Atmospheric Pipe Changes Megathread

[TrickyWolfer]

Maybe we should talk about what we expect as prerequisites for what kind of pressures and what kind of power outputs we want the TEG to put out. Because i think right now some people see pipe bursting as a challenge to overcome instead of a "don't do this", causing them to play in a way that is simply not fun for them.

Because i feel our disagreements fundamentally come from 4 questions:

1. Should the TEG be capped? (Currently: Pipe bursting)
2. If 1. is yes, Where is that cap and how hard should it be enforced? (Currently: Not very much, you can weld against it to a very high degree)
3. If 1. is yes, which methods should be accessable to engineering to increase that cap or does it need to rely on other departments to do so? (Currently: GHC, reinforcement, teg plating, rotor fluid exchange)
4. How much of these should be depending on other people/departments? (And no, that's not RNG)

>  Because i think right now some people see pipe bursting as a challenge to overcome instead of a "don't do this"

I might be wildly wrong for this, but isn't that what nerfs are? It is meant to discourage, not to completely remove a mechanic. If a person wants a solid, unnegotiable "Do Not Do This", the easiest and fastest way to solve that is to simply remove the mechanic all together. If high power is the main concern of balancing, I do not think removing TEG completely out of the roster or removing pipeburn would solve that problem. It would probably drive away an already heavily diminished TEG community and definitely instigating riot in toxins for removing a nerdy way to make canbombs.

Pipebursting is a challenge, and a good one until it became too much. TEG making too much power? Scaling Leak. TEG too much power for a second time? Pipe leak update again. I guarantee there will be a third time and perhaps pipe leak became another update until atmos is completely unusable. It's at this point that you'd realize scaling leak was just a symptom to a bigger problem surrounding TEG.

Personally, I like TEG as is before the manifold update. The select cases of "making YW power" is only confined to around 0.1% engineering population who managed unimaginable amount of time to engineer a perfectly safe loop that's also able to get really high power, making it look trivial. My personal prerequisite for TEG follows the perceived "game design" of other engines:

An engine comes in 3 ""modes"": Low, Medium, and "Fuck it we ball"
Low-output engineering is when you do the bare minimum on the engine to make it work and power the station (e.g. Charburn, default singulo, default nuclear). In TEG, it's already around 2-3 Megawatts as the base minimum.

Medium-output engineering is when you give slightly more effort on the engine to give an output higher than low, but ultimately wouldn't eat any extra resource that's already handed by default (i.e. Donut3 larger singularity, TEG's Chamberburn, nuclear with all default fuel rods in + specific gas mixture). Read: More output without relying on other department. In TEG, it's achievable to get around 8 Megawatts before you need to ask other department (mining is the closest) to start reinforcing the pipes.

"Fuck it we ball" (min-maxing the engine/high-level engineering) is the topic that's been going on in this thread: The gameplay of maximizing output and trading it with the reliance of other department, extra knowledge on how things work, basically tackling every single hurdle that was imposed to discourage you breaking the game (i.e. Terawatt multi-singulo, Nuclear turning the entire room green, and in TEG's case, POO/Hellburning/Pipeburning).

Therefore, my prerequisite and expectations in this is:
Low: Easy to set up, minimum set up time (less than 10 minutes), no need to rely on other wings, can be left alone.

Medium: Slightly harder to set up, but ultimately achievable without relying on other wings for resources and within reasonable setup time (without solars turning on). Can also be left alone.

High: Really hard to set up, needs to rely on other department, takes significantly more time to set up (~15 minute is a lowball, the average setup time is 30-35 minutes in TEG pipeburning nowadays, so solars/external power is a MUST to mitigate the initial setup time), and ultimately cannot be left alone unless you are really knowledgeable and ultimately made it really safe.

And to answer your question:
1. No. Capping the TEG defeats all purpose for engineers to go above and beyond. Soft caps/challenges are welcome, however, this must be balanced with other mechanics in the game rather than a flat-out single-targeted bandaid fix. TEG is already a wildly unpopular engine and is perceived to be "really hard" by modern engineering community (I've been asking couple people in game, and they agree that atmos-TEG related stuff is complicated).

The current situation in High-engineering is also already really complex: I've tutored and work with couple people who wants to achieve high burns, molitz B or not. Even after giving them the basics down to the basic mix that I use, they still struggle to break past Giga-Terrawatts. This was when manifold was still leakless, so technically, modern TEG on average can only break that (reasonable) number. The manifold loop that the nerf address is really an edge case of cough some engineers cough that were uber-experienced, and thus sounds unnecessary.

2 and 3: 
The TEG is already capped by multiple things: 
- Power consumption that scales with pressure (TEG will die if you can't make the power generated outpace the pressure buildup, it's harder than it looks because on average, TEG would output a magnitude lower than the total pressure in the system (e.g. making only 1 terawatt when the pressure already hit Petawatt)), 
- the excess Pipe welding problem, 
- You still have to stay back to monitor the mix (in case of hellburn/pipeburn) because it will change after certain ticks/power magnitude and scuff the burn
- and not to mention the sheer knowledge needed to make a proper custom loop due to the ill-informed TEG page. 
- We also got atmos knowledge to take in account (molarity, controlling mix, etc) so it already reach nerd-level gameplay no engineers should probably be subjected to unless they're minaxing the engine.
- Feasability to even make it work within a specific timeframe due to the many things need to be managed (farts, making custom loop, hotwiring APC, spacing the engine, etc) because ultimately engineers need to power the station before cargo starts yelling

These caps haven't take in account working with other department (i.e. MatSci and waiting for mining to get good rock, Science to mix organic lube/voltagen/GHC) so it's already plenty headache. I would say the Status quo of things minus the manifold thing is already adequate.

4. TEG should be as self-sufficient as other engines in a high-level engineering (assuming mechcomp is 1 job): 

Singularity usually just rely on Science to make ultra-cooled plasma (which can even be done alone with the newly added HPD) and definitely mining for building things (2 wings, but 1 can be discounted easily)

Nuclear usually only rely on mining scoring plutonium/neutronium as well as other ores to make rods (1 wing)

Geothermal is waiting for mining for maximizing power output by digging + make more vents (1 wing).

Therefore, I think it's logical for TEG to also simply rely on 1 wing, though by default we are also relying on science for organic superlube/voltagen which is something i'm willing to accept considering the power output of TEG. However, the current problem is the over-reliance on 2 wings (science for GHC + Mining) when other engines usually overrely on 1 wing (mining). Ultimately, when relying on other wings, it shouldn't be something that would take most of their time; Right now, GHC takes a while to make, as well as mining needing to find high density items would also take time. We as engineers want to be helpful, not obstructive to other jobs.