The games 'lying': A look at Insulated Tiles and Tiles

[Full Metal Kirby]

So as many of you are probably aware, Tiles and Insulated Tiles don't change temperature in the current iteration of the game ... except they actually do, kinda.

If you click on a space occupied by a Tile enough times, you'll end up on the material it's made out of and its current temperature, and chances are it will probably be different from the Tiles' displayed temperature if you've been playing for an hour or if it's an extreme temperature difference.

An interesting quirk with this can be seen if you build a floor of insulated tiles made of sedimentary rock and drop a good quantity of (igneous) magma on it, where the block will in turn melt into magma but the insulated tile 'skin' will remain there. Items/liquids/gasses can now pass through that space as if it isn't even there.

Of course, I say 'kinda' for a reason: Every time you load the game, all the 'skins' reapply their current material and temperature to their relative spot.

However, this means that the longer you play, the more that your tiles and insulated tiles will differ from their actual displayed temperature. So if you have unexplained temperature increases when your entire base is sealed off (and your dupes aren't just 500c), that's probably why. Though, it seems like Insulated Tiles, at the very least, make it so they have a significantly lessened temperature influence on their surroundings -- but they do still affect them, so even in a perfectly sealed insulated tile container completely full of magma, the magma will slowly cool down.

This also has an interesting/somewhat useful quirk you can make use of until it's more than likely fixed in the next update: If you (somehow) manage to heat a block above its melting point while in item form and build a tile out of that block, it will instantly turn to magma ... which will happen every time you save and load the game. Very useful if you, for example, have some 1800c Igneous rocks and want to heat up iron ore to its melting point.

tl;dr: To avoid hidden temperature changes, just reload your game every so often.

[heckubis]

yah I'm building  a steam  boiler out of iron for its already high heat, trying to use the resident heat from the materials to help with conversion,

igneous  for the insulation for the heat as well.