Jump to content

Advanced Engineering Checklist - detailed initial guide


Recommended Posts

This is a checklist I utilize when I play engineering to not only get the station set-up to a passable degree but also optimize anything that's worth the effort. What counts as being worth the effort - If what you did has immediate pay-off either in a 'fair' degree or an 'absolutely must-do because doing it gives so much strength to the station' degree. After the checklist we'll go over all the steps in detail to justify why the steps are taken. 

Engine Setup
1. Move a supermagnetic transmission coil and a supermagnetic standard coil to the main grid SMES room.
2. Turn off the input of the main grid SMES, max out its output.
3. Move four phoron canisters to the engine room - !ENSURE RADIATION PROTECTION! - don't screw them in yet.
4. Turn on all the pumps in the room, max out their pressure transfer. Don't touch the emergency valves!
5. Go to the filters in the north part of the engine room.
6. Set all the filters gas selection to 'phoron'. Required to maintain engine stability!
7. Raise the shutters and turn on + max out the pumps in engine waste. Ignore the coolers. Also ignore the connector port close to the filters.
8. Screw in one phoron canister each to the connector ports in the south part of the engine room. The northmost connector port is connected to the hot loop, the southmost connector port is connected to the cold loop.
9. Once both phoron canisters are depleted of gas, screw in one phoron canister to the northmost connector port for the hot loop. 
10. Once that third canister is depleted, turn off the pump to the hot loop, install another phoron canister. Never turn on that pump again unless in a delamination event.
11. Enter the monitoring room, enable the emitter through what looks like a shutter button. Don't press any of the actual shutter buttons, they are labelled! If you do, press that button again if you did so by accident!
12. Count emitter shots to 25, then disable the emitter through the button. Consider unwelding the emitter.
13. Close all the shutters, then go to the main grid SMES room. 
14. If SMES is empty, turn off its output. If not, wait.
15. Screwdriver the SMES to open its maintenance panel, then put in the two coils mentioned in step 1.
16. Screwdriver the SMES closed, then max out the SMES' input and output.
17. Go back to the monitoring room and find a console with an RCON.
18. Enable the input for every substation and set its in/out wattage to 100,000. Exceptions are Atmospherics, Science Main Level, Science Sublevel and Civilian Main Level. Set all these to 150,000 in/out wattage. The shields are another exception, set these to 200,000 in/out.
19. Disable every bypass to every substation. Yes, all of them.
20. Wire the solars if you want, max their in/out for the SMESes as well. You're done with the main engine.

Click spoiler for detailed explanation of each step below for the engine set-up category:

Spoiler

1.
The two coils as mentioned help the primary SMES transmit a ton of power to the main grid, as well as do so very quickly. The primary SMES should never really have a capacity coil unless you're intending to make the station dependent only on solar power. Which is something you can totally do, but this is not beginner friendly nor recommended as the station power fails within 20 minutes into the round.

2.
You need the SMES to deplete its power before adding any coil modifications later. Maxing its output helps also charge any department APCs that need it, but this does not last. Don't max its output if nobody is already setting the engine up, though - it's basically sabotage if you do.

3.
Moving the canisters to their respective place is important but you shouldn't screw them in straight away. For equal parts safety and for lack of wanting any waste, you want all the pumps and filters enabled before wrenching any canisters into their respective connector ports.
Never get particularly close to the supermatter. You will get irradiated through your radgear unless you are a diona or an IPC, and the hallucinations will usually hit you pretty hard otherwise. Getting hallucinations is something you'll have to RP out and it'll probably disrupt your process. Especially don't get close to the SM when the Thermoelectric Generators are at full spin, because when the SM's surroundings are heavily heated, it also irradiates more heavily.

4.
The pumps need to be maxed out to have full efficiency. Otherwise your engine set-up is going to be sluggish and ineffective.
Don't ever touch the emergency valves except in a delamination emergency. Touching them makes the cold loop mix in with the hot loop, which usually supercools the hot loop in a matter of seconds. This ultimately makes the TEGs not work at full spin but it stabilizes the supermatter.

5-6.
6 is the most important step. The major thing that causes SM delamination outside of sabotage is when it's a bastard mixture of several gases, including N2, oxygen and CO2. The Supermatter does not play well with oxygen (and CO2), and you need phoron in the supermatter for its best-in-game heat capacity. Virtually every other engine is not as effective, though still possible. Given how demanding the powernet is, 'effective' set-ups are generally more desirable than 'possible' ones. Yes, phoron can ignite on fire and CO2 can't. The engine can still be sabotage-proofed for a phoron-setup. It usually involves a fireaxe and some bear traps. Regardless, you want only phoron in the main chamber if at all possible.

7.
No real point in using the filters if you're not going to enable the Engine Waste pumps beyond the north engine room shutters. They're worth using as they filter gas back into atmospherics, which is useful since it 'wastes' nothing, haha.
The connector port prior to the engine room shutters has a use, it's more of an engine waste sampler, however. Any canister put in there would usually be taken into atmospherics to filter other gases out to recycle for additional phoron to reserve in an emergency.

8-9.
Knowing what loop is which is crucial if you have to deal with a delamination event.
You screw in two canisters into the hot loop to get the engine going a bit faster. Inevitably the engine still will stabilize, but you want to exploit that juicy heat capacity phoron has. Since phoron has immense heat capacity anyhow, the SM takes a very long time to delaminate with phoron set-ups, compared to others which delaminate way faster due to lower heat capacity.

10.
That canister is a reserve "oh shit" canister. Usually the hot loop is the biggest problem, not the cold loop. You almost never want the cold loop contaminated with hot gas except when the SM is just about to delaminate. The "oh shit" canister as I have lovingly christened is primarily to stop delamination events at 60%+ integrity, it can stop those much lower, but not as fast. The emergency valves are for fast show-stopping, and for even closer situations you want a combination of the "oh shit" canister and the emergency valves at the same time. Keep the pump off to the "oh shit" canister unless you really need it, but most delam events aren't caused by the cold loop, it's due to what's going directly into the chamber (the hot loop, ofc).

11.
Yes, I've made this mistake.

12.
20-30 shots are fine numbers. Either work but I like 25, personally.
Unweld the emitter if you want to shitter-proof the SM after the TEGs get spinning. Highly recommended. Makes it fucking impossible for anyone without a brain to sabotage the SM.

13.
Radiation mechanics factor in wall-like obstructions and such. Still shouldn't hug the wall next to the SM. If you need to enter the engine room, only do it from the south side unless the north side has been sabotaged.

14. 
See explanation for step 2. Premises still apply, the SMES must be entirely off to add new upgrades.

15-16.
It's pretty much vital that the coils get into the main grid SMES. It makes it perform so well, and I love it. You don't need to worry about the risk of the grid having so much power, as the bypasses solve this problem.

17-19.
Another vital part of engine set-up is ensuring the RCON sets up everything remotely without having to go anywhere. I recommend the power settings as listed in the checklist steps, as it is pretty much enough power for all the respective departments. The 'exception' SMESes as listed are departments that usually make use of cell chargers (like robotics, RnD) or their machines eat almost as much power as Doxxmedearly eats ass (primarily the kitchen appliances). You also want atmospherics to have enough power to run various pump set-ups.

Also, disable the bypasses for the department SMESes! This is essentially a requirement for you to even be considered as an engineer, since the departments no longer depend on the main grid but rather upon their substation's power grid. This is the difference between an airlock shocking you with 3 million watts from the main grid and an airlock that shocks you with 150,000 watts from the local grid. If you 'forget' to do this, you can be immediately held liable for anything like this that happens, as the main grid should not be powering the entire station. It should be powering the supplementary substations which power the station.

Yes, even if someone is hacking into tech storage without gloves, if they get zapped by 1 million watts or higher of a power grid, it's your fault that they got wounded so badly.

20.
If the SM delaminates or has to be ejected, the solars are a good fall-back option that can continue to transmit power to the rest of the station. You can actually power the station on solars, but this is not that advanced of a guide. I also don't recommend that unless you have a lot of time/you want to impress an e-girl/e-boy.

Shields Setup
1. Max out the shields SMES in/out, assuming the engine is set-up.
2. Wrench down the generators and capacitors.
3. Maximize the settings on the capacitors adjusted to the generators. Not the generators themselves.
4. Set field strength for bubble generator to 3 renwick, 5 renwick for the hull shield.
5. Set generation rate for both generators to 0.5 renwick/s.
6. Set field radius to 100m (max) for both generators.
7. Turn on the bubble shield for asteroids, turn on the hull shield when there are carp/drones/etc. This only affects the surface level.
8. Consider buying more hull shield generators + shield capacitors to cover the main level and the sub-level. RnD can also help you.

Click spoiler for detailed explanation of each step below for the shields set-up category:

Spoiler

1.
The shields are their own grid, so don't worry about the settings. If both generators are online, the SMES will support both of them (roughly 160,000 W demand).

2.
You need to do this to make the generators work, otherwise the devices are useless.

3.
This increases the charge rate of the capacitors when they are depleted, or when they are depleting. The main SMES charges the capacitors, the capacitors charge the generators. The generators don't charge the shield very fast when the capacitor isn't charging energy at max efficiency. The cost is wattage, but this isn't much of a cost at all with the shield SMES taking in, storing and outputting sufficient enough power to support this venture.

4.
5 renwick shield strength for each shield generator is just enough to stall carp and sharks, but you need 3 renwick to charge the bubble shield fast enough. Never do anything higher than 5 renwick, it's unnecessary.

5. 
Necessary, otherwise the shield generators themselves don't harness watts to generate a shield fast enough.

6.
Once again, necessary. The bubble shield if kept at a low range either doesn't do anything or doesn't wrap around the exterior of the station properly. The hull shield when kept at a low range won't even generate shields around crucial parts of the surface level either. Maxing out the range does make shield generation slower, but it's a fair cost to pay.

7.
Turning on the right shield for the right situation saves you from having to repair as much as you would if you kept the wrong shield on or both shields off. Don't turn on both, that's not smart and the admins don't approve of that. It's also wasteful if you turn them on if you don't need them.

8.
I know what I said in #7, but the fact is the main level and sub-level don't have hull shields, and that as a problem is one that you as an engineer should try to rectify somehow.

Atmos checklist soon to come. It's quite complex and I need additional images to screenshot later to finish it.

Edited by Scheveningen
Fixed grammar + cleared up a misconception about a community member's capacity to devour posteriors.
Link to comment

Side note, to justify why 2 phoron canisters should go into the hot loop instead of 2 into cold.

Basically, everything mentioned in the engine set-up ties into each other. Having a large amount of gas moles in the hot loop means there's more gas to store heat in. Therefore, the TEGs harness more of this gas and output greater power. The downside is, the engine room will increase temperate at a quicker rate than if there were 2 phoron canisters put into the cold loop. In the cold loop, that gas is not really going anywhere, it's not being harnessed in any capacity as much as the hot loop. There is a potential benefit to putting 2 canisters into the cold loop and that is when you expect the supermatter to delaminate, so that you can open the emergency valves and then a flood of cooled gas equalizes with the heated gas in the hot loop - inevitably creating a state where the hot loop cools more than it once did. But this is pointless to do, because you still have a safe and more efficient gas set-up. The engine should never be set-up with the expectation it will fail, the supermatter is meant to be exploited, and there already exist several ways to save it from certain doom. It is still important to have phoron in the cold loop, but a single canister does well enough for the entire shift. Eventually in the case of the hot loop, as the pressure climbs to 1500kpa+ in the chamber, the heat gain of the supermatter begins to stabilize to a slow crawl, if not fluctuating at a particular number outright.

Further, 2 cans in the hot loop means that the TEGs are outputting their power to transmit to the main grid SMES very fast. That power being transmitted needs to go straight to the department SMESes, for all intents and purposes, for that is what the main grid SMES is set-up to do with the checklist format. Primarily it is a power transmitter, it doesn't store energy very effectively, but it does it well enough so that it's an okay back-up to output power to the substations when the engine has to be ejected. If it delaminates, the main grid SMES is likely going to be gone to the massive implosion+explosion.

I do recommend setting up the solars, by the way. It's an excellent fallback and supplementary measure to the main grid. I can't stress enough to disable the bypasses, as the station departments should be dependent on their respective SMES.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...