Approved Submission U-G3801 Hyperspace Tap

I'll give this article a look over tomorrow as time permits.

Ok, so far the submission is looking pretty solid. However, what can one unit, two, three units etc do when combined together, unless I missed that detail? I do know it mentioned small craft up to large ships.

Nothing special, 2 units provide twice the power, three units provide 3x the power.

The original design was intended to be somewhat like an atomic pile:
View attachment 6967

But this design I'm going for something a little more modern:
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You'd end up putting in however many you need to power a thing. Small fighters may only need one or two while star-ships could end up using banks of 50-60, but I'm not going into that much detail on the submission.

Due to the modular nature of these things and how they can be just plugged together, the article is going to need a rough ballpark of how many to power ships of various size classes. Additionally, the article will also need some more background information on how hooking up works, and its pros and cons to explain why this isn't more common. I'm guessing it's less efficient to use these in bulk due to heat and such.

I added a small line about small craft (IE: fighters) requiring one or two, and larger starships requiring dozens. This is detail that no other reactor really requires and I can leave it to people to generally assume that pound for pound this is only a little worse than a dedicated large reactor (due to all that modularity added, and it not being pure reactor all the way through). I would imagine that the Eucharis' Aether reactor and a stack of generators the size of the Eucharis' aether reactor would put out about the same amount of power.

The article also contains pretty detailed instructions on not just hooking up the device, but mounting as well. I don't think further detail is required here unless you want me to write an article on power cables and standard tubing sizes.

As for the pros and cons or why this isn't more common: Nepleslia already has this technology but after Wazu left their technological development backslid / died off. Along the same lines Yamatai is having a hard time hanging on to its technological talents as well. For a lot of very valid reasons they seem more interested in improving infantry-level gear so you've seen a lot more usability improvements show up there lately. USO, on the other hand, is less interested in infantry. Surprisingly enough (even to me) Mecha-scale seems to be where all the excitement is and USO needs infrastructure. This certainly kills a few birds with one stone.

The thing is, from my understanding, USO was advertised as a low-tech frontier type of RP. It seems odd that something so high-end is now being brought up for it when it's popularity thus far has been built on that - I do fear it jumping the shark by the way. Because of that, I need to ask, how do you intend to have this contribute to RP? What are the players going to be doing with it? I mean, what's the point? It seems counter intuitive considering the plot's premise.

Now, regarding the tech itself directly though, what's stopping someone from taking several more of these than necessary to power a ship class and giving it lots of extra juice? You know. Stuffing them into nooks, crannies, rooms and whatnot throughout a ship? That's what I'm wondering about the most.

Uso is also a procurement specialist. She always seems to know a guy who knows a guy. In this case the expert in the field is Wazu, so she's banking on his high tech-level-skill to produce high-tech-level equipment.

Along the same lines with the U-1, she was letting Alex build a mecha and she just so happen to be able to arrange for this setting's mecha expert to show up and help.

The 188604 plot is about having a low tech world and letting the players do what they want, which for many involves building the planet up into something higher tech. USO just happens to be really good at that sort of thing.

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As for as how do I intend to have this contribute to RP? Pretty much any scene that takes place in the reactor room now has a fleshed out reactor to work with, setup, play with, ect. Anyone who needs a reactor for a submission has one. Anyone needing power for their buildings on 188604 has it, ect, ect.

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What is stopping someone from taking extra generators and putting them in a ship? Nothing. Nearly all ships on SARP have backup generators of some kind. I think its explicitly stated that the C3 does this exact thing to prevent the ship from being depowered by a single hit.

Heat. If you filled every nook and cranny of a ship with these without running a coolant line to every single one the air would become too hot to breathe. If each one is hooked up to a coolant system then the fluid traveling between each system would already be hot and would begin to boil at some point until BOOM.

Gotta blow off steam, a dedicated reactor will naturally be easier to cool but these hyperspace taps are easier to replace and transport.

Also, it is worth mentioning that any reactor requires insulation, shielding, cooling stuff, ect.
A dedicated reactor can have all of the above just once around the exterior, leaving the interior free of clutter so it can be 100% devoted to the process of generating power.

If each hyperspace tap needs its own insulation, shielding, cooling stuff, etc. you'll end up with a space between each and every single unit. When your building a large bank of taps that is going to result in a lot of wasted space that could be devoted to power production. There will be many more hoses running coolant that will take up space as well.

Furthermore, using these as a redundant system would come with both advantages and disadvantages. Heat, if your main reactor is running at its highest output it'll be reflected in the cooling system so when you add these taps for 'more power' it'll increase the burden further.

These taps have their place, and when used correctly they seem like they'll be quite handy but this isn't the kind of device that could just be haphazardly thrown into a ship to boost performance. Large banks of these taps would require a degree of hardware similar to what big reactors use.

Basically this^

The generators aren't magic. You still have to do all the hard engineering work related to running a reactor on a thing that is flying through space.

If you really want to get into it, just adding another reactor to the ship would require you put another counterweight somewhere along the axis of thrust (while in space) in order to keep the ship from flipping around and exploding. You'd also need to add a counter weight along the axis of lift it the ship goes into the atmosphere to prevent the ship from fliping about and exploding. You'd also need to balance it along the axis of thrust in the atmosphere because that may or may not cause the ship to explode as well.

Source: Kerbal Space Program

I can understand wanting an energy system for RP, but why have them be made by the organization? I would have though there would be more fun for the player using pilfered energy systems or even pilfering them in RP as a plot point.

Regarding the article itself though, I've been thinking about this carefully, and I believe it's going to need a few things before approval in order to keep it balanced:

1. Explicit statement saying there is excess heat buildup and detectable emissions using multiple hyperspace taps linked together in comparison to normal hyperspace taps
   
2. Explicit statement saying there are diminishing returns with each additional hyperspace tap used, making them less efficient than singular hyperspace taps.

1: Excess heat and cooling are already listed in the submission.

2: diminishing returns with Aether / hyperspace taps has never been a part of the setting. Nor should this submission have to include several books on basic engineering for people to use any more than aircraft submissions require a full explanation of all aerodynamic forces on the craft.

This is an updated version of an already existing submission. I don't understand why this is taking so long to be approved?

Diminished returns wouldn't be quite accurate, each unit would still generate X amount of power in which case X×(number of units)=(total power generated).

It's just an inefficient use of space. Pros, easier to replace faulty units. Cons, takes more space because of individual packaging.

Indeed, That's all basic engineering stuff. Submissions don't require a full explaination of all the implications of a technology.

It's not like you can add a generator to am exsisting ship to make it more powerful either. You can only put so much energy into a laser before the electronics fry.

If the ship benefits proportionately less from installing an excess number of these than it does from installing the right amount, that is an example of diminishing returns... whether it's because the systems that draw power become overloaded and excess power is no longer beneficial, or the heat sinks become overloaded and drawing excess power starts to do more harm than good.

This is basic stuff, yes... but, a few posts ago Zack said there was nothing stopping people from using more. Apparently, there are several things that stop people from using more. So, uh, that concern is resolved, in a kind of roundabout way, but something could still be put in the article to reflect it, like this: 'As with any other power source, installing extra taps on a ship can provide a backup power supply in case of emergency.' It can stop short of spelling out that this is the only benefit (unless you want to risk frying your systems) since the line implies that this is the only practical benefit.

I definitely think a modular system like this should have some serious inefficiencies compared to power plants that are designed for, and built into ships and other devices expressly to power their systems (or in the case of cheaper stuff, where the ship or device is designed around its power plant), although since they're essentially magical, they could still be more efficient than antimatter or fusion reactors. I can't imagine how economies of scale work for aether reactors.

One area where these might be weak is powering systems that take extreme amounts of energy to use, since it may be difficult to route power from every tap through one place instead of distributing it over the ship, given that they're a multi-point power source.

Just from an efficiency standpoint.... you'd be better off with larger reactors for shipboard use.

There is nothing stopping you from adding more of any reactor to a ship, other than all of the engineering challenges that go along with doing so.

Like with every other submission, it isn't necessary that I have a line explicitly stating that if you carry two of these it will be twice as heavy as if you were carrying one.

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And yes, a single reactor built to the exact right size would be the most efficient for a starship, but then you'd have to design a new reactor for each ship and you'd lose part commonality. Since it takes a few weeks just to get basic parts approved I don't think that is going to be a reasonable approach.

Though there is nothing ruling out making cargo container sized versions of this.

I gave a solution that doesn't require explicitly saying that it's not exploitable, you could try using that instead of just arguing that it's someone else's problem if they misinterpret the way the device can be used.

Tech submissions for power plants can describe the basic technology, or a series or general range of products, instead of having one article for every discrete device. There's no need to have specific power plant designs for every ship in the same way no tech submissions are needed for the blade and hilt of an aether saber, lots of ships get by just fine by saying what type of power plant they have, without mentioning its size or who it's designed or produced by.

Since particular item is a lot more versatile than a built-in power supply, it needs its own submission, but not every ship would need a separate page to describe its 123-F reactor as opposed to the 123-E. You can streamline this; if your motivation to come up with this was to get the equivalent of a wide range of things through this forum at once, it doesn't have to be this way.

Navian is correct - it isn't necessary to create entirely new reactor articles for every single ship with its own reactor. A small paragraph or blurb in the ship article itself will do fine and even be less trouble

Now, regarding this review? As a tech mod, it is my job to make sure articles are not OP or excessively metagaming in some way, which is why I insist on explicit statements as to this article's shortcomings considering that it is a very specific design. It cannot rely on assumptions regarding 'basic engineering', since someone that is less than scrupulous can simply assume otherwise. That is why you need to explicitly state its shortcomings. In this case, it's most likely excess heat in comparison to normal reactors - which doesn't appear to be stated as you said it was - and either diminishing returns past the point of a standard reactor, or some other drawback such as simple inefficiency, requiring more resources than a singular optimized unit seen on typical ships.

It is stated that it requires cold coolant, and outputs warm coolant.

I'd also like to point out that this is far above and beyond what is required in terms of quality for a reactor submission. Stop trying to come up with pointless qualifications to delay approval.

There isn't even a way to use reactors in an OP way, since they aren't really account for in any of the site rules. This is a fluff article to give characters something to interact with instead of using a generic, non-discript, reactor.