Atmos 1

Klovnstation design document

Current status

Atmos is a fun department but currently lacks departmental interactions and plays no role on the station that is positive (unless maxcapping nukies counts). It is also difficult to get into atmos because it takes quite a bit of knowledge to start getting any results.

Rationale of improvement

Making atmos interact with more departments and also easier to get in will create more new atmosians and in general benefit the stained public opinion of atmos. Additionally, more robust atmosians will fix the understaffing and undertraining issues that atmos suffers from, and lead to less immediate round ends from even minor damage.

Requested changes

Learning curve We currently have the fire alarm which is going to help a lot with atmos infant burn chambers. To make atmos more incentivising and easier to learn I have devised some other possible changes:

Zipion A new gas that, when inhaled, adds a moderate speed boost (think 15%) to the player at the cost of tripling the hunger rate (chefs ahoy). It would be synthesised by mixing 9 water vapor with 1 plasma at 150 kelvin or lower and would have no heat effects on the reaction itself - serving as a nice and useful baby’s first mix while enabling more advanced atmosians to pump it into the distro with either hellfire cooling or frezon cooling. Additionally, condensing zipion could create meth. While a less complex one-use gas is pretty lame, we need some straightforward things to do as atmos when you’re just looking around.

Gas overflow valve Yes, long overdue, I think funky has it already, just set a target pressure and fart gas out into another pipe once it is exceeded. Not particularly useful for anything advanced (i think?) but would improve the teg loop clogging situation when you don’t have it all figured out yet.

Condenser combinations The condenser is underused and could benefit from a system where pumping in multiple gases creates a brand new chemical, independent of whatever each one would create separately. These reactions can happen in a way where they take priority over the less complex condensation, so if you don’t nail it you get a bit of the combo and then whatever the remainder is.

Molar pump Getting moles precisely is a PITA and while many know how to, most don’t. Getting a pump to move X moles to the other side up to whatever pressure you want is exactly what people want and will solve problems for so many. Allow both continuous operation and one time moving.

(very complex) Signal comp responsiveness improvement Currently signal comps are far too slow in their processing to keep up with atmos ticks. This would require what I assume to be very complex code restructuring to bind them with atmos processing in some meaningful way. If this were to happen atmos would be reinvigorated overnight because most newborn atmosians gravitate towards signal rigs and get disappointed when they fail.

Interplay Atmos lacks interplay with departments. It is currently stuck either generating maxcaps or gases for edge cases, mostly for sci and artifacts.

Air grenade compressor Air grenades are awesome. This machine would take steel, let you set a pressure slider and pump in tons of gas, with say 2000L of space in each grenade. This would both make air grenades renewable and also provide a way to deploy new gases as we add them, like Evaporin which we mention below. Bonus points for something like gas temperature being kept, which would allow cooking up portable plasmafire nades. (maybe allow plasma and trit pumping as an emag interaction only)

Evaporin An old klovnstation idea. Evaporate puddles when released, cause thirst in people and harm them when they are completely thirsty. The thinking janitor’s alternative to cleanades. Ask for a can from atmos and watch as a couple of moles wipe away a puddle.

The reaction could be tritium and carbon dioxide mixed at say 500 kelvin, with the reaction either producing a waste product of choice (maybe ammonia? not enough sources for that sweet sweet botany condenser product)

Tritium and plasma as fuel Plumbing is in the works, and there has also been an idea about gas guzzling thrusters. These are low priority ideas, but making gas a prerequisite to some advanced machines would make atmos pretty useful to everyone aboard.

An example of this idea would be the plumbing chem synth either accepting minerals or gas as fuel, and all thrusters being replaced with long lasting gas thrusters that would either take a burnmix (to teach people about mixing and cooling) or a pure fuel (to only teach about cooling).

Botany gas interplay Incompatible atmosphere almost always means shoveling up a plant. This is a miserable situation to be in for what could be a good game mechanic. Make each required gas provide an inherent benefit (say growth rate or yield or even seed restoration), with more complex gases providing better benefits, and make it easy to spot what kind of gas the plant requires.

Additionally, ammonia and water vapor being near planter boxes at a low enough temperature could lead to an interaction where the planter automatically consumes the gas as it „condenses“ into it, replenishing nutrient and water respectively.

Science gas interplay Anomalies should be able to interface with gases (and probably consume them in the process) to provide unique benefits like lesser pulserate, more points or even an over time severity decrease, making atmos and sci able to tame anomalies forever when they work together.

Pneumatics Pneumatic items are an interesting idea to explore, and could be a fun pastime or grigger trap staple. Here are some ideas for various parts:

• Pneumatic hammer

Extends a piston to a neighboring tile causing damage that scales with pressure up to about 200 at 18000 kPa (valves, people! give it like 20L of internal volume). A slow and cumbersome yet effective way to breach walls, set up traps, and do various fun things. Retracts when pressure inside reaches 10 kPa or less.

• Pneumatic launcher

Place it in a direction, activate it with 1000 kPa of pressure or more, and things on its tile go flying in said direction (like one of those launcher pads on whatever the fork that has it). Bonus points if launching scales with pressure.

• Mounted pneumatic cannon

Fun for the entire atmos family. Same as the normal cannon but connected to an air supply, can fire bullets when loaded into it and accepts reloads from boxes like a magazine (wink wink nudge nudge). Bonus points if its firing angle is adjustable beyond the 4 major directions.

• Vacuum feed chute

Feed it pressure (it will slowly consume it like the pneu cannon) and it will load and shoot all the handheld items in it into a disposals pipe connected to itself. Feed it more pressure and it will do the same for a larger area, up to 3x3. Yes, we have conveyor belts, that’s why it should also take produce off plants.

• Hellfire oven

The chef can make a hellfire oven which, when fed gas at a sufficiently high temperature (let’s do 2000K, maybe?), can instantly cook anything. (you can still set 30 or 15 seconds for whatever recipe you want, it will just fast forward the process)

Projected changes

Atmos now gets to actually help people and it has more stuff to do than just maxcaps. Gases have more uses and have other purposes outside of bombs or sale. Newbie atmosians are helped by the presence of new devices and a new gas to help ease them in. This is by no means a finished department, but it helps patch over the worst.

Features from this document already implemented into the game

• Zipion
• Molar mixer
• Gas overflow valve