User:Burrito Justice/Sandbox
Welcome to the Tesla, a big ball of lightning that shocks things and is generally really loud and awful. Thankfully this awfulness can be harnessed to power the station!
Basic Setup
- First off, retrieve the Tesla beacon from hard storage. Put it just outside the engine room, secure it over a wire knot (that you will have to place, connected to an existing wire net), and click it to turn it on. If anything goes wrong then this device will hopefully save everyone else a lot of trouble.
- Equip a wrench and secure everything in sight to the floor:
- Containment field generators can be secured right where they are. Refer to the picture above to see where they are normally placed.
- Tesla coils must be secured on wire knots. If they are not on a wire knot then they will not output any harnessed energy.
- Emitters don't need to be wrenched or welded unless you plan to move them; they are already secured and ready to fire.
- The tesla ball generator doesn't need to be secured either. Just make sure it's within the confines of the containment field generators.
- Equip a welder and weld the Containment Field Generators to the floor.
- Retreat to the storage area and bring out all of the grounding rods into the main engine room.
- Secure the grounding rods anywhere you like with a wrench. It doesn't matter where they are as long as they can see the Tesla when it is active.
- A good rule of thumb is to make sure all of the containment field generators are within sight of the grounding rod.
- Return to the room with the partially assembled particle accelerator. Wrench all components to the floor.
- If you accidentally bump a component out of alignment, simply push against it to face north. If you cannot push it, then pull it north by standing on its northern end and clicking your own turf.
- Click on all of the components with cable until they are all stuffed with wires. This includes the control console.
- Screwdriver the panels of all of the components closed.
- Interface with the control console and run a scan for all components. If everything is setup correctly then the PA should be ready to fire. Don't fire it yet, though.
- Move back to the engine room and set the engine room SMES (the one with the wire running out from under it to the emitters) to maximum input and output.
- Turn on all of the emitters. They should be shooting the containment field generators.
- You can swipe your ID over an emitter to lock it. This prevents someone without a valid ID from turning the emitters off and causing a containment breach.
- Click on all of the containment field generators to turn them on. Any other activated CFG in a cardinal direction from another will form a containment field between the two. You should see four fields in total.
- Do not stand adjacent to a containment field. You will most likely suffer intense burns and also be thrown into a wall.
- Also make sure you don't run in front of the firing emitters.
- The Tesla-to-be is now contained. Move back over to the PA control console, set the power level as high as it can go, and turn it on.
- If you really want, you can unscrew the panel and hack the wires to find the throttle control wire. Pulsing it with a multitool will make a grinding sound. Cut this wire to allow higher power levels.
- Eventually the Tesla will make itself manifest and things will get very loud. Keep the PA turned on until the Tesla has 18 miniballs orbiting the main body. Turn the PA off.
- You can quickly figure out how many miniballs are in play by examining the main Tesla ball.
- Assuming you brought out all of the grounding rods, you can actually shoot up to 24 miniballs. This, however, generates more energy than either SMES can utilize and is somewhat risky in case of sabotage.
- Lastly, if the Tesla isn't shooting arcs of lightning at anything and is just hugging the southern part of the containment field then you need to move the Tesla beacon back a few steps.
- Set the distribution SMES to whatever you feel like setting it to. It's the SMES that goes out to the rest of the station.
That should about cover the most basic and straight forward setup. There are, of course, changes you can make to make it more efficient or behave differently if you so desire, but they aren't wholly necessary. If, however, something has gone wrong then you better have setup that Tesla beacon correctly, otherwise you're dealing with a containment breach of more-than-annoying proportions.
Operating Principles
Like any self-respecting engine, the purpose of the Tesla is to generate power, though in SS13's case this is done through wacky, barely understood, and downright dangerous means. The idea is that a Tesla ball - after being energized with accelerated particles and manifesting - will violently arc lightning at objects that it deems must die. Thankfully some scientists figured out how to make a machine that both harnesses lightning and looks annoying enough to the Tesla to be shocked regularly while also being tough enough to withstand being electrocuted to heck and back, thus the tesla coil was born. Sometimes the Tesla becomes so powerful that not even coils can withstand its anger, so they had to make a grounding rod to eliminate the excess energy.
And then they found out that metal walls (at one point) weren't very good at keeping a Tesla in place, so someone with some creative freedom decided to design the CFG network, which shoot out highly energized containment beams, and are powered by emitters of all things instead of just being powered through conventional means, making setting up the Tesla slightly more inconvenient. At least it looks important!
Containment
As mentioned above, containment is very important and will be the first thing you focus on while setting this whole thing up, because if you don't then everything will almost certainly start exploding, so you'll want to make sure you've setup everything up correctly. You can tell equipment is properly secure by looking to see if its sprite has blinking red lights. Failing to secure equipment to the floor will legitimately make things blow up.
Containment Field Generators
The containment field generators (or CFG) are directly responsible for keeping a Tesla ball contained. They must be wrenched and welded to the floor in order to function. They receive power in the form of being shot by an emitter and in turn output energized, tangible fields of energy to other CFGs in order to keep the Tesla ball from escaping or going where it shouldn't. These fields are also pretty good at keeping stuff out of the containment area as well, so good in fact that they will forcefully push away anyone who dares to stand adjacent to one, probably with enough force to send them straight through a window, so be mindful of this.
A CFG has to be turned on (by clicking on it) after it is already receiving power from an emitter. Turning one on before an emitter energizes it may make it turn itself back off automatically. They also cannot be turned off unless the emitter powering them stops firing and the CFG runs out of energy.
Emitters
Emitters usually only see practical use in the SM engine (unless you're already acquainted with their destructive potential regarding blobs or breaking and entering), but emitters here are what power the CFGs to allow them to contain things, namely the Tesla ball. Emitters must be wrenched and welded to the floor over a powered wire knot in order to function. The wire network must also have at least 30 kW in it in order to fire, though since there are four emitters, this means you will need at least 120 kW of power in the network. Otherwise, clicking on an emitter will turn it on and it will fire in bursts of four. Swiping your ID over the emitter while it is firing will lock it and prevent it from being turned off without swiping a valid ID on it first.
Grounding Rods
Grounding rods are the next stage of containment. They must be wrenched to the floor, and ideally within sight of the containment area. Though CFGs will physically prevent the Tesla ball from escaping, grounding rods will make sure it stays that way assuming there's nothing wrong with how the CFGs were setup. More specifically, grounding rods will keep other equipment safe by drawing in excess power and grounding it, preventing the Tesla from straight up melting everything else. The amount of grounding rods present determines how far you can energize the Tesla. In particular, one grounding rod supports up to four miniballs of power, and you start with six, meaning you can safely energize the Tesla up to twenty four miniballs before things begin to explode, assuming you secured all of the grounding rods.
File:SMES.pngSMES Settings
The emitters are the only pieces of equipment dedicated to containment that actually need power from wires, so setting the SMES with the wires running out to the emitters is important, otherwise those emitters won't be running for very long, thus the containment will not hold and the Tesla will be dining on the station's machinery. And you, especially you. Containment matters more than power distribution, so it's usually safe to maximize the input value provided you're not running a low energy Tesla. Output must be set to at least 120 kW, though maximizing this value is fine as well; nothing awful will happen if you do.
Tesla Beacon
The tesla beacon is a device that is capable reducing a Tesla ball - and all orbiting miniballs - to... well, nothing, actually. In particular, a Tesla ball that is within range of a beacon's influence will slowly move vaguely towards the beacon in order to be grounded. The Tesla will also be restrained from arcing any lightning to its surroundings, rendering it relatively safe during its short journey towards the beacon. Setting up the beacon is easy, just secure it with a wrench over a wire knot connected to a powered network (like the main grid, for instance)!
Backup Containment
Besides the above, walls and reinforced floors will prevent the Tesla from passing through them. Ideally reinforced walls are used, but due to the nature of the proc that controls how the Tesla behaves when moving, any type of wall can be used. Reinforced floors aren't necessary unless there are no active containment fields, though reinforcing the floors might not be a good idea in the first place as you'll read in the containment breach section.
Power Generation
Now that we've covered how to actually contain this wacky ball of electricity, we can move on to harnessing energy from it. The short and sweet of it is that electricity shoots out of the Tesla and (hopefully) strikes tesla coils, which then convert and output this energy into the cables they're connected to while the excess energy grounds out into a rod. There's not much more to it!
The Tesla Ball
The Big Kahuna, this fella is what'll be generating our electricity, or perhaps supplementing it if you already have the supermatter running. This is initially summoned by firing particles at a Tesla ball generator with the particle accelerator until the ball is summoned, after which it must remain energized via particle acceleration for however long energy is to be harnessed from it; if it does not have any miniballs and is not receiving any particles then it will eventually fizzle out and disappear - this, as you might imagine, is a bad thing so don't let it happen!
The Tesla will release energy in the form of lightning at predictable intervals and will also attempt to move around randomly. The amount of energy released depends on how energized the Tesla is which can more or less be determined by the amount of miniballs orbiting the Tesla. The exact number of miniballs can be determined by examining the Tesla itself. Going over 24 miniballs while all six grounding rods are deployed is a surefire way to watch a lot of equipment get reduced to ashes, followed by the Tesla escaping, so don't let that happen. Read the grounding rods section for more info on how this works. Anyway, these arcs of lightning will hopefully strike a tesla coil which, if set up properly, will output the energy into the cable it's connected to, thus generating power. From this coil another arc of lightning is summoned that will strike another coil at about half the power. Failing this it will strike a grounding rod, whereupon the arc chain will end immediately.
The Tesla also has a list of what gets struck first, that being the following:
- Tesla Coils
- Grounding Rods
- Mobs (you!)
- Machines
Particle Accelerator
The particle accelerator is an interesting, multi-part piece of equipment that accelerates particles (who would have guessed). The particulars don't matter much - it energizes particles and shoots them out in a 3-wide burst to hopefully smash into the Tesla to keep it energized. Is the power that goes into the PA at all reflective of the resulting power that's output by the Tesla? Heck no, but who cares - it was originally created to send mass into a singularity to harvest Hawking Radiation, but those engines aren't in use on this codebase.
At the start of the round the PA will be disassembled but conveniently placed in the correct position with all of its parts in the correct orientation (provided you don't bump them out of place). All that needs to be done is to secure all of them with a wrench and wire them all up with cable. Note that this includes the console, which is a part of the PA itself. After that, just screw all of the components shut with a screwdriver, interface with the console, scan for parts, and you're ready to fire!
The particles can be energized anywhere from a level of 0 to 2 by default, but a third level can be achieved by messing with the console's wires. A particular wire - when pulsed - will make a loud whirring noise. Cut this wire to remove the safeties and unlock the higher power level option. Nothing bad happens if you use this new level, it just energizes the Tesla faster. Ideally this whole process is done before parts are scanned for to prevent any misfires since pulsing some wires may adjust the power level or begin shooting particles.
Make sure you turn the PA off once you have energized the Tesla to a point you are comfortable with. Setting the power level to 0 will still energize the Tesla!
Tesla Coils
The tesla coils, as you can imagine by now assuming you've read the rest of this guide, are what will harness the power of lightning shot at it and output it into a power cable knot beneath it. Coils can only accept so much power (depending on the machine parts installed) before it allows lightning to arc to another coil/rod/piece of equipment at around half the power, therefore asking research to upgrade them might not be a bad idea, nor would it be a bad idea to build more. Tesla coils can be safely secured inside the engine room while the Tesla is active: the lightning bolts that strike an unsecured coil do nothing.
T E S L O O S E
So something terrible has happened and now the Tesla is flinging itself all around the room it's in, and all of the equipment is in ashes. Oh no! Are we doomed? Are you going to be banned? Is death certain?! Well...
As it turns out, walls will prevent the Tesla from passing through and leaving, and the engine room itself is made up almost exclusively of reinforced walls save for the southern portion that's made up of borosilicate windows, so even if it breaches containment it'll more or less still be "contained". If you properly set up the beacon around where the screenshot dictates beforehand then the Tesla will safely ground and disappear, albeit with damage to most of the equipment that would allow a Tesla to function.
It should be noted that if no powered containment field is present then the Tesla is liable to just pass through the floor and into space, unless the floor is reinforced. Space is about the safest place the Tesla can be, so it passing through a non-reinforced floor is probably the best case scenario assuming it stays there: you'll just have to live in fear of whether or not the Tesla really is still alive for the rest of the round!
Modifications
A few changes can be made for the betterment of server performance (potentially): the Tesla likes to move around a lot and perform a bunch of taxing calculations about what to strike with lightning first, so how about we just keep it from moving at all? Presented in the screenshot to the right is a setup that keeps the Tesla relegated to a single turf, preventing movement and keeping lightning strikes predictable. It involves moving squishing the CFGs into a tighter grouping as well as shifting the coils and emitters around a bit so that containment can be maintained.
Engineering Department
| |
| Head of Department | Chief Engineer |
| Personnel | Engineer - Atmospheric Technician |
| Useful Guides | Guide to Atmospherics - Supermatter Engine - Guide to the INDRA - Guide to Thrusters - Telecommunications - Integrated Electronics |