Seabase Air Management, Part 2

I was looking at the threads on "Remaining Oxygen in Seabases" and "Seabase Air Management" and was thinking of ways to handle oxygen generation in seabases.

To this end I propose a new system that factors in:
1) Space
2) Pressure
3) Oxygen Generation
4) Air Flow

Space: Each room/corridor naturally designates a certain amount of space to not being ocean. Assign a cubic meter (m3) value to all of them as a base. The more space that requires air the more air you need. The more air you need the more ways of getting air into your base you'll require.

Pressure: As with everything, greater depths would pose greater challenges, as you'd need more counter-pressure to keep things working properly. Again, a simple math formula - even the same one already used to determine hull integrity - can be applied to the base value generated in "space," above. Meaning if you're at a depth that degrades x2 hull integrity then you're going to need x2 the amount of air in order to maintain air pressure.

Oxygen Generation: There are many possibilities along this route, from actual oxygen generators that extract oxygen from the seawater to Co2 scrubbers that would act as a force multiplier to those generators. First, the oxygen generators themselves could come in a multitude of sizes, each with ever growing power consumption and production ability. A small, wall-locker sized unit would be the most basic, and would be placed in much the same way along any surface. Next would be a wall mount unit, taking up "window" space and occupying that. Finally would be the industrial sized unit that would be roughly the same size as the current water filtration machine, taking up a window space and a half of your room as well.

Co2 scrubbers would not generate air themselves, but in game mechanic terms would recycle air and make it go farther. By this I mean that Co2 scrubbers would multiply the amount of air available without actually generating any. Simply put, if you've got oxygen generators producing 10m3 of air per second, then your Co2 scrubbers could potentially double that to 20m3 per second. However, if you don't have any oxygen generators to begin with then your Co2 scrubbers won't do anything.

Plants, naturally, would act as free Co2 scrubbers. So now they're more than just decoration, and you've got good reasons to scatter them into every corner.

Air Flow: This is a basic algorithm for osmosis would kick into play. Oxygen would always start where ever the generators are, and then move out from there into empty spaces as needed. The catch is that air naturally rises, and it would take time for clean air to reach a distant area (this is where Co2 scrubbers come into play again). So let's say that you've got a base near the surface that has 400m3 of space. You then add a bunch of vertical corridors heading down into the depths (200m3 of space) and then add another little area at the bottom (100m3 of space). To completely oxygenate the entire facility, you'd need 700m3 of oxygen, so you start building generators - a pair of 500m3 types. The first one you build fills the upper levels (400m3) and half of the vertical corridors (200m3). So long as you stay in the top half you're fine, but if as you start going deeper you run out of air. By the time you're at the bottom level you're back to using suit air as well. Better get that second generator running!

Of course, the deeper sections would suffer from pressure issues, further complicating air flow issues.

Would should also have a better system for pipes. Or rather, larger & longer pipes so that it doesn't take twenty pieces to reach down even ten meters. A new type of straight vertical-only, non-adjustable pipe that is at long as a vertical corridor would be a good start. Make it thicker, too, to allow more airflow. Pipes would no longer be a fixed value and would instead generate a Cm3 value of air just like everything else. Their main advantage being that they require no power, which is good when first starting out or one a resource budget. Even in a solar eclipse you could always just retreat to the upper levels where the pipes alone still bring enough air to survive.

In terms of game mechanics, this would turn bases from a simple "on/off" switch into a giant oxygen tank just like you're already carrying around. In other words, being in a base would simply change the display on your oxygen bar from showing the content of your portable tanks to the content of the base itself. And this is where "remaining air" comes in, because losing power/generators would no longer be an instant transition to suffocation. Rather it would simply mean that you're now on a timer based on the total m3 size of the base (and how much air was in it) before it finally runs dry. In a truly massive base, that can be a long time, so long as you keep moving toward the surface, or have enough plants in your base. Then again, pushing air all the way down to your 3000m structures would also take a long time as well, and require considerable effort & resources. You'd probably need entire rooms dedicated simply to O2 generators and reinforcement panels, or pump it down via pipes/corridors from a more forgiving level near the surface.