Sphere RPG Items and Equipment

Future Industry

By and large, the industrial infrastructure of human space are what has become known as mixed-mode industry. In this, the large, fixed industry of days past is supplemented by agile universal fabricators. Both have their advantages, both have their disadvantages. That said, the age of monolithic factories full of clunky macrotools that took months to change production is long over. Many of the same technologies are present in both portable fabricators and fixed factories; software controllers seamlessly convert standard blueprint files into appropriate formats for their hardware.
For the inhabitants of developed world it means they swim in almost unlimited material productivity.
For spacefarers and others far from civilization, it has profound effects.

Buying Items

To represent the effects of these different production methods, items have both a cost and a production statblock.
Cost statblock:

Cost is the price of an finished item, straight out of the store.

Origin is the source of the item - generally one of the major political blocks. Due to distance or other problems, the price of items will generally be higher the more distant they are from their origin. The origin will commonly be represented as a letter code.

Blueprint cost is the monetary value of a fab-ready blueprint. These can often be difficult to source far from their place of origin.

Production statblock:

Feedstock is the amount of raw material that a given blueprint needs, per item. Feedstock is an aqueous slurry with a high proportion of dissolved hydrocarbons, polymers and dissolved metals. Three standard compositions are in common use, each with different ratios of dissolved components. Most fab blueprints call for one of the three compositions, though using the 'wrong' one is doable - it simply means greatly increased wastage. 2 points of the wrong feedstock equal 1 point of appropriate feedstock.

FEED-A is the lightest standard feedstock composition and most common for everyday items with low metal content.

FEED-B is a composition with increased light metal components, making it ideal for ceramic and light composite items.

FEED-C has increased heavy and ferric metals and consequently is mostly used for high-wear mechanical parts or other more 'industrial' uses.

Complexity is determined by the macro and microstructure of the item, as large, simple objects can be built faster than small, complex ones - error tolerances are higher meaning fabs can work faster. Thus, complexity directly translates into time taken to fab an object. Complexity also has three levels, in this case precision. A fab not rated for the precision of the blueprint cannot built it - the mechanical tools are simply not small enough.

Standard Precision is the lowest precision level for fabs and typically operates in the 10-20 micron range (ie, comparable to silk or fine wool)

High Precision: Bulk molecular in the 100nm-1 micron range

Extreme Precision: Atom-scale construction