The Trouble with Tarnow

[sHaka]

Hey,

Leafing through my newly acquired copy of 'Mindwerks' last night, it suddenly hit me that there's something a miss with the material on Tarnow. Don't get me wrong, I like the whole corrupting magic artefact thang (**cough** Ilsidur's Bane ** cough ) but someone seems to have gotten their maths wrong. How could King Peter possibly have managed to whip round the entire kingdom on a mission to transmute SDC into MDC - i'm assuming he's the only guy who uses the crystal's powers and is quite protective of it - there just aren't enough hours in the day, plus the guy has a kingdom to run. More importantly, the crystal can only transmutate 2 tonnes per day.
I appreciate that after several years, this power triples, but still, that ust doesn't account for the 9000 + Stingray suits of armour (which looks v. cool BTW), thousands of Sea Star suits and their other vehicles, not mentioning thier MDC armour, weapons and conventional modes of transport.
I really like the whole Tarnow concept though (wish ENgland had been handled as well) as so i'm just gonna have to up the crystals power to something like 200 tonnes daily, or even more. Still doesn't explain how the king can get round all the weapons factories and other industrial centres just to make MDC material. Anyone have any decent suggestions to side-step these issues?

[Mike Taylor]

I really didn't worry about it all that much, but then my group didn't do any traveling in that part of the world. Their only contact with Tarnow Kingdom equipment was via trade or the odd adventurer from that part of the world. I'm afraid that you'll find a lot of things that don't quite add up in the Rifts setting even beyond Central Europe.

[Svartalf]

Interesting... well, if you're of a mind, just think that, at the time the Tarnow data in Mindwerks were compiled, he's had the crystal for 12 years, 6 of which are at the rate of 6 metric tonnes per day. And I always assumed that the daily Transmuting of the metals was an important part of his kingly duties, actually more important than most state running tasks, because this is one he just cannot/certainly won't delegate, and one which is vital for the survival of the kingdom, so nothing less than a trip abroad would exempt him from it (and maybe they would give him an honour guard of untransmuted PA and the like, just so he can do it on them in the course of the trip)

[Shaved Monkey]

I remember reading in the description of Tarnow that not all components of the armours and power armours were made of transmuted material. How much I don't know, but considering that the transmuted material would be lighter than the equilivant hi-tech MDC material, the proportion might be small enough that 2 tonnes a day is sufficient.

[R Ditto]

I agree that not everything used in the various designs has to be transmuted.

For actual mass of things, I would guess that less than half of something's weight would actually be made of transmuted materials, mainly the internal structure and the armor, since that's where most of the material strength would be likely needed. My guess is that 10-25% of the weight would be transmuted, maybe up to 40% for heavily armored things

Another possibility for iron might be to transmute it and then use it to create MDC steel somehow. If I'm not mistaken, aluminium is common in many places (like from Bauxite mines, IIRC), and it's light. (about 1/3rd the weight of steel, I think...)

As to how all that metal is transmuted, it's rather simple.
My guess is they simply drive a fancy looking cargo truck by every morning with carefully weighed load of already processed/refined metals pre-formed into neatly stacked/packed bars/ingots/rolls/sheets. The materials get transmuted, the truck drives off to the factories where the materials finally get molded/shaped/forged into their final forms, and the king has the rest of the day is available for other things.

As for total tonnage... 6 years at 2 tons per day, which is over 4,000 tons, and 3 years at 6 tons per day comes out at over 6,000 tons.

Another factor is SDC metals/alloys aren't that "weak" in Rifts.
Examples.
A tank (40-60 tons, armor plate steel around 1940's to 1970's?) has around 1,000-1,200 SDC.
A vehicle with heavy vehicle armor (2.5 tons, N&SS, HU2ed, year 1980-2,000?) has 1,400 SDC.
The cheap pile of junk discount death trap, er, Chipwell Warmonger is just 500 pounds but has 4,000 SDC.

Goes to show that an extra 100 years of metallurgy advancement can manage to keep the SDC alloys reliable still. That means it might be possible to make a vehicle structure of mostly high strength SDC alloys (or highly refined/purified metals) and just use the transmuted stuff in the armor only.