Goonhub
02-12-2021, 10:27 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-12-2021, 10:27 AM by FallenScion. Edited 1 time in total.)
(Para 4-5 and para 10 [ones with triple asterisks] are relevant to only this PR, and added a TLDR at end)
Howdy, finally got around to posting on the forum. Okie, so my thought process is more to talk generally about the engine and the recent changes, instead of specifically the changes to molitz/gas burn temps, so I might need to move this reply else where just let me know if I do. I play on goon main, and I am mostly a conwoker/engineer, so I will be speaking from that perspective. This will contain my personal experiences of having worked with the changes, so what you see/hear/interpret may vary.
More framing for my response, part of what got me into goon/SS13 was seeing Tex's vids on hellburns. I like seeing systems get exploited like that and pushed to their seeming limits. Yes, it is super overpowered and destructive to the station as I've learned, but its... its fun to make engine go BRRRRRRRR.
Given that I appreciate that Molitz B has the intended function of allowing this to occur again. I think leaving this in at all is a good move, given the amount of fun people have had doing hellburns and the spectacle they cause.
***Molitz B does require aid from mining though, and mining tends not to want to provide Molitz unless they are feeling just super cooperative that day. They do not get rewarded in anyway for providing this to engineering as far as I see? I guess they can make money from engineering buying it from them, but they make money from selling it to anyone/the QM. If engineering could reward them better in turn (maybe routing power to the mining magnet or something) or if mining got a reward for providing Molitz B to engineering/toxins, then maybe that would help here? I don't know just it's kinda rough getting it from them unless they are just very nice or the CE hounds them about it. Think adding it to the RD's case is a great move, as it adds more routes for acquisition for everyone, though will need to see in practice what effects it has.
***Ok thats acquisition now for what I'm more opinionated about. Use. I don't know if anyone has figured out how Molitz B functions well enough to actually get a hellburn running utilizing it. I would be SUPER interested to see if anyone has actually gotten like even GWs out of a Molitz B hellburn and how they did it. My attempts have been done as follows. Acquire Molitz B, cube the Molitz B in reclaimer (have also attempted this raw though much less), spread Molitz B and Molitz cubes in burn chamber (have tried spreading them out individually, leaving them in a pile, and keeping some back to throw in later), fill chamber with Plasma and O2 mix as per standard mix ratio usually running it a touch plasma heavy, light, watch as it heats to the point the molitz performs color change, panic as chamber gets dumped full of O2 and try desperately to increase the plasma feed rate by adjusting the feed pump at the computer (I've set it to like 300 kPA and cut off the O2 can), panic again as the heat from the chamber makes the molitz B outside hit reaction temps and chuck it in to the chamber if I left any outside, check the mix to see presence of small percentage of Agent B, reenable the O2 feed as the mix in the chamber evens out, watch as the flames continue at 10K degrees C and don't increase. Now this was pre-80k degree cap change. I have been using pipeburns, since the change as it is a lot more fun and effective. I also tried the same process as above, but vented, this was not very effective either. If someone has got Molitz B to let us return to hellburning as it was I would love to know, as I have been unable to do so. Maybe with more availability we will be able to test setups more.
With using pipeburns more however I have noticed some things about the circulator changes that I hadn't previously.
(I'm more ranting about how the engine works below)
The pressure moving through the Hot loop circ appears to be the main way power output is determined. By activating the hot loop circ you control how much pressure it consumes from the inlet side in a game tick. There appears to be a direct correlation to how much is consumed to how much power is produced, this also appears to disregard the temperature of the loops (except that hot gas expands and thus more pressure, Ideal gas law and all that). If you wanted you could force the circulator to consume all the pressure in the inlet for a large power spike, but this kills the pressure going forwards. This means that for max consistent power you want to match the rate of pressure increase you're seeing at your inlet with the amount of pressure the hot loop circ is set to. With circulators powered off it seems like the circs make their own determination of what rate to consume this pressure.
(rant over)
While I like the amount of control adjusting circs gives, it means that I am attached at the hip to the engine constantly adjust it as the rate of pressure gain increases.
If you leave the circs on their default setting, you have to adjust the pressure in the outlet pipe (or so it seems to me) to ensure the outlet pressure is not higher than the inlet (as otherwise power either isn't generated or not generated well). Not all of the maps are well geared for venting pressure from the outlet of the hot loop as a number have vents on the inlet side of the hot loop instead. Once again this requires constant finicking.
***Back to this PR, raising the cap is good, as charburns were way out preforming plasma and O2 burns (which is super unthematic if what is effectively coal out preforms the substance that the entire station was built around researching, and also imho was super demoralizing to see my hot loop inlet sometimes be colder after the burn chamber than when it went in).
I'm going to speak to what I have heard the purposes of these changes have been.
More engaging engine gameplay:
At first I thought that the new changes were bad in this area. The more I play with pipeburns the more I like the hotspot changes, as pipeburns do feel far more rewarding for technical expertise in engines than hellburns do. I love changing the circ settings or letting out outlet pressure and watching the engineers around me go from "HEY WHY ENGINE NO WORK" to "HOW YOU MAKE ENGINE GO BRRRR?????!!!???". This being said, the only rewarding thing about making the engine go BRR is making the engine go BRR at the moment. The effort in fighting for the few extra MW you can squeeze out goes unrewarded at the moment. Anything over the SMES draw is for your own gratification. Admittedly, there is a certain breed like me for whom that's enough. I like engine go brrr. I can imagine it turns a lot of people away though. I know PTL adjustments are down the line, hopefully those rectify this issue. IF someone can figure out a hellburn with Molitz B, then I can speak to how engaging that is, but as far as I have seen no one has made it work. I don't know how I feel about varient TEGs. Cold varient doesn't make much sense. IMHO we don't have a great way to make a cold engine as far as I can figure out doubly, so since power gen appears to be pressure reliant.
Safe engine gameplay:
HAHA SAFE???? I'm an engineer. If I'm not actively causing the world around me to spontaneously combust, then I have not performed adequately in my job and should be tossed into the engine. Now this being said, the worst hellburn I experienced forced us out into the escape hallway, and moderately annoyed cargo and mechanics. For me it was a blast. I have never seen a hellburn literally melt the floor or the station at large. I can see why that would be annoying, especially if it was low effort to do so. I don't know if this was done consistently or not, so I won't speak to it. From what I understand this was more an issue for RP servers. There has been some mentions I've seen of not wanting engineers to have to vent atmos to run the engine. I still do this with pipeburns to prevent flooding us with plasma and bursting cans. Venting atmos is just gonna be a reality if you want engines to go brrr at all, unless you make it so pipes can't burst or transfer heat externally. It's the most efficient way for an engineer to fix that issue, unless you like give us a button to vent atmos from engineering. Even then at high enough temps the cans will still probably burst. If you want engineers to not light fires, then imho engineering will be very boring and make no power.
This is all that comes to my brain for now. MeThink.exe has crashed.
TLDR.
Temp cap raise probably good since coal > plasma seems weird, and more molitz b = more opportunities to try to get molitz b to work (which I haven't).
Howdy, finally got around to posting on the forum. Okie, so my thought process is more to talk generally about the engine and the recent changes, instead of specifically the changes to molitz/gas burn temps, so I might need to move this reply else where just let me know if I do. I play on goon main, and I am mostly a conwoker/engineer, so I will be speaking from that perspective. This will contain my personal experiences of having worked with the changes, so what you see/hear/interpret may vary.
More framing for my response, part of what got me into goon/SS13 was seeing Tex's vids on hellburns. I like seeing systems get exploited like that and pushed to their seeming limits. Yes, it is super overpowered and destructive to the station as I've learned, but its... its fun to make engine go BRRRRRRRR.
Given that I appreciate that Molitz B has the intended function of allowing this to occur again. I think leaving this in at all is a good move, given the amount of fun people have had doing hellburns and the spectacle they cause.
***Molitz B does require aid from mining though, and mining tends not to want to provide Molitz unless they are feeling just super cooperative that day. They do not get rewarded in anyway for providing this to engineering as far as I see? I guess they can make money from engineering buying it from them, but they make money from selling it to anyone/the QM. If engineering could reward them better in turn (maybe routing power to the mining magnet or something) or if mining got a reward for providing Molitz B to engineering/toxins, then maybe that would help here? I don't know just it's kinda rough getting it from them unless they are just very nice or the CE hounds them about it. Think adding it to the RD's case is a great move, as it adds more routes for acquisition for everyone, though will need to see in practice what effects it has.
***Ok thats acquisition now for what I'm more opinionated about. Use. I don't know if anyone has figured out how Molitz B functions well enough to actually get a hellburn running utilizing it. I would be SUPER interested to see if anyone has actually gotten like even GWs out of a Molitz B hellburn and how they did it. My attempts have been done as follows. Acquire Molitz B, cube the Molitz B in reclaimer (have also attempted this raw though much less), spread Molitz B and Molitz cubes in burn chamber (have tried spreading them out individually, leaving them in a pile, and keeping some back to throw in later), fill chamber with Plasma and O2 mix as per standard mix ratio usually running it a touch plasma heavy, light, watch as it heats to the point the molitz performs color change, panic as chamber gets dumped full of O2 and try desperately to increase the plasma feed rate by adjusting the feed pump at the computer (I've set it to like 300 kPA and cut off the O2 can), panic again as the heat from the chamber makes the molitz B outside hit reaction temps and chuck it in to the chamber if I left any outside, check the mix to see presence of small percentage of Agent B, reenable the O2 feed as the mix in the chamber evens out, watch as the flames continue at 10K degrees C and don't increase. Now this was pre-80k degree cap change. I have been using pipeburns, since the change as it is a lot more fun and effective. I also tried the same process as above, but vented, this was not very effective either. If someone has got Molitz B to let us return to hellburning as it was I would love to know, as I have been unable to do so. Maybe with more availability we will be able to test setups more.
With using pipeburns more however I have noticed some things about the circulator changes that I hadn't previously.
(I'm more ranting about how the engine works below)
The pressure moving through the Hot loop circ appears to be the main way power output is determined. By activating the hot loop circ you control how much pressure it consumes from the inlet side in a game tick. There appears to be a direct correlation to how much is consumed to how much power is produced, this also appears to disregard the temperature of the loops (except that hot gas expands and thus more pressure, Ideal gas law and all that). If you wanted you could force the circulator to consume all the pressure in the inlet for a large power spike, but this kills the pressure going forwards. This means that for max consistent power you want to match the rate of pressure increase you're seeing at your inlet with the amount of pressure the hot loop circ is set to. With circulators powered off it seems like the circs make their own determination of what rate to consume this pressure.
(rant over)
While I like the amount of control adjusting circs gives, it means that I am attached at the hip to the engine constantly adjust it as the rate of pressure gain increases.
If you leave the circs on their default setting, you have to adjust the pressure in the outlet pipe (or so it seems to me) to ensure the outlet pressure is not higher than the inlet (as otherwise power either isn't generated or not generated well). Not all of the maps are well geared for venting pressure from the outlet of the hot loop as a number have vents on the inlet side of the hot loop instead. Once again this requires constant finicking.
***Back to this PR, raising the cap is good, as charburns were way out preforming plasma and O2 burns (which is super unthematic if what is effectively coal out preforms the substance that the entire station was built around researching, and also imho was super demoralizing to see my hot loop inlet sometimes be colder after the burn chamber than when it went in).
I'm going to speak to what I have heard the purposes of these changes have been.
More engaging engine gameplay:
At first I thought that the new changes were bad in this area. The more I play with pipeburns the more I like the hotspot changes, as pipeburns do feel far more rewarding for technical expertise in engines than hellburns do. I love changing the circ settings or letting out outlet pressure and watching the engineers around me go from "HEY WHY ENGINE NO WORK" to "HOW YOU MAKE ENGINE GO BRRRR?????!!!???". This being said, the only rewarding thing about making the engine go BRR is making the engine go BRR at the moment. The effort in fighting for the few extra MW you can squeeze out goes unrewarded at the moment. Anything over the SMES draw is for your own gratification. Admittedly, there is a certain breed like me for whom that's enough. I like engine go brrr. I can imagine it turns a lot of people away though. I know PTL adjustments are down the line, hopefully those rectify this issue. IF someone can figure out a hellburn with Molitz B, then I can speak to how engaging that is, but as far as I have seen no one has made it work. I don't know how I feel about varient TEGs. Cold varient doesn't make much sense. IMHO we don't have a great way to make a cold engine as far as I can figure out doubly, so since power gen appears to be pressure reliant.
Safe engine gameplay:
HAHA SAFE???? I'm an engineer. If I'm not actively causing the world around me to spontaneously combust, then I have not performed adequately in my job and should be tossed into the engine. Now this being said, the worst hellburn I experienced forced us out into the escape hallway, and moderately annoyed cargo and mechanics. For me it was a blast. I have never seen a hellburn literally melt the floor or the station at large. I can see why that would be annoying, especially if it was low effort to do so. I don't know if this was done consistently or not, so I won't speak to it. From what I understand this was more an issue for RP servers. There has been some mentions I've seen of not wanting engineers to have to vent atmos to run the engine. I still do this with pipeburns to prevent flooding us with plasma and bursting cans. Venting atmos is just gonna be a reality if you want engines to go brrr at all, unless you make it so pipes can't burst or transfer heat externally. It's the most efficient way for an engineer to fix that issue, unless you like give us a button to vent atmos from engineering. Even then at high enough temps the cans will still probably burst. If you want engineers to not light fires, then imho engineering will be very boring and make no power.
This is all that comes to my brain for now. MeThink.exe has crashed.
TLDR.
Temp cap raise probably good since coal > plasma seems weird, and more molitz b = more opportunities to try to get molitz b to work (which I haven't).