Bioreactors vs Physics
DagothUr
Florida Join Date: 2016-07-12 Member: 220125Members
Florida Join Date: 2016-07-12 Member: 220125Members
So diving into the netherworld I ran into a problem. I didn't want to try using solar panels below 500m, there weren't any nearby steam vents, and I was nowhere near the uranium fields. That left me with only one power option left: Bioreactors.
At first I was loathe to use them, as previous experience had shown me that their rate of generation was painfully slow and each one took up an entire room. Still, it was my only choice so I began looking for ways to get the most out of them. It was actually pretty simple: Three multipurpose rooms, vertical stack with ladders. First level was an alien containment fish tank. Above that was the bioreactor. Top level was a farm with multiple indoor planters.
Went back to main HQ, grabbed some lantern fruit and chinese potatoes. Then grabbed a pair of bladder fish for breeding in the fish tank. This way I had some variety for fuel and good sources of both food and water without requiring the mind-boggling energy suck of a water filtration machine. I loaded the goods into my Seamoth cargo pods so they wouldn't spoil and headed back to finish setting up my new deep sea depot. Took a few extra pieces of vegetable matter just for starting power to get the lights on.
Set up the plants, stocked the fish tank, was all set to go. Went and farted around for fifteen minutes, came back, and everything was running smooth. I had plants galore, I had ten fish in my tank, and the power was running fine. That's when I realized why the whole situation was completely absurd.
The plants required light to grow, plus whatever hydroponics were hidden inside those planters. The fish tank apparently could make it's own fish food, as well as keep the water clean and everything else just right for the fish in it. All these things required power, and my only power source was the bioreactor. Where did the bioreactor get it's energy from? From the plants and the fish.
In other words, somehow the bioreactor was violating the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. It could convert a single plant into enough energy to grow ten more plants and convert a single fish into enough energy to raise another dozen fish. That's like a bonfire giving off enough light to grow nearby trees faster than you can burn them. Yet there it was: I could toss a couple of fish into this thing and it would give me back enough energy to replace not only those two fish, but the fish that I turned into bottled water with a laser beam, and a side of fruits & veggies. While recharging my Seamoth and a pair of tool batteries.
At first I was loathe to use them, as previous experience had shown me that their rate of generation was painfully slow and each one took up an entire room. Still, it was my only choice so I began looking for ways to get the most out of them. It was actually pretty simple: Three multipurpose rooms, vertical stack with ladders. First level was an alien containment fish tank. Above that was the bioreactor. Top level was a farm with multiple indoor planters.
Went back to main HQ, grabbed some lantern fruit and chinese potatoes. Then grabbed a pair of bladder fish for breeding in the fish tank. This way I had some variety for fuel and good sources of both food and water without requiring the mind-boggling energy suck of a water filtration machine. I loaded the goods into my Seamoth cargo pods so they wouldn't spoil and headed back to finish setting up my new deep sea depot. Took a few extra pieces of vegetable matter just for starting power to get the lights on.
Set up the plants, stocked the fish tank, was all set to go. Went and farted around for fifteen minutes, came back, and everything was running smooth. I had plants galore, I had ten fish in my tank, and the power was running fine. That's when I realized why the whole situation was completely absurd.
The plants required light to grow, plus whatever hydroponics were hidden inside those planters. The fish tank apparently could make it's own fish food, as well as keep the water clean and everything else just right for the fish in it. All these things required power, and my only power source was the bioreactor. Where did the bioreactor get it's energy from? From the plants and the fish.
In other words, somehow the bioreactor was violating the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. It could convert a single plant into enough energy to grow ten more plants and convert a single fish into enough energy to raise another dozen fish. That's like a bonfire giving off enough light to grow nearby trees faster than you can burn them. Yet there it was: I could toss a couple of fish into this thing and it would give me back enough energy to replace not only those two fish, but the fish that I turned into bottled water with a laser beam, and a side of fruits & veggies. While recharging my Seamoth and a pair of tool batteries.
Comments
And here you go again, complaining that the game isn't a physics textbook. What part of fun and entertainment do you fail to understand? Willing suspension of disbelief is a thing, you know. Can't do that, then perhaps you should go teach physics instead of struggling to play Subnautica without finding it's scientific inaccuracies.
Personally i dont mind much that the reactors dont really copy real-life physics, it leaves us time to do other things than keep them loaded.
What if the nutrients for the hydroponics and the food for the fish tank are basically provided by krill being pumped in with the water from outside the base? Then the only power you need is for keeping lights and pumps running, which is negligible compared to krill calories.
I don't want to see my adorable little pet Stalker die of starvation
At the end of the day you can always assume that in the distant future, our physicists have proven the 2nd law of thermodynamics to be wrong.
Buddy, you keep making these game vs physics posts, what are you expecting exactly? Yeah, the game is not realistic. We get it. We expect it.
I have to wonder why do you play the game at all if you find it so hard to suspend disbelief? You are an intelligent person, so I assume you know why the game is why it is. Do you even enjoy Subnautica or do you just enjoy ridiculing it?
Seriously asking.
If however you want a serious discussion about the science, then I'm all for it, but it would have to be presented in a different way.
And if you're just making an observation, yep, you're not the only one who wonders these things.
Anyway, my own personal "realism" issue is in the creation of rooms and vehicles.
When I first saw a cyclops being built all immersion and realism was lost. I actually snorted in derision. It's absurd, ridiculous, crazy and utterly insane on so many levels and I really hope it changes completely before final release.
But that's games for you.
This seems like the way to go. I'm not saying the game needs to be completely realistic, but there are limits to how much my disbelief can be suspended. Now at least here we're trying to find some logical justification: A hidden external source of energy income.
I could see such a device being a good addition to the parts list: "Krill Harvester" that mounts to a wall like a water filter and uses very little energy. Then you could take the krill that you're gathering and feed that into the bioreactor and get more energy out of it than the harvester uses because now you've got an external energy income source (i.e. the entire planet) as your feed. Or you could eat the krill as food yourself.
Or, if you wanted to be really lazy about it (but even more realistic) just add krill as an output product to the water filter and expand it's slots considerably. Then it's simply a matter of assigning different krill densities to different biomes. If you want to lean in favor of gameplay mechanics, make it most dense wherever other power sources are unavailable.
Or you can use your imagination like the rest of us.
But don't you think it's about priorities?
Surely the immersion breaking crafting (see previous post) is far more important and worthy of complaining about more so than bioreactors?
I agree, there is a limit to how much disbelief can be suspended, and that limit is pushed way further and much harder by other issues.
If you could have an explanation involving krill, or a revamp of how things are built to make it somewhat remotely buy-able, which would you pick?
So when you go to build something you'd drop a pile of materials and a tube of nanites, then aim the builder at the tube to tell them what to build. Then you'd watch as they slowly but surely gobble stuff up and grow it into whatever you wanted built.
Not that visually it would much different than what we see now, only much slower. But the gameplay change would be vast: You could probably "seed" and entire seabase by the time to first room was done being assembled, so planning would matter more - not just in base design, but in what you're going to do while waiting for stuff to finish (no more instant "emergency tunnels" to get free air, for example). Plus you could add in more layers to the crafting as you need to gather materials to make more nano-paste.
Anyway, I got sidetracked: Yes, you're right there are bigger issues, but I still don't feel like that justifies sweeping everything else off the table.
I think the instant build is useful for creative but in survival and hardcore it should take a lot longer.
base-building should take even longer
Beyond that, trolls are also fun, and I enjoy banter.
Here's my "hang-up": Inventory space.
Have you ever dropped a quartz crystal on dry ground? Given a more realistic scale comparison, say, next to a flood light, a quartz crystal is BIG. It's almost the size of your torso. How many of those things can you carry in your inventory? Remember how many weapons and ammo the Doom Guy could carry? Somebody added it up one time and it was like 500lbs/36 stone/227 kilos or something ridiculous. There has been more than one cheat code that let you see all the weapons carried on an FPS character model (I'm remembering Blood Rayne right now). It's ludicrous.
All of these things we get hung up on as "inaccuracies" are simply expedients. Go look up Translation Convention on TV Tropes.
This is the classic dilemma of fun-vs-accuracy. It would be tragically boring if all of this were realistic or real-time.
How about this? For those of you who think things build too quickly: I challenge someone who's better at math than me to do these calculations: Take the current compressed day-night cycle and stretch it out to a realistic timeline (I'd say 24 hours or so but that's just because I'm an Earthling). What's the ratio? Then take that ratio and apply it to every build animation or process that takes time (reactor build up, battery charging) and what do you come up with? Slightly more acceptable numbers? It takes a couple DAYS to charge a powercell, right?
What I'm saying is I don't want to have to sit and hold the mouse button for three real-time hours to build a room, or go off and do something else while nanites do it for me. I don't want to schlep krill paste from the filtration machine to the aquarium. I'm perfectly happy to imagine it away as something I could have done were the day not so time-compressed.
And I love that the Cyclops gets built all anti-gravity-like and then splashes down. I just wish it made a bigger "SPLOOSH" sound.
Cheers,
J
Which makes me wonder... if we play video games to escape realism, why do THOSE sort of people play games?
As for bioreactors, I'm grateful to have them. Where else would I put all those dead peepers I find in thermal hotspots in the Safe Shallows? I mean... they're already decomposing so I can't eat them...
Which would open a place for greenhouse lights you install in a Multipurpose Room to emulate a certain light level in the room, needing space and power in exchange for plant growth.
Like just about any time we use the fabricator or construct a massive submarine using a few little chunks of metal, quartz and fish teeth.
Requiring solar lighting or energy intensive grow-lights for plants is potentially the most interesting solution to the current food balance mess, imho.
That would retain planters as an easy source of food when at or near the surface, but would prevent fruits or vegetables from making every other food source redundant when building deeper down or travieling.
You're kidding, right?
Escapism isn't black and white. It's a sliding scale of infinite possibility.
Second, sandsharks are great to power your bioreactor...never use plants...its a waste of time and bioreactor´s storage room.
I placed 2 sandsharks eggs in a tank, and a week later there were 30 of them, and when i was getting really mad about on how to get rid of them it suddenly hit me. I just stored 90 of them in several lockers and i used them in my bioreactors, really, they grow faster than the reactor can consume them...its insane.
a) It's a beam 3d printer;
b) we can see things floating, thus in this universe some sort of control over gravity is achieved (also its obvious because of superluminal travel) thus some sort of control over time flow is achieved as well (gravity and time are interconnected things);
c) so the fabricator uses ion beams to construct an object, and to make an object fast, local time of an object goes faster for an outside observer
If such technology would be possible, I would get drunk and go dancing in the streets, naked.
Same if 2-nd Law of thermodynamics would be proven wrong... or the Law of conservation of Energy.
*bravely dons tinfoil hat and begins googling*
Erm.... mostly what's coming up is results about the 2nd disproving evolution. Somehow. It's too early in my day here to dive into that bowl of crazy.
But I courageously continue and find one result on page 2 about disproving the 2nd. Except it's not really disproving the 2nd. It's a satirical disproof using the same wacky 'logic' as the lunatics trying to use the 2nd to support creationism.
I'm no physics expert but as a semi-professional googler I think it might still be firmly in the not disproved column. Wouldn't surprise if it eventually is but today the science boffins are pro the 2nd.
I do like the idea of installing special lighting to help grow plants at very deep depths. I mean... at 200+ meters down where are they getting enough sunlight to grow and bear fruit?
If I use Bioreactors exclusively I tend to build a LOT of them. Which means I have to do maintenance on my power systems just to keep the lights on (by checking how much biomass they have left to process)...
The market demographic is considerably larger than you might realize.
I suppose it comes down the old Star Wars vs Star Trek argument, which is really Science Fantasy vs Science Fiction. People who prefer science fantasy like things to be big, loud, colorful, and exciting. They don't really care if anything is really plausible just so long as it's cool. Science fiction fans, on the other hand, demand at least some attempt to be made to justify everything that is shown. It doesn't have to be perfect, but you at least have to make an effort.
Obviously I'm more into the science fiction end of the spectrum (my true love being cyberpunk, because that genre isn't technology we might see in a hundred years - it's technology we will see within the next decade). I don't need every little detail of the ecosphere mapped out, but at least attempting to make things plausible it a requirement in my book.
I especially like the way they handled Stalkers, stalker teeth and the way they play with scrap metal. Apparently they gnaw on it to make their teeth stronger and actually metabolize the metal in some way to help with this. Now there isn't a lot of detail beyond this, and that's fine. The point is when I wonder "Why the heck to Stalkers play with scrap metal?" it turns out there is a real reason for it other than "it looks cool."
As a side note, just look at how long the thread is on "Why did the Aurora crash?" That's a lot of people not willing to settle for "just because." So I'm not saying don't do things just because it looks cool. I'm saying that after you get done making something that looks cool, come up with a believable reason for it afterward, and double check for nagging mistakes (like fusing a creature's jaw to it's skull and making it's teeth point the wrong way).
Simply put, if you're going to make a game about exploring an alien world, odds are you're going to a get an audience that heavily leans in favor of science fiction over science fantasy. Especially if you make it into a survival game.
Quantum entanglement also seems unreasonable but exists...maybe we just think in 2D for so much time that all we understand is 2D.
So to be clear, you can't actually provide anything to support your claim that the second law of thermodynamics has been disproved.
Other than bandying around the word quantum like it's a magical mantra or implying that we're unimaginative for.... not taking your word as gospel truth?
When i answered above, i was not trying to create a discussion about if the 2nd law of thermodynamics was disproved or not, but a system can output more power than it consumes, this has already been proven. The doubts right now are mostly concerned about how long can a system run before it fails, well "time" plays a major role here, and if we cant bypass it we may well try to cheat it...
Meaning that the science we now possess is primitive to solve certain problems does not mean they cant be solved in the future, right now quantum entanglement only works one way, but 100 or maybe 1000 years from now people may be using this technology to communicate in real time all across the galaxy and taking it for granted like we now take ours. Remember the wheel was once the proud accomplishment of an entire civilization.
And by the way, disagree with my post if you have to, but we should probably avoid polluting other people´s threads with completely off the topic issues.
PS:
The second law of thermodynamics is sort of incomplete, it must be expanded to include non-equilibrium systems that evolve to increasing order, such as Zero Point Energy Generators
“Throughout space there is energy…If this energy is kinetic then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the wheel-work of nature…Many generations may pass, but in time our machinery will be driven by energy available at any point of the universe.”
Nicolai Tesla