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Expanded Gear System

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Thu, 2011-09-29 17:42

Erenthia

Expanded Gear System

This is something I'm working on. Let me know what you think: The Eclipse Phase Expanded Gear System Standard Units (Quantities) Mass Unit (MU) Intelligence Unit (IU) Energy Unit (EU) A Mass Unit is definied as the average amount of material the average miner can produce in a day under typical conditions. An Intelligence Unit is the result of any skill roll to create a design or otherwise complex abstraction usually a daily result as well. An Energy Unit is definied as the energy needs of a typical morph for one day. Analysis: the average miner should have a profession(miner) skill of 40 (Basic proficiency) assume that the average miner has either sufficient tools or sufficient complementary skills to get another +10 (the math is MUCH easier this way.) In this situation the miner has a 50% chance of success and thus mines 2 MU on a success (averaging to 1 per day) In order to double production, the miner must increase his skill by +50 (ignoring 99 always being a failure). So it must require taking a -50 on your roll to double this production. Consider a highly optimized miner. 90 skill, +30 complementary skill, +30 excellent tools. This miner can take -50 and stll succeed essentially every day, averaging 4 MU per day. Conversly, consider a poorly qualified miner, say with a skill of 25, and no bonuses. The miner will only succeed a quarter of the time producing 1 MU every other day. (Once in every 4 days they will produce 2 Units) Intelligence Units follow the same mechanic, but use different skills. IU can be anything from structures within a simulspace, to the design for a weapon. Energy Units are produced by generators (regardless of type). Simple generators require fewer IU but may require siginificant more MU. Smaller generators require more IU. That's all I have so far, and I'm not sure it covers some things I wanted it too (like how many morphs can fit in a simulspace created by a particular computer) But it's a start.

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The end really is coming. What comes after that is anyone's guess.

Thu, 2011-09-29 18:00

Erenthia

Re: Expanded Gear System

Basically any piece of gear will have requirements in MU and IU, and a certain amount of EU to operate (this also holds true for the Cornucopia machine you used to *make* the thing so there's an EU surcharge there) . Since both MU and IU are gained by expending EU, it would seem EU would be the fundamental currency and probably popular in the Autonomist Alliance. What I'm working on now is, how many MU and IU does it take to create a mining robot or a solar power array or a computer that can host an infomorph. Not easy questions. My assumption is that in the PC much of these things have practical barriers set up by the hypercorps specifically to keep people from being able to create their own industries, whereas in the Autonomist Alliance, they have pirates to worry about. Edited to Add: Looking at the Favor Table it would seem that a single Unit of Mass or Intelligence would be a level 3 favor. A level 4 favor looks like it would be 30 units (Acquire Services page 290)

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The end really is coming. What comes after that is anyone's guess.

Thu, 2011-09-29 18:53

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Expanded Gear System

Why not call them kilograms and Joules? I talked to Eric Drexler today, and he suggested that my earlier estimates of the energy requirements for CMs were a bit too high. His estimate is that the energy required to assemble something from raw materials will tend to be about the same energy as turning the raw materials into a liquid and back (the enthalpy of fusion), around 200 kJ per kg for organic matter, around 260 kJ per kg for iron. However, it makes lots of sense to first nanofacture standard components and then assemble them, so based on a "smart" feedstock of lego pieces the energy requirements go way down. So if one mass unit is a kilogram and one energy unit is a kilojoule, then you need 200-260 energy units to make one mass unit of stuff (if you don't use a good feedstock where this has already been paid, and you just pay perhaps 10% or less of the energy cost). To a large extent different objects have the same energy cost - it is only different if you want to make something highly energetic like explosives. A 1 gigawatt fusion plant (a smallish installation, suitable for a spaceship or habitat) makes a million such energy units per second. (Energy needed for a morph for one day: if a synthmorph can work like an ordinary human for 24 hours, it would be around 100 Watt * 3600 * 24 = 8 640 kJ. It is probably less, since it doesn't have to waste power on heating. )

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Thu, 2011-09-29 19:15

Erenthia

Re: Expanded Gear System

Quote:
Why not call them kilograms and Joules?

I considered that. Mostly my reasoning is that I want to keep it abstract to keep the level of math down. I'm actually quite fond of math personally, but I wanted to smooth things over for people who wanted a bit more granularity without having to whip out a TI-89. Really it's for the same reason you said the energy needed for a human was 100 watts instead of 96.85. Also, I don't want to mess with the existing rules too much, so I'm trying to base everything I can on them. For instance, the Intelligence Units needed to make something custom I took from the rules from coding your own nanofab blueprints (and rounding up to a 10 day week to be conservative): a trivial cost item 10 IU a Low cost item: 20 IU a Moderate item: 30 IU a High cost item: 40 IU an Expensive item: 50 IU I have nothing against doing physics (what little of it I can) but I want to make it as accessible as possible.

Quote:
I talked to Eric Drexler today

0_0 Umm...tell him I said "Hi" ;-)

—

The end really is coming. What comes after that is anyone's guess.

Thu, 2011-09-29 19:28

Erenthia

Re: Expanded Gear System

Sorry for the double post. I got some kind of internal server error. Edited again: Also I failed to mention, Mass Units are not [i]just[/i] the amount of mass. A large number of MU could represent a large amount of easily acquired dumb matter, or it could represent rare matter like uranium or thorium but in smaller amounts.

—

The end really is coming. What comes after that is anyone's guess.

Fri, 2011-09-30 04:25

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Expanded Gear System

I think the rare element issue is not best dealt with using mass units. Otherwise people will just say "But I got 1000 units, of course I can make a railgun!" when they need nuclear isomers. I think some objects need special inputs - whether they are nuclear isomers, antimatter, or really unusual elements. Maybe they could be marked with a star: "Requires 10 MU + 2 MU*" and MU* tends to be expensive or controlled. This goes for the IUs too: some things can only be designed by experts, and are hence more expensive.

Erenthia wrote:
Also, I don't want to mess with the existing rules too much, so I'm trying to base everything I can on them. For instance, the Intelligence Units needed to make something custom I took from the rules from coding your own nanofab blueprints (and rounding up to a 10 day week to be conservative): a trivial cost item 10 IU a Low cost item: 20 IU a Moderate item: 30 IU a High cost item: 40 IU an Expensive item: 50 IU I have nothing against doing physics (what little of it I can) but I want to make it as accessible as possible.

I think it is nice to keep the units strongly tied to measurable and comparable things, but with enough room to fudge. If one MU is one kilogram plus or minus a bit, then things get more useful. The important question is always whether it actually helps playing, and avoids being too inconsistent.

Quote:
Quote:
I talked to Eric Drexler today
0_0 Umm...tell him I said "Hi" ;-)

Sure. You know, even we academics can be fanboys.

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Fri, 2011-09-30 04:47

Jay Dugger Jay Dugger's picture

Re: Expanded Gear System

Please keep working on this system. I'll need something like it iin a few months when the players find Black Peregrine, an open-source cornucopia machine. Did Dr. Drexler say when Radical Abundance pre-orders start?

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Sometimes the delete key serves best.

Fri, 2011-09-30 08:53

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Expanded Gear System

Jay Dugger wrote:
Please keep working on this system. I'll need something like it iin a few months when the players find Black Peregrine, an open-source cornucopia machine.

I think a simple but robust system could be very useful. Just knowing roughly the tradeoffs between mass, time and energy can be important (if you make a 1 kg object in a minute, you will have to get rid of about 3 kilowatts of heat - about the same power as a big air conditioning unit). I would also add costs due to recency (it is the new and cool thing!), quality (lemon or medical grade?), customization (bespoke or clip-art?), testing (alpha, beta or checked in doubleblind studies?) and support (can you call customer support when your railgun is acting up?) Maybe the best is to think of it as moving stuff up and down one category. The price of categories typically increases in a multiplicative way, so going up or down one step corresponds to multiplying or dividing the price with a fixed factor - rather typical for real prices.

Quote:
Did Dr. Drexler say when Radical Abundance pre-orders start?

He is still working on it, so it will be a while. My guess is that it will become pre-orderable sometime next year.

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Fri, 2011-09-30 11:26

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Expanded Gear System

I agree that the 'special ingredients' is going ot be an issue. I suppose the most graceful way to solve it is to keep your three traits, but then include an 'ingredients list'. You need access to the following feedstocks. Don't stress about quantity for each material; now we're getting more gritty than we probably want to deal with. You may also wish to specify with IU specifically which skills are necessary.

Fri, 2011-09-30 14:39

#10

Erenthia

Re: Expanded Gear System

I'm not entirely certain about special ingredients. That's a big part of why I don't want to call Mass Units a particular...mass (hmm thinking a different name would be appropriate. Matter Units?) The point of the system is to determine what is realistic, not just for a player but also to help the GM figure out what a group of, say, 50 people can accomplish in a years time (for instance). On the flip side, most players won't deal with (or have access to) this system in the Inner System. While an individual might be able to throw together a custom project or two, the hypercorps are heavily invested in keeping any major mining/energy harvesting efforts under their explicit control. This is going to largely be the purview of the Outer System (sans Junta) and will be rolled into another project I'm working on: The Autonomist Alliance Open Economic Framework. Much as, you may have money in a bank, but would be hard pressed to identify just which particular bills were actually yours, I'm working on a similarly abstract system of ownership for mining and energy harvesting, that use the MU/EU system for trade purposes (not unlike a stock exchange). I've got more details than are really interesting in this context, but for player purposes, most special ingredients will be available for trade and listed as a particular value of MU unless they are *so* rare that even something like a large hypercorp isn't guaranteed to have access to it. If you simply *must* get in the player's way for something, consider that not every special ingredient would be available for trade *nearby* which would then necessitate potentially expensive shipping and the possibility of having their purchase stolen by pirates. IU is even more abstract than MU. IU would not be something you have stockpiled and lying around ready to use. If that were the case you could simply copy it like any open source blueprint. So IU has to be generated on demand and used up immediately. It really only exists to determine how much effort has to be put in by either an individual or a team.

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The end really is coming. What comes after that is anyone's guess.