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Old 07-10-2010, 05:22 PM   #1
munin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Vermont, USA
Default [Spaceships] Antimatter Factory

We can mine and refine anything, but how do we make antimatter?

ANTIMATTER FACTORY (TL9) [ANY!]
This is an industrial collider capable of producing and storing antimatter. The $/hr entry on the table shows the value of antimatter produced each hour (antimatter is worth $10B per pound). Antimatter is used in Antimatter Reactors (p. SS20), certain reaction masses (p. SS46), and in antimatter warheads (p. SS47). An antimatter factory might explode if disabled or destroyed (see Volatile Systems, p. SS62).

Option: May be High-Efficiency (double $/hr and power point requirement, multiply cost by 4).

Antimatter Factory Table
Code:
              +4    +5    +6    +7    +8    +9   +10   +11   +12   +13   +14   +15 
$/hr         200   600    2K    6K   20K   60K  200K  600K    2M    6M   20M   60M 
Workspaces     0     0     0     0     0     0     1     3    10    30   100   300 
Cost ($)    2.5M  7.5M   25M   75M  250M  750M  2.5B  7.5B   25B   75B  250B  750B 

Hours Per Ton of Reaction Mass
A-cat H2      90    30     9     3   0.9   0.3  0.09  0.03 0.009 0.003  9e-4  3e-4 
A-cat H2O    100    34    10     4     1   0.4   0.1  0.04  0.01 0.004 0.001  4e-4 
A-bst H2/H2O 60K   20K    6K    2K   600   200    60    20     6     2   0.6   0.2 
Matter/AM    50B   17B    5B  1.7B  500M  170M   50M   17M    5M  1.7M  500K  170K

Last edited by munin; 07-12-2010 at 11:31 PM.
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Old 07-10-2010, 05:23 PM   #2
munin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Vermont, USA
Default Re: [Spaceships] Antimatter Factory

Design Notes
The Antimatter Factory system is based on the Industrial Antimatter Factory (IAF) from the GURPS Ultra-Tech Designer's Notes. The IAFs produce antimatter at different rates and costs depending on TL, while GURPS Spaceships seems to assume a constant cost for antimatter fuels (p. SS46) at all TLs (but maybe not for antimatter warheads, p. SS47). The Antimatter Factory system is based on the TL11 IAF's capabilities because it best matches the cost of antimatter given in GURPS Spaceships:
Matter/antimatter reaction fuel costs $10T per ton (p. SS46). Assuming the cost of the matter is trivial compared to the antimatter (and the antimatter makes up one-half of the reaction mass), that means the antimatter is valued at $10B per pound, or $22 per microgram. This is comparable to the $25 per microgram cost for TL11 IAF production and for TL11 antimatter explosive in GURPS Ultra-Tech (p. 88).
No weights are given for IAFs so I assumed 200 tons, the same as the Vatfac (p. UT91) – not that they're similar, it just seemed a reasonable size for a "factory" (if this value is incorrect it will just move the stats up or down the SM scale, but won't change the ratio of Cost to $/hr). Since the TL11 IAF costs $1B and produces 100,000µg per day, this yields a cost for the Antimatter Factory system of $5M per ton (for example, a 5-ton Antimatter Factory costs $25M) and a production rate of 500µg per day per ton, or $459 worth of antimatter per hour per ton (for example, a 5-ton Antimatter Factory produces $2,294 worth of antimatter per hour, which I've rounded down to a GURPS Spaceship-convenient $2,000 per hour).

The High-Efficiency option is based on the mention in the Designer's Notes of optimizing an IAF for high-power locations such as close to the sun.

It would take the Antimatter Factory of a single SM+15 ship 2,250,000,000 hours (257,000 years) to produce the 6,750 tons of antimatter required to fuel a Dirac-Class Exploration Cruiser (pp. SS5:11-12).

Return on Investment: An Antimatter Factory system requires 12,500 hours to produce an amount of antimatter worth the cost of the system itself (i.e, a $25M system requires 12,500 hours to produce $25M worth of antimatter; 25,000 hours for a High-Efficiency system). This compares to 1,667 hours for a Fabricator or Robofac system producing small goods (with 40% input cost; 40,000 hours for large goods, 400,000+ hours for goods requiring assembly off the production line), or 200 hours for a Nanofactory system producing small goods (with trivial input cost; 4,800 hours for large goods, 48,000 hours for goods requiring assembly off the production line).

GMs might want to set a minimum size for Antimatter Factories. I suggest SM+9 at TL9 (150 tons), SM+6 at TL10 (5 tons), and no limit at TL11+.

Last edited by munin; 07-10-2010 at 10:55 PM.
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Old 07-10-2010, 06:03 PM   #3
cultureulterior
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Default Re: [Spaceships] Antimatter Factory

Quote:
Originally Posted by munin View Post
Antimatter factory
Amazing. You're like a machine!

One thing that would be useful to have in the table would be how long the antimatter factory would take to produce one fuel tank's worth of the three different antimatter engine types.

Edit: I've added a link from my post in this thread:http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=71263

Last edited by cultureulterior; 07-10-2010 at 06:07 PM.
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Old 07-10-2010, 06:58 PM   #4
munin
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Antimatter Factory

Quote:
Originally Posted by cultureulterior View Post
One thing that would be useful to have in the table would be how long the antimatter factory would take to produce one fuel tank's worth of the three different antimatter engine types.
Added. A bit ugly, does it make sense?
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Old 07-10-2010, 09:09 PM   #5
munin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Antimatter Factory

ANTIMATTER PRODUCTION FACILITY, LEVEL 1 (TL9)

This facility can produce $7.2M worth of antimatter every day, enough to supply 360 tons of antimatter-catalyzed hydrogen or water or 1,200 pounds of antimatter-boosted hydrogen or water. Supplied with raw materials, it can also fabricate goods up to 600 pounds (SM+1) at $150K/hr, or ships and products up to 100 tons (SM+6) at $15K/day plus 1 ton/day assembly time. Given adequate demand for its products it can earn back its cost in under two years.

tabFront Hull: [1] Steel Armor (dDR 7); [2-6!] Antimatter Factories ($60K antimatter per hour each).
tabCentral Hull: [1] Steel Armor (dDR 7); [2-6] Solar Panel Arrays (one power point each); [core] Control Room (C6 computer, comm/sensor Level 7, 6 control stations).
tabRear Hull: [1] Steel Armor (dDR 7); [2] Open Space (0.1 acres farmland); [3] Habitat (10 luxury cabins); [4] Habitat (4 luxury cabins, 2 sickbays, 2 offices, gym, lounge, briefing room, fabricator minifac, 10 tons cargo); [5] Solar Panel Array (one power point); [6] Hangar Bay (100 tons capacity); [core!] Fabricator ($150K/hr production capacity).
tabFeatures: Spin Gravity (0.15G). Crew: 6 control crew, medic, 2 administrators, 3 technicians. Statistics: TL9, SM+9, $4.1161B.
tab

Last edited by munin; 07-12-2010 at 07:06 AM.
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Old 07-11-2010, 04:17 AM   #6
cultureulterior
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Default Re: [Spaceships] Antimatter Factory

Quote:
Originally Posted by munin View Post
Added. A bit ugly, does it make sense?
Sure. Even better.
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Old 07-12-2010, 10:56 AM   #7
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Antimatter Factory

Quote:
Originally Posted by munin View Post
[B]
This facility can produce $7.2M worth of antimatter every day, enough to supply 360 tons of antimatter-catalyzed hydrogen or water or 1,200 pounds of antimatter-boosted hydrogen or water. Supplied with raw materials, it can also fabricate goods up to 600 pounds (SM+1) at $150K/hr, or ships and products up to 100 tons (SM+6) at $15K/day plus 1 ton/day assembly time. Given adequate demand for its products it can earn back its cost in under two years.
I'm not sure that's realistic, with such a huge RoI.
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Old 07-12-2010, 03:51 PM   #8
munin
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Antimatter Factory

By comparison, Class IV and Class V Orbital Spaceports (p. SS6:10) earn back their cost in three months producing small goods (SM+1 or smaller; including 40% input cost and crew salaries)*, 6 years constructing and repairing small ships on production lines (SM+8/9 or smaller; same), or 60 years constructing and repairing large ships in hangar bays (SM+11/12 or smaller; same). So the Antimatter Production Facility falls in the middle category of those break-even points (years, not months or decades), though admittedly on the shorter end of the category.

If you think an antimatter factory should have break-evens more like a spaceport working on large ships than a spaceport working on small ships, consider basing its stats on a TL10 Industrial Antimatter Factory which produces antimatter at 1/10 the rate and five times the cost as the TL11 IAF (giving a break-even of about 80 years for the Antimatter Production Facility), though the assumption for the TL10 IAF is that antimatter costs 100 times as much.

* The Space Industrial Park (p. SS6:8) and Space Factory (p. SS6:9) also have break-even points under three months.

Last edited by munin; 07-12-2010 at 03:58 PM.
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Old 07-12-2010, 04:17 PM   #9
Langy
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: CA
Default Re: [Spaceships] Antimatter Factory

Those ridiculous RoIs are why SS7 has the 'slower production speed' design switch, which I highly recommend in any even semi-plausible setting. It divides production speed by 24 (by making those per-hour rates be per-day).

I'd also alter the rules for production of large objects that were in SS6 to remove the stupid 'large vessels take weeks instead of hours to construct' rule or whatever it was, because they make no economic sense - time on a fabricator costs how much time on a fabricator costs, no matter if you're making a ton of really small objects or one really big object. In order to reconcile SS6's rules with any sort of economic reality, you'd need to multiply ship purchase costs significantly to reflect the lost opportunity cost of the fabricator building spaceships instead of smaller components.
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Old 07-12-2010, 04:38 PM   #10
Anthony
 
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Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: [Spaceships] Antimatter Factory

There are situations where a RoI of 70% is reasonable, but the production of a product that is by its nature generic is usually* not one of them; a more typical RoI would be 5-10%. Note, however, that's the return above and beyond operating costs; in many cases, operating costs are considerably higher than profits.

*If the value of the product is dropping extremely fast, high ROI is appropriate; for example, RAM chips are a generic product but your production lines had better pay off fast.
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