English is my 3rd language. I only started SS13 less than 2 month ago. I'm a dreamer. And if you don't get what I'm talking about, my thinking process is a total mess.
There hasn't been any much mention of the good old Gas Turbine in this guide section, to my dismay. Even with google, it netted me with nothing productive (do point me out if you found one). Then again, I'm a bad googler. Anyways, hereby I presents you:
Patton Hunt's ultimate search for Gas Turbine knowledge!
This guide is being made in hope of popularize the opposite side of the main engineers, and to rally against the (doombringer) singularity. There's a safer option, namely the Gas Turbine.
I assume there have been many (or few) attempts on this Gas Turbine system while people tried the job, but found out that the amount of work needed to make it function wasn't as rewarding at the end. I've asked few people saying they got 50k, others roughly 100k, some somewhere in-between or even lower. I was one of them, in all categories. That's about worse to a single solar station which generates constant 90k, with abit of downtime every now and then. TullyBBurnalot made a remark:
That had me thinking, because I had been rushing the turbine without considering many other options available to me. And I wanted to make it a reliable power source.
So I did many fine tunings to the whole turbine system, inspired by other Atmos techs' attempts, their layout and theory, and this was the result:
What you are seeing here are extensive experiments throughout many shifts, and it wouldn't be possible if I haven't met these Atmos techs which had so different ideas from what I had (I'm sorry! I can't remember your names! Please drop by!). Combining all of those, the turbine got better shift by shift.
Before moving on, please read viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4941 so you get basic understanding of how Atmosia works, or should work.
Read that? Good, now scratch that entire pipe layout it suggested. Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing faulty with that build and there are many, many ways to re-modify Atmosia, which might as well be loads better than my current pipe layout. But for the current exercise, if you have been observant to the first picture, we need the freezer/heater machines for the Gas Turbine. Thus comes the question: What else is there to replace the freezers for the potential incoming gas pressures?
There's a space loop just outside the Atmosia, not used for anything, and is only connected to connector ports. Strip those off and connect them to the waste pipes, flip the volume pipes and you have already done a basic cooling project in 3-4 minutes, capable of dealing with small incidents. There are always options to improve it, of course, but this is usually enough for most shifts, plus (if you're alone, like I am, OTL), you want to spend your time elsewhere, namely gas turbine. If you want to, you could apply the same theory in the guide linked, using parallel and loop pipes to de-pressureize even further if needed. Or innovate better layout. I've seen one making use of Heat Exchanger modules, and I gotta say it was really impressive. Unfortunately, I forgot to screenshot it (maybe I'll try remake it at some point for a cooling guide section, although it might belong to the other guide focusing more on the Atmosia).
Start of the round:
Get insulated gloves. This is needed because we're going to need to rewire cable(s) later on.
Check if there are any active scientist doing the R&D. Try to communicate with them and have them tell you their progress. If it's empty, pray the following arrivals comes with the needed skeleton crew, or ask CE communicate with RD. He should get the job done if the spot is vacant.
Optional, depending on your commitment, order plasteel (and metal) from the cargo, remind them send it to Atmos (can't stress this enough, they always send it to engineering in any case). It is to expand and reinforce the turbine chamber for a second turbine system.
The following steps will guide you to a minimum good functioning Turbine.
(There are other ways to supply gas to the turbine chamber for better or worse. Perhaps I'll try make them some other time, or when I feel like it *gasp*. Otherwise send me your layouts.)
At Atmosia, we need to optimize some pipes to easier maintain the gas output for the Turbine. The usual gas mix setup inside Atmosia works, but I've often found out that some time after, the burn mix chamber runs out of plasma due to the Gas Mixer's maximum 4500 kPa, which doesn't seem limiting at first. Not to mention there's 9 tiles in the chamber, making gas split evenly up, so there's less amount of plasma on the vent tile. Make a direct pipeline from the Toxin chamber to the pipe leading out of the Burn Mix chamber, and that's one less problem.
Just this step is what probably differ from most attempts on the Gas turbine. What we are now attempting to do is to mix it at the turbine room instead, by using compressed gas with the help of the space loop we are going to build soon.
Now we have to lay out a whole new pipeline from the pure O2 pipe, through the space and into the turbine room. I used h/e pipes for O2 and plasma (and normal, if lazy mood).
The idea here is, with the h/e pipes, the gas becomes more dense and thus, more particles per tiles. That means the Gas Mixer in the turbine room is still capable of outputting the same amount the chambers are doing, and is not limited by the 4500 kPa max. If you go down along the walls of the turbine room, you will find an air injector, not particularly used for anything. Remove the pipes and place a bent scrubber pipe and universal adapter. We'll be using it as an outlet for CO2 (compare with the first pic).
Perhaps you might have noticed I've used volume pumps right before and after the space tiles. Why is that? On my first try, I didn't use volume pumps when building the O2 pipeline. Those pipes, including the original which was also connected to the air gas mixer, became bugged for some unknown reason. No gas were registered, no gas transfered and you were unable to unwrench them. The only way I could save the station (and myself) was to unwrench the O2 digital outlet and make a new line to a new gas mixer.
The only guess I have is that h/e pipes bugged it somehow. So I attached volume pumps before pipeline goes to space as counter-measure. Working fine so far. You're welcome to try without it and see if it's been fixed.
Oops, I went off course... So with most of the space stuff done (we'll have to return to it later, depending on your commitment), what leaves us left is the turbine room. Bring the pipe dispenser there. Remove ALL the pipes you see in that room, including gas pumps behind the airlock. Don't forget to move up the air vent. I was unfortunate to forget that once. The heaters which was on the supply pipes, allowed the air mix get in and bugged the whole pipeline yet again, even with gas mixer put on full plasma.
Anyways, in the turbine chamber, replace the vent with a passive vent and put up the pipes and following the picture (ignore the pipeline with h/e and the volume pump going back to the heater pipeline, was just testing recycling):
The idea here is to heat up the gas with help of the incoming heaters, expanding the compressed gas and pressure before it enters the turbine chamber and keeps it rolling. Also, don't forget the gas mixer settings, 4500 kPa, 33% Plasma (node 1) and 67% O2 (node 2). Those are just my preferences, so if there is a better mix out there, do tell me (and why that is). And don't turn the gas mixer on yet, save it for the very last step. Also, don't forget to install the scrubbers, and set it to eat CO2. Without it, CO2 will slowly decrease the efficiency of the energy output.
Now open up the volume pumps near space tiles in Atmosia, which has been offline so far. Let the gas build up.
With all that done, it's time to go to science desk and ask for upgraded components, do try to inform them beforehand. I don't settle for less than quadratic capacitor and super matter-bin. As for the micro-lasers, get the best they currently got, or wait til they upgraded it too together with the other components.
TL:DR, order minimum upgraded 6 quadratic capacitor, 10 super matter-bins and 10 high-power micro-lasers, or better.
But sometimes, they still haven't reached the needed tier for us to utilize. It's okay, we still have some work left to do, while waiting for the tier they eventually (hopefully) will attain (and promised you).
Get going to the Atmosia, dismantle the freezer/heater and move only the metals, cables, console screens and the circuits to the turbine room. Remember to use screwdriver on freezer circuits, it turns them to heater. Set up the basic machine frames and put in to components you brought from Atmosia, and later the components you ordered and brought from R&D. Install the Heaters, and upgrade the Turbine. Once done, you'll have to "update" the compressor and turbine again by opening their hatch and wrench them a full spin, so the computer can find it. If you don't, you'll get an error message from the computer that either says that compressor cannot be found, or turbine is inoperable. You'll also have to re-wire a(ny) cable between SMES and Turbine (otherwise no input/output will be registered), and that's where the insulated gloves finally comes in (and more if you wishes to expand).
Set temperature on all heaters to max, power on the volume pumps and turn on the gas mixer.
Congrats! That's the minimum amount of work to get a good performing turbine. Go and impress the CE and convince him to shut down singularity, or do you want to optimize with it further?
--- Not finished
---
MISC.
Why aren't we upgrading the compressor? Doesn't it improve the turbine system as well? Well... Not as far as I've seen. So far, I've found the turbine output generally lower than one with a basic compressor, although I could have been doing different pipe setups in every attempts. I'll return to it, when we've found the most optimal pipeline for the turbine system.
Turbine with unupgraded capacitor generates roughly 110k maximum.
Turbine with Advanced capacitor generates roughly 150~160k maximum (Had only 1 attempt with this component).
Super capacitor
Turbine with Quadratic capacitor can atleast reach 400k.
Don't know if there's a higher tier than Quadratic capacitor.
Ideal starting point would be 3 atmos tech, each doing their work in Atmosia, the space part, and turbine room. Hopefully it could be finished in 25 minutes (then there's the issue of scientists research pace and materials). But you can keep the turbine going while waiting for the components.
The truth is always harsh. Remember the very first picture? With current setup, at stabilized output/pressure, a single Gas Turbine generates almost 300k with quadratic capacitor. So how would we raise the gas output/pressure? What if we added another Gas Turbine?. It just shows there is always something else we could improve upon if we wish to reach that constant height, and I don't know what. Always open for improvements, so go ahead and suggest what else could be done. I might have been going on this with wrong mindset the entire time.
To do:
Making it easier to read, more like step by step sentences instead of paragraphs, I think. Maybe.
Clarifying sentences/paragraphs.
Re-formatting and cleaning.
More ideas/stuffs.
The guide will probably never be finalized (of course I'll update it with new findings), as there are huge loads of improvements and layouts, tailored for all different things. I've thought many times that it was the limit, but I kept stumbling upon knowledge unbeknownst to me before. I hope this guide will unite the Atmos Technicians together and will create the ultimate Gas Turbine the server has ever seen (and finally replace singularity mid shift, a noble goal).
