Keep trying, and failing, to start engine - what am I doing wrong?

[oblong]

Listen to Vitatroll. As far as I have seen the only reason for a hellburn to fail is that the fire isn't gaining heat quickly enough. Reasons for this include setting it up badly, losing the cans feeding it, bursting the pipes too early (when it isn't gaining heat as quickly) with oxygen or something, lag spikes, or somebody messing with the chamber/pump. Anybody who has this problem should change their burn chamber setup.

[Noah Buttes]

Hellburns work by forming a recursive feedback loop between the gasses in the burn chamber and the gasses in the heat exchanger pipes.

In other words, the pipes transfer more heat into the air than they actually lose. Then the excess heat in the air is transferred back into the pipes, which radiate additional heat, and so on.

Basically, it's a perpetual motion machine of the first order.

[Vitatroll]

Either has been fine for me. Let's see if somebody started the engine on the current round... Oh God an anime mmo advert. Where's my usual soap advert? Oh, here we go... Oh nice, pre round. Heeey, no engineers. Time to set it up. Valves first... Furnace second... and hey, it's running. On one furnace, it runs at 1.3xxmw. It starts to drop slooowly, but rises again if you top off the furnace. Oh hey, it's Tumany as CE. Hey Tumany!... Hey! Didn't yer momma ever tells ya to not play with your icons like that?...

Okay, bored -- making this into a hellburn... 66/33 oxy/plas gas into chamber at around 70kpa... ignition... pop hole... open relevant valves and close irrelevant valves... and done, now to see if the chamber bugged... Nope, 100mw and rising.

... Okay, checking it again... over a gw now. OW. Oh God. Negative pressure wave or something similar... Oh wow, dying fast due to cold... engine droppin' now, I'm escapingohgodthecrusher... It was open but a genetically enhanced monkey covered in stickers came out of nowhere to save me... Okay one crusher poke since I'm here... well, that was one too many.

This let's play has been brought to you by boredom. Because boredom makes us do things! Huzzah!

On topic: I have had an engine bug before because gas was in the lines when I started the furnaces. This was a year and some months ago, though. I usually dislike running furnaces because I can just hotwire solars for roughly the same effect.

... Oh, engine is rising again. Now over 3gw. Yeah, it's pretty robust as long as the furnace is going.

Spoiler!

*wave -- or *flip, I forget if ghosts can *wave.

[The Grim Sleeper]

I usually dislike running furnaces because I can just hotwire solars for roughly the same effect.

On the topic of hotwiring, what is the problem with the SMES units that they are not worth the effort of using?

[Grek]

The SMES accept power equal to their Input level, but will not reliably charge if their Input level is higher than the incoming power. Since incoming solar power changes frequently, the SMES mean that there's usually at least one SMES refusing to accept the power its panels is generating.

[Vitatroll]

You don't need to cut off the SMES to hotwire; just bypass. Sometimes the SMES seem to bug out and not store power. Hotwiring both fixes this and constantly dumps the max wattage available into the APCs at any given time.

[The Grim Sleeper]

The SMES accept power equal to their Input level, but will not reliably charge if their Input level is higher than the incoming power. Since incoming solar power changes frequently, the SMES mean that there's usually at least one SMES refusing to accept the power its panels is generating.

You don't need to cut off the SMES to hotwire; just bypass. Sometimes the SMES seem to bug out and not store power. Hotwiring both fixes this and constantly dumps the max wattage available into the APCs at any given time.

So to summarize: There is a bug with the SMES that stops them from absorbing power and since the solars feed directly into the SMES and nothing else, the become useless when this bug triggers. By hot-wiring the solars, any power they supply will feed into the net instead.
After hot-wiring, will the SMES units still absorb the surplus power if the voltage on the cable is higher then it's input value?
If the bug is related to 'too high input value', would setting the input values for the Solar SMES to 0 also be a solution? What about the other 4 SMES units?

[Vitatroll]

The power still dumps into the SMES so long as you don't cut them from the network. You can set the SMES input to max and the output to a number that won't zero it out to give an extra cushion if you'd like. You know, if somebody blows up the solar arrays or something.

As far as I'm aware, hotwiring solars is all positive; and it only takes running a wire two steps.

[Grek]

After hot-wiring, will the SMES units still absorb the surplus power if the voltage on the cable is higher then it's input value?

Yes. This makes them good batteries for when there's a solar flare or something.

If the bug is related to 'too high input value', would setting the input values for the Solar SMES to 0 also be a solution? What about the other 4 SMES units?

Remember that the SMES only accepts an amount of power equal to the input value. If the input value is 0, it will accept 0 power. The same holds true for all SMES units.

[Musketman12]

I have no idea what i'm doing wrong with burns either, I get my burn going 66 oxy 33 plasma, get the cold loop going with plasma, do hot loop, ignite, open vent, pop hole in the burn chamber and rcd the space under the tanks. This is exactly what everyone usually says to do, but every time I do it, it get's up to 1 MW and then drops to none and frankly I have no idea what i'm doing wrong.

[Triacontakai]

I have no idea what i'm doing wrong with burns either, I get my burn going 66 oxy 33 plasma, get the cold loop going with plasma, do hot loop, ignite, open vent, pop hole in the burn chamber and rcd the space under the tanks. This is exactly what everyone usually says to do, but every time I do it, it get's up to 1 MW and then drops to none and frankly I have no idea what i'm doing wrong.

Start the burn chamber, and then after waiting like 4-5 min (less if you wanna get going quick, may risk engine failing later) open the valve leading through the burn chamber. Same thing happened to me and I had no idea why the engine was failing, and after I waited a bit it started working perfectly (aside from the crippling lag engine bug   )

[Vitatroll]

Sometimes the atmos bug bugs out. You can generally tell this is happening after orange or too much white shows up in your burn after 10 minutes or so. I used to start my burns by:
- wrench cans
- activate mixer, standard pressure, 66/33 oxy/plas.
- open the vent
- go in and igniting the gas by standing on the outlet and using the RCD sparks
- pop the hole up top
- go back and drop mixer to 50kPa for snazzy one tile burn

Now this just tends to create a bugged burn.

The one thing I can say to all aspiring hellburners and even the 'pros' out there - always start the burn first. It's the most important thing to do, and the sooner you get it done, the more power potential your setup has.

[Musketman12]

Sometimes the atmos bug bugs out. You can generally tell this is happening after orange or too much white shows up in your burn after 10 minutes or so. I used to start my burns by:
- wrench cans
- activate mixer, standard pressure, 66/33 oxy/plas.
- open the vent
- go in and igniting the gas by standing on the outlet and using the RCD sparks
- pop the hole up top
- go back and drop mixer to 50kPa for snazzy one tile burn

Now this just tends to create a bugged burn.

The one thing I can say to all aspiring hellburners and even the 'pros' out there - always start the burn first. It's the most important thing to do, and the sooner you get it done, the more power potential your setup has.

Ok so I tried this, it worked and got me up to around 30 MW's but then the pipes burst and everything burst into flames and the engine dropped to no power.


I tried again the next round and this time I RCD'D the floor under the canisters and it worked, got my first hellburn, currently at 200 EW right now

[Vitatroll]

Yeah. You have to rcd under the cans so they don't bust; or at least make sure they're in a constant vacuum.

Gratz on the hellburn. That's ridiculously high for someone's first.