Gas Giants - Giant Resource Planet?

How would there be no reason to go there...? The intense boost in power means nothing?

Where is everyone getting the idea that there'd be nothing on the planet? From what I remember there'd be certain places where you could build giant gas-sucking vent... things, that then, through fusion, create massive amounts of energy. MASSIVE amounts of energy, there'd definitely be a reason to go there, if you could just build metal makers AND massive energy factories (Which then power the metal makers) then you've got a "race to the gas giant" thing...

What are you going to use that massive amount of energy on?
The only energy sink that we have is fabbers who use metal and energy proportionately. You cannot really build more stuff with a massive energy production in this game. In order to build more stuff you need more stuff.

It would have interesting consequences if every unit had a constant power cost attached to it. On that same note every energy based weapon could cost energy to fire, and every ammo based weapon could cost metal to reload. Those kinds of changes would inspire players to conquer gas giants to keep their armies growing.


I'm not exactly advocating that kind of balance... I'm just saying it would be interesting.

I thought the was heavily implied but ok.

The issue here is that because PA does not limit a player's space to the extent of other RTS such as Startcraft then there is no reason for the player to expand to a gas giant for extra space. Additionally, power is essentially a cheap resource whose rarity is minimal. Thus, making the effort to go to orbital to rush to a gas giant might not be worth it in every players mind because hey would rather build pgens &units in their base on their homeworld rather than dedicate those resources to going orbital

One thing I would like to point out about this. You keep mentioning the temperature (10000K) and saying 'melt'. While this would be correct in just about all circumstances, we are talking about a place where there is *solid hydrogen*. This means that basically any worries about 'melting' are moot.

While I do not think this stops the temperature from being an issue, the pressure involved in the situation is far more of an issue than a 'mere' 10000K. Also, as much as I agree that we are not likely to see technology to harvest from a GG in the near future (my personal guess would be ~10000 years, if we exist that long) i would consider the level of technology displayed in PA to be of the level when it may be feasible.

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On the original topic, I can fully see this taking quite a lot of devTime to balance out so would not expect it to be in v1.0 without some major push to get it in. The resource rush effect is something I believe that are wanting to occur, but I am unsure how much they want it to be the major turning point in each game. There's also the point that I suspect a GG would have to be larger than the game can currently handle without massive slowdown for it to allow for the platforms to be large enough to properly facilitate battles on them rather than orbital fights + bombardment. (Personally I wouldn't mind the bombardment option, but I can see it being a point of contention)

I think it's better off that way, I'd rather have something that could boost my economy greatly, yet not actually always NEED it, as NEEDING a gas giant would be painfully boring as well.. It'd just be a rush to the gas giant, now the gas giant idea becomes a bit more of a strategic choice, "Do I go there for the extra energy, or stay here and focus my resources on further combatants, which would help me more in the long run, what if my energy gets sniped here?" etc... I'd much rather avoid rushes to gas giants, this reminds me of when people were suggesting metal planets let you build metal extractors anywhere, sure it'd be cool, and it makes sense... but then it'd just be a rush to the metal planet as you get 1: a death star, and 2: unlimited metal... Similar problem.

Okay I see your point and I more or less agree with it. Do you think making the resource generation rate decay over time could do anything to help/fix the problem of bum rushing gas giants?

sorry, sorry, i don't want to become a grumpy old bastard! help me !

yea no. the problem is that the metallic hydrogen will be fine. Whatever you send down there (even a scoop 100 meters in diameter made of solid diamond with a 99.9m wall thickness) won't be fine.

As to what happens if you drain the atmosphere, it hugely depends on the speed at which it's drained. even accounting for some of the worst, i'd expect it to take many centuries. As the atmosphere has a pressure gradient to a liquid and eventually metallic core, it would simply change the equilibrium the planet is in. For every X liter gas taken, some factor l*X liter liquid phase evaporates into gas and for every l*X liter liquid phase that evaporates, some factor m*l*X liter metallic hydrogen evaporates.

factor l being about 1/100 and factor m can be as low as 1/10000 (order of magnitude estimation). because the liquid is MUCH denser than the gas and the metallic hydrogen is MUCH MUCH denser than the liquid.

what this means is that the atmosphere is constantly being replenished by the core. again, you need to think of the planet as a gradient, with thin gas at the edges, increasingly thicker gas to the core and eventually a sphere of super-compressed gas which is the metallic hydrogen. sucking away at the top just displaces hydrogen from the core to the edge.

if the atmosphere is drained sufficiently fast there's a good chance the core will stay largely intact, although i don't know the mechanical properties of metallic hydrogen. i doubt that it could hold form when the external pressure drops, so it would probably self-fragment.

I pretty certain that if you drained the atmosphere quickly the liquid layers and solid core would violently explode with a force equal the combined missing pressure of every layer removed. The only thing holding them together is the immense pressure of the layers above. The hydrogen will return to it's natural state as quickly as possible.

Well, what I believe I was trying to do was address each thing somewhat separately. I attacked one thing then went on to comment on the other, however, I did definitely address each case (both temperature and pressure). Perhaps you missed the part where I addressed that pressure would crush anything long before reaching that point. I even used the example of how the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of all of the oceans, has a pressure of approximately 1,000 atmospheres and that we currently do not have the technology to expansively explore this part of the world, and how the pressures on a Gas Giant near the solid-hydrogen-atmosphere border has pressures at something of a factor of about 2 million times greater and would destroy anything down to it's most condensed and most basic elemental form unfathomable quick.

Also, I never referred to it as a "mere 10,000 K" - in fact I emphasized how great the temperatures were by equating them to roughly twice the surface temperature of the sun to try to put it into perspective. Perhaps melting wasn't correct: most materials would simply vaporize.

As far as the technology, PA certainly does have more advanced technologies, however that does not equate to having technology to enter a Gas Giant. I do not personally believe that we will ever have technology that will ever be able to survive in such truly extreme environments ourselves, nor do I believe that the technologies demonstrated in PA are that advanced that they could withstand those environments either. They are just too extreme. As you yourself re-emphasize, the pressure alone forces a gas to become solid at extremely high temperatures.

why not?

it is estimated that a type three civilization would be required to harness sufficient power to control folding space to be able to teleport.

So effectively PA robots are a type three civilization, with the power to harness the power of billions of suns. making harvesting the power of a gaz giant seem rather accessible.

The first problem is that "it is estimated" is one giant assumption.

Who classifies type three civilizations and by what standards?

Technology is safely assumed to be space-faring in PA, however, that does not necessitate that you have the ability to harness the power of billions of suns. And, while speaking of that, where does the figure "the power to harness billions of suns" come from, anyways?

That's all very well and nice when talking about science fiction, but unless the things you are talking about are grounded in real science, in which case I would like to know more about what you are referring to, then I would posit to say that it does not really apply.

If you are interested in current research towards warp drive technology, you should check into these links:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White–Juday_warp-field_interferometer

It's important to note from this research that, assuming that it dies yield results in the future and these theories do hold true, that it would take the the energy equivalent to the mass-energy of the equivalent of Voyager 1 in order to warp space-time and travel approximately 10x the speed of light.

These theoretical values, while not entirely confirmed, are not based on nothing at all. Just because we have the ability to to harness interstellar travel does not mean that we have access to boundless energy or technologies. In fact, the Voyager 1 is nowhere near the power of one sun, let alone billions of them. Not only that, but just because we possess the ability to harness enough energy to travel across space (which, mind you, is in fact quite easier to survive in than the pressures of the Marianas Trench) does not mean that we would definitely have the ability to survive in such ridiculously extreme pressures or temperatures.

I cannot emphasize enough how truly absurdly unreal 2 trillion atmospheres is. Elements in our atmopshere which are gas are solid in such environments -- at temperatures at which they should never freeze. In fact at approximately twice the temperature of the surface of the sun, there really isn't much of anything that is solid, if there even is any element which can be solid at that temperature (which I don't actually think there is, but I have not checked). They are crushed so hard that something extremely gaseous is crushed into a solid planetary body of metal.

Michio Kaku surprized you don't know about this guy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku

we can't be sure. it wholly depends on the strength of the metallic hydrogen and the actual mass of the hydrogen left. combined, it may be enough to exist in a natural state. Obviously harvesting it would be very hard still, but yea.

Apparently I never submitted my last post -.- so here we are:

Very interesting stuff, and surprised I hadn't either. Thank you for sharing that.

While I agree he does have points, they are very lofty and hypothetical ideas on what we think these civilizations should be like should they continue to grow into the future. While I call them lofty, by no means am I saying they are necessarily unrealistic. However, I remain unconvinced. Just because a type 3 civilization should be able to tap into the energy of an unparalleled number of stars does not necessitate that we will have the technology or ability to withstand pressures that extreme and extract materials from beyond those thresholds.

Sure, I suppose I have to concede the point that there may be some method of energy extraction at such a massive range simply due to the fact that such an advanced civilization should be able to tap into enough energy to do so. But then there is a question of whether it is or would be even possible to use pure energy alone to extract something from kilometers deep below a high pressure atmosphere and an even higher pressure layer of metallic hydrogen. Something that I remain skeptical of.

However, I completely believe that we will never be able to reach any of these materials physically because I do not believe that there is a way to withstand pressures of such magnitudes. Raw gaseous elements are crushed into solid form, and therefore I feel that it would be impossible to build a structure that could resist such an urge to be completely and utterly crushed at an elemental level.

TL;DR: I guess the important thing here is that there is a chance that it is theoretically possible, which translates into something that is suited for sci-fi. However, I don't really agree for various reasons.