How To Solve The Overheat Problem

[vonVile]

When anything overheats just destroy and rebuild it. As the game is right now this is the best solution outside of making multiples on the Musher and Super Computer.

Basically the way the game plays now is that the machines are always running at full power even when they are disabled and the cool down is minuscule, which is basically a car running in neutral 24/7. I stopped using the Super Computer for a Cycle and after 3 researches are finished it becomes scalding hot again. That shouldn't happen. That would be like a car engine overheating after being turned on for less than an hour. When something isn't in use the cool down should be twice as fast as it takes to overheat. Currently that seem to be backwards with it taking twice as long to cool down than it takes to overheat.

I'm going to play around with power switches, which I hope are fixed since I haven't tried using them this update, and see if there is a difference. If there is zero power going the machines should completely give no heat.

[alcurad90]

Overheat ? pour some water

Too cold? more water

[ThrowingTracks]

I have noticed that Super Computers increase, on average, by 10 degrees per Cycle if they are in low pressure areas. High pressure areas will help slow the rising temperatures until the area immediately around the machine's temperature is also increased then you are back to 10 degrees per cycle. Having a Hydro Fan running next to the Super Computer will also help slow the overheating process so some micro managing of the Computers heat levels will be needed to get the Hydro Fan researched (It's now the first second level research item I do). What material you choose to build the computer with will also help, though I'm not sure if that's fully implemented yet.

 

The Fact that we have to drip water on these machines is a sad state of affairs as far as I'm concerned. The last thing I would do to cool my own PC down would be to pour water on it, in fact any electrical item, what are we trying to teach here?

[SamLogan]

For the SuperComputer here's a solution :

Use simply the ice biome, I did all my research without overheating.

[vonVile]

40 minutes ago, SamLogan said:

For the SuperComputer here's a solution :

Use simply the ice biome, I did all my research without overheating.

Actually, I was planning to do that to see if it would work. I guess I'll toss the Musher in there, too.

I'm up to Cycle 51 and I'm barely surviving. I'm running out of Algae and barely have enough Mealwood growing to keep 4 Dupes alive. The only thing that looks to be a way to save this colony is using the Geyser really close by to harness the Water and move to using the Electrolyer. The only problem is I have no place to pump the Hydrogen. I guess I could build a huge room under the base an pump it in there and slap a Hydrogen Generator when I finish researching it.

 

[Mast3r07]

I placed the shower where my supercomputer was(after i finished the research tree - for you to get an idea). Constant temp. You can cool your whole base from the first cycles, you just need one pump, a small body of water and a hill like surface(top of the picture).

 

[lemmethink]

I sealed in 3 water pumps with a geyser, pipes and wires hanging outside, unconnected, and it still broke. So I guess it needs to be cooled water. The break/repair mechanic is getting more than a little annoying. In my opinion its not fun and doesn't add anything.

[Snotface]

Ive not run into any problesm with my super computer overheating, and im not really sure why, i dont use water cooling.

The only difference i can see from the pictures people have posted is that i tend to put my heat generating buildings far apart and with lots of room to breath. My rooms are generally 6 tiles high, maybe that gives more air circulation?

[olight]

Overheat in current preview branch is needed some adjustments.

In the game, inevitable requirements are not fun but another meaningless jobs. Heavy electric wire? that's ok, because we can choose small grids or can optimize grids. But if we have no choice about B to make A to work, why didn't make A and B to ONE.

[Jimmota]

If you put your Super Computer or Musher in the ice biome and then pressurize the area, it'll work just fine. The temperature will usually go up to 42ºC and then oscillate up and down thus never overheating. Also they'll have some extra time to cool down as your dupes will stop to eat or take a shoot and gather resources. Anyways, the pace in which the Super Computer gains heat is absolutely ridiculous. And now it's much more faster than the Coal Generator which doesn't make sense.

[ShamPeiN]

super computer and musher both need water to functtion so i build them above water. using gas permeable platform then building a row to push up water in tank. if you research and build planters, then dig buried objects, food is enough until first harvest. research can be done in 25-40 cycles. game starts with 3 pools usually, one is enough to finish research. wolframite platform cool down even faster. some spacing with statues and high room pressure solves the issue.

[vonVile]

I thought I saved this colony last night with 4 Dupes, but when I went to load the game this morning all the saves after Cycle 46 were only 1K. I went back to the last good save where I still had 7 Dupes. I know that's too many, but I was just adding any Dupe to save my colony and knew they were going to die. I wasn't able to repeat my success and was only able to save 1 Dupe before the Dupe Machine gave me another, but the colony was too big for them to handle. After I got to Cycle 60 I checked to see if the game saved my progress, but everything was just 1K files. I even tried to save the game under a new name, but that didn't work forcing me to give up on it.

[heckubis]

just a hint my batteries and genies never over heat

[tehMugwump]

Be interesting when the Devs get this sorted out.  I doubt the intent is for us to poor water all over everything to keep it from breaking, but that's my approach ATM... 

[chromiumboy]

5 hours ago, tehMugwump said:

Be interesting when the Devs get this sorted out.  I doubt the intent is for us to poor water all over everything to keep it from breaking, but that's my approach ATM... 

That's the problem I have: a powered item should be able to be built in a ventilated 22-25°C room and not have it overheat when it's all by itself. A tiny room packed with batteries would, of course, be another story. Heat balance really needs to be revisited.

[Octyabr]

Carbon dioxide is to blame! Well, actually, carbon dioxide in low concentrations, gonna post it properly soon, but a testimonial should do for now: In a cold biome I had an array of batteries which were in the range of 40º~60º Celsius in a small cloud of carbon dioxide at 60ish g/tile, wasn't causing problem, but it was ugly to see in the temperature overlay, I destroyed one to make room for an algae terrarium (to eat the carbon dioxide) and when it was replaced for oxygen in the next cycle, all batteries turned in a nice pale blue colour.

[Keyimin]

I wish that were true for the supercomputer. I took this snapshot earlier, although I'm now wishing I had taken the O2 overlay and a few others with it. Two terrariums next to it, flush with O2 and free of CO2 (you can see the 1000+ g concentration, which you'll have to take my word for being around the entirety of the computer. You can also see there's a ladder with an open set of tiles next to it, and that the hot air simply DOES NOT move up and away as it should. There's no reason the hot air should remain clustered in that space as if it's in a small room. That stupid computer overheated within 10 seconds every time I turned it on. That's just not even close to sensible (or realistic). 

I couldn't be bothered putting water on it at the time, so I just did research in 3- to 5-piece batches, which took forever, but it saved me a different sort of headache at the time.

Anyhoo, the whole "thermal" part of the "upgrade" is obviously a bit wonky still lol.

[ATOM7K]

I think the Thermal part of the upgrade could use some tweaking but the general idea is to incorporate the cooling fan into your base layout thus requiring more dupes to get things done in your base. The cooling fan though has a major bug where it cools the air down to the point where you get CO2 ice so it needs to be micromanaged via the priorities. Hopefully in the next update the cooling fan can get a temp range for operating or can be connected to a thermal switch.

[Keyimin]

The cooling fan. I tried the cooling fan. It nearly froze a 4-tile area around the fan and the dupe who was operating it but failed to cool a darn thing next to it. In fact, the temp transfer was just as nonexistent as for the heat in that pic of the supercomputer above. Four tiles of freezing air were flush with tiles of hot air as if there were a wall between them. At least for me, it's currently a useless waste of water and dupe energy.

[heckubis]

18 hours ago, tehMugwump said:

Be interesting when the Devs get this sorted out.  I doubt the intent is for us to poor water all over everything to keep it from breaking, but that's my approach ATM... 

oh I added wolfram pipes running through the fridge as well running off the same pump. altho my overall water temp in there is  slowly rising and I'm having to set up something to bring that temperature back down

[Dogbarian]

Using wolframite gas-permable tiles under the super computer and having more air space around it seems to work pretty well - watched Skye Storm's LP series where he used this method and it never overheated.  He didn't have his anywhere near the ice biome.

[PickPay]

I tried using Thermo Regulators but they produce too much heat so I switched to Hydro Fans and that seems better, nothing freezing yet but the air around does get cold while operating.

[tehMugwump]

Re: Cooling Fans:  I'd rather hook up a captured Hatch to a squirrel cage than have my dupes spend all their time doing this:

[Tamber]

I just used two supercomputers.  When one got intolerably hot, I disabled it and they used the other one.   This was enough to allow it to cool down and still not stifle research.  They were at different ends of the base, and were the only heat sources in their corners.

[tehMugwump]

Well, the new update that just dropped is suppose to fix the overheating by heating up the environment more than themselves.