Plasma Distro

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So I got a Dumb Idea: Part #4

Plasma Distro

Currently only custom shuttles and the Exploration shuttle run on plasma, but what if all shuttles run on plasma and there is a third pipe with plasma supplying all shuttles with free plasma?

Distribution

From Atmospherics you’d have a third middle purple pipe with low pressure plasma regulated with a volume pump at atmospherics. This will lead to all docks on the station (maybe even arrivals, departures and pods only for show) which will have a volume pump nearby in order to pump in as much plasma as possible into the shuttles’ pipes for engine storage.

Refueling

When the shuttle is docked it will slowly refuel itself automatically. Explorers won’t have to worry about running out of plasma as much but will have to consider redocking once in a while for it to refuel the shuttle.

Shuttles

This would also apply to the Brig shuttle, Mining shuttle, Science shuttle, and Exploration shuttle. Upgrades would still work of which T4 would make the plasma consumption next to zero and practically irrelevant moving forward.

Antagonists

Using these plasma pipes antagonists with an RPED could utilize this siphon plasma from maintenance, making aquring plasma for the purpose of weapons or objectives easier without breaking into Atmospherics or Toxins directly.

An antagonist could reroute a plasma line to use a gas pump into oxygen to plasma floor a certain area or very, very slowly the whole station if they are not careful.

Cargonia

Siphon and sell plasma. Piss off Atmospherics. lol

Accidents

Explosions or poor judgement could contribute to plasma leaks. Assuming that the atmospherics volume pump is not changed these leaks would be generally small and not cause too much damages to the station.

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this would mean that we would basically have gas pipes with a very flammable if not explosive fuel running throughout the station
which we know on an ooc level is very prone to explosions, meteors, rods and other station damaging equipment
are you sure that the extra damage incurred would be manageable?

other than that, I could also see pirates siphoning plasma through pipes this way which imo sounds like fun, though the stealth aspect of it may not be
I agree with any other takes about this part prior to any discussion

edits:
could also see this being routed to rnd for purpose of research, plasma research station after all
the reason for which I don’t see this leading to more maxcaps is that the bottleneck is availability of oxygen canisters anyway
though this reminds me of the question: why is plasma refinery an explo locked research? because it would help build shuttles that could sustain themselves in space or something?

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Boohoo, the 10 moles of plasma got out of the pipe and is now in the air which… is being vacuumed into space. It won’t be much in eqch individual pipe but could be a ton if you decide to siphon it.

Nope. lol
But I think it would, I’d have to test this out.

YES!! lol

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So basically way more people can reliably put plasma in distro? That really does NOT seem like a good idea.

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That is a very low amount of plasma in a VERY large area. And I have a second idea which nerfs plasma flooding overall by implementing small chokepoints for distro where the O2 and N2 will be filtered and merged with any excess being moved to waste. This will force Atmospherics Techies to head out to tamper with these and also allow those who want to only flood one area to easily do so with less worry.

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The piping of plasma through the station is a bad idea, but I do agree that with the plasma fuel system in place it should be applied consistently. At the very least the science shuttle should also require plasma so explorers aren’t bypassing their intended shuttle to use the “free” one instead.

If engineers want to set up a direct plasma fueling system though, that’d be a minor project they could get in on, but unless changes are made to just how bad plasma fires are I agree that default grid of plasma pipes is just going to be every griefer’s wet dream.

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It’s been a bit since i’ve poked around beestation, and I was just gonna lurk a bit and then leave, but I’ve proposed this before. Even if we just run some external piping around the station to fuel shuttles, or something. It feels like something for atmospherics and engineering to manage when they arent busy.

I drew up mock designs for a station a while back that consisted of a landing dock, and each department was an entire functional shuttle that could leave the station. This design had Command be station crew, while the engineers would supply power, oxygen, and plasma fuel. Cargo would be able to mine the plasma, but would be unable to refine it. Meanwhile engineering would have a monopoly over fuel. This design wouldn’t work for a number of reasons, including some mobs being heavily inconvenienced by it, like the blob being unable to put a core tile on any of the ships. But the design had an additional pipe for plasma fuel. This pipe would be a bigger risk to the main station than the departments themselves, as the hooks would be near the engines, while they would have to travel much of the length of the core station.

Ideally, most of the plasma distro is spaced, both to keep it cool and compressed, and also to prevent it from causing a fire. But maybe keeping its pressure low until someone needs refueling is part of the gameplay. The plasma fuel line SHOULDNT have plasma in it at all times. Someone docks, asks for plasma, you turn your side on, they turn their side on, main loop stays low, you shut yours off, they shut theirs off, and the loop remains empty. Gas station simulator. A good job for atmos besides fusion out of boredom.

To wrap all the ideas up, make all the shuttles use plasma, but make a refueling bay in atmosian space where shuttles can dock and refuel, assisted by atmos. This could be functional, probably. In round, it would only take a few minutes to make. Set up the piping, place down some plating so they can see the docking points, easy. If it was actually part of the game, it might have preset docking points.

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I was just thinking of converting all current stations to use this, not making an entirely new map for this. Though I have toyed around that idea too.

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Well the new map was more so to test the idea of almost the entire station being functional hypercruise enabled shuttles, with each department having its own ship linked to a central station. I have a whole long ass thread about this from a while back, so i wont go into detail about it if you really wanted to know.

The main highlight I think you should take away from my point is that you can easily add a refueling depot outside of atmospherics. This circumvents ALL issues with the idea. You don’t need to pump plasma throughout the station. You don’t really need to worry about plasma floods because its mostly in space and atmos. It gives atmos something to do. It creates an almost universal cross departmental interaction for any department that has a shuttle (sci, cargo, sec) and would slightly encourage ship building because fuel would be less difficult to get, or steal if you really needed to.

Of course this idea would not apply to the arrival shuttle, supply shuttle, or escape shuttle, for obvious reasons, but it seems easy enough to implement. Even with a third plasma pipeline throughout the station, it should be fine as long as atmos does their job. think of all that spare space engineering/atmos always has for construction stuff that never gets used. Ship docking bay.

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Take that secondary, spaced abandoned mixing chamber present on some maps out and put the refuling dock there.

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The more I think about it, what if on maps without that abandoned mix chamber, the turbine doubles as the refueling dock?"

Pros: the turbine is already far from the usual atmos fuckery, but is also linked to the mix pipe.
Cons: docking the ship may complicate turbine use, or lead to damage of either system.

serious, dangerous, explosive damage…

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We currently don’t have a docking port capable of allowing multiple shuttles but only one at a time. I’ve wanted to add it for other purposes too but can’t code in DM for shit.

Anyway, currently you could most likely just take all the existing docks and duplicate them all on top of each other there. But if two dock at the same time then… well… problems arise…

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Well this adds a pretty neat engineering job, or perhaps Cargonian job, Orbital traffic control…

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The bluespace gas vendor on other servers come to mind.

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Elaborate.

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from the /tg/ wiki

Bluespace Gas Vendor
This is the hub for gas purchase done by the crew. You only need to pipe your gas in and it will distribute it across vendors available station-wide. You can also set a price per mole for the gases. The gas will be at 20 degrees Celsius and is capped at 1013 kPa when purchased by the crew, do keep this in mind. You can also refill the individual vendors with metal for it to make more tanks.

This solves the problem have a volatile gas line that goes across the station but still a way for shuttle users to refill plasma, provided changes are made to allow a large canister to be placed inside the vendor.