Guide to power

Introduction

Everything on the ship runs on electrical power and it is one of the most important tasks of he Engineering department to keep a constant supply of it flowing.

Power Production (Sources)

To produce this power onboard you have a choice of the following Engines:

The Stormdrive Engine

The Stormdrive Engine

The Stormdrive is the magic engine that uses input gases to output Power directly in the range of multiple Megawatts. Your best bet on producing more power is usually to juggle with the input gas mix to squeeze out more power or run it at a hotter temperature. Be careful not to overdo it as it will explode if it runs too hot.

The Nuclear Reactor

The Nuclear Reactor

Similar to the Stormdrive it produces Power if provided with Cooling and Moderator gases by cooling nuclear fuel rods to a higher or lower degree. Its output ranges in the Megawatts. Similarly you may want to change the moderator input to produce more power. In case this reactor goes critical you'll have to deal with radiation hell and a molten core. But that never happened before, RBMK-reactors don't explode you are simply hallucinating.

Supermatter Engine

A Supermatter shard

The supermatter is a giant pile of exotic material capable of emitting both ionizing radiation and (flammable) gases. While the generation of these elements is normally rather low, the supermatter can be "activated" into releasing more by, well, most anything: even gasses can start the delamination process if they hold enough energy (heat, usually). You see where this is going? That's right, self-induced chain reactions. Your main job as an engineer will be to cool the supermatter down to prevent it from exploding (luckily a very easy job), while simultaneously exciting it to harvest radiation pulses. It's not an unforgiving engine, some would say it's even too stable to sabotage in a timely manner; read the Guide carefully and it will be hard to mess it up.

The Radiation emitted from the crystal can be collected in Radiation collectors, but the Power gained by this only ranges in the hundreds of Kilowatts to some Megawatts. On many ships the crystal is paired with a TEG to instead produce power that way.

Singularity Engine

The usable power emitted by a singularity takes the form of ionizing radiation pulses. These can interact with the mysterious substance called "plasma" so as to generate electricity. The more plasma available, and the stronger and more frequent the pulses, the more power is generated. The net power output can be measured directly by using a multitool on the collector's wire, checking the first SMES unit connected for available power, or by looking it up on a power monitoring console (though the latter will give skewed results if other power sources such as solars are connected).

Again an Engine reliant on Radiation, therefore relatively weak in comparison to the alternatives. This will produce a couple of hundred Kilowatts.

Tesla Engine

This giant ball of incandescent energy regularly regurgitates power in the form of electric arcs. These arcs can be partially captured by tesla generators, and will generally flow along the most conductive/least resisting path. Metal structures are prime target for its strikes, and grounding rods are the safest there is, drawing arcs to themselves and subsequently dissipating them into the whole ship. The latter are regularly used to direct lighting through tesla generators, and are best deployed between the engine and anything you hold dear.

As the Tesla produces Electricity directly with Telsa zaps going into grounding rods and striking the tesla coils it produces a lot more power. The tesla can make power in the range of a few Megawatts with multiple tesla balls.

Solar Arrays

Some unconnected solar panels+tracker

See Solars.

Solars are composed of a usually 60 panels per array and depending on the ship there are multiple sets of them. Each panel can produce 1.5 kW of power for a total of 90 kW per array. This pales in comparison to the other power sources and is rarely ever worth setting up. However they can act as a seperate power grid, like for example for an AI satellite, so that part of the ship is independant from the power of the main ship. Note that solar panels should be connected to a solar tracker to maximise power output via a console.

Gas Turbine Generator

The incinerator room

See: Incinerator

The gas turbine generator is a tertiary power source that was recently installed in the incinerator. By utilizing the temperature differential between very hot air and very cold air, the turbine generator is able to create a nominal amount of electricity. The hot air is created by burning plasma and oxygen gas mixtures. The cold air is creating by passing air through cooling tubes located in space.

Portable Generators

Portable generators are fail safes when all other systems fail. They require fuel that is fed directly into the generator by hand. The type of fuel is dependent which type of generator is being used. Portable generators can be upgraded using parts created by a protolathe. New ones can also be constructed with printable Boards once researched.

Fuel Required by Portable Generator Type

Type	Fuel	Power produced
P.A.C.M.A.N. Portable Generator	Plasma	40 kW - 160 kW
S.U.P.E.R.P.A.C.M.A.N. Portable Generator	Uranium	120 kW - 480 kW
M.R.S.P.A.C.M.A.N. Portable Generator	Diamond	320 kW - 1.28 MWs

One PACMAN generator is located in the SMES room, with plasma located in secure storage, and it is suggested to use it while setting up the singularity or tesla to prevent early release.

Different P.A.C.M.A.N. generators:

• 

  P.A.C.M.A.N.

• 

  S.U.P.E.R.
  P.A.C.M.A.N.

• 

  M.R.S.
  P.A.C.M.A.N.

Thermo-Electric Generator

Present on some ships, often in combination with a supermatter crystal this generator produces electricity from a difference in input gas temperatures. As usual source for the hot gases are a burning chamber or fusion. The expected Power of this Engine depends,but is usually more than you could ever need. Note that abusing freezers/coolers to heat or cool gases of a teg is very much frowned upon; so much so that these setups regularly are blown up by admins.

Power Consumption (Distribution)

Power Grid

To most people they're just wires that burn the shit out of you when you try to cut them without wearing insulated gloves. But really, the power grid is the electrical backbone of the ship, powering everything from the emitters containing the singularity to the APC that controls the bathrooms in the locker room that you never go to. Also, it burns the shit out of you if you try to cut it without wearing insulated gloves.

BUT HOW MUCH DO YOU NEED?

There are two different grids on a regular ship; Let's call one a high wattage Grid and the other a low wattage grid.

• Reactors/Engines are wired to the high wattage one and connect to the input of the smeses, as well as the Armour well and on some maps even a shield generator and Phasers. The Armour well needs a constant supply of 3MWs, the Shield generator 15MWs.

These are the most important things to keep powered as the ship WILL take hits in combat and need to either tank them with a shield or repair said damage afterwards/during combat with the armour well. Additionally on the Aetherwisp its energy based weapons need a considerable portion of power too: They are adjustable in their power draw in three levels for the burst phasers, five levels for the phase cannon (beam) and two power settings for the laser based Anti missle defence systems. The phase cannon needs between 600 kWs to 3MWs to constantly charge, while the lasers need 1 - 2MWs each and the AMS-lasers need 330Kws to 990 KWs Mws each.

to sum up: 
           The Aetherwisp needs power to run the shields (max. 15MWs) the armour well (max. 3MWs) the two burst phasers (max. ~2 MWs), two Anti-missle lasers (max. 4Mws) 
           and the phase cannon (max. 3MWs) plus a little surplus for apcs and machines comes to roughly 28 MWs
           
           All the other ships without shields and energy weapons need around 4 Mws for the armour well to work and have excess power to run apcs and other systems

• The low wattage grid is connected to the output of the smeses and powers apcs on the whole ship. This one is very important to keep powered as people actively need apc charged so their machines lights and doors work. A regular Consumption ranges from only around 60 kWs on smaller ships like the eclipse to 170kW or higher on bigger ships. Consumption will rise as new machines/lights etc. are built. (These values can be calculated by simply summing up the power draw of each apc on the ship on a power monitoring console. You also see which apcs are charged or not on said console.)

to sum up: put the output of the smes/smeses up to the amount at which all apcs become fully charged  
           if there is one low wattage grid for the entire ship a good rule of thumb is that a constant supply of 200 kWs from the smeses combined should keep everything powered (as long as you don't have phasers on said grid)

SMES

A Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) Cell is the spess version of a giant rechargeable battery.

SMES have a modifiable storage capacity, dependent on the power cells installed in the SMES upon fabrication. All SMESs present at the beginning of a typical shift have a default capacity of 3.33 MW. SMES input (charging) and output levels can be modified using capacitors. All SMESs present at the beginning of a typical shift have a basic capacitor with default i/o levels of 200 kW. SMESs will only charge when the input power is equal or higher to the input levels specified on the SMES settings panel. Likewise, SMESs will only output when the level of charge is above the output level specified on the SMES settings panel.

APCs

APCs, or Automated Power Controllers, are found on the walls of the room they're powering or, more likely, in maintenance just outside the room. They can be used to toggle the room's equipment, lighting and environmental (a.k.a. ventilation) systems on and off. If there isn't enough power in the grid to charge all APCs at once, the ones closest to the local smes will be charged first.

Power Cells

Power cells are used to power devices smaller than the ship such as APCs and cyborgs. Constructed with a protolathe, typical power cells come in several different flavors, in increasing capacity: the default power cell, the high-capacity power cell, the super-capacity power cell, the hyper-capacity power cell, or bluespace power cells.

What to do in case of a power outage

Sooner or later, on every barely functional space ship, the power will go out. This is where you come in and call out to recall that shuttle because you can fix it! Power can go out for many reasons. Your first port of call should be the Power Monitoring console in engineering, assuming it still exists. Then, ask yourself what's going on:

• Power goes out everywhere, but gradually, section by section? This means there's a problem in Engineering itself as the rest of the ship is being topped up with charge. It'll be immediately obvious if the engine isn't on/has escaped. Your next port of call should be the SMES cells. Check they're outputting enough power to overcome the drain OR if no APCs are showing on the Power Monitoring computer, it means a wire has been cut either inside or immediately outside the Engineering area and is not being supplied to the rest of the ship.
• Power is out across a small area? This is most commonly a broken wire in maintenance, the easiest way to find it is with familiarity with the power-net and using that in conjunction with the power monitoring computer. If an area has had all wires sending power to it snipped, its APCs will no longer show on the power monitoring computer. For example, if Medbay as a whole has lost power and isn't showing any of its APCs on the power monitor, the wire cut is most likely in the maint tunnel behind Medbay. The more familiar you become with the power nets, the quicker you will be able to work out where the break is and be able to recognize common spots used.
• Power is out in 1 or 2 rooms This is most likely an APC that has been tampered with/blew up. Either hacked by an AI/Saboteur, destroyed somehow or just had its cell ripped out. Again, if the APC doesn't show up on the Power Monitoring computer, it means it's been severed from the power net and wire either inside that room or very close to the APC has been cut.
• Power is intermittent across the ship. Stuff turns off for a while, starts working, then goes off again? Your SMES aren't outputting enough power to keep the APCs charged. This happens most often when the output is just under the drain so therefore some APCs get enough power, while others don't.
• Power goes out everywhere, in under 10 seconds or so? This is most likely a power sink. Power sinks have the odd quirk of still powering the area they are placed in, so your best bet is to get searching for somewhere where the lights are still on, or if it's in maint, where you don't have to crowbar the doors.
• The SMESES cycle between getting power and not getting power for seemingly no reason Bug. admin help it. Can be fixed by admins by restarting the master controller.
• Power isn't actually out? Either someone is crying wolf or something else has happened like for example an electrical storm, which blows out all the lights of an area so people may think power went out.

Now that you know what's wrong with power, it's your job to fix it!