Guide to Supermatter

The Supermatter Engine is one of two primary sources of power aboard the SEV Torch. It consists of machinery harnessing the thermal output of an unstable radioactive crystal powerful enough to destroy a significant portion of the ship if mishandled. Properly modified and maintained, however, the engine can generate very large amounts of power, exceeding the potential of the other primary power source, the R-UST.

Priming, starting, and maintaining the Supermatter engine is an important function of the Engineering Department. In playing an Engineer, you should expect to work with the Supermatter at least once at the beginning of every round, and know how to prevent it from detonating the rear end of the ship.

Basic operating principles

While the Supermatter engine is an inherently complex system, the basic principles by which it operates are fairly straightforward.

The Supermatter

The entirety of the engine room.

The large, glowing, radioactive, lethal shard of crystal that is the Supermatter is, obviously, the centerpiece of the entire operation. Understanding its various properties is key to properly utilizing the Supermatter engine.

First and foremost, in case the previous use of scary adjectives like "radioactive" and "lethal" was not enough to get the point across, the Supermatter is probably the single most dangerous thing aboard the ship. It is highly unstable, and anything directly touching it (such as particularly stupid or suicidal engineers) will instantly turn to ash. Letting the Supermatter get too hot is liable to cause it to explode in a process referred to as delamination. This will not only do substantial damage to the Engineering department, but will short out or destroy most of the ship's electronics and bathe everyone aboard in radiation. While the full consequences of radiation doses are, generally speaking, for the ship's physicians to worry about, it is important for all shipboard engineers to understand that this is one of the quickest ways to negatively impact a large number of the crew. It is the ultimate Bad News so far as the engineering department is concerned, and should be avoided at all costs.

Fortunately, direct interaction with the Supermatter is almost never required. In the case that manual manipulation is needed, understand that touching the Supermatter (by clicking on it or moving into it) will cause it to instantly destroy the person touching it.

Note: The only way to personally manipulate the Supermatter without causing it to explode is to pull it. Gravikinetic tools or loading into a mech via a clamp are significantly safer approaches to moving it, but may not always be available.

Even when not directly interacting with the Supermatter, however, it is still highly dangerous to anyone nearby. Directly viewing an energized Supermatter crystal without mesons will cause hallucinations, which must be corrected by Medical. The Supermatter produces lethal amounts of radiation, heat, and an oxygen-phoron mix which is highly flammable. The reactor core is designed to be sturdy enough to contain the heat, fire, and gases emitted, but not so much the radiation. Engineers working on the Supermatter engine — or even just nearby — are encouraged to wear full radiation protection.

Finally, the Supermatter is susceptible to excessive heat. Temperatures above 5000 K will cause the matter to destabilize, with loss rate dependent on EER — if its integrity reaches 0%, it will explode. Additionally, any temperatures above approximately 5800 K will cause the borosilicate windows around the core to melt if adjacent to fire, which can rapidly lead to a reactor breach and its own host of problems. At 10 000 K, dropped blast doors adjacent to a fire will take damage and eventually cease function. At high enough temperatures, even the external walls may melt into slag, if adjacent to a fire.

Bullets and the like will also inflict damage to the Supermatter's integrity, and increase its energy level. Given time, and assuming that no further damage is inflicted, the Supermatter can regenerate, restoring its lost integrity automatically. This process, however, requires that temperatures be below dangerous levels.

However, despite all its dangerous properties, the Supermatter is also extremely useful if properly controlled. Once safely activated, the Supermatter will emit heat, radiation, oxygen, and phoron. How much of these it releases depends on its energy state.

Terminology

This article, the Supermatter Monitoring program, and other engineers are going to use a lot of acronyms and different terms when they're referring to different parts of the Supermatter in an effort to make sure it doesn't blow a chunk out of the reactor room. The important ones are:

• EER - Equivalent Energy Retention. This is a direct reference to the amount of energy in the Supermatter. The Supermatter sheds this over time to produce heat, radiation, and gas. The higher the EER, the higher the power generation potential.
• EPR - Engine Pressure Ratio. This is how much actual coolant is in the core chamber. A very low EPR is bad — it means there's either a coolant leak or there wasn't enough coolant injected in the first place. High EPR is less of a problem, and some engineers like to run setups that have a deliberately high EPR. If you're not sure, don't be afraid to ask for help! Keeping it between 2 and 3 is generally a good rule of thumb.

The thermoelectric generators

A TEG in operation. Gas flows from left to right on the top and right to left on the bottom.

The thermoelectric generators, or TEGs, are big gray machines that, along with the Supermatter, form the valves of the engine's beating heart.

The idea is simple: the TEGs are set up with a pair of circulators, one on each side, which take in gas from two separate loops. When these two flows pass through the TEG, it produces power based on the thermal energy transferred from the hot side to the cold (in addition to a small amount generated in the circulators directly by gas flow). With all else held equal, the larger the difference between the two gas mixes' temperatures, the more power is generated. The gas is then piped out again and recycled. When gas is flowing properly, the circulators on each end of the generator will spin, and various lights will turn on to indicate that power is being produced.

TEGs also have an upper limit to the amount of power that they can safely produce. If this power limit is exceeded, the generator will begin to spark as it discharges excess energy. Despite the alarming noises, this is not harmful to the machine — it just means that some efficiency is being lost due to the generator being overworked. By default, this is 500 kW per TEG.

Note that the TEGs require both sides to function in order to cool the core. If only one side is functional, either because it's empty or because both its connections are the same pressure and thus not transferring gas, there will be no temperature transfer to the opposite side.

When more information on a TEG's operating status is required, its display can be examined by clicking on its central part. This will bring up a variety of details about the generator, the gases being piped through it, and the power generated thereby.

The pipe systems

The Supermatter engine can be somewhat daunting for a newbie engineer to try to understand. Fortunately, the system is much simpler than it appears, and all pipes within the engine room have been color-coded for ease of use.

• Dark Blue and Dark Red pipes under the floor are the distro and general waste atmospherics lines. They have nothing to do with the engine, and can be safely ignored. Their only purpose is to make the engine room breathable, and refill it (or scrub toxins from the air, as the case may be) in the case of a breach.
• Black pipes are waste. Any gas flowing into these pipes will be transferred to the waste tank. This skips the general waste line's filters.
• Green and Yellow pipes are the primary or hot loop. Gas contained in the green pipes (the primary inlet section) is destined for the Supermatter chamber, where it will be briefly exposed to the crystal in order to absorb heat emitted. Once heated, the gas will be ejected into the yellow pipes (the primary outlet or circulation section), which will route it through the second half of the TEGs and, afterwards, return it to the primary inlet section for another trip around.
• Light Blue pipes are the secondary or cold loop. The gas in these pipes is kept as cool as possible by routing it through radiator tubes in space, which allow it to vent its heat safely into vacuum. It is then piped through one side of the TEGs.

Regulators

Primary & Secondary H2 regulators.

There are four regulators in the engine room by default. Two of these are hydrogen coolant injectors for the primary and secondary loops; two are connected from those loops to the waste line.

The computer for the hydrogen tank in atmospherics can be set to output at maximum pressure to increase the speed of coolant loading. Underloading either loop can result in an inability to cool the core. Overloading the primary can result in low operating temperatures and possibly burst pipes, while overloading the secondary can lead to a loss of cooling capacity as the TEGs cannot pass gas along the resulting very shallow pressure gradient.

The two waste line regulators can be used to prevent loop overpressure by automatically discharging gas above a set limit (using the input pressure setting). Be careful with such a setting; generally, coolant loops become overpressured because they are overheating, and if said coolant is then dumped without solving the underlying cause, the consequence is a runaway overheat-pressure dump spiral. Further, remember that all dumped gas goes to the waste tank — if you put a lot of hydrogen, phoron and oxygen in there, it can catch fire and that may result in unfortunate consequences for the tank and anyone near its thin walls.

Coolant filtration

Coolant filtration.

At the port side of the engine room you will find three gas filters. Two of these are set in such a way as to remove all other gases beside the coolant — hydrogen, by default — from the loops. If you choose another coolant gas than hydrogen, do not forget to adjust them. Otherwise, they'll just filter out all of your precious gas into waste, leaving your engine without any coolant and quickly causing a delamination.

By default, the third filter connects only to the waste line. This filter is set to extract phoron from the pipe and pump it into a canister attached to a connector port nearby, instead of sending it to the waste tank. The amount produced isn't high, but phoron is a very useful gas. Waste not, want not. There is also a bypass T-valve that skips the filter in case you feel like it.

The heat exchanger

This array of pipes on the port side of the engine room attempts to equalize the temperatures between the connected loops directly, without requiring a pressure difference to operate like the TEGs. It is not extremely effective but can contribute in an emergency - generally around a 15% temperature/power reduction if sustained.

To operate it normally, open the primary-to-HX valve. It can also be used to transfer some relatively cold gas from secondary to primary by opening and closing the secondary-to-HX valve, then opening the primary-to-HX valve. If both valves are opened at the same time, problems will usually result.

The emitter

[File:Map_sm_emitter.png|thumb|The emitter in the core room.]] An easy way to energize a Supermatter crystal is to fire a high-energy laser into it. There is one fixed to the floor in front of the reactor core for this exact reason. Once the rest of the Supermatter engine is properly configured and ready to go, opening the reactor blast doors and turning on the emitter will activate the Supermatter and, ideally, begin production of power. The more emitter shots that are fired into the engine, the more energetic the Supermatter becomes, and the more heat is produced - which, of course, leads to more power.

Do remember, however, that the Supermatter is vulnerable to high temperatures. Simply leaving the emitter on to fire indefinitely (without appropriate modifications to handle this) in the hopes of infinite heat and, therefore, infinite electricity is an easy way to cause problems. Even if the Supermatter doesn't explode, higher energy levels also translate to higher radiation output, which can leak out of the engine room and into various surrounding locations if it gets severe enough.

Putting it all together

So, now that all the various pieces of the engine are understood, it shouldn't be too difficult to move from this to a complete understanding of Supermatter engine theory.

Gas contained within the primary loop is piped into the reactor core, heated by the Supermatter, and then brought out again to run through the TEGs. On the other side of the same generator, gas from the secondary loop is being brought in from the radiators outside, freshly chilled and ready to work. The TEG takes the difference in the thermal energy between the loops (note that, while temperature does play an important role, it does not mean a TEG with a high primary temperature will generate more power compared to one with a lower primary temperature but more gas in the loop) and turns it into electricity, and, in the process, the primary loop bleeds heat into the secondary loop, keeping the engine from overheating. Both gas flows are then sent out to be heated and cooled in the same fashion indefinitely.

Put like this, it is an extremely simple process, and the Supermatter is, fortunately, mostly self-sustaining if the engine has been set up correctly. Once things are up and running, it shouldn't take more than the occasional check-in to make sure that things are continuing to run smoothly — barring any nasty accidents, of course.

The setup process

Now that the engine is fully understood, it's time to begin thinking about how to operate it. The process of configuring the engine for safe running can be a fairly long one, but is actually very simple in practice — it just has a long list of steps that need to be carefully executed in order to ensure that everything is working properly.

Protective gear

Any engineer working in or near the engine room is highly encouraged to wear full protective gear at all times. Even the lowest output setups for the Supermatter are dangerous, and neglecting workplace safety is a good way to end up in the Morgue.

Gear	Icon	Description
Radiation Suit and Hood		Together, these provide perfect protection from radiation in the engine room while the crystal is energized. There is no radiation protection sufficient to allow an organic human to survive in the core itself while energized.
Optical Meson Scanner		While worn and turned on, these protect one's eyes from the harmful effects of directly viewing the energized Supermatter, preventing the wearer from hallucinating.
Geiger Counter		This handheld device, when switched on, can be examined to determine the amount of ambient radiation in an area, thus letting an engineer know when it is safe to remove the radiation suit. It'll also make audible clicks when the ambient radiation is above safe levels, regardless of where you have it stored on your person.
Gas Mask		While the engine room is generally safe to breathe, pipe damage and improper gas handling may result in suboptimal atmospheric composition.

Step one: Gas Injection

Typically, the engine will be set up using hydrogen as the only coolant. Assuming that's your chosen gas, use the injectors just fore and port of the core. Good values are output 500 kPa (about equivalent to a fully filled canister) for the primary and output 3.5 MPa (between 3-4 full canisters) for the secondary.

If you halt coolant injection from the core control computer and then inject gas to the primary, the process is faster and more precise — an output of 2.7 MPa is good in this case. Remember to turn off the regulator once that pressure is reached or you will vastly overpressurize the primary when you flip core injection back on.

If you do not intend to use hydrogen, you will have to fill canisters manually and wrench them into the provided connectors for both loops. The main idea is to create a large enough buffer to absorb the heat from the SM crystal.

Step two: Radiator Loop Setup

Now that the gas is injected, the engine is almost ready. The last thing to do before startup is to find the two gas pumps on the secondary loop, just next to each of the TEGs, and turn them on at MAX pressure. This will allow cold gas to gain the pressure necessary to flow through the circulator.

Step three: Startup

Pre-startup checklist

It is a good idea to go through this pre-startup checklist before you energize the core in order to ensure that you didn't miss any critical steps, as forgetting any part of engine setup is likely to result in a Torch-shaking kaboom. Even assuming that you survive, you'll probably be fired, so:

1. Is there gas in the primary loop and is core injection on? Meters should show upwards of 500 kPa in both green and yellow sections, the bottom/port circulator on the TEGs will be spinning slowly.
2. Is there gas in the secondary loop and are the circulation pumps at maximum? Same process, upwards of 2 MPa on meters and the top/starboard circulator should be slowly spinning.
3. Are the waste filters enabled and set correctly?
4. In the Supermatter Monitoring program, is the EPR at least 2 and not decreasing?

Activating the Supermatter

This is it. The moment of truth. Time to bring the engine online and bring sweet, sweet power flowing to the ship.

1. You are already wearing your standard safety gear.
2. Move into the engine control room, just outside the engine room itself, and open the reactor core shutters by pressing the button marked "Reactor Blast Doors".
3. Activate the emitter by pressing the "Engine Emitter" button in the monitoring room, or clicking on the emitter itself while in the engine room.
4. Allow the emitter to fire until the appropriate temperature is reached.
5. Deactivate the emitter.
6. Close the reactor blast doors.

Appropriate temperature depends on your desired output. A value of 3500 K is fairly safe and powerful. Do not exceed 5000 K, as that is when the crystal will start to delaminate, and ideally, the emitter should be stopped long before then, preferably before 4500 K.

Assuming that everything has gone smoothly, congratulations! The engine is now online, and you will in all likelihood not have to do anything with it for the rest of the round. Reheat may be required for significant power draw.

Maintenance and emergencies

While the engine is designed to be mostly self-sustaining, some minor maintenance is needed to keep it running at optimal efficiency. Beyond this, it will occasionally be the case that some idiot messes with a vital component, or that a hapless trainee did something wrong during the setup that wasn't caught. In these cases, it is important to know how to identify the problem and how to repair it quickly, because an unhappy Supermatter is an exploding Supermatter.

Core re-energisation

The Supermatter slowly bleeds away the energy that was used to charge it. This, over time, results in a drop of output from the crystal, including temperature, radiation, and gas. This means that the Supermatter will have to be occasionally re-energized in order to maintain power output.

If you are unambitious, the initial startup should be enough to power the ship throughout the round. In the case of colossal drains on the power or other issues, though, it may be necessary to open up the reactor blast doors and fire the emitter into the Supermatter once again to bump up power output.

Re-energization may come after a significant amount of hydrogen has been drained from the primary by combustion into water, and as such the core's heat capacity may be reduced. Monitor the Supermatter's temperature from the control room as during startup and adjust the number of shots accordingly.

Supermatter monitoring

The Supermatter monitoring room.

In order to make tracking the Supermatter's condition easier, engineering personnel have access to the Supermatter Monitoring program on the consoles located throughout the ship. This gives a readout of the Supermatter's current EER, temperature, integrity, and other associated variables. It will also display alerts if said values begin to approach adjustable safety thresholds.

If the Supermatter Monitoring program isn't giving any readings, then the Supermatter has been moved from its starting location. Better find it fast.

In addition to the Supermatter Monitoring program, the Torch has a built-in integrity monitoring program that will broadcast warnings if the Supermatter's integrity begins to drop. The first warning, given over the Engineering radio frequency, comes at 90% integrity. Should integrity continue to drop, further warnings will be broadcast, eventually switching to the common channel, warning personnel of the incoming disaster.

Engine diagnostics

If the Supermatter Monitoring program has indicated that there is a problem with the Supermatter, it is vital that the problem be identified and corrected as quickly as possible. Failure to do so will, more often than not, result in delamination. In order to diagnose the issue most effectively, it is recommended that newer engineers, without the experience necessary to make more educated guesses, follow these steps:

1. Obtain all necessary protective gear.
2. Visually inspect the emitter from the engine control room. If it is online, deactivate it.
3. Use the Supermatter Monitoring program to check the Supermatter's status. If the core's EPR reading is lower than the normal for your chosen setup, it is likely that a coolant leak has occurred.
   1. In the case of a confirmed coolant leak, attempt to identify the cause. If a regulator was left on that should not have been on, turn it off; if a section of piping has been breached, replace it; and so on.
   2. With the cause of the coolant leak removed, proceed to Coolant Injection, as below.
4. Check the engine room via the cameras.
   1. Search for any damage to walls or pipes, particularly around the Supermatter.
   2. If the reactor core is breached, proceed to the Core Breach section, below.
   3. Otherwise, repair the damage as quickly as possible, then continue.
5. Check the Engine Core SMES in the power storage room. Does it have any power? Are its inputs and outputs turned on? If not, you need to very quickly come up with a plan to get power into the Engine Core subgrid, as this is the battery that runs all of the engine room machinery.
6. Enter the engine room. Verify integrity of the piping and power supply wiring. If any pipes were removed/damaged, determine if the current piping is sufficient to ensure cooling. This usually means that the pipes either run into TEGs and back into the core, or to the emergency cooling valves and back into the core. If the TEG pipes are damaged, but emergency cooling valves aren't, activate emergency cooling valves to keep the core stabilised, and perform repairs to pipes.
7. Begin checking all the machinery. Is the APC receiving enough power to run circulation? If not, either replace the APC cell, or ensure a sufficient amount of power for it to operate (usually done by adjusting SMES settings or, if the SMESes are damaged, by installing an emergency PACMAN generator).
8. Check the TEGs. Are they operating properly? Are they wrenched down properly?
9. Is all the machinery behaving as it should? If a machine appears to be malfunctioning, attempt to bypass it or otherwise resolve the situation depending on which machine is causing failure.
10. If, at any point in this process, core integrity drops below 30%, emergency core ejection is recommended to ensure preservation of ship structure (and the lives of the crew). After this, full investigation is recommended to determine cause of failure. Appropriate actions (at the discretion of the Chief Engineer, or other Command staff) should be taken.

Finally, if you have verified that everything is in working order and, yet, not working, don't be afraid to ahelp about possible bugs (or pleading for guidance).

Gas replacement

Most issues with the engine short of a breach or other structural damage ultimately come down to employing this method. As such, all engineers working with the engine should be familiar with it.

If the engine temperature is approaching or beyond safety thresholds, it is possible to vent all gas from the primary loop by pressing the Emergency Core Vent Control button in the control room. This will open a set of shutters and expose the reactor core to space, sucking all gas out of the Supermatter chamber and, over time, the primary loop. Once this overheated gas is removed, the shutters can then be closed, and replacement gas can be injected into the engine as during setup. Since all of the overheated gas has been vented, this will essentially reset the engine temperature.

Warning: The Supermatter will lose integrity rapidly while there is no gas in the loop! If the Supermatter's integrity is already at critical levels, do not use this method!

Coolant injection

When the engine is destabilizing, but a full loop replacement is not warranted, it may be wise to inject some colder gas directly into the primary loop to cool the Supermatter and prevent further loss of integrity. This is usually just a band-aid function used to buy time unless the only issue was that the gas was somehow lost.

Usually, this is done using the same type of gas that was originally placed into the primary loop. If a different gas is available, however, it may be prudent to inject a different gas that the filters are set to remove from the system. This gas will equalize temperatures with the gas already in the primary loop, then be ejected directly into space, essentially removing heat from the loop outright and providing a helpful emergency temperature drop. This only works if the new gas has a better specific heat than the existing coolant. Otherwise, the bad new gas drowns out the good old gas in the core, rapidly gains temperature (thereby erasing any benefit the new gas might have had), and is only ejected after worsening the situation. For hydrogen, the only better commonly available gas is phoron.

Emergency cooling valves

In addition to the radiator pipe loops extending into space, the Supermatter engine is fitted with a heat exchanger array and emergency bypass valves. These valves may be used either to help the core cool down a bit, or to drastically change the gas characteristics in both loops.

The heat exchangers, under normal operating conditions, are not used. They are connected to both primary and secondary loops, and, when gas is flowing through attached pipes, will help to equalize the temperature between them, which will generally reduce the temperature of gas flowing to the Supermatter at the cost of proportionally reducing power output. In order to enable the heat exchangers, click on the Emergency Cooling Valve beside them.

In even more dire circumstances, an immediate and substantial temperature drop may be required. In this case, if the heat exchangers are already enabled, it is possible to simply join the loops together, mixing the gases contained therein and immediately equalizing temperatures. This will almost completely eliminate power output, but will drastically lower temperature at least once. Returning to operation will require closing the valves, refilling the secondary loop (as much of its contents will have been shifted to primary), and possibly removing gas from the primary loop. Be aware that the amount of gas transferred to primary may cause pipe leaks if not carefully managed.

Emergency core ejection

1: Emergency Core Vent Control. 2: Engine Access Hatch 3: Emergency Engine Room Vents. 4: Emergency Core Eject.

The ultimate answer to Supermatter-related troubles on board the ship. If things are going rapidly south and delamination seems imminent, Engineering has the ability to eject the Supermatter from the ship entirely.

Doing so is a fairly simple process. Open the reactor core to space with the Emergency Core Vent Control button (1), then press the Emergency Core Eject button (3) and pray.

Power restoration

When the Core SMES fails, such as by being destroyed or by running dry after its charging input was turned off, you must immediately take emergency action to restore power to the engine room. Without it, none of the machinery in the engine will function, and the Supermatter will be left to slowly heat itself up to the point of delamination.

How precisely to restore power depends on how it was lost to begin with. If the SMES was destroyed, it will be necessary to wire up a PACMAN or other alternate source of power in its place. If wires were merely cut, they will need to be repaired.

Core breach

A core breach is a very dangerous situation in which the Supermatter chamber is compromised. There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of core breach, and each is handled in a slightly different way.

Inner breach

An inner breach occurs when walls, windows, or airlocks between the engine core and the engine room are destroyed or left open. This situation is very dangerous, because the high-temperature hot gases will merge with the engine room atmosphere. If the engine was set up using phoron or hydrogen in its primary loop, this is particularly bad, as the oxygen in the engine room provides the perfect oxidizer for a raging inferno.

Breaches are some of the most dangerous issues that the engine might face. The immediate concern during any breach is the repair of said breach through any means necessary. If this is not possible, the engineering crew may be left with no choice but to eject the Supermatter.

Outer breach

An outer breach occurs when walls (or blast doors) between the engine core and space are damaged to a degree that causes a gas leak. If this occurs, gas levels will very quickly reach zero.

As with inner breaches, the primary concern with an outer breach is the sealing of the open area and restoration of engine core integrity. Unlike an inner breach, however, there is no chance that gas can be contained to keep cooling the core, so new coolant must be constantly injected to prevent very fast delamination.

Once the breach has been sealed, it is important to restore gas flow in the primary loop to its previous levels.

Cold start

If, for some reason, the Engine Core SMES is completely devoid of charge and the engine is not online, the emitter will not be able to fire, and thus the engine will not be able to start, and even if a portable laser is used, there will be no coolant being pumped through the core to actually generate power (and avoid exploding) afterwards. In this situation, a "cold start" is necessary. There are many different ways to do this, most of which consist of rigging up a temporary power source to enable coolant flow, coax a few shots from the emitter, and bring the Supermatter online. This is very uncommon.

• Use the solars. They are connected by default. Just make sure the engine room SMES is charging from them.
• Replace the engine room APC's cell with a charged one. Continue as normal.
• PACMAN assisted jump start. Enable charging on the engine SMES at full power, optionally cutting the SMES room off from the main grid. Connect a PACMAN portable generator with a wrench to the input or output cables of the engine room SMES, or to the engine room's own network. Turn on the PACMAN generator and wait a while for the engine room SMES to charge, if applicable, then turn its output on, or just make sure there's coolant going through the loops and fire the emitter if not applicable. Remember that the PACMAN generator needs solid phoron as fuel (the PACMAN in engineering storage starts half-full).

Manual ejection

It's possible that automatic ejection can fail due to negligence, or otherwise not work correctly if systems have been damaged. The Supermatter core sits atop a mass driver, and that mass driver isn't indestructible. It's possible something has gone wrong, such as:

1. The mass driver is destroyed or not operational.
2. Someone forgot to open the blast doors to space before pressing the mass driver button.
3. The Supermatter core was somehow moved out of its default position.

Whatever the case may be, a failing Supermatter that fails to eject from the reactor core is the worst possible scenario that the core can be in. If this happens, there's only one solution: someone has to manually enter the reactor room and drag the Supermatter. This is, quite possibly, the most dangerous thing you can possibly do aboard the ship. It's the one scenario where someone has to either directly interact with the Supermatter core or let it delaminate. Just kidding. Use a gravikinetic tool (which are found in select hardsuits and can be printed for mechs) to move the core back into position or out into space as required without entering the chamber. Going into a chamber with an active crystal to drag it around is suicide for anyone not immune to radiation. You will not accomplish anything before being incapacitated and dying ignominiously.

As long as the Supermatter is on a ship z-level, the Torch will feel the aftershocks of the blast, though of course the explosive damage is sharply range-limited.

Upgrades and customization

The Supermatter engine, despite the delicacy of its central component, is made to be easily customizable according to the whims of the engineers working on it. It is entirely possible to make substantial alterations to the engine that will greatly increase its output — though, of course, it is also possible for these alterations to result in complete and total engine failure. Experiment at your own risk, and ideally test these ideas out on your own private server before bringing them onto the game proper. A few of the more common methods of customization are listed below.

Gas mixes

Every engineer has their own preferences for gas amounts when it comes to setting up the engine, and they will argue endlessly about which setups are most efficient, safest, or most powerful.

It should also be understood that more gas is not always better than less gas. As a general rule, the secondary loop works best with more gas inside it, as denser gases have an easier time radiating heat, while the primary loop absorbs heat more easily with less gas.

Radiation collector arrays

Often referred to as RCAs, these devices may be installed close to the core to harness some of its radiation output as extra energy. They work best when placed very close to the core, generally right up against its windows, to catch more of the radiation. You can scavenge a few RCAs from Maintenance, or, if you can convince the Deck Chief to be helpful, order them from Supply under the label "Collector Crate".

Setting up an RCA is a relatively simple matter: simply wire the spot you intend to place it up to a power line, drag the collector there, wrench it into place, insert a phoron tank, and turn it on. Do not attempt to put them inside the core chamber. They explode. They are also capped to 500 kW output at present, with actual output dependent on both incoming radiation and how much phoron you have in the tank (so cooling the phoron used to fill the tank will result in higher output).

Note also that their fairly low power means they're not that useful when competing against TEGs. It may be more helpful to wire them to the engine room APC, so it can better power itself in case external factors affect its SMES.

SMES upgrades

Engineering Storage contains some spare parts for SMES units. You can scavenge a total of six regular coils, six transmission coils and six capacitance coils from Hard Storage, the Shield Room, and First Deck Aux Storage. Some other SMESes can be cannibalized for more parts. For details on how to use these to upgrade the SMES units, see the SMES page.

Generally, the Supermatter output SMESes are the single best place to use transmission coils.

Adding TEGs

This is fairly rare, but possible, and can provide a substantial boost in power if the ship is feeling especially thirsty. You can order parts for another TEG from Supply, assemble it within the engine room, and wire it up. So long as the pipes are appropriately attached, it should function identically to the pre-installed units.

Gas selection

It is worth mentioning that different gasses can be used to run the engine. If you dare to choose another gas, don't forget to adjust the coolant filtration. The most important quality for any gas used is specific heat. The higher it is, the more energy it takes to heat up. For a given amount of gas, a type with higher specific heat will be at a lower temperature for equivalent energy transfer across the TEG, meaning the setup is both safer for the same output and capable of better output without delaminating. This effect is more pronounced in the primary loop, where using less gas of higher quality may be preferable.

Hydrogen

(Standard) Hydrogen is the standard coolant and the one that most engineers are likely to use. It has a much higher heat capacity (100 J/mol*K) than CO2 or N2, which means that the engine will run at lower temperatures for isobaric equivalent power. However, hydrogen is not inert, and when combined with oxygen in the core, will create water, slowly siphoning off your coolant. This will be evidenced by a sustained fire within the reactor core itself, which is perfectly safe under normal circumstances, but which can quickly become extremely lethal in the case of a reactor breach, or lead to part of the containment melting if overheated. By default, the omni-filters are set to filter hydrogen.

Nitrogen

Nitrogen is the worst of the gases available for use in the engine. It has a specific heat of 20 J/mol*K, which results in nitrogen engine configurations running at high temperatures while simultaneously failing to produce the amount of power afforded by other setups. It's fairly inert and plentiful, at least. Its only particularly special feature is that it slightly lowers EER gain from oxygen.

Carbon Dioxide

Carbon dioxide is a single step up from nitrogen in terms of usability. It has a specific heat of 30 J/mol*K, meaning that the engine will run at a lower temperature (than nitrogen) for isobaric equivalent power. It is still inefficient, but it is better than nitrogen and safer than oxygen or phoron in the case of a reactor breach.

Helium

Helium is fairly good for an inert gas. It has a specific heat of 80 J/mol*K, so not quite as good as hydrogen, but almost. It's mildly rare aboard, but not so much as phoron. Its biggest issue is that you cannot filter it like other gases (that is, it lacks an option in the omni-filters).

Phoron

Gaseous phoron is hard to come by, but has double the heat capacity (200 J/mol*K) of hydrogen, allowing it to operate at the lowest temperatures for isobaric equivalent power for any common gas. Phoron will also react violently with oxygen at high temperatures in a similar manner to hydrogen, producing carbon dioxide.

Oxygen

Using oxygen (specific heat 20 J/mol*K) as coolant for the primary loop results in bad engine output while slowly pushing the EER towards 400 MeV/cm^3 (if above a certain percentage concentration). It can be helpful if you want to run a setup without an emitter.

Nitrous Oxide

Nitrous oxide (N2O) has a specific heat of 40 J/mol*K. Being an oxidizer, it lacks the advantages of the inert types, though it also lacks the drawbacks of the volatile types. It doesn't share oxygen's special EER increase mechanic.

Note that running the Supermatter with phoron, oxygen or carbon dioxide in the primary loop will result in a pressure buildup that may require monitoring, as it will not be scrubbed. It is unlikely to be an issue unless you are operating at high EER for a sustained period.

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