Realism of chemistry and physics

[Masterpintsman]

I would like to see the physical, chemical and biological reactions to be somewhat realistic (instead of being completely opposit to what happens in RL, like currently with the algae farms) and use energy lost to entropy (as being emitted at an uncaptureable level) and toxic waste products as a form of ingame resource depletion - instead of matter vanishing into nothingness.

Think of electrolysers to split 2 H20 into O2 and 2 H2 using electricity, generating a bit of heat (that is lost and we have to deal with) in the process, the hydrogen generator fusing 2 H into 1 helium (light, unbreathable, hard to capture, makes duplicant voices funny) providing power but emitting heat (again lost and a problem) and radiation (another problem), a fuel cell that combines O2 and 2 H2 into 2 H20 generating power (less than the electrolyser needs for the reverse) emitting heat (again...).

Also, as melting-, evaporation- and condensation points not only being a function of temperature but also pressure, I would like to have devices that enable to play with the effects of the adiabatic process so we could build interesting contraptions: separating gas mixes by selective condensation, heat pumps to temperate gas or fluids, distillers, ...

So I would like to see:

• inline pumps
• intakes to connect pipes to the world
• hydrostatic pressure in pipes (sucking liquid from deep down is hard, pushing it up not so much)
• sensors for pipe segments to query pressure, temperature, aggregate state
• valves that can be actuated base on sensor readings and a configureable threshold
• heat exchanger with two universal (that allow both gas and liquid ) pipe connections (cross flow), so they could be configured as as condensers, evaporators, or as fluid/fluid, fluid/gas and gas/gas heat exchangers
• a heat exchanger similar to the prior, but with only one universal pipe connection that averages pipe contents temperature with the world (working both in gas and liquid)
• gas/liquid/solid aggregate change (evaporation/condensation, melting/solidifying) inside a pipe (both gas and liquid ones), gas be able to traverse a liquid pipe (but at greatly reduced throughput as of the smaller diameter) and liquid being able to run inside a gas pipe (accumulating at deep points and difficult to be driven through the pipe by airflow) and solids clogging the pipes, which brings us to
• a buildable that intersects gas and liquid pipes, enabling to extract condenseated liquid inside the low points of a gas pipe or to inject a liquid into a gas vent to evaporate it there (as the pressure drops)
• reactors with hatches where solids from evaporated fluids can be harvested (replacement for fertilizer maker)
• stirling engines, turbines, (something) that allows us to harvest pressure differentials within pipes together with world areas with different thermal levels that can be harnessed through building interesting contraptions

Also: while I see a point in gasses (and fluids) always being separated perfectly (as it eases handling them from a game engine standpoint) I think the natural state should be mixes of the different gasses, with the separation of the fractions happening in undisturbed volumes and disturbances (duplicant running through an area) lessening the separation. Same with mixable (oil/water won't, as an example) fluids, it should be possible to settle contaminated water to a certain degree so it would be possible to extract a cleaner fraction at the top (that uses less filtration material to clean to drinking quality) and a more contaminated fraction at the bottom (that has a higher yield when making fertilizer) but it should be difficult to directly get perfectly clean water from a reservoir where a duplicant had a 'mishap' into so some contraptions (add) would be needed to clean it up.(/add)

Also water should evaporate from algae farms (it makes no sense for them to just vanish it), duplicant breathing (dehydrating them, so they'll have to drink) and other reasonable places, while condensating on cold spots and potentially leading to problems inside the base (mold growth, as one example) when not being dealt with or difficulties to setup plant farms (as different crops could require different air humidity levels to prosper). This problem could initially be attacked by building salt based dehumidifyers or power using evaporators, which at a higher technology level could be replaced with a heat pump/exchanger based contraptions that use evaporating/condensing alcohol as a heat exchange medium (for condensing water vapor) or excess heat of other stuff (to evaporate).

Certainly this all would shift the (currently) somewhat simple game focus from need resource? get out and dig it (algae) or want a certain influence on the world then build the objects that does that (hydrofan) toward a more technical style simulation of the intermingled problems of supplying the duplicants with a livable habitat, away from predefined objects (that do a fixed job, like the hydrofan). But hey, it's in space anyway and we can print people - and maybe this or that from it might find it's way into the game in one form or another...

Bottom line: maybe this spawns interesting ideas in other (as in 'not me') people. Thanks for reading, feedback is welcome.

[Vincie]

Let's leave the fusion, energies are too high to create anything interesting and hydrogen comsumption would be too low to introduce. I would rather see realistic cirquits, with logical nodes, resistors, transistors, power inverters, transformators, coils... Ahhh, dreams of a basement-dwelling physicist.

[Ystogan]

For the chemical reactions and water i agree. The other stuff might get to different/complex from what klei intends the game to be.

As of now oxygen is just removed leaving a lower and lower air pressure, while only getting very little CO2 back. This should be equal or something like 95% CO2. The 5% can come from composting the contaminated dirt.
I'd also be more interested in algae actually growing bigger after a while because of the CO2 intake. Creating slime after a longer usage time. Which can be used to make fertilizer.

Water disappearing into nothing bothers me as well. Although, for complexion sake, just let the duplicants only eat food. Having water in the air would add a whole new meaning to the tech tree for harvesting it back to re-use. Maybe even create some artificial alien tech rain?
 

[Vincie]

One thing, if you calculate it:

Let's say, that we burn 1kg of coal - it gives energy of 3,3*10^7J and temperature of around 1273K. If the coal generator is a Carnot engine, it's theoretical efficiency should be 81% in 20C ambient temperature. This means, that burning 1kg of coal should take 2,66kg of oxygen and give power of 7,4kW in one hour. And the rest of the energy would heat the air, like a hot CO2 or soever. If the cycle is 24 hours and the generator generates 600 (600?) watts, it means, that nearly 2kg of coal per cycle. It uses more for far less energy. Maybe coal should be rather a rare, precious rock?

[Dusk]

Game play always trumps realism, trying to put realism before game play is how you rek a game.

Pseudo realism in a game is nothing more than a tool used to help paint a picture and/or create immersion. Creating a really real realistic physics engines turns any game into a CPU hog and adds a heavy learning curve while adding almost nothing to the actual game out side adding more steps required to achieve a desired outcome.

do you really want to have to spends hours deciding how many loops of copper wire, amount of varnish, bearing type, casings, and various other material amounts before making a simple electric motor for your pump? 

Don't forget the amount of time it takes to research and tune something super realistic takes away from the rest of the game. Thats valuable development time not spent on creating monsters, game play events, new zones, or other fun things.  Its never worth it to shoot for extreme realism.

 

[Ystogan]

4 hours ago, Dusk said:

Game play always trumps realism, trying to put realism before game play is how you rek a game.

Pseudo realism in a game is nothing more than a tool used to help paint a picture and/or create immersion. Creating a really real realistic physics engines turns any game into a CPU hog and adds a heavy learning curve while adding almost nothing to the actual game out side adding more steps required to achieve a desired outcome.

do you really want to have to spends hours deciding how many loops of copper wire, amount of varnish, bearing type, casings, and various other material amounts before making a simple electric motor for your pump? 

Don't forget the amount of time it takes to research and tune something super realistic takes away from the rest of the game. Thats valuable development time not spent on creating monsters, game play events, new zones, or other fun things.  Its never worth it to shoot for extreme realism.

 

There is indeed a limit to how much you should go for "real life". However, i do find it annoying the pressure drops so fast, even without digging anything up... it should at least maintain 95% of the pressure.
I'd like to see a more diverse farming and mobs (both hostile and domestic) to help building a base

[Vincie]

Well... But the energy could have been preserved. For example, burning coal could give ashes, food production could provide us with contaminated water, as it was mentioned before, water could end up in air... And why are there no schrooms? Those caves should be all filled with those! Those could be using the water from air to expand! And could be both a meal or a poisonous air contaminator. And those should still use oxygen in my opinion.

Hydrogen generators definatelly should not make enoug energy to run an electrolyzer to provide hydrogen for the generator, simply burning it - but it could be fusing hydrogen with... with abyssylite, producing iron and a fair ammount of energy! And heat, of course. Finally, use for this useless crystalline.

I would also love the Stirling generators to utilize surplus heat.

As for algae deoxydizer, should it not produce clay or something? Algae are definatelly not made of oxygen.

[Aru3]

If you want to be technically accurate, heat produced by any structure or duplicant should be identical to the energy that it consumes. (Joules and kilocalories are both proper units of energy, they both convert entirely to heat when they are consumed.) Conservation of energy, thermodynamics, all that. But Rimworld doesn't work like that, and I doubt this game will either. There's the obvious things like unrealistic products from algae, and mass being created and destroyed all over, and atoms being created and disappearing, such as colonists consuming more oxygen than the oxygen they release as CO2. And also liquid water being compressed to over 2.5 kg / m^3 at times. But you know, games don't have to match reality perfectly. The better they do, the more immersive it is, but it's understandable if it's merely inspired by reality, and filled with impossible number conversions. In that case, I really want to know what all those numbers are so I can perform proper analysis, so please put all the missing ones about production and consumption into the info boxes! And perhaps display the nominal values too, not just the current ones which sometimes jump all over (and presumably average to) the nominal.