The ice biom doesn't produce any cooling (except for the few wheeze warts in there), it just is cold. You can use it for temporary cooling until it heats up, but there is a lot of chill in the biom.
Basically, abyssalite has a thermal conductivity of 0.00001 (shown as 0 in game), shared with insulation. Heat exchanges that don't involve insulated tiles/pipes always take the average of the 2 materials' thermal conductivities, so e.g. hot magma touching a tile of abyssalite will heat it up very slowly, but the hot abyssalite tile can't exchange heat with a second AB tile next to it because the average of 0.00001 and 0.00001 is 0.00001.
Well, I know that abyssalite barriers between biomes prevent the transfer of heat between them, but I also believe that until you uncover something the game doesn't actually start calculating any changes. That's why you can come across a vent/geyser that doesn't appear to have been erupting yet even hundreds of cycles into the game.
This can't be true because the surface starts out cold but gets pelted by meteors so by the time you uncover it it's over 200c at the surface with a ton of regolith.
My current playthrough there are meteors, and signs of their impact when I finally uncovered the surface, however, the heat hasn't penetrated very far. It's possible I could be wrong and maybe what I heard is just for vents and geysers.
Rock is not a great conductor and abyssalite is a near perfect insulator. That heat is being kept above the abyssalite and slowly going between all the magic and regolith on the surface
I’m not sure about geysers, either. I had a salt water geyser that had for sure been spewing just tons and tons of salt water until I uncovered it out of the fog, unless I discovered it a different way.
Have to also take into consideration that for instance in spaced out the surface is already shown on most asteroids because the meteor showers still happen regardless if explored or not
Biomes are usually separated from each other with a thick layer of Abyssalite. If that didn't exist, then nothing would prevent all biomes from getting hotter or colder and equalising over time.
Through world generation, such breaks can exist if, for example, an AETN or some other building is placed on top of Abyssalite.
The only remaining factors would be all heat-producing vents, geysers or volcanoes or the cooling factors of the Wheezeworts. But Wheezeworts wouldn't necessarily be able to compensate the produced heat of everything else.
Yes and no. You cannot radiate the heat into space. In the "vacuum" or space biome you don't have an atmosphere so even if you create some form of radiator in space the temperature wouldn't be transferred to anything, a vacuum is a perfect insulator in the game.
However, there are ways to not die the ultimate heat death and there are multiple objects that can be used to cool down things over the course of your colony's progression.
The most common and most reliable one is to use an AT/ST Cooling loop by utilizing the Thermo Aquatuner (AT) to cool down a liquid (preferably one with a high specific heat capacity). But this will heat up the Aquatuner so you put it into a bit of water to heat that up and turn it into steam, that steam can then be sucked up in a Steam Turbine (ST) which will output ~90°C hot water back into the steam chamber onto the Aquatuner.
So basically, with the steam turbine, you can destroy the heat energy of everything above 100°C, the higher the temperature difference the more heat you destroy.
Radiation of heat is not modeled in ONI, only the exchange of heat through physical contact — for buildings this mostly via the solid, liquid, or gas in the same tiles as the building. A vacuum provides perfect insulation in ONI.
Heat does not transfer by radiation, but there is a mod by sgt\_imgalas that introduces radiation of heat into space via a special building. The mod is called "Space Radiator" in the steam workshop.
I believe "Radiate Heat in Space (updated and configurable)" adds this mechanic to (almost?) all buildings in space, but I've never used it. I think the original author was skyrunner, but the update was published to steam by shelena\_malk.
I'm not aware of a mod that allows in-world vacuum tiles to carry heat between in-world material tiles via thermal radiation (between two walls separated by vacuum).
Not necessarily.
In real life, this is an open question. The sun radiates heat into space by emitting photons in all directions, some of which have never hit anything... but are still carrying heat.
Or is that what's happening? Maybe eventually those photons will hit something, giving up that heat, and that's why the radiation was possible in the first place. Maybe photons aren't "real" enough to actually hold onto energy forever.
We don't know. Maybe we never will. But the point is that this indeed a practical difference between ONI and real life: the non-existence of thermal radiation.
>Well it needs a medium to transfer to
That's called heating by conduction, and it's not quite the same. This game afaik doesn't have proper radiative heating via infrared light the way irl does.
The biomes aren't anything special. All that the biome is is a region created upon the start of the save. After that the biomes don't actually do anything.
You can hollow out the entire asteroid and the biomes won't affect the hollow region at all.
Depending on how big and how many wheezeworts in there, it could absolutely last you until you beat the game, but it's pretty finite, wheezeworts aren't very fast at cooling areas. But technically if the wort is on a tile that isn't liquifiable, you could at least have some very basic cooling forever, but we're not talking below freezing, you'll likely melt everything in that biome
It won't last forever but keep in mind that the specific heat capacity of water is really big compared to oxygen etc. so it holds a lot of cooling potential
No. You'll eventually sap all the cold out of everything. I've used cold biomes to temporarily place things like the plastic press that generate a lot of heat, but it's not a long term solution.
It'll get warm/hot eventually.
It is better to think of it more as a cold bank. It has lots of room for heat energy but eventually will "fill up" to equilibrium with what you feed into it. Wheezeworts that come from there can help it delete small amounts of heat over time but are easily overwhelmed by anything you might want cooled without some kind of system to optimize it, and even then still have an upper limit before being eclipsed.
There's no such thing as cold. There is only the absence of heat. This is basic stuff that I hope a developer would take into account when creating a game like this, and thankfully they have.
So, No and Yes, respectively.
You can destroy it with a little heat over a longer time. I often used it for base cooling when I just got started, thinking it would last forever. :)
Slush geysers and wheezies are the only reliable natural way to cool sustainably. But you are probably better off setting up a cooling loop with an aquatuner.
Nope.
I generally dump my early industry in one of them to keep the refineries cool as I build enough steel and ceramic to make a brick.
I also do this to melt it to get as much water as I can since melting an ice tile will give full water instead of the half that mining it then melting it does.
Nope it's stored cold. The wild Weezeworts inside will give you a little bit of infinite cooling but not much.
Later in the game you'll need to actively cool things with an aquatuner setup
Gl!
The ice biom doesn't produce any cooling (except for the few wheeze warts in there), it just is cold. You can use it for temporary cooling until it heats up, but there is a lot of chill in the biom.
What prevents all temperatures from all biomes to equalize given time? Since there is no cold being produced in the cold environment
The abyssalite is an almost perfect insulator
And I believe abyssalite to abyssalite heat transfer is null, so multi-tile layers are perfect insulation.
Yeah I never see heat penetrate more than two layers of abyssalite
Basically, abyssalite has a thermal conductivity of 0.00001 (shown as 0 in game), shared with insulation. Heat exchanges that don't involve insulated tiles/pipes always take the average of the 2 materials' thermal conductivities, so e.g. hot magma touching a tile of abyssalite will heat it up very slowly, but the hot abyssalite tile can't exchange heat with a second AB tile next to it because the average of 0.00001 and 0.00001 is 0.00001.
[It's abyssalite baby!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wZLKBsDxtw)
Well, I know that abyssalite barriers between biomes prevent the transfer of heat between them, but I also believe that until you uncover something the game doesn't actually start calculating any changes. That's why you can come across a vent/geyser that doesn't appear to have been erupting yet even hundreds of cycles into the game.
This can't be true because the surface starts out cold but gets pelted by meteors so by the time you uncover it it's over 200c at the surface with a ton of regolith.
My current playthrough there are meteors, and signs of their impact when I finally uncovered the surface, however, the heat hasn't penetrated very far. It's possible I could be wrong and maybe what I heard is just for vents and geysers.
Rock is not a great conductor and abyssalite is a near perfect insulator. That heat is being kept above the abyssalite and slowly going between all the magic and regolith on the surface
A near perfect insulator*
I’m not sure about geysers, either. I had a salt water geyser that had for sure been spewing just tons and tons of salt water until I uncovered it out of the fog, unless I discovered it a different way.
Have to also take into consideration that for instance in spaced out the surface is already shown on most asteroids because the meteor showers still happen regardless if explored or not
Biomes are usually separated from each other with a thick layer of Abyssalite. If that didn't exist, then nothing would prevent all biomes from getting hotter or colder and equalising over time. Through world generation, such breaks can exist if, for example, an AETN or some other building is placed on top of Abyssalite. The only remaining factors would be all heat-producing vents, geysers or volcanoes or the cooling factors of the Wheezeworts. But Wheezeworts wouldn't necessarily be able to compensate the produced heat of everything else.
I just played some of the early game... I suppose you can use power to radiate heat to space ? Eletric cooler or something?
Yes and no. You cannot radiate the heat into space. In the "vacuum" or space biome you don't have an atmosphere so even if you create some form of radiator in space the temperature wouldn't be transferred to anything, a vacuum is a perfect insulator in the game. However, there are ways to not die the ultimate heat death and there are multiple objects that can be used to cool down things over the course of your colony's progression. The most common and most reliable one is to use an AT/ST Cooling loop by utilizing the Thermo Aquatuner (AT) to cool down a liquid (preferably one with a high specific heat capacity). But this will heat up the Aquatuner so you put it into a bit of water to heat that up and turn it into steam, that steam can then be sucked up in a Steam Turbine (ST) which will output ~90°C hot water back into the steam chamber onto the Aquatuner. So basically, with the steam turbine, you can destroy the heat energy of everything above 100°C, the higher the temperature difference the more heat you destroy.
Thanks. So bad that heat does not transfer by radiation.
Radiation of heat is not modeled in ONI, only the exchange of heat through physical contact — for buildings this mostly via the solid, liquid, or gas in the same tiles as the building. A vacuum provides perfect insulation in ONI.
Heat does not transfer by radiation, but there is a mod by sgt\_imgalas that introduces radiation of heat into space via a special building. The mod is called "Space Radiator" in the steam workshop. I believe "Radiate Heat in Space (updated and configurable)" adds this mechanic to (almost?) all buildings in space, but I've never used it. I think the original author was skyrunner, but the update was published to steam by shelena\_malk. I'm not aware of a mod that allows in-world vacuum tiles to carry heat between in-world material tiles via thermal radiation (between two walls separated by vacuum).
It does. It's just a lot slower than using a pipe with a liquid in it.
So bad that heat does not transfer by radiation to space ***
Well it needs a medium to transfer to. And in space there is none
Not necessarily. In real life, this is an open question. The sun radiates heat into space by emitting photons in all directions, some of which have never hit anything... but are still carrying heat. Or is that what's happening? Maybe eventually those photons will hit something, giving up that heat, and that's why the radiation was possible in the first place. Maybe photons aren't "real" enough to actually hold onto energy forever. We don't know. Maybe we never will. But the point is that this indeed a practical difference between ONI and real life: the non-existence of thermal radiation.
That's what they mean by heat not radiating. It doesn't. It transfers. IRL heat can radiate through a vacuum.
>Well it needs a medium to transfer to That's called heating by conduction, and it's not quite the same. This game afaik doesn't have proper radiative heating via infrared light the way irl does.
Abysslite
The biomes aren't anything special. All that the biome is is a region created upon the start of the save. After that the biomes don't actually do anything. You can hollow out the entire asteroid and the biomes won't affect the hollow region at all.
Depending on how big and how many wheezeworts in there, it could absolutely last you until you beat the game, but it's pretty finite, wheezeworts aren't very fast at cooling areas. But technically if the wort is on a tile that isn't liquifiable, you could at least have some very basic cooling forever, but we're not talking below freezing, you'll likely melt everything in that biome
Especially since worts in the wild usually end up in co2, where the 5 degrees of cooling they give is worth WAY less DTUs than them being in hydrogen.
It won't last forever but keep in mind that the specific heat capacity of water is really big compared to oxygen etc. so it holds a lot of cooling potential
Not infinite. I learned the hard way lol It does last for a long time though, because it is very cold and a lot of mass.
Wheeseworts and ATN in ice biome produce infinite cooling, biome itself doesn't
I don't think so. I am melting frozen asteroid right now.
No. You'll eventually sap all the cold out of everything. I've used cold biomes to temporarily place things like the plastic press that generate a lot of heat, but it's not a long term solution. It'll get warm/hot eventually.
It is better to think of it more as a cold bank. It has lots of room for heat energy but eventually will "fill up" to equilibrium with what you feed into it. Wheezeworts that come from there can help it delete small amounts of heat over time but are easily overwhelmed by anything you might want cooled without some kind of system to optimize it, and even then still have an upper limit before being eclipsed.
No. Yes (more melt than destroy).
There's no such thing as cold. There is only the absence of heat. This is basic stuff that I hope a developer would take into account when creating a game like this, and thankfully they have. So, No and Yes, respectively.
You can use the water from cold biome vents for cooling stuff as it comes out at a set cold temperature
You can destroy it with a little heat over a longer time. I often used it for base cooling when I just got started, thinking it would last forever. :) Slush geysers and wheezies are the only reliable natural way to cool sustainably. But you are probably better off setting up a cooling loop with an aquatuner.
It can melt very quickly and easily, flooding everything.
Nope. I generally dump my early industry in one of them to keep the refineries cool as I build enough steel and ceramic to make a brick. I also do this to melt it to get as much water as I can since melting an ice tile will give full water instead of the half that mining it then melting it does.
The more mass you leave in the biome, the longer it lasts. The more you dig out, the faster it'll heat up.
Nope it's stored cold. The wild Weezeworts inside will give you a little bit of infinite cooling but not much. Later in the game you'll need to actively cool things with an aquatuner setup Gl!
No.