RimWorld

RimWorld

Centralized Climate Control
Mavoc Jul 29, 2017 @ 12:48am
Thoughts, Quirks, Bugs, and Oddities
Instead of having a ton of comments, I'm going to gather all my thoughts on how to improve this mod here. These are all just suggestions and shouldn't be taken as anything more.
Pipes
  • The Item names of the "Red Pipe" and "Blue Pipe" should have the word "Air" added to them to match the "Cyan Air Pipe"
  • Change cyan pipe to green to better match other temp mods and to avoid confusion with cyan power conduits (green being the color used for ideal room temp)
  • Make the blue pipe's overlay a darker blue to increase the contrast from the cyan power conduit's overlay
  • Exposed pipes should have a negative beauty similar to exposed power conduits
Vents
  • Full Vents and Wall Vents have the same construction cost while having different effects.
  • Full Vents don't count as load bearing for roofs
  • Consider ditching full vents and just having wall vents of various size/strength. The wall mounted ones are far cleaner looking and can be placed on both sides of a wall tile. The full vent look is best for objects that affect both sides of the wall like vanilla vents and coolers.
  • Perhaps a 1x1 at 50cc, a 1x1 at 100cc, and a 1x2 at 300cc
  • Both vents have an option to toggle power even though they don't use power and the option does nothing
  • The toggle open/close option of the vanilla vents would be nice. When closed that vent should no longer use flow and would increase flow eff
Climate Controllers
  • Bug: When power is toggled off, the connected vents get locked to the current exhaust temp regardless of intake temp changes. Also the listed Thermal Eff does not decrease
  • Bug: Info says low power mode when it never seems to change modes. I'm not sure how this should ever be anything other then high mode due to it always either heating or cooling the air to a specific temp
  • Bug: Currently you can set different temps for different controllers on the same network. This causes the whole network to act all wonky. The temp setting should really be saved on the pipe network or some other way of preventing this behaviour, though I can foresee this being problematic to solve due to the possibility of merging 2 separate networks.
  • Bug: The Large Controller is currentlky handling 3500 cc of air instead of 4500 cc. If the large is to be handling 5x the small and be in line with 3 large intakes, then they should get bumped up to 4500.
  • Small and Large have the same construction cost while having different effects.
  • Both obstruct walking and space, which can obstruct air flow. Would be better if they didn't
  • Would benefit from having the same "choose your pipe logic" as the vents and the ability to build pipes and climate controllers on the same tile. Not terribly useful, but consistency is nice.
  • The reinstall option is not auto flagging the machines to be uninstalled, so the reinstall never happens. The Industrial Rollers mod has the same issue btw.
  • The large controllers don't rotate correctly. The heat exhaust rotates in the correct direction but the art rotates incorrectly. Should just need to swap the left and right art.
  • All machines like this should have a negative beauty
Intakes
  • Neither Small or Large have components in the construction cost but they are flagged for component breakdown. Their construction costs really should require a few components
  • Both obstruct walking and space, which can obstruct air flow. Would be better if they didn't
  • Would benefit from having the same "choose your pipe logic" as the vents and the ability to build pipes and Intakes on the same tile. Not terribly useful, but consistency is nice.
  • The reinstall option is not auto flagging the machines to be uninstalled, so the reinstall never happens
  • Consider requiring the intakes be either outside or unroofed as to prevent cheaty loopholes.
  • Alternatively, give the intakes a local exhaust equal to the cc they suck in and the temp of the current outdoor temp. So a normal intake that takes in 300 cc would push 300cc of outside air into the area it is placed. This outside air can be viewed as the air that needs to leak in to replaced the sucked out air.
  • The large intake's art rotates incorrectly, same as large climate controller
  • All machines like this should have a negative beauty
Cheaty Loopholes
If you have a small network you can get a single large room to ideal temp very easily. Then if you fill that room with large intakes for a second network,you can spread that air to every room of a large base without needing climate controllers on the second network.
If the first network is 3x intakes for 900cc, 3x controllers, and 900cc worth of exhaust, you can have 300% Thermal Eff in the room with backups for breakdowns to easily keep that room at the correct temp. As long as that room stays stable, no controllers will be needed on the second network.

You can also skip that first network and use vanilla coolers and heaters to get a room to the correct temp then just fill that room with intakes. This way you can skip the climate controllers all together.
Future Ideas
  • Consider moving all the objects into a new section of the architect menu, more so if more objects get added. An Air Conditioning section would prevent the Temperature section from getting too cluttered.
  • Moving the network's temperature setting off of the Climate Controllers and into a network popup. This could allow for setting an ideal temp range instead of just a fixed point. This popup would be accessible from any of the objects that make up a network and would give a full overview of how the network is functioning.
  • Spreading the objects out over multiple research techs. The current tech is a bit loaded atm and tiering out this mod over a couple of techs might make sense.
  • Consider having 2 separate machines for heating and cooling on an early tier instead of the all in one. Later tiers can have the all-in-ones that can be more efficient if you need both but less so if you only need one. ie: who needs a cooler on an ice sheet; who cares about a freezer getting too cold
  • Consider possible ways to have a first tier that doesn't require power. A wood burning heater is easy, but perhaps a weak cooler and an intake that uses wind speed to capture variable amounts of weak intake.
  • Consider an advanced smart vent that auto opens/closes when the air in the pipe is between the temp of the room and the desired temp of the network. This way we can maximize flow eff without having massive amounts of intakes
  • Consider having toxic fallout get sucked in and spread toxic buildup to pawns indoors via the system. Which would require adding Toxin Scrubbers to the network to clean the air. Since toxic fallout is a rare event, the scrubbers should be expensive in some way to discourage users from building them before being needed, perhaps gold on construction cost or use a ton of power.
Possible Research Techs and their machines, new research has tech level in brackets
  • [Neolithic]Centralized Air: Passive Wind Intake, Air Pipes, Small Wall Vent, Wood Based Heater
  • Passive Coolers: Passive Weak Cooling Unit
  • Refining: Chemfuel Based Heater
  • Air Conditioning: Normal Intake, Normal Climate Control, Normal Wall Vent, Basic Toxin Scrubber
  • [Industrial]Industrial Air Conditioning: Large Intake, Large Climate Control, Large Wall Vent
  • [Spacer]Ship Air Conditioning: Indoor(McCheaty) Intake, Smart Vent, Uber Toxin Scrubber
Last edited by Mavoc; Aug 11, 2017 @ 9:51am
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Showing 1-15 of 16 comments
XXYY君 Jul 29, 2017 @ 4:55am 
Great summary.
Almost Retired Gamer  [developer] Jul 29, 2017 @ 8:18pm 
This is really nice. I will have to find some time to finish the things listed. I wont be available next week. But can do post that. Thanks :steamhappy:
Mavoc Jul 30, 2017 @ 3:50am 
Edit: Highlighted and added a couple bugs, expanded the cheaty loophole section a bit, and added a future ideas section.

Edit2: Added a much better solution to cheaty intakes
Last edited by Mavoc; Jul 30, 2017 @ 12:39pm
Sonk Aug 2, 2017 @ 4:18am 
Amazing suggestions! I'm all for implementing this entire list, aside from the future ideas stuff. I'm very fond of the solution to the cheaty intakes. Pulling in equal amounts of outside air would not only get rid of the loophole, but also still allow for compatibility with vanilla coolers or even other temperature mods. You'd have to make sure that the mod's own climate controllers are still more efficient than vanilla coolers at least. There's also the possibility of giving the intakes an air flow penalty if they are inside a room, or make them produce a small amount of their own additional heat, along with pulling in outside air.
Mavoc Aug 2, 2017 @ 5:51am 
I had considered both of those ideas before landing on the outside air solution. With the air flow penalty, I couldn't think of a percent that wasn't either stupidly harsh or easily ignorable by just adding extra intakes. I also like the idea of not penalizing you for putting walls and a roof around your intakes for the sole purpose of protecting them from lightning or raiders. This way they are protected and pulling in outside(non-cheaty) temp air.

As for the additional heat idea, while that might work in a desert biome, but it would be a welcomed benefit on a tundra biome. This is exactly how I came to the outside air idea, as that is the temp we are using the AC to combat, so clearly it is not of ideal temp.

Last edited by Mavoc; Aug 11, 2017 @ 9:45am
Almost Retired Gamer  [developer] Aug 11, 2017 @ 7:21am 
Hello, I have an update in the works. But this one will take a while (Lots of office work). It will include most of the above fixes as well! Stay tuned!
Mavoc Aug 11, 2017 @ 9:54am 
Glad to hear it. Let me know if you want any clarification on any of these points or if you want to bounce some thoughts around.
Almost Retired Gamer  [developer] Aug 11, 2017 @ 11:29pm 
Yep will do.
Almost Retired Gamer  [developer] Sep 4, 2017 @ 3:02pm 
Sorry for the long wait.

Here is a to-do on the latest fixes for 1.3.0.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DwWprKzEC_3luGLI9QKP-hOAG6Vhrt8bdESPsTMHaMI/edit?usp=sharing

Some of the above mentioned things are "Save Breaking". So I don't know if we should proceed as above for them or not. Most have been fixed. Just a few more left.
Mavoc Sep 5, 2017 @ 9:15am 
As for the 2 save breaking issues:
You could just change the visuals of the cyan pipe to green and change the localization while leaving the internal references as is.
Could you not leave the full vents in and make them unbuildable and not sold by any merchants? This would allow them to be phased out.
Almost Retired Gamer  [developer] Sep 5, 2017 @ 5:54pm 
Yeah I thought of that. But the Cyan to Green (visually) one sounds a little hacky?

For the Vents, I think you are right If I just visually disable the vents from the construction tab & from the merchants, It should run without issues.
Mavoc Sep 6, 2017 @ 8:42am 
Changing the pipe color is definitely not worth breaking any saves and I agree that my first thought is a bit hacky but perhaps there is another way.

1) Can you deprecate the cyan and have a script that runs on load to swap all placed cyan pipes for green ones?

2) Can you reskin the cyan to green and make a new green pipe that freely connects to the deprecated cyan. This is most likely too hacky to bother with but it is a line of thought worth considering.
StarlightSovereign Sep 24, 2017 @ 10:05pm 
I came here to suggest an option to close the vents (but I see you already have that listed) and an option to cut the flow to half on vents. (I have a huge room and a small room, one gets half flow for reduced temp effect, but that may not work this way?)

Also, as per the above, I really hope you don't change the pipes to green, personally. The cyan ones are my preference! XD

Though I think if the purpose of the pipe colors is just designating different systems, you might want an array of pipe colors.

Also, some in-game documentation would make this mod SO MUCH EASIER to figure out!

Simple enough, on the pipe description add: "The color doesn't affect the temperature of the pipes. It just helps you keep your networks separate."

And on the Climate Control Unit "Connect to at least one air intake vent. More than 3 intakes will reduce efficiency." etc.

Almost Retired Gamer  [developer] Oct 19, 2017 @ 8:46pm 
I pushed an update with many changes. A few more are left, but will be more frequent. I also updated the Art slightly.
Almost Retired Gamer  [developer] Oct 19, 2017 @ 9:21pm 
Copy of the changelog:

Highlights:
- Added Research Tech
- Added Build Tab "Climate"
- Made Pipes easier to see with the new color for the Blue Pipe
- Removed Full Size Vents
- Updated Costs of the Intakes and Thermals

Fixes:
- Fix typo in Red Pipe and Blue Pipe name
- Blue Pipe has a darker overlay now
- Pipes now exposed have a negative beauty
- Removed Full Vents from the Mod (with backward support)
- Replaced Toggle Power with Designate Open Close for Vents
- Bug with Vents toggled off or power off
- Increased Large Intakes capacity to 4500
- Rotation of Large Buildings in Art Assets
- Breakdown now flags the building for Auto Repair
- Machines now give negative beauty
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