Add some means of mitigating EMP equipment frying

[Solusphere]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently, it seems as though there exists no method of preventing electronics from being fried when hit by certain electrical attacks. This is bad news for people like me, who actually make use of the game's fairly cool and useful smartphone functions to assemble a library of books, recipes, photos and music. All of which can be irretrievably lost upon getting hit by a leech blossom, or even just walking around on the floor above where an Incandescent Husk happens to be.

I do keep regular backups with SD cards, but apparently this can currently only back up books. I'll make a separate request about that. I had also kept the phone inside the pockets of an electricity-immune activity suit, but it seems this protects neither your bionics or items from the frying/battery draining effect of EMP blasts.

Solution you would like.

Add some kind of EMP-proof faraday case or pouch to store sensitive electronics in. These are a real thing that exist, and a quick google search returns a variety of such products from multiple manufacturers. Commercially manufactured versions could conceivably be found inside military or research facilities (especially with a looming perceived threat of nuclear war) or in the possession of prepper/survivalist zombies or ferals.

Allegedly, you can also get reasonable EMP protection by just lining a box with multiple layers of heavy-duty aluminium foil, which could represent a simple player-craftable solution, but I can't find a reliable source for this claim.

Describe alternatives you have considered.

Allow worn items with the ELECTRIC IMMUNE tag to also protect against EMP blasts. Given that, to my knowledge, the only items that grant this are fully-enclosing environment suits, power armour or faraday chainmail suits, this doesn't seem especially unreasonable to me, though I'll claim no expertise on the subject. The Dialectric Capacitance System bionic probably should not provide any protection to items.

Additional context

No response

[Cenness]

There is pocket-specific option for fire hazards:

"pocket_data": [
  {
     ...
    "fire_protection": true,
     ...
  }
]

maybe we could have an emp_protection?

[PatrikLundell]

Things that provide protection from electricity via insulation (such as e.g. rubber, which I think is what the environment suit uses) does nothing to protect against EMPs. You'll need Faraday type protection to block electromagnetic radiation.

[Raikiri]

I have already described my woes in an adjacent issue about smartphone being by far the weakest area of my character. I'd also like to mention that there are also wearable items such as IR/light-amp goggles that can't be protected by any sort of faraday pouch while worn.

So from balance perspective it really makes sense to be able to fix them if they're broken even if protecting them is hard.

[Solusphere]

I'm not sure about making them repairable. Realistically this is rarely an option for internally damaged electronics, at least not without outright replacing damaged components. Light amp goggles could still be protected using the methods given, but you'd have to take them off first and put them in a safe container. My own goal with this suggestion isn't to make EMP effects completely ignorable, just to give the player more tools in combating them with proper preparation. Light amp/IR goggles, plus the smartphones themselves (albeit not the data on them) are usually pretty easy to replace should the worst occur.

[Raikiri]

Among the hardest to replace items currently are NRE recorders. Replacing them is a royal PITA, and I think it should be possible to protect them. In real life even wrapping a piece of sensitive electronic into aluminium foil should completely negate any EMP blasts of reasonable scale.

That being said, I still think it makes sense to be able to repair them the same way how every other type of item damage can be repaired: by using your relevant skills, tools and spare parts. Why can you build a flashlight from scratch, but you can't fix it after an EMP?

[Solusphere]

Talked to a friend who's a former electrical engineer from Texas A&M to get their insight on this. Regarding player-crafted EMP protection:

easy aluminum foil pouch with a copper wire that goes down your leg and is taped to the bottom of your boot both legs for constant protection there are no voltages present inside a faraday cage, Mr Faraday very much proved this there is literally no voltage possible inside of them no signals in as long as it is grounded. preventing an EMP blast is remarkably easy its just... well... cheap, good, fast, pick 2

Would a foil-lined box/pouch/case still be enough without a ground wire and faraday suit?

no uh you would need some conductive path to ground so like a foil lay line a copper wire dragging copper tape down a leg metallized foil tape down a leg some kind of non resistive and conductive path to ground you would literally only need to like foil one heel, and run a wire from it to a device in your posession in a metallized pouch "So why don't we do that?" because it offers a path to ground in whic you are the best path this kills the human if it touches 120v and the like I would still probably do it, but with precautions especially in a world where shocker zombies exist like reverse anti static bracelet lmao hook up a pair of metallized gloves to this ground wire to heel and voila (but why don't we do that in real life) because I have no idea what kind of amperage a shocker zombie puts out but its not kilo amps a 480 volt triple phase system is capable of such currents, and would turn your cute little taped wire into an exploding linear blaze of rapidly expanding brilliant white copper vapor "Don't breathe this."

Regarding a smartphone case:

3 sheets of aluminum foil. tape to your faraday suit done. hell you don't even have to tape it you could literally just clip a wire to the aluminum wallet foil, and another to the suit still done the only important part is an electrically sound connection you could detonate an explosively pumped magnetic bottle next to a smartphone wrapped in aluminum thrown on some wet grass... and it would do nothing

Regarding repairing EMP-damaged electronics:

impossible they are fucking fried every single interconnect has been overvolted every transitor field effect gate has been destroyed, every N P N flavor of junctions has been doped capacitors have internally arced and shorted motors are irreversibly destroyed due to arcing diodes if they went a certain current path have been reverse biased until destruction you will never repair an emp damaged processor or any type of transistor logic trust the guy who did research on this in his teenage years via destructive testing with EMF fields from a tesla coil its really cool playing a kids electric toy guitar from a house away though

[github-actions[bot]]

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[kevingranade]

The ELECTRIC_IMMUNE clothing is an option as those are already acting as grounded. Anything short of a full suit has issues as without the grounding it just stops working.

[Cenness]

Magiclysm has TARDIS storage with descriptions and names like ... dimensional bag and A glistening ring holding a small dimensional space inside. ... I think state items aren't there should provide defense against everything that happens outside of that kind of storage. Except, of course, for some similar extra dimensional shenanigans - like portal storm. But emp blast is not that.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions. Please do not bump or comment on this issue unless you are actively working on it. Stale issues, and stale issues that are closed are still considered.

[Ichthysdekilt]

Alternatively, maybe hardening recipes for electronics, where those shieldings are installed on/over them? We already have some examples of hardened electronics today - though maybe not to the extent of dealing with some of the EMP blasts in cataclysm, they could be a good reference point.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions. Please do not bump or comment on this issue unless you are actively working on it. Stale issues, and stale issues that are closed are still considered.