[2022] More Atmospherics | Upgrades to Atmospheric Machines and Bug Fixing

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

As we adapt to our new weekly content cadence, you'll see that some new features get spread over multiple updates. This change in pace has some big benefits. It allows us to make smaller iterations, get feedback faster, spread out balancing, and end up with a more refined final outcome. At the same time we're still chipping away at a lot of bugs, but you'll see updates containing more content again soon.

You may have noticed that we didn't release a patch last week. It was getting too close to the weekend and we wouldn't have been available to publish any hotfixes. Therefore, this patch includes all those changes and has given us extra time to spend on some rather large work for the next patch.

While our target is weekly updates, we're keeping it flexible for moments like this.

Upgraded Atmospheric Machines Continuing with the theme of recent updates, this week we’ve focused on more atmospherics changes.
Firstly we’ve upgraded the Air Conditioner, Electrolyzer, Filtration, and H2 Combustor with IC slots to bring them in line with the new Nitrolyzer. We’ve also added the ability to read information about the input and output networks directly from the internal IC without the need to hook up additional analyzers.



Air Conditioner Changes Air Conditioners now start by wanting to move a fixed amount of energy to-or-from their input gas, with the equal and opposite transferring to the waste network.

The Air Conditioner speed is dependent on two main relationships. The first speed modifier is if the waste temperature is in the temperature direction the gas wants to be, with a slight increase in speed for greater deltas. If the waste temperature is counterproductive to the energy transfer process(i.e hot waste while cooling), then the machine will lose efficiency, going roughly at only 5% speed when the waste temperature is 150 degrees in the counter-productive direction. The second speed modifier is when the input or waste gas temperature is out of preferred ranges, with 100 K being a cold limit, -50 C to 100 C being optimal gas working temperatures, 400 C being about 33%, 600 C being 10%, and 1000 C bottoming out at 0%.

Other Changes Along the way we’ve fixed a bunch of other bugs, many of them related to atmospherics. You might notice in the change logs that we’ve been playing with the ragdoll a lot and have added new reviving functionality to the Cryotube. This is ongoing work to bring more importance to the different difficulty settings and provide more ways to deal with problems. Again, this is still a work in progress!




Coming Soon Next weeks patch sees work started on more changes to atmospherics that we’ve been thinking about for a long time. A lot of these changes will be available on the beta branch soon. We’re also revisiting the difficulty settings, and while there won’t be any big changes right away, we’re simplifying these settings, making them more robust, and clarifying what each of the options means.

Your support makes this possible
The major refactor has been a huge milestone for us and we think you can already see the tremendous success. Your support through bug reporting, suggestions, and direct involvement with our team on discord makes a tremendous difference.

If you like the progress we have made, please consider taking a moment to leave a positive review. This makes a great deal of difference to the project. We have worked hard on this project now for five years, and we feel confident the game is substantially improved from when we started. Many projects steer clear of the hard tasks, and we are proud to have taken them on.

Additionally, you can support us by purchasing the DLC we made to allow those whole like the game to support us, and in return get something a little fun to continue to use in the game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2089290/Stationeers_Human_Cosmetics_Pack/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1038400/Stationeers_Zrilian_Species_Pack/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1038500/Stationeers_HEM_Droid_Species_Pack/

Changelog v0.2.3566.17335

• * Fixed ragdolls getting stuck and positions not being synced to clients
  
• - Reverted some changes to ragdolls
  
• * Cryo tubes can now resurrect dead players - as long as they haven't respawned already
  
• * Cryo tubes will mix their internal atmosphere with the world atmosphere when open
  
• + Added support to read Air Conditioner efficiency values using logic i/o.
  
• * Fixed client player positions not updating on the server
  
• * Fixed Error thrown by stacker on load.
  
• * Fixed Render distance on basic packaging machine.
  
• * Fixed Error Spam from Autolathe "This recipe doesn't exist! Defaulting to Unknown".
  
• * Reduced Air Conditioner power usage by 30%, to match previously reduced throughput and energy movement amounts.
  
• * Fixed Gas Ratio readings from inputs and outputs on new atmospherics devices incorrectly read -1.
  
• + Fixed Clients don't get updated efficiency ratios on tooltip new Air Conditioner.
  
• * Fixed Clients not updating the status of input and output connections of atmos devices.
  
• * Fixed ragdoll position not updating correctly
  
• * Fixed Air Conditioner input and output tooltips.
  
• * Changed Air Conditioner to use curves to map its efficiency.
  
• * Expanded negative temperature delta, to allow for slightly longer inefficient air conditioning.
  
• * Decreased base Air Conditioner throughput by 25%, and energy transfer by 30%.
  
• * Changed entities decay behaviour while being carried to prevent decaying while being dragged. Their decay will now pause while being carried and reset to 60 seconds if within 60 seconds of decaying.
  
• * Changed drag ragdoll body to force grabbing pelvis
  
• * Optimized MixInWorld bucketing system for threaded atmospherics calculations. Mixing large clumps of world atmospheres is now 3-4x faster.
  
• * Fixed Catastrophic atmospheric events creating excessive numbers of new world atmosphere grids (20,000+) causing the game thread to lag and creating periodic frame hitches on clients and 100% Cpu usage on servers.
  
• * Changed Values that determine world atmosphere mixing speed and new world atmosphere creation during mix to be dynamic. As the number of atmospheres increase atmospheres not in rooms will mix more quickly and creation of new world atmospheres will require a higher threshold.
  
• * Optimised World atmospheres only calculate has-sunlight if they are in a room. This means that plants in Hydroponics trays will require a room to grow. Has-sunlight calculation is expensive and does not scale well enough to run it on 1000s of atmospheres.
  
• * Fixed Can't build cables on rear side of new Filtration Machine.
  
• * Fixed mining drill not working when loading game if in hand slot
  
• * Changed player body decay time to 10 mins
  
• + Added the cleanupplayers console command to remove player bodies
  
• * An attempt at improving dragging a ragdoll human
  
• * Improved IsKinematic property setting
  
• * Fixed New AirConditioner model now defaults to off and idle when first built.
  
• * added Missing prefab change from previous commit, which increases the AC throughput.
  
• + Complete rework of Air Conditioner logic. Air conditioners start by wanting to move a fixed amount of energy to or from their input gas, with the equal and opposite transfer happening to the waste network.
  
• + The Air Conditioner speed is dependent on two main relationships. The first speed modifier is if the waste temperature is in the temperature direction the gas wants to be. With a slight increase in speed for greater deltas. If the waste temperature is in the opposite direction of where the input gas wants to go, then then machine will loose efficiency, going roughly at only 5% speed when waste temperature is 100 degrees in the counter productive direction. The second speed modifier is when the input gas temperature is out of preferred ranges, with 100 K being a cold limit, -50 C to 100 C being optimal gas working temperatures, 400 C being about 33%, 600 C being 10%, and 1000 C bottoming out at 0%.
  
• + The Air Conditioner now works less efficiently if waste or input air networks are low in pressure.
  
• + Added tool tips to the Air Conditioner info panel.
  
• * Air Conditioners no longer auto fills its waste network from its input gas.
  
• * Fixed pressure regulators inappropriately using static data.
  
• * Fixed Servers throw error spam when a large base explosion and decompression happens.
  
• + Added Servers now rate limit the amount of atmosphere data sent to clients. This will result in clients having less up-to-date values during extreme events but will prevent the server from erroring out while trying to send too much data.
  
• * Changed window mode dropdown to be populated using GameStrings
  
• + Added World atmosphere clean-up command (server only) "atmos cleanup". This will clean up all world atmospheres that are not in a room.
  
• + Added all loading screen text to GameStrings to allow for localization
  
• * Fixed A number of items not showing destroyed model when destroyed.
  
• + Added Destroyed buildState for updated atmospheric devices.
  
• * Fixed Can't deconstruct a Destroyed elevator level.
  
• * Fixed missing localization on custom world panel
  
• * Fixed missing localization on in game menu
  
• * Changed 'enter game name' prompt to use a static game string for localization
  
• + converted credits page and welcome screen to prefab instead of being serialized with the main scene
  
• * Fixed missing localization on in-game save menu
  
• * Fixed missing localization on password input popup
  
• * Fixed some workshop mod menu text not being localized
  
• * Fixed all join server menu text not being localized
  
• * Fixed all load world menu text not being localized
  
• * Fixed all tutorial menu text not being localized
  
• * Fixed all main menu text not being localized. All the localized text components had been set up in the scene instead of the prefab and the data had been wiped at some point.
  
• * Fixed New H2Combustor model not replacing old model when loading saves made on previous versions.
  
• * Fixed Active sound not playing on new H2Combustor.
  
• * Fixed New Air Conditioner not consuming power when IC slot cover is closed.
  
• * Fixed Filters rotated incorrectly on new Filtration Machine.
  
• * Fixed Cant interact with FilterSlot1 when IC slot cover is closed on FiltrationMachine.
  
• + Added Filtration thumbnails.
  
• + Added New FiltrationMachine prefab with IC slot. Mode 0 can be used to Set machine state to idle.
  
• * Reparented FiltrationMachine class to DeviceInputOutputCircuit.
  
• * Fixed small cell devices doubling up on same grid
  
• * Fixed adding pipe radiator step in gas mixture tutorial
  
• * Fixed New mining backpacks are hidden when placed in lockers.
  
• * Fixed GasFuel Generator continues to make power after its run out of fuel.
  
• * Fixed some authoring issues with new Electrolyzer prefab (Sound, animation and pipe connection settings)
  
• - Removed deprecated Electrolyzer prefab
  
• * Added new electrolyzer with IC slot to replace old version
  
• * Fixed Dis-allowed rotations on Nitrolyzer and AirConditioner.
  
• * Fixed plant decay time showing as ten times as long on tooltip
  
• * Fixed Parenting of Save data to reflect reparenting of devices that were children of machine.
  
• + Added IC slot to Air Conditioner.
  
• * Changed Air Conditioner now uses Mode variable to run or stop. Idle: 0, Active: 1.
  
• * Changed Air Conditioner now uses Setting variable for target temperature. While the setting is in degrees Kelvin the machine will continue to show the target Temperature in Celsius on the button screen.
  
• - Removed a number of deprecated scripts that were children of now defunct machine class.