Powernet separation

[Migratingcocofruit]

What Does This PR Do

Separates the station's power grid into 2 networks:

• High power network that is mostly in maints and is hotwired to all engine outputs. Provides power to the lower power network as well as high power devices such as the PTL or BSH.
• Low power network that is fed by the high power network via SMES in engineering and electrical maints and provides power for most of the station

Why It's Good For The Game

It's currently very difficult to transmit large amounts of power to different areas of the station without arcing all the APCs. This limits the ability of engineering to combine the output power of their engines and also makes it next to impossible to build high power devices anywhere other than engineering. By allowing them to tap into maints they can now build things like the BSH wherever, and there is also the possibility of adding various other kinds of high power machines for other departments.

Images of changes

Cyberiad

Engineering SMES room Old electrical maints, north of library Aft Starboard electrical maints, south of toxins Fore Port Electrical Maints, north of garden

Cerebron

Engineering SMES room Fore port electrical maints, north of mining dock Aft port electrical maints, west of paramed office Aft starboard electrical maints, northwest of toxins

Kerberos

Engineering SMES room Fore starboard electrical maints, east of QM office and cargo bay Aft port electrical maints, west of xenobio Aft starboard electrical maints, west of viro

Farragus

Engineering SMES room Fore port electrical maints, southwest of law office Fore electrical maints, east of bridge Starboard electrical maints, south of cargo Aft port electrical maints, east of sci Aft starboard electrical maints, east of gravgen

Diagoras

Engineering SMES room Fore starboard electrical maints, west of brig Aft port electrical maints, southeast of cargo Aft starboard electrical maints, east of viro

Testing

• Went over both wirenets and made sure there were no shorts or disconnects

Declaration

• [x] I confirm that I either do not require pre-approval for this PR, or I have obtained such approval and have included a screenshot to demonstrate this below.

Changelog

:cl: add: insulated APCs. These APCs are found in maints and are arc proof add: Ability to add insulation to APCs. This is done by inserting 10 sheets of plastic while the panel is open tweak: Added 2 additional electrical maints to each station for a total of 4 SMES locations including engineering. tweak: Separated the cables going inside and out of maints. outside of maints you get low power, and inside you get high power. /:cl:

[Denthamos]

Not a bad idea and one that has been floated around before. I still would prefer however the 'high power' cables be larger than normal cables and therefore harder to cut while also being more dangerous to cut/destroy like I commented before on discord.

[Migratingcocofruit]

Not a bad idea and one that has been floated around before. I still would prefer however the 'high power' cables be larger than normal cables and therefore harder to cut while also being more dangerous to cut/destroy like I commented before on discord.

I want to give the current form a chance in testing, see how well it works. If running the high power cables through maints proves too problematic they should be easy to replace, but the point of this PR is to make it feasible for engineering to transmit large amounts of power anywhere in the station so I'd rather keep as much QoL as possible.

[Stoniest]

There should be a distinction between cables, being zapped by 1MW is not great if you're unaware that'll be the case.

[Migratingcocofruit]

There should be a distinction between cables, being zapped by 1MW is not great if you're unaware that'll be the case.

They are all colour coded. Engine line is yellow, maints line(high power) is orange and the low power line that feeds the apcs is red.

[github-actions[bot]]

This pull request seems to be stale as there have been no changes in 14 days, please make changes within 7 days or the PR will be closed. If you believe this is a mistake, please inform a development team member on Discord.

[1080pCat]

It appears like the brig on box station lacks a substation, leading to engineering zapping them alot.

[Christer2222]

How does this change interact with power sinks?

[Migratingcocofruit]

How does this change interact with power sinks?

If the sink is wired to the low power network it should work the same way it always did. If it's wired to the high power network it would be like wiring it between the engine and SMES.

[Rak-Sulavin]

Was told to bring this up by admin as it seems to be associated with this TM.

In NSS Cerebron, Atmospheric Room at 164, 121. An extinguisher cabinet is placed in there on the floor rather on the wall. Seems to be randomly placed or by accident from this TM?

[Sikroth]

Customs Desk in the Kerberos Station is not connected to anything, the wire just goes vertically from the APC to the top window. Assuming it's due to this PR, disregard if it's not...

[Adrer]

List of Boxstation mapping issues: Toxins mixing (198, 104)

Turbine (151, 067)

Cloning (147, 108)

Atmospherics maintenance (125, 067)

Power Transmission Laser (088,078)

[Adrer]

List of Deltastation mapping issues: Construction Area (203, 082)

Fore-Port Solar Maintenance (077, 100)

Aft Secondary Maintenance (169, 080)

Power Transmission Laser (076, 177)

[Sikroth]

Nitpicks on the new wires!

Do we really need two different cables? What differences does the new one have from normal ones mechanically? It's called high voltage but it's not like the normal ones can't handle 1GW. And it says it has extra insulation but you still get shocked cutting or replacing them, and mice can still chew through them.

If we're keeping the new wiring, it needs all the missing sprites. Cables don't only go on 90º bends, and all the other angles are missing. And speaking of visuals... Black wires in a black, dark maint tunnel is about the worst visually speaking. Yellow made them stand out and communicate "high voltage" well enough. Black is just hard to see and not the best option, if you ask me. Maybe a striped wire would make sense being they can be high voltage but it might be visually noisy...

And on the new system to connect them to the normal wires... I get that it'd be less convenient to do this but, could we have a Wire Adapter thing you can make with metal, or something, to connect between the two powernets? I get that the current "hit with ID to enable cross connection" makes sense mechanically and is a simple solution... but like... hitting a piece of wire with an ID feels sort of dumb.

Anyway that's my nitpicking/feedback on that done.

For actual mapping issues, the Cyberiad's medbay has a little maintenance with an APC that also feeds the Cloning lab. That maint has black HV wires but they're not properly ID'd to connect to the normal wires which feed into them. So that little maint and, more critically, Cloning, are disconnected from the powernet.

[BiancaWilkson]

Do cyborgs have a way to interact with the high voltage cables? I couldn't figure out any way to in game since they don't have IDs or a way to dispense them. Not being able to repair a chewed wire is rough.

[Acheronx98]

Need to put two cents in, borgs and maint drones:

1. Not being able to interact with them (I guess you could limit to only engineering borgs and maint drones? If a station gets whacked with a tungsta and there is no engineering, which is common in today's lowpop, then it's cooked. Gotta run a whole new regular cable, but even then, can't enable the existing heavy duty cable)
2. Not having them be part of the standard engineering borg and maint drone loadout.

If it's intended for borgs to not interact with them, perhaps make it so it's only interactable only if the AI controlled setting is enabled in the zone's APC.

Also, there are missing heavy duty cables by the maintenance server room and under the floor to the right of the holodeck computer on Cerebron.

in my opinion, PR should be pulled because borgs and drones are useless right now with the heavy duty cables, which is a pretty big issue, seeing how that's a good amount of the cables across maints now.

[Migratingcocofruit]

Nitpicks on the new wires!

Do we really need two different cables? What differences does the new one have from normal ones mechanically? It's called high voltage but it's not like the normal ones can't handle 1GW. And it says it has extra insulation but you still get shocked cutting or replacing them, and mice can still chew through them.

If we're keeping the new wiring, it needs all the missing sprites. Cables don't only go on 90º bends, and all the other angles are missing. And speaking of visuals... Black wires in a black, dark maint tunnel is about the worst visually speaking. Yellow made them stand out and communicate "high voltage" well enough. Black is just hard to see and not the best option, if you ask me. Maybe a striped wire would make sense being they can be high voltage but it might be visually noisy...

And on the new system to connect them to the normal wires... I get that it'd be less convenient to do this but, could we have a Wire Adapter thing you can make with metal, or something, to connect between the two powernets? I get that the current "hit with ID to enable cross connection" makes sense mechanically and is a simple solution... but like... hitting a piece of wire with an ID feels sort of dumb.

Anyway that's my nitpicking/feedback on that done.

For actual mapping issues, the Cyberiad's medbay has a little maintenance with an APC that also feeds the Cloning lab. That maint has black HV wires but they're not properly ID'd to connect to the normal wires which feed into them. So that little maint and, more critically, Cloning, are disconnected from the powernet.

The main reason of the new cables is to not make it so easy to hotwire the grid, either on accident or on purpose. I considered making a bridge type cable or simply something you build, but I believe this is best reserved for another PR. I'm trying to keep this as barebones as I can since it requires a large amount of testing and generates a huge amount of conflicts as is, and it's a necessary change for any further change that require engineering to transfer large amounts of power around the station(The PTL terminal will be for off station, but that's a part of the bluespace cache ruin PR).

Borgs should have cable coils and be able to interact with cables now. This was an oversight on my end.

The medbay mapping issue and many others should be fixed now, but be sure to drop any more you do notice either here or in the discord project discussion. I don't always reply to all of them but I do see them and work on them.

The heavy duty cables should have all directions now, I'll try a different colour scheme and see how it works. The black is indeed not very visible.