As a disclaimer I have never written a guide before so this will probably suck, and assuming you are doing this for artifacts it will only work when the xenoarchaeology overhaul pr is test-merged. When writing this I assumed people reading this somewhat understand atmos/toxins so some parts may be confusing if you are not.
The reason we are interested in fusion is because it can be used to turn (almost) any object into an artifact, and it is particularly useful to do this in the context of toxins as they have the necessary tools and machinery to experiment with artifacts. To do this we will need to make fusion rad bolts hit items in a tritium atmosphere. However, these rad bolts do not need to be powerful and the tritium atmosphere only needs about a mole.
The following is the default toxins setup on meta station
The first step is to unbolt both doors (ask AI, RD, or hack them) and strip away all piping present. Note that the vent on this and most maps have layer adaptors on either side as shown below (the blue and red things). These must also be removed.
After removing all the piping your setup should look something like this:
Next we need to make three “sections” of pipe for our tritium burn chamber which I will describe and show individually, hopefully making it more simple to understand. I will then move onto the actual fusion chamber.
Input Piping
This is the most simple segment and is placed on Layer 5, and serves as a means to inject oxygen and plasma into our tritium burn chamber. Remember that the injector needs to be turned on manually like a pump.
Output Piping
This is placed on Layer 1 and is how we will extract tritium. Tritium from the burn chamber is very hot which leads to clogging of pipes, which leads to massive losses in tritium (which is very bad because toxins has limited resources). To solve this, we put some plasma into this pipe network which helps to rapidly cool the tritium as it enters through the scrubbers. To do this I make sure that both thermomachines are turned off and that the filter is turned off, and then wrench a plasma canister onto the rightmost connector port. This ensures there is enough room in the pipe network for our tritium, and that there is enough plasma left over for our other steps. The filter should then be set to plasma and the thermomachines should be set to the lowest they can go and (ideally) upgraded. The scrubbers should also be set as shown below.
Heat Exchangers
These will be used to heat up our fusion chamber which we will build later. The connector port is used to put plasma into this pipenet, and the valve is actually important and should be left open. These are built on layer 3.
Make sure that the plasma canister is not wrenched onto the port here when you start burning for tritium or doing fusion, or it will get highly pressurized and explode.
The Final Trit Chamber
The final thing should look something like this. Assuming you have filled the red and pink loops with some plasma and that the scrubbers are set, you should be good to go for the next steps.
- Turn the input pump to max and pump four full canisters of oxygen into the tritium chamber.
- After all oxygen canisters are in, set the pump to 50kpa
- Wrench a portable air pump to the connector port just above the output filter.
- Begin pumping in plasma and press the ignition switch.
You should begin to see your portable air pump slowly being filled with tritium. It is likely that you could make this process faster, but I have always stuck with 50kpa. It will take a very long time for the plasma canister to empty, but once it is done you should have about ~2k moles of tritium. You can pump more canisters of plasma in, but keep at least one for the fusion chamber. I like to keep at least two canisters of plasma for the fusion chamber (one being a half full canister that was used to fill the red and pink loops) Below is the setup in action.
Initially the chamber will glow red, but it should quickly go to green and then white. While we are waiting for our tritium, we can start working on our fusion chamber.
The Fusion Chamber
Firstly, beg engineering for an atmos holofan and then you can proceed. Clear a nice little area and setup reinforced plasma glass and a reinforced floor. Make sure all the windows are levered in or your fusion will leak everywhere, and make sure they are not on the same tile as the reinforced floor.
Place heat exchangers on the reinforced floor, but do NOT connect them to the HE piping from the tritium chamber yet.
Setup two injectors and two ports.
Set up an atmos holobarrier and create a vaccum in the chamber using a large air scrubber (small scrubbers can also be used but they just take longer).
Divide the two areas with reinforced plasmaglass. It is important that the glass panes are not on the same tile as the HE or itll break when you start fusion.
Pump in one canister of plasma and one canister of CO2 into the chamber with the HE and reinforced flooring. Finish connecting the HE piping and then replace the valve with a temperature pump.
Empty a small oxygen or plasma tank using a scrubber, and fill it with 10pka of tritium from our portable air pump. Make sure to turn the pump off when removing the canister or it might spew your 2000 moles of tritium into the air and then people might not be very impressed.
Using an empty portable air pump, empty your small tank of tritium into the empty chamber to create an atmosphere containing tritium. This is where we will put the items we want to turn into artifacts.
Next, move this portable air pump to the other connector port (the one we used to put in plasma/co2). We will fill our small tank with 150kpa of tritium this time (amount is up to you really, just try keep track of how much trit you are using) and use the air pump to inject it into our fusion chamber. Fusion should begin, and if it does not then it is likely just because the plasma and co2 have not heated up enough yet and just need a little extra time. You will be able to tell fusion has began because little red bolts will begin firing out.
If you have an item in the small tritium chamber and a radbolt hits it, it will turn into an artifact. If it does not, then you most likely just got unlucky and a radbolt did not hit it, put some more tritium in.
This usually takes me 30-40 minutes to do in an actual round. This is likely not the most “optimal” way to do this and I encourage you to experiment and figure out what works best for you. With some clever changes you can also manage to do a delayed research bomb but I usually don’t because I’m lazy and its easy to mess up. If you have any recommendations or questions don’t be scared to write them out.
“erm achtually sourshe???” People
