Give full SM crystals

[GelatinousGlob]

 

I made a SM engine last night and found the simple shard to be wimpy. I had four emitters blasting it and it never broke 0C when running full capacity and we were running a TEG off it at the same time. What happened to the old full SM crystal taht came in that large black lead box from cargo?

 

Also, we really need a wide open engineering area to build stuff like this more often. The Sm containment area is composed of two separate zones in rings which makes bringing power in for pipes and vents and shit really difficult and annoying. I don't know why the whole thing isn't just a powered room. Even then with all the SM and tesla shit it is super cluttered.

 

I know engineering got new maintenance areas for some stuff but you can't build a SM without reinforced walls and a large pipe setup for filter and cooling gas along with the chamber itself.

 

[Citinited]

 

You can build a supermatter engine in a relatively small area. The problem is it needs to be constructed in an area near to space for a mass driver.

 

+1 to the large crystal. It'd be fun to be able to set up a crystal as a viable power source. Would also be nice for a stack of plasma glass to be added to engineering.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

You weren't here when we had the SM.

 

As someone who has blown up the SM, please no.

 

It takes out like 1/6th of the station explosion wise.

 

[GelatinousGlob]

And how much does a loose singularity eat? Its not like SM explode randomly and if there is an area suited for it people will know where to run away from.

[Shadeykins]

 

The SM is much easier to blow up by a significant margin than releasing the engine.

 

It requires thorough, active maintenance and a solid know-how from an atmos tech, which is a rare thing.

 

The smaller shards are just fine, really. The SM isn't even intended as an engine replacement anymore.

 

[Citinited]

 

You weren't here when we had the SM.

 

As someone who has blown up the SM, please no.

 

It takes out like 1/6th of the station explosion wise.

 

I was here when we had the supermatter. The explosion was roughly the same as a maxcap tank transfer valve bomb, with the addition of causing mass hallucinations among the crew - nowhere near as round-ending as a singularity release.

 

Supermatter sabotage is kind of a moot point when you have to order it - you can bet that the engineers bothered enough to order a supermatter crystal and also invest the ~hour it takes to construct an engine room will know how it works and also look after it.

 

It also announces when it's about to explode through chat - giving people time to get off-station or fix it.

 

[Jakers457]

SM is my favorite engine, so having the ability to build one seems like a good thing to me.

[Spacemanspark]

 

You weren't here when we had the SM.

 

As someone who has blown up the SM, please no.

 

It takes out like 1/6th of the station explosion wise.

That's what I liked about the SM.

It's a very potentially deadly engine. If you don't set it up correctly, you go boom.

I also like how complex it is to set up.

 

[Dinarzad]

 

You weren't here when we had the SM.

 

As someone who has blown up the SM, please no.

 

It takes out like 1/6th of the station explosion wise.

That's what I liked about the SM.

It's a very potentially deadly engine. If you don't set it up correctly, you go boom.

I also like how complex it is to set up.

 

That's supposed to be the point, imo.

 

Tesla/Solars for "Easy mode" (Set and Forget.)

Singularity for "Medium" difficulty (You set it up easy but you have to go peek in every 30 minutes or so, to make sure everything is fine an plasma tanks are good. There's maintenance to be done, though not much.)

And Supermatter for those that want a 'Harder' engine, takes a lot of maintenance and know how to really work.

 

Ideally you also get more power for doing "Harder" engines that take more work, but the problem is right now, so long as you make enough power to fuel the station.... I mean the excess is just wasted. You can only fill up so many SMES units as back up power before it all just is effectively wasted electricity, so the extra work and risk of a supermatter isn't worth it compared to just throwing up Singulo or Tesla an shit.

 

Back on topic: I wouldn't mind engies that want to be able to build an SM engine being able to do so, at least it gives themselves a 'personal challenge' to do if nothign else. Plus gotta learn somehow, so.

 

If it blows up, you can pretty much just go turn on the solars an be mostly okay. (Explosion is fuckin huge so it probably will take out the one by mechanic office tho.)

 

[Vivalas]

 

+1 to this. As someone who has played engineering extensively on Bay and who knows the ins and outs of the SM where that is the primary power source, I fully support this. (Yes, I know there is a slight difference between SM on different codebases). And no, the explosion is nowhere near as disruptive as a loose singulo. Shuttle is usually only called upon SM delamination in my experience due to the impending power failure unless engineering sets up solars, but most of the engineers are dead afterwards anyways.

 

I also like the complexity and how fun it is to actually try to control it / cool it down / push it to the limit.

 

When set up where the singulo usually is, it really only destroys engineering. When set up somewhere in engineering it would probably only damage medbay and cargo. Saying no "because it destroys 1/6th of the station" is not only false but also moot since all engines do significant damage to the station or crew and failure almost always leads to a shuttle call anyways unless command has enough balls to try again.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

Strawmanning.

 

I never said it was as destructive as the singulo, but you need to realize we no longer have a dedicated spot for it and most of the engineers set their "extra engines" up in ridiculous places like cargo maintenance.

 

If we had a dedicated spot to install and implement it, that won't screw the station if it blows up? Yes.

 

But otherwise? No. The singularity/tesla can be deleted if they get released, if the supermatter explodes and takes out a chunk of the station there's little to be done.

 

It's also slightly bigger than a maxcap in terms of explosion size, since when we DID have the dedicated area for it (and it was huge), it also took out a chunk of maint, engineering, and nommed at mining.

 

[Spacemanspark]

By the time the singularity gets deleted, unless an admin was looking right at it the second it got released, it's already eaten engineering, usually. Probably some other things. And if there are no admins? Singularity (Unless science can BoH it)/ tesla causes the round to end, unlike the SM, where you can actually repair shit, as it's just an explosion.

[davidchan]

 

Definitely would be for the SM being readded to secure storage for set up. Ideally all the engines would start there (sing, tesla, sm, teg and antimatter if that's been ported yet) and eng smes would be charged enough to give the station 30 min of power or so to give engineering time to assemble and customize the engine area for their needs. Solars can be wired to prolong this, as can the turbine.

 

Failing that, the argument of space is irrelevant. The engineering outpost shuttle can be moved, maint expanded and the solars can be shifted to give space if its decided that sing containment can't be modified or changed.

 

Imo engineering is becoming a non job, engine set up takes 10 minutes tops to complete, borgs and drones can safely start the tesla and then engineers typically spend the next 2 hours doing anything but their job, breaches are sealed but pipes never get fixed and your lucky if engineers fix the wires and machines if your dept explodes. Giving them more then. 15 minutes of work for a 2 hour shift isn't going to kill them and setting up solars is easy as its ever been if they don't want to build contaiment from scratch.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

The SM is terrifically easier to fuck up than any other engine, is my main point of contention.

 

I will agree with David that engineering is a non-job (or a find your own work job), but I don't think the SM will solve the issue. Building containment from scratch would be interesting, but I feel like it would end up with a lot more loose engines.

 

[davidchan]

 

SM maybe the easiest to screw up, even by expierenced engineers, its also the only engine that gives you a chance to fix the problem. Its also doesn't make emps so its relatively safe for ipcs and borgs to help. The only unrecoverable screw ups are if you manage to start a fire, which takes the same incompetence or sabatoge as not using the containment field with a sing/tesla

 

There is also still the choice of sing/tesla for those who can't atmos or refuse to learn another engine. Now if some one was saying use the vg sm as the default engine you'd have a point, the 10 stage rock scares me and makes me think anyone who pushes it to its upper limit is down right insanse

 

[Citinited]

 

I exploded a supermatter shard recently.

 

Here is the resulting devastation (I set it up in the incinerator, the shard itself was on the red X)

 

 

As you can tell, the explosion is... not that big. Mechanic's podbay got minorly breached, and obviously maintenance was in bad shape, but otherwise the station was good.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

I exploded a supermatter shard recently.

 

Here is the resulting devastation (I set it up in the incinerator, the shard itself was on the red X)

 

 

As you can tell, the explosion is... not that big. Mechanic's podbay got minorly breached, and obviously maintenance was in bad shape, but otherwise the station was good.

 

Is that with the full rock?

 

Because the old SM had it's own containment area (which was about 1.5-2 lengths of the screen), and when it exploded it more or less destroyed that containment entire area, as well as some of cargomaint (occasionally bits of cargo mining) and secure storage/engishuttle.

 

I recall they capped explosions awhile ago (in excess of a year), but that was after the SM was removed - which could explain the variance. (I'm not sure if that was only on TTV's and chembombs though)

 

[GelatinousGlob]

 

We could at least used a larger area that has air in it to build. Right now there is no safe area for an SM. The engine containment area could be modified to be easier to use but its full of all the tesla shit and containment field. Containment is currently two separate zones, a ring set around the emitters and an undesignated spacezone in the middle. it also has no air and you can't use rad suits without air.

 

The current shards you can max out without too much trouble. I lit one on fire because the secondary TEG we ran off it was setup backwards, as soon as I flipped my full SM cooling it froze out the fire and dropped a full powered shard to 200K max, you can run an SM crystal with close lose to 600K and I bet you could even max out a full powered crystal if you also installed a heat exchange loop.

 

What I think would be a good compromise, have a reactor for the small SM shard, 3x3 plasmaglass containment, basic filtering and cooling. With the room already setup, you could have a full SM crystal orderable and allow engineers to improve the reactor chamber for it. Extra heat exchange space loops, extra gas filtering, more air injectors, ect.

 

The only problem with SMs now is there is no good place to put them anywhere on station unless you don't mind irradiating half the crew through the normal walls.

 

[davidchan]

 

I would actually be in favor of the SM being uncapped and able to eat 1/4-1/3 of the station when it detonates.

 

1) It announces when it's even in danger of going in critical and updates/spams the announcement every time it goes up. This gives Engineering/AI/Who ever has access or tools a chance to intervene to vent and fix the Atmos condition in the chamber, or eject it. I'd strongly encourage there be a check that deletes the SM core if it approaches the edge of a Z level to prevent it from flinging back around to the station like the current Z level layout tends to always do, it'd be funny the first time Perma, sec and the bridge get annihilated by a slingshot SM bombing, the 5th or 100th time it happens would be rightfully infuriating.

 

2) In the event that it's rising multiple percentage points per update, it makes it an incredibly risky sabotage item for escape alone antags since if they make too much of a mess or fire in the chamber to overload it before engineers show up, they are just as likely to get caught in the explosion themselves and fail their objective.

 

3) The danger of the explosion alone should be enough to make people not want to touch it or seal the chamber so that it can't be unboxed and activated. There is still 2 other engines plus solars/turbine for power requirements of the station, so not every round with have an SM, and people who routinely fuck it up can be told to git gud or face an engineering ban.

 

And it's generally just fun to play with, a super creative type could find a way to get the SM to the asteroid, set it up in the middle and detonate it for !FUN! mining.

 

As for engine containment not being suitable for SM purposes... I'd argue otherwise. The only thing it needs is a blast door on the bottom and a few removed space tiles to ensure the SM doesn't get caught on the way out. A plasteel/plasglass cage could be assembled around the tesla/singulo starting area relatively quickly, the only major issues would be setting up a mass driver to shoot it away (optional) and setting the piping and filters, being that it's already in space exposed tile areas you wouldn't need a freezer since space is already -250c or so, just make a loop of thermal cross over, build two filters (or more if you're efficient) to sort out the plasma and oxygen from your coolant (either N2 or CO2) and dump the space cooled plas/o2 into the waste loop and you're basically golden. Radiation collectors would need to be moved closer to the core, but that's an easy fix.

 

[Doukan]

 

The main problem with it was it's stun spam and that is was easily sealed away behind 3+ layers of r-walls.

Most of it's issues could be solvable with better containment design (90% of which would involve having the CE know how to mass driver it).

 

I kinda miss pulling around the core as an IPC and throwing people into though it'd be nice to see it come back.

 

[Citinited]

 

Is that with the full rock?

 

Because the old SM had it's own containment area (which was about 1.5-2 lengths of the screen), and when it exploded it more or less destroyed that containment entire area, as well as some of cargomaint (occasionally bits of cargo mining) and secure storage/engishuttle.

 

I recall they capped explosions awhile ago (in excess of a year), but that was after the SM was removed - which could explain the variance. (I'm not sure if that was only on TTV's and chembombs though)

 

Good point - I took the screenshot two days ago.

 

Shows that the supermatter shard as it is isn't much of a problem when it explodes.