Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.

Expanded Portal Writeup

7 posts / 0 new

Last post

Tue, 2014-05-13 21:03

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Expanded Portal Writeup

Been meaning to share this for a while: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eTdDRc6al4iWKYySKsCWtSiTg8SzBt-GWijg... This is the expanded Portal setting writeup that I did for my gatecrashing campaign; it's not fully complete, but I extended the details for the planet and settlement from the two pages in Gatecrashing out to 23, with a number of locations, NPCs and habitat details. I still have more that I would like to add, but, for the moment, this is what I've got. Suggestions and discussion welcome and requested.

—

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Thu, 2014-05-22 07:22

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

Fusion reactors don't work

Fusion reactors don't work that way unless Micheal J. Stackpole is writing. You can't set them to "overload." Besides, if you have the radioactives locally to run a reactor, you have the radioactives to build a nuke, and the scary thing is? Building nukes is [i]simple[/i]. They were able to manage it back in the 1940s; by the 2140s, any nuclear engineer ought to be able to knock one together, even if you don't build one using an off-the-shelf blueprint. Also, if you're manufacturing and stockpiling metallic hydrogen, you don't need a nuke for general demolitions work. MHO is extremely energy-dense, and will quite adequately frag an entire habitat if you release magnetic containment on enough of it.

—

Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]

Thu, 2014-05-22 07:36

Erulastant Erulastant's picture

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:Fusion

[quote=ShadowDragon8685]Fusion reactors don't work that way unless Micheal J. Stackpole is writing. You can't set them to "overload." [\quote] Sure you can! Just crank it up to full output (ie open all the input nozzles and set your magnetic containment to full power) then turn off the containment. While not technically 'overloading' the reactor, it has the desired effect. [quote=ShadowDragon] Besides, if you have the radioactives locally to run a reactor, you have the radioactives to build a nuke, and the scary thing is? Building nukes is [i]simple[/i]. They were able to manage it back in the 1940s; by the 2140s, any nuclear engineer ought to be able to knock one together, even if you don't build one using an off-the-shelf blueprint. [\quote] Fusion reactors... don't run on radioactives? If you've got anything bigger than Oxygen in your fusion reactor I'd be surprised. I mean, sure, technically there are radioactive isotopes that might show up in a fusion reactor, but they're a) not required and b) not usable for fission nukes.

—

You, too, were made by humans. The methods used were just cruder, imprecise. I guess that explains a lot.

Thu, 2014-05-22 08:12

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

the US government did a study

the US government did a study 30 or 40 years ago on whether the average person could make a nuclear warhead using publicly available information. they succeeded. the real problem with it is raw materials access and precision tolerances. the way i see "overload" is what ever is containing the fusion ball is deactivated, reigning theory right now is magnetic containment but recently a competitor came out, while the feeder material flow is intensified. this results in a runway reaction that would consume a great big area in a nuclear fireball, especially if the reservoirs were in range

Wed, 2015-04-22 05:55

slickMundane slickMundane's picture

Im in China with no access to google...

Any chance you could post your portal write up directly here? Would love to read it but can get on google docs cause China hates google and no vpn at the moment...

Sat, 2015-09-12 23:49

jasonbrisbane jasonbrisbane's picture

And if you fail to make a nuke,

And if you fail to make a nuke, its still a dirty bomb. . .

—

Regards, Jason Brisbane

Sun, 2015-09-13 02:24

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

Uh, I think I'm kind of late

Uh, I think I'm kind of late to this, but there's a big difference between fissionables enriched to work in reactors, and those which can be used to make a bomb. Like 3-4% U-235 vs 90%+ U-235. Nuclear enrichment is one of those things that is still going to require a pretty large facility, as nanobots/nanofabs can't do it at all (or at least not very well). Fusion reactors don't make that much of a bang either, plasma isn't super dense, and cools really quickly when it expands. A 40MW fusion reactor would only destroy maybe a city block if it failed catastrophically. It would leak radioactive byproducts all over the place though, making it a very dirty bomb. It's probably not great for gate demolition unless the reactor is basically touching the gate.