Auto Airlock
Adds an installable Airlock Controller and a matching Airlock Pump that together turn any two-door vestibule into a real airlock. Wire the controller to your two doors and the pump and it will equalize the airlock’s pressure to whichever side you are crossing before the door opens — so opening a door onto vacuum no longer dumps the room’s air into the void. Adds the realism (and the discipline) of cycling an airlock properly.
How to use it
- Find or buy an Airlock Controller and an Airlock Pump, then install both in your airlock vestibule (a small room with two doors).
- Mount the pump on the wall between the airlock chamber and an adjacent air-filled room, with its outlet (the chamfered/clipped-corner end) facing the airlock chamber. Mounting orientation matters — that end is the airlock side. Power the pump.
- Open the controller’s wiring panel and assign three connections: the air-side door, the vacuum-side door, and the Airlock Pump.
- That’s it. When a crew member tries to open a wired door, the controller holds it shut, runs the pump to match the airlock’s pressure to the side being crossed, then opens the door automatically. The opposite door is held shut for the cycle, so both sides are never open at once.
The Airlock Pump
- Moves gas room-to-room only (it cannot fill or empty canisters) and is very fast — fast enough to cycle an airlock before the controller’s safety timeout. Ordinary air pumps are not fast enough and will not work as the controller’s pump.
- Expensive and rare. A purpose-built piece of kit. It has its own on/off knob (right-click panel): On = controller-driven (automatic), Off = disabled (the airlock then just fails open).
Notes
- The pump is optional. With no pump wired (or the pump’s knob switched off), the controller still works as a plain door interlock — it just won’t equalize pressure, so it holds one door shut while the other is open instead of matching pressure first.
- Docked to a pressurized station? No need to cycle — just switch the Airlock Controller off and walk through normally.
- Requires power. An unpowered or override-off controller does nothing and the door opens normally (fail-open). If equalization takes too long (a stuck, off, or underpowered pump), it gives up and opens the door anyway after a timeout so nobody gets trapped.
- Found in the world. Both the controller and the pump turn up uncommonly as loot and in merchant stock. Some generated ships even come with one already mounted — though never pre-wired and working, so you will still have to set it up (and some are damaged).
Configuration (edit the mod’s file in BepInEx/config after first launch)
- Enabled — master on/off switch for the whole mod. Default on.
- FailOpenTimeoutSeconds — how long the controller will try to equalize before giving up and opening the door anyway. Default 60.
- RepressurizeTargetKpa — pressure (kPa) the airlock must reach when re-pressurizing before the air-side door opens. Default 90.
- PressureThresholdKpa — "empty" cutoff (kPa); the source side is pumped down to this before the door is released. Default 5.
- LootSpawnEnabled — let the controller and pump be found as world loot and in merchant stock. Default on.
- LootChance — per-roll chance (0 to 1) to drop a controller on a generic loot roll. Default 0.01.
- PumpLootChance — per-roll chance (0 to 1) to drop a pump on a generic loot roll. Default 0.01.
- ShipPreinstallEnabled — let generated ships spawn with an (unwired or damaged) controller already mounted. Default on.
- ShipPreinstallChance — chance (0 to 1) per generated ship to pre-install a controller. Default 0.15.
- PumpPreinstallChance — chance (0 to 1) per generated ship to pre-install a pump. Default 0.15.
- VerboseLogging — extra logging to diagnose wiring, the door-hold logic, and pump control. Default off.
Requires the BepInEx Mod Loader (free, on the Workshop). Subscribe to it and complete its one-time setup or this mod will not load: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3741030124
