Change from 3rd Ed to 4th - Tech (energy) subcollege

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

746 Watts per horsepower.

Which works out to about 0.002 fatigue/sec/horsepower, so a fairly powerful engine (some sportscars, some trucks) would give you 1 fatigue/sec. In general, no power sources below TL 5 will produce usable amounts of fatigue.

[tantric]

From an technomage's point of view, building a watermill and magically tapping it is basically *ss-backwards. At what rate does mana directly convert to electricity? Given that it takes 5 FP to create a POUND of uranium...(Create Fuel).which you can then turn into essential uranium. Since it goes from coal to uranium in one tech level (guys, how about hydrogen?), at some point it goes to antimatter.

(U-235, I'd guess) or some other nuclear fuel (which will hopefully not explode immediately) with 10x the power and 1/3 the pollution.

I gram of U-235 is 1/235 of a mole, if all of the nuclei were fissioned then the energy release would be: -

E(U235) = 200 Mev x N/235

[x 453g/lb]

Kinetic energy: Weight in tons x desired speed /skill (presumably 12). Moving a sports car at 1.8tons at move 75 with skill-15 for ten minutes costs 9 energy.

Those two number aren't even close, but Powerstone Plugin could get 50% or 1% of the value of create fuel and be insanely powerful. In my world, a 20 mana dedicated powerstone can run a PDA for a month (B Cells are between 5-15, dedicating them doubles value).

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Which works out to about 0.002 fatigue/sec/horsepower, so a fairly powerful engine (some sportscars, some trucks) would give you 1 fatigue/sec. In general, no power sources below TL 5 will produce usable amounts of fatigue.

Actually, for most of TL5, steam engines aren't anywhere near 500 hp. That's why GURPS Urban Magics has a spell to turn lower power ratings into FP/minute.

Bill Stoddard

[tantric]

Does it have direct FP->kw conversion? I'm not being snarky with the above, my entire campaign is based around it. Some hard numbers would be nice.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by tantric

Does it have direct FP->kw conversion? I'm not being snarky with the above, my entire campaign is based around it. Some hard numbers would be nice.

Other way around, kW to FP. And an upper limit on kW handled based on HT.

Bill Stoddard

[tantric]

Ahaha - I missed that little jem. 360 kWs per FP = .1kWhr

A heater, rated at 1,000 watts (1 kilowatt), operating for one hour uses one kilowatt hour (equivalent to 3,600 kilojoules) of energy.

Using a 60 watt light bulb for one hour consumes 0.06 kilowatt hours of electricity. Using a 60 watt light bulb for one thousand hours consumes 60 kilowatt hours of electricity.

So, it takes 10FP to run a heater for an hour. 1 FP will run a light bulb for 1.6hrs. That's actually pretty weak, so it does pay, massively, to create the uranium/coal then burn it. My B cell batteries contain 150 mana! (to run a PDA for 8hrs a day for a month).

Rule: In normal tech TL, the batteries increase in power storage ability (by 10x? IDHMBWM). For each level of magitech advancement, devices use proportionally less power. Items invented at lower tech levels that remain essentially unchanged (bags of holding, wands type weapons) do not share the same progression. ????

That feels like a band-aid. I will have to dig for alternatives.