15 KiB
[BST] Optimizing enhancement
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Author: u/royishere *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4i2215/bst_optimizing_enhancement/
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Score: 5
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Created: 2016-05-05T21:24:42
Post:
I was inspired by the R!Star Wars thread a while back on r/rational, and I decided that rather than fanficcing Star Wars, I might as well work some elements of the discussion into a new space opera universe. I've spent some time scaffolding it, but just to make sure I didn't miss anything too drastic, I'd like to crowdsource the implications of the magic system to see what unexpectedly broken things can be done with it.
Basically, a small minority of people are born with the gift of enhancement -- by focusing, they can amplify qualities. For a (rather minor) example, one so gifted could enhance a pillow's softness to make it more comfortable. If that person were woken in the night by a mysterious attacker, they could then enhance the pillow's weight to make it a more effective weapon.
-Enhancement lasts as long as you focus on it. You can focus on multiple things at once, but there's only so much power you can spread around.
-Enhancement can only amplify attributes that already exist. It may not add new ones.
-The power is smart-ish, and is actively trying to improve the function of what it's used on. You cannot, for example, enhance the speed of an enemy's heart rate and kill them, because some of the power you put into the action will bleed off and give them the necessary enhancements to make such a change beneficial. This might be munchkinable. It's also the least thought-out rule and might require change. (It's worth noting here that all of this is currently subject to change based on the results of the brainstorm)
-Power is less efficient at a distance, or when affecting nonliving matter, and loses effectiveness the less familiar you are with your target. Enhancing yourself will be the most power-efficient move, and you'll get better results enhancing the car you've been driving for ten years than the new one you've just driven off the lot.
-You can enhance your own ability to enhance, but the power you expend is greater than the power you gain. You CANNOT enhance brains/minds/mental processes. Suffice to say there is a reason for this, but it's not relevant to the current discussion.
-The power is like a muscle. Some people naturally have more than others, but practice will yield tangible results as well.
Given the above rules, I have the following questions:
1 - What would you imagine a galactic society with access to these people to look like? How would they fit into daily life? What cultural norms have sprung up as a result?
2 - What low-energy enhancements would yield the largest returns? What high-energy enhancements would end life as we know it? Basically, break this incredibly breakable power.
3: What objects would be most useful to build familiarity with?
I have some answers already, but I doubt they will be accurate once the collective brilliance of r/rational has shattered my idea of this galaxy's status quo.
Comments:
u/Aabcehmu112358 [+5] Utter Fallacy (50 minutes later)
Can you enhance other people's ability to enhance? Does the relation of losses greater than gains always hold, no matter how enhanced someone's enhancement is?
u/UltraRedSpectrum [+7] (7 hours later)
Even if it's still diminishing returns, it seems like you could get ordinarily impossible effects by having a pyramid of enhancers. Each small group - familiar with each other, of course - enhances one representative, and each group of representatives enhances a further representative, and so on until you reach the top. Now that guy at the top can enhance the bounciness of a pillow so hard it launches things into space, or whatever outrageous impossible idea you have.
u/BoilingLeadBath [+3] (2 hours later)
Either way, enhancing other's ability to enhance gives an advantage in terms of decisiveness - the two enhancers don't have to agree on and synchronize their activity.
u/Aabcehmu112358 [+5] Utter Fallacy (3 hours later)
It is also means that enhancers who are already unified in purpose (for whatever reason) may be able to squeeze out extra enhancement by all piling on to the one enhancer who is the most 'familiar' with whatever thing they are trying to enhance.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (13 hours later)
This would also be another "opportunity" for teams of indentured or coerced enhancers.
u/xThoth19x [+2] (8 days later)
I could easily see a government body or cabal taking over by using either mind control devices (and enhancing them) or brainwashing (enhanced) and then using those people to make themselves more powerful. Imagine if North Korea was all enhancing Kim Jung Um and refusal to do so => camps. However, if a pyramid structure was used (to reduce the diminishing returns) betrayal would be easy. I could imagine small empires being possible, but due to the distances in space, large ones would be easy to form, but hard to control.
u/Izeinwinter [+4] (9 hours later)
You can gain some effective intelligence by improving your metabolic processes and just leaving that on permanently. Never have low bloodsugar, never be tired - at the end of the day, you will not be any smarter than your best self was before, but you will spend a far greater amount of time at peak ability. If you start that young, you will get far more learning done.
I expect this will be the most common use, simply because it will also be the most pleasant. Noone likes feeling tired, and while you could do things like enhancing your strength or whatever instead.. why would you? Super-strength isn't useful if you are not currently moving furniture. So the default will just be to leave it at "Optimize metabolism" at all times and switch things up briefly when you need the power for something else
u/msmcg [+1] (12 hours later)
It's said to require focus though, so most people probably wouldn't bother to use it all the time, except maybe to help them wake up in the morning, run for the bus, etc.
u/noggin-scratcher [+2] I am a happy tree (21 hours later)
Step 1: Enhance your ability to focus?
u/msmcg [+1] (3 days later)
Can't be used on brains? That's a bit vague.
u/xThoth19x [+2] (8 days later)
Acquire adderal. Enhance it. Take it. Didn't use power on the brain at all.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (31 minutes later)
I assume you can enhance industrial processes, and in-system and FTL drives.
Gangs of indentured enhancer "galley slaves" in factories and transport vessels that just spend all their time enhancing the same components of the same process or subsystem until they're really good at it.If the technology is there, they may be kept in suspended animation chambers to save space, just awake enough to maintain their enhancement.
u/Epizestro [+2] (4 hours later)
Could you enhance a specific part of someone's body so as to throw them off in battle? As in, they take a step and suddenly their left leg is significantly stronger/heavier than their right. It's not directly harmful for the person, except that it'll screw up their rhythm and make them easier to hit.
On a related note, can you enhance their pain nerves, so any hits you land will hurt even more than usual? Combo that with the previously described usage, and maybe a little power enhancement on your part, and you can increase a character's combat potential quite heavily.
Is entropy an attribute you can enhance?
u/royishere [+1] (6 hours later)
Yes to all these questions - as long as it's not directly harmful, you can try and trip people up that way.
Can you extrapolate on what enhancement of entropy might accomplish?
u/msmcg [+2] (12 hours later)
I think the keys here are that it's a 'small minority' of people, and the familiarity aspect. Demand will be very high since it seems like their power can be used for pretty much anything.
Some ideas: given the fact that enhancing is more effective with familiarity, I think there would be strong tendency towards life-long pairings of powerful people with one or more enhancers: think executive and their trusted secretary, or a knight and their page. The ability to pay for the (rare) services of an enhancer would tend to consolidate power in a few, likely resulting in a strongly delineated elites vs proles situation - potentially feudal. An interesting implication is that the population level of elites would then be influenced somewhat by the birth rate of enhancers.
A point of conflict in your story could be the novelty of big businesses and large governments being able to pay more for enhancers than the nobles can. Low-volume high-value manufacturing (e.g. $50k watches or top end champagne/wine) could use an enhancer on the production line, public figures could have their smile, their voice, their grace enhanced to be more persuasive. Research and development (e.g. pharma) may benefit from pairing enhancers with their top experts. Investment banks would have their networking equipment enhanced (much like they currently pay big bucks for land closest to the exchange to minimise transaction latency).
Depending on how you count 'familiarity', you might get freelance enhancers, whose speciality is enhancing the abilities of other enhancers. Thus the powerful could hire a short-term power boost by getting an enhancer for their enhancer.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (21 hours later)
I'm no nuclear engineer, but you could probably build an A-bomb with this by mucking about with neutron production and such. Of course, you can build an A-bomb anyway. This would just make it easier in terms of materials.
As is often the case in these sort of "superpower" things, it likely goes mind control > perception powers > DPS > everything else.
This effect seems to have a very good knowledge of biology, and at least a decent knowledge of physics and engineering, so you could probably learn some things by observing how it enhances.
It's not clear how it determines what different enhancements "cost".
Depending on how heavily it's penalized in terms of diminishing returns, it might be worth keeping up a constant "boost your boosting" effect while doing other boosting.
u/PeridexisErrant [+1] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (4 hours later)
From the sidebar:
Do not post scenarios for discussion, requests for someone to write a story, or brainstorming threads. Authors get one exemption after each published chapter or equivalent.
u/royishere [+7] (6 hours later)
You gave me the go-ahead in last week's general thread, so I figured it would be ok.
u/PeridexisErrant [+6] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (6 hours later)
Right, sorry - this was one of four such posts I dealt with this morning, my bad.
u/Lugnut1206 [+2] (7 hours later)
Where could we have these sorts of discussions for non-authors? spacebattles or something?
u/PeridexisErrant [+2] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (8 hours later)
The weekly off-topic thread would be fine; otherwise yeah - other subreddits or forums.
u/Dwood15 [+6] (9 hours later)
Why not make a "Wednesday World-building" thread where the thread's sole purpose is for people to discuss their ideas like this?
The general threads are good, but I feel like a topic like this would be generic enough to warrant another weekly or bi-weekly thread?
u/PeridexisErrant [+5] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (9 hours later)
Excellent idea. The first such thread will go up next Wednesday at the usual time, and every week thereafter unless or until it no longer seems like a good idea.
u/Dwood15 [+1] (22 hours later)
Thanks! It will be nice to have a thread that's more specific than the Monday and Friday threads.
u/pje [+1] (2 days later)
This sounds a little bit like a cross between David Brin's The Practice Effect or Sanderson's Feruchemy... except both of those have more interesting limitations.
For example, the Practice Effect only works on inanimate objects and the enhancement needs continuous maintenance (resulting in an economy of servants wearing their employers' clothes to keep them nice). And Feruchemy only works on yourself, and only with certain properties, which must generally be stored in advance for later use. (For example, going around moving slowly for a week to store up speed, being sick to store up health, etc.) So it's inherently a balanced power rather than a world-breaker.
u/royishere [+1] (2 days later)
You should see some of the things they do with Feruchemy in the later books if you think it's an inherently balanced power. :P
Some of the stuff you can do with
Feruchemy's drawback is also not as great a hurdle as it could be, since you can store when the utility cost of storing is low and tap when the utility benefit is great. You can also stack a long period of time's small drip of storage into a few seconds of physics-defying "holyshitwhat".
u/CCC_037 [+1] (3 days later)
So, insofar as combat goes, a sniper an enhance the range of his gun; or the accuracy of his sights; or the clarity of his own eyes.
Someone who doesn't want the sniper to succeed might (for example) enhance the muzzle velocity of the weapon, thus causing the bullet to fly a lot faster, drop a lot less, and miss the target.
You can enhance the speed of a computer, the efficiency of a cooling system (allowing more overclocking).
You could enhance a racing car - being intimately familiar with the car would help, as would being close (the driver could do it? But that takes some of his focus away from driving the thing...)
What about intangibles? If someone's feeling happy, can you enhance that emotion directly, make him happier? Being able to use this on any emotion (especially in a crowd) could make for an extremely persuasive snake-oil salesman. (If not, he could always enhance the desirability of what he's selling in order to push up the price)
Or profitability. Could you enhance the profitability of a company, directly?
An Enhancer could make a great doctor, Enhancing his patients' immune system. (If it's possible to be an Enhancer and not realise it, then one or more Enhancers might be homeopaths). Of course, this goes two ways; an evil Enhancer could rather Enhance the disease, threatening the patient.