Station Engineer
 Station Engineer |
Superiors: Chief Engineer
|
The Engineer
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 most equipped for constructing objects and machinery, repairing structural damage, and are best equiped crewmembers for E.V.A. missions in the cold of Space.
Basic skills: Set up the engine without killing everyone. Fix emagged airlocks and rebuild machines. Familiarize yourself with Hacking.
Advanced skills: Detect and fix sabotage - Telecomms, the engine, power sinks. Know enough about Atmospherics to stop a plasma flood.
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: trying to fill plasma tanks at the same time as another person usually ends up filling engineering with plasma, and trying to setup the SM at the same time is often lethal.
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 syndicates blow your head off on the solars.
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 list of handy items you can bring along to be prepared for damage to the station:
| Item | Description | Item | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
 T-ray Scanner |
When activated it will reveal wires and pipes under the flooring, as well as Critters and Creatures inside pipes. Works in pockets and on your belt. |  Engineering Scanner Goggles |
Some handy goggles with two modes. Meson mode: allows vision of structures and terrain through walls; T-ray mode: allows vision of objects beneath flooring such as cables and pipes. These will also protect you from hallucinations from the SM. |
 Multitool |
Used for hacking Airlocks, APCs, autolathes, mulebots, vending machines, and nearly anything else with a panel. See the guide to hacking for more information. |  Insulated Gloves |
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 helmet/Goggles |
Bring this to avoid going blind when you need to weld things. Welding goggles or a welding gas mask also make for a good substitute. Alternatively the welding protection from your modsuit also works to protect your eyes. |  Analyzer |
Can be used to scan the atmosphere, and shows you what's inside a Canister or a pipe. The analyzer can also be added to an unscrewed Security Camera to upgrade it to an X-ray camera, and will prove invaluable in the case of a anomaly. |
 Material pouch |
A small pouch capable of holding two stacks of a material of your choosing. Handy to keep in your pocket and much less space consuming in your bag then hauling around loose sheets of materials! |  Construction bag |
A handy bag that can hold a lot of construction materials, things such as electronics, cables and various boards. Great to keep in your pocket and loaded with materials for when things inevitably go south. |
 Oxygen tank |
An oxygen tank with a large capacity and a much slower oxygen consuming rate. A must have for when you go EVA or enter into a breached room. Can be filled to 1013 kPa, unless you get creative. |  Engineering MODsuit |
A modular suit that comes with retractable parts. It offers protection against the cold vacuum of space along with heat and radiation. The helmet has welding protection and it functions as a backpack too (though with limited space) A must have for long extended repairs or jobs in a hostile environment. |
 Rapid Construction Device (RCD) |
Your best friend when it comes to repairs or quickly building stuff when you do not feel like using your hands in manual labor. This device and its more advanced counterparts can be used to construct everything from walls to windows and even simple furniture when outfitted with the right upgrades. |  Rapid Piping Device (RPD) |
A device that operates in a similar fashion to the RCD but now with pipes. Bringing one along and using it is entirely optional but doing so will greatly lessen the workload for your co-workers in atmospherics when bombings or other large scale damages occur. |
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; an engineer who accidentally unleashes the fury of a supermatter engine is not a popular person.
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? 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.
Fixing the power
The main engine and/or the solars provide more than enough energy to fully power a state-of-the-art space station -- unless something goes wrong, which it almost always will. Whether it's due to shoddy wiring, a powersink, a bomb, an assistant cutting cables, a loose singularity 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 it hasn't already been devoured by the rampaging maw of Lord Singuloth.
See the guide to power to learn how to into power and, more importantly, how to fix everything.
Tips
The Engine/Power
- The engineering MODsuit has 60% radiation protection. CE's MODsuit has 90%. Atmos MODsuit has 25%. RD's and CMO's have 60%. If working near an active Supermatter Engine, use a radiation suit instead.
- 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.
- 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 PACMAN generator with plasma, wiring it up and setting its output to full power.
- The P.A.C.M.A.N-type generators can each hold 450 sheets of their respective fuels once fully upgraded. Their fuel types and maximum upgraded outputs are as follows:
- P.A.C.M.A.N generator (Plasma) = 60000 W
- S.U.P.E.R.P.A.C.M.A.N generator (Uranium) = 180000 W
- M.R.S.P.A.C.M.A.N generator (Diamonds) = 480000 W
- Cell chargers give power to inserted cells faster than it takes power from the APC, meaning it generates some power from nothing, and you can alternate between two cell and keep an APC running forever! The wonders of space engineering.
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: analyzers 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.
- You can also pry up 4 floor tiles and weld them together to get a metal sheet, which you can grind down for iron. Glass for silicon. Reinforced glass for metal and silicon. Wood for carbon.
- You can screwdriver wooden flooring to remove it without breaking it.
- You can turn one color of wire into another color easily, so long as you have at least one piece of the color you want: You can transfer wires from a stack of another color you have to change their color.
- Need to set up the Supermatter? No CE or AI to open secure storage? Turn off the APC's main power breaker and crowbar the blast doors open. Keep in mind that this will also shut down pumps and filters.