You lack a basic understanding of heat

[smithdl]

So here is the deal.  I love this game.  The ability to create complicated self sustaining systems for multiple needs is awesome.  It is my dream game as a administrator type kind of guy.  But the heat issue is really bugging me.  I am a professional firefighter for a living, and I am also a hazmat tech for my department.  Now, Im not a chemist or a engineer, and I am not trying to sell myself as something I'm not, but there are some basic facts about heat energy that I think would help this game.

First, chemical reactions are either endo or exothermic.  That is, they either release heat or absorb heat.  Now, in this game one of the concepts is energy production for electricity.  These are always heat producing reactions.  Whether its burning gas, coal, petroleum, or the sugar in our dupes blood to run the wheel, it creates heat.  For the goal of this game, we can consider everything we do to be exothermic, with the only exception in this game being melting ice in their respective biomes as that process is endothermic.  Some polymer reactions can be endothermic, but I am no expert at those.  Should plastic creation be endothermic in the game?  I don't know.

The other concept to understand is heat transfer.  Heat transfers in 3 different ways - Convective, Conductive, Radiation

Convective - This concept is that heat rises.  As the heat energy creates molecules that move faster, it creates less dense matter compared to the same amount with less heat.  This also goes hand in hand with vapor pressure, but lets not get to far into the weeds...

Conductive - This is simply the spread of heat on an object.  You heat one side of a wall, it spreads to the other side.  How fast and how close all depends on the material (which for the record you guys have nailed and is a super cool part about this game, choosing your material for your application).

Radiation.  This is the concept that heat energy is always in movement and ultimately is looking for a balance.  Its why you get hot from a campfire even though your not touching it(conductive), and your not over it(convective).  Its energy moving, and contrary to the other two, does not require a mass to transfer.  You can radiate heat in space.

Also, cold is not a thing.  We say its cold, but we mean there is an absence of heat energy.

So, with those facts outlined, which you probably already knew so sorry if it came across as belittling, let me make my point.  

I am tired of looking up solutions for heat management that are about glitches and loopholes not closed yet.  Some self cooling thermoregulator set up that works because you put cold hydrogen at the top and then a different gas like oxygen and somehow they can take the same air and drop the temperature while using heat creating electricity.  That is ridiculous.  There are certain items that have a set temperature output so you can put hot in and get cool out without a consequence to the surrounding atmosphere.  I'm not asking you to fix every loophole, people are always going to find a way in a video game this deep.  And good for them, have fun and find cool stuff.  But for those who want to find a viable solution to this problem that makes sense and is logical, this game simply doesn't have a way to manage heat.

See, you guys got it right, heat doesn't go away.  Melt ice till its gone and then it will ultimately find it equilibrium.  And with the geysers and energy creation in this game, equilibrium is death.  

So let me tell you about a structure fire.  When we make entry into a house that is on fire, we have our nozzle with us, and the ability to put copious amounts of water on the fire.  But what is the science behind it?  The first is the simple heat transfer.  Water takes a crazy amount of energy to heat up and turn to steam.  So by putting water on the fire, we suck the heat into the water.  The fire is creating a certain amount of heat.  The goal is to get the temperature down to a point where combustion can no longer take place.  So, how much water is determined by how much fire.  Common sense.

The second is steam has a huge vapor expansion.  So 100 gallons of water converted to steam will completely fill a room with steam, essentially suffocating the fire from getting air.  It will still have its heat, but no air.  Fire goes out, or dies down enough for us to be in control.

But no matter the fire, there is one thing we must do, and that is get the heat OUT of the building.  Its critical, the most important thing at the end of the day is temperature.  That is why we cut holes in roofs(although it helps with visibility too, removing the smoke) its why we set up fans and open windows, and its why we put water on the fire.  However we do it, removing the heat is paramount.  Now, if you go into a structure fire, and you have big fire, and you just start spraying water into the hot black smoke, you will have a really bad day.  See, your just transferring the heat from the fire into the water, and that steam will fill that house, and before you know it, you will have steam burns with blisters all over you.  Dropping the thermal layer is bad, and if you don't either control your water, or have a way for that heat to leave the building, your not gettin it.

So, whats my point to all that?  The "asteroid" is the house.  All those chemical reactions for energy, there just like the fire in the house.  If you don't have a way to remove the heat from the "house" it will build and equilibrium will be death.

The only reason earth doesn't just heat up and kill us all is because we radiate our heat out into space.  If the heat created by the sun was all trapped on the earth till the next day and kept building we wouldn't be here.  But that is the world created in this game, forcing glitches, and bad logic to find solutions that are, in my opinion, game ruining.

I don't want to manage heat with glitches or weirdness.  So the question becomes, how do you remove heat from the asteroid.  There are a couple ideas I have for logical solutions that are video game friendly and easy.  And yes, I think the Worts are a great way to solve the problem with a video game solution, but there limits as a plant hamper the minds creativity and there aren't very many of them.

Idea #1 - Access to space to radiate heat away.  Now this brings about a huge undertaking and may be in the works already.

Idea #2 - Create a type of material similar to netronium in the ice biomes that is indestructible but refuses to rise above a certain temperature.  This is more of a video game fix, similar to the wort.

Idea #3 - The best for last.  You need cold geysers in the ice biome.  Something that sends out freezing gas.  Which gas?  I don't know.  I'm sure you have your future gases that you plan on implementing.  Should one be super cold?  YES!  I think this would really help balance the game.  And you wouldn't just have to worry about heat, but you would have to worry about to cold as well.

Well, thanks for taking the time to read this.  Keep up the good work.

[blash365]

I agree with absolutely all of it.

 

A closed system with a permanent source of heat and no heat sinks, does eventually overheat.

All current temperature solutions i have seen do not seem like glitch-free approaches to the game to me (apart from weezeworts ... and the anti entropy thermo displacer).

 

I also like that there is a second one having similar thoughts about pressure and temperature in his head.:D

[vovik]

There is already an "anti entropy thermo displacer" structure - it is quite potent and can cool a pool of LAVA as shown by brothgar - so i consider it as heatsink, also there are whezeworts and termofans that legitimately delete heat(wheezes need less resources to maintain).

Also,
About equilibrium - if you let your dupes die and watch for quite some cycles you will see that temperature slowly reaches equilibrium, even abyssalite will not stop it, as it conducts some heat(also geysers will eventually stop producing.. etc...), if accounted that heat is generated only by dupe interaction - then making it deletable by human interaction seems fair.

Even whezeworts have their equilibrium - stop cooling at -60, and accounting that heat production stops eventually equilibrium is at -60.

[blash365]

The problem is that the anti entropie thermo displacer and weeze worts are limited, while the number of possible heatsources increases.

 

For instance my thermo displacer is already fully cooling my 3 polymer presses in a hydrogen-filled room, which arent even working on full efficiency.

I still havent salvaged all the wheezeworts on my map, but eventually i will no longer be able to build any production facilities.

[smithdl]

On ‎1‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 3:06 PM, vovik said:

There is already an "anti entropy thermo displacer" structure - it is quite potent and can cool a pool of LAVA as shown by brothgar - so i consider it as heatsink, also there are whezeworts and termofans that legitimately delete heat(wheezes need less resources to maintain).

Also,
About equilibrium - if you let your dupes die and watch for quite some cycles you will see that temperature slowly reaches equilibrium, even abyssalite will not stop it, as it conducts some heat(also geysers will eventually stop producing.. etc...), if accounted that heat is generated only by dupe interaction - then making it deletable by human interaction seems fair.

Even whezeworts have their equilibrium - stop cooling at -60, and accounting that heat production stops eventually equilibrium is at -60.

So, I think what you mean be equilibrium with the geysers is that if you aren't pulling water out of them they eventually stop spreading heat.  Although that may be true, it is a pointless fact to this conversation.  The point I am making is if your building your base and want to sustain temp control, there is not a balance to the game.  You have unlimited heat production with limited heat dispersion.  I have a 300 cycle base, I have explored the entire map, and I have 8 weezeworts.(which seems really low, maybe bad seed)  I also have my second water geyser that unfortunately puts out water at 165.  That temp is so high and brings so much heat into my base that with my weezeworts split between my batteries and power production and lowering my heat on my electrolysers, I now have a base that is gaining in heat.  This is with 4, I repeat 4, dupes.  Now, I haven't messed with the anti entropy thing yet, so maybe that is exactly what I am asking for.   

Also, the idea that dupe interaction creates the heat so that dupe interaction should be able to remove it confuses me.  Not sure what you mean by that point.  By the same logic, if we had cold geysers and the problem of the game was something continually taking heat out and you weren't  being able to produce enough, you could make the same statement.  

[Entrails]

Great read, thank you for sharing. 

[AileTheAlien]

On 1/24/2018 at 4:56 PM, smithdl said:

Idea #3 - The best for last.  You need cold geysers in the ice biome.  Something that sends out freezing gas.

This would be functionally similar to wheezeworts and the nullifiers, so it should be something unique, with its own challenges. The rest of the game is about managing waste products (heat, CO2, etc), so this should be similar. Maybe it's a bunch of cold chlorine, which is non-breathable? A lot of cold CO2? Something like that, where it's cold you desire, but a by-product you need to manage.  : )

[Kabrute]

search the forum for Borg Cube

[vovik]

10 hours ago, smithdl said:

So, I think what you mean be equilibrium with the geysers is that if you aren't pulling water out of them they eventually stop spreading heat.  Although that may be true, it is a pointless fact to this conversation.  The point I am making is if your building your base and want to sustain temp control, there is not a balance to the game.  You have unlimited heat production with limited heat dispersion.  I have a 300 cycle base, I have explored the entire map, and I have 8 weezeworts.(which seems really low, maybe bad seed)  I also have my second water geyser that unfortunately puts out water at 165.  That temp is so high and brings so much heat into my base that with my weezeworts split between my batteries and power production and lowering my heat on my electrolysers, I now have a base that is gaining in heat.  This is with 4, I repeat 4, dupes.  Now, I haven't messed with the anti entropy thing yet, so maybe that is exactly what I am asking for.   

sir, do you know what is insulation? 
Firstly - you can limit amount of water present in machines using valves, secondly you can use insulated stuff to decrease influence of hot stuff, while cooling at speed at which heat transfers, yea. Also there are heat deletion glitches and stuff.. and no one stops you from using other things like consumers that can "void" heat at heat capacity of input elements - im talking about timble reed with its insane intake of 160 kg of polluted water per day - you could simply use mass fields of reed to void out heat - just transfer heat to polluted water and void it using valves and timble reed(climat control is required too, since water in farms heat up everything around too), alternatively you can use pincha as heat consumer, no one stops you. These are just basic things that i remember being in game about deleting heat, im not even talking about glitches and other methods i dont remember by now...
Seriously, why do you even ask devs to ease out game because you arent smart enough at managing some aspect?
There are enough legit ways of managing heat (!which is produced only because of duplicant operation!), this is your problem that you cannot handle it, not lack of basic understanding of heat.

10 hours ago, smithdl said:

Also, the idea that dupe interaction creates the heat so that dupe interaction should be able to remove it confuses me.  Not sure what you mean by that point.  By the same logic, if we had cold geysers and the problem of the game was something continually taking heat out and you weren't  being able to produce enough, you could make the same statement.  

This is totally same with cold geysers if you are using its products. Geyser is producing stuff as long as it has space to, as long as stuff is taken - there is space, stuff is taken by duplicants to sustain themselves. Also there is no heat production other than duplicant-created machines, so i suppose that heat is created by duplicants and/or because of duplicants. Because if heat is created by duplicants there is no point of creating cryo geyser or stuff that quickly dissipates heat and does not require much duplicant interaction(EEZY GAME). I dont count whezeworts in because they are balanced by their amount and slowness.