Tesla Engine

File:SingularityEngine.png

The Engine Area

How To Set Up The Tesla

Caution: New engineers are strongly encouraged to ask another engineer for assistance.

Located at the southern end of engineering in Space is the Tesla Engine. A modern, efficient and safe alternative to the infamous Singularity Engine.
It's really not that hard to set up the tesla properly and keep it maintained. This guide will assume that you're doing it alone, either because you're the only engineer that signed up, or because everyone else decided they had better things to be doing. First off, you'll need to know what to bring to the tesla room with you, which you can acquire handily from around Engineering.

You will need the following items:

• engineering hardsuit
• magboots
• oxygen tank
• breath mask
• wrench
• screwdriver
• cable coil

Now that you have your supplies, it's time to get to work!

Note: Each of the following "Setting Up" sections can be performed individually or with additional team members. Order of operation does not matter as long as "Finishing Up" is done last.

Setting Up the SMES

There are 4 of these are located in the Engineering bay.

1. Make sure the three on the right are initially set to "Charging: Off" (for Input) and "Online" (for Output). Turn the output for the leftmost up to 150,000 and leave the input off as well. Turning off output could result in field failure or emitters failing to fire.

Setting Up the Particle Accelerator

Caution: Do not bump into the accelerator before it is secured with a wrench. If you knock a piece out of place, right-click > "Pull" it back and right-click > "Rotate" to put it back in its place.

1. Equip a wrench and click on each of the 6 sections of the engine, including the File:Control box.png control box. You will see "You secure the external bolts" 7 times. Make sure the arrow on the control box is pointing down. This is often a pitfall of new engineers. Rotate it until it is.
2. Equip wires and click on each of the 6 sections of the engine, including the control box. You will see "You add some wires" 7 times.
3. Equip a screwdriver and click on each of the 6 sections of the engine, including the control box. You will see "You close the access panel" 7 times.
4. Click on the control box to open its menu, then click on "Run Scan".
   • If you continue to see "Unable to detect parts", you missed something in steps 1-3. If you examine (shift-click) each part, you'll see a hint as to what you missed.
   • If you see "All parts in place", you're free to continue.

Caution: Do not click "Toggle Power" yet!

Setting up the Tesla

1. Nag the Chief to choose the Tesla using the Bluespace Engine Delivery Device. If there isn't a Chief Engineer, beg the local doorknob to let you into the office so that you can take it and do it yourself. If you want to run a Singularity engine instead, look at the Guide to the Singularity Engine.
2. Make sure your oxygen tank and breath mask are equipped and your oxygen tank is "Open" or highlighted "On" in your HUD.
3. Use one of the two southern External Airlock exits to go outside the station.
   • (Optional) Enable your magboots' mag-pulse traction system so you don't accidentally slip into space or into something dangerous.
4. Click on each of the 4 Emitters to turn them on.
   • Caution: Do not stand in front of active emitters!
   • Remember to lock each emitter with your ID card, to prevent accidental (or purposeful) failure of containment.
5. Walk around the outside of the inner circle and click on each of the 8 Field Generators, being careful to time your movement while passing in front of online Emitters.
   • Slowly, you will see a containment field surrounding the inner circle connected by the Field Generators.
   • Caution: Do not walk into the containment field!
6. When the containment field has surrounded the entire inner circle, head back inside to the particle accelerator room.

Having trouble getting the emitters to fire? Follow these steps:

1. Use your screwdriver on the emitter
2. Then use your crowbar
3. Return all of the components (there should be one circuit board (Emitter); one micro-laser, and one micro-manipulator) to the machine frame
4. Use your screwdriver on the machine frame
5. Rotate the emitter to face the field generator
6. Use your wrench to bolt it down, and then use your to weld it into place

It should now begin to fire when activated again. If that doesn't work, check that there is power being sent to the emitters from the leftmost SMES unit.

Finishing Up

1. Open the File:Control box.png control box menu.
2. Click "Toggle Power" to turn the power on.
3. Set Particle Strength = 2.
4. Walk down and look out the window. You will see a stream of green particles shoot out from the Particle Accelerator, and after a few seconds, a badass Tesla Ball will appear.
5. Unlike the Singularity, the Tesla engine cannot enter a critical state in which it would be possible for it to escape containment. You can turn the Particle Accelerator off or leave it running for maximal power generation.

Return to the SMESs

1. Return to the right 3 SMES. These power the majority of the station. Make sure the sum of their output is at least as high as total power usage on the station. Typically the station uses around 200,000 W. You can check if the SMES are outputting enough power at the Grid Power Monitoring Computer in the top left of the engine room. Make sure the Total Power is significantly higher than the Total Load, otherwise devices throughout the station will slowly stop functioning.
2. Once the Tesla is outputting power, return to all 4 SMES, and set the input to "Charge Mode: Auto". Set the Input Level higher than the Output Level so that each SMES gains charge over time. The input should say "Partially Charging" and the "Stored Capacity" % should be slowly increasing.
3. The output of the lone SMES on the left is not that important anymore because it primarily powers the emitters and the engine room. Now that the engine is running, it should be able to sustain the emitters on its own. That being said, it is recommended that you leave it on in case something goes wrong, and that you make sure the leftmost SMES is charging in case of emergency.
4. If you did everything right, the engine room APC will be charging (the one just north of the lone SMES).

A quick note on preventing containment failure:

There are two main circuits aboard the Cyberiad. The yellow one connecting the engine room and containment (including the emitters) and the red one which powers most of the rest of the station. You can check the layout on the Maintenance page. The yellow circuit is powered by the engine and the leftmost SMES, while the red circuit is powered by the right 3 SMES. However, all 4 SMES get their input from the yellow circuit. Also, the circuits will always prioritize charging the SMES over powering devices in the circuit. This means that if the sum of the SMES inputs is greater than the output of the engine and the left SMES combined, the emitters will fail, followed shortly by containment. To prevent this, you can check the Engine Power Monitoring Computer, just below the similarly named Grid Power Monitoring Computer. Make sure that the Total Power is significantly higher than the Total Load at all times!

Continued Upkeep

Unlike the Singularity, the Tesla engine is capable of running indefinitely after it's turned on. Without tampering it's impossible for it to become a danger to the station or die out.

Particle Accelerator Optimization

Upgrade the APC Power Cell

1. Locate the APC on the wall beside the lone SMES unit, in the same room as the Particle Accelerator.
2. Unlock it with your ID Card.
   • Click on your ID Card to put it in your hand, then click on the APC.
3. Set "Equipment" to "On", not "Auto".
   • This is to ensure that vital engineering equipment will be the last to fail should the APC's power cell run low. You can also turn off the lights to save power, although this is not really recommended as it makes it harder to see trespassers in engineering.
4. Use a crowbar on the APC to open it.
5. Click on the Power Cell to remove it.
6. Find another Power Cell laying around and replace the Power Cell you just removed.
7. Close the panel with the crowbar.
8. Check the APC menu to make sure it is on and working.
9. Lock the APC with your ID card.

Turning off the Engine

Occasionally, bad stuff happens. Well, most of the time, bad stuff happens. Sometimes it is necessary to deactivate the engine as safely as possible because nobody can maintain it. Other times meteor showers and bombs endanger your containment machinery. Whatever the crisis, if you have followed the steps above it should be safe to simply turn the accelerator off. The engine will continue to generate power as the Tesla slowly starves and shrinks, so containment won't fail until the tesla dies out and long after.

Non-Standard Containment

The default configuration for the tesla containment is not the most efficient, and variations to the position of the field generators, emitters, tesla coils and grounding rods, can bring about differing degrees of safety and power. Safe experimentation is fine, as long as you always make sure the containment field is active and stable before activating the Particle Accelerator, as is the case with any and all setups.

Using it as a weapon

The tesla is - along with massive plasma infernos and large scale bombings - one of the most brutal forces on the station. Dangerous enough when set free, it becomes an electrificty-spewing, shuttle-calling, indiscriminately murdering monstrosity. Perhaps the most dramatic way to end a round as a traitor. The tesla engine works with the singularity beacon and is extremely lethal to anyone caught outside of a locker or without a pair of insulated gloves and a hardsuit.

Setting the tesla free is not the easiest task to complete as a regular crew traitor, and you will get robusted in short order if you are caught. Generally speaking, all you need to do is disable the containment field. This can be accomplished by deactivating the emitters. Alternatively, you can disable the engineering APC. If you are not an engineer and get identified doing this, you can expect to not make it onto the emergency shuttle alive.