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, do the job of the (always) incompetent atmos techs. Basically, do everything that has anything to do with repairs. Also, be prepared to be the hero the station deserves, because Security is lazy. Guides: Engineering items, Guide to Construction Materials, Guide to construction, Guide to advanced construction, Guide to power, Singularity Engine, Supermatter Engine, Tesla Engine, Solars, Hacking, Guide to Telecommunications, Guide to the Antimatter Engine Quote: I'll fix the power as soon as I'm off my lunch break. |
For the Guide to setting up the 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. For example, badass engineers can break into the teleporter room quickly to kill a malevolent AI.
Bare minimum requirements: Fix hull breaches, fix cables/APCs if power goes out in an area. Know how Solars and SMES work. Resist the temptation to run off with a hardsuit at roundstart.
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 hardsuits. 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 turn on containment at the same time as someone 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 suggestion how you can be prepared for shit on the space station:
| Container | Contents |
|---|---|
 Tool Belt |
 Screwdriver, wrench, wirecutters, multitool, cable coil, crowbar, welding tool. |
 Backpack |
 Internals box, welding helmet, metal, glass, high-capacity power cell. |
 Box |
 Breath mask, epinephrine medipen, T-ray scanner, airlock electronics, power control module, cable coil, flashlight. |
Some of this you start with, some you need to collect. The items you pick up are:
Insulated Gloves: Your most prized possession, 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.
Industrial Welding Tool: Grab this from the welding locker next to the electronics locker; it has double the capacity of a normal welding tool. Throw the normal one you have on the floor to be like every engineer ever (or put it away neatly for bonus points from the CE).
Welding Mask: You need this to avoid going blind while welding. Note if you have the hardsuit on, 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 three 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; and Radiation mode reveals objects contaminated from radiation.
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 virologist inevitably releases. 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.
Extended-capacity emergency oxygen tank: These canisters hold a LOT of air. The hardsuits can hold full-sized canisters which hold more, but two of these filled up in your bag and there's very little chance of you ever running out of air. To fill up: place it in the oxygen tank, click the oxygen tank and turn the pressure all the way up, open the valve, then close the valve. Once you're sure it's closed, remove the tank. Click the tank in your hand and lower the mask pressure to 16 KPA, which will give you the most possible use.
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.
- Rapid Construction Device: RCDs can be used to create or destroy simple objects such as walls, doors and windows without using tools on them. Cannot construct/deconstruct reinforced walls.
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 hardsuit or firesuit.
Power control module: You need this to repair a fully broken APC. Some sit by the SMES modules.
- 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 one by the SMES modules.
T-ray Scanner: Click on it on your hand to activate. 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.
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. Roleplay too determines if you're a good engineer or not -- When talking with people face to face, pop the helmet off and carry it a bit -- hardsuits look pretty cool without the helmet on. Write down things you figure out like the door wires and photocopy them, distribute to the other engineering staff as a memo. Engineers have some great roleplay as the people that fix everything when everything else is going to hell. Take advantage of that camraderie and the ludicrous nature the situations you will find yourself in. A robotic mute-guy-fixing-everything playing style is efficient of course, but it isn't nearly as fun for everyone.
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.
Starting The Other Engines
You may find yourself on a station designated to draw power from a critical mass contained in an energy field. Please refer to either Singularity Engine or Tesla Engine.
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.
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 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.
Getting the Man Out of Danger... Alive!
It's your job to save lives when they cry out for help.
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. Ask the AI or captain to get a jetpack and space suit from EVA and go after the body. You'll most frequently find bodies either somewhere near the derelict or the AI satellite. Drag them to a teleporter and get them back to the station. The use of lockers will help greatly, as lockers do not drift like bodies do, but cannot travel across Z-levels. ALWAYS have tools, glass and metal with you when doing this! Some teleporters need to be rebuilt and some bodies float around randomly and need floor tiles to be build in their path to actually stop
I have no suit and I must EVA
Eventually, you'll be in the uncomforable situation where all hardsuits are 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:
Cryo juice
Cryoxadone quickly heals damage in cold environments. Space is extremely cold - do the math. Ask medical for a beaker of their cryo juice, then vape (e-cig from hacked tobacco vendor) or chug the whole thing.
That's it! You won't even need internals.
This also helps a little against space carps and other assholes.
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 or cryo juice? 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 Bicardine, Salicyclic Acid, Omnizine, Earthsblood - anything that heals brute damage.
O² is for nerds
Lost your internals or oxygen tank? Both Salbutamol and Perfluorodecalin heal suffocation damage quickly enough for you to spacewalk comfortably.
Epinephrine from your epipen works in a pinch too.
The Übermensch
The cold resistance mutation from Genetics protects against both cold and lack of pressure.
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
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- You can hack the YouTool to get Industrial welding tools, which hold 40 units of fuel as opposed to normal tools' 20.
- You can buckle people cough cough the clown to the Singularity/Tesla Generator.
Traitorneering
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 5ever, 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 supply of the station.
