This thread has taken a strange turn.
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Because it was so not strange to begin withâŚ
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Fair point
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SoâŚno TCMCs, then? 
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Look, the open access ports are practically everywhere for the convenience of the engineers and technicians because of one very good reason: the critical systems like oxygen scrubbers, heating, transformers are nestled deep within the station and is inaccessible other than through the ducts or the service elevators. Thereâs a good reason why we put them, and the utilities station containing them, so deep into the interiors that make all these ducts so necessary: itâs to prevent a stray bullet or a good whack with a hammer from setting the whole place on fire. The Minmatar Republic understands that despite sanctions, there will always be small arms being smuggled into stations. We had wrestled with higher-than-cluster-average crime rates for so long that we designed our stations under the assumption that thereâs going to be a firefight breaking out eventually.
What you see nestled behind the grates in the walls are for individual rooms and non-essential machinery. The equivalent of blood capillaries as compared to the arteries running the ducts, supplied by the transformers that you can only access via the ducts or service elevators. Cutting wires and the pipes behind those grates will inconvenience many individuals. Turn off their cooking appliance, mess with the heating, turn off the shower, that sort of thing. It will not cut off oxygen, since the oxygen scrubber isnât behind those grates (and uses a separate ventilation system to circulate atmosphere, also not behind those grates). It will not shut down the power to the entire district or sector, because those conduits are far deeper in the interior, in the utilities stations accessible only through those access ducts or the service elevators.
And before you complain about the access ducts being literally everywhere in a Republic station, I will point out that they are all labyrinthine by design to ensure that no duct rat is going to have an easy time getting to the utilities station by accident. You have to actually know these ducts to get there, and every member of the engineering team has the map and the navigational equipment to get there with haste.
Also, Iâm not talking about milspec ammo. Iâm talking civilian ammo. We arenât discussing anti-material rounds here. And no, even with an autocannon you will bust up the lighting and etc but you still wonât turn off life support. You still need someone to get down those ducts or cut open large sections of the wall or get to the most-likely-unpowered-and-possibly barricaded service elevators, ensuring that the would-be saboteur will still contemplate tunnel-snaking those ducts despite the risk of ambush or getting lost.
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Well ⌠I guess I donât know enough to really argue with you, Mr. Egivand. I guess I see more defense-by-redundant-systems sort of stuff around Matari stations. but, maybe thatâs just what you were saying about powering the heater in someoneâs house and so on.
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We call those âplaygroundsâ, Aria. And you really should explore some of them, sometime. Maybe Iâll take you on a tour of the âimprovised upgradesâ on Huggar station some time. I think I can still fit through most of the accessways⌠(and before some dumbass tries to make a fat joke, I was doing maintenance work there from when I was twelve. Adults canât get into all the little trouble-spots).
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Eeeee! Would you?
I would love that!
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Sure, if we both have time some day. also, @Elmund_Egivand:
You have to actually know these ducts to get there, and every member of the engineering team has the map and the navigational equipment to get there with haste.
That navigational equipment can sometimes be as little as the age-old âball of twine anchored outside the ductâ, and the map can be as simple as â6 left, down 20, straight back 4 more, then up til youâre thereâ. Even now, not everyone doing the work on Republic stations is necessarily employed as part of the maintenance and engineering team.
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You wouldnât believe just how useful a good understanding of the hidden passageways in a station can be to us Gallente 
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Gotta hide the controlled substances someplace, eh?
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I was thinking more for discreet travel, I live in WH space so finding my way into places I shouldnât be is fun. The subsequent hole control comes naturally
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I am not too sure if the term âdefense-by-redundant-systemsâ is the right term since, well, we design station utilities network the same way we design utilities network for our cities.
The basic flow of water and electricity goes this way: source -> station -> main -> periphery
Illustrating this principle in the context of a habitat-class space station, using power distribution as an example, it would be ânuclear reactor -> transformers -> main conduits -> branch conduits (-> homes/shops/etc)â.
We lay down the main conduits in our cities underground. The same idea is applied to stations, except instead of underground, we run them through the ducts. The branching wires are extended from these main conduits, out from the ducts and into wall wiring, then to the homes/shops/etc.
Apply the same principle to plumbing and oxygen.
However, considering that we do not need wires to distribute air and we do not need to distribute air to every individual home, etc, we run the ventilation system through the ceilings and distribute the air wholesale everywhere in that particular sector.
So, there is redundancy by design, it is an efficient distribution system and it is proof against total shutdown caused by stray gunshots and hammer-blows. Kill three corovids with one bullet, as it were. Then we jerry-rig all manner of crap & make a mess of things.
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So to summarise this thread, Lady Galena is upset by Naupliusâ investigating Serenaâs hidden ducts and passages and is concerned that their structural integrity could be easily compromised.
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Succinct. Very succinct.
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Well, at least one of those hidden passages has apparently developed a parasitic-slash-cancerous blockage thatâs growing at an alarming rate. And in a sign of true love and dedication, Napkins seems to have desecrated the corpse of another woman, and done some crap he wouldâve done anyway to âatoneâ for what we all know heâll do again with that corpse. Then he started another âLOOK AT ME!!!â thread about the crap he wouldâve done anyway, all in a bid for more attention.
Next, the inhabitants of this forum will give him that attention. And theyâll do it because publicly telling him heâs bad gives them the same bit of attention-craving ego-balm as the post theyâre gonna yell at him for gives him.
So, really, just another normal day here.
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Pretty much, yes. Iâm trying mockery. Past experience suggests that mockery is not well received by his sort. People are going to give him attention anyway, better it be attention he finds unwelcome. The problem with telling capsuleers theyâre doing something wrong and they need to stop is that theyâll just say ânu uh!â and justify why theyâre not wrong. (Some of them will argue theyâre actually helping).
I donât really pay attention to much of this insanity but whoâs been careless enough to let him get hold of one of their corpses?
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Heâs known to collect them whenever he gets lucky in a fight.
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When normal people get lucky with a woman, it doesnât involve a fight and a corpse.
Are we saying that Nauplius prefers private times where heâs not the only one thatâs stiff?
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All Iâm saying is: Serena now knows he desires her less than he desires a dead body. Thatâs not gonna change, so I hope she likes always wondering how many âgirlfriendsâ heâs got stored away.
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