E=MC² not true in Arcanum?

Isn't it kind of funny how a lil ol metal casing weighing 20 pounds and a small spring weighing 1 pound can be turned into 3 trap springers weighing 100 pounds each?! :smile: I believe it is the same case with spike traps also. Not to mention they take up about 5x as much inventory space. A case could be made for the inventory space, but the incredible weight gain?

On a side note, is it just me or do monsters/npcs know where your traps are and so able to avoid them unless you make a line they HAVE to cross to get to you? Also, is it not possible to use trap springers on doors or chests or did it just happen that the ones I tried to spring were magical?

 

It's so hard to get decent scientific theories to work when there's so many magic users around, the weights you've mentioned are a prime example

 

Troika concentrated more on magick?

 

maybe you use items not listed as requirements like metal shavings? amean it would be a pain if you had to have every thing to make something, think of the guns.
it takes mor than a outoloading chamber and a rifle to make a machinegun

 

well if u think aobut ...troika is pretty much the first company to attempt inserting technology as an equal to magick.... they have nothing to back or compare tech to... for magic they could have looked at other games and base it on that...... but for tech they can't. maybe in a couple of years tech would be more fair and stronger, equal to magick.....
hey at least give troika credit for trying
:grin:
cheers

 

Hehe

Yeah, the weights are messed up, alright. I thought it was pretty amazing that I could turn 20 stones of wine and 10 stones of magnesium into 100 stones of grenades, but I suppose they (they being Troika) have their reasons.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Doyle on 2001-09-23 05:38 ]</font>

 

So grenades are that heavy.

 

Well, several things about this from a technical perspective..

E=mc^2 is an equation involving velocity, mass, and energy. Stone is a measure of weight. Weight and mass are two different things. You could have an object that weighs 180N here on earth, and have a mass of roughly 18kg. Take it to the moon, and it only has a weight of 30N, but it's mass it still 18kg.

Likewise, you could have 10kg of helium gas at standard pressure, and it wouldn't measurably weigh a damned thing here on earth because of it's density and the boyancy of air.

In other words, there is no such thing a "Conservation of Weight". The First Law of Thermodynamics does dictate a Conversation of Mass, not weight.

So, there is a good deal of scientific wiggle room for traps weighing more or less than their components.

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saint_Proverbius on 2001-09-23 09:35 ]</font>

 

While your short treatise on mass, weight and thermodynamics was quite correct, Saint P, your scientific wiggle room doesn't explain how you can make 300 stones worth of traps using 21 stones of metal. :smile:

 

There's 4 possibilities to this one as far as I can see it
1] The existence of magic in the world of Arcanum does strange things to anything technological (see the experiments in the beginning of the manual)
2] Extra unnamed materials are used in the process which come from the character's surroundings and/or posessions (food, lice, etc) - This does not exclude pressurised gasses, and chemical reactions in the process which split molecules (if you split water (heavier than air) with a high enough temperature you get oxygen (same weight as air) and hydrogen (lighter than air) causing the kind of phenomenon you have described
3] Technology in itself is a kind of magic
4] Troika did not want to worry too much about real life science as you would need labs and furnaces and so many other things which would put people off the scientific route

Personally I think its either (1) or (2)

 

When is a stone not a stone?

The stones thing really freaked me out.

I mean, I'm not the sort to bang on about realism in games or anything (I don't wanna have to give up my funky equipment) but I don't understand why Troika bothered using a real weight unit and then making everything weight silly amounts. They may as well have used ounces and assigned a sword a weight of 1 ounce - it would have the same effect on my brain.

I'm British, and we actually use stones as a measurement. I weigh 11 stone. This makes me about the same weight as a couple of springs.

To put it another way, my comparatively puny halfling (8 str) can carry over 50 people of my weight comfortably.

 

Weight

While I could easily imagine a product weighing less than the two ingredients used to create it, I really don't see how the weight could be more than tripled without significant amounts of other ingredients. Since these ingredients aren't required and, in fact, don't exist in the game, I think it's pretty safe to say that the weights are screwed up.

As for al_23's response to my post: Grenades may very well be "that heavy," but the actual weight of grenades is in no way significant to the discussion.

As for Proverbius: Like Calis stated, citing the difference between mass and weight and pointing out that helium can't be easily weighed completely and utterly fails to explain the incredible discrepancies.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Doyle on 2001-09-24 03:55 ]</font>

 

On the surface of earth weight and mass are
consider the same. So one ton of weight on Earth have the same mass of one ton. If you went into space under zero gravity that one ton
will have no weight but still have tha mass of
one ton.

 

Sheriff Fatman,

That whole "stone" thing threw me too -- not that a Yank like me ever actually USES it as a measurement, but I'm aware of the meaning. When I first started with the demo, I was astonished my character could carry such prodigeous weights! I guess Troika just wanted something that sounded "Victorian", and maybe like most folks on this side of the pond they weren't aware that it was a measure still in use.

 

Someone missed the point..

When they chose "stone" as a unit of measure it does not refer to the UK measure of stone. They use it in the literal sense, your character can carry so many stones. It really is that simple.

 

RE : E=MC² not true in Arcanum?

What is really cool is that you can max out your gold and it weigh the same as having a single gold :smile: :smile: :smile: NOTHING

 

Of course it's correct! How do you know those parts weren't filled with helium or some similar gas that's lighter than air? How do you know those parts aren't in a constant quasi-freefall state, making them feel like they weigh less? Maybe those traps oxydize really fast due to the nature of putting two dissimilar alloys together, thus gaining additional mass? Hmmmmmm?

So there!


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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saint_Proverbius on 2001-09-25 21:07 ]</font>