Air Conditioning - Friend or Foe?

[Bolgfred]

Dear Colonists,

I have a topic that I am thinking about an want to hear others opinions about. In that way I start with a long an boring:

INTRODUCTION
I just watched my girlfriend playin rimworld. She had a lot of heat waves so she added a cooling system for her bedrooms. It looked like this:

W = wall
C = cooler
V = vent
D = door
. = floor

WWDWWWDWWWWDWWWDWWWWDWWWDWWW
C   . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W
C   . . .  V   . . .  V   . . .  V   . . .  V   . . .  V   . . .  V
C   . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

As you see, this is a very bad painting, nobody understands. The point is, instead of cooling every room, or building a cental cooling system, she cooled one room, which transfered temperature  6 or 7 rooms in a row.
I told her, this is a bad design as it is cooling one after another with reduced effect... bla bla.
Her answer was, 'shut up, it works'. And she is right. Followed by this here comes the real

ISSUE
I think temperature control is way too easy. This I consider following the following points:

1. Energy costs
A cooler needs energy like about 3 lights. You need about 1-2 coolers for a medium fridge in a tempereate biome (~25°C), target for -3°C). This means 6 light builds are 1 freezer. If it's about for me this is much too less to be realistic. Consumption should be 2-5 times higher, for making a fridge or a perfectly conditioned room a more valuable thing.

2. stored heat/coolness
When I start a freezer, its kind of like BAM! and its below zero degree. Ingame it needs only 1-2 hours to change temperatures of a room.
Similar thing with heating a room. When there is a cold wave and temperature drop to -15°C, in a 6x7 room you only need to build 3-4 campfires, and temperatures immedeatly rise to 25°C.
I think temperature changes should also be slowed by 2-5 times of the current duration. Plus, every furniture should slow this even more, as furniture can save temperature for while, changing slower than air itself.

3. Insulation
I don't like the fact that simple walls basicly give a good insulation itself. Even if youre playing in extreme heat or cold, it is actually not nececarry to keep an eye on building double layered walls or reduce doors facing outside.
I havent tested it by numbers but I think the difference between single and double layered walls are about -30-50% percent. I'd wish to see single wall much less insulated, while double layer give about 300% effect of a single wall. This would make it more effective to put a single cooler on a fridge, while using 2-3 layered walls.
Similar things on doors. A closed door should be a big insulation problem, while a door instandly halves the temperature difference when opened. This would make air locks mandatory in critical areas.

4. Progression
There is none, or at least its binary: If youre a tribal, you are pissed about passive cooling, just waiting for coolers to be researched. If you're not a tribal, you already have coolers, being able to control every temperature issues you will eventually have.

CONCLUSION
All-In-All what I am trying to say, is that I wish temperature control to be a challenge, or at least an element that rewards good design. By now it doesn't feel like that to me, as the tools we have are too powerful.

[Canute]

CONCLUSION
All-In-All what I am trying to say, is that I wish temperature control to be a challenge, or at least an element that rewards good design. By now it doesn't feel like that to me, as the tools we have are too powerful.

Ask yourself, if the temp. control so much challenging like you want, would your girlfriend still understood it, or does a heat/cold wave allways would wipe her colony ?

[Bolgfred]

Ask yourself, if the temp. control so much challenging like you want, would your girlfriend still understood it, or does a heat/cold wave allways would wipe her colony ?

she built emergency bed for everyone in the fridge, so I think she's gonna be okay :-)

[Names are for the Weak]

While she is correct in saying that it works, it's a bit inefficient. You only need one cooler for small rooms, rather than 3 working at once. Here is a more efficient design that works just as well, which I will show using your system:

WWDWWWDWWWWDWWWDWWWWDWWWDWWW
W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W
C   . . .  V   . . .  V   . . .  V   . . .  V   . . .  V   . . .  V
W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

[jamaicancastle]

This setup is inefficient in the sense that you need more coolers (and hence more steel, components, and power) than doing it the "right" way. The reason is that vents are not perfectly effective at transferring heat, so to keep the temp in the right-hand room at the right level, you need more maximum cooling (or heating) power than you would normally.

When I've been designing living spaces, I've almost always gone with a "dorm" design of rooms opening into a central living space (dining + rec room). If you have a shallow venting system - all the vents open into a room that's directly climate controlled rather than one that is itself vented - you get smaller temperature swings and less wasted cooling power.

[BoogieMan]

I recently built a hot biome (125f average I believe) mountain colony where there were three locations each with 4 cooling units that fed into a central AC tunnel which then spread it out around to all the rooms though vents. I kept wall two tiles thick in all places. When the tunnels were completed I sealed them off so no one would path through them. It actually worked out quite well, other than it took a good bit more planning to make the layout of the AC tunnel contiguous.

It even helped once or twice with hives that popped up in bedrooms. Deconstructed the vents and lured the bugs into a 1 tile wide tunnel for each killboxing.

For now though, I'm using this mod for cooling. It's pretty nifty. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=973091113

[Trylobyte]

I argue that the temperature system is fine enough for the context.  This isn't a simulator, after all, I wouldn't expect extremely detailed temperature mechanics in a game like this (except from Dwarf Fortress because the creator of that game is insane.  In a good way).  There are a few quirks of the temperature system (AC units make incredible heaters - I've heated bases with the waste heat of my freezer) but I don't think making it more complex is needed so much as just ironing out the kinks.

Interestingly, the inefficiency you expect to see does happen, but it requires a larger area or a greater ambient temperature difference to really manifest.

[realdead_man]

When I first used climate control I thought it would be more realistic too.

But now that I am a PRO, lol, I understand how to heat/cool rooms in game. 

I would not have a problem doing as suggested I guess.

[Razzoriel]

I wouldn't mind two air conditioning types; one for lowering temperature down to ~5 ºC, and other down to negatives, then make the industrial cooler a 1x3 monster with huge power consumption (~1kW)

[NiftyAxolotl]

It's generally poor form to tell other people that they're playing a game the wrong way.

If she tries that air conditioning setup in real life, then it might be worth a little chat about optimization. In a game? Let her play.

[realdead_man]

fyi, I did some bases like THIS:

W.WWDWWWDWWWWDWWWDWWWWDWWWDWWWW
W.W . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W. W
W.C   . . . V   . . .  V   . . .  V   . . .  V   . . .  V  . . .  C.  W
W.W . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W. W
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

[Canute]

I would do something like this.


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[Snafu_RW]

I would do something like this.

Why not vent between rooms as opposed to venting individual rooms to halls? Install a suitably placed heater/cooler system & the whole thing becomes much more power-efficient, IMO at least..

[Canute]

Vents slowly push the heat from the higher temp to the lower one.
It works better when they are straight connected with the temp. controled room then when they are connected as chain.
You can notice faster if your current air condiction are enough or if you need addiction cooler/heater.
Not to forget the doors push temp faster then walls, and special open doors push alot of temp. At this small rooms forced open doors would do the same effect like vents (useful at early colonies and you need the steel somewhere else then for vents).

[Serenity]

If you have the long side of the rooms facing outside, it also works to place a cooler every second or third room and vents between all