2300AD

[Lord High Munchkin]

The one thing that really would limit things — far more than actual budgets (which might well be quite massive), is just how much refined tantalum is there available?

Who has it, and how much?

A nation like the USA, or Manchuria, might have the economic capacity to turn out, say 50 starships (and don't forget all the missiles use tantalum up too!!) a year, but if they only have enough of the metal to outfit a grand total net fleet of 175 (including all those missiles with stutterwarp engines)... that's all they will have, maximum.

In any case, there will be far more merchantmen than warships... which will just make things tighter. So, fleets are probably going to be tiny.

It isn't the budget, it's the tantalum!!!

 

[rust]

So, fleets are probably going to be tiny.

Judging from the 2300 AD core rules, they are so anyway. For example,
the US has only 10 to 20 of the Kennedy class cruisers, and there are less
than 50 French-built Aconit class frigates in existence - not exactly implau-
sible numbers, I think.

 

[Ishmael]

Rust:
I'd be happy to.

18,000*.65*5e8*.03*.60 = 105.300,000,000 Crimp

Essentially, it is the determination of the world/nation's GNP and then figuring the government's military spending for the branch is question.
This was originally based on the budget system used in Striker and Trillion Credit Squadron from the old CT rules cycle. This example is from my notes and may not follow the TCS rules exactly though...sorry if that causes some confusion.
18,000 cr is the per capita production value ( made up number depends on your universe )
.65 is a monetary exchange rate
5e8 is the population of the world; 5 is the pop modifier and 1*10^8 is from the UWP's pop number
.03 is the percentage of the GNP spent on military
.60 is the percentage of the military budget spent on the navy
--------------------

Lord High Munchkin:
I disagree. Its the budget.
The limited supplies of tantalum should be figured in as part of ship costs. As demand rises beyond supply, the price of tantalum will go up, thus the costs will go up. If this causes a bidding war between purchasers or hard decisions on allocations, then good; negotiations and financial diplomacy can make for a nice adventure hook.

A cost multiplier proportional to 'demand/supply' should be used with the normal cost to determine final price.
If we assume a widget is worth 1000cr when demand= supply, then if demand is 10 times the available supply, then the actual price of the widget becomes 1000cr* (demand/supply) or 1000cr*(10/1).

Well...that's how I'd do it anyways.

 

[rust]

Essentially, it is the determination of the world/nation's GNP and then figuring the government's military spending for the branch is question ...

Thank you, now I have got it.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

I disagree. Its the budget.
The limited supplies of tantalum should be figured in as part of ship costs. As demand rises beyond supply, the price of tantalum will go up, thus the costs will go up. If this causes a bidding war between purchasers or hard decisions on allocations, then good; negotiations and financial diplomacy can make for a nice adventure hook.

A cost multiplier proportional to 'demand/supply' should be used with the normal cost to determine final price.
If we assume a widget is worth 1000cr when demand= supply, then if demand is 10 times the available supply, then the actual price of the widget becomes 1000cr* (demand/supply) or 1000cr*(10/1).

Well...that's how I'd do it anyways.

Sadly, I don't think that's how it works reading the published books... it isn't an open, free market, as regards tantalum.

Some Nations regardless of how ever much cash they have, don't have access to tantalum. It seems rather that the supply is dictated by politics and international diplomacy rather than a commodities market.

Rather than a stock exchange, it's inter-governmental trade.

Some governments may sell off some of what they get, but not all.

 

[Ishmael]

I don't have the original books anymore, so I can't say one way or another about it.

I still feel it comes down to economics. The difference between what you say and what I've proposed is that each government holds an effective monopoly for its production within each country, which it may trade or not as it see fit. All that will do is artificially skew the demand/supply ratio for any tantalum that is traded on any sort of market, free or closed. For tantalum that each country holds internally, the government still has to allocate whatever monies it feels the extraction and processing of the material is worth. Just because each government controls its own supply of tantalum doesn't mean it got it for free.

Besides, if ALL of the supply is in government hands, what does that say about any commercial ships that require it? Does that mean all ships are directly backed by the government? Or do governments allot a specific amount for commercial use with the price being the high bid ( in which case at least a portion of the tantalum market is demand/supply constrained ). Or maybe it goes to whatever corporation that the current government likes for the moment ( oooooo.... political intrigue and lobbyist scandals! ). Hmmmm...multi-national corporations playing different governements against each other for best prices...bwahahahahahaha!!!.... after all, its the government paying these same corps to extract it for them, right?

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”

Perhaps there are overlapping spheres of influences between govs and corps that are separate from and ignore national borders....more lolz

Apparently, tantalum in 2300AD is handled the way weapons grade plutonium is handled by governments today. So, perhaps its not that raw tantalum is so strictly controlled as much as the processing of it is... complete with multi-national oversight?... still costs the governments money and thus economics is a limiting factor.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1988/JGA.htm

This paper would seem to indicate that the control of such strategic materials has a large influence on diplomatic and economic policy.... which opens up quite a few scenarios for exciting adventures, eh?
Moving to acquire strategic materials or the actions to deny them to a cold-war enemy might involve a few 'police actions' and proxy wars for those who like to play with a military slant
The shenanigans that corporations might cause in order to gain the government allotted commercial amounts might be fun to use an adventure hooks too.

well..thats my opinion anyways

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

You beat me to it... I was going to make the tantalum-plutonium link.

The downside is that tantalum seems even rarer than plutonium in the game.

 

[kristof65]

Two things to keep in mind regarding tantalum - one, it's already used extensively in electronics. Second, it has promise for making bio-compatible implants. So tantalum is going to have value outside of stutterwarp technology, making it all the more more valuable. In fact, it's rare enough already that in Africa it's considered a conflict mineral.

Throw in Stutterwarp technology as another use of tantalum, and economically tantalum is going to become a cross between gold and weapons grade plutonimum - IE, it's going to be valuable, and people/nations/corporations are going to want to control it.

With tantalum being so valuable as humanity leaves Earth, other sources in the solar system, and in the galaxy beyond are going to become important.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

I'd say way more valuable than gold... which could easily be extracted from sea water in the 24th century, as they have fusion power to burn.

 

[kristof65]

I wasn't talking about relative value as much as I was demand and perception. Tantalum is going to be valuable like gold in that it's a precious commodity that is also highly useful in industry and medicine. It's going to be a controlled substance like weapons grade plutonium because of the power it represents with FTL travel.

Sort of an uber-gold/uber-plutonium as far as the economics of it.

 

[Ishmael]

I don't feel that it will be like gold in value, simply because it is abundant enough to already be used in common electronics as well as in the formulation of various superalloys. To make a huge change in its relative value for the game, in addition to making it a tightly controlled strategic material would cause more problems than it solves.

Instead, because the control is related to its use in stutterwarp cores (isn't it? ), it must be the process that is tightly controlled and not the element itself.

Because of the immense costs and difficulties of building a manufacturing facility sufficient to produce weapons-grade nuclear material, very few countries have the capability of building facilities capable of making weapons-grade nuclear material.

The only countries with facilities manufacturing weapons-grade nuclear material today are the United States, United Kingdom, France, India, Germany, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan, Israel and China. Syria and Iran allegedly also have or are developing facilities. Of these countries, only the governments of France and Russia are known to sell their manufacturing expertise to other countries.

Because each manufacturing process is unique, any weapons-grade nuclear material can be reliably traced back to its exact manufacturing origin by analyzing the composition and impurities in the material.

By allowing the process to be tightly controlled ( as weapons grade plutonium purification is today ), while not changing the value of tantalum as a material, you can still use it for the various other things without causing them to be worth billions.

such as in SEFOP penetrators........

Due to its high density, shaped charge and explosively formed penetrator liners have been constructed from tantalum.[43] Tantalum greatly increases the armor penetration capabilities of a shaped charge due to its high density and high melting point.

and for use in medical implant technologies such as possible cyborg/cyberpunk gear or general prosthetics.
( I wonder how much tantalum could be recovered by recycling Batou or Motoko )

 

[GJD]

I don't recall that the quantity of tantalum required for a stutterwarp has ever been quantified. It seems to be abundant enough that stutterwarp armed RDET missiles can use it as a consumable, rather than taking every effort top preserve it (although maybe that is an argument for MIRV style submunition armed missiles instead of detonation missiles, turning them more into drone fighters). That said, every nation that has discoverd tantalum deposits has leapt up the world rankings, either because it grants access to space or because it can be very lucrativley traded.

It also suggests to me that salvaging ships for the tantalum would be a viable industry, and that boarding actions to preserve the tantalum core might be more common.

G.

 

[kristof65]

I don't feel that it will be like gold in value, simply because it is abundant enough to already be used in common electronics as well as in the formulation of various superalloys.

Remember that gold is also commonly used in electronics. The motherboards I work on have as much gold plating as they do tantalum inside their capictors. IIRC, Tantalum is one of those elements that is a bit more common than gold, but unlike gold, its not commonly found in concentrated deposits, making it more expensive to mine and refine. Once it's found it's a primary component for FTL, it's value will jump.

I'd agree with you that Tantalum alone isn't it's entire value in stutterwarp - much like low grade plutonium isn't the same thing as weapons grade plutonium nor having the knowledge to use it.

I don't think it needs to upset the current setting balance in order be portrayed as valuable. It presence should be considered, though, to make the setting more beleivable.

 

[Ishmael]

I don't think it needs to upset the current setting balance in order be portrayed as valuable. It presence should be considered, though, to make the setting more beleivable.

I'd fully expect its value to go up because of its importance to stutterwarp, but not to the point that governments automatically mark it ALL as strategic materials. Not unless stutterwarp drives use an awful big amount of it. I can imagine governments filling vaults with it to meet military demands. In this regard, perhaps it would be treated as gold is complete with reserves.

But once that increase in value, then the ordinary things we know of today that use it will also increase in cost because of it or else alternate methods must be used in those everyday items. What sort of effect would that have on the setting to make electronics much more expensive, for example? Or bulkier/less efficient because the alternative just isn't as good?

I still think the best explanation for the control of tantalum is over the processes used in making stutterwarp parts from it...not the control of the element itself.

and back to my original position... its economics that determines availability for starships and not stockpile limits.

 

[justacaveman]

Once you get out into deep space, you may find that Gold is a relatively abundant material. Plus there a lot of fine particles of Gold suspended in seawater. If you have an abundant power source like fusion, evaporitive desalination plants may be used, and this could yield large amounts of gold also. These things may also apply to Tantalum.

I merely point these things out as possibilities.

 

[Colin]

In general, heavy elements will tend to be rare, if we have any idea at all about how they are formed.

Tantalum was chosen for 2300AD precisely because it was very rare. Fan publications since give the rationale that it is the 180m isotope of Tantalum required for stutterwarp drives. Ta180m is the rarest isotope in the universe, and has the property of decaying into Hafnium, releasing a flood of radiation. Oddly enough, when a stutterwarp drives goes past its safe range, there is a good chance that the drive will "burst" and release a strong flood of radiation.

 

[Colin]

Visually, for me, 2300AD has always been a mix of Alien, Aliens, 2001, 2010, Bladerunner, and Outland. Most of Avatar would fit in quite nicely, too. The starship alone is gorgeous. Glowing radiators shedding heat fromt eh drives. Marvelous.

 

[rinku]

Mind you, if it's an ultra rare isotope, it may be worth artificially producing that isotope from more common isotopes of Tantalum. You'd produce it by stripping a neutron from 181 Ta, from my reading of the isotope list.

 

[Joi Sourcebook]

Colin asked

I'm curious as to what people think about 2300AD.

Should it be a contemporary Hard SF game, incorporating inspiration from the current generation of hard SF?

Or should it look to its roots, and create the same sort of experience as the original?

My short answer : both

My longer answer :

My feel is that the basis of 2300AD was that, with the exception of space technology, the way in which people lived in 2300AD was pretty much the way they lived in the late 1980s. None of the other developments (eg DNAM, nano tech etc) had a huge impact on the lives of the majority. I would suggest a similar approach - ie the way in which people live in 2300AD should be pretty much the way they live in 2010.

to quote Sturn

I do want my portacomp to be worn on my wrist (instead of held in two hands) and come with all sorts of options that used to require another device (GPS map, communicator, video camera, etc).

If other techs get a greater part (re-sleeving, gene mods etc.) then we end up with a different game. I would be more than happy to see rules for such things but kept in the background (or as options in an appendix) rather than the foreground. Personally I'd like to see much more space based habitation and industry (Jovian Chronicles minus exo armour) - but that isn't 2300AD which was very much focussed on the bottom of the gravity well.

I'm fairly agnostic on star maps provided that the arms and timeline are maintained. If you can do that with more realistic star locations great - if not stick with the old map.

My ideal would be a fairly straight update of 2300AD but with lots of optional rules for the latest hard SF tropes and some discussion as to how they would effect the world of 2300AD.

Hope this makes some sort of sense.

 

[Colin]

The idea of optional systems is a good one.

I'm looking at the idea of including what amounts to a Merit/Flaw system, that allows the character to purchase things like good eyesight, cybernetic implants, etc at the time of character generation.

With the optional system in place, that would also allow characters to purchase Home World Option Packages: People from Earth get Longevity, 2 extra points of Appearance, and Augmented Reality Implants. (or something like that). People from Beta Canum get a symbiont that can take levo amino acids and sugars and make them usuable. That sort of thing.