a bad upcoming feature?

[iSuck345]

demidevil said:Not very Efficiently, and coal would be the only way to currently realistically power anything

wind power or water powered. (i.e. wind fans and water wheels)

Yeah true, but I dont see that happening in a steampunk world, unless of course all of the punks became hipsters.... in which case humanity would no true fear... wait what if thats what happened in the kenshi universe... the coal ran out of a steam punk world... and then hipsters came and infected their virus to millions bringing renewable energy, tea, and microbrews to all... but at the cost of their fashion sense... and then the hipsters cleansed the earth of the its true plague... HUMANITY, now the survivors cling to civilizations remnants in a wasteland once known as California. oh and there's samurai armor and weapons because you know how cultural hipsters are. Or at least thats how it would appear to be in my head.

SILENCE! TEA CAME FROM ASIANS, PORTUGUESE BROUGH IT TO BRITAIN, BRITAIN MADE IT POPULAR AND THATS THE END OF STORY BLASPHEMER!

[Blxz]

I do like a good cup of tea. Nothing so crass as the americans with their coffee.

[iSuck345]

High-five! Anyone?

[Clawdius Talonious]

We see windmills all over the place in Kenshi. How, exactly, would you use coal to power a robotic limb anyway? It really isn't terribly difficult to generate electricity from wind, a coal firing power plant on the other hand is a fairly difficult to engineer piece of technology. Solar provides quite a bit of power if you have some fairly basic battery technologies to store it in, and recently they had a fella in India figure out how to make a low end solar panel from human hair. Recently they had women in Africa IIRC, design a generator that would power some more basic items from electricity generated with human urine. And this is an inspecific time in the future anyway, who is to say that those sorts of technologies wouldn't become more refined and easier to reproduce? If mankind still has robot parts, it seems probable that some other tech would have been preserved as well.

Given that we're basically talking about something that can likely only be done late game, after significant resources are available and possibly significant research done if you don't want to pay a berjillion cats for the things, I don't think that it's entirely unreasonable to ask for a modicum of suspension of disbelief if the whole bionic arm thing is implemented. After all, who wouldn't get somewhat upset if their main character or one of their best trained soldiers who was an expert in a two handed weapon lost an arm in combat once the save system is stripped out? It seems to me it will be nice to have the ability to repair that damage, and unless you think "well just put it on ice and we'll sew it back on good as new!" makes more sense I don't really see that happening. At that point it would be either train them to use their right arm by itself with a Katana and hope for their attack/defense ratings to give them enough of an advantage to learn to use it well, knowing they'll never be as good as they once were. I guess in the future you could, possibly, put them in a dojo and have them train new recruits. Of course, that sort of thing hasn't been decided, while the robotic limbs thing has been discussed to death.

It isn't like we're talking about optional enhancement surgery to make your troops into some sort of cyber-ninjas, although if that was an option I'd personally be cool with that as well.

[Junglist]

they can make human hearts these days, an arm isn't too far off).

FFS, no. they. can't. Where do people get this stuff from? Critical thinking is a virtue and a very important skill.

The best they have done is some basic, very thin tissues like skin and possibly another thin organ that I can't remember. Hearts, livers, kidneys, etc are too thick and require blood flows to every cell at once and so they simply cannot grow them yet despite decades of work.

I know the post I'm quoting is quite old but I just wanted to say that before you start talking about critical thinking and stuff you might want to have a clue about what you're talking about.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... rough.html

A year later, scientists grew a beating animal heart for the first time.

Dr Taylor’s team have already created beating rat and pig hearts. Although they were too weak to be used in animals, the work was an important step towards tailor-made organs.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=18023493

Then Ott and his colleagues took heart cells from newborn rats and put them onto the scaffold. The cells stuck and started to grow. The heart became red again.

But it didn't beat, so the researchers attached a tiny pacemaker and the heart began to rhythmically wiggle. After a while, it would beat even without the pacemaker. Taylor says it was an amazing thing to see.

I've read about it in a scintific magazine that have good credibility here in Sweden, but seeing as the article is in swedish and probably not on the internet I couldn't post it.


Anyway, to stay somewhat on topic. Electrical generators aren't really too advanced. If the people in kenshi found a generator and reverse enginereed it they could probably build new ones. Putting a bunch of "wings" on the generator to make a windmill wouldn't be a huge step either. So no need for coal.

About the limbs themselves; they might be trickier to make. Seeing as a fully functioning robotic limb would need all kinds of tiny motors and sensors to work and other than that it would need some kind of neural connection to be able to controll the limb. Also needs some sort of computer to "read" the neural signals and make the limb behave accordingly to what you want it to do.

I think some sort of transplanting is the most viable option for limb replacement.

[Mask]

Will read those articles, thanks for posting them.

Robot arms could be gotten to if you assume the level of technology before the war was pretty high, and that it was salvageable enough.

Same goes for transplanting limbs--but the latter would probably be more believable to salvage.
---
You only need a few working high-level medical bays and readable manuals on the subject for it to be plausible to perform, whereas the robot limbs require you to re-engineer and manufacture a large number of mechanical limbs which would be very complicated, high-tech stuff.

Also, the latter option gives you the choice of buying a slave to have their arm removed, or capturing a prisoner for that purpose. It might even be reasonable to have it that you regain your stats more quickly if the prisoner you use is a skilled swordsman...? Certainly, the muscles would be trained for it--though the main concern would be relearning how to use your new arm, which is a ton more important for swordsmanship.

[Clawdius Talonious]

I am unsure how blood type and the like would affect the transplantation of an entire limb, not to mention the insane amount of skill it would take from a surgeon to connect every major blood vessel, and nerve. Unless there's some sort of nanite paste you'd just slather on and stick the two bits together and it would do all of that for you. Of course, if that is the case, you've got some tech there that is far more advanced than simple prosthesis.

Of course, neither of these solutions is perfect, to wield a sword with any skill one would have to be able to have near perfect control of the limb, beyond what either solution would seem to tend to offer. And if there are robotics powerful enough to drive prosthetic limbs, why would we need slave labor? Of course Chris has already indicated that research will be able to be done to require less manpower to operate various aspects of mining and the like. Some sort of robotics used there would seem to make sense.

The bottom line is either way you're talking about using highly advanced technological or biological replacements. Both of them would require massive suspension of disbelief, and to suggest that one makes more sense than another is more than a little silly. Personally I suggest we all just wait and see what Chris winds up doing before we complain too much.

[Mask]

Since you bring that up, they'd probably clone you an arm... Heck, they might have a machine to do all the delicate reconnecting.

As neat as stealing the arm from someone else would be, it might be better to just have cloned arms which are expensive.

[iSuck345]

We see windmills all over the place in Kenshi. How, exactly, would you use coal to power a robotic limb anyway? It really isn't terribly difficult to generate electricity from wind, a coal firing power plant on the other hand is a fairly difficult to engineer piece of technology. Solar provides quite a bit of power if you have some fairly basic battery technologies to store it in, and recently they had a fella in India figure out how to make a low end solar panel from human hair. Recently they had women in Africa IIRC, design a generator that would power some more basic items from electricity generated with human urine. And this is an inspecific time in the future anyway, who is to say that those sorts of technologies wouldn't become more refined and easier to reproduce? If mankind still has robot parts, it seems probable that some other tech would have been preserved as well.

Given that we're basically talking about something that can likely only be done late game, after significant resources are available and possibly significant research done if you don't want to pay a berjillion cats for the things, I don't think that it's entirely unreasonable to ask for a modicum of suspension of disbelief if the whole bionic arm thing is implemented. After all, who wouldn't get somewhat upset if their main character or one of their best trained soldiers who was an expert in a two handed weapon lost an arm in combat once the save system is stripped out? It seems to me it will be nice to have the ability to repair that damage, and unless you think "well just put it on ice and we'll sew it back on good as new!" makes more sense I don't really see that happening. At that point it would be either train them to use their right arm by itself with a Katana and hope for their attack/defense ratings to give them enough of an advantage to learn to use it well, knowing they'll never be as good as they once were. I guess in the future you could, possibly, put them in a dojo and have them train new recruits. Of course, that sort of thing hasn't been decided, while the robotic limbs thing has been discussed to death.

It isn't like we're talking about optional enhancement surgery to make your troops into some sort of cyber-ninjas, although if that was an option I'd personally be cool with that as well.

I still prefer to have robotic limbs.

[Junglist]

I am unsure how blood type and the like would affect the transplantation of an entire limb, not to mention the insane amount of skill it would take from a surgeon to connect every major blood vessel, and nerve.

The reason I thought transplants was a more viable option was beccause robotic limbs need advanced technology and major surgery (at least with todays technology) too. So unless you have some sort of "thinking helmet" to control the robotic limbs then you're going to need to attach electrodes directly to the nerves. Which needs a pretty skilled surgeon too.

Man Controls Robotic Hand with Mind

Either way I think both options are far fetched and since we don't have a main character in this game I think we could actually skip the limb replacement. If a charachter loses a limb you can replace that character with another, sure it sucks, but so does having them die. Adds some form of "lighter version of death" and gives you that moral dilemma of what to do with the limbless person. Do you leave him to die, somehow kick him out of the group or just let him do some easier work?

Also, we're not complaining, we're discussing.

[Mask]

Would be neat to have your crippled fellows at the base, training the new guys or just maintaining the place.

Heck, I know someone who has been wanting to see that for ages...


With limb replacement, I'd want it to be prohibitively expensive, for the above reasons. So, if you have one favourite guy and have become a minor faction... sure, you can get him a limb replacement. If the new guy loses a limb? No way you can afford to do anything about that--aside from get him a hook like captain hook, or attach something similar (wooden arm? blade arm? who knows...).

There are a few simple prosthetic limbs which can be helpful to normal activities, after all.

[Clawdius Talonious]

I am unsure how blood type and the like would affect the transplantation of an entire limb, not to mention the insane amount of skill it would take from a surgeon to connect every major blood vessel, and nerve.

The reason I thought transplants was a more viable option was beccause robotic limbs need advanced technology and major surgery (at least with todays technology) too. So unless you have some sort of "thinking helmet" to control the robotic limbs then you're going to need to attach electrodes directly to the nerves. Which needs a pretty skilled surgeon too.

Man Controls Robotic Hand with Mind

Either way I think both options are far fetched and since we don't have a main character in this game I think we could actually skip the limb replacement. If a charachter loses a limb you can replace that character with another, sure it sucks, but so does having them die. Adds some form of "lighter version of death" and gives you that moral dilemma of what to do with the limbless person. Do you leave him to die, somehow kick him out of the group or just let him do some easier work?

Also, we're not complaining, we're discussing.

There are a number of ways to utilize limbs with advanced functionality, without having to perform any sort of surgery at all. http://www.itworld.com/science/312446/m ... -robot-arm

That sort of tech will continue to improve, however it's easier to imagine say, a bionic limb that handles the "surgery" portion of the attachment process by itself. In theory it wouldn't be impossible for that sort of thing to exist in the future, of course there's also the concept that an shoulder cuff could be designed in such a way to interpret the nerve signals that already would be controlling your arm if it were still attached.

Perhaps complaining wasn't the right word, but what I see here is a bunch of people saying "robot arms are silly, far too advanced! Lets use surgery that would be so complex as to be beyond the skills of any modern surgeon! We can take arms off other people, that's completely feasible!". I was mainly trying to point out that both of those things are currently impossible, and would require some suspension of disbelief. Robotic prosthesis, at least to me, seems far more akin to the sort of technology we're actually developing. While they're looking into things as advanced as printing up biological bits using your own DNA, they're doing it for organs. When a limb is amputated, the answer is likely to remain prosthesis. Those devices get more advanced every year, and Kenshi is set after an apocalypse that occurs at an unspecified point in the future.

Both supremely advanced surgery, and highly advanced technology, don't seem to fit the world at first glance. But the game is far from complete, we're going to be getting a lot of new technologies to research in the near future. The concept of a cache of old world technology isn't terribly unimaginable, it's an often played upon trope in post apocalyptic fiction. However, the idea that surgical concepts that certainly eclipse those we see today where someone has their big toe removed to replace their lost thumb etc. makes more sense than recovering advanced prosthesis is at best a matter of opinion. To me neither of those options fits the world as it stands, however the world as it stands is almost more proof of concept than the game as we will see it once Kenshi hits 1.0, there is no real lore to speak of.

Given that there is no lore, and the game exists in its current state to facilitate an iterative development process, there's not much basis to say "robotic limbs don't fit Kenshi". As a matter of fact, there seems to be more evidence given the "Robotics components" trade good that it is more canon than any sort of crazy advanced surgery. Currently medical practices in Kenshi are limited to "slap a bandage on it and sleep it off". Either option is asking for the addition of a terribly advanced remnant of pre-apocalyptic society to be accepted as salvaged or preserved from before the end of the previous age.

[Blxz]

I know the post I'm quoting is quite old but I just wanted to say that before you start talking about critical thinking and stuff you might want to have a clue about what you're talking about.

Indeed, and then you quoted this line from the article "Although they were too weak to be used in animals, the work was an important step towards tailor-made organs."

Sounds like they can't make a human heart (or even an animal heart that actually does anything other than beat in a lab). So I fail to see what the point of your mini rant was for. My post was in reply to someone who said that 'they' (scientists I guess) can make human hearts these days and an arm isn't far off. While you certainly provided more in-depth information than I did I see nothing that counters what is said.

So ease off a little. Use the critical thinking you are trying to say I lack and look at the articles you have linked.

[Mask]

So ease off a little.

Please do, Blxz.

[Blxz]

So ease off a little.

Please do, Blxz.

Damn, beaten in 3 words.
Well played.

[Junglist]

Sounds like they can't make a human heart (or even an animal heart that actually does anything other than beat in a lab).

I never said that they can make a human heart or even a useful animal heart I just wanted to point out that they have come a lot further than:

The best they have done is some basic, very thin tissues like skin and possibly another thin organ that I can't remember

And I wanted to point out that since I thought you sounded very arrogant towards Mask when you started talking about critical thinking being a virtue. Like if Mask totally lacks that.

Also I didn't ever say anything about your critical thinking or lack thereof. In my opinion critical thinking doesn't even have anything to do with how much knowledge you happen to have about a certain subject.

[Ozark Tempses]

Ugh, calm down peoples...
I believe this is getting completely stupid and you know why?
Because any random guy won't go through 6 pages of random rambling to know whether or not it is realistic... I mean, if for some reason Chris decide to implement robotics(or whatever) limbs, it would have to be easy enough for anyone to understand... So we forget everything about advanced surgery, and we stop creating scenarios to justify that because if I have to play something, I am certainly not reading 3 thesis, I ust want to jump into the action, maybe read a bit, but just a little bit... And that's all!!!

[Mask]

Come to think of it, Chris compared Kenshi to X-COM in one of his descriptions of the game, and we will have research... I say there should be logs like in the original X-COM, where they gave you a short sci-fi description of different technologies/etc. which you had discovered.

[toaster Assassin]

Basically, the game never really states as to what is included in the robotic components you buy. Meaning one can assume that the box labeled "Robotic components" has all the robotic components you need to create your "thing" (You just need the quantity and research to make it).

To make it plausible, some things are just best left to the imagination (

[Clawdius Talonious]

Come to think of it, Chris compared Kenshi to X-COM in one of his descriptions of the game, and we will have research... I say there should be logs like in the original X-COM, where they gave you a short sci-fi description of different technologies/etc. which you had discovered.

What, like this:

?