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[Lazarus] Quasiperiodic crystalline materials

OsakanOne

Inactive Member
Retired Member
Submission Type: Material property
Submission URL: Quasiperiodic crystalline materials

Faction:
FM Approved Yet? Yes

For Reviewers:
Contains Unapproved Sub-Articles? No
Previously Submitted? No

Notes:
Based on a real material. From what I've read, its capable of actually doing all of this and more in excess. It won the nobel prize for chemestry last year(!).

The image used is creative commons, from Wikipedia. Is that okay?
 
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Okay, back to this --

The science in these articles is very heavy. Not to mention these materials could have a major effect on the setting, in terms of the fact this is a technological boost. It is not that the technology is bad, what I am concerned about here is the player being able to understand the materials and how they work.

This is a heavy submission, especially since there is two very heavy sub-articles. This essentially becomes the heart of an entirely new technology which branches out into many different areas. - On that note, I am requesting that a site administrator (Wes or Nash) review the article and its sub-articles as well.
 
Well, quasiperiodics are supposed to be one of the best developments we're likely to get out of materials constructed atom by atom - simply because they don't let energy build up over a single point and can move it all uniformally - filtering different wavelengths down - like a solar-panel does but over a much wider range.

Sounds really simple (technically it seriously is very simple) but... The number of applications is just awe inspiring.

I think it'd be made up for by expense and whatever uses them taking longer to build.
 
Is it plausible that Lazarus would invent this before some other faction? Especially when the Lorath expelled and murdered its primary technology-using caste just a couple years ago? How efficient are these materials at converting radiation to power? And what effect or benefit does this have for that actual roleplaying?
 
*ahem*

1) Is it plausible that Lazarus would invent this before some other faction?

  • Yes, Lazarus' methods involved brute-forcing combinations of atoms until they find useful and meaningful patterns. This is something that is happening every second of every day of every month, of every year. The SARP is a setting of huge computing power and this is a company who decided to put that computing power to use in ways no other company, let alone nation has saught to.
  • Yes: Lazarus a company focused on developing the wheel in circumstances where everyone else is trying to breed a better horse - taking entirely new virginal approaches to old problems. They are usually obsessed with new base technologies, over end-products and consequences in almost all cases.
  • Yes, The company has vast almost innumerable swarthes of money at its disposal, from advertising, banking, asset transfer, interest based asset growth, bonds gambling, trading the stock of other companies and 'technically legal' financial fraud that allows it and other companies to store money outside of taxation - Along side government aid which is further enhanced by monitary fraud - which is where you're drawing this link that Lazarus might be a Lorath company. It isn't:
  • Yes, Lazarus is an international company with members with all manner of diciplines and understanding from a huge variety of nations and background - with ROM constructs and augmented by anyone the Consortium thinks has anything to contribute. While it has around 500 to 60,000 employees at any given time, only 12 of them are actually living people - the rest being AI which are created and retired on an adhoc basis. Think of Lazarus as a giant software brain that loves solving problems.
  • Technically yes, because in all seriousness, many smart materials in the SARP likely already are quasicrystalline arrangements anyway BUT other nations seem only concerned with finding materials that do jobs, not finding out why materials do what they do (otherwise they'd be producing more advanced materials) -- Lazarus on the other hand are obsessed with knowing the 'why', not the 'how' -- enough to see WHY something is happen and then unravel those rules to create new materials with new properties and emergent behaviors based on a model of prediction -- through a combination of physical replication and incredibly massive simulations. So ultimately, this is actually working in their favor, anyway.

2) Especially when the Lorath expelled and murdered its primary technology-using caste just a couple years ago?

  • Yes: I don't really see what the state of the Lorath really has to do with Lazarus. They're a multinational company.

    For those employees who ARE Lorath, I'll give you a satisfactory answer:
    • Yes, While the Occhestians were expelled for discarding ethical and financial concerns in their research.... Er nope: What theywere actually expelled for was heresy and their reluctance to cooperate with the desires of their ruling caste, there was a sizable portion of the Occhestian caste (THEIR OWN CASTE) which remained in the form of the New Tur'listians, who still follow the same research guidelines as the Occhestians which departed, including all practices with questionable ethical and financial concerns - this is ironically Lazarus primary practice anyway - following the same methodology (which is going to become a point of contention later).
    • Yes, With the influx of a massive number of new ideas from other cultures and other nations since joining the international game, there has been a renaissance of sorts in which the Lorath people have looked at ideas other have been unable to crack and with a fresh mind, approached them from an entirely new angle.
    • Yes The Occhestians have indeed seperated from the Matriarchy, however, it was made clear in roleplay that only the radical militant extremist portion of the Occhestians which left the Matriarchy were eliminated. There is still the portion of the Occhestian population present in the Occhestian Republic, which has continued their own research, which was futher augmented by the rather generous sum of research data provided by reverse engineered equipment which fueled their exodus to begin with.

3) How efficient are these materials at converting radiation to power?


  • Quite remarkably, actually. A modern solar-panel today does about 6% - and a NASA grade panel about 16 to 21% efficiciency. This is owed mostly to their 'accuracy' - or rather, how much of their physical constitution forms the nessesary arrangement of parts in order to act AS a solar-panel. As manufacturing technologies are refined, the panel grows more and more efficient - with more of it doing the job. When 100% of the panel forms the proper pattern and has sufficient capacity, it will be around 98 to 99% effective. Nothing is every truly 100% effective. Thermodynamics, yo.

    In this case, Lazarus is building a panel that captures a MUCH higher wavelength and amplitude of electromagnetism (a task which is much easier with smaller equipment, which means a much higher capture density) -- and these materials are also constructed painstakingly atom by atom with a molecular applicator to a tolorance close to somewhere around 99.98% or so.

    As a result, the efficiency IS going to BE very high. The voltage capture too, is also going to be very very high.

    I can see this technology being used with antimatter for massively high-efficiency electrical conversion (still not really approaching aether in terms of raw output, but still impressive for an object of its size) or paired with something like a uranium initiated thorium nuclear fuel cycle - which is safer, more managable and more abundant than hafnium which was the previous nuclear technology fielded in the form of the Quantum Nucleic Cell, or 'QNC'.

    Naturally, the wider the wavelength, the lower the efficiency. You can't specialize AND be a jack of all trades at once, right?


4) And what effect or benefit does this have for that actual roleplaying?

  • I want to give the little guy some punch, so they don't get bullied around by bigger factions. That is, provided they pay for it.

    Its giving other companies and players the means to build something that doesn't need dangerous antimatter or nuclear fusion, that's of a high efficiency and low complexity that doesn't need a turbine to produce electrisity, that's low maintanance.

    Something like a uranium 238 initiated thorium 232 fuel cycle would be ideal, since you can turn the reaction on and off without control rods and feed fuel in and out as a liquid (making melt-down a thing of the past) - and it also doesn't need high pressure or high temperature containment. It also has a superior (albiet slower) yield to a uranium 238 fuel cycle alone, because the production of Xenon-125 is entirely managed. Thorium is also CRAAAAAAAZY abundant, so it would be the first step in a true post-scarsity society - since a reactor about the size of a refridgerator could run a block of houses no problem.

    The gamma capture tools also mean the reactor shielding is also the reactor energy collection assembly, making it far far lighter.

    But this is just one example.

    In another, we have materials which could be incredibly light-weight, sensors and displays that are atom-for-atom pixel-dense in resolution, including volumetric systems, light transmission systems with negative optical refraction (ideal for optical computing & fibre-optic style networking), capacitors with incredible charge capacity, magnets with impressive precision control...

    I mean the list goes on and on. With this stuff, you could produce amazing medical equipment, engines, computing components, cybernetics, telescopes, sensors and display systems, communications equipment, portable devices and even starship components.

    This is almost as big as the discovery of the integrated circuit - and very similar, infact. I figure Lazarus will share the base model of "this is how we find useful patterns and combinations" but they won't be sharing their specific findings -- so that other nations and companies can go off and come up with their own materials -- but only produce them reliably with a molecular applicator, since its the only atomic-construction device of its kind built purely for utter accuracy specifically. I mean, Yamatai could reverse-engineer the device if they wanted (anyone could) but... I dunno, Jim. Its life, but not as we know it.

    And what this does for roleplay is clear; it provides players a new tool, a new means of exploring the science-fiction world in which they live in, using the science part, of that fiction.


Now let me be candid. I don't mean to upset you or your faction and I don't mean any offense by it: this is purely my observation - this is just my opinion alone, okay?

  • From what I know, Yamatai isn't strictly known for innovation. They're deeply embedded in that race to produce a faster horse - not find the next wheel. Project Thought and what became of it were pretty signiature of this. I liked Project Thought, too :/

    In fact, Yui getting angry with Laz and banning their activities was evocative of the case of US VS Tesla in terms of technical surpression. That is... Wanting to be the big kids in the sand-box, without wanting to work to maintain whatever advantage they had - scarsity in the case of the US and technical advantage, in the case of Lazarus.

    For the umpteenth time, I am not 'out to get' your faction.

    I AM NOT OUT TO PUT YAMATAI DOWN. GOOD LORD NO.

    I AM OUT LIFT EVERYBODY ELSE UP.

    BUT NOBODY GETS A FREE MEAL AND I'VE ACHED FOR YEARS TO PLAY A BADDIE OF SOME SORT <3

    Besides, I mean the future should be something to look forward to. You've read cyberpunk, right?

    But ultimately, if you think technical and resource disparity is the only way for Yamatai to stay ontop (which is what I've seen of its practices), that's ... Kind of sad.

    Now I need to skoot. My boyfriend is trying to cool his CPU with my hair-drier so he can play this new mod of Mountain Blade and I'm petrified I won't be able to dry and style my hair later because he'll BREAK IT :O

    Catch you later, Wes :3
 
Just posting to ensure this isn't deleted on a stupid technicality (30 days of submission inactivity) and saving the thread so if I do have to repost it, I can resume exactly where we left off.

None of that fillibustering gobshite.
 
None of that fillibustering gobshite.
Click to expand...

Fairly good way to get your thread locked and rejected actually.

You need to talk to Wes to alleviate his concerns, let him know and assure him that his worries are unfounded.
 
I'm not surprised this doesn't seem to be going places. You're submitting stuff that's frowned upon for common sense reasons. Like trying to define aether when people like it vague for the sake of flexibility and don't want someone outside the faction defining it when you have faction managers and gms that could come together to do so if they really wanted to.

Now you've got a tech article that apparently lets whoever you like greatly upgrade just about everything their faction has. You say you aren't trying to lower Yamatai and instead want to bring everyone else up, but functionally that's the same thing. Also, saying you don't think Yamatai could have come up with this tech because they lack innovation sounds really dubious to me because it's natural for all factions to seem to lack innovation as you see it because people prefer to see new tech submissions built upon past ones. As an example, members discussed and said they'd rather see people use power sources that currently exist instead of constantly creating new ones. They'd rather see new factions or new ships using a "generic fusion reactor" instead of struggling to come up with a new power source and having their submissions held up by forcing themselves to come up with something new that receives a lot of skepticism.

I'm pretty sure I read here this tech provides a new power source. It has the effect of many tech articles combined and all this power is going to one corporation to dole out as it pleases. You might say people still need to actually write their own applications of the tech by making their own articles for each improvement or set of improvements they get but that's another thing, will people explain the science well and consistently?

People also don't want things getting really technical and complex and they don't want a tech arms race. If one small faction heavily uses your tech it seems like another may have to do the same to stay competitive or it may need to come up with its own super discovery and write lots of articles of its own. I think people would rather compete through roleplay than tech submissions.
 
OsakanOne said:
But ultimately, if you think technical and resource disparity is the only way for Yamatai to stay on top (which is what I've seen of its practices), that's ... Kind of sad.
Click to expand...

 
Alright, let's do this.


I think this pretty much sums up your argument..

Arf arf, Amar.





  • I think I need to turn down the snark a wee bit.

    No harm intended. Amar is still mah bro :3
 
I think I'll just preserve this as is so people get to see what you wrote.
I'm not using all sorts of fallacies. When I say people I'm not making up an imaginary group. Plenty have agreed for instance that expanding the setting isn't just tech submissions. That wasn't a link to a lengthy discussion, but people have had them on the forums and elsewhere. You're using fallacies. You point me to some new tech submissions and tell me you like writing tech and you act as if that invalidates the past discussions I've mentioned. The people with a view contrary to yours aren't the only ones that matter, but they're significant. Do I really need to find you the threads where Wes, the guy who has absolute final say as well as veterans, GMs, moderators and faction managers say what I'm bringing up? If I don't link them do they not exist?

Also, you can say everything should work out wonderfully in a way that everyone will largely be happy with, but just because things should doesn't mean they will. That's been a big part of what members talk about. Not just intent, but past results and potential negative consequences of once again trying things that didn't do so well in the past.

And yet another thing, submitting new ship designs and equipment doesn't necessarily mean people are wanting or even willing to have a tech war. Other factions aren't as fleshed out as Yamatai so they've still yet to make all the different ship types they want. I don't think people are usually thinking "I'm gonna crush X faction with my super flagship/stealth ship/whatever." I think they're usually thinking "Oh, boy, I'm gonna make my first flagship/stealth ship/transport etc" or "I'm gonna make a nicer looking one than an old one/one that actually has art or a custom one for my plot." The same with materials. "I'm going to make my faction's version of Yamatai's X to better define it/make it more distinct," not "I'm going to outdo Yamatai's X."

You can say I'm only using generalities and they're all just more fallacies, but I just don't feel a need to get into specifics.
 
Amaryllis points to problems which should be a major ones where you're concerned, OsakanOne. I think it's important that you give it credence rather than argue back against it.

People don't feel obligated to bend to the notion that you have a lofty view of your ideas. We all have egos, after all. I won't deny that some of the exacting detail you put into what you work is nothing short of inspiring. However, you often attempt to get overpoweredness past people considering your work under the excuses of it being the smart thing to do and your layers of technobabble.

Pile too many of them together, and eventually people aren't going to bend. The M2 Sparrow is probably in danger of that.

This is going to stop you eventually. Stop you cold on the things you want the most to see approved here. If you take Amaryllis' words into account and act on it, you can probably avoid yourself a lot of grief in the future. It'd be a shame to see so much effort given no traction because you couldn't adjust.
 
Knock off the snarkiness Osaka, Amary is asking questions related to your submission, getting snarky or even rude with him WILL result in a rejection next time.

You've been warned.
 
So I'm not allowed to defend myself against an argument?

I don't know how to 'culturally talk nice'. It isn't something we do in my country. I can't not be British.



Alright. I didn't like writing this. I went through seven drafts to peel the snark off. I don't like how I feel when I post without it..

I feel like I can't defend myself in advance. That it makes me look weak. It makes me feel vulnerable.

But here's the post anyway.


  • I'll break it down: This isn't anything that hasn't been done before.
    • It makes bog standard nuclear tech passably decent, so we can have a 'phantom weight' tier for tech without having to use antimatter, fusion or aether. Its improving our very lowest tier of gear.
    • It adds an emergancy power system and a low power system for portable gear - on the same tier as batteries or survival rebreathers.
    • Its a means of fleshing out electronic components, materials that aren't external armour in construction, optics, cooling systems, energy storage systems and display systems.

    That's literally all this does. Absoloutely nothing remarkable taking place.

    And better still, this is based on something we're just discovering in the real world. Something that a hundred years from now will be as much of a part of our lives plastic, aluminium and the integrated circuit are. It'd be silly not to include it.

    I fixed the rediculous issues it had early on that I didn't see. And thankyou for pointing those out: You're as involved in any submission as I am, sculpting it and sanding off the rough edges. I love that part of a submission. Shaping something and making it work. Its one of my favourite parts, actually.




    How to put it...




    This is my belief:

    Every perk should come with a flaw to offset it. And the link between the two should be explained. That's the purpose of design history and the considerations of the thing.

    Its guts are how it work.
    Its soul is why it works.

    Overpowered is... Declaring something as the bees knees - attack, defense, speed... And just refusing to balance or explain. It has no soul. No raison d'etre. No purpose. No being.
    Anyone who does this should be punished, absoloutely.

    Do you disagree with me?


    In this particular case, its the cost, time to make, expertise needed to work with it and difficulty to repair. Those are all very serious flaws.

    Its just not... Viable for a lot of tasks.

    Part of its purpose is to play catchup, so other nations can have micronized systems like Yamatai does. To level that playing field.

    Players of similar tools and skill have a more fun game. Its why both players have the same pieces in chess. Its why poker has that element of chance.

    Is that something I shouldn't want?

    Am I wrong?
 
Kyle said:
Knock off the snarkiness Osaka, Amary is asking questions related to your submission, getting snarky or even rude with him WILL result in a rejection next time.

You've been warned.
Click to expand...


I think the problem here is that Osaka is getting nervous with the submission rot that is happening here. This submission was made on December 14th 2012, the review was supposed to be completed on the 16th of December. It is now the 13th of February 2013. This is severely stalled, and what is taking place here is just adding to anxiety about a submission which is just waiting for Wes to make up his mind since he was the last person to touch it.

----

Now, as for submission politics and things people are nervous about...

What we have here is something to provide a new flavor in the most reserved and well fleshed out way possible. Well fleshed out technologies are self-limiting, due to their flaws and benefits being explicitly made clear for any and all observers. This is a safe item, there are no mysteries to it, no uncertainties, no unpredictable factors, no distinctive leaps or bounds above or beyond any other faction that is in the setting.

Without new technology articles, we end up with setting homogenization. There is the same ceiling for everyone to hit with their faction as plot progresses. The Lorath Matriarchy for example has been part of this setting for thereabouts of eight years. During that time, progress has been slow. We've yet to tread on the same ground as the big boys such as Nepleslia and Yamatai, yet, the Lorath are working and have been trying to conduct their own research, instead of the blatant robbery of technology which fueled their original advancement.

Without a third party such as Lazarus, to provide R&D and technology, the Lorath Matriarchy would be forced to continue and seize the low-hanging fruit which stands before them, the same fruit that tempts any and all who have been impacted by the Empire. Aether weapons, CDD systems, transposition weapons, aether generators, phase shifting kit, Yamataium, Yarvex, and it has even been stated that the Lorath are at the technological level to produce Zesuaium. This means, effectively, technology between the factions would be exactly the same with all of its mystery, uncertainty, and flat-out exploit-ability. What small-faction managers want is to get away from that, what we want is our own identity, and in a Sci-Fi setting, identity is established by the fictional science. It is the difference between a TiE and a X-Wing, the difference between a Constitution-Class and a Bird of Prey, the difference between a Gouf and a Guntank.

What we do, is for diversity, and for the setting.
 
I really wish you'd have taken that approach earlier. This isn't defending yourself - it's showing transparency and makes what you do more approachable. If I read your submission and that I don't feel that it's easy to grasp, there's likelya significant portion of anyone whom could be interested with the Lazarus/Lorath tech whom would be put off too. Just because you're trying to so hard to make it sound smart and superior.

Because, right now, what I got was "more efficient/smaller future nuclear power source". Somewhere along the line, that's probably all I needed to know.

It eliminates the need to try to squint looking at your stuff and wonder where the catch is. It also makes me feel like the tons-of-words you've written could've been greatly reduced before most of the detail actually fly over the head of people.

Justifying competency is great, but I get the impression that the efforts are way too much directed toward 'creating the next best thing' rather than making something a player can actually use. Finding a middle ground to make that conceptual research you do into forward thinking submissions be that much more worth it would be ideal.
 
I have no special power or authority here, but I feel the need to say I find it strange how the tone was at first that this submission and submissions spawned from it would be elevating factions and giving Yamatai competition, keeping it on its toes and then became "absolutely nothing remarkable." When Wes asked if "it was plausible that Lazarus would invent this before some other faction" it was said that Yamatai as an example didn't seem to be enough of an innovator to have come up with it already yet
this is based on something we're just discovering in the real world. Something that a hundred years from now will be as much of a part of our lives plastic, aluminium and the integrated circuit are. It'd be silly not to include it.
Click to expand...
 
Some Yamataian technology was stolen or 'found' with the rest truly innovated. CDD? A Federation Shuttlecraft's Warp Drive from the days of Cross-Forum RP. Soul Savior Tech, was taken from the Elysians. Mass Meshers, taken from Nepleslia via a FIRE 1. But let us not forget one form of technology can be the spring-board for other developments.

Innovation is the discovery or improvement of technology. It happens in spurts. Not all at once and never in the same way twice.

Yamatai may not have made this first because they had a different solution. Same with other nations, they may have came up with a different solution. Technology is a many branched avenue of discovery that is only loosely connected most of the time and firmly entwined elsewhere.

I'd like to see this pushed forward and used, minus the graft, drama, four pages of arguments, and what we think this submission should be and let the Osaka refine her product into something we could all use, understand and above all else enjoy.

So can we all just cut the crap, and get the thing where it needs to be so it can finally be approved? Kyle, can you work with Osaka on this?
 
I look at this submission and I see power armor made of Lazarus Quasiperiodic crystalline materials that allows it it absorbing any energy weapon fire used on it with "98% efficiency" and then turning it into energy. And that doesn't appeal to me.
 
Wes said:
I look at this submission and I see power armor made of Lazarus Quasiperiodic crystalline materials that allows it it absorbing any energy weapon fire used on it with "98% efficiency" and then turning it into energy. And that doesn't appeal to me.
Click to expand...

I look at Yamatai, and I see power armor made of Zesuaium that allows it to negate heat, cold, radiation, kinetic forces, and everything less than aether, antimatter, direct nuclear impact, and plasma ordinance.

D: They're like evil twins!!111

Seriously though, really, there has been a strong shift in ordinance on the part of Yamatai, Nepleslia, and every other heavily armed faction in the direction of using solid munitions. Furthermore, when the material is used in an armor capacity, there is a distinctive issue with heat bleed-off in the Toledorium variation of the material, and in some cases, severe vibration.

There are checks and balances already in place to prevent exploitation, and to effectively achieve anything drastic, there would have to be a lot of engineering involved, to the point where we'd be talking starships or large frames, not something such as conformal power armor. That is at least what I gather from reading it.


What this means to you, Wes, would be that a sustained shot from an aether beam would effectively cook a pilot alive, or cause the systems of a given vehicle to overheat or be damaged via EM and photon release. - Everything is okay. Your brave feline soldiers will be able to hurt it.

Edit Note: We should also note that you worry about a 98% efficiency. When dealing with aether ordinance 2% of "Total annihilation" still produces... well... hell.... total annihilation? Like uh, dividing by zero I guess? I mean like, it would be 2% of annihilation maybe? What can 2% of annihilation be quantified as? Either way, damage would be done.
 
...Plus, the kind of quasicrystal which turns electromagnetic stuff into power is actually pretty fragile. Too fragile to be used as armour, which is why I separated Toldedorium and Phyliaus.

...Plus, aether isn't an electromagnetic interaction anyway, its the capture of gluons from baryons, resulting in destruction of an atom on strike. Or that was my understanding, when I was writing the explination of it.

It wouldn't capture energy. It wouldn't make a difference.

But then, that wasn't taken seriously. Since we still don't know what aether is, maybe it could absorb it...

*Rubs chin and makes a thoughtful pose*

...Even if it did, yeah. The volume of energy would be overwhelming.

But please read the sub-articles and note the specific variants. There are like 12 materials there, each different with perks and flaws to offset eachother.
 
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