Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Magic and Technology

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue May 08, 2012 2:19 pm

If Mage: the Word Beginning with "A" taught us one thing: it is that truly open ended magic like "Turn things into other things" or "Change energy" is a nightmare. Not just in that it makes balance a laughable concept, but that it is actually a nightmare to adjudicate. You can have arguments that last hours or days about just one proposed use of an ability.

Just as you wouldn't make a magic effect of "Energy" but instead make something more grounded that shoots destructive lightning at things, you wouldn't make a magic effect that simply changed "stuff" into "other stuff". Because that's fucking insane. You'd ground it into discrete effects like Stone Skin and Rock to Mud.

As for the issue of working on alchemy as a job - that seems plausible. Alchemists do something when they aren't Lancers doing terrorist work for political causes, so you have to decide what kind of living an alchemist makes.

-Username17

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue May 08, 2012 4:10 pm

For rough comparison, at today's scrap metal prices, if you filled a gallon jug with copper every day, you would make about $100k/year.

That's a really good living, and copper prices are likely higher in the Lancerverse. That means any alchemist who can do that is wealthy. Since wealth is advancement here, that's a little broken.

That's not even turning stuff into valuable stuff. Copper isn't gold or diamonds or whatever, this is basic "water to metal", and it's about 1/7 of a cubic foot per day.

That's leaving aside actual creativity. Another thread talked about printing cheap equipment; this makes all equipment actually good (print molds; fill with water; metalize; assemble), and means you can print weapons now.

Frank is absolutely right that generalized transformation powers are crazygonuts. But its also true that even very specific ones get out of control. In Dnd, even Rock-to-Mud and Mud-to-Rock are potent world shakers; that you don't see it is mostly symptomatic of the persistent suck of most of the world and most tables' inability to meaningfully change the world.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue May 08, 2012 4:35 pm

fectin wrote:For rough comparison, at today's scrap metal prices, if you filled a gallon jug with copper every day, you would make about $100k/year.

That's a really good living, and copper prices are likely higher in the Lancerverse. That means any alchemist who can do that is wealthy. Since wealth is advancement here, that's a little broken.

I disagree with this assessment. A medic can draw $100k a year. A Lawyer, an accountant, and a mercenary soldier can all pull $100k a year. Lancers have skills that you would expect would get them to draw down between $100 and $200k a year. If that's how much alchemy pays, that sounds about right.

One thing that we can do is to have the basic transmutations be the equivalent of Sustained spells - which actually makes them way more useful in missions but essentially negligible in terms of between-mission effects (like getting money). Permanent transmutations (actual gold instead of fairy gold), can be something that you work in an alchemist lab all day for.

Peak Copper is expected to be a couple dozen million tonnes a year, I don't think an alchemist in a lab making an extra 8 and a half tonnes of the stuff by working a 5-day-a-week job is going to have that much of an effect.

-Username17

T · Post by T » Tue May 08, 2012 5:00 pm

I know this is an older and more settled topic, but how does the idea of Stress interact with magic/augmentation that specifically makes you better at the info gathering mini game or stealth mini game? Say Predator style camouflage in the 'avoid being noticed dropping a gun of a bridge' example? Or a magic aura scrubbing spell?

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Tue May 08, 2012 5:10 pm

Also, it occurs to me that fectin's assuming no variables other then 'the current price of the this raw material'. Just because the guy's doing water-to-metal transmutations doesn't mean he's pulling copper out of his ass; he's working as an alchemist, which means he has an alchemy lab that needs to be properly equipped, and he's presumably using up a stockpile of consumables to properly bind the transmutation, or however alchemy's supposed to work in this universe.

Accordingly, the profit an alchemist can make by turning one thing into some other thing is hugely dependent on what materials he needs to make the one thing into the other thing. Also, it may not be feasible to do a given transmutation in a single step; for some materials, you will want multiple stages to keep down costs. For example, water-to-gold might be pretty much impossible, in that doing it directly might actually cost more then the current price of gold. However, water-to-copper is a basic entry-level transmutation, copper-to-lead is reasonably doable, and lead-to-gold is well-known, if not exactly inexpensive. Of course, since lead-to-gold is so well-known, you can't just go around buying lead in quantity (the price of lead is pretty closely tied to the price of gold), and copper is so easy, that it'd take you less effort to make it yourself than to buy it. Accordingly, you can actually make money creating gold as an alchemist... but if you don't have a stockpile of a useful precursor material to work with, you'll make better profits just brewing up copper.

During world creation, you can explicitly list a number of well-known transmutations that people make money on; anything not on that list is doable, but probably unprofitable for bulk work. Accordingly, if you need small quantities of some weird material, you can probably talk to an alchemist somewhere and get it... but if the material is uncommon enough, the price won't be much different from market value, even assuming a friendly alchemist working at cost.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue May 08, 2012 5:15 pm

Clearly, the alchemist has no effect on global supply, and probably no effect on local supply. However, he's dealing in liquid, fungible goods in a commodity market, so the global supply matters immensely to him. Essentially, he can print money, and the economy is depressed. His life is awsome.

Those are all good comparisons, but look at them closely. Medic and lawyer are skilled professions with no risk. Mercenary is unskilled with a lot of risk. If you want skilled and high risk at the same time, you have to pay a lot more. Aside from lack of motivation, it's still a problem though: if the alchemist is lancing alongside a merc, and they earn about as much from lancing as the alchemist does from his day job, the alchemist has double the merc's money.

Also, I got to that number by working backwards from 100k, so it was "how much copper do you need to average to make $100k". If your limit is a gallon, you're not doing anything cool in combat. For example, you mentioned turning skin to metal, but a 200lb man has roughly 3.5 gallons of skin (thank you google, for supplying serial-killer type knowledge).

I like the idea of temporary changes, but that's also wierd. What happens if I turn water into lead, cast that into a bullet, and shoot someone with it? Are assassins suddenly untraceable? If I am forensics and recover a bullet, are there now precautions I should take? If I transmogrify a gun into wood, then burn it, what happens when the transformation wears off? How about sodium into water and drink it? Overall, I think permanent transformations are actually the easier option, rules-wise.

T · Post by T » Tue May 08, 2012 5:30 pm

Frankly, instead of being resource starved (copper, oil, etc.), I think you'd be better off being energy starved. Or at least pin the resource scarcity to specific things, like rare earth metals that all high tech gizmos need.

Energy scarcity can be tied to specific materials: coal, oil, uranium, lithium (for fusion), etc. It's also nice because you can rule by fiat that even though there are other energy sources out there (solar, wind, etc.), it's not enough to satiate the MEGA needs of the energy addicted society of the future. So corporations still need to whore themselves out looking for more oil, lithium, gas. And only they have the resources to effectively collect and harness that stuff.

Uranium is out there, but the mines are controlled by just a few corps/countries (just like it is today). Oil is too precious now to waste for energy - peak oil HAS passed in 2075, and it is used only for special high tech plastics and other petroleum based products. Lithium for fusion reactions... Bolivia controls most of the world's lithium, making them an fusion energy super power. You can get it from the sea, but in order to make it worthwhile (it's an energy intensive process), you have to have floating lithium harvesting bases in the middle of the sea, which require so much power they are powered by fusion reactors. Certain areas have turned to natural gas, but the fracking has destroyed all of the local water. Etc. You can get most of this stuff from current events.

If you make peak copper happen, we'll just use aluminum for conductors. Like we already do now in the present day. Who cares if copper is expensive? If you make aluminum scarce, well, that's pretty extreme, since it's pretty goddam abundant. Wiki puts it at 8% of the Earth's surface.

If you do really want to make certain resources scarce, go with something like rare earths. Sure, the common man can string up some shitty power line or something with aluminum, but only Megacorp has access to the rare earth mines that let use build the tech of 2075. This is probably more realistic, because China is already cornering most of the rare earth market today (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Raree ... uction.svg).

It also somewhat avoids people stripping the carpets off the floor and the copper wire out of the walls. Who cares about that shit? Petty thieves will steal the copper like they do now, but you would never think about melting down the captured drone for the metal, because the motherboard in the drone is worth WAY more than the material it's made from.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Tue May 08, 2012 5:44 pm

T wrote: If you do really want to make certain resources scarce, go with something like rare earths. Sure, the common man can string up some shitty power line or something with aluminum, but only Megacorp has access to the rare earth mines that let use build the tech of 2075. This is probably more realistic, because China is already cornering most of the rare earth market today (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Raree ... uction.svg).

I'm told by people who seem to know what they are talking about that there are a bunch of tricks by which you can create the rare earths. They just are not cost effective today. It won't work for things like steel alloys, because you are replicating their electrical properties, not their physical properties, but it will work for electronics.

T · Post by T » Tue May 08, 2012 6:24 pm

kzt wrote: I'm told by people who seem to know what they are talking about that there are a bunch of tricks by which you can create the rare earths. They just are not cost effective today. It won't work for things like steel alloys, because you are replicating their electrical properties, not their physical properties, but it will work for electronics.

That could be true. I don't know that much about rare earths other than what's in the news. Then again, those tricks might only be in the hands of the megacorps with the know how, so you are back where you started - rare earths are expensive because they are in the hands of only a couple of groups.

Steel on the other hand... Iron is pretty goddam abundant too (4th most common element in the crust). And we have a ton (ha!) of it already out of the ground so you could recycle the old shit. When you start making the 1st-4th most abundant elements in the crust rare, I think you'd have lots of consistency problems in your setting.

I just see energy scarcity to be THE driving factor in the future. Again, it's already controlling us now, and it's only going to get worse. I use lithium as a primary example because A) think of how many batteries we depend on now. It's all lithium. It's only going to get worse unless we come up with a new battery technology. Ok, assume that we do. That leads to B) Fusion, as we know it today, depends on lithium.

Fusion is DT (deuterium tritium) fusion. Deuterium can be found in water, so we can get it from the sea. Tritium has a half life of 12.something years, so you can't stockpile it and it essentially doesn't exist naturally, because it all decays away. So we have to breed tritium from lithium 6, which is naturally occurring, but is only 5-10% natural lithium. So it's somewhat scarce. And found only in parts of the world (enter controlling countries/companies). You need a big bad energetic neutron to breed tritium out of Li6, so we are talking about neutrons coming out of a fusion reactor if you are consuming a lot of it. Lithium is the limiting fuel source for a DT reactor. There's a lot of it, but not *that* much of it. And it's hard to transform into tritium.

Ok, so maybe we don't do DT fusion, but DD, which solves a lot of problems. Personally, I think that's doubtful by 2075. I'll be ecstatic if there's an honest to god working DT reactor that is actually putting electricity on the grid that consumers can buy by 2075. But back to DD; it's a lot harder to do. Besides, if you want the energy scarcity built into your setting, you can just hand wave and say, 'DD fusion was too fucking tough and not worth it.' Or, 'DD fusion is too fucking tough and we aren't there yet'. Your power output in a DD reactor is going to be a lot lower and the inputs are higher - at some point, making the superconducting magnets needed is going to go from doable to not doable. Put that dividing line between DT and DD and you have a reason why you do DT and not DD.

Alternately, you could also go D-He3, which is harder to do than DD. Also, too, there isn't much He3 on Earth. It think there's a bunch on the moon and on Jupiter/Saturn, so there's your plot hook for moon bases and Jupiter mines. Of course, with D-He3, you'd still have to come up with some reason why DD doesn't work, otherwise we'd just do DD, since the shit is in the sea and it's easier. One possibility is that DT/DD are just too nasty to deal with with all the neutrons flying around activating shit, and you'd have to replace the insides of your reactor every 6 months, which just isn't economically viable. Also that lithium problem. So instead you mine for shit on the moon. But only rich countries can afford this... etc.

All this fusion shit probably works better in a 2200-2400 setting than it does in 2075, just because in 2300, we could have feasibly run through all of our coal and have NO choice other than fusion, while at the same time, advanced our technology enough to actually be using D-He3 reactors, but in 2075... who knows. It's simultaneously too close and too far away to say. Regardless, energy needs are quite likely to dominate the shit out of any society that will or will not exist in 2075.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue May 08, 2012 7:14 pm

On Rare Earths: currently, China makes about 95% of the world's rare earths. Because (among other things), they bought the US mines and then shut them down. Their actually supplies are about 37% of the world's proven reserves. The US has a pretty similar amount, with the remainder split roughly evenly between Australia and the entire rest of the planet. In Asymmetric Threat, rare earths are likely in hugely short supply in Europe and Africa, but in China and the US things are actually OK on that front.

As for bottlenecking things on energy alone, I don't think that's possible. If oil isn't profoundly limited, then energy isn't meaningfully limited. You could always just burn oil for power.

The big issue is that with monsters and pirates, the global supply of any particular commodity basically doesn't matter. Copper simply isn't fungible if you run the risk of R'lyehns seizing your ship and flaying everyone on board if you try to transport it from one place to another. If something isn't worth sending by air freight or in an armed convoy, it might as well not exist if it's far away.

Meanwhile, efficiency is really high at points of actual manufacturing. When raw materials do arrive at factories, those factories can burn through them at incredible speeds. It's kind of like the second season of The Wire, where people show up every day to find out how many hours of work there is for them - and often that number is zero.

-Username17

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Tue May 08, 2012 7:28 pm

kzt wrote:
T wrote: If you do really want to make certain resources scarce, go with something like rare earths. Sure, the common man can string up some shitty power line or something with aluminum, but only Megacorp has access to the rare earth mines that let use build the tech of 2075. This is probably more realistic, because China is already cornering most of the rare earth market today (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Raree ... uction.svg).
I'm told by people who seem to know what they are talking about that there are a bunch of tricks by which you can create the rare earths. They just are not cost effective today. It won't work for things like steel alloys, because you are replicating their electrical properties, not their physical properties, but it will work for electronics.

By 'create' I assume you mean 'extract from trace quantities found in industrial/mining waste', since you can't feasibly transmute elements in reality.

Of course, since we're assuming the existence of Alchemists who can do exactly that, things get easier. There's all kinds of alchemical texts from way back when, and a lot of them contain information on how to transmute common materials, which now actually works, since magic got turned back on. Of course, this doesn't conveniently address all your resource needs. If you want a formula to transmute lead to gold, that's information in the public domain, found in thousands of places. If you want a formula to transmute lead into osmium, you're probably SOL... best-case scenario, you'd be able to dig around a bit, and find out which megacorp you need to steal the formula from; worst-case involves flying out to one of the magic kingdoms to steal it from dwarves.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue May 08, 2012 7:34 pm

Okay. I completely buy that. But that also makes my point much stronger. If copper (or whatever else) is not fungible and liquid, then the guy who can crap out several tonnes of it per year is in a much, much better place. Sure he can saturate mant local markets, but if he picks a place which uses copper then he has essentially infinite demand.

Is there a good way to put "change to metal" high enough up a tree that wealth doesnt matter anymore by the time you get it?

T · Post by T » Tue May 08, 2012 7:49 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: As for bottlenecking things on energy alone, I don't think that's possible. If oil isn't profoundly limited, then energy isn't meaningfully limited. You could always just burn oil for power.

The big issue is that with monsters and pirates, the global supply of any particular commodity basically doesn't matter. Copper simply isn't fungible if you run the risk of R'lyehns seizing your ship and flaying everyone on board if you try to transport it from one place to another. If something isn't worth sending by air freight or in an armed convoy, it might as well not exist if it's far away.

Word. So make oil profoundly limited

It's as easy and more believable as making copper profoundly limited. There's really not much in the way of electricity generation from oil in the US in the present day. Not sure about other countries. And where does the US get most of it's oil?

Copper production is reasonably spread out over the world as I read things. So is aluminum. Africa gets the shit end of the stick, but what else is new. Depending on how finely you break up a given continent into different powers, sure, you could make shipping copper across North America difficult because of warring factions, but if not, NA should have enough copper and aluminum to meet their needs.

However, the problem of a global market would be true of energy as well. The North American power grid is incredibly fragile and hodge podge. Something like that would just flat out not exist if the US were broken into 10 different warring zones. And do you really think we have enough oil in North America to support our energy needs? If we aren't shipping it from _____ via tankers because of piracy, North America gots no oil.

To say bottlenecking things based on energy is not possible is almost laughable. Particularly in a fantasy land where you can dictate that peak oil has passed. Eastern North American territories run on coal and shale gas. They can't get enough uranium from fission, sun for solar, or oil for... oil. Or fuck it, they are just hillbilly savages now. Southwest territories run on solar power, which is constantly sabotaged by enemy neighbors who do flyovers and paint bomb their panels. Some high tech countries who are near the sea have fusion. Canada has turned solely to to fission - they have the know how and the uranium. South American territories have cornered the market on lithium and batteries: no electric car for you!

You could obviously take it even further if you wanted - Japan literally might not exist anymore since they don't have much in the way of natural resources, for energy or anything else. I don't see how an energy limited or resource limited world would really change that for Japan - if there's not much in the way of global commerce for sea-shipped physical goods, they are screwed. How do they supply their needs?

Energy is really a big deal. It makes the modern world go around and it is a HUGE concern for the future. You don't see much about it in the news (other than the typical blather about oil) because it's a long term problem that we are facing - read longer than the 4 year political cycle of the US. We really don't know what the fuck is going to happen if oil becomes constrained. If you cut out the ability to ship uranium ore and coal on top of that, then we are going to have way bigger problems then not being able to ship copper.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue May 08, 2012 8:33 pm

I don't think you understand the reasons why the power grid is fragile in the US. If it were broken up, it would actually be much, much more robust and much less prone to hystereses.

The US imports less oil than it exports and has large untapped reserves. The same applies to Canada. If oil is scarce, it's going to be scarce everywhere.

The Northeast US has coal and natural gas. Together, those account for 65% of total US electricity generation, so they're not resource starved unless you fiat that they are.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue May 08, 2012 8:39 pm

fectin wrote:Okay. I completely buy that. But that also makes my point much stronger. If copper (or whatever else) is not fungible and liquid, then the guy who can crap out several tonnes of it per year is in a much, much better place. Sure he can saturate mant local markets, but if he picks a place which uses copper then he has essentially infinite demand.

Is there a good way to put "change to metal" high enough up a tree that wealth doesnt matter anymore by the time you get it?

This is actually part and parcel of the question "Why don't the players just steal cars?" After all, if you're getting even two grand for a stolen Mercedes, and you steal one a day for fifty days - that's your hundred grand on like two months work.

The deal here is that selling stuff sucks for player characters. Whether you have drugs, stolen cars, or fabricated copper, you're left with a cache that has some value and it dissipates over time to give you actual cash at some exchange rate. The longer you take to sell it off, the more of the nominal value you get. But while you're doing that, you still have a high value cache in your flat, which counts against your wealth limit and may make you a target for thieves. Commodities Caches are something that you have instead of Surveillance Equipment Caches or Automobile Caches or Heavy Weapons Caches or something. Not necessarily a bad thing to have, but making however much money you're making off of that comes at a direct tradeoff with having better mission gear.

I imagine there will probably be some breakpoints. Maybe you're looking at pushing the limits of your lifestyle, so it becomes worth it to hop up to the suburbs and then pay for the rent by growing pot on the side or something. Or maybe it goes the other way, where you find it to be worthwhile to set up dummy accounts to own storage lockers so that you can fill them with stashes of stolen pharmaceuticals until you sell them off.

T wrote:I know this is an older and more settled topic, but how does the idea of Stress interact with magic/augmentation that specifically makes you better at the info gathering mini game or stealth mini game? Say Predator style camouflage in the 'avoid being noticed dropping a gun of a bridge' example? Or a magic aura scrubbing spell?

There are a couple of linked concepts to work with there. The first is your Trail. That is how easy it is to find you. The second is your Heat. That is how hard people are currently looking for you. If your Heat exceeds your Trail, chances are good that goons will be sent to your house, and then your stuff is compromised. You have to lay low (to raise your Trail), or change your particulars (to lower your Heat). Or just go out in a blaze of glory I guess.

Then we got Lifestyles. A Lifestyle comes with three things: a Trail, a Wealth Limit, and a Social Status. The Social Status bit we aren't super interested in here, but the Wealth Limit is how much you can actually keep in your flat before you start attracting thieves and home invaders looking to take your stuff. Needless to say, having a higher Trail and having a higher Wealth Limit cost more - and having them together costs a lot more.

So anyway, characters with less Stress have higher Trails. Which makes them automatically better at being the guy with the contraband in his house. Because the Heat that holding a Maguffin generates doesn't threaten the low stress guy as much.

Narratively: people who are normal humans have an easier time doing things that piss off corporations and criminal syndicates because they blend into the crowd.

-Username17

T · Post by T » Tue May 08, 2012 9:14 pm

Frank - cool about the Stress stuff. I must have missed that elsewhere.

T · Post by T » Tue May 08, 2012 9:33 pm

fectin wrote:I don't think you understand the reasons why the power grid is fragile in the US. If it were broken up, it would actually be much, much more robust and much less prone to hystereses.

I do understand why it is. Which is why on a continent which is has broken up into many countries, unless there were real incentives, the grid would become very fractured. It exists today because there is a lot of willpower to keep it going across state lines. If it were broken up, that power plant in PA that provides your city in OH with power might not be supplying your city anymore. And, if this dark future scenario has pirates and terrorists who really want to do some damage to their neighbors, take out the power grid where your imported energy comes from. That's what I mean by more fragile - it works for the US now because OH is not scheming in any real way against PA.

fectin wrote: The US imports less oil than it exports and has large untapped reserves. The same applies to Canada. If oil is scarce, it's going to be scarce everywhere.

Yep, other than maybe the mideast or something. But I'd just make it scarce. Besides, most of the oil that is used in the US is for transportation (cars). So if you started using it all for electricity instead, you'd obviously not be using it for cars. Ok, so you have electric or hydrogen cars. The energy stored in those vehicles would have to come from somewhere, i.e. power plants, so ultimately your trying to meet your energy needs for transportation AND electric grid from just oil? I haven't run the numbers, but I think that would be tough today, much less a future where oil may be on the decline, or hard to score locally.

fectin wrote:The Northeast US has coal and natural gas. Together, those account for 65% of total US electricity generation, so they're not resource starved unless you fiat that they are.

I know. That's why I said in a previous post that the NE would run on coal and gas. But, if you fiat that the NE doesn't like the SW, and they don't sell coal to them, or electricity, or gas, then the SW doesn't have a pot to piss in. Hopefully, in our real future, this isn't a concern, but in this game, it sounds like it is. I believe Frank had North and Central America broken into many different countries, but I could be wrong.

The NE isn't going to have oil driven cars if all of the oil comes from Texas/Alaska/Canada/Mideast, which now all hate the NE. Even if they didn't hate, the Deep Ones won't let oil come in through shipping lanes. In the NE, cars are natural gas or electric cars.

Anyway, just thoughts. I think the idea of having resources so limited either because you are peak-resource or global trade is gridlocked has so many wide reaching implications that 2075 wouldn't be Bladerunner + magic, it would be Mad Max. Fiefdoms. Making energy the limiting factor would also be bad, but much more realistic in my mind - break the world down into zones/countries/corps that CAN provide for their energy needs, and they rule that zone with an iron fist. Those zones that can't are in the stone age. The natural resources connected to various energy sources ARE often localized globally, and they often have interesting political and environmental implications, which in a grungy future, could give some interesting flavor. It also neatly bypasses alchemists transmuting sand to copper. (You'd still have the problem of them transmuting sand to highly enriched uranium, but that poses a problem anyway.)

T · Post by T » Tue May 08, 2012 9:40 pm

fectin wrote: The US imports less oil than it exports and has large untapped reserves. The same applies to Canada. If oil is scarce, it's going to be scarce everywhere.

Also, too, the US imports less oil PRODUCTS than it exports. Products is the operative word. Not crude. The US is still a net importer of crude, though some of that is distilled and then reexported.

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=5290

I'm sure there are more subtleties there if you push deeper, but we are still very dependent on foreign oil. And will continue to be.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Wed May 09, 2012 12:51 am

Endovior wrote: By 'create' I assume you mean 'extract from trace quantities found in industrial/mining waste', since you can't feasibly transmute elements in reality.

No, actually create the properties of rare earths using other materials. Though the recycling is certainly also useful and likely cheaper.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2 ... es-magnets

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Wed May 09, 2012 1:06 am

T wrote:They can't get enough uranium from fission, sun for solar, or oil for... oil. Or fuck it, they are just hillbilly savages now. Southwest territories run on solar power, which is constantly sabotaged by enemy neighbors who do flyovers and paint bomb their panels.

Converting coal to oil is something that was mastered by the Germans in the 1940s. And converting coal to gas was mastered in the 19th century. railroads work really well to ship coal very long distances. Plus there is the minor drawback that the states that have the biggest coal mines in the US include Wyoming, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Texas.

It's totally impractical to paint bomb a solar facility, for two reasons. First, have you ever tried to paint 50 acres? Second, it's an act of war and people trying it will get killed, as quad .50s, radar and searchlights are all pretty well understood technology. Third, peel-off covers, like the ones used on race car windshields, are also a well understood technology.

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Wed May 09, 2012 1:12 am

kzt wrote:
Endovior wrote: By 'create' I assume you mean 'extract from trace quantities found in industrial/mining waste', since you can't feasibly transmute elements in reality.
No, actually create the properties of rare earths using other materials. Though the recycling is certainly also useful and likely cheaper.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2 ... es-magnets

Ah. So in other words, you're not even talking about creating rare earths, you're talking about fiddling with the properties of alloys utilizing rare earths, which is completely different. Given how alloys work in general, this is totally possible. If you've got the kinks worked out of the production process, then you'll get markedly greater efficiency then relying on conventional quantities of rare earths. But it is in no way related to actually creating rare earths; instead, you're engineering around the need for as much of them. You'll still need a supply of all the elements in question; you'll just burn through the rarer parts of that supply a lot slower.

Still useful, yes; but it takes some inordinately expensive equipment to pull off, is extremely time-consuming, and uses up piles of energy. If you happen to have lots of high-tech equipment (which implies the infrastructure to keep that equipment maintained, since this is a long-term benefit), can afford significant delays in your production cycle, and have the available power to run the arrays, then yes, you can get some pretty awesome efficiencies on your rarer materials. That said, unless you are a megacorp, you're probably better off hiring an alchemist. In fact, even most megacorps are probably better off retaining an alchemy department.

T · Post by T » Wed May 09, 2012 2:19 am

kzt wrote: Converting coal to oil is something that was mastered by the Germans in the 1940s. And converting coal to gas was mastered in the 19th century. railroads work really well to ship coal very long distances. Plus there is the minor drawback that the states that have the biggest coal mines in the US include Wyoming, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Texas.

It's totally impractical to paint bomb a solar facility, for two reasons. First, have you ever tried to paint 50 acres? Second, it's an act of war and people trying it will get killed, as quad .50s, radar and searchlights are all pretty well understood technology. Third, peel-off covers, like the ones used on race car windshields, are also a well understood technology.

All interesting and true stuff and could really make for some great flavor, right?

Why again was Germany so concerned about making coal gas? Oh yeah, they were scared shitless that they would be cut off from oil.

Thanks for the point about western states having high coal production - it's not something I've looked into much. I'm curious what coal production vs. coal reserves looks like. Do they follow the same geographical patterns? Just changes the territories around a bit though. California is still coal/oil deprived I'm pretty sure. If I recall correctly, we have about 250 years of coal reserves in the US if we maintain the current usage. If current usage changes, so does the amount of reserves.

RE: painting - I'm sure you could do a number with militarized crop dusters spraying paint. Or flammable aerosols or something. The point is that if you are heavily depending on solar power, your power generation facilities are large area and out in the open, i.e. vulnerable. And I was picturing war. I am getting the idea that I'm picturing a much more fractured political landscape than everyone else.

I know rail works well for shipping coal and other stuff. Unless rail shipping is disrupted like sea shipping is. Which may or may not be, depending on what Frank decides. If it's not, what's the problem getting raw materials?

If major shipping lanes are disrupted to the point that you can't get stuff through, then oil WILL be a problem in the North American continent. Crude oil was the US's biggest import in 2011. $330 billion. Like I said, ceasing large scale sea shipping will dramatically impact lots more than the availability of copper.

Again, these are just thoughts. None of this is relevant depending on how Frank sets things up geopolitically. Underwater sea pirates? No sea shipping by fiat. You could just as easily rule similar things in the Mississippi region if you wanted to split the US into two regions which can't/don't trade. Or not. Frank could also rule that there is one world govt that operates Earth in peace, and none of this stuff is relevant, but clearly he isn't going in that direction.

T · Post by T » Wed May 09, 2012 2:20 am

Note, I'm working from Frank's recent post where he stated:

The big issue is that with monsters and pirates, the global supply of any particular commodity basically doesn't matter. Copper simply isn't fungible if you run the risk of R'lyehns seizing your ship and flaying everyone on board if you try to transport it from one place to another. If something isn't worth sending by air freight or in an armed convoy, it might as well not exist if it's far away.

If you have a reasonably coherent economic region in North America, then while stuff might be more expensive than it is now, you'd pretty much have access to all you need. You really wouldn't be resource limited nor care about global supply - continental supply should be enough (though more expensive). But Frank says you are resource limited, so that leads me to believe that even rail shipping is problematic. If that's not true, then there's something inconsistent with the model of resource limited with working continental rail shipping.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Wed May 09, 2012 5:06 am

T wrote: If major shipping lanes are disrupted to the point that you can't get stuff through, then oil WILL be a problem in the North American continent. Crude oil was the US's biggest import in 2011. $330 billion. Like I said, ceasing large scale sea shipping will dramatically impact lots more than the availability of copper.

Yes it would. However it would also mean that Mexico, Canada and Venezuela can only ship oil via pipeline, and that kind of limits who they can ship to. OTOH, Japan is just totally screwed.

Plus the amount of economically recoverable oil is pretty directly related to the price of oil. At higher prices you can spend more to extract it. In addition, at some point people start worrying less about protecting the spotted snail tortoise and start worrying a lot more about mass starvation due to a lack of diesel fuel or electricity. Then areas that are currently prohibited for energy exploration or extraction will stop being prohibited.

T · Post by T » Wed May 09, 2012 1:39 pm

kzt wrote: Yes it would. However it would also mean that Mexico, Canada and Venezuela can only ship oil via pipeline, and that kind of limits who they can ship to. OTOH, Japan is just totally screwed.

Plus the amount of economically recoverable oil is pretty directly related to the price of oil. At higher prices you can spend more to extract it. In addition, at some point people start worrying less about protecting the spotted snail tortoise and start worrying a lot more about mass starvation due to a lack of diesel fuel or electricity. Then areas that are currently prohibited for energy exploration or extraction will stop being prohibited.

Excellent points.

1 - If Mexico, Canada, and South America are shipping oil via pipeline to ex-USA, then they would also be shipping copper, aluminum, and any thing else you need. So why are resources limited?

2 - Very true. At some point, the price also becomes high enough that it is more economically viable to also move to different sources of energy. Currently, most types of electricity generation used fall within a range of 2 or 4 for cost between the cheapest and most expensive. As far as I know, oil is already pretty uncompetitive with respect to that, without future increases in price. We aren't moving back to an oil burning for electricity world anytime soon.

I would imagine, if sea shipping were disrupted and the future ex-USA needed to move off of oil, they'd move to some kind of electric or fuel cell system for transportation, and coal + nuclear for electricity, helped out by other alternative energy forms. Not to different from where we are now minus the gasoline car thing. That assumes that freight trade exists in a meaningful manner across N America - even better if you throw in S America.

Let's flip the discussion around then: If only sea shipping is disrupted (massively) by the Deep Ones, and govts are cooperative enough not to derail intra-continental shipping, why the hell haven't all the govts teamed up to wipe out the Deep Ones? Because they can't? The Deep Ones are too powerful? They are inaccessible? Hopefully it's not, 'because they haven't bothered.'