Guide to the Supermatter

The Supermatter Crystal is the primary power source in most stations. A Supermatter Shard can be ordered from Cargo, which works the same way, but can be moved around. Its primary features are emitting tons of radiation, making everyone who could theoretically see it hallucinate, releasing hot oxygen and plasma, heating the air around, and exploding into a singularity if you screw up. It begins inert but being hit by an object or projectile will activate it.

Do NOT run into the Supermatter to commit suicide! You will be banned.

Words of Warning

The Supermatter is VERY DANGEROUS. Activating the Supermatter should be the last step in setting up any form of Supermatter based power! If you ordered it from cargo the crate should stay LOCKED AND SECURED until everything is ready.
You require safety gear. A full radiation suit or radiation-proof hardsuit AND meson scanners.
Most of "setting up the Supermatter" involves a gas loop that is designed to cool down the Supermatter chamber. While not required, please have some knowledge of gasses, or atmospheric properties.
Anything that bumps into the Supermatter is fundamentally annihilated. Don't touch it. This means weld, and ask the AI to bolt the door to the Supermatter .

Mechanics

The supermatter is an extremely unstable crystal with particular properties. Here's how it behaves:

Power

The crystal's power determines how much energy is produced each tick, and also the range and amount of radiation and hallucinations generated. (a 'tick' usually takes around 1-5 seconds depending on lag)

Power decays over time.
Hitting the crystal with a non-physical bullet (usually emitters) will increase its power.
Power is increased every tick depending on the gas mix. This scales with the gas' temperature.
Consuming an object or mob will increase the power by a significant amount, independently from the object's size.
Power decay can be lowered or even completely prevented with CO2.
Too much power will result in dangerous sideeffects, like arcs of lightning or anomalies.

Instability

The crystal must be kept stable if you don't want it to explode.

Stability does not change by itself.
The crystal grows unstable if the gas mix is hotter than 310K. It will instead stabilize when it is cooler than 310K.
Physical bullets will destabilize the crystal, depending on the damage they do.
Large amounts of power will destabilize the crystal.
Large amounts of moles will not only destabilize the crystal but also prevent the stabilizing effect of cold gases.

Gas Interactions

Each gas has a different effect when it surrounds the supermatter crystal. The strenght of each effect depends on the percentage of it in the gasmix in the supermatter chamber.

Freon Safety: Extremely safe

Freon is a good emergency gas. It cools down all other gases in the loop and slowly dissipates away into nothing. It is not suitable for producing power though, because it severely lowers the power transmission rate. If the engine has enough power, it can produce freon faster than freon can dissipate.

N₂ Safety: Very Safe

N2 is a good safety gas. It actively lowers the temperature and the amount of waste gases that the supermatter crystal produces.

N₂O Safety: Safe

N2O reinforces the heat resistance of the supermatter crystal, allowing for much hotter setups than usual.

O₂ Safety: Dangerous

Oxygen is the gas with the best power/danger ratio. It provides a boost to power transmission without actively increasing the waste gas amount or temperature. It does however count against the safety bonus provided by N2.

Plasma Safety: Very dangerous

Plasma is very similar to Oxygen but provides a much higher power boost and waste and heat penalty. The extreme pressures and volumes of gas produced by this gas are very likely to clog pipes. WARNING: The roundstart setup can not handle pure plasma setups.

CO₂ Safety: Very dangerous

CO2 is a very dangerous gas. In low concentrations, it doesn't do much but after a certain threshold is passed, it will slowly stabilize the internal crystal charge reactions and reduce the amount of power that the crystal loses every second. In high enough concentrations this can raise the internal power to infinitely high levels. Be careful however, since increased power not only increases the amount of heat and waste, but also causes catastrophic sideeffects long before the crystal delaminates.

Gas Production

The crystal produces plasma and oxygen while it's active.

Plasma and Oxygen burn if they're hot enough. This will heavily increase the temperature and reduce the oxygen percentage; if not kept under control this can end up destabilizing the crystal.
The amount and temperature of the produced gas is determined by the current crystal power.
The amount of oxygen is proportional to the temperature of the absorbed gases. Very cold gas input will result in very little oxygen.

Irradiation

The crystal will affect nearby mobs while it's active.

The range and power is determined by the current power. Being further away from the crystal also mitigates the effect.
The crystal will cause hallucinations to nearby mobs if they're not wearing meson scanners or equivalents.
The crystal will irradiate nearby mobs. A radsuit or other protective clothing can negate this effect.

Consuming

Anything that touches the crystal will be consumed and turned into dust. No exceptions. The only way to "safely" transport a shard is to pull it, being careful to not be pushed back into it by someone else.

Collapsing

If the crystal reaches 100% instability, it will delaminate. There are several different events that may happen when the crystal delaminates and they all depend on the state of the crystal during delamination.

A crystal in a heavily pressurized gas environment with large amounts of moles will always collapse into a singularity.
A crystal that has excessive amounts of power stored inside it will cause an explosion and release several tesla energy balls.
A crystal that is neither heavily overpressurized or overcharged will simply explode.

Box and Meta Station Setup

The supermatter engine on Box and Meta can be set up in many different ways and experienced engineers are encouraged to experiment. The less experienced engineers can refer to the safe guide below.

The safe beginner setup

This is an inefficient but very safe and simple setup for the engine. Stick to this until you feel that you understand the basics of this engine.

This guide uses a picture of the metastation engine, but the box one is functionally identical, only rotated by 90 degrees.

Step one: Safety

1. Put on an optical meson scanner and a /radiation suit in case someone prematurely activates the supermatter crystal.

Why: Meson Scanners protect from hallucinations, while the suit protect from radiation. Once the engine starts, it will start emitting both.

Step two: Prepare the gas loop

1. Your first step should be turning pipes on or off until they all match the pictured setup. Click a pipe to access the menu of it. Set them all to max pressure as well.

Why: The pump on the top puts the filtered output gas back in the loop. The pumps leading out of the N2 canisters put N2 in the loop, reducing the power generated but also reducing the temperature the crystal generates. The pumps that go in and out of the crystal chamber simply insert and take away the gas mix. The two pumps below leading to space put the gas into a cooling loop, so it'll be cold when it is re-inserted into the engine.

2. Make sure that the filter(green) on the left is set to "None" and the filters on the right to "N2", "None", "None" and "Freon". Turn them all on and set them to max pressure as well.

Why: The first filter can collect plasma from the output mix into the canisters. You can optionally turn it on to produce plasma gas with the engine. The filters on the right separate the gases produced by the supermatter (N2, and Freon from burning plasma) to keep the airmix constant. There is a loss of oxygen this way, but it is safer.

3. Swipe your ID at the air alarm(blue) and take a look inside the chamber. Hover your mouse over the 3 vents and 3 scrubbers(orange) and note their names. Open the air alarm menu and set the noted vents to 5000 kPA pressure and the scrubbers to siphon and extended range. The scrubbers will show an animation if they are set up to siphon correctly.

Why: The air alarm controls the vents (which puts gas in the chamber) and scrubbers (which take gas away from the chamber). This step makes sure they're active and working efficiently.

With these all done, the nitrogen should be cycling through the system and getting nice and cool.

Step three: Starting the radiation collectors

1. Open the secure storage. You will need someone with access (CE, Captain, or ask the AI) to press the button in the CE office. This gives you access to the plasma canister.

Alternative: Swipe an engineering ID on the APC to unlock it. Turn the APC off. Use a crowbar on the blast door to force it open. Return to the APC and turn turn it back on, then swipe your ID to lock it again.

2. Obtain six plasma tanks. One can be found by the radiation collectors, and up to ten more can be taken from the tank dispenser.

3. Fill each plasma tank with the plasma canister. First, click the canister with a plasma tank in your active hand. Then open the canister menu and set the pressure to max. Double check to see if the tank was inserted correctly, then open the valve and close it after the tank has been filled. Eject the tank.

It's very important to only open the valve if a tank is inserted, or you'll be releasing a huge cloud of flammable, poisonous plasma in the air.

4. Insert each plasma tank into a radiation collector , then turn each on by clicking it with an empty hand. Lock them with your ID card when you are done.

Why: Radiation collectors become more efficient if their plasma tanks contain more plasma. If you keep the plasma tanks half-full, they won't produce enough power to fuel the station.

The engine is now ready to produce power.

Final step: Start the engine!

1. Double-check to ensure the cooling loop is active, you don't want to have an active supermatter with a pump still set to 101kPa or the vents/scrubbers inactive!

2. Head into the emitter chamber. It is on the right side of the picture above. Just click each emitter with an empty hand to turn them on. Don't stand in front of them unless you want some serious laser burns!

Congratulations! The supermatter engine is running!

Beyond the safety

Here are some pointers and hints on how to get more power out of this engine:

Coordinate with other engineers. Don't just silently adjust gases and pumps or you might end up causing accidents or decreasing efficiency.
Higher temperatures generate more energy.
Higher amounts of oxygen moles result in more power.
There is a can of freon for emergency cooling in secure storage. Consider opening it in the engine airlock if the engine is about to go critical. You can always scrub out the freon with a gas filter.
You can pump gas from the atmos mixing loop directly into the engine by using the orange pipe.
The supermatter crystal will glow in a distinct orange color if the gas composition and pressure levels in the chamber are ideal. This will reduce the impact of heat on the generation of power.
Consider setting the first filter of the loop to plasma. The supermatter produces plasma, which can be collected and used to refill the radiation collectors if the round goes on for too long.

Delta station setup

The standard power-gen with initially available equipment is a cooled radiation collector array. The engine room is centered around the Supermatter chamber and is divided into two halves. On the West side of the chamber are the extraction siphons. These lead into a capture filter and then to the cooling system. By default the system uses a space radiator setup; however a heater/cooler system is available. The gas loops north and passes over the chamber to the east side which is the primary filter and waste gas removal system. it then heads south to the gas injection system. This system can take gas from canisters(not provided) or from a gas lint that leads (by default) to the primary N2 tank.

Located above the chamber and gas loop is a complex array of mirrors and emitters that fire pulses to stimulate the Supermatter. To the south of the injection area is the SMES room and to the south of the cooling area is the turbine room.

How to setup

Put on your safety gear
In atmospherics turn on the N2 valve located at the south-east. Its the manual valve
Load the radiation collectors with plasma tanks and activate them. Close the radiation shutters with the button at the airlock entrance.
In the Supermatter area use the air alarm to max the vents inside the chamber and set the scrubbers to siphon.
Enter the core airlock antechamber and max both the pumps
Max and turn on the first filter Make sure its set to Nothing and then the pump to the space radiator.
Max the Primary Filter and make sure its set to N2.
Open the external N2 Line. The loop should pressurize. Don't clog the loop with gas! 300 should do.
Activate the emitters
Program the SMES system

Side projects

Use it as a heat and gas source for a turbine.
Experiment with other gas mixtures.
Work on the crappy pipe job.
Add more collectors and SMES
Replace the crusher!

Sabotaging the supermatter

Want to sabotage the crystal but can't figure out how to pull it off? Here are some pointers and hints:

General hints

You can break the APC of the room to stop all pipes and scrubbers from working.
Disable the telecomms APC with the CE console to prevent the supermatter from anouncing its status.
Cut cameras near the engine.
Instead of turning off pumps and filters, you can just set them to extremely low values instead. They'll still appear to be working.
Taking out all the engineers before attempting a delamination helps a lot.
Opening a canister of plasma in engineering and igniting it will make it a lot harder for people to fix your sabotage. Even more effective if the radiation levels are high.
Keep a flash or EMP on hand. The AI and its borgs are pretty much guaranteed to try and intervene to prevent harm.
Stay around and pretend to be helping so you can undo all the repair attempts by other people.

Regular delamination

These are the easiest to pull off and require no special conditions. You'll want to keep the supermatter chamber very hot and full of plasma or CO2.

Use the filters near the emitter room to filter out N2 and N2O while keeping Plasma, Oxygen and CO2 in the loop.
Pump in pure plasma or burn mix from atmos.
Disable or break the cooling array. Deconstructing a single piece of the heat exchanger can be enough.
Get rid of engineering's freon supply.
Shooting guns at the crystal is extremely effective, but it's likely that you'll end up in the blast.
Disable the scrubbers once the chamber is hot enough.

Overcharged delamination

This kind of delamination requires careful gas management but is faster, far more destructive and there's a good chance it will irridiate, burn and shock the engineers who are trying to fix it.

Ensure that only CO2 is in the supermatter chamber at all times. Filter all other gases and keep the scrubbers running.
Keep the emitters online and firing if you can.
Get as much CO2 into the chamber as possible. Larger amounts of CO2 can even compensate for the oxygen and plasma waste.
Wear as much radiation protection as you can. Consider bringing some charcoal aswell.
Try to keep radiation suits away from engineers, they won't be able to get near the overcharged engine without one.
Make sure you are wearing insulated gloves to protect yourself from the lightning arcs.
Disabling the cooling is not required. In fact, keeping the chamber cool might help you get more power.
The anomalies, gravity pulses and lightning arcs will quickly turn the engine room into a deathtrap. Make sure you have everything set up correctly before this starts happening.

Critical mass delamination

This is by far the most difficult but also the simplest one.

Pump in as much gas as possible into the chamber. The easiest way to do this is to disable the pressure checks on the vent air alarms.
Reverse the scrubber pump. It's a subtle alteration that might get overlooked in the heat of the moment and will prevent the excess gas from being pumped out.
Make sure no gas leaves the chamber. Put up walls, deconstruct scrubber pipes, do whatever possible to keep the gas inside.

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