Post by Nullbear on Nov 22, 2014 14:41:36 GMT
Working on a piping system for BS. Works for both gases, and liquids, and possibly even a few solids. Lets just call it a "fluid" pipe.
There are a few key variables to note, as a player. The volume of the pipe (This is static, it will never change.) and the amount of "fluid" inside of it. There is also pressure, which for simplicities sake, will just be amount/volume for the moment.
These same concepts will likely be used in a lot of things involving gases and other fluids. So an air tank, for example. The materials the object is made of, will affect how much pressure it can withstand, or rather, how much pressure difference.
For something with a pressure strength of 0, Any difference of pressure between the inside, and outside, will cause the object to rupture/collapse. The chemicals will spill out/in, etc. This means that if you have a vacuum pipe, and the air outside is a high enough pressure, this can collapse the piping as well.
Piping things will work just like reagent containers, in that they can contain several different reagents, and reactions can occur within. If we do end up going with plumbing in the future, for example, someone could tap into the piping system, inject some chemicals, and poison the water supply.
Contents of a pipe will be equally dispersed throughout the pipe network. For example, if a pipe is suddenly filled with 500 units of air (this would be the amount, not the volume) and there are 5 pipes (including itself) in the network, they will equalize to 100u in each pipe.
Most of the atmospherics pipe devices etc, will be modified to work with these pipes. So air valves, etc, will affect how the piping system works. From the programmers side, bent/straight pipes that are connected directly, form a single pipe network. All contents are distributed equally. air valves and other atmos devices will not be part of the network, in most cases. For example, we could have two piping networks connected by a pressure valve. If the pressure on the input side of the pressure valve reaches its threshold, the valve will open temporarily, and some of its contents will be transferred to the second pipe network.
Throwing a random antag-idea in here, Using a pipe designed for high pressure, you could attach several slightly lower pressure valves/pipecaps. And slowly increase the pressure of the larger pipe. When it reaches a certain point, all of the weaker caps will explode, releasing your (probably harmful even at low temperatures) gas into the atmosphere. This would be an interesting way to blow up several areas at once, on a time delay, as an atmospheric tech antag, or something. i dunno.
Some other design thing to throw here, Beakers, or well, any non-closed container, cannot have any pressure difference, so most of them will be measured by volume.
Beakers are always full. (wait what?)
Lets say you take an "empty" 20u beaker, and fill it with 5u water. It will now have 5u water, and whatever is in the atmosphere around it. This means you can effectively get "beakers of air" by just... using an empty beaker. but lets say you have a chemical that reacts with air, and you dont want that. You could use the fume hood (or some other device, i dunno, im just explaining what it does, not what its called.) That is a sort of mini-airlock for items. You first put the (probably empty) beaker inside, it empties the air out of itself (and the contents of the beaker, if you were silly) making a vaccum workspace for you. Where you can mix chemicals inside. There will be a way to directly add chemicals to the fume hood, likely using sealed canisters or something. Working on it. Thefume hood will allow you to control the pressure of chemicals in the beaker, and the atmosphere. And to some lesser extent... the temperature. You will also be able to use this machine to put chemicals INTO canisters. Canisters are "pipes", they work on the pressure thing, etc.
Since canisters are rather large... Expect chemistry to become bigger than the little cubbyhole in medbay it currently is. I honestly expect it to be, in relation to baystation's map. About the size of misc research + toxins + storage + all the hallways in between. Chemistry will be covering a lot. From MR, to explosions, to medicine, etc. And there will be tons more that you will be able to do.
Solids, Liquids, and Gases. FLUUIDDS!
All of the reagents (objects too, eventually) will gain a new variable: mass. Mass will affect a few things. But in terms of fluids, it affects at what level the object must be to react with whatever.
Lets say someone spilled water all over the floor, a LOT of water. Oh shit, the room is actually FLOODED now.
The rooms volume comprises of about 30% water, and 69% air.
When an object is on the floor, It will react with the bottom 33%, When its on a table, It will react with the middle 33%, when its on a shelf, the top 33% This is a place where mass takes effect in chemistry/atmospherics. There are some other things to note, though, which im not going to go into here, because its complex and silly, might not make the cut, etc.
I'll give you a taste, though. A sealed beaker of air: floats on the water.
An unsealed beaker of air... also floats on the water, but will have a chance to "spill", at which point well, the beaker fills with water, and sinks.
Solids can become a fluid (in terms of canisters and pipes) if they are mixed into a solution of liquid. It will depend on the solid, and the liquid, and the amount, etc. Only finely ground solids will be considered for this (the bulk of what chemistry will use as oslids, will be "powdered" but the MR division will use other things... like sheets or crystals etc.)
Mass: This will affect all objects, not just chemistry. It wont affect it much, though. Mass will affect the weight of objects, lets say we have a newly discovered metal with an extremely high mass (spoiler alert) and you make a box out of it... While normally.. you could pick up the box. Now the box is too "heavy" to lift. Mass for objects may just be measured like size as opposed to numbers. (ex. tiny, small, medium, large, huge.)
Cargo! they get shelves, and tables, and forklifts, and a few other things...
With mass, cargo techs may not be able to lift crates all by themselves anymore. Sure, an empty crate will still be easy to move, so will most smaller crates. But a crate filled to the brim sheet metal from mining, for example, may not. In this situation, you'll get to use the new forklift! Yay!
Since im planning on adding a sort of "warehouse" job for logistics/cargo/engineering. Forklifts will be seen used there...
This is mostly just fluff, but its a good example of where you can see all these ideas collide: the warehouse. Here we have a three-stage shelving unit. It can hold... you guessed it, three crates. One on each level. You can use the forklift to raise crates to different levels. Or just push them by hand to the bottom-most level. If there is a flood though, you'd better hope those crates arewater ehem... acid proof. The forklift can only do so much. If someone did something stupid, and caused a crate to be just TOO full... or too heavy. (Filling it with bars of that new metal, for example) The forklift will still not be able to lift it...
There are a few key variables to note, as a player. The volume of the pipe (This is static, it will never change.) and the amount of "fluid" inside of it. There is also pressure, which for simplicities sake, will just be amount/volume for the moment.
These same concepts will likely be used in a lot of things involving gases and other fluids. So an air tank, for example. The materials the object is made of, will affect how much pressure it can withstand, or rather, how much pressure difference.
For something with a pressure strength of 0, Any difference of pressure between the inside, and outside, will cause the object to rupture/collapse. The chemicals will spill out/in, etc. This means that if you have a vacuum pipe, and the air outside is a high enough pressure, this can collapse the piping as well.
Piping things will work just like reagent containers, in that they can contain several different reagents, and reactions can occur within. If we do end up going with plumbing in the future, for example, someone could tap into the piping system, inject some chemicals, and poison the water supply.
Contents of a pipe will be equally dispersed throughout the pipe network. For example, if a pipe is suddenly filled with 500 units of air (this would be the amount, not the volume) and there are 5 pipes (including itself) in the network, they will equalize to 100u in each pipe.
Most of the atmospherics pipe devices etc, will be modified to work with these pipes. So air valves, etc, will affect how the piping system works. From the programmers side, bent/straight pipes that are connected directly, form a single pipe network. All contents are distributed equally. air valves and other atmos devices will not be part of the network, in most cases. For example, we could have two piping networks connected by a pressure valve. If the pressure on the input side of the pressure valve reaches its threshold, the valve will open temporarily, and some of its contents will be transferred to the second pipe network.
Throwing a random antag-idea in here, Using a pipe designed for high pressure, you could attach several slightly lower pressure valves/pipecaps. And slowly increase the pressure of the larger pipe. When it reaches a certain point, all of the weaker caps will explode, releasing your (probably harmful even at low temperatures) gas into the atmosphere. This would be an interesting way to blow up several areas at once, on a time delay, as an atmospheric tech antag, or something. i dunno.
Some other design thing to throw here, Beakers, or well, any non-closed container, cannot have any pressure difference, so most of them will be measured by volume.
Beakers are always full. (wait what?)
Lets say you take an "empty" 20u beaker, and fill it with 5u water. It will now have 5u water, and whatever is in the atmosphere around it. This means you can effectively get "beakers of air" by just... using an empty beaker. but lets say you have a chemical that reacts with air, and you dont want that. You could use the fume hood (or some other device, i dunno, im just explaining what it does, not what its called.) That is a sort of mini-airlock for items. You first put the (probably empty) beaker inside, it empties the air out of itself (and the contents of the beaker, if you were silly) making a vaccum workspace for you. Where you can mix chemicals inside. There will be a way to directly add chemicals to the fume hood, likely using sealed canisters or something. Working on it. The
Since canisters are rather large... Expect chemistry to become bigger than the little cubbyhole in medbay it currently is. I honestly expect it to be, in relation to baystation's map. About the size of misc research + toxins + storage + all the hallways in between. Chemistry will be covering a lot. From MR, to explosions, to medicine, etc. And there will be tons more that you will be able to do.
Solids, Liquids, and Gases. FLUUIDDS!
All of the reagents (objects too, eventually) will gain a new variable: mass. Mass will affect a few things. But in terms of fluids, it affects at what level the object must be to react with whatever.
Lets say someone spilled water all over the floor, a LOT of water. Oh shit, the room is actually FLOODED now.
The rooms volume comprises of about 30% water, and 69% air.
When an object is on the floor, It will react with the bottom 33%, When its on a table, It will react with the middle 33%, when its on a shelf, the top 33% This is a place where mass takes effect in chemistry/atmospherics. There are some other things to note, though, which im not going to go into here, because its complex and silly, might not make the cut, etc.
I'll give you a taste, though. A sealed beaker of air: floats on the water.
An unsealed beaker of air... also floats on the water, but will have a chance to "spill", at which point well, the beaker fills with water, and sinks.
Solids can become a fluid (in terms of canisters and pipes) if they are mixed into a solution of liquid. It will depend on the solid, and the liquid, and the amount, etc. Only finely ground solids will be considered for this (the bulk of what chemistry will use as oslids, will be "powdered" but the MR division will use other things... like sheets or crystals etc.)
Mass: This will affect all objects, not just chemistry. It wont affect it much, though. Mass will affect the weight of objects, lets say we have a newly discovered metal with an extremely high mass (spoiler alert) and you make a box out of it... While normally.. you could pick up the box. Now the box is too "heavy" to lift. Mass for objects may just be measured like size as opposed to numbers. (ex. tiny, small, medium, large, huge.)
Cargo! they get shelves, and tables, and forklifts, and a few other things...
With mass, cargo techs may not be able to lift crates all by themselves anymore. Sure, an empty crate will still be easy to move, so will most smaller crates. But a crate filled to the brim sheet metal from mining, for example, may not. In this situation, you'll get to use the new forklift! Yay!
Since im planning on adding a sort of "warehouse" job for logistics/cargo/engineering. Forklifts will be seen used there...
This is mostly just fluff, but its a good example of where you can see all these ideas collide: the warehouse. Here we have a three-stage shelving unit. It can hold... you guessed it, three crates. One on each level. You can use the forklift to raise crates to different levels. Or just push them by hand to the bottom-most level. If there is a flood though, you'd better hope those crates are
