Guide to Telescience
This article contains content which is no longer in the Paradise Codebase, this page has been kept for archiving purposes.
What is this strange thing?
Telescience is the use of the Telepad and Telepad Control Console.
This focuses on teleportation, both sending and receiving.
Telescience is relatively complicated, and in the right hands can be a great aid... or detriment to the station.
How to telescience
Telescience has two barriers preventing you from doing whatever the hell you want: maths and bluespace crystals. Without math, you'll be randomly opening portals to nowhere useful, and without additional bluespace crystals, you'll be limited to teleporting about 60 squares in any direction.
Numbers and stuff, or why is this even fun
Firstly, the maths. Telescience works on a ballistic or parabolic trajectory - it may be helpful to imagine you're firing a cannon at the location you wish to teleport from/to.
You have four variables: Bearing (direction), power, elevation (angle from the ground), and sector (section of space).
The bearing is in degrees, and is the direction to your target from the telepad. It will randomly have an offset from -10º to +10º that you will need to compensate for.
Power is selected from a series of defined power levels, which can be unlocked with bluespace crystals. It has a random offset from 0 to -4 applied to it.
Elevation can be set from 0º to 90º, and represents the vertical angle you are firing your imaginary cannon at. You can see that if you aim close to vertically, you'll get a high shot that lands close to your origin. If you aim at 45º, you'll get an optimum long shot that goes as far as possible. If you fire at less than 45º, your shot will hit the ground earlier.
Sector is which 'level' of the game map you're zapping about on. This will usually be 1 unless you're screwing with the mining outpost.
Bearing and power offsets are changed each time you recalibrate.
Let's zap something
To successfully teleport, you need to know the following:
- Location of the telepad
- Location of the target
- The bearing offset (b)
- the power offset (O)
- the elevation (E)
This allows you to calculate the distance between target and telepad: x₂ - x₁ in a north/south direction, and y₂ - y₁ in the east-west direction, let's call that Δx and Δy. The straight line distance can be found using pythagorus's theorem:
To find the random power offset, put a GPS on the telepad, set Bearing to 0º so it goes straight North, Elevation to 45º and Power to 20.
To figure out the bearing to your destination, you'll need to do one of the following calculations, depending on if Δx and Δy are positive or negative:
| Δx is positive: | arctan(Δy/Δx) |
| Δx is negative: | arctan(Δy/Δx) + 180º |
| Δx is 0, Δy is positive: | 90º |
| Δx is 0, Δy is negative: | 270º |
Some calculators will have an atan2 function that will use the correct function from the above table for you automatically.
Once you have the angle, adjust it by the bearing offset as required.
So you now have the correct bearing, and need to find the power level and elevation to use.
The lowest amount of power required to do this teleport would be a perfect 45º shot, so we need to figure out the next available power level above that.
Through some magic maths, the minimum power you require is equal to the square root of (D × 10). Pick the next highest power level P from the console, adding in the power offset if required.
You'll also need to know the maximum range possible with the power level you just selected:
You now have the bearing and power level, and just need the elevation.
Examples
Calibration at Power 20, Elevation 45º, Bearing 0º:
The GPS should travel 40 squares north. However, it went -3 squares in the x axis and only 39 squares in the y axis, travelling just 39.1 units.
We can work out the equivalent power level: Square root of ((10×distance travelled) ÷ sine of ( 2 × elevation)) = power of 19.7, which is close enough to 20 that we can say there is probably no power offset.
The GPS was actually sent on a bearing equal to the inverse tan of (-3 ÷ 39), or about -4º, which gives us our bearing offset.
Getting an item from (-45, 16y):
That's a straight line distance of 47.76 units, at a bearing of -70.4º. Adjusting for the offset, i need to aim for about -74º, or 286º as a positive angle.
It'd take 21.8 units of power to reach it at a 45º shot, so I'll choose 25 power units for my Dmax, which works out to be 62.5.
The elevation I need is therefore the antisine of (47.76/62.5) ÷ 2, which is 24.9º.
Setting up your lab
First, you will want to get the following items from R&D: A telepad board, a telepad control console board, a console screen, 11 cable coils, 10 metal sheets, 2 glass and either: 5 bluespace crystals and a quadratic capacitor, or 6 bluespace crystals and a super capacitor. Also, if you set up close enough to the bridge, you can get away with 5 bluespace crystals and a super capacitor. For a teleportation hub and all that other jazz, grab 5 more bluepsace crystals, 2 capacitors, a console screen, and matter bin. WARNING: If the teleporter hub does not have a high level matter bin, you will get teleported into deep space without recalibrating the hub every single teleport.
Next, find a suitable location for your telescience lab. You could either nag the chief engineer for a build permit and build your own room right across from the Test Lab, or you could clear out some space in one of the other rooms in R&D and build it there. If your worried about people getting mad at you for being able to teleport to and from anywhere on the station (including important places that have pre-spawned tracking beacons) then don't be, for some reason people generally don't mind (as long as your a scientist).
Then, you want to use the metal to build a machine frame and a computer frame. Wrench the computer frame, add the telepad control console board, screwdriver, add wires, add glass, screwdriver. Add wires to the machine frame, add the telepad board, add 2 bluespace crystals, a piece of cable, the console screen, and the capacitor. Screwdriver twice, use multitool on the telepad, then use multitool on the telepad control console, then screwdriver the panel closed on the telepad. Now add the rest of the bluespace crystals to the telepad control console. For the hub setup, make a machine frame, wires, teleporter hub circuit board, the rest of the stuff, then screwdriver. Then, THIS IS IMPORTANT, build a machine frame and construct the teleporter station, touching the hub you just built, right up against it. Then, touching the teleporter station make a computer frame and build the teleporter control console the same way you did before. To be clear, that's |hub||station||console|, or any other arrangement like that. Then, use a screwdriver on the station, wirecutters, screwdriver again. This is to link it with nearby devices (you must do this every time you deconstruct/reconstruct the hub or the console.
Using a telepad
Now that you've got your equipment on, you're ready for action! Take one of the GPS devices on the table and go put it on the telepad. Make sure to remember it's ID! Now go to that fancy purple console and bring it up. You'll see multiple buttons. Begin by clicking "Recalibrate". You should see a "Calibration Successful" message.
Sadly, every 30 to 40 teleportations (the exact number is randomized every calibration) the Telepad will decalibrate. This means that the telepad simply will not work, and when you hit recalibrate again, you will have to recalibrate your offsets.
Leave handy beacons around the station, and GPS units at interesting locations in space, and you can easily find them again. It's worth putting something down in the Medbay so you can quickly send the wounded and the dead there. A good thing to consider is to build a crew monitoring computer in the telescience room, or get an engineer to build one for you. That way, you can directly obtain the coordinates of any dead or dying crew, and teleport them directly to Medbay or Genetics.
Teleporter Station
This is what gives power and connection to your hub. Once you have a target/gate set on your teleporter console, you simply click on the station to activate the hub. You can also link stations with other stations, allowing these stations to be used as targets. To do this, screwdriver the station to open the maintenance hatch, click on it with a multitool, close the hatch, then click on your second station (with a closed maintenance hatch) to link it. If you wish to sync multiple stations, you need to upgrade its capacitors. You must do this process for both stations on each other, in order to go to and from one another. To use these linked stations as a target, simply open up your teleporter console, set the regime to gate, then set target to the station of your choice.
Teleporter Console
This is the grandpappy of teleportation, the thing that the user actually interacts with to use their hub. There are three types of teleporting: using tracking beacons, linked stations, or custom coordinates. To use the tracking beacon method (the easiest and most common), place your tracking beacon wherever your honk desires, set the regime mode to "Teleporter", set the target to the location that your beacon is in, press calibrate hub, click on your station to activate the hub, then walk on through. If you want to use linked stations, see teleporter station. If you want to use custom coordinates, a pain in the ass awaits you. Set up and calibrate a telepad control console and a working telepad, do all the math and memes to get your target, send nothing to that configured location, insert a GPS device into the console, click "set gps memory", eject the gps and insert it into your teleporter console, click get target from memory, click calibrate hub, then click on your station to activate the hub.
Permanent Teleporter
This is basically a teleporter hub except it can work without a station or a console. It uses pre-set coordinates on its circuit board to teleport to a specific location and only that location. Simply set the target on the circuit board and construct via machine frame. To do this, use a teleporter console, set the target, then open the maintenance hatch of the teleporter station, then click the circuit board on the station. An extremely cheaper, more effective alternative is the use of quantum pads.
Quantum Pads
Quantum pads are self-contained teleporters that can be set up as a linked network. Any quantum pad can be utilized to teleport to any other linked quantum pad. Grab 2 bluespace crystals, 2 capacitors, 2 manipulators, and 2 cable coils, and 10 metal and 10 cable coils for building two machine frames. Fire out two machine frames, cable coils, add the boards, then once you have your two pads built screwdriver one, multitool, screwdriver it back together, then click on the other (maintenance hatch closed) pad, then repeat the same process backwards to link the other pad. Now simply stand on either pad and click on it to send yourself away! Better capacitors will make it use less power, and a better manipulator will increase speed and drastically decrease cooldown times (default 30 seconds). Mining will love you if you put one the asteroid and its partner in cargo.
Traitor Usage
You're a syndicate and you've been assigned as Scientist. You see a lot of potential for your objectives. You're damned right! Amongst countless things, here's a few useful ideas.
- Teleport your target to a whole entire different Z-level that you just populated with xenomorph queens and the supermatter crystal. Or be boring and teleport them into LORD SINGULOTH.
- Steal that locker and take that precious jumpsuit then send it back. Unseen, unknown.
- Flood the chamber with N20 and teleport in anyone with valuable objects.
- Teleport harmful artifacts into the brig. Disable that shitcurity!
- Drop in a !FUN! surprise in that meeting of the heads.
- *Borrow* some weapons from the secure armory.
Box Station Locations