Chemifuel Generator + Hydroponic Rice = LOTS AND LOTS OF FREE POWER?

[dkmoo]

11,000W of free power that came from nothing.

Place solar panels,wind turbines or Ship reactor core and you have real free power from nothing, because these all don't need some input made from pawns.

But even this isn't true, because the power isn't from nothing, it just comes from outside your watching perspective.

Not quite true - solar/wind I know comes from the energy from sun/wind, which since the game doesn't quantify, i can make the assumption that it maintains the First Law. In my set up, however, we have a closed system in which the only input comes from the light from sun lamp, heat from the heaters and power from the hydroponics. There isn't anything else outside of the perspective.

Unless... we are saying that somehow the rice plant is absorbing roughly 100% more energy from the "mystically surroundings of the planet" - I theory i guess i can buy. 

On a second thought, since we don't know what kind of waste is generated - if we throw in some kind of thermonuclear factors into the power-generator equation, then i guess that will fully reconcile the the extra power and maintain the First Law.

On the boomalope front - i'll look into the consumption rates/milking rates and get back to you shortly. FYI i'm not sure Hydroponics can grow hay? I'll use rice instead since that's still by far the best nutrition yield for hydroponics.

[Albion]

Hydroponics also consume water and need some kind of earth substrate. This also doesn't get modeled since plant just grow from power, heat and light. If that would be the case in real life there wouldn't be any famine.
You technically have to take this also into account but I guess some dirt and water won't total up to 11kW

[Chibiabos]

Not quite true - solar/wind I know comes from the energy from sun/wind, which since the game doesn't quantify, i can make the assumption that it maintains the First Law. In my set up, however, we have a closed system in which the only input comes from the light from sun lamp, heat from the heaters and power from the hydroponics. There isn't anything else outside of the perspective.

You completely missed his point that it requires an input of time from the pawns to harvest the rice, generate chemfuel and feed the generators.  That's time not crafting, researching or doing anything else.  I think most players find pawn time to be a precious, limited resource.

[Hans Lemurson]

And we come to one of the sad and ironic truths about "Free Energy Devices":  Even if they violate the laws of physics, they can still fail a cost/benefit analysis.

Conservation of Energy just places an upper-bound on the energy that can be extracted from a system, but says nothing about how cost-effective the technique was in the first place:  If you have a 1kg lump of pure gold that radiates 100W of anomalous heat, you are still going to lose-out to Photovoltaics.

[Shurp]

I'll just leave this here: https://www.livescience.com/25959-atoms-colder-than-absolute-zero.html

"Yet the gas is not colder than zero kelvin, but hotter. It is even hotter than at any positive temperature — the temperature scale simply does not end at infinity, but jumps to negative values instead."

So you see, a gas at -1'K is not colder than a gas at +1'K.  It's hotter.  Whereas a Rimworld hex at -274'C is clearly *colder*.  And it's how heat gets pushed around that determines whether it's a 3rd Law violation.

"Negative" temperature is really a bad labeling issue.  We should be talking about thermodynamic beta instead:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_beta