So here’s something I’ve noticed about all the reactor and engine options for the station, in their minimum output configurations, they can effectively keep the station always running with just enough output to not have the primary station SMES’ run dry.
while that isn’t bad per se, it is kinda boring, while also opening the round the task that often scares off players from engineering, the unstable reactor core with no fail safes what so ever.
And these things that I’ve noted that brought me to write this thread.
You want me to run this with NO FAILSAFES?
The SM, Singulo and Tesla reactors all are power sources that have a very ugly failure state, in every case the engineering section is destroyed entirely when these things go critical and with the Tesla and LORD SINGULOTH, I’m sure we’re all aware of the fact that they don’t stop with just blowing up once.
In the world of engineering, when dealing with such potentially destructive forces, I shouldn’t have to tell you that having no fail safes would get you lynched as fast as if the coder bus found out you’ve been making copy-pasta spaghetti code. yet here we are.
giving engineering the means or tools in game to produce MEANINGFUL fail safes, such as the shard ejection system on Corg would make the job far less stressful and far more welcoming to players inexperienced in reactor operation.
The first thing that comes to mind is perhaps a direct Vent to space floor option. We already have floors that show off space and catwalks that do not seal off an area from space. Now all we need is a floor that can be wired up to a button to just toggle between being a sealed and unsealed floor, for quick venting of all that crazy plasma fire that happened.
Junction boxes, energy routing and rationing.
Now one thing you’ll find in every industrial work place is fuckoff big fuse boxes all over the damn place with one BIGMOTHA-FUCKA that has like 20 or more fuses with afew hundred if not thousand kilowatts going through it at all times. given that this is the range you find in the station’s power grid on the regular, my question is why don’t we have them? this would make for an interesting additon for a number of reasons, of which I will list off now:
- power management. say for example a bunch of additions were made such as more Borgs, a BSA, some anti breach shielding, some more stasis beds and sleepers, a new more lavish bar, those sorts of things, what if the basic SM set up or solars (or something else, keep this in mind for later), isn’t enough to fufill the full station’s needs in terms of power, ergo less power can be diverted around the station at once. Boom now you have a box at a key point in the wiring of maint to selectively shut off power to the sections of the station it supplies to.
- Damage diagnosis. it’s a pain in the ass to diagnose what wire has been chewed where when one department reports a power outage, having a junction box that notes what APCs are connected to it would really speed things up. Either something is broken after the box, which you then check or it’s broken before the box, which you’d learn pretty quickly after checking the box, wiring repair made less tedious.
- Targeted Sabotage. Now boxes like described would also be perfect as centralized points of sabotage. maybe you want to be quick? just flick a switch (with proper access maybe?) and suddenly a department will be complaining their APCs aren’t charging. Maybe flip ALL the switches and now a whole section of the station stops receiving power. Plant a C4 and all of a sudden now the engineering department has to rebuild the fuckin box or rewire the system! It’d just another interesting interaction and tactical choice for the traitors out there looking to cause some indirect mayhem.
I will be expanding this further and bumping it later, in the mean time feel free to discuss.
