Goonhub
06-03-2025, 10:46 AM
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![[Image: M0SYsdK.png]](https://i.imgur.com/M0SYsdK.png)
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.
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.