Replicators and the Economy

[MajorD]

Have replicators been taken into account in how they will effect the game economy? This is not just a matter of accelerated production but of copying and selling items.

I fear the unique items. Realistically, there should be absolutely nothing to stop you from replicating a unique item as much as you like and arming your entire crew with it if its better. That's not what I fear, I fear for no apparent reason not being able to replicate such things as much as I want. A historic baseball card is just wood pulp and ink, an ancient sword is just steel. There are non-replicatable items in Trek but they tend to be ship components, while small arms and clothing are perfectly replicatable. Only a few minerals or elements are non-replicatable as well, rather than the majority.

Are craftable items going to all be ship components of such complexity or size that an average replicator can't copy the item? Size on its own won't work because if it's designed properly it should be plug and play, just slip together and lock it up, rather than requiring knowledge of engineering. Engineering knowledge would be need for installation but that's what a crew is for.

These aspects of Trek tech have to be accounted for. For instance, a lot of items you craft will be replicatable. So, what you sell shouldn't be the item itself but the replicator pattern for the item. If a person buys your item, that's not going to be the end of it and you won't need to build another, so you should be able to gain money from an item over an extended period, not one lump sum unless you are selling the rights to the pattern. One way I can see around this is if you invent something using Starfleet facilities then it is Starfleet property and they give you one lump sum for submitting the design and you get to replicate the item for free once it is submitted.

Realistically, unless you're putting the item out under some sort of public use license, you should get money every time someone downloads the replicator pattern. Harvesting raw materials should only be a cost saving exercise, except with non-replicatable materials, which should work through the replicator since such materials can be transported. It's a difference between being able to transmute a material and work with a material, just becuase a material is non-replicatoable doesn't mean you can't transport it, latinum can be beamed. In Deep Space Nine, I remember only one item that wasn't replicatable and had to be shipped to the station from Starfleet stocks. A device that can't be replicated is different and would require some sort of machine shop.

I can see the player economy revolving around those items but I can't imagine there being very many of those items. If there are too many non-replicatable items that are critical to ship operation and they are produced only by players, it begs the question of why hasn't Starfleet built a factory in order to free up all of these officers being wasted on a pre-industrial revolution economic model? Or, why not hire civilian contractors to take up the work, which would maximize production, lower costs, and free up officers for more important duty?

[Marytha]

We do get hints that replicated things aren't quite as good as the original, I think. Frequently refering to food and drink. Thus you may repicate the Swrod of Khaless, but it isn't as good as THE Sword of Khaless.

Marytha

[vitali]

Unique items could be replicated to standard items. Not quite accurate, but it would work in-game.

Plus, the replicator demands energy. Repetitive usage would require you to lose raw materials (?)

[Zepath]

There's a couple of things they could take into account to "throttle" replicators.

a) the technology level of the replicator you have.

b) all things replicated requires matter. They could easily wink at canon and require "certain matter types" or composition to be able to successfully replicate something.

c) as discussed here, the replicated copy is never as good as the hand-crafted version. e.g. a given phasor will work most the time, or only for so long if its replicated, where the hand-crafted version works all the time and essentially forever (until destroyed or lost).

d) they could limit replicators to natural items (food, clothing, etc). Never allowing the replication of metals or live entities (like foul, bovines, sheep, fish, etc).

e) they could not put replicators in the game at all (my vote). There will be plenty of "things" from canon that will not be in this game because those "things" don't fit, make the game too complicated, or just flat out break the game play.

I'm not an expert on canon replicators ... but even Roddenberry had to draw a line. Otherwise we wouldn't have are those Star Docks building ships of the line. They would just build huge replicators and replicate ships of the line.

[Zepath]

Ok, I went and looked it up on Memory Alpha.

It seems if Cryptic wanted to stick strictly to canon, replicators could present a problem for the game economy.

On the other hand, since the primary use of replicators were to produce food stores, Cryptic could easily limit the replicators in game to that purpose (if they have them at all) and not take a position or comment on the other (rarely employed) uses.

I mean, issues like this is a collaborative work between the Cryptic guys and IP protectors ... so who knows what they will do. :cool:

[PigUp]

c) as discussed here, the replicated copy is never as good as the hand-crafted version. e.g. a given phasor will work most the time, or only for so long if its replicated, where the hand-crafted version works all the time and essentially forever (until destroyed or lost).
I've not heard nor seen anything in cannon to support this. However, maybe crafters can put some nanobots inside a craftable object to prevent people from replicating it. Though, that assumes you can't replicate nanobots or somehow remove them. I'm sure the Federation figured a way to prevent replication of most of their technology. They are constantly trying to prevent their weapons/other tech from falling into the wrong hands. Also, there are still arms dealers, meaning that you can't go out and get a replicator and one weapon and just crank them out forever. You have to buy the quantity of weapons you want from the arms dealer. The exact method to prevent replication was never mentioned in cannon as far as I know.

[dru_mcd]

I think I remember reading an aside somewhere (I think it was the TNG Tech Manual) that replicators did create a problem. I'll paraphase - if you had the power to replicate anything that you wanted, you would be so powerful that you would never need for anything in the first place.

So, yes, the OP is correct in seeing that it could potentially be a major imbalancing factor.

What if we could assume that "complex"molecular compounds and materials couldn't be replicated. I would hate to think that you could go to a replicator and order up a Soong Android, a cat or a phaser. I think that this rationale was used for GPL as to why it was a precious metal.

[Kinjiru]

I think the way to limit replicators and protect an ingame economy at the same time would require a couple of things:

1. Raw materials (basic construction requirement)
2. Power requirement
3. Schematics

This way, it could be assumed that you had stored in your ship's computer a library of schematics that would handle the replication of normal, day to day items like uniforms, food, furniture, etc. The creation of which would just require the raw matter and a small power allocation.

if you wanted to create something that you don't have in your library, you could trade for one, or find one, possibly have a specialist Bridge Officer able to create a schematic, or receive one as a loot item. (Your science officer scans the wreckage of a destroyed enemy ship, picks up a computer log disc, you beam it over and add it to your ship's library, or you kill an enemy in ground combat, examine his tricorder and recover the schematic from it.)

More complex items would cost more in terms energy and matter to create.

You could also set a certain level to the amount of replication energy and matter as a means to increase the base morale of a ship's crew. (The nameless crew, not your bridge officers). In this way, the more power and matter that you've allocated for a period of time gives you a small boost in morale, since the crew is able to use the ship's replicators to keep themselves happy.

Rolling with the morale idea, you could also apply a small morale bonus to the operation of the holodeck, which uses replicator energy and matter, in addition to transporter and holographic technology. The more access the ship's crew has, the higher the bonus.

Anyway, just some ideas. :)

[Zepath]

I've not heard nor seen anything in cannon to support this. However, maybe crafters can put some nanobots inside a craftable object to prevent people from replicating it. Though, that assumes you can't replicate nanobots or somehow remove them. I'm sure the Federation figured a way to prevent replication of most of their technology. They are constantly trying to prevent their weapons/other tech from falling into the wrong hands. Also, there are still arms dealers, meaning that you can't go out and get a replicator and one weapon and just crank them out forever. You have to buy the quantity of weapons you want from the arms dealer. The exact method to prevent replication was never mentioned in cannon as far as I know.

Actually, there were a couple of times in the series that I remember where the replicators didn't get it right at all, or not perfect.

Those more in tune than I can probably call out chapter and verse whatever liquor it was that Picard kept a stash of in his quarters because the replicator never did it justice.

ADDED: Oh, another thing I just thought of ... if the replicator food was so perfect, what was with all the cooks in STNG and Voyager? Just a thought.

[inXi]

Simple solution: make replication pointless economically, aka require too much power, which converts to currency somehow.

Otherwise, it's something they could funk with.

[Tribbler]

We do get hints that replicated things aren't quite as good as the original, I think. Frequently refering to food and drink. Thus you may repicate the Swrod of Khaless, but it isn't as good as THE Sword of Khaless.

Marytha

Good and inciteful understanding Marytha.

I believe that replicators can replicate simpler molecular items, and never really got food and drink down. The right coding was always necessary.

Which brings to mind that only someone with replicator coding abilities will be able to make things in STO (Crafter Perhaps?)

This is all speculation, but taking the information so far, there will be AH's and crafting, so a replicator as the devce for the crafter would not be way off.

You will probably have to have a schematic of the item you are wanting to make.

[PigUp]

Actually, there were a couple of times in the series that I remember where the replicators didn't get it right at all, or not perfect.

Those more in tune than I can probably call out chapter and verse whatever liquor it was that Picard kept a stash of in his quarters because the replicator never did it justice.

ADDED: Oh, another thing I just thought of ... if the replicator food was so perfect, what was with all the cooks in STNG and Voyager? Just a thought.
Well with regard to food I would expect as much. After all today we have food streamlined for mass production. No TV dinner will ever compare to a home cooked meal. It simply isn't possible to produce food that tastes as good as home cooked in mass quantities, because that would involve all the work/energy necessary to make it taste as such, making the price skyrocket.

Also, as I understood it, replicated food is really like eating veggies but doesn't taste like it. So you can order all the ice cream you want, your getting the nutritional value of a salad. Which is probably why replicated food will always tastes different, because there is only so much you can do to fool the senses while keeping the food healthy at the same time.

[billybob442]

There are some in canon limitations on replicators.

In Voyager they mentioned that certain materials (mostly metals) could not be replicated - which make sense that dense materials would be tougher to reproduce. And in TNG it was established that you couldn't replicate living things - though you could make a dead version of an organism (i.e. food) and you had to have the pattern in the database.

The problem with dense materials explains why ship yards & arms merchants are still around since ships & weapons would have to be manufactured instead of replicated because of their metal / dense material content.

From a real-world stand point the energy requirements are enormous and would represent a MAJOR limitation on the technology. Replicating 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of food, half of what the average American eats each day, would require 9e16 J (c. 21 kTons) of energy. That's the same energy you get from a pound of antimatter reacting with matter which is also how much energy was released by the nuclear bomb the US dropped on Nagasaki at the end of WWII.

So mineral mining should be in there. Also considering the power problem there should be limitations on how often / how much a replicator could replicate each day which would also limit it's impact.

[Flatfingers]

I'm not sure what it means for gameplay, but there was this from the Ask Cryptic (http://www.startrekonline.com/ask_cryptic_1-29-09) of January 29, 2009:

Even within the Federation there is a sense of credits: transporter credits and replicator credits.

My guess is that we'll be able to collect items in our travels, and anything we decide we don't want can be fed into the replicator system for some number of "replicator credits." These credits can then be spent to replicate some other object whose pattern is known, with the number of replicator credits required being roughly proportional to the apparent complexity or rarity of the object.

If so, then a tin flute would cost only a few replicator credits; a phase inverter would have a moderate cost, and a Varon-T disruptor (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Varon-T_disruptor) -- assuming you could even find the schematic for it -- would be incredibly expensive, and still might not include some very rare parts.

That system by itself doesn't seem too game-disruptive to me. But there are still some questions:

1. How do object patterns get into a replicator? Can players create pattern schematics, or will that power be reserved to STO's developers?

2. If players can create replicator patterns, what limits will there be on that process?

3. Will pattern schematics be represented as objects that individual player characters can possess (which would presumably allow such patterns to be traded for some form of currency)? Or will schematics be made instantly available to everyone in a faction?

4. Will some schematics be faction-only? In other words, will there be some things that a Klingon player character can replicate that a Starfleet player can't?

5. Will players be able to discover new patterns for replicatable items? (By "discover" I mean obtain through some means other than crafting, such as salvage, looting, trade with a newly-discovered alien civilization, hacking into the computer of a long-lost culture, etc.)

...

As a side note, this is a good example of the kind of non-combat gameplay features I wish some Star Trek Online developer seemed excited about. I don't mind at all if Cryptic devs pop up to comment on combat features and how much fun they're having as they refine those features. But I'd also like to hear about the progress being made on implementing features such as a deep crafting system, NPC factions, diplomacy, stable economic gameplay, and science/engineering outside of combat, not to mention "exploration."

If, as MajorD's questions implied, we could start to hear some specifics on world-y features, such as how replicators will function within Star Trek Online's economic model, I'd be more confident in recommending to others that they check this game out.

--Flatfingers

[Jiryathia]

Replicators definetly have limits. Early voyager used replicator rations when power and supply where greatly limited (there is a reference in 'virtuose' that I can think of where Janeway questions the doctor for using a great deal of the ship power.) Also, a wide range of elements couldn't be created due to complexity or inability to perform the solid to energy transformation (or some other random science reason). There are also several references to industrial replicators in DS9 when used in major planetary construction, indicating that normal ship replicators can't produce at the sheer volume.

Also as stated in other posts, you will prolly need shcematics to 'learn' new items for creation. Like WoW professions don't limit gem production, but you can't make any until you know how. You can't just put a new alien phaser into the computer and make it learn it.

[billybob442]

Replicators definetly have limits. Early voyager used replicator rations when power and supply where greatly limited (there is a reference in 'virtuose' that I can think of where Janeway questions the doctor for using a great deal of the ship power.) Also, a wide range of elements couldn't be created due to complexity or inability to perform the solid to energy transformation (or some other random science reason). There are also several references to industrial replicators in DS9 when used in major planetary construction, indicating that normal ship replicators can't produce at the sheer volume.

Also as stated in other posts, you will prolly need shcematics to 'learn' new items for creation. Like WoW professions don't limit gem production, but you can't make any until you know how. You can't just put a new alien phaser into the computer and make it learn it.

Needing a pattern would be an easy way to contain the replicator's effects on the economy, and given Starfleets high moral standards they'd take a dim view of anyone using unauthorized replicator patterns. So some patterns may be off limits because of copyrights or treaties.

Imaging the mission where you're sent out to shut down someone pirating replicator patterns. :o

[MajorD]

We do get hints that replicated things aren't quite as good as the original, I think. Frequently refering to food and drink. Thus you may repicate the Swrod of Khaless, but it isn't as good as THE Sword of Khaless.

Marytha
Doesn't make sense, a sword is just a lump of steel with an edge. There is the matter of tempering but replicators replicate atomic structure so they should be able to get particular material strengths right.
Ok, I went and looked it up on Memory Alpha.

It seems if Cryptic wanted to stick strictly to canon, replicators could present a problem for the game economy.

On the other hand, since the primary use of replicators were to produce food stores, Cryptic could easily limit the replicators in game to that purpose (if they have them at all) and not take a position or comment on the other (rarely employed) uses.

I mean, issues like this is a collaborative work between the Cryptic guys and IP protectors ... so who knows what they will do. :cool:
That would be an artificial limitation since replicators are not used only for food production. There is an episode of TNG where Worf goes shopping with Data at the ship's replimat and looks through a list of wedding gifts for, I believe, O'Brien.

I'm sure the Federation figured a way to prevent replication of most of their technology. They are constantly trying to prevent their weapons/other tech from falling into the wrong hands.
Those are two conflicting ideas and doesn't fit considering anti-replication tempering has never been shown nor mentioned.

Also, there are still arms dealers, meaning that you can't go out and get a replicator and one weapon and just crank them out forever. You have to buy the quantity of weapons you want from the arms dealer. The exact method to prevent replication was never mentioned in cannon as far as I know.
We know shipping goes on but buying material goods in Star Trek can be no different from buying software. You don't buy software, you buy the right to use software. So, if you need copies for twelve people, you buy twelve registry codes to use twelve copies of the piece of software.
I think I remember reading an aside somewhere (I think it was the TNG Tech Manual) that replicators did create a problem. I'll paraphase - if you had the power to replicate anything that you wanted, you would be so powerful that you would never need for anything in the first place.

So, yes, the OP is correct in seeing that it could potentially be a major imbalancing factor.

What if we could assume that "complex"molecular compounds and materials couldn't be replicated. I would hate to think that you could go to a replicator and order up a Soong Android, a cat or a phaser. I think that this rationale was used for GPL as to why it was a precious metal.
Transmuting lighter elements into heavier elements taking more power the greater the difference in atomic makes sense, that make general mining still valuable. But, you really should be able to just replicate all the parts of a Soong type android. In fact, it's the most likely method by which Data got parts for Lal, his daughter, and spare parts for himself.

A phaser replicated in DS9 using a booby trapped replicator. The person was to walk into the room and maybe replicate something and get shot when it replicates the phaser pointing at them.

It never made sense that you couldn't replicate living things, the difference between a living and suddenly dead thing is minor. Especially since there is a TNG episode where a living spine is replicated for Worf using a specialized replicator. It was some sort open air replicator with a single point that scans back and forth.
Actually, there were a couple of times in the series that I remember where the replicators didn't get it right at all, or not perfect.

Those more in tune than I can probably call out chapter and verse whatever liquor it was that Picard kept a stash of in his quarters because the replicator never did it justice.

ADDED: Oh, another thing I just thought of ... if the replicator food was so perfect, what was with all the cooks in STNG and Voyager? Just a thought.
The times the replicator doesn't work right are when there is a general problem, not an inherent problem of replicators. There is the complaint about replicated food being not as good as the real thing, but that smacks of artificial diamonds not being as good as the real thing, when in fact artificial ones are more flawless and equally carbon. More likely, I think it's a matter of repetition. Replicators can perfectly copy the same thing over and over, so the food is going to be precisely the same each time, this the problem with CD's versus records. The so called richness of records is really random noise in the playback, CD's lack this noise because there are fewer interacting parts and the recordings on CD's don't degrade.

TNG didn't have ship's cooks, except for primitive races, or people who needed or preffered living food, and people who enjoyed cooking for themselves. Sisko's father is a chef but that probably goes with the CD versus record comparison. Voyager had Nelix cook because they said it was less energy intensive to cook than use the replicators. Generally people did not like his cooking.
Simple solution: make replication pointless economically, aka require too much power, which converts to currency somehow.

Otherwise, it's something they could funk with.
Doesn't make sense, even Voyager continued to use replicators when enforcing energy rationing. It makes even less sense for a ship in the heart of the Federation. If replicators were that energy intensive they simply wouldn't use them at all because it would reduce ships' range.
Good and inciteful understanding Marytha.

I believe that replicators can replicate simpler molecular items, and never really got food and drink down. The right coding was always necessary.
Actually, you only need the chemical formula for a food to replicate it, nothing else. I believe Riker asked for something once that was not in memory and that's all it asked for. Of course, that's rather complex information to derive or possibly memorize, but if you just know it you can speak it and the computer would then have the information it needs.

You will probably have to have a schematic of the item you are wanting to make.
That's true, even of food considering you would realistically need more than the chemicals, but the ratios, temperatures, and shapes if you want it to be more than a cube of room temperature goo.
Well with regard to food I would expect as much. After all today we have food streamlined for mass production. No TV dinner will ever compare to a home cooked meal. It simply isn't possible to produce food that tastes as good as home cooked in mass quantities, because that would involve all the work/energy necessary to make it taste as such, making the price skyrocket.
That's completely different, modern convience foods have to be specially calibrated to withstand freezing or long shelf time and still taste decent after rough cooking methods or none at all. Replicator food doesn't need any such specialized construction. You could cook an awesome steak, scan it in detail at its best point, and that would be that. The problem is, it would be perfectly the same each time, right down to the singe marks. Sameness is boring even when it is high quality sameness, a little junk now and then can be a good change of pace.

Also, as I understood it, replicated food is really like eating veggies but doesn't taste like it. So you can order all the ice cream you want, your getting the nutritional value of a salad. Which is probably why replicated food will always tastes different, because there is only so much you can do to fool the senses while keeping the food healthy at the same time.
In instances where replicator virgins eat replicated food for the first time they never have any such complaints. It is only the veterans of replicated food who ever complain. This is true even in Enterprise where they stop at an alien repair station. Interestingly, the station scanned the NX-01's files, got the DNA for catfish, got a catfish recipe, and replicated catfish that Trip Tucker found delicious. That's some really fancy extrapolation.
There are some in canon limitations on replicators.

In Voyager they mentioned that certain materials (mostly metals) could not be replicated - which make sense that dense materials would be tougher to reproduce. And in TNG it was established that you couldn't replicate living things - though you could make a dead version of an organism (i.e. food) and you had to have the pattern in the database.

The problem with dense materials explains why they have ship yards & arms merchants are still around since ships & weapons would have to be manufactured instead of replicated.

From a real-world stand point the energy requirements are enormous and would represent a MAJOR limitation on the technology. Replicating 2 lbs of food (about a half of what the average American eats a day) would require 9e16 J (c. 21 kTons) of energy. That's the same energy you get from a pound of antimatter reacting with matter which is also how much energy was released by the nuclear bomb the US dropped on Nagasaki at the end of WWII.
Do you recall the episode name or the events of the episode? As I said above, transmuting lighter elements into heavier elements taking more power the greater the difference in atomic makes sense, that make general mining still valuable. However, more difficult doesn't mean it's impossible and having a load of the element in question should relieve that problem so the element can simply be transported into place rather than transmuted first.

Ship yards are probably related to the scale of manufacturing rather than to what is being manufactured. Replicators are generally small, to build a ship you need either one huge replicator, or several smaller ones and facilities to combine those parts. Remember, the Delta Flyer was built in a week from scratch, meaning no premade parts could have been used in some of its construction. Same for when they made new warp coils for their warp engines in the warp nacelles. They would have had to replicate them themselves since they landed on a non-industrial world to perform the maintenance.

The power requirements are enormous if they are using energy to matter conversion but if they perform transmutation and material arrangement, then the power loads are far lower.

[Awarkle]

well consider the doctors holo emitter from the future, they could make repairs however they couldnt activly replace it.

This would make me think that replicators require an original pattern to be able to construct the item, the holoemitter couldnt necessarily be scanned due to the complex nature of the item, so because you cant get a patern you cant replicate it.

basically how a replicator works is its a transporter without the inital beam, instead it takes from a source of material and instead of scanning and beaming it to a location it takes this base mateiral and reconstructs it into what was held in the patern buffer.

now in a gaming sence i think replication should always have a limiting factor of

1. resources available.
2. the patern itself
3. the size of the replicator.

Its hinted that there are industiral replicators (on ds9) i would suspect that these produce much larger components to a larger degree of complexity. its interesting though, currently human repication only lies at the form of a single photon :)

[Arcturus]

Replicators do not need raw material in the sense of a tank of hydrogen can become realigned to bond into water by splicing molecules.

In my understanding the Replicator used E=mc^2 to derive matter from the ship's nearly endless energy stores.

That is to say, energy is mass in proportion.

Warp drive is in itself perpetual energy,since antimatter is everywhere in the universe (more than matter) so a replicator can spew out almost limitless matter. The impulse engines use most of this energy and re route the rest to the replicators and computer.

Why are there cooks? Because some people enjoy cooking and being on a ship at once, Starfleet is just awesome enough to let them have a kitchen.

Will this mess with the Economy of STO? I don't want to buy my tea/books from players, so no. I'll use the credits that I do not have to spend on food/shelter or a ship to buy the rights to share your new invention that boosts phaser power or something. :confused:

[MajorD]

well consider the doctors holo emitter from the future, they could make repairs however they couldnt activly replace it.

This would make me think that replicators require an original pattern to be able to construct the item, the holoemitter couldnt necessarily be scanned due to the complex nature of the item, so because you cant get a patern you cant replicate it.

basically how a replicator works is its a transporter without the inital beam, instead it takes from a source of material and instead of scanning and beaming it to a location it takes this base mateiral and reconstructs it into what was held in the patern buffer.

now in a gaming sence i think replication should always have a limiting factor of

1. resources available.
2. the patern itself
3. the size of the replicator.

Its hinted that there are industiral replicators (on ds9) i would suspect that these produce much larger components to a larger degree of complexity. its interesting though, currently human repication only lies at the form of a single photon :)

I agree with your assessment. We must assume that the fact that they didn't replicate a mobile emitter means they couldn't and I agree that it is probably because of a lack of scanning ability unless it has some sort of subatomic structure that can't be replicated. It is possible a lack of replicator finesse rather than scanning fidelity.

[billybob442]

The power requirements are enormous if they are using energy to matter conversion but if they perform transmutation and material arrangement, then the power loads are far lower.

Even with materials at hand you still have to pay the energy costs for breaking and remaking many trillion molecular bonds - all done in a fraction of a second which would make the efficiency terrible. Of course I'm trying to apply real world physics to a fictional device.. but it does explain why IRL we'll be growing our food even if we could create replicator technology. They're simply to energy inefficient compared to old fashion farming to ever expect to feed a large population that way. Of course these considerations may apply in Star Trek too, which would limit their general use. Its to be pointed out that replicators mostly show up on ships and mass rather than energy efficiency would be your limiting concern in a starship.

[Jiryathia]

Even with materials at hand you still have to pay the energy costs for breaking and remaking many trillion molecular bonds - all done in a fraction of a second which would make the efficiency terrible. Of course I'm trying to apply real world physics to a fictional device.. but it does explain why IRL we'll be growing our food even if we could create replicator technology. They're simply to energy inefficient compared to old fashion farming to ever expect to feed a large population that way. Of course these considerations may apply in Star Trek too, which would limit their general use. Its to be pointed out that replicators mostly show up on ships and mass rather than energy efficiency would be your limiting concern in a starship.

If starfleet were to ever stop being panzies and find a safe way to develope the omega particle we wouldn't be having this debate. :(

[inXi]

Doesn't make sense, even Voyager continued to use replicators when enforcing energy rationing. It makes even less sense for a ship in the heart of the Federation. If replicators were that energy intensive they simply wouldn't use them at all because it would reduce ships' range.Yes, Star Trek doesn't make any sense whatsoever quite often. Creating energy out of nothing makes much less sense than what I said. Replicating something is NOT energy un-intensive. It's very energy intensive. See Alien_de_jour's post (http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=635483&postcount=13).

Also, I am going to remind you that we are talking about a game here. And games need their limits, even if those limits don't often make sense.

[PigUp]

Those are two conflicting ideas and doesn't fit considering anti-replication tempering has never been shown nor mentioned.
Ack! I've confused myself as to what I meant with that logical fallacy. Starting over. There must be a way to prevent replication of SF weapons, people are always trying to steal or sell them (meaning it is far easier to do that than using a replicator). This means that in order to get them you have to have a authorized replicator with the correct pattern. Seeing as the patterns are top secret, you have to make do with taking as many physical weapons as you can. Otherwise every time SF updated the phaser design, the next day, everyone would have it.
We know shipping goes on but buying material goods in Star Trek can be no different from buying software. You don't buy software, you buy the right to use software. So, if you need copies for twelve people, you buy twelve registry codes to use twelve copies of the piece of software.
Ah yes, similar to programs of today, without the source code you could never fully 'have' any piece of software. You can only run it, not modify or reverse engineer it.
It never made sense that you couldn't replicate living things, the difference between a living and suddenly dead thing is minor. Especially since there is a TNG episode where a living spine is replicated for Worf using a specialized replicator. It was some sort open air replicator with a single point that scans back and forth.
Well I don't know what you call it, life force/energy, soul, etc. But whatever makes living things alive, is not something that can be manufactured, artificially recreated, or replicated. Otherwise all you need is the transporter pattern for Picard and you have an unlimited supply of awesomeness.

That's completely different, modern convience foods have to be specially calibrated to withstand freezing or long shelf time and still taste decent after rough cooking methods or none at all. Replicator food doesn't need any such specialized construction. You could cook an awesome steak, scan it in detail at its best point, and that would be that. The problem is, it would be perfectly the same each time, right down to the singe marks. Sameness is boring even when it is high quality sameness, a little junk now and then can be a good change of pace.We are in agreement, I was trying to use a modern day example people would be familiar with. Your CD vs record example was far better.

[Jiryathia]

As for creating living things with the replicator, in an ENT episode aliens kidnap Travis and leave a dead body behind. There were single cell organism injected into the crew before that and phlox could tell it was a fake because the replicator hadn't replicated 'living' cells. Just for reference.

[MajorD]

Even with materials at hand you still have to pay the energy costs for breaking and remaking many trillion molecular bonds - all done in a fraction of a second which would make the efficiency terrible. Of course I'm trying to apply real world physics to a fictional device.. but it does explain why IRL we'll be growing our food even if we could create replicator technology. They're simply to energy inefficient compared to old fashion farming to ever expect to feed a large population that way. Of course these considerations may apply in Star Trek too, which would limit their general use. Its to be pointed out that replicators mostly show up on ships and mass rather than energy efficiency would be your limiting concern in a starship.
Considering that Voyager did start rationing their use, they probably are not efficient by modern standards, but it is relative, especially since this is about ships.
Yes, Star Trek doesn't make any sense whatsoever quite often. Creating energy out of nothing makes much less sense than what I said. Replicating something is NOT energy un-intensive. It's very energy intensive. See Alien_de_jour's post (http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=635483&postcount=13).

Also, I am going to remind you that we are talking about a game here. And games need their limits, even if those limits don't often make sense.
Alien_de_jour and you are correct that it would still take loads of power, but relatively speaking it's not a huge drain except over the long term considering Voyager still lasted years before needing to refuel.

True, although, I prefer it to make sense in the context of the millions of data that already exists.

Ack! I've confused myself as to what I meant with that logical fallacy. Starting over. There must be a way to prevent replication of SF weapons, people are always trying to steal or sell them (meaning it is far easier to do that than using a replicator). This means that in order to get them you have to have a authorized replicator with the correct pattern. Seeing as the patterns are top secret, you have to make do with taking as many physical weapons as you can. Otherwise every time SF updated the phaser design, the next day, everyone would have it.
Everyone does seem to get the update the moment they upgrade. :) Actually, you point is right but I would think Starfleet would keep their weapon designs open to at least Starfleet personnel, considering how prone Starfleet personnel are to making modifications to systems. It seemed that it was usually the big stuff that enemies wanted. For instance, the Enterprise-D helped a Romulan ship by giving it a computer but they gave it an old model so they wouldn't be able to get a look at the newest stuff.

I would expect the Ferengi to use modern software practices in contractual obligation, while I would expect Earth and maybe Starfleet to use open source contracts for a large amount of stuff. Not the Federation as a whole, though.
Well I don't know what you call it, life force/energy, soul, etc. But whatever makes living things alive, is not something that can be manufactured, artificially recreated, or replicated. Otherwise all you need is the transporter pattern for Picard and you have an unlimited supply of awesomeness.
We are in agreement, I was trying to use a modern day example people would be familiar with. Your CD vs record example was far better.
If they made sense they you would be able to replicate Picard, especially considering the second season episode where Worf's spine was replicated.:) But, Star Trek does have funky metaphysics that pretty much equates to a soul. That needs to be taken into account as well.

Thanks.
As for creating living things with the replicator, in an ENT episode aliens kidnap Travis and leave a dead body behind. There were single cell organism injected into the crew before that and phlox could tell it was a fake because the replicator hadn't replicated 'living' cells. Just for reference.

Yeah, that station had advanced replicators but the writers stuck to canon of replicators can't replicate life.

[gargamehl]

in some episodes of vojager janeway say:" cut replicator-rations" - so there is a "need" of something, when you wanna use a replicator....usually energy. So, for the sake of cannon and the economy, they can define it...hmmmm, like:
- replicator-systems (incl. sub-system like energy-transfer-line and so on) are deffined to the size of the crew. First, all needs of the crew must be fullfilled, with the (little) rest you can produce basic-material. In low quantity, for example for repairs. The power supply is simly to small for more.

On the other hand, a replicator needs a blue-print. So they simply forget to implement the blue-print for certainmaterial.

next point would be the tech-lv of the replicator. lv1 only food, lv 2 also slow repair-parts for the hull, lv 3 slow capable of making "low-tech"-sub-system-parts, lv 4 "normal-tech"-parts, lv 5 repairpars for the high-tech-things on board.

There are "basic" material....3 dimensional, no radiation, stable. this would be a makeable part. but with 5 dimensional radiation, your replicator simply can not make it.(dilythium crystalls for example)

And always it is the amount of energy, limiting the speed. And you must have the blueprint.

and maby the replicator is missused as the processing-system^^.....put unpure ore in and get pure ore out. Needs less energy as replicate pure ore (1000 times less or so), so time is the answer. Feed the replicator with the needed stuff, is will work fast. Certain mat. can not be replicated, some mat. can be replicated at low speed.

[Meehile]

There's a couple of things they could take into account to "throttle" replicators.

a) the technology level of the replicator you have.

b) all things replicated requires matter. They could easily wink at canon and require "certain matter types" or composition to be able to successfully replicate something.

c) as discussed here, the replicated copy is never as good as the hand-crafted version. e.g. a given phasor will work most the time, or only for so long if its replicated, where the hand-crafted version works all the time and essentially forever (until destroyed or lost).

d) they could limit replicators to natural items (food, clothing, etc). Never allowing the replication of metals or live entities (like foul, bovines, sheep, fish, etc).

e) they could not put replicators in the game at all (my vote). There will be plenty of "things" from canon that will not be in this game because those "things" don't fit, make the game too complicated, or just flat out break the game play.

I'm not an expert on canon replicators ... but even Roddenberry had to draw a line. Otherwise we wouldn't have are those Star Docks building ships of the line. They would just build huge replicators and replicate ships of the line.

Option "b" of your list is my choice, and there are ways to make sure replicating doesn't get out of hand by requiring so much acquiring of materials before you can replicate something. I am intrigued by all the possibilities here.

Some suggestions of mine for this system:

1) No limitis to what items you can replicate as far as mundane items like food, clothing, simple tools, etc. The only limiting factor would be resource matter on hand. Players would be making these for themselves in most cases.

2) Recipe type system - your replicator must be programmed with the patterns of said items, and players would acquire these via trade, quest reward, random drop, trainer, computer analysis, etc. There could even be rare recipes such as Romulan Ale that only a small percentage of people would acquire and be able to make.

3) Complex items - such as phasers, parts, medicines, etc would be much more stringent on resources required to replicate.

4) Unique Legendary Items - Rather than a weaker version, what I want to see here is a time limit version. The item will have equal stats to the original, but will degrade over time such that the player will have a limited window of use.

5) Recycling - the ability to recycle no longer needed items, degraded items, and even trash loot into resources for future replication.

[shadowsafer]

As far as I remember they couldn't replicate gelpacks either (which is living material) and they needed to keep a stock of those when they had to be replaced.

Weapons might not be replicated because they have an organic part build in as well, not likely probably, but not impossible either. After all I for one don't know all the ins and outs and the exact details of how they make their weapons.

Very complex items were also not replicable because it would require too much time for the replicator. This also explains why the doctors holo emitor wasn't replicatable.
I think there is actually a sort of time limit on the item being replicated, if it takes too long it's not possible to do so. However I'm not sure about this either and I definately can't back it up with some episode or so.

In-game I envision we'll be able to replicate basic needs, PE stated back then that Starfleet would fill in general demand such as clothes, food and weapons and specialty items would be buyable. They were refering to a dish that Kisko could make or something and that would never taste as good from a replicator as hand made.
Now I know that Cryptic isn't PE and is doing things differently, but the ideas suggested do make sense.

I think our basic day to day needs will be taken care off with replicators and everything else can be stimulated through player economy.

[MajorD]

next point would be the tech-lv of the replicator. lv1 only food, lv 2 also slow repair-parts for the hull, lv 3 slow capable of making "low-tech"-sub-system-parts, lv 4 "normal-tech"-parts, lv 5 repairpars for the high-tech-things on board.
I find this idea appealing because we know there are at least two types of major replicators in the show, the generic room kind for food and other materials, and industrial replicators. There is also the open sided one Worf used to replicate a wedding gift, so perhaps three types. To some extent I also find the idea of what might be called high definition replication appealing.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Class_4_industrial_replicator
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Industrial_replicator

Looking into it, it turns out the Federation gave Bajor and Cardassia Class 4 industrial replicators, which are capable of producing power plants and factories. Sounds like a factory factory. DS9 also has at least one industrial replicator of its own, which makes sense considering in the Mirror Universe the Terran slaves who freed themselves used DS9 to build their own Defiant with captured plans, and the normal DS9 would probably be needed to perform repairs on docked ships.

So, at least four classes of industrial replicator. It can refer to size or complexity limit, or both, but I think it's straight size. Ships would also need something like an industrial replicator for their machine shops. While I would bet a class 4 industrial replicator could produce an entire shuttle in one replication, Voyager was obviously not able to do this but it was able to replicate sizable whole parts when it made the Delta Flyer, twice, from scratch. The average shipboard machine shop replicator might be about two meters cubed or larger. Larger ships would probably carry larger replicators, as their parts may be larger or number of parts required may be greater. The latter might equal more industrial replicators rather than a larger one.

[MajorD]

I just realized something, I've been assuming we would some how be making technology plans from scratch, but realistically we wouldn't because all the plans have to designed ahead of time in production. It's more likely we will buy or be given tech plans as we advance. That eliminates some of the issue about ownership and trading.

Although, there should be plans you discover in game play by examining alien technology or that your characters figure out in an emergency rather than learn in training or by buying from a merchant.

How about this; to learn a plan from either training or buying you have to have the learning to understand it. Why? The in-universe reason should be that your are coming up with the plan yourself as based on the learning you receive or analysis of a device you buy. If you just buy the plan for the object, then you are really buying one time rights to replicate that object, where as learning it yourself gives you the rights and lets you replicate the stuff at lower cost as much as you like. Of course, there would have to be a third class of replication other than learned replication and one time use replication, there needs to be unlimited use non-learning replication. That would give you the ability to replicate an object as much as you like, such as Earl Gray Tea, uniforms, or phaser Type II's if you have a tendency to lose them on a regular basis.

Invention/Reverse Engineering = Unlimited Replication
Purchase/Limited Use = One or Several Replications
Free Use/Life Time Supply = Unlimited Replication

This way, someone without an engineering background can still have unlimited use replication but they can't get it all for free, only certain replicator patterns, the rest have to be payed for.

As for the replication itself, if you have a replicator pattern you can either spend pure credits, use raw materials, or use both credits and raw materials to make the replicator pattern. You own the right to replicate, but there is a small cost for power that goes up the less resource diversity you have. If you own a unique pattern, you should be able to auction off the pattern itself at any time, or keep the pattern and auction off its one time right of use. You should also be able to give the pattern away, or give away its one time use. This way, players with no engineering skill also have the chance to get unique engineering derived mission bonus patterns.

It makes contextual sense, everyone gets to use replicators, yet it still creates a market for craftsmen.

[Sir.Bastage]

Blueprints aren't necessary to replicate. On DS9 episode "Rivals", Quarks rival replicated a gambling device in a larger size just by scanning it.

[MajorD]

I mention being able to scan objects for copying. I mention plans in regard to inventions the player comes up with them self based on research and learning. That's a good example though, it shows the versatility of the replicator even in the hands of a layman.

[jhem99]

This may sound like a Picard plagiarism but I'll use mine for tea, not Earl Gray, but Oolong tea. Ymm.