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[_DivideByZero_]

Continue previous action, initially aerobraking at a tar planet to get myself into position. Once I'm done at each of the tar planets I move outwards to the asteroids and then shift systems when it's all complete.

Nodes I think will require a Mana potion to spawn, since they are a physical entity made of Mana. So you won't be able to make an infinite amount without finding a source of Mana. The asteroids won't provide much solar energy for your nodes since they're far away, and the nodes are not intelligent so they can't really engage in asteroid-cracking when left alone. The best they can do to collect Mana is to collect random free mana floating around in the debris disk, which is a trickle at best. Most of it is condensed on asteroids.

You're free to put nodes there if you wish though. Most Mana harvesting operations are done by cracking asteroids for Mana locked inside. If there was a dwarf planet you could stick a node inside a geyser and hope it collects Mana dissolved in the water, but there are no easily-detectable dwarf planets in the debris disk. You can either do an exhaustive search to maybe find one (might take many years) or perhaps consult the futuristic Civ at Beta Centauri. They could have some info~

At the moment nothing you do is time-sensitive, so things will go by fast. You can crack asteroids, but the roll will pause when you encounter something interesting.

[Lenglon]

what about if I go in the middle of nowhere and have them collect random free mana there? roughly how long would it take to recoup my initial investment?

[_DivideByZero_]

what about if I go in the middle of nowhere and have them collect random free mana there? roughly how long would it take to recoup my initial investment?

Interstellar mana is at a similar density to the interstellar medium, basically. If you have a giant concentrated mass you'll sweep stuff up, but that requires something like a planet, and it'll concentrate the mana at the surface anyway (your mana turns into life instead). Inside a system the concentration is usually greater, but still, your nodes have a very small area compared to the amount of Mana flowing through a particular point in open space. It would probably take centuries to millennia to recover the initial mana investment, although it will have collected a lot of solar energy by that time. (wizards can totally wait that long though, just travel to a faraway sector and come back after some time).

Concentrated, stable mana is so rare that a single wizard can conceivably deplete some systems before another shows up, although there is a lot of interstellar mana out there in stray meteorites ejected from a star system during formation. Those are extremely difficult to detect, but over time they will replenish a system's reserves. It's not really possible to sweep those up with nodes, however.

[Lenglon]

hmmm, but what I'm hoping for is something more sustainable than hitting rocks...
I mean, I *could* just hang around hitting rocks for a century, but that seems rather...
stupid.
there has just got to be an efficient way to go about this...
ok, there aren't any dwarf planets around here, but lots of debris and dust.
lots and lots of loose mass hanging around with no strong gravity source to pull it in.

How hard would it be to make my own dwarf planet?

[_DivideByZero_]

hmmm, but what I'm hoping for is something more sustainable than hitting rocks...
I mean, I *could* just hang around hitting rocks for a century, but that seems rather...
stupid.
there has just got to be an efficient way to go about this...
ok, there aren't any dwarf planets around here, but lots of debris and dust.
lots and lots of loose mass hanging around with no strong gravity source to pull it in.

How hard would it be to make my own dwarf planet?

All you'd need to do is concentrate mass into a single body. To make a ceres-sized dwarf planet, you'd need to maneuver around 500 asteroids of a 60 km radius into place (ignoring whatever hax-based mana drive you need to efficiently convert part of the mass into propellant). You also need an energy input to move the asteroids. It would take... a lot of power. More than you could conceivably generate with nodes stationed directly on the asteroids, unfortunately, since rock is heavy and moving it takes energy.

I don't think you can do it with nodes. You could try making von-neumann replicators and setting them loose converting asteroids into solar panels to fuel your powers, and then use conveniently-stationed nodes to channel the energy into the asteroid's mass as propellant. But self-replicating machines always go wrong in this kind of fiction...

[Lenglon]

hmmm, but what I'm hoping for is something more sustainable than hitting rocks...
I mean, I *could* just hang around hitting rocks for a century, but that seems rather...
stupid.
there has just got to be an efficient way to go about this...
ok, there aren't any dwarf planets around here, but lots of debris and dust.
lots and lots of loose mass hanging around with no strong gravity source to pull it in.

How hard would it be to make my own dwarf planet?

All you'd need to do is concentrate mass into a single body. To make a ceres-sized dwarf planet, you'd need to maneuver around 500 asteroids of a 60 km radius into place (ignoring whatever hax-based mana drive you need to efficiently convert part of the mass into propellant). You also need an energy input to move the asteroids. It would take... a lot of power. More than you could conceivably generate with nodes stationed directly on the asteroids, unfortunately, since rock is heavy and moving it takes energy.

I don't think you can do it with nodes. You could try making von-neumann replicators and setting them loose converting asteroids into solar panels to fuel your powers, and then use conveniently-stationed nodes to channel the energy into the asteroid's mass as propellant. But self-replicating machines always go wrong in this kind of fiction...

No, no need for any of that. I have a star to play with. and stars radiate energy.
the solar pressure out here isn't going to be huge or anything, but it'll be more than enough, given some time. I'll start with rocks that are on the inner side of the debris disk and have a target point for their combination that's near the outer end. all i have to do is set up the sails.

[Coolrune206]

Seek the source of the signals, consume a mana potion, and begin my journey to the planet. On the way, investigate the planet to check if it has atmosphere. If it does, great, no second potion needed. If it doesn't, consume a second mana potion to land. Check out the local flora and fauna (If there is any)

[Urist Arrhenius]

Go to Sirius and determine what life is present.

((Sorry for absence, was ill.))

[Pancaek]

Go and see what some of those signals in the outer planets are about. Gotta be somewhat stealthy about this, after all.

[_DivideByZero_]

((Waiting on Yourmaster))

hmmm, but what I'm hoping for is something more sustainable than hitting rocks...
I mean, I *could* just hang around hitting rocks for a century, but that seems rather...
stupid.
there has just got to be an efficient way to go about this...
ok, there aren't any dwarf planets around here, but lots of debris and dust.
lots and lots of loose mass hanging around with no strong gravity source to pull it in.

How hard would it be to make my own dwarf planet?

All you'd need to do is concentrate mass into a single body. To make a ceres-sized dwarf planet, you'd need to maneuver around 500 asteroids of a 60 km radius into place (ignoring whatever hax-based mana drive you need to efficiently convert part of the mass into propellant). You also need an energy input to move the asteroids. It would take... a lot of power. More than you could conceivably generate with nodes stationed directly on the asteroids, unfortunately, since rock is heavy and moving it takes energy.

I don't think you can do it with nodes. You could try making von-neumann replicators and setting them loose converting asteroids into solar panels to fuel your powers, and then use conveniently-stationed nodes to channel the energy into the asteroid's mass as propellant. But self-replicating machines always go wrong in this kind of fiction...

No, no need for any of that. I have a star to play with. and stars radiate energy.
the solar pressure out here isn't going to be huge or anything, but it'll be more than enough, given some time. I'll start with rocks that are on the inner side of the debris disk and have a target point for their combination that's near the outer end. all i have to do is set up the sails.

The asteroids themselves are giant solar sails. Why do you think they've lasted billions of years in orbit? Unless your sails have areas many orders of magnitude grater than the areas of the asteroids, you're looking at astronomical timescales unfortunately.

My calcs put the energy requirements for an orbital transfer on the order of trillions of years using solar power collectors spread over the area of 500 60km asteroids. And Nodes can only be spread so thin--it's made of just a single mana potion after all. Assuming a mana potion is a few kilograms and your node material is as strong as CNT film, you might be able to get a 100x100 meter pane or so per kilogram.

I don't think you quite grasp the magnitudes of what we're talking about. Lategame wizards can do this kind of stuff--but that's because they command planets' worth of mana with the skill to manipulate it all despite lightspeed delay. I can't start you off at this power level for obvious balance reasons.

[Yourmaster]

Find a fuel to get onto the planet.

[_DivideByZero_]

Find a fuel to get onto the planet.

Which planet? One of the terrestrial planets or the neptune-type worlds with crushing atmospheres?

[Yourmaster]

Tau Ceti IV

[_DivideByZero_]

Tau Ceti IV

You don't need fuel to land on it, you can just slingshot into the system and airbrake through the atmosphere. I mean, it'll require some accuracy not to slam into the planet, but this is a maneuver a lot of wizards do to cut down on mana costs. You simply enter the atmosphere like a meteor and slow yourself down by redirecting energy.

If you want a safer approach you can use water from oort cloud objects as propellant, although you'll lose some time collecting solar energy to heat the water.

[Yourmaster]

Oh, then slingshot.