/tg/Station 13

Because the rounds I play if i haven't turned up the air loop and waste in pumps nobody else has. It starting unoptimised is a holdover from before fastmos where the difference was imperceptible to most people. Now it's important due to the firelock gridlock breaches cause. Starting with the pumps up will reduce firelock Hell as rooms refill faster after breaches and gas leaks are scrubbed more quickly. You can't expect players to do this, especially on the LRP servers.

But if we optimize atmos roundstart, what will atmos players have to do aside from gas grief? (nothing)

Fixing breaches, repairing pipes and refilling rooms is pretty time-consuming, laborious work. Which is why so few people do it.

cacogen wrote:Fixing breaches, repairing pipes and refilling rooms is pretty time-consuming, laborious work. Which is why so few people do it.

I thought that was engineering's job, bar the room refilling. Whenever I read the atmos guide on the wiki it seemed like their job was fire fighthing? Which is funny, because I'm pretty sure atmos starts more fires than it puts out.

After you've set atmospherics up your job is to look for atmosphere alarms and fix what's causing them. You have a tablet in your bag and can install the Canary app on that to keep an eye on them.

Engineers usually aren't available to repair breaches. It's faster to repair them yourself to refill a room. Sometimes you'll find yourself working in tandem with an engineer but this is rare.

Atmospheric and disposal piping used to be the responsibility of the atmospheric technician. Now both atmospherics and engineering start with RPDs. Both jobs also have access to each other's departments. Their responsibilities overlap.

Most atmosphere alarms are the result of breaches or gas leaks. Fires don't happen that often. Even if another atmos tech started the fire it's still your job to deal with it. Putting a fire out is easy. The hard part is returning the atmosphere to its default state.

It's true the effect of atmospherics is most visible through sabotage. Atmospherics technicians often don't exist or aren't doing their jobs. But it betrays a lack of knowledge to suggest the job is turning up the pumps and leaving or plasma flooding.

The point of the thread is that fastmos has lead to widespread lockdowns. These bar access to departments and prevent people from moving around the station. They last too long because usually nobody is fixing them. If starting atmospherics optimised meant these issues resolved themselves faster, what would be the harm in that? Optimising atmospherics takes five minutes tops. It's rare that anyone does it, though.

It's not a valid argument to say that starting it optimised would take a significant chunk out of the job or lead to increased gas flooding.

Ghilker's atmos content has kind of diverted a lot of atmos gameplay into a focus on gas mixing for the HFR and the crystalizer, hasn't it?

I've only been back a short while, but I can say that easily over half of my rounds have involved me breaking into Atmos as non-Engineering crew to juice the distro loop so that the central hallways will *literally ever* become usable again after they become permanently firelocked.

Particularly offensive is Ice Box, where people have expressed that the central hallways becoming unusable basically every round on it is perfectly normal and expected behavior.

cacogen wrote:Putting a fire out is easy. The hard part is returning the atmosphere to its default state.

...

The point of the thread is that fastmos has lead to widespread lockdowns. These bar access to departments and prevent people from moving around the station. They last too long because usually nobody is fixing them. If starting atmospherics optimised meant these issues resolved themselves faster, what would be the harm in that? Optimising atmospherics takes five minutes tops. It's rare that anyone does it, though.

These parts in particular definitely conform to my recent experiences. The hard part of unfucking atmospherics is not the actual task of fixing it; it's getting into Atmospherics itself if I haven't been 'tiding and learning all the door wires in advance.

RaveRadbury wrote:Ghilker's atmos content has kind of diverted a lot of atmos gameplay into a focus on gas mixing for the HFR and the crystalizer, hasn't it?

I've played atmos a lot recently and on the vast majority of rounds where I haven't been the only atmos tech I haven't seen anyone set those up. Of the people who both know and remember that these things exist, I think only a small portion of them know how to actually use them. I don't think they have anything to do with the lack of people resolving atmosphere alarms.

Pandarsenic wrote:I've only been back a short while, but I can say that easily over half of my rounds have involved me breaking into Atmos as non-Engineering crew to juice the distro loop so that the central hallways will *literally ever* become usable again after they become permanently firelocked.

Part of the reason I'd like to pumps to start up is the fact I can't always be the one to do it. Sometimes I'm doing other jobs. I can't drop everything and get into atmos and get all the equipment I need to do their job for them.

It reminds me of medbay in the sense that somebody else's inability to do their finicky and technical job ends up directly affecting you and the quality of rounds in general. People who already have the knowledge might argue that these jobs aren't that difficult, just time-consuming but they aren't looking at it from the point of view of the average player who has no idea how to do them and no easy way to learn.

So if we do re-tool atmos to be able to better handle fastmos, what sort of space would remain to optimize further? As long as we aren't hitting the ceiling of "perfect atmos" it should be fine to tweak some of the numbers so gameplay is more like how it was before fastmos.

This is a player issue not a gameplay issue

This is the same as saying "let's start with the SM already on what if every engi fucks off to space"

Teach new players to increase the distro output and to set up properly the waste loop, cause a pr to do something like this will never pass

Ghilker wrote:This is a player issue not a gameplay issue

This is the same as saying "let's start with the SM already on what if every engi fucks off to space"

Teach new players to increase the distro output and to set up properly the waste loop, cause a pr to do something like this will never pass

If it were really like that then atmos would be set up to fail 15 minutes in.

What would really improve atmos is a guide to it, seeing as our current best guide to atmos on the wiki is "max out outgoing pressure" + "stare at the pipes until you figure it out"

RaveRadbury wrote:So if we do re-tool atmos to be able to better handle fastmos, what sort of space would remain to optimize further? As long as we aren't hitting the ceiling of "perfect atmos" it should be fine to tweak some of the numbers so gameplay is more like how it was before fastmos.

I'd like someone who knows more about atmos than I do to verify this would be a good idea. But if the pumps started turned up, some basic things you could do to further optimise atmos would be:

- Replace pressure pumps on the air and waste loops with volume pumps
- Replace the waste loop pump with a pipe
- Attach the waste loop to the bluespace gas sender

It would be far more optimal with people refilling rooms too, doing things like:

- Using air alarm settings to normalise the atmosphere far more quickly than the default setting
- Using things like canisters, air pumps, scrubbers, heaters and gas injectors to normalise atmosphere faster than an air alarm

Not to mention having the pumps up won't help rooms with disabled scrubbers or vents. It won't help rooms with pipes cut off from atmos either. It's a basic step that won't perfect atmos nor put atmos techs out of a job.

Ghilker wrote:This is a player issue not a gameplay issue

This is the same as saying "let's start with the SM already on what if every engi fucks off to space"

Teach new players to increase the distro output and to set up properly the waste loop, cause a pr to do something like this will never pass

No, it's definitely an issue of game design.

The SM doesn't have a similar problem, though.

Turning up the pumps has been on the wiki since at least 2012. It still rarely gets done. And what about when there's no CE or atmos techs to do it?

It's not that significant of a change. It will only reduce the time spent in fire alarm gridlock under the right circumstances. The breach has to be repaired. The vents and scrubbers have to be working. The pipes have to be connected or at least have enough pressure to refill the room. The room has to have no toxic gases in it the air alarm isn't already set to scrub. There's still plenty of need for player intervention.

stop asking to remove gameplay just because *YOU* have done it enough it's boring rote work.

cacogen wrote:

RaveRadbury wrote:So if we do re-tool atmos to be able to better handle fastmos, what sort of space would remain to optimize further? As long as we aren't hitting the ceiling of "perfect atmos" it should be fine to tweak some of the numbers so gameplay is more like how it was before fastmos.

I'd like someone who knows more about atmos than I do to verify this would be a good idea. But if the pumps started turned up, some basic things you could do to further optimise atmos would be:

- Replace pressure pumps on the air and waste loops with volume pumps
- Replace the waste loop pump with a pipe
- Attach the waste loop to the bluespace gas sender

It would be far more optimal with people refilling rooms too, doing things like:

- Using air alarm settings to normalise the atmosphere far more quickly than the default setting
- Using things like canisters, air pumps, scrubbers, heaters and gas injectors to normalise atmosphere faster than an air alarm

Not to mention having the pumps up won't help rooms with disabled scrubbers or vents. It won't help rooms with pipes cut off from atmos either. It's a basic step that won't perfect atmos nor put atmos techs out of a job.

I'm not sure about all of those, like the pressure-for-volume swap. If I were to make a proposal at the general idea, it would be something like...

• Set all appropriate pressure pumps to max pressure (e.g. Air to External, External to Filter, Waste In, etc.) from round start. Leave them on pressure default so people can swap them for volume or flat pipes to hyperoptimize. I strongly feel that Waste In should remain a pump for those rare few genius souls who flood the waste loop with atmospheric crud and then pump the waste loop into distro for sabotage. Previously, atmospheric techs had to max out the filters, the outlet pumps/supply controls, etc., manually. I've tried to conform to that style of smoothing over stuff. Barring that, I would almost suggest that those "things being maxed out from the start" changes be reverted so that Atmospherics has to set up everything...?
• Standardize (or consider standardizing, at least) whether there's a heater hooked into important gas lines at the start of the round. It'd be kinda cool if Icebox had that going for both thematic and practical reasons.
• Wrench down all air pumps (not necessarily Scrubbers, though they could be) at round start since it rarely matters but it's annoying to have to run outside for it on most maps. The air pumps and portable scrubbers rarely seem to get used, but perhaps if they were a little more reliably ready, they would be? Could take or
• Set the "Air to Distro" pipe to the highest pressure it can be without causing atmo blowback on unwrench. The only one I'm iffy on because there are actual benefits to different values that you can learn from more time in the department. Maybe leave this at good old 101.3 kPa and let more robust atmotechs figure out when to change it from experience?
• Remove the air pumps on one map that are connected to waste instead of air/distro for no obvious reason (it was not Ice Box or Tram, but I can't remember which it actually is) Was this done accidentally or is this an intentional trap for inattentive atmospheric technicians?

Disclaimer: This is just a few shots in the dark about possible good changes and things to leave alone to get people thinking what the changes would be and how they would affect Atmospherics for both AtmoTechs and other crew, especially when there is no AtmoTech aboard.

oranges wrote:stop asking to remove gameplay just because *YOU* have done it enough it's boring rote work.

I 100% agree with this sentiment, but I think that in this specific case the concern is more in regards to what "roundstart atmos that will never be altered" looks like and how it was tuned for a pre-fastmos station.

It's not about carving time off my run, it's about being able to experience pre-fastmos airlock sanity when no atmos techs are around.

I really dislike people setting the distro to over 1 bar for a long period of time for no reason, it just pre-emptively ruins sabotaging distro and also makes it hazardous for a bunch of ventcrawlers. Much like scrubber network these days, nobody bothers to cool it so it's always filled with excess heat and very annoying to use for an antagonist. That could use some mapping solution, reserve some space in atmos for cooling scrubber network so the most convenient solution isn't to just stick a heat exchange junction into space from maintenance with the least pipes interfering.

Pandarsenic wrote: [*] Remove the air pumps on one map that are connected to waste instead of air/distro for no obvious reason (it was not Ice Box or Tram, but I can't remember which it actually is) Was this done accidentally or is this an intentional trap for inattentive atmospheric technicians?[/list]

Found it; the map is MetaStation. Why's it like this?

RaveRadbury wrote:But if we optimize atmos roundstart, what will atmos players have to do aside from gas grief? (nothing)

I don't know why there is such a "What if" stigmatism in the development process. If people wanna gas grief they can still do so.

Pandarsenic wrote:

Pandarsenic wrote: [*] Remove the air pumps on one map that are connected to waste instead of air/distro for no obvious reason (it was not Ice Box or Tram, but I can't remember which it actually is) Was this done accidentally or is this an intentional trap for inattentive atmospheric technicians?[/list]

Found it; the map is MetaStation. Why's it like this?

It's a bug. Those pumps are hooked into waste. Someone should fix it

oranges wrote:stop asking to remove gameplay just because *YOU* have done it enough it's boring rote work.

Why not respond to the thread as it actually is?

RaveRadbury wrote:It's not about carving time off my run, it's about being able to experience pre-fastmos airlock sanity when no atmos techs are around.

Thank you. I'm not even sure how much having the pumps turned up by default would change things. But I know based on experience atmos is almost never optimised and that it speeds up the rate at which rooms refill. Firelocks are a huge problem thanks to fastmos and nobody seems to want to deal with it. Having the pumps up by default would help. Atmospherics shouldn't be set up in a way that assumes competent atmos techs are dedicating their rounds to making sure the station is free of atmosphere problems because it doesn't happen very often.

So exactly, the default atmos set up should be altered to take fastmos and its effects on the round into account.

Pandarsenic wrote:I'm not sure about all of those, like the pressure-for-volume swap. If I were to make a proposal at the general idea, it would be something like...

I wasn't suggesting that. I was describing examples of what atmos techs could do to further optimise atmos if the pumps started turned up. And how much difference it would still make having somebody doing the job.

cacogen wrote:

Pandarsenic wrote:I'm not sure about all of those, like the pressure-for-volume swap. If I were to make a proposal at the general idea, it would be something like...

I wasn't suggesting that. I was describing examples of what atmos techs could do to further optimise atmos if the pumps started turned up. And how much difference it would still make having somebody doing the job.

Ah, sorry, I misread your post.

But yeah, my report from another fine day of Sybil is "I know, with absolute certainty, that if I don't pick up a crowbar at roundstart, I will be miserably waiting for someone to help me get one by the end of the round."

A big part of this is that space is cold, to be fair, which... isn't really how space works IRL? But I have no idea how feasible touching that at a code level is so I won't suggest a change there as any sort of solution.

Pandarsenic wrote: Ah, sorry, I misread your post.

It's okay, I probably wasn't clear enough in what I wrote.

Pandarsenic wrote:But yeah, my report from another fine day of Sybil is "I know, with absolute certainty, that if I don't pick up a crowbar at roundstart, I will be miserably waiting for someone to help me get one by the end of the round."

This is the experience exactly. It's been like this since fastmos was introduced and there seems to be no interest in doing anything about it.

Pandarsenic wrote:A big part of this is that space is cold, to be fair, which... isn't really how space works IRL?

Even if cold weren't an issue you'd still have to deal with scrubbing gas and repressurising which can be tedious processes by themselves. Refilling air should just be easier and faster to do.

But I can already tell this thread isn't going to go anywhere because the guy who doesn't know anything about the issue, doesn't care and just needs to have his own spiteful way all the time has dismissed the suggestion out of hand because he doesn't know turning up the pumps in atmospherics takes less than a minute and has decided the suggestion is about saving time on pointless repetition each round, not having atmosphere normalise faster by default so the central primary hallway isn't locked down for 20 minutes after a breach if nobody's turned up the pumps. And the atmospherics maintainer has only commented on a pump being the wrong way around on MetaStation.

But the takeway from the thread really is that the default atmos set up should be updated to keep up with fastmos better so firelocks are less of an issue every round.

I think the issues you've identified with firelocks are real, but I disagree with your proposed solution. Atmos techs mattering to a round is a good thing not a bad one, and maxing out air to distro is genuinely very powerful for preventing this sort of thing.

I don't like commenting on these threads because I don't wanna become say, numbers, and just keep repeating things like "no, you're doing it wrong, wait for me to do it properly" without producing anything. That said, I think the issue here is the scope of firelocks, but solving that is a hard problem for quite a few reasons.

Every single round I smash a path through the central primary hallway firedoors to make the game playable

It's super lame and tedious especially when the atmos is completely livable the vast majority of the time this happens

Stickymayhem wrote:Every single round I smash a path through the central primary hallway firedoors to make the game playable

It's super lame and tedious especially when the atmos is completely livable the vast majority of the time this happens

The new fastmos has really destroyed movement with firelocks. The second someone sets some paper on fire, Half the station is on firelock down because the pressure is a bit warm or a bit cold.

Stickymayhem wrote:Every single round I smash a path through the central primary hallway firedoors to make the game playable

It's super lame and tedious especially when the atmos is completely livable the vast majority of the time this happens

Could you play more often on Sybil please? Thanks.

Been noticing as of late that the N2, 02 Mix that produces breathable air for the station is always running low shortly after the shift begins or halfway. Not sure why but it seems to be causing a ton of issues with refilling air.

I'm sure fastmos is to blame because of how quick vents will attempt to fill an area exposed to space deleting air constantly.

I believe the N2 is the general limiting factor on that. It runs dry very quickly.

legoscape wrote:Been noticing as of late that the N2, 02 Mix that produces breathable air for the station is always running low shortly after the shift begins or halfway. Not sure why but it seems to be causing a ton of issues with refilling air.

I'm sure fastmos is to blame because of how quick vents will attempt to fill an area exposed to space deleting air constantly.

a few other codebases (polaris downstreams? Bay?) have air alarms set to automatically shut vents off when they detect a sudden drop in pressure for exactly this reason