A moderator suggested I create a thread about this and:
So I did a little bit of research of viability of thermosynthesis and I would like to share with the developers and other members of the forum and read your opinions on it and how would you like it to happen in the game.
Photosynthesis Calories per hour per square meter
Sunlight per m2 is about 340 watts (or about 292347 cal/h) and this value already considers how much light is reflected as, without the reflection it is more about 1340 watts.
Considering the “worst” plants have about 0,1% efficiency in conversion , it goes to 292 cal/h per square meter.
I know wikipedia isn’t the most trustfull information source, but the wikipedia sources used in this case are trustworhty.
Thermosynthesis Calories per hour per square meter
Using the formula presented here. Let’s consider a cell that has a temperature of 18ºC, at 23ºC and 1 square meter of area, it would have
20 X 1 X -5=-100watts (it means the cell would need yo lose 100 watts). or 85984 calories/hour.
Considering a efficiency 1% (something lots of plants have), it would have 859 cal/h per square meter. This considers a non aquatic environment, as a aquatic environment would be even more effective (at least 2.5 times more up to 150 times more).
All of this can be considered even without direct contact with the sun/heat source.
Edit: even if we consider a difference of 1ÂşC it would have 171 cal/h per square meter.
How would it lose heat to use as food source? I don’t know the details, but the guy who created the theory has some ideas (Free pdf download of his book chapter)
So, if there was a protein capable of using heat as energy source, it would probably be able to survive in multiple environments. Maybe the game could do that higher temperatures make a higher efficiency and thermoplasts are more efficient/reduce the cell temperature more than the non nuclear option.