Better atmo management needed

[Assault Bunny]

Air pumps need a filter option, so instead of filling up a canister with mixed gasses, you can have them fill with only one type. The fact that stations use a O2/N2 mix (and that it's not at all needed yet) tends to mess up my ship atmo, or cause the oxygen pump to freak out and massively over-pressurise. I try to keep my airlock a vacuum, mostly so I lose less air to ships I'm salvaging, but docking at a station means the oxygen tank starts filling up with nitrogen.

[zantanzuken]

there -are- tanks that will only hold one type of gas, like the o2 and n2 tanks, so you can set up an air pump that pulls just n2 out of your ships atmosphere.

that said, the o2/n2 mix isnt actually worthless... it allows you to keep a specific breathable air pressure with less oxygen, and currently that means less co2 generated which means less scrubbing nessisary. its not SUPER helpful.

also i hope you're not venting your airlock into space, because then you'd be wasting more oxygen than if you didnt... vent it back into your ship.

[Aldis]

One thing I learn that really helps with keeping atmo in your ship is to just open one door of the airlock at a time. Like, say you are leaving your ship. Click on the closest airlock door, then after you get there, wait for the door to close automatically close again while you're still there. Then, it's safe to enter the derilct without venting your atmo. Just remember to do it again when you're going back to your ship. Makes salvage trips last a lot longer when you're starting out.

[Assault Bunny]

Ursprungligen skrivet av zantanzuken:

there -are- tanks that will only hold one type of gas, like the o2 and n2 tanks, so you can set up an air pump that pulls just n2 out of your ships atmosphere.

that said, the o2/n2 mix isnt actually worthless... it allows you to keep a specific breathable air pressure with less oxygen, and currently that means less co2 generated which means less scrubbing nessisary. its not SUPER helpful.

also i hope you're not venting your airlock into space, because then you'd be wasting more oxygen than if you didnt... vent it back into your ship.

You say that, but any tank I put in my pumps ended up with mixed gasses. My airlock is a small room that I use a pump to keep vacuum'd, in theory so I can later take that one's tank and put it on my air supply pump, but like I said it doesn't separate gasses. I have actually had to vent my ship to space a couple times, but that was likely due to bugs making the oxygen not work right.

I did originally try just pumping it from the airlock back into the ship without a tank, but that ended up causing weird overpressure issues. The system we have works for basic atmo, but I'd like to see something like a more complicated to set up but overall better system we could upgrade to, even if it's just a rarer part/parts.

Edit: Uploaded a pic for reference. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2994367882

[vitokin]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Assault Bunny:

Ursprungligen skrivet av zantanzuken:

there -are- tanks that will only hold one type of gas, like the o2 and n2 tanks, so you can set up an air pump that pulls just n2 out of your ships atmosphere.

that said, the o2/n2 mix isnt actually worthless... it allows you to keep a specific breathable air pressure with less oxygen, and currently that means less co2 generated which means less scrubbing nessisary. its not SUPER helpful.

also i hope you're not venting your airlock into space, because then you'd be wasting more oxygen than if you didnt... vent it back into your ship.

You say that, but any tank I put in my pumps ended up with mixed gasses. My airlock is a small room that I use a pump to keep vacuum'd, in theory so I can later take that one's tank and put it on my air supply pump, but like I said it doesn't separate gasses. I have actually had to vent my ship to space a couple times, but that was likely due to bugs making the oxygen not work right.

I did originally try just pumping it from the airlock back into the ship without a tank, but that ended up causing weird overpressure issues. The system we have works for basic atmo, but I'd like to see something like a more complicated to set up but overall better system we could upgrade to, even if it's just a rarer part/parts.

Edit: Uploaded a pic for reference. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2994367882

You need o2/co2 alarms i think

[Tumskunde]

I get that even with the alarms on my ship.
I think they just work to start the pumps as I have never seen my pumps turn off once the alarm silences, they just keep running until the tank empties. I usually have to reset them by hand.
There's also the fact that hull pressure will keep rising even after I disable/uninstall the pumps/tanks, usually for ~30 minutes in-game time, sometimes longer.
I notice this worst on my hand built ships, usually the smaller ones, the over-pressurisation is only partially mitigated once I head back to station and sync hull pressure to it.
I usually just have separate pump setups for my airlocks, both the main one and the ones separating my cargo bays from the liveable sections of my ship.


We'd need some pretty fancy air pumps to be able to separate O2/N2 as it's being pumped. A molecular compression filter might do it, but the carbon sieve used to separate gases would wear out and be another consumable.
Best method would be cryonic distillation, use the fact that we have ready access to cold temperatures outside the hull to liquefy the constituent gases and separate them that way, this is because the liquefaction point of O2 and N2 are 100'C apart.
That said, it'd take time and would probably best be done as a separate machine, one that takes an input from one tank and outputs to two or more other ones.

[Weyrling]

You have to connect to the alarm by unscrewing the panel on the pump screen and then selecting the alarm.
Then you can set the pump to Auto, and it will turn on/off with the alarm.

[Tumskunde]

I've done that, repeatedly. Once the alarm turns off, the pump will still run. So if I don't watch them, my hulls get massively over pressured and my gas tanks are drained empty.

[Weyrling]

Sounds like a bug, I've never run into that issue myself so I'm not sure how you might fix that.
I'm guessing either the alarm or the pump is glitched in some way, I'd try uninstalling/reinstalling them or replacing them with entirely new parts from a derelict.

On the subject of atmospheric controls in general, It'd be cool if there were programmable sensors for atmospheric ratios and pressures being above or below a programmed value.

[Assault Bunny]

Yeah, that's definitely a bug, and one that I think I've gotten a version of myself. I had to vent my ship completely to fix the issue.

In any case, here's hoping more advanced atmo management is on the roadmap somewhere.

[MOK]

I'd like some clarity, because I'm still unsure after reading this discussion(and others) -
If you want to remove a specific gas from the atmospheric mix, is this possible? If you've got a mixture thats far too heavy on nitrogen, can it be sucked into a nitrogen bottle, and no oxygen is mixed in?

[TheStechi]

Nope, for now you can only remove CO2 from the mixture.
If you have too much N2 in a Mixture of O2 and N2, then you need to add more O2.

But for now it doesn't really matter how much N2 your mixture has anyways.
You need more than 18kPa of O2 and less than 1kPa CO2 so it is breathable.
The only thing N2 is good for is the prevent/decrease the chance of fire. (Tho I have never seen fire, so I am not sure it is implemented yet.)

[Randombandit]

Gonna kinda Barney-style this with things I know for certain.

All gas bottles can hold all gasses. O2 and N2 bottles, when hooked up, are filled with that gas at the station when you pay for fuel and gas. Otherrwise they are like and gas bottle.

Gas bottles only have to be under the intake or output, they don't have to be "installed".

Pumps can pump forwards and reverse (see red arrow on pump body). They can be constantly on, constantly off, or automatic.

Clicking the screws on the control panel opens the wiring panel. And let's you connect it to a sensor. If the pump is on auto and connected to a sensor it will turn on when the sensor is red and alarming and off when it isn't.
This will pump gas from one side to the other without identifying type. A pump in the O2 sensor with a bottle of nitro on the input will pump N2 into the air until the O2 sensor turns green somehow. If the input is empty and the output has an N2 bottle, when the O2 sensor goes red, it will start pumping the atmo from the room in the input side into the N2 bottle causing it to be mixed. Again, it will keep going until the O2 sensor turns off somehow.

Ultimately, you have a bug or wires going to the wrong sensors, or gas on the wrong side of pumps.
Open your external airlock door, go back inside, hook your mixed gas bottles to the airlock atmo control pump and pump them empty into space (or KLEG) to clear them out. Then get them under pump inputs and RCS regulators and Hydras, go into the station and buy gas. They should all refill.
Then go unhook every pump from every sensor and hook them all back up to the right ones one by one. Turn your pumps off.
Get an EVA suit on and undock.
Vent your whole ship.
Close it all up.
Dock back up and turn your pumps back on and set them to auto.
Dock up and open all the airlock doors to let KLEG help fill you back up.

If that doesn't work...openly weep and retire from shipbreaking...or wait for a patch. Heh.

That's my 2¢

[Grimm Spector]

Ursprungligen skrivet av zantanzuken:

there -are- tanks that will only hold one type of gas, like the o2 and n2 tanks, so you can set up an air pump that pulls just n2 out of your ships atmosphere.

that said, the o2/n2 mix isnt actually worthless... it allows you to keep a specific breathable air pressure with less oxygen, and currently that means less co2 generated which means less scrubbing nessisary. its not SUPER helpful.

also i hope you're not venting your airlock into space, because then you'd be wasting more oxygen than if you didnt... vent it back into your ship.

Less CO2 generation doesn't make much sense ...