[A12d] RedistHeat - Vents/Ducts (Oct 12, v42b) Small heater fix

[Kaballah]

The big temperature controllers don't seem to have a beauty value set, which seems wrong.  Most of the industrial stuff in the game is super ugly, giving you incentive to not leave it out in the middle of trafficked areas.  Otherwise gosh this is a really well done mod, it works wonderfully.

[LustrousWolf]

Please could someone make a tutorial on this? Finding it difficult to get onto my feet with this mod :O
(Like, with everything. Super confused >.<)

Q: I always use wooden autodoors because they open the fasted for my colonists, should I just start using the wooden auto ventilation doors instead now? except for on my geo gen inside my base. Dont want my colonists cooked. This is how they are supposed to be used and used only to allow heat through?

[Kaballah]

It's a little counter intuitive.  Basically you make an enclosed room, roofed, and put heaters into it.  Then you build ducts to carry heat from the heater room to the room you want to heat up.  Then you put some form of intake on the duct in the hot room, and some form out outflow on the duct in the cold room(s).  Here is a very simple setup, if you have a cold room and you want to warm it up with a remote heater.



Powered fans used as intakes are simplest, because they have the highest capacity to move heat in a unit of time, and because you want them to always move at their max capacity so a thermostat setting is irrelevant.  Smart fans in the target room(s) are nice because they allow you to keep distinct thermostat settings for whatever situation required, e.g. you have a colonist that likes his room at 15C but the others are fine at 11C.

Alternatively you could have an industrial cooler (or regular cooler) in the "hot room" and you could cool a remote room the same way.  Once all the ductwork is connected, you can click on any segment of it, and it will show you the "network temperature".  If the network temperature is not what you want it to be in your target room - or rooms, because smart ducts allow you to have different thermostat settings for each room they service - then you may need to add more heater/cooler capacity, or you may need more intake capacity.  If the heater room is staying around the target temperature of the heater(s) that are in it, then you do not have enough intake capacity sucking heat out of the room and stuffing it into the network.  While it's OK to have a door on the heater room, note that it has to be enclosed in order for heat to accumulate in the room, so you may want to put an "airlock" 2-door/vestibule setup in to reduce that.

e: Also note that even though the drawing shows fans connected to the ends of the duct path, they can be placed ANYWHERE on the duct, not just ends; and there can be any number of branches, the duct network does not have to be a simple line.  There can also be any number of intake fans as required, or multiple outlets in a room serviced by the network.  One smartfan handles a 6x6 room very easily for me though, even in bitter cold (-80C).  Basically if the duct network is 1 degree warmer than all your endpoints, you have enough capacity everywhere; if it's not warmer then you need either more heater or more intake (or both).

Vents and vented doors are much simpler; basically you heat the air in an enclosed room or hallway (note that if the hallway is not totally enclosed by doors/walls this will never work) and place vents between this and any rooms adjacent to it, which allow heat to equalize through the vent.  Normal doors prevent this heat equalization while they are closed, vented doors do not.

Make any more sense?

[LustrousWolf]

It's a little counter intuitive.  Basically you make an enclosed room, roofed, and put heaters into it.  Then you build ducts to carry heat from the heater room to the room you want to heat up.  Then you put some form of intake on the duct in the hot room, and some form out outflow on the duct in the cold room(s).  Here is a very simple setup, if you have a cold room and you want to warm it up with a remote heater.



Powered fans used as intakes are simplest, because they have the highest capacity to move heat in a unit of time, and because you want them to always move at their max capacity so a thermostat setting is irrelevant.  Smart fans in the target room(s) are nice because they allow you to keep distinct thermostat settings for whatever situation required, e.g. you have a colonist that likes his room at 15C but the others are fine at 11C.

Alternatively you could have an industrial cooler (or regular cooler) in the "hot room" and you could cool a remote room the same way.  Once all the ductwork is connected, you can click on any segment of it, and it will show you the "network temperature".  If the network temperature is not what you want it to be in your target room - or rooms, because smart ducts allow you to have different thermostat settings for each room they service - then you may need to add more heater/cooler capacity, or you may need more intake capacity.  If the heater room is staying around the target temperature of the heater(s) that are in it, then you do not have enough intake capacity sucking heat out of the room and stuffing it into the network.  While it's OK to have a door on the heater room, note that it has to be enclosed in order for heat to accumulate in the room, so you may want to put an "airlock" 2-door/vestibule setup in to reduce that.

e: Also note that even though the drawing shows fans connected to the ends of the duct path, they can be placed ANYWHERE on the duct, not just ends; and there can be any number of branches, the duct network does not have to be a simple line.  There can also be any number of intake fans as required, or multiple outlets in a room serviced by the network.  One smartfan handles a 6x6 room very easily for me though, even in bitter cold (-80C).  Basically if the duct network is 1 degree warmer than all your endpoints, you have enough capacity everywhere; if it's not warmer then you need either more heater or more intake (or both).

Vents and vented doors are much simpler; basically you heat the air in an enclosed room or hallway (note that if the hallway is not totally enclosed by doors/walls this will never work) and place vents between this and any rooms adjacent to it, which allow heat to equalize through the vent.  Normal doors prevent this heat equalization while they are closed, vented doors do not.

Make any more sense?

Yes this made more sense to me thank you! But it would still be nice if there was a quick 2-3 min video tutorial on it when you add more things as this mod was a little difficult to get the hang of (e.g, explaining what everything does and what this then leads to you being able to do)

[Kaballah]

Here's a practical example, a colony I have in progress now.  At the top center are my heaters, a geothermal plant and some ASRTGs (from the Radiothermal Generator mod) which also generate heat, all enclosed with the heaters set to 21C (their default).   Between the heaters are banks of 10 powered fans - I love to overbuild  - and the big enclosure to the right is the cooler/stockpile, with an industrial cooler being built at the right edge of the image.  Currently it doesn't have any exhaust ports connected, but the small room will be a heat dump with more powered fans to carry heat to the main heater room, where it can be pumped out to colonist bedrooms again.  This map's temperature went down to -80C in the deep winter but everyone inside was nice and comfy at whatever their thermostats were set to (usually 11C).

[LustrousWolf]

Here's a practical example, a colony I have in progress now.  At the top center are my heaters, a geothermal plant and some ASRTGs (from the Radiothermal Generator mod) which also generate heat, all enclosed with the heaters set to 21C (their default).   Between the heaters are banks of 10 powered fans - I love to overbuild  - and the big enclosure to the right is the cooler/stockpile, with an industrial cooler being built at the right edge of the image.  Currently it doesn't have any exhaust ports connected, but the small room will be a heat dump with more powered fans to carry heat to the main heater room, where it can be pumped out to colonist bedrooms again.  This map's temperature went down to -80C in the deep winter but everyone inside was nice and comfy at whatever their thermostats were set to (usually 11C).

I think it is just me not getting it fully >.< So how many "new" rooms are there need for this mod? You have cooler room and a heater room, any more? Sorry about the inconvenience :c
Also can I not just have 1 cooler and 1 heater in a corridor with ventilation auto doors so heat goes into all the room i want it to go? (the bedrooms) (I know I will need more than 1 heater too get the heat around all of the bedrooms i have) ;P

[Kaballah]

You don't NEED to have specific rooms to accumulate heat/cold, I just like to do that.

Also can I not just have 1 cooler and 1 heater in a corridor with ventilation auto doors so heat goes into all the room i want it to go? (the bedrooms) (I know I will need more than 1 heater too get the heat around all of the bedrooms i have) ;P

Yes you can certainly do this, but you lose a tremendous amount of nerd score if you don't build ducts and fans everywhere.

[Latta]

Wow, Kaballah, thank you for such nice explanation! I can never give such detailed description with my English.
Mind if I put your picture on OP?

I'm glad someone uses this so...intensive! When I looked at your screenshot I came up with an idea that maybe I made powered fans cost too much electricity. Would give me your opinion on this? Also, are you experiencing any serious performance issue? Thank you!

[Kaballah]

Of course   I like this mod a whole lot, it adds a really fun crunchy layer of construction with all the ductwork and fans and stuff.  Re: performance, even with a really huge and very complex network of ducts and like, 100 fans I don't see any noticeable performance hit.

And yes powered fans probably cost a little bit much to run, but on the other hand I think industrial heaters cost too little to run for how much heat they make.  Just picking some numbers off the top of my head, I would make powered fans cost 1/2 and make industrial heaters cost x2.

e: the reasoning I have for powered fans is that they're just a simple electric motor with no computer and no heating element, also hmmmmm! they cost 4x more to run than smartfans, that makes no sense at all.  Smartfan has a bit less capacity but does more (thermostat setting) - it should cost more power to operate even if it takes less metal to build.

[Kaballah]

Here's the same colony, White Meat, in the middle of winter:



notice all the flowers are blooming

[Kaballah]

Thinking about this some more, duct openings should be really rubbish (much lower heat push rate) compared to powered fans.  Like 1/10th, considering they use no power at all.  As it stands they seem really super optimal for intake vents and they probably should be the least desirable choice.

e: Yeah in practice they work fine, they just take more tile space.  They cost the same amount of metal per HPR as powered fans but cost no power.  Nerf these a lot/buff powered fans a lot.

[Kaballah]

I guess a small criticism I have is that everything is perfectly efficient.  You should figure some way to make it so that the larger your duct network is and the more crap you have plugged into it, the less efficient it all is.  Relying on one or two big space heaters and a bunch of vents/vented doors trying to heat a large volume without any sort of circulation fans should be very wasteful (like how real heating systems work).

[Latta]

Updated to 22b.

The big temperature controllers don't seem to have a beauty value set, which seems wrong.  Most of the industrial stuff in the game is super ugly, giving you incentive to not leave it out in the middle of trafficked areas.  Otherwise gosh this is a really well done mod, it works wonderfully.

Now both industrials has some beauty penalty, as well as cooler's exhaust port.
Exhaust port's power cost is now 100, increased from 50.

Renamed duct hole to duct opening.
Duct opening's hpr is now 0.1, decreased from 0.5.
Smart fan's hpr is now 0.4, decreased from 0.75.
Powered fan's cost is now 15 steel, decreased from 20. Power cost is 25, decreased from 40.

I guess a small criticism I have is that everything is perfectly efficient.  You should figure some way to make it so that the larger your duct network is and the more crap you have plugged into it, the less efficient it all is.  Relying on one or two big space heaters and a bunch of vents/vented doors trying to heat a large volume without any sort of circulation fans should be very wasteful (like how real heating systems work).

I agree. 20b was more awkward because net's temperature immediately changed by average of each components' temperature. At least now it uses somewhat proper "push" system like rooms.
But circulation fans are not on the list now, I fear it might make this even more complex, coding is another.

[silentlord]

how come you have all the, im assuming smart fans and such in the rooms, instead of in the wall?

i also love the duct-work, really adds a new layer to base construction, i now always build hidden corridors to house power cables and duct-work, like proper maintenance corridors.

hers an example;

[Latta]

You know, that's beautiful. lol.
Nice idea for hidden corridors.