Artifact Research

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 or handheld 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.

Flavors of Artifacts

Artifact	Image	Description
Eldritch		The "Abomination", often cited in mythos. An unknown race, possibly not even from this dimension, however their presence is perpetual. Even looking at the artifact makes scientists feel uneasy. Experiment with your peril.
Wizard		Wizards, while more of a federation than a race, have very unique technology. Complicated machines, made to look archaic as to give the impression that it is magical, however this magic has been mostly debunked by nanotrasen researchers.
Martian		Originates from the temperamental aliens from Mars. The Martians have advanced in organic and terraforming technology, and have used these flesh based machines to advance rapidly throughout the galaxy, much to the threat of every other race.
Forerunner		Also known as Precursor, the true name and face of this race is shrouded in mystery. Carbon-dating reveals that the artifacts are millenniums ancient, and the creators of these machines are possibly extinct. What is known however, is they hold great power.
Robot	File:Robot1.png	A race of silicon based sentients, often confused as machines themselves. Much further advanced than the human race due to their mass consciousness, their machinery has been fine tuned to suit their needs, and therefore is rigidly electronic based.

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. The name of each device (i.e. ELEC_BOX) may be used in the place of the ID in any of the gptio commands.

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.

Working Artlab

The Devices

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

The Pitcher

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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.

Analyzing sensor data

Note that during the time of this update, artlab is being rejigged, so this is subject to change:

Vibration Amplitude and Vibration Frequency (Force)

• Something that has low returns for these categories is something that absorbs physical shock well - if its high, its probably made of something that reverberates a lot when struck, such as metal.
  • Right now these are based entirely off the artifact's origin and thus aren't very useful at all

Test Voltage, Load Impedance, Circuit Capacity and Interference (Electricity)

• Test Voltage is just the voltage you have the electrobox set to.
• Load Impedance is how much of the electricity put into the artifact was returned to the electrobox. If you're getting back 100% of what you put in or close to it, you've likely got something that involves electrical charge on your hands.
• Circuit Capacity is how much electrical charge the artifact seems to be able to hold. Anything with this most likely has some kind of internal charge it draws on to power itself. The higher this is, the longer the artifact can do its thing without having to stop and recharge. However, sometimes artifacts can contain internal power cells which hold the charge - if this is the case, the artifact may return a very low value since the artifact itself is useless without its battery.
• Interference is how much the electrical charge is being disrupted when ran through the artifact. Something with a lot of this is probably some really goddamn weird thing. It's normal for any kind of artifact to have a little of this though.
  • Other things can affect these readouts - certain artifact origins can skew the results a little, and if an artifact is faulty it can disrupt the capacity and interference readouts. The best way to figure this out is to take multiple readings and compare them - if your readings are all the same there's likely nothing wrong with it, but if they're inconsistent you might want to be cautious.

Current temperature, Artifact Temperature, Response to Heat (Heat)

• It only checks to see if the artifact responds above or below certain temperatures. This is only useful to basically tell you "this artifact will activate if you raise/lower the temperature some more, keep going!"
  • As it stands now this equipment is borderline useless

Density, Structural Consistency, Structural Integrity, Response to Radiation and Special Features (Radiation)

• Density is how dense the artifact's mass is. Readings above 10 mean the artifact is more likely to be something weird or something that can fuck with physical forces. Low density means the artifact is likely built to contain something else or is otherwise hollow/cavity-filled.
• Structural Consistency means how much of the artifact's internal structure is solid or similar. The higher this is, the less likely the artifact is to be something useful. Readings will always generally be fairly high though, but ones at or close to 100% are probably worthless. Remember - machines and biological things have lot of complex parts inside so they're not solid!
• Structural Integrity is how "solid" the artifact is in terms of construction, is it very damage-resistant and well put together or is it something you could probably crush like a soda can? Very low readings can also indicate the artifact may have something wrong with it, such as it is damaged/malfunctioning/dangerous or what have you.
• Response to Radiation is how much the artifact responds to being irradiated. You'll have to play around with the radiation strength setting on the equipment to get an accurate picture of what's going on here - the artifact's origin can muck with this reading sometimes. The stronger the response, the more likely it is the artifact is activated via radiation - you just need to find out the right amount to use.
• Special Features details anything that is paticularly unusual about the artifact's shape - these are mostly a hint towards what the artifact does.

..But I just wanted to know how do I get the artifact out of the damn device??

Click-drag from the machine onto the floor to remove an artifact that's inside of it.

Artifact Interaction

Artifacts can be interacted, and thus activated, through other ways than the devices in the laboratory. Various stimulus mentioned below can be used to substitute the various devices, however they do not give as much control, due to the fact that the amount of stimulus is taken into account, such as temperature. Note that ALL artifacts can be activated within artlab, and does not require any external devices, although they may help with inspection

The correct mild stimulus in an artifact will give you a hint if you are on the right tracks to activate the artifact. You'll get something along the lines "Offensive Gadget makes a faint noise!"

It is possible to damage an artifact, this is down to too much stimulus. In addition to potentially destroying the artifact if too much damage is done, it can also cause them to develop faults and malfunctions, which are almost always a bad thing.

Artifacts will glow, shimmer and generally look turned on when activated.

Stimulus

CARBON TOUCH

Basically a human, monkey or what have you touched it. It also happens if a blob hits the artifact, but the likelihood of that happening is slim

SILICON

A cyborg touched it. This doesn't count the AI.

FORCE

Hitting it with something. This is invoked when you smack the artifact with something, throw something at it, or if it's hit by an explosion, meteor, or other things. It's also invoked in a very tiny amount when the above touch stimuli are used, but this will never be enough to get a reaction from a force-activated artifact. Most regular physical bullets will also set off a force stimulus.

HEAT

This happens if the artifact is burned by paticularly high or low temperatures. The baseline is 310 - anything above that is a hot stimulus, anything below it is a cold stimulus. The heater pad is the most controllable source of this - apart from that you can also burn it with a lit welder (a lot of heat) or lighter (a fair amount of heat). Explosions also invoke this - the closer the artifact is to the epicenter, the more heat it gets. Some types of bullet also invoke the heat stimulus. There are currently no cold stimuli apart from the heater pad.

ELECTRICITY

The electrobox deals with this. You can also hit it with electric by beating it with a baton, or shooting it with certain kinds of bullet.

RADIATION

The x-ray scanner invokes this. You can also invoke it by hitting it with an EMP blast (like the blob, unlikely), or certain kinds of bullet. Note that radstorms do not set off artifacts.