Energy Forcefield Pipes

[tamakona]

Pipes made of cylindrical forcefield generators. They need a certain amount of energy to operate which increases with how much pressure they are containing. More importantly, they let you see the gas inside the pipes, just to look cool. So we get to see lines of glowing blue superheated plasma.


What do you think?

[LeahTheTech]

Something something magnetic confinement.
Wait, is the TEG just a shitty fusion reactor?

[Lord_earthfire]

The generator produces energy, so this would simply turn it into a self-feeding cycle. That should be explicitely avoided.

If we want to increase the potential power output of engineering, it should be based on something from other departments, not engineering. See agent b, materials for reinforcement, graphene hardening compound.

[TrickyWolfer]

Something something magnetic confinement.
Wait, is the TEG just a shitty fusion reactor?

The TEG seebeck effect was the friends we made along the way....
(But NGL, having a TEG high-engineering gameplay turning the hot loop into a Tokamak looks cool)

The generator produces energy, so this would simply turn it into a self-feeding cycle. That should be explicitely avoided.

If we want to increase the potential power output of engineering, it should be based on something from other departments, not engineering. See agent b, materials for reinforcement, graphene hardening compound.

I do not think self-feeding cycle is inherently a bad thing: We have this going on with Singularity already (and it's worse, because the containment field does NOT scale with the singularity size + power, just wants a flat power consumption from emitters). In fact, I think having more power consumption to be considered adds to the fun. It:

1. Scales with the heat inside, so it discourages people to burn something hot if they don't want a station-wide blackout / TEG blackout (because TEG itself still need really high external power that scales with pressure!)
2. Really re-consider how many pipes and resources allocated for the more robust pipes (e.g. time allocation, material allocation, etc).

Rather than stuck in a welder sisyphus, having to think about something that's more complex is less tedious and demands a more challenging gameplay, as well as a more creative gameloop than just sit down and stare at the engine with welding tool on one hand. It's up to the engineer on how well they can balance that power consumption.