Access: Atmospherics, Maintenance
Difficulty: Medium to Hard
Supervisors: Chief Engineer
Duties: Ensure the air is breathable on the station, fight fires, repair pipes, help out the Engineers.
Guides: Guide to Construction, Guide to Atmospherics, Cooling Plasma
The job description of an atmospheric technician is deceptively simple. In addition to maintaining the air environment of the station, you work alongside the Station Engineer team to repair breaches and especially pipes. You are also responsible for knowing how to fight fires when the situation calls for it.
Before anything else, you need to configure atmospherics. Most of your downtime can be spent optimizing this area, but these are some basics that need to be done.
First, use the Air gas computer to increase the output, to the maximum of 5066 kPa.
Next, follow the cyan line and increase the output on the two gas pumps (pictured) to their maximum of 4500 kPa.
The reason you've done the above steps is to increase the amount of air flowing into the distribution loop: the dark blue system of pipes which feeds all of the vents on the station. If you wish to try to optimize the output from the air loop to the distribution line, keep these things in mind:
Therefore, you want to be able to slowly fill the gas line, at all times (for casual atmospheric issues, like a door left open briefly), but be able to increase the pressure into the distribution loop if there's an air crisis. Also, you want to be able to manage that flow so that it only gets distributed after you've finished repairs.
One such solution is to have two feeds into the system, a single volume pump and a digital valve. The single volume pump allows for a slow, managed drain of air into the distribution loop, whereas the digital valve can be opened at any time to dump all of the gas in the air line into the main distribution loop. Don't leave the digital valve open, and you will build up a reserve of air in the air line.
PV = nRT. Pressure * Volume = mols * [Ideal Gas Constant] * Temperature. This formula governs everything you do.
“Mols” are a way of referring to how much of a gas you really have in atomic terms. So, for a constant container (or room) volume, when temperature goes up, pressure goes up. If you switch to a larger volume, pressure goes down.
Gas doesn't flow on an individual pipe-to-pipe basis. Gas is constant across any pipe system and only separated into separate gas networks by dividers, such as volume pumps, mixers, filters, gates, and valves. In general, if it has a flow rate, it divides two gas systems. The system itself is treated as one large container, with each pipe adding to its volume.
While the Station Engineer team will help you with repairing breaches, you need to repay the favor by helping with power. You're responsible for gas, and that means that you should be familiar with Cooling Plasma. Supplying engineers with fully loaded and cooled plasma tanks for their Singularity and Supermatter will make them happy. In a pinch, you can power the station without their help using the Thermoelectric Generator, which runs entirely on gas. A particularly long shift might need refills on plasma or oxygen for the Thermoelectric Generator, so keep that in mind. Additionally, the amount of coolant gas in Telecommunications is limited, therefore the Mechanics may want you to prepare extra cooled CO2 for them in a very long shift.
Repressurizing an area that has lost some of its atmosphere is the most common task you'll face as an Atmospheric Technician. Areas usually undergo depressurization when something exposes them to the cold void of space. This causes all of its atmosphere to rush out, along with anything unlucky enough to be near the window.
Once the breach has been plugged with walls or new windows, the room will repressurize only if the air line hasn't been damaged. In the case of meteors, this is unlikely, but with bombings, repairing the air line should be a top priority. If you bring an air pump with you, you can rapidly refill a room by using your RPD to create a connector port and connecting it to the distro line. Once connected, wrench the air pump onto it, set it to out, maximum pressure, and turn it on. This is like adding an extra, high power vent to the room. Keep an eye on it and make sure to turn it off once the room reaches the proper pressure of ~101kPa.
Fires are the main kind of overpressurization you'll encounter. Your atmospheric hardsuit is, for all practical purposes, fire immune. Get a foam extinguisher out of your locker. These are a special extinguisher that rapidly cools rooms. If you don't have one, it might be a good idea to get a fuel can filled with water as well and put it on your toolbelt, for refills. The foam extinguisher can cool even a large room for as much as 30 degrees Celsius per spray, meaning that most casual fires don't stand a chance. When moving into an area with a fire, be sure to travel through space and back routes as much as possible, to avoid spreading the fire into high traffic areas.
If the fire is extremely widespread or too hot to practically deal with, you may have to use the central atmospherics computer. Located in atmospherics monitoring, it allows you to remotely access every Air Alarm on the station. From there, you can panic siphon rooms. Be warned, because hot gas has a higher pressure, this will almost immediately clog up your waste loop, making it useless, unless you optimize the loop with a space cooler and ideally, extra vents.
The heat exchange pipes will cool the waste system and prevent it from clogging by lowering air pressure. Extra vents help space waste faster.
If rooms become flooded with plasma, the air alarms are already configured to filter it out, albeit slowly. If they are flooded with N2O or CO2, this is another opportunity to use the Central Atmospherics Computer. Use it to quickly skip to rooms and set their scrubbers to scrub for those gases. Do not give into temptation and panic siphon rooms, because plasma's effects take hold based on the percentage of the air it makes up, so removing everything at the same time doesn't lower that percentage.
The best way to deal with gas floods is to create a connector port for the waste loop on site with the RPD. If it's a plasma flood make sure you do not change pipes on the RPD menu while in an area flooded with plasma. The sparks will start a fire. Once you have a connector port in place, wrench on a portable scrubber, turn it on and maximize the pressure. This is like adding an extra, powerful scrubber to the room.
This handy tool, which can be retrieved from the cabinet by using a multitool on it (or by smashing it with a high-force weapon), can open firelocks and depowered airlocks like a crowbar. It's also one of the deadliest weapons on the station when wielded with two hands. Security won't like it if you start waving it around, so you better have a good reason for pulling it out.
Release plasma, suck out all the oxygen and replace it with carbon dioxide or NO2, and in short make it impossible for anyone to breathe and/pr start lots and lots of fires. You also have easy access to a fire axe, if you want to kill people up close and personal.
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.
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. It sends air to all the vents on the station, and is fed by the cyan and yellow loops.
The cyan air mix loop, which contains mixed air to feed into the distribution loop.
The red, which contains “waste air” from the scrubbers.
The green loop, which filters “waste air” from the waste loop.
The yellow loop, internal to Atmospherics, which is used for custom air mixes.
Atmospherics are actually very simple and logical and anything you do can be easily understood BEFORE you attempt it. Many people start by asking what should I do as atmos tech (especially during the first 2 minutes of the round). I like to tell these people that since Atmos is very logical, let us first analyze what we want to happen and then I will show you how to acheive the desired result with easy logical pipes.
In the first few minutes of a round one might set the goals to: 1) Increase the mixed air to portable air pumps 2) Increase the efficiency of the Waste loop 3) Increase the efficiency of the Distribution Loop
The Gases
N2 N/A 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. Vox breathe this. NOT N2O!
O2 N/A 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.
CO2 N/A 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. At low levels, people will start gasping.
N2O N2O effect.gif 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 PlasmaEffect.gif The one truly flammable gas on the station, plasma is pink, 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.
When connected together, pipes are systems known as pipelines. A pipeline is separated from another when there is no direct pipe connection to another, and no open valve between them. Devices such as pumps, or valves will separate pipelines from each other.
Some easy to access properties of pipelines:
In simplified simulations, a pipeline shares all the above values at all points along the pipeline. So if a pipeline is connected to a thermal plate in space, or an H/E line in space the entire pipeline will be cooled by this without any necessity for pumps. So you need not use more than one meter along an entire pipeline, as it will all be the same. One other thing you should now note is that there is no such thing as flow. Pumps directly transfer gases from one pipeline to another. This means that pumps connected to the same pipeline on both sides do NOTHING.
In realistic simulations, a pipeline and air in general has a flow - high-pressure air moves to lower-pressure locations, causing wind as it goes. Thermal plates only cool the gas currently passing through them, so longer heat exchange lines will have greater effect. And so on.
Now as a proper Atmosian, one important thing to consider is how to separate your pipelines in such a way that you can work on them properly. You want to keep your pipelines separate if you are working with toxic materials like N2O or plasma, otherwise you could for example introduce plasma into the oxygen that is fueling the air you breathe. Another reason you may want to keep your pipelines separate is due to the fact pipes more than 2 atmospheres greater than the outside air are unwrenchable unless you have the mysterious device known as the socket wrench.
Here are some ways and reasons you would want to use them to separate pipelines:
Gas pumps - A gas pump allows you to put a specific pressure of each gas into the second pipeline.
Volume pumps - A volume pump allows you to maximize pressure in the second pipeline. A volume pump pressurizes up to 9000kpa, and allows you to move a very large amount of gas at once.
Manual/Digital Valves - These function as a pipe cap on two pipelines or act as a pipe allowing both pipelines to fully merge, depending on their setting.
Manual/Digital T-Valves - These allow you to swap from merging pipeline A and B, or pipelines A and C.
Passive gate - Allows gases to travel in only one direction like a pump. However it doesn't pump the gas, it lets certain pressure through. Can let up to 4500 kPa pressure through. It should be noted that its on status can be easy to miss, being just a small red/green light.
Before we get to the more complicated part of atmospherics, let's do a basic runover of the simple types of actual pipes. All of these can be joined up in a single pipeline that is equal at all points. Note that the first three have insulated variants, the benefits of which will be discussed under pipe bursting.
Straight pipes - A single pipe going over a tile
Bent Pipe - No different than straight pipe except turns at 90 degree turn
Manifolds - A pipe going over one tile and another direction
4-Way Manifolds - A pipe that extends in all four directions
H/E pipe - A pipe that exchanges heat with the environment if there are gases, and radiates heat to space if exposed to space.
Bent H/E pipe - The same as the standard H/E pipe, with 90 degree turn
H/E Junction - This junction can join together H/E pipe sections with regular pipes
Devices are what gives spice to pipe networks, which are the combination of pipelines and devices. Many of them fill differing purposes
The purpose of these devices is to interact with the environment around it in some way, there are a number of ways you can use them both with an AAC and an air alarm, so be inventive!
Passive vent - These vents will allow the environment they are in and the pipeline they are connected with to interact and come into equilibrium. If placed in space these will vent gases instead.
Unary vent - A unary vent acts as the combination of a vent with a gas pump. It has the functionality of being able to act either by sucking or blowing, though its sucking function cannot be activated by the typical air alarm. It can be activated using an AAC, tank control computer, or air alarm. It can be used up to a pressure of 5066.25kpa which is an improvement over just having a gas pump, so do not feel obligated to use a gas pump after one.
Injector - An injector acts as the combination of a vent and volume pump. This device is one way, it will only inject gases into the environment. It works up to 200L/s, so combining it with a volume pump is unnecessary. One interesting feature is that unlike volume pumps it has no max limit of how high it can fill, so it can continue filling up a room to any pressure.
Scrubber - A scrubber is a unique device that CAN function as a vent and a volume pump depending on its mode. It also acts one way, it only takes gases from the environment. When it is placed in the syphoning mode it will take gases from the environment at about 120L/s. It has a unique ability to 'scrub' gases from the air as well, letting it take out harmful toxins, or the oxygen people need to breathe if you are a traitor. So try to make the most of this feature if a toxin gets released.
These devices are attached to pipelines to fulfill specific advanced purposes.
Connector - Used to attach canisters, pumps or scrubbers to a pipe network. When connected to a pipeline these act as a pipe with their very own volume, so even if you detach your object dont think this is an empty pipe section! One other thing to note is that anything attached to a connector is in equilibrium only, if you want a canister to fill or empty into the pipeline connected you must use a pump in combination with it.
Meter - This device is put on top of a pipeline and wrenched down. You can then activate it from within ~4 tiles and get the pressure and temperature reading of the gases in your pipeline. You can also multitool them to use them as a sensor in the AAC.
Gas Filter - A filter that takes gases in from one side, and filters one gas out perpendicularly and lets the rest pass. Ceases to function if either final direction reaches its max output pressure. Gas Mixer - Takes in gases from its two inputs, the secondary input being perpendicular. And outputs gases at its output pressure if it has enough gas to take. Ceases to function if one pipeline is empty or if set to take 100% of one type of gas.
Air alarms are a centralized tool for simultaneously controlling the vents and scrubbers in a room. They also will heat/cool a room if the thermostat temperature is more than 2 degrees different than the air temperature, and finally can be set with different thresholds for temperature, pressure, and gas types to activate alerts (or disable them) which can even raise firelocks.
Panic Syphons: This handy button activates a mode that turns all vents off and set all scrubbers to syphon. This can be useful if a room poses an immediate danger to spreading superheated gases to another area. However, it should be activated rarely unless you have rerouted waste to space to prevent the waste line from exploding.
Vents: you control vents through the air alarm. There are the following settings:
External on, Internal off: will drain/add air from the tile the vent is on to make it the correct amount. All air being moved goes into/comes out of the pipe the vent is attached to. Set to 0 to drain air, or pressurise to specific levels.
Both on: completely useless. Don't bother.
External off, Internal on: Drains/adds air to the tile to get the pipe attached to the correct level. Setting a vent to internal and the desired pressure to 0 causes ALL gas which enters the pipe to be shunted out onto the tile.
Scrubbers - two settings, scrubbing and syphoning.
Scrubbers will slowly drain any gasses set to scrub in the air of the tile they are on, and transfer it to their pipe. Useful for removing a contained leak of some harmful gas.
Syphons will do the same, except indiscriminately and drain all gasses on their tile. Useful primarily for quickly removing all gases when they may pose a danger of spreading to other rooms, such as when a room if filled with an extremely high content of harmful gases or superheated gases.
Modes
Thresholds
Atmospherics isn't the only place with pipes, the entire pipe system is there to explore.
Officially, Atmospherics has one other official room on the station, a small room in maintenance just north of the Fitness Room and just east of the Detective's Office. This room can isolate the Security wings distribution system with its own feed of gas, canister of air mix included within.
The Incinerator provides a good off-site burn room.
The Construction Area is a oft disused little haven that's just asking for some pipes, it even comes with an Air alarm that controls nothing that you don't build yourself! This place provides a great blank canvas for any sort of atmospheric experimentation outside of Atmosia. However, it's a little far from any distro pipes.
The Vacant Office is also a prime location for Atmospherics, though there already is a vent system in place as well as plenty of annoying desks to dismantle, it can be a place to practice your pipe skills.
By Arrivals and also the airlocks leading to the Toxins Test Chamber in the maintenance tunnels are two large cans of emergency air mix that can be put into the system with the turn of a valve.
Finally, the entirety of the maintenance system itself is a giant playground of pipes. Try using your T-ray to explore the vast pipe systems.
Whatever you do, be responsible with your experiments.
Using H/E pipes in space you can cool things down to a very low temperature very quickly. By making a cross with two off them you can have two on one tile, which is known as 'sequesteral' cooling.
Air Filters on currently burning mixes can siphon out heated but PURE O2 and Plasma. Do the O2 first then the plasma, as there is less O2 in a fire and thus it functions faster. This (and H/E) allow you to reach really obscene temperatures.
Air Filters and H/E allow you to expose gasses to the heat of fires (or their CO2 product) but keep/make them pure, allowing for hot N2O or similar.
You can use fire to burn out floor tiles into space tiles.
Using a small starter flame/heater you can have in pipe combustion.
Canister bombs are heated Plasma in a canister, with a O2 tank placed in the canister, and then open the valve between them. You will also need to run very, very fast.
The gas diverted by an air filter has no maximum pressure, and can therefore reach an insane amount. For example, you can filter out the oxygen into one sealed pipe and it will keep rising.
You can hack an air alarm to use it as a non-atmostech.
Any time chemistry sets off an air-affecting grenade (Think Welderfuel/Ground Plasma), the particles spread themselves as part of an airmix. This is bloody annoying, because though the Air Alarms pick them up as “High Concentration of Unknown Particles Detected”, they are impossible to suck down to Atmos. Spacing the entire affected air is, as far as I know, the only real “cure”. There is a viable way to clean this, if you can safely cordon off the area. Detonating a welding fuel tank usually (always?) cuts a hole to space on the tile beneath it, and thus if you set your internals on and wear a fire suit, is an highly unsafe but effective way of draining the air. It is also one of the few ways to destroy pipes which are at a high pressure and thus can be a useful emergency cut-off if there is plasma irrevocably linked to distribution. It does KO you, do damage, and can make a space tile, which means without internals and a fire suit it can kill you. Caution is advised.
Pipes at around 300 kPa pressure can be unwrenched, however, devices such as pumps and filters don't really 'hold' pressure and can be unwrenched at any time! (Assuming they're off.)
Gas pumps are for precise pressure control, volumetric pumps are for really fast pumping, and passive gates are for having 'one way' manual valves.
The Atmospherics system is far from optimal, and I'm talking about just the pipe configuration! Break out that wrench and start experimenting! (Just make sure you know what's what.)
Extremely high temperature gasses (Like those from a panic siphoned fire.) can really clog the waste loop. Can something be done to correct that?
No one uses the ports outside of the 'refilling' station, but that doesn't mean that functionality can't be added onto them!
Speaking of EVA suits, your engineering buddies can potentially help you with anything you might want to do in space, be it adding or modifying pipes.
Space is very, very cold– use this to your advantage by connecting the custom loop into space with thermal exchange pipes and volume pumps!
Ever wonder what that large construction area in the middle of atmospherics is for ? Why not put it to use! Wall up the area, slap down some thermal exchange pipes and volume pumps, light it up– and connect it to the custom loop!
The main cargo area inside Cargo has a laughably small number of vents, and how many times have those dumb dumbs sent the shuttle off while the doors are open?
The brigs distribution system is set up to be potentially independent of the rest of the stations distribution loop, maybe other places can be set up like this as well?
The mining station doesn't have air recycling. Very long rounds might make this a problem for any miners working there.
1) Open valves connected to harmful gas you want to add to the station.
2) Set pumps to the distribution loop to maximum pressure output (4500kPa)
3) Set filters to not filter harmful gasses you want to add to the station
4) Open valve from custom mix chamber
5) Turn on pump leading to distribution loop.
6) Wait for vents to slowly kick out your deathgas mix as regular atmos drains out through the inevitable hull breaches. (Alternatively turn off pressure checks on atmos alarms vents).
7) If you need to kill someone for your objective, and you want to be more proactive, the Fire Axe mounted in the wall is surprisingly effective. Just don't leave it lying around, because it's the only one in the station.
To hurry this process up, you can set the air vents at local control panels to maximum output pressure. Not doing so gives the AI and atmos techs more time to notice what you've done and shut it off before it takes effect.
Crafty atmos traitors will want to cut cameras, replace pumps with pipes, and use tricky pipe configurations to avoid the AI interfering or the detective trying to fix it.
Any gas at pressure over 1000 KPA will cause you to start suffocating as in a vacuum. You can just use internals, though.
N2O is invisible at low pressures. If you start giggling, put on your internals to avoid passing out.
Any gas can displace O2, and less than 16 (also useful for optimizing internals) KPA of oxygen starts the Oxyloss. CO2 can be removed with the scrubbers, but to get rid of N2 simply apply some way of removing gas from the air and adding O2. My personal favorite is 2 air pumps, 3 connectors and a Air Filter and a canister: 1 pump draws in, goes through the connection and filters N2 into the canister, and the rest to the other pump, which expels it. Can also be used for N2O which is only sluggishly scrubbed otherwise.
Pressures above 750KPA do 10DPS + 5DPS for every extra 375KPA above that mark, rounded off. Space suits completely block it all, but there is no other defense.
Notes about Pressure, Temperature, Volume and Heat Capacity
PV=nRT where R = 8 The following are linked by this equation. Sadly, without either Volume or Moles, it's not useful in game and is here for the theory.
Pressure (P): Measured in kPa, kiloPascals, Pressure is lethal above 750 KPA's.
Temperature(T): Measures in K, Kelvin, Temperature above x and below y causes burn damage. Bomb making usually relies on a temperature at or in excess of 90 kK. Floors and walls melt at a temperature of z.
Moles(n): While not a variable that can be seen, Moles are the amount of particles of a gas in the air. It is moles that cause odd effects with a certain chemical. As it dumps so many moles to a turf, to keep the pressure acceptable, the moles have to be very, very cold, causing the infectious effect.
Volume(V): Another unseen variable, Volume is the size of a turf, or a canister, tank or piped tank. This helps dictate how much gas it can hold. (Potential list of volume for a tile, pipe, airtanks, etanks, canisters, ect?)
Heat Capacity: A gasmix has heat capacity, and it is calculated by taking into account the quantity of all of the gases in the air and their specific heat. Oxygen has a specific heat of around 20, CO2 has 30, and N2 has 300. When you factor in the normal 70% N2 it leaves you with a very high specific heat. The higher the specific heat, the more energy required to heat up the mixture, meaning that with an air mix vs. pure O2 mix, it takes much more energy to heat the air than the O2, and the increase in energy required also decreases how much the fire spreads. Simply slowing it down means that heat energy will be 'soaked up' by the air instead of super-heating everything extremely quickly.
Fire: An effect caused by burning plasma, fire comes in two different forms of hotspot. It causes massive burn damage, and a strong fire will not be stopped by standard firesuits. Plumbing N2 into a room might work, but heavy firefighting is not the point of this section. Fire will ignite any form of combustibles in near tiles. Sufficiently hot fires use less oxygen as they rise in temperature. This is due to the fact that fires remove X plasma and X*(1.4-Y, Y< or = 1) oxygen. X CO2 is produced.