quote:
Originally posted by Puke:
I dont see any 'realistic' limit to mineral or radioactive extraction, especially considering things like quantum technology. organics might get hard to come by after the top layer of a planets crust was stripped, but the whole issue is game ballance and play style rather than realism. oh well.
to elaborate, why not some sort of matter conVersion? there is already resource conVersion tech, so why are minerals rare? in theory you could take any kind of matter and turn in into an equal (atomic) mass of another type of matter using the same prinicpals, with some loss to entropy. so if you had a medium sized planet, and you did nothing but convert its mass into mineral resources, even if you lost 50% to entropy, whats 1/2 the mass of the earth? more than most empires produce in a 200 turn game? probably. that sort of sends play ballance out the window, but why wouldn't a galactic empire with super-technology be able to convert a small moon into a million or so warships in a year or so? realism? where? and who's Version of super-science do we use for it?
and why do we need mineral / rad storage facilities? come on now! find an empty planet or moon, and stick it there. or put it in solar orbit for heaven's sake! what's it going to do, walk off? sure someone might try to take your 100,000KT of minerals thats orbiting Bravo Seti III, but I dont think volume is really an issue here. I would gladly dedicate 1 planet to resource storage, and I would sure expect it to be unlimited storage if a WHOLE PLANET was dedicated to it. MT Everest has got to way a bit more than 100,000 KT, and it is not even a significant portion of the earth's surface. I wont even GET INTO planetary cargo vs. cargo ship capacity.
pardon my little rant.
[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 30 January 2001).]