| Air Vent | |
|---|---|
| |
| Category: | Functional Block |
| Status: | Functional |
| Function: | |
| Pressurizes and depressurizes a sealed room or airlock | |
| Fits large ship and station | |
| Data Controls: | [edit] [purge] (?) |
The Air Vent is a block that’s the main driver of the Airtightness game mechanic that was released in the 01.074 update. It needs power to function. The Air Vent block is used to fill an airtight room with oxygen, or to empty a room of oxygen to store it safely in tanks.
For a fully airtight variant, see also Air Vent Full.
Construction[]
This functional block is available for both grid sizes. It takes up 1x1x1 blocks of space but leaves half of that space empty. The Air Vent Block has ventilation slats in the front and one conveyor port in the back. This port must be attached to a conveyor system for the Vent to work.
Requirements[]
Air Vents work only on planets with an atmosphere, or in airtight rooms. The conveyor system must be linked to filled or empty Oxygen Tanks, Oxygen Farms, or an O2 H2 Generator, depending on your use case. The vent must be connected to the conveyor system.
Usage[]
When the vent slats face into an airtight room:
- When set to Pressurize and if conveyored to a source of Oxygen, the Air Vent will slowly fill the airtight room in front of the slats with oxygen.
- When set to Depressurize and if conveyored to non-full Oxygen Tanks, the Air Vent will remove oxygen from the room and transfer it into the tanks, until the tanks are full.
When the vent slats face outside:
- If you attempt to depressurise airless space or planets/moons without atmospheres, simply nothing happens.
- If you attempt to depressurise a planet's atmosphere, the atmosphere is not affected but the tanks slowly fill with oxygen.
- If you attempt to pressurise anything but an airtight room, nothing happens. You can't pressurise space nor airless planets/moons nor voxel-enclosed areas such as caves.
Set Up Actions (if pressurised then...)[]
Instead of using an Event Controller, you set up actions that depend on a room being pressurised or not in the Control Panel Screen of an Air Vent block:
Click Set up Actions. You'll see two action slots:
- The first action is triggered once when the room is full of oxygen.
- The second action is triggered once when the room has no more oxygen in it.
"No oxygen" means either that the room is no longer airtight because a door has been opened or a wall block was destroyed; or that the room is still airtight but the depressurization has just completed.
Typical examples of actions to set up are air lock related. To start a whole series of actions, such as opening and closing doors combined with audio-visual alerts, put all actions in a Timer Block and make the vent start the Timer.
What is "Depressurizing" Good For?[]
If you are low on ice or oxygen and cannot afford to waste it, you use a depressurizing air vent to suck the air out of one airtight room, and use it to pressurize another room or airlock or to fill an empty tank.
If you are on a planet with an oxygen-rich atmosphere, here's a valuable survival tip: Build an Air Vent on an outside conveyor port and set it to depressurise:
- An outside Air Vent can suck in oxygen from the atmosphere into a connected Oxygen Tank -- you "depressurize the planet", so to speak.
- An outside Air Vent can also provide oxygen to a player seated in a closed cockpit.
This knowledge can save you in an emergency if you run out of oxygen bottles, are out of ice, or your O2/H2 Generator breaks down.
You know the Air Vent is in the process of depressurizing when its status lights are blue. If it doesn’t depressurize, check whether the tanks are not already full.
How to Tell If A Room is Pressurized[]
Air Vents have four status lights that display (de)pressurization progress and status.
If the Air Vent lights are...
- red, the vent is switched off or has no power -- switch it on before looking for leaks.
- yellow, the room is not airtight, e.g. the doors are open or it's an outside vent for a cockpit.
(Note that, if you are in atmosphere, the room still contains oxygen, despite not being airtight!) - blue, the room is depressurizing. The room is airtight and the vent is sucking the oxygen out of the room into tanks.
- green and the engineer's HUD does not say “Oxygen:High and Temperature:Warm”, the room in the process of being pressurized. Wait a minute and check again.
- green and the engineer's HUD says “Oxygen:High and Temperature:Warm” in green, the room is airtight and pressurized.
Troubleshooting[]
In the presence of an air leak in the room, an Air Vent will not function. For example, open Doors will let air out and the vents will not attempt to pressurize the room until you close the doors again.
Careful: Certain window blocks allow the player to stand in their concave volume indoors, but the HUD displays it as unpressurised as if it were outdoors, even though the room itself is properly pressurised. A small number of other blocks display similarly unintuitive airtightness behaviour.
The Air Vent block itself is an example of a not-full-sized block whose airtightness depends on its rotation and on whether it’s flush with other blocks. — See Airtightness for the definition of leaks so you can avoid them.
Tip: The Steam workshop also offers leak detection mods, such as Digi’s BuildInfo
Recipe[]
To craft a Air Vent in Survival:
 Air Vent | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Component | Large Ship/Station Required | Large Ship/Station Optional | Small Ship Required | Small Ship Optional |
 Computer | 5 | — | 5 | — |
 Motor | 10 | — | 2 | — |
 Construction Comp. | 20 | — | 10 | — |
 Steel Plate | 20 | 10 | 2 | 1 |
DLC Variant[]
The Air Vent Fan is a variant from the purchasable Automatons Pack DLC. It has the same functionality but has an animated spinning fan.
