New Power Option: Fusion Reactors (My Own 3D Model)
lumoize
Join Date: 2017-02-19 Member: 228054Members
Join Date: 2017-02-19 Member: 228054Members
Alright first post lets hope this goes well.
That is my concept for a new type of reactor that would come after the standard Fission Reactor in the game currently. The reactor would be alot more difficult to make than the Fission Reactor, But it would be majorly worth it.
To fuel it the Character would need to find either Tritium or Helium-3 from deposits (Either Chemical would work it would just be up to the devs as to what one is used). The effecieny per Item would be five times that of the fission reactor. The outputs would be an extreme amount of power and Salt (I can explain why if anyone's confused)
I'm keeping this post short but if anyone wants a run through on the chemistry or what a Fusion reactor is just let me know. I'm a science nerd
I would like your guys thoughts on this.
A: Do you think we need more power sources in Subnautica? Or do you think the Fission reactor is all we need?
B: If added do you think it should be harder to find the Resources? I.e Harder to find the Tritium/Helium3?
C: What do you think of my model? I'm a High School Student who taught myself how to model so I would love Constrictive Criticism
That is my concept for a new type of reactor that would come after the standard Fission Reactor in the game currently. The reactor would be alot more difficult to make than the Fission Reactor, But it would be majorly worth it.
To fuel it the Character would need to find either Tritium or Helium-3 from deposits (Either Chemical would work it would just be up to the devs as to what one is used). The effecieny per Item would be five times that of the fission reactor. The outputs would be an extreme amount of power and Salt (I can explain why if anyone's confused)
I'm keeping this post short but if anyone wants a run through on the chemistry or what a Fusion reactor is just let me know. I'm a science nerd
I would like your guys thoughts on this.
A: Do you think we need more power sources in Subnautica? Or do you think the Fission reactor is all we need?
B: If added do you think it should be harder to find the Resources? I.e Harder to find the Tritium/Helium3?
C: What do you think of my model? I'm a High School Student who taught myself how to model so I would love Constrictive Criticism
Comments
I don't know what kind of work goes into making a model like that, but it's pretty cool.
I'm going to back up @Sigmalx here: there shouldn't be any salt. Deuterium-Deuterium or Deuterium-Tritium reactions only produce helium and some stray nucleons as reaction products.
D-D reaction: 1D(2) + 1D(2) -> 1T(3) [Tritium] + p+ [proton]; there is then a secondary reaction releasing 2He(3) [Helium-3] + n0 [neutron].
D-T reaction: 1D(2) + 1T(3) -> 2He(4) [Helium-4] + n0 [neutron].
You'd only have salt if you were refining raw seawater for its deuterium. But since it says the player would be collecting deuterium from a "deposit" (which itself seems a little odd, but giving that a pass), the implication is that there isn't any seawater refining going on...which means no salt.
Of course! Any time!
sent
I may have made a typo. The Deuterium will come from the Seawater, As it is the most abundant in water.
The materials got in the Deposits will be the TRITIUM or the HELIUM 3! Not The Deuterium. Sorry about the confusion! Also thanks @Obraxis , The Subnautica modelling style was really fun to mess around with. Also, as a developer, what are your though on new power? I know you busy animating new things and Have no intention of adding these kinda things, but nevertheless what are your though?
But really thanks You have no idea how cool it is to hear that a game developer actually likes my models
All that said, I think we have plenty of options for power as-is. Personally I prefer thermal power to nuclear whenever possible, because I hate having to worry about fuel.
This could be the ultimate late-game tech though - if the fusion reactor is built to essentially fuel itself with seawater, then it could be self-sustaining like the thermal/solar option, while being built inside your base like the bio/nuclear option. Would be a neat bit of tech to find in a precursor base or something (although apparently even the precursors used thermal power, just sayin').
A: Yes I think we need at least one more Base-reactor option. I had some ideas like Anti-Matter, Coldfusion or Darkmatter as the Auroras Drive for a Endgame Reactor Just to be more flexible in base building and just for the more Sci-Fi-ish aspect. So yes awesome idea!
B: No I think it should be self sustaining once build. I like your "gets its fuel from seawater"-approach. Maybe you could combine it with the water-filtration modell or something alike? If you would need to "mine" its fuel I would suggest to make it more available then Uranium because afaik fusionreactors can run on "lighter" fuels then fission reactors do. So they are, at least on Earth, easier to "find" then Uranium.
C: Self taught? Wow! It looks great...iirc some of todays test reactors have a slightly more Donut shaped reactor chamber, maybe your model can reflect that slightly more? But that is purely up to you as the artist of course.
A: Thanks! I was thinking something like a KugelBlitz Reactor at first but yeah I don't think that would be something a normal person could build XD
B: The gaming part of me really agrees that such an end-game reactor should not be fueled but the Chemistry nerd in me says that the reactor would need to get its Tritium from somewhere are that stuff ain't in sea water
C: your right but I wanted it to be more compact so I made it skinnier, and to make it fit in the bases easier. And if we are going to be Scientifically correct the Shape could be as skinny as the Super cooled Magnets containing the plasma... and Given they have DARK MATTER REACTORS Imma say that they probably have pretty decent Electromagnets
I did a short search to get my facts straight. If my source is correct we need Deuterium Atoms and Tritium Atoms to fuse and thus generate power in the reactor we talk about. We could get Deuterium in small but sufficient ammounts out of water (so maybe seawater will do too?). And the website also mentioned that you could get Tritium out of Lithium which is a byproduct of the fusion process. If that is correct, we could use Lithium which is already in the game and use a modified water filtration machine for the Deuterium.
To start the fusion reactor I would use two energy cells (maybe more) to start the first filtration process to get our first Deuterium and get Tritium out of Lithium at a fabricator. You put the Tritium into the reactor once, together with the energy cells and it would start working. Maybe the energy cells could also function as a small additional power buffer once the reactor is running. Once it is running it would power the filtration machine itself and produce the Tritium itself too out of the Lithium the fusion process creates as a byproduct.
Would that be possible with a slight application of some "videogame-logic"?
The Deuterium is really easy. Calling it Deuterium is confusing, Its just H2, Or Two Hydrogen Atoms. The Seawater would be absorbed ( A Mixture of H20 and NaCl) And would be separated. The O would fuse into O2 (Because That's a natural reaction) and the NaCl would be a by-product. So you would actually get salt out of the reactor XD
Isn't Tritium rather Hydrogen-3 then Helium-3? I know that both can be used as fusion fuel...but Hydrogen is not Helium.
And my suggestion was not to use Lithium instead of Tritium. My suggestion was to use the fabricator to create our first "unit" of Tritium out of a piece of Lithium (which we can already collect in the game and with a little bit of suspension of disbelief the fabricator could do the trick).
Wiki says (And yes I know not all is correct what WIKI tells us): For applications in proposed fusion energy reactors, such as ITER, pebbles consisting of lithium bearing ceramics including Li2TiO3 and Li4SiO4, are being developed for tritium breeding within a helium cooled pebble bed (HCPB), also known as a breeder blanket.
That is why I made the suggestion to use Lithium and the fabricator to create Tritium. As a German website concerning future energy solutions said Lithium would be a byproduct of the fusion process, that is why I jumped to my conclusion that it should be possible for a Sci-Fi version of a fusion reactor to create it's own Tritium out of the byproduct once its started to fuse Deuterium and Tritium.
I hope that made my thougts clearer...
I think, by the time we get our "Cyclops dock'n'reload"-thingy we should have a way better reactor (as our highest/best tier option) and or other means to "generate and store" or "store only" energy in our base. Because let's face it, most bases won't have the 1.200 Power the Cyclops can hold and depending on it's recharge speed it could suck most bases dry which would be bad for several reasons.
So either way we would need a high output reactor that could sustain a decent sized base plus a recharging Cyclops or we need a kind of buffer that can store power for when it is needed. That way we could fill the buffer over time and recharge the Cyclops out of the buffer load.
And before you say "But you never would dock the Cyclops that close before it is empty." The 1.200 Power is just with 6 "normal" Powercells. Imagine the worst case scenario when you use 6 Ion-Powercells. That would be up to 6.000 energy if you would try to recharge close to being emtpy. So we would need Power for a "almost empty" recharge in the range of 1.150 - 5.950 energy.
Who builds so many Reactors to store such a huge amount of power? (to store just 1.000 energy you would already need 2 nuclear reactors).
Sure they could tone the reload rate down to 30 energy/min (same as 1 filtration machine) but who would want to spend that much time waiting for a recharge? (40minutes for a 1.200 power recharge and a 3hour and 20minutes reload for an all Ion-Cell Cyclops)
And if they decide to let it recharge quicker, how to we supply that high power demand in a short time?
I would love the Fusion Reactor (or last tier reactor if we get one and the devs decide against fusion) to have an output of 2-5 Energy/second (Nuclear, our current best, generates 1 energy/second) to support a decent sized base with one or two water filtration machines AND allow a Cyclops to recharge at a decent rate without having to wait 40minutes or way more real time depending on the power cells setup, for one recharge.
What do you think?
Should we get a better Reactor (maybe the one the OP suggested) to be able to decently quick recharge our Cyclops?
Does recharging the Cyclops with "fueled"-reactors (Bio/Nuclear) even make sense?
You would need one reactor rod for a 1.200 energy reload and 5 rods for a complete recharge of one all Ion-Cells Cyclops. That is why I think we need a new reactor that is self sustaining. Either by the logic-model this thread already discussed or via another option like Anti-Matter/Dark-Matter or other Sci-Fi/Space magic sources for huge energy demands.