Insulite

Insulite is a manufactured high-performance insulating material used in Oxygen Not Included. It is chemically distinct from Abyssalite but functions similarly when placed as tiles: Insulite tiles provide extremely low thermal conductivity and are one of the best solid insulators available. Insulite is produced in the Molecular Forge and can also exist as a raw element that melts into Liquid Tungsten (85% mass) and Sour Gas (15% mass).

Insulite’s defining gameplay property is its exceptionally low thermal conductivity, making it far better at blocking heat flow than most conventional materials. However, the game’s heat-transfer system treats different constructions differently: ordinary tiles and pipes use formulas that average or geometrically combine conductivities with neighboring materials, while insulated variants and Insulated Tiles use the tile/pipe’s own reduced conductivity. As a result, an Insulite tile placed next to a highly conductive material will still allow some heat flow under the cell↔cell rules, whereas an Insulated Tile or Insulated Pipe enforces a much smaller effective conductivity because insulated buildings use the lowest applicable conductivity or apply a large divisor to the material’s base conductivity. This means Insulated Tiles/Pipes are generally more practical for airtight heat sealing than simply using a tile made of Insulite, even though Insulite’s base conductivity is extremely low.

Insulite production and conversion are fixed. The Molecular Forge recipe converts:

• 15 kg Isosap + 80 kg Abyssalite + 5 Reed Fiber -> 100 kg Insulite. When melted, Insulite converts into Liquid Tungsten (85%) and Sour Gas (15%).

Practical notes and mechanical interactions:

• Insulite counts as an Insulator-type element (its thermal conductivity meets the threshold for the “Insulator” thermal descriptor). Despite that, Insulated Tiles apply a special multiplier/divisor to their material conductivity (divide by (2/255)^2) and use the lowest-conductivity term when computing cell↔cell transfer; this often makes Insulated Tiles superior to raw Insulite tiles for preventing heat flow.
• Buildings exchange heat with their occupied cells using a building↔cell formula that multiplies conductivities differently (building exchanges use k_mult and a building thermal-mass term). Pipes and insulated pipes have additional modifiers (insulated liquid/gas pipes divide conductivity by 32), and wires and conduction panels have their own modifiers.
• Floating-point precision and game lower/upper limits can prevent small temperature differences or low-mass objects from exchanging heat at all. For example, heat transfer does not occur if the temperature difference is less than 1 °C, the calculated thermal flow is less than 0.1 DTU, or either mass is below 1 g. In practice, well-insulated regions (or low ΔT with Insulated Tiles) can effectively stop measurable heat exchange.
• Extremely high thermal-mass liquids (Magma, large-volume liquids) can paradoxically fail to exchange heat with an insulated tile if the mass is large enough relative to the tile because of floating-point and DTU-limits; partial tiles with lower mass will exchange heat more readily.
• For active cooling/heating, it is usually more efficient to route pipes through tiles rather than rely on atmosphere-only transfer, because the building↔cell formula and pipe multipliers can be exploited to control where heat flows. Insulating both the pipe and the surrounding tiles gives the best results.

Use Insulite where you need a manufacturable, space-efficient insulating solid (e.g., walls and floors around high-temperature machinery or batteries). For airtight, long-term thermal isolation, prefer Insulated Tiles/Pipes or combine Insulite with insulated constructions to achieve the strongest thermal barriers.