Heat Management should be after Mark 2

[ArunPrasath]

Currently, heat is something not handled properly in the game. We have sieve tubes outputting water at 40 degree Celsius.

Everything emits heat in the game save for 2 things - worts and AETN.

Those are not at all enough for large scale bases.

Suggestion:

1. Create a tree that thrives in temperate condition (25-55 Celsius) that gradually absorbs heat and water to give fruits that can be eaten directly. They should take a variable time to grow with them absorbing heat. More heat in vicinity - more heat absorption - more growth. Too must heat (55degree+) will start killing it so will too much cold.

Tree will be a recreational spot and will restore sanity to duplicants. They should be able to play in the tree.

should occupy 3x4 tile area! (they are like trees and not plants. Every fruit gives food+seed). All seeds have 50% chance of sprouting and has a change of dying along their growth if irrigation was absent somewhere along the way. Uses polluted water.

2. Worts should be replicable using a genetic cloning machine. This should be accessible later in the game and should be costly.

3. Currently drip feature is used to cool stuff. I feel that it should be made better. If something is there and works, it shouldn't mean it should be like that forever.

But very very importantly PLEASE OPTIMIZE THE GAME FURTHER!!! I honestly don't know what's making this game lag this much!!! I can play super high end games like AC Origins with 60+ fps, but ONI is stuck at 15. Recent improvements are good, but new features are just adding excess load to an already poor implementation of code. With the beta preview, I'm barely getting 1 fps! YES, 1FPS...

Its my guess that threading has been implemented in this game. If that is true (and i believe so), most of the threads are just waiting for other task to complete before doing its task again. This theory explains the lag, but I may be entirely wrong about this.

Please implement truly parallel threaded systems. Ventilation system needn't wait for other systems to complete before allowing gas through it. I seem to notice this stutter becoz of this at the 1-5fps range.

[Oozinator]

I have no problem managing heat, because of drip feature.
Look at DS there are dozen of "features", implemented into gameplay.
The tree idea / fruit / sanity / heat is nice

[DyingCrow]

A tree that deletes heat and provides food? What about all the engineering challenges? The crazy builds we can create? THe neverending need for more, better infrastructure?

What about a game where losing is planned, and experience is the most valuable tool?

 

[Ambaire]

On 3/31/2018 at 6:29 PM, DyingCrow said:

What about a game where losing is planned, and experience is the most valuable tool?

 

You should give Dwarf Fortress a try, if you don't play it already. Sounds like you'd enjoy it greatly.

 

(I enjoy playing DF as well. ONI doesn't need the whole losing is FUN mechanic imo. sometimes nice to just have a romp in a park without ultra mega serious mode)

[KittenIsAGeek]

There are a number of ways to deal with heat.  There's the drip method, or using the constant-temperature-output of devices, or the phase change of matter.. 

My creative process: Since the output of the sieve is always 40c, it doesn't matter what temperature the input is.  So what if I put an aquatuner (or two) in the pool and run the sieve's output through it.  If the polluted water gets hot enough to start boiling, well, then I can use that for a steam generator...

So far in this build, I haven't used a wheezewart or AETN and I've had no problems managing the temperatures.  Heck, I'm 223 cycles in and I still haven't dug into my ice biome.

[ImpalerWrG]

And that is why we need to remove drip bug and the 40c sieve output, it breaks the game temperature management aspect.

Do that and We will see folks using their wheezewarts and other parts of the game actually intended for cooling.

[Kasuha]

2 hours ago, ImpalerWrG said:

Do that and We will see folks using their wheezewarts and other parts of the game actually intended for cooling.

You didn't do the math yet, did you?

[ImpalerWrG]

Kasuha you have made your feelings known already on this subject and frankly I disagree and do not like your superior tone.  Your whole premise that the high cooling capacity of these structures is necessary to play the game is wrong, I and many other players don't use anything but wheezewarts/Nullifier and play a fine game.

You claim a need for a certain amount of cooling to balance a particular features heat output like a geyser or volcano.  Well tough you don't get to uncork every heat source on the map and then erase their primary downside, you have to pick and choose and work within constraints.  That is why we are given finite cooling capacity, why we can not breed more wheezewarts or build Nullifiers of our own.  Has it never occurred to you that every thing that is clearly presented to the player as a heat-sink is designed with a cap that is likewise made very clear?

What ever math you expect me to do is irrelevant because any structure with cooling capacity is inherently INFINITE because structure counts are uncapped.  If you can cool 1 steam geyser with sieves and showers then you can cool a million geysers with them.  Now you can say that we should get a higher cap on that cooling capacity (more nulifiers and warts) but that is substantively different from a structure.

[Oozinator]

6 hours ago, ImpalerWrG said:

And that is why we need to remove drip bug and the 40c sieve output, it breaks the game temperature management aspect.

Do that and We will see folks using their wheezewarts and other parts of the game actually intended for cooling.

 

1 hour ago, ImpalerWrG said:

...

What ever math you expect me to do is irrelevant...

It's not really..

[ImpalerWrG]

7 hours ago, Oozinator said:

 

It's not really..

 

Wow Ooz, what a well thought out rebuttal.

[Oozinator]

2 minutes ago, ImpalerWrG said:

 

Wow Ooz, what a well thought out rebuttal.

My english is not good enough to tell you technical game related things.
Devs created the fixxed outputtemp not by accident.
Perhaps they remove/change it, when they offer alternative machinery, or solutions for the heatproblem.
Hydrotiles spreading now heat from input liquid, was changed too, some time ago.
When you would remove wheezies for example,  icebiomes would be to sensitive to temp change.
Wheezies offer some alternative strategies and gameplay, like AETN does, they should not be removed.
They are not really needed and you can go without them, when you want..
When ONI is final, i bet Klei makes optional settings, like in DS map creation, then you can switch off, what you want.

 

[Flydo]

14 hours ago, ImpalerWrG said:

  That is why we are given finite cooling capacity, why we can not breed more wheezewarts or build Nullifiers of our own.

What ever math you expect me to do is irrelevant because any structure with cooling capacity is inherently INFINITE because structure counts are uncapped.  If you can cool 1 steam geyser with sieves and showers then you can cool a million geysers with them.  Now you can say that we should get a higher cap on that cooling capacity (more nulifiers and warts) but that is substantively different from a structure.

Agree, we need a finite cooling capacity, according to thermodynamical law Entropy of a close system must increase.

I don't see the point of making a game with so much scientific law and physical principal for at the end say "Shut up science, you don't exist, i want a close system cooling down by itself"

Is probably for that (and maybe cause i 'm a test technician in physique) that i don't like to use exploit (waterlock is another think, clearly in real world you can separate two gas chamber by a small amount of liquid (but with not a big pressure difference, or a vaccum between two waterlock, science non sense so not for me )

[crypticorb]

I'm seeing a lot of debate, but no real suggestions. I have a few ideas I'd like to put out there, with my reasoning for how they'd work.

14 hours ago, Flydo said:

Agree, we need a finite cooling capacity, according to thermodynamical law Entropy of a close system must increase.

This is the basis of what O.N.I. currently is, a closed system in an asteroid, with limited resources, and nowhere to really dispose of waste, either heat or useless materials.

First: what we really need is a means of harnessing our excess heat. Turn our waste heat into something useful. Most all other byproducts of ONI are useful in some way; we can turn pH2O into fertilizer and natural gas, or filtered water, and trash raw minerals into coal or sand. 

The steam turbine can use raw heated steam, recycling back into itself, needing only more heat. The only problem is we cannot currently extract heat from any sources to use it unless they are already FAR above the 300°C threshold, such as magma. 

What we need is a means to move heat from one material into another, with a high threshold for overheating. A radiator that can extract heat from something like a gas or liquid pipe, and move it into the environment. The thermo-aquatuner does this already, but has a ridiculously low overheat temperature, and draws a massive amount of power. 

My first idea is to rework the aquatuner, or make a highly advanced and expensive variant of it that can have extremely high overheat temperature, and gives us a means of extracting all the heat that is being dumped into the game by all these new geysers. The new hydrogen vent, and several of the others, output at 500°C, which is useless. It overheats any normal building used to circulate or utilize the material, but at the same time is not enough thermal concentration to run a steam turbine.

This new Radiator would allow us to pump liquid through it, and move it from the pumped liquid into whatever environment (preferably a steam turbine room) to allow us to harness the heat from geysers other than volcanos or molten metal vents.

 

My second idea would be a rework of the hydrofan. In its current implementation, the hydrofan is largely useless, requiring manual delivery of water, and continuous manual operation, with almost negligible output of cooling. The original idea of consuming a resource for cooling effect is good, but burning water and dupe time for so little result needs reworking. A simple fix would either be to ramp up the cooling effect by a factor of 2-3, or allow automated operation at a cost of power.

 

My third idea, which is quite a bit more complex, would be to have a true coolant system involving pressurizing/depressurizing gasses. When a gas is pressurized, it costs power, but does not heat up the container. When the pressure is released, the container cools down FAST, releasing super-cooled gas proportional to the pressure and gas properties. This idea would implement a compressor, which would compress a gas down to an arbitrary pressure, which could be moved as a bottle and released elsewhere for cooling (and gas), or pumped in refined metal high-pressure gas pipes to be released elsewhere.

 

If you guys have any suggestions or modifications to these ideas, I'd love to hear them.

 

On 3/31/2018 at 4:27 AM, Oozinator said:

I have no problem managing heat, because of drip feature.

This is a blatant exploit, and will very likely be removed. It not only is relying on a bug in game physics, it breaks the laws of thermodynamics on a ludicrous scale. I frown upon thee, good sir.

[BlueLance]

I don't really have any issue with heat, For my natural gas geysers two wheezeworts each is more than enough to cool them, eventually down to the point where wheezeworts cannot cool anymore. Hydrogen Geysers are sort of the same, but if you take out too much gas then the geyser will quickly cook the rest stiffling the wheezeworts. 

I tend to minimize the amount of heat that escapes from geysers (Unless I want to use that heat for something which usually is not the case.

Edit - I do not used drip cooling and if anything I add heat through Nat Gas Gens, Since they are hot they output hot gas versus the cold gas that they get fed.... I should change that

[Tolham]

I would be happy if they just let us farm wheezeworts.

[onebit]

Does the steam generator make heat death impossible? It seems like if the outside of your abysalite bunker became an inferno you could make a lot of power. The trick would be to concentrate it.

[crypticorb]

8 minutes ago, onebit said:

Does the steam generator make heat death impossible? It seems like if the outside of your abysalite bunker became an inferno you could make a lot of power. The trick would be to concentrate it.

The steam generator requires 300^oC minimum to operate, typically about 500^oC to operate continually. We don't have any buildings that can concentrate or exchange heat at that temperature. The only method (currently) to reliably run a steam turbine is to use magma or volcanos.

[onebit]

You can run a steam turbine with tepedizers. It's not power efficient, but is it a net loss of heat?

edit: Thought about it a bit more. I guess if the base outside was a 300C death world it would work, but it'll only be a 170C death world which is a problem.

 

[Neckcen]

As someone who picked the game and just went in blind, I have to say the way heat currently work is just not fun.

I failed at managing polluted water and ended up infecting all my duplicants, I started over and did better. Then they starved, then I asphyxiated them, ... but every time it was "my fault" for not building the right thing at the right time or not planning far enough ahead. Then my plants roasted, hmm what did I miss? oh the hydrofan? nope, doesn't help. Ice biome? kinda work for a while, then warms up.

Turns out I didn't miss anything: whilst there are dozen of ways to generate heat, there are no real way to deal with heat without relying on dubious quirks. Don't get me wrong, the contraptions some people came up with are amazing, but not really something you would stumble upon whilst experimenting in survival mode.

Heat is currently what hydrogen would be without the hydrogen generator: a byproduct which can't be consumed and ends up slowly ruining your game.

As for a suggestion, I agree with crypticorb: there should be a way to use heat as a resource. Alternatively the world should tend toward absolute zero making heat a necessity.

[Ambaire]

The real solution is to open up the asteroid surface and allow us to put special machines there that radiate heat to the vacuum of space. The game is in an asteroid.. there's no reason for that neutronium top layer.

[Man in the Mist]

I suspect bring able to breach the asteroid surface will happen shortly before the game leaves Early Access.

[yoakenashi]

With everyone having so much trouble with heat, I must have done something wrong. I'm at 550 cycles and use a few wheezeworts near hot items like my electric grills, have not used any AETNs, do not use the drip bug, and use just one thermo aquatuner. Base stays a nice 25°C. I think I'm surviving solely on the fact that polluted water has a specific heat of 6, while water is just 4.179 (love that fact!).

Personally, I would not like to see any changes to heat management just yet.

But with any game still in development, it's not about my one opinion, it's about everyone's opinion. The developers are trying to make a game that meets the demands of the majority. So thanks everyone for putting in their opinions! Love this game.

 

[ImpalerWrG]

It's seems to be just folks who want to continuously solidify the output of multiple metal volcanoes in real time who are complaining about heat dissipation.  This is a classic symptom in game development forums where the most elite power-gamer want envelope pushing content rather then content that's geared towards normal players.

[Ambaire]

2 hours ago, ImpalerWrG said:

It's seems to be just folks who want to continuously solidify the output of multiple metal volcanoes in real time who are complaining about heat dissipation.  This is a classic symptom in game development forums where the most elite power-gamer want envelope pushing content rather then content that's geared towards normal players.

Heh, you hit the nail on the head there. Starbound got ruined by people like that, Tiy included. Used to be this fantastic game with grappling hooks and procedural usable guns and stuff and then it just slowly declined to garbage.

[scientas]

Yeah, I see this a lot as well. The hardcore set wants more and more challenges and the casual gamer wants more and more friendly content.

If the hardcore set gets their way it tends to turn the game into an unplayable grindfest for everyone but the 1% and usually results in a game the casual person can't or won't finish. Newer players can't keep up with the learning curve. Game dies.

If the causal set get content they want, the hardcore set gets bored and leaves. Developers feel as though they've lost their most rabid fanbase so they in turn stop trying to do real game development and instead focus on monetization. Game dies.

Hopefully Klei can keep the balance. As a casual gamer, honestly the more updates I see the more unplayable the game gets. It's a great game, but once I get to a certain point it gets overwhelming. Losing an entire base because an entire farming method became obsolete or because the heat overruns the base without grinding out a-lite or or drip cooling or borg cubes just means the game is too much of a commitment for someone who plays mostly on weekends.

I don't want to re-learn physics or build a logic gate masterpiece - I just want the funny people to dig and not die so easily.