Tin Can

Tin Can

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Engineer's Guide to Cosmic Events
By Hexzatite
Tired of being baked by the sun? Hate lightning with a burning passion? Need help warming up?
Well then this guide is for you! Practical and easy ways to maximize your time in your ship/station!
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Introduction
Hello there, fellow engineer(s)!
If you are reading this, then you are either curious or come upon a predicament called a "event" while in your ship/station, and are looking for guidance. Look no further!
This guide will cover these so called "events" and list out common and easy ways to get through them as best as you can*!

Each "event" is given a ranking of 1 to 5 for difficulty, 1 being extremely easy and 5 being extremely difficult. Difficulty is based off of:
  • Required attention to systems/measurements
  • Damage received to the ship/station
  • Other issues that may arise

Last Updated: 3/19/2020 (March 19, 2020)
Version: 0.0.66a

*Note: This does not guarantee survival. This guide shall not be held responsible for poor choices made by engineers who read this.
Asteroids: Angry Rocks
This event is categorized as your ship/station drifting into a dense area of asteroids. These asteroids will collide with your ship and may cause damage to your ship/station or hull breaches. Smaller, harmless asteroid chunks and dust will hit against your outer hull harmlessly, but may cause lots of unintended noise, which may drown out any important error sounds. Larger asteroids are more dangerous but thankfully rare. When they hit, they will cause: damage to parts of your ship/station, your lights to flicker off then back on, you to drop any items, and possible hull breaches.

Asteroids are by far the most damaging event currently known, doing direct damage to system components and causing lots of stress and noise.

When you get a collision warning that a dense asteroid area has drifted into your path, here are some steps you can take:
  1. If you have no control (like if you are in a escape pod), start by removing any batteries in any systems you have running. Batteries are expensive and damage to them takes lots to repair.
  2. Open all critical systems for quick access to maintenance for them.
  3. Set all available screens to show errors for even faster maintenance.
*If you are feeling brave or a critical system is damaged, you can attempt to try and repair system while still in the event, but caution should be taken as the shaking and hard hits may make it hard to move around.

In the aftermath, you should quickly look at critical systems to make sure there are no issues to be fixed, then move to secondary. You should also move fast to seal any hull breaches that occur, as they will drain your precious oxygen and can severely lower your cabin pressure.

Difficulty: 4 (Violent shaking, Loud Noises, Direct Damage, Hull Breaches)
Freezing Nebula: Colder then Cold
A freezing nebula is a abnormally cold and dense cloud of ice particles and dust that will lower your ship/station temperature and freeze over the windows. It will also lower your main generator's temperature to a pitifully low level, making it very hard to keep power. Luckly for you however, most Temperature Regulators can keep your atmospheric temperature perfectly safe, the issue is more so power.

To safely pass a freezing nebula, it's relatively simple. You can turn off enough system to maintain low power to a select few and/or use batteries to supplement the lack of power.

Recommended systems to keep powered: Temperature Regulator

Difficulty: 1.5 (Basic Power Management, Very Basic Temperature Management)
Electromagnetic Storm: Simply Shocking
A electromagnetic storm is basically a thunderstorm in space, including the lightning and thunder... and power flashes. Frequent lightning strikes onto your ship/station will cause damage to electrical components, overloading them very quickly unless precaution is taken. It is very easy to fry your whole ship/station when encountering one, so you should take this one very seriously. Leaving components on can also cause electrical fires from the overloading system, causing all sorts of unpleasant issues.

Once you encounter electromagnetic disturbances, you must move quickly to do the following:
  • For non-essential system, simply turn the system off.
  • For essential systems:
    1. Turn them off.
    2. Remove their Power Connector until the disturbance passes.
    3. Insert a Battery.
    4. Turn system back on.

Difficulty: 3 (Advanced Power Management, Electrical Damage, Fire Damage)
Star Flyby: Hot Hot Everything
Sometimes, your course will take you on a flyby nearby to a star. Getting too close will raise the temperature of your ship/station as well as quickly raise the temperature of your main generator. The solar wind and magnetic interference coming off the star will also disrupt communications and cause loud static to play.

Flying close to a star should be avoided, but if you find your self near one, here is what you should do:
  1. Make sure your Temperature Regulator is in operational and in good condition.
  2. Quickly turn off your main generator, as it making heat plus the star will quickly turn your ship/station into a oven.
  3. Use batteries and only batteries for power until the heat stops rising.
The heat will continue to rise even with the main generator off, however if you act fast enough, the heat will not rise to dangerous levels, but it may still get uncomfortably warm for the duration of the flyby.

Difficulty: 3 (Temperature Management, Loud Noises)
Black Hole: Gravity Sucks
Black Holes are impossibly dense singularities that have gravity so strong it can pull in light, thus making them the darkest objects in the universe. This intense gravity also has a effect on your pod, increasing or decreasing the pressure exerted on it, changing the internal pressure requirements, and stressing the hull so much it can cause breaches. Black holes also shift the center of gravity, making you and loose objects shift around.

Your first encounter with the beasts of the universe may be challenging, but it's not impossible and not as hard as come claim it is, it just requires a lot of attention and watching numbers. Here's how you tame the beast:
  • Make sure your Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide, and Nitrogen gas system are working as best as they can.
  • It is of upmost importance that you focus on the pressure readout from the Nitrogen gas system, as this is your only reliable and easy way to read your pressure through this event.
  • If the pressure is rising, and the Nitrogen system cannot contain it, turn off your Oxygen system until it starts lowering. This sounds counter-productive, but at higher pressure you require less oxygen, so it balances out.
  • If the pressure is rising too fast still, you may elect, in a emergency, to open a airlock to vent some pressure out into space. THIS SHOULD ONLY BE A EMERGENCY MOVE. PLEASE DO NOT OPEN THE AIRLOCK UNDER ANY OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES!
  • If the pressure is lowering, and the Nitrogen system cannot contain it, turn off your Carbon Dioxide system until it starts raising. This sounds counter-productive, but at lower pressure you require more oxygen, so it balances out.
  • If the pressure is lowering too fast still, you may elect, in a emergency, to open one of your Oxygen or Carbon Dioxide containers to quickly raise the pressure, just quickly close it afterwards. THIS SHOULD ONLY BE A EMERGENCY MOVE. PLEASE DO NOT OPEN THE CONTAINERS UNDER ANY OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES!
  • If you hear a weird hissing or your oxygen and CO2 are both dropping, there is a hull breach somewhere in your pod/station. Quickly find and fill it!
Remember though that you can only handle so much carbon dioxide and oxygen. Make sure you keep in mind that and you don't accidentally overshoot!

Difficulty: 5 (Advanced Pressure Management, Movement, Hull Breaches, High Attention Required)
Breaches and Fires: Holes and Heat
Certain events, poor maintenance, and general wear and tear can cause hull breaches and fires to start on your pod, causing all sorts of issues. This section goes over Hull Breaches (a hole in your hull causing pressure to drop) and Fires (heat-causing infernos that are dangerous).

Hull Breaches
A hull breach, or simply a hole, is when either a asteroid pierces your hull, your atmosphere is too over/under pressurized, or just happen from weakening of the hull through wear and tear over time. These are dangerous because they can slip unnoticed till your atmosphere is nearly gone.
There is no simple strategy for dealing with these, you just have to be vigilant and look around your pod when you have the time to. Always check for them after events, and always try to listen out for a hissing or wooshing sound of air escaping your pod.
To fix them, simply grab your Leak Filler and fill the hole. Holes will not appear on top of one another, and generally do not form on the insides of systems, however you should still check, just to be safe.

Fires
Fires (specifically, electrical fires) are dangerous for several reasons. They raise the temperature in your pod, they burn through oxygen and produce lots of carbon dioxide, they cause damage, and they hurt you directly. Whenever a fire breaks out, it is of priority to put it out as soon as you possibly can.
Fires are caused by a severely overloaded electrical fault (like in a electrical storm or power surge), poor maintenance of parts (more broken parts have a higher fire chance), and just general wear and tear failures.
Fire growth and spread is directly related to atmospheric pressure and oxygen content. A higher oxygen content and higher pressure atmosphere will make fires spread faster and burn hotter. You can lower the station/pod's atmospheric content of oxygen to smother the fire out if you have no other choice, but is is MUCH preferred if you use a fire extinguisher to put them out instead.
16 Comments
FL 12 Jan, 2023 @ 1:26pm 
Thanks:cupup:
Hexzatite  [author] 12 Jan, 2023 @ 1:25pm 
Turning off the systems does nothing, parts will still be damaged if they are installed. You have to take the parts out to prevent damage.
FL 12 Jan, 2023 @ 6:07am 
In asteroid field, can i just turn off the systems to save parts from damaging? or should i remove as many as i can ?
Hexzatite  [author] 27 Jul, 2022 @ 2:21pm 
@B-Rabbit: No worries! Yeah the black holes really suck! (Pun not intended)

@RTiger32: Fair enough! The challenge of the game is up to some personal interpretation of course. Consider this more of an "This is how I feel" guide rather then 100% total fact :P
B-Rabbit 27 Jul, 2022 @ 9:53am 
Thank you for this, the black hole event was kicking my butt!
RTiger32 12 Jul, 2022 @ 12:14pm 
A black hole isn't too hard(3), but you need to pay attention. The only thing you really need to turn off is the o2, as long as possible, and stay near the airlock door for when you feel the squeeze. The other way around a black hole is to maintain your atmosphere at 0.8 bar. I wouldn't worry too much about patching leaks during the event until your pressure goes under 1 bar, which can also be monitored from the analog.

Asteroids are plain old physical persuasion(4-5, depending on spare parts). Hang on to something and switch all your monitors to show error codes. Also, keep the fire extinguisher and leak patcher handy.
RTiger32 12 Jul, 2022 @ 12:14pm 
Ice nebula is 1. All you need to do is turn everything off besides the power, and the emergency lights. After that, just keep an eye on the analog and switch back on the life support and temperature as needed.

Star is 2. This time, turn everything off besides the temperature regulator and emergency lights, and be sure your critical systems can run on battery for a while. Again, keep an eye on the analog to get past.

Electrical is 3. This time, turn everything off again, disconnect main power from critical systems, and run o2/co2/EmLights on battery alone.
Shiva 18 May, 2022 @ 8:27pm 
I would change the ratings to
Nebula= 1;
You may want to remove batteries until getting the load balanced or they'll drain at no benefit. Other than that, this one is cake.

Star= 2;
Stars are way easier than storms because with a star you just gotta shut off the main genny and you're good. But with storms (3), you actually gotta Switch everything to OFF in a mad dash and getting a late start (due to a lack of main computer warning) or forgetting even one system accidentally can be disastrous. These two are not the same!

Additionally, for stars, as soon as the main computer warns you, turn off the main genny and turn *off* the temperature reg, this will actually allow you to cool down (safely) as you approach. Only turn temp control back on when the thermometer needle gets back to halfway and you can save your battery while staying pretty cool for most the trip! EZ
Hexzatite  [author] 26 Sep, 2021 @ 11:22am 
You gotta either cycle them from other systems OR pick them up somewhere. Only way to get past it.
draftsman 26 Sep, 2021 @ 9:59am 
Slight problem, im on the survive 15 minutes BUT, my life support is missing two pumps, what do i do.