Supermatter Engine

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Introduction

The Supermatter Engine is not as simple as a Singularity or Tesla engine. It is far more complicated, and it requires regular upkeep and checking to maintain optimum performance. It is also much more adaptable, with many settings and tweakable options to improve, or ruin, your engine.

It's not as complex as it looks.

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 or creating singularity/tesla if you screw up. It begins inert but being hit by an object or projectile will activate it and it'll start producing huge amounts of radiation, which can be converted to power with the radiation collectors.

Words of Warning

1. 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.
2. You require safety gear. A full radiation suit or radiation-proof hardsuit AND meson scanners.
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 some knowledge of gasses, or atmospheric properties.
4. 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.

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.

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.

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 wrenching the N2 canisters in place. Then start turning pipes on or off according to the picture on the right. Red circled pumps should be set on and to max pressure. Turn the ones without a circle in the image off.

   Why: When the crystal is generating power it also makes toxic gases and heats up the air surrounding it immensely, thus it needs to be properly ventilated. We start by making the gas loop push N2 counter-clockwise around the loop, cooling it on the left side with the coldness of space before re-entering the engine room again from the right side.

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

   Why: The bottom filters separate the gases produced by the supermatter crystal (N2, and Freon from burning plasma) to keep the gasmix constant. There is a loss of oxygen this way, but it is safer. (The first filter could also be used to collect plasma from the output mix into the canisters.)

3. Swipe your ID at the air alarm next to the crystal room and take a look inside the chamber. Open the air alarm menu and set the vents to 5000 kPa pressure and the scrubbers to siphon and expanded range. The scrubbers will show an animation if they are set up to siphon correctly.

   Why: The air alarm controls the chamber's vents (which puts gas in on the right) and scrubbers (which take gas away on the left). This step makes sure they're active and gases are moving in the chamber as fast as possible.

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 produce the power from the crystal's radiation. They become much more efficient if the plasma tanks are packed to the brim.

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 set! You can now continue to set up the SMES so the power is provided to the rest of the station.

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.