Space Heater not functioning?

[Sky Sweeper]

It says it's producing heat, but the areas directly around it never heat up and the space heater iself even starts to cool off as it's running. Are they not working right? What is the issue?

[fluxtorrent]

Assuming you are playing on rime.... simply put there is a LOT of cold to get rid of, the space heater only puts out so much heat it takes a LONG time to heat up an area. The blocks underneath it will mass twice what the heater itself does and those are going to absorb an equal amount of energy to warm up.

So you have 1200kg worth of cold mass to heat up before you even START to really spread any heat. And thats assuming you don't have airflow stealing some of that away to other places.

[Bokonon]

引用自 fluxtorrent：

Assuming you are playing on rime.... simply put there is a LOT of cold to get rid of, the space heater only puts out so much heat it takes a LONG time to heat up an area. The blocks underneath it will mass twice what the heater itself does and those are going to absorb an equal amount of energy to warm up.

So you have 1200kg worth of cold mass to heat up before you even START to really spread any heat. And thats assuming you don't have airflow stealing some of that away to other places.

Like fluxtorrent says, they're almost useless on Rime, especially alone. Early game on Rime I was able to use one with copper tempshift plates to keep a liquid lock (plain water) warm enough to stay liquid but other than that they're pretty weak.

Edit: I couldn't keep it warm enough for mealwood even with tempshift plates, at least not as quickly as I wanted. I rushed tepidizers and used warm water for heating loops to warm my early farms.

[Sky Sweeper]

引用自 Bokonon：

引用自 fluxtorrent：

Assuming you are playing on rime.... simply put there is a LOT of cold to get rid of, the space heater only puts out so much heat it takes a LONG time to heat up an area. The blocks underneath it will mass twice what the heater itself does and those are going to absorb an equal amount of energy to warm up.

So you have 1200kg worth of cold mass to heat up before you even START to really spread any heat. And thats assuming you don't have airflow stealing some of that away to other places.

Like fluxtorrent says, they're almost useless on Rime, especially alone. Early game on Rime I was able to use one with copper tempshift plates to keep a liquid lock (plain water) warm enough to stay liquid but other than that they're pretty weak.

Edit: I couldn't keep it warm enough for mealwood even with tempshift plates, at least not as quickly as I wanted. I rushed tepidizers and used warm water for heating loops to warm my early farms.

uhhh... okay, whats a heating loop? I didn't see that in the research. Is that one of those weird overly-complex player-made mix of machines to do one thing but takes up like 40 blocks of space?

[Sky Sweeper]

引用自 fluxtorrent：

Assuming you are playing on rime.... simply put there is a LOT of cold to get rid of, the space heater only puts out so much heat it takes a LONG time to heat up an area. The blocks underneath it will mass twice what the heater itself does and those are going to absorb an equal amount of energy to warm up.

So you have 1200kg worth of cold mass to heat up before you even START to really spread any heat. And thats assuming you don't have airflow stealing some of that away to other places.

What is the point of a space heater if it doesn't work in the one environment it's supposed to?

[Bokonon]

引用自 Sky Sweeper：

引用自 Bokonon：

Like fluxtorrent says, they're almost useless on Rime, especially alone. Early game on Rime I was able to use one with copper tempshift plates to keep a liquid lock (plain water) warm enough to stay liquid but other than that they're pretty weak.

Edit: I couldn't keep it warm enough for mealwood even with tempshift plates, at least not as quickly as I wanted. I rushed tepidizers and used warm water for heating loops to warm my early farms.

uhhh... okay, whats a heating loop? I didn't see that in the research. Is that one of those weird overly-complex player-made mix of machines to do one thing but takes up like 40 blocks of space?

If you don't want to build weird crap, refund the game now, it's not for you.

[fluxtorrent]

引用自 Sky Sweeper：

引用自 fluxtorrent：

Assuming you are playing on rime.... simply put there is a LOT of cold to get rid of, the space heater only puts out so much heat it takes a LONG time to heat up an area. The blocks underneath it will mass twice what the heater itself does and those are going to absorb an equal amount of energy to warm up.

So you have 1200kg worth of cold mass to heat up before you even START to really spread any heat. And thats assuming you don't have airflow stealing some of that away to other places.

What is the point of a space heater if it doesn't work in the one environment it's supposed to?

It does, you just have to apply more than 1 if its THAT cold. The space heater is better for maintaining temps than it is for warming an area up. I used 4 on my current rime world to keep my drecko farms warm enough.

It takes a good long while at the start to heat anything up because as I pointed out, its so damn cold. I mean reminds me of my childhood in northern Canada cold.

DTU's are the equivalent to a BTU in real life more or less, an expression of energy per second to heat. 1 DTU is the amount of energy required to heat up 1 gram of material 1 degree kelvin (if I'm not mistaken they based it on kelvin, never did any detailed testing) in 1 second.

so 16k dtu/s is enough heat to bring the temperature of say, copper ore (mostly likely material you make your early game heater out of) 16kg by 1 degree kelvin per second.

Since your heater itself is 400kg that means it will take "roughly"25 seconds to raise its temp 1 degree IF thats the only thing its warming up. but since its also directly warming 4 tiles of oxygen (lets assume 1500 grams each) and those are passing the heat along outside the initial area itself you cut that down even further because that air is going to rob the copper ore of the heat it gains (lower thermal capacity on the ore)

lets pretend for a second that you put it in the minimum sized room, literally a 2x2 space with nothing but that oxygen and insulated tiles.

we will even make it simpler and assume those tiles are abyssalite and the thermal transfer to them takes place so slow it won't affect the short term calculations.

If that air and that heater start off at -25 its going to take 1 heater 25.5 seconds to heat everything up by 1 degree. You won't see a positive temp for 10.57 minutes.

So under ideal conditions one space heater is not going to have a massive impact on a much larger space very quickly.

These numbers are more or less roughed in simplified versions of how it actually happens, you will actually see positive temps on the air sooner and the heater itself will stay at a lower temp longer because of the vagaries of thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity, also because iirc the heater applies its heat to the air before it does to itself.


It gets much worse when you take away the insulation because each tile you build at below 0 temps also becomes a massive heat sink and will absorb heat from the air as well. The bigger the area, the longer it will take to heat.

Conversely this goes for cooling and keeping a warm base cool as well, the less mass you have absorbing heat in it the easier it is to keep cool.Bigger areas = slower heating.


Ultimately the space heaters are not the optimal solution for whole base heating, but they ARE ideal for getting a farm started (assuming you go bristle berries, the 5c temp is way easier to manage early) by placing a heater, then 7 farm tiles, a heater, then 7 more farm tiles and finishing off with another heater. Between the lights and the heaters you shoulfd be able to keep your farm operational right from the early cycles (and you can ditch them once your water is warm enough)

[Sky Sweeper]

引用自 Bokonon：

引用自 Sky Sweeper：

uhhh... okay, whats a heating loop? I didn't see that in the research. Is that one of those weird overly-complex player-made mix of machines to do one thing but takes up like 40 blocks of space?

If you don't want to build weird crap, refund the game now, it's not for you.

Great solution mate, but I bought it back in alpha. The issue is the new biome is a new challenge. Figured it's easier to heat things up than cool things down, but apparently that rule is reversed on Rime and it's confusing the hell out of me.

[Sky Sweeper]

引用自 fluxtorrent：

引用自 Sky Sweeper：

What is the point of a space heater if it doesn't work in the one environment it's supposed to?

It does, you just have to apply more than 1 if its THAT cold. The space heater is better for maintaining temps than it is for warming an area up. I used 4 on my current rime world to keep my drecko farms warm enough.

It takes a good long while at the start to heat anything up because as I pointed out, its so damn cold. I mean reminds me of my childhood in northern Canada cold.

DTU's are the equivalent to a BTU in real life more or less, an expression of energy per second to heat. 1 DTU is the amount of energy required to heat up 1 gram of material 1 degree kelvin (if I'm not mistaken they based it on kelvin, never did any detailed testing) in 1 second.

so 16k dtu/s is enough heat to bring the temperature of say, copper ore (mostly likely material you make your early game heater out of) 16kg by 1 degree kelvin per second.

Since your heater itself is 400kg that means it will take "roughly"25 seconds to raise its temp 1 degree IF thats the only thing its warming up. but since its also directly warming 4 tiles of oxygen (lets assume 1500 grams each) and those are passing the heat along outside the initial area itself you cut that down even further because that air is going to rob the copper ore of the heat it gains (lower thermal capacity on the ore)

lets pretend for a second that you put it in the minimum sized room, literally a 2x2 space with nothing but that oxygen and insulated tiles.

we will even make it simpler and assume those tiles are abyssalite and the thermal transfer to them takes place so slow it won't affect the short term calculations.

If that air and that heater start off at -25 its going to take 1 heater 25.5 seconds to heat everything up by 1 degree. You won't see a positive temp for 10.57 minutes.

So under ideal conditions one space heater is not going to have a massive impact on a much larger space very quickly.

These numbers are more or less roughed in simplified versions of how it actually happens, you will actually see positive temps on the air sooner and the heater itself will stay at a lower temp longer because of the vagaries of thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity, also because iirc the heater applies its heat to the air before it does to itself.


It gets much worse when you take away the insulation because each tile you build at below 0 temps also becomes a massive heat sink and will absorb heat from the air as well. The bigger the area, the longer it will take to heat.

Conversely this goes for cooling and keeping a warm base cool as well, the less mass you have absorbing heat in it the easier it is to keep cool.Bigger areas = slower heating.


Ultimately the space heaters are not the optimal solution for whole base heating, but they ARE ideal for getting a farm started (assuming you go bristle berries, the 5c temp is way easier to manage early) by placing a heater, then 7 farm tiles, a heater, then 7 more farm tiles and finishing off with another heater. Between the lights and the heaters you shoulfd be able to keep your farm operational right from the early cycles (and you can ditch them once your water is warm enough)

So what am I supposed to do? Build insolated walls everywhere? The goal is to get off the rock, right? I'm not understanding how to do this - I thought the idea was that there is a machine for every solution. But space heater seems to be the only one that is designed to heat, whereas other machines produce heat as a by-product more effectively. I don't get that.

It's not that I don't want to build massive machines, the issue is things never seem to stay stable enough for it to get finished without it becoming useless. Perfect example is the water-filtration-production. it's Fertilizer Sythezier > natural gas generator > water purifier > water items > empty polluted water into well > pump polluted water to fertilizer synthesizer, right?

I just want to know the shortest/most resource efficient way to do things so that I'm not wasting 20+ cycles trying to make some complex work-around that the game isn't intended for you to have. If there's a problem, there should be a solution tool, not some maze you have to build.

Sorry, I'm frustrated. I love this game except for these situations. Got germs? Sink. Need food? Farm tile. Need water? more complex, but still doable. Too cold...? Sorry, fill your base's space up with heaters, preventing you from building a compact base and requiring a ♥♥♥♥ ton of power you probably can't effectively set up yet. Oh, and they won't heat up as much as industrial equipment, so you might as well not even bother....

[fluxtorrent]

I'm going to preface this; Rime is definitely not an "easy" asteroid to play on. the cold is a serious challenge.


The heater definitely put out more heat than "most" industrial machinery, and at a way lower power usage. The only real exceptions seem to be the ethanol distiller, the refinery, and the glass forge. The rock crusher for example puts out 2kdtu less heat and consumes twice the power for instance (and only runs when someone is smashing the button, this is the main problem trying to heat with industrial machinery).

Ideally, at least for rime, you DO want to use the mechanical airlock door and insulated walls to reduce airflow to areas you don't want/need heated at that point.You will also want to hop into coal power generation pretty quickly. The heat that puts off and the extra machinery it lets you support also makes a huge difference. Batteries are also a good source of passive heat. They will NEVER make a dent in the cold by themselves but they can create a kind of thermal barrier that locks off some of your heat escaping. Popping a tepidizer into your water can also help.

Simply put your problem isn't that the heater is slow to work, its that there is just so much entropy to battle on that map.

Think of it like filling a swimming pool. The battery is a thimble, you will never get it full but it "will" put water in there. The rock crusher is a kids cup, and the space heater is a Wendy's large soda cup.

None of them will fill the pool fast. But you get enough of those soda cups and it will fill a lot faster than with just the kids sized drinks. ;)

The best heat sources you will find are geysers. If you can find your maps salt water geyser or one of the cool steam geysers you can use the heat coming off those to heat ANY area up to the temp you want. In fact you may even find yourself with too much heat, which is actually an even bigger problem on rime since there is no garuantee of easy cooling after you've "filled the pool".

[Omega]

The easy fix for that issue is a radiant heat loop. It will still take some time to move the heat around, but you can speed things along by using radiant pipes directly in your farm tiles or by combining temp shift plates with the heating pipes to feed heat down into one of the piped farm tiles. The radiant heating loop is not terribly complex, it is just a pipe loop that takes heat from your water supply and uses radiant pipes to leave it in the cold areas of your base. If you use the pipe mechanics to create a closed loop where the ends are connected by a valve and supplied by a pipe bridge ahead of the valve it will only use energy to pump the loop full and will then run forever without needing more power.

So recap: on rime, build your farm with insulated tiles, fill it with heaters until it reaches temp, then remove most of them(1 or 2 left to hold the temp for mealwoods)

OR: build a reservoir(insulated), run pipes around the reservoir(radiant is best), run a leg up and a leg back to your farm(still insulated tiles), run pipes near the farm tiles with tempshift plates(irrigated) or inside the tiles (basic), connect both sides of the loop(return and feeding) with a valve to keep it pumping without using power, fill it with a pump and watch it normalize your farm temp with your reservoir temp.

The radiant loop will still work slowish if the water is not too far off the temp of your farm so you might want to aim to have your water in the 80f range to make it go a little faster. Tepidizers/Metal Refineries are nice for this purpose. As an added bonus, you can expand your heat loops off that main spur near ice to melt it in place to double how much water it gives you.

To your original question as to why the heaters don't work well: make sure you swept all the debris out of your farm as well. All that rock on the ground will absorb loads of heat.

[fluxtorrent]

Oh good catch on the sweeping bit omega, not something i think to mention for heating/cooling issues since my ocd keeps my floors clean anyway lol

[Angpaur]

This kind of bug reports just clearly shows how people don't understand some of the most important game mechanics. People don't get how mass and specific heat capacity are affecting cooling/heating. Maybe a better tutorials explaining game mechanics could help, explaining players that to change temperature of each thing a specific amount of heat needs to be applied/removed. It can be calculated based on mass and specific heat capacity. I don't blame people to not knowing this. This is not a common knowledge that you use every day and even if you learned about it in school it may happen that you just don't remember it well after some time.

[Sky Sweeper]

引用自 Angpaur：

This kind of bug reports just clearly shows how people don't understand some of the most important game mechanics. People don't get how mass and specific heat capacity are affecting cooling/heating. Maybe a better tutorials explaining game mechanics could help, explaining players that to change temperature of each thing a specific amount of heat needs to be applied/removed. It can be calculated based on mass and specific heat capacity. I don't blame people to not knowing this. This is not a common knowledge that you use every day and even if you learned about it in school it may happen that you just don't remember it well after some time.

I want to play games to have fun, not make calculations... it would be much easier (and clearer) if the heating devices showed the radius they would reach, like lightsources do. Same with cooling devices and machines that give off heat.

[GoForTopher]

引用自 Sky Sweeper：

引用自 Angpaur：

This kind of bug reports just clearly shows how people don't understand some of the most important game mechanics. People don't get how mass and specific heat capacity are affecting cooling/heating. Maybe a better tutorials explaining game mechanics could help, explaining players that to change temperature of each thing a specific amount of heat needs to be applied/removed. It can be calculated based on mass and specific heat capacity. I don't blame people to not knowing this. This is not a common knowledge that you use every day and even if you learned about it in school it may happen that you just don't remember it well after some time.

I want to play games to have fun, not make calculations... it would be much easier (and clearer) if the heating devices showed the radius they would reach, like lightsources do. Same with cooling devices and machines that give off heat.

They don't have a radius, this of it more like this. Imagine you have a block of ice and a hair dryer. The hair dryer gives off heat, no one would argue it doesn't. If you turn on the blow dryer and point it at the ice block the air coming off the sides of the block will be cold. This does not mean the hair dryer is blowing out cold air it just means the heat energy is being consumed by the ice block and once the ice block is fully melted it will start feeling warm again.

You pretty much just have a hair dryer in the middle of a huge ice block and your wondering why it isn't warm. All the mass of the tiles around, and the density of the air has to be slowly heated and since it's so cold it feels like nothing is happening but over a long enough time it'll melt anything.

You want to speed up the process do what you'd do in real life and buy a 2nd hair dryer, or a better device "liquid tepidizer"

[Angpaur]

引用自 Sky Sweeper：

it would be much easier (and clearer) if the heating devices showed the radius they would reach, like lightsources do. Same with cooling devices and machines that give off heat.

And how would it help? This is not about heat range, but amount of heat you need to transfer. Game cannot calculate it for you and show, as it would have to be done separately for each tile and building. So if you don't want to make that calculations then you can just roughly estimate if you understand the mechanics or you just go play other, easier games.