How does heat dissipate?

[Vastin]

So, in a true closed box simulation your colony would die pretty quickly due to waste heat buildup, especially with you running several kilowatts worth of heavy machinery in a sealed underground environment.

This doesn't happen, so presumably there is a background heat-sink mechanism that gradually draws heat out of the overall environment - does anyone know what that mechanism is? The game doesn't mention it anywhere.

[profitX10]

The mechanics do not conserve energy. There are plants biomes and machines that break thermodynamics.

[Thorin]

Most machines don't emit any heat, or much less than what they should, the freezing plant just removes heat without doing anything, and the geysers add heat beside water to the system.

[AquaX]

Ur living in a small chunk of rock w it's own ecosystem to close to that of a planet. That itself throws the law of thermodynamics off.

Thermodynamics is only somewhat applied in this game due to how complex it can get if it is fully applied. As long as gases move around the machines, they tend to remain a constant temp unless they build up heat faster than it is discharge and the gases remain a on stand temp.

[Ackranome]

it seems that building certain buildings creates heat, your dupes also create heat. The vents create heat. The Wheezeworts take away heat.

I don't see much else that deals with Kelvin concepts in this game.

The enviroment I would presume is "built" as an algorithm to have an "equal" level of heat and cold likely to something like 0C as a function so each map isn't insanely hot or insanely cold for the player and 0 is a nice number to calculate too.

It would seem there is a infinte energy as vents create natural gas.

There is infinite water as vents create water. So you have infinite oxygen and hydrogen.

If these vents are always creating heat it would lead to a "heat death" if heat didn't disapate or get off set by an equal reduction in heat by the Wheezeworts. So I would think the total number of Wheezeworts would be specifically matched to the vents. You can't grow more wheezeworts - I haven't seem them "die" yet in any case so I am not sure if they can???

I don't see anything that indicates the gas itself take away or produce heat so I would presume this isn't the case - the gases are void.

I would think that the game is likely going to create a heat death if there aren't more wheezeworts inherently as the Dupes produce heat. You're adding them into the game. Most energy creation also has heat properties too. You are adding heat. You also add calories to the enviroment as you get 2+ seeds to maintain food supplies. That would indicate you have more energy to expel more heat. Heat death seems what will happen no matter what.

But.....

You appear to be able to insulate Vents and areas and "contain" heat. Where does this heat go? Not sure. It does not appear on the surface of the game though. I haven't made it to the Void yet so I don't know if that is "cold."

[AquaX]

There are ice biomes that take out massive heat if u let it remain somewhat insulated.

I think the devs made heat slow moving so u got time to adjust and deal with it. Poorly managed, ur base heats up in about 50-100 cycles.that gives u plenty of time to notice and quickly fix it.

In early geyser develop, u can see it melt an entire ice biome in a snap. U can see you tubers watch their base drowned in polluted and clean water.

[profitX10]

If you are not careful with oxygen condensation cleaning of polluted air you can get a base down to negative 140F in no time flat.. It takes a lot of energy to offset liquid oxygen vaporizing in a base.

[Vastin]

Ok, in answer to my own question:

From what I've seen the background tiles gradually normalize the foreground heat to a local value each tick unless something in the foreground environment is generating or absorbing heat. The standard starting environment normalizes to something around 20 degrees, the lava regions to 30+, and the ice regions to something at or below zero.

So basically you can use any area as a heat sink because heat will gradually dissipate to the background value regardless. Of course, using water in the icy areas as a heat sink is far more effective for cooling things rapidly.

Needless to say, there's no overall closed thermodynamic environment, or anything particularly close to it. This would be true in a real cavern system as well, as the rock would gradually transport heat away into the vast bulk of matter around the open spaces - albiet somewhat slowly. If you generated heat too rapidly, you'd eventually cook or freeze yourself.

Because the background normalization seems quite slow, you can overload the local environment pretty easily with too much heating or cooling.

[Ackranome]

Originally posted by Vastin:

Ok, in answer to my own question:

From what I've seen the background tiles gradually normalize the foreground heat to a local value each tick unless something in the foreground environment is generating or absorbing heat. The standard starting environment normalizes to something around 20 degrees, the lava regions to 30+, and the ice regions to something at or below zero.

So basically you can use any area as a heat sink because heat will gradually dissipate to the background value regardless. Of course, using water in the icy areas as a heat sink is far more effective for cooling things rapidly.

Needless to say, there's no overall closed thermodynamic environment, or anything particularly close to it. This would be true in a real cavern system as well, as the rock would gradually transport heat away into the vast bulk of matter around the open spaces - albiet somewhat slowly. If you generated heat too rapidly, you'd eventually cook or freeze yourself.

Because the background normalization seems quite slow, you can overload the local environment pretty easily with too much heating or cooling.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=931686723

I wanted to see if this is true - and it seems that way.

[Wögi]

I also hoped that was the case, and tried it out in debug mode.
Sadly, it does not seem to work that way. Built an insulated Box, waited a few cycles, and nothing changed... So the Heat-death seems almost not avoidable. So sad.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1274687960

[Bugs Bunny]

There are numerous ways to "delete" heat. Many buildings have a fixed heat output, for instance electrolizers and sieves. You can feed those 120 degree water and you'll get 70 deg and 40 deg water respectively.

Toilets also generate water, so by feeding them cold water, you can add cold water to the world, helping soak some of the heat.

Wheezewarts have already been mentioned....

Also the nullifier (there is one per map AFAIK) can be used to remove some heat as well.

Finally, there is the drip bug which is probably the most efficient and overpowered way to remove heat. When you make 20 deg water drip over a building, it will cool that building down to 20 deg instantly, whatever temperature it's at.

I have a system in my base I came up with that uses a partially submerged aquatuner. You fill that basin with scalding water and start the system which will pump the hot water through the tuner and then back on itself. Each blob of water that goes through goes down 15 deg and cools down the tuner by as much, as well as some of the water in the basin since it's sent back into it. Next water to go in is colder, cooling it even more, and so on. Very quickly, the water coming out is sub-zero. I use a temp sensor to stop it before that happens and I can take the water down to say 15 degrees but the tuner is still much colder than that by the time it happens, so even after the system stops, the water keeps cooling down to approx 4-8 degrees.

The basin is 1 deep and simply overflows in my main water tank... all water coming to the tank passes through that system, so whatever I send in there comes out at 10ish deg and falls in the main tank. The tuner barely ever runs, it only takes like 2-3 secs to freeze itself and trigger the sensor.

[Clonefarmer]

Originally posted by Deicide666ra:

Also the nullifier (there is one per map AFAIK) can be used to remove some heat as well.

There are 3 on every map.

[Bugs Bunny]

Originally posted by Clonefarmer:

There are 3 on every map.

Darn... I'm closing on turn 400 and I haven't found a single one yet... and I explored a lot of the map.. I got like 5-6 ice biomes found already.

[Clonefarmer]

Originally posted by Deicide666ra:

Originally posted by Clonefarmer:

There are 3 on every map.

Darn... I'm closing on turn 400 and I haven't found a single one yet... and I explored a lot of the map.. I got like 5-6 ice biomes found already.

They tend to generate towards the edges of the map.

[AquaX]

Heat nullifer exist in the ice biome and their mostly cover with ice. You see it if you look for ruins tiles in the ice biome.

[Bugs Bunny]

Oh right I forgot they can be encased in ice... I found a couple in other games and they were mostly (but not completely) covered.