Temporal tear mechanics

[n_t_p]

Here's a suggestion under the following known/assumed temporal tear features

• There's a dupe operated POI
• There's another POI that takes radbolts
• Likely starmap POI we'll send a rocket to

Given that, I'd like to suggest we try something interesting with these, instead of the obvious "shove in radbolts until win". Unless radbolt generators get some sort of threshold value to make them harder people will likely just farm space radiation or wheezeworts to make all ten billion radbolts or however many arbitrarily large value it's set to. That's hella boring. Players absolutely will just afk the game for 10 hours and that's something that should be designed around, not encouraged.

First, the radbolt requirement should be on the lower end. Maybe 3k radbolts total to open the tear, and the building passively looses 25 per cycle, to discourage slowly farming.

Next, let's actually use those space materials. First we'll collect some resin, transform it into isoresin by steaming it, then irradiate and boil it. Irradiation and steaming can happen in the same chamber, the point here is to get people to use the research reactor. 

Irradiating isoresin transforms it into Energetic Polymer, which is a liquid. 
 

Energetic polymer:

• A highly dynamic and viscous synthetic substance
• Liquid at -83 C to 545 C
• SHC and conductivity identical to isoresin
• Freezes to Isoresin

To be able to handle the temps in a research reactor isoresin's melting point needs to be raised to 412. When isoresin is exposed to a threshold value of say 500 rads per cycle it immediately changes phase into energetic polymer. Research reactor's radiation output will also need to be increased.

Now that we have the energetic polymer we need to gasify it at 545 C into Energetic Plasma.

Energetic plasma

• The charged gaseous state of exotic organic compounds
• Condenses at 545 C to naphtha

The 545 C threshold is meant to require a niobium or better aquatuner. You can use a metal volcano or magma instead, or a refinery with unusual liquid lead coolant. The irreversible phase change into naphtha and then promptly into sour gas is meant as a punishment if you handle it wrong.

What is all this for? The temporal tear opener will absorb Energetic plasma from the environment at the rate of 25 g/s. If it doesn't meet this requirement the radbolts in the structure are rapidly depleted, in the same way that radbolt generators deplete when unpowered. This translates to about 50-100 kg of isoresin depending on how long it takes to generate the 3k radbolts needed to open the tear. It rewards players able to find a way to generate lots of radbolts quickly by reducing the isoresin requirement. The ceiling for this efficiency gain would be to somehow provide all 3k instantly, reducing the required amount of plasma to just 25g, but I don't expect that will be possible.

Opening the tear is a one-time task delineating the end of the game, and should be difficult. This requires one of the major space resources, and encourages the use of others. It requires the players demonstrate a thorough understanding of the mechanics in the sim and the infrastructures needed to work in it.

Subsequent openings of the tear could give artifacts or something, idk.

[sakura_sk]

37 minutes ago, n_t_p said:

Subsequent openings of the tear could give artifacts

Artifacts are already in game

[n_t_p]

3 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

Artifacts are already in game

Yeah I know about the changes in testing branch. I mean like different artifacts.