The problem with Firelocks and large-scale pressure loss

[Errant-4]

Description

Inspired by discussion on #34278 , one of the many attempts to improve the spacing situation/firelocks

There are a couple of big design issues with the way firelocks currently work

• While they close fast enough to protect neighboring compartments with minimal loss of pressure, they trap everyone in the area. They either crit there from the vacuum, or they pry open the firelocks leading to
• Any subsequent opening of the firelock will cause much worse pressure loss.
  • My test has shown that on the initial disaster, firelocks close quickly enough to only lose ~5 kPa in neighboring compartments. This is negligible and would be fine
  • However, openings for escaping crew has a MUCH bigger impact, even though the firelock closes very quickly afterwards. (22, 13, 11, 9, 7, 6 kPa for 6 openings, the loss gets lower as the room pressure drops) Just 3 openings lose half of the remaining pressure, and that's assuming that no one HOLDS one open for other people to get through
• Neighboring areas that also lose pressure will lock their vents, so they don't replenish air, and then the problem will likely spread to their neighbors as well
• Because spacing is so bad and "infectious", most crew can't open firelocks with the idea that now they can't make the situation worse. This leads to them either dying helplessly, or hoarding crowbars and making the problem spread
• Prying firelocks open is normalised, because there is no other way and because the ability is easy to acquire (prying tools are common)
• Security/Paramedics are often hampered by firelocks from doing their jobs and/or saving people. Yet if they get access to open them without a crowbar, they will exacerbate the existing issues

Possible solutions, preferably a combination
(No guarantee that any of these would be approved, before further discussion)

• Make it so firelocks have a "soft" state where they first raise a holofan, allowing passage for escaping crew without venting the neighboring areas (at least, the ones that react quickly enough)
• Make closed firelocks not be pryable, so only crew actually authorised to deal with the emergency situations (and hopefully, equipped with the tools to do so) will open them (sucks if you get stuck behind them, but "we have to escape the breached compartment before the door closes!" is a timeless spaceship/submarine staple! obviously, this would work best with the holofan idea, and would still cause it's own issues)
• Inflatable walls/doors in emergency closets? Make your own temporary airlock
• Steal the GLOO gun from Prey? This would actually only help with sealing holes, not sure if it really belongs among these solutions at all
• Some way to better survive in a spaced room/corridor while emergency escape is arranged/rescuers arrive? Though having to rely on rescuers arriving or even actually existing at all is probably not the best approach
• Repressurising locked but not breached areas should be easier/faster. Air Alarms should have a button for it, it should not be locked behind a screwdriver and obscure knowledge

[ArtisticRoomba]

As a terminal CE main, I'll give my two cents.

Make it so firelocks have a "soft" state where they first raise a holofan, allowing passage for escaping crew without venting the neighboring areas (at least, the ones that react quickly enough)

I don't know, I'm indifferent about this idea. I'm of the opinion that firelocks are not a way to navigate between spaced and unspaced areas without equipment. They are damage control. They are making a statement, that this part of the station is cut off because it's damaged, and you'll have to find another way around. Whether it be through maints, or resolving the issue by calling an engineer. People should see spacing as a conflict and route through maints to go between spaced areas.

Make closed firelocks not be pryable, so only crew actually authorised to deal with the emergency situations (and hopefully, equipped with the tools to do so) will open them (sucks if you get stuck behind them, but "we have to escape the breached compartment before the door closes!" is a timeless spaceship/submarine staple! obviously, this would work best with the holofan idea, and would still cause it's own issues)

Personally I like this idea out of all of the ones presented here the best. As I've said before, 25% of the spacing is the actual spacing, 75% is the spacing caused by people prying the door over and over again traversing through the spaced area, which is not what a normal person would do on a space station! A possible way to go about this is allow authorization to open the door from the inside of the spaced area.

Inflatable walls/doors in emergency closets? Make your own temporary airlock

Expanding sensible emergency equipment is good, however it makes sense for this equipment to be used by engineering responding to an accident or at least doing damage control, so I think it would be best to make it more available to engineering (even though they have it already...)

Steal the GLOO gun from Prey? This would actually only help with sealing holes, not sure if it really belongs among these solutions at all

We already have metal foam grenades, however they're a cargo purchase and I have never ever in my time ever seen them be used except for antagonistic funnies, and that was like once. Like what was previously suggested when they were introduced, they should be in Atmospherics Technicians lockers. This would allow engineering to seal hull damage incredibly quickly, which is something that is needed.

Some way to better survive in a spaced room/corridor while emergency escape is arranged/rescuers arrive? Though having to rely on rescuers arriving or even actually existing at all is probably not the best approach

Is the space pen being brought back a viable option? If not, this could be solved by making emergency EVA suits available in corridors.

Repressurising locked but not breached areas should be easier/faster. Air Alarms should have a button for it, it should not be locked behind a screwdriver and obscure knowledge

Repressurising areas is an explicit air alarm mode called Fill. Only atmospheric technicians can touch air alarms though, and in my opinion, for good reason. As for decreasing the skill gap, my engineering guidebook update is ready for review and merge, #33062. I highly recommend it be merged, all of atmos is entirely IC knowledge without it.

[K-Dynamic]

I can write a whole essay about how much I hate current atmos implementation.

Pressure lockouts need to be reverted or reworked because they're clearly just causing the whole station to gasp when the dreaded lockout infection spreads. No one seems to realise that you have to screwdriver the vents open or release an air canister, because it's not explained anywhere or an obvious gameplay feature. People just end up blaming atmos.

Air alarms have a whole bunch of modes dedicated to scrubbing yet none on overriding vent lockout. We should really be automating fills because there's only 3 atmos techs with proper access, or letting engis access them so they don't have to screwdriver vents over and over.

[ArtisticRoomba]

Pressure lockouts need to be reverted or reworked because they're clearly just causing the whole station to gasp when the dreaded lockout infection spreads. No one seems to realise that you have to screwdriver the vents open or release an air canister, because it's not explained anywhere or an obvious gameplay feature. People just end up blaming atmos.

I agree. There was one PR to fix this and make it a lot better, however I believe it's stuck in review hell.

Air alarms have a whole bunch of modes dedicated to scrubbing yet none on overriding vent lockout.

Yes, there is. It's called the Fill mode, it overrides pressure lockout. However, you not knowing this proves both our points: atmospherics is undocumented. See #33062.

We should really be automating fills because there's only 3 atmos techs with proper access, or letting engis access them so they don't have to screwdriver vents over and over.

I disagree. This removes an incentive for atmos to leave their department, and spacing issues are usually too complicated to automatically resolve (until they are, and in those cases, I do wish I had remote control).

Engineering shouldn't get access to atmospherics devices, as atmospherics is actually a very complex and different thing compared to regular engineering work. While they do go hand in hand quite often, and they do basically work together, they are different and require different areas of knowledge.

[Errant-4]

Is the space pen being brought back a viable option? If not, this could be solved by making emergency EVA suits available in corridors.

There were imo many issues with the space pen. Single use, not actually effective enough at what it's meant to do (but if it was, that would be it's own problem because it works in any space situation not just within the scope of on-station survival), many newbies likely didn't even know it existed

Imo any such survival solution would be more reliable and need to be either immobile or, preferably, mobile but in some other ways be limited to the station. Otherwise we have just invented makeshift spacesuits. I think there needs to be more design difference between being in a spaced corridor, and going on a spacewalk

Hmm what if... emergency spacesuits had a heating element that DID protect you from space cold, so long you are in range* of a powered LV wire? (Wall-less shuttles might still abuse this but that's still a fairly narrow envelope, I guess?)

(*) and I guess also on-grid so people can't just power them from the walls while floating outside them

[K-Dynamic]

Yes, there is. It's called the Fill mode, it overrides pressure lockout. However, you not knowing this proves both our points: atmospherics is undocumented. See #33062.

For the record, I didn't proof-read properly and forgot to mention fill mode when rewriting my sentences

Hmm what if... emergency spacesuits had a heating element that DID protect you from space cold, so long you are in range* of a powered LV wire? (Wall-less shuttles might still abuse this but that's still a fairly narrow envelope, I guess?)

(*) and I guess also on-grid so people can't just power them from the walls while floating outside them

I thought you only start losing temperature rapidly if you step onto an exposed lattice or off into space. Realistically, I'm not even sure is space is 'cold' or able of making you rapidly lose thermal energy.

[ArtisticRoomba]

I think that the emergency EVA suits should just be made more common. They're already heavily disincentivized for regular use:

• Absurd slowdown, zero armor.
• It's a soft suit, so no pressure protection besides space.
• Usually paired with an emergency oxygen tank to encourage short traversals of spaced areas and discourage extended internals usage.
• Zero insulation for actual space exposure.

It doesn't make remote sense to wear this all the time (which is the problem we want to avoid). So I think it's fine expanding their availability. That way people who get trapped in a spaced room can put something on and stay afloat until they can figure themselves out.

[spiffycodes]

i mean that's what they are meant for it's meant to be dangerous and cause a panic when your locked out.

i would interpret them as not trying to protect the people in the dangerous room but the rest of the people in the other rooms and if that's locking a few people out so be it.

number one good map design can halt the spread of spacing.

using airlocks with small fire locks surrounding them can section of key areas and are much harder for the spacing to spread to.
this also makes a air lock for engineering to go through without a holo fan as they can close the firelocks behind them.

what is a issue is the removal of the firelock remote as people open the firelocks even if the room is hazardous as either they don't look or don't realise that room is 5000c and atmos is currently trying to fix it.
being able to bolt effected areas while things are repaired is useful being able to bolt firelocks and maints doors can stop the issue spreading.
i suppose inflatables could be used but they take up a lot of space and people also tend to ignore them

[Errant-4]

Oh, another issue with firelocks, they can be prevented from closing by entities in the way. (For example, in one test, a glass shard from the exploding window ended up under teh firelock, preventing it from closing). Imo when they close, they should shove everything not anchored out of the way. Including crew.

[spiffycodes]

Imo when they close, they should shove everything not anchored out of the way. Including crew.

the strength of that might have to be adjusted and it might cause stuff to be shoved into a wall.
after all a firelock rail gun might not be the best idea.

a common mapping error is to accidentally put something in the way of a firelock like a locker or vending machine

[spiffycodes]

that would be funny connecting the firelocks to a door chain to make a sequence and launch people, vending machines and stuff out Oxygen not included style.

[Hanzdegloker]

I do quite enjoy the idea of a soft-lockout using holofans, just long enough for crew to vacate the area before its locked down, and hell, I feel like the chances of you DYING in general go way up unless you carry a crowbar. It feels like an absolute necessity, even a flashlight I could work around but not having a crowbar especially Sec or Para, is even negligence I'd say in the current state of the game, and I can'y say I'm too happy with crowbars being such a hard requirement for station life. Hell we even have coloured variants of crowbars lol.

[EthanQix]

  * However, openings for escaping crew has a MUCH bigger impact, even though the firelock closes very quickly afterwards. (22, 13, 11, 9, 7, 6 kPa for 6 openings, the loss gets lower as the room pressure drops) Just 3 openings lose half of the remaining pressure, and that's assuming that no one HOLDS one open for other people to get through

Serious question here, should we really aim to save the crew from their own dumbassery? Emergencies aside, I feel that crewmates prying open doors specifically closed to protect them from spacing deserve the horrible choking death coming to them.

[Errant-4]

Serious question here, should we really aim to save the crew from their own dumbassery? Emergencies aside, I feel that crewmates prying open doors specifically closed to protect them from spacing deserve the horrible choking death coming to them.

The issue here is that the desperate/shortsighted/malicious decision of a single/few players will impact everyone else over a progressively larger and larger area

[ArtisticRoomba]

i mean that's what they are meant for it's meant to be dangerous and cause a panic when your locked out.

i would interpret them as not trying to protect the people in the dangerous room but the rest of the people in the other rooms and if that's locking a few people out so be it.

number one good map design can halt the spread of spacing. using airlocks with small fire locks surrounding them can section of key areas and are much harder for the spacing to spread to. this also makes a air lock for engineering to go through without a holo fan as they can close the firelocks behind them.

The funny part is that this map design was an intentional reaction to the fact that firelocks are currently broken as of right now.

[Pronana]

* Make it so firelocks have a "soft" state where they first raise a holofan, allowing passage for escaping crew without venting the neighboring areas (at least, the ones that react quickly enough)

I saw an idea floating around that atmos should be able to upgrade firelocks to only work on holofans, which I was kind of mixed about because it changes how a station is layout works in combat, you can shoot guns through and walk through holofans but not firelocks after all.

I think rather, they should have a holofan underneath them when they close that way escaping crew don't space the area for a decent amount of time while also keeping their functionality as cover the same. You could have it be based on the firelock being powered, and maybe some internal charge the firelock has, and since big spacing often leads to power outages anyways, this wouldn't always render the threat of spacing spread obselete.

* Make closed firelocks not be pryable, so only crew actually authorised to deal with the emergency situations (and hopefully, equipped with the tools to do so) will open them (sucks if you get stuck behind them, but "we have to escape the breached compartment before the door closes!" is a timeless spaceship/submarine staple! obviously, this would work best with the holofan idea, and would still cause it's own issues)

Firelocks being like regular airlocks and not being able to be pried because they're powered is a good change as well imo, specifically if security and parameds can also open them. However I think they should also care about directional travel too if this is going to be the case. They should open for someone who is leaving a spaced area, and only if the holofan is still down and not open for someone trying to enter a spaced or superheated area.

* Some way to better survive in a spaced room/corridor while emergency escape is arranged/rescuers arrive? Though having to rely on rescuers arriving or even actually existing at all is probably not the best approach

Space medipens 2025? Joking aside this would probably require major mapping changes.

* Repressurising locked but not breached areas should be easier/faster. Air Alarms should have a button for it, it should not be locked behind a screwdriver and obscure knowledge

I think not only this, but often times spacing persists because while a room is completely sealed, it's stuck under "under pressure lockout" I feel like the vents should be able to turn back on more quickly and automatically if a room isn't completely spaced to alleviate a lot of the required manpower. Means atmos techs only have to focus on any breaches or fires.

Also side note, I think superheated rooms need a visual indicator of some kind, whether it be something like "This door radiates heat are you sure you want to open it?" or having visual distortion in superheated rooms to tell you "Hey this air is VERY HOT don't go in"

[Alpaccalypse]

Until I read this I always wanted to be able to remotely trigger fill mode on air alarms from the atmos monitoring console, now I am not so sure. I think the same goes for public access to air filters, especially fill mode, as if automatic is not on, it can cause problems pretty much as bad a spacing. From an in-game perspective, can you imagine what management/security would think of giving everyone access to the most critical element of a space station's life support?

On the other hand, I do think air vents locking out far too long and being hard to manually restart is an issue worth addressing. It might need some rebalancing if the general airlock/spacing issue is resolved, but it would still be relevant regardless of this current issue.

As a compromise, maybe some sort of emergency override could be enabled on air alarms that are actually sounding an alarm? It could allow anyone to panic/fill, but only by engaging automatic mode too. This would mean you could reinitialise locked out fans, for instance, but if it is left on a dangerous setting, automatic mode will reset things to normal after a short time.

-Also, it's amazing how fast pressure can drop through an opened airlock, for a long time I couldn't beleive it could happen so fast, that I kept trying to work out some other cause, when it was just this. It would be helpful and cool if there was some sort of feedback beyond the "gust of air" warning message when rapid depressurisation is happening.

Would some sort of gushing air animation around an open airlock tile be something doable? A bit like an animated sprite that changes states depending on how fast pressure is changing on either side of the airlock tile? Dunno how demanding this would be on servers or whatnot, but I thought it was a thought worth sharing, related to the issue here. I think something like this might get players reacting more rationally to forcing firedoors, instead of just some abstract numbers and some gasping (which I think we all have a habit of ignoring half the time anyway).

[Errant-4]

Pressure lockout should be made smarter - if pressure in an area is above zero and stable for, say, 10 seconds, there is not really a reason the vent should not restart

[ilovehans10]

Pressure lockout should be made smarter - if pressure in an area is above zero and stable for, say, 10 seconds, there is not really a reason the vent should not restart

If you ask me we could make them even smarter by making it so that regardless of the pressure every ten seconds the fan will "probe" with a small volume of air, and if the room doesn't loose pressure over the next 3 seconds, then the room is considered pressurized and fans restart.

For my personal thoughts on the holofan argument would be that if it does spawn a holofan it should only last a short while and be on a long cooldown. I think the coolest look for this would be: Have a 10 second holofan spawn when a room is first spaced, but the firelock not close > After 8ish seconds, the firelock closes so that it is closed when the holofan despawns > Watch the clown suffocate because he slipped himself and didn't make it out on time Wait for Atmos to come and fix the spacing.

I think that firelocks should be there to keep rooms that aren't spaced safe, and the matter of crew safety could be better handled by The Bag™. The Bag™ taking inspiration from both The Murderbot Diaries and your local supermarket checkout, would be a tent sized bag that holds people, and keeps them safe from space. Similar to the crates animal orders come in it would have an attached supply of air, but unlike those, it would be collapsible because NT is cheap as fuck and had spare body bags lying around it makes it more space efficient for storage in O2 lockers. It would be found in some O2 lockers but also sometimes statically mapped in rooms with space facing windows. The Bag™ could also have a transmitter on it that when a bag is activated automatically sends a warning to both engineering and medical comms, and displays its location/air remaining on the crew monitor.

The gameplay loop for The Bag™ would be as follows:

1. Meteorites space the maints bar during pun pun's birthday party
2. One crew member opens the O2 locker and takes out The Bag™
3. They activate The Bag™ on the floor, and it unfolds similar to a body bag
4. Any crew that don't want to suffocate/be crushed stand on top of The Bag™
5. Someone activates The Bag™ sealing those standing on it inside
6. Atmos arrives later and drags The Bag™ to a pressurized area then goes to repair the spacing
7. Crew inside or outside active the bag again to open it and climb out

[Alpaccalypse]

...The Bag™

Love the whole idea. Would also make it less harsh to have firedoors lock down depressurised areas even with people left inside, which I would quite like to see, as an element of the old trope of sealing the hatches of breached submarine compartments, sealing the fate of the crew inside, to save the crew outside.

The Bag™ combined with firedoors locking out areas that are only then accessible to paramedics, security, or engineers, would solve a lot of the excess spacing problems. What I like about harsher firedoors even more, is that is would add a nice new sense of danger to spacings, and an imperative for emergency response jobs and the rescuing of crew.

[Errant-4]

I have proposed something previously, however I pictured them as person-sized transparent inflatable hamster balls. So you could walk around in them, but not interact through them

[EthanQix]

I have proposed something previously, however I pictured them as person-sized transparent inflatable hamster balls. So you could walk around in them, but not interact through them

I like the idea, this would make a neat replacement for the space pens

[Errant-4]

Also you should be able to pop them with piercing damage B)

[EthanQix]

Also you should be able to pop them with piercing damage B)

Genius!