Участник:TSB5/Guide to the HFR

UNDER CONSTRUCTION. EXPECT ERRORS AND OMISSIONS. FOLLOW AT YOUR OWN RISK!

The Hypertorus Fusion Reactor (HFR) is a complex long-round project, added to Atmospherics in Fusion's seventh major revision.

Words of Warning

Maintaining the HFR is hard. Maintaining the HFR is really hard. Maintaining the HFR makes managing the Supermatter Engine look like a breeze. Expect to spend half an hour just on building supporting infrastructure, then up to 15-20 minutes on running it, depending on what your goals are.

Getting the HFR operational requires knowledge of how to create uncommon gases. This typically means setting up the Incinerator to produce Hydrogen and Tritium.

Going all the way to Metal Hydrogen requires knowledge of the rarer atmospherics interactions, as well as memorizing many effects unique to the HFR.

Oh God Shit's Fucked What Do Halp

• Is integrity over ~56%? Is there someone that knows what they're doing around? Do you see Healium around, either in the moderator mix interface or in a nearby canister? If at least two out of three of those were true, leave them to it, unless they're asking for help.
• Is power offline?
  • Run for the APC with an Inducer to charge it fast.
  • Once power is back, run for the interface and fix the settings. Power disappearing forces the settings to bad values, and your old values don't come back when power does. Iron content goes up by ten percentage points PER SECOND while power is offline, every second counts. Continue down the list, everything will be very badly screwed even if you manage to restore power.
  • If this wasn't a passing problem that the Inducer could fix (Beg the AI to help with whichever of these they can):
    • Maximize SMES output.
    • Turn on the Incinerator if available (the AI can do this immediately on Delta). It was usually set up for trit/H2 production earlier, can make a modest amount of energy by default, and can more energy than the SM if fully upgraded.
    • If things still aren't fixed, proceed to If all else fails
• Maximize the current dampener. This almost always changes the reaction from exothermic (heating things up) to exothermic (cooling things down).
• Check: Does Heat Output's value start with a minus sign? If not:
  • Immediately minimize the heating conductor.
  • Minimize the fuel injection rate.
  • Try changing magnetic constrictor values to see if you can find values that do make heat output negative. Minimizing is a good start. Give up after five attempts. If you can't make heat output negative, proceed to Strategy: Slowdown
• Strategy: Starvation. Good if heat output is negative, very good if the fusion mix is very small.
  • Maximize the heating conductor.
  • Maximize the fuel injection rate (make sure that no fresh fuel is being piped in).
  • Add more gas to the moderator mix. Room temperature is about as good as frozen when compared with meltdown temperatures, and coolant cooling goes through the moderator mix anyway.
  • If the fusion mix is very unbalanced, AND one of Hydrogen or Tritium is below 25 moles, CAREFULLY add whichever of the fuel components was missing at a VERY LOW RATE to help process what's left, and ultimately further reduce the fuel mix volume.
  • Double check the coolant system. Add more Freezers to the coolant network until the system either stabilizes or melts down.
  • Rationale: Fusion is almost always the hottest mix, and a smaller volume is easier to cool than a larger volume. The HFR restores integrity the more that the fusion mix drops below 800 moles. Many bad effects stop happening if there isn't enough fuel to run the fusion reaction.
• Strategy: Slowdown
  • Minimize the heating conductor.
  • Minimize the fuel injection rate (make sure that no fresh fuel is being piped in).
  • Add more gas to the moderator mix. Room temperature is about as good as frozen when compared with meltdown temperatures, and coolant cooling goes through the moderator mix anyway.
  • Double check the coolant system. Add more Freezers to the coolant network until the system either stabilizes or melts down.
  • Rationale: If you can't make the reaction endothermic, the most you can do is minimize the rate of change and hope your coolant does the job.
• If all else fails:
  • Call the shuttle.
  • Consider bombing the HFR before it gets any worse (decide whether or not you want to be in the room at the time to avoid lynching to restore your honor).

So how does this all work, anyway?

The HFR consists of three special gas mixes, plus a simple output port:

• The Fusion Mix
• The Moderator Mix
• Coolant

Temperature is exchanged slowly between the Fusion Mix and the Moderator Mix, and rapidly between the Moderator Mix and Coolant. Gases added to or removed from Fusion, Moderator, or Coolant retain whichever quantities and temperatures they had previously.

The entire volume of the Fusion Mix is heated by the capped heat output, so a smaller Fusion Mix will heat the Moderator Mix more slowly than a large Fusion Mix for the same level of production, and ultimately require less cooling.

Besides choosing which gases to add to the HFR, there are a few tunable parameters:

• Heat conductor. Sets the maximum internal rate of change in the Fusion Mix's temperature, in either direction (though the Endothermic cap is one tenth the size). Along with the Fuel injection rate, one of the two values that will see the most tuning:
  • Maximize when attempting to increase fusion power levels.
  • Minimize if you need to leave the HFR unattended for a minute.
  • Set to the highest rate your cooling setup can stably handle when attempting to maximize production.
  • Maximize when attempting to reduce fusion power levels, if you successfully flipped the reaction to be Endothermic (cooling).
  • Minimize when attempting to reduce fusion power levels, if you could not flip the reaction to be Endothermic.
• Magnetic constrictor. Should almost always be minimized, at 50. If your mix has an extremely large volume, constricting it to the smallest space can destabilize the reaction, flipping it to become endothermic. When this isn't a concern, higher values reduce the magnitude of the reaction and the scale of gas effects, which can be situationally useful if you need to leave the HFR unattended for a minute. The Heat conductor is generally a more effective means of control. Maximize when attempting to reduce power levels, if you could not flip the reaction to be Endothermic.
• Fuel injection rate. This serves two purposes: It sets the rate at which gas is pulled from the fuel port into the Fusion Mix, and it also sets the scale at which gas is consumed - one of two key factors for how much gas is produced. There is no way to separate these two purposes. The HFR will always try to pull more gas in than it consumes, so be sure to have a gas pump or gas mixer keep fuel input at low pressures in order to avoid overfeeding. Along with the Heat conductor, this is the value that will see the most tuning:
  • When initially fueling the HFR, this should have a high value, to bring the Fusion Mix up to a functional volume quickly. 250 to 500 is fine. You could also have this maxed out if you want to exclusively manage the external fuel input rate with a gas pump or gas mixer, although this risks consuming gas at a far higher rate than necessary.
  • During stable production, this should have a value paired with the heat conductor value to optimize the production rate while avoiding gas waste. See the table in "Key Parameters" below for details.
  • When trying to process output gas, this should be set to the minimum value, at 5, while Waste Remove is also set to Off. This mostly minimizes (hot) gases being added to the output port, without wasting fuel, giving any freezers or space cooling time to cool existing output that was already removed. The reaction can be flipped Endothermic to completely stop output gases from being added, but this will burn fuel for no production, and setting the FIR to 5 is almost always sufficient.
  • While trying to return to a safe temperature, without attempting to starve the Fusion Mix, this should be set to the minimum value, at 5. Gas is not produced while the reaction is Endothermic, so there shouldn't be a need to burn more fuel than necessary.
  • While trying to return to a safe temperature, with attempting to starve the Fusion Mix, this should be set to the maximum value, at 1500, in order to burn away the Fusion Mix as quickly as possible. Note that this can also burn through any reserve of Healium extremely quickly!
• Moderator injection rate. Sets the rate at which gas is pulled from the moderator port into the Moderator Mix. If the moderator port is directly linked to a connector, and supplied with canisters, it's generally safe to leave this maxed out at 1500. Leaving it maxed out also means one less setting to change when you want to rapidly add room-temperature gas to the Moderator Mix to cool it down, and every second often counts.
• Current dampener. Increases the instability of the reaction. A sufficiently unstable reaction will flip the reaction from being Exothermic (heating) to Endothermic (cooling), albeit with a negative heat change cap one tenth of the magnitude of the positive heat change cap. A mix increasing at 5x10^6K will decrease at 5x10^5K instead! This works even at unsafe fusion power levels, and is the main way of correcting reactions that would be about to get out of hand. Given that this flip is all-or-nothing, this should be set to 0W (nothing) or 1000W (maximum) at all times.
• Waste removal. If enabled, 50% of the Fusion Mix's Helium per second, 5% of the Fusion Mix's Anti-Noblium per second, and any user-provided Moderator filter gas are moved from their mix to the output.
• Moderator filter. If Waste removal is enabled, this removes up to 20 moles per second of a gas of your choice from the moderator mix, placing it into output.

Gas effects

Gas	Location	Energy modifier	Power modifier	Heat modifier	Radiation modifier	Fusion power
Hydrogen	Fusion Mix	1	0	1.15	0	2
Tritium	Fusion Mix	1	1.05	0	0	5
Helium	Fusion Mix	-1	-0.55	1.05	0.55	7
Nitrogen	Moderator Mix	0.35	0	-0.75	-0.45	0
CO2	Moderator Mix	0.55	0.95	0	0	0
N2O	Moderator Mix	0.95	-0.05	-1.45	0	10
Zauker	Moderator Mix	1.55	5.55	0	0	0
Anti-Noblium	Moderator Mix	20	0	0	10	20
Hyper-noblium	Moderator Mix	-10	0	0	0	10
H2O	Moderator Mix	-0.75	0	0	0	8
NO2	Moderator Mix	-0.15	1.45	0	0	0
Healium	Moderator Mix	-0.45	0	0	0	0
Freon	Moderator Mix	-1.15	-0.75	-0.95	-1.15	-5
O2	Moderator Mix	0	0.55	0	0	0
Plasma	Moderator Mix	0	0.05	1.25	-0.95	0
BZ	Moderator Mix	0	0	0	1.9	8
Proto-Nitrate	Moderator Mix	0	0	0	0.1	0
Stimulum	Moderator Mix	0	0	0	0	7
Pluoxium	Moderator Mix	0	0	0	0	-10

Key parameters

Effects within Fusion reference either Fuel Consumed (F) or the Scaled rate of Production (P).

The effects we want to maximize reference P, so we try to maximize P, then set F so no excess fuel is wasted.

F = fuel injection rate / 1000 * 5 * power_level

P is clamped between 0 and F, based on heat output. Heat output tends to be either non positive or the maximum, limited by the Heating Constrictor. Once we've found a stable Heating Constrictor value for the current mix and cooling infrastructure, we can work out the ideal fuel injection rate which sets P=F, so that no excess fuel is burned.

	Fusion Level 1	Fusion Level 2	Fusion Level 3	Fusion Level 4	Fusion Level 5	Fusion Level 6
Temperature scale:	heat / 100	heat / 1000	heat / 50000		heat / 1000000	heat / 10000000
Max P:	5	5	1	10	5	30
FIR for F=P given max P:	1000	500	67	500	200	1000
Min P:	.5	.5	.1	1	.5	.5
FIR for F=P given min P:	100	50	1.34 (min 5, so always burned)	10	20	17

The Fusion mix

Optimal power is the fusion mix consists of 50% tritium and 50% hydrogen. Tritium is consumed at 0.85F, Hydrogen is consumed at 0.95F. 0.5F Helium gets produced. Counterintuitively, Anti-Noblium doesn't do anything in the fusion mix except take up space and be extremely slow to remove.

The Moderator mix

The fusion mix is always Tritium, Hydrogen, and padding. The output gases have departed, and no longer have any effect on the HFR. The moderator mix is where the most interesting effects happen.

Effects tend to reference F or P. So a gas X that gets consumes at 1.1 times the current rate of production, to produce a gas Y directly in the output port at 0.5 times the current rate of production, gets written as "Consumed x1.1P. Adds Y to Output."

Gas	Description	Fusion Level 1	Fusion Level 2	Fusion Level 3	Fusion Level 4	Fusion Level 5	Fusion Level 6
Inherent	Regardless of the contents of the moderator mix, Fusion Levels have effects of their own.	Adds CO2 x0.95P to Moderator. Adds H2O x0.75P to Moderator.	Adds CO2 x1.65P to Moderator. Adds H2O x1P to Moderator.	Adds O2 x0.5P to Moderator. Adds N2 x0.45P to Moderator.	Adds CO2 x1.65P to Moderator. Adds H2O x1.25P to Moderator.	Adds NO2 x1.65P to Moderator. Adds H2O x1P to Moderator.	Adds Anti-Noblium x0.0095F to Fusion.
Plasma	The first production moderator gas. Your bread and butter. Plasma adds a decent heat modifier to help the early fusion process, and has a high heat capacity that helps to slow change to moderator heat (and indirectly, fusion heat) in any direction, giving you much more time to react to anything that happens. Every gas with an interesting Moderator effect can eventually be produced from Plasma.	With at least 100 moles: Consumed x0.85P. Adds N2O x0.5P to Moderator.	With at least 50 moles: Consumed x1.75P. Adds BZ x1.8P to Output. Adds N2O x1.15P to Moderator.	With at least 10 moles: Consumed x0.45P. Adds BZ x1.1P to Moderator. Adds Freon x0.15P to Output. Adds Stimulus x1.05P to Output.		With at least 15 moles: Consumed x1.45P. Adds BZ x1.35P to Output. Adds Freon x0.25P to Output.	With at least 30 moles: Consumed x1.45P. Adds BZ x1.15P to Moderator.
BZ	The second production moderator gas after Plasma. Your stepping stone to Proto-Nitrate. Produces the Healium necessary to run dangerous Fusion Levels for extended periods of time, for those wanting to risk it. While Fusion Level 1 will burn through BZ rapidly with little gain, Fusion Levels 3 and above treat BZ as a catalyst, only consuming BZ at the base rate common to all gases present in the moderator mix. Massively increases radiation output. Your ability to handle Hydrogen without radiation turning it into Tritium will be very limited after this. Causes hallucinations to anyone not wearing mesons at Fusion Levels 3 and above. At Fusion Level 6, Mesons will no longer protect you from hallucinations.	With at least 150 moles: Consumed x0.95P. Adds Healium x0.75P to Output. Adds Halon x0.55P to Output. Adds Proto-Nitrate x0.25P to Output.	No effect	With at least 100 moles: Adds Proto-Nitrate x1.5P to Output. Adds Healium x1.5P to Output.		With at least 100 moles: Adds Healium x1P to Output. Adds Proto-Nitrate x1.25P to Moderator. Adds Freon x1.15P to Moderator.	If present: Adds Anti-Noblium x0.0045F to Fusion.
Proto-Nitrate	The final production Moderator gas. Produces the rarest gases. Massively increases radiation and heat, without increasing the rate of production. This means that when an active level of Proto-Nitrate is present, you will need to provide more cooling for the same level of production. Since you cannot remove moderator gases at Fusion Level 6, Proto-Nitrate's direct Output production is the only way to extract Fusion Level 6 heat. Being able to transfer Fusion Level 6 heat is necessary for Metal Hydrogen production.	No effect	With at least 20 moles: Consumed x1.35P. Increases Radiation by 55%. Increases Heat output by 2.5%, without increasing the rate of production. Adds Stimulum x1.05P to Output. Adds Plasma x1.65P to Moderator.	With at least 15 moles: Consumed x1.55P. Increases Radiation by 95%. Increases Heat output by 25%, without increasing the rate of production. Adds Stimulum x1.25P to Output. Adds Halon x1.15P to Output.		With at least 50 moles: Consumed x1.35P. Increases Radiation by 95%. Increases Heat output by 25%, without increasing the rate of production. Adds Stimulum x1.95P to Output. Adds Pluoxium x1P to Output.	If present: Consumed x3.35P. Increases Radiation by 100%. Increases Heat output by 125%, without increasing the rate of production. Adds Stimulum x2.15P to Output. Adds Zauker x5.35P to Output.
N2O	The first gas not on the main production pathway which (technically) has a special moderator effect, and the only one that is not descended from Plasma. Increases energy, but also massively decreases the heat modifier. Not very useful.	No effect	With at least 50 moles: Consumed x1.5P. Decreases Radiation by 45%. Increases Heat output by 5.5%, without increasing the rate of production. Adds Halon x1.35P to Moderator.	No effect
Freon	A safety moderator gas which quickly reduces fusion energy, and reduces the amount of cooling necessary. At high Fusion levels, decreases heat and radiation output, without (directly) decreasing the rate of production. Comes with very strong negative energy, power, heat, and radiation modifiers, so if you're planning to use this to reduce the amount of cooling required, you'll need to factor in the need for a larger moderator mix to maintain positive energy. At Fusion Level 5, has a very high threshold to activate, but has a very strong effect. Note that this almost completely removes radiation output when active, so any local Radiation Collectors will quickly drop output as well. The HFR losing power is always a catastrophic outcome unless completely inactive. This means being switched off with the first button in its interface, not just resting at Fusion Level 0! Might be useful as an emergency moderator addition when you're losing control of a reactor. Probably more useful when combined with BZ to make more Healium.	No effect		With at least 50 moles: Decreases Radiation by 20%. Decreases Heat output by 10%, without decreasing the rate of production.		With at least 500 moles: Decreases Radiation by 80%. Decreases Heat output by 50%, without decreasing the rate of production.	No effect
Healium	Directly restores integrity of a heavily damaged HFR that is operating at dangerous Fusion Levels. This is the magical red gas that will allow the daring to run the HFR at dangerous power levels for an extended period of time. However, the mechanics and their implications are quite complicated. See discussion below.	No effect				With at least 100 moles, when the HFR has taken over 400 damage (below ~56% integrity): Consumed x20P. Restores 0.11% integrity per hundred moles.

Goals

Important gases for fusion:

• Hydrogen
• Tritium
• Proto-Nitrate
• Healium

Gases to filter and process internally:

• H2O (for Hydrogen)
• Freon (for Healium; can be used in moderator if you want)

Gases to at least collect to make sure other things don't clog up:

• Pluoxium (useful directly, can also be sold for a decent price)
• Helium (can be sold for a decent price)

Gases to optionally collect to use or sell:

• Stimulum
• Nitryl (may be worth collecting to avoid decomposition)

Gases optionally collect to sell:

• Halon (if you care about fire, you're going to be using the backpack anyway)
• Antinoblium (doesn't do anything outside of fusion, but makes cashmoney at cargo)
• Zauker (currently doesn't explode with PN, so oddly safe. Bug? Intentional removal? Makes lots of cashmoney at cargo)

Setups

NB: Hydrogen won't stay as Hydrogen around radiation even when stored in a canister, now. Fuel always needs to be mixed and piped in advance now, update your designs accordingly.

The "I have four minutes before the already unrecallable shuttle arrives"

Output gases are generally favorable with desirable effects in the moderator, and can be filtered out of the moderator mix if not, provided the Fusion Level is less than 6. So the simplest HFR setup just hardpipes output gases back into the moderator port, tries to stay within safe parameters at Fusion Level 3, and sprints for the shuttle when you screw up and hit Fusion Level 6. This is extremely simple to set up, and lets one get a feel for HFR operation without risking much.

The Cargonian

Tier 3 canisters functionally tolerate any degree of pressure and temperature, even beyond what Fusion Level 6 can throw at you. So the next simplest setup involves moving sets of tier 3 canisters around, repeatedly whacking them with an analyzer or your PDA, and throwing down ad-hoc filters to extract what is useful and discard what is not.

Safety

Power

Losing power is extremely bad. The settings are forcibly set to values that are not helpful for a meltdown:

magnetic constrictor to 100
heating conductor to 500
current dampener to 0
fuel injection rate to 200
moderator injection rate to 500
no waste removal

Your previous settings are not restored when power is restored!

Additionally, iron content increases by 10 percentage points every second that the HFR goes without power (!).

Healing

Various damage and healing effects, with examples for a sense of scale:

If the power level is 5 or more:

Takes damage equal to ((((fusion_mix_moles) * 1e5 + fusion_temp) / 1e5) - 2500) / 200 per atmos tick
  Temperature of 1e8: Take 0.5 points of damage per 100 moles over 1500 moles per atmos tick
  Temperature of 5e7: Take 0.5 points of damage per 100 moles over 2000 moles per atmos tick -- point at which metal hydrogen's efficiency maxes out
  Temperature of 2e7: Take 0.5 points of damage per 100 moles over 2300 moles per atmos tick
  Temperature of 1e7: Take 0.5 points of damage per 100 moles over 2400 moles per atmos tick
  Temperature of 2e6: Take 0.5 points of damage per 100 moles over 2480 moles per atmos tick
  Temperature of 1e6: Take 0.5 points of damage per 100 moles over 2490 moles per atmos tick
Takes damage equal to log(10, fusion_temp) - 5
  2.7 damage per atmos tick at 5e7
  2 damage per atmos tick at 1e7
  1 damage per atmos tick at 1e6

If the amount of moles in the fusion mix is less than 1200, or the power level is 4 or less:

Heals (800 - fusion moles) / 150 each atmos tick
 Heals  .6 damage per atmos tick when total fusion moles are 700
 Heals 2   damage per atmos tick when total fusion moles are 500
 Heals 2.7 damage per atmos tick when total fusion moles are 394
 Heals 4.5 damage per atmos tick when total fusion moles are 125

If fusion is active, the fusion temperature is below 5e5, and the power level is 4 or less:

Heals log(10, temperature) - 5.5 each atmos tick
 Heals  .5 damage per atmos tick when fusion temperature is  1e5
 Heals 1.5 damage per atmos tick when fusion temperature is  1e4
 Heals 2.5 damage per atmos tick when fusion temperature is 1000
 Heals 3.5 damage per atmos tick when fusion temperature is  100
 Heals 4   damage per atmos tick when fusion temperature is   30

Takes damage equal to ((iron content rounded to nearest 100%) - 1) every atmos tick

The final sum from all of the above effects is capped to losing at most 0.5% integrity (taking 4.5 points of damage) every atmos tick.

In short: run with a starved fusion mix to avoid damage and start healing, and work on reducing temperature if you can.