Goonhub
11-26-2013, 12:15 AM
![[Image: X1JiIob.png]](http://i.imgur.com/X1JiIob.png)
Yeah, check that out.
Some of us were tossing around the idea of adding a particle accelerator to the station over on SA. Here's what I came up with. This enormous area would go where toxins is currently. (In the "Brainstorm: make toxins useful again" thread I outline what I think should be done with toxins, which would work well with the incomplete smelting machine recently added to the engineering sector) There's an enormous number of things it could be used for. So how do I think it should work? It's simple... No, actually, like everything in research, it isn't simple at all. Get comfortable, this is going to take a while.
The control panels are going to need a large interface. ThinkDOS or DWAINE won't do, it'll be far too slow, and there's going to be so much data involved. Each accelerator or lab can operate independently, but the panels for the two accelerators can be set to a joint mode, where both are controlled by a single panel. That'll be important for running supercollision experiments.
"A" is the beam launcher. You load it up, and it fires a beam into the accelerator, or straight at the target. It can be controlled from the panel to fire at a certain intensity, and for a certain duration. You can't really see it in the image that well, but it's surrounded by crystal glass, with one side having a crystal glass version of the sliding door. Of course, you have to open the first blast door before you can fire.
The beam launcher has three internal slots, which would be loaded by having the item in your hand and clicking a button on the launcher's dialog box. The first slot would be emitters. The lab comes standard with an item that emits EM waves from radio up to x-ray. If you can find or create the right material, you can also load proton/alpha/beta/gamma or neutron radiation sources. It can also take magnetic bottles filled with antimatter you've made, or it can just straight up load a beam weapon like a laser.
Slot 2 is the chamber of the launcher. It may contain ores/gems/beakers and gasses loaded from small canisters or tanks. These contents will modulate or react to the output of the emitter in various ways, such as by adding exotic particles to the beam, giving the beam special effects like cryostylane making it a freezing beam (though it will be up to the scientist to discover what stimulus is needed to pull out this effect in each specific case!), or exploding delightfully. Those boxes on the table should contain a couple gems and ore samples (random?) to help you get started early. Adding an inert gas to the mix may stabilize the mixture, or have a variety of other effects. I'd recommend adding Helium and Xenon to the game for this purpose, as both would have other uses. Helium as a coolant, and Xenon, well, I'll just quote the wikipedia article.
"Xenon induces robust cardioprotection and neuroprotection through a variety of mechanisms of action."
Slot 3 is a focusing element. It starts out empty, but you can add a glass lens to help focus an EM beam, or a (expensive) magnetic focuser for both waves and charged particles for greater output efficiency. Just be careful with the solid glass lens that you don't stick it in front of a beam of antimatter!
"B" is the magnetic coils, here represented by some SMESs turned sideways. That's just a frame, though. The actual coil is contained inside, and you can open the frame up to replace it with something more efficient and powerful if you can make them in the autolathes. And efficiency is important. This idea came up from a discussion of what to do with all the power the main generator is capable of producing. Well, you see those five APCs in the image? Two of them are just for the magnetic coils, because in the event of a power interruption they'd drain extremely fast. A third APC powers everything else in the room, including the control panels so they scientists on duty can deal with the potentially disastrous consequences of losing control of this beast.
"C" is the adjustment array. It should be a device in a solid wall block, or perhaps a triangle-shaped half block? Either way, it should visibly point inwards as I've indicated. This device is simple. It allows control of the next item on the list, so making sure it stays in working order is important. There are spares available in the storage section marked "c."
"D" is the beam reflectors. Of course, a proper particle accelerator should be circular, but there are advantages to doing it this way. There's much more potential for lab accidents, for one. Now, the reflectors act as mirrors to redirect them beam in the circuit, obviously. But, they have a limited amount of strength. This thing is supposed to accelerate particles to near the speed of light, after all. Both quantity of stuff in the beam and its speed matter for this. So, each one has a limited number of "points" that can be put into each of the categories of things it has to reflect. Waves/ions/neutral particles/antimatter. That's what "C" is for. And, the basic ones also have a penalty for each additional category you split the points into. Each type of reflector also has a performance modifier for each category, with waves typically being very high, and neutral particles or antimatter being low. To start out with, those crates near the top of the sector each contain a full set of specialized reflectors to replace the general ones that start out installed. One set for waves/ions, one for neutral particles, one for ions/antimatter. Of course, mixing positive and negative charged particles is a no-no. If the reflector is overwhelmed, part of the overflow will fly through and strike the wall behind it. If enough makes it through, the wall may even be breached. (Let's say 1/16th of the overflow passes through, since it will leak 4 times for every one time more power can be added from the emitter. This will increase the chances of an interesting runaway.) Each reflector can be individually set up, but that won't take effect until an execute command is given. This way, you can make two mirrors fully transparent simultaneously, so both beams strike the test target in the center of the accelerators at the same time.
Which brings us to "E", the target. In the upper left of the storage section you can see three types of targets I came up with (Well, the sprites were actually taken from screenshots of tgstation). The first, of which there are a bunch made available, are simple but durable blocks. Just for when you want to slam your beam into something and see what happens. The second is a magnetic trap, which can contain and preserve exotic matter created in your experiments, or just trap your beam so you can take a good long look at it with your instruments. It's not 100% effective, though, so some photon decay will result. Also, it can be pre-loaded with a small sample. For example, a block of metal you want to fire a neutron beam at to make it radioactive. The third is a body frame. It comes pre-loaded with an anatomical manikin which simulates the human body. (Almost guaranteed not to come to life when exposed to exotic particles) But, you can take that out and replace it with a real human, or a monkey, or a plant or an artifact. The frame can position the subject so that the beam will hit a specific location. More on that later.
"F" is a data port (Unnecessary, I suppose, but useful as a reference point) and "f" are the various instruments used to collect sensor data. Each sensor can have its sensitivity adjusted. Higher sensitivity means better accuracy, and a lower minimum detection threshold, but it a signal goes too high the sensor will be damaged and become inaccurate until repairs are rendered. There's the EM sensor, which detects the beam's EM waveform, which would usually be a hump or spike on a graph, as well as the photon decay signatures of exotic particles, any harmful radiation, including neutron radiation, and detects the total energy released. It also has a spectrographic element, telling you want elements/stable particles are in the mix. It can be placed on one of the end terminals, or in the center of the accelerator, though only the spectrographic function will work in the latter case.
Second is the impact analyzer, which is basically a super-high speed camera. It also measures total energy released, as well as penetration depth of solid targets, and the target's integrity afterwards (combining the previous two values to measure the actual damage inflicted). It measures the final speed of the beam, the target's temperature and change in temperature, and other physical properties.
The third is the bio analyzer, used when you have a living or semi-living object in place. Basically the same as a health analyzer, but provides less detailed information. For example, it may detect sicknesses as body parts operating poorly, but it won't say what sickness or how to cure it. It can detect sudden changes in a person. For example, say we had cancer as a disease, and you used a radiation beam to treat it.
Fourth is the spacial sensor, used to detect warps in space, gravity, and so on. Right now all I can think of is it detects a warp factor for the strength of disturbance and a stability factor for how constant it is. Different anomalies, teleporters, wormholes and so on have different degrees of these. Stick a telecrystal in the emitter's chamber, and see what disasters you can summon! This can be placed both at the end terminals and on the center terminals. Be careful! Firing a beam that carries the telecrystal's traits at too high power may cause spacial anomalies or portals to eldritch dimensions to spawn in the middle of the accelerator, or worse, outside it.
Now for the part that may be a bit controversial. "G" is a beam lens, which accepts all kinds of beams without trouble, and "H" is a beam cannon. If needed, it can be used to launch a dangerous beam from the left accelerator into space. A final failsafe in case someone breaks the system in a way I can't even dream of. But, the real fun of it is that it can also be used as a weapon. It will be difficult to do, because the scientists and a bridge officer would have to cooperate in entirely different sections of the station to get the beam ready to fire. But once it is, a terminal on the bridge (so someone may occasionally go there for once) can be used to initialize a firing sequence. Using cameras like the (non-functional) one on the observatory, the officer would enter a free-look interface that allows them to fly around the station. Once the firing sequence is initiated, the beam travels between relays set up around the station, and the officer sees a countdown of how many remain until a firing position is achieved. While this is happening, the officer is clicking on the target, whether that's a space pod, or a martian base on a different z-level. The target is locked in when the last relay fires, and the beam strikes the target, likely obliterating it. Of course, aiming is hard, but not so hard that you won't hit every few shots unless the target jumps away. The beam will have been accelerated to an extreme speed by the accelerator, so it will be moving at that point almost too fast to see. Obviously, the potential for a misfire hitting the station or for traitor abuse is high. All the more reason to put it in, I say.
So what else can all this be used for? Well, it does take over some, but not all, of the functions of the artifact lab, which is why I put it next to that. To start out with, you want to use those smaller labs first. Since some materials react violently to some stimuli, you test them there in the low energy labs. Set sensitivity to high and power to low, and see what makes something like erebite react and what doesn't. Here's some other ideas.
-As mentioned before, curing cancer (which the game doesn't have) with a radiation beam. Alternatively, use the body frame to make the radiation beam hit a specific location, with an increased chance to induce a mutation specific to that location, and with much less overall radiation than would otherwise be needed for mutation. Telekinesis for head, body odor for arms, etc. Then send the person to genetics for a before/after comparison to make their research go faster.
-Stick a chunk of metal in the magnetic trap, then modify it with an alpha or neutron radiation beam into a radioisotope. Get that into someone's body, and it'll slowly release the radiation into their system so they have a tiny amount for a long time, and it can be tracked in some way perhaps? That's something they do in real life.
-Fire a beam weapon into the accelerator, and test to see what it looks like from a physical perspective. For a phaser it should be partly exotic particles, and partly some kind of EM wave to stimulate their release. Find out what you can add to the emitter that enhances but does not change the profile, and you'll know the mechanics of the weapon. Then, set up the emitter to produce that effect without the actual weapon, and you're ready to start experimenting. Can you enhance the power? Add a special effect? Turn it into a freeze ray or radiation gun? Once you've come up with something you like, you burn the data of your setup on a disk and take it to the electronics bay where they turn it into a mod. Some restrictions, though. Each type of weapon has a set emitter strength, a set chamber material capacity, and a set beam acceleration power. Just cranking up the power on your massive apparatus is meaningless, as is filling it with tons of crap. You have to find an efficient formula. Setting it up right will also allow you to make the beam fly faster, if you can produce an effect where it requires less power from the accelerator to speed up.
-As mentioned before, make an ice ray, but make it one that inflicts no damage to a person. You've created a useful tool that will allow you to make burning hot areas livable again.
-Set up a radio signal in one accelerator, then figure out how to disrupt it with the other one. Finally, go back to the first and figure out how to create a headset mod that allows you to overcome that interference.
-Fiddle around with telecrystals until you produce a wormhole, record data on what it looks like, then use the other accelerator to find a way to close it. Use that to create a secondary pod system that allows you to stop other pods from escaping through wormholes within a certain range while it's active. The effectiveness of your formula will determine the range of the pod system.
-Related to the above, create beam weapon mods that allow you to (no doubt slowly) clear the station of spacial anomalies.
-Make Uranium-235. Obliterate yourself.
-Find the ultimate formula that transforms a human being into a being of nigh-invincible pure energy! But beware. The slightest miscalculation, and your subject will explode into gibs!
-Search for the elusive cluwnon, the fundamental particle that makes cluwnes cluwnes.
-What happens when you fire a gamma ray beam at the Bible?
