Question(s) on Vents

[Naraku]

With the introduction of vents, I immediately became exceedingly happy. (or joyful? ) But after filling an entire room with heaters, and applying a vent to connect my heater room to a small room, I began to realize while it does help, it's in a very small and inefficient way. 9 Square room, six of those squares are heaters which are set to 31 Celsius. I attach a vent to the other room which is a 28 square room and it only can get up to 7 degrees when it's only -11c outside. To further elaborate, the room with the heaters are easily maintaining 31c.

To compare, I put a single heater in that room, unattached the vent, and I was better off with one heater in that room by a large amount. It was getting up to 18c-21c. Am I doing something wrong? Because from the looks of it, vents don't seem to encourage me to change my play style, since it's much more efficient to simply set up one heater in each room rather then place a vent. Because while if you have excess heat/cold it can certainly help, it's not enough to save a noticable amount of electricity. At least for me.

I'm curious if I'm doing something wrong, or if there's something strange going on here. From the text, it says it 'equalizes'. I'm known for my comprehension problems, but to me that means it levels out the temperature for -both- rooms. So if it's 30c in one room, and 10c in another room, each room will equalize out to 20c, correct? Not 6-8c in one room, and 31c in the other?

Of course I don't expect a single vent to -completely- equalize two rooms temperatures out especially in extreme temperatures surrounding each room, but I do expect it to be considerably stronger then this.

[Arigas]

I was having the same problem with freezers as well. Opted just to forgo the vent instead. Didn't matter if I pre-froze the room at all, as soon as the vent was built, the temperature started increasing, when it was at -20C

[Boboid]

Frankly vents don't do a fantastic job of equalizing temperature, you often need more than one and even then it's no substitute for a hole in the wall.

As for your definition of equalize.. that's.. more or less how it works although the numbers sound wrong, couldn't actually tell you the exact results because the temperature system is a bit complex.


At any rate - More vents helps and it can be more efficient than putting a heater in every room, particularly bedrooms -which need to be the correct temperature- although temperature does equalize through walls/doors (though not as quickly as vents, obviously).


I'd avoid trying to set up a central area where all your heating/cooling happens as that just.. won't work, much like in real life
Try thinking of vents as like.. a 1x1 foot square between two walls - better than nothing but not an extraction fan or open door.

[Naraku]

Frankly vents don't do a fantastic job of equalizing temperature, you often need more than one and even then it's no substitute for a hole in the wall.

As for your definition of equalize.. that's.. more or less how it works although the numbers sound wrong, couldn't actually tell you the exact results because the temperature system is a bit complex.


At any rate - More vents helps and it can be more efficient than putting a heater in every room, particularly bedrooms -which need to be the correct temperature- although temperature does equalize through walls/doors (though not as quickly as vents, obviously).


I'd avoid trying to set up a central area where all your heating/cooling happens as that just.. won't work, much like in real life
Try thinking of vents as like.. a 1x1 foot square between two walls - better than nothing but not an extraction fan or open door.

What I was planning to do is making the equivalent of the venting system in real life, actually. The only time I can see vents being of any use is if you have excess heat/cold in a given room, so might as well give it some use else where. But honestly, this happens very rarely. They most certainly need a buff, given the replies thus far.

[linkxsc]

On the note of heaters... I dont know if its in code or even if its true, but Ive been getting the feeling that they dont work as well when tucked up against a wall. They seem to heat better when in the center of a hallway or such with open spaces on all sides.

[Naraku]

On the note of heaters... I dont know if its in code or even if its true, but Ive been getting the feeling that they dont work as well when tucked up against a wall. They seem to heat better when in the center of a hallway or such with open spaces on all sides.

I can say they work even if something is directly in front of it, however it would be worth looking into just -how- effective they are with objects around it or in front of it.

[linkxsc]

On the note of heaters... I dont know if its in code or even if its true, but Ive been getting the feeling that they dont work as well when tucked up against a wall. They seem to heat better when in the center of a hallway or such with open spaces on all sides.

I can say they work even if something is directly in front of it, however it would be worth looking into just -how- effective they are with objects around it or in front of it.

Simple way to test. Make a bunch of 3x3 rooms with 1 door (make em so noone is gonna go in them) put 1 with a heater in the center, 1 with it against the wall, and 1 in the corner. Get them all built. Set them all as no roof regions, normalize the temperature between them. Pause the game, set them all to have roofs. And see how quickly the room hits 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 degrees. Which 1 goes the fastest?

[TLHeart]

I have found vents useful in my bedrooms, for cooling. I use 6x6 bedrooms, and now I can build an air conditioner in one bedroom, and cool 3 rooms, so it saves me steel. The room with the AC stays at 70F, while the rooms on both sides, stay at 74F.

Now if one of the vented rooms has a wall to the outside temp of 100F+, then the vent does not keep the room in the 70's.

Tynan stated in another thread, that vents will NOT create central air and heat.

[Dive]

Vents are certainly helpfull. I have 3 heaters warming up a 8x10 hall + 50x2 hallway  up to 21 C. I also have 9 5x5 bedrooms connected to the hallway with vents and doors. All the 9 bedrooms are at 17 C. It's -3 C outside, not really cold but still.
A vent takes 30 steel and a heater takes 65 steel, so I saved 315 steel on that (not really much for a mountain biome I'm playing at).
Each heater takes 100W of power, so I saved 900W, and that, I think, is the best thing about vents - power saving. For me it's important because I don't like neither solar panels (one reason - short cirquit) nor wind turbines (their top-down design just doesn't fit IMO) so I only use geothermals, and they are a limited resource.

[Arigas]

I have vents into my colonists bedroom, and they work well, just find it not that great for my freezer right now. Great idea though, really happy to have them ^.^

[Demoulius]

I just started a game in an arid biome and had 2 coolers keeping the central room at 20 degrees celsius. Outside of a heat wave they did the job. I then added vents to about 6 adjacent bedrooms and noticed my temperature going up. Added a 3rd cooler and the air remained roughly 22-23 degrees for all the rooms Whens its 30+ degrees outside I would say thats a decent room temperature

[nottma]

I find the vent system works well if the heat/cooling source is in the hallway. It works close to how you'd expect in a real life scenario.

[Gennadios]

I like building a freezer next to the infirmary to keep meds and organs fresh, then build the heater into the infirmary. It sometimes became a problem when the infirmary reached 130+ degrees. Vents are a cheap way to regulate temperature inside tundra mountain bases.