Update: Double Checking the DTONS - Asteroid Miner 200DT

UPDATE: (view the gallery here)

In Mneme we try to make the ship fit the displacement tons in its stats. We have to take some liberties because if we made it really modular, the ships would look really different and they wont fit the aesthetic. Still its a pretty big challenge: 

Example the Mining Drone which has a 10DT Bay. Since 30% buffer is needed we had to be really generous with the space. 7DT but of course it needs a lot of space for the umbilical and servicing. So we have to take a bit of liberties. 

Hopefully people will appreciate the design and thought that went into this. We are currently working on creating 3d Printed prototypes of all the ships. As well as 3d Printing instructions. So those who took that risk to support us know that whatever improvement is uploaded into the product is not made separately. With Game in the Brain, we hope to return to the business model where you get a lot of value from the product. 

Update: Asteroid Miner Progress and Mining Drone

 

earlier vversion above. 

1. I cannot be tracked or wheeled since it assumes gravity, and it has to be able to grip the terrain. 
2. Its not a Boring vehicle its like a mobile Drill bit and Vacuum, it will have an umbilical to transfer material from one place to another. It can transfer material from one Mining drone to another. -part of the use is Cutting up an asteroid. 
3. How do you pick up the Powdery Asteroids if there is no Air? Well, I think it's critical that we have a clear intake, and it mechanically moves the materials into its intake and umbilical. 
   

• New Module: Mining Laser. Its funny cause we have Lasers in our manufacturing plant (Fiber Laser), and we've been playing around with the Creality Laser module (just a 5W laser, we learned we needed a 40-100W to create PCBS) and h Tech Ingredients special on lasers
• New module: ORe Processor. like the Fuel processor but for materials and processes at 1DT/hour. Similar stats in Dtons and space. 

• As always this will be a Power Point file that will allow people to edit it, for further customization, imagining - Seth Skarkowsky - buying our stuff and making his tweaks  and since its CC-BY-SA he can easily go into a  lot of detail and not get in trouble. 

Designing the asteroid Miner 200DT

 Constraints: 

1. it should be able to PUSH/TENDER an asteroid (burrowing to get near the center of mass of an asteroid when pushing).  
2. it should be able to Carve Out CHUNKS from a larger asteroid. 
3. it should be JUMP with an asteroid (burrowing to get near the center of mass of an asteroid). 
4. It should be able to alter the asteroid's spin, if any. 
5. It should deflect the trajectory of an asteroid or its chunk - so using a gravity well, it will push an asteroid to alter its course towards the direction it needs. It also will convert the mass of the asteroid into FUEL. 

Reasoning. 

1. The whole asteroid is useful, inspired by Delta-V (Daniel Suarez) and Seveneves (Neil Stephenson). The economics of intrastellar space is a lot of material. 
2. Ships are really more of drives pushing large chunks of material. FUEL - be it chunks of ICE or an asteroid with Volatiles - why do I need precious tonnage enclosing some stable fuels instead of being economical with my resources. 

Features. 

1. Boring Body to have a GRIP on the asteroid and possibly affect its rotation using the nacelle drives. 
2. Nacelle drives, C-rated J and M and Power plants
3. 2- Mining Drones 10DT each with umbilical. 
4. The control center and bridge is modular, and not part of the drill body. It will adjust to allow more of the boring hull into the Asteroid. 
5. 72DT of fuel and it can process the Asteroid for Fuel. 

if you like our work check out our products in DrivethruRPG

Week 4 of 2024, Jan 22. Targets

Trying to think positive and not feel bad about the lack of sales. I want to post when there is an accomplishment, particularly something tangible.  I should promote my wares more, but I want to condition people that I have something relevant to report when I promote. 

1. Uploading the new 300DT ship model to DTRPG. 
1. Prepare the ships for upload and updating the Files. That will take a couple of hours of checking and zip and uploading.  
2. Mneme Space Combat - 
1. Update the Rules for the TENDER rules. Basically a Ship can carry up  Thrust and Jump if their Drives and Power Plant are up to it. These game changing rules are kinda a big deal since it makes ships more modular. Tendering habitat and cargo modules as well as explain how large volumes of material are Jumped into star system.  
2. 200DT Mining Ship Concept. Nicco and I will be working on the 200DT mining ship, designed to push or drag 400DT of asteroid. 
3. STL files of our ships. 
1. Ill be getting some On-the-Job-Trainees from Industrial Design, I hope someone them are interested in a paid side project of helping me convert my ships into STL files. Starting with finishing the Merchant Trader and testing it. Particularly a telescopic mini stand, that will allow some levels of elevation. 
2. I may have to train them in Blender and the workflows in blender. One of my other projects is FreeCAD and developing a process flow to set up FreeCAD and update it. This is a major project which I use the ojts for.  
4. Finding an OJT interested in being hired for my Random Character gen project in Github. I have 5 potential candidates. I will have to teach them the workflow of testing and deploying and then illustrating the workflow of the Javascript in Diagrams.net. That would take a few days (of multi hour sessions). Then they can start improving the character gen. 
1. When I finish the character gen: Random RAW and Step by Step but MNEME (making changes to make it automation friendly). i can proceed to the Mneme Variant Rules v2 where I stream line it and create Blender STL files of combat figs. 
2. Other Softwares. Migrating the Mneme World Generator into Javascript Web. 

Hopefully it becomes a fulfilling week, if i get stuff done. 

Update: the Internal maps of the 300DT Frontier Trader and Merchant Liner Done - Next Revamping the Asteroid Miner

Just excited as we are doing some finishing touches.

So the buyers have access to the Onedrive folder that has the latest and the prototypes Just need to note the Fuel Processors and Scoops.

300DT Frontier Trader editable files models and CC-BY-SA!!!

By Next Week Jan 22 I'll upload the model and the maps to DrivethruRPG (which is already available in the Onedrive Folder you have access to when you buy the book) . 

Now we begin work on the Asteroid Miner... which is not going to be RAW.

It uses a homebrew of Tender Mechanics - basically, your jump drive and fuel determine the amount of DTONS total you can jump or thrust with. So if you are a 200DT ship with a J-Drive and M-Drive C you can jump-1 and thrust-1 with 60DT of fuel. 

So Mining Ships "Tender" Asteroids much bigger than it and moves the WHOLE thing or Breaks up a large chunk to move towards its target destination. Its Mining Drones (increased to 2 from 1 and we will make a Model of it) will process ice and volatiles for fuel and supplies. They will have an umbilical.

So from 86DT of cargo its just 23 and the Mining ship is 88MCr - but this is designed to move stuff bigger than it. 400DT of  siliceous 11,200 Tons of material to be sifted.

The tender system will help explain how red and brown stars are built up to be Jump points for Shorter-ranged ships. As well as how a 400DT system defense boat got there.

GAME MECHANICS IMPLICATIONS: TENDER MECHANICS

Larger Engines and more MODULAR cargo. So afer the Asteroid Miner 200DT is the research Vessel (Merchant Trader 200DT hull with minor tweaks, the way Cargo vessels are converted to research vessels).  

We have a 200-400DT Habitat Ring, we will use Instancing in Blender that allows us to create a "Projection" of the Staterooms and Labs on the ring as you can make objects follow a curve - while the ACTUAL model will be flat so that Referees and Buyers can easily change and Manipulate the Layout of the ring. 

We will include the Habitat and Tender in Mneme World Generator because its a habitat! Its reasonable especially since buyers who made MWG silver are greatly appreciated. If your not into ships well you will be getting a free ship in MWG!  We will later on include the BOSCO after we hit Copper for mneme Space Combat (Remind me or feel free to call me out if I forget).  

OTHER MATTERS. 

Ill be running combat with Particle Beam Weapons mostly to see how effective they are over Beam Lasers.  At 3D6 damage its so much more effective than missiles, I want to test if I should check if I should Half damage at its extreme range (x0.5).  People pay for the product that its tested.  

Sorry for the late update, I only meet with Nicco for progress after my regular work. 

What happened to: 2 Parsecs from Sol

2 Parsecs from sol, was created and I encountered a serious problem for me - How to resolve space encounters. Around this time I discovered the movement rules didn’t exist in the CE SRD and there were many problems with the Encounter mechanics: Particularly range and Threat. 

If Space Combat was too lethal and outcomes forgone (when we measure firepower of the ships against each other) then its important that Players have PREVENTATIVE actions to feel in control and to have some agency in the story. If the Space Combat was a slug fest of attrition - it may give more agency but could be too tediuous and time consuming. So this was what Mneme Space Combat Tried to fix - the thing about it is that it’s not what people complain about except my self. I come from GURPS and i used to a heavily front loaded game, I also like war gaming and I like knowing the odds and I want to do the math to model it. If you know about Tier5 Mech Warrior Player you will find me breaking down combat into usable Heuristics (Like the Alpha of a Mech determines how much Mobility they need to be in a position to generate Opportunities to fire) and if you saw my older Airsoft Blog I did it when it came to Physical Performance and combat as well. I want people to feel like they can see the pattern or have a framework to understand the chaos of combat - for me when the Chaos of Airsoft became Sane and I was able to make sense of shots being fired, their direction, silence, and trying to predict enemy movement - I enjoyed the game more than when I didn’t understand it - even if Airsoft was very chaotic and had too many variables. 

So we made Mneme Space Combat, today around 21 books were sold since October. I had hoped more and that the demand and sales would allow me to hire more: 50 sales would have resulted to 300usd (6usd x 50) and I would have been able to make a down payment for the Freelancers - Students that I’ve taught when I take on OJTS from various schools who I teach about multimedia, programming and or 3d Modeling).  This is a hobby that I love so pretty much 100% of the profit goes back to the business.  Right now, instead of Buying TRPG books, all the money I would have spent buying the latest Mongoose Traveller Product or various other books goes to making this book more valuable. 

So now that Sales have slowed down I was thinking of making 2 Parsecs from Sol sell for 5usd and sale for 2.5usd. The AI revolution happened and we at first thought of making it with Stable Diffusion, but we held of against it. We have a version of the Book that uses AI art. Even Mneme Space Combat has an AI art version. Actually AI made art not matter - to an extent. When anyone can make Beautiful art - it ceased being special - especially the AI made ones. I taught my Industrial Design students Blender and Stable Diffusion and how to use the AI to prototype much faster with the AI and after teaching others to use SD - and I can teach people in GITB to make their own Character art. I used to be an Artist before I became an IT head and i love how AI made art more accessible - its just that what’s the point when the beauty of AI will eclipse all the hard work of an artist who spent hours making it. So I decided we will focus on things the AI has a hard time doing: DEPTH - ships, layouts, and engineering of the worlds and technology. 

I lurk in reddit and see all the AI art and see all the AI avatars and “AI girlfriends” and what can be done with Stable Diffusion. OMG - beauty = AI. beauty is FAKE. Every picture is now AI until I can tell its providence. I use AI in making Characters for our Saturday night games - we would generate Art as we gamed to help the other players visualize with a RTX 3090 24GB vram. I have a civitai account and learned to tell which model is being used but - when you make a book and you have to choose what Hours I will be paying for to make this book - Lets make something the AI can’t do. 

Adventures have lost their luster - I’m just fixing our H20AI and will train it to Referee as well and hope to create a small specialized one that can run off a CPU - basically a choose your own adventure AI. Like the books us Gen Xers grew up with, and in the philippine I could barely afford those books and had to borrow the books of friends. Now the Referee can join the adventure, now the Guys hanging out on the week end to game can have the AI run the adventure and everyone just enjoy hanging out. The AI will document and weave the narrative - posting the session outcomes. 

The output of GITB - as of current - the Mechanics, Models, and the Rules cannot be made by AI. The fluff can be made by AI, of course the overarching world building and demographic and economic and cultural trends will follow a writing style more than analysis - so that still is within the human vision for it. 

How can 2 guys from the Philippines make a great product, and people recognize this is special? What’s funny i’m so open that once I figure it out, I’ll tell everyone and since I’m so niche no one believe it. 

We will be improving the boats and creating the cutters and various other small craft. But far in the future. My break even is about past silver lolz

Converting to Other Blockchains - Vast Distances and Portable Wealth

Block Chain in 4AU or greater! in our Sol solar system, the problem is the distance from Luna or Mars or Jupiter and their corresponding blockchains. As 1 AU is 8 minutes, note that Sol with Neptune and Uranus - Ice giants and Saturn, they may be using different Blockchains per location. Pretty much acting like a currency. So even in Sol we will be having problems of speed of transaction completion. 

Basically what happens is, the problem is the speed by which a record, transaction and account can be verified. The solution is to convert values as you change Blockchain Domains. 

As distances become greater, the time for “the check to clear” takes longer. 

Basically a Blockchain domain is the reach by which the blockchain is reliable. When a transactions will take weeks or months to process, it’s best to convert the funds into a currency of a Blockchain that is closer. This means I will take 1 million credits from my Imperial Account and Transfer it to this Local duchy’s Blockchain, I may lose 2-10% but I dont lose months or weeks waiting for my transactions to go through.  I may have only 980,000 credits in the new block chain. But I need these credits to help me with transactions and conduct my business in that location. 

So we just came from Taiwan in Dec 16-21 and it reminds me of converting my Pesos to NTD, and then converting them back. The rest of our money is back in the philippines and credit cards allowed us access to these funds at the speed of light, but its the CASH - converting PHP to NTD that made me conscious of what would happen if we lost access to the internet and we needed to make monetary transactions. 

In GURPS this would be Finance, in Cepheus Engine this would be Economics or Finance science. and it is a Science, to understand how many Financial systems overlap, interact, and attempting to predict multiple interacting systems: like Biology, Ecology, and Economics.  

In Game Terms - you can just roll to see how much resources you have at your disposal or the Referee can make this a hook and the challenge. You can handwave it, as one of the many factors the PCs are juggling and thats the purpose of the powerful AI in the Ship’s is for.  You can just keep to assuming the PCs draw from a source of funds - but the Referee can arbitrarily say if it is accessible. The constraints become an unending source of adventure hooks.