Vehicle fuel

[Piscator]

Getting enough zinc and copper sounds not exactly easy either.

I would like to see steam engines though, which could run with unrefined resources (coal, wood, dung, (crude) oil), but this will take a lot of discussing, calculating and balancing. There are also higher priority issues right now.

edit: Natso, this would be pretty much like a wooden cart.

[randognsac]

Coal and oil were buried by God himself, just like in real life.

Electric cars are a bit problematic as, at least in real life, none of them are powered by a classical, non-rechargeable, copper an zinc battery, but with rechargeable accumulators instead. Creating energy by means of a battery is a thousand times more expensive than the available alternatives, so cars usually just store cheap energy from somewhere else. Cantr won't be ever completely realistic of course, but full grown cars that are powered like duracell bunnies would seem odd to say the least.

Energizer bunny not Duracell.

[Piscator]

According to this article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duracell_Bunny

you are likely living in North America.

[randognsac]

I stand corrected! I have been shamed! I guess Im not old enough to remember the Duracell Bunnies.

[Rand]

I wasn't aiming for easy fuel with the battery idea, just an alternative. Although the notion of a battery really has me thinking. Imagine you could make battery cells (zinc, copper, nickel, coal(carbon), Steel casing) take a couple of these and hook them in tandem with copper wires. Then Cantarians could find a recharge method such as a pedal powered alternator (Ie: its a stationary charger that people can build in towns and charging a battery is a project- Ex: 2 days to charge a depleted battery) , or perhaps towns with lots of fuel could build gas powered charging stations (generators). My mind is spinning with possibilities...

[returner]

I wasn't aiming for easy fuel with the battery idea, just an alternative. Although the notion of a battery really has me thinking. Imagine you could make battery cells (zinc, copper, nickel, coal(carbon), Steel casing) take a couple of these and hook them in tandem with copper wires. Then Cantarians could find a recharge method such as a pedal powered alternator (Ie: its a stationary charger that people can build in towns and charging a battery is a project- Ex: 2 days to charge a depleted battery) , or perhaps towns with lots of fuel could build gas powered charging stations (generators). My mind is spinning with possibilities...

That's a really great idea.

I was going to say, 'maybe we could introduce it for radios?'. I then had second thoughts, and third thoughts.. and now I'm going to say it! Maybe we could introduce it for radios?? In honesty, though, I think that's getting nitty-gritty.

[Rand]

Batteries for radios might effect the game balance, they are already hard enough to build. But the benefit is that it could result in less airwave spam and chit chat. Does anyone think if I suggested batteries in the "suggested" discussion it would last long enough for debate?

[Piscator]

Batteries are a bit problematic since we lack the code to consume them properly. It would seem odd to consume 4g of batteries or something like that.

[Rand]

Could we not have a health meter on them? Ie: the battery is 88% depleted?

[Piscator]

I guess we could decrease the "health points" of a battery object, but as I said, we can't use the current code for that.

[randognsac]

Instead of health points, use repair instead. The batteries rot rate would be alot faster than normal rot for other objects. Could that be done?

[Piscator]

That's what I meant by "health points".

Now that I think about it, a battery could be defined as a tool. That would at least allow the use of battery powered tools in manufacturing projects. For example, if we wanted the soldering iron to use batteries, we could add batteries as a tool to every project that uses a soldering iron. Due to the used based decay the battery would slowly be consumed, when you are working on the project. The battery would of course have to be non-repairable.

For anything more complicated we would need ProgD.

[Cdls]

Now, would batteries be rechargeable or would they be a one time use and toss type item?

[Piscator]

Well, I have no idea how to make such a battery rechargeable with the current code (except for making it simply repairable, which would allow anybody to recharge a battery by magic).

More problematic is though that I don't see an application for such a battery. The options are indeed very limited.

[Cdls]

Well, couldn't you make a machine "Battery Charger" which would be an automated project. It would require 1 dead battery and the output would be 1 fresh battery?


Maybe the use of a battery could speed production time when paired with certain tools?