ATOYL (Aquatuner on a yielding loop)

[myxal]

Yielding loops are awesome, why are they used so rarely?

TL;DR: An ATOYL setup puts a buffer-style double-bridge on the aquatuner's loop, and extends each end of pipeline - beyond the bridge outputs to the build's output source (Steam turbine, pump, etc.), and beyond the bridge inputs

A yielding loop is a loop added to a "straight", 1-to-1 pipeline (taking liquids from source A to sink B). A fairly known use case for this technique is the zero-automation water purifier from the compendium:

Recently Francis John released a video (Bionic/Prehistoric series, ep 11) where he encountered a familiar problem - for one reason or another, an aquatuner in a build is driven by something other than a pipe thermo sensor, risking freezing the coolant or overchilling some other part of the build. How to avoid this?

Galaxy brain meme:

1. Run the cooling loop through a liquid bath with a tepidizer.
2. If the build produces outputs or takes inputs which heat can be extracted from without downsides, use a heat exchanger, like a chill brick.
3. If the build's (inputs?)/outputs are the same as your choice of AT coolant, steal heat from there. But how?

I'd like to share my solution to #3 which I've been using in my CSV tamers for some time, since experimenting with blakemw's old tamer, where the primary goal was to maintain a running loop with full 10 kg packets no matter what. Here's a simplified pipeline layout that illustrates how ATOYL is hooked up:

 

In FJ's build, something like this should work, accomplishing the replacement without having to either inject heat into the insulated tile with a liquid bridge (FJ's build), or run coolant unnecessarily through the steam room, or have hot replacement sitting in a pipe outside the steam room.

Or better yet, drop the AND gate + timer, and swap the shutoff for a meter valve set to a reasonable fraction of the 10kg packet - to avoid thermal shocks to the turbines.

A little bit extra: Quite a few people swear by having a stash of refinery coolant sitting in the steam room to minimise the waiting for coolant during fabrications. The benefits of doing that are debatable, but I never found it appealing to have ~160°C coolant sitting in pipes in the industrial brick, leaking heat and hurting the brick's power efficiency. (The coolant stored in the refinery is insulated - it doesn't exchange heat with atmosphere or the tile below the refinery's CoI). A yielding loop can still cut the turnaround time by however long the coolant loop is, while maintaining empty pipes outside the steam room:

Edited April 2 by myxal
formatting

[KittenIsAGeek]

So I have used these before, but this is well-described and laid out.  Most recently I started a frozen-core spaced-out ceres map where the warmest spot on the first two asteroids was a sweltering -20C.  So I set up a yielding loop to circulate the clean water so it wouldn't freeze up at the contact points with the sink and lavatory... and a metal pipe segment as it passed behind the wood heater.  Got it all functional by the 10th cycle with no frozen pipes.    Yeah, I love yielding loops. =^.^=

[thriceandonce]

No matter how long I play this game, bridge mechanics always make my head hurt ^^;; Do you use the build as suggested by blakemw with the bridge heat conduction, or do the game mechanics work differently these days? 

[KittenIsAGeek]

I've used bridges for heat conduction, yep.  Not often, but when you need a specific spot to have a small amount of thermal transfer...

[myxal]

Yeah, for heat conduction a conductive wire bridge is often sufficient and not nearly as costly as a steel/niobium/thermium rail bridge, which technically does work even better due to the higher (thermal and actual) mass. Automation ribbon bridges should work just as well as wire bridges - which one gets used usually depends on which doesn't conflict with ports from other buildings, or which is already researched.

As for the actual build I use, we had a workshop of sorts just last week... I prefer the tamer compact, which necessitates using hot liquid loop to spread the heat,  but in terms of mechanics the bridge sticking out method is still viable.

 

 

[bv55]

On 4/8/2026 at 5:58 AM, myxal said:

Yeah, for heat conduction a conductive wire bridge is often sufficient and not nearly as costly as a steel/niobium/thermium rail bridge, which technically does work even better due to the higher (thermal and actual) mass. Automation ribbon bridges should work just as well as wire bridges - which one gets used usually depends on which doesn't conflict with ports from other buildings, or which is already researched.

As for the actual build I use, we had a workshop of sorts just last week... I prefer the tamer compact, which necessitates using hot liquid loop to spread the heat,  but in terms of mechanics the bridge sticking out method is still viable.

 

 

Btw I updated my tamer a bit by moving two transformers out of the room as they will be stored in the steam chamber with the main power cord. Just didn't posted it as the thread was already overflown with my messages and they were a bit offtop.

Edited April 9 by bv55