Cooling tests and conclusions

[sandrews]

I want to thank MR Njersy for this video. His testing proved that more manifolds equals more cooling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6kZLcO6v5M&t=1625s

After today's tests I was able to establish different sizes of cooling devices does increase cooling.

The cooling issue i had was do to a negative pressure on the B side of the coolant manifold. I fixed this by simply adding a pump to the B side of each coolant manifold. My test engine went from 72C at 2.56RPS to 43C at 2.56RPS. Most of the cooling issues reported here are likely due to a negative pressure somewhere in the coolant path. In short coolant is washing back into the cylinder and never reaching the radiator.

The runaway temps is likely because the ∆T is to low. I haven't figured out the minimum temperature at higher RPS to maintain temperature yet. I tried testing this by adding a second air ex-changer. The second ex-changers cooling was exponentially lower. I only lowered the water temperature to 38C from 45C in the first ex-changer and then to 33C in the second ex-changer.

I am hoping a radiator will cool everything back down to ambient temperature. That will likely solve the issue.

If the radiator in conjunction with ex-changer doesn't lower the temperature down sufficiently then the Bug is larger cooling options are needed for 5x5 designs.

If you are interested I can post the test engine to the workshop.

I hope this helps folks.

That's enough for tonite. I am going to bed.

[In other news, the President]

Cool. I'm hampered by stuff at the moment and I'd like to do testing myself right now, so it's good that people are posting legwork.

[Stake From JateFarm]

Its frustrating that the best cooling solutions found in MrNJersey's video are those with the electric radiator, belt pump, and NO liquid coolant.

[Anwaan]

His video only highlighted how borked the system is. The engines should not have all shut off at the same time if the cooling loops were working properly. The engine without any cooling being cooler than the others at idle really highlighted just how messed up it is. I had hoped he would show how to actually balance cooling properly, because so far everyone is either "it's broken" or "you don't know what your doing" yet nobody has been able to offer any insight into what really works (and certainly not without LUA or microcontrollers.) Engines used mechanical cooling for over a century before computerized systems were ever a thing, a basic engine in SW should be able to function in the same way if things were working properly.

[lvme]

""it's broken" or "you don't know what your doing" yet nobody has been able to offer any insight into what really works."
No has been able to offer any help because it's broken. Running engines at 7 RPS or stacking 50 radiators into a tower is not a viable solution to cooling bug.

[In other news, the President]

Originally posted by lvme:

""it's broken" or "you don't know what your doing" yet nobody has been able to offer any insight into what really works."
No has been able to offer any help because it's broken. Running engines at 7 RPS or stacking 50 radiators into a tower is not a viable solution to cooling bug.

I can't blame you for wanting more realistic RPS, but 7 RPS is generally where you want to be in this game. The non modular engines were rather forgiving and it puts people in the wrong mindset for making modulars. It's not a bug, its just that what the devs(and frankly a lot of players) consider "working" is not what a lot of players expect as "working". Like me, I am generally comfortable with the way things are now, but I understand that there are people that aren't.

Unless I'm looking at a specific build, I can't offer help. I'd love to have few useful lines that helps that helps many builds, but due to the nature of the game(or really any game that makes complex machines) the more general the advice the more vague and less helpful it is. ALL solutions are tailor made for a specific problem in a build and that contributes to why people are slow on the uptake. Due to the nature of the game and the smallness of the dev team, it's only reasonable to wait at least a year for enough documentation to come out(from the community, no one at this point expects it from the devs) to get a significant portion of the player base over the modular engines hump without severely reducing the complexity modular engines. And I mean severely. Sure it was on the EXP build before official release, but no one would trust any SW guides or premades made for previous versions.

At the point we are now the only piece of advice that works without personal guidance(holding someone's hands throughout the process) is to spend your time to experiment, but the average player is just not likely to enjoy that process or find it worth their time.

Also, as much as I hate to say it, if you cannot or will not do math at the the level of understanding and using logic blocks(I'm not even going to drag micros in to this) and you also find the workshop hard to use, you've got no business being around modular... at least at this time where the shop hasn't gelled yet. As for actually building modular engines, they were never planned for it to be easy for the average player in the first place. It was made for a niche set of players. It's never, and should never, get easier than this.

That being said I completely understand that there's a lot of people who want to play this kind of game and REALLY HATE DOING MATH, in fact that's rather natural. I don't see a reason to hold that against anyone, but understand it is going going to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Let's just all agree this process will go a lot faster if the devs release the formula for heat generation/dissipation calculations. And actual numbers for the a/f volumes would be nice.

[Eagle]

Originally posted by In other news, the President:

Originally posted by lvme:

""it's broken" or "you don't know what your doing" yet nobody has been able to offer any insight into what really works."
No has been able to offer any help because it's broken. Running engines at 7 RPS or stacking 50 radiators into a tower is not a viable solution to cooling bug.

I can't blame you for wanting more realistic RPS, but 7 RPS is generally where you want to be in this game. The non modular engines were rather forgiving and it puts people in the wrong mindset for making modulars. It's not a bug, its just that what the devs(and frankly a lot of players) consider "working" is not what a lot of players expect as "working". Like me, I am generally comfortable with the way things are now, but I understand that there are people that aren't.

Unless I'm looking at a specific build, I can't offer help. I'd love to have few useful lines that helps that helps many builds, but due to the nature of the game(or really any game that makes complex machines) the more general the advice the more vague and less helpful it is. ALL solutions are tailor made for a specific problem in a build and that contributes to why people are slow on the uptake. Due to the nature of the game and the smallness of the dev team, it's only reasonable to wait at least a year for enough documentation to come out(from the community, no one at this point expects it from the devs) to get a significant portion of the player base over the modular engines hump without severely reducing the complexity modular engines. And I mean severely. Sure it was on the EXP build before official release, but no one would trust any SW guides or premades made for previous versions.

At the point we are now the only piece of advice that works without personal guidance(holding someone's hands throughout the process) is to spend your time to experiment, but the average player is just not likely to enjoy that process or find it worth their time.

Also, as much as I hate to say it, if you cannot or will not do math at the the level of understanding and using logic blocks(I'm not even going to drag micros in to this) and you also find the workshop hard to use, you've got no business being around modular... at least at this time where the shop hasn't gelled yet. As for actually building modular engines, they were never planned for it to be easy for the average player in the first place. It was made for a niche set of players. It's never, and should never, get easier than this.

That being said I completely understand that there's a lot of people who want to play this kind of game and REALLY HATE DOING MATH, in fact that's rather natural. I don't see a reason to hold that against anyone, but understand it is going going to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Let's just all agree this process will go a lot faster if the devs release the formula for heat generation/dissipation calculations. And actual numbers for the a/f volumes would be nice.

Your take on this isnt right. Maffs has nothing to do with Broken cooling man.
If the engines are not even cooling off... If you dont even need any cooling... If the radiator suddenly glitches out and the engine blows up there is clearly a problem.
Read some of the comments in the comments section of that video in this thread.
These people are veteran builders of this game talking about how nothing they do stops their engines overheating and how adding 5 radiators doesnt cool their engines.

Cooling is broken. Either the Radiators are not actually doing their job and are broke or actual cooling is broken. If Njersey can remove all of the cooling and still be cool on a running engine that means Cooling is broken.

I understand math and math has nothing to do with getting them to cool if cooling is broken... Equations have no effect beyond making work arounds on a broken system. You see what Im sayin here? Again though it goes back to this is a game and you shouldnt have to be an engineer or mechanic to simply play it and build a working engine.
There are people who are engineers that play this game that still dont understand all of the logic components. So the people dont understand math is a poor reason to claim the cooling system works. It doesnt work if you dont need cooling at all. It doesnt work if adding a tank breaks cooling. It doesnt work if your engines will not cool at an acceptable rate.

[In other news, the President]

Originally posted by Eaglezero6205:

Equations have no effect beyond making work arounds on a broken system.

Those workarounds are what fixes this entire thing. I'm not going to argue that it's not grounded in real engineering, no one is saying it is.

Anyone expecting the cooling to make sense like it does in the real world can give up entirely right now.
Anyone expecting the cooling to make sense like it does in the real world can give up entirely right now.
Anyone expecting the cooling to make sense like it does in the real world can give up entirely right now.
It will never be fixed for them, period.

That doesn't take away from the fact that there's SOME kid of reasoning behind it, and no matter how STUPID and out of touch with reality that reasoning it is, it will help people with thier builds. I'll accept any stupid formula, as long as it's what the game uses and I can work with it to help people.

It's not people not knowing math in general. It's people who do are completely fine with doing the math for everyone else not having enough information to guide everyone else in ways that don't involve having to go through specific builds with each other.

People have made successful builds with varied setups, but those people can't help you in a way you'd like.

[Anwaan]

I spent several hours yesterday trying to get a stable 6 cylinder (four crankshafts, two sides with 3 cylinders, one as a spacer to get behind the water pump.) Testbed with an electric radiator, three coolant manifolds, belt pump fully open, two air and 1 fuel manifold with a 3x3 wheel for load with enough brake force to lower the rps down to around 10-12 (depending on throttle, brake varied between 0.04 to 0.15) At only 70% throttle, it overheated every time within just a couple of minutes. I didn't test below 70%. The radiator did make a difference, but not more than half a minute depending on the load/throttle. So does cooling work? Technically yes. Is it usable in any semi-believable way? Not really, hence "broken."

[Anwaan]

Originally posted by In other news, the President:

Originally posted by Eaglezero6205:

Equations have no effect beyond making work arounds on a broken system.

Those workarounds are what fixes this entire thing. I'm not going to argue that it's not grounded in real engineering, no one is saying it is.

Anyone expecting the cooling to make sense like it does in the real world can give up entirely right now.
Anyone expecting the cooling to make sense like it does in the real world can give up entirely right now.
Anyone expecting the cooling to make sense like it does in the real world can give up entirely right now.
It will never be fixed for them, period.

That doesn't take away from the fact that there's SOME kid of reasoning behind it, and no matter how STUPID and out of touch with reality that reasoning it is, it will help people with their builds. I'll accept any stupid formula, as long as it's what the game uses and I can work with it to help people.

It's not people not knowing math in general. It's people who do are completely fine with doing the math for everyone else not having enough information to guide everyone else in ways that don't involve having to go through specific builds with each other.

People have made successful builds with varied setups, but those people can't help you in a way you'd like.

If workarounds have to be used to make something work, it's broken.
If an average player can't assemble something that looks reasonably comparable to an engine they would see if they opened the hood of a car and expect it to work somewhat comparably, it's broken. Being a game with vast amount of variables, some adjusting to get to a usable engine should be expected, but in general if all the components are there and within reasonable amounts/sizes/configurations, it should work.

There's a vast difference between expecting a realistic simulation, and expecting concepts to make sense. Nothing in this game would lead a player to assume they are using some fictional universe of engineering, as everything has the appearance of being based in reality. I love what the devs had going, but it's almost like since the rush to 1.0, they're completely lost on what to do, like they're missing the knowledge required to move the game forward beyond the mashed together systems it is,. The components are all there, and they look like they should work when put together, but since there's no fundamental basis for the design, there's no consistency is how things work.

Edit: The most recent patch notes are a perfect example of their awkward thinking. They are basing heat on fuel consumption. Clearly since fuel "burns" that must be what causes the heat generation! That is the dumbest line of thinking I've ever heard of.

[In other news, the President]

Originally posted by metl:

If workarounds have to be used to make something work, it's broken.
If an average player can't assemble something that looks reasonably comparable to an engine they would see if they opened the hood of a car and expect it to work somewhat comparably, it's broken.

Yes, if that's the metric, this game is completely and utterly broken and has been from the beginning. Everything in this game is a workaround. I'm not being facetious, and I am absolutely not happy about it either.
I'm willing to bet that modular engines was never made for any kind of reasonable idea of "the average player". I'm willing to bet the devs put stat skill gap in on purpose to hand off their workload to workshop creators. I'm not saying it's a good idea

Originally posted by metl:

there's no consistency is how things work.

I didn't outright say that because I'd be a broken record if I did. Come join us in a chorus line.
That being said this is still a real game; a real program with a finite size and a finite amount of constants and variables.
There IS a consistency. A very stupid, convoluted, obscured, non-... sorry, ANTI-INTUITIVE consistency. I just want to know what it is.
I am absolutely done with expecting some kind of proper simulation in engine building, and I think people should absolutely give up if they do. I am not, however, done with this game.

I'm thinking about players who don't know jack about engines and still want to build them. They constitute a great loss to the continuation of this game if not properly shown a path, not to a working engine, but to a basic set of rules that almost guarantees them a working engine they can build on. They don't need something that's actually properly analogous to real steel mechanics. They just want to put parts together that works, using a repeatable process.

It's in my honest belief that if the devs were pushed to redo everything to make it the engine builder we all thought it was they'll throw the towel in.

I like what this game does. I'm stuck with this game because there's no other game that comes close to doing what it does. And I absolutely hate that.

Maybe it should implode.

[bigdave]

I had 20 5x5 coolers on a 8-line, they did absolutely nothing.
Pumps all over to make sure there is water, coolers at a nice 18, engine on fire.
The cooler side was very slowly warming up, so something did work the way it should. Just not enough.

[Eagle]

Let me pull some quotes from that videos comment section to add perspective to just how bad the issue is.

:Runs cooler without cooling: See, nothing wrong with cooling!

I don't think an engine with no cooling is supposed to stay cooler than one with 4 radiators.

no ive had two separate el. rads on a flat 6 engine both with separate cooling reservoirs and one performed as devs said, the other was broken...with identical set ups.....this update is broken af and most players can accept that.

Having a fluid tank on the cooling pipe prevents cooling from working at all. So in both cases there was 0 cooling. If he deletes the fresh water tanks he'd have very different results.


Maybe only modualr engien pump can cool anything now... after modular engien update a try 5x5 3 cyl engine, with 6 5x5 radiators and electric pump and its overheats no matter what i do... i try modular engine turbo housing to cool it too, but its almost same effect. Like in this video... only modular engine pump can do good coling, but when u dont want engine to have front plate, what would you do ? :-(


How about this one?

if anything you've proved it IS broken. notice how all of the testbed hit 70 at the same time? that means there was 0 heat mitigation until it was below some arbitrary threshold. cooling systems work by constantly removing heat by a % of the difference between the system and ambient temp (newtons law of cooling). meaning even while being run at full tilt their would have been variation, and far more than a millisecond or so between uncooled and any level of cooling.

takes more than a minute to loose 5 degrees on idle
"there isnt cooling problems"

This one.=> my 4 cylinder explodes after few seconds, 2 electical radiator + 6 coling manifolds + freshwater tank + belt pump...... but yea, i see... nothing wrong with cooling.

Before they released modular engines onto the main branch about a week ago, the cooling worked really well. Now all my engines which worked just fine before the update overheat in seconds

If you still believe cooling isnt broken your head is in the sand. There is no way in hell that all of these veteran builders just didnt know what they were doing... Or didnt know maffs.

[Anwaan]

Originally posted by In other news, the President:

Originally posted by metl:

If workarounds have to be used to make something work, it's broken.
If an average player can't assemble something that looks reasonably comparable to an engine they would see if they opened the hood of a car and expect it to work somewhat comparably, it's broken.

Yes, if that's the metric, this game is completely and utterly broken and has been from the beginning. Everything in this game is a workaround. I'm not being facetious, and I am absolutely not happy about it either.
I'm willing to bet that modular engines was never made for any kind of reasonable idea of "the average player". I'm willing to bet the devs put stat skill gap in on purpose to hand off their workload to workshop creators. I'm not saying it's a good idea

Originally posted by metl:

there's no consistency is how things work.

I didn't outright say that because I'd be a broken record if I did. Come join us in a chorus line.
That being said this is still a real game; a real program with a finite size and a finite amount of constants and variables.
There IS a consistency. A very stupid, convoluted, obscured, non-... sorry, ANTI-INTUITIVE consistency. I just want to know what it is.
I am absolutely done with expecting some kind of proper simulation in engine building, and I think people should absolutely give up if they do. I am not, however, done with this game.

I'm thinking about players who don't know jack about engines and still want to build them. They constitute a great loss to the continuation of this game if not properly shown a path, not to a working engine, but to a basic set of rules that almost guarantees them a working engine they can build on. They don't need something that's actually properly analogous to real steel mechanics. They just want to put parts together that works, using a repeatable process.

It's in my honest belief that if the devs were pushed to redo everything to make it the engine builder we all thought it was they'll throw the towel in.

I like what this game does. I'm stuck with this game because there's no other game that comes close to doing what it does. And I absolutely hate that.

Maybe it should implode.

Ia actually agree with you, and anti-intuitive is a very apt description. I enjoy the build and rescue side of the game, but do wish there was better rhyme and reason to how things work. I don't think most players need an actual engineering simulator, just more understandable systems and how things in the game world work.

[In other news, the President]

Originally posted by metl:

Ia actually agree with you, and anti-intuitive is a very apt description. I enjoy the build and rescue side of the game, but do wish there was better rhyme and reason to how things work. I don't think most players need an actual engineering simulator, just more understandable systems and how things in the game world work.

I forgot where I picked it up from, but just having Gordon Ramsey pop into my head and shouting "IT'S RAW!" every time I run into a game logic problem really helps keep the frustration down. So much stuffing it back into the oven.

At least if there was some sort of congruence with real engines the vast and relatively easily accessed information on them would be useful to even casuals, and not a trap to get those who would be the biggest fans of the genre in a frustrating place.

Should modular engines and other Stormworks features reflect real life units, and values?



No. In Stormworks, we model lots of systems and mechanics to work in a real time game simulation, While the systems are based on reality, it's impossible to accurately model everything as if it was real life, in a video game. We balance systems to reflect real life, with simplifications, and balanced to work as a game.

Hello darkness my old friend...

[Valk]

thread make me sad
~many games owner, player of factorio, minecraft, terarria, space engineers, etc
basically anything with blocks

programmer, mechanically inclined

I love the idea of this game, but the unecessary complexity makes me want to refund it

but I already spent more time than the refund timer to try cool my engines.

'git gud' is not a valid response to cooling systems needing to be bigger than the engines they run on

'just pipe it to water' doesn't work for land vehicles

I love this game already but it's so much more pain than anything i've ever played before