Does it make sense that the materials on a planet depends on the planet type?

[iain666]

At first glance, well d'uh - of course it does. But there're generally four kinds of rocks we can shoot to get mats out of them. Outcrops are the local bedrock, what the planet is made of. Bronzite Chondrites, Mesodiderites and Metallic Meteorites are all rocks that fell out of the sky - those should reflect the bulk composition of the whole system (or be differentiated wholly separately from any planet they happen to land on), not the planet they landed on. If the latter three predominate then there's not really any reason for material availability to correlate with planet type, if it's mostly the former then the observed correlation makes sense (although there should be a chance, however small, of finding any material that exists anywhere in the system in a meteorite on any planet in the system but I can accept a line was drawn).

I'm going to start counting...

Sites of volcanic/organic activity are excluded as they are likely to skew things being localised and non-representative, I will always be aiming for the strongest signal on the wave scanner and driving about randomly until I get one if there's nothing.

Bedrock vs sky at 23:22 for the first 100 minutes...

 

[Sapyx]

Well, to an extent I suppose it depends on how "mixed up" the asteroids get. Are most of the impactors on icy outer moons comets which came from the outer system, or asteroids from the inner system which were flung outwards? I would assume (!) it is generally easier for things to be flung inwards rather than outwards, since there's a huge object at the bottom of the gravity well (the local star) that tends to suck everything down towards it, but I'm no astrophysicist to be able to state this with confidence.

You should also be careful when arguing about "logic" for the distribution of materials. Highly radioactive short-half-life materials like polonium and technetium "logically" shouldn't occur anywhere except perhaps in supernova-remnant star systems (black holes and neutron stars); as far as we can tell they don't occur in nature in our own solar system in extractable quantity and since the laws of physics are universal, there's no reason to believe they'd be any more probable in other star systems of similar stability and age.

 

[Maia Posidana]

You should also be careful when arguing about "logic" for the distribution of materials. Highly radioactive short-half-life materials like polonium and technetium "logically" shouldn't occur anywhere except perhaps in supernova-remnant star systems (black holes and neutron stars); as far as we can tell they don't occur in nature in our own solar system in extractable quantity and since the laws of physics are universal, there's no reason to believe they'd be any more probable in other star systems of similar stability and age.

Ummm, Polonium is a very great deal more common on Earth than you seem to think. While it is extremely rare, it is not nearly so much so that it is difficult to extract. Polonium used to be used in textile mills to dissipate static charge. It was also used in the early days of the photography industry, in the creation of photographic plates. Last I checked, our solar system was not a supernova remnant.

 

[Krunchie]

Don't bother. It's all random.
I've seen Metallic Meteorites drop only Sulphur, Phosphorus and Carbon (all are nonmetals), which is mind boggling.

 

[iain666]

Well, to an extent I suppose it depends on how "mixed up" the asteroids get. Are most of the impactors on icy outer moons comets which came from the outer system, or asteroids from the inner system which were flung outwards? I would assume (!) it is generally easier for things to be flung inwards rather than outwards, since there's a huge object at the bottom of the gravity well (the local star) that tends to suck everything down towards it, but I'm no astrophysicist to be able to state this with confidence.

Chondrites and mesosidereites are from rocky asteroids by definition and are formed in the early stages of planet formation so will have fairly uniform bulk composition system wide (mesosiderites come from the rockier upper volumes of planetesimals that got big enough to at least start some fractionation so should be relatively less Iron-nickel rich). 'Metallic' meteorite isn't a strict term but presumably refers to the iron-nickel rich bits of the same bodies that spawned the mesosiderites. There might be fragments of cometary ice but not in the stuff we can currently interact with.

You should also be careful when arguing about "logic" for the distribution of materials. Highly radioactive short-half-life materials like polonium and technetium "logically" shouldn't occur anywhere except perhaps in supernova-remnant star systems (black holes and neutron stars); as far as we can tell they don't occur in nature in our own solar system in extractable quantity and since the laws of physics are universal, there's no reason to believe they'd be any more probable in other star systems of similar stability and age.

Po occurs naturally during the decay of uranium and can be found in the solar system but the quantities are small and with a half life of a few months you don't get to keep it for long (maybe our radioactive mats should disappear if we don't use them, or turn into different ones where applicable...)

 

[malenfant]

Ummm, Polonium is a very great deal more common on Earth than you seem to think. While it is extremely rare, it is not nearly so much so that it is difficult to extract. Polonium used to be used in textile mills to dissipate static charge. It was also used in the early days of the photography industry, in the creation of photographic plates. Last I checked, our solar system was not a supernova remnant.

Polonium has a very short half-life (the longest half-life is about 125 years) which makes it very rare as a natural element on Earth: "The largest batch of the element ever extracted, performed in the first half of the 20th century, contained only 40 Ci (1.5 TBq) (9 mg) of polonium-210 and was obtained by processing 37 tonnes of residues from radium production. Polonium is now usually obtained by irradiating bismuth with high-energy neutrons or protons. [...] Only about 100 grams are produced each year, practically all of it in Russia, making polonium exceedingly rare." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#Occurrence_and_production

It's certainly not going to be found in natural meteorites in the quantities shown in ED.

 

[JetsonRING]

Meteorites, for example do not care about what type of planet it is on which they fall so, materials not commonly found on a particular type of planet can still be found there. o7

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Ummm, Polonium is a very great deal more common on Earth than you seem to think. While it is extremely rare, it is not nearly so much so that it is difficult to extract. Polonium used to be used in textile mills to dissipate static charge. It was also used in the early days of the photography industry, in the creation of photographic plates. Last I checked, our solar system was not a supernova remnant.

Those uses need little polonium and I believe it's not natural, instead they craft it from irradiating other elements.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Well, to an extent I suppose it depends on how "mixed up" the asteroids get. Are most of the impactors on icy outer moons comets which came from the outer system, or asteroids from the inner system which were flung outwards? I would assume (!) it is generally easier for things to be flung inwards rather than outwards, since there's a huge object at the bottom of the gravity well (the local star) that tends to suck everything down towards it, but I'm no astrophysicist to be able to state this with confidence.

You should also be careful when arguing about "logic" for the distribution of materials. Highly radioactive short-half-life materials like polonium and technetium "logically" shouldn't occur anywhere except perhaps in supernova-remnant star systems (black holes and neutron stars); as far as we can tell they don't occur in nature in our own solar system in extractable quantity and since the laws of physics are universal, there's no reason to believe they'd be any more probable in other star systems of similar stability and age.

The only way I can think of a planet having polonium or other radioactive elements is if it were to have very high concentrations of uranium or thorium and bismuth to actively produce it.

 

[Para Handy]

I went over this a bit in a thread I made about the variance between the amount of Arsenic found compared to amounts of rarer materials according to the system map. Since the body's detailed info on the system map lists the elements as "Planet Materials" - that doesn't mean the physical make-up of the planet (apart from what occurs in outcrops) - the meteoric materials are not dependant upon the planet's constituents since they are deposited from space.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

I went over this a bit in a thread I made about the variance between the amount of Arsenic found compared to amounts of rarer materials according to the system map. Since the body's detailed info on the system map lists the elements as "Planet Materials" - that doesn't mean the physical make-up of the planet (apart from what occurs in outcrops) - the meteoric materials are not dependant upon the planet's constituents since they are deposited from space.

This makes sense but would suggest a fairly even distribution of those mats from body to body, and we know that much is false.
The planetary materials makes this clear.

 

[Para Handy]

This makes sense but would suggest a fairly even distribution of those mats from body to body, and we know that much is false.
The planetary materials makes this clear.

Yes but it is not dependent upon the make-up of the planet, it is a distribution derived "somehow" by stellar forge. It somehow decides (or just allocates) an element as being able to be found on that planet surface and the percentage distribution of that element. I have no idea how it is done but it is obviously not just decided by the make-up of the body as if you look around I am sure you can find any element on any type of landable body.

As I say, the Planetary Materials listed on the system map just means what elements can be gleaned from the surface.

I am quite happy to be proven wrong - any Stellar Forge experts going to explain the materials derivation?

 

[iain666]

The material distribution seems to have at least some correlation with planet type (at least on early provisional analyses). Sulphur and Phosphorous - I've never seen those on a metal rich planet when I've been looking for them but I'm rarely looking for them so...

I'm now counting local vs space rocks as I prospect. Things were looking fairly even for 5 bodies, then I landed on an icy one and it was all space rocks so I've started again but counting per body type (other factors that could effect incidence of meteors like having a moon are being ignored for this phase).

At some point towards the end of my rock-type-incidence data gathering exercise I will look to grab planetary data from somewhere like EDSM and do an updated material by body type study and then see if there's any correlation.

It might be a fool's errand, but it'll keep me amused for a while...