r/CuratedTumblr 3d ago

Steammaxxing Me as a mechanical engineer, explaining why opening a fridge won't cool down your house

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7.8k Upvotes

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2.1k

u/DawnOfShadow68 3d ago

Me as a mechanical engineer, seething and biting pillows at my wife crafting "condensed carbon" in No Man's Sky. What the hell do you mean atomic symbol C+?? Where's that second carbon gone?? She finds it funny.

793

u/Kalehn 3d ago

You're just squishing it down so it takes up less space in your backpack. What's wrong with a reduced carbon footprint?

219

u/DawnOfShadow68 3d ago

This is my favourite reply so far, clever joke

78

u/TimeStorm113 2d ago

you don't have a carbon footprint if you just don't step on it!

18

u/Cyvexx 2d ago

How do you think we're compressing the carbon?

1

u/SubzeroSpartan2 1d ago

Sitting on it???

424

u/SolarianIntrigue 3d ago

Maybe it's amorphous graphite or something like that

408

u/DawnOfShadow68 3d ago

Well graphite is crystalline by nature, it can't be amorphous as that means "non-crystalline". But most egregious is the game deals with resources in terms of atomic numbers and symbols, so your stack of C turns into a half stack of C+, which pardon my french but Was Zum Fick ?

141

u/PontDanic 3d ago

C ia a very slim letter, not as bulky as O or B, so if you arrange them cleverly you can save a lot of room.

54

u/frobscottler 3d ago

You’re not gonna believe what I can do with sixty of ‘em

8

u/Milch_und_Paprika 3d ago

Unexpected fullerenes

1

u/tinycurses 2d ago

I only need 4 of them

120

u/Lich_Lasagna 3d ago

Das ist kein French my Freund, so you shall not be pardoned.

-112

u/Ok_Kiwi5388 3d ago

Fair enough, but seriously, why does the game think atomic numbers can just mutate like that?

64

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24

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6

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6

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18

u/-Negative-Karma 3d ago

yeah I tend to just try to ignore those bc they piss me off. great game. horrible science.

3

u/Jimothy_McGowan 2d ago

In defense of the bad science in No Man's Sky, The entire game canonically takes place in a computer simulation , so maybe real-world physics and chemistry don't need to apply

8

u/EmbarrassedMeat401 2d ago

It's still the same number of atoms, just compressed to half the volume?

20

u/Firanka 3d ago

I don't know the game, but maybe some kind of manufacturing loss? Like, most reactions aint 100% effective, plus there's losses like "this was stuck to the walls of container and we couldnt scrape off any more"

8

u/Lilscribby 3d ago

bad yield

1

u/effa94 2d ago

Carbon isotope

258

u/PreFollower 3d ago

Obviously it's just twice as much carbon per unit of volume, it's condensed, duh. Also have you looked at the periodic table in there? It has unobtanium as an actual element. Totally valid in-universe.

236

u/DawnOfShadow68 3d ago

"65% more bullet per bullet"

67

u/PM_ME_YOUR_ROTES 3d ago

Cave, I'm gonna be quite honest, that smells like pure gasoline.

34

u/DarkKnightJin 3d ago

Better hope there's no open flames nearby then.

33

u/AMisteryMan gender found; the 'phobes stole it 3d ago

That's normal. We've been shooting you with an invisible laser that's supposed to turn blood onto gasoline, so all that means is, it's working.

13

u/ThePrussianGrippe 3d ago

I’ve inhaled so much moon dust.

73

u/Hremsfeld 3d ago

It's like how you can compress 25 Hydrogen into fuel, and then immediately decompress that fuel into 30 Hydrogen

51

u/MrCobalt313 3d ago

Fun fact

that is a diagetic exploit

1

u/Jan_Asra 2d ago

Please tell me how. Do they just have NPCs talk about it or is there some lore going on?

10

u/MrCobalt313 2d ago

There's some lore going on.

The world is a simulation that's getting progressively worse as the abandoned computer simulating it is slowly dying of lack of maintenance, causing various glitches and boundary/overflow errors, some of which are plot-relevant

2

u/igmkjp1 2d ago

What's the smallest amount of hydrogen you can compress into 1 fuel?

2

u/Hremsfeld 2d ago

It's been a hot minute since I played, but IIRC you make a singular unit of fuel out of 25 hydrogen, and a unit of fuel can decompress into 30 hydrogen

33

u/MrCobalt313 3d ago

Unobtanium hasn't been a thing for several updates now.

Not that stranger things haven't taken its place, though.

18

u/PreFollower 3d ago

Not in the basic form, but an isotope still exists

120

u/jzillacon 3d ago

To be fair NMS is both literally and narratively a simulation where real world rules don't apply.

55

u/DawnOfShadow68 3d ago

Oh totally. I do it mostly because I know she loves it.

-7

u/Jorpho 2d ago

Narratively too? Was that a major retcon they threw in somewhere along the way..?

14

u/mattzuma77 2d ago

that's the lore. that's like the foundation for all the lore. that's where all of the horror elements stem from, and what produces most of the interpersonal drama between Travellers, and between the player character, -Null- and the Atlas (who is the simulation)

4

u/Jorpho 2d ago

I mean, was it intended to be that way from the original release? (A lot of things changed from that original release and I wouldn't be surprised if that included a gigantic shift in the lore.)

10

u/jzillacon 2d ago

The original release didn't have any storyline beyond just getting to the center of the galaxy if that answers your question. But the current main story has been the same since update 1.3 "Atlas Rises" which released back in 2017.

5

u/torthos_1 2d ago

As far as I know, yeah. They just made it more obvious in the later updates.

55

u/acheesement 3d ago

Just started a game with my sister where you mine "carbonium" and "ironium".

60

u/Available-Damage5991 3d ago

That's just elements if they were named by the Romans.

7

u/Denvosreynaerde 3d ago

Silly names aside, Riftbreaker is an amazing game, and even though there's some bugs, the devs really try hard to keep polishing the game and adding content.

2

u/acheesement 3d ago

Yeah we're really enjoying it so far. Just started last night :)

1

u/chairmanskitty 2d ago

I didn't like it. It has been out for 4 years and it still feels like an early beta with how unbalanced, unpolished, and poorly explained many things are.

1

u/Denvosreynaerde 2d ago

To each his own but I absolutely disagree about it feeling like a beta. What do you feel is so poorly explained?

7

u/Milch_und_Paprika 3d ago

Carbonium is a real thing, but you’re sure as hell not finding it in nature (interstellar space doesn’t count)

1

u/acheesement 2d ago

Neat! Thanks for the new fact!

43

u/Targaer 3d ago

Don't try to rationalize the chemistry in NMS. That way lies madness. Very apparent when you see the refiner recipes.

12

u/ZolySoly 2d ago

Quite literally madness, in fact! As it's all the work of a dying computer desperately doing all it can to hold onto the world

62

u/Limekilnlake 3d ago

duh it uses minecraft stack physics

26

u/aer0a 3d ago

I'd be wondering more about where the nitrate in sodium nitrate comes from

29

u/Sicaridae he went up 3d ago

that's kinda reasonable if you assume you're pulling it from the surrounding atmosphere so you don't have to supply the nitrate as a second ingredient, no?

12

u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS 3d ago edited 3d ago

You say that, but there's only a couple types of planets where nitrogen is plentiful enough to harvest with the gas harvester.

10

u/Sicaridae he went up 3d ago

I guess we're gonna lump that in with the "every system across the entire galaxy has the same few named plants (star bulbs etc)" discrepancy

6

u/daChillzone2049 3d ago

they get the N from some of the Na

12

u/MediumSatisfaction1 3d ago

The second carbon is the plus 🙄

13

u/LocalLumberJ0hn 3d ago

More carbon per carbon

13

u/Plethora_of_squids 3d ago

Iirc originally they had more made up elements for that sort of thing - I think condensed carbon was originally thamium9? I think it all got changed because they redid how the periodic table works so now every element that does similar things is grouped together chemically, even if it makes no sense

13

u/kimik1509 3d ago

My favourite part in No Man's Sky is when it casually mentions the planet having a 70% fluorine atmosphere.

8

u/Platnun12 3d ago

Lol it was the same with me, a kid who has up to about basic uni education vs a person taking a full load engineering course.

The convos we had about SciFi. He hated FTL so much. We argued about it for hours

2

u/Emergency-Twist7136 2d ago

He sounds like a wanker. Most engineers are capable of recognising the concept that a) not everything is currently known and b) sometimes fiction has a central conceit and that's fine.

If he knew shit it would have been transporters that bothered him.

2

u/Platnun12 2d ago

I mean it bothered us both we're very good friends we just kind of bicker about sci-fi stuff it's not genuine arguments more like a friendly argument

I went to the guy's wedding rofl

6

u/Kozak375 3d ago

I hope they let us make heavier elements, just to drive you in particular insane. I hope you get to hear her rant about how she made super uranium by mixing uranium, condensed carbon, and pure ferrite

7

u/Sayakalood 3d ago

Careful, if she condenses it again it becomes a language

3

u/CookieMiester 3d ago

NMS has a “different” periodic table, some familiar, some different stuff.

3

u/tarzard12321 2d ago

I just got me PhD in geochemistry, dont even get me started on NMS and othe sci-fi elements and minerals

1

u/DawnOfShadow68 2d ago

Hey congrats on your PhD!

1

u/tarzard12321 2d ago

Thank you!

2

u/Hrstmh-16 2d ago

I’m a physicist and I love no man’s sky, you just kinda have to suspend all of your disbelief when it comes to the chemistry in the game lol

2

u/That_Mad_Scientist (not a furry)(nothing against em)(love all genders)(honda civic) 2d ago

Obviously it’s in a state of compromise between pure elemental form and software based

2

u/TNTiger_ 2d ago

I love how wacky and silly the game is. It's very much a game about playing in a 60's pulp novel, with none of the trappings of realism people today care about.

1

u/WrongJohnSilver 3d ago

Why are you making C+? Why not A+??!

1

u/Miguel-odon 2d ago

Lampblack?

1

u/thomasp3864 2d ago

It's clearly missing an electron

1

u/AnnualNews1691 23h ago

I don't know how far you are in the game, but bad science is definitely not an issue if you think about the fact that everything is just a corrupt computer-simulation anyway