My bird is telling me that you're not setting up the engine properly.
Know that guy who builds all the things? Well, you're his boss! You are the head of the Engineering Department, which includes not only Station Engineers, but Atmospheric Technicians as well. Essentially, your job is to boss your staff around and make sure the engine and solars are set up so that the power is flowing. Other than directing the workflow of the department, you're also expected to carry out general engineer-duties and maintain Telecomms. To be a good CE it is imperative that you have a good working knowledge of how APCs, SMES cells and power in general works, how to decipher atmospherics, how to efficiently set up the singularity and solars and how to get your charges' sorry asses moving.
Bare minimum requirements: Make sure that singularity/solars gets online at the start of the round. Know what to do when Telecommunications gets blown up.
Duties
It's no secret that Engineers are more often than not the laziest of the station's crew, and that there is no job that surpasses the capacity for an Atmospheric Technician to be completely clueless about his own department. This is where you come in! As stated above, your duties consist pretty much entirely on telling the Engineers and Atmos Techs to work or just doing their jobs yourself. Listed below are those jobs.
At the Start of the Round
Greet your team over the radio and establish your authority. Find out who you will be working with and how many of them, and make sure that everyone has a job to do.
Designate someone to do solars (unless someone else volunteers first) and get everyone else working on the singularity. If you take charge these first minutes of the round, most of engineering will follow the rest of your orders until the round ends. If you stay silent then when you suddenly need something done halfway through the round, you can guarantee that nobody will listen to you. If nothing else, speaking over the channel will at least tell you who on your team you can rely on.
If any of your team members try to run off with an engineering hardsuit just to go space exploring, let them know that they will be arrested for dereliction and demoted if they do not return to do at least the most minimal duties before doing whatever they want.
With Your Powers Combined
There are multiple ways to power the station. Unless you know what you're doing, stick with the singularity engine at first, and get it working as soon as possible. It's hard to set up a second power source if the crew is trying to lynch you for not finishing the first one.
Singularities and the Setting Up Thereof
Unless you really really want to use another source of power, this will obviously be your first priority. Sometimes your team will be fairly competent and you'll only need to supervise, but a lot of the time you will be required to step in. Read the guide, and make sure you know it. If someone's clearly new, help them out a bit and show them the ropes. If someone's clearly being a twat then shout at them and forcibly demote if they continue. With these points in mind the singularity should successfully come online and start generating power. It's always a good idea to announce this to the crew when it happens.
The Forgotten Power Source
Whilst the singularity outputs a metric shit-ton of power, a hardened engineer like yourself knows that it's incredibly unreliable at the best of times. This is where the solars come in. Solars output a decent amount of energy and can keep the station running at bare minimum whilst you inevitably sort out an issue with the singularity, but they need setting up first! Luckily this is even easier than setting up the singulo and you can just designate one of your minions to go out and complete the task, better yet if they volunteer. Remember though, engineering only has two hardsuits. No yellowsuit chump's getting his hands on YOUR pristine white hardsuit. So get the AI's attention and tell it that the man is allowed in EVA to pick up some equipment. Or just do solars yourself, you lazy fuck.
Fossil Fuel
Depending on the model of your space station, there might also be a combustion engine installed. This is probably the easiest way to generate power with plasma, but you're going to burn through the contents of canisters quite rapidly so if you want to power the station this way it might be a good idea to connect the combustion engine directly to Atmospherics.
Matters Of Super Matter
You can order a super matter shard through cargo and use it to pulse radiation to radiation collectors instead of a singularity. Super matter is extremely dangerous and you'll have to build an engine that's even more complicated than the Singularity Engine (most likely from scratch), but that's no reason not to try it, right?
Atmosia, the Great City-State of Pipes
The singularity is running, the solars are wired and the engineering team are at your beck and call. The station is getting a steady supply of power and you're confident your team can maintain this and repair any damage to the hull. Your job is done, right? NOT SO FAST, my friend! Haven't you forgotten atmospherics?
Yes, as hard as it is to accept, that convoluted bundle of pipes and its clueless staff are under your jurisdiction and it's your responsibility to make sure that it's keeping everybody breathing. As the CE, you are expected to know the basics of how atmos works, how to optimize it, and then how to keep people from fucking with it. Luckily, that's pretty much it. Again, read the guide and learn it.
All you really have to do with atmos is get acquainted with its staff (you can do this at round start along with your direct minions, as they share the engineering channel), make sure they know how to optimise it (if not, do it yourself - better yet teach them), and then check back in periodically to ensure some asshole hasn't tampered with it, slightly more if the atmos team is the usual band of drooling lunatics.
...Then What?
Now that the station's systems are running at maximum capacity or are in the process of being made so, you can relax a little. Here is what you should be doing:
- Set up helpful NTSL Scripts on all channels, e.g. the job assignment notification script.
- Listen to the radio for hull breaches. When you hear of one, send a couple of Engineers out to mend the damage.
- Check the Station Alert Console to see if there's any power/atmos alarms going off on the station.
- Periodically check out atmospherics to make sure nobody's messed it up.
- Babysit the singularity.
- Talk to your team. Make sure solars are wired or in the process of being done.
Viva La Working Class!
As a Head of Staff, you are a prime target for the Revolutionaries, and will most likely be attacked in some way. While setting up the spare emitters, stealing the RCD and holing up in Engineering is a tempting possibility, it is in extremely bad form and will be met by negative karma and general hatred towards you. In short, do not barricade yourself in Engineering during a Revolutionary round. It makes rounds take way the hell too long, and may prompt non-revolutionary engineers to invade, especially if you start dicking around with the power supply.
Law Abiding Engineer
"OH GOD IT'S LOOSE, CALL THE SHUTTLE!" -Poly
You have easy access to anything of any real importance on the station, with the added bonus of being regarded only slightly more important than the RD (in that at least your own department listens to you, most of the time). You have the ability to completely ruin the station by fucking with telecoms, subverting the AI with the circuit board in tech storage, sabotaging atmospherics and the engine, and hide away safely in space with EVA gear. Remember that an extra-capacity oxygen tank filled to 1013kPa lasts a very, very, very long time. Have fun!
