The Supermatter engine is the main engine and power source in most station maps. It emits tons of radiation, making everyone who could theoretically see it hallucinate, releases hot oxygen and plasma, heating the air around. This engine can potentially explode, or even create a singularity/tesla if you screw up! When the shift begins it is dormant but if hit by an object, projectile or person it will activate and start producing huge amounts of radiation, which can be converted to power with the radiation collectors.

Do NOT run into the Supermatter to commit suicide! You will be banned.

Engine setup

This is the engine setup used on most maps. The layout and amount of work required may change depending on the map.

Set up

This is the safest, easiest setup and it will be the most common one used. Don't experiment with the engine until you are experienced. This setup should last for the entire round.

Step 1: Protection

The engine will begin to cause both radiation damage and hallucinations once turned on. This will help you prepare for all of this.

Put on some optical meson scanners or engineering scanner goggles in radiation mode
Put on a radiation suit or engineering hardsuit

Step 2: Preparation

Setting up the supermatter engine is a case of going in a big circle. Refer to the image on the right for steps 2, 3 and 4.

At points 1 and 2 set these pumps both to on and max output pressure (4500kpa)
At point 3 set the air alarm scrubber controls to "Mode: Siphoning" and "Range: Expanded"
At point 3 set the air alarm vent controls to "Internal Target Pressure: 0 Kpa"
At point 4 turn the pump off You don't want the coolant gas to bypass the SM do you?
At point 5 turn the filter on, set it to max output pressure (4500kpa) and set it to filter nothing
At points 6 and 7 turn the pumps on and set them to max output pressure (4500kpa), pay atenttion that the valve inbetween is not opened. You don't want the hot gas to bypass the space cooler do you?
At point 8 turn the filter on, set it to max output pressure (4500kpa) and set it to filter nitrogen
At points 9, 10 and 11 turn the filters on, set them to max output pressure (4500kpa) and set them to filter nothing. What is filtered returns to the loop and what is not exits to space
At point 12 turn the pump on and set it to max output pressure (4500kpa) To the right there are freezers but they do not reach space's low temperature
At point 13 wrench the two N2 canisters
At point 13 turn both of the pumps on and set them to max output pressure (4500kpa)

Step 3: Plasma

The final preparation is setting up the radiation collectors.

Collect 6 plasma tanks
(Optional) Fill each plasma tank to full using a plasma canister
At points 14 and 15 fill each radiation collector with a plasma tank. Click them with an empty hand to turn them on, and don't forget to lock their controls with your ID

Step 4: Start the Engine!

All the preparations to ensure the supermatter shard doesn't blow are now complete. Congratulations!

At point 16 click the button to close the radiation shutters
At point 17 turn on all three emitters. Your engine is now fully setup
Remember to lock the emitters' controls with your ID

Words of Warning

The Supermatter is VERY DANGEROUS. Activating the Supermatter should be the last step in setting up any form of Supermatter based power! If you ordered it from cargo the crate should stay LOCKED AND SECURED until everything is ready.
You require safety gear. A full radiation suit AND meson scanners.
Most of "setting up the Supermatter" involves a gas loop that is designed to cool down the Supermatter chamber. While not required, please have some knowledge of gasses, or atmospheric properties.
Anything that bumps into the Supermatter is fundamentally annihilated. Don't touch it. This means weld, and ask the AI to bolt the door to the Supermatter .
The engineering hardsuit has 75% radiation protection. CE's hardsuit has 90%. Atmos hardsuit has 25%. RD's and CMO's have 60%. If working near an active Supermatter Engine, use a radiation suit instead.

Mechanics

The supermatter is an extremely unstable crystal with particular properties. Here's how it behaves:

Power

The crystal's power determines how much energy is produced each tick, and also the range and amount of radiation and hallucinations generated. (a 'tick' usually takes around 1-5 seconds depending on lag)

Power decays over time.
Hitting the crystal with a non-physical bullet (usually emitters) will increase its power.
Power is increased every tick depending on the gas mix. This scales with the gas' temperature.
Consuming an object or mob will increase the power by a significant amount, independently from the object's size.
Power decay can be lowered or even completely prevented with CO2.
Too much power will result in dangerous sideeffects, like arcs of lightning or anomalies.

Instability

The crystal must be kept stable if you don't want it to explode.

Stability does not change by itself.
The crystal grows unstable if the gas mix is hotter than 310K. It will instead stabilize when it is cooler than 310K.
Physical bullets will destabilize the crystal, depending on the damage they do.
Large amounts of power will destabilize the crystal.
Large amounts of moles will not only destabilize the crystal but also prevent the stabilizing effect of cold gases.

Gas Interactions

Each gas has a different effect when it surrounds the supermatter crystal. The strength of each effect depends on the percentage of it in the gasmix in the supermatter chamber.

N₂ Safety: Very Safe

N2 is a good safety gas. It actively lowers the temperature and the amount of waste gases that the supermatter crystal produces.
Precooled N2 is good to have around for emergencies.

N₂O Safety: Safe

N2O reinforces the heat resistance of the supermatter crystal, allowing for much hotter setups than usual.

O₂ Safety: Dangerous

Oxygen is the gas with the best power/danger ratio. It provides a boost to power transmission without actively increasing the waste gas amount or temperature.
Pretty risky to use, as any disruption of the cooling loop will soon cause a tritium fire in the crystal chamber which is nigh impossible to stop unless if the setup accounts for it to begin with. Even just a high concentration of O2 will activate and continuously power the crystal. This gas is almost as risky as CO2: it doesn't cause significant danger as long as the crystal is cooled, but the moment it ignites you are definitely fucked, moreso than CO2.
If you're badass enough to run an O2 setup: Always precool it before flooding the Supermatter chamber.

Plasma Safety: Very dangerous

Plasma is very similar to Oxygen but provides a much higher power boost as well as waste and heat penalty. The extreme pressures and volumes of gas produced by this gas are very likely to clog pipes.
WARNING: The roundstart setup can not handle pure plasma setups.

CO₂ Safety: Oh shit what are you doing

CO2 is a very dangerous gas - in low concentrations, it will increase the crystal's power generation and can be used to produce Pluoxium as well.
In high concentrations however, it will raise the crystal's energy to extremely high levels. This causes catastrophic side effects (electric arcs and anomalies) until it eventually explodes into a Tesla ball.
Only for the skilled.

Gas Production

The crystal produces plasma and oxygen while it's active.

Plasma and Oxygen burn if they're hot enough. This will heavily increase the temperature and reduce the oxygen percentage; if not kept under control this can end up destabilizing the crystal.
The amount and temperature of the produced gas is determined by the current crystal power.
The amount of oxygen is proportional to the temperature of the absorbed gases. Very cold gas input will result in very little oxygen.

Irradiation

The crystal will affect nearby mobs while it's active.

The range and power is determined by the current power. Being further away from the crystal also mitigates the effect.
The crystal will cause hallucinations to nearby mobs if they're not wearing meson scanners or equivalents.
The crystal will irradiate nearby mobs. A radsuit or other protective clothing can negate this effect.

Consuming

Anything that touches the crystal will be consumed and turned into dust. No exceptions, not even other supermatter shards. The only way to "safely" transport a shard is to pull it, being careful to not be pushed back into it by someone else.

Collapsing

If the crystal reaches 100% instability, it will delaminate. There are several different events that may happen when the crystal delaminates and they all depend on the state of the crystal during delamination.

A crystal in a heavily pressurized gas environment with large amounts of moles will always collapse into a singularity.
A crystal that has excessive amounts of power stored inside it will cause an explosion and release several tesla energy balls.
A crystal that is neither heavily overpressurized or overcharged will simply explode.

Troubleshooting AKA Oh god it's on fire what do I do!?

The supermatter's in trouble! You should be able to locate where the issue is from the screenshot alone. Here's the answer.

First and foremost

Inspect the gas loop to confirm it is intact and operational.
Check the meters to quickly ascertain where a problem may lie.
If any of the meters report an unusually high or low amount of gas, then you're close to finding the issue!

Common gas loop failures include:

Gas pumps offline.
Gas pumps left on default pressure. (Crank them up to 4500kpa!)
Gas filters offline. Remember! Filters do not allow ANY gas to pass through if they're turned off! If you don't wish to filter anything, leave them online but set to filter nothing
Gas filters left on default pressure.
Gas filters no longer set to filter coolant back into the loop. Just set filters back to filter in the coolant and add more coolant to the loop (Most of the coolant is likely injected into space by this point.)
Supermatter chamber vents improperly configured.
Supermatter chamber scrubbers not siphoning.
Heat exchange pipes broken. Space dust can slip through the defenses on occasion. Or a traitor may detach a section.
Too much gas! If a section has too high of pressure, the gas pumps cannot push anything more into it!
Too little gas! The more (cold) gas there is, the faster the gas will be able to siphon heat away from the crystal. A supermatter crystal in near-vacuum is just looking for an excuse to overheat.

Second

If the gas temperature is too high to stabilize with the cooling loop alone - hope that Atmos have a canister of precooled N2 or even Hyper-Noblium around.

Third

If the supermatter is delaminating and the gas loop is operational, use an analyzer to check for problem gases in the loop. Someone may have slipped in some carbon dioxide. Double-check the filters to see if they're getting rid of unwanted gases.

And lastly

If all else failed, pray that an Atmosian elder investigates and finds the problem before it's too late.

Sabotaging the supermatter

Want to sabotage the crystal but can't figure out how to pull it off? Here are some pointers and hints:

General hints

You can break the APC of the room to stop all pipes and scrubbers from working.
Disable the telecomms APC with the CE console to prevent the supermatter from anouncing its status.
Cut cameras near the engine.
Instead of turning off pumps and filters, you can just set them to extremely low values instead. They'll still appear to be working.
Taking out all the engineers before attempting a delamination helps a lot.
Opening a canister of plasma in engineering and igniting it will make it a lot harder for people to fix your sabotage. Even more effective if the radiation levels are high.
Keep a flash or EMP on hand. The AI and its borgs are pretty much guaranteed to try and intervene to prevent harm.
Stay around and pretend to be helping so you can undo all the repair attempts by other people.

Regular delamination

These are the easiest to pull off and require no special conditions. You'll want to keep the supermatter chamber very hot and full of plasma or CO2.

Use the filters near the emitter room to filter out N2 and N2O while keeping Plasma, Oxygen and CO2 in the loop.
Pump in pure plasma or burn mix from atmos.
Disable or break the cooling array. Deconstructing a single piece of the heat exchanger can be enough.
Shooting guns at the crystal is extremely effective, but it's likely that you'll end up in the blast.
Disable the scrubbers once the chamber is hot enough.

Overcharged delamination

This kind of delamination requires careful gas management but is faster, far more destructive and there's a good chance it will irridiate, burn and shock the engineers who are trying to fix it.

Ensure that no N2 or N20 are in the chamber at all times. CO2 increases energy, but the plasma and oxygen will cause a burn that accelerates the process and makes it much harder to fix.
Keep the emitters online and firing if you can.
Get as much CO2 into the chamber as possible. Larger amounts of CO2 can even compensate for the oxygen and plasma waste.
Wear as much radiation protection as you can. Consider bringing some charcoal aswell.
Try to keep radiation suits away from engineers, they won't be able to get near the overcharged engine without one.
Make sure you are wearing insulated gloves to protect yourself from the lightning arcs.
Disabling the cooling is not required. In fact, keeping the chamber cool might help you get more power if you can't get enough CO2 into the chamber.
The anomalies, gravity pulses and lightning arcs will quickly turn the engine room into a deathtrap. Make sure you have everything set up correctly before this starts happening.

Critical mass delamination

This is by far the most difficult but also the simplest one.

Pump in as much gas as possible into the chamber. The easiest way to do this is to disable the pressure checks on the vent air alarms.
Reverse the scrubber pump. It's a subtle alteration that might get overlooked in the heat of the moment and will prevent the excess gas from being pumped out.
Make sure no gas leaves the chamber. Put up walls, deconstruct scrubber pipes, do whatever possible to keep the gas inside.