This is a work in progress guide with some unfinished parts.
So! Setting up the SM has become too easy for you? You’re a new player wanting to figure out the secrets of the SM? Want to play around with a really deadly big lamp that will kill you if you touch it? Then you’ve come to the right place!
This is an in-depth guide for the Supermatter,designed to give you a full understanding of the SM, its mechanics, how to make basic and advanced Supermatter setups, how to delaminate the supermatter into one of 4 outcomes and how to keep it stable. This guide will cover EVERYTHING about the SM.
Theoretical section:
Touching the supermatter with any tool (the exception is a supermatter scalpel, tongs and nuclear authentication disk), or any mob will dust them, completely removing them from the round, this has been the bane of many engineers, so be careful!
How the SM produces power - when the SM is given energy (this is normally done with emitters), it will emit electrical arcs which are harvested by the tesla generators near it, this results in a net positive electricity gain, which is looped back into the emitters that will fire at the SM endlessly and keep producing electricity.
To make sure we understand how the Supermatter works, we will need to go over some parts of the NT CIMS interface (this app can be found on any modular console in engineering or in any engineer’s PDA) →
- Integrity - this is the health of the supermatter, if it goes below 100% it will start to irradiate the room through the plasma glass and you will have to either wear any radiation shielded equipment (hazmat, engiMOD, CE MOD) or close the radiation shutters.
Going below 50%, it will start to produce anomalies around it, this includes: pyroclastic, gravitational, hallucination, flux anomaly.
Going below 0% health it will start the delamination process, keep in mind it can still be saved at this point, it will begin a 15 second cooldown after which it will delaminate into one of 4 outcomes, which I will expand on later down this guide.
All modifiers for integrity:
• Heat damage - How much damage is caused by the absorbed gas mix being hotter than the temperature limit.
• Charge Damage - How much damage is caused by exceeding the 5000 MeV internal power threshold.
• Molar Damage - How much damage is caused by absorbing more than 1800 moles of gas.
• External Damage - How much damage is caused by external sources such as physical bullets and destabilizing crystals.
• Space Exposure Damage - How much damage is caused by being on or near space tiles.
• Low Temperature Limit - The only way to heal the integrity of the SM, this is how much damage healed by being below the temperature limit. - internal energy - This is how much energy the SM has, if the net gain of the energy is positive (this means the energy rises indefinitely), then the SM will keep heating up until something is done about the cooling gas mix. If the net gain is negative, then the SM will eventually stop emitting arcs when at low internal energy. Current modifiers for internal energy:
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• - Zap power transmission - This is the maximum amount of electrical energy that can be harvested by the tesla generators at this time.
- Moles absorbed - How many moles the SM has absorbed on its tile, the cycle goes like this: 1) absorb gas mix 2) transfer energy of gas mix to SM 3) Produce waste gas and release both cooling gas mix and waste gas.
- Temperature - The current temperature of the SM.
- Temperature limit - This is the threshold for losing integrity from heat damage, current modifiers for the temperature limit:
• Base Heat Resistance - Base heat resistance of 40 Celsius or 313.15 Kelvin. Additive amounts for other factors are based on the base heat resistance. (example: +100% means 313.15 extra Kelvin)…
• Gas Heat Resistance - How much additional heat resistance we get from gasses. (for example N2O increases the temperature limit up to 1878.9 Kelvin if the cooling mix consists purely of N2O)
• Psychologist Heat Resistance - How much additional heat resistance we get from the presence of a psychologist or anyone with the HYPERG1G4 skill chip around the SM hallucination range. Gives up to 45 Kelvins of additional heat resistance. (forget this, this will never happen in practice and is useless.)
• Low Moles Heat Resistance - How much additional heat resistance we get from a low amount of gas in the supermatter. Goes up to +100% base heat resistance (basically don’t put too many moles into the cooling loop). - waste multiplier - How much waste is released per cycle of absorption, the normal waste gasses are Oxygen and plasma, if CO2 is present in the gas mix, the SM will also produce Pluoxium (Pluoxium has a use and should be mined if possible). Current modifiers:
• Base Waste Multiplier - Base waste multiplier for the supermatter. Fixed at 1x.
• Gas Waste Multiplier - How much of the waste multiplier is being changed because of the gasses around the supermatter, (every gas that does this shows their multiplier in their modifiers)
• Psychologist Waste Multiplier - How much of the waste gas multiplier is reduced by the presence of a psychologist or anyone with the HYPERG1G4 skill chip around the supermatter hallucination range. Waste multiplier reduction from psychologist only goes up to -20%. (pffff, who needs psychologists) - Absorption ratio - how much of the gas on the SM tile it absorbs per absorption cycle
- Gases - displays gasses recently absorbed by the SM, the show all gasses button shows the modifiers of every gas in the game, it can also be viewed in detail here https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Guide_to_the_Supermatter#Gas_Interactions
The NT CIMS is your number one tool for monitoring the SM, make sure you know some of its aspects!
Gas theory or thermodynamics:
SS13 uses the ideal gas law for all gasses insert gas law screenshot
To simplify: if gas gets hotter, it expands, if it can’t expand it will increase in pressure
Pipenet theory or LINDA:
LINDA is the name of the SS13 atmospherics system. it does not simulate flow in pipe segments, instead, a pipe connected with another pipe shares the same amount of gas in them, This gas sharing is instantaneous, if pipes are connected they will count as one “segment” or “sector”.
Observe the picture below as an example. The gas from the canister will immediately appear on the first node of the volume pump because both of them are connected through the same pipeline, even if the pipes are ten, twenty, or a hundred times longer. As long as two things are part of the same line they will equalize instantly.
https://tgstation13.org/wiki/File:Pipenet_explanation.png
Devices such as: Pumps, filters, gas mixers, etc. separate pipelines or “segments”, producing possible clogs and slow down gas movement as they don’t transfer gas instantaneously.
Ideally, your cooling loops should consist only of 2 “segments”.
This is the end of the theoretical part, reading this may be boring when first starting out, but will get much more interesting once you decide to get into the more advanced SM setups.
Practical section (basic level):
The cooling loop:
The SM cooling loop is the most important part of the SM as it prevents delamination and lets you operate the SM safely. It is a system of pipes directed at completing these tasks:
- Cool your cooling mix.
- Insert the cool cooling mix into the SM chamber…
- Extract the hot mixture of waste gasses and your cooling mix.
- Filter out the waste gasses into space (or into a canister) and send your cooling mix back to step 1.
The round start cooling loop consists of the following:
- Canister+pump - This allows your basic and arguably safest cooling gas to enter the cooling loop (roundstart canister here is nitrogen).
- SM chamber intake - This sends your gas into the SM chamber using unary vents and the air alarm.
- SM chamber outtake - This siphons every gas from the SM chamber to reintroduce it into the cooling loop4) SM chamber bypass, This bypasses the SM chamber (only use this to cool the cooling mix before inserting it into the SM.
- Mining filter - This filters any useful gasses you may want to extract from the SM (for example pluoxium).
- space heat exchangers - This uses the vacuum of space to cool the cooling mix (heat exchangers equalize the temperature between the vacuum of space (insert space temp here) and the gas inside the pipes).
- Filters - This filters out the waste into space and sends the cooling mix back into the loop.
- Emergency cooling - use these thermo machines to give additional cooling during a delamination, should not be used during normal operation as unupgraded thermo machines have a higher cooling limit than space and will instead heat the gas mix to 70K (and try to keep it there).
Insert new gas pipes round-start sm cooling loop picture here
This setup is extremely ineffective and should be replaced before starting the SM.
Basic and reliable cooling loop setup:
We want to merge as many pipelines to allow the gas to travel as fast as possible.
- Replace the pressure pumps with volume pumps, this will increase the speed at which your mix is inserted or can be used to regulate the speed at which you introduce a new mix. (this isn’t very important)
- Replace the pump with a pipe.
- Replace the pump with a pipe. Step 2 and 3 both increase the gas travel speed by merging pipenets, allowing instant gas travel
- Replace this with a valve (digital or manual, your choice), again, this will increase the speed by merging pipenets.
- Make a bypass using a valve and pipe, or just pipe works.
- Replace the pumps with pipes, this merges pipenets.
- There are more advanced ways to set up these filters but this works just fine for a basic SM setup, turn these on and set the first one to the gas you plan to use (by default, nitrogen is filtered on the first filter).
- remove the pipes and pump below, replace all pumps with pipes, this merges pipelines and allows the thermomachines to cool the cooling mix at all times in an emergency.
Insert setup screenshot as explained
Actual SM setup:
Equipment you will need:
Meson scanner, engineering goggles, optical scanners - Anyone looking at the SM without these on will begin to hallucinate
RPD - rapid pipe dispenser for placing pipes and devices.
Wrench
Engineering or Atmospherics ID, airlocks near SM use engine and engineering access.
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Modify the cooling loop to your needs (this can be the basic, advanced or your own custom cooling setup),do NOT wrench the cooling mix canisters, only send the gas after the cooling loop is ready (unwrenching pipes with gas in them takes longer and spills some of the gas in it.
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Wrench the canisters and insert the cooling mix by using the pumps
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Set up the air alarm: By default, there is 3 unary vents and 3 scrubbers in the SM chamber.
Insert air alarm interface
Insert air alarm vents interface
Insert air alarm scrubbers interface
We want to be constantly injecting the cooling mix and siphoning everything out at the same time, for this - turn off pressure checks on vents by disabling both external and internal, alternatively you can set the pressure to 0 internal, which will try to keep the pressure in the connected pipeline to 0.
Insert example
Then, we want to configure the scrubbers to siphon, set the scrubbers to siphon and extended range, extended range siphons everything in a 3x3 area around the scrubber.
Insert example
4) Check the gas interfaces on the pipes insert example if they are purple, their temperature is low and all of your gas interfaces are showing to have gas in them, then your cooling loop is working!
5) set up and turn on emitters (some stations already have this done and you just need to turn them on) place 2 reflector boxes pointing at the SM and weld them (wear welding protection!), point the emitters at the reflector boxes, wrench emitters, weld emitters, turn them on.
6) Comfigure SMES, now that you are producing power, it’s time to send that power to the station, set input to max and output 30 KW below the max, this way the SMES will be gaining a net positive charge and will act as a backup power source if the sm stops giving power.
- Profit
SM power cycle:
- Energy added via external means, this can be emitters firing, items or mobs getting dusted or modifications resulting in net positive energy gain(example is CO2).
- Internal energy rising results in Tesla coils being emmited - which is transfered to the tesla generators
- Tesla generators power SM room APC and charge the SMES
Common problems:
emitters don’t fire - fix this by cutting the wire to the emitters and wrench a pacman generator to the new wire network, this will jumpstart the emitters and will produce some power to start the power cycle.
Gas is in the cooling loop but is not cooling - Something is wrong with the space cooling, most likely your pipeline isn’t connected to it.
There is a fire in the SM chamber - this normally happens when there are too many waste gasses in the SM, this happens when the SM has too much internal energy, when the gasses aren’t being siphoned out or when the SM isn’t being cooled.
SM is on but still no power - Check the power cables and SMES.
Delamination prevention:
The SM chamber is on fire resulting in a chain reaction of waste gases continuously releasing, starting the delamination process.
Prevention algorithm:
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Get radiation protection!!! This should be your number one priority as radiation damage can only be healed with potassium iodine pills which are normally only found in medbay.
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Turn off the emitters or any external energy source.
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Check the cooling loop, has it been sabotaged, engineer didn’t set it up correctly? Fix it.
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Grab a fire extinguisher, water tank, magboots and a holofan (hopefully they’re researched) Leave the water tank nearby, go into the SM chamber, activate your magboots and place holofans in the entrance, then extinguish the Crystal, remember that the SM can still be saved when it has reached 0% integrity (although this is extremely rare and you shouldn’t risk it if you don’t know what you’re doing)
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if everything fails, run out of engineering, outside of the explosive radius and hide in a locker (this will prevent you from hallucinating the rest of the shift when reality distorts from the SM exploding). Only give up when it has 5-10% integrity, this is enough time for you to escape!
General tips
ask another experienced engineer to watch you set up the SM so they can help if anything goes wrong.
Wearing a MODsuit is the best choice when a delamination starts.
Plasmamen are immune to radiation
A destroyed APC prevents all devices from working in that room, repair dat APC!
This is the end of the Basic SM guide
Advanced section:
So you think you’re pretty good huh? You’ve prevented a couple delams and even set up the SM all by yourself? Well, time to delve deeper into the most revolutionary power generation NanoTrasen ever discovered
This section assumes you have read the theoretical segment thoroughly and at least some of the basic segment.
Advanced cooling loop:
Gas cooling:
Installing layer adapters and valves at the space cooling loop will allow you to upgrade the amount of heat exchangers you can fit by 3 times, valves are for disabling space cooling to use T4 thermomachines.
Use a 5 layer filter system, this will allow you to have the fastest speed of transfer between the 2 pipelines in the same space (1000 L/s instead of 200 L/s, trying to get more than 1000L/s is pointless because even 1000L/s is overboard)
Adding upgraded thermomachines to the cooling mix pipeline, adding it to the waste/cooling mix pipeline is a waste as the waste is dumped into space or into a canister.
Installing air injectors (or more unary vents) and more scrubbers, which will incrase your gas travel speed. Be wary of air injectors as the cannot be controlled with an air alarm, although this can be circumvented with a valve being closed on the pipeline.
Get rid of the mining pipes, place a filter at the end of the waste loop if you want to mine gas, this will make sure not to bottleneck the cooling loop when mining gasses.
Plasma cooling:
Needs pictures
Plasma has the highest heat capacity out of all gases in the game, therefore being the best storage of thermal energy and the best transferrer of thermal energy, using plasma we can make a supplementary cooling battery that will step in when the normal loop starts to falter, to do this:
Set up a new pipeline with heat exchangers in space and heat exchangers connecting to the main cooling loop
Insert plasma with a connector port and pump
Profit
Heat exchangers inside the SM:
It is possible to install heat exchangers inside the SM chamber, heat exchangers can only be installed on layer 2,3,4, so if you do this, your vents/air injectors and scrubbers shoudl be on layer 1 and 5, to maximize efficiency.
Advanced cooling mix setups:
CO2 + N2 + N2O: This setup produces a minor amount of pluoxium, mine it!
The ratio for this should be 20:60:20, you should upgrade the cooling just in case.
Pure O2: currently very hard to accomplish on Fulpstation but shoudl still be possible, this setup requires high amounts of cooling and is very dangerous as a fire will begin to produce trtium.
Pure CO2: currently very hard to accomplish as it will begin a charge inertia delamination from making a very high net positive internal energy gain.
Very high amounts of cooling required!
Pure tritium: extremely dangerous but really funny
Hyper-noblium + any setup: makes the setup very safe as hyper-noblium prevents reactions from occurring.
Delamination:
Now that we know how to operate the SM safely, it’s time to find out about the fun and dangerous stuff
Explosion: The SM explodes, releasing all absorbed gases + extra waste. This is essentially a maxcap on steroids. Caused by a delamination without any special circumstances.
Tesla: Charge inertia delamination, produces an infinite tesla ball that will rupture containment and kill everyone in it’s path if not shielded in field emitters. How to do: At the time of delamination, the SM must have 5000 Mev internal energy. stop siphoning and start scrubbing all gasses except CO2, set filters to filter CO2, send CO2 into the cooling mix. This will make the SM very efficient at keeping internal energy
Singularity: Spawns singularity that will start to eat the station if not contained in field emitters. How to do: at delamination the SM has to have absorbed 1800 moles of any gas. Get at least 4 cans of CO2 or send CO2 into engine room through atmos, disable scrubbers and try to insert as much gas into the chamber as possible.
Resonance cascade: One of the most difficult delaminations to do on purpose, this can only be done on the main SM, a shard cannot do this. after delamination, the crystal will expand indefinetly until encasing the whole Z-level, anything that touches it will be dusted, this normally will end the round in 5 or less minutes, the emergency shuttlevwill not arrive and CentComm will open a pirtal for escape, when the portal is encased in the mass, the round will end. How to do: the SM must absorb 40% hyper-noblium and 40% anti-noblium with at least 270 absorbed moles at time of delamination. This can also be caused by a destabilising crystal, given to traitors with the “cause a resonance cascade” final objective.
Keep in mind that purposefully delaminating the SM as a traitor should only be done if you have the objective “Die a glorious death” or with very good reason as griefing on fulpstation is prohibited.
Mastery or how to make a black hole/tesla for fun:
So you’ve done all there is and want to play with fire? It’s green shift/white dwarf and you don’t want to use the suicide verb? Wel,l time to teach you how to contain a tesla or singularity delamination for fun
WARNING: request permission from the CE or captain before doing this, do not do this on the main crystal and remember that failing to contain these delaminations will force a shuttle call if admins don’t intervene.
This takes a whole round of work to accomplish, you will also need a lot of materials so if you have no shaft miners you may want to reconsider, heliostation has a dedicated chamber for this, so it’s the best station to do it on.
This section will talk about Tesla and singularity, both of these require a dedicated chamber you will need to build.
You will need: a 3x3 containment chamber for the SM shard, scrubbers and vents, at least 3 tiles around the chamber to walk on and place emitters, field emitters. Air alarms, apc.
All the materials you will need:
SM shard
Lots of CO2
RCD, RPD, BS RPED, all tools including gas analyzer.
3-7 stacks of iron or any material for refilling your RCD
1-2 stacks of reinforced plasma glass
APC, air alarm electronics
4 field emitters, minimum of 4 emitters but 8 is recommended. (Field emitters can be ordered from cargo or found in secure engi storage, emitters can be made)
Canisters
Lots of cables
Intelligence
building the containment:
Start by filling out an airtight room for the whole containment, the room has to be airtight to create a new area and for apc and air alarm to function
Build the chamber for the shard, reinforce the plating with plasteel and use rods to reinforce the plating with iron rods (otherwise the fire will space a tile), then place directional plasma windows from the inside, forming a box, secure all the windows except for one, where you will insert the shard, double check the rest are secure or they will break at the worst moment.
Prepare gas insertion, for Singularity you will only need air injectors, for a tesla you will need one air injector and as many scrubbers as you can fit. Pipe the waste to space and the injection to a docking port or to your gas supply.
Prepare field emitters, emitters, grounding rods, shielding for emitters and grounding rods with plasma glass for defense against anomalies and slimes
Configure the air alarm, for tesla: scrub O2, Plasma, H2O, pluoxium on expanded range. No need to configure air alarm for singulo if you used injectors.
Space the area and place catwalks for faster movement, this is to get rid of any plasma fires and slimes
Insert the shard: Turn on magboots and put down a holofan at the entrance, bring the shard crate into the center, open it, wrench it with left click, WRENCH IT!!! Leave the chamber and install the window. Keep in mind that the shard may or may not start delamming from spacing, so this must be done quick.
Starting the delamination:
After the chamber is secure, start all the field emitters and begin firing with the emitters at the field emitters
After a shield operational, insert your CO2.
Observe the delamination, if anything goes wrong you must repair it quickly, when too many anomalies appear, leave the room as to not die.
Profit if it’s successful, run if it’s not, tell the crew to call shuttle as an uncontained singularity or tesla is extremely dangerous and WILL kill the whole station.