[MERGED PR] Scaling pipe leakage

[TrickyWolfer]

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 ?

IIRC Chambers are used for low hellburns and molitz B input since the atmospherics update, if not siphon and make hot plasma gasses for canister bombs. One really main reason why I rarely plate the TEG is because the scarcity of ores that have high conductivity significant enough (so far Electrum is the most popular choice, which needs gold = rare to find). Plating actually really helps, albeit the benefits are flat, not exponential. Say without plated, the engine could surge only around 10 MW, but plated with electrum it could surge 15-20 MW. On a bigger scale it could really determine from normally EW to hitting YW.

There's a method of pipeburn using the chambers, but I haven't tested that out. But that's a topic for another day. High PTL-worthy outputs right now really relies on RNG (gotta get Electrum, map rotation, and see if there are willing borgs to help) and competency (No comment on this)

In my opinion, this update really eliminates a lot of maps to do pipeburn, thus making the feat really rare and hard. I would say either we un-merge this or find a way to instead compliment other mechanics, something that could make pipeburns more consistent and not relying on RNG that much, OR find another way so that high-power outputs are reproducible.