Ship Workshop/Maker Shop

[Grav_Moped]

Note- biologicals makers are a thing - they can build synthetic bodies and organs, grow clone bodies and organs and function as an autodoc of its own TL.

If they are, I'd think they'd be of unusually high TL. The problem isn't that they'd be unable to replicate living tissue, but that they'd have to provide a surrogate "life support system" for all of the tissues/organs/bodies during the generation and assembly process. It'd work for individual organs, probably, but creating entire complex organisms might be stretching it a bit.

Forced-growth cloning (especially given the in-universe existence of Medical Fast Drug) is a more likely way to produce "clone bodies". This could be classified as something a Maker Device does, but it'd require a dedicated biological Maker Device rather than a general purpose one.

In short, you can't "3D Print" a housecat, but you could definitely force-grow a clone of one. At a high enough TL, you could probably do so with just the transcription of its genetic sequence. Slightly higher, you could create an exact match (control of phenotype expression). Customization is probably still higher tech... and creating viable arbitrarily-designed organisms higher still.

 

[Baroun Tardis]

If they are, I'd think they'd be of unusually high TL. The problem isn't that they'd be unable to replicate living tissue, but that they'd have to provide a surrogate "life support system" for all of the tissues/organs/bodies during the generation and assembly process. It'd work for individual organs, probably, but creating entire complex organisms might be stretching it a bit.

I'd suspect that's the limits for Sythoids right there: you can't grow the creature....
So you polymer up some bones. You mount some pulleys and such, and a substrate that's like abosobant stitches, then print some muscle tissue and add electrodes. Add some plastic piping for 'blood'. Add another layer of plastic, then some more muscles and skin, leaving the top of the head open.
Use the CloneOrganMaker to fast grow a brain and plug that in. Put another layer of polymer and some biologic scalp on.

Can't do a whole being in a Maker... so just do the parts that have to be organic

 

[mike wightman]

You can make an entirely synthetic biological sophontoid in a synthetics maker but you do it part by part

Do you grow synthetics or construct them? A bit of both perhaps? Build the synthetic organs, build the synthetic skeleton, install organs and then grow the "blood" vessels and "nervous system, Add or grow "skin".

Tl13 appears to be the minimum for this tech.

And now for the really nasty - you could place a sophont (willingly or unwilling) into a biomaker to install cybernetics, bioaugments, even whole body restructuring...

 

[Baroun Tardis]

And now for the really nasty - you could place a sophont (willingly or unwilling) into a biomaker to install cybernetics, bioaugments, even whole body restructuring...

Have you looked at the game "Eclipse Phase" ?
They have "Healing Vats" which are explcitly mentioned as nano-level makers that specialize in fixing injury and disease and such.. and install augments or restructure.

They've also got a thing sort of like wafer jacks, but it's internal, at the base of the skull. It does a continuous backup of personality.. so if one of your friends gets killed, and you can retrieve the memory crystal and take it back with some surrounding tissue, you pop the lump in the Vat and wait 3 days.

It's the retrieving the memory crystal part that means your friend gets a Sanity check for chopping out part of the back of your head....
... but what are friends for, right?

 

[Deldarius]

@mike wightman
You mentioned that a maker could break things down.
How about bodies, living or not? Would a maker be able to break down a body into stock materials, to be used for healing at a later time?

It would make all the dead, bad guys actually useful, asides being lead catchers in the first place.

Organ leggers wouldn't just take a kidney anymore either. Ice on a desert planet has got to be expensive.

Hey, Soylent is People! When you are hungry, protein is protein folks.

 

[Condottiere]

1. Rogue Trooper is a science fiction strip in the British comic 2000 AD, created by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons[1] in 1981.[2] It portrays the adventures of a "Genetic Infantryman" named Rogue and three uploaded minds mounted on his equipment who search for the Traitor General.

2. A Deathstill was a place where the water of a person's dead body could be reclaimed. On Arrakis, water was the most precious commodity. According to Fremen tradition, a man's water belonged to his tribe. As a result, the Fremen developed deathstills as a way of reclaiming the water of their dead, since it belonged to the tribe, and the dead had no further use of it.

3.

 

[aramis]

If they are, I'd think they'd be of unusually high TL. The problem isn't that they'd be unable to replicate living tissue, but that they'd have to provide a surrogate "life support system" for all of the tissues/organs/bodies during the generation and assembly process. It'd work for individual organs, probably, but creating entire complex organisms might be stretching it a bit.

Artificial life forms are present now. Mostly bacteria.
Humalog and humulin are both manufactured with altered microbes, which still self replicate. Maker tech should be able to do the needed editing by TL A, and the support systems needed are also already extant.

Essentially, an artificial womb needs to provide temperature, oxygenatin, key nutrients, and glucose; it needs to accept and filter out waste products. In other words, dialysis and intravenous feeding - both of which are mid maturity by the 90's - Arguably, TL 8 or 9.

In no small irony, it's easier to make an artificial womb and grow a lamb than to create just a hock....

Simply put, biotech is moving faster than 70's Marc predicted, and cyber as well.
Meanwhile, Cyber is far slower than any of the 80s/90s CP authors, including Mike Pondsmith, William Gibson, or Walter Jon Williams, predicted.

---

The world's first artificial womb for humans

Doctors in the Netherlands say they are within 10 years of creating a 'second' womb for premature babies.

www.bbc.com

 

[Grav_Moped]

In no small irony, it's easier to make an artificial womb and grow a lamb than to create just a hock....

That's sort of what I was getting at originally. It's not really a "maker device" (3D printer) except in the black-box sense (input raw materials, output a living organism).

 

[mike wightman]

The analagy between a 3D printer and a maker is an oversimplification and can only stretch so far.

There is a lot more to a maker than a big box and 3D printer...

 

[whartung]

There is a lot more to a maker than a big box and 3D printer...

Does a "maker" imply an assembly component? If I press the "Gun" button on the maker, do I get an ACR out the slot, or a bin of parts?

 

[mike wightman]

You get all the parts, assembled into the gun if that is what you want, or the components so you can hand finish each piece before final assembly. If your maker has the expert gunsmith program then it can likely produce a gun that you would swear was hand built by an expert gunsmith. A basic gunsmith program may only produce a mil spec...

 

[kilemall]

It would make more sense for shipboard makers be parts only assembly required.

 

[mike wightman]

Then they are no better than what we have today. The point of a maker is to manufacture the finished article just as it is constructed by the T5 design sequence. I/we first got the idea during the T5 playtest when my players asked where the makers are on their ship. I had been going on for a couple of weeks about makers - the design sequence - and a couple of them thought they were an actual manufacturing device (that's youth for you). I communicated this on these boards (the link is broken) and had a couple of emails with Don about it.

So if you want parts it will make the parts, but it is fully capable of producing the assembled gun thanks to gravitics, sonic "tractor beams" and robotic manipulators.

 

[kilemall]

Then they are no better than what we have today. The point of a maker is to manufacture the finished article just as it is constructed by the T5 design sequence. I/we first got the idea during the T5 playtest when my players asked where the makers are on their ship. I had been going on for a couple of weeks about makers - the design sequence - and a couple of them thought they were an actual manufacturing device (that's youth for you). I communicated this on these boards (the link is broken) and had a couple of emails with Don about it.

So if you want parts it will make the parts, but it is fully capable of producing the assembled gun thanks to gravitics, sonic "tractor beams" and robotic manipulators.

The manipulators themselves may require less volume but you are still talking dedicating volume you don’t have in smaller ships to the raw materials, parts housing and assembling processes.

Maybe volume you can afford for smaller items like guns and other handhelds, collapsibles like vacc suit and armor so ships locker equipment is handled, but it starts getting ugly for vehicles on up.

 

[mike wightman]

Yup, I treat the ship's maker as a ship's locker, it is incapable of making whole vehicles (but could construct replacement parts for a vehicle or the ship itself).

Makers on ACS are limited in size and therefore what they can "make". It is still more efficient to have a maker and a stock of raw materials than all the spare parts you may need during a month. Will there be limitations? Yes - the manufacture of chips and the like means that it is more efficient to carry a stock of spare chips, and there may be a shortage of a critical element - which may involve an adventure or two to go and source it.

Vehicle makers and up are large fabrication makers and thus will not fit on an ACS - usually. You could construct a vehicle maker in the 1000t hold of a bulk carrier for example.

 

[kilemall]

Hmm, maybe 2 tons of the 20 ton bridge is ships locker maker related?

1 dton for the actual locker, 1 dton of maker, 1 cubic meter of which is assembly, 1/2 of cubic meters are maker and the remainder are stocks.

Maker resources consumed are 50% cost over commercially consumed product as it has to be very specific specs. Cr1000 gun costs Cr1500 in resources. Running low on resources makes it more likely an item is not possible. Full resource bins cost Cr120000, if resources fall below Cr60000 start rolling 1d6, must roll at resource amount or below rounded down Cr10000 per pip. So Cr55000 left, must be 5 or below, Cr20000 2 or below, etc. Maintenance of this portion of the bridge means in part restocking of Cr5000 of resources per year during the normal refit, any more has to be made up out of the ship’s budget.

This makes ACS makers approximately MCr1 for CT type bridges, a mandated safety item, but not a magic bag of holding/personal factory.

Economics and space carve out probably works for engineering makers too, 10% of the drive space.

 

[Krikkitone]

Limitations for makers I see
Materials needed
Time needed
Size v capabilities

As mentioned something that could “spit out a gravcraft” is going to be massive. However it would also take a while, and need lots of specialized raw materials.

To solve the raw materials problem
1. Stock ~ 10,000,000 different alloys/mixtures suitable for maker use
2. have a massive maker capable of refining new materals and making new alloys/mixtures
3. have your part made of inferior materials (but “good enough” until you get into port and get a proper part made to replace it)

3 sounds like the preferred for shipboard makers

Finally there is the time. The more complex, larger, assembled, more advanced material, etc. the part, the more time it will take. Admittedly, as GM it should be “speed of game” but I’d say a maker couldn’t make more than ~1-5% of its own cost of parts in a week. (so 1 Mcr maker can make a 50 kcr part in 1-5 weeks…at a high raw material cost)

 

[Baroun Tardis]

I was just playing with the T5 gunmaker, and there's naught in the rules for ammunition.
Then this thread came to mind....
I think I know why: when you buy a gun, it includes a data file with the information on making the appropriate ammo and magazines. Ammo comes from the ship's maker, and we avoid bookkeeping issues (other than ready or carried ammo if you're running a game where it matters. )

 

[kilemall]

I don’t know that weeks is a functional rate. A Ship’s Locker maker that needs to make a vacc suit while the leak is not patched isn’t going to be of use. But in the other hand you don’t want to give players a air/raft spitting genie.

Tying it to your good enough/breaks point, probably should be a baseline for full replacement, then reduced times for higher chances of breakage during continuous/stressed uses.

 

[Grav_Moped]

One nice thing that the Maker concept solves is the mystery of how a tramp trader's engineering crew can "duct tape and bailing wire" patch up very-high-tech systems that really ought to need more than literal duct tape and bailing wire to fix.