Should Atmos be revamped/changed?

[aft2001]

This isn't in ideas/suggestions since it's not really a fully fledged concept that can just be implemented and probably needs discussion before being considered. That and this thread could serve as a platform for discussion on how atmos works in general and what changes could/should be made.

The atmos system seems a bit broken (pretty sure most people know that) but could(?) be made a lot better while still not making it a lag-fest.

One possible way to improve how atmos works is, instead of a tile-based atmos system for environmental atmospherics (the atmosphere that's on tiles), having area based atmos. As in, the atmospherics of individual tiles' volumes won't be simulated, but rather the atmosphere of multiple tiles will be simulated as one single volume. A room would have some volume X, that is the collective of all its tiles' volume. If you were to put a gas canister in there and open it, it would fill the room's volume, not the tile it's on. If you were to breach it, it would decrease the room's volume, not just the surrounding tiles. A hallway would be made of multiple collective volumes, but each are simulated on their own so that breaches don't instantly start depressurizing the opposite end of a hallway, but rather one chunk, then the next, and then the next. 

This has been done on multiple servers, as far as I know. I, however, do not know how difficult it'd be to implement. It's also not a massive issue, but could still further reduce lag caused by atmos simulation while improving how atmos works.

oh also being able to make and move atmos pipes would be so fucking helpful. Not a full on atmospherics system with air scrubbers and vents everywhere, no, but rather for custom gas mixing and manipulation in Toxins, Engineering, and possibly Mechanics.

[Superlagg]

From what I've read, our Atmos is an incomprehensible nightmare of hellcode that not even its creator wants to deal with. But then again, Kremlin seemed to figure it out just fine, at least enough to make that swazzy engine readout thing.

An Atmos rewrite/rework would theoretically make the atmospheric system simpler, easier to use and understand, more wieldable by mortal dorks... but "simple", "intuitive", and "useful," I feel, isn't quite what I'd use to describe the spirit of Goonstation. Would be absolutely fantastic to have an Atmos that did what we'd want it to do (work as expected in a reasonable timeframe without destroying everything it touches), but there's also a kind of frustrating charm to its current hyperjank. I dunno. Hellburns came from that jank, I think.

Also, other servers' Atmosseses aren't much better than ours, from what I can tell. It might work faster, but there's also some awkward qwirks to it that might make it less than an ideal replacement. I don't know enough about it to say for sure, but I think it'd be more a tradeoff than an upgrade.

[Wisecrack34]

lack of jank is why no SS13 remake will ever work