Wonky Thermal Conductivity of Pipes

Is Insulation marked as 'insulated', like ceramic? If not, the pipe is using the average thermal conductivity (roughly 1), which means the average conductivity for the sandstone (2.45) is roughly the same ratio as you observed in your tests.

If you redo the test using a ceramic pipe, it should show a much larger difference. If it does, I'd say the problem is insulation not being considered 'insulated.'

17 hours ago, ThyReaper said:

Is Insulation marked as 'insulated', like ceramic?

I don't know what you mean with "marked as insulated". The pipe I'm talking about is a normal one and not an insulated pipe.

The material "Insulation" in-game shows the property insulator, which as far as I understand just remarks that it has low thermal conductivity and has no further impact.

17 hours ago, ThyReaper said:

If not, the pipe is using the average thermal conductivity (roughly 1).

There should be no averaging of thermal conductivity. If this is what the game does I might as well change the title to "game averages thermal conductivity".

Furthermore in-game tooltips say that heat transfer between two objects is limited by the smaller thermal conductivity.

13 hours ago, Shurlan said:

I don't know what you mean with "marked as insulated". The pipe I'm talking about is a normal one and not an insulated pipe.

The material "Insulation" in-game shows the property insulator, which as far as I understand just remarks that it has low thermal conductivity and has no further impact.

Sorry, forgot what the keyword was. That's what I was asking, and it suggests that the pipes are ignoring that property of the material for content-pipe interactions.

13 hours ago, Shurlan said:

There should be no averaging of thermal conductivity. If this is what the game does I might as well change the title to "game averages thermal conductivity".

Furthermore in-game tooltips say that heat transfer between two objects is limited by the smaller thermal conductivity.

That's how it works for insulator materials in most circumstances. However, around QoL I, other conductivity calculations changed to use the average. Insulators use the original physics of using the lower conductivity.

9 hours ago, ThyReaper said:

However, around QoL I, other conductivity calculations changed to use the average. Insulators use the original physics of using the lower conductivity.

Was that an official change or did it just happen? I can't find the change note regarding this (looked rocketry and up).

It seems like they botched stuff to get the heat transfer rates they want. Since real life concepts are used but they have to balance a game they resort to averaging thermal conductivity, which is just silly (in real life that is).

If area of objects and average thickness would be introduced they could turn to hearts content, without losing real life similarity.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Thanks for the information.

Since Insulation is an Insulator the bug still stands.