Armour quality and metals

Thank you and looks like I already voted your post :)

Damn! But also thanks! Hopefully one of these posts or one like it gets some traction. I've linked yours in the comments to my post too.

I liked your topic. More attention for variety is always good.

What is, so far I know, already planed by Keen. So we should have more materials in SE2 anyway.

They could add a few more materials without totally overwhelming everything, especially if they balance it all. Better materials would need more ore types, but it should be balanced such that using one element in only one recipe and only in miniscule quantities is avoided (ie, "dumb down" things like steel just a hair).

Real natural ores do not contain just one metal, but a mixture of different metals and non-metals. Usually one metal is the "main" metal and the others are considered waste. However, this is only how it works on Earth, where other materials can be obtained more economically from other sources. In a space environment with high transportation costs and severely limited resources, it is more profitable to obtain "everything usable" in a single processing cycle, separating multiple materials at once when processing the ore, and minimizing waste.

This should be reflected in the ore processing model, but also in the model of the ore itself in the game world.

For example, we have bauxite, "aluminium ore".

According to the wiki: bauxite is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminum content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mainly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (Al(OH)3), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)) and diaspore (α-AlO(OH)), mixed with the two iron oxides goethite (FeO(OH)) and hematite (Fe2O3), the clay mineral kaolinite (Al2Si2O5(OH)4) and small amounts of anatase (TiO2) and ilmenite (FeTiO3 or FeO-TiO2).

So a bauxite-type ore also contains iron (and lots of iron - at least the same amount as aluminium), titanium, silicon, and, interestingly in space, oxygen and hydrogen. Plus small amounts of gallium - and also germanium, vanadium and other related elements. And in such quantities that it's economically efficient (on Earth!) to reprocess old waste piles from aluminum production and use them as ore to extract these "companion metals, semicondutors and nonmetals".

Plus gold and platinum deposits (bonanza type) are rare occurrences in bauxite deposits.

This should be somehow reasonably incorporated in the game.

For example, an ore is defined by its composition - bauxite is an example (I don't know the exact ratios of each component, for simplicity let's calculate a 1:1 ratio of the number of molecules for all):

Al(OH)3 = 27 + 3x16 + 3x1

γ-AlO(OH) = 27 + 2x16 + 1

α-AlO(OH) = 27 + 2x16 + 1

FeO(OH) = 56 + 2x16 + 1

Fe2O3 = 2x56 + 3x16

Al2Si2O5(OH)4) = 2x27 + 2x28 + 9x16 + 4x1

TiO2 = 48 + 2x16

FeTiO3 or FeO·TiO2 = 56 + 48 + 3x16

then:

Al = 5x27 = 135 (kg)

Fe = 4x56 = 224 (kg)

Ti = 2x48 = 96 (kg)

Si = 2x28 = 56 (kg)

O = 26x16 = 416 (kg)

H = 10x1 = 10 (kg)

Total = 937 (kg)

So from "one tonne" of bauxite we get the quantities of elements listed above when processed "almost perfectly" in a perfect refinery.

The remaining 63 kg (to a full tonne) can be declared to be a "precious metal ore" concentrate containing gallium, vanadium and other metals, with quartz and oxygen.

A similar calculation should be made for each extant "ore" or rock type.

The only problem is that having so many elements in one are completely disrupts the "rarity" balance currently in the game while also largely removing a need to find multiple ones in the first place. Expanding each one to have a primary and secondary (maybe a tertiary in high efficiency refineries) element output could be a good balance.

The issue of "scarcity" of raw materials is essentially artificial. In space, in the solar system, and in the earth / planetary crust, there is "adequate" supply of technical metals. There is no real reason why platinum or gold, for example, would be needed to make a nuclear reactor.

This is what the abundance of elements in the Earth's crust looks like, normalized to a million silicon atoms. The missing elements are noble gases.

Iron and some metals are relatively less abundant in the Earth's crust than in the solar system - because they were pulled into the Earth's core when the Earth formed.

This is what the abundance of elements in the solar system looks like, normalized to a million silicon atoms. This is also the same for the occurrence of elements in the present universe (anywhere), because the processes of nucleogenesis in a supernova explosion are virtually the same everywhere in the universe.

Hydrogen and carbon are significantly more abundant than in the Earth's crust because the large gas planets and especially the Sun are composed of hydrogen and methane CH4.

I also wrote about this theme in https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/45245-survival-refined

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/45245-survival-refined#comment-90311

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/45245-survival-refined#comment-90321

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/45245-survival-refined#comment-90323

Yes thank you Semtex. Also moon and asteroid regolith roughly contains oxygen 42%, Silicon 21%, iron 10%, calcium 8%, aluminium 7%, magnesium 7%, other 5%. Moon and asteroid top layer should be regolith instead of rock.

There's picture in wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regolith

It would be good if there were two kinds of regolith:

One classical, like on the Moon, made of material that has undergone melting and partial separation in the formation of planets, moons or large asteroids. And was subsequently crushed into rocks, fragments, sand and dust. The composition should be similar to that of the Earth's crust. There are deposits of ores in it, or places with elevated concentrations of certain elements.

The second type I would call "primordial" - it would have a composition close to that of the "solar system" as a whole, containing unmelted, unseparated "primordial" material, including some not very large amount of organic matter (something like the material of comets and similar bodies from the edges of the solar system). There would be no ore deposits in the primordial bodies, at most only ice deposits. However, the material would contain "all the elements" in an undifferentiated state... The material is more in the nature of sand, or "sandstones and duststones" cemented by water and organic matter.

Interesting details can be seen in the diagram of the composition of the Earth's crust and solar system:

As the primordial material is remelted and separated during the formation of planets (as objects in hydrostatic equilibrium formed by gravity), the elements are separated according to three main groups:

Lithophile elements readily combine with O2 to form the minerals of the rock mantle and planetary crust (Li, Be, B, C, O, F, Na, Mg, Al, Si, P, Cl, K, Ca, Sc, Ti, Cr, Mn, Ra, Ac, Th, Pa, U).

The siderophile elements are named after meteoric iron and form the iron core of the planet, either readily forming alloys and compounds with iron (Fe, C, Cr, Co, Ni, Mo...) or not forming oxides or other compounds (Ru, Rh, Pd, Re, Os, Ir, Pt).

Chalcophile elements readily associate with sulphur, selenium and tellurium (S, Cu, Zn, Ga, Ge, As, Se, Ag, Cd, In, Sn, Sb, Te, Au, Hg, Tl, Pb, Bi, Po) and are not represented by any distinct geological layer. They occur in the planetary crust and mantle.

The great "scarcity" of carbon and nitrogen in the Earth's crust is also due to the fact that in the solar system they accumulate mainly in the large gaseous planets in the form of methane and ammonia, and to a lesser extent have contributed to the formation of the inner "rocky" planets. This means that their separation occurred before the formation of the rocky planets began.

This distribution of elements is likely to be the same everywhere in the Universe, i.e., with minor variations, the same on all planets and moons, including water and ice moons such as Europa, Titan and Triton, which are covered with water or methane ice.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

I just found that regolith is actually coming in to the game :)