Heating and Cooling - Mechanics, Environment, Player etc.

[Walsy]

Hi everyone, my name's Walsy and I'm a new player. I've played through the demo and watched several videos created by various players when I came up with this idea. I made sure to do a fairly thorough search on this forum to make sure that my idea is in fact unique, so I hope that you (and especially the developers!) enjoy it.

TL;DR Heating and cooling mechanisms to affect efficiency (speed) and durability (health) of each part. This idea could also be applied to the environment and our player.

I was really impressed with Factorio's rational complexity: not only do we use steam engines to produce power, but we need to use boilers to heat the water for it and we need to supply the power it creates to the rest of the system. This got me to thinking "why not take this one step further?" We already have a bit of a heating parameter in the form of the boilers and steam engines, so it should not be too hard of a task to implement to other pieces of equipment.

Machines all need to be maintained at the right temperature in order to work properly; when they work harder and faster, they overheat or wear out faster. This could be represented by showing a temperature parameter (either numerically or maybe a colour-coded box) and by using the health parameter already present on each piece as a sort of "durability" value. As the piece heats up, it starts to wear out; it will become damaged and need to be repaired or replaced (we already have repair packs, so this would just be another use for them). So these parts need to be kept cooler to maintain their efficiency. This could be done either by external air conditioners, fans or what have you OR by being installed within the part much like the speed and performance modules. Obtaining good efficiency could be represented by a speed boost; optimal temperatures could have the piece working at 110% speed for example, which would have higher cooling requirements and thus be slightly tricky to maintain effectively. It would also add a layer of complexity to the advanced tech, since each new part runs faster than it's more basic form, they would have higher cooling needs and therefore need more space and power provided to each piece to maintain efficiency.

Liquids can also be affected by heating and cooling, since you want liquids to be able to maintain their flow. Oil has a cloud point of -4 to -12 degrees Centigrade, which is the point where wax crystals begin to form in the oil and prevent it from flowing properly. When the oil is reheated above this point, the wax crystals melt back into the oil and it flows normally once more. So heaters could be needed along oil lines to ensure these temperatures are maintained. This would be more of an issue if the environment is cold enough to have to worry about temperature. Speaking of which....

The environment could be adapted to simulate high heat or cold conditions. This would ideally be controlled in the main menus for those that don't want to worry about temperature and those that would like to have an extra challenge or a different play style. In high-heat conditions, machinery would need much more cooling to work steadily or would break down much more often and the player would have to worry about the heat (more on that shortly) although liquids would flow well and have few issues. In cold conditions, machines would run much more efficiently but fluids and the player would have to be kept warm.

In addition to the environmental temperature affecting our equipment, it would make sense for it to affect the player as well. In really hot conditions, the player could slowly lose health when out of cooled areas or regain his health much more slowly; these effects could be reduced by cooling modules which he could load into his armour or by entering an area that is being cooled locally. In cold environments, the player could have reduced speed unless he is properly heated with heating modules or in a locally heated area.

So that's my idea and the thoughts that followed; let me know what you think and I look forward to discussing it with you!

[ssilk]

Hm. Interesting aspect. That idea combines many things together. Weather, environment, energy production, usage of "modules", efficiency...

[Harkonnen604]

Such things were proposed regarding pollution and solar panels. My opinion - this will make productivity rates not so predictable enforcing player just to build more surplus ingredients, so that belts do not starve on steel due to overheated smelters while steel consumers on the other end of factory are in good condition. Buildings loosing health due to overheating is probably a better way to go, but onset of that should happen only when you have an army of construction bots ready.

As for liquids - a very good point. Nights can be made quite cold, thus requiring some sort of electric boiler along the way (like now long tubes require pumps). And since these boilers will become biter attraction, players will start preferring oil trains over long pipes. But again this is not much different from already existing "requirement" of putting electric pumps, if their pollution level is increased - it will be roughly the same gameplay effect.

[Ghoulish]

It's a nice idea, though I can only imagine its implementation would require huge amounts of code? And whereas it's a neat idea.. It doesn't add much. For example - If assembly machines were to start to break down or require repairing, the construction bots would just fix it without even notifying the player, so what does it add?

The overheating aspect is cool - if you wanted assembly machines to work at max speed for long periods of time (or perhaps overcharge them to work even faster, say 120% etc) Then they would need an additional cooling system, but how feasible is it to have even more pipes or a new fan-type unit attached to all assembly machines? I personally wouldn't mind the extra thought that would be required to keep my factory cool in a very hot biome, the assembly machines get hot, and rather than needing repair, they just work a lot slower, and the hotter they get - the slower they work. So more cooling is needed, but what type of cooling and how would this functionally work? Air conditioning units needing pipe work running to every single assembly machine? In big factories that would be a nightmare, though for some a nightmare worth tackling.

Don't like the liquid idea though, it'd just add too much complexity, the idea of having to heat or perhaps cool pipe work, seems to be an unneeded level of realism, in an already complex game (and oil for new players is complex enough) Not keen on the overheating player idea.

Interesting ideas, but how much game value?

[mdqp]

I like some of the ideas proposed here (efficiency loss related to overheating, requiring appropriate temperatures for fluids movements through pipes), but others I don't like as much. Having damage over time to components doesn't add to the complexity, it just creates a resource/management sink in the form of more repair kits needed, and could require boring micro-management in the early game; players requiring appropriate temperatures to survive would likely be worked around through exploits (for example, if your temperature is fine while in a vehicle, just carry one around for temporary relief, or install/remove modules from power armor only when needed), the mobility of the character make logistic challenges based around him either a hassle or trivial, while permanent/semi-permanent structures have much more interesting challenges that can be handled through long-term solutions.

I do worry about the computational requirements for heat/cold calculations, if the system requires an in-depth simulation, but hopefully the developers would go for an approximation for gameplay purposes, so it should be fine.

[Harkonnen604]

Liquids already have heat/cold parameter and it's simulated for everything, not just for water in boilers.

[Walsy]

Nights can be made quite cold, thus requiring some sort of electric boiler along the way (like now long tubes require pumps). And since these boilers will become biter attraction, players will start preferring oil trains over long pipes.

I really like this idea: rather than just having a visual change for nighttime, having a physical change to our factories would be really interesting!

If assembly machines were to start to break down or require repairing, the construction bots would just fix it without even notifying the player, so what does it add?

Like everything in Factorio it can be automated, as you said, with construction robots. This means it would be more of an early to mid-game issue that would need to be addressed, first manually and then later be more automated; late game you would just keep repair packs available in the logistics network for the bots to use, which is a bit more interesting than just using repair packs on our walls and turrets all the time.

I do worry about the computational requirements for heat/cold calculations, if the system requires an in-depth simulation, but hopefully the developers would go for an approximation for gameplay purposes, so it should be fine.

I will admit that I wasn't thinking about the effort required to create or implement these additions, or how they would affect the performance of our own computers to play with them included. I think that's more for the developers to figure out if they like these ideas, since this thread is just for green-lighting new ideas and getting them peer reviewed, but its definitely something to consider if any of it moves forward.

Liquids already have heat/cold parameter and it's simulated for everything, not just for water in boilers.

I wasn't aware of this, but if this is the case then it should be that much easier to have it affect our fluid dynamics or make it more apparent that this is happening.


Thanks for the input so far guys! I hope to hear more comments and criticisms from the masses