Heating tower as tech

[Cronpa]

I recently got to the win condition and space age was much more fun than I expected. Heating tower was the main surprising thing

Heating tower tech which unlocks heating tower, heat exchangers and steam turbines as a better boiler and steam engine. It would be prerequisite for nuclear tech. First burn normal fuel better, then get nuclear fuel. Since nuclear reactor is just a heating tower but with different fuel.

It's very unintuitive to unlock heat ex and steam turbines in Nauvis by mining uranium but heating towers on Gleba. I didn't even have steam turbines when went to Vulcanus where they would have been very useful too.

[BlueTemplar]

How is this different from unlocking quality on Nauvis, but Recyclers on Fulgura ?

And heating towers are especially useful on Gleba, but this is something which a player might miss if they didn't have to unlock them there.

[Cronpa]

I completely missed heating towers on Gleba as did at least one of my friends. Went for solar, boilers and steam engines as it's the usual power generation.

Hendricks on youtube also spent 30h or so in Gleba without heating towers, as he didn't mine uranium so it wasn't even available to see. I was on the same path if didn't go online to read. I thought it can't be this bad so fell for reading tips. It wasn't a good experience. Then those few tips completely turned Gleba into a fun planet.

Quality by itself is useful and I did a lot of quality without any recyclers. Heating tower not so much, without steam exchangers it's not useful.

[BlueTemplar]

Hmm, I did get nuclear power first...

But Heating Tower is also useful on Gleba even without Heat Exchangers,

because it will burn spoilage without deadlocking at max temperature even if your accumulators / steam tanks are full

.

Right, so maybe it's just the Heat Exchanger + Heat Pipe + Turbine that should be split from Nuclear Reactor ?
(Turbine by itself is also useful on

Vulcanus

.)

[Cronpa]

Ye agree'd. Maybe just those ones. Or include them in heating tower tech as well if didn't get from nuclear tech. Then you'd get it in Gleba even if didn't do nuclear.

Also yep I didn't have turbines there either, so was using steam engines for a long time until unlocked nuclear.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, I was more thinking that the new «Heat Exchanger» tech would be a requirement for both Nuclear and Gleba the planet itself ?
(Would need to find a good balance for the new tech costs of Nuclear and Heat Exchanger of course...)

[Tinyboss]

I'm not sure there are any items currently in game that can be unlocked by different researches. Or to have a research be unlocked by one OR another prior research. That makes me wonder if it could easily be supported. And it would feel weird to unlock those things before we had anything to use them with.

However, the overall idea of being able to use them with heating towers before unlocking reactors is good IMO. Just not sure how to do it.

[BlueTemplar]

I'm not sure there are any items currently in game that can be unlocked by different researches.

Iron sticks are unlocked by 4 (!) different techs.

Or to have a research be unlocked by one OR another prior research.

That might be interesting, but who asked for that in this discussion ? (EDIT : Oh, you want «Heat Exhangers» (should that be actually «Steam 2» ?) to be optional for Gleba ? EDIT 2 : but with which alternative ??))

And it would feel weird to unlock those things before we had anything to use them with.

Yeah, I was wondering how off-putting that would be... but, for instance, it's not like you can do anything with uranium that you've mined and even processed before you unlock some subsequent tech !

(Technically, Turbines also save on space compared to steam engines, but that's so niche it's barely worth mentioning...
EDIT : though wait, not anymore with Space Platforms ?! Ah no, wait, can't build neither boiler nor heating tower on space platform, so gated behind nuclear reactor anyway...)

[Tinyboss]

Iron sticks are unlocked by 4 (!) different techs.

Oh, nice! In that case, I think turbines, heat pipes, and heat exchangers should additionally be unlocked with the heating tower.

[BlueTemplar]

I completely missed heating towers on Gleba as did at least one of my friends. Went for solar, boilers and steam engines as it's the usual power generation.

Hendricks on youtube also spent 30h or so in Gleba without heating towers, as he didn't mine uranium so it wasn't even available to see. I was on the same path if didn't go online to read. I thought it can't be this bad so fell for reading tips. It wasn't a good experience. Then those few tips completely turned Gleba into a fun planet.

Quality by itself is useful and I did a lot of quality without any recyclers. Heating tower not so much, without steam exchangers it's not useful.

Wait, what are we even discussing, Heating Tower does also unlock heat pipes / exchangers / turbines ?!?

heating_tower_unlocks.png (67.51 KiB) Viewed 1560 times

So what remains is a fairly minor complaint about having to unlock Turbines from either this or Nuclear for

Vulcanus

?
P.S.: Which is part of «every new planet makes subsequent planets easier» progression, so it might not even be a good idea to separate it from Gleba like this.

[Cronpa]

True yeah, completely missed that it unlocked those. Maybe it's the name that made it difficult to connect? Personally I thought heating -> has to be for Aquilo and completely skipped that it's a better boiler. Maybe heat effect itself needs a tip page like other new mechanics that shows it generating power.

As an aside a lot of Gleba was like that to me. It's fun after knowing the mechanics but very difficult to see with the many kickstarting only recipes.

[BlueTemplar]

Well, it's unlocked on Gleba, does say «can be used for steam power», unlocks steam turbines...

Sounds like an issue of a player knowing too much about the game already, someone who didn't know what Aquilo was wouldn't have made that mistake ?

But then, the game itself make it easy to get the gist for Aquilo by reading tooltips in the space map, or looking further in the tech tree... and yeah, HT tech does also say «can prevent freezing».

I guess another Heating Tower tips and tricks (to the one I expect we get on Aquilo which deals with freezing ?) might be warranted ??