(Tritium/Plasma/High heat)
I’ve noticed an uptick of rounds where large and otherwise unseeable areas are affected by either high heat or plasma/tritfires. This by itself isn’t the issue, it’s a reflection of the work put into atmospheric propagation and the strength of the engine. The problem is that these are unplayable, invisible deathzones.
A few things; high atmospheric heat is similar to low/high pressure and is likewise usually caused by syndicate activity. They are also invisible and carry similar risk of death, but the difference is in severity. A player can reasonably walk into a spaced area, notice (even with significant delay) that they’re in danger, and retreat, and usually they will fully recover.
Due to temperature damage systems, any contact with a significantly hot enough environment will linger and effectively kill you even when you’ve retreated to a safe temperature, and taking off any insulated clothing (like the tooltip suggests) usually doesn’t prevent you from taking life-threatening or fatal amounts of heat damage. In fact, this heat damage will persist until the affected entity has ashed completely, preventing item/brain recovery or revival.
You can prevent both types of atmospheric threats with hardsuits and medical supplies (or water to splash on yourself), but that requires either precognition or those supplies being available to you, when a heated environment is visually identical to a normal one.
So I propose a couple fixes;
- Increase the heat decay when in a cool environment to prevent fatal encounters with less than 10 seconds of exposure
- Add a visual effect (can use the stealth/camo effect for a heat haze), or otherwise audiovisual warning that an environment is superheated that doesn’t require you to be in said environment
- And alternative to the heat decay change, add spacepens back or an equivalent to that allows affected players to survive 1 single encounter with a heatzone and gives them the space and time to effectively prepare for the next time they encounter it.
5 Likes
I just experienced an event with this on the new grasshopper server. A botanist was learning botany and the instructor was showing off mutagen.
This caused a plasma gas mutation that killed literally everyone in service because the other botanist was smoking a blunt (of course).
I as a borg show up to assist as a result of my immunity to temperature and repeatedly tell a passenger to not go into the room, and they almost immediately go crit and then subsequently ash.
There was very little visual indication of there being an issue in the room without looking at the detail on the firelocks currently.
Eventually the CE showed up after I welded the firelocks shut, but it was still extremely devastating.
2 Likes
imo extreme heat or cold should leave ash and ice entities on the floor that can be cleaned by clicking, so you can tell apart a room with some vapour init versus the 5000 degree room filled with soot
ice for the same reason, air on earth usually has water in it to get frozen in a spacing or frezon leak. people sweat so there would be (trace) amounts in the air on a space station too
3 Likes
In my memory a few 13 stations have visual indicators like burn marks on walls, floor tilings and the like. Synonymous with explosions, but it’s still an indicator that an otherwise clean room is a hazard of some kind
3 Likes
Buff fire spread, nerf fire damage.
Fire should be an issue that requires people in fire gear and Fire extinguishers to safely handle but should not rapidly round end people
3 Likes
Squares with high heat should look wavy, like how the air looks in a desert.
4 Likes
This is definitely necessary, I was playing a med intern and our entire department got wiped out after one room had a plasma fire. I was exposed for at most 20 seconds and then retreated to heal. Almost passed out from the burn damage if it wasn’t for the medical bed and medipen. then minutes later some other dipshits opened the door because the room looked exactly like any other and heated the entire department killing myself, HoP, CMO, and my patients then turning the bodies to ash while everything else was left unharmed. by the time Engi and Atmos vented the place the Department was beyond saving.
This shows a complete lack of balance to the damage temperature hazards provide. How is it that everything in the station is completely unaffected by heat but the second a person walks in they are fried to a crisp. I would be fine with the current system if there was a better way for civilians to deal with extreme temps and if fire had more obvious indicators like burnt furniture and walls/tiles.
I think the entire fire mechanic is underutilized, there should be more small fires that burn surrounding structures and consume oxygen and actually give fire extinguishers and fire suits a purpose instead of the current system which creates unstoppable tidal waves of flame which wipe out station in seconds.
Main harm is not the fire damage, its all the heat from fire spead. Atmos fires do not need getting even more buffed.
Only way to save people from ashing is yeeting them into cold deepspace or medbay cryo pods without insulation. There are no chems that work on dead people to cool them down.
Lepo effect on heat is 10 times weaker(Roughly 3C, do not even bother) compared to heating up, let alone the fact anyone in need of it for temperature control will die within seconds from overheat and likely going to ash within minutes or at very least become ointment/mesh/cream/alox sink.
another issue with atmos fires and super heated rooms is the fact when atmos get there many of the crew continually open doors to the super heated area as there is no way of knowing if that area is dangerous. If i remember correctly the atmos fire door remote got removed so they can’t bolt doors to prevent crew from spreading super heated air or fire.
Also due to the change to how the door remotes work the remote couldn’t bolt maint doors which made its use fairly nul and void.
If i ever have to fix another atmos issue i’m just using inflatables to cordon off a area so people don’t mess with it while i’m working.
and yeah i think the super heated air is more of a danger than the fire it self as with the change the fire spreads much more slowly and burns slower but super heated air can spread very quickly making more areas inhospitable and is much harder to notice.
2 Likes
While firelock remotes were used 99% of the time for combat and not atmos stuff, the 1% was usually the heat flood indeed.
With the amount of danger, the VERY high temperature firelock alarms should be blinking, beeping and maybe even require atmos access to open.
yeah the should be some way to distinguish between high temp and spaced.
As no one takes locked fire locks seriously. spaced areas are not that dangerous as strange as it is but they look similar to areas that are hot as some times you might see a lot of water vapor but many would just think that’s a gas leak or clown doing a vape con.
there is just no way to know especially if the door is not a windoor as then you can’t see the room behind it maybe normal doors should have warning lights?
red = spaced
orange = hot
green = toxic air
Spaced should probably be more distinct from heat.
One of the reasons spaced is often ignored is spacing one room impacts adjacent rooms. In other words if the cargo dock is breached, the front becomes “spaced”, despite being safe to reconnect.
yeah that’s fair its just spacing doesn’t kill you as fast as realy hot temps
maybe
deep blue light = spacing
blueish wight = cold temps
So deep blue for space, light blue for cold, a distinct grey for off? That seems pretty clear.
I agree that there should be a better indicator. but it needs to be clear in both color and color-less format. There are crew with in character and IRL color blindness. I think the airlocks should have a set of lights on both sides(similar to hydroponic trays). with each light having its own color. This creates a better distinction that doesn’t rely on color alone.
Green = safe
Red = hot
Blue = cold
Yellow? = spacing
Also having the airlocks tell you what the lights mean when examined and being less sensitive to safe pressure shifts will make it more intuitive for new players.
1 Like
I personally think atmos fire is fine as it is damage wise, but I think, like RIMWORLD, there should be at least “SOME” fire defense built in on the station, the fire retardant popper that blows up and kills fire and cools down bodies when fires happens, on key areas that this may accidentally happen due to the fault of no one, like botany, or bar. Not in atmospheric though, because they should understand better and it’s a good punishment for doing fault.
However, exterme heat should give of infrared-type of “visual” so heated red on the area where extreme heat exist, so that players can understand that the area is HAZARDOUS.
I think sprinklers and fire foam poppers would be great for the station, an emergency CO2 release could tie into both the air and fire alarm systems while not needing a new water simulation system.
Atmos also lacks a dedicated terminal like the power monitoring console for engineering. Adding an atmospheric monitoring console would not only make finding leaks in the station easier which would save valuable time running around trying to find the one missing wall or floor piece but, it would also show atmos where they are needed most.
2 Likes
yeah some sort of sprinkler system would be nice if they did a rework on how fire works and make it so atmos manages it so it still can be sabotaged.
would also be nice to have different fire types like:
wood/paper
grease/flammable liquids
electrical
metal
So that you have to find different things to put the fire out rather than just a water fire extinguisher. you have to get a foam fire extinguisher for flammable liquids, a fire blanket if chef lights the oil in their pot on fire, and a powder fire extinguisher if chem light something like magnesium on fire. could even make it that if you try and put out a electrical fire with water it shocks you and shocks any surrounding puddles.
would be nice but would be a pain to try and implement and i have not got the skills to make an attempt.
1 Like
I agree! this issue is very annoying and torturous to lizard species since their heat threshold is useless
but the most annoying issue is that even if you have one rookie/new player atmos, botanist, and even a borg that opens the firelocks, then that one player self-atags and round removes the entirety of the station! without punishment or admin intervention i mean I have many rounds where someone messed up , atmos lighted a gas and let it spread without a holofan , borg opening the doors without realizing spreading the heat and thus harm crew breaking law #1 without realization, if you did not know that someone did really do that , you are pretty much fucked! and ashed I have seen rounds when I know that someone did mess up and wore my paramedic suit and ta-da 80% of the station literally burned into ashes I was the sole of the survivors the suits really seemed liked a power-gaming(from suits) but IF someone new messes up and lights something on fire then NOT EVERYONE HAS TO HAVE A BAD DAY FOR THAT. in other words newbie,single person mistakes don’t need to cause so much chaos and death. oh and in disaster scale , hight heat have caused much more death than singoloose and teslaloose since most people have time for preparation, in heat, you don’t, one wrong step you learn the issue but unfortunately it’s already too late and you got ashed. high heat events should be leanier to players, they have way too much escalation in damaging (one gas can ignite and become a round-removing zone that can spread) and cause excessive “pain”
2 Likes