steam turbine Steam Turbine: Too Cold - Too Useless

[SkySentinel]

There're two huge fun-killing problems with the current implementation of the steam turbine:
1. It requires minimum steam temperature without any justified reason;
2. Its power output is ridiculously lower than its heat energy input.

I can understand, why you added the difference between the temperatures of ingoing steam and outgoing steam: to nerf the possibility of the building an endless tower of steam turbines. I'm totally agreed that such possibility should have been nerfed, otherwise it just ruins all the balance. And taking out some heat energy directly from steam is legit simplifying for a game physics.

But it was enough to do the needed nerfing, the minimum run temperature of 250 °C is not necessary. Furthermore, the steam turbine comes under "renewable energy" tech, so there should be a renewable steam (heat) source with a temperature higher than 250 °C. Magma doesn't fit into this definition because it's not renewable. Except magma, there's nothing such hot anymore and none of tech buildings can heat water/steam to the needed temperature. Geysers, especially steam geysers would perfectly fit into the concept of geothermal renewable energy source, but their temperature is too low (and none of tech building can raise the delta to the needed temperature of 250 °C).

I've just tested the released version of the steam turbine, and here're the numbers (please correct me if I'm wrong). It throughputs 10 kg/s of steam and consumes 30 K of temperature (heat energy). The heat energy capacity of steam is 4179 J/kg/K. The typical efficiency should be around 50% (in the current simplified thermodynamics system). So the right power output should be 10x30x4179x0.5=626'850 J/s or around 625 kW. Yes, it's more than half a megawatt. And it's a way more than current 2 kW. All of this doesn't balance the game, this actually does unbalance it in the negative, making the game unreasonably difficult and non-rewarding, ruining the concept of real-like physics, and killing the fun.

What I suggest:
1. Reduce the heat capacity of steam to around 2000 J/kg/K. This value corresponds to the real physics value, and it will help to balance the thermodynamic issue mentioned above. The x2 difference between heat capacity of steam and water is the part of thermodynamic equation actually.
2. Increase the power output of the steam turbine to 20 kW. This's current power network limit - sounds like a good synergy.
3. Correlate power output and heat energy input to the following values:
- efficiency = 5% (due to very low-tech - sounds fair);
- steam throughput = 10 kg/s (one water pump full-time work - synergy again);
- heat energy consumption = 20 K (delta for polluted water boiled with aquatuners);
=> 10x20x2000x0.05=20'000 J/s.
4. Reduce the minimum working temperature to the level of steam condensation temperature plus consumed temperature: 99.4+20=119.4 °C.
5. Increase the building requirements to x10 amount of refined metal. This sounds fair while power output was increased 10 times.
6. Increase the startup (spinning up) time to 300 s while it does throughputs steam and consumes heat energy (currently doesn't). This will effectively prevent working in non-constant steam generation systems, making the whole steam power plant large and complex, and hard to copy endlessly.

At first glance, the end product of these suggestions may look like OP power source. But if we take apart magma (as non-renewable heat source) and take into account only the thermo aquatuners, then try to build steam source with constant 10 kg/s flow and zero heat emission without internal overheating - really, just try to do it - we will find, that this is very hard task. And it should be rewardable. Have to be. Otherwise there's no point to build it at all, 2 kW isn't worth all the invested engineering, materials, and work. Furthermore if we take into account, that aquatuners consume a lot of power, the final power surplus of the whole power plant may be even negative (if designed poorly). Therefore, it's not OP. And it can't be towered endlessly due to the consumption of 20 K from the steam flow (the rated steam temperature of the power plant is around 120-125 °C).

That’s all. I hope you'll like it and it will be implemented in the future. Sorry for the long text and thanks for your time.

P.S.: As a part of the steam power plant, please note also this suggestion about the condensation section - this is much needed to make the whole system work as it should.

[Steelflame]

Honestly, I just think the Steam Turbine is something we got too early.   It should have been delayed a few updates, it obviously wasn't an important part of this one in the slightest, and adds nothing to the game in it's current implementation.

 

It also is sort of ironically named in the research tree... considering its supposed to be "renewable energy" but it is in fact the only non-renewable energy source in the game.  Everything else is renewable, if not exactly scalable for that aspect of it.

[SkySentinel]

I don't think so. I have an excellent application for the steam turbine: it's a power supply of the polluted water distillation plant. The plant produces steam anyway and consumes around 19 kW of electricity, but with the steam turbine it will be self-powered and give a little power surplus. This doesn't break The Law of Conservation of Energy, because main energy source of the plant are two steam geysers that produce a lot of heat energy. Also its design provides the recuperation of heat energy from the condensation chamber to the evaporation chamber. I could only dream of the developers adding a steam turbine, but they did it just in time.

Thereby the steam turbine adds pretty much interesting aspect to the game for the gamers like me. I can assure you that I'm not the only one with such engineering plans for the game. And I bet that someone already has even more applications for the steam turbine that we can't even imagine. All the charm of ONI, all that makes the game so unique is that it gives such wide opportunities.

[Steelflame]

That would be true of the Steam Turbine worked as needed, but with the current temperature ranges it requires it is beyond current machinery to make it function unless you are effectively wanting to turn it into an ore dump as you constantly have to repair overheated materials.

[vovik]

NUCLEAR UPGRADE in on the way. Not useless at all!

On 11.02.2018 at 9:26 AM, SkySentinel said:

All the charm of ONI, all that makes the game so unique is that it gives such wide opportunities.

Wait, wha? Opportunities? game works the way that devs see it, all opportunities are exploits of their vision... You can mention it if you watch how long devs take to add things people ask to, or to rework existing mechanics so not only their vision is only existing option.