Chill out issues

[Listy]

I prefer to play on hot maps, mostly due to previous versions of the game causing issues with snow. I've seen most talk on here about cold biomes. Including a comment from Tynan about how the new temperature changes would make it easier to heat a base.

I'm in them middle of a desert and I don't need to heat the base, I need to cool it!

At the moment you just bleed to much cold. I'd love to give my colonists a air conned bedrooms and hospital. But its just not happening.

On an arid shrub land biome, I have a 9x15 Freezer, even with an insulation layer (Freezer wall, walkway, outside wall) around it can barely be kept at -2/-3 with six coolers going full whack. During heatwaves it'll hit ten degree's easy. to give you an idea of how much power this is sucking down I have a Sun lamp, two normal lamps, a cooker and those cooling units hooked up to a Geothermal power plant, and that's about all it can deal with.

Feeling a little hot here, can't even provide cooling for my colonists so they're going to have to have a permanent -5 for slept in heat to their mood.
As for the idea of providing my hospital with its own septate freezer, that's looking very shaky.

[skullywag]

3rd or 4th time ive heard that insulation isnt working as expected....is it THAT hard to get a freezer to -10?

[Listy]

3rd or 4th time ive heard that insulation isnt working as expected....is it THAT hard to get a freezer to -10?

I had a think, and stopped thinking like a normal person, and started thinking game mechanics.

Normal person thinking:
We want it cold inside, hot outside. So we build a cooler into the wall and it will make the inside cooler.

Game mechanics version:
Count the temperature in adjacent cells to the outside wall and modify the internal temperature thus.

So the soloution was two coolers in the middle of the room, all targeting the same square. Build two more walls and I can maintain the same temperature as six venting outside. Why? because only one cell adjacent to the exterior is now at a higher temperature. Never mind this cell is in the middle of the room...

So yeah now I have to remodel the entirety of my base. But even then its going to suck massive amounts of power which is going to come from where? I'd make a horrible Green party member... I'm desperately wanting a Nuclear power station right now!

[REMworlder]

9x5 is pretty big; my biggest freezers are usually half that. I tested out the 9x15 combo and can confirm 3 just barely keeps the room at freezing, and when heat waves happen or someone opens the door that's lost.

I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is there isn't really any insulation right now, only ways to lose heat or cold. Roofs just lose heat too quickly for things like buffer areas to be useful for anything besides extreme cold, so anything besides a basic airlock to slow open-door temperature loss is going to have a negligible effect.

All that said, I've spent summers in 100+ F (Rimworld heatwave) weather and even modern buildings take a ton of effort to keep somewhat cool in the 70-degree range. Yeah coolers take a ton of electricity, but that just makes me think of summer brownouts. I'd hate for the effects of extraordinary heat to be negated by simply building a few coolers, but I agree some more counterplay options would be cool.

[Riftmaster]

I usually have a large freezer, and I normally build it with insulation around, to prevent heat entry and  cold escape (to some degree...heh)

Last freezer I built had 3 coolers venting into a 3x1 walled in roofless area inside the cooler...with the cooling squares at the 3rd row of the large cooler...probably 7x15 or something.

I didn't realize it, but after reading this that's probably why it worked - that and it was several rooms away from the outside.

[tommytom]

The problem is (ignoring other current game mechanic problems) that:

IRL, you have a heater that generates thermal energy; thus, you have it in the game.
IRL, you have a in-wall/window air conditioner that *transfers* thermal energy to another room/outdoors (enough so that it's colder); thus, it's in the game.
IRL, you have central heating/cooling to not have 100 in-wall/window air conditioners; this is NOT in the game.

For an in-mountain bases, this is a nightmare without vast exhaust hallways (since you can't remove roofs now in mountains) to exhaust the heat. For exterior modular bases, this is almost no problem at all besides maybe lost efficiency (using a huge cooler or two to cool a small room). For exterior man-build non-modular bases (all one big block), it isn't so bad as you just make a 1x1 unroofed exhaust between walls and can probably even be shared by 2-4 coolers.

It's alpha. There are mods. Grumble grumble. Proceed.

[Rock5]

3rd or 4th time ive heard that insulation isnt working as expected....is it THAT hard to get a freezer to -10?

I had a think, and stopped thinking like a normal person, and started thinking game mechanics.

Normal person thinking:
We want it cold inside, hot outside. So we build a cooler into the wall and it will make the inside cooler.

Game mechanics version:
Count the temperature in adjacent cells to the outside wall and modify the internal temperature thus.

So the soloution was two coolers in the middle of the room, all targeting the same square. Build two more walls and I can maintain the same temperature as six venting outside. Why? because only one cell adjacent to the exterior is now at a higher temperature. Never mind this cell is in the middle of the room...

So yeah now I have to remodel the entirety of my base. But even then its going to suck massive amounts of power which is going to come from where? I'd make a horrible Green party member... I'm desperately wanting a Nuclear power station right now!

I'm not sure I follow this. Could you explain it better? Have you actually tested it in God Mode and test both side by side?

[Listy]

I'm not sure I follow this. Could you explain it better? Have you actually tested it in God Mode and test both side by side?

Yup, I tested it same map, other side of the map from my colony. I just fired up god mode and built a test set up.

Here's a screen shot:
http://i.imgur.com/i7GgIjQ.jpg

The Yellow bits:
These were the vents on the old system, which needed six coolers. The issue is of course you have six cells next to the freezer wall that are heated, and subsequently cause massive heat loss.

The Red bit:
Is the new set up and you only have the drag factor of one heated cell, for the coolers to work against. So you've cut the number of coolers needed by 2/3rds. One cooler can get the temperature in that room with that set up down to about one degree.

So no longer can you stick coolers in walls, as that's inefficient, because while adding more cooling power you're also adding more surface area exposed to the heat.

[tommytom]

I'm not sure I follow this. Could you explain it better? Have you actually tested it in God Mode and test both side by side?

Yup, I tested it same map, other side of the map from my colony. I just fired up god mode and built a test set up.

Here's a screen shot:
http://i.imgur.com/i7GgIjQ.jpg

The Yellow bits:
These were the vents on the old system, which needed six coolers. The issue is of course you have six cells next to the freezer wall that are heated, and subsequently cause massive heat loss.

The Red bit:
Is the new set up and you only have the drag factor of one heated cell, for the coolers to work against. So you've cut the number of coolers needed by 2/3rds. One cooler can get the temperature in that room with that set up down to about one degree.

So no longer can you stick coolers in walls, as that's inefficient, because while adding more cooling power you're also adding more surface area exposed to the heat.

Interesting analysis.
Now that walls and ceilings bleed heat/cold more, it seems like this is accurate.

I never liked indoor heater/cooler though. Too inconsistant.

In the setup you posted, you could also unroof that single block to expel heat. That's assuming it gets hotter than outdoors though.

I was under the impression that coolers work based on how well they expel heat to the other side (i.e. expelling outdoors has infinite capacity and indoors gets diminishing returns), but maybe not.

[Listy]

I never liked indoor heater/cooler though. Too inconsistant.

In the setup you posted, you could also unroof that single block to expel heat. That's assuming it gets hotter than outdoors though.

I don't like it from an arcitetural point of view. And yes you're correct you need that point unroofed.

I have just noticed that the two coolers weren't doing their job very well, and the temperature was getting above 0, so I had to add in another one.

[Rock5]

That's only 1 room though.

I did a test myself.



I watched them for a few days. They were pretty much the same. Sometimes the one on the left was lower by 1 degree and sometimes the one of the right was lower by 1 degree. Note: only the one on the right has the hole in the roof. Of course if those 4 walls were removed from the left room the room would be larger so wouldn't reach as low a temperature.

Edit: this is still with Alpha 9b.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[skullywag]

38 cell freezer with an airlock door and 1 cooler cant barely keep up....not sure but i feel the coolers need the smallest of buffs, That size a room looks quite small and more than 1 cooler just looks stupid. Until materials have insulation values that is....