Stormworks: Build and Rescue

Stormworks: Build and Rescue

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Space DLC - Life Support
By krail
Atmosphere and pressure mechanics - how to survive in spaceships, submarines, and other enclosed spaces!
   
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This Guide
This is a very short guide I'm mainly making to record results of my testing.

Mainly about the survival mechanics and not a specific guide on how to build a life support system
Pressure
The stormworker is quite a beast, so can survive pressures between 0.12atm and 4.00atm.

Barotrauma status effect damages the player outside this range, if damage is enabled
Gases
Composition of gases is important for being able to breathe in an enclosed space.

The system is not very realistic... but thankfully, it is very easy to understand and work with:
Oxygen
  • The only rule for being able to breathe is that the atmosphere contains at least 15% oxygen
  • This does not vary based on the atmospheric pressure, unlike in real life - whether the room is at 0.1atm or 10atm - greater than 15% oxygen is all that is required.
  • There is no maximum value either - 100% oxygen is perfectly breathable at all pressures
Other Gases
CO₂ and Nitrogen are not harmful in any quantity. This means a mix of (80% CO₂, 20% O₂) is perfectly safe to breathe
Breathing
Non-breathable atmosphere does not directly damage the player - instead the player's breath meter is drained, as if underwater - damage occurs only when the meter is empty

A player in an enclosed space converts Oxygen into CO₂ at a rate of 2.5L/minute

Although the CO₂ build up is not harmful, remember that it is reducing the oxygen% as you breathe. If you want to stay a long time in an enclosed room, you will need to figure out some way to top up the oxygen.
Life Support in Space
Add all this together and you start to get a picture for how to deal with atmosphere in space, remember just two simple rules:
  1. Pressure must be between 0.12 and 4.0atm
  2. Oxygen greater than 15%
The player can survive in a wide range of environments so it's up to you how to design your life support system.
A simple method
Here is a very simple way to keep the air healthy in any kind of environment.
  • Connect a pressurised oxygen tank to your cabin via any sort of valve.
  • Use the composite output of a gas sensor to monitor the amount of O₂ in the cabin, and open the valve to the oxygen tank if it goes below a threshold (say 20% for safety).
  • This will keep the oxygen level healthy, but over time the pressure will slowly increase to unsafe levels - to fix that, add another valve which allows air from the cabin to vent to space - activate this valve if the pressure goes above your desired using another threshold control.
A funny side effect of this system is that over time, the % of CO₂ in the cabin will slowly increase until there is no nitrogen left! But remember, CO₂ is harmless to us, as long as it doesn't displace all the oxygen!

A small oxygen tank spawned in at 100atm has over 4600L of oxygen. With this system a single small tank will support 1 person's oxygen needs for over 30 hours!
Remarks
Consider this a work in progress.

Please comment if you notice I have gotten something wrong
16 Comments
Z0ctb0x 22 Oct, 2024 @ 3:04pm 
mar 4, that was my birthday lol, why was I here?
Z0ctb0x 4 Mar, 2024 @ 5:42am 
when I am in the rocket I have built (yes I know for sure its sir tight) even though it's heated and oxygenated it still freezes and suffocate's me.

anyone know why?
Echoless 25 Feb, 2024 @ 4:19pm 
Would you be able to make a life support micro-controller with this information and the comment below mine?
VKU 13 Jan, 2024 @ 10:53pm 
There are filters in the workshop that allow only CO2 to pass through! We put the pump after the filter outlet and turn on the pump with the controller that is connected to the composite output of the Gas Meter sensor. In the controller, the composite input of the fifth channel is connected to the Threshold with a minimum of 14 and a maximum of 999 set. The pump outlet is output to the outside, regardless of whether it is a submarine or a lunar base.
gaming general 13 Jan, 2024 @ 2:51pm 
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white Noise 29 Dec, 2023 @ 4:35pm 
You don’t need to do this to scrub the co2 you can use catalitic converters this is slow and you eventually lose the co2 so it doesn’t work forever but you just to run through it another tip is that you can seperate nitrogen but running it through the centrifugal separator
meloeh 26 Dec, 2023 @ 5:52pm 
and add a valve to the outside to outgo air but make sure that its a gases relev on it so the water doesn't come in
meloeh 26 Dec, 2023 @ 5:51pm 
just make sure it dosent go over 4 atm
meloeh 26 Dec, 2023 @ 5:50pm 
like when you need more persh or need replace o2 in sub