Nuclear Transmutators - end game idea

[CodingKitteh]

I know the end game of minerals + ore running out hasn't been reached yet but consider an end game problem where you will need mineral/metal management.

To generate more of such limited resources, you can use nuclear transmutators. However, the cost would be a huge energy bill such that, to generate metal ores from lesser elements, you will have to consider the cost. This is true in real life where artifical nuclear transmutations occur in a particle collider (at our current society's economy) is expensive and cost prohibitive. There are natural transmutations that occur in the universe and that is how our universe got the heavier elements.

Since energy (somewhat) and oxygen generation in the end game is over abundant, having a new mechanic to drain more energy while gaining some benefit seems quite interesting. And...more gold. GOLD!!!

[brummbar7]

Particle Collider?  It's not nuclear, but requirements could be set up to take up large portion of map, making it a project to keep player occupied.  They could rename it something sci-fi, so that rl particle collider operators who play the game don't get up in arms.

[AlexRou]

1 hour ago, brummbar7 said:

Particle Collider?  It's not nuclear, but requirements could be set up to take up large portion of map, making it a project to keep player occupied.  They could rename it something sci-fi, so that rl particle collider operators who play the game don't get up in arms.

By nuclear I think he is using the scientific term which means the nucleus of an atom.

Anyways in real life particle accelerators don't even make enough atoms to be visible in a year. And they do it by taking element x and element y where mass of x + mass of y = mass of element z. And then shooting blindly and pray that x and y hits and creates z.

A better description would be a Molecular assembler, they don't slam atoms together and pray, they work by scifi magic. Anyways it better be a huge system of multiple buildings working together and requiring a crazy amount of power.

[brummbar7]

Ya I was mainly trying to refer to the structure of it - a huge ring.   If it could be arranged such that the player needed to devote a similar amount of space, it would make it a big project, not least because of all the space you'd have to hollow out, dealing with all the gases and fluids along the way.  It'd be interesting if the requirements could be arranged such that it had to be built in a huge ring, but I'm not sure how practical that is. 

But even without that, the basic components could be: 1) the tube the particles accelerate in.  Basically just like pipes, but made from some wild material.  2) accelerators, which must be spaced along the pipe at a certain interval.  These would be very expensive in material.  More accelerators allows for higher tier creations/functions.  3) magnets, which have to line the tunnel the tube and accelerators are in, at a specific distance from the tube.  Maybe not 100%, as the player still needs access.  But as much as every other tile.  The sheer number would consume a lot of materials.  They would emit magnetic flux, which would stack just like decor, and every piece of pipe would have to be subject to X magnetic flux to work.  That'd be the basic building blocks.  Plus all the wiring and power.  Maybe it has to have a super computer hooked into every circuit.  So you can either use heavy watt wire to connect it all and use X computers, or use tons of regular circuits and use 20x computers.  It'd be interesting to know how much metal even exists on a given map, so one could have some idea of how big one might be able to make it.

I'm not sure how you'd make it require a circular shape though.  But you could probably do things with flux requirements to at least require it be spread out.

[LeadfootSlim]

I mentioned something kind of like this in another thread about making proper use of Science and Scientists in the end-game, when all tech has been researched; putting Scientists to work at stations "synthesizing" materials, i.e. manually performing conversions like dirt to Algae, coal to diamonds, stone to gold other such violations of common decency. I could definitely see a big, crazy machine that requires piped water cooling as a means to that end...