Buck's Guide to not Being an Atmos Scrub

[Fj45]

 

THIS IS REALLY OUTDATED AND INCOMPLETE, PLEASE REFER TO THIS GUIDE

 

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4941

 

 

 

 

 

This guide (once completed) will cover most of the basics of atmospherics: gear, setting up atmos, firefighting, defending atmos, repairing breaches, crowd control and correct use of the fireaxe. I won't cover anything more advanced as most of that is up to personal preference.

 

Setting up atmos

 

This, right here is pretty your entire job. (Not your most important job, that's keep the fireaxe safe and use it properly) Now, most techs are sadly idiots that have no idea how to even setup the filters, (training cuts) so don't be surprised if you get yelled at or half your work gets changed. Just talk to the CE. (Or show em correct use of the fireaxe.)

 

 

Atmos is much, much simpler then it looks. Most of it can simply be ignored.

Dirty air comes in the red waste loop. That enters the green filtering loop where each type of gas is sorted into a tank. N2 and O2 are then pumped into the air tank by the first stage of the cyan distro loop. Then the air tank is pumped into the second stage of the blue distro loop where it is sent out around the station.

Simple enough?

 

Now, to setup atmos right you have to change a few things so gas is pumped round and filtered quickly. The faster dirty air from a plasma fire gets to atmos and the faster clean air refills a breached room the better.

 

First, go round and change each filter to 4500. Every single one. Doing that will get the gas going into each tank much faster. Otherwise the waste loop would never clear.

 

Once you have finished with the filters you need to fix a major atmos problem: hot gas (such as from plasma fires) expands and that clogs the loop. How you fix that is simple: cool it down. And the four coolers will do just that. Go cooler by cooler and turn them. Leave them at the temp they are already set at. Once every cooler is on, you then need to send waste gas TO the coolers.

 

First, find the two pumps in the picture. Replace those with volume pumps. Make sure they are going the right way. (The red line points to where the gas will go)

 

Then, follow the above picture. Turn the digital valve to point towards the coolers. Turn both volume pumps you replaced on. Find the manual valve that leads to the coolers and turn it on. Check everything. Then check it again.

If you setup it right the coolers should be cooling any gas that comes through the waste loop.

See that multitool on the table? And the volume pump on the cyan pipe above it? That starts as a pump. Replace that with a volume pump as seen in the picture.

 

Now, a major problem with the default atmos setup is that it is rather easy to sabotage. But it is also rather easy to fix. See the slightly discolored yellow pipes in the above picture? Those normally have two valves connecting up three tanks holding some very dangerous gases. Just simply remove the T-junction and the valves, replace the missing pipes and boom, atmos is now damn hard to screw up.

 

 

There, atmos is setup. While it isn't the best possible setup it is the best you can do without changing a huge amount of the station. (To my knowledge, if you have any ways I can improve this please comment)

 

 

 

Now, this guide is still rather unfinished and I will add many more sections. If you have any suggestions please let me know.

 

Edited June 11, 2015 by Guest

[Bone White]

 

I like to extend one of the 6 canister sockets with a volume pump emptying the canister attached, and another to fill, so that I can pump out O2 from a canister into the freezer loop (grey) chill it to minimum, then pump it back into the now empty O2 canister. No leftover chilled O2 in the loop, no warm O2 left in the canister, and only requires two pieces moved, and two new pumps. This is great on long shifts, or where someone keeps sabotaging the chilled O2 supply in medical. It's not like atmos has much else to do at the start of the shift. I'll throw up a screenshot next time I play atmos.

 

Also, I'd highlight the difference between an unconnected pipe above a floor tile, and a connected pipe next to a pipe under a floor tile. The difference is subtle and hard to spot if you don't know what you're looking for. Atmos is rather large to cover with a T-Ray scanner effectively, so learning to read the pipes is a great idea.

 

On that note, when I teach people atmos, I like to explain how to read the pipes, rather than just setting it up.

 

90% of atmos is actually air alarms, and not pipe work, so I'm surprised you haven't covered this e.g. how to douse a fire without siphoning air, how to detect sabotage, what the colours of the vents/scrubbers mean etc.

 

[Fj45]

 

Yes, I will make sure to talk about air alarms.

Not quite sure what you mean about "reading the pipes" though.

 

[Bone White]

 

Being able to see what's happening to all the gases in atmospherics, and how to fix sabotage, rather than just setting it up at the start of the shift.

 

Additionally, explaining about not being able to remove pipes which have a certain internal pressure, and how to counteract this, would be another addition.

 

I taught myself atmospherics, rather than reading guides or being given tuition, so my understand of it may have some holes, or go further than most people's knowledge.

 

[Fj45]

 

Alright, I'll do that.

Pretty much the same way I learned, there seems to be a real lack of proper guides for some reason.

 

[Bone White]

 

As promised, the pumps to allow you to fully drain and fill canisters.

 

 

Another suggestion, explaining how pressures equalise between open valves, but are kept separate when closed off would be useful for people wishing to learn beyond the basics. This could also be explained as the limitations of meters in showing total pressure on both sides of an open valve.

 

[Smudgyglasses]

Never knew to use the freezers like that. Nice. 8-)

[Fatbackwards]

 

How about adding some info to the guide about modifying or upgrading vents and piping on station? Say, if you want to install a new vent, scrubber, and air alarm in a room... how would you go about doing that?

 

Same with modifying a room, say the room was cut in half... like the construction assembly line; and the scrubber and vent combo are blocked by a wall. How would you transfer piping to make a new vent in the other room, and install a new scrubber in the room with a vent? And how would you hook them onto an already established air alarm?

 

[Fj45]

Thats a bit more advanced then what I am aiming this guide for but I might add it anyway.

[Fj45]

 

Sorry for thr lack of updates, been rather with with teh dorfs.

 

If anyone wants to contribute, go ahead.

 

[Bone White]

Don't worry, I'll expand on this greatly when I'm finished with the medical wiki pages, about air controls, re-piping atmos, reading the pipes and all sorts of wonderful things.

[Fj45]

Thanks, sounds great.

[Fj45]

Alright, I'll update this soon. Gearing up is coming next.

[Spaceship2212]

im scared of all the pipes

[Fj45]

 

Don't be. Only way to spread dangerous gases. is either using canisters (and they only effect a limited area) or knowing exactly how. You changing a pipe or two will not kill people.

 

First, have a read of the TG guide to atmos. It shows how the loop works. Understand that and everything else becomes easy.

 

Right, what questions do you have?

 

[Spaceship2212]

im scared of all the pipes [x2]

[DZD]

 

Don't be scared of the pipes, they will not pump dangerous gases everywhere. It is actually really difficult to flood the station with harmful gases unless you're very specifically trying to or you drag a canister somewhere and open it. By default, there is only one pump that will dump gas from the yellow loop into the distribution (blue) loop, and it is in the enclosed area in atmos, and you should never really accidentally trigger it.

 

Edit: Image with the pump highlighted.

[HereticChurch]

That image alone reduced my fear of Atmos by about 90%.

[Fj45]

 

Atmos is not something where a single thing will cause everything to go wrong. It is controlled and a very safe system. Remove the three lines of pipes connecting up the non-airmix tanks and the only way to sabotage it is adding many more pipes. Having the loop pressurised also makes it very difficult to do ANYTHING. Even if someone does manage to pump gas into the distro loop, the atmos alarms will greatly limit the damage it can do.

 

Do not fear the idiot in atmos. Fear the highly competent atmos tech. They know how to gas everyone so fast they couldn't even open a fire door before falling dead.

 

[Fj45]

So, what questions do people have?

[DZD]

 

Methods of combating atmos problems without using air alarms may be a good idea to cover, given that air alarms are currently broken. Currently, the only way to fight plasma fires consists of scrubbers and supercooled N2.

 

From my experience, it does seem that the best way to learn to "read" the pipes and determine how gas flows is to actually try atmos in-game. Learning to do so makes it much easier to work with the atmos system, and be able to fix it should it be sabotaged.

 

Edited July 17, 2014 by Guest

[Fj45]

 

Well, the simplest way to extinguish a fire is to just open the room to space. Also stops atmos from getting clogged.

 

Agree, no guide can teach that.

 

[Spaceship2212]

im scared of all the pipes [x3]

[Saaesculus]

 

Here's an interesting thing to note if you are an atmos tech, are atmos itself, are an atmos pipe, or are interested in atmos in general:

 

The "Air to external" pump that the guide says to replace with a volume pump? From what I can see, looking at the map, they only pump air to the two portable air pumps in the hallways, and two empty canister ports in the room with the fireaxe, which seems like a waste of air to me, unless you plan on using the pumps and not canisters or other methods to repressurize rooms. The "External to filter", right next to the air to external? It's also just pumping air from the two portable air scrubbers in the hallways to the filter loop. Only the "Waste in" and "Air to Distro" pumps seem to interact with the actual station scrubber and vent network. Even the atmos room air scrubbers aren't directly linked to the atmos filter loop, but the "waste in".

 

[Fj45]

 

Isn't the cyan loop connected to all the vents in engineering? Thats why I change that out.

 

I often add a few extra scrubbers in atmos or engineering if I have time, works very well and you can just add them to the waste lines easily enough.

 

Not quite sure what your point is, are you saying that those distro/waste lines never have much use?