Grounded SM feedback

[OFQ]

That's primary about this PR https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/48472

I tested new SM with this plox/co2 setup.



But it was boring. So I (as Oranges suggested) enabled all the zappy zappy mechanics and here is how it ended up looking (one of more interesting cases):



Not bad! But it can be even better! Although that nasty hole, where the middle bottom rad collector used to be.. Damn slime killed grounding rod and then double damned zappy zap blew it up, made a hole into space and uncorked SM core by blowing up its super reinforced glass. NEAT!

I like explosive teslas big time But unless there was a way to make some areas 100% zap prove it won't EVER be ok to have this flag toggled in the game,I feel like blowing huge holes in SM is, surprisingly, too critical of a malfunction. On the other hand, simply damaging equipment/disabling it for a time doesn't look like too critical of a failure. It is extremely unlikely that a failed freezer will kill SM, or even if an engine room APC gets disabled it is fixable. Actually making SM robust for such failures is a half of fun. Similar how sometimes space debris brakes cooling loop and you have to stabilize SM and figure out what happened before SM blows.It is extremely rewarding to fix shit like this since it tests your SM memes knowledge.

So here's what IHMO can be improved:

1. Current zaps are dead boring. Zaps can be much more destructive to the engine room without actually causing total collapse. Except the explosive ones - they are pure horror. Also since running SM in zapping state requires continuous monitoring - there always will be an engie memer to fix damaged equipment.
2. Energy delaminating threshold should be bumped up to allow wider zapping range without delaminating SM.
3. The biggest torn in a side (even with deadly zaps) are anomalies and slimes. While you "theoretically" can deal with slimes by freezing SM room (BZ doesn't work for some reason) the absolute shit ton of anomalies kinda make it unplayable. But some anomalies for you to fart is ok. It's just you get overwhelmed by them also they break gas tanks and stuff... So you have to clean the are, add extra airlocks or something. Not sure for now but anomalies could be fun stuff to deal with. Real hard for sure but fun.
4. It could be really cool to make zaps much much more dangerous (and fun) if a grounding rod provided some 100% safe area around it, maybe space that has at least 2 adjacent grounding rods. To balance this, for example, grounding rod can store some charge (similar to field generators) that slowly dissipates. The better capacitor it has - the bigger storage amount. When a grounding rod gets overloaded it stops acting as a grounding rod. You can reset it by rebuilding (similar to how we clean freezers/heaters from waste gases) this will allow for 100% safe setup given that engies reset rods in time. Bonus meme: sometimes capacitors randomly fails (like a light bulb) and need to be replaced. So the more grounding rods you have the more annoying it gets. it will also mean that you gonna need pathing around the rods.
5. What if SM zaps become more dangerous based on delamination/energy level or something? Then we would be able to have real neat explosive zaps for "all hell broke loose" cases without making regular zapping setup too dangerous.

[OFQ]

I managed to store station state in VM snapshot so it can be resumed and reset. This should save a lot of time on setup. It seems to require that you first disconnect all players and close server's port before making the snapshot. Not sure how reliable this is.

[TheFinalPotato]

Hi, I'm glad you like the concept, I agree about the potential damage, that was something I was real worried about messing up, I really didn't want a power level above 5000 to fuck everything up.

Thank you for your feedback, I'm just gonna go down point by point.

1.I agree somewhat, I don't like how lightweight the zaps are, to carbons, and to the environment. I'm not sure about the continuous monitoring part, with enough freezers you should be able to run it just above the starting line for bolts stably, might be wrong tho.
2.When you say delam threshold, I assume you mean the "DANGER: CHARGE INERTIA CHAIN REACTION IN PROGRESS" message. If you don't, meme on me, but as far as the operable power levels go, you should have access to between 5000-9000 assuming all other damage sources are negligible, so heat and mol count. This is because the max healing you can get from low temp is 2. and power damage hits 2 when its OVER 9000(End me). I'm open to increasing that threshold, but I'm not sure we need to.
3.Yeah the anomaly spawn rate is a bit high, the slimes should be kill-able with a bz flood, I'll look into why they aren't later. I do like the danger/fire they bring but the spawn rate seems a little to high to me.
4.The way the sm zap code is formatted right now, it does lots of technically redundant but more readable things, I could cull those and use the time gained to do something around the lines of zapping to the nearest rod if it's within at least 2 tiles. I like the both the capacitor and failing ideas, but I'm worried about how they will effect tesla setups. Maybe I should just merge coils and rods and make the rod explode if there's an excess of power in it's connected powernet. Ehhhhhhhh, I need to find a good way to make them both safe at face value and fallible, any ideas would be much appreciated.
5.Once I figure out the above, yes so much, There is already a three stage power indicator, I could just steal from that and use it to determine the effects. Same thing minus the predetermined values for damage. Thank you for this, I love this idea so much. Would need different sprites too, and that would give more visual indicator to the state of the sm. I could also give even more of a power bonus for them. Yes. Many times yes.

[OFQ]

I'm not sure about the continuous monitoring part, with enough freezers you should be able to run it just above the starting line for bolts stably, might be wrong tho.

SM produces o2. It combines with co2 and turns into plox that dilutes the mix or, if you filtering it out, still drops co2 content. So the zaps stop. You can make it more stable by constantly pumping co2 from atmos but it still gonna drift out of the sweet spot. If produced plox had the same power buff that consumed co2 has it would make the system stable. Not sure how big of a buff it will be since plox kills rad production and being potent power buffing gas can be a double edged sword and it will enable pure plox setups. So actually you can make plox buff energy level even more than co2 does + to balance it out make plox heat SM real hard (given that plox has good heat cap it will be manageable). SM will eventually go critical if too much of co2 will turn into plox. It seems like really interesting hazard, especially since extra co2 will be produced in the case of fire(it gates more likely with buffed plox heat) and BOOM you have more plox than you expected even without pumping in/after filtering out co2. i really like stuff like this. For example h2o is, surprisingly, one of the deadliest SM coolants

the slimes should be kill-able with a bz flood, I'll look into why they aren't later

I had around 3% BZ in the air mix. Could be too low. Or maybe space hole sucked it out. Or anomaly slimes immune to it(while controlled by script?).

max healing you can get from low temp is 2. and power damage hits 2 when its OVER 9000(End me). I'm open to increasing that threshold, but I'm not sure we need to.

Hmm. Yeah I should test it more.

Maybe I should just merge coils and rods and make the rod explode if there's an excess of power in it's connected powernet.

Merging coils and rods is a great idea. Since they are confusing as hell, especially for tesla engine setup. You have to place grounding rods but you also want the energy so you need coils but wouldn't rods steal energy zaps from them? So how far they should be from each other? This is probably one of the reasons why tesloose always eventually loose - engies trying to use rods sparingly. And since there is no immediate feedback from the system on rod/coil interplay it isn't so hot of a game mechanic.

[OFQ]

Once I figure out the above, yes so much, There is already a three stage power indicator, I could just steal from that and use it to determine the effects. Same thing minus the predetermined values for damage. Thank you for this, I love this idea so much. Would need different sprites too, and that would give more visual indicator to the state of the sm. I could also give even more of a power bonus for them. Yes. Many times yes.

Given scaling zap damage, SM could start sending out non harmful zaps(for equipment) around 4000 energy level. Or even lower if the range also limited (like zap a rad collectors once in a while)
But yeah zaps have to be color coded to avoid confusion. Maxed zaps should be red or even green like in HL

Those early zaps can serve not only as a cool factor but also as an early warning of SM power level. And the red glow can warn about imminent heat delamination - it makes more sense.
So:
- glowing red SM - heat
- zappy SM - power
- fusion ball SM - rads
- The roaring SM can be moles. Maybe some kind of a visual hint is required. How about slight distortions (like haze) of the SM sprite. Or vapor.
- SM delamination also needs a sound

but probably more like

it is well fitting - ominous and otherworldly also ice can't copyright strike you(hmm but then birds can).
Also having visual indication for the delamination level would be cool. Even something like increasingly twitchy crystal should do.

- - - - - - - -

Also one big thing. Slimes and anomalies shouldn't spawn around SM crystal (inside core confinement). First of all it is not fun for slime players since they are stuck. Unless they can break reinforced plasma glass in front of rad collectors - it also bad, since it will make them crazy powerful. You can't get to them and they will just keep bashing the glass and totally screw SM. But usually they simply jump into SM

Spoiler:

Btw, about jumping into SM. What if carbons killed by SM turned into SM ghosts. Basically usual ghosts but visible and can talk to the living also green and confined by the engine room where they died. It can give us interesting interplay and extra chance for the dead ones to learn SM setup (by chatting with the engies around it).

or get confused and try to vent-crawl the cooling loop
Anomalies in the SM core are just bad luck. Especially if it starts fire in the coolant. It's too random and I would say not manageable. Engie might want to farm anomalies in the engine room but getting screwed by them in SM core is too big of a risk. So 2 tiles no spawn zone around SM crystal will fix all of this. 2 tiles because you also don't want them in the walls (look at the second screenshot) but if you up it to 3 tiles then it gonna be even better for slime players since they also can stuck inside airlock and behind rad collector shutters.

[OFQ]

I need to find a good way to make them both safe at face value and fallible, any ideas would be much appreciated.

Soo how about this. The rods and coils are merged in a singe thingy. The thingy must be hooked to the power network and turned on (just to give a feedback to the player if he/she messed up something).
The device (i'll call it cathode - like copper penny in the lemon, where SM is the electron source - anode) may have 4 characteristics and take up to 4 parts that control them:

• The size of protected area. So when engies get their hands on the best parts they can upgrade some of cathodes and remove the rest to declutter the space.
• Capacity. Basically cathodes stomach. It buffers the energy and has a visual indicator of how full the cathode is (can be reset manually like freezer/heaters).
• Processing rate. The speed at which cathode processes stored energy and sends it to the power net.
• Efficiency. how much power is lost when it turned from cathode storage into grid power.

Cathode/cathode rod/lightning rod/lightning absorber/transducer(probably the best name) can fail at least in these ways:

• A furry ate a wire that is hooked to the cathode - when cathode's capacity gets overflown it will fail. Can simply stop working for a time - basically lightnings will ignore it or jump from it to other objects(it is less destructive since they can end up jumping to other cathodes). Hardcode option: it explodes (kinda overkill since a failed wire is hard to notice in time). As an extra spicy meme cathode can end up charging from the power grid if emaged/hacked and start acting like anode
• Capacitor can randomly fail (or die from overcharging) - cathode will get fried and will need a fix. Extra meme - after failure it will send out the rest of the stored energy as tesla shocks.
• Cathode can get overwhelmed by too strong of a storm.
• Zaps can reach out of the cathode's range.
• Some uga buga touches it without gloves. If cathode has enough power stored it will fry the capacitor and husk the tider. To make this less of a hazard we can use something like plastic floor(actually wooden floor will do) tiles that make stuff/carbons on them insulated - as a trade-of they can be fire hazard. So basically we'll make safety(till it burns and we all die) catwalk out of this stuff around cathodes. It should protect only from walking into electric stuff like socked airlocks, powered grills and cathodes, but not from tinkering with the stuff (click actions), also making it wet should negate protection. The material used to build the tiles should be relatively scarce since the floors should also protect from zaps or maybe it will be balanced by the fire hazard factor. Or maybe if you stand near something that is not protected you still can end up zapped and then lightning will jump from you to that object...
• Slime/anomaly/antag f its up. - it probably should explode and make a space hole in the floor.
• Grid power above certain level. We gonna need a SMES between cathodes and other stuff. Can make power bridges more useful. So in the case of such failure I think something similar to the hack/emag can happen. The cathode capacitor will start charging from the grid or at least stop discharging into it (similar to the wire failure) and eventually fail causing tesla disco. Given that you gonna have more than one cathode hooked up.. It will be quite a way to die. But then we also gonna need a way to dump excessive power. Given that SM produces plasma we might use it + extra power to make solid plasma with a new machine "condenser" and store the energy this way.

[TheFinalPotato]

I will most likely merge grounding rods and coils, I would like to make them have an upgrade-able range, but that would take precious time from the tesla processing, and I don't want to fuck up the scaling on tesla setups too much.

The rest will most likely make its way in, I'm a bit apprehensive about some of the more complex stuff so it may or may not show up at some point. I also don't want to add to much behind the hood that's non obvious at first glance when playing.

[OFQ]

I think parts can be pretty obvious in the terms of what they contribute to:
Capacity Duh! capacitor
The size of protected area - matter bin (kinda like better/more conductive antenna)
Processing rate Also EZ - Manipulator
Efficiency - laser, kinda also makes sense since better lasers need less energy since they more precise and stuff

To make it less of a part party, manipulator can both affect processing rate and efficiency so the laser won't be required. And it will make intuitive understanding more achievable, basically better manipulator - more energy. But then having separate part for efficiency enables power gamer moves like deliberately keeping efficiency low to avoid overwhelming SMES - basically transducer acts more like a rod and less like a coil. Could be really useful if you see that your system is about to get nuclear from the power excess.


- - - - - - - - -

2day I learned that:

Nitrogen-13 and oxygen-15 are produced in the atmosphere when gamma rays (for example from lightning) knock neutrons out of nitrogen and oxygen

[OFQ]

I was thinking how to make transducer (rod + coil) more intuitive. And I came up with a neat idea. The device really need some kind of a grid connectivity indicator (like emitters have yellowish glow when they unpowered) My initial idea was to add extra light that will indicate the wire status (green - ok, yellow - too high wire power level, red - about to go bunkers and no light/same color as emitters have - unplugged) But then I realized that we already gonna have capacitor charge indicator + this indicator with the different statuses is kinda too much for a low resolution sprite also it is too complex and in no way intuitive.

So instead of adding extra indicator how about extendable (telescopic?) antenna. When transducer is connected to a wire that can drain power from it - the antenna will be erected. And when something wrong with the wire (too high wire power or it's cut) the antenna thingy will become unerect - in this state transducer simply ignored by lightnings or has the same priority as the rest of machines and if zapped will fill its capacitor(with eventual failure from the overload).
It is both intuitive and safer. So there will be 3 destructive malfunctions for the device: 1 - capacitor overload, 2 - hack/emag, 3 - graytider touched it/run into without protection while capacitor was semi full.
Random capacitor failure, given its RNG nature, shouldn't be something catastrophic.

[OFQ]

So I did quite a lot of testing with co2+n20 setups and it seems that you are right. We don't need higher power delamination limit. It's quite hard to get power delamination with this setup:



Actually the problem is in anomaly/slime flood. Slimes keep attacking me with 8% BZ atmos. And anomalies ruin/burn everything they can I think spawning should start around 5600 instead how it is now (looks like 5100) and should scale with the power level. I quite enjoyed being tossed around by gravy anomaly while slimes vored my face and I think this is how it should be with the ridiculous power levels(well beyond any sane levels, like maybe 7000+) Funny thing is that the power arcs (I still have explosive lightnings and stuff enabled) weren't too big of a problem(power kept around 6000) probably since I had so much rods/coils. Slimes end me much sooner than something get blown up by a lightning pretty much every time.

Here some examples of extreme fun levels:

[Critawakets]

Honestly with how fun this SM is, i think it would be really useful to make engineering hardsuits have 100% rad resistance like the CE hardsuit in order to be able to make an SM with venting holes for any pyro anomalies. The CE suit would still have the very useful fire resistance.

[OFQ]

Goes into my signature https://i.imgur.com/RxZ4FeG.jpg

[OFQ]

Hey! What if on top of casualty stabilization field, the fail safe system also released SM shard automatically so engies had like 30 seconds (before it self destructs) to drag SM into the space, while it irradiates everything, burns, spawns anomalies. Or if you are a tator you could get it deeper into the station. In both cases you would probably die horribly but someone can choose be foreced to become an hero and SM room can be fixed/cleaned up and SM shard installed (it actually makes SM shards useful). The SM vars should be fixed after SM is released or the big bad booms become too avoidable. Especially singuloth since the mole count will be fixed instantly.

[OFQ]

I made some sprites to illustrate my "erecting" idea:

This is how transducer looks when the wire under it is cut/overpowered or there is no wire:




When the wire is properly connected it gets happy:

<- easy in/easy out to convey a sense of mass.. Look, I don't have a thousand hours in MS paint but it looks decent

[OFQ]

This is how transducer may look when it's overflown (capacitor is full) and it's about to blow/start zapping the living hell out of everything around.





- - - - - - - - - -

There is a cool looking sprite called sm_arc: <- gif export messes it up, it much cooler in engine. I think the sprite can be used as a spawning ray - it starts at SM and his the ground where something spawned by SM(anomaly,slime) + a spawning sound could be great. It will warn engineers around SM + cool factor. The thing with slimes/anomalies is that they often spawn off screen and deal much more damage that they would've if they were detected sooner.

[OFQ]

I made lightning sprites with different colors for showing different power levels (and destructive potential). At least should be useful as a dev prop.

Actually I'm not sure that those are the sprites SM use. It's so distorted. It actually might be the "sm_arc" one, but for some reason it doesn't look so yellow in game. Anyway, this probably gonna be done via color rotation filter in the game (to make all of them I simply rotated hue) not only it will be more efficient in terms of space but also would allow continuation of color change. But then the levels of destructive power are digital - not analog. For example, when the color becomes yellow it means that machines will also be damaged. When it gets red - machines might explode, etc. So maybe having transition colors isn't a good thing.

[TheFinalPotato]

sm_arc was recently added as a resprite of the zap, I accidentally reverted it in my original pr, the fix was merged.... yesterday I think?
I have an idea for how to use the sprites you've made, not gonna elaborate in case it blows up in my face.
The overall plan for now is to implement the more dangerous zaps, and make grounding rods a sure thing. I may fiddle with how they work later with the idea of giving them a failstate, really don't want to fuck up tesla's tho.

Anomaly gen may need a tunedown, as it stands I'm not good looking it would be to have an arc at each spawn.

[TheFinalPotato]

I have the logic together now, holy shit this thing is destructive if not contained.....
https://media.discordapp.net/attachment ... height=681

[OFQ]

holy shit this thing is destructive if not contained.....

As it should be

Spoiler:

[OFQ]

Hmm. It being so destructive might be a problem in a very strange way. If this level of energy can occur during sabotage/f-up of a non hight energy setup it will remove singuloth delamination from the game since it will always uncorks SM core. It might be hard to balance this out. But maybe instead rework lightning in a such way that they won't target pipework (and all the vents and scrubbers) + ground tiles and walls. Its' kinda meh of a fix. It would be much more fun if this type of a catastrophic explosive failure, when the floor tiles are getting destroyed, would be achievable only with epic power setups. Maybe it can be done if heat not only shrunk the range of the lightning but also capped their destructive power. Or make pressure cap it. So when SM is on fire it won't tear holes in the ground.

[TheFinalPotato]

That shit only happens when we go above 9000 power, I'll test singoloth setups, see how high they get. I'd like this to be something you can stumble into with bad/poorly planned setups, but I'd hate to have it ruin a singulo delam.

[OFQ]

The latest master looks bugged. But first the good news! I tested my favorite singuloth speedrun setup (hooking up atmos plasma directly to vents) with the latest master and it all seems good, still under 8 minutes from the round start to the singuloth. Energy goes up to around 6000 so its not a problem. But still a nerf to that sabotage because the old SM also got power delamination going so you also had an option to stop pumping plasma at some point or make a hole near SM (or someone else makes it while trying to fix SM) it will cause SM to go tesloose pretty much every time but now you can do only singuloth with this setup and it feels a bit slower:





The bad news is that it looks like around 37% SM integrity server shits itself. First time I got AFKed and managed to reconnect but the second time the whole thing crushed or something. Somehow I managed to drag daemon window around and then the new position endedd up saved in the configs:

Code: Select all

window-pos -425x-399 <---- epic
host-visibility public
host-security safe
host-port 7070
daemon-file F:\tgstation-master\tgstation.dmb|F:\tgstation-master\tgstation-master\tgstation.dmb

[OFQ]

Btw. How hard will it be to get an accidental tesloose now?

[TheFinalPotato]

Nothing about the damage around powerdamage/the teslaloose point should have changed, so as normal. It seems like it's been telephoned around the server as being at 5000 power, but it's had the same damage equation for a long time.
About the bug you encountered, A: It might be a good idea to make an issue report on the repo, and B: what precisely do you mean by crash?
On an unrelated note there seems to be a persistent theme of heat/power related delams slowing down hard near 40%, it needs some tweaking.

[OFQ]

I have no idea what was that but now it's all ok. Hmm. Also the "dangerous power level" message is back. And venting gas allowed me to make tesloose. Now I'm confused.

I guess I'll try couple more times.

Spoiler:

I might f-up dream daemon somehow. I remember that the load time also was surprisingly long.

[TheFinalPotato]

Have you been using the supermatter monitor? That could help ya tell what's changing.
Do you mind if i use some of your sprites for arc related things by the way?

[OFQ]

Do you mind if i use some of your sprites for arc related things by the way?

Sure

Have you been using the supermatter monitor? That could help ya tell what's changing.

Also sure. So I did a couple of runs and it seems that since the round start to singuloth spawn in takes around 6 minutes 40 seconds (+/- like 20 sec) so its pretty close to how I remember it. The only thing that is different is that (if my memory doesn't leak) the dangerous power level occurred much earlier when I last tried to delem stuff on a live server (like 2+ month ago) it was around maybe 70% and critical coolant mass was around 50% but not sure. But anyway it isn't a big deal and I might be wrong.

[OFQ]

Yeah also it seems like anomalies and slimes are less of a trouble with this delem. I only saw some sparky things but it use to be much worse with like slimes and stuff ( or am I f-ing delusional )

[TheFinalPotato]

Yeah no that's normal, slimes get bumped up spawning rates past a point, at lower powerlevels they should be less of a problem.

[OFQ]

Surrounding rods, emitters and all that meters with directional reinforced plasma windows + reinforcing floors where wires are makes slimes and anomalies pretty harmless. So maybe the spawn rate is ok.
I had safe run on Event Hall(forgot to cover wires so slimes vored em):



It was 7000+ energy and everything were pretty stable. The only big problems I faced is that slimes spawned on top of canisters and killed them. I think if SM couldn't spawn anything over mobs/machines/any movement blockers it would be pretty balanced even with an extreme spawn rate.

- - - - -

Some anomalies ignited SM coolant but it went off pretty fast, still would be much better if anomalies and slimes couldn't spawn next to SM. Also I constantly pumped co2 directly from the atmos space tank via overclocked vol pump so I'm thinking that running out of co2 is quite possible (if used unwisely - like when emitters are off but you need MORE POWER) Well, I guess, you can burn produced plasma to get more co2.

- - - - - -

Actually you would also need to protect pipes and filters since slimes can break them but they rarely do. I guess BZ(if it worked) is required then, or cooling loop around SM core where pipes are.

[OFQ]

It's pretty easy to accidentally tesloose (and it is ok) I protected everything from slimes and anomalies with plasma glass and reinforced floors but I pumped too much co2 and SM started to get hot so I had to go in and pump it out but f-ing slimes camped the valve

[OFQ]

It looks like if someone hits SM and gets dusted while SM isn't cooled at all it will only spawn anomalies without any slimes till it explodes. Not sure if it's good or bad. But it is pretty frequent delaminaiton on lowpop.

[TheFinalPotato]

Feature, not boog.

A pr is up, dropped the use of your sprites cause my feature was causing crashes, take a look. https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/48935

[OFQ]

Why it hits plating and grill? There are grounding rods one tile away from each of the hit sites.




It has like 9 tesla balls and level 3 particle accelerator firing.