To: 
From: "Steve Oostrom" 
Reply-To: trekcreative{at}yahoogroups.com

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>This is a huge can o' worms, Monica. With this one you're asking people
for all of their different ideas about how replicators work and what is and
isn't an appropriate use for them.

>My opinion is as follows.  This is how I run these things in my stories
and RPG campaigns.  I don't expect this to be especially binding.  Just
some ideas I toss out, for you to examine and adopt or bypass as you will.

Well, here are my ideas and responses.

>My assumptions are these

>A>  Replicators as ubiquitous appliances are relatively new. Many
    current character's parent or grand parents will recall a time when
    Replicators were huge machines that occupied whole starship decks
    and were rarely seen outside Starfleet.

This is generally true.  Replicators as a means to produce everyday product= s were
more valuable in those locations were getting everyday products or producin= g them
by conventional means was more difficult than using these machines.  Thus, = they
appeared on starships, new colonies, starbases and the like.

B>  Replicators cost energy.  In an economy as materially rich as the
    Federation's the real limitation is how much energy a society can
    generate, and how much each citizen has available to him.  Money as
    a representation of gold or buying power is useless.  I assume the
    Federation Credits are measures of each character's personal share
    of society's energy production.

And on starships, energy production is virtualy unlimited.  In Steve-Trek
a= nyway, energy
is at a surplus when the ship is at warp and they have to somehow get rid
o= f it.  Ultimately,
the only expense in a replicator is energy.

>  Each use of a replicator to create a new object will cost some of a
    character's allowance/supply/personal worth of energy credits.

On a planet, this might be true.  Each person gets a certain allotment of
e= nergy to use
as he or she sees fit, and running the home replicator would cost energy. 
= The ultimate
outcome of course would be that all products would come from a replcator,
a= nd the only
real economy would be developing new and different programs that people can=
 use to
produce stuff that simply cannot be made the conventional way.

>C>  We rarely see people on a starship change clothes.  They will wear
    very much the same clothing for years on end, or at least very
    different outfits.  However these same people will replicate
    costumes for the holodeck, and gifts and doo-dads at the drop of a
    hat.  Ergo,  the clothing must not *need* to be changed as often.

Advanced dirt-repelling and odor-eliminating fibres, no doubt.


>D>  I assume that sonic showers are older technology, well developed by
    TOS times.  I assume that besides having a  shower shaped tube for
    washing people that Sonic showers can also clean clothing or other
    objects placed inside of it.

Or special machines using the same technology can be used.


>E>  Jay uses too many bullet points

That's an established fact that nobody on trekcreative will dispute.

>F> I also assume that a replicator pass (scan object.  Compare object to
   original template. remove everything that is not part of the original
   template)  can easily clean clothing.

This is one function of the replicator, and ties in with the transporter te= chnology
that can remove objects from people being transported.  I see this as a
ver= y logical
use of replicator technology.  Similarily, this approach can be used to rem= ove
impurities from the water or air supply on a starship.

>G>  I assume that most 24th century clothing is made from super-science
    material that doesn't wear the same as old fashioned stuff, and can
    take endless trips through sonic showers or through replicator
    cleanings.  If there are normal clothes (Cotton denim blue jeans or
    cotton t-shirts)  I assume that a sonic cleaning will wear them out.
    Although how seriously it does this compared to a  20th century
    washing machine,  I couldn't say)

I would think that there would be a mixture of fibres, from the
old-fashion= ed cotton to
twenty-fourth century technology.  The one advantage of replicators is that=
 a person
can have a detailed scan of his body made, to collect many measurements, an= d the
replicator program can take this data and produce perfect clothing, which w= ould fit
right and be comfortable, and would already be "broken in." 
Also, a person=
 can have
unlimited fashion choices.  I don't think that this would show any sign of
= excessive
behavior in people.  Already, we have certain things that we can use in unl= imited
quantities (like songs on the radio, books to read) compared to centuries a= go when
the technology like radios and printing presses did not exist.  Nobody thin= ks we're
excessive if we listen to a wide variety of music or a read a lot of books.=
  It would be
the same with clothes.  Because all you have are the patterns, and these ca= n be
borrowed, loaned out and even created by the user, you're not piling up a h= efty
supply of clothes.

>H>  I therefore generally assume that 24th century people don't wear
    lots of differen things because they don't want to.  Perhaps an
    issue of what the culture considers appropriate.  a closte full of
    replicated clothing and wearing all sorts of different stuff may be
    viewed as vain, and uselessly flaunting wealth that doesn't matter
    because everyone has it.

As above, I believe that the opposite would result.  Replicators not only
p= roduce items,
but make waste disposal very easy.  In essence, there'd be no waste.  Disca= rded
items would be simply broken down into the original component atoms and sto= red for
future use.  The only expense is energy, and if you're willing to invest
th= e energy, then
you can do this.  People wear a variety of clothes because they can, and be= cause
it doesn't flaunt wealth.

>I>  I assume that in the case of overt wear or damage to clothing that
    it can easily be put into a replicator and rematerized to it's
    orginal template settings Essentially this would be making a new set
    of clothing from the template using the old set as the raw material.
    This would "Cost" the same as a new set of clothing.

On a starship, I basically assume that an average crewmember might keep one=
 uniform
in the closet in case the replicator breaks down, or for whatever reason
th= ey cannot use
it, but in the normal course of the day, the person would get up, go to the=
 replicator
and call up a fresh uniform.  They might throw the previous day's into the
= deconstructor
slot first, or they might've done it the night before.

>J>  I assume that new costumes are easily available and well within the
    personal wealth of all the characters.  I assume that you'd have to
    be a complete hog, like totally out of control before using up too
    many credits in a replicator.

>K>  I read about a concept in a recent James P. Hogan book called
    "Financial Obesity"  The idea that a person's personal supply of
    money is grossly over sized and disdended.  An interesting peace of
    utopian thinking and well within Character for Star Trek.  A person
    who replicates copies of the crown jewels or $10,000  Oscar night
    gowns is considered to be handling society's abundance in an
    immature way, noting a lack of self control.

An interesting idea there.  Maybe there is the kernal of a story idea here.

>> What about on Earth? Does everyone has a "special"
laundry cleaning
> machine that automatically removes all dirt, leaving the clothes clean
> and dry?

>In Jay-Trek replicators as appliances are available but have not
completely penetrated Earthly Society, although it's much more ubiquitous
than out on the planet Podunk on the edge of nowhere.

Colony worlds would strongly use replicators, and with advances in technolo= gy,
they might never move away from it.  An upcoming "Athena" story,
"What Lies Behind," looks at this in more detail, taking the idea
of replicators, limitless energy (and hologrpahic technology) to the
ultimate limit.

>People who don't have a household replicator simply travel down to the
local mall (Imagine a space station's promenade) and use a commercial
replicator.  They clean the clothes they already have in their ubiquitous
Sonic showers.

>If they don't have a sonic shower one can easily imagine that the
Dishwasher works along similar lines and works as a generic house hold
cleaning device.  Such a thing would be much more enviromentally friendly
than soapy "gray water"

True.

>For ease of play  I have come up with a set of general rules for
Replicator useage in my games/stories.  The object is to keep the
replicator from becoming such a Santa Claus machine that the characters
never have to venture far away from it to get a resolution to their
problems.

I have rules on the replicator too, but the fact remains that the replicato= r can be
used to resolve the problem.  The solution is to come up with a story that
doesn't need this kind of resolution.  Stories that can be easily solved
by=
 using
a replicator likely would likely be an event in the Steve-Trek universe
tha= t doesn't
warrant a story.  I don't recall any story that could have come out differe= ntly by
using a replicator.

>1> Replicators are energy hogs, and the first things to be shut off when
   the energy is tight,

In Steve-Trek, this is not necessarily so.  Life support runs on replicator=
 technology,
so the background machinery might still be used, even if the individual ter= minals
are off-line.

2> Replicators can't do alchemy.  If you want a gold chain with a
   diamond pendant, then you must first have the gold and carbon atoms
   available in large enough numbers to make one out of.  Replicators do
   not create matter, they reaarange it in convinient ways.

Partly true.  Molecular replicators can't do alchemy.  Atomic-level
replica= tors can, but
they use far more energy (the difference between maniupating chemical bonds=
 and
manipulating the nucelus of an atom) and are more complex and delicate mach= ines.
Their primary role is not to produce raw materials, but to produce small am= ounts of
very specific elements and isotopes.  Atomic replicators are how elements a= bove 114
on the periodic table are produced.

>2A> With Trek's level of technolgy, the asteroids and comets of the
    Solar system contain enough of every kind of atom to keep every one
    in the whole Federation happy for a thousand years.  Gold isn't
    rare, the question is, did you think you'd need it enough to
    bring a sizable amount with you?

Undoubtedly, there are some raw materials like rare-earth metals that are
n= ot common, but which
might become valuable and would have to be sourced in other star systems. 
= There is also the
question of dilithium, which in Steve-Trek is an alternate form of matter
t= hat can only be replicated
if you already have dilithium in the base-matter tanks.

>3> There are certain things that Replicators can't make.  One of these
   is a delicate computer chips with molecule sized devices on it.
   Since all computers are based on these delicate devices, it takes
   special machinery to make them, and these delicate machines form
   another bottle neck in how much of what is flying around.  You can
   replciate most of a Replicator.  but what you can't do is replicate
   the computer that runs it or stores the object templates in it.

I actually take the opposite approach.  Given that replicators are based on=
 transporter technology,
which has to be, by definition, precise down to the atom, I see replicators=
 are the best means to
produce highly precise devices, nanotechnology and the like.  Jay can have
= his view, of course,
but I prefer mine.

>You can probably think of a few other things.  In Jay-Trek I assume
    that subspace coils of the kinds used in everything from
    communications equipment to warp drives also require special
    techniques to create.

No, anything can be created in the replicator.  Larger items might be
bette= r made using alternate
technologies, but small items can be done in the replicator.

>4>  Jay must have a bullet point replicator

As he proves time and time again, his supply of bullet points is limitless.

>5>  With these in place it's easier (but by no means unheard of)  to
    keep a character armed with a replicator from getting too far ahead
    of the story.

Devise the plot so that the character will never have the need to use the
r= eplicator to get ahead.
It's a great way to supply the background, like the food and drinks in the
= mess hall, but not a
great way to advance the plot.

Steve
The Universe Unbounded.

Visit "Star Trek: Athena" at http://ussathena.iwarp.com


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>This is a huge can o' worms, Monica. With this one you're asking
peoplefor all of their different ideas about how replicators work
and what isand isn't an appropriate use for
them.>My opinion is as follows.  This
is how I run these things in my storiesand RPG
campaigns.  I don't expect this to be especially
binding.  Justsome ideas I toss out, for you to examine
and adopt or bypass as youwill.
Well, here are my ideas and
responses.
>My assumptions are
these>A>  Replicators as
ubiquitous appliances are relatively new.
Many    current character's parent or
grand parents will recall a time
when    Replicators were huge machines
that occupied whole starship decks   
and were rarely seen outside Starfleet.
This is generally true. 
Replicators as a
means to produce everyday products were
more valuable in those locations
were getting
everyday products or producing them
by conventional means was more
difficult than
using
these machines.  Thus, they
appeared on starships, new
colonies, starbases and
the like.
B>  Replicators cost energy. 
In an economy as materially
rich as the    Federation's the real
limitation is how much energy a society
can    generate, and how much each
citizen has available to him.  Money
as    a representation of gold or
buying power is useless.  I assume
the    Federation Credits are measures
of each character's personal share   
of society's energy production.
And on starships, energy
production is virtualy
unlimited.  In Steve-Trek anyway, energy
is at a surplus when the
ship is at warp and
they have to somehow get rid of it.  Ultimately,
the only expense in a replicator is
energy.
>  Each use of a replicator to create
a new object will cost
some of a    character's
allowance/supply/personal worth of energy credits.
On a planet, this might be
true.  Each person
gets a certain allotment of energy to use
as he or she sees fit, and running the home
replicator would cost energy.  The ultimate
outcome of course would be that
all products would
come from a replcator, and the only
real economy would be developing
new and different
programs that people can use to
produce stuff that simply cannot be made the
conventional way.
>C>  We rarely see people on a
starship change
clothes.  They will wear   
very much the same clothing for years on end, or at least
very    different outfits. 
However these same people will
replicate    costumes for the
holodeck, and gifts and doo-dads at the drop of
a    hat.  Ergo, 
the clothing must not *need* to
be changed as often.
Advanced
dirt-repelling and odor-eliminating fibres, no doubt.
 
>D>  I assume that sonic
showers are older technology, well
developed by    TOS times.  I
assume that besides having
a  shower shaped tube for   
washing people that Sonic showers can also clean clothing or
other    objects placed inside of
it.
Or special machines using the same
technology can
be used.
 
>E>  Jay uses too many bullet
points
That's an established fact that nobody on
trekcreative will dispute.
>F> I also assume that a replicator pass
(scan object. 
Compare object to   original template. remove
everything that is not part of the original  
template)  can easily clean clothing.
This is one function of the
replicator, and ties
in
with the transporter technology
that can remove objects from people being
transported.  I see this as a very logical
use of replicator
technology.  Similarily,
this approach can be used to remove
impurities from the water or air supply on a
starship.
>G>  I assume that most 24th
century clothing is made from
super-science    material that doesn't
wear the same as old fashioned stuff, and
can    take endless trips through
sonic showers or through replicator   
cleanings.  If there are normal clothes (Cotton denim blue jeans
or    cotton t-shirts)  I
assume that a sonic cleaning will wear them
out.    Although how seriously it does
this compared to a  20th
century    washing machine, 
I couldn't say)
I would think that there would be
a mixture of
fibres, from the old-fashioned cotton to
twenty-fourth century
technology.  The one
advantage of replicators is that a person
can have a detailed scan of his
body made, to
collect many measurements, and the
replicator program can take this
data and produce
perfect clothing, which would fit
right and be comfortable, and
would already be
"broken in."  Also, a person can have
unlimited fashion
choices.  I don't think
that
this would show any sign of excessive
behavior in people. 
Already, we have certain
things that we can use in unlimited
quantities (like songs on the
radio, books to
read)
compared to centuries ago when
the technology like radios and
printing presses
did
not exist.  Nobody thinks we're
excessive if we listen to a wide
variety of music
or a read a lot of books.  It would be
the same with clothes. 
Because all you have
are the patterns, and these can be
borrowed, loaned out and even
created by the user,
you're not piling up a hefty
supply of
clothes.
>H>  I therefore generally
assume that 24th century people
don't wear    lots of differen things
because they don't want
to.  Perhaps an    issue of
what the culture considers appropriate.  a closte full
of    replicated clothing and wearing
all sorts of different stuff may be   
viewed as vain, and uselessly flaunting wealth that doesn't
matter    because everyone has
it.
As above, I believe that the opposite would
result.  Replicators not only produce items,
but make waste disposal very
easy.  In
essence, there'd be no waste.  Discarded
items would be simply broken down into the
original
component atoms and stored for
future use.  The only
expense is energy, and
if you're willing to invest the energy, then
you can do this.  People
wear a variety of
clothes because they can, and because
it doesn't flaunt
wealth.
>I>  I assume that in the case
of overt wear or damage to
clothing that    it can easily be put
into a replicator and rematerized to
it's    orginal template settings
Essentially this would be making a new
set    of clothing from the template
using the old set as the raw
material.    This would
"Cost" the same as a new set of clothing.
On a starship, I basically assume
that an average
crewmember might keep one uniform
in the closet in case the
replicator breaks down,
or for whatever reason they cannot use
it, but in the normal course of the day, the
person
would get up, go to the replicator
and call up a fresh
uniform.  They might
throw
the previous day's into the deconstructor
slot first, or they might've done
it the night
before.
>J>  I assume that new costumes
are easily available and
well within the    personal wealth of
all the characters.  I assume that you'd have
to    be a complete hog, like totally
out of control before using up too   
many credits in a
replicator.>K>  I
read about a concept in a recent James P. Hogan book
called    "Financial
Obesity"  The idea that a person's personal supply
of    money is grossly over sized and
disdended.  An interesting peace
of    utopian thinking and well within
Character for Star Trek.  A
person    who replicates copies of the
crown jewels or $10,000  Oscar
night    gowns is considered to be
handling society's abundance in an   
immature way, noting a lack of self control.
An interesting idea
there.  Maybe there is
the
kernal of a story idea here.
>> What about on Earth? Does everyone
has a "special" laundry
cleaning> machine that automatically removes all dirt,
leaving the clothes clean> and
dry?>In Jay-Trek replicators as appliances are
available but have notcompletely penetrated Earthly Society,
although it's much moreubiquitous than out on the planet Podunk
on the edge of nowhere.
Colony worlds would strongly use
replicators, and
with advances in technology,
they might never move away from
it.  An
upcoming "Athena" story, "What
Lies Behind," looks at this
in more detail, taking
the idea of replicators,
limitless energy (and hologrpahic
technology) to
the ultimate limit.
>People who don't have a household replicator
simply travel down to
thelocal mall (Imagine a space station's promenade) and use a
commercialreplicator.  They clean the clothes they
already have in theirubiquitous Sonic
showers.>If they don't have a sonic shower one
can easily imagine that theDishwasher works along similar lines
and works as a generic house holdcleaning device.  Such
a thing would be much more enviromentallyfriendly than soapy
"gray water"
True.
>For ease of play  I have come up with
a set of general rules
forReplicator useage in my games/stories.  The object is
to keep thereplicator from becoming such a Santa Claus machine
that the charactersnever have to venture far away from it to get
a resolution to theirproblems.
I have rules on the replicator
too, but the fact
remains that the replicator can be
used to resolve the
problem.  The solution is
to come up with a story that
doesn't need this kind of
resolution. 
Stories
that can be easily solved by using
a replicator likely would likely
be an event in
the
Steve-Trek universe that doesn't
warrant a story.  I don't
recall any story
that could have come out differently by
using a
replicator.
>1> Replicators are energy hogs, and the
first things to be shut
off when   the energy is tight,
In Steve-Trek, this is not
necessarily so. 
Life support runs on replicator technology,
so the background machinery might
still be used,
even if the individual terminals
are
off-line.
2> Replicators can't do alchemy.  If
you want a gold chain
with
a   diamond pendant, then you must first have
the gold and carbon
atoms   available in large enough numbers to
make one out of.  Replicators do   not
create matter, they reaarange it in
convinient ways.
Partly true.  Molecular
replicators can't do
alchemy.  Atomic-level replicators can, but
they use far more energy (the
difference between
maniupating chemical bonds and
manipulating the nucelus of an
atom) and are more
complex and delicate machines.
Their primary role is not to produce raw
materials,
but to produce small amounts of
very specific elements and
isotopes.  Atomic
replicators are how elements above 114
on the periodic table are
produced.
>2A> With Trek's level of technolgy, the
asteroids and comets of
the    Solar system contain enough of
every kind of atom to keep every
one    in the whole Federation happy
for a thousand years.  Gold
isn't    rare, the question is, did
you think you'd need it enough to   
bring a sizable amount with you?
Undoubtedly, there are some raw
materials like
rare-earth metals that are not common, but which
might become valuable and would
have to be sourced
in other star systems.  There is also the
question of dilithium, which in
Steve-Trek is an
alternate form of matter that can only be replicated
if you already have dilithium in
the base-matter
tanks.
>3> There are certain things that
Replicators can't make. 
One of these   is a delicate computer chips
with molecule sized devices on it.   Since all
computers are based on these delicate devices, it
takes   special machinery to make them, and
these delicate machines form   another bottle
neck in how much of what is flying around.  You
can   replciate most of a Replicator. 
but what you can't do is replicate   the
computer that runs it or stores the object templates in
it.
I actually take the opposite
approach.  Given
that replicators are based on transporter technology,
which has to be, by definition,
precise down to
the
atom, I see replicators are the best means to
produce highly precise devices,
nanotechnology and
the like.  Jay can have his view, of course,
but I prefer
mine.
>You can probably think of a few other
things.  In Jay-Trek I
assume    that subspace coils of the
kinds used in everything
from    communications equipment to
warp drives also require special   
techniques to create.
No, anything can be
created in the replicator.  Larger items might be better made
using alternate
technologies, but small items can
be done in the
replicator.
>4>  Jay must have a bullet
point replicator
As he proves time and time again,
his supply of
bullet points is limitless.
>5>  With these in place it's
easier (but by no means
unheard of)  to    keep a
character armed with a replicator from getting too far
ahead    of the
story.Devise the plot so
that the character will
never have the need to use the replicator to get ahead.
It's a great way to supply the
background, like
the
food and drinks in the mess hall, but not a
great way to advance the
plot.
 
Steve
The Universe
Unbounded.
 
Visit "Star Trek: Athena" at http://ussathena.iwarp.com;">http://ussathena.iwarp.comhttp://ussathena.iwarp.com">http://ussathena.iwarp.com;
 



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