"Turbo" Air Pump

[ooogoooo]

I was going to use the turbo air pump as a manual air lock, but it's so slow!

[ooogoooo]

Correction. Really slow when vacuuming the air out. Almost instant when putting it back.

[pariah]

Yeah, it's pretty realistic (or maybe perfectly realistic, I dunno, this is speaking as someone who's spent the last few months designing an air pressurisation system IRL but only caring about it going the other direction) but it's a bit of a hassle since standing around waiting for the airlock works against you during the phase of the game where you really care about conserving atmosphere.

But I kinda love this behaviour since it's one of those things that'll make constructing clever logic systems rewarding... when we can do that in the game.

My solution currently is to build "tall" airlocks that use a row (or two) of many turbopumps, that only have 1 tile of space to walk past them all on the way out. That way the tile volume:pump ratio is low, and strolling past them all on the way through gives them a bit of time to work without needing to wait.
Of course it ain't optimal or anything and unless you bother with a switch (I don't) now you're just burning power reserves instead of air reserves... but I guess electricity is cheaper.

[TheStechi]

Well, I am only keeping my living quarters pressurised and have a separate airlock, with a row of doors, so you vent minimal atmosphere and you don't vent atmosphere every time you drag back on thing to your cargo hold.

I never had to buy any air or rcs fuel (aside from first few runs in the beginning of the game). I just take every canister I find and empty it into the appropriate tanks.

[pariah]

Ya actual optimal solution is to basically live in your EVA suit and only pressurise the section of the ship where you occasionally go to poop or sleep.
I believe you can refill EVA tanks by putting them under an air pump, maybe make a small enclosed plenum with sensors to mix atmosphere from life support canisters with a pump output for refills if you want.

But EVA tanks are so cheap/plentiful you don't even need to do that.
Similar to how I mentioned with waiting in airlocks, any engineering to help with early game problems are really only relevant early game... when you don't really have the resources to make use of them. But that's also the most fun phase of the game.
I'm not sure how they're planning to integrate these in terms of future design--it's good that they're in opposition when you just need to survive, but it'd be fun to also have a reason to engineer ships later on besides the scars of early game trauma that won't persist with experience.

[zantanzuken]

refill you o2 tanks with air pump, refill your battery with the battery charger... the CO2 filter never breaks so that's fine (though it likely will in the future.)

but yeah, you only really need to pressurize where you 'live'... on the other hand, the NPC's you don't directly control are big dumdums and if your whole ship isn't pressurized they'll space themselves faster than you can say 'that was dumb'

[ooogoooo]

I've noticed that once you get the EVA you don't really need atmosphere in your ship. Might trick-out my current vessel to flip it and downgrade to something really cheap. Just add a few floors and a bunch of webbing to turn it into a giant scrap barge.

[Vik]

It doesn't seem like explosive decompression is implemented yet, so is it even necessary to create a realistic airlock system?

[Excellion]

Originally posted by Vik:

It doesn't seem like explosive decompression is implemented yet, so is it even necessary to create a realistic airlock system?

Honestly, when going for a semi-realistic airlock using two doors with three tiles of room in between them is best. Waiting a second in between the doors limits heat and o2 loss to three tiles at most every passage, and is actually quite a cheap method to keep a ship pressurised. (While also being a lot faster than sucking the air back in a cannister).

Of course that is mostly a RP strat, since the more efficient method is to just use an EVA suit with an overpressurized bottle at all times.

[Weyrling]

As the air pressure decreases, pump efficiency also decreases.
You can always just wait a little while for the turbo pumps to get 99% of the air out of the airlock, but it's not really necessary yet.
As-is, you can just refill your tanks for a bit of cash every once in awhile.
Once there are reasons to go on longer trips I expect rationing atmosphere to become a more relevant factor, though.

[pariah]

Originally posted by Vik:

It doesn't seem like explosive decompression is implemented yet, so is it even necessary to create a realistic airlock system?

If you don't live in your EVA suit then yeah, kinda. Storing plenty of atmosphere and refilling it is easy and cheap enough that you don't really need to care, but some derelicts are full of CO2 so the backwash poisoning your ship can be a problem. Having a two-stage airlock or a way to vent your airlock can help with that even late game when you have CO2 suckers/scrubbers.

[Randombandit]

Originally posted by ooogoooo:

Correction. Really slow when vacuuming the air out. Almost instant when putting it back.

That makes perfect sense.
Pumping air into something with increasing pressure take a while even with a powerful pump (ex. pumping car tires). Emptying a pressurized gas bottle into a vacuum would just require opening the valve to full and letting it flow out super fast with the vacuum actually yanking the air out even faster (ex. get a long balloon filled with air and cut the top off, it will empty FAST!)

Originally posted by Vik:

It doesn't seem like explosive decompression is implemented yet, so is it even necessary to create a realistic airlock system?

There is convenience in putting your airlocks atmo into a bottle (or back into your own ship, which can cause issues in certain situations, but mostly harmless practice) before opening it to hard vacuum. Every time you go into and through it without doing that then you lose any N2 and O2 that was inside your airlock at the time.
So, no...not needed in any but the most gas-starved situations...but good practice and a bit of simulation if you are into details.