Factorio Forums

Hey guys,

While waiting for research to finish, I looked through the sprite atlas (F3) and found these glowing heat pipes:





While building my first reactor setup, I was kind of disappointed that the heat pipes didn't glow and now I found these already existing sprites.

Does anyone know why those aren't actually in the game?

There are some glow-related properties for heat pipe in entity.lua. I tried modifying them, but they don't do anything.

However, if you think realistically, if the pipes are glowing, it means they fail to keep the heat energy inside them. Heat energy is lost from their surface. Anything touching them will burn like hell. (or just melt... or become hot...)

Mooncat wrote:There are some glow-related properties for heat pipe in entity.lua. I tried modifying them, but they don't do anything.

However, if you think realistically, if the pipes are glowing, it means they fail to keep the heat energy inside them. Heat energy is lost from their surface. Anything touching them will burn like hell. (or just melt... or become hot...)

True, but train signals also work without power... and belts...
So having heat pipes glow and retain their energy would be fine by me from a gameplay-enjoyment perspective and without breaking the game-logic too much.

It would be a nice visual touch, that's for certain, and would give us a better visual representation of when the Reactors working.

Hell, if there's an 'overheat' mechanic (Heat Exchangers not getting enough Water pumped into them to transfer the heat away) and the turbines losing efficiency (maybe cause the pipes to damage players while 'overheated') from that, it'd be a even nicer touch.

Mooncat wrote:There are some glow-related properties for heat pipe in entity.lua. I tried modifying them, but they don't do anything.

However, if you think realistically, if the pipes are glowing, it means they fail to keep the heat energy inside them. Heat energy is lost from their surface. Anything touching them will burn like hell. (or just melt... or become hot...)

Sounds like a good way to explain the max temperature... If the heat pipes are at 1000 degrees but the nuclear reactor is still running, glowing pipes would explain where all of that energy is disappearing to...

Maybe the glowing explains all those heat pipe temp irregularities It would be a nice counterpoint to the glowing green bits, I think.

Mattyrogue wrote:It would be a nice visual touch, that's for certain, and would give us a better visual representation of when the Reactors working.

Hell, if there's an 'overheat' mechanic (Heat Exchangers not getting enough Water pumped into them to transfer the heat away) and the turbines losing efficiency (maybe cause the pipes to damage players while 'overheated') from that, it'd be a even nicer touch.

Yes. A reddish/orange glow could indicate that the Heat Pipes and the whole rest of the setup are operating at the desired 500 degrees celcius, but if the glow becomes yellow-white or even pure white, then it indicates to the player that he and his base are in deep shit, and that he ought to run away very fast!

Peter34 wrote: but if the glow becomes yellow-white or even pure white, then it indicates to the player that he and his base are in deep shit, and that he ought to run away very fast!

That would actually be a quite good sign. The shit's starting to happen when the reactor has no liquid left to heat the heatpipes.