Alloy/combo element making
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This has been an idea in my head for a while now. Something that could expand on saves a lot as far as functionality goes, is to create alloys.
Now, as an EXAMPLE, not as a suggestion, I will use coal and tungsten for making tungsten carbide.
To make an alloy, there would be a "make alloy" button. It would open up a 4x4 grid that uses a checkerboard pattern and a couple spots on the side to input two different solids. For tungsten carbide, you would choose tungsten for one element, and coal for the other. It should look like a checkerboard of coal and tugnsten. When done, you could draw with it like you would WALL. These 4x4 sections would have special data pertaining to them as their own combined material. Coal+tungsten would be different from gold+iron in its properties but structure would be the same.
Doing all those alloys would likely be very complicated and some would probably be left out, example, explosives or radioactives.
Some example properties of something like tungsten carbide: The two brittle elements combined would be very very strong, so a similar effect to titanium as far as pressure goes. It would have OK conductivity like metal, and a melting point of around 2500-3000 degrees. When melted they would turn into molten tungsten and molten coal, and when cooled would become their own elements, as the alloy is destroyed.
I expect mixed reviews on this, but it was just an idea in my head I felt should get out there so it doesn't bug me that I might be keeping behind a potential goldmine of creation. It may be a gold mine, it may not, but if it is I would have hated to keep it off here. If it isn't, well, an idea's an idea, it's always a good idea to throw anything out there if you think it's good.
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This kind of expands on that concept, giving the combined materials their own unique properties instead of combined effects.
Maybe some elements strengthen others, in the case of my example with tungsten carbide. Both tungsten and carbon are fragile to pressure but as an alloy using special data in the 4x4 you drew the block in would be stronger against pressure.
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It likely wouldn't be helpful unless you restrained it into another type of array, since most of those elements have already-exotic properties that make them function. Mixing them doesn't really sound like how it would actually be.
As cool as the idea is, even real chemistry doesn't follow these guidelines. A real allow is just a matrix of given molecules with altered properties to suit. -
I have to say, thats a pretty cool idea but this seems kinda like crafting in minecraft.....
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There wouldn't really be many uses for this, but if it was an easier way to layer elements then it would be really useful.
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Actually, now that I think about it for a little, bit, maybe tungsten carbide would be a bad example in an alloy topic. It could be a combination made with this, but its an entirely new "molecule". This could use certain metals to make a true alloy with special features, but the whole chemical bonding thing sounds pretty useful aswell.
As far as restraining it to an array, that's exactly that the alloy making area would do. You make it, and only when you draw with the alloy "pen" when you accept your mixture, placing down a 4x4 pixel of the material would give that 4x4 special data telling the dots they aren't their own but rather behave collectively in the 4x4. They all share a melting value, heat changes are the same in all dots, etc. Imagine it just an upscale dot of a different material. When it melts, it turns into lava, or whatever the coded alloy's data tells it to turn into, of the elements it was made of, and when they cool they become themselves, destroying that block of alloy forever until you draw it again.
I have no idea if I'm explaining what you dont know, anyway. If there's something you don't understand about my idea "mixing 2 elements as their own unique data", please tell me, and I can try to help you. :)
