Can a Commander build itself?

See nanolathe as a 3d-blueprint that can easily produce swords or AK-47, but not nukes. For nukes, you need to centrifuge the uranium for a year to extract the desired isotope, something that the 3d-blueprint can't do.
Same thing there. If a gate-capable unit needs a handwavium-synchronized armour or a technobabble-core and that you need a particle accelerator the size of Jupiter to create one, then the nanolathe won't cut it.
This way, the gate itself can even be quite cheap actually, so in GW it could be built as a retreat device from a lost battle that works for Commander only, for example.

Depends on if the lathes work on the molecular or atomic scale.

And who created it? Humans? So where are they now, that god-like humans? That's not TotalA, they aren't transfered into machines.

Hey, insane future tech probably WOULD incorporate biological elements - there's a lot to be said for the data storage capability of DNA for example. In either case it may be part of the manufacturing process that a proper Commander level AI could take a considerable amount of time to create, thereby making it impossible to make a 'proper' ACU on the field ( sub commanders only?)

DNA isn't that special. It takes 32 atoms for DNA to store 1bit of information. This is a remarkably similar number to what we did in 2002 using gold atoms on silicon and an electron microscope. http://uw.physics.wisc.edu/~himpsel/memory.html

Imagine what we'll be capable of in the future. Then imagine what an ultra intelligent machine mind would be capable of in a more distant future. Yeah none of our tech even deserves mentioning.

Reliable existence of tech for lengthy period is impossible without low-level self-repair. Which means that tech of future, especially with nano-stuff will be a lot like organic life. Just not carbon, but silicon based (or some artificial "nano-atom" based).

bahahaha nano-atom.

Seriously, they could be using tech based on manipulating quarks or even more fundamental properties of the universe. Strings, loops, pocket dimensions, etc.

That's not a fantasy setting, zordon. There is no magic, sorry.

So manipulating quarks is magic but not FTL? That's oddly specific...

Magic is just the unexplained.

FTL expose more philosophical questions than physical. There is no prove for impossibility of such thing. And there is prove that under some circumstances information may travel faster-than-light. Teleportation of bare mass or energy is quite possible.

Manipulation of atoms is not just possible - it's real thing. Modern CPUs are made more or less by composing atoms into very thin layer.

Manipulation of lower elements, such as electrons - using very complex equipment, yes it's possible.

But quarks? No way. Even prove of some quark existence is very hard task, due to very low energy and very low lifetime. You can't manipulate them cause all your tools to do so are just overpowered (smallest known controllable thing we might use for that is photon).

So, that's magic. FTL is not magic, it's sci-fi - M-theory is almost dimensional sling-shot approval (but is not provable by itself), so you just need to say "it's true" and hey - you got perfectly valid explanation for FTL.

Enlighten us, please. We urgently need this information as End Of World™ is upon us!

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This can include FTL engines, unless you would care to reveal yours to the world nord?

The whole point is that we can't jut use our current(2012) set of "known" things as a basis for something that could be taking place thousands of years into the future.

I mean go back 100 years, what kind of things do you think they thought were impossible back then?

Mike

Flight would be my choice.

Don't know, Jules Vernes did imagine quite a few things. Heavier-than-air flight, interplanetary travel, submarines, cars, world-wide net of roads and fuel stations for cars, corrupt megacorps controlling said fuel...
In 1912, there were a few planes already. There were even the first rocket equations.
****, WWI was nearly a century ago already, time flies for sure...

I'd go for pretty much anything based on digital computers. Those would have been magic a century ago.

About FTL, well, here's the thing. AFAIK, there are ways but for that we need negative energy. The problem is that so far, there is not even a hint that they may exist in this universe. But let's say that FTL is possible somehow. The problem is now that FTL = time travel.
So the magic here is not just the FTL itself, it's that the Commander's FTL don't allow for time travel.

The magic is also that somehow giant bipedal robots are efficient.

Christ yeah........time really does fly by.....wow.

That's not expandable. 100 years back people thought that "it's all clear into physics. Few edge cases paradoxes remains, something with blackholes, nothing serious". And then this "few edge cases" SUDDENLY expanded into differential mathematics and physics.

Same thing happened with absolute black body paradox.

But now we learned our lessons, no one ever speaks that "everything is known" or "something is not impossible" unless there is mathematical prove of some impossibility.
If we assume that this proves are incorrect do to wrong axioms, then our whole physics model is wrong. That's an assumption that goes far off sci-fi standards.

Cell-phones are indistinguishable from magic for people who never heard of them. Blackhole behavior or complex quantum process are also magic-alike, cause no one but few very-very smart people completely understands them. That's why most magic rationale (including my own =)) are based on some quantum processes.

What I do really believe that future will make all this complex things a lot easier and base physics courses will include all this ultra-complex things. People 100 years ago didn't know even a fraction of our current "normal" knowledge.

So, whatever you call now "magic" in future will be "ordinary" thing, but that's due to rise of education.

Teleportation is possible. I believe that self-conscience teleportation is not, though.

Did you just do a complete about turn?

Oh no, this thread seems to have drifted a bit. There were some really cool points, too:

I like this one. Nukes were one of the few units you couldn't lathe in TotalA. It shows that nanolathing has a hard limit on what it is capable of. We understand (the best) nukes today as devices requiring high purity and near-perfection of design. It's not a big leap to put those same requirements on a super-futuristic nuke.

The very sensitive nature of a nuke demands a facility that is not just a grey goo gun, but rather a factory that can generate, process, and assemble raw nuclear material into a complete unit. This is further supported in TotalA as you could not assist nukes, and nuke creation demanded an enormous amount of power over the classic lathe.

Production happens through self assembling nanites. It's safe to say that nanites are some form of molecules, perhaps even larger. While a nanite might be able to precisely place an atom here or there, the vast majority of material is comprised of the nanites themselves. They form into every aspect of the robot, its shapes and circuits and armor.

So the best guess, is that lathing works on a molecular scale. The process is in fact not too different from our own rapidly advancing 3-d printers. A pile of pellets(metal) is run through a printer head(nanolathe) following a schematic(pattern) that gives the creation any shape and form you want (units). It's just a lot more advanced, able to create power plants, moving parts, circuits and shooty bits, and is designed to do these things as fast as possible. That's everything a lathe needs to self replicate and wage war.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Similar to the nuke, a Commander demands high purity components and exacting precision. Nanite circuits are replaced with pure circuits. A self replicated lathe is upgraded to a true progenitor goo blaster. A simple gun unit is swapped with the most devastating firepower ever developed. A simplistic power core is upgraded to an antimatter containment vessel. Storage tanks are upgraded to superconducting power coils and subspace compression fields. The list goes on.

None of these things are suited to a nanolathe. The process might simply be too slow, such as making a nanolathe from a nanolathe without nanite waste. Some of these features could be more expensive than their alternatives. Why screw with subspace when you can create a bigger storage tank, for example. Some things may simply be impractical for a war machine. Who the heck wants a power core that can take out half of your army? These are all liabilities for basic units, so there is no reason for a nanolathe to worry about their design.

Those same liabilities are exactly what a Commander depends on to win planets. A superior gun lets it survive against standard units. Cheating space-time lets it bring more stuff through a gate. A faster lathe lets it build the biggest things in the shortest time. The Commander depends on having the pinnacle of technology to win invasions.

Could a Commander store all the information needed to reproduce itself? It might be possible, but in the end it's a complete waste. A Comm is built on the exact opposite principles of its units; bulk vs. precise, swarm vs. perfection. The immense complexity of its high tech systems require a huge amount of memory storage(circuit schematics, armament design, entire server rooms of construction detail down to the atom), taking away from more critical features like winning. And more importantly, why bother? A Commander already brings the schematic of a perfect invasion machine; himself.

And he do this for only reason: to prove bobucles' point of commander degradation!

Really, IF ACU is so perfect and so important (and he is!) and his replication is actually key to victory, why the hell you'll NOT make copies of all it's schematics all over the place, doubled and kept on special storage with extended information that allows to read without errors even in case of half-memory destruction?

Also, why not make memory so perfect (you have subspace compression!) so it may storage everything without removing a thing?

And, yes. You know what is the most advanced tech on the market today? It's microcomputers with 12 nm techprocess. And guess how they are made? By carefully layering atoms one by one, i.e. by nanolathe, more or less.

What do you describe is, of course, more primitive, but more efficient way of building army in the field fast by composing units out of small bricks that may move themselfs while into special energy field. So you don't need complex and fragile equipment to precisely put atoms on atoms - you just got a load of nanites made in small factory and a beam of energy.

Also, BTW, SupCom tech was different - it was actually composing units out of raw matter similar to modern CPUs (that's why it was 'mass', not 'metal').