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. Cryo pods need a properly built atmospherics setup to work. Power is only required for the automatic injection of chemicals to work as of right now, but this may change in future.
How to build
As of right now, cryo pods aren't mapped in any map, but this is most likely subject to change. This may require time since the full atmos setup is quite large and requires rethinking a portion of medbay to allow for one functioning pod. In the mean time, 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. The atmospherics setup requires several machines to provide a safe environment. The one explained futher 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). Due to what might possibly be a bug, the buildup of those gases is extremely quick, so even having a patient inside for around 10 seconds will produce enough waste to make the air non breathable. But even without this bug, 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.
Interaction
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. With a properly set up cryo pod, ejection means ejecting a patient whose temperature's still extremely low. That means the patient will start getting hurt the moment they get ejected from the pod. With a normal setup with a gas mix at the temperature of 73.15K, this should amount to around 13 cold damage: this is normal. You can try to find out how to avoid this yourself (perhaps ask the atmosphere technicians to make the room the pod is in hotter, or just treat the damage yourself?) 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. Be sure to do the math to avoid overdosing the patient with whatever chemical you're using! 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. In future, this might be used to also track which chemicals are reacting inside the patient.
Wires & Emagging
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.
