Guide to Atmospherics

Atmospherics (or Atmosia) is the land of pipes and air, a peaceful place often left to its automatic work. To the untrained eye, it might appear to be entirely impenetrable and useless, just a mess of pipes that should be left alone to do their own work while the Atmospheric Technicians goof off in the break room. But this is far from the truth. In the hands of a competent technician, Atmosia can just as easily save the station as it can horribly destroy it.

Atmosia

Content

Atmosia contains several notable things that every Atmospheric Technician should know about:

• Atmospheric Alert Computer: This computer console will tell you where your attention is needed. A green indicator signals everything is alright, a yellow indicator signals something went wrong, and a red indicator means you should get your ass in gear and move out;

• Central Atmospherics Computer: From this computer, you have complete control of every air alarm on the station, allowing you to change vent, scrubber and mode options. By default, every air alarm has their remote access enabled, so you can theoretically do your job without ever leaving Atmosia, assuming you have competent Engineers;

• The Atmospheric Pipe System: This system takes in the station's waste air, filters it, and provides fresh air for everyone (except Vox and Plasmamen) to breathe;

• The Distribution Computers: These computers allow you to see how much of a certain gas you have in storage, in addition to letting you change the rate at which they output;

• The Gas Containment Areas: These are small, walled off areas containing large amounts of all gases. Vital for maintaining a breathable atmosphere aboard the station.

• Reserve Air Canisters: Extra canisters of air mix, oxygen, nitrogen and nitrous oxide that can be used to refill portable tanks, or as emergency reserves to fill rooms after a breach;

• Firefighting Equipment: Enables Atmospheric Technicians to survive easily for extended periods in difficult atmospheres. These include specialized firefighting armour and backpacks that fire metal foam;

• Atmospherics Hardsuit: This hardsuit is completely fireproof and can withstand raging plasma fires, in addition to, of course, freely allowing spacewalking (yes, you too can always be on fire and laugh it off);

• Portable Scrubbers / Portable Air Pumps: Allow you to quickly filter / repressurize (respectively) areas of the station;

• Portable Space Heaters: Can be used to keep an area from freezing;

• Pipe Dispensers: Allow repair / construction of disposal pipes, air pipes, supply / waste pipes and heat pipes;

• Fuel and Water Tanks: For use when fighting fires or other hazards;

• Freezers and Heater: Allow you to freeze or heat the gas in the pipes when routed through them;

The Pipes

For the following section, it would be best to think of air as a fluid since, technically, it behaves like one. Imagine it as being a current of water flowing through the pipes. Atmospherics is pretty simple, but the pipe layout makes it slightly confusing for the untrained eye. It consists of four pipe "loops", which are color-coded for easy checking:

• The dark blue loop is the Distribution Loop, or Distro Loop. It sends breathable air (roughly 80% nitrogen and 20% oxygen) to all the vents on the station, and is fed by the cyan loop lower down in Atmospherics;

• The cyan loop is responsible for creating Mixed Air to feed into the distribution loop;

• The red loop is the Waste Loop, which retrieves waste air from the various scrubbers on the station and feeds it to the Filtering Loop;

• The green loop is the Filtering Loop, which filters out the various gases in the waste air provided by the Waste Loop at various filters placed along it;

• The yellow loop is the Mix Loop, which is internal to Atmospherics and is used for custom air mixes. It is rarely used for anything not highly illegal

The air breathed by humans on the Cyberiad is made out of oxygen and nitrogen, and is mixed on the south end of Atmosia (in the cyan pipes). The gases are pumped from their containment areas and into the air mix containment. The breathable gas is then pumped through the cyan loop to the north of Atmosia, where it is then pumped into the blue loop and out to the station.

The filtering loop runs the gases through the filters along the green piping and is your main tool in fighting gas spills and large fires.

The "canisters" of the station's Atmospherics network are actually rooms filled with the appropriate gas. The output of these rooms are controlled by their respective supply control computers and a small valve that allows the gas to be injected into the pipes.

The Gases

• N2: One of the components of the air mix. N2 soaks up heat in the air, and lowers the temperature of a fire. By association, it can very quickly lower the temperature of a fiery rupture to the point where the flames self-extinguish.

• O2: You breathe this. Running out of O2 will cause your slow death by suffocation damage. It is also required for a fire to even start, and hold, ending the fire when the O2 or plasma is depleted. Having less than 16 kPa of O2 flowing into your lungs chokes you.

• Air: The gas mix that is distributed in the station. It is composed of 70% N2 and 30% O2.

• CO2: An invisible, heavy gas, CO2 is one of the first and fastest gases the scrubbers suck out of the air. It chokes people effectively and quickly, and if you can be bothered to set the alarms up, will result in a invisible room that kills those in it. Takes some setup and can be very, very annoying. The emote for this at below incapacitating levels is gasping and choking.

• N2O: A white-flecked gas. Makes you laugh at low doses and at higher ones puts you to sleep. Scrubbers don't deal with it too well and portable scrubbers just choke on it. If using this as a sleep gas mix do *not* forget the O2 at at least 16 kPa, or you will kill someone.

• Plasma: The one truly flammable gas on the station, plasma is purple, and highly toxic. Of note is the fact that in the presence of any oxygen at high pressures, plasma pumped into air can and will spontaneously ignite on turf at high pressures.

Setting Up Atmosia

In it's default state, Atmosia can technically handle most atmospheric crisis, albeit highly inefficiently. Experienced technicians can play with it at will, re-routing the pipes and adding all sorts of machinery to make it more efficient. This, however, requires a lot of experience with the role, and a guide on all possible Atmospherics configurations would probably require a small wiki of its own.

As such, it's important that you understand how exactly gases work, and how they flow from one place to another. Take your time to become acquainted with the Atmospherics layout, and try and wait for a few crisis before attempting any major redesign projects. However, here are some important things to keep in mind:

• Hotter Gas is under Higher Pressure - The hotter a gas is, the more pressure it exerts on the piping. This means that a single room's amount of gas, if properly heated up, can be the equivalent of half the station's atmosphere in pressure alone. This becomes problematic if you're using pressure pumps, since they only go so far. In addition, the filters on the filtering loop work on pressure as well, so keeping gas cool and low-pressure is incredibly important.

• Volume Pumps are Far Better - Pressure pumps are, by and large, useless in dealing with waste air when compared with volume pumps. Pressure pumps should be used for projects that require very specific amounts of gases to be pumped, such as some Turbine setups. Volume pumps bypass this by ignoring pressure and instead moving volume of gas. Seeing as the gases' volume remains constant inside the pipes, this translates into a faster waste loop.

• Less is More, does not apply - At least for pumps. While you do still have limited room to work with, three volume pumps will always work better than one. Just remember to keep the number of pump clusters constant: you don't want three pumps feeding a single one, bottlenecking the whole thing.

• Space is Cold, and so is Gas - Aside from the freezers, which are very inefficient if not upgraded, there are two main ways of cooling down gas (which is useful when handling fires, as it reduces pressure and helps it clear out faster): the space loop and heat exchange pipes. Routing a gas through the space loop will cool it down to the temperature of the vacuum outside (a chilly 21 Kelvin), quickly and efficiently. Heat exchange is a bit more complicated, however. It works by having one of set of exchangers have pre-cooled gas (either via freezers or space loop), and having another set of exchangers adjacent to the first one. Any gas that flows through the second group will transfer its heat to the pre-cooled gas, also quickly and efficiently.

• Round and Round and Round it goes - It's perfectly possible for you to just send gas back into the space loop. Having T-valves set up to create tiny loops is a great way of further cooling down gases and setting up buffer zones to keep gases rolling without clogging up the filtering loop. This is especially useful in the case of fires and large spills, where you must reduce the waste air's pressure as much as possible in order not to clog the various air filters.

Air Alarms

Air alarms are the central tool of an Atmospheric Technician, outside setting Atmospherics up. To use an air alarm, simply swipe your ID across it, or access it via the Central Atmospherics Computer. Here are the available options:

Panic Siphon: Turn off all the vents and activate the scrubbers to remove all the air, quicker than normal.

Vents: You control vents through the air alarm. The pressure and gas settings are already perfectly set up by default, so don't bother touching them.

Scrubbers: Two settings, scrubbing and siphoning:

• Scrubbing will slowly drain any gasses set to scrub in the air of the tile they are on, and transfer it to their pipe;

• Siphoning will do the same, except indiscriminately and with all gases, not just harmful ones

In addition to this, you also have several available modes, which change how the vents / scrubbers work:

• Filtering - Default setting. Keeps rooms filtered of harmful gases, at a comfortable 101.325 kPa and at a warm 20 degrees Celsius (unless someone fiddled with the thermostat);

• Draught - Will set scrubbers to siphoning, while simultaneously venting new gas;

• Siphon - Sets the scrubbers to siphon;

• Panic Siphon - Triples the siphoning speed;

• Cycle - Siphons out all the air, then vents in new one;

• Contaminated - Like panic siphon, but only scrubs out the configured gases;

• Refill - Triples vent output for fast repressurization;

• Off - Vents and scrubbers are shut down

Pipe Dispensers

There are a few different pipes and devices that you can get from the dispensers, each with specific uses.

• Regular Pipes - The ones used in Atmospherics. Useful for remodelling projects;

• Supply/Waste Pipes - Outside Atmospherics, there are two big loops: supply and waste. These are represented by blue and red pipes, respectively, which can only connect to the same type of pipe. In order to connect them with regular pipes, you need to use a universal adapter;

• Heat Exchange Pipes - Allow you to cool / heat gases based on the ambient temperature of the tile they're on. Think space loop (for cooling) or the Toxins burn chamber (for heating)

Devices:

• Connector - Used to attach canisters, pumps or scrubbers to a pipe network. If you can't get a pipe network easily to the filter loop, an empty canister can be a good substitute;

• Vent - Once placed down it will have to be turned on by activating it at the room's air alarm;

• Pressure Pump - The basic pumps you'll find all over Atmospherics. Good for precise pressure levels. Goes up to 4500 kPa;

• Volume Pump - A bit like the pressure pump, but pumps via volume rather than going for pressure. 200 is its max output, but this is fairly significant. Faster than a pressure pump (You can even fill canisters up past the standard 4500 kPa pressure!), so best used in systems where a specific maximum pressure isn't needed, such as the waste loop;

• Passive Gate - Think of it as a one-way manual valve, but electronic. Doesn't pump gas, but lets a certain amount of pressure through. Can be set up to 4500 kPa. It should be noted that its power status light can be easy to miss, being just a small red / green light;

• Scrubber - Self explanatory, scrubs the nasty out of things, or acts like a vacuum. Like vents, needs to be turned on by an air alarm after being put in place;

• Meter - Want to know how much gas is in a pipe? Use these;

• Gas Filter - Checks for whatever gas you set it to, then filters it out into another pipe;

• Gas Mixer - Like a filter, but mixes gasses instead of filters. There is one in Atmosia that mixes nitrogen and oxygen

Disposals Pipe Dispenser

In addition to handling the station's Atmosphere, a secondary job you share with the Engineers is making sure the Disposals network is functioning properly.

Seeing as these don't actually handle anything, it's literally as simple as drawing lines from point A to point B.

That said, it's still possible to create truly dizzying contraptions with the use of outlets and pipes, such as quick travel "highways" in the Central Primary Hallway.

Traitor Atmos: Horrible Deaths Ensue

There is precisely one occasion where large scale Atmos sabotage is permitted: the hijack objective. In any other condition, sabotaging the station in any large scale will result in the staff getting very annoyed, so unless you have it ADMINHELP BEFORE TRYING ANYTHING BIG.

With that said, wreaking havoc with Atmosia is as easy as hooking up the plasma / carbon dioxide / nitrous oxide containment areas (or an unholy combination of all three) to the main Distribution Loop, then remotely replacing the air on the station's Air Alarms. Slowly, but surely, death ensues.

If, however, misery may not be global, you have a variety of tools at your disposal. Your AXE can very easily murder anyone if dual-handed, you have Engineering right next door, and Atmospherics itself is out of the way and rarely looked at. In addition, you're the one closest to the AI Minisatellite. Use that advantage wisely.

The Supermatter: Time to Shine, Baby

The Supermatter Engine is perhaps the epitome of Atmospheric excellence. It represents a beautiful, pseudo-scientific amalgamation of Engineering and Atmospheric work, and can be used for truly astounding effect.

While Engineering concerns itself with constructing the Supermatter's containment area and emergency disposal system, you'll be the one responsible for constructing the system that will scrub out the waste plasma produced, and supply fresh coolant to keep the Shard from delaminating. This is the single most important component of the Supermatter Engine, and a well-designed cooling system can allow for continuous emitter fire without so much as a minor hiccup. This can snowball into absolutely ridiculous amounts of power.

In addition, you can also cool down plasma for use in radiation collectors. The colder the plasma, the more you can fit into a plasma tank, and the more power it will generate!