Supermatter Engine

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Introduction

In comparison to the other three power options, (solars|tesla|singulo), the Supermatter Engine is by far the most complex power method. It is recommended that the engine be checked regularly to upkeep and maintain its top performance. However this engine will provide a surplus of power if done right and offers plenty of tweaking to be done for even the most experienced crewmember.

It's not as complex as it looks.

Aboard the ship, the Supermatter Crystal will be the primary power source. In addition a Supermatter shard can be bought from a station using Cargo when docked to a station, the only difference - The shard can be moved around without ending in a horrible death. Both Crystals produce radiation when inert and will cause hallucinations if stared at. When the engine is inert, the shard will produce oxygen and plasma and heat the atmosphere around it. Without any filter the shard will either explode or turn into a Tesla that will destroy the entire ship and kill all crew subject to it. In addition to the thermoelectric loop, the shard will fuel radiation collectors.

Words of Warning

1. The Supermatter is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. In any case you should NEVER activate the Supermatter before you're 100% sure that every single step is finished any you are happy with the pipe layout. If you bought a Supermatter Shard from Cargo leave it locked inside of the crate till everything is prepared!
2. You require safety gear. You'll find a full radiation suit and mesons in the engine room's airlocks - If the engine is on, these are required to protect yourself from both radiation and hallucination. You'll also find hardsuits in engineering that block radiation in the equipment room.
3. Most of "Setting up the Supermatter" involves a gas loop that is designed to cool down the Supermatter chamber. While not required, please have at least basic knowledge of engineering and atmospherics.
4. Anything which comes in contact with the Supermatter is fundamentally annihilated. Don't touch it. You should never open the doors to the Supermatter unless there is a DIRE threat to the engine and it cannot be ejected via the mass driver.

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 server delay)

• 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.

BZ Safety: Extremely Safe

BZ is an extremely cold gas that instantly freezes anything it touches into solid ice. This is perfect for stabilizing an unstable supermatter crystal.

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.

H₂ Safety: Normal

H2 Is the only stable gas that has zero effect in reaction to the engine chamber, Its usually a good gas to inject into the cooling line or heating line as it holds heat well without the danger of side-effects.

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.

The Up-to-date FTL13 guide for Beginners!

While this is the most inefficient setup, it is recommended to start with a safe setup until you understand the basics of the Supermatter.

Step One: Always Wear Protection

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: Grab Some Tools

1. Look around Engineering and Atmospherics, You'll want a complete tool set. Its also a good idea to head over to the atmos tech lockers and grab a RPD since you'll want to replace pipes if you want to get the best flow rates.

   Why: You'll need normal tools to attach the tanks and pipes to the engine and an RPD in order to quickly print pipes on demand.

Step two: Setup both Loops

1. You'll first want to wrench in the filter canisters (see 6) and decide what you wish to put in the hot/cold loops, then wrench those in, too (see 5). It is recommended to insert two canisters of H₂ into the cold loop and two canisters of N₂O into the hot loop. Before you enable any of the pumps, It is recommended to replace these to volume pumps to speed up the flow of gas.

   Why: Wrenching the caution tanks will allow the plasma and oxygen to be removed from the line. Wrenching H₂ into the cold line will provide cold gas after it flows through the cold loop (See 10). Wrenching N₂O into the hot loop will reinforce the heat resistance of the shard. Finally, Volume pumps will work at higher speeds and pressures.

2. If you're satisfied with the layout of the pipes, you can now enable the pumps and filters (see 3 + blue/green squares). Anything you've wrenched in should now slowly start to flow out of the canisters and into their respective lines, Its never a bad idea to give this a moment and ensure all the canisters are empty before moving on.

   Why: You'll want the engine loops filled with gas so you can immediately transfer the heat into power. Its generally known that the higher pressure the pumps are - the faster they'll flow and the more power you'll gain.

3. Next, you'll want to swipe your ID on the air alarm and unlock it (See 8). Once you've done that, open the air alarm menu and set the vents to 5000 kPa pressure and the scrubbers to scrubbers to siphon and expanded range. If you've done this right, the scrubbers will show an animation.

   Why: Setting the vents to a high pressure will ensure the gas is pumped into the engine as fast as possible. Setting the scrubbers to siphon and expanded will remove any gas from the chamber as fast as possible.

Once you've finished all this, gas should be flowing through both loops and cooling down.

Final step: Start the engine!

1. Double-check to ensure the cooling loop is active. Always make sure to check over all the steps multiple times in case you missed something.
2. Head over to the emitter (See 4) just right of the crystal and turn it on. Just click the emitter with an empty hand to turn them on.

Don't stand in front of them unless you want some serious laser burns!

Congratulations! You have set up the engine - Now continue to set up the SMES to provide power to the ship. After finishing, you may address repairs and upgrades to the station, but be sure to check up on the engine from time to time!

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.

Troubleshooting AKA Oh god it's on fire what do I do!?

The supermatter's in trouble! You should be able to locate where the issue is from the screenshot alone. Here's the answer.

First and foremost

Inspect the gas loop to confirm it is intact and operational.
Check the meters to quickly ascertain where a problem may lie.
If any of the meters report an unusually high or low amount of gas, then you're close to finding the issue!

Common gas loop failures include:

• Gas pumps offline.
• Gas pumps left on default pressure. (Crank them up to 4500kpa!)
• Gas filters offline. Remember! Filters do not allow ANY gas to pass through if they're turned off! If you don't wish to filter anything, leave them online but set to filter nothing
• Gas filters left on default pressure.
• Supermatter chamber vents improperly configured.
• Supermatter chamber scrubbers not siphoning.
• Heat exchange pipes broken. Space dust can slip through the defenses on occasion. Or a traitor may detach a section.
• Too much gas! If a section has too high of pressure, the gas pumps cannot push anything more into it!

Second

If the gas temperature is too high to stabilize with the cooling loop alone. Unleash the freon

Third

If the supermatter is delaminating and the gas loop is operational, use an analyzer to check for problem gases in the loop. Someone may have slipped in some carbon dioxide. Double-check the filters to see if they're getting rid of unwanted gases.

And lastly

If all else failed, pray that an Atmosian elder investigates and finds the problem before it's too late.

Sabotaging the supermatter

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

Please note that since FTL13 is a cooperative server, breaking the engine and thus ruining the power supply is greifing.

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.