[MERGED PR] Scaling pipe leakage

[Jazzy Blues]

A small idea... but maybe also Potato mutation that can give power due to potency.
POTATO POWERED STATION GO!

Potato power cells are already a thing. Just plug wires into a potato for a large cell or a peeled potato for small ones. Potato cells have a very small capacity that scale of potency, but can't outclass regular power cells.
The real strenght of potatoes is that they are self charging like cells made of radioactive mats. And the recharge rate scale decently of endurance. So potato power already exist. You can replace every APC cell with a potato that will never run out of power as they recharge faster than what most department can drain.

But this has nothing to do with the TEG, so moving on.


I don't have much to contribute to the discussion, as I'm not really a big engineering main. On one hand I understand that pipeburns are a fun thing to do for experienced engineers from a gameplay perspective. But on the other hand from a simulation point of view, the idea of broken pipes usualy exposed to space still increasing in pressure toward infinity seemed a bit silly to me.
So now, engies wanting to pipeburns have to run around fixing pipes. Wich depending on wich map you are on can be a pain. This make more sense from a simulation pov, but add tediousness to the gameplay side.

Also bothering me is the very much unused burn chamber, and TEG electroplating mechanic. The burn chamber simply can't produce anything close to a pipeburn, and the plating bonus are really insignificant compared the the exponential increase in pipe burns.

Reinforcing/Plating pipes look like a sensible idea. But there could also be a type of TEG plating that could help with making pipeburns less bursty, as well certain circulators lubricants. Idealy using some neglected materials or chemicals that are not particularly hard to make or find, but just don't have much use right now.
I'm thinking weird stuff like viscerite alloy plating so the TEG become elastic and porous, taking some of the pipe stress upon itself. And why not dumping THC in the hot loop circulator to help it chill under all that pressure. Stuff like that.

I still have no idea what to make of the burn chamber, but maybe someone smarter than me could figure out a way to make it help pipeburns too ? Like creating an intentional pipe burst inside of it and recylcing the leaked gas somehow ?

The chamber does have a use in fact even in pipeburns that not too many actually make use of.

While it's "intended purpose" may be to heat up the gas in the pipes it works just as well the other way around, anything inside of the chamber during a pipeburn can be heated to extreme levels. This is absolutely necessary when making canister bombs the engineering way as the pipeburn gas is unusable for that intent. And there are definitely uses beyond that when you want to heat up anything of your choice to temperatures you can't reach anywhere else. It's pretty much just a question of creativity. This was basically ruined by this PR though which again, upsets me a lot.

"The Engineer Way"? I was under the impression that Pipeburns were the only method of getting can bombs, are you telling me there's another way?

There are yes but I highly doubt it's possible to achieve the largest explosions using any other method.
In any case that is off topic, I am starting to wonder if anything is going to be done about this merge though. It is quite clear that the majority of affected players are unhappy with this change and it's been about a week or so since the merge. I don't know if there are players who are genuinely happy with it but choose to not express it, but even so I highly doubt that.
If a dev, admin, or someone else who does the merging/unmerging is here this message is directed towards you, I don't really know how you work but if it would be possible to consider unmerging this if everyone is okay with it I know many players would appreciate it a lot!