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Member Back to Top Post by Nullbear on So, This is what I've been working on:



Overview



The idea with conduits, is to simplify wires, pipes, etc. And merge some aspects about them with each other, so as to make it easier to interface between the two (think of a device that allows power to go through the attached wire, only if a certain amount of gas is present in the pipe below it, for example.) As well as add some new, and interesting variants on them all, Such as High-Volt and Low-Volt Power Cables.



To start, I'm mostly dividing the conduits into 4 subcategories:



- Power Conduits. (These will replace wires.)

- Fluid Conduits. (These will replace atmos pipes.)

- Transport Conduits. (These will replace disposals pipes.)

- Network Conduits. (These are totally new, lol.)



To make things easier to explain, i've made a list of four or so "default" conduits for each category. These are the cables you would be able to find in use around the station. But it would of course be possible to make even more variations on them all.



All conduits have 2 main durability variables. One affects the temperature needed to "melt" through the conduit. The other affects the force, or Δpressure needed to burst or destroy the conduit.



So, lets get right into what all of these are about then shall we?



Power Conduits.



Power conduits will generally just... well... transfer power across the station, and between devices. Each would have different properties, some of the most important ones would be "resistance", which will convert a portion of the energy passing through it into heat. Generally you'll want a low resistance cable for transferring power, because otherwise a lot of power would be lost to heat, and in worst-case scenarios, the cable could begin to melt if the temperature exceeds the heat durability, or worse, cause other things around it to melt and burst into flame, causing power outages and disaster.



Another important quality of power conduits, will be whether they're insulated, or not. Insulated cables will be a bit more expensive, but it will only shock you when you cut them, and it will be possible to color them for easy identification, or for grid-like wire art, weirdos. Non-insulated cables will have the FUN aspect of electrocuting anything or anyone that clicks on it, or anyone who steps on it. Some fun thing that i'm going to add (that i have no idea why it wasn't already a thing.) will be that mice have the occasional tendency to nibble on wires. Should they nibble on an insulated wire, the wire will lose the insulated property, causing a serious danger to anyone walking through maintenance. On a bare wire, the wire will be cut, causing parts of the station to lose power, and some extra work for the engineers to do. I'm still deciding on whether the mice should be fried by the wires, or if they should have "evolved over the years to be electrically resistant" for the sake of lore and fun. In either case, it will give the janitor a real reason to lay out mouse traps (aside from just pissing off unwary engineers.) and a bit of extra work for the engineers (and hatred for them, if they dont get it done in time.)



The default power conduits i had in mind, were these:



- High Voltage Main Cables -



Realistically low resistance, somewhat pricey, LARGE cables used to transfer power from the engine to the rest of the station, or to power-demanding heavy machinery like the teleporter, etc. Touching one of these cables will more than likely kill you. Sorry 'bout that.



- Low Voltage Standard Cables -



Using APC's, high volt cables will transferred to these, which will need to be connected to individual equipment, like airlocks, computers, etc. Touching one of these cables will give you a light shock, but it isnt too big of an issue.



- HV Resistance Cable -



These cables explicitly take advantage of the resistance property of cables, they have a high melting temperature, and are intended to be used for heating areas. They could be used, lined through the station, as a very effective (but potentially dangerous, if too much power goes through them.) way of heating the station. They could even be used as ghetto igniters if you pass huge amounts of power through them. (I can see a CE flooding the station with plasma, and then tampering with the engine and cables and whatever to have the plasma ignited.)



- LV Light Cable -



Because WHY THE FUCK NOT. These cables are just like Low voltage cables, except they GLOW depending on how much power is going through them. Yeah, they're pretty expensive to make, and they have a tendency to blow up when they reach their melting temperature.



Fluid Conduits



Fluid conduits will generally be used for transporting air across the station, but my intent with these, is to make it possible for plumbing to be a thing, as well as an eventual chemistry overhaul i've got in the works. They will be like some freakish bastard child between reagent holders and atmos pipes. They hold reagents, rather than gasses, the reagents are balanced across each pipe network, this makes it possible to use pipes to disperse vaccines (or toxic chemicals) through the air. Similar to how i described power conduits, here are some of their important properties:



Their durability. Depending on what you're transporting through the pipes, this is going to matter. If the pipes are pressurized, they could burst explosively!



Volume. Arguably the most important property. The volume will be affected by the size of the conduit. (more on that later.) And contrary to what you might expect, they don't affect how much fluid can be in a conduit at any time. Rather, they will mostly affect the flow (larger volume pipes will be able to transfer more reagents at a time.) but also the pressure of the fluids inside.



The material of the conduit also matters, as some reagents will react with certain materials, causing usually interesting things to happen. Such as an acid melting through a metal pipe, causing everything else inside to come out with it, or the slow deterioration of a pipe carrying water, as it rusts.



The default cables i had planned for fluid conduits:



- High-Volume Main Supply -



The high volume pipe is rather large, but cheap, and is great for making sure your crew has enough air to friggin' breath. It can store a lot of air at a time, and can transport more across the station at a time than lower-volume varieties. The downfall of this pipe, is mostly in its size, material, and the fact that it wont connect to most of the machines you want it to connect to. It will however connect to the larger ones, like the big scrubber thing in toxins, or some large machines used in atmospherics.



- Low-Volume Standard Pipe -



Half the size of the bigger guys, this pipe cant carry nearly as much, but is a lot more versatile. It will be used to connect from the HV pipes, to the vents. Or to transfer water and other fluids across the station where you don't need quite so much of it.



- Low-Volume Pressure Pipe -



About the same size of the standard pipe, but quite a bit more expensive to make, and a lot more durable. These pipes will generally be used in the atmospherics department where high-pressures are needed. Like filling air canisters.



- Low-Volume Glass Pipe -



Not really intended for high-pressure, this pipe is clear, so you can see whats inside of it, as well, where reagents would react with metal, they wont react inside of this pipe. Its much less durable than the standard pipe, but would find a good use for itself in a chemistry set-up (hint-hint).



Transport Conduits



These conduits are used to transfer objects across the station. The objects they can transport are directly proportional to the size of the conduits. So size (again with size? Just wait.) is obviously an important property of the conduits. They will also have a flow property, that can vary from non-existent, to lightning speed. Generally, the faster something is moving, the more likely it is to get damaged when travelling through the pipe, but the less time it takes for it to reach its destination.



Here are the defaults:



- Low Volume Dust Pipe -



These pipes are too small to really transport much, but they're good for transporting fine particles like dust, ground up iron as used by chemistry. In terms of their use on the station, they'll usually be paired with air filters, in order to scrub contaminants like dust, carbon particles, etc. from the air, or you know, stuff like diseases, or small insects, like spiderlings. (I may have said too much.)



- Medium Volume Transport Duct -



These ducts are considerably larger, and would generally be used to rapidly transport small to medium sized objects across the station where they condition they're in at the end, doesn't matter. For example: trash, glass shards, and so on. If you choose to throw something organic in, it'll probably be an unrecognizable mess when it reaches the other end, unless its alive, and has a good grip, like diona nymphs, or the RD's good pet Lamaar.



- High Volume Delivery Duct -



These ducts are Much larger even still than the one before it, but also a lot slower. They're mostly intended for routing large objects like crates across the station, but occasionally it's been found that monkeys and other LARGE pests can crawl in there as well.



- Maintenance Duct -



These massive ducts are large enough for people to walk around in! Albeit, not comfortably. They're radiation lined, and quite durable. Should some portion of the station become depressurized, its more than likely that these ducts will remain intact. As such, its a great way for engineers to get to compromised areas without compromising the rest of the station. As it happens, since they're intended for human transport, they don't have any automated flow, as that would be dangerous and generally counterproductive. Oh yeah, sometimes big creepy purple aliens crawl around in here spitting acid and stuff. Cheers. (As i assume there could be some misunderstanding here, these ducts dont replace maintenance. They will be rather sparsely placed as well, because they kind of interfere with wiring and piping (intentionally, more very soon.), and their size is limited. We will have both maintenance, and maintenance ducts. Maintenance ducts could be used to get from toxins to the toxins test site, as an example. Its basically just a bigger, uglier version of the glass pod on the research site, that isn't automated, etc.)



If you didn't figure it out, I am making it possible for you to actually walk through ducts. Vent crawling will exist, rather than teleporting across the station. It'll be a great way to hide bodies, break into secure areas, etc.



Network Conduits



Network conduits transfer data between devices. This can be simple simple data, like "0" or entire tables and strings. These will mostly be used for interacting with other devices, networking (hence their name) etc. As an example, you would use these cables to go from a button on the wall, to a door, to open the door.



The important properties: Density. A high density cable has more "channels" but is also much more expensive to produce. Generally you'll want to use the minimum needed channels. Channels are used to transmit data or signals to devices, a higher density cable just saves you the hassle of having to use 8 cables, and compresses them all into one. Sometimes you really dont have a choice.



Speed. It will affect the time between pushing the button, and the door opening. The longer the cable, the slower it'll be. If you can get away with it, it's probably better to use a slower cable. But for large distances, or where speed matters, it matters.



Encryption: Some cables will be "encrypted" in order to make it harder to just "tap into them". They would be more expensive, but would be valuable in terms of secure data (like telecomms) or dangerous equipment and secure areas (like the captains office airlock door, or atmospherics devices.) Borgs tapping into the wires would have a bit more trouble, and humans would have A LOT of trouble, but with some extra gadgets, its certainly plausible.



Default Conduits:



- High-Speed Dense Cable -



Used in places with many devices, or for connecting lots of devices across a large distance. They are very expensive to produce. It has 8 Data Channels.



- High-Speed Basic Cable -



Just like above, but it only has 1 Channel.



- Low-Speed Smart Cable -



Its slower than most cables, but is good for diagnostics and places where speed doesn't matter. It will light up whenever data passes through it, and it is possible to interface with it using a multitool. It has 4 channels.



- High-Sec Net Cable -



Its rather fast, and encrypted. It has 4 Channels. You should already know what it's used for.



Final Touches



I don't really have much to say here...



Size, lets get to size. Each turf/tile has 6 Conduit Channels (not to be confused with net cable channels) where up to 6 conduits of any kind can be placed. You could for example have six different net cables on one turf, or two net cables and 4 power cables. But the size affects how big it is on-screen, most of its properties, and how many conduit channels it takes up. A maintenance duct for example, takes up all six. That means you cant have any other cables or pipes on that turf. With poor planning, this could be a real issue. Standard power cables however, would only take up one of the six slots, this is great cause there's gunna be lots of them.



I've got plenty of ideas for devices i'm going to add. Most of them involving networking, and interactions between conduits. Such as branching from a high density net cable to a low density cable. Or getting "data" and signals on a network pipe, based on the pressure of a conduit, or the temperature, etc.



For those who have some experience coding with ss13, Most of the work for this will be done within the master controller. I'm taking great care to make sure that none of what im implementing brings the performance down. At least, not by much. For example, If the tick cost of the conduit process goes up, it will process less frequently, but to keep up with itself (like air pipes) it will transfer more per process.



As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, lemme know!



~ Nullie