Extending the power simulation.

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Extending the power simulation.

Post by oranges » #526427

Just an idea at this stage.

How do people feel about removing the radiation collectors, and instead the supermatter heat/pressure/gas generation is used to drive one or more turbines in a series to produce power.

I think this would lead to a more interesting engineering experience of optimising your SM flow for the number of turbines you have and balancing pressure rates and trying not to blow up your loop.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by Not-Dorsidarf » #526428

Sounds like a good idea to me, and adds more depth to alternate power setups than "supercharge rads"
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by Dr_bee » #526443

Making the SM just for harvesting plasma to burn would be much more interesting.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by AnonymousNow » #526446

First instinct good. More options means more possibilities means more fun.
Second opinion bad. Higher failure rate means more shuttle calls means weaker rounds.
Third consideration good. Make individual turbines accessible via fireproof button-activated remote button systems engine-side and a maintenance firehatch connection on another side.

The ayes have it.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by MisterPerson » #526562

There isn't much point to optimizing power generation if there isn't something to spend that power on. Similar problem we have with money right now.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by Lazengann » #526564

I think it's a neat idea. I've been playing with the supermatter and after experimenting with the gasses there's no point in doing anything except dumping CO2 in it as it's the only one that makes decent power. 25% Tritium barely gave me more power than pure nitrogen and I'd appreciate having more to play with there.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by PKPenguin321 » #526569

Heat is debatably more broken than radiation, since there seems to be a "I OVERFLOWED THE HEAT OF THIS GAS LOL" bug every other week. If the goal is to get away from the busted radiation system then this will probably not be much of an improvement
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by skoglol » #526570

Yeah, maybe. I had a half formed idea of tying power (and by inclusion radiation) gen to managing pressure, basically making the safest currently good enough for a whole round near worthless in terms of output. This seems like kinda that with less reliance on atmos. What does the crystal add to this equation though?

Either way, we should take a good look at the power usage to power generation balance. Engineering would be a lot more fun if anyone actually recognized your (lack of) hard work. Right now supplying station with power is way too easy, and someone can moonlight for a couple minutes to do it.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by AnonymousNow » #526574

A few years ago, someone suggested a specific way of selling power to centcom - a massive, constant, beam-like power transmission laser, and a portal in front of it. Both require power, the latter a set amount, the former ramping up significantly in strength depending on available output. It would generate something for the station over time, and of course, be another big Z-level crossing hazard if the portal was broken, with damage ranging from painful to complete ash-like immolation.
Projects like that will encourage engineering to go full autism on their creations, which will hopefully give them a shot in the arm.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by oranges » #526576

MisterPerson wrote:There isn't much point to optimizing power generation if there isn't something to spend that power on. Similar problem we have with money right now.
We can rebalance the generation of power from the turbines at the same time, such that a single pair can provide *Just* the amount the station needs, on the default burn mixes
skoglol wrote:Yeah, maybe. I had a half formed idea of tying power (and by inclusion radiation) gen to managing pressure, basically making the safest currently good enough for a whole round near worthless in terms of output. This seems like kinda that with less reliance on atmos. What does the crystal add to this equation though?
We may need to tweak the supermatter/gas reactions a bit, but the idea here is that the Supermatter in generating heat/gas in the presence of something like plasma, is essentially a very interesting source of "power" generation.

This would also help explain lorewise, why NT is so interested in plasma and the Supermatter research, in that you could consider that if we found some resource/mineral in space that made fusion easier to acheive, we would greatly increase the energy capacity of the human civilization.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by XivilaiAnaxes » #526588

If it doesn't involve reducing the glorious radiation generated I'm down for it.

If it helps generate enough power to husk assistants doorhacking I'm doubly down for it.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by Critawakets » #526591

For this to work, the SM has to work basically completely differently. Currently any negligibly higher than room temperature gas in the SM causes it to take damage, making it unideal for power generation via turbine.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by deedubya » #526605

Big brain question of the day: Why does it need to involve the supermatter at all if the byproduct of it's usage(radiation) is no longer a factor? It seems like what you want is to basically replace the supermatter with the turbine, but have a chance for it to "backfire" if not managed correctly.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by XivilaiAnaxes » #526610

deedubya wrote:Big brain question of the day: Why does it need to involve the supermatter at all if the byproduct of it's usage(radiation) is no longer a factor? It seems like what you want is to basically replace the supermatter with the turbine, but have a chance for it to "backfire" if not managed correctly.
Half the reason anyone gives enough of a fuck to play as engineer is the fact the engine is so volatile which makes it exciting. Nobody is going to sit around jerking off over dumb shit turbines. Hell the only reason anybody even remembers the turbine exists is because you can make spooky tritium there.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by Horza » #526736

XivilaiAnaxes wrote:Half the reason anyone gives enough of a fuck to play as engineer is the fact the engine is so volatile which makes it exciting.
Seconding this, the only times I've seen any engineer excited about their SM layout in the past few months have been either when they're new engies testing out their overwrought virgin layout with internal separated cooling loops, or chad pumpless engi designs based around edging the SM to the magic 4500-5000 MeV point where the SM starts zapping people without delamming then holding it there as job insurance. Then you hook up the SM output directly to station power and can husk assistants in two throws into a shocked grille.
XivilaiAnaxes wrote:Nobody is going to sit around jerking off over dumb shit turbines. Hell the only reason anybody even remembers the turbine exists is because you can make spooky tritium there.
Even then that's because it's a ready-made burn chamber at roundstart that doesn't require (much) extra setup aside from the turbo fusion nerds adding an external cooling loop as trivial setup. Even before the fusion changes near the beginning of the year when I was trying to optimize turbine operation I'd have my work constantly sabotaged or shut down by atmostechs and engis and scientists wanting to make some trit for maxcaps or their own autism projects. At best, fully upgraded with T4 components, a turbine only generates as much as the basic-bitch roundstart SM setup does while burning enough oxygen to empty the station's main tank within a single round. Upgraded to T2/T3 as is more usual (since roboticists/nanite memers take the research points unless you tweak the engineering R&D console) it's really only a replacement for solars. To that end, I've only ever seen the turbine unironically used when all other sources of electricity generation have been knocked out but the shuttle hasn't been called, or when a newfriend discovers how to turbine.


I can tell you right now that you can abuse the temperature/pressure handling of the atmos system, even without getting into fusion memes, that would make anything other than explicit fusion-based power gen trivial but tedious. Even then, save for Kilo and it's bizarre fucking power grid, setting up solars is enough for any station.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by XivilaiAnaxes » #526806

Horza wrote:words
Adding to this - I'm like 90% sure solars will power the whole station with no issues with the further "benefit" of not being as open to sabotage (sure you can cut the wires but that's so insanely boring compared to causing the supermatter to delaminate) and not being open to incompetence. The only thing you worry about with solars is meteors (which are a lesser threat but still a threat to the supermatter).

How many roundstarts do you get engineers getting excited about doing them? Never. You might get a guy one on 15 rounds decide they'll do it because they know engies are going all out on the autism and might not fire up the engine for a bit.

From the objective logical station standpoint solars are "better" but from a gameplay standpoint they are straight up garbage design nobody wants anything to do with them because they aren't interesting.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by deedubya » #526823

Solars are by design not enough to keep a station powered, at least on box/meta. I think you'll get like an hour tops unless you know exactly what to set the SMES to.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by MisterPerson » #526922

I agree the solars suck, but I think they have a place in the eventual "ideal" power world as an emergency supply to keep "important" things running like atmospherics and maybe weak lights or something.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by XivilaiAnaxes » #526925

MisterPerson wrote:I agree the solars suck, but I think they have a place in the eventual "ideal" power world as an emergency supply to keep "important" things running like atmospherics and maybe weak lights or something.
Yeah but there's only two ways you will increase the rate that rounds solars find use:

A - Have them already setup roundstart so you don't have to roll the dice on whether someone gives a damn setting them up. This would probably involve cutting the power they generate significantly meaning that any shift where the supermatter does explode it's guaranteed "we HAVE to call shuttle" instead of 20-80 "Oh we can just do solars and forget about engineering". Mind you nobody would really care about the change because it would end up being "oh yeah solars exist I guess" just like it is now.

B - Absolutely fuck up designing a new engine so badly to the point that people would rather SET UP SOLARS than even go near whatever fisher price abortion replaced the metal as fuck danger rock. Of course this would probably result in 90% of engie mains just saying fuck this shit orange man bad and rolling something else especially considering how badly fusion got nerfed (Which while a shame was entirely fair because of how little counterplay there was to "plasmeme opened the canister everyone dies").

Solars aren't bad because of any stats around them. Solars are bad because they just aren't remotely engaging and I can't see any way that you can rectify that without a massive overhaul (Like maybe something attacks the panels regularly and you have to do something to stop it) because solar power in real life is just as non-engaging. Solars could power the entire station with just you putting up 4 wires total across the four arrays and people would still prefer to work on the engine.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by SkeletalElite » #526954

I don't really think the method of generation is important as long as it is developed enough that it's fun to optimize it and there are ways to continually optimize it as the round goes on and science gets more techs. All it's really lacking is a REASON to optimize. Would switching power generation to turbine based fixed that? I don't think it would, however, radiation is cancer so I think reworking the way supermatter radiation works would be just as fine a solution as making radiation not the method of power generation. I hate in particular how you can just throw shit in the SM chamber and it makes it generate more power because the shit gets contaminated which then gives off more radiation which then generates even more power.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by deedubya » #527037

XivilaiAnaxes wrote:A - Have them already setup roundstart so you don't have to roll the dice on whether someone gives a damn setting them up. This would probably involve cutting the power they generate significantly meaning that any shift where the supermatter does explode it's guaranteed "we HAVE to call shuttle" instead of 20-80 "Oh we can just do solars and forget about engineering". Mind you nobody would really care about the change because it would end up being "oh yeah solars exist I guess" just like it is now.
Calling the shuttle over an SM meltdown is weaksauce, unless it consumed literally the entirety of the engineering wing and/or caused a loose goose. The cargo tesla is always an easy backup option.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by OFQ » #527601

Just add more fun delaminations.
Currently we have:
Moles -> singuloth.
Power -> tesloose.

Can we have heat one? Maybe something like "Resonance Cascade" that opens portal to some kind of space Cthulhu domain and starts to spawn slime all over the station :P
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by OFQ » #527603

On the productive side of things(from someone who spent like 100+ hours on SM: one of my older babies):

1. This is the biggest party pooper for advanced SM setups https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/issues/41075

2. Tritium rad collectors are shit. It is hard to get trit and it burns out really fast and the amount of points generated is like nothing.

3. SM rooms need more space. At Least at meta station engy vault can be refitted into spacious burner/mixer chamber or to house extra coolers. When I play Engie on smaller stations I just give up. Non 2-level pipes around Engie/Atmosia space is absolute cancer.

4. Engine room shouldn't have breathable/burnable atmosphere. I would seal it off and feed from n2 can with robust air scrubbing capabilities directly into space. This way SM will be more fire proof, graytiders will be discouraged from running around and getting irradiated while there will be no need in EVA suites to maintain the engine. Also you can hook up extra coolers to that n2 setup. It will help fight slimes. You can make this setup yourself as an extra sweaty engie memer but it will take too long even on greenshift so preferably all the basic elements should be there from the round start(including airlock).

5. You can add TEG to SM loops for extra power but as is it is an absolutely broken meme that can generate a ton of power with a brain dead setup... You can simply build a TAG and power it with some plasma fire and you don't need SM... Or solars... Or engineers... Man I hate TEGs it make SM looks like an extremely dangerous toy. I don't want to face the reality! Balancing TEGs out and making it so that SM generates the bulk of energy from them would be grand. Adding more TAGs... Will involve re-piping of extremely hot SM loop and extremely cold space loop (preferably filed with plasma for heat cap).. What can go wrong? EPIC! The thing with n2 atmosphere will actually help a lot with this.

6. Bring back contamination. REEEE!!!!! We need more hazard. Or even better (this feeds into the idea with SM having separated atmos system) what if radiation causes gases to turn into their isotopes with similar chemical properties but radioactive and/or poisonous, maybe even with some perks. Like radioactive o2 releases trit if heated or more/less reactive or something. Atmosia tators gonna love this.

7. Adding extra SM shards is dumb in its current form. People simply drag it into SM core and that's all. There should be a way to link them somehow. And it gave me an epic idea. Space Station 13 needs MORE LASER MEMES!
A laser is created when the electrons in atoms in special glasses, crystals, or gases absorb energy from an electrical current or another laser and become “excited.” The excited electrons move from a lower-energy orbit to a higher-energy orbit around the atom's nucleus.
We have crystals! What if SM didn't absorb emitter shots but instead enhanced them.. And then this stronger shot could get reflected with mirrors into other SM crystal or into the same one. Eventually it should go into something that can turn it into energy. Or to break things... If you are a baddie. Or into the blob face (emm core). Adding more crystals will make sense because each one of them will have some kind of excitement cap and if you supply too much energy it will start to delem. Maybe also shooting emitter bursts into random directions. Engies gonna wrap those emitter lanes all around the station on greensifts and everyone gonna get fried when a graytider misalign a mirror.

You can get it to the next level with emitter rework. If they had power and wavelength regulator. You can turn power to lowest for debugging setup without causing too much damage. And wavelength can be used to drive SM array. Basically each crystal should have it's resonance frequency and you want to drive it in optimal mode with emitters by adjusting their power and wavelength to cause certain interference. SM will need cooling and gasses will affect its tolerance and such.

They way you absorb that final boosted ray also can be something fun. It can be used to drive fusion engine or simply turn one gas into other, produce matter and antimatter, execute changeling, turn yourself into Dr. Manhattan. A lot of SC-FI things can be done with an extremely powerful laser beam. But since I also would like SM be more tied with slimes (lore vise) I would say the ways to use that super beam should include hitting living slime with it. Extremely powerful beam hitting yellow slime will create SM shard. Other slimes will have other effect. The default effect (if slime dead or power is too low/hi) should result in explosion/tesla balls/portals into slime world. This will also hint at where the huge ass SM crystal is from and while slimes are so dam rustled :evil: Btw heaving more SMs/running them at hi power should increase chances of anomaly events happening. SM she'll be dreaded by ALL!!!!!!


- - - - - - - - - -

AnonymousNow wrote:A few years ago, someone suggested a specific way of selling power to centcom - a massive, constant, beam-like power transmission laser, and a portal in front of it. Both require power, the latter a set amount, the former ramping up significantly in strength depending on available output. It would generate something for the station over time, and of course, be another big Z-level crossing hazard if the portal was broken, with damage ranging from painful to complete ash-like immolation.
Projects like that will encourage engineering to go full autism on their creations, which will hopefully give them a shot in the arm.

from: https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=23917
SM usually produces much more energy than station needs. It would be really nice to have something useful and fun to do with it.

So how about an energy market where you can sell and buy energy? For example add an "energy market" console to engineering (similar to cargonia shuttle) The console will show list of stations that want to purchase or sell energy. Each station will have a price (dynamic) and coordinates where energy should be beamed to sell it. To sell energy engineer picks one of stations from the list with the best current price and its coordinates then he/she grabs EVA suite and builds an energy beam dish outside of the SS13 station (similar to solars) and orient the dish towards specified coordinates, hooks it up to the grid and start beaming the energy in exchange for credits. Purchasing energy works similarly.
Also the power beam thingy could be emagable. In standard operating mode it will turn off when an object is blocking the beam but if emaged it will burn the object + drain all the power from the grid.
Also the console itself also can be emagable/hackable for adding pirate stations that will send money to your personal balance or in exchange for contraband drops. Or something more benign. Like adding syndicate stations with best prices (when hacked)
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by Screemonster » #527675

increase the demand of a whole lot of machines on the station and make a generator to match because holy shit having a high-tech singularity supermatter science engine on the station is all well and good but not when its power output and demand is comparable to a shitty backup diesel engine, muh immersions

have solars and the like sufficient for "basic" features like lighting and door and vents and make the actual engine a "you must turn this on in order to enable !!FUN!!" feature, kinda like the way the station can basically muddle along without miners on lowpop without catastrophically failing but you need dem mats if you want the good stuff
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by iain0 » #527688

(sorry, i suck at terseness)

Been a couple of months since I played, but I'd often thought about power. This may have been more appropriate in the other thread but since this is the one Discord linked to...

Power /is/ kinda pointless at the moment, the solars do most of the work, combined with initial SMES charge, and the SM isn't that powerful that it really justifies its existence, a few more solar panels is all the station really needs, not a huge bomb waiting to blow up engineering (and the SMES therein).

I've seen some amazing work done on the SM engine, major cooling loops, running it right up against the 5000 tesla delaminate it will do, and yet, inspite of all this work, it's no better than just turning on the default setup. Optimisations of the engine are, at best, helpful for recovering it from sabotage, but optimising its output is basically just something unnecessary you can do if you feel like killing time.

Which is nice, but makes the engineering job not that important (repairing things is a fairly futile past time too unless rounds last multiple hours).


Predictably the question remains, even if you overhaul the engine, whats all this work /for/, given the station can last a good 20-30 minutes on batteries alone, and far longer with solars. Money is pretty pointless, the only time that ever mattered to me was when i late joined as engineering and cargo tried to charge me 5000$ for a pair of insulated gloves. With no CE and the 50$ vendor gloves already sold, I simply suicided in cargo lobby because whats the point in being an engineer who can never get gloves (i dont even try late joining any more). So the economy is a bit whack and there's little other point in money generally.

Materials matter. When all the miners are dead, or the posts are unstaffed, the station tended to be horribly limited in what can be done. At the same time, no-one (probably) wants to put miners out of a job.


So, a limited energy->matter conversion machine, with some simple rules in place
1) Make it like the grav gen - you cant build it, you can't destroy it, only damage it painfully. So there will only ever be exactly one of them.
2) Figure out the average yields of a miner over the course of a session (perhaps "tier" the machine too?) and create a *CURVE* that tends towards producing this much - so maybe if you feed this machine 100KW power, it produces 10% of a miner. If you feed it 500KW maybe it makes 25% and so on. No linear scaling. No ability to go past 1.0 * average miner output. Keeps mining relevant ( I'm assuming 'average miner output' isn't enough to keep the station stocked, and people will argue about who is taking what I guess) but helps alleviate the stagnation of no mining income.
-> the tiering idea can have different curves for each tier, so the default tier 1 is just producing reasonable ammounts of common stuff like iron and at most trace ammounts of advanced materials, but as you tier it up you get better returns on the rarer stuff. Maybe give it its own research nodes for some higher tier component and make them deeper and deeper in the tree to prevent too much "rushing" of "end game" materials and items.
3) The machine should have a variable power control, configurable by engineering, as to what it "draws" from the grid. At round start this machine should be set to draw 0, switched off, and ideally its local APC 'equipment off' mode. In a secure room.

( You can scale this return down if appropriate of course, this really isn't meant to screw miners, just produce something thats actually useful, but things should still be difficult if there's no miners )

The security and settings are because this thing is basically a pre-made power sink if anyone gets in there and messes with it.

It may also be worth isolating the engine's emitters with their own SMES that doesn't feed anything else. I've already seen the engine "stall" a few times when people were setting up conveyor belts + electric grids, eventually there's not enough power to even run the emitters and restarting the engine at that point gets a little tricky (esp if you haven't isolated the power drain at this point, you have to do some rewiring in the engine room to cut it off from the grid and make engine output feed its self as well as the SMES)

This is obviously a tricky balance idea, i'm personally rather fond of the "curves that tend towards a number" solutions as this mitigates against "cheesing" the system (it never produces more than the value it tends towards) while at the same time allowing rewards for more and more power generation (alebit diminising returns).

I'd never really figured out what to do with this idea, it is of course a fine line between excess supply, and starvation, for all meaningful resources, and at the same time it's supposed to be a bit of "fun" and a "game" so it probably shouldn't be too difficult to just "make things run adequately but slowly", while still giving room for those who want to put the time in to net bigger rewards. And currently power generation is rather lacking in that regard.


I'd be tempted to say uncap the 5geV (or whatever it is) tesla delam and let the engineers go truely crazy. If they break the engine and make it produce a peta-watt, so what, they get almost the mining production of a single human player. But never more than.

But as with all things balance, everyone will have their own opinions and there will probably be a diverse reaction across the whole range of possible reactions, so didn't see much point coding anything up and I've little to no idea how "consensus" is achieved for anything more debatable (my only contribution so far being a reasonably simple bug fix, and even that generated a bunch of (reasonable) discussion)
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Horza
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by Horza » #527700

OFQ wrote: 7. Adding extra SM shards is dumb in its current form. People simply drag it into SM core and that's all. There should be a way to link them somehow. And it gave me an epic idea. Space Station 13 needs MORE LASER MEMES!
We have crystals!
I like this idea, but it could use more refinement. Make emitters going through the crystal a required component of power generation (which rewards stable setups and essentially shuts off power during ANY delam) with a passthrough emitter-absorber making power from crystal-enhanced emitter beams. Rads emitted would both be a dangerous factor and should scale with the amount of emitter energy being passed through the crystal, while being a source of radiation for the (now-completely-science-based) rad collectors, which would be buffed. As it stands, there is literally never any reason why rad collectors should ever be switched to science mode since just harvesting catatonic bodies for dissection purposes is enough to completely replace any gains from any trit-supplied rad collectors.

Excellent potential, though. Making emitters customizable on a danger-power curve is also good.
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I actually really love these ideas of yours, of an energy->matter converter able to replace basic miner output not only as a way to replace dead miners but also as a way to reward notably autistic engineering departments for their dedication, other than by useless money. The percentage-based budget payouts we've had for the past month has made people realize how useless extra money really is.

Only suggestion I'd make is to not hard-cap its output at just one "average miner" since I guarantee you that the power gap between being able to make a 6MW SM engine and anything beyond a 10MW SM engine is huge and should be rewarded. I've seen stable SM layouts make up to 100MW of power (maybe more, given that late-night drunken classic Sybil observing blurs memories) using absolute top-tier designs. Make 4MW the "one average miner" load, 10MW the "two average miner" loads, 40MW the "replace mining" load, and anything further should be based on an exponential extrapolation function.

My own basic SM design (based on a certain ligger's slightly more robust design) can easily make 4MW 10 minutes in, which is roughly when the token newfriend miner dies. More complex 10MW designs require 20-30 minutes, which is when everyone but the megafauna hunter dies, and anything past that is a sheer reward for engineering. You don't even have to change how the SM behaves. Maybe incorporate part-tiers into the energy->matter balancing curve, so upgrades are essential to extracting full efficiency out of it. Place the converter somewhere away from engineering so the engies will (hopefully) upgrade shit along the way with a BRPED.

Of course, TEGs will absolutely have to be nerfed to make this work.

These ideas are great, 10/10.
Last edited by Horza on Fri Dec 06, 2019 11:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by Critawakets » #527703

Im thinking that there should be an item called the "Supermatter Catalyzer" that can switch between two modes of supermatter function along with changing its color to have a visual indicator.

Green: Rad Mode, its the same as now.
Our current yellow: Heat Mode, its what oranges wants. Produces more power by just producing hot gas out the butt.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by iain0 » #527708

Horza wrote: Only suggestion I'd make is to not hard-cap its output at just one "average miner" since I guarantee you that the power gap between being able to make a 6MW SM engine and anything beyond a 10MW SM engine is huge and should be rewarded. I've seen stable SM layouts make up to 100MW of power (maybe more, given that late-night drunken classic Sybil observing blurs memories) using absolute top-tier designs. Make 4MW the "one average miner" load, 10MW the "two average miner" loads, 40MW the "replace mining" load, and anything further should be based on an exponential extrapolation function.
Thanks for the feedback - the numbers are definately a hard question in tuning, i tended to favour the "caps out at a max" type curve, rather than exponential growth, so it doesn't simply become a "cookbook alternative to miners that happens every round". I think tweaking the curve - maybe an "S shaped" curve can give more reward for beating the basics without getting too insane at high levels - so it has a slow start, but ramps up when you hit "high" engine outputs, and then tails off again just incase someone figures out how to exploit the hell outa power, as well as making sure mining doesn't become a redundant job. A few options here though and I opted for a more conservative version to not disturb balance too much - it could always be tweaked later either way, though nerfs tend to be less popular (though making a job redundant is also not popular so).
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by zxaber » #527715

I've given some thought to the turbine idea for the SM and ultimately I'm not a huge fan. (*cough*)

Currently, we have a trade-off system; We produce more power by having more radiation, but it also increases heat which causes instability. Thus, you balance heat and power generation, and different gasses can have different effects on both.

If we move to a turbine system, we're only really balancing one factor. The idea would be to produce as much heat as we're able to dissipate via the turbine, and so any optimization or engine projects just become a loop of tacking on more turbines and then adding more heat. There may be risks involved with this in cases where the turbines have to shut down for whatever reason (and adding in blades that have a durability and need to be replaced while the turbine is shut down could be neat), but otherwise the possible engine setups would be much less interesting in my opinion.

There is, of course, the side goal of gas synthesis using the engine (in my case, I create pluox because I run CO2 engines), which could help keep things entertaining. But normally, such setups carry risk of instability via too much heat production, which is why designing them to be stable is fun. When heat is your main output (rather than radiation as is the case now), you can just add more heat consumers and call it a day.

I think we should instead re-balance the various gases to have more of an array of effects. The wiki lists most gasses as having special interactions, and I think we could look into amplifying some of the effects to encourage more custom non-N2 setups.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by OFQ » #527779

iprice wrote:So, a limited energy->matter conversion machine, with some simple rules in place
1) Make it like the grav gen - you cant build it, you can't destroy it, only damage it painfully. So there will only ever be exactly one of them.
2) Figure out the average yields of a miner over the course of a session (perhaps "tier" the machine too?) and create a *CURVE* that tends towards producing this much - so maybe if you feed this machine 100KW power, it produces 10% of a miner. If you feed it 500KW maybe it makes 25% and so on. No linear scaling. No ability to go past 1.0 * average miner output. Keeps mining relevant ( I'm assuming 'average miner output' isn't enough to keep the station stocked, and people will argue about who is taking what I guess) but helps alleviate the stagnation of no mining income.
-> the tiering idea can have different curves for each tier, so the default tier 1 is just producing reasonable ammounts of common stuff like iron and at most trace ammounts of advanced materials, but as you tier it up you get better returns on the rarer stuff. Maybe give it its own research nodes for some higher tier component and make them deeper and deeper in the tree to prevent too much "rushing" of "end game" materials and items.
3) The machine should have a variable power control, configurable by engineering, as to what it "draws" from the grid. At round start this machine should be set to draw 0, switched off, and ideally its local APC 'equipment off' mode. In a secure room.
Actually you can join this with the LASER SM idea to make useful and realistic fusion engine with a lot of depth. The machine can be a chamber that you load with reagents: minerals, gases, creatures like slimes(I described above) you can mix and match stuff.
Now based on what you load into the machine and the SM ray energy level you can turn one things into another:

For example:

low tire:
1. Turn sand into glass
2. Compress plasma gas into solid plasma sheets. You can then use them in generators.
3. Burn organics into co2.
...

Mid tire:
1. Fuse iron and titanium into silver.
2. Fuse silver and iron into gold.
3. Split co2 into o2 and diamonds.
4. Fuse plasma and o2 into tritium.
5. Do C.B.T. on yellow slime to produce tesla arcs.

Top tire:
1. Turn yellow slime into SM shard.
2. Use fission on uranium to create extreme rads and iron + gold.
3. Run stable fusion on tritium to produce different gasses, heat and rads.
4. Put a gamer in with plasma filled atmosphere and turn him into plasmaman or something :D

Those just examples. The core idea is to make some kind of pipelines that can turn one thing into another with byproducts and then pipe those outputs into next stage. You will still require mining to get basic resources that you then can turn into something rarer. Ideally the machine should be more like a small room with some kind of active containment(see tokamak or tesloose/singulo engine) and holding units for gases and matter. Pipes can transport gases and conveyor belts/transport tubes solids. Or for starters it can be modular machine like TAG that can also be connected to resource silo for input outputs and extended with extra gas pipe connectors and stuff. Maybe even a chute module that will allow it to receive/send stuff via disposal network.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by deedubya » #527808

Honestly, I think the big issue with engine management is...well, the lack thereof.

Think about it. The only major process to managing up any engine(PA based, SM, turbine, TEG, even pacmen) is the setup itself. The only engine that even comes close to requiring actual upkeep is the singularity engine, or accounting for incompetence with the supermatter engine.

Rather than making engine setup more complex and involved(this is already the case regardless of your engine choice), we should instead be looking at ways to make managing them a necessity, and an engaging activity in and of itself. I think the singulo is a good example of how not to do it, though. Nobody enjoys going in and out constantly adjusting the PA to make sure the singularity stays at stage 3.

Alternatively, if managing the engine itself doesn't become a thing, perhaps power management with SMES/APCs should be? Overloading the grid could have consequences. Think Rimworld, where overloading your grid can result in explosive backfiring and electrical fires. Being able to manage the engine output, the SMES in/out rate, and upgrading APC powercells could all be part of grid stabalization, taking attention away from the engine itself, as well as putting engineers out into the world instead of holed up in their autism fort.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by XivilaiAnaxes » #528883

Ehhhh there IS room to manage the engine if you're hardcore enough to experiment the whole round, but the fact is a lot of the time engineers don't WANT to do that and will just turn on the engine as is (or at most just swap the pumps for pipes because it's easy and pumps are dogshit). The engine gameplay is THERE for people who want to do it.

I feel there just isn't much of a reward for playing with the engine though - if I can get the spooky green gas in my crystal for example I don't actually get anything out of it except bragging rights and making the milksop of an AI squirm at how "dangerous" it is.

Making a turbine system for the engine probably carries the same problem - WHY would you bother doing it? At present you can at least worship the Chernobyl system you have set up.

If you want to powergame the engine you just pull the matter bin exploit and pray none of the admins are sticks in the mud that delete all your bins. You can get enough power to husk people doing dumb shit which is funny as hell even if you never witness it happen.

To improve the power simulation the only real thing you should look at RE the engine itself is the balance numbers - make gasses really worth investing in so you can hit those 50MW milestones without using exploits. The engine IS fun at the moment, there's literally no other reason to really play with it.

To REALLY improve the engine experience there needs to be a point to power you make - if there were real tangible benefits to power you'd see more people wanting to engage. Say if you could set up turrets that did damage based on how much energy was in the grid (and maybe didn't require energy guns to build so it was actually an achievable construction) you'd have an engaging reason for regular players to want to minmax the engine. If as CE you could "overclock" the power grid from a terminal increasing stationwide consumption for more effective machines (chem dispensers/borg chargers/doorcrush damage/weapon chargers that sort of thing).

The only current reason anyone really enjoys the engine is because it's currently fun. There's no need to rework it to make it more fun because "fun" is the only thing working on the supermatter really has going for it.
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Lazengann
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by Lazengann » #528904

iprice wrote: I simply suicided in cargo lobby because whats the point in being an engineer who can never get gloves (i dont even try late joining any more).
medbay can do a surgery on you that makes you immune to shocks
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by Anonmare » #528915

deedubya wrote:Honestly, I think the big issue with engine management is...well, the lack thereof.

Think about it. The only major process to managing up any engine(PA based, SM, turbine, TEG, even pacmen) is the setup itself. The only engine that even comes close to requiring actual upkeep is the singularity engine, or accounting for incompetence with the supermatter engine.

Rather than making engine setup more complex and involved(this is already the case regardless of your engine choice), we should instead be looking at ways to make managing them a necessity, and an engaging activity in and of itself. I think the singulo is a good example of how not to do it, though. Nobody enjoys going in and out constantly adjusting the PA to make sure the singularity stays at stage 3.

Alternatively, if managing the engine itself doesn't become a thing, perhaps power management with SMES/APCs should be? Overloading the grid could have consequences. Think Rimworld, where overloading your grid can result in explosive backfiring and electrical fires. Being able to manage the engine output, the SMES in/out rate, and upgrading APC powercells could all be part of grid stabalization, taking attention away from the engine itself, as well as putting engineers out into the world instead of holed up in their autism fort.
That sounds like Bay power managment, where the powernet is divided into subnets with SMES acting as transformers that either step-up or step-down power. Though they have circuit breakers for bypassing damaged SMES units and a console for remote-controlling SMES units from a distance which makes it less busy work.
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Re: Extending the power simulation.

Post by RaveRadbury » #528947

Lazengann wrote:
iprice wrote: I simply suicided in cargo lobby because whats the point in being an engineer who can never get gloves (i dont even try late joining any more).
medbay can do a surgery on you that makes you immune to shocks
Genetics has a mutation that makes you immune to shocks. An engineer who can't get replacement gloves is the perfect subject to receive such a mutation.
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