Exploits usage and game mechanic intent

RDS88 · December 31, 2020, 4:10pm

very much correct but this is fun

Halinder · December 31, 2020, 4:14pm

solution is obviously to admin-bomb each power generation source every time it’s turned on

Babundus · December 31, 2020, 7:03pm

I definitely think fire should affect adjacent tiles, it’s always confused me that you have a fire the temperature of the sun being held back by fucking glass. If it can melt floors it should be able to melt walls. Atmospheric barriers can just be given absurdly high heat resistance if such a thing was implemented.

Alexanderself1 · December 31, 2020, 7:06pm

The issue is that the SM and TEG and Turbine would all melt the entire station instantly

RDS88 · December 31, 2020, 7:07pm

oh boy tesla time nobodys poked any holes in that yet

Alexanderself1 · December 31, 2020, 7:08pm

I’m not even sure it creates heat but distribution of that much energy into either the station or the air would instantly fry anything and everything in the station and surrounding space

Babundus · December 31, 2020, 7:08pm

I’m fine with at least attempting some scientific rationale for it; plasma glass being some super-heat resistant form of glass I am fine with.

Alexanderself1 · December 31, 2020, 7:10pm

The issue is that making glass and walls not hold back heat is that it would take one enterprising smart antag to instantly ruin the round. Pyrosium is easily created and reacts with oxygen to create heat. Plumbing chem to insert into smoke machine and eventually you will reach unimaginable temperatures across the entire station.

Babundus · December 31, 2020, 7:17pm

Make it destroy the machine/container if it reaches a certain temperature like it would in real life. Also I’m not sure if Pyrosium/Crystolane work in smoke form, I tried to do something similar in the past.

Alexanderself1 · December 31, 2020, 7:23pm

If you add oxygen as a chem to it that should work as smokes can react together

Alexanderself1 · December 31, 2020, 7:23pm

OH SHIT WAIT WE DONT EVEN HAVE TO HAVE THIS HEAT SYSTEM TO FUCK UP MEDBAY VIA SMOKE

It is clear

Nik735 · December 31, 2020, 7:53pm

tesla just exists as free power, sm is just free power, singlo is just free power, the only logical generator is the pacman but I get why the teg is a “exploit” its just degenerate to put such low effort into a teg, at least use one side with freezers the other a trit/plasma fire or something

bloons3 · December 31, 2020, 8:13pm

Freezers/heaters are known not to obey conservation of energy by coders tho.

Ruko · December 31, 2020, 8:14pm

Thread started by someone can actually interpret this game’s spaghetti code and digs through it looking for things to exploit instead of fix.

I have a hard time believing this is started in good faith after our last interactions.

Same. I had discussed it a handful of times prior to this incident and it’s used in mapping on the Supermatter so I had previously told people it wasn’t. I’m silent in the report thread because I frankly don’t know how to respond to it.

If it’s deemed an exploit, the adminbus is justified. If it’s not an exploit, it’s just flagrant adminbus.

This is one that I’ve been told to “fix” by making the TEG spontaneously explode in the past. I’ve yet to actually see anyone do it though.

I’d like to believe that’s not true and hope you report any you see.

bloons3 · December 31, 2020, 8:17pm

Also a known bug/exploit.

github.com/tgstation/tgstation

Cell chargers now respect the law of conservation of energy.

tgstation:master ← ArcaneMusic:powercellssuck

opened 06:48PM - 08 Nov 20 UTC

ArcaneMusic

+20 -4

## About The Pull Request Hopefully I can make this PR as knowledge filled as… possible, so sit down and buckle up, because we're about to talk about POWER USE. So, machines use power. The station uses power. Without power, key, critical aspects of the game don't function, and keeping the station's lifeblood pumped with electricity is the primary goal of the engineering department. Cool. So there's currently 2 methods of "power use" that machines can use, that is, through the passive use of power (Assigned by the `idle_power_usage` and `active_power_usage` variables), or through the `use_power()` proc. What's interesting, is that neither proc actually draws directly from the cell of the APC, which is sort of assumed by a proc called `use_power()`, after all. Where the passive power draw aspect of an APC is done automatically as machines are processed, and then applied to the APC seperately, taking power per cycle, use_power just applies a temporary blip of power usage to one of the APC's power tracks (Equipment, Lighting, or Enviroment). One would assume then that this temporary power drain would apply for long enough that it would apply the intended cost to the cell, and then turn off. But I'm making this PR, right? So the most egregious issue this brings is in terms of the cell recharger. If you place a power cell into a cell recharger, the recharger calls use_power every processing tick in order to reduce the APC cell by an equivalent amount to what the cell is intending to gain in charge. After all, you're just moving the charge from the APC to the power cell, plus the processing charge required by the cell_charger. However, lets look a bit closer at how use_power actually works. For this example we'll use a default, unupgraded cell recharger attempting to put it's default 250 watts into an empty bluespace cell. Because power is heavily linked to the area that the machinery is placed in, we snag the area, determine the power channel, and call a use power proc on the area. The area use power proc simply adds that 250 watts, or rather joules into the equipment power channel of the APC, a part of power usage. All of this is parroted over to the APC's processing side, where the actual cost to the power cell is calcualted as follows: `var/cellused = min(cell.charge, GLOB.CELLRATE * lastused_total) // clamp deduction to a max, amount left in cell cell.use(cellused)` So that number, the 250 joules of power we're calling to the cell, is actually being multiplied by a global cellrate, which is applied to every power drain on the station, actually charging the APC cell a total of 0.5 kj. Based on some rumentary math and some experimentation, I filled a full bluespace power cell with 40Mj of power using 351 Kj of power from a standard, stock APC cell with no other drain except the 5 joules of power draw from the cell recharger. So: What does this mean? - Power draw is completely fucking busted (We knew this). - Using two power cells, an APC, and an inducer, you can create infinite energy, anywhere, at zero cost to the station. - We really need to make cell recharging a direct power draw. Thankfully, that last one actually fits the portfolio of being a fix! This adds a new proc to machines called `directly_use_power`. It does what it says on the tin, directly charges the APC for instances where power is going 1-1 from a power cell to another cell, in order to prevent infinite energy exploits. ## Why It's Good For The Game Power is all kinds of unbalanced. Attempting to enforce the concept that a single unit of power is equal to itself is probably a good step in the right direction and in all likelyhood appears to have been the original intent with cell chargers in the first place. I'm self-aware enough to see that this has ramifications beyond just fixing an issue within the cell charger alone, so if maintainers want to close this until december that's perfectly fine, but this is one of those things that could really easily snap basic station balance in twain. ## Changelog :cl: fix: Cell rechargers now actually attempt to fill the power cell with the amount of power necessary to fill the cell, based on the APC's charge, preventing infinite energy. /:cl:

Power is all kinds of unbalanced. Attempting to enforce the concept that a single unit of power is equal to itself is probably a good step in the right direction and in all likelyhood appears to have been the original intent with cell chargers in the first place.

bloons3 · December 31, 2020, 8:20pm

Any game “mechanic” that enables extremely high return for low actual effort will generally be considered an exploit, especially when done outside of intended mechanics.

For example, connecting a TEG to a heater and freezer instead of a space loop or system that creates heat as a byproduct.

Another example would be placing an air injector under the supermatter because you are knowledgeable that interacts strangely with the terrain that the supermatter exists on, and will make it impossible to delaminate the SM even if you were to pump pure plasma and CO2 into the chamber.

Yet another example would be creating many small items in the SM chamber to absorb and emit small amounts of radiation to make a massive power increase, which is trivial to do with an RPD, and bypasses the intended mechanic of the SM which is to experiment with gas mixtures, cooling solutions, and emitters to increase power generation.

system · January 7, 2021, 8:20pm

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