User:Vincentius vin/Atmos

Research Director Robert Oppenheimer says: "Here, hold this bomb. Just be aware that I'm not directly responsible for any mass destruction that may or may not be cause by you using that."

Ordnance is a section of the Research and Development section of the station. There was a time when being in this place was basically a dead giveaway that you were a bad guy but with the advent of Research bombs, this is no longer the case.* Instead, being a robust bomb-maker will get you praise and laudation as the crew realizes you used all the bombmix to complete difficult research experiments and get a lot of credits for the department's research budget rather than using it to turn the Station into a crater-ridden deathtrap! Hooray Science!

Tools of the trade

There are a few items that you will need to grab or at least keep track of.

Items

Toxins is located within the Research Division and is the home of bomb construction with the lab on the left, a passageway in the middle and the observation room on the right.

Rapid Pipe Dispenser

The rapid pipe dispenser can be found in the ordnance lab. You will need it to retool the pipe setup.

Analyzer

The analyzer will tell you what is going on with canisters, pipes, the environment, simply Left Click with it on your hand on things to examine them and Press Z or Click the analyzer itself to examine the air around you. Right click the analyzer icon to open the gas and reaction reference.

Tablets or Modular Computer

We will need them to publish papers and read up on the experiments we are about to do. Make sure you have one nearby.

Holofans

Some station start with the luxury of having the Atmos Holofan in the ordnance lab. You can use it to retool the freezer chamber if you want. Simply Click on a tile with it in-hand to generate a barrier that will let you go through but not air and heat.

Tools

Pipes are reconfigured using tools, you might want to keep a toolbox nearby or have the tools inside your backpack by Click-dragging the toolbox into your backpack. In particular you will use the wrench the most to unwrench and fasten pipes.

Tanks

In toxins, tanks are the objects that actually produce explosions from being overpressurized. However you cannot overpressurize a tank easily by pumping them with regular pumps, which is where ordnance comes in.

TTV

The TTV allows you to combine the contents of two tanks together. This will be the thing you need to make large bombs.

Machineries

Gas Compressor

The gas compressor is where you do the Gas shell experiments. They, unlike regular blue pumps, does not have a pressure limit and will allow you to overpressurize a tank very easily.

Anomaly Refinery

Anomaly refinery allows you to insert Tank Transfer Valves into them to compress Anomaly Cores. They are also equipped with a simulation feature for you to test out bombs without actually losing them, NT won't accept that data though for some reason...

Doppler Array

The doppler array is a directional device that allows the recording of real explosions. If those explosions happen to be caused by tanks, they can provide insight on the possible causes.

Additional Machineries

Portable scrubbers and portable pumps are often used to clean or fill a tank.

Thermomachines are also used very often to cool down or heat up a gas.

Lastly, canisters store gas and will also be used to contain exotic or very hot gas.

Papers and You

To complete experiments, as well as to acquire funding and scientific cooperation, you require the NT Frontier application. This can be downloaded on your department's civilian console, or a device like a laptop or tablet.

To do this, you need to:

1. Grab your ID and insert them into a tablet or a modular computer.
2. Open the NT Software Hub application and look for the program NT Frontier. It is in the Science tab if you didnt find it. Press download and wait for it to finish.

The application will helpfully list all available experiments as well as their tier requirements. Do note that for experiments which unlock research nodes upon completion, it is not required to reach the maximum tier. However you should endeavor to do so, as you will otherwise earn less funding and cooperation. Do note that you can only publish one paper per experiment and tier. So you cannot re-do the same tier later on to gain more rewards if you publish a worse result early.

Using disks

In order to publish papers, the relevant file must be on your phone's internal storage. To do this you will need to:

1. Complete the appropriate experiment in the Tachyon-Doppler Array or Tank Gas Compressor.
2. Grab a portable hard drive (data disk). These should by lying around near a computer or a doppler array.
3. Insert the data disk into the Tachyon-Doppler Array or Tank Gas Compressor and print the experiment to the disk.
4. Stick the disk into your phone or computer and use the File Manager software to copy the file from the disk to the phone.

Now you will be able to select the experiment in NT Frontier and publish your paper!

Scientific Cooperation

Other than funding, publishing papers earns scientific cooperation with the partner you select when publishing the papers. In the partner's overview tab, you can see your relations with each partner. Good relations allow you to purchase discounts on research nodes, which will however degrade the relations.

Practical guide to Gaseous Synthesis

Toxins is about making gas, either for bombs or for gas shells. You can read up on all the gas reactions in the game here.

If you are just starting out, you are recommended to make BZ first, then Tritium, before moving on to the harder gases like Hyper-Noblium.

BZ Synthesis

BZ requires N2O and Plasma in a low pressure environment to produce. To use this you can use the freezer chamber to both cool down the reactants (drives the pressure down) and to give a larger area for the reaction to occur (also drives the pressure down).

1. Wrench the plasma canister in to the first mixer port.

   Why: As stated above, one of the ingredients for BZ is Plasma.

2. Wrench the N2O canister in to the second mixer port.

   Why: As stated above, one of the ingredients for BZ is N2O.

3. Set the first mixer to 100% Side Node.

   Why: A mixer is supposed to mix two inputs, but in this case we do not need the oxygen.

4. Set the second mixer to 66.66% Main Node 33.33% Side Node.

   Why: This way the input and consumption stays the same and we will prevent buildup inside the chamber which can skew our pressure.

5. Open the valve connecting the Mix Line (yellow) with the Freezer line (purple)

   Why: This will redirect our mixed gas to the freezer chamber.

6. Wrench a plasma canister into the freezer port.

   Why: The heat exchangers on the freezer turf will need gas to start exchanging heat, Plasma is an exceptional coolant since it absorbs a lot of heat.

7. Turn the thermomachine on and minimize the target temperature.

   Why: The thermomachine will attempt to cool the plasma down to the selected temperature, which in turns cools the chamber.

8. Open the air alarm and look for the scrubber inside the freezer chamber (match the id). Set it to expanded mode and to scrub BZ.

   Why: This will allow us to collect the BZ as they are formed in the chamber.

9. Wrench a canister or a portable pump in the output port

   Why: The BZ collected by the chamber will be deposited to the canister or portable pump. The former is more readily available while the latter allows you to do gas shells very precisely.

10. Look for the Chamber Monitor, and in this order: Lower the injector to 1 L/S, and turn it on.

    Why: This will be the final step that allows our reactants to go inside the chamber. You might be able to optimize it even further by adjusting the input rate up and down as time passes. Aim for somewhere below 50 kPa.

Addendum

If you overpressurized the gas inside the freeze chamber, you might want to:

1. Disconnect the output canister.
2. Set the scrubber to siphoning in the Air Alarm.
3. Turn on the bypass volume pump.

Though this may not always work, such as when the input line is already at maximum pressure. You can then change the normal gas pump to a volume pump.

Tritium Synthesis

Tritium is still relatively simple to grasp, but it is prone to failure which can render your workplace hazardous to work in. Don't lose hope if you fail, even experienced players make mistakes.

The production of tritium requires the combustion of plasma inside a heavily oxygenated environment. Tritium also combusts relatively rapidly with oxygen, which means you will need to upgrade the scrubber network to get sizable amounts of it. This guide will assume that you do not have the means to do that.

1. Set the first and second mixer to 100% Main Node.

   Why: We require oxygen in the chamber, this setting will fully pump the oxygen in.

2. Open the valve connecting the Mix Line (yellow) with the Burn Line (black)

   Why: This will route the oxygen into the chamber.

3. Open the air alarm and look for the scrubber inside the burn chamber (match the id). Set it to expanded mode and to scrub only Tritium.

   Why: The first one will allow us to clear the yellow/black line quicker, while the second one will let less tritium burn.

4. Click the chamber control panel, and open the interior airlock. Wait for it to cycle.

   Why: This will allow us to access the pumps connecting the pipes to the injector.

5. Maximize the pump leading in and pump leading out.

   Why: The first one will allow tritium to be produced more quickly, while the second one will let less tritium burn.

6. Head back down to the Oxygen Stationary Tanks, use your analyzer on them and turn the first mixer off (Ctrl-Click) once you are satisfied with how much oxygen is in the chamber.

   Why: However much gas you leave in the tanks is completely optional. Keeping a reserve of around 2-3k (around 1-2 canisters) might be a good idea in case you decided to pursue another experiment that needs oxygen.

7. Wait for the black and yellow line to empty out and turn the injector off with the Atmos Monitor. The monitor should read around 1-2k moles of oxygen.

   Why: We will need the plasma to be trickled in slowly, turning the injector off first will give us ample time to prepare the plasma.

8. Wrench a plasma canister in to the first mixer side port.

   Why: This is preparing the plasma.

9. Set the first mixer to Side Node 100%

   Why: Plasma is in the side, so we maximize it.

10. Activate the burn button. Make sure you don't press the vent button.

    Why: This button will trigger the igniter in the chamber and allow the plasma to ignite.

11. Head back to the Atmos Monitor and start trickling the plasma. Start with a small number, turn the injector on, and keep adding the rate slowly until the temperature is above 1.7k Kelvins. You are free to increase or decrease the rate afterwards.

    Why: Tritium is made when there are around 100x as much oxygen as plasma, we trickle the plasma slowly so this ratio is maintained. We also aim for the temperature to be above 1.7k Kelvins because the oxygen consumption is most efficient at that temperature. Higher rates mean more tritium made per second, but it also means a higher burden on your cooling system.

12. If all goes well, tritium should be made and cooled by the freezer. You can wrench a canister or a portable pump to the output connector port when finished.

    Why: The canister is withheld because wrenching it means a smaller volumetric share for the freezer. Rather than being (200L / Pipe volume), the gas that the freezer can cool directly becomes (200 L / (Pipe volume + Canister volume)). Read more on gas equalization here

Addendum

In most cases, you will need to add more scrubbers to the chamber. You should do this before adding anything to the chamber. To do this simply:

1. Grab a firesuit and fire helmet from a Fire Closet, wear them.
2. Equip and activate internals.
3. Use the door control and open the interior airlock. Wait for it to cycle.
4. Open the exterior airlock either by interfacing with the same console or by pressing the airlock sensor near the walls of the chamber.
5. Unwrench either the scrubber pump or pipe and replace them with a layer manifold of a suitable color.
6. Add four more scrubbers to the chamber. You will most likely need to do this in another layer, feel free to choose any.
7. Go out by pressing the airlock sensor once again. Wait for it to cycle.

Ordnance Tests Part 1 - Gas Shells

Before playing with bombs directly, you are recommended to try out gas shells first. They are far less punishing and final than a proper bomb test.

To do gas shell experiments, you will need to visit the tank compressor. The tank compressor in essence is an overgrown pump. It is mainly used to burst tanks with exotic contents inside, letting it spew into the collection chamber to be evaluated.

The tank will then either spring a leak or explode, both of which will be contained by the machine. In case of a leak, it's advised to wait for the tank to empty before removing it from the machine. In case of an explosion, all of the gas content will be outputted to the collection chamber.

Upon a succesful ejection or detonation, the collection chamber's gas data will be finalized and recorded into an experiment file. A printable experiment is then available to be printed into a data disk. Gas in the chamber will also be flushed into the output port.

To properly use this contraption, there are two course of action you can take:

1. Overpressurize a tank with the experiment gas

   Pros: Very quick to do.

   Cons: Difficult to clean the input port up, less control.

2. Prefill a tank with the experiment gas, overpressurize it with another gas in the compressor.

   Pros: Easier to clean the input port up, more control over the number of moles.

   Cons: Takes a bit more time, requires a portable pump in most cases.

Try and pay attention to the pressure at which tanks leaks or explodes, we might revisit this concept again later.

Ordnance Tests Part 2 - Research Bombs

OH MY GOD JC A BOMB!

Useful knowledge: Heat capacity, pressure

A TTV does not explode on its own: it only connects two tanks. The tanks themselves explode.

The explosion depends entirely on how high the pressure is able to rise inside a tank before it destroys itself or leaks out. There are two main ways to do this:

Reactionless Explosions

Reactionless explosions are more often than not the easiest to produce. They work by letting a hot gas mixture heat up another gas mixture.

In order to do this effectively, we need to do two things:

1. Put as much energy as possible to the system.

   The more energy we can fit into the first tank, the bigger the explosion.

2. Make the resultant gas mixture extremely easy to heat up while packing as many moles as possible, I.E. low resultant specific heat capacity.

   The lower we can push the resultant gas mixture down, the bigger the explosion.

Production of a Reactionless Bomb

We need a hot gas with high specific heat capacity, and a cold gas with low heat capacity. The former will give more energy, while the latter will drive the resultant heat capacity down and allow more moles to be involved.

The easiest gas to obtain with a reasonably high heat capacity is Plasma.

The easiest gas to obtain with a reasonably low heat capacity is Nitrogen or Oxygen. Though oxygen has another special interaction that will be discussed later.

Procure both canisters and heat the plasma and cool the nitrogen using a thermomachine. Simply wrench the canisters to the connector port and adjust the thermomachine directly.

It is perfectly possible to produce maxcaps using this method

Reaction-Based Explosions

Another method to make explosions is to have exothermic reactions occur inside them. The reactions will drive the temperature up, which in turn drives the pressure up, causing an explosion.

To generate very big theoretical explosions, you will need reactions, especially the very energetic ones like Tritium Combustion and Hyper-Noblium Formation. Both requires tritium which you should already have, if you don't read this.

Production of a Tritium Bomb

Principles

Tritium combustion have several main properties. Upon the opening of a valve, the tanks will allow exactly two reaction ticks before exploding. We also know that tritium combustion:

1. Needs more oxygen than tritium to be energetic.
2. Consumes ten times as much oxygen than tritium burnt.
3. Burns 10% of the tritium every tick.
4. Factor two and three means the number of oxygen burnt each tick is the same as the number of tritium available.

All of these factors have led the 66-33 mix to be extremely popular, due to the unique interaction between the reaction ticks and the properties of the tritium burn itself.

In essence, the 66-33 mix is a mix which contains twice as much Tritium as Oxygen, allowing the energetic burn to happen twice, with as high reaction rate as one can get.

The first tick will consume half of the oxygen and ten percent of the tritium. Paving the way for the second tick to also be energetic.

The second tick will consume the rest of the oxygen, ending the energetic phase but also hitting the threshold for reactions available. Letting us make the biggest, baddest bomb possible.

Execution

We want a 66.67 - 33.33 mix of Oxygen and Tritium (in that order) in the payload tank. Always err in the side of Oxygen. More Oxygen will just mean a lower payload but more tritium will mean the second tick never occurs, gimping your mix.

Production of a Hyper-Nob Bomb

Hyper-Nob bombs are made using their formation, which when unmoderated by BZ releases a lot of energy. This reaction occurs on very low temperatures and will only happen on one tick unlike the Tritium Bomb.

Implosion Compressor and Anomaly Refining

That funny-looking box in the toxins launch room does more than just sit around. It's the main way of getting anomaly cores.

What's an anomaly core?

Anomaly cores are essentially an item with the special property of being able to exist only in a very small number (currently eight) per type. They're used to give functionality to several high-end research items, and can be obtained in one of two ways:

• Defusing Anomalies with an analyzer and signaller, or with an Anomaly Neutralizer

• Buying raw cores from Cargo or using the random ones toxins spawns with, and activating them in the Implosion Compressor.

The machine will always require bombs with a blast radius of at least 4, which is tiny compared to the 50,000 point research bomb, and only requires a bomb just short of the one described in the next paragraph. However, with diminishing returns being a thing, this means that after processing multiple cores of the same type, the required blast radius will go up. You may need to slightly adjust your mix to be more powerful after each use of the Compressor.

The compressor will first take the raw core, then accept a TTV with two tanks attached. If the mixture of the two tanks would have provoked a blast that fulfills its requirements, the Implosion Compressor will rock the station with an equivalent effect of the actual blast, and the raw core will be spit out as a proper, activated core. You'll also get your TTV back, likely with one of the tanks gone. It's that easy!

Guide to Maximum Capacity Bombing

So fate has decided to make you a bad guy and you've decided to use your newfound knowledge in the art of bombing to tear the station a new one. Great! If you've followed the above instructions at least once, however, you'll probably have realized that you only have enough gas mix to make a single bomb. There are, however, six Tank Transfer Valves in your table (and you can even get more from Cargo). Surely this is no coincidence? Indeed it isn't. A simple regular old Plasma-Oxygen bomb is very easy to set up and mass produce and, while awful and a waste of time in terms of gaining department budget credits, will be devastating if detonated strategically on the station! This part of the guide will assume you have some familiarity with working in Toxins and just highlight the bomb mix, as well as some general tips when bombing.

Your bomb mix: Put cold Oxygen in a portable pump, and hot Plasma in a canister. Make sure to clean your piping in-between to avoid contamination. Set the Freezer you start with to 141.3 Kelvin and cool Oxygen to that temperature. Upgrade your Heater with Tier 4 Lasers and set it to 1413 Kelvin and heat Plasma to that temperature. Grab two tanks from the Tank Dispenser, scrub them clean, fill one to 2533kPa with Oxygen and the other to 3039kPa with hot Plasma. All done, you got yourself a maxcap! Pick a trigger, put it somewhere and detonate it. Below, you'll find the available triggers:

Timer

Proximity Sensor

Remote Signaling Device

Voice Analyzer

Infrared Emitter

Mousetrap

Health Sensor

Important Note about Remote Signaling Devices

Some jokers like to randomly signal the default frequencies of these devices so before you attach one to a bomb you'll want to open its control panel by using it in your hand and change the frequency and/or code so that you don't get a nasty surprise.

Final Warning

Seriously, don't go and randomly set these off on the station if you aren't a syndicate or otherwise an antagonistic character, you WILL get job-banned or even permabanned.

If you manage to accidentally blow up toxins and maybe even the surrounding Research department once or twice as a beginner, don't panic and just explain what happened to the admins who will likely contact you. They're usually an understanding bunch and know that mistakes happen. Just make sure to learn from them!

On the other hand, if you DO know what you're doing, the potential damage you can cause to the station can be extreme and sometimes irreversible, very likely changing the course of the round. There are VERY few instances where you can use these bombs as a weapon while being a normal non-antagonist crew member, and even when faced with a situation where it could be used to save the station, use it only as a last resort.

Don't Be This Guy

We call this one a Toxins Moment.

Well, shit.

Hey, at least you'll keep the Atmospheric Technicians busy for a bit.