Goonhub
03-17-2014, 08:32 AM
Okay, I think I've collected my thoughts on this. I'm going to try to organize this as reasonably as possible.
1. I don't know how good current over suits are at protecting from radiation, but a dedicated anti-rad suit would probably be a good idea. A lot of what I'm about to go through would be more fun if you could protect yourself from it, while letting other people experience it more directly. These suits would need to protect from standard harmful radiation, as well as more exotic types I'll describe later.
2. Starting with the laser itself, the device should be modable in three parts. First, the emitter. I suggest keeping things simple, at least to begin with, and not involve frequency. Emitters are manufactured from various materials, with claretine having higher performance than pharosium, for example. You can set any emitter to any power level, but setting the power too high will gradually cause the emitter to break down and catch fire/melt, which may destroy it and the other components of the laser as well, and they'd need to be repaired or replaced. This way, you have a motive to acquire higher materials, but you don't absolutely need them to play around. Erebite, cerenkite, and plasmastone emitters would have special effects, but also carry dangers. (In recipes, that is. I'm thinking of a recipe-based system here. The roles of these special emitters should be predictable to some degree, though)
3. The second part of the laser is the gain medium, which will be a gas or gas mix. Energetic gasses (O2, plasma) will give a power boost to the laser, allowing you to reach higher energy levels than your cheap-ass emitter wcan handle. But, but too much power into them, and they may explode. Stable gasses (N2, He?) are safer, and will also prevent, for example, an erebite emitter from critically exploding. It'll still melt if overpowered, though. Use toxins to create an optimal gas mix to get a power boost while still being stable.
4. Third part is lenses. Manufactured from any transparent or semi-transparent material. Molitz, plasma, telecrystal... cytines? These just have various recipe effects, like the special emitters.
5. Now the mirrors. Those three mirrors look nice, but maybe a four-mirror setup would be better, allowing you to use only 8-directional beams, and also being easier to manipulate. Like, use a wrench + crowbar, and they can be rotated by 1/8th of a circle at a time. Of course, doing that would look obvious, and send beams everywhere, and doing it while the system is in use would be very, very dangerous.
Presuming the current setup, the mirrors should be controllable to change how much they reflect into the middle and how much they keep power in the perimeter loop. A balanced system would be like this: laser set to 9000 (system automatically compensates for boost from gain medium, but gives readout for what % of safe maximum the emitter is going at), 3 mirrors set to 3000, all mirrors send 3000 power into center. But here are some other cases: laser set to 10000, mirrors set to 3000, all send 3000 power into center, perimeter builds up 1000 per cycle (I'll go into what that's good for later). Also: laser set to 8000, mirrors set to 3000, first mirror sends 3000 power into center, other mirrors send 2500 power, system is unbalanced, beam shoots through center and starts burning through wall (slowly, not instantly).The controls should be set up so that you set the laser and mirror's power, then hit an "execute" command to implement them all instantly rather than gradually like the SMES units do.
6. The environment inside the reaction chamber should be controllable as well. Like with the laser gain medium, this should have various effects, stabilize the reaction, etc. More on that later. Being able to cool down the chamber rapidly would also be a very good idea if you have to go in and make repairs because something's exploded. Stable gas mixes or vacuum should be necessary to prevent air from spontaneously combusting under extremely high powered beams.
7. In the very center of the chamber there should be a reactant bottle. It'll contain whatever is being reacted, obviously. For your standard laser fusion reaction, that'd be deuterium, I guess. This should be a magnetic bottle, rather than a sealed bottle, so that its contents can interact with the surrounding environment. The contents of the bottle should deplete slowly but noticeably with time. Engineers will have to keep an eye on that. Possible contents should be various gasses, chemicals, ores, artifacts, etc. Let the chamber be fillable/refillable from outside, by putting something in some chute or port or whatever, and injecting it at a controlled pace.
8. So how does this all come together? Well, you have a recipe of sorts, which may require a certain amount of laser power, or certain materials at various stages of the system, and these recipes produce various effects. More power should not equal more effect potency. Rather, if the power is too low your console should only provide a hint as to what the effect will be. If the power is too high, you get harmful radiation that chokes out the effect (but can be collected by radiation collectors for power. There should be a Goldilocks range where the effect will actually happen. This will also be where the perimeter beams come in. Setting the mirrors to suddenly input a great deal of built up power will trigger the effect for a single cycle, before the radiation chokes it out, so this is how you make things happen in a big way. Also, various factors should make the Goldilocks range larger and easier to find. High level effects should have a Goldilocks range of width 0 until it is expanded by these factors, which will be determined on a per-recipe basis. The Goldilocks range should have a fairly narrow build up on the low side, but a very sharp dropoff on the high side. Setting the system up on that high side dropoff will allow some effects to propagate through special radiation, which will pass through walls (possibly out into the hall) but will not be harmful (at least, not in the way normal radiation is) and will be blocked by anti-rad suits. I suggest that in addition to the normal radiation health stat, everyone should have a special radiation stat that measure how much of a single given effect has built up in their bodies.
So, here's some examples of recipes. Obviously, none of these should be taken as final... I hesitate to put anything really interesting here at all, given how public it is. All should produce some power than can be collected for the station, at various levels of efficiency.
Claretine emitter (highest performance... other than alien tech?) + optimal gas mix + molitz lens (most energy efficient, no added effects) + vacuum chamber atmosphere + empty reactant bottle = antimatter (Feed matter into chamber slowly for large amount of energy) (O2 atmos would spontaneously combust under this much power) (If reactant bottle is not empty, matter-antimatter reaction is instant, may explode violently if too much antimatter is produced at once)
Plasmastone emitter + plasma or plasma gas mix gain medium + plasma glass lens (very strong, has stabilizing effect if laser set low, other odd effects if it is set high) + plasma or plasma gas mix chamber environment + plasmastone in reactant bottle * high amount of laser power input from mirrors all at once (considerable buildup time needed for balance reasons) = station-wide warning, followed by massive fart that damages anyone standing up
Stable gain medium + Telecrystal lens + stable chamber atmosphere + empty reactant bottle = portal opens (laser power determines what kind. Collectable energy may pour out of portal, or various nasty creatures, randomized each round like telescience z-levels)
Cerenkite emitter (reaction always produces radiation) + Telecrystal lens + empty reactant bottle = wormholes throughout station, number determined by effect potency
Cerenkite emitter + Telecrystal lens + erebite in reactant bottle = small explosions throughout station
Cerenkite emitter + O2 gain medium + plasma glass lens (again, this has different effects at low or high power) * low power = every minute, chance for random mutation in radiation area
Cerenkite emitter + O2 gain medium + plasma glass lens * high power = every minute, chance for random disease
Artifact in reactant bottle * individually determined laser power level, high end of Goldilocks range = Some artifact effects propogated through radiation, artifact turns off after a while (Maybe have handheld radiation collector that can be used to release this effect later? For example, use a healing artifact in this way, collect the radiation, and you have a limited-use item that heals everyone in an area. Of course, how effective this device is should be determined by the effect potency within the chamber)
1. I don't know how good current over suits are at protecting from radiation, but a dedicated anti-rad suit would probably be a good idea. A lot of what I'm about to go through would be more fun if you could protect yourself from it, while letting other people experience it more directly. These suits would need to protect from standard harmful radiation, as well as more exotic types I'll describe later.
2. Starting with the laser itself, the device should be modable in three parts. First, the emitter. I suggest keeping things simple, at least to begin with, and not involve frequency. Emitters are manufactured from various materials, with claretine having higher performance than pharosium, for example. You can set any emitter to any power level, but setting the power too high will gradually cause the emitter to break down and catch fire/melt, which may destroy it and the other components of the laser as well, and they'd need to be repaired or replaced. This way, you have a motive to acquire higher materials, but you don't absolutely need them to play around. Erebite, cerenkite, and plasmastone emitters would have special effects, but also carry dangers. (In recipes, that is. I'm thinking of a recipe-based system here. The roles of these special emitters should be predictable to some degree, though)
3. The second part of the laser is the gain medium, which will be a gas or gas mix. Energetic gasses (O2, plasma) will give a power boost to the laser, allowing you to reach higher energy levels than your cheap-ass emitter wcan handle. But, but too much power into them, and they may explode. Stable gasses (N2, He?) are safer, and will also prevent, for example, an erebite emitter from critically exploding. It'll still melt if overpowered, though. Use toxins to create an optimal gas mix to get a power boost while still being stable.
4. Third part is lenses. Manufactured from any transparent or semi-transparent material. Molitz, plasma, telecrystal... cytines? These just have various recipe effects, like the special emitters.
5. Now the mirrors. Those three mirrors look nice, but maybe a four-mirror setup would be better, allowing you to use only 8-directional beams, and also being easier to manipulate. Like, use a wrench + crowbar, and they can be rotated by 1/8th of a circle at a time. Of course, doing that would look obvious, and send beams everywhere, and doing it while the system is in use would be very, very dangerous.
Presuming the current setup, the mirrors should be controllable to change how much they reflect into the middle and how much they keep power in the perimeter loop. A balanced system would be like this: laser set to 9000 (system automatically compensates for boost from gain medium, but gives readout for what % of safe maximum the emitter is going at), 3 mirrors set to 3000, all mirrors send 3000 power into center. But here are some other cases: laser set to 10000, mirrors set to 3000, all send 3000 power into center, perimeter builds up 1000 per cycle (I'll go into what that's good for later). Also: laser set to 8000, mirrors set to 3000, first mirror sends 3000 power into center, other mirrors send 2500 power, system is unbalanced, beam shoots through center and starts burning through wall (slowly, not instantly).The controls should be set up so that you set the laser and mirror's power, then hit an "execute" command to implement them all instantly rather than gradually like the SMES units do.
6. The environment inside the reaction chamber should be controllable as well. Like with the laser gain medium, this should have various effects, stabilize the reaction, etc. More on that later. Being able to cool down the chamber rapidly would also be a very good idea if you have to go in and make repairs because something's exploded. Stable gas mixes or vacuum should be necessary to prevent air from spontaneously combusting under extremely high powered beams.
7. In the very center of the chamber there should be a reactant bottle. It'll contain whatever is being reacted, obviously. For your standard laser fusion reaction, that'd be deuterium, I guess. This should be a magnetic bottle, rather than a sealed bottle, so that its contents can interact with the surrounding environment. The contents of the bottle should deplete slowly but noticeably with time. Engineers will have to keep an eye on that. Possible contents should be various gasses, chemicals, ores, artifacts, etc. Let the chamber be fillable/refillable from outside, by putting something in some chute or port or whatever, and injecting it at a controlled pace.
8. So how does this all come together? Well, you have a recipe of sorts, which may require a certain amount of laser power, or certain materials at various stages of the system, and these recipes produce various effects. More power should not equal more effect potency. Rather, if the power is too low your console should only provide a hint as to what the effect will be. If the power is too high, you get harmful radiation that chokes out the effect (but can be collected by radiation collectors for power. There should be a Goldilocks range where the effect will actually happen. This will also be where the perimeter beams come in. Setting the mirrors to suddenly input a great deal of built up power will trigger the effect for a single cycle, before the radiation chokes it out, so this is how you make things happen in a big way. Also, various factors should make the Goldilocks range larger and easier to find. High level effects should have a Goldilocks range of width 0 until it is expanded by these factors, which will be determined on a per-recipe basis. The Goldilocks range should have a fairly narrow build up on the low side, but a very sharp dropoff on the high side. Setting the system up on that high side dropoff will allow some effects to propagate through special radiation, which will pass through walls (possibly out into the hall) but will not be harmful (at least, not in the way normal radiation is) and will be blocked by anti-rad suits. I suggest that in addition to the normal radiation health stat, everyone should have a special radiation stat that measure how much of a single given effect has built up in their bodies.
So, here's some examples of recipes. Obviously, none of these should be taken as final... I hesitate to put anything really interesting here at all, given how public it is. All should produce some power than can be collected for the station, at various levels of efficiency.
Claretine emitter (highest performance... other than alien tech?) + optimal gas mix + molitz lens (most energy efficient, no added effects) + vacuum chamber atmosphere + empty reactant bottle = antimatter (Feed matter into chamber slowly for large amount of energy) (O2 atmos would spontaneously combust under this much power) (If reactant bottle is not empty, matter-antimatter reaction is instant, may explode violently if too much antimatter is produced at once)
Plasmastone emitter + plasma or plasma gas mix gain medium + plasma glass lens (very strong, has stabilizing effect if laser set low, other odd effects if it is set high) + plasma or plasma gas mix chamber environment + plasmastone in reactant bottle * high amount of laser power input from mirrors all at once (considerable buildup time needed for balance reasons) = station-wide warning, followed by massive fart that damages anyone standing up
Stable gain medium + Telecrystal lens + stable chamber atmosphere + empty reactant bottle = portal opens (laser power determines what kind. Collectable energy may pour out of portal, or various nasty creatures, randomized each round like telescience z-levels)
Cerenkite emitter (reaction always produces radiation) + Telecrystal lens + empty reactant bottle = wormholes throughout station, number determined by effect potency
Cerenkite emitter + Telecrystal lens + erebite in reactant bottle = small explosions throughout station
Cerenkite emitter + O2 gain medium + plasma glass lens (again, this has different effects at low or high power) * low power = every minute, chance for random mutation in radiation area
Cerenkite emitter + O2 gain medium + plasma glass lens * high power = every minute, chance for random disease
Artifact in reactant bottle * individually determined laser power level, high end of Goldilocks range = Some artifact effects propogated through radiation, artifact turns off after a while (Maybe have handheld radiation collector that can be used to release this effect later? For example, use a healing artifact in this way, collect the radiation, and you have a limited-use item that heals everyone in an area. Of course, how effective this device is should be determined by the effect potency within the chamber)