Ganima’s comprehensive guide to maxcaps (with video)
Goal of this guide
Regarding the length of this guide
The word comprehensive is in the title for a reason. It’s supposed to take you from no knowledge to full capability. If you know how to upgrade machines, if you understand how to research works, if you know what a maxcap is, if you don’t care about clean up, if you don’t want to bomb things on the station… you can skip a large portion of this guide. Unfortunately, when I wrote it I didn’t take this in mind. However, all paragraphs should be compete thoughts so you should be able to quickly skip over sections.
The goal of this guide it to provide steps and an explanation on the theory of maxcaps. Additionally, it will also explain some things that I found confusing while making my first maxcaps. Here is the link to the video.
If you don’t want to play around with high explosives on an active round you can host your own server. It’s very simple. You don’t need the database. You can test all sorts of things here.
Tips for the test server:
- There is a secret menu in the adminbus panel that lets you fully
power all areas and the SMES. - If your hotkeys don’t work, try going into preferences and resetting
to default. - If you want to spawn something, use the Spawn command in the textbox.
Just type the item name or what you think the name is and a menu will
pop up with all the things in the game with that word in their name.
For example: Spawn “spare” - will show a menu from where you can
spawn the spare Capitan’s ID. Another use is Spawn “trit” - which
will spawn a full Tritium canister. - Right click on a tile and use “Jump to turf” to teleport.
- If all the extra tabs and options are distracting, you can use the
deadmin command to become a normal player. You can readmin at any
time.
The theory
This is a guide on how to create a bomb in the Toxins department of RnD. We are making this bomb to generate, ideally, 25k discovery points, 50k general research points and 50k credits. These are used to research technologies. Properly used one maxcap can reach technology Tier 5.
These bombs are usually called “maxcaps”. This is because they reach the explosion size cap on bombs in the game. This cap is here because of Cuban Pete.
Don’t say that name three times in the lab while wearing clown shoes or you will instantly explode. There is a little joke for you to distract from the knowledge I’m about to shove down your throat.
Theses bombs are also known as TTVs. TTV stands for Tank Transfer Valves. TTV are the red valve pipe looking things on the tables in the Toxin lab. They are used to connect two tanks together.
In one of these tanks, we want ~95moles (500kpa at 43K) of super-cooled Tritium. This is the minimum amount of Tritium. More is fine. Probably a lot more. Less is not. The rest of the tank should be super-cooled Oxygen. In the other tank we want super-heated Plasma.
TTVs can also have a signaler attached to them. We use this to detonate remotely. You can also attach proximity sensors and timers. Those are used to remotely state your displeasure with someone without your personal involvement.
It’s important to note that a maxcap can be achieved with no Tritium if you just want a bomb. But a maxcap that generates research point must contain Tritium. A normal bomb can just have super-cold Oxygen and super-hot Plasma.
Also, important to know is that you can only maxcap once. More specifically the max point amount you can generate in one round from Toxins is 25k/50k/50k. If you were to detonate two maxcaps, for example, the second one would generate nothing.
How to make the boom
Now that you understand what our goal is and why here are the steps we need to take:
- Crate and cool ~95 moles of Tritium. At 43K (kelvin) this comes to ~500kpa of pressure in the tank. Less than this is a problem, but more is not. At least up to some point.
- Fill the rest of the first tank with Oxygen also at 43K.
- Fill the other tank with super-heated Plasma.
- Assemble the maxcap with the TTV and launch.
Toxin’s lab modifications
Now let’s finally get to the nuts and bolts. The meat and potatoes. The brass tacks. This is the most involved step so don’t be daunted. Tritium is crated when you burn Plasma in an Oxygen rich environment. So that is what we will do.
But first we must make modifications to our burn chamber and the associated pipenets. That is a fancy word for a pipe network. You will find most the tools you need for this initial setup in the lab itself. If something is missing, go to the station primary tool storage or make it at the lathe. You will need a RPD, a screwdriver, a wrench, a crowbar, and an analyzer.
You will also need T2 stock parts to upgrade your thermomachines, henceforth referred to as freezers. You will get these parts from the RnD department lathe. Research the Industrial Engineering technology.
Sync the lathe and then grab a RPED, 5 advanced matter bins and 5 high power micro-lasers. Used the RPED on the components to place them inside it.
I will be showcasing Kilo, my beloved, but the theory is the same on all stations. Just use your head to figure out the exact steps on each station. Here is what the initial setup looks on Kilo:
Image legend top left to bottom right we have:
Gray – Input pump for the injector. Set it to max pressure since we want to dump a lot of Oxygen in first.
Purple – Scrubber pump. Replace with a normal pipe. Short answer is it will be much more efficient. Here is the long answer. You don’t need to understand this for our purposes.
Pink – The air alarm used to control our one scrubber. You can set it now to extended range and tritium or do it later.
Red – The switch used to open the bolted doors. Be careful here since in my experience it’s kind of bugged. Just make sure you click the “open interior air lock” and never touch it again.
Green – Igniter switch. Used to set our mix on fire.
Orange – Burn chamber airlock switch. Do not press it by accident because you will vent your mix to space.
Yellow – The initial pipe network on Kilo. We will need to do some modifications to it.
Here is what we want to have in the end:
First upgrade one of the freezers and move and rebuild the other one with upgraded parts. The screwdriver is used to “open” a machine. It must be off. Use the RPED on the opened machine and you will hear a sound indicating that the parts have been replaced. The chat logs will show what parts were replaced exactly so you can make sure all is in order.
To move a freezer open it, then use a crowbar on it to deconstruct it. Un-wrench the machines frame and move it where you want it then re-wrench it. You can use the RPED to pick up the old parts to make it easier to pick up the other components. The RPED will always use the best components. Insert the circuit board. Add the T2 parts with the RPED and the glass and wire piece. Use the screwdriver to complete the machine. To rotate the machine open it and then use a wrench on it.
Once you are done turn both freezers on and set them to their lowest temperature with the left arrow. You know you did it properly if it says 43K.
Next crate the pipenets as shown. To crate the pipe nets, you will use the RPD (Rapid Pipe Dispenser). There will always be one in your lab. Use the RPD in your hand to open the menu from where you can select what you want to build. All components can be unwrenched and then “picked up” with the RPD into its abstract internal buffer of materials used to crate pipes and devices.
The idea is that we have the blue pipenet used to inject stuff into the chamber. It’s just a straight pipe with a pump so we can control the speed of the pumping.
The red pipenet is the one with the freezer. The idea is what we scrub the tritium and cool it with the freezer. The volume pump must be OFF. We don’t want to pump semi-cool or hot tritium into the portable air pump. If you haven’t set up the air alarm to scrub Tritium, do it now.
Speaking of portable air pumps. That is the blue box looking thing. These pumps have an internal buffer. We want that buffer filled with Tritium. And then we want that buffer to go into an empty Oxygen tank from the tank dispenser. Here is the interface (in general, not in this moment):
You can control the target pressure as well as is it going in or out. Be careful with this. Turning it on while these is no tank will have it dump its contents into the air. Try not to dump super-heated plasma into the air.
Finally, the yellow setup in the corner is used to cool one canister of Oxygen.
Creating the Tritium
Time to create our burn mix and get that Tritium. We are going to pump three canisters of Oxygen into the burn chamber. You can find them in the Toxin storage area. Wrench them to the connector and wait until the lights on the canister stop blinking. This indicates that the canister is empty. If it’s going slowly make sure you have maxed out the inject pump. Wrench the one Oxygen tank to the cooling setup as well.
Once this is done make sure to reduce the pumping speed of the input pump back to 101Kpa. We don’t want to dump the entire Plasma tank content into the chamber when we wrench it on. We just need a trickle to power the burn.
Here are things to check for before you wrench the Plasma tank on the connector:
- Is the air alarm set to scrubbing Tritium and turned on?
- Is the pump set to 101Kpa?
- Is the freezer turned on and set to cooling at the lowest temperature?
- Is the volume pump to the portable gas pump turned OFF?
Once you have made sure of all the above, wrench the Plasma tank to the injector and set the mix on fire with the igniter switch. You have done it properly if the mix starts to burn a bright cyan color and you should see hot Tritium in the pipe if you use the analyzer on it.
Now wait a bit. If you keep using your analyzer on the scrubber pipenet you should see the Tritium mole count increasing. This depends on the map and your pipenet size, but in general wait until you have 30-40 moles in that node of the pipenet. If you are not sure extra won’t hurt since we can just get rid of the excess.
You can un-wrench the Plasma tank a little earlier since the chamber will keep burning with the leftover Plasma. Once you have the desired amount turn off the scrubber. This will stop any more hot Tritium from coming in the pipenet and the freezer will rapidly cool the contents. The leftover Tritium will burn up in the chamber and it will eventually stop burning. It’s still extremely hot inside it. You can at this point set the scrubber to scrub Plasma but keep it OFF.
Use your analyzer and once the Tritium is cooled off to 43K turn on the volume pump and wait until it pumps all the tritium into your portable air pump buffer. Congratulations. You have just made super-cooled Tritium.
Placing the Tritium into the tank with super-cooled Oxygen.
Time to get our tanks for the maxcap. In your lab there will be a tank dispenser and a portable scrubber or two. The portable scrubber is the white sink looking thing.
The scrubber will remove the contents of the inserted tank into their internal buffer. In the absence of the tank, they will scrub the air. By default, they don’t scrub oxygen, so turn that on.
Grab one Oxygen tank and one Plasma tank from the dispenser. Place the tank into the scrubber and then turn it on. You should see the tank pressure drop to 0kpa. Turn it off. Remove them with ALT + Click. Do the same from both tanks. Now you have two empty tanks.
Now it’s time to fill the Oxygen tank with the Tritium. Place the tank in the portable air pump that has the Tritium in it. Set the desired pressure. In our case 500kpa. Turn on the mode to IN. Turn on the pump. It should take just a second. Then turn it back off.
Once you have made sure it’s off you can remove your new Tritium tank. It’s now time to fill the rest with super-cooled Oxygen. Make a setup like this:
Now since most Toxin labs only have two portable pump and we need one for pumping plasma we will need to empty the one filled with Tritium. If you have a little excess Tritium, you can just dump into our Oxygen tank (soon to be maxcap tank). If you have a lot of excess, you can just dump into a different Oxygen tank and throw that in a corner somewhere or scrub it.
Now place the empty portable air pump on the little setup and pump all the cold Oxygen into its buffer. Then simply max out the pressure and pump it into the tank. You now have a super-cooled Tritium Oxygen mix tank for your maxcap. Almost there.
Getting the hot Plasma tank
The final ingredient is a tank filled with super-heated Plasma. Luck for us we already have a very hot room. So, we just need to scrub some Plasma from it. However, there is none since it all burned up. Before we pump some in make sure your air alarm is set. The scrubber should be scrubbing Plasma but should remain OFF. Also make sure to turn off the freezer. We don’t want to cool our Plasma.
Wrench the other portable air pump to the connector and turn on the volume pump. Make sure there is no excess Tritium in the pipenet first. There should be none or very little since we pumped it all into the previous portable air pump.
Now wrench the Plasma tank back to the inject pipenet connector. Literally just for a second. Then un-wrench. Quickly turn on the scrubber with the air alarm also just from a second. This will scrub a little bit of plasma into the pipenet. But, because it’s so hot it will be a lot more pressurized. If you look at your portable air pump you will see it has a lot of hot plasma in its buffer. Simply fill the Plasma tank with the hot plasma. You now have all you need.
Side note: we turn the air alarm on for just a second because it will scrubber all that we need, but less then the portable air pump buffer. This makes clean up much easier.
Assembly and launching of your bomb
So here we are. As promised, we have one Oxygen tank filled with super cool Tritium and Oxygen and another tank filled with super-hot Plasma. You can make sure using the analyzer.
Here are all the parts we need. Place the tanks on the TTV. Set the receivers to some different frequency and a different code. Just in case. Use the screwdriver on a receiver and attach it to the TTV. It’s done. Don’t be afraid to use the maxcap in hand. It will just open the interface like this one:
It won’t open the valve unless you click the button. You can remove any parts you want to check if you set the receiver wrong or something.
Time to launch it. Go to the toxins launch site. It has the scanning array and the mass driver. Place the maxcap on the launch pad and press the button to launch it. Turn on the intercom so all may hear of your great work. Verify that the maxcap is on the location by checking the cameras.
And finally take out the other receiver and push the button. Receive praise.
Beyond the maxcap
Now what? Why did you even do this again? Research all the technology and upgrade all the machines. Receive unanimous praise. Grow very bored.
You should go and research the technologies properly up to Tier 5. Here is the guide for that. After that you should upgrade the machines around the station. Here is the guide for that.
Hot tip: Bluespace RPEDs work through cameras, so you don’t have to go in person to all these places. The people will just see a blue beam granting them upgrades and say quite prayer to whoever is doing that.
Surender the 50k credits to cargo or take it all for yourself and buy expensive hats. After all, you earned it.
You may have seen the other camera in the toxins launch room. The outpost. This is an area inside a mountain on Lavaland. It’s not used to get research points. Instead, you can make a normal maxcap and give it to the miners. They can then use it to hollow out the mountain and get a lot of resources instantly.
Making the lab safe
Once you are done and if you know you won’t be making any more bombs it’s prudent to clean up the Toxin’s lab.
For some reason the main thing that makes a bomb, that being the TTV, is not secure at all. The ones in the Toxin lab are all that you have on the entire station. The only other source is ordering from Cargo. If you want to do one thing to prevent more bombs, then placing the TTVs in a secure place or hiding them is what you should do. You can’t make any sort of bomb without them.
Additionally, wrench the cold Oxygen pump and the hot Plasma pump to the injector pipenet. Dump the whole thing into space. Turn on the freezer and cool the hot Plasma left in your scrubber pipes. There should be none since you only turned the air alarm for a second. Remove the inject pump and the volume pump on the scrubber pipenet. Secure the RPD. Close the interior airlock.
If you do all this the short way to say this is that the bad men can’t make a new bomb. The long way to say it, is that the only way someone is making a bomb now is if they have the knowledge, have access (one way or another), have a RPD, have an Oxygen canister, have time to make a new burn mix to heat up the Plasma and, the hardest part, having a TTV if you hid or secured them. It’s just not happening.
The way of Cuban Pete
After making the maxcap you might notice that you have all the tools needed to make more normal bombs. You have a pump filled with cold Oxygen and one filled with hot Plasma. Indeed, it would take you just a minute to make a brand-new bomb. And you happen to have 5 excess TTVs. Interesting.
When transporting maxcaps the TTV itself is a bulky item and of course the completed bomb is as well, meaning it can’t fit into backpacks. The TTV also looks like a completed maxcap in your hands no matter what. But you are in the RnD department. And the Bag of Holding can fit bulky items inside. Interesting.
You can place the completed bombs or the TTV itself into large cardboard boxes, lockers or crates and the drag that around. You can hide it behind other bigger items like the cardboard cutouts from the launch room crate. This will fool any quick examinations that doesn’t involve a right click to inspect the item stack.
You should ask for maintenance access. Or any other access considering you just went through the trouble of doing a maxcap for the station. That should make the deliver easier. Just be polite to the command staff and you should get what you want. Bomb them afterwards for not offering all access to you.
Only God can stop you now. Literally. They receive active logs when a maxcap is made or triggered so make sure you are allowed to commit terrorism.