Topic A brief history of resources
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In Response to Clonkonaut
Last part: Energy
Energy is a tough resource. Needed in masses but fairly hard to produce. I will not go into how energy is transferred but the production. Again my draft:
First I thought about the classic ways of producing energy.
Windmill
The windmill was always the cheap one. Just plaster the landscape with windmills and it is fine. No problems unless there are some meteorites. The weakness was - well - its greatest weakness. So long until you spot a dot of sky underground then the weakness was gone. I remember some criticism on the windmill because of this cheap exploit. We may keep it or not or do some brainwork to restrain the windmill to the surface. For now I have nothing to say about it.
Steam engine
This is the old power plant in a new shiny steampunk version. Provide it with fuel (wood, coal, oil or dried moss) and it will produce energy. Fuel is more or less available unlimitedly. So this one is probably your main source of energy most of the time.
I now thought of some specialised power plants which are used whenever you happen to have the corresponding materials. The first two are then highly profitable (because the needed materials are rare), the last one is not for some reason.
To control the profit from one power plant we could rethink the whole "produce x amount of energy" concept and just limit the amount of supportable buildings. Like the steam engine may support three or two buildings (it is irrelevant whether they are active or not), the windmill just one or whatever. This is just a sidekick idea.
These are the new plants:
Acid battery
The idea came from the potato battery: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_b5hcKABPlGI/TTJO7phdUQI/AAAAAAAAk_8/RnoCDsF_1-U/s1600/1-1610a.jpg
This power plant needs metal and acid. Because acid is rare and dangerous and metal is a refined resource the gain is bigger than with the steam engine. No sketch of its look available by now.
Solar power plant
This one is not that cheap as it sounds. To focus the sunlight you need a crystal on top of this one. Crystal is rare as well. The crystal burns out after some time. The plant needs a direct line of sight to the sky! If you cannot provide that or think this is too risky, you may construct some mirrors to redirect the light (see the lower right corner of my draft). With some of these you can even guide the light down into a cave.
The solar power plant has a little bonus I did not write down on the paper. You may use it as a laser cannon (thus consuming the crystal at once). This will fire a compressed sunbeam onto the targeted spot making everything idling around there burst into flames.
Hydro electric power plant
This is the one I am not sure about. It is obviously fueled by water power. It is a little wall which starts to produce energy if water touches either of the sides. The water dribbles out of the opposite side. You will need a big amount of water and a cave where this water might be stored after passing through your plant.
The tricky part is to prevent perpetuum mobiles by connecting a pump to the plant. Therefore the dribbling must be faster than the pump and it should not be possible to connect more than one pump to this one. This could be managed by just providing one building with this plant. But the careful chosen amount of produced energy may be too little to justify the effort.
Energy is a tough resource. Needed in masses but fairly hard to produce. I will not go into how energy is transferred but the production. Again my draft:
First I thought about the classic ways of producing energy.
Windmill
The windmill was always the cheap one. Just plaster the landscape with windmills and it is fine. No problems unless there are some meteorites. The weakness was - well - its greatest weakness. So long until you spot a dot of sky underground then the weakness was gone. I remember some criticism on the windmill because of this cheap exploit. We may keep it or not or do some brainwork to restrain the windmill to the surface. For now I have nothing to say about it.
Steam engine
This is the old power plant in a new shiny steampunk version. Provide it with fuel (wood, coal, oil or dried moss) and it will produce energy. Fuel is more or less available unlimitedly. So this one is probably your main source of energy most of the time.
I now thought of some specialised power plants which are used whenever you happen to have the corresponding materials. The first two are then highly profitable (because the needed materials are rare), the last one is not for some reason.
To control the profit from one power plant we could rethink the whole "produce x amount of energy" concept and just limit the amount of supportable buildings. Like the steam engine may support three or two buildings (it is irrelevant whether they are active or not), the windmill just one or whatever. This is just a sidekick idea.
These are the new plants:
Acid battery
The idea came from the potato battery: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_b5hcKABPlGI/TTJO7phdUQI/AAAAAAAAk_8/RnoCDsF_1-U/s1600/1-1610a.jpg
This power plant needs metal and acid. Because acid is rare and dangerous and metal is a refined resource the gain is bigger than with the steam engine. No sketch of its look available by now.
Solar power plant
This one is not that cheap as it sounds. To focus the sunlight you need a crystal on top of this one. Crystal is rare as well. The crystal burns out after some time. The plant needs a direct line of sight to the sky! If you cannot provide that or think this is too risky, you may construct some mirrors to redirect the light (see the lower right corner of my draft). With some of these you can even guide the light down into a cave.
The solar power plant has a little bonus I did not write down on the paper. You may use it as a laser cannon (thus consuming the crystal at once). This will fire a compressed sunbeam onto the targeted spot making everything idling around there burst into flames.
Hydro electric power plant
This is the one I am not sure about. It is obviously fueled by water power. It is a little wall which starts to produce energy if water touches either of the sides. The water dribbles out of the opposite side. You will need a big amount of water and a cave where this water might be stored after passing through your plant.
The tricky part is to prevent perpetuum mobiles by connecting a pump to the plant. Therefore the dribbling must be faster than the pump and it should not be possible to connect more than one pump to this one. This could be managed by just providing one building with this plant. But the careful chosen amount of produced energy may be too little to justify the effort.
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