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

[Latta]

I found that I didn't updated Vents & Door only 's link... It really should be find now.

[cy-one]

I didn't read all of the thread, so please excuse the possibly dumb question...

Can "cool air" and "hot air" be shared on the same duct network? I mean, can I have a cooler room and a heater room (both with industrial heaters/coolers) and have fans suck in both cool and hot air into the same network?
Or do I need a separate cool and hot network?

[rditto48801]

I didn't read all of the thread, so please excuse the possibly dumb question...

Can "cool air" and "hot air" be shared on the same duct network? I mean, can I have a cooler room and a heater room (both with industrial heaters/coolers) and have fans suck in both cool and hot air into the same network?
Or do I need a separate cool and hot network?

Yes, both can use the same network, but not at the same time.
Lock heater room fans and unlock cooler room fans as weather gets hot.
Lock cooler room fans and unlock heater room fans as weather gets cold.
Then just have the smart fans set to an average temp to aim for year round, adjusted where needed for individual rooms, like bedrooms.

It's not as 'set and forget' or otherwise as effective as two separate hot and cold networks, but it gets the job done.

The only issue with the setup is still needing a separate network for the cooler room if you also will be using it to keep refrigeration/freezer rooms cold.

[Kaballah]

Note that you can mass-lock vents of the same type by double clicking (selects all in view) and then locking.  You can also mass-set thermostat temperatures on smartfans/coolers/heaters by selecting multiples by double-click.

[Latta]

I need feedback on equalization speed.

Should ducts remain slower than vents? Because in A10, there will be a vanilla vents which will likely has its own new mechanic. There are currently two options in my mind.
First, ducts remain same. It will need some thoughts as I have to implement new mechanic to duct network's.
Second, ducts are buffed to match vents, at increased cost in both material and power.

[Kaballah]

I sort of think you should leave duct work just as it is, I think it works really well.  I don't know how much more throughput the new vanilla vents have compared to yours, but duct work already has the big advantage of being centralized and quicker at putting heat/cold into individual rooms, as opposed to equalizing it through many chambers with vents.  You should probably try to get the lock/unlock and temperature setting mechanics working with the new 'switch flicking' concept introduced in this version though.

Will your current version of RedistHeat work at all with A10?  I really just use the duct features and industrial cooler/heater most of the time so the changes to vents won't affect me too much.

[jefferyharrell]

I need feedback on equalization speed.

What makes most sense to me, intuitively, is if the temperature of a duct network changes in proportion to how many inlets it has and in inverse proportion to how many duct sections it has. So in other words, a duct network with one inlet and one outlet but with a mile of pipe in between will change temperature pretty slowly, while a small network with many inlet fans will change temperature pretty fast. That's what I intuitively expect, but it might be a pain in the neck to implement in the mod, so I'm stopping short of outright suggesting it.

The one thing that actually bothered me about the mod was the "pulsing" effect of both the big heaters and the vents. I found that if I had an industrial cooler with its exhausts in a closed room that had vents to the outside, the temperature of that room would shoot up to over 100° then down, then up to 100° again then back down. I found that really immersion-breaking, and also very hard to work with. I had this oh-so-clever idea of harnessing the exhaust heat from my fridge cooler to heat my base in winter, so I tried using active fans to maintain a temperature in the exhaust room of 80° and then pumping the warm air around the base in ducts. That didn't work well because the active fans couldn't maintain a stable temperature in the exhaust room. It was fluctuating by 20 or 30 degrees every second, which is really unrealistic and which bugged me.

Maybe that's just unavoidable. Maybe there's no other way for vents (both active and passive) to work. I haven't had a chance to try vents in alpha 10 yet so I don't know if they work the same way. But since you asked for opinions, I feel like duct networks should have hysteresis proportional to their size while vents should work however they have to to make that pulsatile response thing go away. Whether that means vents need to respond faster or slower, I dunno. I'm just thinking out loud.

Thanks for a terrific mod. Really looking forward to an alpha-10-compatible version.

[Latta]

It won't work with A10 now. There were some class name changes in vanilla code base, along with XMLs like health to hitPoints and removal of eType.

[carlgraves]

Kinda off topic; I would've posted this in the central heating thread but...this is basically the more upto date version of the same mod.

I'd stopped updating the mod cuz Tynan had asked if he could integrate vents into vanilla. Didn't really want to 'promise' that he was going to be integrating his own vents so i just held my own dev. Obviously that was way back in A8, so it's been awhile.

So if anyone was wondering why I sorta just stopped updating that was why

[Latta]

~~

Good to know I will keep you in credit list anyway even though vents are integrated. Oh, I still have industrial heaters too...
Thank you for your Central Heating.

===

Updated to A10c. There was somewhat radical changes to how duct network equalize their temperature. Also, overlay graphics are now properly displayed. Was supposed to be in 23, but there was no 23...

In addition to those, there are some changes to naming.
Smart duct fan -> Smart duct outlet
Powered fan -> Duct intake
Duct intakes no longer require research as its prerequisite.

Edit: Oh, yes, intersections can be built under walls like pipes as Kaballah said. Intersections will also display its overlay because of this. Still, no overlay when you select pipes. I don't think its possible because if I make it display, pipes can't be built together with power conduit.

===

Please expect some minor/major bug and/or balance issues, as this is the very first version of A10. Thank you.

[Kasdar]

I was wondering if it would be possible to have vents that can be placed on the floor, or against the wall, instead of or in addition to the ones that take up a wall spot. I kinda like having solid walls for my rooms and buildings and the vents just dont quite match the look I tend to go for.

[Kaballah]

Oh, hooray, really was looking forward to this.  Heat management in very cold biomes feels MUCH harder in this version and I was having to build so many heaters everywhere    Thanks for the update!

ps: I liked "smart fan" better

[mcduff]

I feel like one of the things that would really help mods like this would be some kind of generic "circuit" system that can tolerate multiple different systems. Something that could deal with different electricity rings, different temperature ducts, and things like water if it gets implemented in the future. A way in the base game to make a generic conduit and assign it something easy to read like a colour rather than an arbitrary number.

If you could pull up an overview and see networks coloured red (hot ducts) blue (cold ducts) green (hydroponics power) yellow (lighting power) etc, that would be super awesome. I know it's outside a modder's scope, though.

[jefferyharrell]

Are vented doors supposed to not actually separate rooms? I can't remember whether they worked this way in alpha nine or not, but in alpha ten make a room with a bed in it, then make another room with a bed, then separate the rooms with a vented door or autodoor. Designate one of the two beds for prisoner use and both beds will be so designated. The game doesn't seem to recognize the vented doors as actual doors, at least in my game. I may do a little more testing to see if I have a mod conflict or something, because I have a few mods installed, all of which are in "just ported this to alpha 10, there will be bugs" status.

[Kaballah]

Yeah I notice that as well, vented doors don't actually separate rooms.  E.g. I can't tag a bed for prisoners inside a room closed with a vented door, it will convert all adjacent beds owned by colonists.