Heat radiation and space exposure

[Sasza22]

I was thinking about how could the devs handle the heat radiation without redoing the entire heat transfer system in the game. The it came to me that heat radiation is only relevant in space for the most part and we could ignore it in other scenarios. If so then we could use the "exposed to space" status as an indicator when it shoul happen.

But how would it work? Simpliest as possible imo would be just making space absorb heat based on the normal parameters (thermal conductivity and capacity) just like it absorbs gasses and liquids. There could be an additional parameter for buildings to take it`s size into account.

But to do that we would also need natural light to cause stuff to heat to balance it out. It would cause a few things. The regolith would cool down quickly making it more realistic but the top layer would be really hot during the day (extreme temperature differences; typical for space). Critters and dupes without exosuits would quickly get cold in space making it an actual hazzard to stay in there (other than no oxygen).

Only thing i`m afraid is it becoming to easy to cool stuff using space if that was implemented.

[D.L.S.]

Sounds interesting.

Probably could be done even easier: each top most solid/liquid tile emitting rays(only upwards, so dont need to calculate side neighbors and stuff) and cooling itself, so all you need is check if this tile on top of it's column, if it is it slowly dump heat, rate of losing heat depends of it's material(additional parameter for solids and liquids). So you doing calculations not for each exposed to surface tile, but for each top tile in each coll, so your emitting surface will always be the same(amount of columns in game map), but emitting rate different depends of material.

If devs want this, it can be done many ways.

 

2 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Only thing i`m afraid is it becoming to easy to cool stuff using space if that was implemented.

Add heating by sun(or which crossest star is) light, and try to balance so incoming light heat = irradiated heat in space, and more heat from comets if needed.

From another side - cold also could be a problem, need to use heaters if your asteroid cools too much(i mean not heating base with waste heat, but really on purpose spend power for heaters, burn a lot of coal... sounds like frostpank lol), interesting scenario too.