Post by Shard on Mar 11, 2018 13:26:57 GMT -5
Tech - Materials Research and Development by Shard
(OGP class on 4/30/2017)
Shard
@here Beginning lecture on Materials Research and Development, who all is present?
TehOldeSourcerer
Hi
Jade
I'm half here
Mari's Mage
Here
Jade
At work so I'll be lurking
Helio Sideras
Also lurking
Eleana
here
Shard
Bunch of lurking going on, eh? No worries.
Jade
I'll participate as much as able lol
Shard
Alright, so first off, a quick disclaimer - this is based on my personal experience, and is only one approach out of many, there are multiple ways to view and interact with things, not just the way I mention.
Shard
Ok, one moment, it appears my saved text is causing formatting issues.
Shard
One of the main benefits of Tech is the way it interacts with different forms of energy, called materials. As you may be aware already, some forms of energy work better for certain tasks, such as energy aligned with positivity being better for healing or empathic raising than energy attuned with death or decay. Tech works with energy on a much deeper level than just attunement with a general concept, relying on innate properties of certain configurations of energy. One of the main requirements for improving Tech is to find proper arrangements of energy for each components -- you wouldn't make a support beam out of rubber, or a bumper out of explodium, for example. Some forms of energy are quite easy to find or generate, which will be called 'natural' materials for this lecture. Additionally, most forms of energy seem to fit within certain sets of properties, at least for the easily obtained materials. In general, metallic forms are solid, durable, somewhat flexible but don't spring back well, conduct energy well, and can be easily manipulated with brute force. Typically, crystal is hard, brittle, sharp, focuses energy similar to light, inflexible, and nonconductive. Biological forms of energy are typically soft, flexible, self-repairing (or easily made so) with large numbers of possible catalytic reactions, both conductive and nonconductive are common, and very difficult to work with using mechanical processes, though it is good at self-assembly and growth.
Shard
Within the astral, you will often find numerous forms of energy floating around or easily harvestable -- air, water, rock, tree, etc are all quite common, and contain usable materials, which can be considered practically infinite and free. From these, you can then alter some to create more useful forms - as an example, you can make a rock-based furnace that burns wood to heat water and power a steam turbine. Likewise, you can use heat to break down rock and extract 'metallic' forms of energy where they are in reasonably high densities, allowing a much more useful building material. Similar to in the physical, it is also possible to form compounds or alloys of various substances by mixing them, melting them together, etc.
Marcus
I'm here but a bit late
Shard
No worries, best part about text lectures is that you can always go back and read them just fine
Shard
As can be seen above, the 'natural' materials are very easy to interact with. Now for more complex materials, you can do things similar to crystal growth, create pressure chambers similar to turning weak carbon into diamond, usage of things similar to chemical reactions to produce new compounds, etc. Towards the higher end, it is possible to use the ability to zoom in/out that comes with tech to look closer until you find the building blocks of the energy you are working with. This allows direct manipulation of compounds similar to molecular engineering, with the ability to go deeper into something similar to atomic engineering where you can directly change one element into another. The easiest way to do this is direct manipulation, using your will to manipulate directly, similar to how you can move energy through yourself, though it is also possible to build tech to do this automatically. In energetic terms, this allows you to take something like elemental fire and change it permanently into something similar to steel - something with absolutely nothing in common aside from existence.
Shard
Once you begin having a large collection of materials, it is important to know what each one is good at - for this, experimentation is key. For each material, it is recommended to test for the following: density, flexibility, conductivity, compressive strength (resistance to being crushed), tensile strength (how well it resists being pulled apart), shear strength (resistance to force in two opposite directions), reaction towards common materials, focusing abilities, brittleness, regeneration (typically nonexistent in nonbiologicals), and potentially many more as more knowledge is gained. Some good tests to try with new materials: Try making a hollow sphere of the material and push energy into it until it ruptures or explodes. This allows a degree of understanding as to tensile strength and if it is brittle or will deform. Another would be to do similar without overloading it, then attach something like a beacon or laser projector on the outside without any wiring - this shows if it is conductive, and if so, how much. For regeneration, making a block of the material and gouging it in one spot and crushing it in another can help, as sometimes regeneration only occurs when there is brute force involved.
Shard
Once you understand the materials you have found/created, you may find them superior to those you have already used in tech already. The nice thing about tech is that with it being heavily processed by the subconscious, you can update the 'blueprints' to use a new material, apply it over the top of already existing tech, and push the new material into the place of the old, rapidly upgrading it. This can also be done through automated systems, including self-updating tech. Likewise, with how blueprints in tech function, if you update the base level components in one piece of tech, your blueprint for that base component will also be updated in any other tech that makes use of it, allowing for incredibly rapid updates even if you have thousands of tech designs. Likewise, it is possible to do as mentioned earlier and 'zoom in' within existing tech and directly convert the material from one form to another, though typically that is more time and effort intensive than simple replacement.
Shard
For a simple example of improvements that can be made with materials, consider a simple shovel. If you make it out of a wooden stick and a chunk of stone, it does work, but you might break the stick if you use much force or lift too much, the stone might not cut into the ground well and might chip if you hit anything hard, you might hurt your hands on the stick, etc. So you experiment and find that you can produce iron, which holds a shape better than stone, can be sharpened, and is easier to connect to the stick. You are still likely to break the stick, but you solve chipping the rock and having trouble cutting into the ground. Maybe later you figure out how to produce plastic, and use that to make a new handle, which still has problems with hurting your hands, but mostly solves the breaking issue. Later on you might run into foam, and make a padded handle instead. With something simple, you get direct improvements, but on larger projects, you may find that a small improvement is repeated in numerous places, and may even cause new problems, such as a higher conductivity material leading to an overload in a containment area, or improved flexibility causing things to act in ways you didn't predict while designing. This leads to a constant need to develop new materials and adapt to their use, but the gains can be very beneficial, leading to hundreds of times higher durability and efficiency between two pieces of tech with the same design but different materials.
Shard
Any questions/comments?
TehOldeSourcerer
Is one of the concepts you are referring to here that of using energy to affect things like technological devices by imbuing them with energy?
Marcus
How can you tell the difference between different types of energies? Can you tag a few examples of he different energies you are talking about here?
Shard
Tech is a alternate method of energy manipulation that tends to be more advanced in general. I believe you were not here for the earlier lectures on it, I will be posting it in the resources section in a bit.
TehOldeSourcerer
Cool
Shard
Typically you can tell the difference by the feel, appearance, how they react, and numerous other ways, depending on the energy itself. Closer forms such as iron vs steel can be trickier to tell than things like ceramic vs oil. Sharp crystal vs liquid darkness should be a good example?
Shard
Was that helpful, Marcus, or need more examples? And anyone else have any other questions or comments?
Marcus
Hmmm, is there any way you could associate a couple energies to a few different heres? Something we can practice scanning to get a feel with energy you gathered and you know is whatever you label it as?
Marcus
Like steel and oil
Marcus
But mine aren't attached to anything because idk how to tell the difference
Shard
Yeah, did that with the crystal/darkness ones, but can give some more examples in a bit, just a bit more difficult atm than usual.
Marcus
Oh okay thanks
Shard
basic iron-type metal | basic steel-type metal | basic ceramic | basic diamond-style crystal | basic flesh None of those are specifically anything you might run into, just whipped up some generic forms by taking the most common aspects of many materials I've run into.
Zephyr Cloudrunner
So when I do things I just sorta do it all instinctually, and that includes when making constructs and the like. In your opinion, would that result in weaker constructs than if you know and plan the specific and individual materials?
Shard
It should be a mix of the two methods, IMO. Make a plan consciously, assign your materials to it, then allow instinct to take over once you have numerous basic components designed. If you have the building blocks, your subconscious can rapidly assemble a large piece of tech out of them for you to do what you need done, though that can often be improved significantly with conscious redesign later on.
Marcus
Tyvm Shard
Shard
So I would say spend a few days/weeks building up basic components like batteries, motors, energy conduits, field projectors, laser emitters, generators, siphons, etc, then working instinctively should see a large increase in power.
Zephyr Cloudrunner
Another question, if I may
Zephyr Cloudrunner
does working slower produce better results, or is that relative to the individual, in your experience?
Shard
That is kinda complex, as tech is a mixture of slow methodical development and rapid casting. A blueprint naturally works much better when carefully designed, which tends to take more time, but once you have your blueprint, it is quite easy to follow it rapidly, especially when you allow the subconscious to do the heavy lifting part of it, leading to situations where you may spend months designing a large piece of tech and then cast it in under ten seconds.
Zephyr Cloudrunner
hmm
Zephyr Cloudrunner
I ask because often times I find I only need to make a concept and I'll automatically generate a construct that fits the needs
Shard
nods That is similar to what was mentioned earlier - once you have the basic components, it is possible to link them together very quickly to produce a working tech component. If you need something new, the degree of difference between what you have and what you need is a major influence on the time it takes to design and implement. In my case, I can whip up a new shield of practically any type almost instantly because I have a huge stockpile of components designed for shields, but if you ask me to do telepathic projection, I will likely take months to get something designed and working because I don't have components predesigned and have to start from the ground up.
Shard
Any more questions before I go vanish again?
Zephyr Cloudrunner
nothing I can think of atm
Marcus
Nothing right now but I will be scanning those energy types quite a bit so thank you for that
(OGP class on 4/30/2017)
Shard
@here Beginning lecture on Materials Research and Development, who all is present?
TehOldeSourcerer
Hi
Jade
I'm half here
Mari's Mage
Here
Jade
At work so I'll be lurking
Helio Sideras
Also lurking
Eleana
here
Shard
Bunch of lurking going on, eh? No worries.
Jade
I'll participate as much as able lol
Shard
Alright, so first off, a quick disclaimer - this is based on my personal experience, and is only one approach out of many, there are multiple ways to view and interact with things, not just the way I mention.
Shard
Ok, one moment, it appears my saved text is causing formatting issues.
Shard
One of the main benefits of Tech is the way it interacts with different forms of energy, called materials. As you may be aware already, some forms of energy work better for certain tasks, such as energy aligned with positivity being better for healing or empathic raising than energy attuned with death or decay. Tech works with energy on a much deeper level than just attunement with a general concept, relying on innate properties of certain configurations of energy. One of the main requirements for improving Tech is to find proper arrangements of energy for each components -- you wouldn't make a support beam out of rubber, or a bumper out of explodium, for example. Some forms of energy are quite easy to find or generate, which will be called 'natural' materials for this lecture. Additionally, most forms of energy seem to fit within certain sets of properties, at least for the easily obtained materials. In general, metallic forms are solid, durable, somewhat flexible but don't spring back well, conduct energy well, and can be easily manipulated with brute force. Typically, crystal is hard, brittle, sharp, focuses energy similar to light, inflexible, and nonconductive. Biological forms of energy are typically soft, flexible, self-repairing (or easily made so) with large numbers of possible catalytic reactions, both conductive and nonconductive are common, and very difficult to work with using mechanical processes, though it is good at self-assembly and growth.
Shard
Within the astral, you will often find numerous forms of energy floating around or easily harvestable -- air, water, rock, tree, etc are all quite common, and contain usable materials, which can be considered practically infinite and free. From these, you can then alter some to create more useful forms - as an example, you can make a rock-based furnace that burns wood to heat water and power a steam turbine. Likewise, you can use heat to break down rock and extract 'metallic' forms of energy where they are in reasonably high densities, allowing a much more useful building material. Similar to in the physical, it is also possible to form compounds or alloys of various substances by mixing them, melting them together, etc.
Marcus
I'm here but a bit late
Shard
No worries, best part about text lectures is that you can always go back and read them just fine
Shard
As can be seen above, the 'natural' materials are very easy to interact with. Now for more complex materials, you can do things similar to crystal growth, create pressure chambers similar to turning weak carbon into diamond, usage of things similar to chemical reactions to produce new compounds, etc. Towards the higher end, it is possible to use the ability to zoom in/out that comes with tech to look closer until you find the building blocks of the energy you are working with. This allows direct manipulation of compounds similar to molecular engineering, with the ability to go deeper into something similar to atomic engineering where you can directly change one element into another. The easiest way to do this is direct manipulation, using your will to manipulate directly, similar to how you can move energy through yourself, though it is also possible to build tech to do this automatically. In energetic terms, this allows you to take something like elemental fire and change it permanently into something similar to steel - something with absolutely nothing in common aside from existence.
Shard
Once you begin having a large collection of materials, it is important to know what each one is good at - for this, experimentation is key. For each material, it is recommended to test for the following: density, flexibility, conductivity, compressive strength (resistance to being crushed), tensile strength (how well it resists being pulled apart), shear strength (resistance to force in two opposite directions), reaction towards common materials, focusing abilities, brittleness, regeneration (typically nonexistent in nonbiologicals), and potentially many more as more knowledge is gained. Some good tests to try with new materials: Try making a hollow sphere of the material and push energy into it until it ruptures or explodes. This allows a degree of understanding as to tensile strength and if it is brittle or will deform. Another would be to do similar without overloading it, then attach something like a beacon or laser projector on the outside without any wiring - this shows if it is conductive, and if so, how much. For regeneration, making a block of the material and gouging it in one spot and crushing it in another can help, as sometimes regeneration only occurs when there is brute force involved.
Shard
Once you understand the materials you have found/created, you may find them superior to those you have already used in tech already. The nice thing about tech is that with it being heavily processed by the subconscious, you can update the 'blueprints' to use a new material, apply it over the top of already existing tech, and push the new material into the place of the old, rapidly upgrading it. This can also be done through automated systems, including self-updating tech. Likewise, with how blueprints in tech function, if you update the base level components in one piece of tech, your blueprint for that base component will also be updated in any other tech that makes use of it, allowing for incredibly rapid updates even if you have thousands of tech designs. Likewise, it is possible to do as mentioned earlier and 'zoom in' within existing tech and directly convert the material from one form to another, though typically that is more time and effort intensive than simple replacement.
Shard
For a simple example of improvements that can be made with materials, consider a simple shovel. If you make it out of a wooden stick and a chunk of stone, it does work, but you might break the stick if you use much force or lift too much, the stone might not cut into the ground well and might chip if you hit anything hard, you might hurt your hands on the stick, etc. So you experiment and find that you can produce iron, which holds a shape better than stone, can be sharpened, and is easier to connect to the stick. You are still likely to break the stick, but you solve chipping the rock and having trouble cutting into the ground. Maybe later you figure out how to produce plastic, and use that to make a new handle, which still has problems with hurting your hands, but mostly solves the breaking issue. Later on you might run into foam, and make a padded handle instead. With something simple, you get direct improvements, but on larger projects, you may find that a small improvement is repeated in numerous places, and may even cause new problems, such as a higher conductivity material leading to an overload in a containment area, or improved flexibility causing things to act in ways you didn't predict while designing. This leads to a constant need to develop new materials and adapt to their use, but the gains can be very beneficial, leading to hundreds of times higher durability and efficiency between two pieces of tech with the same design but different materials.
Shard
Any questions/comments?
TehOldeSourcerer
Is one of the concepts you are referring to here that of using energy to affect things like technological devices by imbuing them with energy?
Marcus
How can you tell the difference between different types of energies? Can you tag a few examples of he different energies you are talking about here?
Shard
Tech is a alternate method of energy manipulation that tends to be more advanced in general. I believe you were not here for the earlier lectures on it, I will be posting it in the resources section in a bit.
TehOldeSourcerer
Cool
Shard
Typically you can tell the difference by the feel, appearance, how they react, and numerous other ways, depending on the energy itself. Closer forms such as iron vs steel can be trickier to tell than things like ceramic vs oil. Sharp crystal vs liquid darkness should be a good example?
Shard
Was that helpful, Marcus, or need more examples? And anyone else have any other questions or comments?
Marcus
Hmmm, is there any way you could associate a couple energies to a few different heres? Something we can practice scanning to get a feel with energy you gathered and you know is whatever you label it as?
Marcus
Like steel and oil
Marcus
But mine aren't attached to anything because idk how to tell the difference
Shard
Yeah, did that with the crystal/darkness ones, but can give some more examples in a bit, just a bit more difficult atm than usual.
Marcus
Oh okay thanks
Shard
basic iron-type metal | basic steel-type metal | basic ceramic | basic diamond-style crystal | basic flesh None of those are specifically anything you might run into, just whipped up some generic forms by taking the most common aspects of many materials I've run into.
Zephyr Cloudrunner
So when I do things I just sorta do it all instinctually, and that includes when making constructs and the like. In your opinion, would that result in weaker constructs than if you know and plan the specific and individual materials?
Shard
It should be a mix of the two methods, IMO. Make a plan consciously, assign your materials to it, then allow instinct to take over once you have numerous basic components designed. If you have the building blocks, your subconscious can rapidly assemble a large piece of tech out of them for you to do what you need done, though that can often be improved significantly with conscious redesign later on.
Marcus
Tyvm Shard
Shard
So I would say spend a few days/weeks building up basic components like batteries, motors, energy conduits, field projectors, laser emitters, generators, siphons, etc, then working instinctively should see a large increase in power.
Zephyr Cloudrunner
Another question, if I may
Zephyr Cloudrunner
does working slower produce better results, or is that relative to the individual, in your experience?
Shard
That is kinda complex, as tech is a mixture of slow methodical development and rapid casting. A blueprint naturally works much better when carefully designed, which tends to take more time, but once you have your blueprint, it is quite easy to follow it rapidly, especially when you allow the subconscious to do the heavy lifting part of it, leading to situations where you may spend months designing a large piece of tech and then cast it in under ten seconds.
Zephyr Cloudrunner
hmm
Zephyr Cloudrunner
I ask because often times I find I only need to make a concept and I'll automatically generate a construct that fits the needs
Shard
nods That is similar to what was mentioned earlier - once you have the basic components, it is possible to link them together very quickly to produce a working tech component. If you need something new, the degree of difference between what you have and what you need is a major influence on the time it takes to design and implement. In my case, I can whip up a new shield of practically any type almost instantly because I have a huge stockpile of components designed for shields, but if you ask me to do telepathic projection, I will likely take months to get something designed and working because I don't have components predesigned and have to start from the ground up.
Shard
Any more questions before I go vanish again?
Zephyr Cloudrunner
nothing I can think of atm
Marcus
Nothing right now but I will be scanning those energy types quite a bit so thank you for that