TL;DR
Entity tooltips should display that entity's heating value (heat wattage) required to prevent it from freezing on Aquilo.What?
At the minimum, in tooltips for entities with a heating_energy value in their prototype, display somewhere in their tooltip that heating energy value.Additionally, the following may be considered:
- Only display this information when viewing a surface that requires heating.
- Display this information in a new tooltip section titled "Requires heating" or similar, with one values, "Consumption" displaying the heating energy in watts.
- Additionally display, in the above section, an additional value, "Min. temperature: 30 °C". However, this may mislead players into thinking that some entities have a different minimum temperature, and may be ommitted.
Why?
The mechanics of heating on Aquilo are very opaque to the player; between all the information officially available to the player (in-game tips and tricks and FFF), a particularly studious player would learn that "Every entity that needs heat also consumes heat", that the minimum heat is 30 °C, and that unheated entities will freeze and not work. The first two pieces of information require reading the FFF - and quite closely for the one line about entities consuming heat! I have observed that the average player on the Factorio Discord does not know that heat is consumed on a per-entity basis with some players thinking that heat is not consumed at all (and that reaching a minimum temperature is all that is required), and some others thinking that heat loss is either per heat pipe segment or at a constant rate over an entire heat network.The real offender, and the main motivation for this request, is that some entities have incredibly unintuitive heating values. For example, did you know that an pipe to ground consumes 150kW of heat, when a regular pipe only consumes 1kW? This is a massive slap in the face for most players who have assumed that heat consumption between entities of similar tile-size are likely the same, and have "optimized" long pipelines, such as those from their starter lithium or fluorine patches, with long series of pipe-to-grounds assuming that the lower entity count would require less heating, when it is in fact consuming 30x the heating energy (2 pipe-to-grounds vs 10 regular pipes). Additionally, the most common crafting machine on Aquilo, chemical plants, along with most other crafting machines, tend to consume around 50/100/200kW of heat, which is comparable to a pipe to ground, but most players would likely "intuit" that pipe to grounds cost significantly less heating energy. There is a similar effect with underground belts, where a full length of regular belts costs less heating, but the heating cost of the underground is much less significant of a difference than the pipe-to-ground case so it is more excusable.
Finally, official sources of information do not list the actual list of heating exempt entities. Between tips and tricks and FFF, a player can learn that power poles, solar panels, and accumulators do not require heating. However, there are several other entities, such as stone/steel furnaces and chests, that do not require heating. Additionally, many players come to assume that power poles require heating anyways, and I have observed several cases where players run heat pipes to substations or big electric poles.
Although tooltip information will not completely alleviate these issues (as players who do not read anything ever exist), they provide necessary information in a much more accessible place that most players will look at on a regular basis.
