balencing heating/cooling

[dakenho]

so I love the the new heating and cooling requirements but have found a couple of problems balance wise.
1. its really expensive metal wise to add a heater to every room. but they get anointed at shared rooms.
2. People complain about working in cold rooms but then if you give them really warm clothing you risk heat stroke the rest of the time and their does not seem to be a good way around this.

while heaters and coolers are good for individual rooms like food freezers they can be expensive (150 metal a room ish * 16 colonists :/). maybe a central boiler room and the need to build vents and ducts (similar to wire conduits?) and then let players use heaters and coolers for special case rooms.  even allowing heaters to be placed in walls to be shared by more then one room would really help with the metal cost .

[DarknessEyes]

I found a solution for your problem...
In the hallway linking all rooms add one heater and one cooler and set them for same temperature.
The temperature seems to share between rooms each time a door opens.

[WolveNZ]

A Central heating system would be cool, maybe needing a geothermal vent? then is just a case of having some piping (as with the power system) to go to vents in each room?

Pros:
+ Powerless heating
+ cheaper per room

Cons:
- More expensive start up costs
- Requires vent
- Requires piping for the heat

[amul]

You can basically do this already using hallways, @WolveNZ.

[Ubil]

The solution to the problem is simple: add duct work.

It would be a semi-transparent block (placed in overhead) that does not block movement, can go through walls, and allows for temperature equalization with everywhere you add a vent to the duct.  Vents could only be placed on existing ducts and duct ends are automatically "capped" to prevent exploiting that.  So ducts by themselves do nothing, you'd have to add at least two vents.  Then you could have your central heating and cooling and pipe it around your houses.  A balance for this is that duct work would absorb a small amount of energy from surrounding atmosphere, so duct work that travels between warm buildings by going outside would provide a cooler temperature in the winter on ends with no heater or warmer in the summer.  Also, vents would balance slower than doors (smaller hole) and maybe with a certain range (still air would equalize slower) effectively limiting their range.

This also opens up the possibility for duct fans to speed up temp balancing and provide one way direction for temperature equalization and extending the range an effective centralized air conditioning system would be, in-line heating and cooling to put them inside vents and off the ground, or other options, like maybe a humidifier and dehumidifier system for humidifying rooms for hydroponic growth  (would require other changes, obviously) or removing moisture from a freezer room to prevent snow build up inside. (would be a problem if humidity was added as a factor)

I got this idea when I would have several large bedrooms (to get space bonus) all next to each other but needed doors between them to balance temp.  I'm not the first to think of this either: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=8783.0

Thoughts?