Why are door compressors considered an exploit?

[lunazone]

Physically they make perfect sense, them opening up forces gasses to move in, then it traps and moves the gasses to their destination. Is it the fact that compressing gasses with air-locks is silly?

[Iriswaters]

I would say that it is due to the idea that it should take a very large amount of force, ie: energy, to compress gases beyond a certain point.  The doors should require far more power to close.   Or likely simply be impossible past a certain level.  Yet closing them is no harder than it is when they are just being doors.

 

It also gets around a number of limitations.  It removes certain challenges.  Like finding ways to deal with excess gases.

 

That said, there is no non-exploit way to deal with some gases effectively.  I mean, you can eventually space them, but unless you rush for space(dealing with the limitations on steel), you are likely to drown in chlorine first.

 

--Edit: To clarify, since several people have taken exception, this is ONLY a refutation of the idea that it is 'realistic' that they should work.   That it physically makes 'perfect sense'.  Arguing on the basis of other physics-breaking things is irrelevant to the point I'm making.--

[crypticorb]

Door compressors are a grey area in my opinion.

In real life, we have something called piston compressors, which are commonly used for high pressure applications, where a large hydraulic driven piston descends to compress gas (or liquid), and a sealing valve opens to add the new pressure to a larger reservoir or a piped system.

Door compressors in ONI are a semi-unintended result of the mechanics of doors shoving gasses/liquids out of the tiles they occupy when closing. When closing, the doors will force all contents to either side. Which side the door shoves it to depends on what the neighboring tiles contain, and whether they are solid tiles (or closed doors).

I don't believe that door compressors should be removed from the game in all circumstances. There are several things that should change that would bring them back in balance with semi-reality:

1. Pressure limit for closing. Above 1000kg, door compressors should not function. If the doors have a tile >1000kg/m3 adjacent AND if the door closing would force the door's contents into that tile and it would exceed 1000kg/m3, then door will refuse to close.
2. Have pressure damage for doors, just like tiles. If doors contain a liquid pressurized beyond its resting state, have it take pressure damage and leak, just like any other tile.
3. Have automation for doors only function if the door is powered. This would limit door compressors to require something in order to function, instead of allowing players to generate motion from nothing.

Note that none of these changes would greatly affect gas compressors. In reality, gas compresses readily compared to liquid up to a limit, but simulating condensation by pressure would be... difficult under current game mechanics.

These changes would allow players to continue using door compressors for applications such as steam turbines, while preventing players from compressing liquids to ridiculous levels, which is unrealistic. 

[chemie]

play the game the way you want.  I personally try to avoid exploits but i have no issue when I use sandbox to fix things like broken abysilitte caused by POIs.  your game,  your rules.  ignore forum warriors declaring something exploit or not.  have fun.  

[Ixenzo]

The only thing that matters is whether you considere it an exploit, because you're the one playing your game.

My philosophy is "if it works, it's a feature. If it doesn't, it's a bug".

[Trego]

2 hours ago, gary9996 said:

Physically they make perfect sense, them opening up forces gasses to move in, then it traps and moves the gasses to their destination. Is it the fact that compressing gasses with air-locks is silly?

If they made 'perfect sense' 'physically', then we'd use them in real life, but we don't, because they actually don't make 'perfect sense'.  Crypticorb does a good job outlining the three ways in which they don't make sense, which are the same reasons why hydraulic piston compressors are used instead IRL.  put another way, a door compression system is just a really poorly designed hydraulic piston compressor.  I consider them kinda sploity because they're pretty unrealistic, but I wouldn't blame you for using one because the more realistic compressors simply aren't implemented in ONI at this time, so, you do what you have to do.

[Doddler]

Personally, I feel that the fact that you can operate a door compressor without any power at all is what makes it an exploit to me. You shouldn't be able to automate structures without at least a power cost.

[beowulf2010]

I'm in @crypticorb's camp. I agree with the concept of door compression but feel that they need to be toned back a bit and should have maximum pressure values that (ideally) would be different if powered or unpowered. 

I personally do not use them, but that's mostly because I don't like the constant noise and have no interest in using mods until the game is "released". 

The reason (for me) for calling it an exploit is that I feel that it should be and ultimately will be modified or eliminated at some point. 

Not that I have a problem with people using exploits. I just want to make sure things are labeled so that it's a bit easier to deal with if/when it gets fixed like when the drip cooling bug was finally fixed causing the death of the Borg Cube. 

[mathmanican]

The "one element per tile" mechanics in ONI create lots of unrealistic situations, and create lots of fun areas to explore. (It's kind of like throwing out the parallel lines postulate from Euclid's axioms, and then exploring things like hyperbolic geometry - seemed silly till Einstein noticed that space-time behaves this way. In comes relativity and quantum mechanics - ooh, a "one subatomic particle per tile" view of the universe.) The door compressors are a consequence of the "one element per tile" mechanic. To call it an exploit, in my opinion, is the same as calling each of the following an exploit. 

1. mechanical filters,
2. carbon dioxide or hydrogen air locks,
3. one tile high "natural" filters that separate hydrogen from oxygen in SPOMs (or any gas/liquid separation system)
4. any gas conflict "exploit" (such as for a steam turbine or natural gas vent),
5. any water based airlock,
6. liquid over vent, gas over output pipe, (infinte storage)
7. liquid locked electrolyzers/steam turbines, (nonstop operation)
8. much, much, more. 

For me, this game is like a 400 level college course on heat conduction, with perfect insulation between many objects. All other methods of heat transfer (convection, radiation, etc.) are ignored. Other physics laws such as the ideal gas law PV=nRT, Newton's second law of motion F=ma, and more, are mostly ignored. We assume uniform material properties in an entire region (tile). Without this "one element per tile" mechanic, simulating things could become computationally unrealistic with modern computing power (for a game).  In 20 years, maybe there will be an "ONI Improved" that includes the ideal gas law, or appropriate force computations, etc. I'd pay good money for these improvements as computation power and numerical schemes improve. 

1 hour ago, crypticorb said:

I don't believe that door compressors should be removed from the game in all circumstances. There are several things that should change that would bring them back in balance with semi-reality:

1. Pressure limit for closing. Above 1000kg, door compressors should not function. If the doors have a tile >1000kg/m3 adjacent AND if the door closing would force the door's contents into that tile and it would exceed 1000kg/m3, then door will refuse to close.
2. Have pressure damage for doors, just like tiles. If doors contain a liquid pressurized beyond its resting state, have it take pressure damage and leak, just like any other tile.
3. Have automation for doors only function if the door is powered. This would limit door compressors to require something in order to function, instead of allowing players to generate motion from nothing.

1. Pressure limits on closing/opening seem out of place in ONI (arguable, as some machines require certain pressure limits - but all of those get hacked in other ways).  I think setting an arbitrary pressure limit would cause chaos and just lead to more one element hacks (tiny bits of chlorine near the door to "trick" it into working, or some other tom-foolery....)
2. Adding pressure limits on doors (and all materials), so those limits match other tile properties (strength properties), seems completely reasonable. Airflow tiles or three tile thick walls, couple with vent shenanigans,  would then be the alternatives for storing infinite liquids. 
3. Changing doors so that they require power to open/close, without a dupe there, seems perfectly reasonable. Fits perfectly into the rest of the game. 

Just my thoughts. Happy ONI all! 

Maybe ONI is like Dr. Seuss's,  "Horton hears a who".  The whole "one element per tile" rule is just "quantum mechanics". Our dupes actually live in the microscopic world. Weird stuff happens when you study things at a quantum level, and yet this weird tiny stuff explains precisely the larger world we live in. 

[Zarquan]

2 hours ago, crypticorb said:

Door compressors are a grey area in my opinion.

In real life, we have something called piston compressors, which are commonly used for high pressure applications, where a large hydraulic driven piston descends to compress gas (or liquid), and a sealing valve opens to add the new pressure to a larger reservoir or a piped system.

Door compressors in ONI are a semi-unintended result of the mechanics of doors shoving gasses/liquids out of the tiles they occupy when closing. When closing, the doors will force all contents to either side. Which side the door shoves it to depends on what the neighboring tiles contain, and whether they are solid tiles (or closed doors).

I don't believe that door compressors should be removed from the game in all circumstances. There are several things that should change that would bring them back in balance with semi-reality:

1. Pressure limit for closing. Above 1000kg, door compressors should not function. If the doors have a tile >1000kg/m3 adjacent AND if the door closing would force the door's contents into that tile and it would exceed 1000kg/m3, then door will refuse to close.
2. Have pressure damage for doors, just like tiles. If doors contain a liquid pressurized beyond its resting state, have it take pressure damage and leak, just like any other tile.
3. Have automation for doors only function if the door is powered. This would limit door compressors to require something in order to function, instead of allowing players to generate motion from nothing.

Note that none of these changes would greatly affect gas compressors. In reality, gas compresses readily compared to liquid up to a limit, but simulating condensation by pressure would be... difficult under current game mechanics.

These changes would allow players to continue using door compressors for applications such as steam turbines, while preventing players from compressing liquids to ridiculous levels, which is unrealistic. 

I would be happier with around 2000 kg (or what ever the resting temp of magma is), as sometimes I use (powered) doors to move magma.  Or perhaps, they can compress, but the speed at which they close is dependent on the amount of mass they are moving.  The more mass, the longer it takes, and thus the more power consumed.  That with the pressure damage and the doors requiring power to automate.

On pressure, I think that any tile except neutronium should automatically break if the pressure gets too high. Around 10000 kg sounds right.  Perhaps with a few exceptions.  And this would be ignoring the thickness of the tiles and airflow tiles.

[lunazone]

29 minutes ago, Trego said:

If they made 'perfect sense' 'physically', then we'd use them in real life, but we don't, because they actually don't make 'perfect sense'.  Crypticorb does a good job outlining the three ways in which they don't make sense, which are the same reasons why hydraulic piston compressors are used instead IRL.  put another way, a door compression system is just a really poorly designed hydraulic piston compressor.  I consider them kinda sploity because they're pretty unrealistic, but I wouldn't blame you for using one because the more realistic compressors simply aren't implemented in ONI at this time, so, you do what you have to do.

There are obvious reasons why we don't use them in real life, namely because using airlocks to pump gasses is very silly because that's not what they are designed for. Reasonably you could use airlocks to compress some gas, but it'd stop working before you get a good amount of it compressed, due to the airlocks being unable to close.

[Sasza22]

If something is 20 times as affective as using a pump and uses similar amounts of power (or no power at all) i`d consider that an exploit. Well maybe not if it`s using gravity. But as door pumps are considered they are pretty unbalanced compared to other means of gas and liquid management. Personally i avoid using them but i also avoind powering electrolizers with hydrogen generators as it makes zero sense to me (i just store the hydrogen and burn the excess to save space).

[PhailRaptor]

If Doors had pressure limitations like Tiles do, everything would be fine.  But they don't.  You can use Doors for infinite liquid storage, keeping literally hundreds of tons of liquid compacted into a 4 or 5 tile area and never worry about it ever escaping.  There really isn't any discussion to be had there -- the builder is taking advantage of game mechanics for a play-pattern that is not intended by the developer.

[Ixenzo]

16 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

the builder is taking advantage of game mechanics for a play-pattern that is not intended by the developer.

Who plays the game, me or the developer?

[malloc]

3 hours ago, crypticorb said:

These changes would allow players to continue using door compressors for applications such as steam turbines, while preventing players from compressing liquids to ridiculous levels, which is unrealistic. 

No doors or power required for infinite liquid compression.  Just geometry and multiple gases stacked if you replace the broken wall in the image with an airflow tile.

 

[B1663r]

Couple of things.  First, current thinking of some physicists is that the universe is tile based at the plank scale, as opposed to being scalar.    This lady breaks it down in this video.   But also, having repaired car windshields several times...  The repair technician will open the door windows before they glue the windshield onto the car, because if someone slams a door on the car it will blow the windshield right out of the car.  If the developers wanted to do away with doors moving air or liquid, and make it more realistic, they would add the concept of compression heating, and decompression cooling.  For example, scuba tanks need to sit in a bucket of water as you fill them, or the metal they are made of will melt and the tank will explode.

 

 

 

[SakuraKoi]

Using it infinitely is of course an exploit, finitely it is not.

Now should one care about using exploits? Nah, it's all a matter of recognition.

It should be fairly obvious that one should not feel proud about using it (finding it is another matter) and neither one should deny it like I child would, that's about it. Luckily few do openly call themselves 1337-Progamer-420 for tricking the game/developers. Those who are in denial and say stuff like

5 hours ago, Ixenzo said:

Who plays the game, me or the developer?

seriously however are more...

 

A (my) free-style definition for "(Game) Exploit":

"A largely unknown, which many would commonly not think of or can said to be unintended process which results in an advantage and which one should not miss if it is fixed ("nerf'd")"

[Trego]

8 hours ago, gary9996 said:

There are obvious reasons why we don't use them in real life, namely because using airlocks to pump gasses is very silly because that's not what they are designed for. Reasonably you could use airlocks to compress some gas, but it'd stop working before you get a good amount of it compressed, due to the airlocks being unable to close.

We use plenty of things for purposes they weren't originally designed for.  That doesn't matter.  What matters is your last sentence, it wouldn't work that well.  I..e, it doesn't make 'perfect sense', like I said.

[Ixenzo]

3 hours ago, SakuraKoi said:

 

Oh I'm sorry, I shall play my singleplayer game your arbitrary way so I wouldn't get an advantage over your singleplayer game.

It is irrelevant what the object is designed for. The physical process, the rule of the game is, and these rules are the only ones that matter.

[SakuraKoi]

19 minutes ago, Ixenzo said:

Oh I'm sorry, I shall play my singleplayer game your arbitrary way so I wouldn't get an advantage over your singleplayer game.

It is irrelevant what the object is designed for. The physical process, the rule of the game is, and these rules are the only ones that matter.

Thank you for proving my point i.e about how childish you act. Never did I write how you should play, I'm not even writing that you should feel ashamed. Needless to say, there is no need to retort to your selfish sophistry and what the result would be if you take it just a little bit out of context.

[Saturnus]

9 hours ago, Ixenzo said:

Who plays the game, me or the developer?

We do, so the devs don't have to. If the devs had to play the game to play test it instead of us, it'd take years before it's done, and it'd probably be a steaming pile of turdilicious Shove Vole excrement when it was finally finished.

[SamLogan]

For me, a exploit is when you skirt a restriction like : gaz vent overpressure by flooding it with liquid or obstruct the steam turbine pedestral.

Since there's no error message tell you can't pressurise you gas with doors, for me it's not an exploit.

[Craigjw]

Gases are compressible until they become liquids.  I recently got bored with building dozens of gas tanks, filling up 1/4 of my map and have therefore switched to infinite compression.

I do not feel that door compressors are an exploit, I feel that Klei are being too hard on us by not providing us with enough solutions to deal with the issues that we face in the first place, that tend to cause us to resorting to using an exploit.

[Lancar]

4 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

I do not feel that door compressors are an exploit, I feel that Klei are being too hard on us by not providing us with enough solutions to deal with the issues that we face in the first place, that tend to cause us to resorting to using an exploit.

.... So which is it?

 

[Craigjw]

5 minutes ago, Lancar said:

.... So which is it?

 

Let me rephrase

.... that tend to cause us to resorting to using an "exploit".

Is that better?