Engineer

Engineering, in all its glory.

Engineers have access to a large supply of tools and equipment geared towards modifying and repairing the station. They begin the round near the engine, and their primary job is making sure that the station remains powered. This is usually done by running the Thermo-Electric Generator. Do note that experimenting with the generator may cause side-effects such as horrible burning and death.

Power to the People

This page will give you a primer on how to get the engine running. Short version:

• Get any gas flowing in the two gas loops that meet in the Thermo-Electric engine in the middle of Engineering.
• You want the top loop to be real hot and the bottom loop to be real cold. The temperature difference is what generates power. People usually focus on heating the hot loop.
• The hot loop can be heated by connecting hot gas to the loop in the first place, by burning fuel in the furnaces, or by getting a fire running in the combustion chamber.
• The cold loop mostly cools itself by a coil exposed to space.
• Be careful with pressure. Get it too high, and the pipes will burst.
• Don't forget to open valves as needed to get the gas going where it needs to go.

You think that looks hard? The station used to be powered by a contained black hole. We're better off now.

SMES Cells

With all of that completed, to actually get the power flowing you have to go over to the SMES cells and set each one of them. A little under half of the engine's output as input (to counter fluctuations), and half of that as output (to charge the SMES) is a good idea.

Power Transmission Laser

After you have the engine running and power flowing, consider routing some of your extra watts into the power transmission laser. It inputs and outputs power similarly to a SMES unit, but not only is it a laser, it constantly gives the station budget cash while it's powered! This provides plenty of incentive for making excessively powerful engine setups, and will win you the favor of much of the station if you can get it set up. Just keep a close eye on the input to make sure you aren't depriving any departments of power in the process.

Alternative Power

If the engine breaks, the station can fall back on the solar arrays. They're pretty much maintenance-free once set up or hotwired (preferred option), however repairing their wiring when necessary also falls under your responsibility.

Repairing the Station

Main guide: Construction

The Engineering department's other real job is repairing hull breaches and damage. To repair a hull breach, you'll require rods and floor tiles, both of which can be made from metal. You should also get a pair of internals and complain at the CE until he gives you a spacesuit. To repair the breach, use the rods on the space tile to form a lattice, and then the floor tiles on the lattice to finish the floor. Once totally sealed, garnish with space heaters so people can walk through the area without slowing to a crawl.

You may also need to make walls to fully seal a breach. To do this, you'll require a stack of metal (and optionally rods). Open the metal's construction window and select Wall Girders. Once they've been build, use metal on them to form a wall. You can also use reinforced metal for the plating, which you can make by combining regular metal sheets and rods. If you want to make a false wall, use a crowbar on the girder first to dislodge it, then apply the plating.

Now, once you've fully sealed the breach, you might want to repressurize the room so that people aren't suffocating and gasping for air as they walk through the place. Depending on which area you've sealed, there may be a corresponding Emergency Air Hookup for it, where you can just connect the air canisters to the relevant ports and turn the relevant valves.

If not, you'll have to do it manually by bringing in some air canisters. Don't just open it and leave it out in one spot; all the air will accumulate in that one spot rather than spreading out. Instead, set the canister to a fairly high (600 kPA or more) and move the canister around from time to time so the air is (hopefully) evenly distributed through the room.

If you want the area to look like it didn't totally just explode, you'll want to learn how to replace broken floor tiles. To do this, just use a crowbar on the tiles that look burned, and then replace them with new floor tiles. It's not really an important skill to have, but it does make the station look less like a death trap.

Now What?

Once it's set up, one person can handle the engine safely, and most of the time, there are no hull breaches. So, it's time to get up to some mischief, since you've got nothing better to do. To start with the basics, Door Hacking. You'll need a multitool, a screwdriver, insulated gloves, and a crowbar. A wirecutter could also come in handy. Open the door's faceplate with the screwdriver, then click with an empty hand. A window will come up. Minimize it and take out your multitool. The window will show a bunch of wires with buttons for Cut, Pulse, and Attach Signaller on them. Start from the top, and begin pulsing wires. Pulse each one once. There are notifications at the bottom for Power, Bolts, and AI control. If you trigger a Power wire, you can use the crowbar on the door to open it. Power will be down for 10 seconds, and then backup power will trigger. Pulsing the backup power wire will disable it for 1 minute. If the bolts go down, then the door can't be opened. Pulse the same wire again to undo the bolts. The Bolts can go down at all times, but can only disengage if the power wires are operating. If you accidentally hit the bolts when the power is down, you might have to wait a minute to continue. It's also a good point that an engineer who is well versed in how hacking doors work, when provided the tools to do so have effectively all access to any portion of the station they wish. Nothing is better at stopping a corrupted AI than an insulated glove wearing Engineer who knows his stuff.

Another bad idea for Engineers is making and wearing Stungloves. To make a pair of Stungloves, take a pair of insulated gloves and use wiring on them. Then use the Insulated Gloves on a power cell to charge them. If you wear them and hit someone with the harm intent, you'll shock them. This sounds great (and it is), but stun gloves have an extremely obvious sprite and sometimes Security Officers will deem them as a weapon and arrest you to get them. If you do make some Stungloves, keep them in your backpack until things start blowing up. After there's been a few murder reports, even the most fascist Security Officers will be too busy to care about your gloves.

Treachery

Traitor Engineers often choose to wreak a little havoc using the AI as an assistant. With their easy access to tools and gloves, they can easily break in to the AI upload in order to give it a law that will send it on a bloody rampage. Care must be taken to not be stunned by the turrets (which you can't turn off), but some fast movement will let you succeed regardless. They also have normal access to the tools that people will use to build alternate AI upload consoles, and the backup Reset module, allowing them to steal or destroy these things before they are used. Engineers also have tons of access to odds and ends like timers and welding fluid, so they are able to construct a few pipe bombs to raise a little hell with impunity. The power transmission laser can also reach insane levels of power if enough watts are being sent out, to the point that contact results in immediate, absolute disintegration. The flow of the laser is fixed and consequentially can only be taken advantage of in particular places, but it makes for excellent corpse removal and a nice way of executing any stunned or unconscious victims.

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