Atmospheric Pipe Changes Megathread

[tamakona]

Okay, I could be incredibly misinformed about this as im not a TEG wizard so bear with me here.

From what I saw of a little bit of what people were doing with indestructible piping on TEGs felt, i guess just absurd. Like I distinctly recall one round, the temperature and pressure of the pipeburn had reached literal infinity and the TEG was producing more energy than most stars. I may be misinformed on that and am free to be corrected but there is really no reason that should be a thing you can do.

I feel like just saying its just because of making "high power" is a bit misleading given how absurdly high the power was getting on some of these rounds (again feel free to correct me on this but i am mostly sure that the whole reaching RW craze was caused by the indestructible piping)

but again, i could be fully misinformed on this so take it with a grain of salt

I mean, that's pretty much what people were doing. And exactly what the pipe-bursting mechanic tries to prevent. It was working fairly well with atmos pipes being non-constructable. Once the HPD was introduced, people abused manifold to create more or less what you describe. It's not quite infinte, but it was so high that it might as well have been.

I'll be honest the only times I ever see pipes explode is:
A) I was lazy and missed a pipe to reinforce with steel before standard burn chamber
B) Someone loaded a second plasma can into the hot loop before stronger reinforcements than steel

Perhaps to make it easier the HPD could accept a stack of sheets and reinforce placed pipes with the inserted sheets.

This thread talks about the very much high end of pipeburns. The kind that go even beyond what's needed for canbombs. So about changes that will mostly affect the pipeburn-nerds the most and noone else.

Yo, been busy so sorry I'm late to the conversation. There's been a lot said, so I'm sorry if I'm not able to cover all of them, however I will try to get my points across as best as I can. 

Ultimately, this entire discussion and thread was sparked by a change made to prevent pipe constructing for a specific technique of running the TeG from being "trivial". I've heard other reasons cited but as best as I can research this is the reason that Leah said themself for this change.

I'm gonna touch on this briefly, but I personally I don't think that the manifold loop is as trivial as most people think it seems. There are a couple of details about how the pipe systems work that make it finnicky. To me, invincible pipes are more quality of life than anything; just like most players I am highly averse to welder Sisyphus. Figuring out the details of how the system works, solving the puzzle, and seeing the funny number go up to the classic absurdist levels we all know and love in this game, in my opinion, is the fun. Having to weld pipes does not change that, it just makes the process less fun for no added benefit. Whenever I mention this people are quick to point to the reinforcement system and how it can be expanded, but I will explain later why I do not like the current iteration of this system very much.

Of course, all of that is just my subjective personal opinion, and overall many people seem to be in support of manifolds leaking. And I actually kind of am too, my issue is that by itself it's objectively not a very good idea given the context of the current state of the game. Like you mentioned yourself, it's a very targeted change that only aims to go tell some people "hey, stop doing this!". If the goal was to make pipeline system design more fun by making them more involved, then the leak change should have been part of a bigger set of changes overhauling the system to accommodate that. Your assumptions about pipeburns in the first place are somewhat misinformed; yes they scale really well, but they do not scale infinitely. There is a hard cap (as opposed to singulo which in theory could actually grow forever), and if your goal is to make as much energy as possible instead of reaching a high power output number to be funny, you'd actually slow your growth down on purpose. But if you slowed it too much or with the incorrect method, your engine could actually die from the blowers overdrawing APCs. Second, you are limited by your supply of fuel mix and oxygen. If these run out, no more burn. Granted, the pipeburn is so efficient that in the current setup it's unlikely to run out in a shift. But it's a resource cost that in fact exists and could be adjusted if needed for balance. These are some of the other things that could have been done if pipeburns making too high power too easily was an issue. 

The leakage change:
1. Does not make setups more complex or engaging than they are. In fact, you'd probably run the same setups as before, just with the added super annoyingness of welder Sisyphus.
2. It makes engineering rounds less diverse as you are locked into pipewelding should you choose to pipeburn, or simply not pipeburn. It removes variety and options, full stop. Pipewelding also reduces the amount of time you have for other activities such as station repair or whatever antag gimmick you wanna do or upgrading the engine with mechcomp, automatic PTL and gas inputs and whatnot.

Just to reiterate, I'm completely on board with manifolds leaking. But I think the overall system needs an overhaul and just releasing the one change like this doesnt add anything to the game.

[align=center]The Reinforcement System and Why I Don't Like It.
[align=left]There's a few things to tackle here. First, mechanically, how it works is that you hold sheets, then click on the pipes to weld them on. Hegh?!??!? That's just pipewelding with extra steps! It's the exact same fucken thing, although arguably you at least only have to do it once, but it's the same thing! If people don't like pipewelding how do you expect them to like reinforcement either?

Okay, this first point is a little overexaggerated. I think the welding mechanics overall aren't very fun, which isn't to say I hate it overall, I just think there's a correct way to do it, for example in the good game Barotrauma very good game game that is good the good barotrauma game good BAROTRAUMA GOOD, I really enjoy the welding mechanics. But pipewelding is more of a punishment for incorrect pressure management or pushing the limits of an engine too hard, so I'm not too tripped up about that.

What I really don't like, however, is the sheer reliance on mining and chemistry that the current system has. I think it's too much, and too little, at the same time (and this plays into my earlier point about how big system changes like this should be part of a bigger set of changes instead of one single pretty horrible change on it's own). First of all, while I understand that the objective is to push cooperation between departments, in practice it doesn't go that way. Mining gameplay is very much opening lootboxes, and you were always gonna be able to buy the ores from the fabs anyway. Placing a request with mining does not magically increase the bohrum spawn rate. And don't tell me about the quantum telescope, it picks rocks from a set list; it's also random and you have to go through 10 other red herring locations before you can start scanning at full speed. So what ends up actually happening is that the reliance on mining does not enhance inter-departmental cooperation, you are just loitering around in front of the fab-store waiting for someone else to open the lootbox for you. That's assuming the miner is punching rocks the whole shift, most of the time they've gone MIA at 20 minutes to go make spears. I can't even blame them for that, they get a whole ass forge, they gonna use the whole ass forge, and punching rocks get boring if you're not getting the tool upgrades for it. There's too little incentive for collaboration on the miner's part, and while I have seen some ideas on how this can be fixed, once again they should have been implemented at the same time as the other changes like the leaks.

In the middle of writing this post, I played a round where at about 70 minutes into the shift, chemistry still hadn't delivered the Chief Engineer the GHC they were asking for. I then went up to their counter, asked for methamphetamine, and got 400 units in less than a minute. And no, they didn't already have it, I saw the guy walk to the chem dispenser and make that shit. GHC is probably even worse than begging mining for materials.

ive actually gotten tired of writing so im gonna just post this as is, basically my points are
1. leak sucks, doesnt actually help the game if you look carefully
2. reinforcement sucks, should have discussed it deeper, i think it's a symptom of being a bandaid fix to another poorly thought out leak change years ago
3. we need to more thoroughly and collectively discuss highly encompassing changes like this in the future. i think it's kinda too late to rollback all the changes, but i do believe the current system can be reiterated to improve, starting with making mining-engineer collaboration more interactive and rewarding for both sides. (and also maybe another forum post discussing the topic of how much rng is too much)

[TrickyWolfer]

So far, the main problems were:
1. Welder sisyphus - Nobody wants a repetitive gameplay of welding; The current limit for fatigue pressure is still too low due to problem 2. However, there is almost no alternatives that gives true relief (permanent solution) to this problem except for unbreakable pipes

2.  Too reliant on RNG (unreliable) - Too reliant on mining for getting stuff (getting things beyond bohrum is tricky, especially since the miraclium nerf). Relying science is also i assume a bit RNG because you'll have to be in the right place and time to get someone making GHC for you.

3. From problem 2: Lack of Resources. Especially exacerbated in Toxins, Engineers would have to have a LOT of materials to handle the burn, and while this could possibly balance the burn, due to the amount of pipe segment needs to be reinforced, it might be way more expensive compared to the other engines i.e. Nuclear and Singularity (to even reach max power, both engine doesn't seem to need ultra rare materials i.e. starstone to function properly in a high-engineering gameplay and make numbers go big)

In short, the current state of atmos fatigue management is unreliable and possibly time-consuming due to waiting for relying on 2 different wings. TEG is also one of the more expensive engines to start, as it requires engineer's knowledge in multi-department e.g. Matsci, Chemistry, Wiring, Atmos.

The demands from engineering and toxins is to make the solve reliable and hopefully eliminate the welding sisyphus gameplay.

The solves presented so far were as follows, as well as the problems tackled:

1. Unbreakable HPD obtainable by cargo; Make it expensive so that it scales with competency of QM + engineers making early money. This solves:
- Problem 1: Unbreakable means no more welding sisyphus at certain point
- Problem 2: Reliable obtaining method from cargo meant we just need to rely on cargo (no RNG)

Balancing: The knowledge of Engineering and Cargo in rounds, the high price meant that it's nigh impossible to get it at round start. Toxins could benefit at mid-round to start doing bombs.

2. External pipe managers (i.e. MechComp, Nanite gas, Shield system), something that could manage your pipes while you're away.
- Problem 1: Still gives a chance of breaking, however significantly less tedious in repairing due to more system managing it for you
- Problem 2: Variable, but if the way of obtaining is pretty straightforward, then this might be also a very simple work w/o overreliance on RNG (i.e. just need to fab it in MechComp)

Balancing: Knowledge of MechComp by engineers and maybe MatSci, but that would meant there's still Mining reliance, however slightly more tolerated due to the wide variety of options. Toxins would probably suffer due to need of access engineering for MechComp items.

3. Pipe behaviour changes:
a. Make pipes burst from rapid temperature/pressure change: This effectively rewards engineers who plays it safe while also punishing engineers who wants to push the system to the limit. Problem 1 might be eliminated completely if the engineer wants to keep it stable as well as problem 2, however those problems will return once the engineers try to push higher than a certain boundary (or even an unexpected mix failure).

b. Punishing manifold abuse: Punishes engineers who tries to chain unbreakable segments of pipes. This scales with engineer knowledge but also reward people who wants to trade off risk and reward by chaining breakable pipes. Problem 1 ight return regardless, problem 2 might be eliminated

c. Chemically-infused pipes: Gives pipes interesting properties depending on the material/chemical it is plated with. Assuming the engineers played it right, it could eliminate problem 1. However, due to the nature of obtaining chems and materials, it would exacerbate problem 2 (except for toxins who might have a VIP track to chem room)

d. Stackable Reinforcement: It seems to be one of the more popular choice, as the current system we have is very limiting. It scales well with resource and could trade-off RNG based gameplay for "amount of things I could get". It could eliminate the reliance of 1 of the wings if the cards were played properly.

Also can be combined with unlimited pipe hardening idea by Cringe. Toxins might benefit a lot since they could get it from fabs or make their own chems, as well as engineering just needing to stack materials.

4. Atmospheric Changes:
a. A gas with higher heat capacity: Assuming MolitzB is really unreliable due to the nature of RNG-based, a gas with a better way of obtaining it might reduce problem 2. Problem 1 might return (and will return), only delayed. Toxins... would probably suffer as same as engineering.

===============================================
All in all, what I just realize and missed from all these discussion is that compared to other engines, TEG seems to be really high-maintenance when it comes to retaining power.

In singularity, once you could just start the setup and feeder, you're limited with materials to continue feeding it or add more arrays to capture the energy

In Nuclear, you are limited by materials to get more heat output from the reactor. Gas is almost negligible and only suffer in energy after a really long while.

In Geothermal, you chase down a hotspot, stack it, and dig underground. Your limitation is time and access to mining.

All of these methods meant that you can stop at anytime you want and decide to just quit to the bar. TEG however, does not give you such luxury (hence the perceived Welding Sisyphus). A singulo reaching certain size doesn't suffer in output once you ran out of clowns to feed, a nuclear doesn't suffer much as well since you can just leave a nuclear engine at anytime and the power generation only really slowly goes down due to fuel depletion. Geothermal? Just exit the water lol.

TEG? Once you set up the entire thing, suddenly, there's gajillions of leaks you have to tend to. The reaction is also almost instantaneous due to scaling leak quickly purging the pipes. 3 minutes off because sec was asking where the clown went? Too bad, it went from TW down to MW immediately because all of the plasma in the atmos pipes gone to air because of a single leak you didn't attend.

Now the thing is, is there a way to tackle this? It's probably something larger than the scope of this thread, but my money's on getting external pipe managers, stackable pipe reinforcements, and unbreakable HPD so it still gives some breathing room and able to stop anytime.

[Lord_earthfire]

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)

[tamakona]

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)

1. No. Because that just sucks. Outside of performance issues it's just not fun to say "STOP, DO NOT play this any further, the video game is NOT meant to be played like this", especially in such a player driven creative game that I feel like is at its best rewarding ingenuity instead of putting arbitrary roadblocks into it.

Even so, there ARE in fact, three hard caps besides pipe leaks on the TeG already put in place. The first one is just a straight up upper limit, that already exists. The second one is the shift time limit. It takes time to achieve power growth. And it takes more time to use the mechanics made available by high power to affect the round in interesting ways. The third one is cargo yelling at you because they've gone dark at 20 minutes. Any setup you wanna run can't take longer than that to prepare because it negatively affects the other players in a round, who will not like you.

2. 1 is no, and welding sucks more than ever with manifolds making it such that even the default pipelines have way more leaks than before. At the very least make the welding fun like in Barotrauma.

3. 1 is no, but it shouldn't RELY on other departments, it should BENEFIT from cooperation. I've already explained in my previous post why the current way it's done is not very good.

4. yes mining is RNG it's literally lootbox gaming, and it's not even the good kind of lootbox gaming, the engineers are having SOMEONE ELSE open the lootbox for them. That's not fun, nor interactive, nor cooperative, nor challenging. You're twiddling thumbs outside of mining waiting for the thing you need to magically appear. A couple of ways this can be remedied is to give mining engineering access and vice versa, and giving mining benefits as an incentive for helping, such as a faster magnet with more power, or mechcomp devices that help the mining process by allowing to search for particular ores.

also why did you edit this 22 times lol

[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.

[Lord_earthfire]

also why did you edit this 22 times lol

To be honest, it was a bit annoyed suggestion at the beginning, which i overthrew when i thought about on what we disagreeing upon.

Which is question 1. I fully think there should be a cap, and in the first comment was suggesting to make pipes destroy themselves completely upon going far too much over the pressure limit. And if i were to rework the TEG from the ground up, that's what i would implement. So i think we will unlikely reach a common ground, simply because we disagree on the most fundamental point.

Then, it were 2 questions, and upon considering further, i added the other questions. The other edits are spelling or phrasing-related (i edit my comments a lot when i'm on the phone, because im -really- prone to fat-finger on my phone. Or add stuff in paranthesis, such as this very sentence).

[TrickyWolfer]

also why did you edit this 22 times lol

To be honest, it was a bit annoyed suggestion at the beginning, which i overthrew when i thought about on what we disagreeing upon.

Which is question 1. I fully think there should be a cap, and in the first comment was suggesting to make pipes destroy themselves completely upon going far too much over the pressure limit. And if i were to rework the TEG from the ground up, that's what i would implement. So i think we will unlikely reach a common ground, simply because we disagree on the most fundamental point.

Then, it were 2 questions, and upon considering further, i added the other questions. The other edits are spelling or phrasing-related (i edit my comments a lot when i'm on the phone, because im -really- prone to fat-finger on my phone. Or add stuff in paranthesis, such as this very sentence).

I see; I guess at this point we can agree to disagree regarding limitations around TEG since personally i find it a bit silly to impose limit in a sandbox game, but I understand the balancing standpoint. There should be a thread about TEG general atp, since this thread was originally meant to talk about atmos pipes.

Speaking of atmos pipes, I got couple buggy things during testing local i.e. uninsulated pipes doesn;t actually transfer heat. Were there things that changed in atmos except for the optimisation?

[Scaltra]

I am going to be frank, as I am tired of beating around the bush and do not have the time to directly address and respond to the individual points and claims made at separate times.

The manifold system was something that completely bypassed the intended mechanics of how pressure functions in pipes, and in order to maintain balance with all atmospheric-related systems, TEG, Toxins, and Nuclear, it needed to be changed.

The TEG is not some scorned black sheep who has been destroyed by this change, nor does it take significantly more effort to get more performance out of it than other engines comparatively. Arguably, it takes considerably less.

Knowledge and out-of-game research should not be a way we look at how a certain mechanic is balanced, and arguably reflects poorly on our transparency with the system and the bad design of how opaque the learning process about it can be. If you know how to do something and it takes you ten to 20 minutes to set up, an infinitely scalable power production method that uses nothing but the tools and resources you can source all from inside the same place at Roundstart and the barrier is almost exclusively knowing that IMO is just flat out bad design. People would have found out how to exploit this more and better, given time, and regardless of whether it's only two people who figured it out first or not, it still needs to be addressed.

The reactor had its flow rate nerfed because it was too easy to just increase it infinitely and just add more gas. Singularity had repeat feeding nerfed so that feeding it the same thing, like laser tripwires, gave less. When an engine or mechanic overperforms for the effort put in, it gets nerfed/ reworked.

I am all for suggesting changes and ways we can tinker with these things more and be clever and brainstorming new mechanics, but I think lamenting about the change and claiming it wasn't warranted or shouldn't have come before a new thing is just wrong.

On that note, I think cooperation should be the main focus; you shouldn't be able to get to the absolute heights and literal limits of the heat and power system with just one or two people. These sorts of events should be possible, I agree, but it should be because of the cooperative effort of everyone involved. Hell, it doesn't even need to be that across departments either. There are other power production methods you can use to supplement that you can have someone grab and set up super quickly to work with solar and meet required power demands, like a portable gas generator or a power furnace.

With the singularity, you will struggle to get to this terawatt you keep mentioning without scampering around sourcing materials, talking to cargo, etc. It's not just cooling plasma, it's MORE plasma. You just need to cool it to fit more in the tanks. And even fitting a 22k tank of plasma in there that is full is a big jump, but not as much as I feel like you are thinking it is. On top of the fact that it also consumes the plasma, which most people don't actually know about. Even reaching 1 terawatt on a singularity can be a process, and when it does it is almost always because mining has been commished to send half their ore into the damn thing.

The point mainly being to emphasize that the higher end of TEG? It is honestly fine, it may be one of the easiest even still to actually do once people adapt to the new changes. And canister bomb stuff is arguably still in a fine place once new methods are figured out to wall up the pipes, coat them, etc, quickly. And honestly, that is how it should be. The heights of pipe burns should not be so easily achievable that it's the pipe layer and you are done.

I think there are also at least a dozen methods to still bypass a lot of this that people aren't even mentioning, on top of that.

Pipe burns should not be trivial, but I do think the TEG could use some love, and I would like to see more mechanics for cooling down gas than anything in terms of optimizing the TEG. Honestly, the TEG needs more interesting mechanics and things to mess with that don't just wide getting this material thing so you can mess with the stuff you want to. Because, unlike some engines where you can go out and source your own thing, some of the materials are a lot rarer for the TEG or require specialized tools or synthesis to acquire. which can be annoying, but honestly? It does happen with every other engine aside from maybe geothermal, too. Except for geothermal, you need to go to the station and deal with repairs constantly. Unless someone else is handling it all for you, which feels pretty nice when it is the case.

Just mainly trying to say that the TEG is honestly fine, but between it being a thing that scales up instead of being an immediate change, because plasma fires are the main way you normally source your heat. It takes time, so you are incentivized to do things and set things up as fast as possible so it can scale faster. I think it all would feel MUCH better if it were easier to start your "seed" for a pipeburn for the TEG and then transition into actually hooking these things up, so the time pressure and finding resources didn't feel as bad. Because I feel like that is the actual pain point here. Because Singularity scales far worse than a pipeburn TEG, with much more significant in-game effort. However, the singularity can feel much better past the initial setup point. It's done, it's there, you aren't going to rollback and lose power (aside from the plasma being consumed) unless it is lost, and you can focus on purely sourcing things for it from getting more plasma as well as more stuff to feed it, or even expanding its containment (although most people opt for just doing the basic big set up and being done at that and even delaying to add more even if there are ways to add more without delaying)

I think either finding a method to do that or changing the TEG so that the pain point isn't as bad is honestly what the high-end problem is. Since it applies the time constraint and makes everything that follows feel more pressing and annoying that you can't just "set it up and be done" basically.

Although I think cargo should just be able to order more junk in general, honestly. Like GHC or other weird exotic important chems for niche uses and the like. The chef can order produce for when botany decides not to, so why not?

Edit: and to focus on pipe stuff specifically, which is what I was honestly hoping this whole thread would be about instead of bashing the change (passively and not so passively) and then responses to that, I just want to see new cool pipes that we can buy or involve chemicals. That would be cool. Pipes that produce oxygen but need to be cleaned out because of the carbon being removed, or can directly add or remove heat. Honestly, if and when Cringe does build pipes, some sort of network where you can integrate the two, like liquid-cooled gas pipes or feed certain chemicals to do certain things, could be cool and make the whole thing more engaging.

Or telecrystal pipes that are expensive could be cool, that teleport the gas to the other end of another telecrystal pipe network So you could set up something like a pipeburn where you have space to do so and wall the thing off and make it really secure while then transmitting it to the TEG or something else

[TrickyWolfer]

I am going to be frank, as I am tired of beating around the bush and do not have the time to directly address and respond to the individual points and claims made at separate times.

The manifold system was something that completely bypassed the intended mechanics of how pressure functions in pipes, and in order to maintain balance with all atmospheric-related systems, TEG, Toxins, and Nuclear, it needed to be changed.

The TEG is not some scorned black sheep who has been destroyed by this change, nor does it take significantly more effort to get more performance out of it than other engines comparatively. Arguably, it takes considerably less.

I'm sorry for not replying for a while; I've been busy 

The thing about "Creativity" or ingenuity is that it makes use of things that aren't meant to be. PTL forever feeding the singularity is definitely not the intended use, but then (used to) work well. TEG running on energy drinks and potato batteries is also not intended use. Just the matter of "how many corners I can cut", "how can I balance these smartass engineers", and in TEG, just so happen manifolds was the main target. Definitely no beating around bushes here, good discussion, good insights from all sides.

It's also generally "bad design" all around engineer in all engines since we have to rely on a lot of either 
a. Mining (Asteroid RNG moment), so it sometimes felt frustrating to set it up at first
b. Outside information (most notably on TEG due jank atmos)

I don't think another megathread would fix the problem easily :9, so for now, i think focusing one at a time is good after some TEG lengthy discussion.

Back to Atmos pipes; I'm thinking about the "price" to implement the ideas you got. As in, how many coders actually touch the pee pee poo poo atmos. I know for sure Cringe's been dabbling in one but even with a good knowledge of it, SS13 just has a tendency to nuke atmos (air fell into negatives in the recent bug report iirc). One that could be combined with your idea is probably Tamakona's Tokamak pipes; Imagine chemically reinforced pipes + forcefield pipes that actively siphon power. That's engaging, and i'm willing to spend like 40 minutes to set everything up just to make sure it's nigh leakless, it's fun!