Station Engineer
| ENGINEERING STAFF | |
  Station Engineer |
Access: Engineering, Power Equipment, Tech Storage, External airlocks, Construction Site, Maintenance, Telecoms Additional Access: Atmospherics Difficulty: Medium Supervisors: Chief Engineer Duties: Start the Supermatter, wire the solars, repair station hull and wiring damage; if there are no atmos techs repair station piping when damaged, and ensure the air isn't filled with toxic stuff. Basically, do everything that has anything to do with power and repairs. Guides: Engineering items, Guide to construction, Guide to advanced construction, Guide to power, Supermatter Engine, Solars, Hacking, Guide to Telecommunications, Guide_to_Atmospherics Quote: "Danger! Crystal hyperstructure integrity faltering! Integrity: 0%" - The Supermatter after the engineers throw Poly at it |
Hey, Listen!
For the Guide to setting up the Supermatter engine, click here.
Effectively, you are an assistant on steroids, and need not fear any electrical things with your gloves. You can, however, affect the station, for good or for ill, much more profoundly than a mere assistant can. What sets you apart from the rest of the crew on the station is that you are the laziest crewmember in the entire station most equipped for constructing objects and machinery, repairing structural damage, and E.V.A. missions in the cold of Space.
Bare minimum requirements: Fix hull breaches, fix cables/APCs if power goes out in an area. Know how Solars and SMES work. Don't throw Poly, the CE's pet, into the Supermatter Engine. Resist the temptation to run off with a MODsuit at roundstart.
Basic skills: Set up the engine with the least amount of casualties. Fix door-jacked airlocks and rebuild machines. Familiarize yourself with Hacking.
Advanced skills: Detect and fix sabotage - Telecomms, the engine, power sinks, atmospherics. Know enough about Atmospherics to stop a plasma flood.
The Engineer
Engineering Etiquette
Take a look around engineering as the first thing you do, and see how many fellow engineers you have. If there's a ton, you probably don't want to snatch up everything that isn't nailed down. Don't fight over MODsuits. Don't try to break into the middle of a task someone has already begun: two people messing around with the Supermatter pipes without coordinating can lead to the Supermatter to delaminate.
Be nice and courteous and you'll often be treated well, curse people out for their incompetence or how slow they are and people aren't going to rush to your retrieve your corpse when you die to your own incompetence.
Engineering Equipment
Engineers have to carry a lot of equipment to perform their various tasks. The job is a lot easier if you carry around what you need so you don't constantly have to be running back to engineering for each step of a repair process.
Here's a suggestion how you can be prepared for shit on the space station:
| Container | Contents |
|---|---|
 Tool Belt |
 ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  .
|
 Backpack |
 ,  , , ,  , ,.
|
| Internals box |
 , ,  ,  , , ,  .
|
Some of this you start with, some you need to collect. The items you pick up are:
Insulated Gloves: Your most prized possession, especially if all modsuits are snatched up already. These puppies protect you from shock. Engineers work with insane amounts of electricity, and it's easy to put yourself into crit if you tap into the main engine line without remembering to put them on. Always grab a pair of gloves. There's a few pairs laying around engineering, and more in the electrical closet. Lock the closet when you're done unless you want the clown and mime to steal all the remaining pairs.
Welding Mask: You need this to avoid going blind while welding. Note if you have the engineering or atmos MODsuit activated, it works as a welding mask you don't have to flip up/flip down.
Metal & Glass: Basic building blocks. Carrying just one stack each is generally fine; convert it into floor tiles, bars, or reinforced glass as necessary. If you take one stack to yourself, pay close attention to the radio so you know where they are needed.
Engineering Scanner Goggles These have two modes: Meson mode allows vision of structures and terrain through walls; and T-ray mode allows vision of objects beneath flooring such as cables and pipes.
Gas mask: Basically the same function as a breath mask, but with the added bonus of protecting you from pepper spray, acid sprays to the face (once), and some of the diseases the medical doctors inevitably release, but offers a limited range of view. Also keeps you on your feet a little longer in high concentrations of N2O, so make sure you have one in your inventory if not on your face for roleplay reasons. Note, syndicate voice changer looks exactly like it, so don't be surprised if Security asks you to take off your mask to verify you are who you say you are. You can find them in engineering lockers, laying around in engineering and in maintenance tunnels.
Power Cell: Needed to repair a fully broken APC, or just get an APC working in a drained area. Good to have one on hand.
Inducer: The Electromagnetic Power Inducer can be used to charge objects like APCs, cyborgs, and energy-based weapons without replacing their power cells.
Flashlights: These light up the area, even in your pockets. Two flashlights in your pockets and your helmet light on and you'll light up a huge area, very helpful to general crew when you're doing repairs in a freshly-darkened crater so they don't walk into the vacuum and freeze.
Hazard Vest: An archetypal item, it serves no purpose except roleplay and that you can buckle an extended capacity emergency oxygen tank to it. Definitely do so if you aren't in a MODsuit or firesuit.
Power control module: You need this to repair a fully broken APC. Some sit inside electrical supplies lockers.
- Airlock electronics: You need this to construct an airlock. Having one on hand can save you a long trip back if you run across a broken door. Some by the metal and supplies, and inside electrical supplies lockers.
Firesuits can no longer be carried in bags, and it's unsafe to firefight without them, so just run to the nearest firefighter closet in the advent of a fire to gear up -- There is one close to nearly everything everywhere in the station, learn their locations.
Note that some of these are for roleplay reasons only. You do not absolutely need them, but you are free to grab them.
Doing Your Duty
You have a few things you should do, if you don't want to be robusted, before doing what you want to do. Repairing things is what engineers do, and so is setting the station with power. Without any engineers doing a little work, the station will crumble.
Starting the Engine
This is an extremely important task. Luckily, it is laughably simple. Make certain you follow the instructions precisely to the smallest detail; an engineer who accidentally unleashes the fury of a supermatter engine usually doesn't last longer than the supermatter does.
Working on the Solars
Read the guide, make sure you have wire, internals and a space suit. Best of luck.
Fixing the Station
Is there a hole in the wall? Are floor tiles broken? Did an idiot break a window to get into the medbay? Are people complaining about electrified doors? Are cables torn up leading to an APC? Has anyone wasted all the power in an APC? Are the APC's themselves fried? Is it more than thirty seconds into the round? The answer to two or more of these is always yes.
Quit reading "The Lusty Xenomorph Maid" and get to work!
Fixing the Power
The main engine and/or the solars provide more than enough energy to power a state-of-the-art space station -- unless something goes wrong, which it almost always will. Whether it's due to shoddy wiring, extreme APC load, a powersink, a bomb, an assistant cutting cables, a delaminated supermatter or simple engineer laziness, power outages are a common problem that is your, YES, YOUR, job to fix. See that Power Monitoring computer? If people complain of power outages, it should always be the first port of call -- assuming the supermatter isn't shouting on the radio about imminent causality stabilization, in which case run before a lynch mob appears to beat your ass.
See the guide to power to learn how to into power and, more importantly, how to fix it.
Getting the Man Out of Danger... Alive!
It's your job to save lives when they cry out for help and no one else can help them.
Firefighting
Engineers get access to maintenance hallways, which contain several firesuits and extinguishers. If a fire breaks out somewhere, put it out. Firesuits allow you to walk in almost any fire. Extinguishers have a limited capacity. Refill them with water tanks, which can be found all around the station.
Physical Rescue
If someone cries that he can't get out of somewhere and no one can get him out, then it's your job to do so. Hacking airlocks, deconstructing walls, basically whatever it takes to get to them. I don't need to point out that you should never put others or yourself at risk in doing so!
Space Recovery
A body's been spaced? Now it's your job to recover it if a Paramedic hasn't done it already. Ask the AI or anyone with access (usually command staff) to get a jetpack and space suit from EVA and go after the body (or break into EVA yourself), or use a MODsuit. You'll most frequently find bodies either somewhere near a space ruin or the AI satellite. Throw their body back to the general direction of the station or carry them with you. ALWAYS have tools, and metal to do this! Building floor tiles along your way is a great way to stop drifting into space, and some bodies may require breaking into somewhere to recover.
I have no suit and I must EVA
Eventually, you'll be in the uncomforable situation where all MODsuits are gone and EVA is gone, yet you have to fix the Supermatter cooling pipes or retrieve the Captain's frozen corpse from space.
You'll need to protect against three things: The cold (burn damage), the lack of pressure (brute) and lack of oxygen (suffocation).
There are a few ways you can do this:
Ghetto space suit
Put on a Firesuit plus either a hardhat, firefighting hat or EVA helmet. Now you just need to keep warm.
Grab some coffee, tea or hot chocolate from a vending machine.
Even better - ask a Chemist for Leporazine (stabilizes body temperature), the Bartender for Cafe Latte (better than regular coffee) or Botany for Capsaicin (heats your body).
Ghetto space suit part two
Can't find a Firesuit? Wear an explorer's suit or winter coat plus boots. This is much harder to pull off, since the lack of pressure hits you with a lot of brute damage.
Grab a bunch of Salicyclic Acid, Omnizine, or Earthsblood - anything that heals brute damage.
O² is for nerds
Lost your internals or oxygen tank? Salbutamol heals suffocation damage quickly enough for you to spacewalk comfortably.
Epinephrine from your epipen works in a pinch too.
The Übermensch
The space adaptation mutation is no more! Though, the Temperature Adaptation from Genetics protects against the cold of space and high heat. That's half of the dangers of space, all you would need next is some pressure protection from a firesuit + fire helmet and you'd be all set. No need to keep drinking coffee over and over!
Why not use Pressure Adaptation, you might ask? Well, while Pressure Adaptation is certainly not a bad choice, you'd still need to protect yourself from the cold somehow since the two mutations can't be combined. That means you'd have to constantly consume drinks or chemicals that keep your body heat in check. With Temperature Adaptation all you need is a full firesuit setup, no extra chemicals needed.
Moving around in space
Don't have a jetpack? Grab a fire extinguisher, a water tank and buckle yourself to a rolling chair.
Or, grab a stack of many small items (metal rods, cable coil) that you can throw to propel yourself.
You can build lattices in open space to instantly stop movement too.
Tips
The Engine/Power
- The engineering and atmos MODsuits have radiation protection modules. Make sure to wear one or a radiatuion suit if working near an active Supermatter Engine.
- Engines can be wired directly into the power grid; in the SMES rooms, each one has an input and an output. Connecting the two will cause the power to bypass the SMES cells. This is extremely dangerous, and can caused shocked doors to instantly put people into critical condition. Only do it if a lot of power is necessary to recharge stuff.
- Arriving half an hour into the round and nobody's set up power? Chances are all the SMES cells can be drained. However, you can still power Emitters and other equipment by loading the P.A.C.M.A.N generator with plasma, wiring it up and setting its output to full power. Or try to blow kisses at the Supermatter until it produces enough power to power the Emitters by itself.
- The P.A.C.M.A.N generators can hold 50 sheets of plasma sheets.
The S.U.P.E.R.P.A.C.M.A.N generator can hold 20 uranium sheets. Maximum power output of both:- P.A.C.M.A.N generator = 20KW
S.U.P.E.R.P.A.C.M.A.N generator = 60KWRemoved from the station, can only be found in space ruins such as Charlie Station.
Construction
- To get maximum camera coverage, you only have to place one camera every fifteen tiles. If there's a wall between them, use an analyzer on the assembly after you weld it to the wall to create an xray camera. Otherwise, count seven tiles from where the previous camera disappears from view and build a camera there.
- It is possible to upgrade the AI's cameras by using certain items: analysers confer X-ray vision, potentially allowing the AI to observe Maintenance areas; proximity sensors give their effect to the camera, alerting the AI when someone walks by. Plasma sheets will cause the camera to become EMP-proof.
- You can use an airlock circuit in your hand to modify its access requirements. Necessary if you're rebuilding doors to restricted areas such as the armory or bridge.
- For most construction/deconstruction operations (Mining, wrenching chairs/tables, deconstructing walls) you can click on multiple spaces to take things apart or build multiple things at a time.
- You can put windows directly on grilles by using a glass/reinforced glass sheet on them. Make sure to screw them on afterwards!
- You can also pry up 4 floor tiles and weld them together to get a sheet of the material it is made, which you can put in a lathe.
- You can screwdriver wooden flooring to remove it without breaking it.
- You can turn one color of wire into another color easily, by clicking it in your hand and selecting another layer.
- You can vend upgraded industrial welding tools from the YouTool, which hold 80 units of fuel as opposed to normal tools' 20 and industrial's 40. Later you can print an experimental welding tool from the engineering protolathe, which holds 40 units of fuel but recharges itself without need of welding fuel tanks.
Hacking
- You start with a skillchip that allows you to see what wire does what. It only works for airlocks, APCs, and air alarms though, you can't see machine wires unless you have station blueprints in your offhand.
- If you pulse the main power wire of an airlock, it will be out of power for 10 seconds, allowing you to crowbar it open. Cut both main and auxiliary power wires and the door will not have power until the wires are fixed.
- Pulsing the AI connection wire in an airlock will only make the AI unable to use for a few seconds. Cutting it will make the AI waste several seconds to recover connection to it upon trying to use it, and will not need to require the AI connection wire for that airlock after it is done.
- ALWAYS have insulated gloves when hacking stuff.
Traitorneering
"Lets do this Texas style!"
Being a traitor engineer can be both the easiest and hardest task on the station. On the one hand, you can go almost everywhere on the station, and have easy access to the tools to get rid of any pesky doors (or walls) in your way. Also, many crew members don't bat an eyelid when they see an engineer wearing a jetpack, or standing in a hole in the wall. Any curious crewmen are usually deflected by saying you are doing engineering work ("I need this to repair hull damage, Captain!")
On the other hand, Engineers lack weapons. Stungloves, however, are the hidden weapon few ever search for, which can give the upper hand in a fight. Stungloves are gone 4ever, but stun prods can be made from basic tools! In addition, cable restraints may be constructed from cable coils. In a pinch, the welding tool is a fairly powerful weapon which causes burn damage when turned on. Secondly, engineers loitering near their target may quickly arouse suspicion, especially if you are far, far away from a maintenance tunnel. Engineers are also one of the few jobs which retain their maintenance access, making travel around the station significantly safer, faster and easier.
And finally, if you truly hate the station, it is within your grasp to release the kraken fury of the supermatter, and generally sabotage the power and air supply of the station.
Traitor Tips
- You can attach a remote signaler to the Telecomms APC to have a a station wide radio jammer in your backpack (just watch out for that pesky AI). Or just deconstruct it entirely, whatever pleases you.
- You have access to some of the most robust tools for breaking into secure areas (hacking tools shiftstart, wire knowledge shiftstart, jaws of life, and insulated gloves).
- You can print AI upload boards at your lathe once they are researched, or steal the one in secure tech storage.
- You can delam the SM into a singularity or tesla for a reason to call the shuttle or a last ditch effort to kill your target. See here for more information in how to.
- You have easy access to space via your engineering MODsuit. Solars are a great hiding place for bodies or illegal items later in the shift.
- The RCD can be a very valuable asset. You can use it to construct doors, walls, and floors very quickly. And vice versa!
