How exactly does magma work?

[1Erik1]

How can you maximize the magma usage? Like I have oil fields where all the gas pockets are basically out of reach of magma due to distance cooling down the heat before it can reach gas pockets.
I also feel like on hard difficulty I can not ever catch up to the AI. I suppose that means I am doing something wrong/could do something better. Is there some way to utilize magma beyond going at the very edge of the node that is closest to the gas?
I mean for example it looks like connecting one more node to magma somehow increases the heat flow but everything beyond that doesn't do much at all.

[Gibibit]

I have to admit that magma heated pipes are not displayed very clearly. Indeed as you noted longer pipes lose more heat than short ones. Additionally, the more pipes are connected to a single heated node, the more the heat will be spread out and also reduced over the total distance of all connected pipes further increasing the heat loss. Finally, each node also loses some heat every second.

Here are some images to clarify.

Using a single heated pipe over a long distance is fine: https://gyazo.com/52e0732c896aa2bb96cf6048b066fcfb

Converting oil over a long distance still works pretty well (though note that gas growth uses more heat than oil to gas conversion): https://gyazo.com/4174edd4bc58416c9f22dbed127846af

Here a big network connected to a single heated node dissipates the heat, decreasing the oil speedup effectiveness: https://gyazo.com/1f0b55aabf042c156fa9e4b31ff9a95c

You can solve this by connecting the branches of your network to their own heat sources: https://gyazo.com/547de900706ada8b01cc2ad1ad5c8601

Closing nodes stops any heat from passing through. Just compare these two.

1. Opened node, heat is lost in the network: https://gyazo.com/06e7d5d6c864795f3317a42a3b023802
   
2. Closed node, heat stays in one half of the network: https://gyazo.com/4b7ff3517042f1f7d08d4827cafc6e2b

Bonus tip: you can keep a tiny amount of oil in each well in the level, then convert it to gas and fill the entire well again! This way you can drill out almost all the oil and still create tons of gas. Warning: requires micromanagement :)

Bonus tip 2: if you connect two nodes to a gas well, you can use one node to grow more gas and the other to siphon it out. This way you can almost indefinitely keep boosting the price. Warning: this definitely makes your pipe network more complicated :)

The expert mode for The Heat Is On is purposefully made more difficult than the previous expert mode. Practicing in the single game mode until I mastered the use of magma did the trick for me.

Ask away if you have any more questions! I might sticky this thread for others to read as well.

[1Erik1]

Well since I have the opportunity:

Larger pipes let you transport more gas at once making it easier/possible to get a higher price. Does heat work the same way? Can I get gas faster by using bigger pipes connected to magma or convert oil faster?
Considering you can use multiple pipe nodes within a gas pocket does that mean I can let them grow beyond my existing pipe network if I just turn off nodes that stop the growth or are only nodes already within the gas pocket the only exception to this rule?
Does it make any difference where exactly the heat pipe is placed within the gas pocket? Is it more effective to have the heat be exactly in the middle?
If I were to use the traditional gas growth alongside the magma gas growth would their growth potential be additive or multiplicative and is there a max growth potential or is it theoretically limitless?
Considering I could make extremely large pockets by combining both methods would the heat from heated pipes outside the gas pockets increase in effectiveness as the gas pocket grows bigger or is it always a flat growth potential being added?
If I were to use seperate pipes connecting to the same magma source (not the same pipe node just the same magma) and use them on the same gas pocket would the heat add up or would I need a completely different magma source?

[Gibibit]

Alright here we go:

• Bigger pipes do not transfer more heat. The only way to get more heat to a node is to connect more heated pipes to it.
  
• A node that is not built inside the gas well will always stop the well's growth. Pipes do not stop the growth though.
  
• The location of the converting/growing node does not effect the conversion/growth speed of the well.
  
• Even if you could have both the thermal expansion and magma growth upgrades at the same time, which neither campaign has, you could not use them both at the same time. Having a pipe connected to a well disables thermal expansion.
  
• The speed of growing gas with heat is determined by the amount of heat that is present in the growing node. Each game tick all the heat is consumed and the well grows proportionally. More heat = more growth!
  
• Magma sources contain infinite heat. The amount of heat you can get out of it is limited only by the amount of nodes you connect to it.

[Gibibit]

Please do not necro old threads with off-topic responses. Thread locked.