Air Conditioning - Friend or Foe?

[IceThorn]

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.

a central temperature system is not a bad idea but the structure, imho has to be different:

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

Code Select Expand


WWDWWWDWWWWDWWWDWWWWDWWWDWWW
W   . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W
W   . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W
W   . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W  . . .  W
WWXWWWWXWWWWXWWWXWWWWXWWWXWWW
W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . W
WWWCWCWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWCWCWWWW


I added 1 conditioner; they has to be set 2 inside cool, outside heat and 2 vice versa at the same temperature.
This means that if the temp is too low, the heating ones will turn on and the cooling ones will turn off, if the temp is too high, the cooling ones will turn on and the heating ones will turn off.
This keeps the same temperature in every room.

[Alenerel]

Heat pumps go brrr,
air conditioning has dual uses now, slap one with the hot exhaust facing into a room and it'll make some heat, (maybe more efficient than a heater?)

Idk why ppl keep saying this stuff. If its hot and you want something cool, you are dumping the heat out, you dont want the heat anywhere. If its cold, the coolers are off and they arent pumping any heat to warm up anything.

I dont quite understand this whole post... It seems like a mess for a small inconvenience. I put my bedrooms more or less together and I just put 1 cooler/1 hear every other bedroom, and connect them by two with 1 vent. This is, only two rooms are connected, not a train of connected rooms.

This works for the average -5ºC to 35ºC. If you need more power, just put one cooler and heater in every room and forget about vents.

[FelipeBarreto]

Two things I'd like to see with powered coolers:

A much higher energy requirement when creating a freezer, relative to outside temperature. If it's 30ºC outside, it's MUCH easier and less energy-intensive to cool a room to 20ºC than to -3ºC. Maybe locking the max and min temperatures of the normal AC and adding a new freezer capable of going sub-zero specifically for freezers.

Late-game central heating/cooling. More efficient to keep several rooms at the same temperature. Cooled/heated air transported by pipes, like power cables. Can be put anywhere with a non-mountain ceiling (heat is exhausted through the ceiling into the ambient). The efficiency in a single room would be impacted by the length of the pipe and the number of exits before the current room.

[Bozobub]

That's a decent idea but sounds more like something a mod would do.

[Demoulius]

Given the title I was expecting a topic about how to weaponize AC's or something 

I think we have to renember a few things.

1: its a game: Rimworld isent an 'air conditioning simulator' so its good to keep that in mind in the back of your mind when thinking about things like this. Some things dont make sense from a real life perspective, but theyre fine from a game mechanic perspective.

2: A single cooler might be more then just a simple air conditioning unit: They share the same size and functionality of a wall. I think its therefor better to vieuw  them as industrial coolers (if you want to take a real life example) then as a simple AC unit. Theyre alot larger then what a normal AC unit is so I think its fair that their effect is alot higher then a real life AC unit. The game also moves very fast. A few real life seconds are easily an hour in the game. So the effects arent as instant as they might appear.

And 3: if it works for your gf, then hey good for her let her enjoy the game. Dont see why youd have to be fussy about it...

[Bolgfred]

Why you guys resurrect this thread after 4 years? I am completely confused.

Actually my point back then was that I want to build separated buildings, but the game mechanics force me to connect all rooms. I wouldn't say many things as I did back then, but that was the quintessence. Now let this one go back to its grave, please.