Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => CCP Public Library => Topic started by: Veiki on 10 Feb 2015, 16:57
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This has been one of those simple little questions that for me recently as regards fiction writing in the New Eden setting: what are the ubiquitous building materials used.
This is not as regards spaceships, but rather what would be commonly used in civil applications. Because what is used to build with will also affect the architecture and aesthetics of a constructed environment.
At present given the technological level available in New Eden I'm convinced that Carbon variants are commonly used, cheap to manufacture, and widely accessible: carbon fullerene tubes for structural purposes, carbon fibre sheets, varied polymers and plastics etc.
From an industrial design and architectural perspective it certainly presents many different and varied uses in its application - likely replacing steel and other metals in current use?
However it does make me wonder what is the brick and concrete type material of choice used in New Eden - still brick and concrete or something else entirely?
It's becoming one of those nagging questions for me as I've started writing fiction pieces again.
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But... Caldari STEEL !
I would perfectly expect some advanced more sciencey forms of concrete in gallente Omega cities and shantytowns while witnessing as you say high tech materials like carbon based construction, maybe the kind associating light weight, resistance, and that could also remodel itself at will or some such...
Some PI items hint a bit in that direction, with smartfab units, sterile conduits and the likes, even if it's more focused on industrial applications.
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In Amarr, at least, bricks were used for some time after spaceflight, because of the Sacred Bricks that make up the Tal-Romon Cathedral. The Cathedral was built on a different world to the one on which it now stands.
Modern buildings in the Amarr capital city also are built from bricks. In the slave quarter at least
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Torsad-Laur
The Gallente seem to use polymers a lot, as well as glass and crystals. https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Caille#Cityscape_.26_Infrastructure
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Hueromont#Cityscape_.26_Infrastructure
Concrete does seem to be used, mainly for infrastructure, and military facilities, though some houses are built from it, seemingly on less-developed worlds.
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Falling_Skies_(Chronicle)
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/And_to_Live_in_Peace_(Chronicle)
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Sand_Giants_(Chronicle)
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Looking at the reasons we are using concrete and steel today it should not be too difficult to come up with a lot of sci-fi (or just future) solutions to this question. Even looking at current research goals/papers can be inspiration.
In the case of on-site prepared liquid concrete one can think of adding polymers or additives that reduce the time it needs to harden, modify electronical properties or provide self-repair capabilities. And, of course, just varying the formula to increase durability, modify tensile strength and so on.
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I vaguely recall mentions of some sort of glass-replacement material that is transparent but as strong as (or stronger than) steel but can't recall exactly where from.
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Ignoring the fancy titles such as "permacrete" and "durasteel", I think the reality is that many of the same materials will be used as today. It's pretty much what we'd expect.
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Yeah, when you can strip mine entire asteroids down to nothing, its not too hard to imagine building stations (or hell, even ships) out of things like concrete and steel, or upgraded versions of concrete and steel using materials abundant in space but rare terrestrially. I believe the Jita 4-4 Chronicle mentions concrete being a major material in the station's superstructure. The reason we build spaceships and spacestations out of light and relatively flimsy materials today is related to the difficulty in getting things out of a gravity well. Once your in space, there's little reason to make things out of more exotic materials. We build skyscrapers out of steel and concrete because they're strong, durable, and abundant. There's little reason to use other materials if the basic ones work just as well for less isk.
Now that being said, New Eden definitely has materials science that we don't. We can't build a space elevator because we don't have the materials science yet, New Eden has space elevators, so they clearly have some materials science further advanced then ours.
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Yeah, when you can strip mine entire asteroids down to nothing, its not too hard to imagine building stations (or hell, even ships) out of things like concrete and steel, or upgraded versions of concrete and steel using materials abundant in space but rare terrestrially. I believe the Jita 4-4 Chronicle mentions concrete being a major material in the station's superstructure. The reason we build spaceships and spacestations out of light and relatively flimsy materials today is related to the difficulty in getting things out of a gravity well. Once your in space, there's little reason to make things out of more exotic materials. We build skyscrapers out of steel and concrete because they're strong, durable, and abundant. There's little reason to use other materials if the basic ones work just as well for less isk.
Now that being said, New Eden definitely has materials science that we don't. We can't build a space elevator because we don't have the materials science yet, New Eden has space elevators, so they clearly have some materials science further advanced then ours.
In New Eden nanotechnology and nanofibers are available in great abundance. Seeing that they can already make entire starship superstructures and armour plating out of nanofibers it shouldn't be too difficult to synthesize long enough nanofibers to make space elevators with.
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Space elevators are canon afaik. They're mentioned as being fairly common on the richer Federation worlds, and I can imagine that heavily industrialized or agricultural worlds would likely also have them to get resources harvested up out of the gravity well. I wrote a space elevator into my description of Skarkon II (https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Skarkon:_Analysis_of_a_Disaster), and there's plans to build one on Renaissance in Origin in the next few years. As far as sci-fi technologies go, a space elevator is actually really tame, and certainly much more easily grasped then teleporters and other hypothetically sci-fi transportation methods. I quite like space elevators conceptually, and I really hope that CCP lets us actually build them mechanically before too much time passes, seeing them in the trailers is such a tease.
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Just helping to add to the point of New Eden having more advance materials to work with. Our spaceships can have nanofiber superstructures and nanofiber armour platings while in real life we are still struggling to make nanotubes longer than 55cm.
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https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Items_(technology)#Engineering_and_Industrial
There's also the very useful t2 ship components in-game which give a good idea what the different materials used by the different empires are.
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Ignoring the fancy titles such as "permacrete" and "durasteel", I think the reality is that many of the same materials will be used as today. It's pretty much what we'd expect.
Yea they slap new labels on them to say 'we've SUPER refined the process now' but it's still concrete and steel at the end of the day.
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And since genetic tampering is rather taboo pretty much everywhere, I doubt we see a lot of really advanced bioscience other than your usual genetic enhanced livestock... Although I wonder where they draw the limit, if you can have buildings made out of biological bodies like pre-programmed coral.
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I vaguely recall mentions of some sort of glass-replacement material that is transparent but as strong as (or stronger than) steel but can't recall exactly where from.
Transparent Aluminium :D
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I vaguely recall mentions of some sort of glass-replacement material that is transparent but as strong as (or stronger than) steel but can't recall exactly where from.
Transparent Aluminium :D
A keyboard? How quaint.
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And since genetic tampering is rather taboo pretty much everywhere, I doubt we see a lot of really advanced bioscience other than your usual genetic enhanced livestock... Although I wonder where they draw the limit, if you can have buildings made out of biological bodies like pre-programmed coral.
The Gallente technology article mentions genetic tampering is pretty common for them, actually. Designer babies and stuff.
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Ok, good to know =)
I'm completely tainted by old lore... :/
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Thanks for the responses, it's provided a lot of food for thought.
On a slightly related note:
An Amarrian engineer oversees a construction site. In later years the building collapses and kills people. It is found out he was involved in corrupt practices and used substandard materials to cut costs so he could embezzle funds.
Would there be potential he would be charged of "heresy" by something like the Synod of Holy Amarrian Imperial Engineers for violating the proper scriptural method for a concrete pour?
Another mundane question I know, but I'm curious as to how given the Amarrian Scriptures cover not only matters of faith and spirituality but also practical matters would such an instance make sense?
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Thanks for the responses, it's provided a lot of food for thought.
On a slightly related note:
An Amarrian engineer oversees a construction site. In later years the building collapses and kills people. It is found out he was involved in corrupt practices and used substandard materials to cut costs so he could embezzle funds.
Would there be potential he would be charged of "heresy" by something like the Synod of Holy Amarrian Imperial Engineers for violating the proper scriptural method for a concrete pour?
Another mundane question I know, but I'm curious as to how given the Amarrian Scriptures cover not only matters of faith and spirituality but also practical matters would such an instance make sense?
Depends on how far it was violated. Heresy tends to be a matter of belief and not just breaking the principles. So, if he was just breaking scriptural law, he's just a criminal and lawbreaker (on both temporal and theological level, in Amarr). But if he actually started advocating his lawbreaking as a general principle, then it'd be heresy.
In other words, heresy is pretty hard to get actually convicted of (charges are likely to happen all the time though, but probably get dropped most of the time). Heresy in legal terms would probably be something like, "to knowingly and with intent to establish and spread false belief act in severe contradiction to Scripture." In other words, it'd have to be a much bigger thing than just breaking the law. It'd have to be outright advocating that the law is wrong, that your own law is better, and advocating for its spread and dissemination amongst wider society.
In terms of whether law covers such mundane things? Yes it does. Amarr has sainted people over land parceling reform. A lot of what is considered very basic bureaucratic and administrative principles would indeed be in Scripture (namely, anything that is Empire-wide law. Basically, Federal law in Amarr is religious law, local/state laws (Holder and below laws) are not religious law).
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Thanks for the responses, it's provided a lot of food for thought.
On a slightly related note:
An Amarrian engineer oversees a construction site. In later years the building collapses and kills people. It is found out he was involved in corrupt practices and used substandard materials to cut costs so he could embezzle funds.
Would there be potential he would be charged of "heresy" by something like the Synod of Holy Amarrian Imperial Engineers for violating the proper scriptural method for a concrete pour?
Another mundane question I know, but I'm curious as to how given the Amarrian Scriptures cover not only matters of faith and spirituality but also practical matters would such an instance make sense?
Depends on how far it was violated. Heresy tends to be a matter of belief and not just breaking the principles. So, if he was just breaking scriptural law, he's just a criminal and lawbreaker (on both temporal and theological level, in Amarr). But if he actually started advocating his lawbreaking as a general principle, then it'd be heresy.
In other words, heresy is pretty hard to get actually convicted of (charges are likely to happen all the time though, but probably get dropped most of the time). Heresy in legal terms would probably be something like, "to knowingly and with intent to establish and spread false belief act in severe contradiction to Scripture." In other words, it'd have to be a much bigger thing than just breaking the law. It'd have to be outright advocating that the law is wrong, that your own law is better, and advocating for its spread and dissemination amongst wider society.
In terms of whether law covers such mundane things? Yes it does. Amarr has sainted people over land parceling reform. A lot of what is considered very basic bureaucratic and administrative principles would indeed be in Scripture (namely, anything that is Empire-wide law. Basically, Federal law in Amarr is religious law, local/state laws (Holder and below laws) are not religious law).
Amarr Empire may be a theocracy, but not all theocracies are like the Imperium, where entire worlds could, with impunity, be declared 'Excommunicate traitoris' and have a Cyclonic Torpedo dropped on them because of a tax error or somebody accidentally collapsed a cathedral dedicated to a God figure.
40K is over-the-top parody and must be recognised as such. Theocracies still practice common sense and restrain. Some lawyers might start taking passages from Scriptures to sway opinions against the defendant but that doesn't mean the judge is going to start calling the defendant a heretic and sentence him to being burned him on a stake because he evaded taxes.
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Seeing as I have never played nor read the lore of 40k, and frankly don't care about the universe, please don't assume at random that I am using some kind of 40k inspiration. Assuming that you are referring to my post since you quoted my post.
And no, it's quite a lot more than 'just occasionally quoting a passage from Scripture'. Much of Amarrian law IS Scripture. Amarrian trials (the ones handled by the Theology Council, at least) are literal theological debates with the lawyers quoting passages and discussing varying interpretations and how they apply to the crime being tried (https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Government_of_the_Amarr_Empire#Theology_Council).
So again. Evading taxes? No, not heresy. But evading taxes while shouting that taxes are immoral in the sight of God, the tax system as written in Scriptures must be abolished and replaced with X, and encouraging the people around you to not pay their taxes either on that merit? That could very possibly get a heresy conviction.
This is, of course, assuming that the tax law in question is an Empire-wide one and thus from Scripture, and not, say, a local law. The latter would be tried by the Civic Court and be a bit less severe.
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I would expect, Elmund, that heresy, while grave sin in itself, also has very different scales depending on the heresy in question. For the little commoner evading taxes and then screaming that they are unfair and ungodly, it sure will make his case a lot worse and serious to the eyes of the Civic Court, but it's definitely not on the same scale as preaching blooder practices openly.
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Seeing as I have never played nor read the lore of 40k, and frankly don't care about the universe, please don't assume at random that I am using some kind of 40k inspiration. Assuming that you are referring to my post since you quoted my post.
And no, it's quite a lot more than 'just occasionally quoting a passage from Scripture'. Much of Amarrian law IS Scripture. Amarrian trials (the ones handled by the Theology Council, at least) are literal theological debates with the lawyers quoting passages and discussing varying interpretations and how they apply to the crime being tried (https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Government_of_the_Amarr_Empire#Theology_Council).
So again. Evading taxes? No, not heresy. But evading taxes while shouting that taxes are immoral in the sight of God, the tax system as written in Scriptures must be abolished and replaced with X, and encouraging the people around you to not pay their taxes either on that merit? That could very possibly get a heresy conviction.
This is, of course, assuming that the tax law in question is an Empire-wide one and thus from Scripture, and not, say, a local law. The latter would be tried by the Civic Court and be a bit less severe.
I was using your quote to help myself elaborate a point.
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There probably is a Book of Civil Engineering, or several of them, with chapters about the appropriate concrete mix of sand, aggregates and cement, and the proper way to pour it, for various applications.
Early sections might have passages beginning something like:
"Through the Light of the Lord, the following mysteries of concrete were revealed to I, a humble civil engineer, in service to Emperor Heideran I, during the construction of the Grand Cathedral of Kathis."
and then go on about the maximum strength, reactions in hot/cold weather, and so on.
Using substandard materials, would be a Sin, rather than heresy.