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[[File:Teslaroom.png|right|thumb|The Tesla containment chamber in its entirety. Click to enlarge the picture.]]
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Welcome to frick. Engine will probably kill you. Just use the SM instead.
=Power Generation=
If you want power then you gotta talk about how it's generated first


=Basic Setup=
==Thermoelectric Generator==
#First off, retrieve the [[#Tesla Beacon|Tesla beacon]] from hard storage. Put it just outside the engine room, secure it over a wire knot (that you will have to place, connected to an existing wire net), and click it to turn it on. If anything goes wrong then this device will hopefully save everyone else a lot of trouble.
<small>See also: [[Supermatter_Engine#The_TEGs|Supermatter Engine Guide]]</small><br>
#Equip a wrench and secure everything in sight to the floor.
You put in cold gas in one end and hot gas in the other and you get power depending on the difference in temperature and if the pressure difference isn't awful
#*[[#Containment Field Generators|Containment field generators]] can be secured right where they are. Refer to the picture above to see where they are normally placed.
#*[[#Tesla Coils|Tesla coils]] must be secured on wire knots. If they are not on a wire knot then they will not output any harnessed energy.
#*[[#Emitters|Emitters]], too, must be secured over wire knots. They should also be facing a containment field generator.
#*The tesla ball generator doesn't need to be secured. Just make sure it's within the confines of the containment field generators.
#Equip a welder and weld the following to the floor:
#*Emitters
#*Containment Field Generators
#Retreat to the storage area and bring out '''all''' of the [[#Grounding Rods|grounding rods]] into the main engine room.
#Secure the grounding rods anywhere you like with a wrench. It doesn't matter where they are as long as they can see the Tesla when it is active.
#*A good rule of thumb is to make sure all of the containment field generators are within sight of the grounding rod.
#Return to the room with the partially assembled [[#Particle Accelerator|particle accelerator]]. Wrench all components to the floor.
#*If you accidentally bump a component out of alignment, simply push against it to face north. If you cannot push it, then pull it north by standing on its northern end and clicking your own turf.
#Click on all of the components with cable until they are all stuffed with wires. This includes the control console.
#Screwdriver the panels of all of the components closed.
#Interface with the control console and run a scan for all components. If everything is setup correctly then the PA should be ready to fire. Don't fire it yet, though.
#Move back to the engine room and set the engine room SMES (the one with the wire running out from ''under'' it to the emitters) to maximum input and output.
#Turn on all of the emitters. They should be shooting the containment field generators.
#*You can swipe your ID over an emitter to lock it. This prevents someone without a valid ID from turning the emitters off and causing a containment breach.
#Click on all of the containment field generators to turn them on. Any other activated CFG in a cardinal direction from another will form a containment field between the two. You should see four fields in total.
#*Do not stand adjacent to a containment field. You will most likely suffer intense burns and also be thrown into a wall.
#*Also make sure you don't run in front of the firing emitters.
#The Tesla-to-be is now contained. Move back over to the PA control console, set the power level as high as it can go, and turn it on.
#*If you really want, you can unscrew the panel and hack the wires to find the throttle control wire. Pulsing it with a multitool will make a grinding sound. Cut this wire to allow higher power levels.
#Eventually the Tesla will make itself manifest and things will get very loud. Keep the PA turned on until the Tesla has 18 miniballs orbiting the main body.
#*You can quickly figure out how many miniballs are in play by examining the main Tesla ball.
#*Assuming you brought out all of the grounding rods, you can actually shoot up to 24 miniballs. This, however, generates more energy than either SMES can utilize and is somewhat risky in case of sabotage.
#*Lastly, if the Tesla '''isn't shooting arcs of lightning at anything''' and is just '''hugging the southern part of the containment field''' then you need to move the Tesla beacon back a few steps.
#Set the distribution SMES to whatever you feel like setting it to. It's the SMES that goes out to the rest of the station.
That should about cover the most basic and straight forward setup. There are, of course, [[#Modifications|changes you can make]] to make it more efficient or behave differently if you so desire, but they aren't wholly necessary. If, however, something has gone wrong then you better have setup that Tesla beacon correctly, otherwise you're dealing with a [[#T E S L O O S E|containment breach]] of more-than-annoying proportions.


=Operating Principles=
==Tesla Coils==
Like any self-respecting engine, the purpose of the Tesla is to generate power, though in SS13's case this is done through wacky, barely understood, and downright dangerous means. The idea is that a Tesla ball - after being energized with accelerated particles and manifesting - will violently arc lightning at objects that it deems must die. Thankfully some scientists figured out how to make a machine that both harnesses lightning and looks annoying enough to the Tesla to be shocked regularly while also being tough enough to withstand being electrocuted to heck and back, thus the [[#Tesla Coils|tesla coil]] was born. Sometimes the Tesla becomes so powerful that not even coils can withstand its anger, so they had to make a [[#Grounding Rods|grounding rod]] to eliminate the excess energy.
<small>See also: [[INDRA]]</small><br>
sorry burrito justice... it's over


And then they found out that metal walls weren't very good at keeping a Tesla in place, so someone with some ''creative freedom'' decided to design the [[#Containment Field Generators|CFG]] network, which shoot out highly energized containment beams, and are powered by [[#Emitters|emitters]] of all things instead of just being powered through conventional means, making setting up the Tesla slightly more inconvenient. At least it looks important!
==Solar Panels==
<small>See also: [[Solars|Solar Setup Guide]]</small><br>
You connect the solars to a solar tracker and it tries to track the sun and generates power based on how many solars can see the sun


==Containment==
==Antimatter==
As mentioned above, containment is very important and will be the first thing you focus on while setting this whole thing up, because if you don't then everything will almost certainly start exploding, so you'll want to make sure you've setup everything up correctly. Failing to secure equipment to the floor will legitimately make things blow up.
Wacky engine that supplies power by feeding it fuel. It can also be scaled as large as you want and in any shape you want as long as the parts are laterally adjacent. There's not much else to it unless you mess up the settings, then it might blow up. Ordered through cargo.


===[[File:CFG.png]]Containment Field Generators===
==PACMAN==
The containment field generators (or CFG) are directly responsible for keeping a Tesla ball contained. They must be wrenched and welded to the floor in order to function. They receive power in the form of being shot by an emitter and in turn output energized, tangible fields of energy to other CFGs in order to keep the Tesla ball from escaping or going where it shouldn't. These fields are also pretty good at keeping stuff out of the containment area as well, so good in fact that they will forcefully push away anyone who dares to stand adjacent to one, probably with enough force to send them straight through a window, so be mindful of this.
Secure over a wire knot, give fuel, set target power, turn on. What fuel it takes and how high it can go depends on the subtype
*PACMAN: Takes phoron sheets
*SUPERPACMAN: Takes uranium
*MRSPACMAN: Takes tritium


A CFG has to be turned on (by clicking on it) after it is already receiving power from an emitter. Turning one on before an emitter energizes it may make it turn itself back off automatically. They also cannot be turned off unless the emitter powering them stops firing and the CFG runs out of energy.
==Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator==
thing with infinite fuel that can power up to 1 kilowatt. that's it. there's an advanced version that can generate up to 10 KW with good parts


===[[File:Emitter.png]]Emitters===
==Unimplemented and Misc==
Emitters usually only see practical use in the [[Supermatter Engine|SM engine]] (unless you're already acquainted with their destructive potential regarding blobs or breaking and entering), but emitters here are what power the [[#Containment Field Generators|CFGs]] to allow them to contain things, namely the Tesla ball. Emitters must be wrenched and welded to the floor over a powered wire knot in order to function. The wire network must also have at least 30 kW in it in order to fire, though since there are four emitters, this means you will need at least 120 kW of power in the network. Otherwise, clicking on an emitter will turn it on and it will fire in bursts of four. Swiping your ID over the emitter while it is firing will lock it and prevent it from being turned off without swiping a valid ID on it first.
===TEG 2===
If the TEG is so great then why isn't there a TEG 2? Well, there was. It didn't go anywhere and has been sitting around collecting dust in the code for ages.


===[[File:Grounding_rod.gif]]Grounding Rods===
===Radiation Collector Arrays===
Grounding rods are the next stage of containment. They must be wrenched to the floor, and ideally within sight of the containment area. Though CFGs will physically prevent the Tesla ball from escaping, grounding rods will make sure it stays that way assuming there's nothing wrong with how the CFGs were setup. More specifically, grounding rods will keep other equipment safe by drawing in excess power and grounding it, preventing the Tesla from straight up melting everything else. The amount of grounding rods present determines how far you can energize the Tesla. In particular, one grounding rod supports up to four miniballs of power, and you start with six, meaning you can safely energize the Tesla up to twenty four miniballs before things begin to explode, assuming you secured all of the grounding rods.
Though available in cargo, these don't collect radiation since they've existed before radiation was actually implemented and never got changed. They can harvest power from a singularity but they can't harvest energy from a SM because that part of the code got commented out.


===[[File:SMES.png]]SMES Settings===
===Gas Turbine===
The emitters are the only pieces of equipment dedicated to containment that actually need power from wires, so setting the SMES with the wires running out to the emitters is important, otherwise those emitters won't be running for very long, thus the containment will not hold and the Tesla will be dining on the station's machinery. And you, especially you. Containment matters more than power distribution, so it's usually safe to maximize the input value provided you're not running a low energy Tesla. Output must be set to ''at least'' 120 kW, though maximizing this value is fine as well; nothing awful will happen if you do.
<small>See also: [[Guide_to_Atmospherics#Unimplemented|Guide to Atmospherics]]</small><br>
Two machines that compress gas in the surrounding atmosphere to shove through a turbine in order to generate power. The compressor takes power to do its job, meaning this engine can be run at a net loss for power, but if supplied a decently hot burn mix then the pressure will be high enough to allow the turbine to turn at a rate that can generate sort of decent amounts of power - the turbine is more of a supplement to existing engines for powering the station rather than a standalone one. As it stands, despite the code not being meaningfully altered in almost a decade, the turbine runs almost exactly as it was intended.


===[[File:TBeacon.gif]]Tesla Beacon===
===Pipe Turbine===
[[File:Beacon_placement.png|right|thumb|A recommended position for the Tesla beacon.]]The tesla beacon is a device that is capable reducing a Tesla ball - and all orbiting miniballs - to... well, nothing, actually. In particular, a Tesla ball that is within range of a beacon's influence will slowly move vaguely towards the beacon in order to be grounded. The Tesla will also be restrained from arcing any lightning to its surroundings, rendering it relatively safe during its short journey towards the beacon. Setting up the beacon is easy, just secure it with a wrench over a wire knot connected to a powered network (like the main grid, for instance)!
The pipe version of the gas turbine, however the code and era when it was implemented are completely different. High pressure gas must be piped into the input and the output pipe should remain as low pressure as possible to allow gas to be turned through without issue. The turbine will then turn a motor which generates power. Just needs a proc called on the motor to connect to a wired power net, otherwise this setup is still functional. Mention the Adiabatic Process


==Power Generation==
===Fractal Reactor===
Now that we've covered how to actually contain this wacky ball of electricity, we can move on to harnessing energy from it. The short and sweet of it is that electricity shoots out of the Tesla and (hopefully) strikes tesla coils, which then convert and output this energy into the cables they're connected to while the excess energy grounds out into a rod. There's not much more to it!
Generates 1 MW of power when active, which is pretty crazy, and it doesn't seem to use any fuel. Probably because it's actually used for debugging. If you see this then you should probably ahelp.


===The Tesla Ball===
=Power Storage=
The Big Kahuna, this fella is what'll be generating our electricity, or perhaps supplementing it if you already have the [[Supermatter Engine|supermatter]] running. This is initially summoned by firing particles at a Tesla ball generator with the [[#Particle Accelerator|particle accelerator]] until the ball is summoned, after which it must remain energized via particle acceleration for however long energy is to be harnessed from it; if it does not have any miniballs and is not receiving any particles then it will eventually fizzle out and disappear - this, as you might imagine, is a bad thing so don't let it happen!
If you wanna keep power then you gotta talk about how it's stored


The Tesla will release energy in the form of lightning at predictable intervals and will also attempt to move around randomly. The amount of energy released depends on how energized the Tesla is which can more or less be determined by the amount of miniballs orbiting the Tesla. The exact number can be determined by examining the Tesla itself. Going over 24 miniballs while all grounding rods are deployed is a surefire way to watch a lot of equipment get reduced to ashes, followed by the Tesla escaping so don't let that happen. Read the [[#Grounding Rods|grounding rods]] section for more info on how this works. Anyway, these arcs of lightning will hopefully strike a [[#Tesla Coil|tesla coil]] which, if set up properly, will output the energy into the cable it's connected to, thus generating power. From this coil another arc of lightning is summoned that will strike another coil at about half the power. Failing this it will strike a grounding rod, whereupon the arc chain will end immediately.
==[[File:SMES.png]]SMES==
Big battery fella. The amount of power it can store and the amount of power it can input and output per tick depends on the type and amount of coils installed. Receives power through a terminal, outputs power into a wire beneath itself


The Tesla also has a list of what gets struck first, that being the following:
===SMES Coils===
#Tesla Coils
Coils determine how much power can be stored and how far you can adjust the I/O. You can fit six coils inside a single SMES unit
#Grounding Rods
*Superconductive Magnetic Coil: Stores 5 MJ of power, I/O of 250 KW
#Mobs (you!)
*Transmission Coil: Stores 0.5 MJ of power, I/O of 1000 KW
#Machines
*Capacitance Coil: Stores 50 MJ of power, I/O of 50 KW
*Basic Coil: Stores 1 MJ of power, I/O of 150 KW


===Particle Accelerator===
==Power Cell Rack PSU==
The particle accelerator is an interesting, multi-part piece of equipment that accelerates particles (who would have guessed). The particulars don't matter much - it energizes particles and shoots them out in a 3-wide burst to hopefully smash into the Tesla to keep it energized. Is the power that goes into the PA at all reflective of the resulting power that's output by the Tesla? Heck no, but who cares - it was originally created to send mass into a singularity to harvest Hawking Radiation, but those engines aren't in use on this codebase.
An alternative to the SMES. I/O is probably locked but the amount of power you can store depends on how many power cells you shoved inside it.


At the start of the round the PA will be disassembled but conveniently placed in the correct position with all of its parts in the correct orientation (provided you don't bump them out of place). All that needs to be done is to secure all of them with a wrench and wire them all up with cable. Note that this includes the console, which is a part of the PA itself. After that, just screw all of the components shut with a screwdriver, interface with the console, scan for parts, and you're ready to fire!
===Power Cells===
*Default: 1000
*Heavy Duty: 5000, found in APCs and portable atmospheric equipment
*High Capacity: 10000
*Super Capacity: 20000
*Hyper Capacity: 30000
*Slime: 15000, recharges, harvested from yellow slimes in xenobiology
*Potato: 300


The particles can be energized anywhere from a level of 0 to 2 by default, but a third level can be achieved by messing with the console's wires. A particular wire - when pulsed - will make a loud whirring noise. Cut this wire to remove the safeties and unlock the higher power level option. Nothing bad happens if you use this new level, it just energizes the Tesla faster. Ideally this whole process is done before parts are scanned for to prevent any misfires since pulsing some wires may adjust the power level or begin shooting particles.
=Power Distribution=
If you wanna use power you gotta talk about how it's distributed


===[[File:Tesla_coil.gif]]Tesla Coils===
==Wires==
These are what actually collect power
Things you throw down to carry power from one place to the next. Distance doesn't matter, a cable close to a SMES and a cable really far on the same network will have the same charge. use a multitool on these to figure out how much power is available.


=T E S L O O S E=
==APC==
GOOD LUCK
Stores power but not much, it supplies power to all machines in the same area as the APC. If it's not in the same area, it's not under that APC's control


=Modifications=
==Rechargers==
Squish
These things use ridiculous amounts of power so maybe don't decide to recharge more than two power cells at a time lmao
*Device Recharger: 45 KW when active. Accepts power cells, energy weapons, batons, and certain devices.
*Heavy-Duty Cell Charger: 90 KW when active. Only accepts [[#Power Cells|power cells]].
*Cyborg Recharging Station: 40 KW when active with default parts. Accepts stationbounds, [[IPC|IPCs]], and biologic crew if they're wearing a [[Hardsuit Operation|RIG]]. It can also repair the damage of synthetic individuals if its parts are upgraded, though this can consume more power.
*Exosuit Dock: 90 KW when active. Park a mech over this to recharge its cell.
 
==Power Priority==
SMES receive priority over APCs, otherwise everything will try to charge equally and simultaneously based on available input, i.e. four SMES units with max input but only 4 KW available will mean that all four SMES will charge at 1 KW/h
 
==Interruptions and Syncing==
APCs will turn red for a while if an explosion happens or if substations have their breaker boxes toggled. That's because power code sucks and has to resync everything after a large change in power nets like wires being spawned or deleted. if people complain about APCs being red and that engineering sucks tell them to shove it up their ass and wait two seconds lmao
 
==RCON==
RCON is short for Remote Control in that it is a program that can remotely interface with SMES units that have their RCON wire enabled, and it is also able to toggle breaker boxes remotely, allowing you to manage most of the grid from a single computer. It's intended purpose is to separate and organize department power networks into their own grids so that they aren't wholly reliant on the main grid. There are many reasons to setup substations, however there are another many reasons to ''not'' use RCON. [[#Pros and Cons|You will have to determine when it's best to use]], but setting up substations is by no means necessary: unless purposefully sabotaged, the main grid will power the whole station just fine assuming the SMES in charge of the grid is charged and outputting enough power.
 
The ideal way to configure each substation is to set it up in a way that the department will always receive power when necessary. If you aren't sure what settings to use then don't bother configuring the substation; it's simpler and safer to just run it off the grid directly. Nonetheless, the substation's output must be able to meet a number of factors:
#'''The amount of APCs:''' All rooms should have one APC, though sometimes multiple rooms share an APC. Departments vary in the amount of APCs they have but, ignoring the rest of these factors, 20 to 60 KW is a safe minimum to expect.
#'''The amount of machinery:''' Lots of machinery will consume power while idle, so it's important to keep them in mind, ''especially'' when they're in use. Lights fall under this category, atmospheric installations especially so.
#'''The amount of [[#Rechargers|rechargers]]:''' Rechargers are machines that tend to consume the most power at a time. The amount of rechargers in a department is what you want to know the most, and you'll want to adjust the SMES output to account for the potential for all rechargers being used at the same time. If the SMES output doesn't go high enough then the department will lose power if someone decides to recharge a lot of equipment. Research is especially prone to this.
If you want a quick and easy way to determine how much power a department will draw normally, just setup the substation like normal and set the output to maximum, the SMES will tell you the expected draw. If the draw is below available output then you can lower it to something a bit above that value to account for intermittent draws of power. However, if the draw is the same as available output or higher then you will need to either upgrade the SMES or re-enable the bypass.
 
The substation's input, on the other hand, must be set to what the department is expected to require at the least. It is '''safe to set the input lower than the output''' - as long as the input can meet demand during normal work then the higher output will use the SMES' stored charge to account for more demanding loads, assuming the high demand is only temporary (like recharging equipment).
 
===Breaker Boxes===
Breaker boxes are the physical objects next to SMES units inside substations that determine whether or not the substation is bypassed. It does this by literally spawning wires underneath itself to connect a wire leading to it from the grid to a wire beneath the SMES leading to the rest of the department, effectively connecting the department to the grid and ''bypassing'' the SMES. Breaker boxes can be interacted with in person or remotely, though to prevent [[#Interruptions and Syncing|power net weirdness]] they cannot be toggled back for a while. To clarify: wires beneath the breaker means the SMES is '''bypassed''', wires missing from beneath the breaker means the '''bypass is disabled'''.
 
===Pros and Cons===
Setting substations can be a nice tool if you know what you're doing, but it can easily incapacitate entire departments if you aren't careful. If you aren't sure then don't setup substations. Anyway here's all the benefits and disadvantages to disabling the bypasses of substations:
*'''Pros:'''
**Department-specific power net monitors will be limited to only their department instead of it ''and'' whatever else is connected to the grid, allowing you to diagnose room-specific power draw issues remotely more easily.
**Substation SMES can function as backup batteries if something terrible happens to everything else, assuming they're charged. This, however, doesn't require the bypass to be disabled: the SMES will charge as long as a wire from the grid is connected to its terminal, and it will always be there unless damage or sabotage is done.
**Incomprehensibly high power draw can be isolated to a single department, sparing the rest of the station.
**''Carefully maintained'' output can reduce the damage of being shocked by equipment managed by the substation.
*'''Cons:'''
**Values that do not take all equipment in a department into account can result in the department running out of power, or simply not being supplied enough power.
**Certain departments (like Research) are capable of exceeding the maximum possible output of their substation SMES by several times, meaning either the SMES needs to be upgraded or the SMES should remain bypassed.
**The benefits of keeping a SMES' output low for the sake of reducing the damage of shocks is irrelevant if you are forced to maximize the output or need to bypass the SMES.
**Grid checks affect APCs ''and'' SMES units. A SMES must be restarted before it can output power again, so departments that don't have their bypass enabled are reliant on their substation to restart rather than the main grid SMES being restarted and powering everything.


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[[Category:Engineering]]
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Текущая версия от 11:26, 15 октября 2023

Power Generation

If you want power then you gotta talk about how it's generated first

Thermoelectric Generator

See also: Supermatter Engine Guide
You put in cold gas in one end and hot gas in the other and you get power depending on the difference in temperature and if the pressure difference isn't awful

Tesla Coils

See also: INDRA
sorry burrito justice... it's over

Solar Panels

See also: Solar Setup Guide
You connect the solars to a solar tracker and it tries to track the sun and generates power based on how many solars can see the sun

Antimatter

Wacky engine that supplies power by feeding it fuel. It can also be scaled as large as you want and in any shape you want as long as the parts are laterally adjacent. There's not much else to it unless you mess up the settings, then it might blow up. Ordered through cargo.

PACMAN

Secure over a wire knot, give fuel, set target power, turn on. What fuel it takes and how high it can go depends on the subtype

  • PACMAN: Takes phoron sheets
  • SUPERPACMAN: Takes uranium
  • MRSPACMAN: Takes tritium

Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator

thing with infinite fuel that can power up to 1 kilowatt. that's it. there's an advanced version that can generate up to 10 KW with good parts

Unimplemented and Misc

TEG 2

If the TEG is so great then why isn't there a TEG 2? Well, there was. It didn't go anywhere and has been sitting around collecting dust in the code for ages.

Radiation Collector Arrays

Though available in cargo, these don't collect radiation since they've existed before radiation was actually implemented and never got changed. They can harvest power from a singularity but they can't harvest energy from a SM because that part of the code got commented out.

Gas Turbine

See also: Guide to Atmospherics
Two machines that compress gas in the surrounding atmosphere to shove through a turbine in order to generate power. The compressor takes power to do its job, meaning this engine can be run at a net loss for power, but if supplied a decently hot burn mix then the pressure will be high enough to allow the turbine to turn at a rate that can generate sort of decent amounts of power - the turbine is more of a supplement to existing engines for powering the station rather than a standalone one. As it stands, despite the code not being meaningfully altered in almost a decade, the turbine runs almost exactly as it was intended.

Pipe Turbine

The pipe version of the gas turbine, however the code and era when it was implemented are completely different. High pressure gas must be piped into the input and the output pipe should remain as low pressure as possible to allow gas to be turned through without issue. The turbine will then turn a motor which generates power. Just needs a proc called on the motor to connect to a wired power net, otherwise this setup is still functional. Mention the Adiabatic Process

Fractal Reactor

Generates 1 MW of power when active, which is pretty crazy, and it doesn't seem to use any fuel. Probably because it's actually used for debugging. If you see this then you should probably ahelp.

Power Storage

If you wanna keep power then you gotta talk about how it's stored

Файл:SMES.pngSMES

Big battery fella. The amount of power it can store and the amount of power it can input and output per tick depends on the type and amount of coils installed. Receives power through a terminal, outputs power into a wire beneath itself

SMES Coils

Coils determine how much power can be stored and how far you can adjust the I/O. You can fit six coils inside a single SMES unit

  • Superconductive Magnetic Coil: Stores 5 MJ of power, I/O of 250 KW
  • Transmission Coil: Stores 0.5 MJ of power, I/O of 1000 KW
  • Capacitance Coil: Stores 50 MJ of power, I/O of 50 KW
  • Basic Coil: Stores 1 MJ of power, I/O of 150 KW

Power Cell Rack PSU

An alternative to the SMES. I/O is probably locked but the amount of power you can store depends on how many power cells you shoved inside it.

Power Cells

  • Default: 1000
  • Heavy Duty: 5000, found in APCs and portable atmospheric equipment
  • High Capacity: 10000
  • Super Capacity: 20000
  • Hyper Capacity: 30000
  • Slime: 15000, recharges, harvested from yellow slimes in xenobiology
  • Potato: 300

Power Distribution

If you wanna use power you gotta talk about how it's distributed

Wires

Things you throw down to carry power from one place to the next. Distance doesn't matter, a cable close to a SMES and a cable really far on the same network will have the same charge. use a multitool on these to figure out how much power is available.

APC

Stores power but not much, it supplies power to all machines in the same area as the APC. If it's not in the same area, it's not under that APC's control

Rechargers

These things use ridiculous amounts of power so maybe don't decide to recharge more than two power cells at a time lmao

  • Device Recharger: 45 KW when active. Accepts power cells, energy weapons, batons, and certain devices.
  • Heavy-Duty Cell Charger: 90 KW when active. Only accepts power cells.
  • Cyborg Recharging Station: 40 KW when active with default parts. Accepts stationbounds, IPCs, and biologic crew if they're wearing a RIG. It can also repair the damage of synthetic individuals if its parts are upgraded, though this can consume more power.
  • Exosuit Dock: 90 KW when active. Park a mech over this to recharge its cell.

Power Priority

SMES receive priority over APCs, otherwise everything will try to charge equally and simultaneously based on available input, i.e. four SMES units with max input but only 4 KW available will mean that all four SMES will charge at 1 KW/h

Interruptions and Syncing

APCs will turn red for a while if an explosion happens or if substations have their breaker boxes toggled. That's because power code sucks and has to resync everything after a large change in power nets like wires being spawned or deleted. if people complain about APCs being red and that engineering sucks tell them to shove it up their ass and wait two seconds lmao

RCON

RCON is short for Remote Control in that it is a program that can remotely interface with SMES units that have their RCON wire enabled, and it is also able to toggle breaker boxes remotely, allowing you to manage most of the grid from a single computer. It's intended purpose is to separate and organize department power networks into their own grids so that they aren't wholly reliant on the main grid. There are many reasons to setup substations, however there are another many reasons to not use RCON. You will have to determine when it's best to use, but setting up substations is by no means necessary: unless purposefully sabotaged, the main grid will power the whole station just fine assuming the SMES in charge of the grid is charged and outputting enough power.

The ideal way to configure each substation is to set it up in a way that the department will always receive power when necessary. If you aren't sure what settings to use then don't bother configuring the substation; it's simpler and safer to just run it off the grid directly. Nonetheless, the substation's output must be able to meet a number of factors:

  1. The amount of APCs: All rooms should have one APC, though sometimes multiple rooms share an APC. Departments vary in the amount of APCs they have but, ignoring the rest of these factors, 20 to 60 KW is a safe minimum to expect.
  2. The amount of machinery: Lots of machinery will consume power while idle, so it's important to keep them in mind, especially when they're in use. Lights fall under this category, atmospheric installations especially so.
  3. The amount of rechargers: Rechargers are machines that tend to consume the most power at a time. The amount of rechargers in a department is what you want to know the most, and you'll want to adjust the SMES output to account for the potential for all rechargers being used at the same time. If the SMES output doesn't go high enough then the department will lose power if someone decides to recharge a lot of equipment. Research is especially prone to this.

If you want a quick and easy way to determine how much power a department will draw normally, just setup the substation like normal and set the output to maximum, the SMES will tell you the expected draw. If the draw is below available output then you can lower it to something a bit above that value to account for intermittent draws of power. However, if the draw is the same as available output or higher then you will need to either upgrade the SMES or re-enable the bypass.

The substation's input, on the other hand, must be set to what the department is expected to require at the least. It is safe to set the input lower than the output - as long as the input can meet demand during normal work then the higher output will use the SMES' stored charge to account for more demanding loads, assuming the high demand is only temporary (like recharging equipment).

Breaker Boxes

Breaker boxes are the physical objects next to SMES units inside substations that determine whether or not the substation is bypassed. It does this by literally spawning wires underneath itself to connect a wire leading to it from the grid to a wire beneath the SMES leading to the rest of the department, effectively connecting the department to the grid and bypassing the SMES. Breaker boxes can be interacted with in person or remotely, though to prevent power net weirdness they cannot be toggled back for a while. To clarify: wires beneath the breaker means the SMES is bypassed, wires missing from beneath the breaker means the bypass is disabled.

Pros and Cons

Setting substations can be a nice tool if you know what you're doing, but it can easily incapacitate entire departments if you aren't careful. If you aren't sure then don't setup substations. Anyway here's all the benefits and disadvantages to disabling the bypasses of substations:

  • Pros:
    • Department-specific power net monitors will be limited to only their department instead of it and whatever else is connected to the grid, allowing you to diagnose room-specific power draw issues remotely more easily.
    • Substation SMES can function as backup batteries if something terrible happens to everything else, assuming they're charged. This, however, doesn't require the bypass to be disabled: the SMES will charge as long as a wire from the grid is connected to its terminal, and it will always be there unless damage or sabotage is done.
    • Incomprehensibly high power draw can be isolated to a single department, sparing the rest of the station.
    • Carefully maintained output can reduce the damage of being shocked by equipment managed by the substation.
  • Cons:
    • Values that do not take all equipment in a department into account can result in the department running out of power, or simply not being supplied enough power.
    • Certain departments (like Research) are capable of exceeding the maximum possible output of their substation SMES by several times, meaning either the SMES needs to be upgraded or the SMES should remain bypassed.
    • The benefits of keeping a SMES' output low for the sake of reducing the damage of shocks is irrelevant if you are forced to maximize the output or need to bypass the SMES.
    • Grid checks affect APCs and SMES units. A SMES must be restarted before it can output power again, so departments that don't have their bypass enabled are reliant on their substation to restart rather than the main grid SMES being restarted and powering everything.
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