Post by Marcus Langley on Dec 11, 2011 23:26:54 GMT -5
I have no idea what to call this one.
[Sun 11] [22:46:06] <Burrito_Loco> Since Kario's out and Ell is apparently AWOL...
[Sun 11] [22:46:48] <Bali> Ell's not AWOL. Ell's just Ell.
[Sun 11] [22:46:49] <Bali> :D
[Sun 11] [22:57:30] <Burrito_Loco> I didn
[Sun 11] [22:57:37] <Burrito_Loco> 't say unexpectedly absent
[Sun 11] [22:57:40] <Burrito_Loco> Just absent
[Sun 11] [22:58:48] <sohum> AWell
[Sun 11] [22:59:15] <Bali> Hahaha
[Sun 11] [22:59:58] * Tod is plugging away on animal pictures, but they're not scanned in. I'll do a big batch when I have enough.
[Sun 11] [23:16:54] <matejcik> yup, i'm here.
[Sun 11] [23:36:08] <Tod> Should I draw some bats for PCs, yes or no?
[Sun 11] [23:36:10] <Tod> because, wings
[Sun 11] [23:38:10] <Bali> Aren't there other animals with wings?
[Sun 11] [23:38:33] <Tod> I'm just drawing mammals, thus far
[Sun 11] [23:38:56] <Burrito_Loco> Currently, I think, birds are out
[Sun 11] [23:39:58] <Tod> yeah, afaik, we're just doing mammals
[Sun 11] [23:40:27] <Tod> bats'd be neat, but it might be a good idea to keep players from potentially complaining that their characters should be able to fly without airplanes, or something silly like that
[Sun 11] [23:41:51] <matejcik> well they can't. weight ratios are wrong
[Sun 11] [23:42:13] <Burrito_Loco> Need bigger wings
[Sun 11] [23:42:34] <Burrito_Loco> The light-weight bones would be a serious handicap though
[Sun 11] [23:42:40] <matejcik> and lighter bodies, which would have to be so light that they couldn't move under their own force
[Sun 11] [23:42:41] <Tod> totally
[Sun 11] [23:43:00] <Tod> I will happily continue on with bats on the list!
[Sun 11] [23:43:03] <Tod> bats with goggles :3
[Sun 11] [23:43:29] <Burrito_Loco> I'm still trying too rationalize a scenario where air travel is the preferred form, even for cargo hauling
[Sun 11] [23:44:34] <matejcik> the easiest, and probably cleanest, way out of this is a physics tweak
[Sun 11] [23:45:03] <matejcik> as in, flight is much cheaper than we expect, because aerial lift is way stronger than it's supposed to be
[Sun 11] [23:45:17] <Burrito_Loco> So far I've got heavy, toxic atmosphere making sea level deadly and/or warm, shallow seas that wreck heavy shipping on reefs and are far too stormy for small/low draft craft
[Sun 11] [23:45:26] <matejcik> i do realize that it sort of breaks my idea about why bats don't fly :e))
[Sun 11] [23:46:42] <matejcik> i like the dangerous shallows idea
[Sun 11] [23:47:17] <matejcik> seawater itself could be contaminated too
[Sun 11] [23:47:35] <matejcik> toxic vapors near sea level etc
[Sun 11] [23:47:55] <Burrito_Loco> Right, that was idea one, pulled from my own setting proposal
[Sun 11] [23:49:02] <matejcik> also
[Sun 11] [23:49:16] <matejcik> as long as you have enough resources to run air cargo hauls
[Sun 11] [23:49:43] <matejcik> it's easier, in terms of logistics, to load up the stuff on the plane than to get it down to sea level and then back up
[Sun 11] [23:50:29] <matejcik> esp. if we're talking big loads - you'd either have to build an elevator big enough to lift the whole ship, or have loading/unloading take a very long time
[Sun 11] [23:50:34] <Burrito_Loco> Yeah, but the economies of scale on a supertanker (or hauler) are such that the added load/unload is a drop in the bucket compared to flight
[Sun 11] [23:51:17] <matejcik> right, so, where do you build this huge ship, when your dry-dock is a kilometer above sea level?
[Sun 11] [23:51:43] <matejcik> that would be a fun project btw :e)
[Sun 11] [23:52:04] <Burrito_Loco> Why is your dock so high? Carve one out at/near sea level
[Sun 11] [23:52:26] <matejcik> yeah, that's a fun project too
[Sun 11] [23:52:47] <Burrito_Loco> Sure, the capital outlay is big to start
[Sun 11] [23:53:16] <matejcik> put this together with the toxic vapors thing, and you got yourself a pretty big hurdle
[Sun 11] [23:53:16] <Burrito_Loco> But it would amortize very quickly when the other option is a fleet of aircraft (even if we're talking airhsips)
[Sun 11] [23:53:37] <Burrito_Loco> Right, making sea level uninhabitable
[Sun 11] [23:54:08] <matejcik> by the time you finished your first supertanker, sealed atmosphere and all, your competitors are established in the market and running insane profits with fleets of aircraft
[Sun 11] [23:54:27] <Burrito_Loco> Well, you could undercut them by massive margins
[Sun 11] [23:54:42] <matejcik> you'd have to seriously undercut them price-wise, but then your project would get into black numbers by turn of next century
[Sun 11] [23:55:09] <Burrito_Loco> Not necessarily, shipping is, quite literally, orders of magnitude cheaper than flying
[Sun 11] [23:55:50] <matejcik> yeah, and also slower and you have to take longer routes, so even more slow
[Sun 11] [23:56:54] <matejcik> so you could make a massive profit on your first shipment, yes, but you'd take a week per trip, where your competitors can haul the same cargo in hours and make dozens of trips
[Sun 11] [23:57:15] <matejcik> perhaps the profits would be comparable?
[Sun 11] [23:57:16] <Burrito_Loco> at 10x+ the cost per trip
[Sun 11] [23:57:33] <matejcik> yes, but you're shipping way cheaper, remember?
[Sun 11] [23:57:48] <matejcik> okay, let's crunch the number
[Sun 11] [23:57:49] <matejcik> s
[Sun 11] [23:58:06] <Burrito_Loco> There's a reason that the world is covered by ships today
[Sun 11] [23:58:40] <matejcik> let's say a plane eats 100 moneys per trip, and makes a profit of 200 moneys
[Sun 11] [23:58:42] <Burrito_Loco> You fly when time is of the essence
[Sun 11] [23:59:00] <Burrito_Loco> Those are insane margins, but go on
[Sun 11] [23:59:01] <matejcik> yes, yes, but in real world, you have all the infrastructure. there is not the big investment upfront
[Sun 11] [23:59:30] <matejcik> um ... sorry. earns 200 moneys, so the profit is 100 moneys
[Sun 11] [23:59:37] <matejcik> per crate
[Sun 11] [23:59:45] <matejcik> but that might not matter :e)
[Mon 12] [00:00:02] <matejcik> your ship eats 5 moneys per crate, and earns 100 moneys
[Mon 12] [00:00:51] <matejcik> now, let's say that the route takes ... i don't know ... 100 hours by ship and 2 hours by plane. also let's assume that i have a fleet of aircraft big enough to carry the same load as your supertanker
[Mon 12] [00:01:32] <Burrito_Loco> (massively more expensive than the ship, but alright)
[Mon 12] [00:01:56] <matejcik> probably, yeah
[Mon 12] [00:02:50] <matejcik> so, by the time you make one trip and earn 95 moneys of profit per crate, i make 50 trips and earn 50x100 profit
[Mon 12] [00:03:04] <matejcik> i do admit that the numbers are somewhat insane
[Mon 12] [00:04:38] <matejcik> still, even like this, you will be turning a solid profit and i'll start losing customers because your prices are that much better
[Mon 12] [00:05:01] <matejcik> hmpf
[Mon 12] [00:06:00] <Burrito_Loco> A major cargo ship can haul 3-5 thousand times what a c-130 can
[Mon 12] [00:06:20] <matejcik> for this to make any sense we'd have to factor in the upfront investments, drop the assumption about the same cargo capacity (which is realistic in the scenario but breaks when we count the upfront investments) etc
[Mon 12] [00:06:26] <matejcik> so. well. this was a fun exercise
[Mon 12] [00:08:17] <Burrito_Loco> I'd stick with "reasons we literally just can use sea transport"
[Mon 12] [00:08:22] <Burrito_Loco> can't*
[Mon 12] [00:09:39] <matejcik> well, let's try the "shallows" angle
[Mon 12] [00:09:48] <matejcik> you can't build a supertanker because it has nowhere to float
[Mon 12] [00:10:03] <Burrito_Loco> right, storms+reefs
[Mon 12] [00:10:04] <matejcik> (which only makes sense - pieces of land as well as sea floor were lifted)
[Mon 12] [00:10:23] <Burrito_Loco> Not at all
[Mon 12] [00:10:47] <matejcik> you could build hovercrafts, but probably nowhere near as big as a regular tanker
[Mon 12] [00:11:02] <matejcik> maybe on par with planes
[Mon 12] [00:11:20] <Burrito_Loco> Regardless of the "cataclysm" angle (which I still despise, but anyway) it stands to reason that if you have only a small amount of land above water, the average depth is probably pretty low
[Mon 12] [00:11:31] <Burrito_Loco> Well, no, they could be much, much bigger
[Mon 12] [00:11:39] <Burrito_Loco> But they don't do terribly well in choppy water
[Mon 12] [00:11:45] <Burrito_Loco> They break their seal
[Mon 12] [00:12:15] <matejcik> hmm, how about those florida-style swamp hovercrafts?
[Mon 12] [00:13:00] <Burrito_Loco> Those aren't hovercraf
[Mon 12] [00:13:01] <Burrito_Loco> t
[Mon 12] [00:13:12] <Burrito_Loco> They're wide bottom, low draft boats
[Mon 12] [00:13:33] <Burrito_Loco> They swamp easily and don't load cargo very well
[Mon 12] [00:13:59] <matejcik> oh.
[Mon 12] [00:14:20] <matejcik> well then. you can't build a big boat because it wouldn't move. you can't build a big hovercraft because it would sink.
[Mon 12] [00:14:27] <Burrito_Loco> Yup
[Mon 12] [00:15:00] <Burrito_Loco> that's the idea
[Mon 12] [00:15:13] <matejcik> you could build some sort of contraption where you have a small hauler pulling an insane train of small boats loaded with cargo
[Mon 12] [00:15:39] <Burrito_Loco> They'd swamp in a storm
[Mon 12] [00:16:01] <matejcik> not necessarily though
[Mon 12] [00:16:19] <matejcik> the cargo wagons could just be floating containers
[Mon 12] [00:17:03] <matejcik> there's a risk of part of the load breaking loose, sure
[Mon 12] [00:17:13] <Burrito_Loco> In a storm, it's almost guaranteed
[Mon 12] [00:17:28] <Burrito_Loco> Or the train drags their tug into a reef
[Mon 12] [00:17:41] <matejcik> that's more likely.
[Mon 12] [00:18:19] <matejcik> in fact, anywhere near the length we would want and the train would wag the tug instead of the other way around, in any sort of current
[Mon 12] [00:18:30] <Burrito_Loco> That still requires an insane amount of reefs
[Mon 12] [00:18:37] <Burrito_Loco> Yup
[Mon 12] [00:19:30] <matejcik> we don't need actual reefs.
[Mon 12] [00:19:55] <matejcik> it's enough to know that if a storm comes the thing cannot be controlled at all and when the storm passes you're probably miles from wherever you want/need to be
[Mon 12] [00:20:17] <matejcik> caught in a roundabout current, if your luck is particularly bad
[Mon 12] [00:21:48] <matejcik> getting this train off a beach would be heck of a job even if it's undamaged. especially if it's undamaged...
[Mon 12] [00:22:08] <Burrito_Loco> Which is why we need to rule out the truly massive cargo ships, anything smaller takes care of itself one way or another
[Mon 12] [00:23:03] <matejcik> so, now we're left with reasonably small ships, on par with airships if not planes
[Mon 12] [00:23:43] <Burrito_Loco> Well, right, but the only way to rule out the supergiants is reefs or the like
[Mon 12] [00:24:16] <matejcik> shallows without reefs is not enough?
[Mon 12] [00:25:01] <matejcik> and there doesn't need to be that many of them, they just need to be well placed
[Mon 12] [00:25:03] <Burrito_Loco> We'd be talking <15m
[Mon 12] [00:25:06] <matejcik> yup
[Mon 12] [00:25:15] <Burrito_Loco> That's pretty fucking shallow
[Mon 12] [00:25:36] <Burrito_Loco> And they'd need to be pretty ubiquitous to the point where you'd have trouble mapping shipping lanes around them
[Mon 12] [00:25:56] <Burrito_Loco> Or to the point where the passages are too narrow to trust in high water
[Mon 12] [00:27:49] <matejcik> how about we had this twenty kilometers around every island? even if you go to the trouble of building a supertanker out in the deep water, you still have a substantial distance for loading it with smaller craft
[Mon 12] [00:28:06] <matejcik> plus the kilometer up to where people actually live
[Mon 12] [00:28:49] <matejcik> i don't like this scenario too much, though. we'd have to add the toxic vapors so that people don't wise up and move down to sea level and build themselves a dry land
[Mon 12] [00:31:57] <matejcik> another obvious idea is sea monsters
[Mon 12] [00:32:08] <Burrito_Loco> Go all Dune on this shit?
[Mon 12] [00:32:41] <Burrito_Loco> An option to be certain
[Mon 12] [00:36:11] <Tod> seems like people are pretty into there being lots of giant monsters of various sorts
[Mon 12] [00:36:41] <matejcik> or a "heavy air" physics tweak where airships are very viable so nobody bothers with building water-ships
[Mon 12] [00:37:28] <matejcik> also!!
[Mon 12] [00:37:51] <matejcik> why build a super-cheap supertanker, when there is not enough consumers for all the shit you transport
[Mon 12] [00:38:52] <matejcik> without economies of scale on your side, it's not supercheap anymore
[Mon 12] [00:39:47] <Burrito_Loco> True
[Mon 12] [00:39:56] <Burrito_Loco> The question of raw population comes in
[Mon 12] [00:41:06] <Burrito_Loco> And yeah, cheap air transport occurred to me, but I wasn't sure how to rationalize it without putting nasty, nasty things in the air to make it heavy
[Mon 12] [00:43:30] <matejcik> i believe this is one of the things where we can say "it just is that way" without anyone being too upset
[Mon 12] [00:43:47] <Burrito_Loco> heh
[Mon 12] [00:44:30] <matejcik> after all, their physics and chemistry might be similar to ours, but not necessarily the same. also, if we take the storm drive, we're already breaking science, so what
[Mon 12] [00:47:44] * Burrito_Loco would rather not
[Mon 12] [00:48:12] <matejcik> awwwww
[Mon 12] [00:54:16] <Burrito_Loco> Jacked up pseudo-science sticks in my craw
[Mon 12] [00:54:45] <matejcik> yeah yeah ... but ... storm drive!
[Mon 12] [00:55:05] <Burrito_Loco> indeed
[Mon 12] [00:55:34] <matejcik> but okay, i admit, that can only work when we take good care to never try to explain it
[Mon 12] [00:55:57] <matejcik> and since that won't work with an userbase of more than three people...
[Mon 12] [00:58:06] <Burrito_Loco> yarp
[Mon 12] [02:44:21] <Tod> gotta take off. See you guys next week!
[Sun 11] [22:46:06] <Burrito_Loco> Since Kario's out and Ell is apparently AWOL...
[Sun 11] [22:46:48] <Bali> Ell's not AWOL. Ell's just Ell.
[Sun 11] [22:46:49] <Bali> :D
[Sun 11] [22:57:30] <Burrito_Loco> I didn
[Sun 11] [22:57:37] <Burrito_Loco> 't say unexpectedly absent
[Sun 11] [22:57:40] <Burrito_Loco> Just absent
[Sun 11] [22:58:48] <sohum> AWell
[Sun 11] [22:59:15] <Bali> Hahaha
[Sun 11] [22:59:58] * Tod is plugging away on animal pictures, but they're not scanned in. I'll do a big batch when I have enough.
[Sun 11] [23:16:54] <matejcik> yup, i'm here.
[Sun 11] [23:36:08] <Tod> Should I draw some bats for PCs, yes or no?
[Sun 11] [23:36:10] <Tod> because, wings
[Sun 11] [23:38:10] <Bali> Aren't there other animals with wings?
[Sun 11] [23:38:33] <Tod> I'm just drawing mammals, thus far
[Sun 11] [23:38:56] <Burrito_Loco> Currently, I think, birds are out
[Sun 11] [23:39:58] <Tod> yeah, afaik, we're just doing mammals
[Sun 11] [23:40:27] <Tod> bats'd be neat, but it might be a good idea to keep players from potentially complaining that their characters should be able to fly without airplanes, or something silly like that
[Sun 11] [23:41:51] <matejcik> well they can't. weight ratios are wrong
[Sun 11] [23:42:13] <Burrito_Loco> Need bigger wings
[Sun 11] [23:42:34] <Burrito_Loco> The light-weight bones would be a serious handicap though
[Sun 11] [23:42:40] <matejcik> and lighter bodies, which would have to be so light that they couldn't move under their own force
[Sun 11] [23:42:41] <Tod> totally
[Sun 11] [23:43:00] <Tod> I will happily continue on with bats on the list!
[Sun 11] [23:43:03] <Tod> bats with goggles :3
[Sun 11] [23:43:29] <Burrito_Loco> I'm still trying too rationalize a scenario where air travel is the preferred form, even for cargo hauling
[Sun 11] [23:44:34] <matejcik> the easiest, and probably cleanest, way out of this is a physics tweak
[Sun 11] [23:45:03] <matejcik> as in, flight is much cheaper than we expect, because aerial lift is way stronger than it's supposed to be
[Sun 11] [23:45:17] <Burrito_Loco> So far I've got heavy, toxic atmosphere making sea level deadly and/or warm, shallow seas that wreck heavy shipping on reefs and are far too stormy for small/low draft craft
[Sun 11] [23:45:26] <matejcik> i do realize that it sort of breaks my idea about why bats don't fly :e))
[Sun 11] [23:46:42] <matejcik> i like the dangerous shallows idea
[Sun 11] [23:47:17] <matejcik> seawater itself could be contaminated too
[Sun 11] [23:47:35] <matejcik> toxic vapors near sea level etc
[Sun 11] [23:47:55] <Burrito_Loco> Right, that was idea one, pulled from my own setting proposal
[Sun 11] [23:49:02] <matejcik> also
[Sun 11] [23:49:16] <matejcik> as long as you have enough resources to run air cargo hauls
[Sun 11] [23:49:43] <matejcik> it's easier, in terms of logistics, to load up the stuff on the plane than to get it down to sea level and then back up
[Sun 11] [23:50:29] <matejcik> esp. if we're talking big loads - you'd either have to build an elevator big enough to lift the whole ship, or have loading/unloading take a very long time
[Sun 11] [23:50:34] <Burrito_Loco> Yeah, but the economies of scale on a supertanker (or hauler) are such that the added load/unload is a drop in the bucket compared to flight
[Sun 11] [23:51:17] <matejcik> right, so, where do you build this huge ship, when your dry-dock is a kilometer above sea level?
[Sun 11] [23:51:43] <matejcik> that would be a fun project btw :e)
[Sun 11] [23:52:04] <Burrito_Loco> Why is your dock so high? Carve one out at/near sea level
[Sun 11] [23:52:26] <matejcik> yeah, that's a fun project too
[Sun 11] [23:52:47] <Burrito_Loco> Sure, the capital outlay is big to start
[Sun 11] [23:53:16] <matejcik> put this together with the toxic vapors thing, and you got yourself a pretty big hurdle
[Sun 11] [23:53:16] <Burrito_Loco> But it would amortize very quickly when the other option is a fleet of aircraft (even if we're talking airhsips)
[Sun 11] [23:53:37] <Burrito_Loco> Right, making sea level uninhabitable
[Sun 11] [23:54:08] <matejcik> by the time you finished your first supertanker, sealed atmosphere and all, your competitors are established in the market and running insane profits with fleets of aircraft
[Sun 11] [23:54:27] <Burrito_Loco> Well, you could undercut them by massive margins
[Sun 11] [23:54:42] <matejcik> you'd have to seriously undercut them price-wise, but then your project would get into black numbers by turn of next century
[Sun 11] [23:55:09] <Burrito_Loco> Not necessarily, shipping is, quite literally, orders of magnitude cheaper than flying
[Sun 11] [23:55:50] <matejcik> yeah, and also slower and you have to take longer routes, so even more slow
[Sun 11] [23:56:54] <matejcik> so you could make a massive profit on your first shipment, yes, but you'd take a week per trip, where your competitors can haul the same cargo in hours and make dozens of trips
[Sun 11] [23:57:15] <matejcik> perhaps the profits would be comparable?
[Sun 11] [23:57:16] <Burrito_Loco> at 10x+ the cost per trip
[Sun 11] [23:57:33] <matejcik> yes, but you're shipping way cheaper, remember?
[Sun 11] [23:57:48] <matejcik> okay, let's crunch the number
[Sun 11] [23:57:49] <matejcik> s
[Sun 11] [23:58:06] <Burrito_Loco> There's a reason that the world is covered by ships today
[Sun 11] [23:58:40] <matejcik> let's say a plane eats 100 moneys per trip, and makes a profit of 200 moneys
[Sun 11] [23:58:42] <Burrito_Loco> You fly when time is of the essence
[Sun 11] [23:59:00] <Burrito_Loco> Those are insane margins, but go on
[Sun 11] [23:59:01] <matejcik> yes, yes, but in real world, you have all the infrastructure. there is not the big investment upfront
[Sun 11] [23:59:30] <matejcik> um ... sorry. earns 200 moneys, so the profit is 100 moneys
[Sun 11] [23:59:37] <matejcik> per crate
[Sun 11] [23:59:45] <matejcik> but that might not matter :e)
[Mon 12] [00:00:02] <matejcik> your ship eats 5 moneys per crate, and earns 100 moneys
[Mon 12] [00:00:51] <matejcik> now, let's say that the route takes ... i don't know ... 100 hours by ship and 2 hours by plane. also let's assume that i have a fleet of aircraft big enough to carry the same load as your supertanker
[Mon 12] [00:01:32] <Burrito_Loco> (massively more expensive than the ship, but alright)
[Mon 12] [00:01:56] <matejcik> probably, yeah
[Mon 12] [00:02:50] <matejcik> so, by the time you make one trip and earn 95 moneys of profit per crate, i make 50 trips and earn 50x100 profit
[Mon 12] [00:03:04] <matejcik> i do admit that the numbers are somewhat insane
[Mon 12] [00:04:38] <matejcik> still, even like this, you will be turning a solid profit and i'll start losing customers because your prices are that much better
[Mon 12] [00:05:01] <matejcik> hmpf
[Mon 12] [00:06:00] <Burrito_Loco> A major cargo ship can haul 3-5 thousand times what a c-130 can
[Mon 12] [00:06:20] <matejcik> for this to make any sense we'd have to factor in the upfront investments, drop the assumption about the same cargo capacity (which is realistic in the scenario but breaks when we count the upfront investments) etc
[Mon 12] [00:06:26] <matejcik> so. well. this was a fun exercise
[Mon 12] [00:08:17] <Burrito_Loco> I'd stick with "reasons we literally just can use sea transport"
[Mon 12] [00:08:22] <Burrito_Loco> can't*
[Mon 12] [00:09:39] <matejcik> well, let's try the "shallows" angle
[Mon 12] [00:09:48] <matejcik> you can't build a supertanker because it has nowhere to float
[Mon 12] [00:10:03] <Burrito_Loco> right, storms+reefs
[Mon 12] [00:10:04] <matejcik> (which only makes sense - pieces of land as well as sea floor were lifted)
[Mon 12] [00:10:23] <Burrito_Loco> Not at all
[Mon 12] [00:10:47] <matejcik> you could build hovercrafts, but probably nowhere near as big as a regular tanker
[Mon 12] [00:11:02] <matejcik> maybe on par with planes
[Mon 12] [00:11:20] <Burrito_Loco> Regardless of the "cataclysm" angle (which I still despise, but anyway) it stands to reason that if you have only a small amount of land above water, the average depth is probably pretty low
[Mon 12] [00:11:31] <Burrito_Loco> Well, no, they could be much, much bigger
[Mon 12] [00:11:39] <Burrito_Loco> But they don't do terribly well in choppy water
[Mon 12] [00:11:45] <Burrito_Loco> They break their seal
[Mon 12] [00:12:15] <matejcik> hmm, how about those florida-style swamp hovercrafts?
[Mon 12] [00:13:00] <Burrito_Loco> Those aren't hovercraf
[Mon 12] [00:13:01] <Burrito_Loco> t
[Mon 12] [00:13:12] <Burrito_Loco> They're wide bottom, low draft boats
[Mon 12] [00:13:33] <Burrito_Loco> They swamp easily and don't load cargo very well
[Mon 12] [00:13:59] <matejcik> oh.
[Mon 12] [00:14:20] <matejcik> well then. you can't build a big boat because it wouldn't move. you can't build a big hovercraft because it would sink.
[Mon 12] [00:14:27] <Burrito_Loco> Yup
[Mon 12] [00:15:00] <Burrito_Loco> that's the idea
[Mon 12] [00:15:13] <matejcik> you could build some sort of contraption where you have a small hauler pulling an insane train of small boats loaded with cargo
[Mon 12] [00:15:39] <Burrito_Loco> They'd swamp in a storm
[Mon 12] [00:16:01] <matejcik> not necessarily though
[Mon 12] [00:16:19] <matejcik> the cargo wagons could just be floating containers
[Mon 12] [00:17:03] <matejcik> there's a risk of part of the load breaking loose, sure
[Mon 12] [00:17:13] <Burrito_Loco> In a storm, it's almost guaranteed
[Mon 12] [00:17:28] <Burrito_Loco> Or the train drags their tug into a reef
[Mon 12] [00:17:41] <matejcik> that's more likely.
[Mon 12] [00:18:19] <matejcik> in fact, anywhere near the length we would want and the train would wag the tug instead of the other way around, in any sort of current
[Mon 12] [00:18:30] <Burrito_Loco> That still requires an insane amount of reefs
[Mon 12] [00:18:37] <Burrito_Loco> Yup
[Mon 12] [00:19:30] <matejcik> we don't need actual reefs.
[Mon 12] [00:19:55] <matejcik> it's enough to know that if a storm comes the thing cannot be controlled at all and when the storm passes you're probably miles from wherever you want/need to be
[Mon 12] [00:20:17] <matejcik> caught in a roundabout current, if your luck is particularly bad
[Mon 12] [00:21:48] <matejcik> getting this train off a beach would be heck of a job even if it's undamaged. especially if it's undamaged...
[Mon 12] [00:22:08] <Burrito_Loco> Which is why we need to rule out the truly massive cargo ships, anything smaller takes care of itself one way or another
[Mon 12] [00:23:03] <matejcik> so, now we're left with reasonably small ships, on par with airships if not planes
[Mon 12] [00:23:43] <Burrito_Loco> Well, right, but the only way to rule out the supergiants is reefs or the like
[Mon 12] [00:24:16] <matejcik> shallows without reefs is not enough?
[Mon 12] [00:25:01] <matejcik> and there doesn't need to be that many of them, they just need to be well placed
[Mon 12] [00:25:03] <Burrito_Loco> We'd be talking <15m
[Mon 12] [00:25:06] <matejcik> yup
[Mon 12] [00:25:15] <Burrito_Loco> That's pretty fucking shallow
[Mon 12] [00:25:36] <Burrito_Loco> And they'd need to be pretty ubiquitous to the point where you'd have trouble mapping shipping lanes around them
[Mon 12] [00:25:56] <Burrito_Loco> Or to the point where the passages are too narrow to trust in high water
[Mon 12] [00:27:49] <matejcik> how about we had this twenty kilometers around every island? even if you go to the trouble of building a supertanker out in the deep water, you still have a substantial distance for loading it with smaller craft
[Mon 12] [00:28:06] <matejcik> plus the kilometer up to where people actually live
[Mon 12] [00:28:49] <matejcik> i don't like this scenario too much, though. we'd have to add the toxic vapors so that people don't wise up and move down to sea level and build themselves a dry land
[Mon 12] [00:31:57] <matejcik> another obvious idea is sea monsters
[Mon 12] [00:32:08] <Burrito_Loco> Go all Dune on this shit?
[Mon 12] [00:32:41] <Burrito_Loco> An option to be certain
[Mon 12] [00:36:11] <Tod> seems like people are pretty into there being lots of giant monsters of various sorts
[Mon 12] [00:36:41] <matejcik> or a "heavy air" physics tweak where airships are very viable so nobody bothers with building water-ships
[Mon 12] [00:37:28] <matejcik> also!!
[Mon 12] [00:37:51] <matejcik> why build a super-cheap supertanker, when there is not enough consumers for all the shit you transport
[Mon 12] [00:38:52] <matejcik> without economies of scale on your side, it's not supercheap anymore
[Mon 12] [00:39:47] <Burrito_Loco> True
[Mon 12] [00:39:56] <Burrito_Loco> The question of raw population comes in
[Mon 12] [00:41:06] <Burrito_Loco> And yeah, cheap air transport occurred to me, but I wasn't sure how to rationalize it without putting nasty, nasty things in the air to make it heavy
[Mon 12] [00:43:30] <matejcik> i believe this is one of the things where we can say "it just is that way" without anyone being too upset
[Mon 12] [00:43:47] <Burrito_Loco> heh
[Mon 12] [00:44:30] <matejcik> after all, their physics and chemistry might be similar to ours, but not necessarily the same. also, if we take the storm drive, we're already breaking science, so what
[Mon 12] [00:47:44] * Burrito_Loco would rather not
[Mon 12] [00:48:12] <matejcik> awwwww
[Mon 12] [00:54:16] <Burrito_Loco> Jacked up pseudo-science sticks in my craw
[Mon 12] [00:54:45] <matejcik> yeah yeah ... but ... storm drive!
[Mon 12] [00:55:05] <Burrito_Loco> indeed
[Mon 12] [00:55:34] <matejcik> but okay, i admit, that can only work when we take good care to never try to explain it
[Mon 12] [00:55:57] <matejcik> and since that won't work with an userbase of more than three people...
[Mon 12] [00:58:06] <Burrito_Loco> yarp
[Mon 12] [02:44:21] <Tod> gotta take off. See you guys next week!
