Atmospheric Pipe Changes Megathread

[Scaltra]

I believe the manifold change was the correct decision; it wasn't an intended feature, and things like pipeburning for canbombs and the TEG were never designed with that possibility in mind.

Simply put, I have dabbled pretty deeply in all the main power production methods that the station offers, aside from the reactor. By far, pipeburns with unbreakable pipes were the easiest and least resource-intensive way to achieve both lower high-end and high-end power and far-reaching effects. It is extremely time-efficient, and although some things you could get from other departments will help, it is not needed. I.E we have farts at home.

I would also like to clarify and state that this does not just impact the TEG and toxins, but also the reactor. Managing pressure and the fact that you want more gas, so more thermal mass can pass through the turbine, with pressure being your limiter for that one.

pipe burns, especially good ones, are limited by the pipe pressure limits, especially later on, even with all of the intended pressure increase methods.

I do think the manifold method was way too cost-efficient, and know-how alone should not be the only thing holding you back from constantly maxing out or even approaching maximum limits.

Despite the claims, singularities, even plenty of them, even with 22k plasma, which is as low as you are getting without a TEG, do not reach those power levels without a great resource cost. Both to get all the plasma required (which is also slowly consumed) for even a single tank, etc. This has all been said before, though, and not what I mainly want to say. I just want to outline all this and make it clear that although I am about to say the TEG needs a lot to feel better, from QoL to reasonable support for higher end, that doesn't just equate to sitting somewhere clicking pipes for over an hour. I don't want that to be the experience anyone faces.

It was outperforming everything in time and resource efficiency, and honestly, I think the reactor probably could have done the same by abusing the same inability to bust. I just don't think anyone had bothered with it yet that I had seen.

Personally, I just really don't want to see this discussion be "grrr this change sucked and this is why" and instead solutions and ideas we can all come together and be happy with because I don't think we all want the system to be jank unbustable pipes when it could be something cool as fuck.

Personally, if something works to get around pressure, I want people to be like

"holy shit that's clever"

vs ahh it's just...this pipe doesn't burst so use this one.

(which isn't to say there isn't more to the higher ends of it, or pushing a burn but managing the pressure to not burst the pipes? let's not kid ourselves, that is exactly what this is when manifolds are in play and being used, you just stop caring about it entirely, it becomes solved aside from keeping pressure high on input and low on output.)

Anyway, out of that preamble

I think there are a few styles of solutions we could do without, just trivializing and removing the pressure threat that the pipes pose.

We could have a passive management system, a sort of device that could be placed and automatically manage the pipes for you, that would work well with the current wrench-smack system Leah implemented, where it's just some non-player machine that you feed resources to that manages this aspect for you. It could be a little robot that actively goes around and does it, a pipe shield system that uses science junk to help the pipes manage the pressure with an energy cost of some sort, that costs more energy related to the pressure difference between the pressure of the atmosphere and the contents of the pipe itself.

Or we could have/ focus on upgrades that offer more permanent solutions, but I do think it would be nice to see some sort of "cost sink" of sorts, as long as it does not require constant management, especially if well executed.

I would like the TEG itself to focus more on well...the thermo electric effect personally, so better ways to interact with the cold loop as well, and for other atmospheric science-related things like if there were pipes you could make that interacted with the cryostlane reaction like the blower does (and is sadly really bad at actually helping the TEG and way to resource intensive for its help and how it gets outscaled by everything else happening and ends up being a drop in the bucket in the end)

Chemically enhanced pipes could be interesting, though, like a pipe with liquid dark matter/ sorium infusions to force the pressure to either go up or down in areas.

The specifics exactly don't matter, but some sort of system to let us manage these things, even with help, would be nice. Honestly, I love wolfys points on cargo-related stuff as well because there is a feedback loop there, and I LOVE having potential buyable upgrades like the extreme pressurization device, for example, which is very often overlooked, and more upgrades that could be integrated over time as funds change could be a very cool thing.

The main thing is we need something manageable that isn't going to feel tedious and repetitive and be a pain point, high or low levels of power. I think it's good to have a system that can get wild and potentially reach power levels of stars. That is the kind of wild chicanery that SS13 is known for, or at least Goonstation. I think these events should be on the rarer end and require great effort, though. Potentially from multiple departments/ groups on the station through collaboration. If they exist or not, I just don't want it to be some fun, optimized-out thing where someone is sitting there clicking the same thing or things over and over again. In my ideal, I see things like this being something you form a rallying cry for and through hard cooperative work its something big to RP around and will often not work out because of how rounds work with antagonists and all that but can work and is something people don't need to squat over and are encouraged to go run out and RP with people to get the resources to do it.

Which means ideally we want and need a system that has some form of passive management where an upfront resource cost gives you time to do that. Either through stuff you can buy to do it better, maybe a jank temp fix that only works for a certain amount of time, even while you work on a permanent one.

There are always a lot of directions that maintainers could go in, and I am not going to presume to know the perfect balance between what is efficient for their time and effort and what is a good solution.

All I can say for certain is there are some clear pain points already underlined by myself and others, and that I would like more stuff that lets us tinker with these things dynamically, and I am always happy to see more reasons for cargo to have people buying upgrades. Science has always felt tough to rely on, if for no other reason, because at the very least, the fact it there are so many jobs often means you may not even have someone willing to work in chemistry and make what you want, so I lean on cargo being potentially cooler with help from science having some cool ways they can help and would work off of already built across department ideas. Or maybe special gear you can order that can also be further enhanced by science chemistry, like the blowers.

Last idea because I am trying not to make this huge and more verbose, but directed nanites or nanites in general in the blowers...could be a neat sort of idea for something that fixes the pipes for you while away, that could be more resource intensive. Or needing to buy a device that requires them as fuel that you can also buy, but science/ the chef, etc, could help do at a more reasonable price in time/ money.

[tamakona]

If there is an alternative for a true unbreakable pipe, even if it would meant trying to power through azones in just couple of minutes or sweating in QM, anything to make sure that the pipes doesn't burst past 1e28, I'm willing to take it

I feel like it is entirely undesireable to support such pressures, even the 1e10 that is achieveable with ghc and bohrum+ plating already creates energy outputs that can be considered unreasonable for an engine to achieve.

Gotta fact check this cuz quick google search says the weakest nuclear power plant on earth absolutely dwarfs a non-scaling TeG setup that is beefed to the brim with mining's resources. And we're talking about an engine running on magic space age gas that burns at 15 times the temperature of the sun. It's powering a stable wormhole, a mining magnet with fuckoff giga range, and up to several sentient supercomputers, among other things.

Hell, an e+10 temperature TeG....still can't compete with real life nuclear power plants. You're telling me chemistry can produce infinite amounts of cheese-making aerosol and cargo and botany can each run the entire station without any other department's help but if I want to see a slightly bigger number that's too much to ask?

I have several bones to pick with your other arguments in this thread because I feel like they are poorly informed and just...hateful of engine goblins for no reason. Like getting big number doesn't hurt anyone. Imagine minding your own business with your toy train, and some adult busts into your room and breaks that train because they think the scenario you put your train in is "unreasonable". But I'm gonna wait until I've leveled off a bit cause I don't wanna make an angry post that might say some things that aren't in the spirit of the community. I hope you have a good day, and that no one breaks your toy train.

[Roman]

On this, I'm glad that indestructible pipes have gone. As someone who's gotten the Jiggawatts medal recently with a chamberburn, its absolutely possible to achieve very good outputs without what ultimately amounted to an unfixed exploit in the piping system.

Using knowledge from maybe 10 previous runs that hit up to 2.6 EW at the end of the shift it took about 20/30 minutes of prep working with science, mining and other engineers to do. We gathered and alloyed materials, mixed chems etc. and ended up with a great setup that didnt even burst but still got us our million which was promptly turned into a joint.

Using plasmasteel reinforcement with 20u GHC per pipe on the standard Kondaru layout you can contain over 20TPa of pressure (I reached that pressure without a burst, possibly higher), with Iridium reinforcement and GHC I'm sure you could hold even more.

No one enjoys being stuck in welder hell, and I'm always impressed with the ingenuity that we as a community can apply to the TEG to overcome the problems it presents and ideally I'd like an even higher tier of materials, for example an Iridium (alloy) alloy for some silly pressures above what I've achieved. Another idea would be to be able to increase the thickness of the pipe layers through multiple layering as has been presented above, this is done IRL when high pressures are involved (maybe balanced by forcing players to have to vault over said thicker pipes though I'll admit that's a half-baked idea).

All this is to say that it's very possible to get big ol' numbers with the TEG without using unbreakable pipes and it just requires some team effort and with recent updates such as pipe reinforcement I'm excited to see where development will go next.

[Lord_earthfire]

I have several bones to pick with your other arguments in this thread because I feel like they are poorly informed and just...hateful of engine goblins for no reason. Like getting big number doesn't hurt anyone.

Not hateful of engine goblin, i am myself very much one (admittably, most of my nunbers come from pre-HPD, i used that one mostly for doing setups in toxins, but without manifold closed loops).  If i wouldn't be, i would advocate for caps on power generation, but i don't because that would be against what i want as well. I just really dislike the TEG in its current state... and heck, i have recently given engineers a way to automate fart gas generation. But that isnt't needed because guess what: you can run a pipeburn for a whole shift with like 700 kpa of farts in a scrubber (would need to get ny notes out to check the correct number, that one i'm very not sure off).

Just something like needing to provide significant constant supply of farts to keep the burn alive would do so much for me to be content with it.

Because large numbers do hurt anyone trying to change anything about power generation or usage. They are a constant problem you have to design around. Even proper body heat to burn damage mechanics would instantly crumble at what temperatures plasmaburns create.

Not that much relsted, but these are the same reason i e.g. PR'ed the soft cap on botany produce around a year ago. Get the upper limit in check so you can do nice things for anything that is much lower than that.

[TrickyWolfer]

I agree, but here's the catch: these methods don't scale infinitely without you expending recources. Or are even capped. Stacking hotspots? Keep on printing those vent generators. And that doesn't go infinetly higher. Nuclear reactor? Hope mining does their job and the output is soft limited by the reactor exploding. Singularity? Most feeders require manual work and the ones that don't (e.g. PTL, trip wire laser, thermal paper printer) got nerfed/fixed.

The pipeburn? Once set up, it keeps on scaling. Without the welding, all you need to do is keep supplying it with oxygen. And the soft cap here is the pipe failure pressure. I personally don't like time through welding being the upkeep, though.

Okay, I could be incredibly misinformed about this as im not a TEG wizard so bear with me here.

From what I saw of a little bit of what people were doing with indestructible piping on TEGs felt, i guess just absurd. Like I distinctly recall one round, the temperature and pressure of the pipeburn had reached literal infinity and the TEG was producing more energy than most stars. I may be misinformed on that and am free to be corrected but there is really no reason that should be a thing you can do.

I feel like just saying its just because of making "high power" is a bit misleading given how absurdly high the power was getting on some of these rounds (again feel free to correct me on this but i am mostly sure that the whole reaching RW craze was caused by the indestructible piping)

but again, i could be fully misinformed on this so take it with a grain of salt

I mean, that's pretty much what people were doing. And exactly what the pipe-bursting mechanic tries to prevent. It was working fairly well with atmos pipes being non-constructable. Once the HPD was introduced, people abused manifold to create more or less what you describe. It's not quite infinte, but it was so high that it might as well have been.

I'll be honest the only times I ever see pipes explode is:
A) I was lazy and missed a pipe to reinforce with steel before standard burn chamber
B) Someone loaded a second plasma can into the hot loop before stronger reinforcements than steel

Perhaps to make it easier the HPD could accept a stack of sheets and reinforce placed pipes with the inserted sheets.

This thread talks about the very much high end of pipeburns. The kind that go even beyond what's needed for canbombs. So about changes that will mostly affect the pipeburn-nerds the most and noone else.

My main gripe about all of this is just the active nerf of atmospherics due to the perceived "high power". It is very much high-end pipeburn, I stand corrected, however if the "high power" part is the only problem, then there is no need to keep adding nerf to pipes since toxins would also need the pipes (and they don't make much of a ruckus).

People also severely misunderstood the TEG. I've seen countless new engineers trying to replicate RW burns, but couldn't even break terrawatts. It's not only about the manifolds leaking, it's not only about the mix, but the knowledge of pipe configurations and pray to god SS13 jank atmos doesn't screw you right here and there. TEG also boasts to be one of those engines that still needs an external power to function. Death of engineers due to APC hotwired is also a thing. 

All in all, I think TEG itself already has a lot of occupational hazard and challenges (i.e. Heat crawl through uninsulated pipes / Hotwired APCs / Need charges to construct the loop / Figuring out which map has good heat insuls and layout / Pray that your co-workers weren't fixing the vents to prevent heat crawl / enough friends to construct it within reasonable timeframe before getting yelled by cargo). An (almost) unbreakable pipe would be a very welcome feature to prevent the already complicated things a veteran TEG engineer have to put up. Really there's only 1-2 people that I know of that could pull this maneuver, not including me.

I really don't want new TEG players got downturned just because life gets really really hard for TEG engineers nowadays, especially if things breaking beyond 1e10 pressure. The fix I could agree on is definitely the "Stackable pipe reinforcement" to level resource trade-off, or even sell HPDs that could give you those pipes, but fully removing unbreakables is definitely not it, especially when the alternative is still very low.

I like Scaltra's idea on those passive management system, chemically enchanced pipe would also be beneficial.
Thank you Roman for putting out that combination could still bring the pressure up to Terra-Exapascal. it is enough for most of TEG engineers, however, one little problem I have with this method is that we'll be relying too much on mining rolling plasmasteel or whatnot. It's the same as hellburn waiting for OxyB molitz and that would meant these kinds of feats, which was originally reliable and rewarded for veterans, now as unreliable as the current state of hellburn. It is still a good thing to bring up though

[Emimiyu]

Maybe made some already on map pipes unbreakable, but just not the one made by atmos construction device.

Toxin is so hard to plate

[TrickyWolfer]

Maybe made some already on map pipes unbreakable, but just not the one made by atmos construction device.

Toxin is so hard to plate

Hey! I like that idea  
It would still screw toxins because they usually use a custom loop to make specialized canbombs. Personal opinion as engineer though? I like it!

QUICK EDIT TO AVOID DOUBLEPOST:
Holy shit, we need a pipe fix FAST. I played a round with the manifold change and I died from a bloody chamber burn, because manifolds can now rupture + poor visual cue. It went from 2 segments to downright 5 at a time, which is really unfair

[Cringe]

something i ideasguyed a while back was to give nitrogen some purpose by hardening pipes without limit based on moles/temperature, but with some other effect to balance it. no specifics, but it might be a neat path to follow.

[TrickyWolfer]

something i ideasguyed a while back was to give nitrogen some purpose by hardening pipes without limit based on moles/temperature, but with some other effect to balance it. no specifics, but it might be a neat path to follow.

I think it would be funny that instead of using Nitrogen from science, to harden the pipe you must use Atmospherics Nitrogen. Most of custom pipes and high burns needs to vent the room to be safe and whatnot. However, that means that the room cannot retain gas, and thus administering Nitrogen would be a challenge by itself.

Would still need HGC since the devs love them so much, plus couple of dense mats. But, it would need a certain percentage of N2 in the air (normal atmos has around 72%), say, at least 80-90%, then the N2 can react with the pipes to multiply the pressure limit. I say multiply so it could scale with the quality of the pipes exponentially, so it drives engineers to go high or go home

[Lord_earthfire]

Personally, i would rather have a gas that has a heat capacity that surpasses plasma. Such a gas would have more heat energy at the same pressure. That means you don't need pressure to go ad infinity and instead can just have a higher amount of this high capacity gas instead.

Maybe i can whip up a concept past the feature freeze.

[TrickyWolfer]

Personally, i would rather have a gas that has a heat capacity that surpasses plasma. Such a gas would have more heat energy at the same pressure. That means you don't need pressure to go ad infinity and instead can just have a higher amount of this high capacity gas instead.

Maybe i can whip up a concept past the feature freeze.

That would be OxyB; Heat capacity's at 300, surpassing plasma's 150 by double.
However, OxyB is notoriously hard to get + really RNG based, so it's unreliable + engineers can't do anything since they have to wait for science/mining and as a personal taste, I'd rather have a reliable way to generate energy rather than a 1 in a hundred round to get enough amount of OxyB.

This is what also plagued modern hellburn and why it's not popular, it's just... too hard. 45 minutes idling around, and then need to purge the entire system, rebuild it, and that is if you're lucky in TEG maps where there are willing engineers that wants to babysit an already uber-deadly engine ever since more pipes can burst. I do still like the idea of a gas having a really slow pressure buildup but good heat retention, as well as more matsci that involves TEG semiconductor, but this last part is unrelated to the thread.

(p.s. Big fan of your wall PR)

[Lord_earthfire]

Im aware of oxy b, but i was thinking about a gas that does not react, a kind of carrier-medium. And also obe that is produceable in toxins.

And there is low rng involved. As a miner i always end up with heaps of molitz b. Also, people are sleeping hard on molitz b geodes.

Maybe something that decomposes at over 10k K? So instead of pumping it in the hot loop, you use it to massively amplify the cold loops efficiency. As a bonus it would be useable in the nuclear reactor nerding. The numbers are pulled out of my ass, but i feel there is kind of potential in the idea. People always want to do more with the cold loop.

[TrickyWolfer]

Im aware of oxy b, but i was thinking about a gas that does not react, a kind of carrier-medium. And also obe that is produceable in toxins.

And there is low rng involved. As a miner i always end up with heaps of molitz b. Also, people are sleeping hard on molitz b geodes.

Maybe something that decomposes at over 10k K? So instead of pumping it in the hot loop, you use it to massively amplify the cold loops efficiency. As a bonus it would be useable in the nuclear reactor nerding. The numbers are pulled out of my ass, but i feel there is kind of potential in the idea. People always want to do more with the cold loop.

I'll try not to sleep on OxyB geodes.
Second, cold loop is shrimple as it is; Just needs enough heat exchangers and a gas with good heat cap to function since cold loops core function was just to dump hot loop's heat. OxyB is my favourite gas to pump into cold loop when i'm lucky.

I think adding gas that falters above a certain temp sounds pretty beneficial, however it wouldn't caught on as low as chamberburns since chamber can easily reach around 30000 K and 10k K is definitely a low standard

[Chomusuke]

Quick TLDR I suppose: I fully disagree with the change that made manifolds destructible. I rant a little and dare to suggest an alternative at the end.
I want to start this post off by saying I started to really play the game in toxins and spend a lot of time in there.

To me a lot of the fun in atmos comes from two thing:
Nerding the atmos system and making the temperature go way up,
The big fuck off bombs that are possible as a result.

Especially the "number go up" and trying to improve your setup and ratios is something I enjoy.

Before constructible atmos the main takeaway I always had to give when someone asked about advanced stuff in toxins was: "Toxins sucks for it. Go do it in the TEG"
Toxins starts off way inferior to the TEG and my high temp burn setups used to consist out of modifying a burn chamber to extract oxygen agent b and pump it into a portable gas pump or an atmos scrubber.
That is because
a) toxins fundamentally lacked any way to work with larger amounts of gas and make accurate mixes.
b) most portable atmos devices are indestructible

Now we got constructible atmos.
After a long time I went back into toxins trying to re-imagine how I made canbombs.
I moved away from ghetto setups that turn out more or less random and cant be adjusted once they reach 15MPa.
It is finally possible to make meaningful setups, to actually engage with atmos and experiment.
Fine tuning ratios and trying out new gasses (I would have never hooked up a can of CO2 to my burn before but alas here we are)
Although most shifts youll do at most one burn its also entirely possible to start from scratch, which used to be a huge pain before.

So what was it constructible atmos made possible?
It allows to actually experiment without the pain of working in a portable gas pump.
Constructible atmos made toxins viable. Not broken but finally usable. A place to actually go into to experiment rather then just spend 5 minutes to make 5 TTVs and bomb who knows what.

Important to note tho. Even constructible atmos has its limits.
Issues youll run into are:
1. Backflow and cooling,
If you try to vent gas its very much possible to just reduce your burn from e+11 temps to e+6 within less then a minute.
2. Too high of a pressure build up,
In the late stage of my burns I had to add several gas vents on maximum output and sometimes not even breaking even with the pressure increase (dumping this much also accelerated the previous point)
3. Pumps just stop working in high temperature environments,
This might be due to rounding or something but all pumps are flat out not usable. The gas is just stuck in the pipes.
So at best I could hook it up to yet another indestructible atmos device and release deep blue gas.

Atmos has no doubt received many nerfs but with this one I especially wonder what the reason was.
A very good setup for the TEG allowed for:
power,
instagib hotwires,
instagib PTLs,
money through the PTL,

A mediocre setup TEG setup you can just wing allows for:
power,
instagib hotwires,
instagib PTLs,
less money through the PTL,

Nothing about rupturing manifolds changes what the TEG is capable of.
The only thing I see this change doing is prevent people from reaching absurd numbers.
Numbers that ultimately do not hurt people as the TEGs influence outside of the engine room is more or less maxxed out at 10MW.
The worst thing that could happen would be the station getting cooked again in which case... imo thats on the engineers to prevent same as you wouldnt dump 10 erebite rods into the nuclear engine without making REALLY SURE you can protect the station from the rads and have a way to stop the reaction.

What hurts me about this change is primarily that it took away something fun to work with since the non rupturing is what enabled all nerdery to follow.
From using heat exchange pipes in custom setups to making PDA apps that control the amount of plasma in my setup.
We come back to a point where there is only one way to make a burn and that is in the TEG using nothing but plasma and some oxygen, setting the exhaust pumps at specific temp to specific pressures
(small side tangent) it feels as tho any options for atmos that result in options and possible experimentation would be denied even if they ultimately do nothing but give nerds something to keep working with.

As a treat and since this thread includes uses for the pipe behavior, this is what my nerdery looked like 

As for an alternative (with admittedly does not have not as much thought behind it):
Id much rather see the TEG require a minimum volume on attached pipe networks to work properly and drastically lower the volume of manifolds or impose a penalty on interconnected manifolds.
Might even increase the cost on canister ports and make the pressure tanks rupture so closing off the indestructible setup comes at a higher cost.
That way default setups work for default engineering setups without issues, players that want to build expansive indestructible TEG setups will need to go through several more full HPD charges and toxins remains viable.

[TrickyWolfer]

Quick TLDR I suppose: I fully disagree with the change that made manifolds destructible. I rant a little and dare to suggest an alternative at the end.
I want to start this post off by saying I started to really play the game in toxins and spend a lot of time in there.

As for an alternative (with admittedly does not have not as much thought behind it):
Id much rather see the TEG require a minimum volume on attached pipe networks to work properly and drastically lower the volume of manifolds or impose a penalty on interconnected manifolds.
Might even increase the cost on canister ports and make the pressure tanks rupture so closing off the indestructible setup comes at a higher cost.
That way default setups work for default engineering setups without issues, players that want to build expansive indestructible TEG setups will need to go through several more full HPD charges and toxins remains viable.

Welcome to the thread, Chomusuke, and we're glad to have you here!
It's interesting to see this from toxin's perspective considering that this PR was merged for the sole reason of TEG making big numbers is bad.

I agree with all the points that you laid out; The newest PR hurts players for their ingenuity, among other things. From a TEG engineer's perspective, this does change """nothing""" because eventually engineers will seek even more bullshit ways to get big TEG number reliably; This manifold stuff hurts wings that works within an already really confined place AND less resource to work with i.e. Toxins. There were couple of PRs already laid out, but it was mostly TEG focused and doesn't target one of the more hard-hitted area of "pipeburning" (can bomb manufacturing). Hence this thread was made as a catch-all because I do feel really bad for toxins catching strays for ultimately what devs implemented due to only 2 individuals (that I know of, there could be more but months playing I have never seen the others) that managed to get reliable Yotta+ in modern day Goon (which, in hindsight, sounds short-sighted and vindicative).

=============== RANT STARTS HERE ==============

Tangentially related, though it has been echoed multiple times in this thread is that people are severely underestimating the research needed to even reach this point. Your screenshot is one of the solid proof of things that "look" simple, but I'm fully aware that from the constant back-and-forth and code-diving you did in the server proves otherwise. I absolutely do not see any net positive of this specific PR aside from making engineer-researcher life's a living hell due to more pipes bursting + poor cues, so I try to look for other's opinion about the fate of the pipes. I know for sure even the developer team is really ill-informed about the hardships of atmos research and the ones that stepped in for the fix were the ones that actually dabbled with modern atmos. You wouldn't really call "rings of manifold" as a sole reason for nerf if you're aware TEG research notes looked like this (and this is still WIP):



Funny enough, they only start to do something about atmos pipes whenever Pipeburn reaches its golden era. The first one was back in 2021, and that was quickly curbed by scaling leak PR which made a lot of TEG nerds quit. The true fix for that only got added 3 years later when HPD was added. Cut to 2025, second pipeburn era was incited again because I got a itch to scratch, and guess what added. Repetitiveness wouldn't be a good reason; That reason would have been applied to any other engine (except maybe geothermal). Back then TEG was even more braindead because people just chuck a mix and let the leak do its job for you controlling molarity. PTL dangerous? Those are the engineer's responsibility and we as one are willing to be yelled due to incompetency of keeping the station safe. It is part of SS13's occupational hazard, emphasis on crew incompetency. Loop looks safe and boring because we spent at least 3-4 months researching the optimal loop so that it doesn't maim the station, not because it's mad busted.

=============== RANT ENDS HERE ==============

I'm willing to take more expensive unbreakable pipes if we want to trade-off resource for big buck. Hooks? Expensive. Penalty? Sure why not.
Anything except the total removal of QoL in constructible atmos and more emphasis of rewarding ingenuity of players rather than rolling RNG waiting for mining and science to do its job. Remember, PTL's benchmark was lowered because nobody can even reach the numbers anymore; Back then there were a lot more people who could reach that even with SINGULARITY.