🥝 Community Kiwi Space Station 13 Server (2024 edition) - Space Station 13

[enaR]

My stance is every ss13 thread but this one should be locked to drive more traffic to my server instead

It's not really a bad idea when we have 3 threads and the most "general", unaffiliated one is also the least active.

 

[HahaYes]

whoever originally coded it doesn't understand electricity (or God or nature in general)

Sounds about right given all the other dumb bullshit you've found going on in the code in general

might actually be more fun to have them not, so that the lights dim and stuff as you start to not have enough power

Based that'd be fucking cool, it'd also work nicely with the losing heat stuff you mentioned the other week requiring more draw from the grid

it doesn't actually make logical sense or work particularly well if you try to have circuits of any complexity whatsoever

That'd probably be why the breakers go apeshit if the grid is supplied far beyond its actual demands at the time, no wonder

 

[geckogoy]

That'd probably be why the breakers go apeshit if the grid is supplied far beyond its actual demands at the time, no wonder

well it works fine (or so I thought) as the station currently is, because its mains -> breaker -> subgrid so its fairly straight forwards. however the basic wattage system is very hostile to allowing power to flow between grids

every electrical device on a powernet has to advertise its current wattage demand, so it would feed back on itself as circuit breakers see their own demand reflected back through the loop and it would amp up out of control (currently breakers check if the grid on both sides of the breaker are the same grid, but if it was like grid A -> grid B -> grid C -> grid A that would kill itself still)

the only real way to fix it imo is to introduce voltage and current as separate concepts and just do it quasi-realistically (this is not considered a priority problem at this time but I will eventually do it for fun)

 

[HahaYes]

the only real way to fix it imo is to introduce voltage and current as separate concepts and just do it quasi-realistically

Yeah sounds about right, plus having it behave like that would be really neat tbh. Either way it still functions at the moment and the station does get power so eh, you just can't feed too much into the main grid but that pretty much never happens anyway as the TMGs already limit how much they can output in the first place so that kinda stops it becoming an issue like 95% of the time already, in the meantime the overloading thingy is just a quirk of the station

 

[Jotch]

How could we port Byond to Holy C?

 

[Grayson Death Carlyle]

How could we port Byond to Holy C?

Very painfully.
IIRC TempleOS as created by Terry doesn't even have network capabilities, and every program in it has Kernel level access. I would assume that gives server admins a lot of room to fuck with your computer (or at least your VM) if you were to somehow connect a TempleOS VM to the Internet and run spessmans on it.

 

[Hantavirus]

Voltage should not sag as power runs out. It would sag at the batteries, but any power storage medium will have regulators (actually inverters, assuming space stations still use AC power in the distant future). This is to avoid issues with voltage-sensitive loads, particularly motors--as I mentioned above, a load will generally pull the amount of power it needs, meaning a single phase, 120 VAC, 1 hp motor will generally pull about 14-16 amps (depending on efficiency and what % of capacity it is running at). If the voltage sags, the motor will draw more current, heating the windings and leading to failures. The same goes for any regulated device with a fixed output power, like, theoretically, a Teleporter.

Lights are generally more tolerant of voltage fluctuations. Incandescents are best at this and will dim linearly with a decrease in current. This also increases the life of the bulb. LEDs will also dim, and if they do not have their own regulator built in that is designed to work with resistive dimming, they will begin to flicker. This is why you need to buy modern dimmers to dim your newer LED lights, because LED dimmers actually cut a portion of the AC cycle or change the shape of the wave instead of just dropping the voltage across a resistor like in the old days. Fluorescents use ballasts that attempt to maintain a constant power and thus would not dim in a low-voltage scenario but simply draw more current.

A more realistic solution to the station running out of power is rolling blackouts, like what I did to conserve power while flailing around the TEG room like a retard. Different station areas or even individual APCs could be marked "critical" and would be immune to periodic blackouts, but the risk there is that if you make too many circuits critical, your power reserves will run out much faster. You can see this in "troubled" countries like South Africa. Line voltage and even frequency is mostly constant even with serious grid problems, the only real solutions to demand outpacing supply are to increase supply or cut off demand!

Edit: I should add that from an electrical safety/best practices standpoint, the output of one breaker should never be connected back to a circuit higher in the tree topology, nor should it be cross-connected to the output of another breaker. This is mostly to avoid situations where a breaker is turned off but the wire is still energized, or where paralleling circuits leads to inadequate over current protection for the wiring/devices (if you replace your 15 amp living room outlet breaker with a 50 amp breaker, you will start a fire when there is a fault or too many devices plugged in and the wires burn up in your walls; this used to be common when fuses were interchangeable and people would simply screw in a 30 amp fuse because the 15 amp kept blowing). The most common violation of this principle today is when homeowners connect a portable generator to their house via a male-to-male "suicide cord" to backfeed the panel through an outlet or two. Actually quite safe when done exactly correctly, but easy to screw up and extremely dangerous if not done right.

However, SS13 engineers are not usually known for their scrupulous adherence to electrical code. Sometimes you just need power, and you don't have a breaker box or a very expensive SMES on hand. It would be very nice if this was possible.

 

[HahaYes]

Sometimes you just need power, and you don't have a breaker box or a very expensive SMES on hand.

That's what the P.A.C.M.A.N generators are for, portable power wherever you need it

 

[Hantavirus]

Right. If I understand correctly, under the current system, if you need to power Medbay, you drag the generator to Medbay and wire it into the net downstream of the Medbay breaker, and it does not affect any other breakers. Or would adding a power source downstream of a breaker box cause issues?

In a more realistic scenario, you would kill the main breaker at your local subpanel/breaker box to prevent backfeeding power into a transformer and killing an engineer working to fix the wiring fault somewhere else. This is how you backfeed your house to keep the lights and fridge on during a storm. Alternatively, if the TEG is down, solars are down, and there is no Supermatter, anyone could set up a PACMAN wherever they find one outside Engineering (there is one in Maint by Arrivals if I remember correctly), backfeed the main panel with it, and distribute power to whichever breakers you leave on.

Definitely falls under "nice to have" and not a priority. I don't know anything about BYOND, but I am guessing the language is a hindrance to implementing stuff like this, just like every other "nice to have" feature.

 

[geckogoy]

I don't know anything about BYOND, but I am guessing the language is a hindrance to implementing stuff like this, just like every other "nice to have" feature.

Not really byond, just the pre-existing code. Have not tested pacmans perhaps they work fine

 

[HahaYes]

Right. If I understand correctly, under the current system, if you need to power Medbay, you drag the generator to Medbay and wire it into the net downstream of the Medbay breaker

Honestly you'd get your main power source repaired at that point over using a pacman and fuel for it (solid plasma), that's very limited unless you have shaft miners supplying what you need, but yes that's more or less what you do

Have not tested pacmans perhaps they work fine

They work pretty nicely tbh

 

[MAAAD]

Probably won't make it today again (I promise I'll be there next Saturday bros), is anyone available to play this Sunday at Saturday's time? React with plox, let's see how many of us will be there.
Also @geckogoy they're having an event on /vg/ almost at the same time as KiwiStation's scheduled session so there probably won't be any more than average amount of people today. You could maybe try to shift the planned time for today if you care, that's just a suggestion though since if I can't make it today, I can't make it for the entire night.

 

[geckogoy]

You could maybe try to shift the planned time for today

I dunno seems like a bad idea

 

[geckogoy]

Alright the start time is in about 5 minutes but I am running a little late, so I will show up in a bit with the completed antag rewrites and do a restart

Ok I have arrived the time is now and have the following updates:
Updates

• Antagonist system rewrite V1.0 is in place, this mostly just greatly simplifies the code for it so it should be less buggy going forward
  • ERT, nuke, traitor, blob modes all should work
• Pawnis gun sounds

Gunsounds for shotguns

Also, stetchkin silenced pistol sounds and STS-35 (syndicate rifle)

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

Does anyone have any interest in the "never came to be" codebases? I'm still sitting on a bunch of one off codebases like STALKER 13 (Needs a refs update) or Europa (not fully functional) if there's ever a need to go off and play something different because we got tired of the 1488th Nuke ops round taking out the Glorious Third Soviet Union (Actual lore TM).

 

[enaR]

Largest SS14 happening in a few months: They have blocked the biggest alternative launcher from authenticating. They repeatedly promised they wouldn't do this for anything short of malware or CP level stuff.

 

[geckogoy]

Does anyone have any interest in the "never came to be" codebases? I'm still sitting on a bunch of one off codebases like STALKER 13 (Needs a refs update) or Europa (not fully functional) if there's ever a need to go off and play something different because we got tired of the 1488th Nuke ops round taking out the Glorious Third Soviet Union (Actual lore TM).

No stalker child you will ENJOY nuke mode (because of cool gun sounds)

Anyways a little bit although maybe more for scavenging ideas/sprites and such because it would be a crap ton of work to maintain a parallel codebase

Largest SS14 happening in a few months: They have blocked the biggest alternative launcher from authenticating. They repeatedly promised they wouldn't do this for anything short of malware or CP level stuff.
View attachment 6294606

Damn thats what you get for trusting a tranny

 

[enaR]

Looks like it might be due to an actual lolsuit going one way or the other about the piracy thing.

 

[HahaYes]

No coming back from that

Looks like it might be due to an actual lolsuit going one way or the other about the piracy thing.
View attachment 6294682

God I hope so that would be hilarious

 

[MAAAD]

I hopped in. We're waiting 10 more minutes for others to join!