Has anyone done the math for radiator sizes?

[Q the Platypus]

I expect that it’s going to depend on the thermal conductivity and the temperature difference but has anyone built a calculator to work out how big of a radiator you will need?  I’ve been just guessing and never getting good results.

[Saturnus]

3 hours ago, Q the Platypus said:

I expect that it’s going to depend on the thermal conductivity...

Actually no. Thermal conductivity is not really important.

For the interaction between the pipe itself and what is inside the pipe both thermal conductivity and heat capacity of the pipe is ignored. The only thing that counts is the thermal conductivity and heat capacity of what is inside the pipes, and a mystery value given by the material description. Some materials says things like "thermally reactive" and "high heat conductivity". Pipes with materials with the same description behave exactly the same in the interaction with the material inside the pipes regardless of the materials' real thermal properties.

For the interaction between the pipe itself and what is outside the pipe the thermal properties does count however. Thermal conductivity is set to the lowest value of the two interacting materials as always, and that will almost always be the gas or liquid the pipe is in so thermal conductivity of the pipe material is almost always ignored. Instead it relies on the heat capacity of the two interacting materials and the lowest thermal conductivity.

[Coolthulhu]

5 hours ago, Saturnus said:

For the interaction between the pipe itself and what is inside the pipe both thermal conductivity and heat capacity of the pipe is ignored. The only thing that counts is the thermal conductivity and heat capacity of what is inside the pipes, and a mystery value given by the material description.

Nope - those "mystery values" are calculated directly from heat conductivity and capacity and are only used in display functions.

Since pipe-content interactions are handled by C# part of the game, it can be easily looked up.