Engines

[XDTM]

Engines are powercreeping their way up into ruining the round almost every time they're turned on.

-It's available at roundstart, with two different flavors, for free.
-So destructive that once it gets loose the round is over in a few minutes, except for the rare cases where it goes to space (which isn't even a risk with tesla).
-No realistic way to stop it once loose; there are BoHs for singulos, but they usually won't be researched or materials'll be missing once you can make them. Even then, by the time you DO stop it, everything is already ruined and shuttle's called.
-Extremely easy to loose:
--As an engineer/CE, you just gotta keep the PA on, or "forget" the shieldgens, or cut a wire, or turn the SMES down, or drag an engine generator in front of the PA; 99% of the time they're unsupervised and can even set it loose by mistake. If they ARE supervised, just come back 5 minutes later and do the same.
--As a traitor, all you have to do is go inside engineering through the convenient maint door, then snip a wire, turn the PA up, etc. There is nobody in engineering anyway most of the time, so nobody will notice. If a traitor wants to set the engine loose, it'll get loose. And in rounds with 4-8 traitors there is always at least one that wants to set it loose.

So this all boils down to the fact that if you set up the engine for power, it's a coinflip on whether someone sets it loose. In my opinion, a destructive engine wrecking the station and causing panic IS fun, but it should be a rare event, not "oh i wonder how long do i have before the engine is loose this round".

What we need, i think, is to reduce the number of ways to loose the engine, or make it riskier/high-profile: create a barrier shutdown button that requires some item from the bridge, same way the nuke disk is required for the nuke; make the PA send a radio alert on the engi channel when it is turned up; give the emitters a rad collector/tesla coil in the space area so it's not as easy as cutting a wire.

[TheColdTurtle]

You do know you can make the engine completely safe, like for the tesla put emitters inside the shield generator, with the emitters wired directly up to a coil. And the fact that the emitters are powered by tesla bolts too. Also solars is always the best option no matter what. Just get rid of the engine stuff and wire the solars at roundstart.

[Saegrimr]

Solars can't keep the station powered, but it will slow down complete failure.

Maybe have the AI go flick the light switch in unused areas to conserve power :^)

[XDTM]

To elaborate on the containment button, ideally it would be used to turn containment on without all those steps whose only reason to exist is to make newbies loose engines. And then it can be used, after authenticating with nuke disk/other item from bridge, to shut it down and set the engine loose.

Also the engine generators should definitely start outside the containment.

[TheColdTurtle]

Once again, just git gud and fucking spend more than 3 minutes setting up the engine and you will be fine. As long as you make it idiot proof you will be fine

[Davidchan]

Once again, just git gud and fucking spend more than 3 minutes setting up the engine and you will be fine. As long as you make it idiot proof you will be fine

That's kind of the problem. 99% of engineers just do the default set up and fuck off into the wilds.They've got no incentive to stay inside of engineering once power is up. Engineering has literally become a non-job and in desperate need of a retool. There was a damn good reason the Supermatter required someone occasionally poke their nose into it. You could literally replace engineering with a supply closet and an on/off switch that output 1MW into the grid and nobody would know the difference.

[kevinz000]

You do know you can make the engine completely safe, like for the tesla put emitters inside the shield generator, with the emitters wired directly up to a coil. And the fact that the emitters are powered by tesla bolts too. Also solars is always the best option no matter what. Just get rid of the engine stuff and wire the solars at roundstart.

I'll wreck this with a grenade I can make in half a minute in chemistry.

[PKPenguin321]

Just use solars if you're so mad about dying to the engines. Or defend them better. They're supposed to be crazy lethal, that's the entire point.

[oranges]

>Engines are powercreeping their way up into ruining the round almost every time they're turned on.

What do you mean powercreeping? The singulo was always this destructive for as long as I can remember.

[TheColdTurtle]

I'll wreck this with a grenade I can make in half a minute in chemistry.

Can you wreck this?

NSFW:

[PKPenguin321]

i'm pretty sure leaving the PA on would still wreck that, since once the tesla gets high enough energy it overloads the shield generators and shuts them all off. at the time that image was made this wasn't the case however

[Cobby]

I really dislike the fact that the tesla can blow up machines and turn humans to dust when they're on top of them yet do absolutely nothing when on top of a tesla coil or emitter.

[cocothegogo]

make it so you need engineering access to use the computer? might not do much but if a traitor wants to release it he has to buy an emag or kill a guy

[John_Oxford]

Maybe add like a complicated huge ass conventional engine that requires you to piece it together part by part and then wire up it's fuel injectors and valve releases and shit to a computer, where you can tune it to run.
It could take welding fuel, or we could add diesel or gasoline as liquids.

You could make it where you could order additional and better made parts for the engine from cargo for a set amount of points.

[Cik]

the only reason any of this is even true is because engineering fucking sucks and is no fun at all

there's no engineers, or if they are they aren't even IN engineering for more than 2 fucking minutes because there's NOTHING TO DO

FIX ENGINEERING FIX THE ENGINE REEEEE

[DemonFiren]

Like I said, we need walls of light and arc pylons everywhere.
We need meteor defense guns on the outside of the station that drain a fuckton of power.
We need frequent meteor showers.
We need a reason for engine optimisation to matter in a way that doesn't immediately and irrevocably fuck over everything at once.

[Anonmare]

I kinda wish Engineering had a bit more control over the station. I think Bay has the CE being able to control the flow of power somewhat and being able to cut power off from some departments but I dunno how they accomplish that since I don't go to Bay.
Maybe having too much power in the grid at once can fuck with station systems, like being a little over has a small chance of making an APC overload its lights every few minutes. Going further over can have more dangerous effects, going all the way up to machines exploding like they've been hit with Machine Overload/APCs exploding like welder tank bombs/airlocks shocking and unshocking themselves randomly and so on.

[DemonFiren]

IIRC Bay has a much more potent power control and atmos computer that lets you remotely set APCs and air alarms by department, but [citation needed] on that.

[Alipheese]

We need Maria's nazi tesla again. Self sufficient, self cleaning, self jew eradica-enpowering!