User:Carbadox

A Further Guide To The Engineering Department

So, you read all the wiki pages, got all the basics and played some of the jobs. Are you still lost? Great, cus that's what this page for. Everything here will be divided into 4 main parts, one for each Engineering job position, respectively...

• Mechanic
• Engineer
• Cheif Engineer
• Quatermaster

I'm bad at introductions so let just start.

Mechanic

As a mechanic, your responsibilities are almost naught. You're not even expected to fix the APCs, god knows none does. Your usually expected to just fulfill your own selfish desires of tomfoolery and what not, however you can also prove to be a great service to the station. Although you're generally non-vital to the station crew, what you make out of your tools can be life saving to everyone and can even help you gain some respect as a reliable and useful asset. Before we talk about how to become a suave space station super star (did you like that alliteration?), let's take a moment to talk about what makes the difference between a good player and a bad one. The set-up.

Gearing Up

Within your workshop where you usually spawn, you should find everything that you need to prepare properly. That being...

• A utility belt - for storing all your tools such as a...
  • Screwdriver
  • Crowbar
  • Multitool
  • Welding Tool
  • Wire Cutters
  • Wrench
  • All of which you'll find in a mechanical (blue) toolbox. You can quickly place all those items from the toolbox into your belt by clicking on your belt with the toolbox in hand
    • Disregard the atmospheric analyser. It will only take up precious inventory space and it's not nearly as important as all your other tools.
• A hard hat in your locker. Useful for when you're patrolling the maintance tunnels and need a light source.
• A fire extinguisher in the emergency (red) toolbox. Just in case.
• And a soldering iron (if you really need to), however store it in your backpack's internal box and not your toolbelt. You'll only need it when you start working with box frames but when you are, you'll be coming back to your workshop anyways so it's not entirely necessary to carry around. Ditto for the deconstruction device in your locker.

That's about it here. Some people grab the meson goggles sometimes, and some even grab the engineering wintercoat in there but don't do it unless you like looking like a human sized bananna with your yellow on yellow get-up. Now, you should consider scavenging a gas mask in a maintance tunnel. It serves as a breath mask for your emergency internals but can also protect you from any chemical attacks. It also looks pretty ominous and cool, no?

Next up, you'll want to collect some materials for your Reverse-Engineering Fabricator. You know how it uses up materials for frames? Wondered how to refill those materials? Well here it is. While some more advanced Fabricators or fabs often require materials with special qualities, on board fabs are pretty simple and only require 3 types most of the time, that being Metal/Dense Metal, Crystal and Conductive Material. These show up on the station in the form of Steel, Glass and Copper Wires or just Wires respectively.

While you can try searching for some stacks around the station or perhaps try salvaging it from the station itself (perhaps if you have a deathwish with the Cheif Engineer), it's honestly quite ineffective and not worth the time. Don't worry though, you'll get those mats before you know it. How you ask? Well through the power of space Amazon Prime of course! Just stroll on over to your local Cargo bay or Quatermasters Office and place an order for 200 sheets for Glass Sheets, 200 Steel Sheets as well as a 4 pack of wires for only 5k credits! What if you don't have a Quatermaster to approve your order? You have a couple alternatives. You can purchase the crates and get the crates without any approval needed with your own money, but 5k is quite alot and you might not always have that much when you need it. However, if you have a Security Officer, Cheif Engineer or AI that aren't too preoccupied, they can very easily approve the orders with hopefully no problem. Now that you've got your crates of loot you can drag them all the way to your workshop. Or alternatively, use the cargo transporter while you're there to quickly move them over to your workshop.

Phew, now that that's out of the way let's finish this off. The first thing you'll want to do with find a reclaimer in your workshop. Drag it over so that it's next to your Reverse-Engineering Fab but not blocking your way. Diagonally to it is fine. Now, click and drag the reclaimer onto your fab. What you've now done is set the reclaimers output to the fab. Now when you put the materials into the reclaimer, they'll put themselves directly into the fab and won't just drop unstacked onto the floor. You can also do the same thing with the fabricator and make it drop everything it makes infront of it for example. Last thing, if you open the boxes of wire, you can click and drag the box in your hand and make it drop it's contents onto the floor. After that you can quick stack all the dropped wires into the reclaimer by click dragging again.

Finally! Now that your fabricator has been loaded up, we can finally start putting it into proper use! So what should be start making? Well....

Research and Development