Boilers can not blow up since the space dlc broke the whole steam system. Since than you don't need to control pressure as there is no pressure anymore in the boiler. You don't need to control heat or use any microcontroller. Just endlessly heat up the boiler and you are done. No blow up, no water consumption no heat or pressure control, most likely you don't need the condenser and cooling anymore too... They killed a perfectly working steam system, so what may this tell you about the devs care for steam engines...

Originally posted by NiceGuy:

Boilers can not blow up since the space dlc broke the whole steam system. Since than you don't need to control pressure as there is no pressure anymore in the boiler. You don't need to control heat or use any microcontroller. Just endlessly heat up the boiler and you are done. No blow up, no water consumption no heat or pressure control, most likely you don't need the condenser and cooling anymore too... They killed a perfectly working steam system, so what may this tell you about the devs care for steam engines...

Yeah I just noticed that in my newest run, I placed my old steam engine that was a prototype and it suddenly didn't work lol

I built a new one from scratch and surprisingly it worked first time but I have two weird problems now that I can't figure out, firstly the pistons don't actually work at their maximum capacity unless I blow the whistle and IF I blow the whistle it suddenly drinks over 50% of the water in my reserve water tank every quick tap

I think I need a microcontroller or something to lower the amount of the heat coming from the firebox into the boiler someone said, but, I don't understand why blowing the whistle makes the pistons go faster because its placed before the actual pistons?
I thought maybe the first piston in the row was eating all the steam but it doesn't appear the be the case
I put a pressure relief valve on my water tanks after reading about it, but now I'm thinking maybe theres air inside of the pipes connected to the pistons that isn't being pushed out through the pistons like they would be irl ?
so maybe a pump that forcefully creates a vac inside of the steam pipe before steam is generated is needed? but this all seems, again, like way too much just for a steam engine.

BUT I did manage to achieve a really compact and small steam boiler + piston assembly for a small boat, so that complaint is off the table for now

I'm also not sure how I'd make a relief valve for the steam, is steam considered a fluid or a gas? if its a fluid, surely I can just put the same one I have on my watertank to relieve the air out of the systems, but, if it counts as a gas then I guess the only way to relieve it is to have manual valves that I have to tap quickly during startup ?

also my other problem is that the engine consumes coal at an outrageous amount ngl

just slap an electric furnace and a basic microcontroller that maintains boiler temperature below 175 degrees on some steam pistons.

Somehow you generate infinite electricity. while still being small enough to fit inside a helicopter. You will never need a relief valve or any other logic. the system will run forever and remain relatively quiet.

Originally posted by Porkchop:

just slap an electric furnace and a basic microcontroller that maintains boiler temperature below 175 degrees on some steam pistons.

Somehow you generate infinite electricity. while still being small enough to fit inside a helicopter. You will never need a relief valve or any other logic. the system will run forever and remain relatively quiet.

Yeah I was thinking about the electric furnace as an alternative but I do actually want black smoke and the occasional white steam coming from a stack because that and watching the pistons move etc is half of the fun for me, I also wanna look into getting sails done at some point but the steam engine is the first thing for me

I've build a Nuclear Steam Engine. Puts out plenty of electricity to power any electric motors used and never runs out. Just finished a test by running it for 24 hours straight.

Originally posted by Panzerfanlol:

Originally posted by NiceGuy:

Boilers can not blow up since the space dlc broke the whole steam system. Since than you don't need to control pressure as there is no pressure anymore in the boiler. You don't need to control heat or use any microcontroller. Just endlessly heat up the boiler and you are done. No blow up, no water consumption no heat or pressure control, most likely you don't need the condenser and cooling anymore too... They killed a perfectly working steam system, so what may this tell you about the devs care for steam engines...

Yeah I just noticed that in my newest run, I placed my old steam engine that was a prototype and it suddenly didn't work lol

I built a new one from scratch and surprisingly it worked first time but I have two weird problems now that I can't figure out, firstly the pistons don't actually work at their maximum capacity unless I blow the whistle and IF I blow the whistle it suddenly drinks over 50% of the water in my reserve water tank every quick tap

I think I need a microcontroller or something to lower the amount of the heat coming from the firebox into the boiler someone said, but, I don't understand why blowing the whistle makes the pistons go faster because its placed before the actual pistons?
I thought maybe the first piston in the row was eating all the steam but it doesn't appear the be the case
I put a pressure relief valve on my water tanks after reading about it, but now I'm thinking maybe theres air inside of the pipes connected to the pistons that isn't being pushed out through the pistons like they would be irl ?
so maybe a pump that forcefully creates a vac inside of the steam pipe before steam is generated is needed? but this all seems, again, like way too much just for a steam engine.

BUT I did manage to achieve a really compact and small steam boiler + piston assembly for a small boat, so that complaint is off the table for now

Before the space dlc, a boiler turned 1 volume of water into 100 volumes of steam. After space dlc, 1 water turns into 1 steam.
So either you need a water tank that is 100x bigger, or you need a condenser.

Originally posted by NXTtrain:

Originally posted by Panzerfanlol:

Yeah I just noticed that in my newest run, I placed my old steam engine that was a prototype and it suddenly didn't work lol

I built a new one from scratch and surprisingly it worked first time but I have two weird problems now that I can't figure out, firstly the pistons don't actually work at their maximum capacity unless I blow the whistle and IF I blow the whistle it suddenly drinks over 50% of the water in my reserve water tank every quick tap

I think I need a microcontroller or something to lower the amount of the heat coming from the firebox into the boiler someone said, but, I don't understand why blowing the whistle makes the pistons go faster because its placed before the actual pistons?
I thought maybe the first piston in the row was eating all the steam but it doesn't appear the be the case
I put a pressure relief valve on my water tanks after reading about it, but now I'm thinking maybe theres air inside of the pipes connected to the pistons that isn't being pushed out through the pistons like they would be irl ?
so maybe a pump that forcefully creates a vac inside of the steam pipe before steam is generated is needed? but this all seems, again, like way too much just for a steam engine.

BUT I did manage to achieve a really compact and small steam boiler + piston assembly for a small boat, so that complaint is off the table for now

Before the space dlc, a boiler turned 1 volume of water into 100 volumes of steam. After space dlc, 1 water turns into 1 steam.
So either you need a water tank that is 100x bigger, or you need a condenser.

Mine has a condenser, it doesn't lose any water or steam when running normally but it still loses the majority volume of a medium watertank when I pull the whistle for a second,
Honestly I guess a whistle of this size WOULD use alot of steam, but, thats not actually how whistles work,
but I guess this could only be addressed by making the whistles smaller?

Originally posted by Panzerfanlol:

Originally posted by NXTtrain:

Before the space dlc, a boiler turned 1 volume of water into 100 volumes of steam. After space dlc, 1 water turns into 1 steam.
So either you need a water tank that is 100x bigger, or you need a condenser.

Mine has a condenser, it doesn't lose any water or steam when running normally but it still loses the majority volume of a medium watertank when I pull the whistle for a second,
Honestly I guess a whistle of this size WOULD use alot of steam, but, thats not actually how whistles work,
but I guess this could only be addressed by making the whistles smaller?

Yeah, the whistle does consume a lot of steam. And with the changes to the boiler, you have way less steam in the first place.
The new component modding system might be able to help with rebalancing stuff, though.

Originally posted by NXTtrain:

Originally posted by Panzerfanlol:

Mine has a condenser, it doesn't lose any water or steam when running normally but it still loses the majority volume of a medium watertank when I pull the whistle for a second,
Honestly I guess a whistle of this size WOULD use alot of steam, but, thats not actually how whistles work,
but I guess this could only be addressed by making the whistles smaller?

Yeah, the whistle does consume a lot of steam. And with the changes to the boiler, you have way less steam in the first place.
The new component modding system might be able to help with rebalancing stuff, though.

Man that sucks lmao, thats a huge chunk of the appeal of steam,
can I store steam in a custom tank like you can for fluids? I doubt it right?
But ontop of that, do you know whether my hunch about air being stuck in the steam pipes are causing my pistons to not work correctly until its relieved is correct or not ?

Originally posted by Panzerfanlol:

Originally posted by NXTtrain:

Yeah, the whistle does consume a lot of steam. And with the changes to the boiler, you have way less steam in the first place.
The new component modding system might be able to help with rebalancing stuff, though.

Man that sucks lmao, thats a huge chunk of the appeal of steam,
can I store steam in a custom tank like you can for fluids? I doubt it right?
But ontop of that, do you know whether my hunch about air being stuck in the steam pipes are causing my pistons to not work correctly until its relieved is correct or not ?

I am not entirely sure, actually. I usually use turbines with a generator (I am attempting a nuclear-steam-electric train locomotive), and last time I tried they "just worked".
Even so, did you make sure to offset the pistons properly? If they are stopped at Top/Bottom Dead Center, they can't start moving again on their own.

Originally posted by NXTtrain:

Originally posted by Panzerfanlol:

Man that sucks lmao, thats a huge chunk of the appeal of steam,
can I store steam in a custom tank like you can for fluids? I doubt it right?
But ontop of that, do you know whether my hunch about air being stuck in the steam pipes are causing my pistons to not work correctly until its relieved is correct or not ?

I am not entirely sure, actually. I usually use turbines with a generator (I am attempting a nuclear-steam-electric train locomotive), and last time I tried they "just worked".
Even so, did you make sure to offset the pistons properly? If they are stopped at Top/Bottom Dead Center, they can't start moving again on their own.

Yeah, one at 35, one at -35 and one at the bottom, +/- 1 degrees,
they never reach the max of 0.75 pressures (I'm using the smallest pistons because I want the most compact engine possible as I said before), I think they reached about 0.35 max,
but they just moved faster after I blew the whistle,
I'm also not sure how cool the condenser is supposed to get either, but I was using the electric radiator and I think it was between 60-80 degrees, which doesn't really seem "cool enough" to me, yanno?

I'm thinking about maybe switching from 3 smalls to maybe 4 smalls OR using 2 medium pistons in a tiny cut-out infront of the engine assembly with a single (or maybe 2 depending on how I style it) tiny pistons powering a generator for electricity,
I couldn't get my 3 small piston assembly to generate 1.0 electricity, they were always getting between 0.2XXXX and 0.08XXX aswell, but, that problem can be solved with gears and fiddling after I actually build the boat for it

Originally posted by NXTtrain:

Originally posted by Panzerfanlol:

Man that sucks lmao, thats a huge chunk of the appeal of steam,
can I store steam in a custom tank like you can for fluids? I doubt it right?
But ontop of that, do you know whether my hunch about air being stuck in the steam pipes are causing my pistons to not work correctly until its relieved is correct or not ?

I am not entirely sure, actually. I usually use turbines with a generator (I am attempting a nuclear-steam-electric train locomotive), and last time I tried they "just worked".
Even so, did you make sure to offset the pistons properly? If they are stopped at Top/Bottom Dead Center, they can't start moving again on their own.

I posted this recently if you want to check it out.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3535542298

Originally posted by MpShade:

Originally posted by NXTtrain:

I am not entirely sure, actually. I usually use turbines with a generator (I am attempting a nuclear-steam-electric train locomotive), and last time I tried they "just worked".
Even so, did you make sure to offset the pistons properly? If they are stopped at Top/Bottom Dead Center, they can't start moving again on their own.

I posted this recently if you want to check it out.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3535542298

pretty cool my dude, I'll check it out to take inspiration condenser and cooling stats