User:Carbadox/A Further Guide To Engineering

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A Further Guide To The Engineering Department

So, you read all the wiki pages, got all the basics and played some of the jobs. Are you still lost? Great, cus that's what this page for. Everything here will be divided into 4 main parts, one for each Engineering job position, respectively...

  • Mechanic
  • Engineer
  • Cheif Engineer
  • Quartermaster

I'm bad at introductions so lets just start.

Mechanic

As a mechanic, your responsibilities are almost naught. You're not even expected to fix the APCs, god knows none does. Your usually expected to just fulfill your own selfish desires of tomfoolery and what not, however you can also prove to be a great service to the station. Although you're generally non-vital to the station crew, what you make out of your tools can be life saving to everyone and can even help you gain some respect as a reliable and useful asset. Before we talk about how to become a suave space station super star saviour, let's take a moment to talk about what makes the difference between a good player and a bad one. The set-up.

Gearing Up

Within your workshop where you usually spawn, you should find everything that you need to prepare properly. That being...

  • A utility belt - for storing all your tools such as a...
    • Screwdriver
    • Crowbar
    • Multitool
    • Welding Tool
    • Wire Cutters
    • Wrench
    • All of which you'll find in a mechanical (blue) toolbox. You can quickly place all those items from the toolbox into your belt by clicking on your belt with the toolbox in hand
      • Disregard the atmospheric analyser. It will only take up inventory space and is not even useful for your line of work and access.
  • A hard hat in your locker. Useful for when you're patrolling the maintance tunnels and need a light source. Will also protect your noggin if worse come to worst.
  • A fire extinguisher in the emergency (red) toolbox. A standard and vital item for anyone in my honest opinion. It serves as a great improvised (self defense) weapon and is handy in a pinch in case of a fire.
  • And a soldering iron (if you really need to), however store it in your backpack's internal box and not your toolbelt. You'll only need it when you start working with box frames but when you are, you'll be coming back to your workshop anyways so it's not entirely necessary to carry around. Ditto for the deconstruction device in your locker.

That's about it here. Some people grab the meson goggles and some even grab the engineering wintercoat in there but don't do it unless you like looking like a human sized bananna with your yellow on yellow get-up. Space fashion is important! Now, you should consider scavenging a gas mask in a maintance tunnel. It serves as a breath mask for your emergency internals but can also protect you from any chemical attacks. It also looks pretty ominous and cool, no?

Next up, you'll want to collect some materials for your Reverse-Engineering Fabricator. You know how it uses up materials for frames? Wondered how to refill those materials? Well here it is. While some more advanced Fabricators or fabs often require materials with special qualities, on board fabs are pretty simple and only require 3 types most of the time, that being Metal/Dense Metal, Crystal and Conductive Material. These show up on the station in the form of Steel, Glass and Copper or Copper Wires respectively.

While you can try searching for some of these resources around the station or perhaps try and salvaging it from the station itself (if you like getting stern talking tos from the Cheif Engineer), it can take a while to find everything. Don't worry though, you'll get those mats before you know it. How you ask? Well through the power of space Amazon Prime of course! Just stroll on over to your local Cargo bay or Quatermasters Office and place an order for 200 sheets for Glass Sheets, 200 Steel Sheets as well as a 4 pack of wires for only 5k credits!

What if you don't have a Quatermaster to approve your order? You have a couple alternatives. You can purchase the crates and get the crates without any approval needed with your own money, but 5k is quite alot and you might not always have that much when you need it. However, if you have a Security Officer, Cheif Engineer or AI that aren't too preoccupied, they can very easily approve the orders with hopefully no problem. Now that you've got your crates of loot you can drag them all the way to your workshop. Or alternatively, use the cargo transporter while you're there to quickly move them over to your workshop.

Phew, now that that's out of the way let's finish this off. The first thing you'll want to do with find a reclaimer in your workshop. Drag it over so that it's next to your Reverse-Engineering Fab but not blocking your way. Diagonally to it is fine. Now, click and drag the reclaimer onto your fab. What you've now done is set the reclaimers output to the fab. Now when you put the materials into the reclaimer, they'll put themselves directly into the fab and won't just drop unstacked onto the floor. You can also do the same thing with the fabricator and make it drop everything it makes infront of it for example. Last thing, if you open the boxes of wire, you can click and drag the box in your hand and make it drop it's contents onto the floor. After that you can quick stack all the dropped wires into the reclaimer by click dragging again.

Finally! Now that your fabricator has been loaded up, we can finally start putting it into proper use! So what should be start making? Well....


Research and Development

I don't think I need to remind how to work a device analyser/your PDA but if you need a rundown, here you go. Now how do we properly make use of this magnificant tool? Well I'm glad you asked, me. After giving the cloner a quick scan, you can start work on some of the other things lying around in MedBay, in this case you'll want to give the NanoMed (the stationary medical vendor), Port-a-Med (the floating sleeper) and the Port-a-NanoMed (the flying NanoMed) a scan. If the MedBay has a robotocist you can try asking if they have any bots that theyd'd like you to scan (any roboticst will be eternally grateful to you if you manage to supply a lifetimes supply of butt-bots to them). Now, head back to your workshop and start printing out your blueprints, putting them in the fabricator and manufacturing whatever you choose. For this example, you'll want at least a NanoMed frame because I'm going to show you a cool trick. It also wouldnt be amis to bring the bot blueprints to the Roboticist for them to put it in their own fabs. Put all the frames in your nearby Mechanics cart and drag it over back to MedBay.

You can start deploying the Port-A stuff outside in the lobby as the Doctors can call and recall those to them with their PDAs. However, here's where the cool trick starts. Place the NanoMed frame somewhere in the open where everyone can see it but isn't too obstructing and deploy it. After that run over to your nearest vending machine, preferably a soda or snack one, open the maintance panel with a screwdriver, open the menu and pulsing and the wires in order until you see the "AI Control indicator" wire go from 'lit' to 'unlit'. Keep which wire that was in mind and run back over to your NanoMed that you just made, open it's panel and cut the AI wire with some wirecutters and close the panel again. Congratulations, you have just made a Nano-Med that is open to all access.

Here's what you just did. The AI wire in vendors and vending machines acts as both the component that enables the AI to take control of the machine but also acts as the ID scan, the thing that stops just anyone from jacking all the supplies for themselves. By cutting that wire, you allow everybody to make use of the machine, which can make some regular players very happy or might just piss the AI off though it's not really their job so who cares! It makes you wonder whether this trick could be used on anything else...

Quartermaster

    As the QM, you can either be the station's angle or it's devil. Your the underappreciated, self-sufficient powerhouse of the station. Just because you're limited in station access, doesn't mean you're handicapped in having all the toys everyone else does. With the help of you're console and manufactors, you're a one man Sec Officer/Medical Doctor/Robotocist/Engineer/Chef/Botanist/Barman/Janitor and above all else, entrepreneur. All you need is the know how, and here it is.

Making Money

Your main source of making loadsamoney comes in 2 ways. The Station's PTL and your trading and bartering.

With the PTL, it's out of your hands unless you have the access to set it up. You best hope a lovely and charming Engineer/Cheif Engineer is around to not only hellburn the station but also to babysit the laser and maximise the profits. You'll also want to bugger the CE/HOP/Captain to transfer all the money made over into the cargo budget to make the most of it. The great thing about the PTL is not only the fact that it passively makes money for you, with the correct set-up the profits being made will gradually increase easing the workload for you. But let's say you're not fortunate enough to have someone set up the laser, let alone the engine. What do you do then?

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