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Difficulty: Hard Supervisors: Commander, Executive Officer Rank: Not defined Duties: Coordinate engineering, ensure equipment doesn't get stolen, make sure the Supermatter doesn't escape. Guides: Supermatter Engine, Construction Unlock Requirements: Not available. Detailed Description: Not defined |__________| |
Role
As the Chief Engineer, it is your responsibility to ensure the structural stability of the USS Sulaco, and that all alterations made to it by the Engineering Team are structurally sound and safe. You are also responsible for coordinating the Maintenance Technicians and ensuring they don't overload the Supermatter or release toxic gases all over the ship.
How to Set Up the Supermatter
Basic Overview
The Supermatter is a big chunk of radioactive material. When the Supermatter is activated, it releases heat and radiation. Sufficient heat or radiation will harm the crew, so both must be controlled. Using phoron, the Sulaco collects the Supermatter's radiation and turns it into power. There's a cooling loop using nitrogen (N2) to control the heat.
Notes:
Set Up the Cooling Loop
The Supermatter is cooled using nitrogen (N2). There's a console in the engineering office that controls the cooling loop. At first, it's not injecting any coolant. Adjust the settings until it's injecting coolant to input at the maximum of 700L/s. The output pressure should stay at 0, toggled open.
Notes: An input of 700L/s may be overkill for most engine setups. Once the engine is fully up and running, this could be adjusted downwards to find a lower equilibrium and conserve nitrogen but in a way that will still sufficiently cool the Supermatter.
Use Safety Gear
The Sulaco engine room is extremely dangerous. The radiation will injure, blind, cause hallucinations, and eventually kill. Before entering the engine room, put on Optical Meson Scanners, a Radiation Suit, and a Radiation Hood.
Notes: The Optical Meson Scanners do not protect your eyes when welding.
Prepare the Radiation Collectors
Fill Eight Phoron Tanks
Phoron is an extremely dangerous substance, but essential to the power generation process. There are eight orange tanks already in the Sulaco engine room. These tanks are engineered to store phoron. There are several orange phoron canisters in the engine room.
Put a phoron tank in your hand and touch it to a phoron canister. This should attach the phoron tank to the phoron canister. Touch the phoron canister and it gives you options. Set the output pressure to its maximum of 1013 kPa. Click to open the release valve. This transfers phoron from the canister to the tank until it reaches a pressure of 1013 kPa. Click to close the release valve. Then click to eject the phoron tank. This phoron tank should now be full of phoron. Do this for all eight phoron tanks.
Turn on the Radiation Collectors
Once there are eight full orange phoron tanks, it's time to set up the radiation collectors. There are eight radiation collectors total, four on each side of the Supermatter. Open the blast doors using the switch and carry your full phoron tanks inside this tunnel. Put one full tank in each radiation collector and it should turn orange. Then click on all eight radiation collectors to activate them. Close the blast doors when you exit.
Notes: If you've released phoron into the Sulaco engine room, this is bad. WiP: How to fix it?
The Engine Room SMES Unit
The generated power needs to be stored. There are seven big white SMES units across the ship that function like enormous batteries. One of them is in the Sulaco engine room. Turn its input and output online and use the maximum settings. The SMES is now on the power grid and will start to draw power to charge itself and output power to the rest of the ship as necessary.
Notes:
Use the Emitter
The Supermatter is mostly inert before it's activated. There's an emitter in the Sulaco engine room for this purpose. An emitter is essentially a giant laser. It's wired into the SMES and the power grid. Open the blast door to the Supermatter and tap the emitter to turn it on. Count every zap from the emitter and hit the Supermatter 8-10 times. Turn off the emitter. Close the blast door.
Notes: The Supermatter can be zapped more than 10 times. Every zap will produce additional power, but every extra zap is risky. Obviously, exploding the Supermatter is a bad idea. If the Supermatter isn't set up near the beginning of the round, there may not be enough juice left to fire the emitter. Find a way to charge the SMES to 1%. That should be enough to use the emitter. Or, set up a portable generator near the emitter for power. Make sure to reset the engine room once you're finished.
Charge the Nitrogen Cooling Loop
There are three nitrogen (N2) canisters at the top of the Sulaco engine room already connected to the cooling loop. These canisters are probably empty and the red light is blinking. Wrench them loose to pull them free of the cooling loop. Find the other nitrogen canisters in the engine room and pull them to these spots. Wrench them into place and the nitrogen will flow out of the canisters and fill up the cooling loop.
Notes: This step may be unnecessary at the beginning of the round, but it's probably good for preventing the Supermatter from overheating later. If the Supermatter starts overheating, add more nitrogen to the cooling loop. There are other nitrogen canisters on the Sulaco.
Secure the Emitter
A common terrorist or mutinous act is to try and overload the Supermatter. It's usually done by turning the emitter on and zapping the Supermatter until it blows up. To prevent this, consider either cutting the wires to the emitter, unwelding it, or doing something else so that it's not so easy for a baldie terrorist to push two buttons and and blow up the ship.
Notes: The Optical Meson Scanners don't protect your eyes when welding.
Six More SMES Units
There are six additional SMES units scattered around the Sulaco. These are enormous batteries and will help to maintain power if anything happens with the Supermatter. There are three in a row in engineering. There is one on the top deck in each maintenance tunnel on both sides of the central ladders. The last one is on the lower level between the Corporate Liason's office and telecommunications. If all SMES units are turned on to maximum, it's probably too much load on the power grid and there may be brownouts and blackouts. After setting up the Supermatter, activate the two SMES units at the central ladders and set them both to maximum. The three other SMES units in engineering should probably be deactivated or set to low input levels until the other three SMES units are at full charge. Once there's 100% backup power in the first three SMES units, slowly activate and charge the other SMES units.
Notes: There's no hard and fast rule for the SMES units because it would depend on how much power the Supermatter generates. If the APC in the Sulaco engine room is mysteriously losing its charge, the battery power is probably being sucked into the power grid because there's too much drain on the system from the SMES units. To fix this, turn the input levels down on a few SMES units.
Monitor the Engine
Use the consoles in the engineering office to check the power output from the Supermatter and the current load on the system. Habitually check up on the Supermatter temperature. It's probably fine under around 300K, but be concerned if the temperature crosses around 500K.
Notes:
Ejecting the Supermatter
If the Supermatter all goes to hell, don't be too proud to eject it using the failsafe buttons in engineering. That's a better outcome than any resulting explosion that could irradiate and destroy most of the Sulaco.
What Else Should the Chief Engineer Do?
- Teach your MTs, establishing a line of dialogue with them at roundstart can mean the different between a coordinated and efficient engineering department, or a bunch of SSD MTs and an overwhelmed CE.
- Do training exercises. Do your MTs struggle with repairing things, or do you want to test them? Ahelp first, and then wall off and poke holes in EVA and teach them how to fix it.
- Ask if you can go planetside and assist with the building of an FOB, or add cameras onto the dropship or pod to assist command.
- Experiment! Think of a cool project and try it out. Make sure to ahelp first if it might be breaking some rules!