Gas Giants - Giant Resource Planet?

To quote the TA Manual:

Nano-lathing
Tiny robots (10 microns across or less) are sprayed onto a powered skeleton. They each ’know’ allowable places they may link up (as well as being guided by the powerful intelligence within the nano-lathing unit) and as they settle into position they fuse creating solid material. Then a second stage of nano-lathing occurs where highly specialized nano-bots seek out precise locations on this skeleton to form optical links, weapon systems, intelligences, and other internal components.
Provided there is a blueprint, anything can be built with nano-lathing.

Nano-bot
A nano-bot is a robot that has components on the nanometer scale, that is, its components that are made up of individual atoms or groups of atoms. These tiny robots can, in great numbers, be used to build any object.

Sorry. Didn't see that. I wonder if black holes are going to be a feature included in PA?

A gas giant is just that: it is primarily comprised of gas. The reason a Gas Giant consists primarily of gases (as opposed to our planet which is primarily solids and liquids) is due to the fact that it has become a larger gravity well in the regions further away from a star.

If you think about how more dense materials sink faster and further down in water, you can begin to understand what the density distribution of materials tends to look like as you move farther from a star. What is something doing when it sinks in water? It is travelling closer to the center of the gravity well.

In other words, the farther from a star you are the higher the percent of low density matter present. Therefore, with gas being less dense, you will encounter more gasses further away from the center of the gravity well. Which is actually the case in our solar system: the rockier planets tend to be closer to the star, and the more gaseous (and physically larger) planets tend to be further.

Jupiter's outer atmosphere is ~90% hydrogen and ~10% helium. The rest of the atmosphere is ~75% hydrogen, ~24% helium, and ~1% other elements. The core (excluding obviously the metallic hydrogen layer, which is of course solid hydrogen) is ~71% hydrogen, ~24% helium, and ~5% other elements.

Here we realize that there are almost entirely light elements and gaseous elements present in Jupiter. There is no metal to extract from the atmosphere, and because of this, there is no chemical reaction we can due to extract metal: there has to be metal present in some compound or mineral for us to smelt it, condense it, or electrolyze it.

Due to this fact extracting metal from the atmosphere itself would be impossible, and the amount of other metals actually inside of the deep core of a gas giant would be particularly small. The metallic hydrogen layer extends from the core all the way to about 78% of the radius of Jupiter, which is a pretty ridiculous amount of metal hydrogen to have to dig through. This is also ignoring the sheer fact that conditions this deep in the planet are impossible for anything along the lines of the technology we are seeing inside Planetary Annihilation to have access to. It would, realistically speaking, be far easier endeavor to mine moons or asteroids around the Gas Giant for metal.

If you want a little more information on Jupiter, you can google Space.com 18388 and it should bring you to the article "What is Jupiter made of?"

So sorry to say, but there actually is no other sources of metal that may be present in a Gas Giant besides within it's deep core.

As for stopping the gas clouds, that would be a galactic endeavor in-and-of-itself. To stop the flow of gasses in the atmosphere, you would need so much material to do something on that scale that you'd need to strip at least a dozen planets clean of metals.

What drives an atmosphere to move, just like the atmosphere on Earth, is actually the sun. Heating from the sun rays (and subsequent cooling from colder, darker areas) cause a lot of differences in temperature, which affect pressure and volume of gas, which subsequently cause winds, storms, and movement. Not to mention rotation, however, honestly I don't know how rotation of a planet truly affects atmospheric movement, so I can't speak about that aspect. To stop the atmosphere from moving, you'd need to remove the atmosphere. But, as I said, that would be a galactic endeavor and near impossible, something that is far greater than what would seem to be possible on the P.A. scale.

What that would do to a planet? Well, I don't really know. Losing that much matter would affect the pressure and temperature of an object, and it would have severe consequences to a planet, but the planet wouldn't simply crumble apart. Sure, you might get cracks in the metallic hydrogen layer, but it wouldn't suddenly cease to be one solid planetary core.

Building giant rockets (Halleys) isn't that bizzare. It's actually something we've done already, just at a much larger scale. But yes, you are right, it's a bit of fantasy to be able to move something that big. However, if I might say so, it is completely possible to pinpoint a tracjectory to hit something through space. We've done it plenty of times with satellites and rovers to explore the solar system. It's quite possible, just on a much MUCH larger scale. As you point out, to do it in such a small period of time would be impossible, however, I believe that is a signature of the game that it moves so quickly, because otherwise it wouldn't be a viable strategy for ending the game. Though, perhaps lengthening the time necessary would be nice, so that one might destroy some Halleys to prevent impact and postpone their imminent destruction.

And again, as said above: The things that affect the atmosphere movement are caused by solar rays striking the planet. Even if you used machines to extract energy from the winds of the planet, you would not run out of wind. Just as we do not run out of wind because we're building structures on the Earth or using wind turbines to extract energy from the wind.

The amount of heat at the core is from friction due to gravity and pressure. Pressure is due to the gravity of all of that stuff (atmopshere, etc.) above any given point. To get rid of the temperature and pressure at the core, you'd need to strip a planet of it's atmosphere which is time consuming and rather implausible. This would definitely have an impact on the dynamics of a planet. However, the core would not just dissipate -- there is a lot of mass there, which is the source of all that gravity, and that would still be there at the core, so the core would remain. One likely consequence, however, is without the atmospheric pressure, the solid hydrogen would likely warm and expand into a NEW hydrogen atmosphere, but leaving the core intact. There would still be plenty of new atmospheric pressure generated by all of that newly-gaseous hydrogen above the core, so you'd likely need to strip that atmosphere as well to get at the core. In the end, you'd be left with a rocky dead core. If the core was liquid, it would likely cool due to exposure to space and be one solid chunk. If it was already solid, it would also likely cool and remain solid. So in the end: No, I don't believe that it would just break apart if you tried to slow the winds -- something you couldn't simply do to begin with.

Also, I agree, getting at the core of the Earth and the core of Jupiter are rather similar. They're both rather impossible to accomplish due to ridiculously high temperatures and pressures. We can't access the bottom of our own oceans, we can't break through the mantle, and we can't get anywhere near our core. We will likely never have access to any planetary core due to the extreme environments.

Your concern is that GGs in particular will be used to rush for huge resource boosts. However, it is already the case that this is already 100% in full swing in the game. From experience of playing many games with only one or no moons, those games that I do play with a moon, it always seems to be the case that someone will rush to the moon simply for that huge resource boost in easy, available and uncontested metal extractors and space.

So unfortunately, this is already the case. It's really an interplanetary consequence.

I particularly like this and think that this would be a natural way to balance the realistic lack of metal on the Giant itself.

Well, as I just previously commented, and as Pendaelose mentioned, there are certainly possible benefits of GGs which could be worked out to add metal to the gravity well, such as a plethora of moons, asteroids, an potentially even rings.

As far as extraction of metal: for a planet that is the center of a gravity well and not necessarily a starting planet, IS it necessary to have metal? I don't know. Does Uber plan to have wars fought solely on Gas Giants? I don't know. If they did, then they need a solution for metal, if they didn't, then perhaps not. Though, one easy fix for this is to accompany rings with gas giants, though that still leaves the problem of how you might start a new game on a gas giant. I don't know how to solve that. Obviously Uber will need to work out the kinks on how exactly they are going to deal with GGs and how they work, how you start on them. Perhaps they could allow you access to an early orbital mex. That is a really awkward and may even be part of the reason why GGs aren't finished yet. It's a prety difficult problem and I really don't have a good solution for "don't we need metal?" problem.

And as far as the energy shielded drill: That begs the question as to why a drill can be energy shield but we do not have energy shields in the game. Also, liquid nitrogen would be entirely inconsequential. There is so much hot atmosphere that we would not have enough liquid nitrogen nor the energy or ability to cool it as it descends into the atmosphere to keep the Nitrogen from boiling off instantly and to keep the drill from melting. We're talking about temperatures of near 10,000 K just to get to the metal hydrogen (which is useless to us) and iirc 40,000 K to reach the top of the core. Nitrogen is liquid below 63 K, and boils at 77 K. There is so much gas there that is so unbelievably hot that a little bit of Liquid Nitrogen would mean nothing. It's not like we're dealing with a little bit of fire, or high temperatures, we're talking about temperatures which would vaporize metals quickly. There's just too much hot gas (like, the entire planet) there for us to do anything about. And that's completely ignoring those high pressures, so high, they force hydrogen (at 10,000+ K) to become solid again, something it should only do at ~15 K. Physically not possible. Any other tech would be pretty big "deus ex" moment and really, as I said with the energy shield, begs the question as to why we don't have that much raw power or technology to use for war purposes.

What waylanderpk points to is that stars only fuse elements up to iron and all of the heavier elements are formed in a supernova. However, that is stellar fusion. A fusion reaction that could be controlled would potentially be able to continue even further than this. This would be incredibly difficult, but I don't think that it is theoretically impossible.

The reason stars cannot fuse Iron is because fusing Iron is an endothermic reaction (takes energy). Lighter fusion reactions are exothermic (releases energy). Stars lack the temperature, pressure, and raw energy required to fuse Iron in any stable fashion and therefore collapses. Consequentially this collapse releases a ridiculous amount of energy, causes more fusion of heavier elements, and rebounds off of the solid iron core giving us a supernova.

It is, however, theoretically possible that we could continually feed energy into a reactor to fuel fusion of this kind. However, the question is whether we have the resources to do so available. Apparently, as Devak points out, there are already theoretical plans on how this can be achieved.

But it would definitely cost energy to do so.


EDIT: My sincerest apologies. As you all can tell I am horribly long-winded. I never intended this post to be two giant posts long. Moral of the story: I certainly need to sleep more and post less.....

i don't know, i doubt it. Could be a cool all-dark system to play around in.

The kind of black hole you need for such a fusion plant isn't very big though. If it's a charged, spinning back hole you don't need very exotic technology to move it around and get energy from it. The size we're looking at is something, uhm, well far below baseball size. it could probably fit in your hand. i wouldn't recommend it tho.

@fhandab yes it is necessary, energy doesn't add much to the table, you can build it anywhere but metal is a rare resource that you must find in specific points

If you could drill from anywhere on a gaz planet it would make Gaz Giants invaluable.

If no metal could be gained from a gad giant, there is no reason to go there. If there is no reason to go to a planet, no one would fight there. If no one fights there, why should Uber waste their time on a seldom used and gimmicky game mechanic. I appreciate the scientific info. Cleans up alot of my questions about Gas Giants.
Ultimately having metal spots on the planet itself might be a necessary evil. Maybe if there were old wreckage in the clouds of Jupiter from the wars before the commanders reawakened then THEY could be torn apart to get the metal they're made of.

highly theoretical mind you. Let's see if we can get power from fusion first.


However, if we have a race of robots with the kind of nanolathe tech etc we see in PA, then you might be able to, say, couple 5 fusion generators together. One uses high-Z fusion to produce metal while the other four ensure a constant flow of energy.

Mind you that effectively, this is no different from a Metal Maker in Total Annihilation, just with a fusion reactor incorporated already.

From a gameplay perspective, the best shot would be to indeed have metal platforms floating around a gas giant using these Metal Makers. For gameplay purposes, they would have Metal Spots on them that are effectively the Metal Maker's output.

5? What do you think all the power generators are? Coal turbines? It's a pretty reasonable assumption that the power generators use fusion.

This is how (in my head) SupCom's Mass Fabricators worked. Using good ol' E=mc^2 to convert energy to matter (also the wiki page agrees with me).

So... I do not know if Uber has released either a yay/nay stance on metal converters yet. This could very well work if they do. However, the platform itself is made of metal. Why not just have metal spots on the platform itself which denote non-critical structures and stuff that can be disassembled and reformed into your own robots and the like?

actually that's what i meant: a platform floating at the gas giant, with metal spots which are the "output" of these huge metal makers.

*sigh* there's no need to talk like that. i think the kind of fusion generators in my head are a little bigger than in your head. i'm thinking huge, huge platforms largely dedicated to this mechanism. You're thinking these tiny plants we're using in the game.

Well, I wouldn't instantly jump to the claim that there is no reason to go there. I admit that it is pretty sketchy and a bit undesirable to have nothing there. However, that doesn't mean that having a planet to build on and extra space to use as a staging area to feed your war efforts on other planets isn't beneficial; it definitely is.

I think the question major question to balance this is "how do we make this a viable starting planet?" and perhaps it is to have some sort of sources of metal available.

However to have a planet where you can tap into metal by drilling anywhere (which has been suggested) is a bit overpowered being able to get effectively a near infinite amount of metal. This would also beg two questions:

If I have technology to drill kilometers deep through extreme conditions in a Gas Giant, through turbulent atmosphere and metal hydrogen in order to extract useful metals, and I can do it anywhere around the planet, why can I not then use that same technology to dig through easier conditions on rocky planets to dig anywhere I want for metal?

What about metal planets, then? Should we not, by those standards, then be able to extract metal from anywhere on a metal planet?

That sort metal availability would seem to be a bit overpowered.

I would suspect that all Gas Planets have a very large number of asteroids and small moons (and large moons) oribting them.

The orbital system around the gas planet would provide the metal. As for going actually to the gas planet (ie surface) well...

Now to make the gas planet system (ie gas planet and it's moons) more easily conversable than regular orbital transits, this woudl be an excellent place to introduce the unit gun. Let unit guns pop a unit anywhere in a moon-planet system. Gas Giants naturally have a larger system to do this with.

As for the asteroids around it, I'm talking of 1-5 metal points per asteroid, movable by single halleys, but a crapload of them.

yea, a gas giant wouldn't have a surface to step on, so from a development POV it's not much of a headache to make them. so unlike, say, a metal planet or lava planet, a gas giant would not be a massive waste of development time.


it's not ideal, but it's also not a huge shame.

And Crystal and Marble planets, and planets made out of...Obsidian (or extend lava planets)

I appreciate the science, reminds me of my quantum physics class and more recently the new cosmos series.
There is no way to harvest the heavy elements in the core of a gas giant. That is why it makes sense to do away with the resource named metal. Call it something else and give it a lore background like the transformer's Energon. Since it is now a fantasy element we can make it available as a gas, liquid, or solid state at any density that we choose. Therefore it can be harvested from the atmosphere of a gas giant whose atmosphere contains trace amounts of the element. However this would be done at a much lower efficiently rate than harvesting it from a solid.

Alternately, metal availability on gas giants can be done starcraft style. As in reclaiming wreckage and asteroids in the orbital layer of the planet; but the resources are limited and do not regenerate.

It might be a bit late to do this primarily because of the fact that the games economy is focused around having metal deposits on the map that player must fight over. Replacing metal with a resource that can be found in the air and in the ground would necessarily force Uber to rethink how the economy would function, retool that whole system of the game, potentially create new art assets, rework ai, etc etc. While this could be a cool idea for a total conversion mod, it might be a bit late in the development cycle to expect out of PA now. Sorry :/

I understand that having the extra space to build on would be useful in huge, long PA games. However, I have so far yet to see/play one that has reached that late of a stage.

Additionally, I, for one, never really understood why metal planets have metal points. If someone could explain the logic behind that I'm all ears.

future first class building materials is carbon nanotube and plastics

the way I see it that would ruin all the fun. I think gaz planets shouldn't be allowed to be a starting planet.

If they are to add gas giants as a playable planet type they will have to rethink the economy. This is an opportunity to sneak metal makers into the game buildable only in the orbital layer of gas planets.

If there is nothing there to fight over and sustain an army then why would anyone even visit them?
I suppose that they could act as a second sun to offer an additional orbital anchor for moons?