1% of players to about 15%). The actual mechanics and even culture of high end raiding guilds changed relatively little nonetheless. An overall more successful title is beneficial for everyone, but that requires giving a voice to the large population of quiet quitters and bringing them back to the table.

[SGT_Imalas]

On 1/13/2024 at 4:12 PM, Charletrom said:

This would probably lead to a big performance impact.

unlikely. the main performance hog is dupe and critter pathing.

there are also mods that add these mechanics, allowing testing/playing with them:

• Surface Radiation: heating/cooling of surface
• Space Radiator: ISS radiator sail as a dedicated building
• Radiate Heat in space: buildings absorb and radiate heat energy

[SpomJ]

And all of this still goes out the window allowing you to break thermodynamics by throwing hot stuff into space