Old Material Science
| Old Material Science | |
| Location | |
|---|---|
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Metallurgist's paradise. | |
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Everybody | |
This small room is home to the arc smelter, which can be used to turn raw ores or metal bars into weird, fancy alloys. It's located between the engine cold loop room and the cargo bay airlock. Public access is (temporarily) through an open wall in the back of the storage room left of the cargo bay.
So fucking metal!
The devices scattered around the room are as follows:
Arc Smelter: This giant contraption in the back of the room is where dreams are made. Simply insert a material into the smelter by clicking it with the desired material in your hand, then click the smelter with an empty hand to refine that material into an alloy bar, then click it again to retrieve the bar. Up to two materials can be loaded to make a combination alloy that combines the functionality of both materials (i.e. combing a metal and a crystal will have it be recognized as both metal and crystal). Note that every use of the smelter causes slag to build up inside of it which, if not removed, will decrease the quality of each successive alloy. Remove slag by clicking the smelter with the slag shovel. Then you can use the slag as a material if you want, I guess. Most compatible materials are listed here, though you can also use obscure things like gold. Experiment!
Fabrication Unit: The janky-looking thing on the right side of the smelter. This is where you insert your alloy bars to make stuff. Most schematics will only need metal alloys, though a couple will need fabric (fabric/fibrilith or an alloy mixed with it) or crystal (molitz, plasmastone, cytine, telecrystal or starstone) as well. A single bar will fulfill each requirement.
Additive barrel: The barrel to the smelter's left. A creative tool for the chemists to make use of, this will mix an inserted reagent with an alloy bar when it's created in the smelter, applying the reagent's effects to the final product. The barrel may only contain one reagent at a time, and the more reagent you used, the greater the effect. Note that this a work in progress and that not all reagent-mixed alloys work correctly at the moment.
Material analyzer: The computer terminal at the west side of the room tells you all sorts of info about a material, such as its resistance to damage, its value, what happens when you wear it, etc. Just click on it with a hand containing the material in question; both alloy bars and stuff made from alloy bars work.
General Manufacturer: These are found all over the station, really. As you'd expect from the name they're supposed to be used for producing general objects, but in Ore Processing all it does is store mauxite, pharosium and molitz bars for you to toss into the smelter.
oh god what are all these numbers
The material analyzer spits out a lot of information about a material when it's scanned. It's all explained in the "Dummies guide to material science" book on the table, but for the sake of completion it might as well be listed here too:
Siemens coefficient: Conductivity rating. Ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 meaning non-conductive and 1 meaning perfectly conductive. Less conductivity means less damage and stun from electricity.
Heat transfer coefficient: How well heat is kept in the material. 0 means it never loses heat, and goes up to 1 which means heat transfers through it immediately. Spacesuits have this set to 0.1, for example.
Thermal conductivity: Basically Heat transfer coefficient as it would apply to floors and walls. This isn't always the same as the former, so pay attention to it if you're making a room.
Temperature Protection: How well the material protects from heat if worn. If your current temperature exceeds this value, you will start taking burn damage.
Heat capacity: This is probably the limit before an Atmos Tank of this material ruptures from too much heat, but due to the atmosphere coding being mangled beyond recognition it no longer applies. Need confirmation.
Permeability coefficient: How well the material resists chemicals. 0 means fully resistant, 1 means it might as well be thin air. Biosuits lean towards 0.
Disease resistance: Exactly what it says on the tin, this is how well the material resists diseases of any sort when worn. Unlike the above, 0 means it's completely powerless against disease, while 100 means completely resistant.
Melee Protection: How well the material protects you from being whacked with stuff. Protects both health and stamina. Higher is better.
Bullet Protection: Get shot with a bullet, divide the original damage with this value, and the new value is how much damage you actually take. Again, higher is better.
Explosion resistance: The more of this the material has, the safer things behind it (not what is made of it) are from explosions. This only applies to walls.
Explosion protection: This is protection for the material itself. The higher this is, the less damage, stun and chance of limb loss the wearer takes from explosions.
Radiation Proof: Whether or not the material protects from radiation. A simple Yes or No.
Magical: For Wizards, this is if the material lets you channel magic when worn. The more magical stuff you wear, the less time your skills take to cool down! Again, a simple Yes or No.
Value: Want to sell the alloy bars instead? This is how valuable the bar is.
Damage: The higher this value is, the more damage it does when you whack someone with it.
Quality: The higher this is, the higher the rest of the material's stats will be.
Durability: Works off of a "# out of #" system. It decreases as the material is hit, and when it reaches 0, one of two things happen: the material no longer blocks damage nearly as well, or it outright breaks (this is only for certain things, like windows being beaten with a toolbox).
Hardness: How hard the object is, obviously. This is a modifier for certain values, and depending on what you're making, you may want either less or more.
"Material has unique properties.": This will only display when the material has a certain quirk to it that doesn't fit under the rest of the info. This includes obscure stuff like Molitz being see-through or Telecrystal randomly warping you. Experiment to see what does what.
Autoignition temperature: Once the temperature in the area reaches this value, the material will catch on fire and, if not put out, will be reduced to ash.
Burn output: How much energy it puts off when burning. Think char ore in the furnace.
That's nice, now what can I make?
| Product | Requirements | Description! |
|---|---|---|
| Glass sheet x10 | 1x Crystal alloy | Dissatisfied with the flimsy glass that the station uses? Whip up some of your own with your sturdier alloys. |
| Metal sheet x10 | 1x Metal alloy | Make super-tough floor and walls, reinforce borgs, etc. |
| Jumpsuit | 1x Fabric alloy | Plain old jumpsuits, except not really since you can make them out of whatever the hell you want with the wonderful power of metallurgy. |
| Heavy Armor | 1x Metal alloy 1x Crystal alloy |
A super-tough exosuit. Become a hulking, nigh-indestructible giant. Note that this is not a spacesuit and will not protect you against the cold of space on its own. |
| Slag shovel | 1x Metal alloy | Has a fringe use if someone steals the original slag shovel, but otherwise is a great melee weapon. |
| Pod Armor | 3x Metal alloy 1x Crystal alloy |
No more scrounging up materials for a super-tough pod, now you can make one yourself! Acts like the Light Pod Armor in terms of speed and capacity. |
| Atmos Tank | 1x Metal alloy | Tired of having your tanks rupture in the Toxins lab from too much pressure? This is for you. |
| Gloves | 1x Fabric alloy | More useful than you might think, giving gloves a high Damage value improves the power of your punches. Giving them a Siemens coefficient (conductivity) of 0 also makes them act like insulated gloves, neat! Note: I'm not sure if this will allow you to make stun gloves out of them. Experiment!? |
So where do I get all the stuff I need?
Procuring the right materials can be a bit luck-based. Sometimes the Quartermaster will get special materials from trades, and the Merchants that come by shuttle can also have some goods. In most rounds however you'll be relying on the Miners, whom you should yell at to bring materials to the smelter if they have nothing better to do (they usually don't). If you yourself are a Miner, then keep what you want to use for yourself and bring the rest of your spoils to the smelter.
As for what materials you actually want, it really depends on what you're making and why. Heavy Armor and Pod Armor should be made as damage-resistant as possible, so they enjoy materials with high defensive numbers like bohrum and uqill. Gloves and Jumpsuits will always need fabric/fibrilith, and while Gloves are obviously useless for defense short of making them non-conductive, the right additive and a high Damage value can give you a surprising edge in unarmed combat. If you're selling stuff, forget about the other stats and try to ramp up Value as much as possible. Find materials with high or low values and experiment in making them better. Your imagination is key here.
Alright, I got all that. Now how do I become indestructible?
Among the vast amount of ores and gems out there, there are a few that are always welcome in the processing room:
- Mauxite. Boring, yes, but plain old mauxite is still nice as a starting armor ingredient.
- Molitz. Nothing too special about it, but it's nice to have something that can add Crystal qualities.
- Uqill is ridiculously dense, offering both superb melee protection and a whopping 15 damage. A slag shovel made of uqill will crack skulls like nobody's business.
- Bohrum doesn't tank melee as well as uqill, but it halves bullet damage and has a pretty impressive explosion resistance of 5, which is very handy if someone is bombing the station.
- Koshmarite is also an excellent defensive material. This can only be acquired from stuffing miracle matter into a Recycling Unit and hoping the RNG spits out the right material (since miracle matter can literally become any ore and gem in the game), but your fellow smelters will love you if you can produce it.
- Fibrilith is essential if you want to make Jumpsuits or Gloves. Fabric is recognized as fibrilith in the coding, so that works too: you can mass-produce fabric by having Botany grow some cotton and refine it with a Recycling Unit.
And indeed, no crafting system is without a few advanced tricks. Here are some things to know:
- When you combine two materials, their stats average out. For example, say you combine bohrum with its Melee Protection of 7 and uqill with its 11; a direct fusion of the two would yield a Melee Protection of 9.
- Merged materials will take on a mix-and-match name of whatever you put in: it starts with the additive if you used one, then the first material you inserted, then finishes with the second material.
- If you plan to use two or more materials, figure out which ones you want and then gather as much as you can, and then start smelting them into the same bar one after the other. Smelting the exact same materials together does nothing, but smelting different ones constantly like this will gradually increase/decrease the combined alloy bar's stats until they hit their base maximums/minimums. Note that constantly sullying the mixture like this will decrease Value, but if you're not selling it then you don't have to worry about that.
- If you're crafty with the order of the materials, you can eventually revert their name back to a base material while still having the properties of everything you put in. Make a Heavy Armor prefixed with slag but given uqill's stats, no one will be able to tell the difference without the Material analyzer!
- Once a material is smelted into an alloy bar, that bar will keep the material's typing and quirks forever regardless of how many reforges it goes through. You could fuse whatever you want into a telecrystal and it would always have its spastic warping properties, you could pump a hundred uqill into fibrilith and it would still be considered a fabric, something with a Radium additive would always induce radiation, etc.
Evil Blacksmith
So you're a traitor? I'm sure you've already seen the boons of durable armor, so I have just one word for you: erebite. Erebite ore tends to make a huge explosion from so much as being looked at wrong: the slightest impact, be it from smacking/throwing, heating, electrifying or explosion knockback has a chance to make it go off, and the chance increases as its durability decreases. This extends to anything you make out of it or mix with it, so smelting a single erebite bar into a stack of metal essentially gives you ten easy pipe bombs. Pod Armors made of erebite are equally devastating, basically a 2x2 bomb with an engine strapped to it that will tear a huge chunk out of the station. If you can find a way to set them off easily without blowing yourself up in the process, you can as much damage, if not more, than pyromaniac Scientists and Miners. Like with regular material acquisition, erebite is easiest to acquire as a Quartermaster or Miner depending on how the RNG rolls.