Bluespace pipe caps

[joaomarcosh]

What this does

Adds bluespace pipe caps which all share the same network so you can teleport gasses between them. The pipes can be made in a pipe dispenser by upgrading its two manipulators to at least pico-manipulators (probably too low a requirement but it can be easily changed later). There is a max of 20 bluespace caps per world. You can recolor the caps with a multitool so you can have different bluespace networks defined by color.

https://github.com/vgstation-coders/vgstation13/assets/34819564/9c969fde-f40c-4634-8ff3-ebb1f834ca8c

https://github.com/vgstation-coders/vgstation13/assets/34819564/0f44e26d-8f03-4f6e-8bc7-d3a29f672a30

Why it's good

Allows you to build large interconnected systems without having to build every single pipe.

TODO

• Add logging

Changelog

:cl:

• rscadd: Added Bluespace Pipe Caps.
• imageadd: Added sprites for the Bluespace Pipe Caps.

[Pancakemines]

Might be worth making it capacitor upgrade in the dispenser instead of manips since those are available round start from engi plasma doesnt seem as much as work as slimes. Engineering also is the department with the most value with capacitors so it kind of fits the theme.

[Eneocho]

while the codersprites are SOVL, it doesn't really feel bluespacey, can you add the blinking blue lights from bluespace beakers or stasis beakers?

[joaomarcosh]

Sprites made so far: by Tiger: by Blithering: by Eneocho:

So far I prefer Tiger's but I want to hear other opinions on this

[Eneocho]

I'd like blithering's, it looks fancy as hell and does properly give the vibe of gases being teleported and shit.

[angryturnip]

I don't think something like this that removes all the logicistic requirements of atmos is healthy for the game unless it's locked behind something rare like having to put a flawless bluespace crystal into your RPD to use them. Things that completely trivialize mundane tasks should be a nice once in a blue moon sort of thing, rather than something you can reliably get most rounds.

[angryturnip]

Should also say, this will be powergamed extremely hard if easy to acquire. You could put a bluespace pipe in any gas miner room and now you have a quick gas flood method that fits in your bag

[Eneocho]

I don't think something like this that removes all the logicistic requirements of atmos is healthy for the game unless it's locked behind something rare like having to put a flawless bluespace crystal into your RPD to use them. Things that completely trivialize mundane tasks should be a nice once in a blue moon sort of thing, rather than something you can reliably get most rounds.

While I share the sentiment, gating it TOO hard also makes it yet another neverfeature, natural bluespace crystals would be better in my opinion. Rare enough that it doesn't really happen that often, but not rare enough that it only gets used once a month, if lucky.

[angryturnip]

While I share the sentiment, gating it TOO hard also makes it yet another neverfeature, natural bluespace crystals would be better in my opinion. Rare enough that it doesn't really happen that often, but not rare enough that it only gets used once a month, if lucky.

Then it shouldn't be added. This is one of those things that is so incredibly unbalanced and powerful that it either should be locked behind a once a month special thing or not added at all in my opinion.

[Inorien]

I don't like it Echoing Turnip's sentiment of it completely stomping on the logistical puzzle that is the heart and soul of atmos. Having it in the RPD is really terrible, if we would have this at all I would rather it be behind a ton of research and hard-to-get materials or admin-only, even. Maybe a gimmick on a particular map.

[djkramer123]

Strong enough that it should be locked behind tier 4 parts and only from the machine, rather than the rpd. It's cool though, and I like blithering's sprites from the bunch

[Eneocho]

An idea we had was that, to counter unstoppable floods with this thing, the atmos console should point to the exact coordinates of each bluespace pipe. So while you CAN use it to flood, it is also pinpointing exactly where your flood comes from.

[Inorien]

An idea we had was that, to counter unstoppable floods with this thing, the atmos console should point to the exact coordinates of each bluespace pipe. So while you CAN use it to flood, it is also pinpointing exactly where your flood comes from.

coordinates

if the CAC map worked properly I would be more on board with this particular idea. This is just a ridiculously powerful item and even with that I feel like the balance is completely off

[angryturnip]

An idea we had was that, to counter unstoppable floods with this thing, the atmos console should point to the exact coordinates of each bluespace pipe. So while you CAN use it to flood, it is also pinpointing exactly where your flood comes from.

I still remain of the opinion that it should either be locked behind something very rare or not exist. Even if you make it easy to locate, an instant plasmaflood with minimal pipes is incredibly broken inherently. Not to mention all of the other things it trivializes for non-antag atmos techs.

[Eneocho]

true i'm arguing in favour cause the feature seems cool, and i'd like it for faster autismo deadpop atmos builds, but I see the concern and point

[jwhitak]

This is absurdly powerful for antagging. Hide a plasma miner on another z-level, use the caps to hook into distro in a bunch of hidden places... then good luck stopping the plasma. This really will need restrictions, though the qol would be nice. I'm surprised I didn't realize the potential of how bad this would be while you talked about coding it before.

Ideas:

• Limit the caps to pairs (helps with pipe crawling things), that way you can have more than 8 connections but don't have to worry about someone slamming down like 40 cap connections on distro to a secret hidden in space plasma miner.
• Limit accessibility behind some other requirements (tier 4 parts, science, trader, CE RPD (not real), even admin only)
• Have any caps show up on one of the atmos computers, reporting their coordinates/area
• Have the caps use power, and a lot of it, so they show up on the energy readouts.
• Limit the distance that the caps function to the same z-level and within some distance (less interesting than other ideas)

Even if you get the thumbs down, this is a cool idea. As-is though, I really doubt we should merge it without some more gate keeping, unless you really like to have unstoppable plasma flooding.

[ErrorsWindows]

i like tge original sprite

[angryturnip]

The only idea I can think of that would make this not (as) abuseable is to only let the gas jump a 1 tile gap and angle the intended use to allowing atmos techs to not have to deconstruct walls while piping through them. I'm also not really a fan of any ideas to balance it being in the realm of "make it require a lot of power" or "let people locate it on a computer" because at the end of the day, people are still gonna walk into a populated room and instantly plasmaflood with something they had in their backpack.

[Inorien]

you don't have to deconstruct a wall to pipe through it, just click the wall with the RPD

[Eneocho]

The only idea I can think of that would make this not (as) abuseable is to only let the gas jump a 1 tile gap and angle the intended use to allowing atmos techs to not have to deconstruct walls while piping through them.

You can already pipe through walls, just stand next to it and use the RPD on it. A limit of 5 tiles would, in my opinion, make it not as powergameable as people fear, while still keeping it fairly useful, since 5 tiles is within screenview. Another limit to, say, 10 bluespace caps, would make it a saving grace for atmos spaghetti, rather than the main feature of it.

[angryturnip]

Oh, well then yeah just don't add this in any capacity. That's the only thing I could think of to make it seem balanced

[joaomarcosh]

Planned nerfs:

• remove it from the RPD and increase the requirements to upgrade the pipe dispenser
• disallow multi-z setup
• limit amounts of caps
• limit range of caps
• make it always appear on top of tiles
• add the location of all existing caps to the atmos computer
• high power consumption? (dont really think its necessary with all the other nerfs)

also new sprite that mashes all other sprites together

[Eneocho]

yeah, 100% disallow multi-z shit, that's MUSTARD GAS in many levels sure it'd be funny to ventcrawl as a crab and make it to z2 cause you put a vent in the shuttle, but z-shifting pipe stuff tends to always be extremely broken

[hacker-on-steroids]

for all the screaming you're doing about how this can do UNSTOPPABLE FLOODS!!!! a tunneler(artificial bluespace crystals only need diamond+plasma) loaded with TTVs is possible right now and unlike wrenching pipe fittings you can dispense the bomb up to 7 tiles away and without any silly wrenching and configuring steps and if a scigger takes the 20 seconds to build a camera console he can drop a maxcap anywhere instantly

concerns about multiZ are also a bit overblown desu, just have to be careful about the derelict crabs as long as you have atmos consoles monitor the bluespace pipes i think it should be fine

[MercuriusGH]

West sprite is misaligned

[robustjim]

this isn't needed it will just make our atmos techs even more lazy with no desire to put actually effort into their piping

[Pancakemines]

Rambling here read ahead if you dare.

I'm seeing a lot of knee-jerk responses to this item which matched what my initial response was but I think there's a lot of reasons that these thoughts when examined a little further aren't as accurate as they seem. To start with addressing the idea of the "unstoppable" flood. Unstobbable is to atmos as possible is to asmiov ai, which is to say totally irrelevant the only measure a flood should be compared by is how recoverable it is because this determines if you have to leave the station. On that note it's worth mentioning here that you can flood the entire station to an unrecoverable state within the first five minutes of the round using nothing but four straight pipes (which also fit in your backpack for whatever that's worth) and an AAC. This uses the entire output of the miner faster than it can produce plasma and these pipecaps would add zero different functionality to this.

So now we know it's not any more dangerous than the default state of atmos we can look at how powerful it is or more accurately "will it make our atmos techs lazy?". Honestly as far as I can tell, no? The most powerful tool for refilling a station is already the stations default distro because it reaches everywhere, this doesn't give you any more access to that so all it would allow you to do is refill specific areas of the station from a network not connected to it's current distro. Which we already have a tool for: The Portable Air Pump. There's a reason these are outside engi for the public they are by far the most effective tool to refill a specific room or area of the station an overpressure air pump will always be the fastest way to refill a room even with these implemented. The only situation I can even concieve of that would functionally make use of this would be instead of overpressuing that pump you instead overpressure a pipe into a pipe cap so you can make an incredibly ugly 5 layered vent into pipe cap setup in any station room to refill it which again would still be slightly slower and prone to releasing more air than you want because vents are stupid making the only benefit not dragging the air pump behind you for all of 5 seconds to get to the room you want to refill.

Realistically the only reason I could see anyone using this is to pressure an area that they don't want to keep moving back and forth between or to set up a burn chamber in the bar or something equally stupid without having to pipe over the whole station and I see nothing wrong with that. Yes it could end rounds but it's worse than the current way to use the exact same medium (gas) anyway so what should it matter? Should we gatekeep round ending to people autistic enough to keep a vent script or learn how to use the CaC? The same person could just blow up a shard or release a sing and be done with it anyway, all that matters is that this adds enough interesting to the game that people can do things with it to justify that it might occasionally be used to end the game too and I think it does that.

For what its worth I also thing its original implemetation barring pico manipulators was fine people really overrestimate how often cross department interaction happens because it seems really easy to say on paper but even with a consistent xenobio player on recently I can count on one hand the amount of times people have asked for slime cores. And it's not as though a mechanic is going to upgrade the dispenser by default anyway so why make someone jump through hoops because there's a "possible" threat of someone maybe ending a round because they feel like it.

[west3436]

I just don't see this as fun or useful. Having it at roundstart causes plenty of issues that have been addressed already, but making it a late-shift item makes it useless to Atmos Techs. Additionally, this just eliminates the purpose of an Atmos Tech. Why deal with pipes at all if I can just slap two of these fellas down? Next we'll see Bluespace Cables or Bluespace Disposals and eliminate the ?!FUN?! of wiring/routing disposals. I'm not going to try to veto this outright, but we'll let the emojitocracy do its thing and if it's not an overwhelming "yes", I don't really want to merge this.

[Eneocho]

I just don't see this as fun or useful. Having it at roundstart causes plenty of issues that have been addressed already, but making it a late-shift item makes it useless to Atmos Techs. Additionally, this just eliminates the purpose of an Atmos Tech. Why deal with pipes at all if I can just slap two of these fellas down? Next we'll see Bluespace Cables or Bluespace Disposals and eliminate the ?!FUN?! of wiring/routing disposals. I'm not going to try to veto this outright, but we'll let the emojitocracy do its thing and if it's not an overwhelming "yes", I don't really want to merge this.

bluespace collabs to eliminate the ?!FUN?! of code reviewing when???

[Pancakemines]

I just don't see this as fun or useful. Having it at roundstart causes plenty of issues that have been addressed already, but making it a late-shift item makes it useless to Atmos Techs. Additionally, this just eliminates the purpose of an Atmos Tech. Why deal with pipes at all if I can just slap two of these fellas down? Next we'll see Bluespace Cables or Bluespace Disposals and eliminate the ?!FUN?! of wiring/routing disposals. I'm not going to try to veto this outright, but we'll let the emojitocracy do its thing and if it's not an overwhelming "yes", I don't really want to merge this.

I think that not seeing a way something could be useful shouldn't ever be considered when adding something that doesn't have other glaring issues. Everyone has a degree of functional fixedness when it comes to anything in the game and enough rounds with boxer grisby have proven at least to me that there are people who will always find an interesting way to use a unique tool even if it doesn't seem like it could be used in that way. I also don't really see how this eleminates the purpose of an Atmos Tech the point of the role is the knowledge of the player not the tools they have available unless the argument is that the peak skill requirement of an atmos tech is to click the floor 20 times and then click a wrench on those newly placed pipes. This doesn't elimate the need to understand what gasses are needed in what quantity and how to effectively put that gas in the place it needs to be. It's about as useful as the teleporter is to someone trying to walk somewhere, if you don't know where you're going it doesn't matter anyway

[angryturnip]

To start with addressing the idea of the "unstoppable" flood

It's not that. It's that every atmos tech will set it up every round to have a panic button flood in their backpack in case of an emergency.

[anonymoose-contributor]

I'm sure its been discussed to hell and back on the discord and here, but this is a neat idea on paper however the actual execution sounds horrendous.

[Pancakemines]

It's not that. It's that every atmos tech will set it up every round to have a panic button flood in their backpack in case of an emergency.

I'm not really sure I understand the complaint I think this is a gross overestimation of most of the players. It would also be very obvious at a glace if someone had set this up "just in case" and even in that sitatuon the most you could do without already having set the AAC or CaC would be to flood a singular room that you're standing in and opening doors from it which functionally is no different to just dragging the miner into maint and opening doors while hoping for the best. I can't really imagine a situation where in a desperate last ditch attempt you whip out the cap, attatch it to the current vent (or make your own assuming you have an rpd on), you unlock the air alarm, disable the pressure checks, and open every door from that location. For what it's worth you can quite literally already set a panic button with less effort ignoring bombs existing even in engi itself the PA has the capability to attach assemblers you can remotely power it to 3 with just a cut wire and an assembler placed at the start of the round which has no visual on the console at all. Then all you have to do is hit the button once at minimum or three times for the purple beams and the sing will release without you ever setting foot back in engi which is probably just as likely to be destructive as a door open flood and to this day I've never seen anyone do it.

On a personal note I also want to add that if someone metagaming a just in case plasmaflood was ever an issue I think it's something that should be policied by policy rather than by removal of ability. Especially now with a current increase in cracking down on bad behaviour the most obvious solution to that would be to simply not allow it, we already explicity reference removing the plasma valve as metagaming in case of an AI uprising this could easily be under the same rules.

[djkramer123]

It's not that. It's that every atmos tech will set it up every round to have a panic button flood in their backpack in case of an emergency.

and every scientist carries a maxcap in their bag of holding, silly argument

[kilozombie]

I think the fear of this being used for antaggery is silly and overblown.

However, I don't love the idea of every future cool atmos project having a "but why didn't you just use bluespace pipe caps" annoyance attached, or else a "not legitimate, you used bluespace pipe caps" detraction for anything that uses them creatively. I don't think it will make anything that's hard suddenly easy though. Atmos is still defined by temperature and pressure management, not just pipes from A to B.

The more reasonable use case is for grand-scale atmos projects that really couldn't work any other way. For that reason, I think multi-Z is desirable. Who fucking cares if someone spends two hours setting up a plasmaflood setup that lets the plasma come from the asteroid, it still has to get pumped into the station same as always, and from a single point.

[kilozombie]

It's not that. It's that every atmos tech will set it up every round to have a panic button flood in their backpack in case of an emergency.

If this is satire it's great

We don't let people carry plasmafloods in their bag as a nonantag same as we don't let them carry bombs. If someone spends their last waking seconds activating a dead man's switch that floods the station, who cares if they were using normal pipes or funny teleporty pipes?

Plasmafloods (generally...) start at Atmospherics and end in Distro. Distro is also in Atmospherics. The closest way to get to Distro is by just plugging it in. Nothing will ever be more simple or fast than that. Just carry around a button that activates that connection.

[hacker-on-steroids]

if this really isn't allowed to exist make them only obtainable through xenoarch/spacevaults i think we need more wacky loot that isnt guns and emags and items that turn you into an antag

[malfunctioning-ai]

and every scientist carries a maxcap in their bag of holding, silly argument

Hell if people are that concerned that someone is going to... LOOSE PLASMA OUT OF NOWHERE :O :O :O (requires you to wrench down a pipe setup real quick while people watch) then just make it too big to fit in backpacks, or even only pick-upable with two hands like cannonballs. It's a super absurd concern though.

[falcon2346]

This allows for all sorts of interesting things that you wouldn't normally be able to do without taking a completely unfeasible amount of time which is pretty neat. All the fearmongering about plasma floods is just dumb, I have to believe that anyone that thinks this makes it easier to wreck a round has never even taken the time to understand what pipes in atmos do what. Flooding is completely trivial as is. Yes this would let you flood locally with a bluespace cap and a passive vent linked to the miner but placing and wrenching the pipe still takes a while, and this doesn't make widespread flooding any easier.

[SonixApache]

https://github.com/vgstation-coders/vgstation13/pull/36581#issuecomment-2128324319 I think you're going way overboard with the nerfs here. Adding them to the computer is a nice touch, though. Though powerful, I think that if you just limit these to being producible in single pairs only, say, by having to slap any kind of bluespace crystal into the pipe dispenser for a single use, that wouldn't be too bad. People screech that it'll make it too easy for antags (they have to replace two pipes rather than replacing two pipes to flood the station, it's fucked up) and trivial for non-antag things (they don't have to lay a pipe through the entire station to get plasma to a plasmaman room anymore) are in my opinion theorycrafters that are blowing things out of proportion. I like Eneocho's sprites the most.

[joaomarcosh]

Initial implementation is done and ready for review

[Inorien]

much more on board with it after the proposed changes

pico manipulators is easily obtainable, but raising this to femto manipulators might be a huge ask though it could make for much better interdepartmental interaction alternatively (or in addition) a requirement of one bluespace crystal per segment could be a good additional cost but that can be considered much further down the line

[jwhitak]

My current stance after sitting on it without looking at things for like 24h is that I've been successfully negotiated down. With the suite of nerfs, it'll start off in a better spot (vs powercreeped super easy to get). It's an interesting tool for engineers to work with in order to make bizarre things. In the worst case and it actually does get used for the worst case antaggery, we can further nerf it/admin only it.

"But muh power creep once it's loose it won't be able to get put back in the box" yes it can if it's that bad. I see the raw power in the flooding this can do and not be stopped with, but I'm gonna point out: current state of the game you can make some really nasty floods that can't be cleaned out so easily. This just makes the worst floods even harder to remove. But that doesn't exactly matter when most players can't stop an automated valve and script AI flood. I'm still concerned over the potential, but it's whatever. Let the engineer get some new toys for once.

Votes are currently roughly even as of this post. 9-8 with bonus confusions. We do not follow emojicracy anymore but the caring audience is mixed - It's worth a try. Unless things change between now and when code review is complete, this looks mergable.