Questionable Questing

Persimmon

Did you encounter possinilities of threats we can't handle with just commandoes? Also, do you think our Equatorial colony can have a useful growing season with greenhouses? They seem alot more resource efficient if the climate is warm enough.

inverted_helix

Keep in mind that this is only vaguely inspired by Frostpunk, we can't take things from the game too closely. In Frostpunk you don't encounter any military threats *at all*. The weather is just too bad for any army to move. You pretty much only need something along the lines of a police force to deal with internal unrest. There are no true military units.

inverted_helix

We don't have any equatorial colony. I think greenhouses will require a lot of space and a lot of glass compared to Pincertech requiring a lot of rare materials and technical knowhow.

Persimmon

https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/sole-survivors-steampunk-survival-horror.7549/page-4#post-1922700

Northern Chile, near equator, with copper mine and airship dock.

Given A) Pincertech requires lots of coal burning and B) Morganville seems to be the only colony with tons of coal it might worth building some greenhouses ahere plausible.

inverted_helix

Honestly not sure that I'd really call it equatorial. It's at the closest 19 degrees south of the equator.

Though another potential issue is extreme lack of water there. The Frost probably won't help with that because the rain shadow issues, so you'd need to bring in a ton of water for agriculture.

inverted_helix

I'm not sure any colony without a lot of coal for heating will survive anyway.

Persimmon

Greenhouses can recycle most of the water given off by plants, but yes, any agriculture would result in needing net water inputs.

Hmm, it might not be viable as a colony site then. I also wonder why we have the Mississippi site.

At least a hypothetical New Mexico Radium mine could be energy sufficient if coal deliveries were interrupted.

inverted_helix

If we start up more colonies I really do think a very close to the equator coastal colony might be able to get away with minimal heating and greenhouse driven agriculture. We could find a location that could supply one of the minerals we need that way.

Persimmon

I just looked at a map, and Chile is not at all close to the equator! It might be a typo from Shaper.

But yes, greenhouses do not require electircally activated steam or incandescent lighting, so coal burning can be minimized if insolation is sufficient.

Also... How would we even deliver the coal?

Persimmon

So an 100mph airship would take about 2 days to reach northern Chile from West Virgini, and can haul 20 tons.

The question is then how much of a fuel fraction of does the airship need to perform such transport at such speeds, and what the reliability (and hence uptime vs maintenance downtime ratio) of our airship fleet is expected to be.

inverted_helix

It's why I figured that we can only effectively build colonies at locations that coal can be mined, or equatorial enough to get away without much heating.

And yes Chile isn't that close to the equator, that's why I didn't count any of our colonies as equatorial.

inverted_helix

Also I have this odd thought that "electrically activated steam" is actually a cool mist humidifier. Because electricity directly in water just produces hydrogen and oxygen. Granted this is basically physics defying tinkertech so it doesn't really need an explanation that works with our physics.

I'm just thinking that it's might just be aeroponics.

Persimmon

Well, he said its plausible to run a single colony on the output of a Radium mine, but given it's extreme rarity and expense we should supply that colony with Coal and have them only use radium if a storm cuts off shipments of coal for extended periods.

Persimmon

Do you mind if I let Shaper know Chile isn't actually very close to the equator?

inverted_helix

I suspect he meant it more vaguely anyway.

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Lee_Ranch_mine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grants,_New_Mexico

An enormous coal mine only about 30 miles from a uranium/radium deposit. That sort of distance we could probably keep a train running over.

Though not sure if the uranium deposit is known yet or not, wouldn't be in our timeline, but radium is used earlier here.

inverted_helix

More generally the grant belt of uranium deposits comes quite close to the San Juan coal basin. So if you're interested in proximity rather than being able to produce millions of tons a year of coal, you can probably get them even closer.

Persimmon

Uwah. Thank you for the research! That's a really great find!

Persimmon

Any thoughts on how Sato is powering his automata?

inverted_helix

I figured it was just a small steam engine because there would have probably been comment if they found the power system unusual instead of just the brain.

Persimmon

Shaper did say it was impossible to power a 2 ton power armor with a steam engine, because the minimum useful size is much larger...