[MoM] Add the Gamma Sterilization photokinetic power

[Standing-Storm]

Summary

Mods "[MoM] Add the Gamma Sterilization photokinetic power"

Purpose of change

When Photokinetics were first added, they had the ability to irradiate food to make it last longer. Then they lost it.

Time to bring it back.

Describe the solution

Add the Difficulty 5 Gamma Sterilization power, which lets you irradiate food and drink. When you use the power, you get a menu that lets you pick food and then counts up the mass of items you want to irradiate, sets a flag to keep track of them, then starts an activity. This activity is high-energy but short time (40g of food irradiated per second), following the results of #69460. When the activity is completed, the items you picked are irradiated. The calorie cost and time it takes scales with the amount of items selected.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Testing

The power can show up through insight, contemplation teaches the power, the power is usage and lasts an appropriate amount of time (mostly a short time).

Additional context

[emixa-d]

I think it would make more sense for calorie (and drain & stamina, though that's trickier) to scale by sum of item volumes or sum of item mass(*), because many food items are not of comparable size (e.g. 1 bread / 22 flour vs. 1 yeast), and in some cases (e.g. food whose nouns are classified as uncountable in English, e.g. flour) the item volume is for convenience of the crafting system rather than a reflection of the world simulated by the game.

Also, a 'fun' failure mode could be to accidentally send the gamma radiation to the wrong location,, i.e. give yourself some radiation (but going by later calculations, it would be very low).

Some time ago I tried to investigate how a photokinetic would do this (as in, power costs), and what the implications of them being able to do this would be (I was worried it might be super lethal in combat). Let's complete the investigation (conclusion: does not appear viable in combat, unless you have strapped them down to a chair or something for a long while, in which case much simpler methods exist):

• unit of ionizing radiation (per mass) is the gray (1 Gy=1 J/kg)
• food irradiation doses (for purposes of extending shelf life) is around 1-7kGy (source: table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation)
• according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome#Signs_and_symptoms (**), early symptoms of ARS can occur at 0.35 gray.
• comparing energies involved: 1 apple(0.05kg) @ 2 kGy ->0.1 kJ. 0.1 kJ / 1 average North American Human (80.7kg) = 0.0001 Gy.
• 0.0001 Gy < 0.35 Gy by a large margin, so doesn't seem viable
• (might get a little more viable if you only target a single region, e.g. the brain, but I don't know if it scales that way and it still would take a while).

There probably are many things wrong with this kind of reasoning, but unless I miscalculated it appears this has no combat applications (except perhaps for some niche situations where simpler methods exist).

(^) all theoretical
(**) I'm not going to track down the source for only a game.

[Standing-Storm]

Originally I figured that since the time spent was so low the mass differences would all come out in the wash (does it really matter if it takes 2 minutes or 4?), but I admit I was not considering scraps of meat or individual units of yeast. Those taken into account, scaling the time by mass makes more sense.

Also, a 'fun' failure mode could be to accidentally send the gamma radiation to the wrong location,, i.e. give yourself some radiation (but going by later calculations, it would be very low).

This is why learning the power requires knowing Lucent Barrier (to avoid this exact problem from occurring).

Edit:

(might get a little more viable if you only target a single region, e.g. the brain, but I don't know if it scales that way and it still would take a while).

Avoiding having to deal with this sort of thing is why I've consistently taken the stance that psionics is not generally that precise unless you're using them on yourself, so a photokinetic wouldn't be able to fry specific portions of someone's brain the same way a telekinetic can't rip someone's heart out of their chest or a teleporter teleport someone's head off.

[emixa-d]

I did some calculations on "kcal cost / kcal content of food", and it seems a bit low. Going by my computations, sterilizing a banana costs only 0.63% of the calories of the banana. Is it meant to be that efficient (or did I miscalculate somewhere -- haven't updated yet)? Going by the mention of 'extremely taxing' I thought a sizable fraction (e.g. 13% or even 25%) would be the case.

• assume 100g, 89 kCal banana
• u_photokinetic_sterilize_item_weight_in_grams=2.5 (after the /40 division)
• duration = 3.5 s (ignoring rounding) (or 2.5 s, maybe that +1 is just for technical reasons)
• average calorie cost: 2 kCal/(12.5 s) (EOC_PHOTOKIN_RADIATION_STERILIZATION_COST)
• -> total calorie cost = 0.56 kCal
• 0.56 kCal/89 kCal = 0.63%

[Standing-Storm]

It's extremely taxing compared to normal uses of powers, but you're right--it at least according to the above-linked PR, it doesn't actually take that much energy to radiation-sterilize something ("2.5 Calories per kilogram of matter"). An in-game banana weights 120g, so it's only about 54% efficient (2.5 kCal per kg * 0.12 kg of matter = 0.3 kCal). But if you start trying to sterilize every single piece of food you have you are going to make yourself pretty tired.