Ring Gate Engine

[Dyllan]

I was looking at ring gates, and it got me thinking... if you had access to a supply of ring gates, but no access to magic to supplement them, what kind of things could you make out of them?

I don't want to use anything requiring advanced science (no steam engines and certainly nothing involving combustion), just things that a creative commoner with a few ranks of knowledge: engineering might think up.

First thing I thought of is the sand engine:

You take two ring gates, put them inside what is essentially a large hourglass, and add paddle wheels which are driven by the falling sand. You add a mechanism to open and close the hole in the hourglass, to adjust the speed that the sand falls (or stop it entirely). And then you connect whatever you want to run to the spokes of the paddle wheels. You could make a horseless carriage, or run a mill, or, I'm not sure what else.

Any other ideas on what you could make out of them (or what you could power with the sand engine)?

[Emperor Tippy]

KKV's are the best abuse in that case.

With real world physics and a few other tricks you can get RKKV's.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Easily portable cannons. Set up one gate on the ground and the other gate hanging over it so objects fall continuously. Throw in a heavy object wait for it to reach terminal velocity. Flip the top ring dowager your target and watch the cannon ball fly.

Wait, I forget they have a daily weight limit. All things I can think of have things falling through them endlessly till they reach a desired velocity

[The Underlord]

A portal gun? Dont know what they actually are but they sound a lot like portals.

[Dyllan]

KKV's are the best abuse in that case.

With real world physics and a few other tricks you can get RKKV's.

Excuse my ignorance, but what does KKV stand for?

I expect I know what it is, but I don't recognize the abbreviation.

[Darrin]

Excuse my ignorance, but what does KKV stand for?


KKV = Kinetic Kill Vehicle.
RKKV = Relativistic Kinetic Kill Vehicle.
RKV = Ruby Knight Vindicator, which can also be synonymous with Relativistic Kill Vehicle if you add enough Nightsticks to Divine Impetus/Recovery.

[jseah]

See also:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12155641&postcount=20
Ring gates are near the bottom of the post.

And later in the thread there are diagrams as well.

[Little Brother]

I've always found Decanters of Endless Water to be the most useful. Infinite power supply, power for a space vehicle, or at least a plane, and so on.

My favorite use of a ring gate? Using it to make a crossbow function like that one gun from DS9, the one that teleports bullets. While being an elf.:smalltongue:

[Chess435]

I've always found Decanters of Endless Water to be the most useful. Infinite power supply, power for a space vehicle, or at least a plane, and so on.

My favorite use of a ring gate? Using it to make a crossbow function like that one gun from DS9, the one that teleports bullets. While being an elf.:smalltongue:

What do you do with all of your water once it's fueled your engine? :smallconfused::smalltongue:

[MesiDoomstalker]

What do you do with all of your water once it's fueled your engine? :smallconfused::smalltongue:

Permanent 1-way Gate to the Elemental Plane of Water. Research a spell that does exactly that. It shouldn't go higher than 9th, I'd personally put it as 7th if a player asked me as a DM to do this.

[Little Brother]

What do you do with all of your water once it's fueled your engine? :smallconfused::smalltongue:Set it on Geyser, use it as a jet. Stick a couple dozen on the back per thruster, call it good.

Not as fun as Far Shot(I believe it's called)+Telescope=Faster than light travel. Aim ten feet above the ground of whatever planet you're throwing the container at, you can miss by up to ten feet, congrats, you're 5-15 feet above the surface of another planet. Or the using Far Shot with mirrors to travel anywhere on the planet.

[Fax Celestis]

You need two sets of ring gates. Put one end of one in the Elemental Plane of Fire, and one end of one in the Elemental Plane of Water. Put these together for infinite steam. Now you can have steam powered stuff. Victorianamagipunk!

[Keld Denar]

You take two ring gates, put them inside what is essentially a large hourglass, and add paddle wheels which are driven by the falling sand. You add a mechanism to open and close the hole in the hourglass, to adjust the speed that the sand falls (or stop it entirely). And then you connect whatever you want to run to the spokes of the paddle wheels. You could make a horseless carriage, or run a mill, or, I'm not sure what else.

You would need either some sort of gear reduction mechanism, or a REALLY big "engine". The torque you'd get from such a device would be almost nil, even with a massive flywheel, especially compared to the weight of the vehicle required to push it.

You'd probably have to make the gears out of metal, as wooden ones probably wouldn't withstand the stress and would shear off at the teeth. You'd probably also need steel shafts, or at least steel reenforced wooden shafts to keep them from warping due to the extensive torque applied across a smallish cross sectional area.

That would require some pretty extensive foundry work or a well worded Fabricate spell.

Also, you'd probably have better luck with water over sand...or better yet, some kind of heavy oil. You need high mass and low friction to get the best efficiceny out of your transfer. Sand isn't dense enough (too much air), and the coefficient of friction is MUCH too high.

/engineer'd

[Qwertystop]

Easily portable cannons. Set up one gate on the ground and the other gate hanging over it so objects fall continuously. Throw in a heavy object wait for it to reach terminal velocity. Flip the top ring dowager your target and watch the cannon ball fly.

Wait, I forget they have a daily weight limit. All things I can think of have things falling through them endlessly till they reach a desired velocity
Still good as a cannon. Juts put one ring on the ground facing up, the other is pointing at your enemy. Pick up a heavy object and drop it over the ground-one from high up.

Set it on Geyser, use it as a jet. Stick a couple dozen on the back per thruster, call it good.

Not as fun as Far Shot(I believe it's called)+Telescope=Faster than light travel. Aim ten feet above the ground of whatever planet you're throwing the container at, you can miss by up to ten feet, congrats, you're 5-15 feet above the surface of another planet. Or the using Far Shot with mirrors to travel anywhere on the planet.

How does that work? What container teleports the thrower?

[Little Brother]

How does that work? What container teleports the thrower?It doesn't. Far shot, I think that's the name, lets you throw an object at anything you can see. So, you throw it at some planet, or the other side of the planet, and so on, and it arrives there within 6 seconds.

So you throw other people in an airtight box.

EDIT Fixed for clarity and formatting

[Emperor Tippy]

Ah but technically you can't see other worlds. Hell, it's actually impossible for even optimized characters to see the sun or moon.

[Madcrafter]

The real issue with the ring gates is their weight limit. 100lbm is not very much, especially if you are trying to run any sort of machine off it. However, as was implied in the post linked above, there is no limit to the transfer of energy that can go through. Maybe something can be made of that.

As for you Keld, I think you should be an engineer, if you are not already. It is truly the greatest of professions. Although I'm not sure if a heavy oil would flow fast enough to produce much of a benefit in the power generated.

[Daftendirekt]

Easily portable cannons. Set up one gate on the ground and the other gate hanging over it so objects fall continuously. Throw in a heavy object wait for it to reach terminal velocity. Flip the top ring dowager your target and watch the cannon ball fly.

Wait, I forget they have a daily weight limit. All things I can think of have things falling through them endlessly till they reach a desired velocity


A portal gun? Dont know what they actually are but they sound a lot like portals.

Thought the same thing after reading that. "Thinking with portals..."

[jseah]

Since no one has read the thread of the post I linked, here's how to bypass the weight limit:

Simply don't extend the object completely through the ring gate.

Take two ring gates and face them towards each other horizontally.

|-> <-|

Take an iron rod shorter than the distance separating the ring gates and stick it halfway through one gate. It comes halfway out the other side.

|== ==|

Now bring the gates together until the two ends of the iron rod (which now face each other) are touching. Weld the two ends to each other.

|====|

Turn the whole apparatus vertical and anchor the top ring gate.

---
| |
| | Direction of falling
| V
---

Iron rod will now "fall" and keep falling and never actually completely pass through the gate (since it has no start and no end, at no point is the iron rod "through" the gate)

[Qwertystop]

Since no one has read the thread of the post I linked, here's how to bypass the weight limit:

Simply don't extend the object completely through the ring gate.

Take two ring gates and face them towards each other horizontally.

|-> <-|

Take an iron rod shorter than the distance separating the ring gates and stick it halfway through one gate. It comes halfway out the other side.

|== ==|

Now bring the gates together until the two ends of the iron rod (which now face each other) are touching. Weld the two ends to each other.

|====|

Turn the whole apparatus vertical and anchor the top ring gate.

---
| |
| | Direction of falling
| V
---

Iron rod will now "fall" and keep falling and never actually completely pass through the gate (since it has no start and no end, at no point is the iron rod "through" the gate)
So what happens if you try to move the gates apart after welding?

[Madcrafter]

Interesting to note that to bypass the weight limit you have to put an infinite amount of material through. Does that mean you could let a constant unbroken stream of liquid through without going over the limit either?

As for what happens if the gates are then pulled apart... Whoa... It creates some sort of paradox. Alternatively, what happens when you put a section of a ring gate through its partner?

[jseah]

Pulling ring gates apart just breaks the rod. (the rod is stretched along with the space it exists in) If you have an invulnerable rod, the universe breaks.
EDIT: The question you want to ask is: "what happens if you teleport the rod away"
I have not a satisfactory answer to that question.

Ring gate through other gate is simple. It comes out of itself. And if it'll fit through the partner gate, it'll fit through itself.

The interesting question, a mere extension of the infinite falling rod trick, is what happens if you make the gates not face each other (bend it outwards slightly).
What basically happens is that the iron rod bends (or breaks if the angle is too acute)

Now, take a good hard look at where those forces on the bent iron rod go. (which is trying to bend back)

[ericgrau]

Objects pushed part way through then retracted don't count towards the weight limit. You could flip them over and over again to make a reciprocating engine. Heck the engine itself could turn the rings. And now we have an unlimited power source.

[Gavinfoxx]

What is the best way to get around the 100 lbs limitation?

[Madcrafter]

I am somewhat unconvinced that it would break the rod, though I see your reasoning behind it. Perhaps the mere unconventionality of the situation makes it hard to hold on to the concept.

I you teleport the rod away, I would say it is as it's original length, snipped at whichever point it passes through the gate, since my interpretation of teleport would act on whichever orientation of the mass was compared to the gates, and not care about its connection to itself through the gates. Others I'm sure will have different views.

As for ring gate though its partner, I had not thought that one though, but it was along the lines of the ring coming out of the ring coming out of the ring and then spinning them. Never mind that.

The physical laws that ring gates allow one to break make them a good reason why rational thought and D&D don't always go together.

[Qwertystop]

I'd say that if you try to move the gates, you'd have to pull them apart hard enough to break the rod. Same goes for tilting them.

Though I'd say that if you tilt the rings, the rod would just go through at an angle so that it fits through both.

[Little Brother]

Ah but technically you can't see other worlds. Hell, it's actually impossible for even optimized characters to see the sun or moon.Explain.

Also, a telescope. Put one into space with a gate in there, have them walk in.

[Mr.Bookworm]

Explain.

Also, a telescope. Put one into space with a gate in there, have them walk in.

Spot check rules give a -1 penalty to spot an object for every 10 feet of distance away from you it is. Per RAW, it's a DC 0 check to spot something large and obvious, like say, the sun.

The sun is ~93 million miles from Earth. That's 491,040,000,000 feet. The DC on a Spot check to see the sun is 0, but you take a -4,910,400,000 penalty to your Spot check.

The moon is a more modest ~1,261,154,400 feet from the Earth, or a -12,611,544 Spot check penalty.

EDIT: This is RAW silliness, mind you, not something someone would ever use in a game.

[Little Brother]

Spot check rules give a -1 penalty to spot an object for every 10 feet of distance away from you it is. Per RAW, it's a DC 0 check to spot something large and obvious, like say, the sun.

The sun is ~93 million miles from Earth. That's 491,040,000,000 feet. The DC on a Spot check to see the sun is 0, but you take a -4,910,400,000 penalty to your Spot check.

The moon is a more modest ~1,261,154,400 feet from the Earth, or a -12,611,544 Spot check penalty.

EDIT: This is RAW silliness, mind you, not something someone would ever use in a game.A) Pretty sure it's a flat DC

B) Negative size modifiers, apposed checks. The sun's size should give it a penalty many times more than the distance issue.

C) Telescope, circumstance bonus.

[jseah]

I'd say that if you try to move the gates, you'd have to pull them apart hard enough to break the rod. Same goes for tilting them.

Though I'd say that if you tilt the rings, the rod would just go through at an angle so that it fits through both.
That depends on the interpretation that ring gates interact with things that go through them.

Which is unstated. The interpretation I was using is that ring gates bend space, and whatever goes through it doesn't "see" a ring gate at all.


The physical laws that ring gates allow one to break make them a good reason why rational thought and D&D don't always go together.
Actually, the physical laws ring gates break is limited to two symmetries (also called invariants) and one assumption.

The invariants are with respect to translation in space and translation in time.
Stuff halfway through a ring gate behave differently to stuff in normal space. (breaking invariant wrt space)
You can't trace a reverse course in time for a ring gate engine. (breaking invariant wrt time)

The assumption broken is that space is simply connected (assumed to be the case for our world). The moment you turn on the ring gate, space is no longer simply connected.

As for the problems those things cause:
No invariance wrt space = does not conserve momentum (you can reflect forces and objects with ring gates)
No invariance wrt time = does not conserve energy (you can make energy out of nothing, or destroy energy)
Non-simply connected space = some forms of movement are impossible (this is the teleport the welded rod problem)

[NichG]

You should be able to restore the time symmetry at least by allowing forces like gravity to also propagate through the gates. So if you tried to drop an object through one gate into the other, you'd find that the two facing gates actually create a region of antigravity between them due to the requirement that both gate mouths must be at the same gravitational potential as they are physically the same point.

You could restore the space symmetry by making it so that the ring gates themselves feel forces based on the change in momentum of things passing through them due to misalignment. That is to say, if you had In-gate and Out-gate at a 90 degree angle to eachother, a fast object moving through the In-Gate would cause it and the Out-Gate to be pushed with an impulse at a 45 degree angle outward from the bend that exactly conserves momentum. It's precisely the same as the problem of water flowing through a hose with a 90 degree bend in it, except now the hose is magic spatial topology.

I don't have a good answer to the welded rod though. This comes down to the question of, how does shape change its topology the moment the gates are turned on or the moment the gates are destroyed. Since its a topology change, I don't think it can be a continuous process, so there's going to be some sort of singularity involved in the curvature of space at the inception point. Ostensibly different physics should hold near to the singularity to act as a cutoff - quantum gravity stuff is the likely cutoff for this kind of thing.

[Randomguy]

What happens when you reach your arm through the ring gate and use it to try to move the other gate?

It's always useful if there's a piece of weaponry that the badguy uses, but that can't be moved. All you need to do is leave one of the ring gates there. The smallest party member can go through the ring you party has (without an escape artist check via the shrink person spell), move the other ring over the muzzle and start firing the weapon when needed. The same applies for beneficial traps that can't be moved.

They also make splitting the party a breeze: The wizard's spells can affect both halves of the party and the cleric can stick his hand through and heal or turn undead when needed.

It's also fun for the warrior to glue one, with the "out" end facing out, on his shield, while the rogue uses the other gate to stab through from a safe distance.

Then, there's the stop hitting yourself approach: Stop time (using celerity or a readied action) while the enemy wizard's spell is still in mid air. With your familiar's help, position the gates so that his own spell hits him. Bonus points if it's a lightning bolt or another line spell: it should go through the first gate, come out the second gate, continue until it hits the wizard, and then go through the first gate again, and the loop continues until the bolt travels enough distance.

[Keld Denar]

As for you Keld, I think you should be an engineer, if you are not already. It is truly the greatest of professions. Although I'm not sure if a heavy oil would flow fast enough to produce much of a benefit in the power generated.

I am an engineer. Mechanical in fact, so this stuff is awesome to me.

Anyway, it depends on the viscosity. You'd probably want heated oil, since viscosity goes down significantly above what, 200 degrees F (depending on weight). I know when I used to work in the pipelines in Alaska, crude was typically transported at about 180-200 degrees, but there was still a lot of water and gas in it, which affects properties. You'd want it to be as pure as possible to reduce friction. Water is actually slightly more dense, and doesn't really need to be refined, so it would actually probably be better.

As far as the weight limit, however, while it appears continuous, water is discrete. A finite volume has a finite weight. Water would flow through the gate until the weight limit was reached and not a molecule more.

Maybe if I'm so inclined later, I'll draw out some sketches for a water wheel and figure out how much torque you could get out of say...a 1 meter diameter wheel, and then run that through a gear box (I only have numbers for modern gear boxes), and then maybe compare that to the weight of a wagon to get average horsepower. You probably wouldn't have a variable speed transmission, and you're losses to friction would be pretty severe without modern day precision machining (unless you cast Fabricate with enough ranks in Craft: Machinist). Then again, HP doesn't really matter with infinite potential behind it, and the only difference is how much of it you can harvest at a given time.

As far as the welded rod in the gate, picture this: 2 round discs with the rod between them, welded to the discs like an axle. Now imagine you tried to pull the discs apart. You couldn't...not without snapping the rod first. It would remain perfectly horizontal. The difference here is that you could move the rod in the ring gates, but you couldn't move it if it were welded to the discs. Still, the distance between them would be fixed. If you tried to bend one of the gates so that it would be pointing in a direction that wasn't perpendicular to the stationary gate, you would have to apply enough force to actually bend the bar (depending on the yield strength and diameter of the rod).

At least thats how I'd imagine it, applying the principles that I know. You couldn't take the two gates out of plane or out of center from one another without breaking the rod. You could move the rod in either the X or Y direction (looking down on the device), and you could push it up or down in the Z direction (through the gate), but you couldn't twist it around any axis unless the orientation of one gate was reversed, because while angle of incidence would have the same magnitude as the angle of impact, the direction would be reversed and it couldn't possibly move that way.

The cool thing about that, is if you had a long enough rod, and you SET it at true verticle, you'd have a perfect plumb and level reference device for doing things like setting walls or other mundane tasks we use levels and plumbs for.

EDIT:

With regards to the rod...if you placed the gates horizontally so that the rod is vertical, it would fall continuously. If instead of a smooth rod, we had a rod that had "teeth" on it, like a worm gear or something similar without a pitch (pitch doesn't matter, since it won't rotate). If you put a round gear that touched the teeth of the vertical shaft, the gear would spin at some rate proportional to the force applied to it (F = MA means that the gear would experience a tangential force equal to the mass of the gear times the acceleration due to gravity, or ~9.81 m/s/s). Thus, if you had a falling rod with a mass of say...100 Kg, it would put 981 N worth of force on the wheel. If we had a wheel with a radius of 25 cm (.5m diameter), you'd have 245.25 Nm worth of torque on the drive shaft that the wheel is spinning around. If you knew how fast the rod was falling (whatever terminal velocity of a rod with almost no drag), you could calculate how fast the gear is spinning. From there, its a simple matter of introducing a system of gears (possibly using friction couplings like a modern day transmision) to translate that torque and speed to a torque and speed more appropriate for pushing a wagon, and you'd have a perpetual motion wagon.

[jseah]

You should be able to restore the time symmetry at least by allowing forces like gravity to also propagate through the gates.
<...>
You could restore the space symmetry by making it so that the ring gates themselves feel forces based on the change in momentum of things passing through them due to misalignment.
Very good. =)

Although you need to restore the space symmetry before the time symmetry can come back (momentum reflection results in forces from nowhere, and thus non-time symmetry)


Since its a topology change, I don't think it can be a continuous process, so there's going to be some sort of singularity involved in the curvature of space at the inception point.
Or do the other thing and work out how teleport works.

Eg.
Teleport must bend space to allow the travel of an object through an arbitrary distance within a fixed amount of time. If you require teleport to preserve the topology of space the object being teleported resides in, then the problem goes away.

Therefore:
You cannot teleport a rod like that while preserving its local space topology unless the target of the teleport is one with a similar shape. IE. another set of ring gates facing each other. Although not necessarily the same angle.

--------------

Of course, that's the "fold space" explanation of teleport. Other explanations will have their own results.

If teleport 'cuts' out the local region of space and 'sticks' it at the target, what you will get is that the rod can go anywhere, but when it arrives, there will be two portals just like the pair of ring gates.

If it overlaps with another set of ring gates, then all is well and fine. If it doesn't, then you get a pair of disemboided portals, which are likely to be unstable. Which would very likely shut immediately and destroy the rod (or just that section that is across the interface, depending on how such wormholes shut)
At some point in the shutting, I agree that there will have to be a singularity.

[jseah]

I just had a delicious idea for a game.

A wizard is making a pair of ring gates. The universe has conserves all the usual space and time symmetries that NichG mentions.
However, this wizard screws up his item creation and creates a pair of ring gates with some very interesting properties.

What happens in normal ring gates, is that when you put things through it, they just come out exactly the same as they went in.
HIS ring gates causes anything going through it to mirror image. (left maps to right, right maps to left, top maps to top, bottom maps to bottom)

Sure, rotational symmetry goes out the window (and so does time symmetry as you can generate torque from nowhere), but those bits aren't the interesting bits.


The mirror image ring gates basically violate another topological assumption of the universe. The assumption that the universe is Euclidean 3-space.

The mirror image ring gates turn the shape of space into a solid Klein Bottle. Also known as a non-orientable wormhole.


The other more interesting experiment would be a mirror image ring gate that also turn the universe into an Alice universe.
Anything going through it reverses chirality, charge and time direction. Basically, anything going through the ring gates turns into a mirror imaged version of itself made out of antimatter.

Hm.. not such a good idea after all. XD

[Calanon]

Ah but technically you can't see other worlds. Hell, it's actually impossible for even optimized characters to see the sun or moon.

*Looks up at Sun and waits for Night to fall and gazes at the Moon* :I

OT: The most interesting use of the ring of gate is opening up a permanent portal to the plane of elemental water and using it as a water supply for a desert nation (Or the opposite for a flooded nation that wants LESS water but your results may vary on this one)

If i remember correctly the Netherese did something like this so they could get water onto their Enclaves :smalltongue: