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New science division: Particle physics
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03-16-2014, 06:39 PM
atomic1fire Wrote:If you could rotate the dishes you could just as easily be a huge jerk and missfire the laser right into somebody, or cause an explosion. Or if you are feeling especially sassy that round, make some weird, convoluted mirror reflection system that has the laser bouncing around the hallways, turning them into some sick, twisted maze of death.
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)
03-17-2014, 10:36 AM
Does this mean that mining can no longer goof off into the debris field and get blown up trying to take down the x-drone without having mined a single piece of ore?
03-17-2014, 02:17 PM
Amuys Wrote:Does this mean that mining can no longer goof off into the debris field and get blown up trying to take down the x-drone without having mined a single piece of ore? No, of course not. It gives mining and engineering another reason to interact, and I'll probably try to add some mining upgrades that the mechanics can build, but QM can provide ores too. As can space traders, if the engineers feel like flying out to get some.
03-17-2014, 07:51 PM
Honestly, putting aside how similar that is to my suggestion (
 ) I think it's a bad idea to require an emitter of a high quality ore that can melt. That means that if Engineering breaks it, you need mining to repair it. The best setup, in my opinion, is one that can be operated using nothing more than items inside engineering indefinitely, but inefficiently. So if every other department is fucking off, you can still set up the engine and produce some power. But when mining is on the ball, and getting you the Miracle Matters and Erebite ores, you can make some fuckoff awesome emitters/lenses/whatever that are touchy, but powerful.Therefore, I think the base materials should be stuff that's easily and immediately accessible. The three main ores, Mauxite/Molitz/Pharosium, various gases, and easy reagents like water and welding fuel. Anything more than that shouldn't be a requirement to make the engine run, but a necessity to make it run well.
03-17-2014, 08:21 PM
Captain_Bravo Wrote:Honestly, putting aside how similar that is to my suggestion ( It is similar, yes, but I was working from a simplified version of my original particle lab concept. And yes, the basic materials needed would be pharosium for the emitter, and molitz for the lens. Also, deuterium or helium gas for the basic fusion reactant, but those aren't in the game at all at present, are they? Also, as for the melting, if that happens you could be left with, for example, a lump of claretine slag that you have to extract from the machine (screwdriver -> wrench -> crowbar) before it can be used again. The slag can be taken to disposals or the cargo bay or wherever and recycled back into usable ore, so it'd take a bit of time, but not be an irrecoverable setback. Does that answer your concerns?
03-18-2014, 06:23 AM
I'm guessing that since the engine is going to be turned on and off a lot during a round, solars are going to be even more important now?
03-18-2014, 06:58 AM
Zadeon Wrote:I'm guessing that since the engine is going to be turned on and off a lot during a round, solars are going to be even more important now? Most definitely. Not just because it turns off a lot, but also because it's likely to take a fair amount of power to start up. This thing is going to produce energy in large fits and starts, so constructing more SMES units is going to be very helpful for storing it up.
03-18-2014, 02:54 PM
I can only hope this will turn out just like black mesa, where I'm throwing things at scientists for fun and monsters spawn everywhere because someone pushed a button wrong or put the wrong thing in the machine.
(Yes I know black mesa is basically HD half life, but black mesa had stuff you can pick up and throw at people, which is way funnier then having them ignore you jumping on their head.)
03-18-2014, 06:21 PM
Oh man a renaissance cascade event would be awesome. It would only be achieved when a certain formula/combination is used, and it would change each round which combination it is so that you don't have somebody triggering it every single round.
03-19-2014, 01:26 AM
Perhaps a crystal could be found in deep space/telescience that causes the renaissance cascade/makes a shitload of energy.
03-19-2014, 05:01 AM
Zadeon Wrote:Oh man a renaissance cascade. thatd be awesome like we could have segway jousting tournaments and eat turkey legs and then we'd stone the village idiot hipBEE. also gives everyone a mutation that makes you say "m'lady" "ye olde" and other things
03-19-2014, 06:54 AM
A resonance cascade is an obvious thing to have. In fact, I'd say it'd be inconceivable to not have it. But for obvious reasons, it should be hard to achieve. Maybe not Solarium level, but still quite a bit of effort.
One of the other suggestions I liked that are floating around on this board is to have invadable trader shuttles. (The topic is here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2470) I was going to do a mockup of what one of those shuttles would look like, but I just haven't gotten around to it. Maybe now I will. To summarize, the basic idea was that a person could either fly in on a pod or get sent in a crate or send a teleporter beacon or what have you. Once they started their attack, they'd have a limited time to break in (if approaching from the outside) fight off the crew and break into the cargo holds to loot whatever they could get their hands on, until the ship would warp away. The traders themselves would be NPCs of varying degrees of strength. To connect these two ideas, one of the traders, I'm thinking Vurdalak, could have an engine that contains a number of different unique crystals, one of which will randomly be the xen crystal. The artifact lab would need to be used to determine which sample is usable in the station's reactor. Perhaps a special artifact lab object, the anti-mass spectrometer, would also need to be acquired to investigate and activate the samples? Anyway, after that, you could finally stick it in this reactor. For the most part, all it would do is produce tons of energy, but if you investigate how to make it produce more and more, you eventually hit the tipping point where the cascade happens.
03-19-2014, 07:17 AM
poland spring Wrote:Just realized what I typed. Not what I meant but okay.Zadeon Wrote:Oh man a renaissance cascade. |
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