Artifact Research

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Artifact Research is the branch of Research concerned with the identification and possible testing of dangerous, unpredictable artifacts of extraterrestrial origin. An artifact is a large item of non-Nanotrasen origin whose function is unknown. These artifacts are usually dug up by miners, and the station always starts with one in the Artifact Lab and two in the near-by Pod Bay.

Running gptio

Discovering an artifact's effects takes more than repeatedly poking it (although this helps in a fashion). Using the DWAINE terminal, you can advance the station's knowledge of artifacts and their properties and make your analysis more precise. To do this, you must:

1. Insert your card into the terminal, and type term_login
2. Type cd /mnt/artlab to move to the default location of the artifact research tape.
3. Type gptio list to list the available research equipment. You'll either need to write these IDs down somewhere, memorize them, scroll back to this output or re-run the gptio list command whenever you need to use a piece of equipment.

Important commands

gptio list

Lists the currently connected devices and their IDs.

gptio activate device-id

Activates a device. This can be anything from shooting an object across the room to irradiating whatever is in the x-ray scanner.

gptio deactivate device-id

Some devices don't automatically deactivate after a short amount of time. You'll need to use this command to make them safe to touch.

gptio sense device-id

Instruct the device to take readings about its state and the state of whatever object is inserted into it.

gptio read device-id

Retrieve the data generated by gptio sense. Note, this will report the state from when you last sense:d, not the state right now.

gptio info device-id

Show the status of a device, including if it's active, if it's an "enactor" and/or a "sensor" and maybe most importantly what variables it has to mess with.

gptio peek device-id variable-name

Read the value of a variable. Note that most if not all variables can be read on the device itself.

gptio poke device-id variable-name value

Change the value of a variable.

Analyzing Artifacts

The artifact lab comes with five devices: Pitcher, impact pad, electric box, heater and x-ray scanner.

• The pitcher is not for shooting artifacts, though that's fun too. It's for firing things at the impact pad, and you put artifacts there.
  • The pitcher has one variable, POWER, which goes from 0 to 100. Simple enough.
• The impact pad is for putting artifacts on. Fire an item at the artifact and then read the sensor data-
  • The pad has one variable, STAND, which is binary (0 or 1). Setting it to 1 extends a stand for putting handheld artifacts on.
  • Two datapoints will be reported: Vibration amplitude and vibration frequency.
• The electric box will run an electrical current through the artifact.
  • It has two variables, WATTAGE (1-50) and VOLTAGE (1-100). Remember, Wattage = Current * Voltage, so "Selected current" will just be Wattage/Voltage.
  • It returns three datapoints: Returned current, circuit capacity and interference.
• The heater will heat the artifact, or cool it. (Note, the sensor used to be bugged. It's been fixed as of February 2013.)
  • It has one variable, TEMPTARGET (accepts 200-400 in Kelvin), which the actual temperature will slowly reach.
  • The sensors will report current temperature, artifact temperature and whether the artifact responds to temperature at all.
• The X-ray scanner will scan the artifact.
  • It has one setting, RADSTRENGTH, which goes from 1 to 10 (multiples of 10%).
  • You'll get a load of data back: Object density, structural consistency, structural integrity, special features of object and like the heater, whether it responds to radiation.

The dirty secret of Artlab is that each specific artifact always gives the same sensor data. So you can potentially know what a certain artifact does after analyzing it in the lab, but you'll still need to figure out how to activate it.

Activating Artifacts

An artifact will glow once it's activated. To reach that stage takes some experimentation. Heating, cooling, electrifying, hitting, irradiating and touching the artifact are all worth trying and can be done within Artlab itself. Chemistry may be able to provide some test substances as well. Further experiments will have to involve equipment from other departments.