Megastructures would not exist as in world structure. Megastructures would have to be launched piece by piece by a megastructure handler multiblock. Individual megastructure pieces (dyson swarm parts, accelerator parts, etc), as well as fuels to launch the megastructure parts into space, would be consumed by the multiblock to increase progress of the construction. Depending on the size of megastructure and distance that the megastructure has to be deployed, different launching technologies would have to be used. Ranging from rocket fuel propelled engines, to maglev structures shooting rockets into space, to warp technology. Since it is unreasonable to hold a megastructure piece in the inventory, building and launching the megastructure part will be done in the same recipe, with no intermediate of having a megastructure item. The multiblock would also have a recipe progress animation that shows progress of building that part in world as well as an animation for launching that part.
Circuits can be linked to the megastructure. The linked circuits can be put in special megastructure handlers, that have huge arrays of emitters & sensors. Things can be input to be sent to the megastructure, and things made by the megastructure can be received. For example, massive energy receiver for dyson swarms, and material receivers from asteroid mining swarms. Some structures such as the dyson sphere need constant upkeep.
ZPM Tier
Gas mining megastructures
(This would override the gas mining system seen in advanced rocketry)
On space stations orbiting gas giants, drills can be built reaching to different depths, giving different gases. Drills with deeper depths will require stronger materials. The extracted planetary gas will then have to be treated and cryogenically distilled into different compounds, just like what is needed with liquid air.
Possible gases obtained (different compositions at different depths, also depends on planet):
Hydrogen
Helium
Deuterium (in the form of hydrogen deuteride)
Methane
Neon
Asteroid harvesting megastructures
(This would override the asteroid mining system seen in advanced rocketry)
Asteroids would be located by obtaining space data. This space data is researched to find asteroids. There are many different types of asteroids in the Asteroid Belt and Kuiper Belt that can be mined to cover specific metal & chemical demands later in the game.
To harvest these asteroids, special rockets equipped with thrusters, solar panels and lasers could be sent to the asteroids to modify their orbit, pushing them to enter Earth's orbit. The farther the asteroid, the longer this will take. Once the asteroid is orbiting Earth, mining stations equipped with solar panels and grinding machines can be sent to the asteroid, which will send asteroid rock back down to Earth to be processed.
UV Tier
Antimatter Mass Production
Could be used as an intergalactic travel fuel source or an energy source.
The main idea is that this uses large arrays of solar panels, particle collectors and particle accelerators that automatically create far more than just a few nanograms of antimatter as seen in normal particle colliders:
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/45f0c79d13c29
Antimatter would require special containment cells.
UHV Progression
Magnetic Monopole Mass Production
Requires a particle accelerator approximately the size of Earth to accelerate particles to energies getting closer to what was seen at the Big Bang, to get weirder types of matter
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48572566653b6
Magmatter from monopoles would be an extremely strong material required for megastructures beyond this tier. Due to its extreme density, it will collapse into black holes if a ball of magmatter exceeds a diameter of a few millimeters. Magmatter is stored in the form of very thin wires to prevent this from happening. Microscopic black holes can be produced by purposefully creating a large ball of magmatter to be collapsed. This may be used as parts of future megastructures
Add in methods to process materials that are far beyond the capabilities of gregicality multiblocks. Possibly needed to make dyson swarms
UEV Progression (Megastructures that need magmatter)
Dyson Swarm
Constructing this would require mastery of resource production in the entire solar system. Advanced solar panels and lasers will have to be mass produced. Here is Zalgo's idea from June 2021:
MATERIALS NEEDED:
Massive amounts of stuff from colonizing solar system
Copper indium gallium selenide for solar cells
Add more later
POWER GENERATION:
We make it by having reflective panels around the Sun, with an adjustable orbital radius, each panel will have a fixed surface area, we can calculate the power collected by them like this: First we find the power density at the radius the panels are orbiting that, this is easy to calculate:
P_r = pow(R_T/r, 2)*P_E, where P_E is the power density on Earth (1361 W/m^2) and R_T is the orbital radius of Earth (1 AU)
To get the total power made by the swarm we simply multiply P_r by the surface area of a single panel, and by the number of panels we have.
MAINTENACE:
The reflective panels should degrade at a speed proportional to the power density they are being subjected to, the more they generate, the faster they degrade, which means that a swarm closer to the Sun may generate more power with more less material cose, but will require a higher upkeep, on the other hand a swarm further away from the Sun will have a lower upkeep, but a higher material cost per unit of power generated.
The rate at which panels break should be adjusted to make getting more than 1% of the total output of the Sun unfeasible, so we can avoid changing the skybox, keep in mind that 1% of the total solar output is still a lot of power.
POWER TRANSMISSION & USE:
The panels make the power but have to beam it solar relays, which then transmit it towards Earth, a single relay can only support so many reflective panels, so if you don't have enough relays you waste power. (More in next section)
Transdimensional power transfer & orbital laser drill
Power can be sent between different planets and from power generating structures like the dyson sphere. This can be done with microwaves or neutrinos.
MICROWAVE METHOD:
Beaming power from planets would be done with massive arrays of Holmium-doped YIG crystal lasers to convert electricity into microwaves. Beaming power from the dyson sphere would similarly be done with giant holmium-doped YIG crystal laser array satellites a few kilometers wide.
These microwaves can be sent to relays orbiting a planet to beam the energy towards power plants on the planet that convert microwaves back into electricity, which can be done with rectennas, which consists of a dipole antenna and a schottky diode. The microwaves could also be used as an orbital laser drill by sending the microwaves towards a target. Orbital laser drills would extract massive amounts of material from planets: soil, stone, lava, ores, and any other thing that happens to be on the planet. This planetary material will have to be all sorted out into useable materials. This extracts molecules rather than pure atoms, such as silicon dioxide, lava, and ore materials, which is something that cant be done by megastructures that only make pure elements,
NEUTRINO METHOD
Using special technology, power can be transferred more effectively by converting power into neutrinos on planets and dyson sphere power relays, and converting the neutrinos back into power at power plants on different planets. This power system does not need relays and is efficient during day and night. This will be especially challenging due to the properties of neutrinos, including neutrino oscillations and neutrino's ability to pass through normal matter.
UIV Progression
Moving stellar & planetary objects
Previous tiers involved sending man made objects to stellar or planetary objects, including black holes. This tier and beyond would require moving the stellar or planetary objects themselves via various high tech spaceships, to create artificial systems such as the void forge. This includes "planetary kinetic manipulation" as mentioned in the tech tree. Allows player to change day/night cycle at will.
Full Periodic Table Nucleosynthesis
Star lifting for mass producing hydrogen and other lighter elements inside the core
Large star-sized particle accelerators on top of the star's equator, along with magnetic nozzles on the star's poles, would squeeze matter from the top and bottom of the star, to be collected. Products obtained will depend on the age of star and other factors. Most stars would provide hydrogen & helium when lifted, while chemically peculiar stars will give other materials. These include:
Zinc, strontium, zirconium, barium from Am Stars
Strontium, chromium, europium, praseodymium, neodymium from Ap/Bp stars
Black hole factories for producing heavier elements from lighter elements
Black hole factories mine light hydrogen gas from the surface of gas giants and redirect them to a microscopic black hole with the mass of the Moon (can be made by magmatter). This creates a small accretion disk where fusion takes place, generating immense amounts of radiation and plasma containing heavier elements, up to californium and beyond.
The superheated product plasma from fusing would have sorted and cooled and into useable material
Creation of gravitational anomalies using a "void forge" involving black holes
Would require cosmic strings made from extremely high energy particle colliders. Would be made on site rather than being made somewhere else and somehow being magically transported to where-ever you need it to be. Production of this would be similar to magnetic monopole production, as cosmic strings have probably also been formed in similar conditions as monopoles. Would probably need a far bigger particle accelerator.
Gravitational anomalies could be used for many applications beyond this point, including transportation and end-game weapons. One application of a gravitation anomaly could be making a region of space time where time flows hundreds of thousands of time faster or slower than its surroundings.
The highest tier of particle accelerators would probably take advantage of the power of supermassive black holes to accelerate particles to light speeds, somewhat similar to how ultra-high cosmic rays are created. This could be used to simulate conditions at the big bang and make all sorts of exotic matter, some of which will have to be somehow extracted and stabilized.
UXV Progression (Megastructures that need gravitational anomalies)
Mass production of wormholes
Wormholes will unlock instant transfer of information & matter between different areas. This allows linking several megastructure computers together into one overpowered network. Also allows linking of several resource collection systems throughout the galaxy to channel massive amounts of resources into certain areas.
Production of wormholes will require the most advanced systems for energy transfer, energy storage, and the most advanced particle accelerators. Manipulation of space time via gravitational anomalies will be used to stabilize the structure.
OpV Progression (Harnessing the power of black holes)
Black hole power generators
Black holes are stated to be the final way to create energy in supersymmetry. Also probably covered by Zalgo
Neutron star mergers for nucleosynthesis
Rather than using hydrogen from gas giants for nucleosynthesis, the player can push 2 neutron stars together to create a neutron star merger, releasing several solar masses of heavy metals to harvest. Would probably be the final method of mass producing raw materials.
Stuff to research later
This entire list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hypothetical_technologies#Engineering_and_manufacturing
Summary
Megastructures are mostly inspired by the Orion's Arm project technology page (https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45b175dbc0d73)
Launching and building megastructures
Megastructures would not exist as in world structure. Megastructures would have to be launched piece by piece by a megastructure handler multiblock. Individual megastructure pieces (dyson swarm parts, accelerator parts, etc), as well as fuels to launch the megastructure parts into space, would be consumed by the multiblock to increase progress of the construction. Depending on the size of megastructure and distance that the megastructure has to be deployed, different launching technologies would have to be used. Ranging from rocket fuel propelled engines, to maglev structures shooting rockets into space, to warp technology. Since it is unreasonable to hold a megastructure piece in the inventory, building and launching the megastructure part will be done in the same recipe, with no intermediate of having a megastructure item. The multiblock would also have a recipe progress animation that shows progress of building that part in world as well as an animation for launching that part.
Circuits can be linked to the megastructure. The linked circuits can be put in special megastructure handlers, that have huge arrays of emitters & sensors. Things can be input to be sent to the megastructure, and things made by the megastructure can be received. For example, massive energy receiver for dyson swarms, and material receivers from asteroid mining swarms. Some structures such as the dyson sphere need constant upkeep.
ZPM Tier
Gas mining megastructures
(This would override the gas mining system seen in advanced rocketry)
On space stations orbiting gas giants, drills can be built reaching to different depths, giving different gases. Drills with deeper depths will require stronger materials. The extracted planetary gas will then have to be treated and cryogenically distilled into different compounds, just like what is needed with liquid air.
Possible gases obtained (different compositions at different depths, also depends on planet):
Asteroid harvesting megastructures
(This would override the asteroid mining system seen in advanced rocketry)
Asteroids would be located by obtaining space data. This space data is researched to find asteroids. There are many different types of asteroids in the Asteroid Belt and Kuiper Belt that can be mined to cover specific metal & chemical demands later in the game.
Types of different asteroids in asteroid belt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_spectral_types
Chemicals found in kuiper belt objects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt#Composition
To harvest these asteroids, special rockets equipped with thrusters, solar panels and lasers could be sent to the asteroids to modify their orbit, pushing them to enter Earth's orbit. The farther the asteroid, the longer this will take. Once the asteroid is orbiting Earth, mining stations equipped with solar panels and grinding machines can be sent to the asteroid, which will send asteroid rock back down to Earth to be processed.
UV Tier
Antimatter Mass Production
Could be used as an intergalactic travel fuel source or an energy source.
The main idea is that this uses large arrays of solar panels, particle collectors and particle accelerators that automatically create far more than just a few nanograms of antimatter as seen in normal particle colliders: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/45f0c79d13c29
Antimatter would require special containment cells.
UHV Progression
Magnetic Monopole Mass Production
Requires a particle accelerator approximately the size of Earth to accelerate particles to energies getting closer to what was seen at the Big Bang, to get weirder types of matter https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48572566653b6
Magmatter from monopoles would be an extremely strong material required for megastructures beyond this tier. Due to its extreme density, it will collapse into black holes if a ball of magmatter exceeds a diameter of a few millimeters. Magmatter is stored in the form of very thin wires to prevent this from happening. Microscopic black holes can be produced by purposefully creating a large ball of magmatter to be collapsed. This may be used as parts of future megastructures
Source: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48572566653b6
Material Processing Megastructures
Add in methods to process materials that are far beyond the capabilities of gregicality multiblocks. Possibly needed to make dyson swarms
UEV Progression (Megastructures that need magmatter)
Dyson Swarm
Constructing this would require mastery of resource production in the entire solar system. Advanced solar panels and lasers will have to be mass produced. Here is Zalgo's idea from June 2021:
MATERIALS NEEDED: Massive amounts of stuff from colonizing solar system
Copper indium gallium selenide for solar cells
Add more later
POWER GENERATION: We make it by having reflective panels around the Sun, with an adjustable orbital radius, each panel will have a fixed surface area, we can calculate the power collected by them like this: First we find the power density at the radius the panels are orbiting that, this is easy to calculate:
P_r = pow(R_T/r, 2)*P_E, where P_E is the power density on Earth (1361 W/m^2) and R_T is the orbital radius of Earth (1 AU)
To get the total power made by the swarm we simply multiply P_r by the surface area of a single panel, and by the number of panels we have.
MAINTENACE: The reflective panels should degrade at a speed proportional to the power density they are being subjected to, the more they generate, the faster they degrade, which means that a swarm closer to the Sun may generate more power with more less material cose, but will require a higher upkeep, on the other hand a swarm further away from the Sun will have a lower upkeep, but a higher material cost per unit of power generated. The rate at which panels break should be adjusted to make getting more than 1% of the total output of the Sun unfeasible, so we can avoid changing the skybox, keep in mind that 1% of the total solar output is still a lot of power.
POWER TRANSMISSION & USE: The panels make the power but have to beam it solar relays, which then transmit it towards Earth, a single relay can only support so many reflective panels, so if you don't have enough relays you waste power. (More in next section)
SEE SIMULATION HERE: https://discord.com/channels/701354865217110096/704379576742183132/856885545593339924
Transdimensional power transfer & orbital laser drill
Power can be sent between different planets and from power generating structures like the dyson sphere. This can be done with microwaves or neutrinos.
MICROWAVE METHOD:
Beaming power from planets would be done with massive arrays of Holmium-doped YIG crystal lasers to convert electricity into microwaves. Beaming power from the dyson sphere would similarly be done with giant holmium-doped YIG crystal laser array satellites a few kilometers wide.
These microwaves can be sent to relays orbiting a planet to beam the energy towards power plants on the planet that convert microwaves back into electricity, which can be done with rectennas, which consists of a dipole antenna and a schottky diode. The microwaves could also be used as an orbital laser drill by sending the microwaves towards a target. Orbital laser drills would extract massive amounts of material from planets: soil, stone, lava, ores, and any other thing that happens to be on the planet. This planetary material will have to be all sorted out into useable materials. This extracts molecules rather than pure atoms, such as silicon dioxide, lava, and ore materials, which is something that cant be done by megastructures that only make pure elements,
NEUTRINO METHOD
Using special technology, power can be transferred more effectively by converting power into neutrinos on planets and dyson sphere power relays, and converting the neutrinos back into power at power plants on different planets. This power system does not need relays and is efficient during day and night. This will be especially challenging due to the properties of neutrinos, including neutrino oscillations and neutrino's ability to pass through normal matter.
UIV Progression
Moving stellar & planetary objects
Previous tiers involved sending man made objects to stellar or planetary objects, including black holes. This tier and beyond would require moving the stellar or planetary objects themselves via various high tech spaceships, to create artificial systems such as the void forge. This includes "planetary kinetic manipulation" as mentioned in the tech tree. Allows player to change day/night cycle at will.
Full Periodic Table Nucleosynthesis
Star lifting for mass producing hydrogen and other lighter elements inside the core
Large star-sized particle accelerators on top of the star's equator, along with magnetic nozzles on the star's poles, would squeeze matter from the top and bottom of the star, to be collected. Products obtained will depend on the age of star and other factors. Most stars would provide hydrogen & helium when lifted, while chemically peculiar stars will give other materials. These include:
The superheated star plasma from star lifting would have sorted and cooled and into useable material
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting Chemically peculiar stars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemically_peculiar_star
Black hole factories for producing heavier elements from lighter elements
Black hole factories mine light hydrogen gas from the surface of gas giants and redirect them to a microscopic black hole with the mass of the Moon (can be made by magmatter). This creates a small accretion disk where fusion takes place, generating immense amounts of radiation and plasma containing heavier elements, up to californium and beyond.
The superheated product plasma from fusing would have sorted and cooled and into useable material
Source: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/464790d2497de
Creation of gravitational anomalies using a "void forge" involving black holes
Would require cosmic strings made from extremely high energy particle colliders. Would be made on site rather than being made somewhere else and somehow being magically transported to where-ever you need it to be. Production of this would be similar to magnetic monopole production, as cosmic strings have probably also been formed in similar conditions as monopoles. Would probably need a far bigger particle accelerator.
Void forges would span several tiers: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/56a75bc63a599 (This goes very in-depth about how it would work)
Gravitational anomalies could be used for many applications beyond this point, including transportation and end-game weapons. One application of a gravitation anomaly could be making a region of space time where time flows hundreds of thousands of time faster or slower than its surroundings.
Zevatrons & Dark Matter Production
List of possible candidates for dark matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Theoretical_classifications
The highest tier of particle accelerators would probably take advantage of the power of supermassive black holes to accelerate particles to light speeds, somewhat similar to how ultra-high cosmic rays are created. This could be used to simulate conditions at the big bang and make all sorts of exotic matter, some of which will have to be somehow extracted and stabilized.
UXV Progression (Megastructures that need gravitational anomalies)
Mass production of wormholes
Wormholes will unlock instant transfer of information & matter between different areas. This allows linking several megastructure computers together into one overpowered network. Also allows linking of several resource collection systems throughout the galaxy to channel massive amounts of resources into certain areas.
Production of wormholes will require the most advanced systems for energy transfer, energy storage, and the most advanced particle accelerators. Manipulation of space time via gravitational anomalies will be used to stabilize the structure.
Microscopic worm hole production: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4a5dd245a6820
Macroscopic worm hole production: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4900e0ec7498a
OpV Progression (Harnessing the power of black holes)
Black hole power generators
Black holes are stated to be the final way to create energy in supersymmetry. Also probably covered by Zalgo
Neutron star mergers for nucleosynthesis
Rather than using hydrogen from gas giants for nucleosynthesis, the player can push 2 neutron stars together to create a neutron star merger, releasing several solar masses of heavy metals to harvest. Would probably be the final method of mass producing raw materials.