Guide to the Stormdrive Engine

If you find yourself in the unfortunate situation of being the only engineer and not knowing how to set up this space age nuclear fission reactor you've come to the right place! This guide will tell you all about setting up the stormdrive and making sure it doesn't explode for at least another 30 minutes after that!

Dangers of the Stormdrive

Of course every awesome form of power generation comes with some downsides, so this is what you'll need to watch out for:

• If the Stormdrive somehow explodes it'll send a storm of plutonium sludge across the entire ship, irradiating everything that passes over it, this sludge can be removed with a shovel.
• The Stormdrive also emits radioactive particles during normal operation, so be careful when entering the chamber!
• Don't forget to load in the control rods at the start of the shift, you'll only know you've messed up when it's already too late.
• It's very important to communicate with the people working in atmospherics, you don't want them to accidentally pump Tritium into the reactor!

The numbers, what do they mean?

In contrast to most other engines, the Stormdrive works with numbers and gases, more of those in a bit. But instead of just pumping in the perfect gas mix an leaving it like you would do with the supermatter, you'll also have to adjust the control rods to make sure the reactor stays stable and replace them from time to time to avoid a meltdown.

Temperature

This is probably the most important value when it comes to handling the Stormdrive. The temperature directly impacts the amount of energy you produce and also how high the reaction rate is. Here are a few important things to note down:

• Higher temperature means higher power output and reaction rate
• The higher the temperature gets the closer the reactor is to overheating, so try to keep it balanced.
• Certain gases can reinforce the maximum temperature cap and thus allow you to run the reactor hotter before causing an explosion.
• Other gases can also actively lower the reactor temperature, allowing you to quickly cool down the reactor in case of a meltdown.

Control Rods

Control rods are big sticks designed to lower the rate of the reaction. At the start of the shift you will have to put these in yourself by setting the reactor to maintenance mode and directly inserting them. It is also possible to do this while the reactor is running, but this isn't recommended if you don't have any heat insulation and the reactor is running at high temperatures. The control rods can also be upgraded, though only to a certain excent. In order to aquire the most premium of rods you will have to convince Cargo to buy them by waving your department's budget card at them. While inside the reactor you can control the control rod lowering percentage using the slider (or by manually editing the number). The console will also inform you of their integrity so you know when it's time to turn off the reactor for control rod maintenance.

Rate Of Reaction

The rate of reaction (RoR, Mol/tick) represents the rate at which gasses are being reacted in the reactor, or more practically: the rate at which your reactor gains heat. This can be indicative of an uncontrolled reaction which is likely to lead to a meltdown if left unchecked, so ensure that you keep an eye on it. This figure can be managed with the reactor's control rods. Raise the control rods to raise the rate of reaction, and lower them to lower it.

Reactor Fuel

The Stormdrive strangely uses plasma based fuels for sustained fission reaction. These fuels are all inserted in gas form and are necissary to start and run the reactor, if there's no fuel there's no ongoing reaction. The three gases you can use as fuel are:

• Constricted plasma, this is made by putting plasma through a constrictor (very strange I know) and is the most balanced fuel type.
• Plasma, regular plasma can also be put in the reactor, though it has a lower reaction rate than constricted plasma. It is recommended to use this when starting out.
• Tritium, this is by far the most volatile fuel, it has an increased rate of reaction, radiation output and temperature. It also reinforces the maximum temperature cap, but using tritium is only recommended for people that are experienced with the Stormdrive.

A Step By Step Guide

If you're here, you've either read a lot or not much. You'll see a great big set of stuff in engineering (image right) and have no idea what to do with it. Luckily, this section was made specifically to help you avoid messing things up!

1. To start off you'll want to build the Particle Accelerator, the thing in the orange box, this is a very easy three step progress. Wrench down the parts, wire them and then screwdriver them closed.
2. After that's done you're going to want to turn on the plasma constrictors, marked with purple, by simply clicking on them with an empty hand
3. Now you'll want to turn on the pumps that are marked with red on the image to get the plasma flowing.
4. Your reactor is now almost ready start, just grab five control rods from their crate and pop them into the stormdrive.
5. Now your Stormdrive should be ready to go! Turn on the Particle Accelerator using the blue console and set it to power 2. After 2 shots the reactor should now come online and you can turn off the Particle accelerator to avoid any unwanted side effects.

Advanced Gas Reactions

The Stormdrive runs on gas, because there's so many gases in the game this means there's a lot of fun properties to be assigned to each gas. Luckily for you we have this handy chart with most of the gases on it so you can know what they do before accidentally blowing up the reactor.

Nucleium Production

You might have noticed that there's a gas called Nucleium on the gas chart. Nucleium is fuel that has been used up, and can only be made inside the Stormdrive's reaction chamber when the temperature is above 400°C. Once Nucleium production begins it will start to form at the same rate the fuel is consumed. Watch out though, because Nucleium comes out of the Stormdrive it will be just as hot as the entire thing itself.

The Stormdrive gas chart: Template:Stormdrive