Shield room

[Fiskap]

A simple suggestion, add a room using some of the space of the command substation, meeting room or bridge that starts out with installed but not configured bubble and maybe hull shield generators. If this is deemed to be too much of a robust feature for roundstart then we can just leave the shield equipment laying around in the designated room for it, and have an engineer wire and wrench it later. Which is sorta what we already have for the engine and solars.

The station canonically gets affected by meteors every other round (since meteors aren't an antagonist-motivated event of conflict and the rules imply that this is indeed canon) so it's dumb to not have a designated location for this. Instead engineering has to move all shield equiment from storage to the bridge (and not every person has access to it) or maybe command substation every round, and I'm honestly sick of this chore that really makes no sense for the setting anyway. It's not like the engine or solars that already start out with designated locations and partially set up, the station not having a designated shield room again makes no sense, even for SS13. Imagine if we had to grab solar panels from storage and build the solar panel arrays from scratch, or manually build all the piping for the engine and then put the supermatter core in: absolutely ridiculous.

The shield room should be restricted to engineering personnel and not require anyone to pass through the bridge first, this is so engineering can activate it whenever a meteor storm is about to affect the station and no synthetics or command personnel is available. The room would run off the master grid, the command grid or have its own SMES much like the AI subgrid.

Engineering is fairly annoying to play right now and this would only enhance fun for everyone and bring realism that doesn't affect anything else. It can't really be abused in any way since the etiquette for shield usage would remain the same, only turn it on whenever it's needed.

[Lohikar]

Where would the room fit in though? I don't think the command substation should be made any smaller, and I can't (immediately) think of a sane reorganization of command that would create a large enough room without stealing some space from the AI chamber or upload.

Maybe re-purpose those windowed space areas near the bridge?

Other than that, this would definitely be nice to have, and it would be nice to not have to let engineers onto the bridge every shift to install a shield.

[Nanako]

a dedicated room for shields is a good idea - its a common trope which seems to be missing on our station

However the shields themselves need a bit of reworking first, the way they currently work is fairly buggy

As to location, i'm not certain on an exact spot, but it needs to be somewhere near engineering and near the centre of the station. Shields are, and should remain, the domain of engineering, due to the logistical requirements of the power draw

[Wesmas]

Could the janitors closet be moved? Cause that space is close to engineering, and its not like the janitors room has a lot of stuff in it, right?

[Lohikar]

Problem with having it in the janitors closet is that it might not fully cover security, even at maximum radius.

Maybe rearrange the upload & upload foyer, and use that little bit of area that's currently just space?

[Fiskap]

You could make the meeting room smaller and expand the command substation which contains the shield equipment.

[Nikov]

I could have sworn I posted the command substation's eastern side as a suggestion. Engineering access door on one side, command access door on the other, as its own little 2x2 closet right adjacent to that little hallway. Or part of that hallway, if you widen the hall to two tiles wide you can fit the shield gen in it. Then just include a door to the substation that engineers can use and you're set.

[Lohikar]

I tried setting up the generators in the existing command substation, and was able to fit both in while keeping them both powered by the command substation SMES.

However, even at 100 meters the projected field doesn't cover the Research shuttle entirely.

 

EDIT:

TheGreatJorge remapped the teleporter room and came up with this:

[canon35]

That mapping suggestion between the core and teleporter looks like a pretty good idea to me. And yes, a dedicated shield room would be a nice addition to have.

[Skull132]

Imma shove it in here.

Shield room will most likely be added once the shields are made to require more management. Basically, the way I see it, there should be a mechanical need to shut them off after a long amount of time.

[Conservatron]

is it possible to have a somewhat exponential power drain on shields based on low long they've been active? Theoretically they'll be blocking all sorts of cosmic energy and space dust, not just large meteor rocks. With enough power you can set and forget.

[Guest Complete Garbage]

I think shields should be able to run forever under certain conditions, but you'll have to be creative and do some work to make it happen. Also, the base shield range should be upgradable in some way so that the bubble will no longer block off parts of the station.

[Lohikar]

The base bubble shield range is sufficient to cover the entire station, minus toxins test site.

Perhaps upgrades could increase efficiency or charge rate?

As for preventing leaving the shield on all the time, perhaps a heat mechanic could suffice. Either like telecomms equipment, heating the local atmos; or a pacman, maintaining an 'internal' heat level, causing failure if it overheats.