The engineering room was a big escape room with lots of switches and buttons. The first interaction you have with I t is actually trying to get into it. It might be open, it might be locked, you might get a smuggler or some other character’s help getting access.

Once you get inside, there are seven stations, as well as a high-level console and status board. A lot of the stations have a very 1970s IBM feel to them.

Cooling Systems lorem ipsum

Life Support Systems, like the Service Systems, this is a lot of big switches.

A closer look at the switches.

Mechanical Systems this station comes with a metal handle that looks like a long code cylinder, there are two dark orange mechanical linkage stations to the left and right of the main console, when indicated you insert the handle into one of the wheels at the bottom of the orange station and use the lever to rotate it up or down to connect two pieces of pipe together.

The other orange station on the right-hand side of the console.

There’s also a big vertical pipe next to the station with a valve handle marked carbon freezing systems, sometimes you pull that handle.

Power Core the power core has glowing lights that change color, and blinking buttons to be pushed. There’s a child-sized entrance opposite the main entrance in case you need 70s drama where children can prove their heroism by fitting into tight places.

Rhydonium Fuel is the Orange Crush fueled heart of the Halcyon, this station is in charge of the Rhydonium fuel. Rhydonium is the fuel starships used before Coaxium.

Service Systems is the first station I encountered, I had to flush the trash compactor contents out to space for an acquaintance. I did it like five times before somebody asked me if I had swiped my Magic Band at the door. I had not, and that was the problem, it can’t credit your datapad if you were never there.

Systems Patch, you get blinking lights with Aurbesh characters on them and have to trace the lines from the light to the appropriate socket on the patch panel in the middle and plug the cable into the socket, then do it again on the opposite side, and that should solve the problem.

That’s the ten-credit tour.

It costs a lot to look this cheap.

Dolly Parton

Thoughts: I’m sure all the consoles are both simpler and more complex than I imagine. I would think for all the switches that you flip a handle left to right or up and down, they spring back in place when you let go, there’s a momentary switch that interrupts the current and somewhere each station has a Raspberry Pi or some other controller looking for those interrupts and signals the blinking lights to go off when you flip the right combination of switches. Every button, every switch, everything has to hold up to be being pressed hundreds of times per voyage, possibly thousands of times, the handles all need to hold the weight of toddlers to tweens that think it’s a climbing wall. The consoles themselves and many of the handles look like they were salvaged from an IBM or Soviet-era factory somewhere, and I mean that in a good way. There are other stations that seem like 1980s Doctor Who was running out of budget and feel kind of cheap in a $300 million endeavor.

Each of those stations may or may not actually report back to the engineering console or the status board in the room. Whether they do or not, I highly suspect that no matter how well each station does in the day two Override exercise, it always takes three tries to get a clear status board. Because you don’t need to be a functioning engineering team to have a fun adventure, and if one station kept everyone from enjoying the story beats, that wouldn’t be any fun for anyone. The gal I was paired up with last minute, we were a team of two. we didn’t have long enough arms or enough hands to master the Service Systems if everything had to happen exactly at the same time, but we managed.

I feel like if people wanted to recreate the engineering room, they could do it possibly the easiest of all the experiences. The PVC pipe fittings took me out of the experience everywhere I saw them, but they’d be easy to get at the local hardware store. The consoles you might be able to 3D print as many Star Wars Room Builders would attest. The mechanical station probably has the most finish next to the main engineering status console, the actual metal parts would require some CNC machining or a really well-repurposed salvage run somewhere for the wheels you put the lever into, the actual fitting linkages inside the plexiglass might be 3D printed. The liquid bubblers of the fuel system and the sunlight lounge might start with aquarium bubblers and mood lighting. I would recommend any build team to get creative with what they have available and see what they can do instead of trying to replicate what they had here.

The space manages to feel dark and cramped like many shipboard spaces do, while I think probably retaining good wheelchair access throughout the space, which is an impressive feat. The cargo hold I think, suffers from too little space, it’s only there for a few storylines and never for a group mission, as far as I’m aware, but you’re telling me they can fit 500 passengers worth of sunbutter jelly rolls in there, much less smuggling significant amounts of supplies for the resistance in there? Also, the Sublight Lounge isn’t big enough, Starcruiser Two, Coaxium Boogaloo needs at least 2 Sabacc tables and at least as much clearance around the tables in the booths as the booths at Oga’s.

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Paul

Evilrobotgames at Gmail.com