[Setting Riff] Clockpunk

angelfromanotherpin · Fri Oct 30, 2015 10:14 pm

I'm putting together a setting for a game, looking for input, feedback, deconstruction, interesting implications, anything you want to contribute.

The big element is that the tech is clockpunk. Some great metallurgical breakthrough(s) have allowed the creation of relatively portable springs that can store enormous amounts of energy. A lot of the mechanical technology of the setting is roughly 1920s era: there are cars and planes, but they run on tight-wound mainsprings instead of combustion engines.

A related element is a relative lack of chemical energy. The power of steam has not been harnessed, and there are no potent explosives, not even black powder. There are guns of a sort, but the propellant in a bullet's case is a tiny high-energy spring (I haven't crunched any numbers, but presumably they're less powerful than regular guns).

This combination leads to a near-bottomless demand for mechanical energy. Wind and water-mills are big producers, but there are also factories where anyone can turn up to crank a handle for pay. Harness animals (oxen, horses, mules, etc.) do this work as well, although they need more space than a human does because they have to at least be able to walk in a circle.

There is (of course) more to the setting, but this is the aspect I want to examine more closely.

Stinktopus · Post by **Stinktopus** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 10:29 pm

So, how does an airplane get "fueled"? Do a couple of guys spend some time winding it? Is there a dismal galley full of winders below an airy and spacious passenger compartment? Does a new, pre-wound spring get installed from the winding factory?

Edited for wrong variant of "there."

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 10:39 pm

I would imagine that a bullet that carried a barely-contained spring could be devastating if it could be engineered such that it was released once embedded in a person's body. Something like a foot+ long thin spring, with caps on either end, contained perpendicular to the length of a glass bullet. Assuming you could find a way to fire said bullet without immediately breaking it, without protecting it from shattering on impact, then you're basically launching small mechanical "explosives" at people.

Edit: Honestly, I think the main implication of such a setting is that it would have a lot of Looney Toons style schizotech.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 10:48 pm

I imagine this tech path goes all the way back to the Roman era. You have winches and water wheels and slaves turning big wheels like in Conan. And you get some really good springs, and some amazing crossbows, and you just never develop cannons at all.

-Username17

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 11:08 pm

At the macro level, you get a society that has opposite energy constraints from ours. Unlike reality, dense sources of stored energy are not scarce; but unlike reality, the total generation of energy to store is quite limited. It's gonna matter a lot how recent the advances in kinkspring kinetic batteries are, as that will flavor how much society has adapted around them vs how much society is still in transition.

As a starting point, agriculture is going to look very different, as watercourses are now more valuable as power sources than as irrigation, and draft animals become relatively more valuable than meat animals. So people in the setting would be looking more into water minimal crops and calorie efficient draft animals as spring winding needs grow with the technology.

angelfromanotherpin · Fri Oct 30, 2015 11:10 pm

Stinktopus wrote:So, how does an airplane get "fueled"? Do a couple of guys spend some time winding it? Is there a dismal galley full of winders below an airy and spacious passenger compartment? Does a new, pre-wound spring get installed from the winding factory?

I don't know how long it would take 'a couple of guys' to wind enough energy into a spring to count as a full tank of gas, but I imagine it would be a long time. That's the ghetto version for down-on-their luck types (although it does mean that you can't be indefinitely stranded for lack of fuel).

I also think a passenger craft would spend more power carrying the extra people than it would gain from their cranking for a flight's duration; but you could have an emergency situation where all the passengers are told to report to a crank to extend the plane's endurance for a much-needed little.

I think most of the time you would drop off your spring at a mill or factory to be rewound, and maybe if they have one of the right specs ready you could pay extra to take that one instead, no waiting. But I also think that standardization is low, and the odds that one vehicle's spring will work in another vehicle are ungood. There are probably devices where you hook up springs to both sides to transfer energy between them.

Prak wrote:I would imagine that a bullet that carried a barely-contained spring could be devastating if it could be engineered such that it was released once embedded in a person's body.

I do like the idea of the crazy spring-bearing bullet, and explosive bullets date back to the 1860s, so it's not out of line with other tech. The question would be, is it worth spending that much extra energy to make a bullet somewhat more lethal, and the answer would be yes some of the time. Indeed, I think a lot of fragmentation explosives could be mimicked with triggered spring effects, they'd just be more expensive relative to our world.

FrankTrollman wrote:I imagine this tech path goes all the way back to the Roman era. You have winches and water wheels and slaves turning big wheels like in Conan. And you get some really good springs, and some amazing crossbows, and you just never develop cannons at all.

I can just about visualize the alternate evolution of the spring-rifle from the crossbow, and it's kind of amazing.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 11:52 pm

I think a big thing that's been overlooked so far is fuel dynamics. In order to linearly increase the amount of chemical energy available, you need to linearly increase the volume and weight of the fuel container. If you have clockwork instead, increasing the energy available does nothing to the weight and can actually decrease the volume of the container. That means vehicles can be very small compared to the size of a chemically powered vehicle. Likewise, since there's no need for a combustion chamber, you don't need an engine, per say, just a transmission connected to the spring.

I imagine that groundcraft end up looking more like a motorcycle than a car, and that aircraft end up looking more like a helicopter with wings than a traditional airplane.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 12:39 am

Actually, come to think of it, one of the major weapons developments in this sort of world would probably be the cartridge spring bullet, so that instead of needing to rewind the gun spring, each bullet has its own firing spring and the gun just releases it and gives it something to push against. So you'd still have firing pins, essentially, but they're made to break whatever is holding the bullet's firing spring (possibly glass, again).

AndreiChekov · Post by **AndreiChekov** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 1:46 am

older grenades killed people with shrapnel, you could mimick that with a spring under a plate, and a glass top, with shards of metal inside.

Cannons can be done with a spring in a tube. You have to wind it between each shot, so it would be less useful against infantry, but still make a good siege weapons. The romans had various spear and rock launching machines that worked on rope tension, so I'm sure that siege weapons run on springs would be viable.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 6:54 am

Forgive my ignorance in this field, but if your metallurgy is so badass, wouldn't it make more sense (at least as far as weapons go) to have really good compressed air technology?

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 8:00 am

I have to disagree about the lack of support structure required on a vehicle. You'd need a massive amount of gearing to turn the energy from a spring expanding from say 10 cm to 3 m in length into the energy needed to move a car 300 km (100 000 : 1). With these sort of pressures a circular spring would tend to explode sideways through its housing so that is the sort of length difference you'd have. You might be able to use multiple springs to extend endurance, but switching between them would be the sort of thing that could lead to disaster.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 8:43 am

what kind of characters do you expect people to play, and what kind of story do you want to GM

Is this a real world alternate history with real world countries, or is it a fantasy setting

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 1:27 pm

JigokuBosatsu wrote:Forgive my ignorance in this field, but if your metallurgy is so badass, wouldn't it make more sense (at least as far as weapons go) to have really good compressed air technology?

Forgive my ignorance, I basically know nothing about pneumatics or how the metallurgy would be relevant.

OgreBattle wrote:what kind of characters do you expect people to play, and what kind of story do you want to GM

Is this a real world alternate history with real world countries, or is it a fantasy setting

The idea is to do interwar-style pulp adventures with somewhat exotic technology. It's definitely a fantasy setting, although I expect a lot of it will 'rhyme' with real-world events.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 1:35 pm

Stronger pressure vessels, valves, etc. I realize your desire for a clock punk setting is the reason for the thread and all the science stuff is a digression.

Thinking about it, though, it could make an interesting plot point - the PCs come into conflict with the "Pneumatist Heresy" or the like.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 1:54 pm

My guess is the pneumatists lost an early marketing struggle and now none of the infrastructure is compatible with their devices. The tech is kept alive by a small and scattered community of fringe enthusiasts.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 2:36 pm

The limits of a spring are based on the material's elastic reversability, which is related to but not the same as any form of strength. I could imagine materials that could store a lot of energy in elastic deformation but wouldn't necessarily be able to hold their shape when filled with high pressure.

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 3:44 pm

So, in your society, RUST is the biggest enemy? O.o

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 3:54 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:The limits of a spring are based on the material's elastic reversability, which is related to but not the same as any form of strength. I could imagine materials that could store a lot of energy in elastic deformation but wouldn't necessarily be able to hold their shape when filled with high pressure.

-Username17

The spring can be on the outside creating pressure inside a pneumatic cylinder, or piston, though, so the interaction of pressure and elastic deformation can be compartmentalized. To make good pressure pistons you'll want good seals around them, and possibly nobody perfected that level of precision when you could get by with a simple spring and lock.

I could see pneumatic cylinders being alternative batteries/capacitors.

The mechanic raised up from under my hood, He shook his head and said: "This ain't good; Your pneumoseal's done shrunk one size too small; And those springs are a little too long.
But don't be downhearted, I can fix it for you, sonny; It won't take too long, it'll just take money."

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 4:25 pm

What about magnetism?
I guess things like compasses and the such may not like that much metallic things around themselves?
And if you can repeatedly move metal masses alongside each other, induction?

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 5:17 pm

I don't understand what you mean, Orca. It seems obvious enough that you'd use a "battery" consisting of a mainspring, an axle with an interlocking head and a safety bolt to keep the device from unwinding when not attached to anything. No part of that gets longer or shorter as the spring is wound or unwound, it just increases and decreases in diameter. It would look like this:

internally, the mainspring looks like this:

Changing a battery is a fairly simple process. Insert safety bolt on new battery, unlatch old battery, pull old battery from gear socket, insert new battery into gear socket, latch new battery, remove safety bolt on new battery.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 6:14 pm

Paolo Bacigalupi has a novel and a couple novellas set in an post-fossil fuel, post crop-plague world where molecular "kinksprings" are replacing the last remnants of fossil fuels as the means of dense energy storage. But those works are more concerned with the horribleness of man and the importance of post-collapse biotech to the society.

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Sun Nov 01, 2015 7:01 am

Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadow of the Apt series has a lot of clockpunk technology