Chief Engineer

ENGINEERING & COMMAND STAFF

Chief Engineer

Access: Engineering Departments, Power Equipment, CE Office, Vacant Office, Bridge, Maintenance, EVA, Tech Storage, Telecommunications, External airlocks, Brig, Mineral Storage
Additional Access: N/A
Difficulty: Hard
Supervisors: Captain, Executive Officer
Duties: Coordinate engineering, ensure equipment doesn't get stolen, make sure the supermatter doesn't explode, maintain Telecoms.
Guides: Chain of Command, Hacking, Guide to construction, Guide to advanced construction, Guide to power, Supermatter Engine, Thermo-Electric Generator, Guide to Telecommunications, Department Standard Operating Procedure
Quote: "WHO TOOK THE DAMN HARDSUITS!?" - Poly and every single one of his masters

Know that guy who builds all the things? Well, he has a boss, and it's you! You are the head of the Engineering Department, which includes not only Engineers, but Atmos Techs as well. Essentially, your job is to boss your staff around and make sure the power flows. Other than directing the workflow of the department, you're also expected to carry out general engineer-duties and maintain Telecomms. To be a good CE it is imperative that you have a good working knowledge of how APCs, SMES cells and power in general works, how to decipher atmospherics, how to efficiently set up the Supermatter and how to get your charges' sorry asses moving.

ROLE RULES:

Never abandon the ship. You should never intentionally be on a different z-level from the ship without admin permission. This does not apply when docking with a station to retrieve an objective, though that should be delegated.
Be active when playing a Head of Staff. If you’re playing a command role and need to go AFK, offline, or otherwise leave then adminhelp to notify admins. WHEN YOU LEAVE, DO NOT SUICIDE OR GO AFK on the spot unless it’s an emergency. Enter a cryopod to free up the job slot for someone else. Do not join a round as a Head of Staff if you know you cannot stay for the entire round.
Do not play the department’s Head of Staff unless you have experience and a basic understanding of performing all of the department’s jobs.
Know and follow Ship Law and Standard Operating Procedure.
Heads of Staff are, unless otherwise stated, expected to follow the role-specific rules of their underlings in addition to their own.

Bare minimum requirements: Make sure that the TEG goes online at the start of the round, and that the FTL drive and shields have plasma available. Know what to do when everything gets blown up.

Duties

Engineering is very important in FTL13, and the Supermatter Engine can appear confusing to many, and the cramped Atmospherics looks like a labyrinth, stressing many people out while the time ticks down until the power goes out. This is where you come in! As stated above, your duties consist pretty much entirely on telling the Engineers and Atmos Techs to work, and how to work if they don't know, or just doing their jobs yourself. Listed below are those jobs.

At the Start of the Round

Greet your team over the radio and establish your authority. Find out who you will be working with and how many of them, and make sure that everyone has a job to do.

Designate someone to wrench down the plasma tanks for the FTL drive and the shield generator (unless someone else volunteers first) and get everyone else working on the Supermatter Engine. If you take charge these first minutes of the round, most of engineering will follow the rest of your orders until the round ends. If you stay silent then when you suddenly need something done halfway through the round, you can guarantee that nobody will listen to you. If nothing else, speaking over the channel will at least tell you who on your team you can rely on.

Sometimes your team will be fairly competent and you'll only need to supervise, but a lot of the time you will be required to step in. If someone's clearly new, help them out a bit and show them the ropes. If someone's clearly being a twat then shout at them and forcibly demote if they continue. With these points in mind, a power source should successfully come online and start generating power. It's always a good idea to announce this to the crew when it happens.

If any of your team members try to run off with an engineering hardsuit just to go space exploring, let them know that they will be arrested for dereliction and demoted if they do not return to do at least the most minimal duties before doing whatever they want. Salvaging is best left to miners anyway.

With Your Powers Combined

There are multiple ways to power the ship. Unless you know what you're doing, stick with the one the ship has at first, and get it working as soon as possible. It's hard to set up a second power source if the crew is trying to lynch you for not finishing the first one.

Matters of Super Matter

The ship is equipped with a Supermatter Engine, which requires near-constant monitoring to ensure it produces power without blowing up the aft of the ship. However, the Supermatter engine allows for far more flexibility than a Tesla engine, and will generate more than enough power to keep the ship at 100% capacity in the right hands. However, it can very quickly delaminate if it overheats. If allowed to delaminate completely, it will explode, irradiating a good portion of the ship and causing whatever crew survives to want to lynch you, assuming you aren't already gibbed.

The supermatter engine will also vaporise anything that comes in contact with it, so be mindful when walking into the core, on top of being knocked around with space wind and becoming irradiated if the engine's already started.

Atmosia, the Great City-State of Pipes

The supermatter engine is running, ~~the solars are wired~~ and the engineering team is at your beck and call. The ship is getting a steady supply of power and you're confident your team can maintain this and repair any damage to the hull. Your job is done, right? NOT SO FAST, my friend! Haven't you forgotten Atmospherics?

Yes, as hard as it is to accept, that convoluted bundle of pipes and its clueless staff are under your jurisdiction and it's your responsibility to make sure that it's keeping everybody breathing and refilling spent plasma canisters for the FTL and Shields. As the CE, you are expected to know the basics of how atmos works, how to optimize it, and then how to keep people from fucking with it. Luckily, that's pretty much it. Again, read the guide and learn it.

All you really have to do with atmos is get acquainted with its staff (you can do this at round start along with your direct minions, as they share the engineering channel), make sure they know how to optimise it (if not, do it yourself - better yet teach them), and then check back in periodically to ensure some ass hole hasn't tampered with it, slightly more if the atmos team is the usual band of drooling lunatics. It's also a good idea to teach them how to link the plasma loop to the FTL Drive and Shields directly.

Please keep in mind that making Atmospherics sabotage-proof (for example by removing the plasma tank from the loop) before you have decent IC evidence that someone is going to sabotage it is considered metagaming.

...Then What?

Now that the ship's systems are running at maximum capacity or are in the process of being made so, you can relax a little. Here is what you should be doing:

Listen to the radio for hull breaches. When you hear of one, send a couple of Engineers out to mend the damage.
Check the Ship Alert Console to see if there's any power/atmos alarms going off on the ship.
Periodically check out atmospherics to make sure nobody's messed it up.
Babysit the supermatter.

Viva La Working Class!

As a Head of Staff, you are a prime target for the Revolutionaries, and will most likely be attacked in some way. While setting up the spare emitters, stealing the RCD and holing up in Engineering is a tempting possibility, it is in extremely bad form and will be met by negative karma and general hatred towards you. In short, do not barricade yourself in Engineering during a Revolutionary round. It makes rounds take way the hell too long, and may prompt non-revolutionary engineers to invade, especially if you start dicking around with the power supply.

Tips

Magboots don't just stop you from slipping into space, they stop you slipping in general when they're activated. You have special magboots that don't slow you down while activated, too!
All that is needed for telecomms is: receiver->mainframe->processor->mainframe->server->broadcaster. Just make sure everything is linked to each other properly and you won't need a hub. Mining and people on the DJ station are still fucked though without a hub. You may also want to connect the coolant canister.
Poly kills spiders in 2 to 3 seconds and can’t be hit by them (if you can get Poly to attack them). Works on carps too!
CE’s hardsuit is fireproof, and is said to be able to hold a jetpack on the exosuit slot. It has a built-in jetpack anyway, though.
You can scan pieces of paper with your PDA to add them to your PDA notes. Useful as a CE, just scan your monitor key and then hide it in the paper bin.
The message monitor console in telecoms can be used to read PDA messages, and forge them too! Go to the last option, to send a system administrator message, and change the name and title. (They don't have to be on the manifest, even.)

Law Abiding Engineer

"OH GOD IT'S LOOSE, CALL THE SHUTTLE!" -Poly

You have easy access to anything of any real importance on the ship, with the added bonus of being regarded only slightly more important than the RD (in that at least your own department listens to you, most of the time). You have the ability to completely ruin the ship by fucking with telecoms, subverting the AI with the circuit board in tech storage (or the card on your desk), sabotaging atmospherics and the engine, and hide away safely in space with EVA gear. Remember that an extra-capacity oxygen tank filled to 1013kPa lasts a very, very, very long time. Have fun!

Jobs on FTL13
	Command	Captain, Executive Officer, Bridge Officer
	Security	Head of Security, Security Officer, Master-at-Arms, Detective
	Engineering	Chief Engineer, Ship Engineer, Atmospheric Technician
	Supply	Quartermaster, Cargo Technician, Shaft Miner, Munitions Officer
	Science	Research Director, Scientist, Roboticist
	Medical	Chief Medical Officer, Medical Doctor, Chemist, Geneticist, Virologist
	Service	Janitor, Bartender, Cook, Botanist, Clown, Mime
	Civilian	Assistant, Lawyer, Chaplain, Librarian
	Non-human	AI, Cyborg, Positronic Brain, Drone, Personal AI, Construct, Adamantine Golem, Ghost
	Antagonists	Traitor, Changeling, Nuclear Operative, Wizard, Shadowling, Abductor, Xenomorph, Revenant, Space Ninja, Holoparasite, Swarmers, Blob, Devil, Clockwork Cult
	Special	Centcom Official, Death Squad Officer, Emergency Response Officer, Ian
	Races	Humans, Lizardperson, Flyperson, Plasmaman, Podman, Miscellaneous