06-19-2019, 11:00 PM | #11 | ||
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Magic] Using Shape Earth and Earth to Stone in construction
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06-19-2019, 11:25 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Magic] Using Shape Earth and Earth to Stone in construction
Nope, the distinctive feature of the true arch is its shape, not how it's held together. Shape earth would make construction of a corbeled arch somewhat easier, but it's basically math to figure out a true arch (side point: the 'find weakness' spell would probably let you build a true arch by trial and error, because stress points should show up as weaknesses).
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06-20-2019, 12:30 AM | #13 | |
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: [Magic] Using Shape Earth and Earth to Stone in construction
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P83 has the custom TK limitation "Lift Only" where it only affects weight but not movement speed, while "Move Only" does the opposite. I don't know if 20/40 would be the correct numbers to use for Control, but it's an idea to build from. |
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06-20-2019, 05:42 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Nov 2014
Location: San Diego, CA
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Re: [Magic] Using Shape Earth and Earth to Stone in construction
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Shape Earth (stone) can make complex shapes in a matter of seconds. Shape Earth (stone) also moves the stone and shapes it in place without the need to transport (an important limitation at low TLs). Other spells that are useful in building are Essential Earth tripled the strength of the joints. Earth wizards has tremendous capacity to build and construct very quickly. Last edited by GURPSman; 06-20-2019 at 06:31 AM. |
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06-20-2019, 07:45 AM | #15 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Magic] Using Shape Earth and Earth to Stone in construction
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06-20-2019, 10:36 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Magic] Using Shape Earth and Earth to Stone in construction
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06-20-2019, 11:20 AM | #17 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: [Magic] Using Shape Earth and Earth to Stone in construction
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Certainly these spells, and some knowledge of engineering, would allow the building of fine stable canals quickly. The money making options for a kingdom would be major.
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
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06-20-2019, 11:50 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: [Magic] Using Shape Earth and Earth to Stone in construction
If you fuse all the stones, you don't necessarily get a true arch. You get a shape that could be described as post-and-lintel with a semicircle chopped out of the center bottom of the lintel. I'm not an engineer, but it's not obvious to me that an homogeneous block with a semicircular cutout is stronger than the full post-and-lintel (itself weak compared to an arch).
The point of the arch is converting the downward stress into stress along the perimeter of the arch, and thus making it compressive around the arch span rather than tensile at the bottom edge of the lintel. Qualitatively speaking, the wedge shapes of the arch stones (or the stones + their mortar) gradually change the downward stress into more transverse compression, starting with trying to drive the keystone down into the rest of the arch, the driving of which wedge becomes a stress forcing the two blocks to either side apart horizontally, and so on around the boundary of the arch. For another comparison, there's a shape called a "jack" arch, which isn't curved at all, but rather a horizontal series of wedge-shaped blocks or bricks slanted outward at the tops, with those wedges filling a flat horizontal shape, identical in outline to a lintel. If it were only the bottom edge of the shape that mattered and not the internal connections, then a jack arch wouldn't be any stronger than a lintel, but merely decorative at best, but structurally not worth the bother. If the crystals in solid stone could do that redirection of the downward force on their own, then it seems post-and-lintel would have been a fine solution to start with -- though cutting out the middle reduces the load the lintel itself contributes, it also weakens the lintel by making in thinner where the most stress is. Maybe removing part the stone makes the forces go sideways just because they no longer have a choice (other than to go down "into the air" and break the stone). But maybe it's the more macroscopic geometry of those "voussior" wedges that make the real difference, rather than the crystalline structure of the minerals in the stone or molecular bonds, or just the curved outline of the span over the doorway. I don't suppose anyone out there just happens to be a civil engineer or architect? |
06-20-2019, 01:34 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ft Collins, CO
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Re: [Magic] Using Shape Earth and Earth to Stone in construction
I think this explains lots of Incan ruins that I saw in Peru. :)
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06-20-2019, 01:53 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Sep 2018
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Re: [Magic] Using Shape Earth and Earth to Stone in construction
From my perspective. The Shape spell would allow you to form fairly intricate homes very quickly out of stone but building them so they don't fall apart would require Engineering-Civil and making them beautiful would require Artist-Sculptor.
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