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Post by tophattingson on Oct 18, 2016 23:38:53 GMT
At the moment, Boron is currently behaving as a super-material. Cheap, low density, usable practically everywhere and very high strength. In fact, with the properties listed in-game, you'd expect Boron to be a primary structural material in real life, replacing aluminium.
I am fairly certain that the developer has put the properties for "Boron Fiber" in where "Boron" should be. This would be OK were it not for the fact that Fibre materials (such as Aramid) are not usable for certain module components (like conventional gun barrels) whereas Fusile materials are usable. Clearly Boron Fiber needs to be split off into it's own material from Boron, and plain boron given the correct physical properties.
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Post by n2maniac on Oct 19, 2016 8:12:06 GMT
More generally, I have seen some weird things on material properties:
-Nuke costs consist mostly of the explosive
-Sythesized nuclear isotopes appear really cheap, considering what typical transmutation costs are
-Diamond and osmium are cheaper than steel
-Diamond and graphite are about the same cost
I would be tempted to start a spreadsheet, tag items that look odd, and offer recommendations with a source where suitable. Would there be interest in this from the developers?
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Post by blothorn on Oct 19, 2016 12:17:24 GMT
Amorphous boron really does have amazing properties (it is what boron fibers are made from), but we do not have the ability to make nontrivial parts from it yet--we cannot make complex parts by chemical vapor deposition, it is not ductile at all, is essentially unmachinable (because of its high strength and brittleness), and I believe that casting it gives a suboptimal crystal structure. However, people are working on laser-controlled CVD 3d printing, which may give a practical pathway to near-arbitrary boron parts within 10-30 years.
Costs seem to be based on both atomic abundance and ease of manufacture, with the assumption that materials that can be used additively are easier to manufacture than materials (notably the fibers) that need separate creation/assembly steps or complex creation (magnetic metal glass, notably). This seems reasonable, although I think it is not always implemented consistently.
What costs most in a nuke is heavily dependent on how you make it. If you use a very small core with a lot of explosive (as was common before the 1.06 patch broke fusion bombs), of course the explosives are more expensive. Right now radioactive isotopes are the most expensive metals by an order of magnitude or two, which seems reasonable.
Diamond, however, seems plainly wrong--as a merely metastable crystal, it is very difficult to make it by any process. I think it is so cheap because of the high abundance of carbon, but I would think its manufacturing process would put it at least on the scale of magnetic metal glass.
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Post by dragonkid11 on Oct 19, 2016 14:28:34 GMT
Actually, only 20% of diamond can be made into jewelry.
The rest? They get used in industrial product.
Synthetic diamond can be made cheaply even with today's technology and they also composed of most diamond used in industrial purpose.
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Post by shiolle on Oct 19, 2016 16:01:19 GMT
Not to derail this thread, but so far synthetic diamonds are roughly 40 to 60 times more expensive per carat than natural diamonds, as this document suggests: www.bain.com/Images/PR_BAIN_REPORT_The_global_diamond_industry.pdf page 79). Plus it seems there are problems with the size of the diamonds different methods can produce. Why do you think they are cheap? |
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Post by thorneel on Oct 19, 2016 21:00:25 GMT
I believe properties are for block diamond, so small industrial diamonds are unusable. Are there leads for using diamond in additive manufacturing like for amorphous boron in a few decades as said above? If so, it may justify a relatively low price - however I doubt any such technique would be trivial, so it should probably not be so cheap. While we're at it, what about diamond fibres? This is an example, though I would expect "big" diamond fibres to be a thing if diamond is relatively inexpensive. As for boron, given how useful it is for so many thing, should this drive the price up compared to its base availability? If everyone want to use it for everything, there will be comparatively less for anyone. |
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