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Technology Help Thread

Drakon

Drakon

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I just noticed that there is no real thread for people who want to discuss and get help for technology and similar topics for their fan fictions.

In any case, I wanted to start this off with a simple question regarding the large airships that seem to feature in the anime movies.

What would make sense for them as a power source?

My fan fiction had one airship powered by a nuclear fusion reactor...which was the only power source that I could think of that had enough output for a given amount of fuel.

The other idea I played with was a COGAS (combined gas [turbine] and steam) system that paired 3 gas turbines and 1 steam turbine that used waste heat to boil water. The system in question burned hydrogen fuel but now I am wondering if there is enough room in the airship to store that much fuel.
 
I think it's very unneeded to try to explain things in Pokémon. Random stuff can be a power source, and even ones that wouldn't work in real life. Fans propelling wind downwards so the aircraft can rise up make perfect sense in the Pokémon world.
 
I suggest that you keep it vague so that the reader can speculate on how it works.
 
I agree with Kyuujux. Especially if your fic is about Pokemon, I don't think you need to sweat that stuff.
 
Unless the intended fanfic has some touches of science fiction, has a technology-related Aesop, and/or is the portrayal of reality through the eyes of a scientist (or someone who should know about technology), there's little reason to worry about this.

Either way, I personally don't care much about energy or non-Pokemon transportation, but I care a lot over their communication systems, being an IT chick: Pokedexes, Pokegears, the PC Storage... Why? Because that can't happen by magic, according to my own experience with real world communication technology, so no A Wizard Did It :p
 
Kayi-chan said:
Either way, I personally don't care much about energy or non-Pokemon transportation, but I care a lot over their communication systems, being an IT chick: Pokedexes, Pokegears, the PC Storage... Why? Because that can't happen by magic, according to my own experience with real world communication technology, so no A Wizard Did It :p
Click to expand...

Same here, except without the IT status. I couldn't care a lick for the physics, but the electronics have to be immaculate.
 
You make a good point but I think I will keep "techno-porn" as a signature of my writing style.
 
Kayi-chan said:
That's still quite a mean thing to say, even if joking :sweat:



Please, you two, contribute to the topic for real.
Click to expand...

It was a reference to a TV show. I believe it was about cartoon character going on trial.
 
In my fic, I adapt the concept of Capsules that can change into various machines or devices or even a house from Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball series. I don't explain the mechanics as it would be impossible to do so and I don't want to make up some bogus story behind it. So I allow the reader to just accept it without question or speculate.
 
I love trying to figure out the technology, especially on the airships.

And it just so happens that my fic Obsession will have to at least passingly mention some of the details of the Hikoukyuu, since it'll cover the construction of the ship. My personal thought now is gravity dampeners, plus a series of propellers for silent flight. I know it's canon that the propellers were part of his "aesthetics", so my guess is that that means they weren't part of the original designer's work (in-universe, of course). So I have to consider what the original work would look like as well.

Most of it will be for offhand references, in the vein of just mentioning things (I've done that with original regions too and will sometimes agonize over what to call them), but I have to have it figured out at least partway. Obviously I'm not going to work out exactly how a "gravity dampener" would work, but I have to at least think of what things are called and a vague idea of what some of the stuff does.

...and how much it would cost. Right now the figure I'm looking at is something like what I worked out to be five hundred million dollars, which would make it, in real world terms, the most expensive house in the world.
 
You know, the Hikokyu is described as the size of a small city but to me, I would say it is about the size of a large aircraft carrier (lengthwise) and maybe roughly the same width as three.

As for the cost, $500 million is a little on the low side. I am actually looking in the low billions... A real life aircraft carrier costs a few billion bucks.

I never gave much thought to the antigravity technology but I imagined that they would work similar to a maglev train ("traveling wave") but not with magnetic fields.

On a side note, what powers the airship?
 
The way I figure things, the technology is present and relatively commonplace, albiet being used to maximum effect for the Hikoukyuu. Also this is for the stripped-down version, ie, minus the marble floors and capture stuff, and whatever other luxuries may exist that we didn't see in the movie. There's going to be a lot of work done on it after it's built.

But in my ficverse, the ship is stretching more common technologies. An airship factory is central to the storyline, so we get a bit of insight into that as well. But because the technology is there and used frequently, it lowers the price considerably.

Remember, this is the world where you can transport animals through computers, and you can heal those monsters of any injury under the sun by putting them in a machine for a few seconds. They're running at a much higher tech level than we are.

As for power, I'm honestly not sure. But I figure it's "whatever powers the Battle Pyramid, Megarig, J's ship, and Kodai's ship"--ie, all the other obscenely large airships used in conjunction with legendary capture we've seen over the course of the series.
And if a nobody research assistant like Zero can afford a honkin' huge ship, than they must not be in the billions. Unless he has a secret fortune we don't know about.
 
I still think technology should be vague in explanation, if you're not good at going into details.
 
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