I mean, if you want, I can give you a step-by-step list of how to configure the engine in the current version...
- Fill the collectors (this step hasn't changed)
- Pressurize with N2, just dump both canisters in (also hasn't changed)
- Turn on filters, max out waste pumps. No adjustment needs to be made to the engine output/input. It is handled by a control computer now.
- Configure the Engine Room SMES: 150KW in, 150KW out
Time sensitive part now: If you do not complete the following within a few minutes, the engine room will run out of power and you'll need to do some additional work. It's not difficult, but the engine room running out of power is probably the #1 reason the SM is exploding lately, usually due to a misconfigured SMES.
- Turn ON the Freezers. They start off, and they are a massive power sink.
- Open charging port, fire ~10 shots.
At this point, the engine should begin charging the engine room SMES and the engine room APC should either be charging or full. If the engine room APC is *not* charging, check the SMES configuration. It is likely that the Engine Room SMES is not supplying enough power to the APC to run the freezers and pumps, which take ~100KW.
You can now leave the engine room and configure the station SMES. The engine should be outputting ~500KW initially. The easiest 'inexperienced engie' config is to just set all the SMES to take 50kW input and give 50kW output. This is generally enough to supply the station, won't stop outputting until the Engine's output is *very* low, and the only downside is that it won't charge any of the SMES very fast, if at all.
Now you can go forth and do other things! The engine will go on with relatively little supervision from this point onward, though do check in and make sure someone hasn't sabotaged it. If you want to get more bang for your buck out of the engine, there are a few other things to be done. The easiest thing is to hook in additional collectors. There are 4 extra collectors in engineering. Bring them in, stick a wire under them, fuel them up, and you'll get an instant 66% boost on your engine output for no additional danger. If Cargo is feeling nice, you can even get them to order *more* collectors and tanks. The second easiest thing to do is to setup a third freezer, though this usually requires bothering R&D for parts, which can be hit-or-miss. In general, a 3-freezer engine is *incredibly* safe and very difficult to overload unintentionally.
In the event an overload is beginning, DO NOT PANIC. Assuming this is an accident, overload usually takes a very long time to go off, on the order of 5 minutes, and they CAN be averted.
Step 1: Power. I've repeated this three times in this 'guide' because it's that important. An engine room without power is a bomb waiting to happen. Figure out why it's lost power and fix it immediately. Not only can the freezers, pumps, and filters alone sometimes resolve an overload, but power in the Engine Room is *required* in order to enact the final emergency procedure: Core Ejection.
Step 2: Nitrogen. If you've got power, you can pump in more gas. If the core is overloading and the freezers aren't enough, you can just shove in as much N2 as you can get your hands on. Colder is better, but room-temp will do. If you've got an Atmos Tech, tell them to keep the gas coming until the overload has been averted. If you don't, break into atmos and steal their N2 canisters. It's for the good of the station.
Step 3: Vent. If power and N2 isn't enough, you're likely out of luck, BUT there is one last thing you can try. In the Southeast corner of the engine room is the Vent button. It opens a shutter from the core to space and will begin venting all air out of the core ASAP. Usually at this point, it's too late, but it does slow things down enough for...
Step 4: Eject. In the CE's office, behind a pane of glass, is the core eject button. If all else has failed and the core isn't cooling down, break in and hit this button. The vent *must* be open, or the core will slam into the shutter and become stuck in the engine core, almost guaranteeing an explosion. You can verify a successful ejection using the Camera console in the CE's office. (Camera: Engine Core South)
If ejection fails, congratulations! Evacuate engineering immediately and call the shuttle. There are things an experienced engineer can do to save engineering even at this point, but they are not for the unprepared and are highly likely to result in the death of the engineer attempting them, even when they succeed.
This concludes a crash course in SM engineering. With this in hand, you should now be able to set up the SM reactor without causing a massive explosion, and avert such explosions if someone else screws up! Just keep in mind that the SM is a somewhat popular target for antags on Urist, and that sometimes if the SM is exploding too often, it's because our antags are being *very* uncreative.
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Topic: Space Station 13: Urist McStation (Read 2116817 times)