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Re:Who Killed the Electric Car? by Rei · 2008-03-17 05:30 · Score: 5, Insightful · on 100-Year-Old Electric Car Design Makes a Comeback

1) The Prius isn't an electric car. It's a hybrid. It's just an efficient user of gasoline.

2) Priuses aren't largely driven by "the affluent". They're mostly a middle class car. And they've been a stunning success; Toyota has said not to expect any more increases in sales next year because they can't produce them any faster.

3) "In the end" is hardly applicable; the adoption of hybrids keeps expanding, and automakers are offering more and more options. GM, for example, plans to release a new hybrid modelevery three months for the next four years.

4) As for electric cars, there are a lot of myths. Here they are, all broken down for you.

5) Yes, you are correct that there was no conspiracy to kill the EV1. The EV1 was never designed to be profitable; like all of its competitors, it was solely a byproduct of the CARB mandate. It was produced in tiny numbers, with tech far worse than what is available nowadays, based on a design that shared no common infrastructure with other GM vehicles (a "one-off"), and so forth. The leases were heavily subsidized. GM wanted nothing to do with actually making EVs, and as soon as the CARB mandate was overturned, they were quite glad to be rid of them. So were the other manufacturers who also had similarly unprofitable EVs. It was a horrible PR move, and GM realizes that now, but it made sense on the books, especially since GM was bleeding money at the time. And as for the "liability" argument, GM was 100% correct; lawsuits add hundreds of dollars to the cost of every car made in the US, and an owner can't disclaim liability for *someone else's* lawsuits. And as for the battery argument, please -- if GM cared about the EV1, they wouldn't have *sold the batteries* in the first place. They had already shut down many other part lines before CARB was overturned anyways; even if they had the batteries, they still couldn't have made more. The conspiracy arguments get crazier and crazier from there (like GM destroying the EVs because they wanted to "hide" them, yet in a fit of insanity they donated them to museums, but then they put pressure on the museums to hide them...)

Re:85% of a growing amount by Rei · 2008-03-07 05:19 · Score: 1 · on Government Report Examines Alternative Energy Research

Not true. They have protected a number of fields (most notably in the eastern GOM and in ANWR), which certainly are the majority of known untapped deposits remaining in US territory/waters, but not *all* new discoveries. Plenty of little ones have come online, and there seems to be little attempt to stop the development of, for example, the deepwater supergiant Jack 2 field. Anyways, there's a heck of a lot more involved than oil fields in US territory, which are somewhat limited (ANWR represents about a year of our annual consumption, while the eastern gulf probably represents half a decade of consumption). The rest of the world is much more important in terms of oil development than the US, which is mostly tapped (but more on that later). Brazil, for example, just last year found *three* new deepwater supergiants (Jupiter, Tupi, and Sugar Loaf). Sugar Loaf may be the world's third largest oil field ever discovered. In 2003-2004, Iran found two new supergiants, one of which also may be the world's third largest (they'll have to fight it out ;) ). Some places are likely huge oil-rich regions that have barely been explored at all due to potentially higher production costs, such as the west coast of Greenland, which has numerous active oil seeps and large amounts of bitumen from old oil seeps, plus a subsurface geology suggestive of massive traps. The arctic as a whole is little explored. And speaking of more expensive sources, bitumen is profitable at $30-$40/barrel, while coal liquefaction is profitable at a little more, and even the price point for shale extraction in the 1970s was less than $100/barrel (I'd be surprised if they couldn't do it for $50-60/barrel today). Venezuela's ultra heavy crude in the Orinoco belt, too, is a Saudi Arabia-scale source, just like Alberta's bitumen, and is easily profitable with prices less than half of what they are now. Our coal resources are essentially boundless on the century-scale. Just coal mineable at current market prices at current consumption rates is something like 200 years worth, just on known reserves alone. Yet, you don't have to actually mine coal to liquefy it; you just need to burn it with insufficient oxygen to create town gas (CO + H2), which can be done subsurface via gas injection, so whether it can be profitably mined or not is irrelevant. So long as you can burn it, you can produce it. Just in 2005, a single subsea coal deposit was found off the coast of Norway that contains over three times as much coal as the world's entire known reserves. By my calculation, that's 60 cubic miles of coal, enough that you could cover the entire state of Indiana 8 1/2 feet deep. And I didn't even cover CO2 injection for oil recovery, which is expected to add dozens to hundreds of billions of barrels to US reserves alone while at the same time doing carbon sequestration.

Supply isn't the problem. Even the price of producing what supply is out there isn't really the problem. The problems are existing infrastructure, domestic instability, the weak dollar, wars and threats of war, and the stocking of the strategic reserves. All of this is overwhelming our existing production capacity, and it takes 5-10 years to build new capacity.

Re:Fossil fuels != oil by Rei · 2008-03-07 04:48 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Government Report Examines Alternative Energy Research

What gets me is the graph in the report. They show "renewables" climbing by only one percent. They neglect to mention, however, that most of that "renewables" section is hydroelectricity, which has fallen as a percent of our electricity as it is no longer seen as a very "green" option at all. Generation by non-hydro renewables have expanded by several orders of magnitude since the 1970s.

If I have a way to generate electricity cleanly and it costs $1/kWh, while coal is $0.08/kWh, almost nobody will adopt.
If I double the cost effectiveness and it's $0.50/kWh, more will adopt, but still very, very few will.
If I double it again and it's $0.25/kWh, still more will adopt, but it'll still be a small percent.
If I double it again and it's $0.12/kWh, more will adopt, and you'll have a small dent in the market.
If I double it again to $0.06/kWh, the market will be swept.
If I double it again to $0.03/kWh, coal use for power generation will be consigned to the history books.

Rather than looking at the total share of our generation, they need to look at the growth rate of these alternative sources and how their cost effectiveness has changed. And it's been dramatic, with no signs of slowing. Wind costs a fraction of what it did in the 70s, while solar is an order of magnitude lower. Economies of scale and more advanced turbines may halve wind costs (wind already being competitive with coal in some places), while CIGS solar cells are on their way to providing yet *another* order of magnitude cost reduction, making solar cheaper than coal even in Alaska, let alone in the desert southwest. Then there's EGS (enhanced geothermal -- no need for a wet, near-surface heat source), solar thermal, wave, tidal, high altitude wind, and so on.

Let's look at the numbers. They report that the US has spent $57.5B on renewables, fossil, and nuclear in the past 30 years. Let's be kind and say that renewables got a whole third of that (I doubt it) -- $19B. We spend that in *two months* of the war in Iraq. The US consumes 1 billion tons of coal, ~7B barrels of oil, and 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Coal costs ~$70/ton, oil in the past year averaged something like $80/barrel, and naturl gas was ~$15/1000 cubic feet, so that means we annually spend about ($70B + $560B + $330B) around a trillion dollars on fossil energy. This doesn't count the externalities of fossil fuel usage -- environmental destruction, increased healthcare costs, increased use of the military, etc. Contrast this with half a billion to a billion dollars on renewables research annually. 3-4 orders magnitude less spending, and yet consumption of techs like solar are growing at almost 40% per year and seem almost certain to overtake the price point of coal in the next decade. How, exactly, is this a bad investment? And all of this ignores some of the idiotic things they've been spending money on, like corn ethanol and hydrogen fuel cells.

Re:Electricity by Rei · 2008-03-03 13:02 · Score: 3, Informative · on MIT's Nano Storage Could Replace Hybrid Batteries

Its easy to be an environmentalist, you don't have to think of the requirements to achieve whatever goals you might have. It just has to sound good.

And it's easy to insult environmentalists when you don't know what you're talking about. We already have tons of spare generating capacity for EVs and PHEVs -- everywhere except the pacific northwest. And even if we had to build more, as if electricity infrastructure was somehow more expensive to build and operate than oil infrastructure (it's far cheaper -- that's part of why a joule of electricity costs so much less than a joule of gasoline).

Why electric cars? Here's a primer.

The main issue is efficiency. by Anonymous Coward · 2008-02-27 10:16 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Nanoparticles Could Make Hydrogen Cheaper Than Gasoline

Hydrogen cars really have nothing going for them. You can read the all the gruelling details here, but basically, li-ion batteries are about 99.9% efficient, while fuel cells are usually 40-50%. The tank to wheel efficiency of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is ~35-40%. 85% electrolysis efficiency is nothing new; that's what big steam reformers get, although it would be new for small "kit" systems. Then there's transmission losses for getting the power to the elecytrolyser (~93% efficient) and power plant losses (~35% efficient for existing systems, 45%+ for next-generation). Put it all together and hydrogen is notably *worse* for the environment than gasoline, while electric cars are better for it. And they almost have the range of hydrogen cars, automotive li-ions (as opposed to laptop li-ions) -- nanophosphates, titanates, spinels, and so on -- are far safer than hydrogen (for many, many reasons). And they can recharge as fast as you can feed them juice to boot, and have almost the range of the best hydrogen cars, with no need for platinum at all, with next-gen batteries vastly outranging hydrogen. And on, and on. Hydrogen cars are a dead-end, environmentally destructive technology.

Re:But.. by Rei · 2008-02-22 18:52 · Score: 3, Informative · on 100-MPG Air-Powered Car Headed To US Next Year

First off, reserves don't work that way. Here's a writeup concerning how this concept applies to oil, but the same thing applies to lithium. Reserves don't simply "run out"; there's many thousands of cubic miles of the stuff in Earth's crust and oceans (Earth's 1.65e23kg crust is 20-70ppm lithium for a total mass of 3.3 to 11.6 quintillion kilograms). All that changes is how much is mineable at *today's prices* with *today's technology*. I.e., either higher prices or advancing technology put more lithium into play -- and not just a little more, but literally exponentially more. Example: the oceans have And on top of this, unlike oil, lithium is an easily displaceable resource -- most lithium is used in glass, ceramics, and greases, and can be substituted for in all of them.

The scare articles ignore these basic facts. They also ignore other things inconvenient to them -- most notably, tailings. For example, listen to this quote:

"This means there is less lithium per volume of water, so competitors have to process more water, explained Tahil, adding that there is also the issue of the lithium-to-magnesium ratio. The more magnesium, the harder it is to extract the lithium."

Yes, but that means that you get *more magnesium* out of the process, which also has sales value. Likewise, other mining operations that are seeking various minerals can (and do) get lithium tailings. Currently, these are typically discarded due to the low price of lithium. As demand for a mineral rises, recovery circuits get added where appropriate. This is "value added" mining -- no new mining is going on, but you just get more product out of it. Production from almost any brine pond in the world will give you lithium tailings, but almost none bother to extract the lithium salts from them; they're going after other, currently more valuable minerals.

Some people have this silly notion of world mining operations as though the Earth was some big ball of "nothing" in the crust, and scattered around this "nothing" are little random deposits of one mineral (mixed in with "nothing"), and these couple deposits are all there are of that mineral. And, obviously, the real world doesn't work that way. *Everywhere* is minerals, and a given element can be found almost anywhere at least in *some* concentration, however minimal. All that changes from place to place is how cheap it is to extract (which can vary widely). Likewise, when you produce products from anywhere, you're going to get tailings that include all sorts of other minerals -- and you're mining, crushing, and concentrating them to boot, so half of the work is already done! But if the price of the minerals is low, it's not worth recovering further from the tailings. If the price rises, you recover them; it's as simple as that.

One thing to remember about lithium: it's cheap. It's currently very cheap. So? Well, people don't prospect for cheap minerals. Think for a second of how much oil our insatiable demand has continually turned up over the past century. Now imagine actual exploration for valuable lithium deposits. It's only reasonable to expect major growth in known lithium reserves, probably by orders of magnitude, should lithium suddenly gain any appreciable value.

Lastly -- and here's the real kicker -- lithium is only a tiny fraction of the cost of a lithium ion battery It's price could grow tenfold and you'd barely even notice it (and you better believe there'd be a *lot* of new reserves coming online with that much price growth!) 1 kWh of automotive li-ion batteries currently costs ~$300-$2000, depending on the type. This involves less than a kilogram of lithium carbonate, which currently costs about $4.50.

In short: Ignore the scare mongering. There's no world shortage of lithium, and never will be.

Re:But.. by Rei · 2008-02-22 08:15 · Score: 1 · on 100-MPG Air-Powered Car Headed To US Next Year

If an air car is only 1/5th the efficiency of a gasoline car it is still going to result in fewer emissions

No, it is not, at least with respect to CO2. Typical thermal power plants in existance are 30-40% efficient. Modern plants are 40-50% efficient. A gasoline engine is ~20% efficient. 1/5th of 35% (or even 45%) is way below 20%. If you're talking about emissions other than CO2, however, you have a point (at least on some of them). Power plants are worse for NOx and SO2 than ICEs, but a lot better on HCs and CO. Particulate matter is about the same. Also, power plants can displace emissions away from densely populated areas.

If you want to talk efficiency, compare it to an EV where the source of the electricity is the same and thus the efficiencies are directly comparable in terms of environmental friendliness.

Gladly -- and I do that over on my site. Electric cars are incredibly energy efficient; after any generation losses (which are shared by hydrogen and air cars), they lose almost nothing -- 7-8% in transmission, similar in AC/DC conversion, a fraction of a percent in charge and discharge (if using li-ion batteries; with NiMH, it's much higher), and ~10% in the motor. Here's a study you might find interesting. It doesn't cover air cars, but it covers many other types of vehicles.

Re:TFA is worthless. by Rei · 2008-02-18 11:01 · Score: 2, Informative · on New Solar Cell Harvests Hydrogen From Water

Indeed. Water alone is bad enough for corrosion, let alone water containing free hydrogen and oxygen. Some of their cells have operated only for days. On top of this, the cells use an expensive "special glass" (haven't seen anywhere that goes into more detail than that) to pull off the trick. Really, the tech looks to be at about the point that solar cells were in the '60s.

Not that hydrogen cars are a realistic solution to our current problems anyways.

Re:EV power generation by Rei · 2008-02-15 06:04 · Score: 1 · on Hydrogen-Powered cars with Zero-Carbon-Emission?

If you want full calcs, I've got those too.

We don't have gobs of spare generating capacity just laying around.

Yes, we do.

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious? by Rei · 2008-02-14 12:04 · Score: 4, Informative · on Hydrogen-Powered cars with Zero-Carbon-Emission?

and focus on Electric Cars powered by Hydrogen cells and NOT Hydrocarbons and not Hydrogen combustion engines... they are too inefficient.

You talk about efficiency and advocate hydrogen fuel cells in the same sentence? You do realize that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are extremely inefficient, right? At low loads, fuel cell vehicles are typically 46% efficient at turning hydrogen in the tank into wheel torque and 36% in the NEDC driving cycle. On top of that, you have generation losses (modern power plants are 40-50%, older ~30%, and possibly up to 60% in the future), transmission losses (7.2% average in the US), electrolysis losses (80-85% efficiency if done in the most efficient manner possible, regeneratively on hot steam). Which makes hydrogen worse than gasoline in terms of a carbon footprint. You can also make it from methane reforming, but that's no better. You can grow it from bacteria, but that costs an utter fortune. There are direct sunlight to hydrogen cells, but they are expensive, very inefficient, and break down quickly.

The hydrogen economy is simply unrealistic. On the other hand, there is an awful lot of promise in electric vehicles.

Re:What, nobody's thought of the obvious? by Rei · 2008-02-14 12:04 · Score: 4, Informative · on Hydrogen-Powered cars with Zero-Carbon-Emission?

and focus on Electric Cars powered by Hydrogen cells and NOT Hydrocarbons and not Hydrogen combustion engines... they are too inefficient.

You talk about efficiency and advocate hydrogen fuel cells in the same sentence? You do realize that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are extremely inefficient, right? At low loads, fuel cell vehicles are typically 46% efficient at turning hydrogen in the tank into wheel torque and 36% in the NEDC driving cycle. On top of that, you have generation losses (modern power plants are 40-50%, older ~30%, and possibly up to 60% in the future), transmission losses (7.2% average in the US), electrolysis losses (80-85% efficiency if done in the most efficient manner possible, regeneratively on hot steam). Which makes hydrogen worse than gasoline in terms of a carbon footprint. You can also make it from methane reforming, but that's no better. You can grow it from bacteria, but that costs an utter fortune. There are direct sunlight to hydrogen cells, but they are expensive, very inefficient, and break down quickly.

The hydrogen economy is simply unrealistic. On the other hand, there is an awful lot of promise in electric vehicles.

Re:This makes my blood boil by Rei · 2008-02-03 14:51 · Score: 1 · on US Pulls Plug on Low-CO2 Powerplant Project

Please don't confuse running out of light, sweet crude with running out of oil.

As for the article at hand, good riddance. The plant was initially to be making hydrogen, too, and the DOE has now said that they're only willing to cover capture and sequestration. Which is great, as hydrogen cars are a dumb idea.

Re:This makes my blood boil by Rei · 2008-02-03 14:51 · Score: 1 · on US Pulls Plug on Low-CO2 Powerplant Project

Please don't confuse running out of light, sweet crude with running out of oil.

As for the article at hand, good riddance. The plant was initially to be making hydrogen, too, and the DOE has now said that they're only willing to cover capture and sequestration. Which is great, as hydrogen cars are a dumb idea.

Re:Good deal by Rei · 2008-01-16 07:36 · Score: 1 · on Nanotech Anode Promises 10X Battery Life

Divide 1e9 with 9.3e6 and you have 107,5USD / kWh. Oops.

Oops indeed. You assumed that the pool only works once.
Need a towel for the egg on your face?

You admitted it yourself the $1/W figure is completely meaningless.

The hell it is! It's how you tell how much power a cell produces in standard conditions costs per watt. The less it costs for the same amount in standard conditions, the more valuable the cell is. You punch the number in and adjust from standard conditions to your actual operating conditions. You can't get much more meaningful than that.

What matters is what's the average cost for kWh in any given region in average.

Which depends on the region, which is why you give solar cell output numbers relative to a standard set of operating conditions (1kW/m^2, 25C) so that you can adjust based on your local insolation. Do you expect every solar cell that comes on the market to have to have an entire table of how it performs in different regions to explain what can easily be represented with a single number, all because someome like you has trouble understanding simple conversions?

but over here we need more heating when we get f- all sunlight for months during winter

You use electric home heating? A) Tsk, tsk, and B) you're majorly in the minority.

I'm sure your amortization calculations factor in a modest profit for capital for the projected 50 year service life and add to the cost of the energy accordingly?

That's what IRR is -- your rate of return on the investment averaged over the lifespan of the project. If you want to see all of the factors that are taken into account by a typical solar economics calculator, check one out.

Re:Good deal by Rei · 2008-01-15 19:43 · Score: 4, Insightful · on Nanotech Anode Promises 10X Battery Life

First of all, Nanosolar HOPES to make the cells at $1/W, they are nowhere near that cheap yet, and this is the price their marketing department HOPES to achieve.

And your information comes from? Nowhere, that's where, because they're not sold on the open market yet, so claims like "they are nowhere near that cheap yet" are complete BS. All of their capacity is currently going to a German municipal plant. Secondly, all of the CIGS companies are giving numbers in the same ballpark, as are the CdTe companies.

Secondly, that is the price for the cells without factoring in energy storage devices, energy conversion systems, servicing etc

Duh. That's part of a general solar economics calculation. Only an idiot would just multiply $1/W times the desired number of watts. A large, batteryless installation in Anchorage, AK of nanosolar cells gets a 30 year IRR of 7-8%. In Las Vegas, it's more like 13-14%.

Thirdly, it is the price under optimal conditions, with perfectly aligned cells. (and on, and on...)

(Dragnet theme)Duh, duh duh duh. Duh, duh duh duh, duh!(/Dragnet theme)

Do you think we're idiots? What's next? "Third, the cells only produce power when the sun is visible. Fourth, you need to have wires to conduct the power. Fifth, you need "humans", who can use the power...."

They are also relying on indium, an element which is thought to become scarce due to increasing demand, and of course, mass-deployment of indium based solar cells would certainly push the price up.

Indium is more common than silver, is easier to recover than silver (because of its close interrelationship with zinc ores), and CIGS cells use a miniscule amount of it (nanoscale-thickness coatings). Indium's current high price is more related to a lack of demand for it before LCD TVs started using it in bulk; this led to a few of the world's only indium recovery circuits shutting down without new circuits replacing them at other mines. It's not a problem. It only takes a few years to ramp up production.

Finally, even if they were able to start producing these at competitive costs and at a large rate, you still have the problem that you will have to increase solar photovoltaic output by a factor of 1000 just to reach 20% of current energy demand.

Huh? Did you ignore my post, above, where it already addressed this?

With most of nuclear reactors built in the west ending their licensing in about 2030 - 2040, Oil running low and gas prices rising due to low demand

Whaa? For one, nuclear is making a serious comeback in the US. Two, oil is not running low. Light sweet crude is, but light sweet crude != world petroleum production capability. Venezuelan super heavy crude and Canadian bitumen syncrude are taking off. Third, the demand for gasoline has been rising constantly year to year. Are you confusing the annual demand fluctuations with year to year growth in consumption? Demand is always lowest in the winter, highest in the summer.

[quote]But no, we're going to gamble on some hypothetical solar breakthrough.[/quote]

Hypothetical? Yeah, about two dozen companies, some of which have been selling them in smaller volume for years, is "hypothetical". What's next -- are CFLs hypothetical as well?

[quote]Despite the fact that no realistic way to overcome the problems with intermittent supply, that they don't produce energy at night, diffuse and limited output, as well as the high price, having been demonstrated.[/quote]

In the pacific northwest, and to a lesser degree the west coast as a whole, energy storage is a non-issue. The west relies a lot on hydro power, and hydro pairs perfectly with solar (it already has a low capacity factor, so there's no additional economic cost to the hydro producers). Even in the east, solar alone with no storage can eliminate the p

Re:Still limited by Carnot efficiency by Rei · 2008-01-02 18:08 · Score: 1 · on Molten Salt-Based Solar Power Plant

Depending on the situation, in an idea location, you can already break even. Check out the calculator for more details. Of course, in most places, you don't stand a chance.

The issue is that you were acting like solar is a dead end. It's anything but. Prices have been, overall, falling quite rapidly, and they show no signs of stopping (apart from a recent hiccup due to supply not keeping up with rapidly increasing demand). In fact, there should be a huge price fall soon as all of the CIGS and cadmium telluride thin film manufacturers start to get their production online. And that particular fall shouldn't stop until prices are in the ~1$/W range.

Re:Consumer offerings? by Rei · 2007-12-21 05:17 · Score: 5, Informative · on Silicon Valley Startup Prints $1/watt Solar Panels

Yes, it is cheaper than coal power, almost everywhere in the US. You can run the numbers for yourself. The problem with coal is that once you burn it, it's gone. The problem with traditional solar is that the capital costs are so high, you'll never catch up with the interest. When you cut the capital costs on solar significantly, it wins hands-down.

Re:Consumer offerings? by Rei · 2007-12-21 04:41 · Score: 5, Interesting · on Silicon Valley Startup Prints $1/watt Solar Panels

Once their production capacity outstrips their manufacturing obligations. As per their website, which I've been following (slowly) over the past couple years, you *could* get one right now off ebay -- their #2 print. However, it's being sold as a collectible item, a piece of history, with the proceeds going to charity. So, needless to say, the price is rather steep ;)

This is huge news. Punch $0.99 a watt into the calculator, and even good chunks of Alaska become economical for installations.

Re:A grain of salt by Rei · 2007-12-20 10:40 · Score: 1 · on Comparing Browser JavaScript Performance

Well, it depends on what your app is doing, I suppose. If it's just a bunch of onClick statements that have simple responses, sure -- I wouldn't expect much time to be spent in it. On the other hand, I write asynchronous CGI and Javascript applications like this solar power economics calculator. And there's a *lot* of Javascript in there. Boosting Javascript performance is a big deal in such circumstances.

Re:Promising by Rei · 2007-12-19 06:35 · Score: 2, Informative · on Nanowires Boost Laptop Battery Life to 20 Hours

If I could spend 2 grand and break even in a year,

Wow, you have no familiarity with the concept of long-term investments do you? No, solar isn't an economical investment in most places. But if you expect your investments to return your expenditures in one year, I'd hate to see what your retirement plan looks like.

For anyone interested in seeing how the economics of solar power works out where they live, check out this handy-dandy photovoltaics economics calculator.

Ob. skepticism by Robaato · 2007-12-10 04:20 · Score: 2, Interesting · on 2008, The Year of the Spaceship

So, if Rutan, Virgin Galactic, and Scaled Composites are aiming for orbital flights, will they have to redesign the spacecraft from scratch?

Why SpaceShipOne Never Did, Never Will, And None Of Its Direct Descendants Ever Will, Orbit The Earth

Re:'Child Killer' would be an awesome tag.... by Rei · 2007-11-30 11:42 · Score: 1 · on On the Moral Consequences of Gaming

Some friends and I have been idly discussing the possibility of developing Yet Another MMORPG(TM) based on the concept of combining the concepts of a "restricted" world where what you do makes a difference for your character (like most hack-and-slash MMORPGs) with a creation-based MMOG like Second Life that lets you create instant worlds at the drop of a hat. This would be the concept that you build your world from your surroundings and what you choose to do with it is left to free will (living in peace and building, warring with each other, or whatnot). At the same time, we'd rather avoid it being Yet Another PvP-Filled Hack-And-Slash fest; we want people who don't want to be fighting to not have to put up with constant attacks by griefers or those who in general want to kill everything in sight. In short, we want people to feel free to build if they want, free to fight if they want, but not to make the latter people drive the former out of the game.

We've discussed a number of possibilities, such as having the default response to being attacked to be "flee" instead of the typical response, "futilely bash that high level heavily armed person who attacked you with your bare hands". I.e., you have a chance to find other people to help you out while you escape, to prepare yourself for combat, or whatnot (the only reliable way to kill someone would be to be in a group so you can cut off their escape, and griefers are more likely to play solo than in groups, while those who would hunt down griefers are more likely to work together). There was one idea, however, that's been discussed which is in the spirit of this article. Namely, whenever you kill a new unique person, a tattoo appears on your hands. The more you kill, the more it spreads down your arms. Hence, killers end up with a visible mark indicating them as such. If you're a fighter, your tattoos could be seen as "awesome", as a sign that you're good at killing. To people who want nothing to do with killing, however, they'd be a brand that says, "stay away". One possibility has been bandied about that, in karmic justice, perhaps the victim gets some degree of input in what the tattoo ends up looking like ;)