Prices of in-game items
Isummon_Durt
Lower MiddleEarth Join Date: 2017-12-09 Member: 234349Members
Lower MiddleEarth Join Date: 2017-12-09 Member: 234349Members
I just finished subnautica, (the ending cinematic was amazing,) but I was given goosebumps at the ending dialogue saying that I need to pay a fine of some trillion credits to enter Alterra space. The source of my goosebumps was that I knew that I'd stocked my ship full of Ion Cubes and Diamonds before launch. So, just for fun, I was wondering how many credits an ion cube or precursor artifact might be to a historical or scientific community.
And also, the player does seem to have found the first two examples of sentient life on the same planet, (or so it's suggested.) So even if the player's budget isn't quite high enough to re-enter Alterra space, he should be able to bribe them into free admission if he provides proof to his discoveries. And plus, I assume he becomes a sort of profit who has his mind linked with some outer-space mind control creature!
And also, the player does seem to have found the first two examples of sentient life on the same planet, (or so it's suggested.) So even if the player's budget isn't quite high enough to re-enter Alterra space, he should be able to bribe them into free admission if he provides proof to his discoveries. And plus, I assume he becomes a sort of profit who has his mind linked with some outer-space mind control creature!
Comments
Personally, I am thinking the bill is due to Alterra considering all the items on Planet 4546B as theirs. So all the Ion Cubes and Diamonds that you brought with you is their property and you don't get one credit from it. The other possibility is that the main character already has a massive debt and the work required to develop the rocket plans for your rescue pushed the debt to 1 trillion credits.
So you probably have a trunkful of pretty shiny rocks with the same market value as, say, iron. Bit of a pity there.
The other problem you'll be contending with is that everything you made on 4546B was made from commonly-available survival specs, which by the statement of the PDA itself are tuned to make use of the resources you have available to you. Consequently, we can't take it for granted that what we see in-game is the state of the art universe-wide. In fact, we have evidence that we're not working the top branches of the tech tree: Alterra is a bit player in the phasegate market, an entire industry based on FTL/matter teleportation technology. So while ion cells are pretty kickin' stuff to us stranded on some cosmic backwater, we can't assume that, compared to the galactic standard for technology, they don't rate the same in that universe as NiCd batteries do to us. Even the QEP gun could be old news; if a warship had encountered it rather than a civilian freighter/constructor, the story could well have been entirely different. ("Captain, something just shot us in the aft shields. No damage, but it sure was pretty.")
The survey data and information about the Degasi's fate, that's probably worth something to somebody. But if Alterra was careful in how they word their contracts (and I'll bet you they are!) they already have the rights on that information anyway.
At the same time, though, we can't assume that a trillion credits is a whole lot of cash. Inflation can be a pretty wild thing if it runs out of control, and a trillion somethings might have the same purchasing power of a $20 today. (For reference, by the time Zimbabwe gave up and stopped printing its own currency, they were circulating hundred billion dollar notes for use as pocket money.) So without some sort of means to peg value somewhere - any listed price or value we can relate to modern value - all we can do is guess.
As for Scifiwriterguy, you have a good point. Although we can begin to estimate (sorta') how many credits make a modern... let's use the currency Zimbabwe uses because why not. A single pound of diamond, (about as much diamond as a single deposit in Subnautica,) in modern-day would be worth 10250000 euros. Ok, that's nice. We can't, however, calculate how inflation and interstellar mining has influenced the prices of diamonds, but we know that the price of the pound of diamond the player can find is note-able enough for Alterra to have a pre-programmed reminder to the player that it's still their own property, yadda yadda yadda. So far, we've gotten nowhere.
BUT! (and it's a big one) This could be solved by measuring the rate of price change vs. change of diamonds going through trade, then finding how common carbon is in the universe, (no matter how paradoxical this may sound it has the simple answer of 3.5 measurements of carbon per single measurement of silicon,) then calculate how much the price of diamonds would go up along with the rarity of them on a galactic scale. Something to note here is that currently, diamonds don't really have any value besides commercial value. They're pretty much useless. However, it seems as if Alterra has found a use for diamonds in 3D printing, (for replication lasers, I guess; a factor which makes no sense whatsoever but let's leave that alone for now). So let's pretend that within Alterra space, diamonds have a value both practically and commercially, (maybe.) But without the complete information, we can't make a good estimate. However, if anyone here knows the answers to these missing links, someone could calculate the gist of how many credits would make up a euro. Also, for a starter, diamond mining would likely be done on carbon super-earths. So start calculating how likely it is that a super-earth would be made of carbon.
Also, something interesting to not is that it would seem as if things aren't quite as tailored for our specific survival as it might seem; that is, the 3D printers aren't necessarily meant to cope for our survival situation as directly as it would seem. We can see this in action with the PRAWN, (as if the PRAWN were redesigned to be built with materials available on 4546B it wouldn't be mkIII, probably,) and also with several other vehicles. The vehicles we find in the Aurora (seem) identical to the ones the player can make. And so are tools; as the PDA says that the knife is the only weapon permitted by Alterra printers. This suggests that the knife is a very rudimentary and common design. Also, the propulsion and repulsion cannons are mentioned in PDA's. What this suggests is that Alterra mainly deals with more diverse planetary geology similar to Earth's own; and that its tech is largely based off of what can be found on familiar planets. Sorry if I explained this one poorly.
I'm inspired by your third paragraph in other ways. It'd be cool if you could check out another post which I might make about the subject of energy shields.
1 trillion credits
Actually, diamonds have extremely high value (in the non-monetary sense) and an extraordinarily wide range of practical applications. In fact, more diamond is used every year for industrial and research purposes than for jewelry; over 80% of diamond mined every year is unsuitable for decorative purposes but are perfect for industry. Diamond-tipped and -studded saw blades and cutting discs for slicing through a range of materials, diamond-studded drill bits for hard rock drilling, diamond dust polishing, research compression rigs (AKA diamond anvils), scalpel blades...the list goes on and on. Many of the physically larger applications like scalpel blades and larger-by-volume applications like polishing powders have been given over to synthetics, but low-grade natural diamond is still a major industrial resource. (The lowest grade of diamond actually has its own name - bort - simply because there's so much demand for it.)
While they have wide industrial uses, however, the sheer amount mined every year means that the prices for bort are pretty low; when 80% of what you take out of the ground goes into that market, it tends to depress the value pretty fast.
You'd never catch me in a diamond spaceship. That's really just a great way to die in style. Titanium is a far superior material for a spaceship. Diamond has one advantage: it's about 25% less dense than titanium.
"But wait," many will say, "diamond is harder than anything else we know!" This is true, and that's what makes it unfit to be a hull material. "Hard" isn't necessarily a great thing. Here's the science wall o' text on why:
Elastic deformation is what it sounds like; the material bends or flexes but bounces back once the pressure lets off. Think of a steel bar. Under strain it can bend (depending on the formulation a fair bit) but will spring back. It's why springs work.
When the strain exceeds a material's elastic deformation limit, it begins to undergo plastic deformation. This is the point where deformation becomes permanent. Generally speaking, the total amount of deformation will be the pressure minus the elastic deformation pressure. The material has a little bit of spring-back once the pressure is off, but it's going to stay permanently bent to some degree.
The best example you can do yourself is to pick up a paper clip. If you put a little pressure on it, it'll flex and spring back. But if you put more pressure on it, you'll bend it and it'll stay bent. That's elastic/plastic deformation.
Once you exceed a material's plastic deformation limits either by sheer pressure applied or by applying the pressure too quickly for deformation to occur, the material is going to fail. How it fails depends on the material, but anything crystalline (which includes most metals) is going to fracture along the crystal planes and the structure is going to break.
So, for the purposes of our conversation, let's look at a metal versus diamond.
Put a metal - steel, titanium, whatever - under strain. First it's going to bend a little, but if you let go it'll pop back. Put it under more pressure. Now it's going to bend enough to stay bent. Add more pressure. Now it starts groaning and clinking. That's the sound of the metal crystals twinning - basically, splitting from one crystal into two - and a warning that you're nearing the strength limit of the material. Keep adding more pressure and it's going to crack. But you'll have applied a LOT of pressure to do that. Different metals have different strength profiles, but the more elastic the metal is, the better it'll withstand pressure. (Cast iron is hard but brittle, titanium is softer but stronger. Its strength, measured by a statistic called "ultimate tensile strength" is more than double that of cast iron.)
Now go with diamond. Diamond is a hard material with minimal elasticity. This means that you have a VERY narrow pressure band before you've exceeded its elastic deformation limit. Now you're into plastic deformation...except hard crystals don't deform well at all. So you soar through that narrow band very quickly, too. That only leaves...failure. And fail it will. Basically, a hard material is good for resisting pressure in specific conditions. The point of a cutting blade or etching tool, the acting faces of a very small compression cell, these are ideal conditions for hard but brittle materials. But providing strength across large faces against forces that can be very intense over a very short period of time (such as an impact) is not where hard materials excel. The reason diamond is able to withstand extreme pressures is because it's very carefully arranged for those applications. The diamond crystals have to be oriented such that they're aligned with the axis of pressure; off-center pressure will cause a failure pretty quickly. This limits you to fairly small structures - compression cells, sawblade studs, and the like. Any large structure will crush easily because the crystals cannot be oriented to resist all pressure.
(Hang on, hang on, why doesn't a diamond ring shatter every time you hit your hand on something? Simple: you can't generate enough pressure to exceed its strength modulus. The ring itself will fail first. But put that same diamond in, say, a hydraulic press and you'll have diamond powder.)
The concept of hard armor was abandoned early on in human technology because it just doesn't work. You need a material that flexes - or, at worst, dents - rather than just breaks. Glass is a similar problem, which is why bulletproof glass isn't glass at all; it's either a polymer or polymer-glass composite designed to deform and catch a bullet rather than just be harder than it. The most effective pure-metal materials for withstanding pressure are amorphous metals; they're produced using a process that prevents the formation of large crystals, meaning that there are no long planes for a fracture to propagate along.
Link please?
To be fair I think the game mentions in several places that a lot of Precursor tech is far beyond anything the Federation has. I know the tablets and forcefield controls are described as such, and some of the relics suggest it as well.
This is a race that's capable of backing up their entire consciousness to a computer. Considering how limited PDA hard drive space is suggested to be, I think that tech capable of storing the entire essence of a living, intelligent being would be pretty valuable. :P
That, and considering the fact that the Aurora itself was carrying batteries of the same quality you can craft, tells me that they might appreciate an upgrade as well. :P
There's a log entry earlier in the game that reminds you of that prospect that Altera owns what you get and can bill you for anything you build with their tools and materials. It ends the log file with saying your current bill is several hundred thousand credits. Since that happens roughly midgame, I'm guessing the building of the Cyclops and it's components, followed by the building of the Neptune is what pushes it up to 1T creits.
Although if the player knew that was coming, I don't understand why they were stupid enough to go straight back to Altera. Any relatively intelligent person would try to at least initially land some place out of Altera's eye and kept a low profile until they could sell all the stashed goodies off and try to stay out of the public eye as long as possible. Or at the very least immediately seek government or law enforcement protection from Altera.
Personally I'd be inclined to just send up a note on the Neptune saying "Nah screw you I'm staying in my ocean paradise." Then reenable the QEP and make for the Arcti-oh wait that's not finished yet.
I believe the bill with that message was 3 million credits not several hundred thousand credits. Personally, I don't think the main character had a choice in where we ended up since all blueprints are directly downloaded by the PDA. It is the problem with easy user interfaces. Just click on the button and the computer doesn't everything for you. There is even that voice log from that Doctor that mentioned how he is not a real Doctor since he cheated on the medical exams, but it didn't matter since all he did was read diagnoses off of computer readouts. If the Neptune's computer does all the navigation, then all the main character can do is launch the ship and enjoy the ride. So the only options are enjoying the simple life or get back to Alterra.
That's entirely possible, I may have been giving the PC too much intellectual credit. It's entirely possible they had rocks for brains too, since everything they did was automatically crafted or processed for them during the events of the game.
QEP? What's that stand for sorry? And are you referring to the Precursor AA gun?
Link for my discussion on Alterra's Energy Shield and their weird technological habits.
Random thought: Does Alterra space contain any super-earth carbon planets? Because if they did, they would probably use diamonds more often in their vehicles. And replicating diamond obviously isn't difficult because of how easily a pound of diamond can be shrunk into an inch of space in a small handheld laser device.
Good points all around. Insofar as the tablets and controls are concerned, when you add in the comments made by the Degasi crew, it seems likely that the Precursor tech superiority - at least as it applies to those pieces - is in durability. Those devices are extremely old, unmaintained, and yet perfectly functional. Given that even today having a computer than can go more than 15 months without a severe issue is practically the thing of legends, that's a pretty impressive piece of tech by any stretch of the imagination.
Your second part is certainly a point I'd hold up as evidence of superior technology. Given that estimates in 2016 peg the human brain as having a data capacity in the neighborhood of a petabyte (a thousand terabytes), that alone is a hardware headache.