Guide to Atmospherics: Difference between revisions

|style="text-align:right;"|3

|style="text-align:right;"|6

|style="text-align:right;"|10

|style="text-align:right;"|70

|style="text-align:right;"|70

|style="text-align:right;"|70

|style="text-align:right;"|105

|style="text-align:right;"|200

|style="text-align:right;"|200

|style="text-align:right;"|200

|style="text-align:right;"|200

|style="text-align:right;"|200

|style="text-align:right;"|200

|style="text-align:right;"|200

|style="text-align:right;"|200

|style="text-align:right;"|200

|style="text-align:right;"|750

|style="text-align:right;"|1 000

|style="text-align:right;"|2 500

|style="text-align:right;"|1 000

|style="text-align:right;"|10 000

|style="text-align:right;"|50 000

! Gas

! Heat capacity

| O2

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 20

| N2

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 20

| CO2

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 30

| N2O

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 40

| Plasma

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 200

| Water Vapor

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 40

| Hypernoblium

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 2000

| Nitryl

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 20

| Tritium

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 10

| BZ

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 20

| Stimulum

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 5

| Pluoxium

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 80

| Miasma

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 20

| Dilithium

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 55

| [[File:Atmos.png|thumb|499px|A wise Atmos Tech once said: "just stare at the pipes until you get it."]]

| [[File:Atmos_simplified.png|thumb|499px|"Simplified" picture of the Atmospherics pipe system. Yellow circles represent filters and the lightbrown circle represents the mixer. ]]

'''Here are two pictures of the atmospheric pipe system. Right one is a "simplified" version of the left picture. Yellow circles representing the filters which filter out a certain gas from the Waste In -gasmix. The light yellow circle near the lower middle represents the mixer which mixes N2 and O2 into a breathable air mix.

* The '''<span style="color:blue">dark blue pipe loop</span>''' is the distribution loop. It sends air to all the vents on the station for the crew to breathe.

* The '''<span style="color:cyan">cyan air mix pipe loop</span>''', which is specialized to mix and provide the air mix to the distribution loop, and is used to fill air pumps outside the front door of Atmospherics.

* The '''<span style="color:red">red/<span style="color:green">green</span></span> pipe loop''', which retrieves the gas in the station via the air scrubbers (red loop) and passes them through a set of filters (green loop).

* The '''<span style="color:yellow">yellow</span> pipe loop''', internal to Atmospherics, which is used for custom gas mixes that can be fed into the canister charging station in the middle of atmospherics, or fed into the mixing tank.

# The gasses are pumped through the  '''<span style="color:cyan">cyan tubes</span>''' from their respective tanks ('''N2''', '''O2''').

# They are mixed in the air tank ('''Air''') to a 1/5 mix of O2 and N2.

# The breathable gas is then pumped through the '''<span style="color:cyan">cyan loop</span>''' to the north of Atmospherics.

# And finally it's pumped into the '''<span style="color:blue">dark blue distro loop</span>''' and out to the station for everyone to breathe.

# Scientist Bill messes up and fills the [[Toxins Lab]] with plasma but fortunately manages to evacuate the room safely.

# Being an otherwise ideal situation Atmos-wise, the Toxins Lab's air scrubbers have been set to filter out all hazardous gases (they're not set by default, this has to be done through the Air Alarm manually or by asking the AI to do it) and plasma starts to get sucked through the scrubber into the waste pipes.

# The plasma arrives to the Waste In -loop (the red pipe loop) at Atmos. It travels south through the pipes, its first stop being the N2 Filter.

# If there was any Nitrogen in the waste gas, it would get filtered out here, and the rest of the gas continues its journey through the waste loop, same thing happening at every filter.

# The plasma finally reaches the Plasma Filter.

# Here the plasma gets extracted from the waste gas and pushed into the big plasma tank-room outside the windows.

# The plasma stays in the room until someone decides to pump it out.

# Scientist Bill by now notices that the Toxins Lab has no plasma anymore and is able to safely continue his work. Yay!

* '''For the love of Nanotrasen, at least do this:'''

# Get a Volume Pump from the [[Pipe Dispenser]] at the north side of Atmos and replace the '''<span style="color:green">green circled</span>''' normal pump with a volume pump, making the waste gas -system >100x more efficient. We want the waste gas sucked from the station into the waste system as soon as possible!

# Set all '''<span style="color:red">red circled</span>''' filters ON and set them to maximum pressure (4500 kPa) so waste gases will actually be moved.

* '''This is good as well:'''

'''Pros and cons of this whole setup:

* First and by far most important: make sure pipes don't get broken and if they do, fix them.

* Go around swiping your ID on [[Air Alarm]]s, setting the operating mode to contaminated, and then re-swiping to lock it. You can ask the AI to do this as well, and probably should.

* Fill all the air pumps with air using a volume pump (more air pumps can be found from the locker room).

* Make extremely extended oxygen tanks for internals use (instructions below).

# Go to the red lockers, get a hard hat, gas mask and everything else that might be of use. Remember that you need both a fire suit and a hard hat to be resistant to weak fires. One will be useless without the other.

# Go grab the Fire Axe from the wall mount and hide it somewhere so the [[Clown|chucklefucks]] won't get it and go killing. DON'T take it with you and go walking through the hallways trying to look like a badass, you'll be the prime target of any antagonist/griffon who needs an efficient weapon.

* Least importantly, maintain the disposals system. You can generate pipes, but it needs welding and is generally a pain in the ass. You can also make fun slides, though.

* On a basic view, a 16 kPa minimum O2 requirement in internals. Pure O2 is theoretically toxic in real life, but has no representation for this in code, and takes a while to be really dangerous anyway (they use it to treat certain diseases, for example), and thus using a tank filled with air for internals is fairly inefficient.

* Cold O2 has more moles per kPa, and because people breathe in moles, and filling tanks usefully for internals are largely capped by the 1000 kPa release pressure, means cooling your O2 before using it in internals is important! Cooled down O2, such as from a freezer-ed canister, is the most efficient way to set up internals. Cooling it below 264 K will result in icicles inside in your lungs, though!

* If you need to empty an internal tank to make space for better, colder O2, you can use an Air Pump. Set it to ''"pump in"'' and ''"turn on"'' then ''"off"'' with the tank inside it, making it completely empty, thus allowing you to refill the tank more effectively.

* An emergency oxygen tank with normal settings lasts for about 12 minutes. Same tank, but with optimized gas temperature and output settings reduced, lasts about 50 minutes. If you don't have resources to get cooled O2 right now, set your output pressure to 16 kPa, it will give you 31 % more time to breathe.

* The Atmospherics system is far from optimal, and we're talking about just the pipe configuration! Break out that wrench and start experimenting (just make sure you know what's what)!

* Extremely high-temperature gases (like those from a panic siphoned fire) can really clog the waste loop. Could you do something to correct that?

* No one uses the ports outside of the 'refilling' station, but that doesn't mean that functionality can't be added onto them!

* The wall section that looks like the letter 'I' can be dismantled if you need more working space for pipes.

* Don't count out the grated window areas, they can be a great (har har) way to utilize the vacuum of space without an EVA suit.

* Speaking of EVA suits, your engineering buddies can potentially help you with anything you might want to do in space, be it adding or modifying pipes. Watch the hilarity as that incompetent engineer fumbles with the huge crate of pipes he dragged out into space for you!

* The main cargo area inside Cargo has a laughably small number of vents, and how many times have those dumb dumbs sent the shuttle off while the doors are open?

* The brigs distribution system is set up to be potentially independent of the rest of the station's distribution loop, maybe other places can be set up like this as well?

* The mining station doesn't have air recycling. Very long rounds might make this a problem for any miners working there.

* Any gas at pressure over 1000 kPa will cause you to start suffocating as in a vacuum. You can just use internals, though.

* N2O is invisible at low pressures. If you start giggling, put on your internals to avoid passing out.

* Any gas can displace O2, and less than ''16'' (also useful for optimizing internals) kPa of oxygen starts the Oxyloss. CO2 can be removed with the scrubbers, but to get rid of N2 simply apply some way of removing gas from the air and adding O2. My personal favorite is 2 air pumps, 3 connectors and an Air Filter and a canister: 1 pump draws in, goes through the connection and filters N2 into the canister, and the rest to the other pump, which expels it. Can also be used for N2O which is only sluggishly scrubbed otherwise.

* Pressures above 750 kPa do 10 DPS + 5 DPS for every extra 375 kPa above that mark, rounded off. Space suits completely block it all, but there is no other defense.

* Repairs hull breaches similarly to [[Guide_to_chemistry#Smart Metal Foam|Metal Foam]].  

* Cleans the air from toxins.  

* Normalises air temperature to room temperature (20°C or 293.15K).  

* Removes slipperiness from floors (from water etc).  

* The foam itself is not slippery.  

* Your holobarriers let people walk through, yet block gases. Very useful for cleaning up Plasma spills, fixing hull breaches and keeping fires in check.

* Using H/E pipes in space you can cool things down to a very low temperature very quickly. By making a cross with two off them you can have two on one tile, which is known as 'sequesteral' cooling.

* Air Filters on currently burning mixes can siphon out heated but PURE O2 and Plasma. Do the O2 first then the plasma, as there is less O2 in a fire and thus it functions faster. This (and H/E) allow you to reach really obscene temperatures.

* Air Filters and H/E allow you to expose gases to the heat of fires (or their CO2 product) but keep/make them pure, allowing for hot N2O or similar.

* Using a small starter flame/heater you can have in pipe combustion.

* Canister bombs are heated Plasma in a canister, with an O2 tank placed in the canister, and then open the valve between them. You will also need to run very, very fast.  

* Gas pumps are for precise pressure control, volumetric pumps are for really fast pumping, and passive gates are for having 'one way' manual valves.

* Straight piping is faster than any volume pump or gas pump, regardless of the amount. You only want a volume pump if you have a good reason for separating two pipenets from each other. For that reason, many of the pumps in the SM and even in atmospherics is useless.  

* If about to unwrench a pipe known to contain deadly gas, use a holobarrier on the tile first, then unwrench, this will keep the gases isolated to that specific turf. You can then bring your portable gas scrubber to the holobarrier'd tile and clean it up much, much faster and much safer than if you had unwrenched it without a holobarrier in the first place.

* BZ deals damage based on the pressure, not percentage of the air that is being breathed in. This means that hot BZ is more effective than regular air-temperature BZ. This just might give you a bit of an edge when plasmaflooding, or if you want to use an invisible deathgas flamethrower.  

* A flamethrower containing extremely chilled gas such as n20 can flood a room very, very quickly. This is useful as an antagonist, but also for cooling down the SM if all your cooling breaks down for some reason.

* A scrubber connected to a very large spaceloop is much more effective than a scrubber connected to a freezer. This is because of the added volume allowing the scubber to dump more moles of gas into the connected pipenet.  

* Using a pump of any kind after a scrubber is highly redundant and drastically lowers the effectiveness of the scrubber as it separates the pipenets and cuts off volume. The SM and the incinerator's scrubbers can be massively improved by simply replacing the pump with a straight pipe.

! Gas

! Fusion power

| CO2

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 1.25

| Water Vapor

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 8

| Nitryl

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 16

| BZ

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 8

| Stimulum

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 7

| Pluxonium

| style="width: fit-content; text-align:right;"| 10

==== Power tier ====

* '''Low tier''':  

** 0-5 power ratio

** Produces 10% BZ and 90% CO2 with a high enough heat to make a tiny amount of hyper noblium

* '''Medium tier''':

** 5-20 power ratio

** Moderate chance of explosion and medium range shock

** Produces 25% Nitryl and 75% N2O with a high enough heat to make several hyper noblium bombs

* '''High tier''':

** 20-50 power ratio

** High chance of explosion and wide range shock

** Produces 1/12th Stimulum and 11/12th pluxonium with a large amount of heat

* '''Super tier''':

** 50+ power ratio

** 100% chance of explosion and very wide range shock

** Produces 100% Tritium with a massive amount of heat

* '''Work with friends.''' It has high setup and maintenance requirements, and your fellow atmos techs, engineers and toxins scientists are all valuable resources in your pursuit of very hot things.

* Although some gases may have high fusion power they might have too high specific heats to give you the tier you want, as a rule of thumb Stimulum, Nitryl, and BZ are all very useful for reaching higher tiers of fusion.

* Fusion requires ''Heat energy'' not ''Temperature'' meaning the more moles you can fit into an area, the lower the temp is for you to start fusion.

* It is recommended to have a sacrificial lamb preform the finale in an unused area such as space, if not be wearing radiation protection and have an excuse for the [https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Administrators gods] you are about to anger.

* It is intended to preform fusion in a canister but doing it in a pipe net or incinerator is possible.

* Heat exchanges are your friend for starting your reaction. Connect it to tritium burn chamber or canister to get the heat needed to start it.

* Typically gases with high power but also high specific heats like water vapor or pluxonium will become exponentially more efficient the more you use due to the average specific heat increasing less and less the more you use.

* Should you want to release a canister that you used for fusion in a room full of people, consider shooting it to break it open so you arent right next to it.

* You can harness the radiation produced from fusion to produce power using rad collectors. Earn your keep as a member of engineering. Or just use it for pluoxium production.

* The higher the temperature, the prettier the fire. See if you can get the prettiest color fire.

* Traitors can harness fusion reactions to devastating results if done correctly.

# Open valves connected to harmful gas you want to add to the station.

# Set pumps to the distribution loop to maximum pressure output (4500 kPa).

# Set filters to not filter harmful gasses you want to add to the station OR set the waste-in pump to 0 kPa (but leave it on to confuse the crew).

# Open valve from custom mix chamber.

# Turn on pump leading to distribution loop.

# Wait for vents to slowly kick out your deathgas mix as regular atmos drains out through the inevitable hull breaches (alternatively turn off pressure checks on air alarms' vents to speed things up).

# If you need to kill someone for your objective, and you want to be more proactive, the [[Fire Axe]] mounted in the wall is surprisingly effective. Just don't leave it lying around, because it's one of only two on the station.

# Disconnect, change the direction of, and reconnect the pump that feeds from the air mix to the mix tank in the north-eastern room of atmosia.  

# Open the valves for your deathgas mixture of choice.

# Power on and max the pressure on every pump in the mix pipes (yellow pipes) from the storage tanks out to the station output (blue pipes).

# Reconfigure the piping to connect the waste system directly into the pure pipes.

# Find a place with a waste pipe next to a distro pipe, then configure them so that they can be united later.

# Open the valves for your deathgas mixture of choice, the waste piping should now begin to fill with your gases.

# Set as many air alarms as you can to have every vent at Internal 0.

# When ready, go back to your distro/waste pipe spot and unite them.

# Listen to screams over the radio.