Chief Engineer
Engineering and Command
Chief Engineer
- Access: Command, Chief Engineer, Atmospherics, Engineering, Maintenance, External
- Difficulty: Medium
- Duties: Maintain and fix the station, and direct the engineering department's personnel.
- Supervisors: Captain
- Subordinates: Atmospheric Technician, Station Engineer, and Technical Assistant
- Guides: Guide to Construction, Guide to Power, Guide to Atmospherics
The Chief Engineer (commonly addressed as CE) is the head of the Engineering Department. They are responsible and essential for maintaining the station and ensuring it is livable.
Generally, you will be directing your engineers to handle matters like setting up power sources and Atmos distribution, fixing spacings, and responding to department requests. Additionally, you will handle more sensitive matters like fixing broken-into secure areas, re-assigning airlock accesses, managing Telecoms outages or backups, and more. Department heads may also call on you or your staff to make department modifications, such as demoing walls or adding private areas.
The Chief Engineer and their Department are commonly targeted by disgruntled individuals, as their department contains useful tools and equipment. In addition, the Engineering Department contains sensitive equipment like the AME, Atmos distro, Singularity/Tesla, the Gravity Generator, and Telecoms, which can be extremely disruptive or destructive to the station if sabotaged or misused.
Equipment
Chief Engineer's Toolbelt
The Chief Engineer's Toolbelt comes with a variety of experimental equipment, allowing them to take care of matters quickly.
- Jaws of life - Serves both as a crowbar and a wirecutter. The tool can also slowly pry open powered unbolted doors.
- Power Drill - Serves both as a screwdriver and wrench.
- Experimental Welding Tool - It welds faster and uses less fuel, and regenerates fuel over time. Note: While it is "less dangerous" to the eyes, it still is dangerous. You should always be wearing your goggles.
- Multitool - Links and lists station electronics and devices, as well as pulsing wires on maintenance panels.
- Holofan Projector - Generates a passable wall that blocks atmospheric gases, needed for managing spacings and floods.
- T-Ray scanner - Allows you to see pipes, wiring, and tubing underneath station tiles.
- Gas Analyzer - Analyzes the contents of a container, pipe, or atmosphere.
A note that because of the space saving of your experimental tools, you'll have a 2x2 space on your toolbelt, perfect for your Rapid Construction Device (RCE).
Suit Locker
The Chief Engineer is provided the Chief Engineer's Hardsuit, a special hardsuit with greater resistances to a wide variety of damage types and increased mobility. It is generally a good idea to wear this all the time, as you are commonly working in hostile environments.
Accompanying your hardsuit, the CE is also provided with Advanced Magboots (colloquially known as jayz), which do not slow down the wearer. Being such a powerful item, your jayz are a prime target for passengers.
In the CE's suit locker is also an Oxygen Tank and a Void Jetpack. They are the same in terms of gas capacity, but the Void Jetpack is a jetpack, so it's useful to wear this instead and use it as a breathing source capable of emergency mobility. It's important to note that the Void Jetpack comes filled with an oxygen/nitrogen air mix at high output pressure, so it is wise to dump this out and refill it with oxygen or nitrogen, and change the pressure back to the standard 21.3 kPa. If you refill the Void Jetpack to maximum capacity using supercooled oxygen or nitrogen (70.3 K) you can safely lower the output pressure to just 5.3 kPa.
The suit locker also contains a breath mask, but this is not necessary for running internals.
Chief Engineer's Locker
The Chief Engineer's locker is stocked with important equipment. You'll want to take most of it with you. It has:
- Insulated Gloves - Important, as this keeps you from frying, and you don't start out with them at the beginning of your shift!
- Chief Engineer's Rubber Stamp - Important for stamping important documents.
- Rapid Construction Device (RCE) - Important for fixing spacings and building airlocks.
- Access Configurator - Important for configurating airlock accesses.
- Engineering Door Remote - Important for remotely opening/closing and bolting doors in the engineering departments and other doors across the station. Note: This remote has it's own accesses, so if you lose this, someone has access to your department and office!
- Engineering Encryption Key Box - Contains spare encryption keys for your department's comms. May be important for fixing sabotaged telecoms, but you will likely be using a master encryption key provided by the Head of Personnel for that instead.
- Compressed Matter - Ammo for the RCD. Might as well take this with you.
- Cigar Box - Contains 8 standard cigars. Not on all stations. Relax and smoke a few. Calm before the storm.
- Engineering Goggles - Useless, as you're already wearing a pair when the shift starts.
Chief Engineer's Dresser
The Chief Engineer's Dresser contains all the attire to let the entire station know you're the one that controls their air privileges, as well as the giant melting ball of electricity. It has a Cloak, Mantle, and Beret in the CE's fashion. It may also come with a CE's bedsheet.
It's important to note that the CE comes equipped with a hard hat at the start of the shift. If you use this or the Beret, be careful, as it blocks the deployment of your hardsuit helmet.
Chief Engineer's Office
The Chief Engineer's office is a nice little cozy room, a place of serene solitude compared to out there. Every station is different, but it can have:
- the Chief Engineer's Locker, Suit Locker, and Dresser
- a Fax Machine
- an RCE, with extra compressed matter
- a stack of LV, MV, and HV wire
- Power Monitoring and Solar Control computers
- an instrument for performing rituals to Lord Tessloth
- a pet parrot
- an Intercom
- extra Engineering Goggles
- a Cell Charger or Recharger
- a pAI
Responsibilities
Power, Atmosphere, and Hull
The Chief Engineer is responsible for ensuring that power and atmosphere are being supplied to the station, as well as the hull being intact and free of spacing. Their main job in this regard is to direct their staff to efficiently work on these tasks, as well as respond to station emergencies.
Easy power sources like the AME should be setup at the start of the shift so that time can be spent setting up sustainable power sources like the TEG, or more exotic ones like the Gravitational Singularity Engine or the Tesla Generator. The Chief Engineer can forbid or allow these sources of power at their discretion, unless overridden by the Captain.
It is a good idea to setup Solars as an additional source of power, as they can still power some departments, including the Engineering Department, which can be essential to kickstarting a different power source. Solars on most stations are already setup and simply require HV wire to be run to panels.
It is essential that the Atmosphere of the station is maintained. The CE should check if Distro is setup correctly at the start of the shift and check if pressure is safe across the station, as well as the presence of waste gasses.
The hull must also be maintained. The CE will direct atmospherics technicians and station engineers to spaced areas to restore hull and pressure.
Important Notes/Recap
- During a catastrophic event, such as a bombing, major power, atmosphere, or hull failure, you should declare a code yellow and announce what's going on. This tells your station what's happening and gets the attention of your engineers, although 99% of the time they are probably very busy fixing the problem already. A code yellow also bumps you up a level on the chain of command as per Alert Procedures, so don't be scared now! You're on the big stage!
- Most of the equipment you carry on you or in your office is valuable, so be careful and hold onto it! Try not to be lured into maintenance tunnels by a Passenger or Chef as you're probably going to get ambushed.
- Be careful responding to a Telecoms sabotage. Never go alone, buddy up with another Engineer to investigate the issue.
WIP
This guide or wiki page is still 100% a work in progress, as this does not explain or cover all aspects of being a Chief Engineer. Space Station 14 is a constantly changing game, and some information written here might not be accurate.
