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:

Insert your card into the terminal, and type term_login
Type cd /mnt/artlab to move to the default location of the artifact research tape.
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.

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.

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.

How do I get an artifact out of the machine??

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