How are you going to make the parts to make a generator before you have melted the metal.
Once again the discussion is getting ahead of itself. The underwater civ explanation must work from scratch meaning you can only start with stuff that would be available in an ocean and all of the required processing steps need to be possible from that starting point, you can’t assume that some further technology is available before establishing the way that further technology is created from the initial resources.
Otherwise it’s perfect but you forgot the circular reasoning ie. someone suggest that thing x solves underwater civs, but they forget that getting thing x is actually harder than the problem it solves…
What about a potassium ship? I hear they work well in water.
Deathwake
(i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)
316
As a person who has seen a lot of the forum over the years- yup. That’s how it goes. Some inspired random human (like myself) or a new user who doesn’t understand that literally every solution and each of their kitchen sinks has been proposed. I do like the currently existing termite solution. It’s a fun and original one. As soon as I come up with a way to get electricity before the bronze age (surprisingly doable) the only hole left will be the why. (Why would a given civ do all the inane requirements when there is no incremental gain, same as how flying fish could actually fly but there’s no incremental gain on the way.) Anyways did you know some bronze age pots were batteries? If I can push that back a few thousand years we’re good, as I can come up with reasons, however crazy, to do anything.
I can think of 2 paths here,im sure there might be more uses once you have a workable metal:
1Tin → Mine the hydrovents to lava → Use Tin tools to not get too close to lava and thus smelt copper → Bronze
2Tin → Air Underwater forges at shallow sea → Ceramics → Copper → Bronze → Bronze forge fore even harder to get metals
Underwater forges → Harder metals / materials.
Tin → Basic Mechanics. → Pump
Basic Mechanics → Watermills
Once they get a basic pump going they WILL experiment with air and Vacuum just like we did.
Forges btw dont need to be made of higher melting point materials , since the heat will be concentrated only where you want the melting to happen.The Material of a traditional blacksmith forge had a lower melting point yet it was done.
Even though i have a hard time thinking that they wouldnt be able to insulate cunductive materials in water theres still hope.
Analogic computing.
Cant do computations on semiconductors?Tin → Fluidics got you covered.
Fluidics might be limited in its clock cycles compared to modern computing.
I am pro-underwater civilizations, but…just because you have a certain metal doesnt mean you can just smelt another…metals have different melting points, unlike minecraft.
Deathwake
(i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)
322
It seems like it may be close to possible that a hydrothermal vent could suffer frequent earthquakes, that might rip open the vent and expose the magma. If the magma is hotter than on Earth, it may be possible that it’d be hot enough to smelt and melt stronger metals. This could be taken advantage of using a special floating heat-proof container, filled with ores or metal, with an external ballast that burns away once the materials are processed. This seems like it could allow all metals to be obtained without needing air and the various troubles that come with it
