Stringtech Needs

Summary:

In a world with inversion, shouldn't the problem be heat dissipation?

Stringtech Needs

David McK-B 26 Nov 2017 18:51

Currently, Stringtech requires: "You need electricity, plain and simple. Plug into a wall jack in an enhanced civilization for about an hour. In lower-tech surroundings you may need to plug directly into an electrical substation", and I think that's kind of weird, at least at Stringtech 4 and 5 when you get inversion.

Inverting just one gram of matter produces 1.8 * 10^14 J . That's about ten times more energy than a modern nuclear plant produces in an hour[1].

On the other hand, if you're only 99% efficient at using the energy, then you have to dissipate 1.8 * 10^12 J of energy, which, if released all at once, would be an explosion of about half a kiloton TNT-equivalent.

Given these numbers, it seems much easier to imagine a world like Mass Effect 2, where you have to replace your heat-sinks[2] to keep shooting, than one where you have to plug into a wall and put several kilograms (mass) of electricity into your batteries.

Or am I missing something?

— David

[1]: "The Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona has three reactors and has the largest combined electricity generating capacity1 of about 3,937 MW." — eia.gov tools/faqs/faq.php?id=104&t=21

4 GW * 3600 s = 1.44 * 10^13 J

[2]: I feel like you probably get these from a municipal power plant, and then send them back nice and hot for use in a Rankine cycle or something.

Re: Stringtech Needs

Colin_Fredericks 10 Jan 2018 02:30

Edited because I can't do math some days.

That makes some sense, though a whole gram of matter is (as you pointed out) a TON of energy. If you wanted to pick up 180 terrajoules in one hour, at (oh, let's say) a hundred thousand volts, it would require a current of half a million amps. No matter how efficient you are, you're gonna melt something. You're not picking up quite that much power.

I recently fixed up the Level 3 burden for Nanotech in Version 1.1.0 of the book; I might touch up the one for String as well. Dumping heat fits with the "Entropy" entries in the tech section, but I can imagine someone with Nano 4+ just fabbing themselves a new cold heat sink and dumping the old one into an ocean. (Or a volcano. It'll still cool down.) I prefer something for these that makes characters reliant on infrastructure or other people.

Last edited on 10 Jan 2018 14:24 by Colin_Fredericks Show more

Re: Stringtech Needs

David McK-B 10 Jan 2018 18:45

I'll have to download the latest update to take a look.

My first idea in response to that was that maybe you need to physically connect to the cooling system *while* using heavy stringtech, but… when you're using an inversion beam as a weapon, I can't see it really having much in the way of power or heat issues for you — the heat issues are the goal, and the power requirements have to be low relative to the boom or there's not point using it for power.

Maybe what you need is some kind of maintenance using a small amount of time near a very large piece of equipment to keep the whosamadingers aligned so they can keep functioning right?