Ice Liquefier

The Ice Liquefier is a powered processing building that melts stored ice into water. It works automatically, without Duplicant intervention, and is useful when a colony needs a steady supply of water but has access mainly to ice rather than liquid sources. Its flavor text is a reminder that the result is always water, not something dangerously hot: the output never becomes hot enough to burn a tongue.

Every 5 seconds, the Ice Liquefier consumes 100 kg of internally stored ice and converts it into 100 kg of water at 25°C. The building can also store the fuel it needs for the process: ice, wood, and the resulting water. Its internal capacities are 1000 kg of ice, 152.8 kg of wood, and 500 kg of water. If the water storage is full, conversion stops until space becomes available. These stored materials do not exchange heat with the outside environment while inside the building.

The amount of wood consumed depends on the temperature of the ice being melted. The game calculates the energy required to raise the ice directly to 25°C, so colder ice costs more wood to process. Each kilogram of wood provides 4000 kDTU of heating, and each kilogram burned produces 142 g of dirt. Because the required heat is based on the ice’s starting temperature, the wood cost per 100 kg of ice ranges from 1.16 kg to 15.28 kg.

A few practical notes make the building easier to use efficiently:

• Colder ice is more expensive to liquefy, so warming ice before processing reduces wood consumption.
• The building’s internal stores are separate from the surrounding room, so it can safely hold inputs and outputs without immediate heat loss.
• Since it continuously turns ice into room-temperature water, it is useful for converting ice biome stockpiles into a manageable liquid supply.
• The byproduct dirt adds a small amount of solid waste that must be handled somewhere in the base.

Because it consumes wood rather than power alone, the Ice Liquefier is best treated as a resource conversion building rather than a free water source. It is strongest in colonies that have excess ice and enough wood to spare, especially when a stable water supply is needed before more advanced infrastructure is available.