Atmos Suggestions

[Timrod]

I've been playing Atmos quite a bit recently, and I've noticed a bunch of things that could really use some improvement. Most of it has nothing to do with actual atmos code - so there shouldn't be any fear (as far as I know) of causing runtimes and/or lag. Here's some of what I'd like to see:

1. Analyzers showing mole counts rather than just pressure.

Not everyone is familiar with how Atmos works, so I'll explain it here. Gases on /tg/ are measured in Kilopascals - kPa, a measure of pressure. The problem is that there's also a hidden count of moles - how much of the gas there actually is in the container. The reason this is an issue is that pressure can be wildly misleading. For instance, it is entirely possible to have a canister of pure plasma, heated up to 5000+ degrees with 200,000+ kPa of pressure.. but very few moles of actual plasma. The game already keeps track of mole count, this is why the Captain's oxygen jetpack (and the larger oxygen tanks) last longer than the emergency O2 tanks when used as internals. I'd like to see the mole count become visible when using an Analyzer or PDA cart with a gas analyzer (Science, Atmos, CE) on it. This would make it a lot easier to figure out how much of a gas is actually in a container.


2. Ability to attach add-ons to canisters.

Right now, canisters are kind of dumb. You can't, say, attach a signaller to one and use it to open the canister remotely. I think this should change, in that canisters should be able to accept a single add-on assembly. This would be especially useful for canister bombs. Here's how they should work:

Signaller - When signalled, opens the release valve on the canister. Very simple.

Timer - After the timer counts down, opens the release valve on the canister. Also very simple.

Igniter - When attached to a timer or signaller, will spark when the canister's release valve opens. Useful for doing burn mix and starting plasma fires.

Mini-Analyzer (new) - When attached to a canister, will monitor the air each tick for pressure. If the pressure goes below a set amount, opens the release valve on the canister.

Voice Analyzer - When attached to a canister, allows you to open the release valve via voice command. Useful for pre-placing air canisters in areas likely to be bombed and setting them off on command via radio.


3. Move the Incinerator next to Atmos.

The incinerator is something that could potentially be very useful for Atmos, in that right now they have no easy way of getting into space without breaking a window. Atmos could use this as a door to space, while it would still remain publicly accessible from maint.

I'll post more later as I think of them.

[paprika]

When you have internals connected, there needs to be a calculation done to determine how many seconds (or ticks) you have left of breathable oxygen. This would help so many people. It should also display on the UI.

[Cipher3]

Number 3 is a map issue as it's already next to atmos on Metastation and therefore Artyom.

[Neerti]

When you have internals connected, there needs to be a calculation done to determine how many seconds (or ticks) you have left of breathable oxygen. This would help so many people. It should also display on the UI.

There's an icon for a 'flashing' internals icon, which I think was meant to have it switch to that icon if you were running low.

[Reimoo]

All of the ideas suggested so far sound excellent and easy to implement. Too bad very few good ideas suggested on this forum actually get pulled.

[MisterPerson]

I don't think analyzers should display mole counts per-say, but they should display volume. I think volume would give a much more meaningful representation of "amount of gas" than moles, since everyone understands volume but not many understand moles.

[Timrod]

One other:

4. Make pumps do their job.

Right now, there's this really weird bug where if you pump a pure gas into a pipe and then try to pump the gas out (ie; put plasma in the pure loop and then pump it out to replace with oxygen), trace amounts of the first gas will remain in the pipes no matter what kind of pump you're using. These amounts are usually a fraction of a KPA (dunno how much by volume) but can completely screw things up. For instance, if you have to fill a plasma canister for Engineering and then want to cool some O2 for super-internals, you can't because the trace amount of plasma makes the O2 unsuitable for internal use.

[Miauw]

When you have internals connected, there needs to be a calculation done to determine how many seconds (or ticks) you have left of breathable oxygen. This would help so many people. It should also display on the UI.

why is this needed.
oxygen tanks last hours.

It's a cool feature but it wont get used unless we drastically reduce the amount of oxygen you get from tanks.
Also depending on how you do it it would be either rather inefficient or rather prone to bugs. (calculate every tick vs calculate once and then countdown)

All of the ideas suggested so far sound excellent and easy to implement. Too bad very few good ideas suggested on this forum actually get pulled.

this post pisses me off.
1. we are currently in a feature freeze
2. these are just suggestions.
3. You're underestimating the complexity of pipe atmos.

Adding assemblies to canisters would be really cool and is probably viable, I'm just not sure how assemblies really work.

[MisterPerson]

Someone made assemblies pretty easy to work with, actually. All the interfacing is done via a handful of procs. Handling when to actually fire the assemblies is all done by them. All the canister needs to care about is tracking/storing the assemblies themselves, creating a way to attach/detach them, and handling what happens then they get a signal.

[Miauw]

Oh, cool. For some reason I felt like assembly code would be really bad and hard to work with, but it looks like I was wrong.

[Malkevin]

I don't think analyzers should display mole counts per-say, but they should display volume. I think volume would give a much more meaningful representation of "amount of gas" than moles, since everyone understands volume but not many understand moles.

Not really.

A canister that holds 10L of gas at room temperature holds 10L of gas at boiling/freezing, and will hold 10L at max capacity and 10L when half full.
The volume of the container doesn't change as pressure increases, and gas will always attempt to fill the container, barring external forces such as gravity.
So to calculate (read: waste cpu cycles) the volume of gas you would have to extrapolate the value by using preset variables such as: temperature being room temperature, the external pressure being 1 atmosphere, and.... an imaginary container of a fixed sized.
Basically you'd just be giving a different form of pressure measurement, and the only use would be that it would give consistent read outs across all containers regardless of their size or the temp of their contents.


If you want to know the true level of the amount of gas in the sample just stick with moles. Its the proper term, and when atmos looks like something which was written for some dude's physics degree (which it was IIRC) you may as well use the proper terms for sake of consistency. Plus there's the fact that moles are held as a variable in air datum so displaying them requires zero calculation.

[MisterPerson]

Volume is held in Liter form as a var on most (all?) gas containers. It also requires no calculation, so I'm not sure what your point is. Either way it's something that should be displayed in-game as it currently isn't. For the record, I was literally talking about the container's volume, not volume of the gas at STP, which is what I think you thought I was talking about.

Yes, with PVT you could calculate n out-of-game if you wanted, but I question how many players would actually use n if displayed. I consider the complexity increase of displaying it not worth the gains to the very small percentage of the population that actually knows what moles are and gains a benefit by having them displayed. I'm pretty sure most of the bomb whizzes know how PVT relate to each other and may even have an idea of what moles represent without knowing the term or what it means.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Vessel volume in liter should definitely be displayed on examination, IRL it's usually stamped on any pressure vessel, from fire extinguishers to scuba tanks.

Volume in Mole is irrelevant because it depends of the gas type and of it's temperature/pressure, it is not suitable to express the volume of a container.

[tunderchief]

>enormous remote detonated canister bombs

Yes please.

[ColonicAcid]

Vessel volume in liter should definitely be displayed on examination, IRL it's usually stamped on any pressure vessel, from fire extinguishers to scuba tanks.

Volume in Mole is irrelevant because it depends of the gas type and of it's temperature/pressure, it is not suitable to express the volume of a container.

Yes but it accurately describes how much the rate of reaction will be. A lower more concentrated gas with more moles reacts faster than a spread out, low molar gas. Moles are useful for scientists for obvious reasons and Atmosphere techs trying to get pure as fuck gas or flood shit. Volume is the everyday unit that's used but in science professions you use molars because you can use a relation to find the volume if you know the moles.