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Aether Generators: How much do they power by size?

Soresu

Soresu

Well-Known Member
As the title states, we have a few different sizes of these generators. Ship, Shuttle, Fighter, Power Armor, Lunch Box. What I ask is this: Can a Lunch Box sized generator power a shuttle? A Power Armor? And so on. I want to know, and get a sense of scale to these things. We hear about them but we don't know how much energy they can pump out in the sense of powering something of equal size or something bigger.
 
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I know origin's use of Aether generators includes suitcase-sized ones powering light aircraft, but aside from that I always leave the size fairly vague.
 
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Well, it'd help people who play engineers and so on to get a good gauge of just what these things can power, even partially if we can decide on it. But this is also to sate my own curiosity on the issue as well.
 
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I would imagine it would largely be linked to system demand.

A power armor being powered by a 'lunch box' size generator is able to provide 'indefinite' power to an externally mounted aether saber rifle, while providing power to shields, propulsion at 1/3rd the speed of light, and strength augmenting the wearer. Just the saber rifle output alone is enough to light up a whole city. I imagine that a 'lunch box' generator could meet the needs of a starship life support system, and basic 'creature comforts' such as automated doors and gravity regulation. Though when it comes to engines, shields, or weapons it would be beyond capacity.
 
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To be honest, I've always just winged it and went with what felt like a good size. In the RP, we know that the washing-machine-size portable aether generators the Star Army keeps in repair rooms can power most of a Plumeria's functions (except for the main cannon) while the suitcase ones can give the ship basic emergency power for lights and environmental control.
 
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That provides some information. But if we continue to wing it, we'll develop inconsistencies with canon even with revisions to posts, some will slip through.
 
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What about the possibility of smaller units (about the size of an AA battery) in large numbers (about 70 or so) 'emulating' the function of a larger collector while being physically distributed?

I figure its a bigger maintenance headache but in terms of reliability, the redundancy would be leaps above a single lunchbox unit. In addition, you could step up or dial-down the output based on EXACTLY what you needed and NOTHING MORE so the aetheric event detected could potentially be TINY.
 
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The big problem with that is we've established or it's been written that they can't function well when in close proximity to each other. I don't know the exact distance they need though. And I could be wrong since this could've been subject to change.
 
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Well, that's because they're in conflict with one another.

If they acted together instead of in conflict, they'd function as a single piece of hardware -- like...

Alone, they're like dots, each with a circle drawn about it - the circle representing the complete draw or sink.

Working together, you network them as a single thing - points providing anchor-points to lines as edges and you'd draw only one circle for even fourty or fifty units. Just around the geometry they make together.
 
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