Radiation attenuation makes zero sense... why?!

[squanter187]

This game was so far accurate enough for my tastes, but the radiation 'absorption' mat characteristics make absolutely no sense.... plastic better than lead? and gold being way down? why?! what radiation are we dealing with here? I can't even come up with one material property that would justify such grading, unless i'm missing something.... something big enough to question my existence. Please explain.

[NeoDeusMachina]

In a universe where genetic ooze printed duplicants shoot laser beam guns at alien space critters that eat rock and poop coal, you are bothered by inaccurate radiation absorption properties of materials? Gotta embrace that this universe has its own governing laws of physics, some of which might be very far from our own.

[Primalflower]

Radiation absorption is not a mechanic that was thrown in and unchanged from release, it was iterated upon and changed in how it works a few times. From this I gather that it wasn't out of the developers minds that it was unrealistic in some way, and perhaps they just thought it would lead to a better gameplay experience for the radiation absorption to be spread out the way it is now. After all, lead is encountered at times on an entirely different planetoid to uranium ore.

[Sasza22]

I`m still disappointed that granite doesn`t emit trace radiation, but i guess it would cause more trouble than it`s worth.

[blakemw]

On 11/14/2023 at 11:40 AM, squanter187 said:

plastic better than lead?

This is because there are different kinds of radiation.

Lead is generally really good for shielding against x-rays and gamma rays.

But for shielding against particle (such as beta and neutron) radiation rather than photon radiation, hydrogen is the best, and thus hydrogen rich materials such as plastic and water - even though these materials may be practically transparent to x-rays. Heavy metals like lead are not ideal, when a high energy particle hits a lead nucleoli all sorts of exciting things can happy, such as Bremsstrahlung radiation and cosmic ray spallation. When a high energy particle hits a hydrogen it loses some energy and the hydrogen bounces around a bit, so the idea is to lose the energy over multiple small collisions.

So obviously the devs didn't want to simulate multiple different kinds of radiation, not in the sense of real forms of radiation like alpha, beta, gamma, neutron, cosmic ray. It's kind of spoofed, with some radiation sources such as uranium tiles having only a short range (representing alpha and beta), and other radiation sources such as research reactors and space having long range (representing neutron and cosmic ray)... but it gets really complex trying to properly model different kinds of shielding.

So IRL both lead and hydrogen rich polymers, basically plastic, are good radiation shielding materials in different circumstances. In ONI they are just both made good radiation shielding materials even though they shouldn't be in some circumstances.

There's also a truism that sheer mass is the best radiation shielding, a couple of meters of dirt or concrete will work great against any kind of radiation. So rock tiles are pretty good shielding.

Then there are also gameplay considerations. You may want a material which is largely transparent to radiation. In game gold and gold amalgam can be used for that. Is that accurate? Not really at all, gold is largely equivalent to lead, and gold amalgam is essentially just rock, therefore it makes little realistic sense that these materials should be significantly worse than lead/rock, but like gameplay. FWIW I think the reason gold was picked to have very low radiation shielding was the the Rutherford gold foil experiment, where Rutherford fired radiation through gold, with the particles slipping through the gaps between nucleoli. Of course, that was gold foil, gold only made for poor radiation shielding for the purpose of this experiment because it can be hammered so thin relative to other materials. But 100 kg of gold will shield nearly as well as 100 kg of lead.

But anyway, it only has to make sense in a pop culture kind of way because at heart ONI is an imaginative kind of simulation, not make sense in a strict realism kind of way.

[squanter187]

On 11/16/2023 at 5:06 AM, blakemw said:

This is because there are different kinds of radiation.

...

yes but as you said it doesn't work for any not sure why you delved into details, and Rutherford justification is completely nonsensical, and you even showed why.... fascinating take- ego tripping?