Make Atmos Tech less shit

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

I think the job Atmos Techs has basicly become redundant and if we continue the way we are going right now, we could just merge the Engineer and Atmos Tech.

 

I remember Atmos Tech as one of the most demanding, interessing and argubly one of the most difficult jobs on the station. Right now it's just flat out boring and a miserable excuse to spawn with easy fireaxe access. To go into further detail i will just quote my own post that got buried in another topic:

 

 

But i do like the removal of all the plasma windows. When i remember back like half a year or something, engineering and atmos actually had something to do on the station. Nowadays everything gets trivialized:

 

- Plasma windows everywhere, that take like half an hour to breach if you don't have the tools to deconstruct them.

- A atmospherics that comes by default with a freaking volumetric pump a the distribution loop? That's just flat out retarded considering that you could not unwrench pipes with pressure over 300 kPa. The obvious next step was to implement the easy way out and make some pipe cooling tool to unwrench the stupid high pressure pipes anyways.

 

Come on, that was part of the fun of playing atmos tech. Balancing the pressure needs vs. the need to maybe replace some pipes in the system and keep the pressure as low as possible. Having some emergency systems to almost instantly boost the pressure in distribution. (Even back then a clever atmos tech could add pipes at to a pipe system with over 300 kPa)

 

- Engineers beeing able to unlock Air Alarms and having their own pipe dispensers in the secure storage..

- Supermatter already prestocked with 4 nitrogen canisters, i mean really? This canisters should last for hours.

- Cryo prestocked with two full oxygen canisters, that's so much the cooler is barely able to cool down the oxygen anymore.

- Science having so much gas in storage that i have never seen a scientist come up to atmos and ask for any canisters, never ever did that happen!

- The change with the canisters, that you actually can't fail to use them anymore. Because a eject also closes the valve.

- Also fires seem to burn much shorter and have less of a spread than they used to be, i am talking specifically about oyxgen/fuel fires.

 

Don't get me wrong, i do understand the intentions behind all this changes and they work well, they acutally work to well. There is basicly zero environmental danger and everything is super convenient on the station. This obviously effects the jobs that are supposed to deal with this kind of situations like engineers and especially atmos techs.

 

I loved to play atmos tech but now it's just flat out boring. The most excitement you get nowadays are a few cows breaking like 3 or 4 walls, yay. If the time really comes, where there is acutally a giant bomb or something going on, then everyone just crys for the shuttle and just resets the round, because they are used to a perfectly functioning station. And let's be honest, big events like bombs or flooding plasma does rarely happen due to the strict rules on this one (i am not complaining about this rule and i wouldn't change it, i just want to point out that it adds to atmos tech beeing boring).

 

My normal atmos tech round looks something like this:

1. Setup the 5 filters and maybe add some more pumps to the waste loop. 3 minutes

2. Hook the waste loop up to the cooler and heater and make them normalize the temperature (Heater, coolers and the rest of the mixing loop won't be needed for anything else due to the fact that everyone has enough of any gas in storage by default..)

One minute

3. Find other engineers and atmos techs to annoy security and after that steal the booze-o-mat form the bar and set it up in engineering to make Cole happy. The smile on his face is reward enough.

4. My newest thing is setting up voice controled airlock lockdowns for atmospherics and engineering, since we now have a autolathe by default..

5. If the round is still going at that point you have to get really creative and built some defences for the one pair of insulated gloves left in tech storage. I am talking electrified windows, stun turrets, alarms triggered by invisible infrared lasers, the whole shebang.

 

 

Since this evolved more and more into giant rant about how useless my favorite job has become, i want to finish with some new changes that are really awesome and add to the game:

 

I really love the new game mechanic that you can drill through walls and lay pipes without removing the walls, this definitely adds to the game. Same goes for the visual map of air alarms, this gives you a much better understanding of the current status of the station and definalty helps pinpointing breaches and such.

 

[FarmWizard]

What's there to do? Totally remove atmos and rebuild it from scratch each round?

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

What's there to do? Totally remove atmos and rebuild it from scratch each round?

Well, i would prefer this solution to what we have right now.

 

But i don't think it would have to be so drastic, how about:

 

- Removing the Pipe-Freezer entirely or make it some item that you would have to get from science

- Reducing the default amount of gas canisters across the station. Like the Supermatter engine, cyro, toxin mixing and toxin

storage. Why even have a toxin storage when there is already a storage built in into toxin mixing?

- Give the Atmos Tech some area to test / play around

- Remove the Engineers access to fire alarms, that's the atmos tech job. Same way a atmos tech cannot enter Tech Storage or

access APCs or Insulated gloves. If a bomb explodes somewhere and breaches the station, the engineers should be the guys

getting the power back up seal the breach and repair damaged equipment, after that it should be the atmos tech jobs to restore

pipeing and restore normal atmosphere.

 

Something that just seems out of place and could add some meaning to modify atmospherics:

- Tie the random scurbber backpressure surge event into the actual amount of gas in the waste loop. I am not saying that it should

eject the actual gas inside (That would be terrible if you syphon a plasma fire somewhere) but take the pressure into account so

that there is no pressure surge when the waste loop is actually empty. And the other way around raise thre probability of a surge

happening when the pressure is high.

 

 

All boils down to: give the atmos tech some meaning. Just compare Engineers to Atmos Techs:

Engineer Access:

- SMES

- Engines

- Insulated Gloves and comming with that the ability to repair shit

- Tech Storage

- EngiVend (Batteries and ciruit boards)

- APCs

- Fire alarms

- Solars, which actually gives you a way to leave the station (a atmos tech is locked inside and literally has to remove windows to

get outside)

- Can reach Secure Storage

 

Atmos Tech access:

- Atmospherics, considering it's almost setup already and nobody ever needs any gas filled into canisters, this access looses a lot

of meaning.

- Can access Firealarms remotely

- has more atmos equipment like scubbers and portable pumps, but considering the amount of gas that is pumped into the station

distribution you barely need to use the portable pumps because the system easily handles a ton of breaches everywhere

- has a pipe dispenser (secure storage in engineering has them too now)

 

I would argue, when the CE goes into atmospherics at round start and sets the 5 filters to 4500kpa he could just lockdown atmospherics and the rest of the work for the round could be done by engineers and the oversized atmospherics systems. (huge amounts of gas in distribution, so you can acutally pump air into a breached room for quite some time without any long lasting effects) Also the amount of gas inside the atmospheric gas tanks seems to be basicly infinite for the usual rounds on this server.

 

[Bone White]

 

Atmospherics, just like the majority of stations ingame, is designed to function without any crew there whatsoever. We don't want to have a shift fall apart just because "no one picked atmos tech again".

 

Since the changes I made to pipe laying including the pipe freezer, I see more people playing atmos, to experiment with pipe layouts, which is not limited to the atmos room itself but can include the supermatter engine also, providing they (90% of the time approved) get additional access from the HoP with the CE's permission.

 

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

Atmospherics, just like the majority of stations ingame, is designed to function without any crew there whatsoever. We don't want to have a shift fall apart just because "no one picked atmos tech again".

Well, but the atmos techs job evolves around dealing with the atmospheric systems, don't you see the issue here? It's not like the chef spawns with a kitchen full of cooked food nor are the science levels unlocked by default...

 

Well and it's obvious why situations like "nobody picked atmos tech" happen, because it has become a boring and redundant job.

 

If it's the desire to run a failsave atmospherics system all the time, then i don't see the point of having dedicated atmos technicians, just merge them with engineering and make it a sub-job of the Engineer, just like Engine Technician. So you can do your 2 minutes of atmos for the round and then go to beeing an engineer.

 

Since the changes I made to pipe laying including the pipe freezer, I see more people playing atmos, to experiment with pipe layouts, which is not limited to the atmos room itself but can include the supermatter engine also, providing they (90% of the time approved) get additional access from the HoP with the CE's permission.

 

Well yes, you can experiment with atmos systems, but that's it. There is no reason to improve a atmos systems that's already oversized, your work does not provied any benefits to the station. The supermatter engine is running perfectly fine without additional improvements.

 

I don't know what to say about to pipe freezer, i just dislike it because it's just seems so overpowered. For me it's on the same level as if you would add a handcuff cannon to every security locker that shoots the cuffs directly on the targets hands. At least make me have to cool down some gas to use as "fuel" for the pipe freezer or something.

 

[FarmWizard]

 

Any half decent atmospheric technition would know why the pipe freezer is in and wouldn't want it removed.... You've never tried anything with excessive a,punt of back pressure have you?

 

Seriously, Atmos tech is like an engineer only its LOOOOOOADS harder to fuck up, and LOOOOOOOADS harder to master. Also I've never failed to have fun as an atmos tech.

 

[Fj45]

 

Problem is balancing things like that are just so difficult. Reduce the time cyro oxy lasts and if there is nobody in atmos, medbay is screwed. Science is less vital to the station as a whole but even then there are still issues. Atmos also lacks proper space and equipment to optimse everything so atmos doesn't clog during fires AND be able to mess around with gas mixes. That is something I plan on fixing but that is a very, very, very long term project.

 

Now, there is a large amount here and its pretty early so I won't say much.

 

 

Engies need alarm access, it is not a case of "they terk ur jerbs!" Most engineers do not have much of an idea about working the alarms anyway.

 

DO NOT REMOVE THE PIPE FREEZER. That thing is so godamn useful, not being able to tear up pipes was always a stupid "feature" but useful evil because it stopped yer average greytide from fucking with the pipes.

 

If you find atmos boring and useless, you are one of these:

In the wrong job.

Unimaginative.

Someone that needs to expand their atmos knowledge.

 

There is a huge number of things you can do to massively improve how well it handles fires or setup a system to really quickly fill canisters or so many of the other atmos projects.

 

A good atmos tech is faar more powerful then anyway engineer! Gloves are a single weld or request away, they have the fireaxe, plus a hardsuit that is far superior. And many other things.

 

[TheDemonic]

I think 1 thing that would make atmos more interesting is by making them better at fighting fires other than just sucking out ALL the air everytime.

[Bone White]

That's the best way to put out a fire, especially when you have a massive reserve of air.

[Fj45]

And it shouldn't really be as that is no godamn fun. Atmos needs some awesome fire fighting tools.

[FarmWizard]

It's be better if you could have a fireproof inflatable airlock and fireproof inflatables. Along with fire hardsuits and some heavy duty fire extinguishers. Think botany's backpack water tanks but with a firehose nozzle.

[Fj45]

 

Already got the hardsuits, rest rounds good. TG seems to have something like that:

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/5645

 

[FarmWizard]

Perhaps Atmos techs should also have access to its own toxins style room for experimenting?

[Fj45]

 

That is what I have been planning with my atmos overhaul. Problem is, the poorly thought out "upgrade" to viro took up a huge amount of vital space. Even before I am able to do anything with atmos I will need to redo viro.

 

The overhaul will be a long way off/.

 

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

Since i cannot convince anyone to give atmos some real impact on what happens on the station, i guess some more room to built stuff never hurts

 

That is what I have been planning with my atmos overhaul. Problem is, the poorly thought out "upgrade" to viro took up a huge amount of vital space. Even before I am able to do anything with atmos I will need to redo viro.

 

The overhaul will be a long way off/.

How about moveing the Nitrogen, Oxygen and mixed air tanks to the right, below the Carbon Dioxide. Then you could extend atmospherics downwards. The only thing in the way would be the small engineering escape pod. This could be moved to face to the south.

 

What i also would change is the akward waste pipeing below the tiles near the canisters at the atmospheric entrance, which tends to interfere with your own modifications above the tiles for the atmos setup itself.

 

Also i think the incinerator rooms "airlock system" seems to be non functional. You can hit the open button several times it just doesn't seem to respond at all.

 

[Fj45]

Mate, that is EXACTLY what I have been planning!

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

A thing that annoyed me for a long time is the Atmos Lockdown.

 

I don't understand why there is a blast door between the small atmos control room and atmos itself. Every time you have to move from the control room to atmos you have to lift the lockdown, which undermines going into lockdown at all.

 

Also it makes absolutly no sense that the atmos control room has only a "half" lockdown. The windows leading into engineering do not have any blast doors while all the airlocks have one. I think it would make much more sense to remove the blast door between atmos control and atmos and add blast doors at the windows leading to engineering.

 

Additionally i would like have a atmos alert computer visible while working inside atmospherics. Many times you get yourself busy in atmospherics and tend to ignore what's going on on the station. Either replace the walls between atmos control and atmos with windows, or what would be really neat are like one or two wall mounted atmos alert computers, where you could see the atmos alarm blinking red like on the normal computer and go next to it to check where the alarm went off. I you want to go really fancy you could add a alarm signal or light flash when the status goes from green to red. Obviously the same should be done for the engineering alert, if someone actually codes that.

 

[Fj45]

 

Either the lights or maybe a PDA system. (Just an alert, no information)

 

Do agree about changing the blast doors, although it is sometimes useful with two techs, one mans the control room and keeps an eye on engineering while the other works.

 

[MarkvA]

 

A thing that annoyed me for a long time is the Atmos Lockdown.

 

I don't understand why there is a blast door between the small atmos control room and atmos itself. Every time you have to move from the control room to atmos you have to lift the lockdown, which undermines going into lockdown at all.

 

Also it makes absolutly no sense that the atmos control room has only a "half" lockdown. The windows leading into engineering do not have any blast doors while all the airlocks have one. I think it would make much more sense to remove the blast door between atmos control and atmos and add blast doors at the windows leading to engineering.

 

Additionally i would like have a atmos alert computer visible while working inside atmospherics. Many times you get yourself busy in atmospherics and tend to ignore what's going on on the station. Either replace the walls between atmos control and atmos with windows, or what would be really neat are like one or two wall mounted atmos alert computers, where you could see the atmos alarm blinking red like on the normal computer and go next to it to check where the alarm went off. I you want to go really fancy you could add a alarm signal or light flash when the status goes from green to red. Obviously the same should be done for the engineering alert, if someone actually codes that.

I've added an atmos alert computer to the south-eastern part of atmospherics, and I've added blast doors to the windows between engineering and atmospherics, and removed the one between atmospherics and the control room. As a trade off, I've removed the blast door leading into maintenance so that there is still an entry point which doesn't require you to start welding down walls, similarly to how the lockdown in security and engineering currently works.

 

[Fj45]

Eh, I really don't know about that, atmos is supposed to be THAT secure, far too easy to just use two EMags and your in. I would not mind if you just removed the blast doors on the windows leading into engineering.

[MarkvA]

 

Eh, I really don't know about that, atmos is supposed to be THAT secure, far too easy to just use two EMags and your in. I would not mind if you just removed the blast doors on the windows leading into engineering.

Mhm, fair point. Done.

 

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

Thanks for the changes!

 

Is there something to be done with the Airlocks at the incinerator room? They don't seem to respond to control panels.

 

Also a atmos tech doesn't seem to have any way to leave the station. The airlocks at escape and and arrivals are all locked and since atmos tech can't use the solar array airlocks, i usually run into the problem of how to get outside of the station to repair stuff from the outside. Right now i use the nearest windows for a makeshift airlock. I think the best solution is to add atmos access to the solar arrays, since they are well spaced out across the station.

 

What's also a problem are this heat transfer pipes outside of atmospherics in space, they cool extremly slow. There either needs to be a complete shitload of pipes or the heat transfer rate should be changed.

 

Also, very much this:

Already got the hardsuits, rest rounds good. TG seems to have something like that:

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/5645

God, i hope my vox can wear this. That sounds awesome!

 

[MarkvA]

 

Thanks for the changes!

 

Is there something to be done with the Airlocks at the incinerator room? They don't seem to respond to control panels.

 

Also a atmos tech doesn't seem to have any way to leave the station. The airlocks at escape and and arrivals are all locked and since atmos tech can't use the solar array airlocks, i usually run into the problem of how to get outside of the station to repair stuff from the outside. Right now i use the nearest windows for a makeshift airlock. I think the best solution is to add atmos access to the solar arrays, since they are well spaced out across the station.

 

What's also a problem are this heat transfer pipes outside of atmospherics in space, they cool extremly slow. There either needs to be a complete shitload of pipes or the heat transfer rate should be changed.

 

Also, very much this:

Already got the hardsuits, rest rounds good. TG seems to have something like that:

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/5645

God, i hope my vox can wear this. That sounds awesome!

Incinerator doors will be fixed when the pull request is approved, and I've added external airlock access to the atmos tech access as it doesn't really make sense for them not to have it.

 

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

Incinerator doors will be fixed when the pull request is approved, and I've added external airlock access to the atmos tech access as it doesn't really make sense for them not to have it.

 

Great!

 

 

Since we are at it, i am trying to think about other things that could be added to atmospherics.

 

What comes to mind are:

- Optical Meson Scanner in Atmos lockers

- pumps / valves that are activated by certain temperatures, like you could set to only let air pass from source to destination if source has a certain temperature or only let gas pass if destination is above x °C. Would be great to control heat of incomming waste air.

- I am not sure where i have seen it (most likely another server) but there was a engineering camera network, that only showed the cameras in areas with firealarms, poweralarms or atmosalerts. That was really neat and super useful so you could take a look at the area fist before you leave engineering to fix a simple breach just to arrive and find busted pipes everywhere.

 

Edit: I might just go atmos crazy but i am pretty sure that last time i used the pipe painter to paint a bunch of new pipes in atmos i found some random pipes that switched color without me hitting them (at least i think i didn't accidentally hit them). I did not have enough time to test this propperly.

 

[MarkvA]

 

Incinerator doors will be fixed when the pull request is approved, and I've added external airlock access to the atmos tech access as it doesn't really make sense for them not to have it.

 

Great!

 

 

Since we are at it, i am trying to think about other things that could be added to atmospherics.

 

What comes to mind are:

- Optical Meson Scanner in Atmos lockers

- pumps / valves that are activated by certain temperatures, like you could set to only let air pass from source to destination if source has a certain temperature or only let gas pass if destination is above x °C. Would be great to control heat of incomming waste air.

- I am not sure where i have seen it (most likely another server) but there was a engineering camera network, that only showed the cameras in areas with firealarms, poweralarms or atmosalerts. That was really neat and super useful so you could take a look at the area fist before you leave engineering to fix a simple breach just to arrive and find busted pipes everywhere.

Unfortunately enough my knowledge of atmos is very limited, so I'm not going to touch any of the pipes. I'll leave that to an expert!

 

As for your other two suggestions, I've added meson goggles to the lockers, and I've added the monitoring computers to engineering and atmos. Just oughta wait for the pull request to be approved.