Goonhub
03-11-2013, 09:15 AM
I've been having fun with the new engine, and after many fires I have some critiques...
1. Fire doors. Jesus. I don't think the engine should have so many of them. I know it is easy as snipping the controls, but nobody ever plans for the fire, and once you need them snipped it is usually too late and a royal pain in the ass. Pair this with lag (which often accompanies fires) and it is frusterating trying to extinguish fires. I say put a pair between the main engineering lobby and the engine, but leave anything with engine piping inside fire-door free. I'm not a huge fan of fire doors in general, count how many times you've had to open a fire door, then count how many times there was a real legitimate fire behind it. Also, good luck trying to drag a corpse out or a firebot in. Snipping or not Fire Doors are annoying as shit and not fun.
2. Speaking of Firebots, they suck. Not enough spray, too far in between sprays for it to be useful in anything other than a two-tile fire. I once put a firebot in that chamber north of the engine (where the purge lines turn to the north) where it sat, extinguishing only one tile of fire which re-lit before its next spray. To be fair it was a pretty aggressive O2/Plasma fire
3.The piping of the hotloop in the one tile hallway between the engine and the gas feeds also has an electrical cable on top of it. When you do have a burst pipe you have something like a two pixel sweet spot to repair it in a line that is probably most prone to bursting. Also the cable is red, the pipe is red as well. Makes it hard to see already small holes in pipes it may be covering. Pair this with a welding mask, which leads me to #4....
4. A minor gripe/whine: Fire knocks out the lights, making it dark. The floor tileset is dark grey. Using a welding mask on top of it makes for annoyingly dark conditions. Anymore I don't use welding masks, I just grab the mining space helmets which are superior for this purpose, they don't make everything really dark, they have a built-in light, and you can weld with them without hurting your eyes. The only advantages you get from a welding mask is you can flip it up down and it protects from flashes.
5. Can't purge quick enough. I've had over five burst pipes, with purge running full blast, yet still the pressure and temp were rising. I could of welded it shut again but it would just burst. Was this an intended runaway effect? I had no options but sit on my hands and wait, all I wanted to do was abandon my experiment and go back to a safe and tame setup so the crew wasn't yelling at us. I was told the setup I used was risky, but to punish engineering with an inoperable engine for the remainder of the round for experimenting makes me not want to experiment at all.
6. Engineering could stand to have one extra can of all the gasses. If you're careful it isn't a problem, but it is very possible to make a bad gas mix and screw yourself because you don't have enough gas to re-do the loop again. Maybe put an extra N2 + Co2 cannister in the CE office as a backup in case any bumbling engineers waste the other ones?
7. Lag.
Gripes aside, the new engine is great!
1. Fire doors. Jesus. I don't think the engine should have so many of them. I know it is easy as snipping the controls, but nobody ever plans for the fire, and once you need them snipped it is usually too late and a royal pain in the ass. Pair this with lag (which often accompanies fires) and it is frusterating trying to extinguish fires. I say put a pair between the main engineering lobby and the engine, but leave anything with engine piping inside fire-door free. I'm not a huge fan of fire doors in general, count how many times you've had to open a fire door, then count how many times there was a real legitimate fire behind it. Also, good luck trying to drag a corpse out or a firebot in. Snipping or not Fire Doors are annoying as shit and not fun.
2. Speaking of Firebots, they suck. Not enough spray, too far in between sprays for it to be useful in anything other than a two-tile fire. I once put a firebot in that chamber north of the engine (where the purge lines turn to the north) where it sat, extinguishing only one tile of fire which re-lit before its next spray. To be fair it was a pretty aggressive O2/Plasma fire
3.The piping of the hotloop in the one tile hallway between the engine and the gas feeds also has an electrical cable on top of it. When you do have a burst pipe you have something like a two pixel sweet spot to repair it in a line that is probably most prone to bursting. Also the cable is red, the pipe is red as well. Makes it hard to see already small holes in pipes it may be covering. Pair this with a welding mask, which leads me to #4....
4. A minor gripe/whine: Fire knocks out the lights, making it dark. The floor tileset is dark grey. Using a welding mask on top of it makes for annoyingly dark conditions. Anymore I don't use welding masks, I just grab the mining space helmets which are superior for this purpose, they don't make everything really dark, they have a built-in light, and you can weld with them without hurting your eyes. The only advantages you get from a welding mask is you can flip it up down and it protects from flashes.
5. Can't purge quick enough. I've had over five burst pipes, with purge running full blast, yet still the pressure and temp were rising. I could of welded it shut again but it would just burst. Was this an intended runaway effect? I had no options but sit on my hands and wait, all I wanted to do was abandon my experiment and go back to a safe and tame setup so the crew wasn't yelling at us. I was told the setup I used was risky, but to punish engineering with an inoperable engine for the remainder of the round for experimenting makes me not want to experiment at all.
6. Engineering could stand to have one extra can of all the gasses. If you're careful it isn't a problem, but it is very possible to make a bad gas mix and screw yourself because you don't have enough gas to re-do the loop again. Maybe put an extra N2 + Co2 cannister in the CE office as a backup in case any bumbling engineers waste the other ones?
7. Lag.
Gripes aside, the new engine is great!
