Guide to the Supermatter

Кристалл Суперматерии является основным источником энергии на большинстве станций. Осколок такого кристалла может быть заказан из отдела карго, он будет работать как обычный кристалл, но его можно двигать и он использует меньше газа в тик. Его основная функция - излучать радиацию, заставляя каждого кто теоретически мог на него посмотреть, испытывать галлюцинации, выпуская горячий кислород и плазму, и ВЗРЫВАТЬСЯ если вы что-то сделали не так. В начале смены, вам это не грозит, однако кристалл активируется, если в него выстрелит любой лазер, либо его коснется любая сущность, заставляя вырабатывать достаточно много радиации, которую станция конвертирует в энергию, используя сборщики радиации.

НЕ УМИРАЙТЕ об Суперматерию в начале раунда, активируя кристалл до настройки охлаждения нормальным инженером. Вас забанят.

Техника безопасности сука

1. СМ опасна для жизни. Активация СМ это последний шаг в её настройке. Если вы заказали кристалл из карго, вы НЕ ДОЛЖНЫ открывать контейнер пока для него не будет созданы подходящие условия.
2. Используй СИБЗ. Пока СМ не активирована, можно ничего не надевать, но если вы решили что-то делать ПОСЛЕ, вы действительно захотите надеть мезонные очки И полный комплект костюма от радиации. Правда.
3. Большая часть "настройки СМ" предполагает прокладывание круга труб, охлаждающих камеру Суперматерии. Это не столь важно, однако, мы рекомендуем вам иметь представление о том, как работают газы, трубы и иже с ним.
4. Всё что касается СМ аннигилируется до основания. НЕ ТРОГАТЬ КРИСТАЛЛ.
5. Из всей одежды, доступной на первых минутах смены, только костюмы от радиации и риг Главного инженера имеют полную защиту от радиации. Инженерный риг имеет 75% защиты, риг Атмостеха имеет 25% защиты. Риги Директора ОИР и Главврача имеют защиту в 60%. Даже небольшое количество радиации может иметь свои последствия. Так что, если вы работаете с Суперматерией, одевайтесь по погоде.

Принцип работы

Кристалл суперматерии очень нестабилен, вот как он себя ведет:

Мощность

Мощность кристалла определяется количеством выделяемой энергии в тик, и радиусом и количеством радиации, которую он излучает. Наш билд настроен таким образом, что один тик происходит каждые 0.5 секунды, что заставляет атмос быть немного быстрее. Имейте это ввиду.

• Мощность кристалла уменьшается со временем.
• Уменьшение мощности можно избежать, при помощи углекислого газа (CO2).
• Попадая по кристаллу любым лазером (обычно излучателем) увеличит его мощность.
• Мощность увеличивается каждый тик, в зависимости от смеси газов и его температуры.
• "Формула смешивания газов" следующая: O₂+Плазма+Trit+BZ+H₂O+H₂+CH₃Br+CO₂-N₂-Плюоксий. Считайте каждый газ за определенный процент. Из этой формулы следует, что если в вашей смеси больше 50% Азота(N2), суперматерия не будет генерировать новую мощность.
• Поглощение кристаллом объекта или моба существенно увеличит выработку энергии, в зависимости от размеров поглощенного объекта.
• Слишком высокая мощность кристалла приводит к появлению аномалий или вспышек молний.

Нестабильность

Вы ОЧЕНЬ хотите держать кристалл стабильным, дабы тот не рванул.

• Сама по себе стабильность никак не изменится.
• Кристалл становится менее стабильным, если смесь газов горячее 313К и наоборот, стабилизируется если смесь холоднее 313К.
• Падение стабильности можно полностью предотвратить, или уменьшить используя оксид азота и плюоксий.
• Высокая мощность дестабилизирует кристалл.
• Большое количество молей не только дестабилизирует кристалл, но и сведёт на нет стабилизацию используя вышеупомянутые газы.

Кристалл и газы

Напоминаем, кристалл высвобождает плазму и кислород, с момента активации.

• Плазма и кислород начнут термо-реакцию только если температура поднимется до 383.15К. Это очень быстро поднимет температуру в камере, как и содержание кислорода. Если вы не сможете контролировать это, реакция приведет к дестабилизации кристалла.
• Количество и температура газа определяется текущей мощностью кристалла.
• Количество кислорода также пропорционально температуре поглощенных газов. Слишком холодный газ приведет к низкому содержанию кислорода.

Взаимодействие с газами

У каждого газа есть свой эффект на кристалл суперматерии. И сила этого эффекта зависит от процента этого газа в смеси.

Гипер-Ноблий

Безопасность: Сверх-безопасно

Гипер-ноблий не имеет особых реакций с СМ. Однако то, что делает его самым безопасным газом, - это его свойства. Во-первых, он обладает наивысшей теплоемкостью среди всех газов - 2000, в сравнении с 200 для плазмы и 20 для азота; это означает, что всего 40 молей гипер-ноблия уже имеют больше охлаждающей способности, чем две канистры азота, с которых вы начали. Во-вторых, наличие как минимум 5 молей гипер-ноблия в газовой смеси предотвращает все реакции в этой смеси. Это означает, что как только у вас есть достаточное количество гипер-ноблия, ваша суперматерия не может загореться ни при каких условиях. Проблема, конечно, заключается в его создании.

Таким образом, гипер-ноблий можно использовать в любой настройке, и, если он у вас есть, вероятно, стоит это сделать. Настройка с 95% трития и 5% гипер-ноблия абсолютно безопасна; Да и по факту, настройка с 32% кислорода, 64% трития и 4% гипер-ноблия, несмотря на то, что этот газ является идеальной воспламеняющейся смесью, полностью безопасна.

Плюоксий

Безопасность: Очень безопасно, но останавливает генерацию мощности.

Плюоксий уменьшает выработку энергии вдвое и увеличивает тепловое сопротивление. Это самый мощный защитный газ, но он снижает выход мощности, который вам, вероятно, необходим. Удаление его из системы не обязательно плохо, но сохранение его в системе на длительный срок раунда без антагонистов, весьма хорошая идея.

N₂

Безопасность: Очень безопасно

Азот это базовый, безопасный газ. Он хорошо охлаждает Суперматерию и уменьшает количество выделяемых газов.
Неплохо иметь заранее охлажденный азот для экстренной ситуации.

N₂O

Безопасность: безопасно

N2O усиливает тепловое сопротивление кристалла суперматерии, позволяя устанавливать более высокие температуры, чем обычно. Этот газ может действовать как окислитель при более высоких температурах, поэтому, если суперматерия перегревается, он будет поддерживать огонь так же, как кислород. Однако его сгорание приводит к образованию большего количества азота по сравнению с другими продуктами горения, поэтому это может быть даже хорошо. Если вы используете его, используйте в больших количествах. Неплохо было бы провести дополнительные трубы для охлаждения, если вы используете именно этот газ.

CO₂

Безопасность: как пойдет

CO2 одновременно является очень безопасным и очень рискованным газом. В небольших концентрациях он в основном поглощает кислород, уменьшая пожары и создавая очень безопасный плюоксий, что делает его невероятно мощным в качестве защитного газа.
Однако в высоких концентрациях он будет повышать энергию кристалла до чрезвычайно высоких уровней, предотвращая потерю мощности. При правильном управлении и подготовке это отличный способ генерировать энергию. При плохом управлении и недостаточной или совершенно плохой подготовке он в конечном итоге превысит безопасные уровни энергии и начнет распад кристалла, создавая электрические вспышки и аномалии, пока в конечном итоге не взорвется в виде шара Тесла. Это также может произойти, если произойдет ивентовый скачок суперматерии. Если вы используете установку с CO2, устанавливайте заземляющие стержни, иначе ваша суперматерия, скорее всего, взорвется!

Methane

Safety: Dangerous

Methane increases the heat resistance of the supermatter half as much as N₂O, and prevents the supermatter losing power just like CO₂ does. However, unlike CO₂, methane does not contribute to the gasmix power, and thus emitters or similar must be used with it. On top of that, methane burns, and it burns quite hot. Be careful with this! If you can find it, of course.

Methyl Bromide

Safety: Depends Methyl bromide lowers the supermatter's heat output while adding to the gasmix power. This makes it quite safe to run an emitterless setup with; however, at high temperatures, it burns, and it's a pretty hot burn. You don't have to be too careful with it, though; it's no oxygen, and certainly no tritium.

O₂

Safety: Dangerous

Oxygen increases power, waste gas amount and temperature.
Due to trit fire nerfs, this isn't nearly as dangerous as it used to be. You can run an oxygen setup; the problem is that oxygen is just not as good as plasma for power, and oxygen and plasma setups require identical setup. It's a waste gas, pure and simple. You can run an oxygen setup and it will generate enough power, but it's pure bragging rights. If you're badass enough to run an O2 setup: Always precool it before flooding the Supermatter chamber.

BZ

Safety: Bad for you, depends for the supermatter

BZ increases the heat produced by the supermatter, increases the radiation produced and adds to the gasmix power ratio, but reduces the actual power of it, overall leading to a net loss in radiation. Due to the power reduction, can be considered something of a safety gas in very niche circumstances. At 40% of the mix, the Supermatter will start to fire irradiating nuclear particles. Don't get hit by these, regardless of your clothing.

Plasma

Safety: Dangerous

Plasma is somewhat similar to Oxygen but provides a much higher power boost as well as waste and heat penalty. The extreme pressures and volumes of gas produced by this gas are very likely to clog pipes, unless you use passive vents or siphoning vents. Plasma has the second largest heat capacity of any gas, and by a wide margin, meaning that having enough of it can make the supermatter extremely stable. As such, with the right setup, it's often the safest gas for 100% gasmix power setups.
However, note that the roundstart setup cannot handle pure plasma setups. You will inevitably have a singularity delamination or worse. Figure it out!

Tritium

Safety: OH GOD OH F*CK

Tritium increases the radiation production of the Supermatter by up to 3 times, without BZ's downside of lowering energy production. There is one slight issue with it.

Tritium is dangerous. Tritium is very dangerous. Tritium makes Plasma seem safe. Even with extremely robust cooling systems, Tritium is a horrifyingly irritable and jumpy gas. While it isn't as harmful to the heat level as Plasma is (just barely), it also has the second worst heat capacity of all gasses while Plasma has the second highest. This means that Plasma can be kept happy with enough cooling, whereas Tritium eagerly goes from a safe space loop into a burning hellfire. Add to this the byproduct of large amounts of Oxygen production due to high temperatures, and you have a tritium fire and a very hot crystal. Do not use this gas unless you have a very strong understanding of atmospherics and the Supermatter, and are willing to get creative.

Due to nerfs to tritium heat production, this is a far safer gas than it used to be. Now, instead of being nigh impossible, it is merely very difficult. Ironically, the most reliable way to get a working tritium supermatter is to use way, way more tritium than might seem reasonable, just to make sure that it can't heat up too easily.

Hydrogen

Safety: Dangerous Hydrogen is largely identical to tritium, for supermatter purposes. It only causes 30% as much heat increase, however, and doesn't generate radiation when burning. It's not easy to come by, requiring some cooperation with chemistry, so this is largely irrelevant. A hydrogen setup might make a good meme, though.

Water vapor

Safety: Dangerous Water vapor causes the supermatter to run hot, almost as hot as tritium makes it run. It also adds to the powermix ratio. In general, you mostly just don't want it and should scrub it out like oxygen. It also dissipates on its own in cold conditions, which your supermatter really, really should be, and freezes in real cold conditions, which, again, it should be, and these freezes can cause inconvenience if one attempts to service the supermatter. Avoid it if possible.

Irradiation

The crystal will affect nearby mobs while it's active.

• The range and power are determined by the current power. Being further away from the crystal also mitigates the effect.
• The crystal will cause hallucinations to nearby mobs if they're not wearing meson scanners or equivalents. Being further away also reduces this.
• The crystal will irradiate nearby mobs. A radsuit or other protective clothing can negate this effect. This is a direct effect, non-clothing shielding will not help!

Consuming

Anything that touches the crystal will be consumed and turned into dust. No exceptions. The only way to "safely" transport a shard is to pull it, being careful to not be pushed back into it by someone else.

Collapsing

If the crystal reaches 100% instability, it will delaminate. There are several different events that may happen when the crystal delaminates and they all depend on the state of the crystal during delamination.

• A crystal in a gas environment with large amounts of moles (>1800 moles) will always collapse into a singularity.
• A crystal that is overcharged above 5000 MeV will delaminate into a tesla ball (this is only really possible with high concentrations of CO2).
• A crystal that is neither immersed in high molage or overcharged will simply explode, with power determined by the gasmix power ratio. At 0, it's about half of a maxcap, with only 1/4 the spacing range; at 1, it's even bigger than a maxcap.

A consequence of this is that if the supermatter is about to explode, a last-second nitrogen dump can prevent damage, but don't make it too much or you'll get a singularity.

Cooling

The direct turf (location/tile) of the supermatter is what dictates its behaviour, and thus an integral part of any supermatter engine is sufficient cooling of the crystal's immediate environment. The cooling system used by the standard supermatter engine is a dynamic system; meaning that the gases around the supermatter flow to other parts of the engine in order to get cooled. This is why a single pipe being broken might cause catastrophic consequences. On our standard supermatter setup, there are two main factors of cooling: heat exchanger pipes (we will refer to this as heat exchanger under this subsection) and freezers. Note that both of these apparatus perform cooling only on the gas in it's immediate "container". A single freezer or heat exchanger pipe will be less effective on a larger pipe network than a smaller one due to it getting a smaller share of the gas that it is able to cool. Keep this in mind when doing expansion to the setup.

Heat Exchangers and Freezers

You might think that heat exchangers work on the basis of heat radiation, but this is not true. Heat exchangers actually work on the basis of conduction, that is between the heat exchanger and the turf it is in. For our supermatter heat exchangers, the heat sharing will be performed with an immutable (unchanging) space turf (with the temperature of 2.7 Kelvins and heat capacity of 7000 J/K.) or snow turf (with the temperature of 180 Kelvins and heat capacity that varies slightly). There are some limitations however, stopping the conduction process when the temperature difference is lower than 20 Kelvins-difference/degrees Celcius.

Freezers just reduce the temperature directly, using up power in the process. One may think that lower tier freezers aren't worth it, since they don't cool as well as space; this is not the case: adding a freezer to the supermatter will always help it recover from disasters, because the lowest unstable temperature for the supermatter is greater than the highest temperature a freezer can get Don't be afraid to add freezers even when upgrades aren't in!

Static Cooling

Our dynamic cooling system is contrasted with a static cooling system, where the gases around the crystal doesn't flow and simply get cooled passively. It is possible and even advisable to combine both dynamic and static cooling when running the crystal under heavier load, and this is commonly accomplished with cooled heat exchanger pipes directly interfacing with the crystal's turf. This however, require some significant time investment. On smaller scale supermatter projects, a static cooling system alone might be able to keep the supermatter safe and sound. Be sure to experiment!

A Practical Guide to The Supermatter

So you wanted to skim the theory and jump right into the action? We got you covered. This is a step by step walkthrough to set your local supermatter crystal up. Beware however, there are many improvements that could be made!

Step one: Safety and Preliminary Preparations

1. Put on an optical meson scanner (Engineering scanner goggles work too, if changed to meson mode) and a radiation suit in case someone prematurely activates the supermatter crystal.

   Why: Meson Scanners protect from hallucinations, while the suit protect from radiation. Once the engine starts, it will start emitting both.

2. Insert your ID into your tablet and download the NT CIMS program if you haven't already. The NT CIMS provides critical information on the state of the crystal and all good engineers should have it installed and running.

Box Station SM

Step two: Prepare the gas loop

1. Your first step should be wrenching the N2 canisters in place (seen in the top right in the image; it's in the top left on Meta, bottom left on Pubby, and you have to grab them from atmos on Delta). Afterwards, turn the pumps on and maximize them. (Hotkeys: ctrl-click to turn on, alt-click to maximize)

   Why: When the crystal is generating power it produces plasma and oxygen and heats up the air surrounding it immensely, thus it needs to be properly ventilated. We start by making the gas loop push N2 around the loop, cooling it with the coldness of space before re-entering the engine room again.

2. Color code: Red. Set up red-colored pumps. This can be done a few ways. Often maximizing them is sufficient, but supermatter surges can cause the supermatter to catch fire in that case. You may want to replace them with volume pumps; or even better, just straight pipes.

   Why: A larger quantity of cooled gas inside the Supermatter will snuff out waste gas and heat better than one that isn't properly filled. Gases don't actually move through pipesl the entire pipe is one big gas mixture, and gases are thus in the entire pipe at once all the time. Therefore, pumps are only useful as one-way gates (which you don't need) and bottlenecks (which you don't want). When in doubt, replace the red-circled pumps with straight pipes.

3. Color code: Cyan. Turn the filter on, maximize it, and set it to filter nothing, or, optionally, replace it with a manifold or straight pipe.

   Why: This filter is commonly used to collect useful gases from the Supermatter engine to be used elsewhere. We do not need this filter to be set to anything for stable power generation. Setting it to filter anything will cause it to inevitably clog unless babysat, causing the supermatter to delaminate. Do not set this filter to any gas unless you are absolutely sure your setup can handle it clogging or you are absolutely sure you can set it reasonably quickly. It's usually better to just remove it and replace it with a pipe.

4. Color code: Purple. Turn on all the filters and maximize them. Make sure at least one filter is set to nitrogen; remember that filters are perfect, meaning their "front" output will never have the gas it's filtering and the side output will never have any gases it's not filtering. While we only need nitrogen, nitrous oxide, pluoxium and hyper-noblium are also all perfectly safe and helpful.

   Why: This filter complex dictates which gas will be let inside the Supermatter chamber. We are currently running a simple Nitrogen engine, so we need only the first filter to be set to nitrogen. The other three filters still need to be on and set to nothing in order for the bad gas to actually get vented! If the first filter had been tampered with and the chamber is running out of nitrogen, repeat step one with Nitrogen canisters obtained from other parts of the station.

5. The other pumps to the right: do with these as you want. It is technically better for the freezers to be on and connected to the rest of the loop, but it is unlikely to matter until you upgrade them. You can also use the freezers as a "panic button", keeping a save-the-supermatter gas dump mix in it. Make sure to turn on and minimize the freezers no matter what you do. Freezers are always colder than the Supermatter's damage temperature: there's no reason to have them off!
6. Proceed to the air alarm, which will always be next to the doors into the crystal room. Open the air alarm menu (on most maps it will start unlocked), click Scrubber Controls and change the scrubbers to siphon (by clicking "scrubbing") and Expanded Range.Scrubber Controls

   Why: Siphon makes the scrubbers remove all gases. This is to ensure hot gasses are removed from the chamber as fast as possible, to prevent the hot burn mix the supermatter emits from actually burning.

7. Color code: Yellow. In the same air alarm , click Vent Controls and turn off the vents' pressure regulators by clicking "external", so that neither external nor internal are active. Picture (click it):

   Why: Turning off the pressure regulators makes the vents completely dump the contents of the loop pipes into the chamber. You generally want to get the gas in there as quickly as possible.

8. Optional: Turn the bypass pump off.

   Why: This pump is used to bypass the chamber and to precool the gas before entering it. This pump is minorly detrimental to an engine that has already started, but it rarely matters. You can remove it or replace it as you please.

9. Review the crystal's status using the NT-CIMS tablet/modular compupter program.

   Why: The NT CIMS provides great insight on troubleshooting supermatter related problems. If you did everything correctly, the temperature should be dropping, the gas composition will shift heavily towards pure nitrogen, and there should be enough moles inside the chamber (above 30).

With these all done, the nitrogen should be cycling through the system and getting nice and cool. Give yourself a pat on the back, for the hardest part is over!

Step three: Starting the radiation collectors

1. Obtain six plasma tanks. One can be found by the radiation collectors, and up to ten more can be taken from the tank dispenser.
2. Insert each plasma tank into a radiation collector , then turn each on by clicking it with an empty hand. Lock them with your ID card when you are done.
3. It's worth pointing out that you also used to have to fill the plasma tanks with extra plasma from a canister. This is not currently the case, but many people still do this out of habit or misinformation.

The engine is now ready to produce power.

Step four: Start the engine!

1. Double-check to ensure the cooling loop is active, you don't want to have an active supermatter with a pump still set to 101kPa or the vents/scrubbers inactive!
2. For supermatter engines on Delta Station, you need to set everything yourself. Haul emitters and reflectors around to your desired setup, wrench and weld the emitters once aligned properly (rotate with Alt-Click), and weld the reflectors. Wire the plating under them and hook them up to a powered cable.
3. Align the reflectors so that the emitter beams are deflected towards the supermatter crystal.
4. Head into the emitter chamber. It is on the right side of the picture above. Just click each emitter with an empty hand to turn them on. Don't stand in front of them unless you want some serious laser burns!
5. Close the radiation shutters with the Radiation Shutters Control button (if available).

The supermatter is now generating power.

If the emitters are not firing despite being turned on, it means they are not being sufficiently powered. This could either be because a cable to them have been severed (less likely), or the station does not have enough power to run them. To fix this, you could:

1. Check the cable and ensure a proper connection is made between the power reservoir (SMES) and the emitters.
2. Maximizing the SMES might solve some fringe cases of the station having enough power stored but not enough power flowing.
3. Start the P.A.C.M.A.N generator to give the extra kick needed to start the emitters. Once the engine is supplying power, you can turn off the P.A.C.M.A.N.
4. Throw a useless object into the supermatter crystal in order to kickstart the engine. A commonly used object for this is a 1 credit holochip, available to you by Alt-Clicking your ID.

Final step: Set up the power storage units (SMES)

1. Go to the room in engineering with multiple SMES .
2. Set their target inputs to total at least the output of the SM and their target outputs to total at least 200 kW, keeping each target output less than target input.

   Why: This increases how much power they forward to the rest of the station. If you set them all to input 200 kW, you will starve all but the first couple, because the supermatter simply does not generate this much power. Do not do this. The TG wiki is wrong.

Congratulations! The supermatter engine is set!

Beyond the safety

Here are some pointers and hints on how to get more power out of this engine:

• Coordinate with other engineers. Don't just silently adjust gases and pumps or you might end up causing accidents or decreasing efficiency. If you don't understand a setup, don't mess with it.
• Higher temperatures generate more energy.
• Higher amounts of oxygen, plasma, tritium, CO2 and (to a lesser extent) BZ moles result in more power.
• You can pump gas from the atmos mixing loop directly into the engine by using the orange pipe.
• The supermatter crystal will glow in a distinct orange color if the gas composition in the chamber is ideal. This will reduce the impact of heat on the generation of power, but generate more power overall.
• The gas loop isn't that efficient at roundstart! Consider tuning it to run better by replacing some of the pumps with straight pipes or adding better cooling.
• This really cannot be emphasized enough: replacing the red-circled pumps with straight-pipes is probably the single most efficient improvement that can be made to the supermatter. Pumps are bottlenecks and nothing more; they are essentially worthless. Do not use them unless you absolutely need one-way gas flow or a bottleneck
• Producing loads of power sounds great, but as soon as you go over 5000 MeV/cm³ anomalies will start forming rapidly and the SM will likely delaminate.
• 4-way heat-exchanging manifolds have just as much cooling power as two straight HE pipes on the same layer and take up half the processing power. Use them!

Bad advice the TG wiki gives you and why it's bad

• "Consider setting the first filter of the loop to plasma. The supermatter produces plasma, which can be collected and used to refill the radiation collectors if the round goes on for too long."
• Why it's bad: This will cause a delamination within literal minutes. Filters stop working completely once either side is clogged. The filter will clog rapidly with plasma if you do this. This advice is purely there to give the admins a reason to bwoink you or something, I have no idea.
• "Gasses leaving the SM go straight to the heat exchangers then to the filters, this means you cool all your gasses and then remove gasses. If you filter first you can get improved cooling (since you don't waste energy cooling unused gas) allowing for more dangerous gasses to be used easier."
• Why it's bad: filters clog at 4500 kPa, and scrubbers clog at 5066 kPa. Filtering before cooling means you are not cooling the scrubber output directly, which means you are making clogs worse. Do not do this.
• "Plasma is terrible inside of the SM, potentially worse than Carbon Dioxide. Despite being terrible inside the chamber, you can use it on the outside as a coolant."
• Why it's bad: you want more plasma than oxygen to prevent trit fires, and, ironically, to make it harder for the supermatter to actually get hot (since plasma holds heat very well). Also, CO2 isn't even that bad. However, it is true that it is the best gas to use as an external coolant, in another loop connected via heat exchangers or heat exchange pipes.

Troubleshooting/Delamination

The supermatter's in trouble! You should be able to locate where the issue is from the screenshot alone. Here's the answer.

First and foremost

TURN THE EMITTERS OFF OR ASK THE AI TO DO IT!

After turning the emitters off

First, check that the emitters are actually off. Do not skip this step. The emitters being on is what is causing it to delaminate, almost 100% of the time. Turn the emitters off. Inspect the gas loop to confirm it is intact and operational.
Check the meters to quickly ascertain where a problem may lie.
If any of the meters report an unusually high or low amount of gas, then you're close to finding the issue!

Common gas loop failures include:

• Gas pumps offline. Replacing them with pipes makes this a non-issue.
• Gas pumps left on default pressure. (Crank them up to 4500kpa!) Replacing them with pipes makes this a non-issue.
• Gas filters offline. Remember! Filters do not allow ANY gas to pass through if they're turned off! If you don't wish to filter anything, leave them online but set to filter nothing
• Gas filters left on default pressure.
• Gas filters no longer set to filter safety gases back into the loop. Just set filters back to filter in the safety gas and add more safety gas to the loop (Most of the safety gas is likely injected into space by this point.)
• Supermatter chamber vents improperly configured.
• Supermatter chamber scrubbers not siphoning.
• Heat exchange pipes broken. Space dust can slip through the defenses on occasion. Or a traitor may detach a section. The bypass pump can (and often should) be replaced with a pipe to make this a non-issue.
• Too much gas! If a section has too high of a pressure (a very, very low 5066 for scrubbers, 4500 for gas pumps and 9000 for volume pumps) the gas pumps cannot push anything more into it! Making the pipenet that the scrubbers scrub into larger makes the pressure lower, as does making the gas colder, so lots of coolant can often be an answer; however, this also makes the filters worse. Strike a balance.
• Too little gas! The more (cold) gas there is, the more the gas will be able to absorb the heat put out by the crystal. A supermatter crystal in near-vacuum is liable to overheat very quickly

Second

If the gas temperature is too high to stabilize with the cooling loop alone - hope that Atmos has a canister of precooled N2, N2O or even Hyper-Noblium or pluoxium around.

Third

If the supermatter is delaminating and the gas loop is operational, use an analyzer to check for problem gases in the loop. Someone may have slipped in a bunch of oxygen. Double-check the filters to see if they're getting rid of unwanted gases.

And lastly

If all else failed, pray that an Atmosian elder investigates and finds the problem before it's too late. If you aren't in a locker when the crystal explodes, you will get a huge mood debuff and a whole lot of hallucinations.

Sabotaging the supermatter

Want to sabotage the crystal but can't figure out how to pull it off? Here are some pointers and hints:

General hints

• You can break the APC of the room to stop all pipes and scrubbers from working. This will be less effective if it's passively cooled, but very few supermatter setups will survive this indefinitely.
• When the crystal reaches 0% integrity a 30 second countdown until the explosion will be broadcast on common channel, even if telecomms is disintegrated.
• Disable the telecomms APC with the CE console to prevent the supermatter from announcing its status.
• Cut cameras near the engine.
• Instead of turning off pumps and filters, you can just set them to extremely low values instead. They'll still appear to be working. You can do the same with vents, setting them to external 0 (TG's advice to set them to internal 0 instead of just disabling really helps sell this one.)
• Taking out all the engineers before attempting a delamination helps a lot.
• Opening a canister of plasma in engineering and igniting it will make it a lot harder for people to fix your sabotage. Even more effective if the radiation levels are high.
• Keep a flash or EMP on hand. The AI and its borgs are pretty much guaranteed to try and intervene to prevent harm.
• Stay around and pretend to be helping so you can undo all the repair attempts by other people.

Regular delamination

These are the easiest to pull off and require no special conditions. You'll want to keep the supermatter chamber very hot and full of plasma or CO2.

• Use the filters near the emitter room to filter out N2 and N2O while keeping Plasma, Oxygen, tritium and CO2 in the loop.
• Pump in pure plasma or burn mix from atmos.
• Disable or break the cooling array. Deconstructing a single piece of the heat exchanger can be enough, if they didn't pipe the bypass.
• Disable the scrubbers once the chamber is hot enough.

Overcharged delamination

This kind of delamination requires careful gas management but is faster, far more destructive and there's a good chance it will irradiate, burn and shock the engineers who are trying to fix it.

• Ensure that only CO2 is in the supermatter chamber at all times. Filter all other gases and keep the scrubbers running.
• Keep the emitters online and firing if you can.
• Get as much CO2 into the chamber as possible. Larger amounts of CO2 can even compensate for the oxygen and plasma waste.
• Wear as much radiation protection as you can. Consider bringing some anti-toxin medication as well.
• Try to keep radiation suits away from engineers, they won't be able to get near the overcharged engine without one.
• Make sure you are wearing insulated gloves to protect yourself from the lightning arcs.
• The anomalies, gravity pulses and lightning arcs will quickly turn the engine room into a deathtrap. Make sure you have everything set up correctly before this starts happening.

Critical mass delamination

This is difficult but also simple.

• Pump in as much gas as possible into the chamber. The easiest way to do this is to just dump a whole lot of nitrogen. It's a "safety gas", sure, but the supermatter will delaminate with too much of any gas.
• Reverse the scrubber pump. It's a subtle alteration that might get overlooked in the heat of the moment and will prevent the excess gas from being pumped out.
• Make sure no gas leaves the chamber. Put up walls, deconstruct scrubber pipes, do whatever possible to keep the gas inside.

The actual good part of the guide

This section on the TG wiki is the most important guide to the supermatter available. It has a terrible name and it's at the end of the article, but it's important. Read it.