What can't replicators do?

Please move this if this isn't the appropriate forum.

What I was wondering was, in general, as GMs/Narrators, what have you described Replicators being unable to do? I've used Memory Alpha, and various wiki references, plus book references like the NG (I think) and Stardock, even though its an older source for a diff system.

Sure you can't make photon torpedoes, or create energy with a replicator, but what sorta weapons _could_ you come up with?

My thought involved a species that used replicator tech to quickly produce missile weapons for their ship, combined with a folded space transporter/railgun, which would have the effect of ye old Starfleet Battles system where you transported mines, but in this case, without needing to drop your shields.

Assuming you have enough suspended material, and power, you can make bombs. As demonstrated by DS9 self-replicating cloaked mines. But in game terms, what type of missile weapon could you make?

Something with the penetration value of Photorps? Quantums? Can you replicate high explosive materials like ultritium, or materials to make a nuclear warhead?

From a game perspective, I'd be happy to have an accelator cannon/transporter cannon that does less dmg than a photorp (maybe 5s across the board in penetration) with beam weapon-ish range. Largely its for story (though on a super success, I'd rule that the folded transporter managed to remat the bomb INSIDE the target's shields, ignoring shield defense for that attack), but I'd like some consistency and 'yeah...i suppose its possible' reasoning. I mean, as a GM, I could make whatever I wanted to happen, happen, but I prefer having some consistency with the world situation.

(As for why this tech hasn't been adopted by other species) in game I've described this design, incorporating folded space transporter tech, plus other stuff, as generally being detrimental to most humanoid creatures. Cept the creatures using this weapon in this case, naturally. I'm thinking "It gives off radiation that can't be easily shielded, and these creatures are largely invulnerable to radiation so they don't care", to adapt it to general Alpha quadrant species would require more shielding and safeguards that would ultimately make the weapon less efficient (by a large degree) than using standard photorps/etc.

Anyhoo, in other replicator questions:

Could an industrial replicator make a nuke? A spatial torpedo (ala Enterprise era)?

Interesting question.
I personally think of the replicator as a mall. Anything you can buy there, the replicator can make easily. Originally only intended to create food-stuff, replicators can't make anything bigger than what fits on a tray, or in the case of Industrial replicators; the space of a shopping mall cart.

Even replacement organs for lifeforms in the ship's databanks can be created. (VOY: "Phage")

The only things they can't reproduce are either items which Starfleet has little or no knowledge about (such as Romulan or Cardassian technology) or whose use is forbidden (Even Sisko had a hard time optaining Bio-mimetic gel in DS9: "In the Pale Moonlight").
Some other stuff they can't make are dilithium crystals and Bio-neural gel packs, the type of stuff that makes the starship engines and computers run. Vessels have to travel to either a station or planet for that.

Uniforms and weapons require a higher security clearance, just like in real life.

Starfleet (Or: Myself as a narrator) wouldn't allow a crewmember to replicate any weapon more powerful than a handphaser without security clearance. If they don't ask the captain for clearance, I'd let my players do a few difficult Computer Use skill checks before allowing that.

Industrial replicators can even be used to replicate heavier machine parts, but not complete machines. (TNG: "The Game"; DS9: "For the Cause")
That's very important; They can only create parts, not a complete machine. So that'd require some assembly checks (probably a combination of some appropriate skills such as Construct, Craft, Engineering, Knowledge, Repair, and in case the player missed one of those checks, I as a narrator would know the weapon won't function properly.)

Just don't let the players use the replicator to solve all their problems for them. Star Trek is not about technology, it's all about the human adventure. So in my game, players have to make skill checks, even when using a replicator.

Generally speaking, there seem to be a number of materials a replicator can't or certainly can't easily do.

Organics (alive)
Antimatter
Superdense atomic elements (I.e. those from the higher actinide series)
Super advanced crystaline latice structured materials, with a refractive structure, such as superrior forms of duranium, dilithium, vertinium cortenide (the stuff they make warp coils from).
Matter not from normal space, such as partly subspace based matter, such as tetrions, chronitons or Latinum (which has some sort of wierd subspace effect, possibly owing to also belonging to a class of superdense elements)
Something they don't have an accurate sample (to the atomic/molecular level)
Something which requires quantum levels of accuracy.

I think depending on the era you are talking about and if you are distinguishing 'regular' and 'industrial' some or all of those issues can be overcome, but generally speaking unless they have an exact quantum state recording, anything alive would rapidly become dead, as the balance of precise chemical interactions at the time of scanning are incredibly important, In sentient lifeforms I can forsee horrible 'single bit errors' in DNA, nurotransmitters and other sensitive electrolitic interactions killing someone who was replicated from anything other than a transporter trace, using a replicator which can use all that data (a transporter! :))

I think this also applies to a lot of advanced computer technology too, as information would be stored on them at the quantum level, including the basic operating system for the device, meaning it would be hard to replicate them given most computing devices are self contained computers in this era (isolinear chips are both CPU, I/O and memory devices). Several of the TM's indicate these are manufactured rather than replicated, which fits that. it also explains why they couldn't replicate the EMH portable holoemitter in Voyager.

A lot of the materials in TNG are super advanced crystalline composite materials which have properties far in excess of anything we can conceive of today. They are extremely good at refracting/reflecting energy, which, if you think about it, means they can't really be replicated, as they would begin refracting and reflecting the energy beams of the replicator, as they formed. Imagine replicating warp coils... and the energy causes it to produce subspace distortion uncontrolled - KABOOM - that's a lot of why Photorps can't be replicated, as they have warp-coil-like devices in their hulls. Dilithium likewise is unreplicateable (though they can repair it now, using theta matrix compositing, in TNG)

When it comes to materials which are superdense, in the realms of *we need a particle accelerator to make this* then you are using up a lot of energy to transform base matter (replicators take a lump of organic and inorganic matter and transform it into a roughly similar material, not form particles from pure energy!) into higher forms of matter. Of course being 'the future' many materials are made from atomic elements 'not on our periodic table' which means these types of elements. I think these would come under the 'wasting energy' camp, more than the 'impossible' but then I severely doubt that a domestic replicator would have enough energy to create such particles, at all, though staship and starbase replicators could be allocated such high-energy on a military-need basis I am sure. (industrial replicators are probably devices which can take that much energy without overloading!)

For the same reason as organics it's probably not a good idea to replicate anything with an unstable quantum state, such as explosives... I.e. you are mixing an unstable molecule, which explodes, with a device which creates it using large amounts of energy, that sounds like a recipe for disaster! LOL That sounds like a fun way to infiltrate a starship: Introduce a virus which causes all the replicators to replicate large quantities of explosives! :D I think it's mentioned lots of things are locked out, with command codes, from being replicated, anyway so that should be hard to do!

Anything that's not even classed as regular matter probably can't be made by a replicator, and I doubt can even be transported easily, such as things out of phase, subspace particles, antimatter or the exotic weird thing of the week :) Likewise replicators can only really make things from a 'pattern' so while you could create a holographic puppet or a visually similar fake from visual scans alone, you'd need to thoroughly scan something at the atomic level to actually replicate it. (so you might be able to make a good enough fake of the Mona Lisa using a good tricorder scans, intensive scanning would likely reveal it to be a fake, due to things like carbon 14 readings etc.)

First of all I would simply consider the replicator a story-element. If it is appropriate for your story if your characters can replicate a certain thing, let them. Of course in this case you need to keep track of these things, because what was possible in one episode should not become unavailabe in another withour reason ( the need to program the replicator with the necessary data, computer glitches, power failures, sabotage or computer locks are excellent reasons, e.g. ).

More generally speaking I would say anything that would not need specialized equipment nowadays ( comparable of course ), should be availabe via replicator. Certain high tech like computer parts, which contain very tiny connections or power supply lines, etc. should be impossible to create at least at a satisfactory quality. Crystal structures, organisms, etc. should also be invalid options out of the simple reason that the resources needed would be to high - a transporter system would be more suitable for such elements.
What I used as a rule of thumb, back when I was still playing Trek RPGs, was: If the player cannot explain how something works then the replicator cannot produce it, cause it is too complex.

My rule of thumb is that they can create most mundane equipment used by Starfleet. This is done by reading a template into replicator memory and using that to alter the crude matter from which the replicator creates the finished product. No template generally means no product.

I decide what templates exist, based on story considerations, but the rule of thumb is that exotic materials, high energy materials, living tissue and things of similar complexity are out.

Templates for certain objects have security clearance attached. The way security clearance works in my world is like this: the replicator queries the computer with the player's identity (obtained biometrically, usually) and the security clearance of what he wants to create. The computer returns a thumbs up or thumbs down. This mechanism prevents the player's entire security clearance data from trekking around the network. Instead it stays in the central core, and requests come in which are granted or rejected). Any template derived from one or more templates carries the highest security clearance requirement of any component. So a phaser disguised as a walking stick would still require a phaser's clearance.

It's possible to create a template by scanning an example object (which is self-limiting). It's also possible to design a template "from scratch" but it is very hard to do and takes a great deal of time. How much time depends on my evaluation of whether there exist suitable components that the player can combine. It also requires design software that in turn requires engineering skill and appropriate clearance to use. And generally, it requires a lot of prototyping to work the bugs out. The normal process is to create models by traditional techniques, optimize the hell out of them, and then scan them. Creation of templates is normally done at specialized facilities by specialist engineers, and they are uploaded to starship databases through the same subspace network that carries software updates and other sensitive data.

Really clever players can of course try to hack their way around this and they may even succeed if their skills are up to it. But starship computers log all kinds of things for the simple reason that space travel is dangerous and in times of peace Starfleet usually analyzes all kinds of data from lost ships to prevent repeats. Because of this, it's extremely difficult to keep hacking a secret indefinitely. Bypassing the security clearance protocols or safety protocols without excellent reason usually constitutes conduct unbecoming at the very least, and will get players drummed out. I warn them about all this, because the Academy teaches everyone at least the basics of 23rd century law.

The high-energy technology the examples are talking about replication are probably incredibly dangerous. A replicator mishap might turn your custom phaser into an hilarious way to explode.

*GM says "Of course you can replicate a phaser"* ...... "Sir there's a hull breach in sector 23! Some sort of high energy explosion in the replicator network?" :D

Yep Balok, I agree. Players always like to shirk rules, and it always amuses me to foil them, or point out they are likely to get caught :D

I think that there are probably a lot of things that you could make with aa replicator, but that doing so woulnd't be practical, or that there might be safeguard to prevent a repicator from doing so.

For example, with the way technology works, replicating something probably uses a lot more energy that other methods of production. I many cases it might be more efficient to find another solution. Kinda like giving someone the secret of turning lead into gold, but discovering that it takes $200 worth of lead to make $20 worth of gold. Just thinking about the law of conservation of matter for a minute (yeah it Trek, but a little science can help with a lot of SciFi problems) one can realize that just producting a Ton on phasers (literally) would require at least a ton of mass from the ships stores, aqnd that is at 100% efficiency. Three or four tons is more reasonable. Very dense materials would require a lot of energy/mass.



As for safeguard, I'm sure that there are all sorts of restrictions to prevent people from just replicating an arsenal, or some sort of toxin. THese can be bypassed, but as a general rule most people on a ship shouldn't be able to replicate a phaser rifle or 50.

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Originally Posted by tonyg

I think that there are probably a lot of things that you could make with aa replicator, but that doing so woulnd't be practical, or that there might be safeguard to prevent a repicator from doing so.

For example, with the way technology works, replicating something probably uses a lot more energy that other methods of production.

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I very much doubt that. The transfer from energy to matter is far more effecient that creating something by "hand". You'd still need energy for that so the same coeffecient for energy conversion applies. There is waste created, machinery all working with less than 100% effeciency, etc.

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Just thinking about the law of conservation of matter for a minute (yeah it Trek, but a little science can help with a lot of SciFi problems) one can realize that just producting a Ton on phasers (literally) would require at least a ton of mass from the ships stores.

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The law of mass conservation does not apply here - it fails in systems which include conversion of mass to energy, like radiating materials, etc. Uranium, etc. looses mass by radiating it off in form of electromagnetic energy. Theoretically ( remember E = m c² ) it is possible to change energy back to mass again, exactly what replicators do. What does apply ( and this one always does ) is Law 2 and three - Conversation of Energy and Production of Entropy. Meaning the Energy will loose "worth" and replicating something will use up energy stored in the systems.

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Originally Posted by Evan van Eyk

I very much doubt that. The transfer from energy to matter is far more effecient that creating something by "hand". You'd still need energy for that so the same coeffecient for energy conversion applies. There is waste created, machinery all working with less than 100% effeciency, etc.

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You still have to store the raw nutrient matrix material and basic inorganics, de-assemble it, move it and manipulate it (at a molecular level!) during replication, and which (according to the DS9TM) involves a lot of localized subspace domains and crap, which is pretty high energy.