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.

Freon 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 0% stability, 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.

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 Supercooled N2

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.