Cryogenic Pods

Cryogenic Pods

Cryogenic Pods, also called cryo pods or cryopods, are a special type of medical machinery used in conjuction with specific chemical solutions. The machine itself can be thought of a simple gas chamber a patient can be placed in, with specific protection to prevent cold gases from damaging patients. It also offers a slot for a beaker or similar, to automatically inject the patient with a solution, slowly over the course of time. With limited chemistry supplies, the cryo pods are a renewable and resource efficient way of healing a patient at the cost of the time it takes to cool, heal, and warm the patient back up. In addition, its one of the few ways of reviving a patient who has taken lethal amounts of Poison damage.

Cryo pods need a properly built atmospherics setup to work. Power is only required for the automatic injection of chemicals to work.

How to build

Cryopods are in most maps, except for Cluster and Reach. If you need to build pods, you can get the main component, the circuit board, through science. You can unlock it by researching the Advanced Life Support node. After that, it builds like a normal machine does: you place down a machine frame, follow the instructions and check which materials the specific circuit board requires.

Atmospherics setup

Once the machine's built, you will have to set up the atmospheric piping required to supply a safe, cold gas mix to the cryo pod... unless you want the patients to die a horrible death. You can in fact notice that the cryo pod has no air initially, thus entering it will harm you due to no pressure nor air. You can always view the pressure and air mixture of the cryo pod by using a gas analyzer on it.

The atmospherics setup requires several machines to provide a safe environment. The one explained further is simply an example of a working setup, but nothing stops your inner atmospheric technician (or a real one somehow being outside atmospherics and prone to help the medical department) from experimenting other setups, such as directly linking the distribution net to cryo pods and such.

• Gas port: you'll need at least one to hook a canister to kick-start the gas mix. Remember that species usually breathe oxygen, but slimes require nitrogen. An air canister should satisfy both requirements.
• Pump: if you directly use all the gas contained within a gas canister, you'll go from a depressurized environment to an overpressurized one, which will lead to the same end: death. To avoid that, you'll need a pump next to the gas port to ensure only one atmosphere of pressure is going in the cryo pod (101.325kPa).
• Freezer: we don't simply need a breathable gas mix. We need an extremely cold one, otherwise the cryo pod won't be very useful. For that, you can simply use a freezer, which allows you to cool down a gas mixture down to 73.15K, which is enough for chemicals such as Cryoxadone to react in the patient.
• Pipes: To connect the cryo pod and the other atmospheric machines, you'll need pipes. You're probably going to need at least a T shaped one and a few straight ones, but it really depends on the room you're building this in. Also keep in mind the cryo pods always face south, with their atmospheric socket being in the same direction, regardless of how it is rotated during construction.
• Gas filter: People don't simply breathe in gases. They also breathe stuff out, and that stuff is usually harmful to breathe in again. We don't want to contaminate our precious cold gas mix, do we? For that reason, you'll need one gas filter for each gas you expect to filter out (CO2 for humans, N2O for slimes). Gas filters should be used if you plan to use cryo pods for long period of times.
• Something to collect the waste gas: could either be a gas port with an empty canister, or directly connect it to the waste net. Up to you.

An example of a working atmospheric setup for a cryo pod.

How to Start the system on a prebuilt setup

If you don't have to build the atmospheric setup, the setup to get the cryo pods working is simple. Most stations come tied into the distribution network and you don't need any tools. If you want to be sure things are working right without using yourself as a test dummy, a gas analyzer will let you check everything you need to check. Turn the Gas Pump on and you can leave it at the default settings 101.375 kPa. Find the Refrigerator, and set it to 73.15K so your patients cool down as fast as possible. Find your gas filter and turn it on and set it to filter Carbon Dioxide. Remember to set this to Nitrous Oxide if you treat Slimes. Congratulations, you are done with the setup. The distribution network might not be setup, so you may not have pressure yet. You can check this with the gas analyzer by using it on the cryo pods and if they are empty, on the gas pump to see if any air is coming into the system.

If distro has not been setup or has been damaged severely or there isn't a direct connection to the distribution network, wrench your gas canister (either air or O2) to the connector, set your gas pump to limit the pressure in the system if one exists, then set your filter and refrigerator.

Using the Cryogenic Pods

By default, you can drag a patient (yourself too) on the cryo pod to handle insertion. Ejection works by right-clicking the pod and ejecting the occupant. This can currently be done by the patient himself as well. If the lock wire is cut, through, the ejection mechanism will fail until the wire is mended. This means only a crowbar will allow the patient out the cryo pod.

Winter Clothing and Hardsuits can interfere with the cryo pod's ability to cool a patient. A winter coat in an over-pressurized cryo pod set to 73.15K will not budge a patient's temperature. If you're not sure if their coat or shoes will impact the freezing process, make sure to strip a patient's coat and shoes off of them before sticking them in a pod. Have somewhere secure to store this for them.

As long as the patient is inside of the cryo pod, they will not take cold damage, no matter how cold you make it. However, upon ejecting, the patient will retain that cold body tempature and start taking cold damage. A patient without cold damage modifiers and fully frozen is going to take about 13 cold damage while warming up to normal temperature. You need to be a bit more careful with how you manage Reptilians & Slimes exiting the pod due to their cold damage modifier. Scarves can help manage the cold damage or 5u of Leporazine can solve the problem immediately and treat whatever minor cold damage they took.

Cryo pods accept a beaker as a solution container. If both a beaker and a patient are present and the cryo pod is powered, the pod will transfer one unit per second from the beaker to the patient. None of the cryo pod specific medicines can be overdosed, but you shouldn't waste good medicine.

Cryo pods also come with the same interface of health analyzers. You can access it by simply clicking the pod with an empty hand, assuming there's a patient inside.

Wires & Emagging & Sabotague

You can access the cryo pod wires just like any other machine, with a screwdriver. The wires allow you to cut power or lock the cryo pod. Cutting power only affects the automatic injection system: no power means no chemical will be injected. The lock wire is related to the ejection mechanism instead. Emagging a pod causes the lock system to be fried permanently so that only a crowbar will allow patient to be ejected unless the cryo pod is rebuilt.

If you have your cryo pod network hooked up to the distribution network of atmos and someone starts pumping garbage into the pipes, this will affect your patients in difficult to treat manners. If you are ever seeing any non asphixation damage go up, get them out of the tube and check your gas mixture. It is very easy to render someone unrevivable due to a few seconds of exposure.