Miniaturization Tech

[Lerchey]

There is another way to do it, which would be more work, but should be closer to what the original posted asked about...

Create a reasearch area of "miniaturization". You can either make it available to everyone, or make it based on having a certain level of physics/construction/whatever.

Make complete copies of the standard components for Miniaturization Level 1. They would have their normal requirements PLUS require one level of Miniaturization. If you have all of the requirements, you can use the smaller components.

One way to justify the duality (eg, a Meson BLaster III and a Reduced Size Meson BLaster III) would be to make the smaller ones more expensive to purchase.

Thus, (sorry, SE IV is on my work machine and I'm using my laptop, so I'm completely making up the numbers!), if a Meson BLaster III used 20KT of space, and cost 1K in minerals and 0.5K in radioactives, you could make the 1st level of miniaturization create a Mini Meson BLaster III that uses 15KT of space, but costs 1.5K in minerals and 0.75 in radioactives.

Of course, there would be Mini Meson BLasters I through X or whatever is normally available for that race type.

When you get a new level of Miniaturization, you'd have a whole second set of Micro components (of course, you'd need to create a set of prefixes for each level of miniaturization), and another set at Miniaturization III and so on.

I think that it could be a lot of fun, but it would also be a lot of editing.

Col. John