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Yet MORE Fabber questions

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Mon, 2010-09-27 13:26

Prime Mover Prime Mover's picture

Yet MORE Fabber questions

I know theres a ton of info floating around on the forums covering this sort of topic but after our last game I had a few more detailed questions I'm not finding clearly defined. (And they may well not be.) 1. Hard suit has the ability to recycle waste to create food and water indefinitely. Theres no loss of matter as its reused? How appetizing are your food pellets water collections going to be after a few hundred recycles? 2. Feedstock cost and consumption. I recently ran "Mind the WMD", while on Mar's our hero's need to make ammo and repairs. With the small fabber they were given this seems reasonable. So what exactly can they put in it? Shovel in Martian rock and dust...or would they have to have a pre-made kit of feedstock along with blueprints for each item? I'm no science major but I'm understanding the changes on are on a molecular scale not an atomic one correct? So it's not making matter from whole cloth or changing elemental properties? This has been answered for more complex items (as requiring more rare feedstock) but for even simple items to function in the same manner must share certain chemical properties? Thanks in advance for any further info and apologies if I've missed something thats already been covered.

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"The difference between truth and fiction, people expect fiction to make sense."

Mon, 2010-09-27 15:35

Rhyx

Re: Yet MORE Fabber questions

You are right in saying that the Fabbers need some kind of a feedstock. Nanites can reconfigure molecules (like weaving carbon into carbon nanotubes lets say). For most things that is enough, put in a shovel full of martian soil and you could make a gun, add some oxygen and you can have some propellant for the bullets. You could probably make scrapper's gel from water. For a change on the atomic scale you need femtobots and only the TITANS are rumored to have those. At that point what you have is basically alchemy. As for the makers in a hardsuit..hmm I would guess that reconfiguring the carbons from your solid waste and the water from your urine you could probably go for quite a while but in a totally practical way you would probably start to auto digest yourself after a while unless you feed your maker with some new source of carbon, protein, water. A handful of leaves or grass should do the trick but it's pretty hard to come by in the void...

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Mon, 2010-09-27 17:01

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Yet MORE Fabber questions

As a GM I think there are three ways you can play this. 1. Assume that feedstock is easy to find. All fabbers have generic blueprints for all items with a cost of trivial, and most items with a cost of low. 2. Make the players describe where and how they're getting the feed stock to produce what they'd like to make, and buy/program all blueprints ahead of time. Martian soil is about 16% iron oxide. Iron will make you a revolver but it won't make you a smart rail pistol even if you have the blueprints. Help them to understand that to obtain carbon in the middle of the martian outback they're probably going to have to recycle another piece of gear or... well, bodily waste has quite a bit of carbon in it ;) 3. require that the players pass a scrounging test to obtain feed stock. Assume that fabbers have generic prints for any gear with a trivial or low cost that doesn't require smart materials. I prefer optoin three for ease of game play. for ease of play I

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Mon, 2010-09-27 20:17

babayaga

Re: Yet MORE Fabber questions

Prime Mover wrote:
I know theres a ton of info floating around on the forums covering this sort of topic but after our last game I had a few more detailed questions I'm not finding clearly defined. (And they may well not be.) 1. Hard suit has the ability to recycle waste to create food and water indefinitely. Theres no loss of matter as its reused?

Not really. Matter's all sealed inside the suit.

Prime Mover wrote:
How appetizing are your food pellets water collections going to be after a few hundred recycles?

It all depends on how good the cooking skills of the device are. Think of the best meal you've eaten. The very best ever. That stuff's probably been recycled thousands (perhaps millions!) of times here on old Earth, having been digested over and over by mammals, birds, fish, bugs, molds etc. over the millions years it's been on the Earth's surface.

Prime Mover wrote:
2. Feedstock cost and consumption. I recently ran "Mind the WMD", while on Mar's our hero's need to make ammo and repairs. With the small fabber they were given this seems reasonable. So what exactly can they put in it? Shovel in Martian rock and dust...or would they have to have a pre-made kit of feedstock along with blueprints for each item?

You need the blueprints, but barring some specific stuff (mostly requiring rare elements) you can really do a lot with Martian soil.

Prime Mover wrote:
I'm no science major but I'm understanding the changes on are on a molecular scale not an atomic one correct? So it's not making matter from whole cloth or changing elemental properties? This has been answered for more complex items (as requiring more rare feedstock) but for even simple items to function in the same manner must share certain chemical properties?

Basically, with carbon, oxygen and hydrogen you can go a long, long way and make all sorts of stuff.

Wed, 2010-09-29 10:41

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Yet MORE Fabber questions

1) You shouldn't be losing a lot of matter, but you will use energy and build up heat. I assume it's running off some simple nuclear battery which will expire after a certain number of months. The food probably wouldn't be great either, so you'll probably go crazy first, if you're just floating through space. 2) I approach this as a computer guy. Fabbers expect certain things as input. Feedstock is basically pure. If you want to take trash from on the ground and turn it into feedstock, you need a recycler. Very nice fabbers will have a built-in recycler (also many specialized ones, like just for making food). Fabbers also require a lot of power, blueprints, and time. Mars soil is going to have a lot of silicates, iron, oxygen and carbon. You could make some steel things out of that and fiber optic cables, but you're going to have trouble making anything with computer parts, polymers (like plastics), etc. If all you had was a fabber, a recycler, and all the blueprints in the universe, I'd say you're basically limited to 19th century technology (as a rule of thumb). If you want a modern gun, replacement copper wires, pneumatics, modern textiles, etc. you're going to need to salvage those critical materials from something else.

Thu, 2010-09-30 09:05

Prime Mover Prime Mover's picture

Re: Yet MORE Fabber questions

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
1) Mars soil is going to have a lot of silicates, iron, oxygen and carbon. You could make some steel things out of that and fiber optic cables, but you're going to have trouble making anything with computer parts, polymers (like plastics), etc. If all you had was a fabber, a recycler, and all the blueprints in the universe, I'd say you're basically limited to 19th century technology (as a rule of thumb). If you want a modern gun, replacement copper wires, pneumatics, modern textiles, etc. you're going to need to salvage those critical materials from something else.

This is really how I've approached it so far and it I think following some simple guidelines like this will keep things from getting too crazy.

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"The difference between truth and fiction, people expect fiction to make sense."

Thu, 2010-09-30 18:26

babayaga

Re: Yet MORE Fabber questions

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Mars soil is going to have a lot of silicates, iron, oxygen and carbon. You could make some steel things out of that and fiber optic cables, but you're going to have trouble making anything with computer parts, polymers (like plastics), etc. If all you had was a fabber, a recycler, and all the blueprints in the universe, I'd say you're basically limited to 19th century technology (as a rule of thumb). If you want a modern gun, replacement copper wires, pneumatics, modern textiles, etc. you're going to need to salvage those critical materials from something else.

If you just add a little hydrogen (the most common element in the universe :) ), I fail to see why you couldn't make with nanotech: a) many polymers b) pneumatics c) modern textiles d) guns (I'm not sure what you mean with modern guns - railguns? you could certainly make those) e) conductor wires Keep in mind that you can really do a lot with carbon if you can position it at the atomic level (which is what nanotech is supposed to allow you to do). Finally, note that martian soil is also relatively rich in phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, sulphur, manganese, zinc and copper - in addition to the "dirt-common" :) iron. There's also a fair abundance of lead, tungsten, barium, cadmium etc. Check out http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/earlymars/pdf/3051.pdf) Summarizing, I think a good rule of thumb is that with feedstock you can make pretty much anything you need, except for stuff heavily dependent on radioactive materials. It might not be 100% exact, but it's the best approximation at this level of complexity - there's really not much you can't do.

Fri, 2010-10-01 05:21

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Yet MORE Fabber questions

babayaga wrote:
nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Mars soil is going to have a lot of silicates, iron, oxygen and carbon. You could make some steel things out of that and fiber optic cables, but you're going to have trouble making anything with computer parts, polymers (like plastics), etc. If all you had was a fabber, a recycler, and all the blueprints in the universe, I'd say you're basically limited to 19th century technology (as a rule of thumb). If you want a modern gun, replacement copper wires, pneumatics, modern textiles, etc. you're going to need to salvage those critical materials from something else.
If you just add a little hydrogen (the most common element in the universe :) )

Most common in the universe, very rare in Mars soil and air except in the polar regions. You will have to add water from your cantine.

Quote:
, I fail to see why you couldn't make with nanotech: a) many polymers b) pneumatics c) modern textiles d) guns (I'm not sure what you mean with modern guns - railguns? you could certainly make those) e) conductor wires Keep in mind that you can really do a lot with carbon if you can position it at the atomic level (which is what nanotech is supposed to allow you to do).

But martian soils seem to be poor in carbon from my reading. There is less than 1% carbon by weight in martian soil: http://physik.uni-graz.at/~thp/Proceedings_organics.pdf You might get carbonates in some places, but most places will have a very small fraction carbon. To make a 1 kg plastic object you need to sift through more than 100 kg of soil... quite some digging work. Feedstocks are so much easier to use than recycling the environment.

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Sat, 2010-10-02 21:19

Dry Observer Dry Observer's picture

Re: Yet MORE Fabber questions

The feedstocks problem is probably one of the key disputes between rural Martian dissidents and the hypercorps. It only takes a single sizable comet in Martian orbit to supply vast amounts of water for the use of local habitats, given the space elevator in particular -- especially anywhere close to a high-speed rail line. Assorted asteroids can likely other key materials not commonly found in the regolith/terraformed soil. That doesn't make things free, but it [i]does[/i] make them cheap... assuming there's a significant number being brought in and a reasonable degree of free-market competition or government assistance. But the hypercorps have no interest in hitting rock bottom on price when they can control the hinterlands' access to critical materials. So they're in a perfect position to restrict that trade, push up prices and drain resources from otherwise problematic settler populations. Which, of course, leads to longer term problems that the corps will have to face in the future. Ironically, there's a reason to control asteroid trade, particularly since a collection of long-range drones could handle pretty much the entire process, with just a few infomorphs or AGIs stepping in at key points. Asteroids in orbit and approaching orbit, after all, are one of the most obvious ways to launch a surprise attack on a planetary habitat, simply by means of high-speed bombardment. Rather than accept that risk, why not just restrict certain tasks to people you can trust absolutely... because they're [i]your[/i] people?

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Sun, 2010-10-03 03:22

#10

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Yet MORE Fabber questions

Very good points. That Iceteroid the red eden progect just dropped in the middle of a barsoomian settlement could have supplied allot of water for crops that they need right now. Even if recycleing tech has aproched 100% efficiency in the outer system it's likely to be less efficient on Mars where fabbers are less common. A ruster looses quite a bit of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon just by breathing.

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.