Anyone actually used Cooling Fan?

[Technoincubus]

It seems that it is THE most useless piece of machinery in the game. I used it, like, only once to understand that it is the worst thing dupes can build in the game.

It requires dupe operation, it requires precious water. It is bad at cooling. The Fan have virtually no positive qualities. It needs a serious rework to be usable.

[WanderingKid]

It definitely needs a rework, but my problem with it isn't the dupe usage, I'm okay with it being a spot cooling to remove some heat from the corners of a base or something.  My concern with it is the water usage.  It's off the charts for what it does.

[Technoincubus]

I can cope with use of wate late gamer but it is dupe operation that is decisive for me in not ever touching it. 

[MorsDux]

Neither is acceptable thats the point. It makes you build better systems out of pure disgust towards its inefficiency. 

[PhailRaptor]

The Hydrofan used to be tied with the Algae Terrarium in terms of worthlessness.  The Terrarium has had quite a successful rework.  We are now waiting on the Hydrofan's turn.

[KittenIsAGeek]

I have used it every now and then.  When Thermal first came out, it was WAY over powered and would give the dupe operating it frostbite in a third of a cycle.

Its effect is much less dramatic now and does appear to cool about 40 watts of heat.  That said, there are some significant problems:

1. It only works when being operated by a dupe.  Which means it isn't a constant 40 watts of cooling.
2. It uses water.  LOTS of water.  You might not notice with one or two, but get ten of these running and you can watch your water reservoir drain right before your eyes.
3. Because you can't pipe water to it, dupes must carry the water there.  So there's delivery time in addition to operating time.
4. The area of effect is very small.  In combination with the minimal amount of cooling, I've only managed to cool down something that doesn't produce much heat -- like a research station.
5. Carbon dioxide messes with its thermal transfer rate.  These things, like wheezewarts, work best in hydrogen.  However, their place in the tree means that you're using them inside your early base, before you have exo-suits.  The CO2 from the operating dupe will get sucked up into it and will 'steal' some of the thermal energy.  The CO2, because its a small amount and has poor thermal properties, will flash-freeze well below zero, causing the dupe to stop operation.  The moment the dupe leaves, the CO2 will be back to room temp and another dupe will queue up to operate the fan.  This steals operating time and reduces its effectiveness.

 

[UziMaster]

Perhaps turn a percentage of the water into ice, providing further cooling and reducing the resource cost. The ice itself being the main cooling vector would mean you don't need to worry about which gasses are there, though it would be a bit non-sensical for the current design...

Maybe significantly increase the cooling, but turn the water into steam?

 

 

[Lilalaunekuh]

Hydrofans have some more downsides, if you just got hot water ...

=> If you feed >90°C Water to your hydrofan it seems to radiate a good amount of heat before destroying some

 

But I still love my hydrofans and build them most of the time to support a polyme press:

- Build a space to collect the water your polymer press is emitting

- Build a pitcher pump there

-Build a hydrofan close to the polymer press

=> If you got no real use for the little water output of your polymer press, why not use it to improve the cooling

[JonnyMonroe]

It certainly needs a buff. And the water cost could do with a reduction but I think it needs to stay manual or players will mass them mid game rather than seeking out better solutions. It needs to stay an early game solution and being manual operated keeps it in that niche.

[Technoincubus]

I've gone huge lenghts to rid myself of Oil refinery simply because it required a manual use and built a huge installation foroil boiling.

Just to avoid manual operation.

[BlueLance]

My dupes need something to do, so I let them do it

[Carnis]

It can almost liquify hydrogen, since the hydrofan does not care if the water in it is frozen or not... but then the heat of the duplicant starts to heat the hydrogen too much after a while. Tried it once while drunk.

[Lilalaunekuh]

43 minutes ago, Carnis said:

It can almost liquify hydrogen,

Wouldn´t liquid hydrogen be able to chill a dupe wearing an exo suit ?

[BlueLance]

Liquid hydrogen would evaporate or freeze solid too quickly I think? I know it would break the pipes so I am not sure how you would get liquid hydrogen

[heckubis]

i remember when the dupes would run those to the point of liquefying Co2. and i still use them next to things like the kiln but not many will also use them as a bandage for cooling a green house while im upgrading the farms mid game(dont allways need especially if you have a spare wart) they should be earlyer on the research tree but yah they need to be fixed you are already able to make better by the time you learn them most often but then again i will still throw a power wheel small battery and deoxidyzer in areas i come into. but i figure its one of those stop gap items to use as dupe powered backup

[Kittie885]

I must be the only person who uses hydro fans. I use them in conjecture with the ice plants. I make sure to have a surplus of water though. I have actually found them useful for a bunch of small gardens clustered together.

[Technoincubus]

I seriously can't rhink how hydrofan could be useful because it requires a manual operation. It just hogs one dupe and consumes water at alarming rate.

[Tobruk]

Plus you have no control over the amount of cooling. Every other piece of equipment that heats/cools is automateable, but the fan will theoretically work ALL THE TIME (provided a dupe is always willing to operate it). I was forced to resort to cheese shenenigans as placing the fan in an enclosed space behind doors and locking the doors while temp got cold enough. C'mon...

[psusi]

On 9/4/2018 at 4:42 AM, Tobruk said:

Plus you have no control over the amount of cooling. Every other piece of equipment that heats/cools is automateable, but the fan will theoretically work ALL THE TIME (provided a dupe is always willing to operate it). I was forced to resort to cheese shenenigans as placing the fan in an enclosed space behind doors and locking the doors while temp got cold enough. C'mon...

From my experience with them, I don't see how this could ever happen. The amount of cooling they provide is damn near zero.  I once had some hot water from a steam vent spill into my base.  I spent a good 30 cycles running 3 hydrofans using up all of that water and the temperature maybe went down 1 or 2 degrees.  Nowhere near the temperature before the water spilled.

[Technoincubus]

making fan automated and not requiring dupe operation at least could change things so I can consider them to be used at some point where I will have exccessive water. But dupe operation menas that I will never touch it even it will be able to cool down better than thermo-nullifier.

[crypticorb]

If you look at the actual numbers, the hydrofan cooling factor is actually less than the heat the dupe operating it outputs.

This alone makes it a worthless structure.

If the hydrofan consumed ice or polluted ice, and ramped up the cooling amount by a factor of 10, it might be useful.

[tzionut]

For me is useful only to get rid of excess water, but is faster to vent it in space  . I used once for curiosity, then never build it again.