Glotmorf on 25 Dec 2003 06:17:58 -0000 |
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[spoon-discuss] Materiel |
A thought on the finding of resource units... Mr. in a Spacesuit had an interesting idea in terms of having more than one type of resource unit, but tried to develop it in far too arbitrary a fashion. Might I suggest something more similar to that used in Star Wars Galaxies? You start with top-level categories. We could go with resource unit as a top-level category, but I suspect we're eventually going to be wanting to subdivide into energy and matter eventually, so I'll suggest top-level categories of energy, organic and inorganic. There may exist units under a given category. There may also exist categories under a category, such that there may be units that can be recognized as belonging to the higher category, but also exist in a more specialized form for particular uses. For example, under Inorganic we might have Metal and Rock, and under Metal we might have Iron and Gold. A unit of iron would also be a unit of metal and a unit of inorganic, but there could exist units of inorganic that weren't metal, or units of metal that weren't iron. In those cases where any old metal would do, one could use iron, gold or generic metal, whereas in those cases where iron is required, gold or generic metal could not be used. Higher-level-category units could be refined to attempt to produce lower-level- category units, with a given chance of getting a particular lower-level-category unit (low compared to other possibilities), a higher-level-category unit, or sludge (no unit). In the above example, refining generic metal may result in iron, gold, inorganic matter or nothing. Hybrid materials can be made from combining multiple materials. They can be separated again into their component materials, but not without producing some sludge. They can also be used at their lowest common category and up -- if copper and tin could be combined to make bronze, bronze would be usable as a metal as well as itself -- but if so used they become units at that level. Good points of this system include: -- It's backward-compatible. Higher-level-category units don't have to be converted when lower-level categories are created, and build recipes involving higher-level categories don't have to change. -- It's sideways-compatible. If plastic is created as an organic category, then later changed to an inorganic category, neither the units nor the recipes involving plastic have to change. -- It works with made things too. If one makes or finds, say, a starter motor (presumably only useful if someone has a recipe that involves a starter motor), said motor could be broken down into different metals, according to its recipe, or simply melted down in its entirety to be used as generic metal. So...what should the first top-level categories be? Matter and Energy? Glotmorf ----- The Ivory Mini-Tower: a blog study in Social Technology. http://ix.1sound.com/ivoryminitower _______________________________________________ spoon-discuss mailing list spoon-discuss@xxxxxxxxx http://lists.ellipsis.cx/mailman/listinfo/spoon-discuss