Engineering Beginners Guide
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Contents
Engineering Basics
This Guide is meant to be a bare-bones beginners guide to aid those who are new to the field of engineering in getting started with the three basic systems that you will be responsible for maintaining aboard the NEV Northern Light. This guide will not aim to make you an expert in managing each of these systems, as there is significant nuance and room for optimization with them, but will introduce their basic operations and provide an easy-to-follow guide for bringing the ship to minimal operational standards. For more a more in-depth and advanced look at each of these systems, a link to their dedicated pages is provided at the end of each section.
Your Responsibilities
As a member of NanoTrasen Engineering, you will be responsible for maintaining the following ship systems:
- Maintaining the Supermatter Reactor, ensuring that the ship has enough power to operate
- Maintaining the hull and atmospheric integrity of the NEV Northern Light
- Maintaining the ship’s thrusters, and ensuring they have adequate fuel for exploration
- Maintaining the ship’s on-board AI system. This duty will not be covered in this guide, as it is primarily the responsibility of the Chief Engineer, or another senior engineering staff.
As you can see, your duties are wide-ranging, but vital to the operation of the vessel, as such, engineers are often held to a higher standard of professionalism than that of other professions aboard the ship, but due to the complex nature of the job, mistakes are to be expected, do not be afraid to admit your mistakes to your coworkers, as they can help correct the issue faster, and teach you how to not make the same mistake twice.
Shift Start
When the cryo-oversight computer awakens you or your shift, you should first make your way to the engineering department at the aft of the ship. If this is your very first shift, we recommend you introduce yourself to your coworkers and speak with your Chief Engineer for the shift to receive instructions, we recommend that Chiefs assign new engineers a more senior engineer to shadow for their first shift, so the newbie can learn from hands-on experience, however staffing issues may mean that no senior engineer is available and you may be assigned to work alone. Do not be afraid to ask questions, and make sure a senior member double-checks your work if you are working on any vital ship systems.
The Supermatter Reactor
Basic Principles
The core power generation is done by the Thermo-Electric Generators (TEGs). There are four in the engine, and they are powered by the flow of two gasses of differing temperature through their two sides. The larger the temperature difference, the more power generated. Note that they are less efficient when generating more than 500kW, but are not harmed by doing so, despite the intermittent sparks generated.
Basic Setup Guide
1. Attach gas canisters in the ports marked with ORANGE (1) squares using a wrench. For this guide, use phoron canisters as the vastly higher specific heat (10x that of nitrogen) makes it ideal for generating lots of power while minimizing risk of delamination. You'll need 8 canisters in total for this step.
2. Max out and turn on the pumps marked in LIGHT BLUE (2) so that the gas flows freely through the loops.
3. Set up omni-filters, shown in DARK BLUE(3) squares. These filters will filter gases OUT of the coolant loop and into waste canisters, because we use phoron turn off phoron filter (furthest left filter, by default). How you do this is largely up to you just keep in mind gas you want to keep goes in the blue pipe gas you don't want to keep goes in the black pipe.
4. Wrench either a Nitrogen or Phoron canister to the port in the RED (4) square. Which gas you use is up to you. Phoron is a better gas to use, but as this line is only cooling the waste gasses anyway, it's not vital that it be optimized completely and keeping the extra phoron around could be useful.
5. Set the Waste to Wasting pressure regulator in the YELLOW (5) square. Recommended settings are to set the Pressure Regulation to "Input," and the target pressure to 3500 kPa. This will allow the waste gasses to stay in the line and benefit from the waste cooling before being sent to the wasting port.
6. Be sure to use the RCON console (found in the control room near the Main Coolant Pipes) to turn on substations that are off back on and allocate more or less power to substations that need it. Most substations can run optimally with 250KW input power without having power failures. (Optional) Double check everything.
7. Turn on the emitter using the switch upstairs. Located south of the consoles, on the table. It is also recommended to close the "Engine Monitoring Room Blast Doors" by using the button on the same table. This will help prevent unauthorized entry into the reactor chamber below.
