Hydrofan Rework

[crypticorb]

As we all know, the heat and thermal conductivity system was reworked to DTUs (duplicant thermal unit), which was an odd change, but it gives us a clearer understanding of which buildings put out how much heat relative to each other.

The hydrofan... has anyone actually used this thing? It's pathetic in its current state. I rank it among the most useless buildings available, right up there with the ore scrubber, the dupe checkpoint, and the aerial critter lure. Take a look:

It absorbs a measly 80 DTU/s. Eighty, as in eight-zero.

On top of that, it requires clean water to operate, and consumes it at about 500g/s. It also requires continuous duplicant manual operation. This is where I'll break down what needs to change, and why:

1. The hydrofan doesn't dissipate enough heat. The duplicant operating the hydrofan puts out 83.68 DTU/s, which means the water and dupe time isn't even enough to overcome the operators body heat. In oxygen, a single wheezewort absorbs about 10x as much.
2. Duplicant time required should be cut out entirely. Hydrofans, or vaporizers as they're known in the real world, take a medium amount of power and humidify the air. The hydrofan could be vastly improved if it were powered, or simply autonomous, like the deodorizer.
3. The water source could be easily changed to a piped source, rather than delivery.

If any one of these changes were to occur, it would greatly improve the use value of the hydrofan. I understand that it is an early game method of cooling with reasonably balanced requirements, but it is incredibly underwhelming. By the time a player notices a heat problem, such as overheating farms, it is FAR too late to use one of these to solve the problem, and better solutions are readily available just one research tier above, in HVAC.

[Tekky]

I agree that the Hydrofan is virtually useless and that it should be made more powerful, in some way.

[babba]

+1

The current Hydrofan is like a party guest nobody talks to, standing in a dark shady corner.

[goboking]

5 hours ago, crypticorb said:

he hydrofan... has anyone actually used this thing? It's pathetic in its current state. I rank it among the most useless buildings available, right up there with the ore scrubber, the dupe checkpoint, and the aerial critter lure.

I can't be the only one who finds ore scrubbers and, to a lesser extent, dupe checkpoints useful?

[crypticorb]

1 hour ago, goboking said:

I can't be the only one who finds ore scrubbers and, to a lesser extent, dupe checkpoints useful?

Ore scrubbers are completely reliant on chlorine geysers to function, and are only needed for slime or algae, which can simply be stored in cold water or chlorine for the same result. They also require significant setup and dupe time to process the ore.

Checkpoints are... pointless. Everything a checkpoint can do, an standard mechanized airlock or airflow door can do just as well. There are only a few edge cases where the unique capabilities of the checkpoint are more useful, but all of them involve the dupe sitting and waiting at the checkpoint, which is a waste of time.

[Sasza22]

5 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

dupe sitting and waiting at the checkpoint, which is a waste of time.

The point of the checkpoint is to make a dupe waste time. That`s why it`s considered useless.

The scrubber would be useful if it was loaded manually with bottled gas and if the gas bottler was lower tech. it would actually be a good reason to build the bottler.

As for the hydrofan i`d prefer if it used ice and oparating it would speed up the temperature exchange. You`d end with some water and the are cooled down. (wouldn`t work below 0^oC)

[crypticorb]

16 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

The point of the checkpoint is to make a dupe waste time. That`s why it`s considered useless.

The scrubber would be useful if it was loaded manually with bottled gas and if the gas bottler was lower tech. it would actually be a good reason to build the bottler.

As for the hydrofan i`d prefer if it used ice and oparating it would speed up the temperature exchange. You`d end with some water and the are cooled down. (wouldn`t work below 0^oC)

I like both of those two ideas. I've been trying to think of a reason for the gas bottler, it seemed like a pointless structure for most any purposes, and when I saw it suggested in the forums I hoped the devs would ignore that idea.

I love the idea of the hydrofan being more powerful with ice, perhaps give both water or ice as an option? Or even polluted ice, as it currently has zero purpose other than melting.

[goboking]

1 hour ago, crypticorb said:

Ore scrubbers are completely reliant on chlorine geysers to function,

There's enough bleach stone to supply a handful of ore scrubbers for thousands of cycles.

 

 

[Gnarmaw]

The problem with Ore Scrubbers is that dupes won't queue up so if you have multiple dupes running back with germed stuff, some of them will run past it without cleaning which means you need to build at least one Ore Scrubber per dupe to ensure clean stuff

Easier to just store stuff in Chlorine, Water or simply letting slimeling dies naturally on non slime stuff.

[Mooka]

agreed