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 acid and plutonium sludge across the entire ship, irradiating everything that passes over it, this sludge can be removed with a shovel. The acid can however not be removed and will destroy everything it lands on.
• 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

A standard control rod

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 because the reactor runs at very high temperatures. The control rods can also be upgraded, though only to a certain extent. In order to acquire the most premium of rods you will have to convince Cargo to buy them by waving your department's budget card at them.
When they're 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 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 to the right) and have no idea what to do with it. Luckily, this section was made specifically to help you avoid messing things up!

Basic setup

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.

Making your own

In you somehow managed to get your hands on a new stormdrive, congratulations! This section was made specifically for you!
To make your stormdrive work you'll just have to complete the following steps and then continue with the regular setup.

1. Make sure you have a room that's at least 3x3 in size to put it in.
2. Put the stormdrive in there. (right now it's not possible to build one but I'm sure you'll figure it out)
3. Connect the pipes to the main stormdrive machine.
   IMPORTANT: the stormdrive's input is always on the right side of it and the output is always on the left.
4. Build the stormdrive control console and link it to the reactor by using a multitool on the reactor and then on the console.
5. If you want you can also build Plasma Constrictors if you are using plasma as fuel to make it more effective, and don't forget to split the plasma from the other gases before putting it through aswell to avoid clogging the constrictor.

Maintaining the Stormdrive

Your job isn't over once the reactor is active. In fact, you now have the job of constantly watching and tweaking the reactor settings to not only make sure it produces optimal power, but doesn't overheat and explode. There are a few important things you need to do now to make sure the reactor stays functional and stable.

• Bring up the reactor temperature to a point where it produces enough power to offset the demand on the powernet. If set to max input, an SMES can accept a max of 0.2 MW, with the combined three in engineering being able to accept 0.6 MW when all are set to max input.

• Keep an eye on the temperature. You want to make sure the temperature isn't rising out of control. If you need to leave the reactor unattended, make sure the temperature is stable or at the very least decreasing.

• Watch the status of the control rods. As the reactor operates, it'll wear down the control rods. If the rod integrity starts to get low, shut down the reactor and put it into maintenance mode once it's cool. Make sure to shut down the reactor ahead of time, as it'll take a while for the reactor to cool, and during that time the rods will continue to loose integrity. Once the reactor is cool and in maintenance mode, replace the damaged rods with fresh ones, and you'll be good to restart the reactor.

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.

The Stormdrive gas chart: Template:Stormdrive

Nucleium Production

So 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.

Meltdown

You're hopefully reading this ahead of time to prepare for a potential meltdown, and not because a scary siren came on saying that a reactor meltdown is imminent. Meltdowns happen because something went wrong and the reactor is overheating, either due to being left unattended, control rod failure, or sabotage. You don't have much time once the sirens come on, so you got to act fast. Here's what you need to do to prevent the ship from become a radioactive wreck if the reactor starts overheating.

1. SCRAM the reactor. Get the control rods lowered to 100%. It may not stop the meltdown, but it'll buy you time.
2. Flood the reactor with a cooling gas. N20 is usually available in atmospherics, but water vapor is better if you can get a hold of it. N2 is an okay alternative, but it'll lower the rate of reaction instead of cooling the reactor. This isn't as effective, but is better than nothing. Whatever gas you use, get it into the fuel lines and make sure to turn on the fuel dump to cycle the cooling gas in faster.
3. If the control rods have failed, you may have to bite the bullet and replace them while the reactor is active. This is VERY DANGEROUS and will likely kill you, but may buy the ship enough time to avert disaster.
4. If all else fails, or you don't have the time for anything else, your last option is to cut the fuel line. Wrench the pipe that leads into the reactor, and then get everyone to evacuate the area. When the reactor runs out of fuel while hot, it'll become a gravity well and start sucking things into it, you included. This will wreck everything around the reactor, but it's a better alternative to it exploding and irradiating the whole ship.

If you're lucky, you'll stop the reactor from going critical. Once the reactor is cool, you're safe to begin repairs, and eventually restart the reactor. Make sure to figure out what went wrong the first time before starting the reactor again in order to avoid a repeat.

Sabotage

Of course no good engine comes without a way to sabotage it. Luckily for you there's plenty of ways to do that!

Explosion!

A Plasma Control Rod, if you see one of these let your local Chief Engineer know.

Now I'm going to walk you through that first option first, because who doesn't love explosions?
Making the Stormdrive explode is relatively easy to do, you just have to cause a meltdown. There's various ways to make the Stormdrive do this, but if you're an engineer you get access to a Plasma Control Rod. This Control rod is filled completely with plasma, which is about as safe as one can expect. All you have to do in order to mess things up is insert it inbetween the other rods while nobody is looking and no one will realize anything is wrong until they turn on the reactor...

Hot wires

If you haven't noticed by now, the Stormdrive can output a lot of power.
This power usually goes through the SMES units which carefully manage the output to avoid the grid having more energy than it needs, but by connecting a few wires that shouldn't be connected you can attach the Stormdrive directly into the main power network! If someone cuts a cable or touches an electric grille after you do this, they will most likely instantly get all their skin burned off which can be very dangerous.

Who turned off the lights?

Of course there's also a less agressive way to sabotage the reactor, and this involves making sure the Stormdrive doesn't output any power. This can be done in a number of ways, though some are easier then others. The easiest way to do it is by cutting the wire that sends power from the stormdrive to the SMES array or from the SMES units to the main grid, of course this is a very easy thing to repair and spot, but with enough planning you might be able to make good use of the few minutes without power. Of course a more obnoxious way to sabotage things is by pumping the reactor full of non-fuel gas before it's activated. This will force the engineers to first pump the gas out of the reactor until they can turn it on due to the lack of fuel and will probably take longer to fix than just your average cut wire.

Of course there's loads of other ways you can mess with things (or improve them) so try to experiment and, most importantly, have fun with it!