Kiln produces 4k DTU/s, not 20k DTU/s

The problem here is how buildings generate heat, the 20k is broken into two components.  4k "Normal operation" and 16k "Excess produced". Normal operation heats the building itself while excess produced heats the surrounding gas or liquid. In a vacuum that 16k never happens.

Your test is flawed in that it just shows that something with 1/5 the thermal mass does indeed have 1/5 the thermal energy. It's not meaningful. Run the test by having the kiln actually do work in an atmosphere for x number of seconds. Calculate the change in thermal energy of the entire system and it ought to add up to 20k per second.

Edited April 18, 2020 by wachunga

6 hours ago, wachunga said:

Your test is flawed in that it just shows that something with 1/5 the thermal mass does indeed have 1/5 the thermal energy. It's not meaningful. Run the test by having the kiln actually do work in an atmosphere for x number of seconds. Calculate the change in thermal energy of the entire system and it ought to add up to 20k per second.

You can't, the materials in the kiln absorb the heat.

6 hours ago, wachunga said:

The problem here is how buildings generate heat, the 20k is broken into two components.  4k "Normal operation" and 16k "Excess produced". Normal operation heats the building itself while excess produced heats the surrounding gas or liquid. In a vacuum that 16k never happens.

This is the bug then, yes? Machines shouldn't just produce less heat in a vacuum, they should overheat faster.

1 hour ago, n_t_p said:

You can't, the materials in the kiln absorb the heat.

Use chlorine as the atmosphere and the heating to the coal inside the kiln is inconsequential. My example is a gold kiln inside 4 cells of 40kg chlorine total at 0C. Kilns take 40 seconds to run. During that time the 125 kg 0C coal inside the kiln heated up to ~0.05C. The kiln and chlorine heated up to ~31.8C. Doing the math gives ~20 kDTU/s as expected.

1 hour ago, n_t_p said:

This is the bug then, yes? Machines shouldn't just produce less heat in a vacuum, they should overheat faster.

Less a bug and more a design choice that allows for potential abuse. Getting rid of the excess produced mechanic entirely and just heating the building sounds like a good idea, but doing so may open up a can of worms. Would all buildings then be able to dump their heat to atmosphere in normal play conditions? I've never looked that far into it and don't know offhand. For example the polymer press is notorious for overheating, turns out it is 32k normal and 0.5k excess. Now 32k is substantially more than 20k, but just as an illustration of potential issues.

I suppose you could special case the excess produced to check for an atmosphere and put it all into normal operation when there is none, but is it really worth the dev time?

Edited April 18, 2020 by wachunga