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Pulling delaminating shards is now lethal

username-removed-209083 requested to merge (removed):Supermatter into Bleeding-Edge

Important note : I am fully aware this is going to be contentious, because it means fucking up the Supermatter setup and having a delaminating shard on your hands is going to be FAR more lethal than before. This is why I put a Controversial tag up here.

  • When a shard ends up being pulled (checks for pulledby during process()) when it is delaminating and above the warning threshold (at least 5 % damage, which means audio warnings start being broadcasted), continuing to pull it will cause it to Consume() the puller (same thing as bumping into it)

My reasoning as to why I made this change :

  • As far as danger versus power output goes, the Supermatter is ABOVE the Singularity. However, the Supermatter is extremely easy to contain if it starts delaminating, while a loose singularity is basically a lost cause and can only be destroyed or starved

  • The Supermatter is so easy to save (Basically have a Cyborg pull it out, or a human pull it out and die from radiation or atmosphere) that it turns the entire engine into a virtually risk-free venture. Even if you fuck it up horribly (for example by not engaging the cooling and keeping it under emitter fire), it will never end up a disaster. This causes rookie Engineers to try and set it up, causing 90 % of SME setups to end up with a Cyborg having to space the shard

  • This change completely forbids pulling the shard out into space to prevent it from delaminating. It means that you will have to at least TRY to prevent a catastrophe. For example, vent the room and empty a pre-made canister of supercooled N2, or just space the shard with a RCD (which is a bit cheap, but I don't want to go all-out on this either)

  • This also means that rookie Engineers will now consider the supermatter shard as a dangerous engine, and not as a toy to go fuck around with in Auxiliary Engineering. You'll have to make a decent cooling loop to ensure the chamber won't heat up, and prepare a failsafe if the shard starts fucking up hard. It could literally be anything, from Telescience lending a hand to a few foam fire extinguishers in a closet to manually unfuck the chamber

  • This way, it is extremely analogue to the Singularity. The Singularity isn't HARDCORE to set up, but if you fuck it up it's going to go loose very quickly. So you should most likely not set it up if you really don't know what you are doing, especially if no-one is supervising you. Go wire the solars instead

  • Pulling a shard under normal conditions is UNCHANGED

Discussion and all goes below

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