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[Graknorke]

I vote that vampire round for round of the month.

[Glloyd]

I vote that vampire round for round of the month.

Do I want to know what happened?

[Octobomb]

I vote that vampire round for round of the month.

Do I want to know what happened?

If you don't, you're lying.
Can it beat the round earlier today, though, which I have two oocq from. See above, Hans and rabid do science, zas is set to hellish, genes are rewritten by admin, fire melts all of toxins, Hans sets off a huge bomb, rabid chases me around with explosions and is pronounced griff by Jacob while I attempt to dock his pay. Hans then deletes all the walls. This is over the last 15 minutes. SCIENCE MY DEAR BOY!

[Kriellya]

-snip-

Eject at 10%? HAH! No, the only time I would eject at 10% is if the next thing it says is 20%. *Then* I have a problem.

I know. People just don't understand I'm actually competent. Except when I flood engineering with plasma. Or accidentally detonate the SM. Or shock myself.

Good guide. Does that really get you 1MW? 12 shots with all the collectors usually gets me ~700KW.
I also hate the bypasses. Because I am a highly safety conscious engineer, and isolation is a good thing!
Have you been on BS12 lately? They're working on a new thing: isolation breakers. When they're done, they'll let their engineers disconnect the grid into several separate sections, each with its own SMES. I'm really looking forward to it. It will give me so many ridiculous things to do when it comes to optimizing the grid

The SMES also have another significant benefit: Significant life extension of critical equipment during power loss. Which is probably only relevant on the long rounds I enjoy so much

Spoiler: A Safety Bulletin from CE Kriellya (click to show/hide)

I get a little obsessive over good engineering on my shift. Part of why my 'goodbye' to any engineer is 'Stay safe'

So here's a list of safety violations that will make CE Kriellya twitch

• Wiring the solars into the grid: Do you *want* to blow up the solars? Or expose their APC to a power sink? INSANITY!
• Wiring the engine equipment into the engine output: Those freezers are high voltage, but everything has a limit! And what if you lose engine power? That's a quick way to burial in space!
• Wiring Atmos into the grid: We need that to breathe. Why are you bypassing it's backup power SMES and exposing it to shorts? Because you don't want to have to *watch* it? ARE YOU AN ENGINEER OR A SCIENTIST?!?
• Trying to get a MW out of the engine: WHHYYYY? Why are you putting the station at extreme risk for something we don't need? This station takes 300KW to run, on a bad day. Why are you trying to generate 3 times as much power?
• High voltage grid: Are you trying to get someone killed? Are you trying to get *me* killed? I have to touch those wires! I'd rather they not be willing to kill me at the slightest provocation!

And now you know how to make me twitch. Have fun!

You'd hate working with me. I think I violate most of these .
1. The SMES are difficult to figure out appropriate values for - if you know any, praytell.
2. The high inputs needed to sustain the high outputs from the SMES to avoid bottlenecking, which takes power away from the rest of the grid. If the engine isn't able to power the freezers - which will be powered first - then you have a good half hour before it explodes. Plus, it allows for easier expansion for up to 5 freezers.
3. Same as above. Due to air SCIENCE and a project to cool the station (don't ask), we discovered that the pipes have hours of air in them. I don't like dealing with the bottleneck.
4. Thanks to Baymachines, at full consumption the station eats almost 400k. I have two smes at 150k (maxed) and 200k (~150k used). At 1MW, which is ac
5. Okay, that's dumb. Dear Honkmother, unless you have a powersink (they top out at 1.4MW), don't wire everything into the grid.


That said,sometimes I wish R&D would get their acts together. When engineering starts building, they better be prepared to pump out SMES and freezer parts and other machine components like no tomorrow. I want to build my power bank of 20 SMES dammit!

The engine room and station grid SMES are very easy to setup. The engine's equipment requires ~125KW at full bore (pumps to full, 3 freezers to full), so I usually give it an in/out of 150KW. Each freezers adds about 30KW, so bump it up about 30KW per freezer. If I'm not concered with charging the grid SMES, I'll usually max out the input on the engine, just so it tops off faster.
The grid SMES is also pretty simple. I find the station requires ~300KW to charge, and ~200KW to run. I'll usually start by setting everything to 50KW/50KW, then keep an eye on the output of the engine while I pump up the input on one of the SMES units (usually the bottom one) until I'm using most of the power coming out of the engine, then I'll pump the output until I've got about 150KW floating. At that point, I'll run over and configure the Atmos SMES to do 100KW in/80KW out, which is enough to keep the basic setup going. If I start doing something in Atmos, I'll usually increase it to 150KW in/125KW out, especially if I'm using the freezers.


The solars are... difficult to use the SMES with, I agree. I treat them as 'backup' power and generally just configure them to charge unless something goes wrong with the engine. 80 KW in, 0 out usually charges them in a couple rotations. Future experimentation can provide a more definite value, but I find that they on average produce ~40 KW during a full rotation. Some produce less than others, due to differing obstructions. If I want them to have *some* output, I'll usually set them to 25 KW, to ensure that their SMES stays charged.
If I actually *need* them (the engine is gone, or I want to experiment), I'll bite the bullet and wire them in. Without the theoretical 5th solar panel, they just don't produce enough to realistically power the station otherwise.

With regard to Atmos, yeah, it can basically run the pumps forever under normal circumstances. What it *doesn't* have is hours of air to re-pressurize with. It's basically impossible to repressurize anything if Atmos is out of power, including the engine room you might have to re-pressurize to bring it back online safely. Though usually you'd want to solve the power problem before you solved an Atmos problem anyway

Hmm... I suddenly had an interesting optimization idea. I'll have to test that later. Who wants to play with phoron?

I just tell the solars to send out 100-200K each, just enough power to get the station to survive...

That is way too high, at least on this server. It will just drain the SMES and shut off. The solars at max exposure generate 90KW, unless upgraded somehow. Or unless something has changed recently.

Yeah, I figured that, but the question was more about what the atmospheric thresholds were.  I'm assuming that the reason the supermatter goes critical is that the heat increases the air pressure enough that it overwhelms the Plasma filtering system. So if I only have to put one Nitrogen canister in instead of the customary two, then it figures that I could get the supermatter producing more energy before needing to install the extra gas coolers. 

The temperature is the main concern. The new atmos pumps are *really* good at pumping out the toxins, and there's actually a cooling loop on the waste to lower it's pressure. I've never seen the SM go boom just due to pressure, though I would be interested in trying

[Hanslanda]

I vote that vampire round for round of the month.

Do I want to know what happened?

If you don't, you're lying.
Can it beat the round earlier today, though, which I have two oocq from. See above, Hans and rabid do science, zas is set to hellish, genes are rewritten by admin, fire melts all of toxins, Hans sets off a huge bomb, rabid chases me around with explosions and is pronounced griff by Jacob while I attempt to dock his pay. Hans then deletes all the walls. This is over the last 15 minutes. SCIENCE MY DEAR BOY!

I did not delete all the walls. I pantomimed deleting all the walls.

It's really hard to delete the walls. It is also really hard to teleport all the walls to a different Z-Level for Maximum !!FUN!!

Much to my regret.

[Aedel]

Right click, variables, delete all of type, yes.

All walls deleted.

[Hanslanda]

Ssssssh.

[Glloyd]

Without the theoretical 5th solar panel, they just don't produce enough to realistically power the station otherwise.

It'll be in the next update. It'll start wired too. You'll still need to moniter the SMES on it though.

[Octobomb]

-snip-

I'm always game for science. Especially science on fire. You and I seem to have very different (although equally valid) styles of engineering. I go for simplicity and ease of use, and fix problems as I go. You seem to aim to prevent all of the issues before they occur.

[Kriellya]

Without the theoretical 5th solar panel, they just don't produce enough to realistically power the station otherwise.

It'll be in the next update. It'll start wired too. You'll still need to moniter the SMES on it though.

Yay! Where is it going, off the south end of the station near the new shuttle?

-snip-

I'm always game for science. Especially science on fire. You and I seem to have very different (although equally valid) styles of engineering. I go for simplicity and ease of use, and fix problems as I go. You seem to aim to prevent all of the issues before they occur.

Pretty much
I mean, I wouldn't word it quite that way. I try and do things in a... sensible manner. It's not like my objective is to prevent antags from doing anything to my engine or grid. Though it does tend to include redundancies

[Glloyd]

Without the theoretical 5th solar panel, they just don't produce enough to realistically power the station otherwise.

It'll be in the next update. It'll start wired too. You'll still need to moniter the SMES on it though.

Yay! Where is it going, off the south end of the station near the new shuttle?

Off the north, right beside the secret bar.

[KingofstarrySkies]

So. It's Halloween. Now, I know you're planning a special round tomorrow, but...Surely, we gotta do something !!FUN!! for the occasion!

inb4 nuke ops, "Happy Halloween, you sons-a-bitches." *BLAMMICUS*

[Cheedows]

So. It's Halloween. Now, I know you're planning a special round tomorrow, but...Surely, we gotta do something !!FUN!! for the occasion!

inb4 nuke ops, "Happy Halloween, you sons-a-bitches." *BLAMMICUS*

*cough cough* WELDEER ROUUUND

[Aedel]

If my computer is fixed by tomorrow I will run something I need player feedback on for a later event. Its 2spooky enough for Halloween.

[Liction]

I figured out why the supermatter engine never seems to filter out the phoron in the chamber. That blue square used to be a four way pipe which is not ideal because that makes half of the gas output go right back into the engine. I am not sure if this is intentional or not but I feel that it shouldn't be. The pipe in that square should be changed to be two perpendicular pipes, as shown by the yellow and green arrows, rather then the four way pipe that is there currently.

I was also experimenting with hooking up the atmos system to the engine. The orange line is the distro air which goes into a gas filter. The red line is where the nitrogen is filtered out and is ran through a pressure regular valve and into the engine input pipe, ensuring the engine is fed at a constant rate. The purple arrow is another regulator valve that for overflow in case there is too much pressure or you need to depressurize the pipes to do some modifications. I got this idea from remembering the fact that the station air mix is 30% oxygen and 70% nitrogen and would be very trivial to filter out the nitrogen to feed into he engine. It could even be an emergency cooling system in case the core is about to go critical and is trivial to set up if you properly pressurize the air distro.