Alcohol

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by Littlearmies

Hi, largely because the other crops can help work providing nitrogen to the soil - best quality grapes come from vines that have been stressed - that is why it's illegal to irrigate vines in most of Europe (and hence why Central California vineyards, which depend upon irrigation, produce such godawful wines). Roses, planted at the end of vineyard rows, act like canaries in mines to give warnings of disease in the vines.

The benefits of working in the wine trade....

Malc

You wouldn't hapen to work outside the Central Valley, would you? I believe Napa and Sonoma depend heavily on irrigation, too. Interestingly, they call it quality assurance...

Webstral

[Abbott Shaull]

I have always wonder why they would good food to make fuel. Like many things about the game original rules, that didn't make sense, but hey it was their game.

[Legbreaker]

This would be why Methanol was included at a cheaper (half) price than Ethanol.
Ethanol requires foodstuffs while methanol is made from basically anything else. (Yes, I know it's more complicated than that, but it is just a game.)

[Raellus]

I think it's pretty much accepted as a given that the game designers wanted a way to make player groups more or less self sufficient when it came to fueling up their one or two vehicles. They probably also wanted to slow vehicle movement so that a group of players couldn't drive halfway across Poland in a single afternoon. Plus, there's no doubt the nuclear exchanges described in GDW canon would pretty much end most conventional fuel production and distribution for at least a decade.

I think the idea is that methanol could be produced with the byproducts of conventional agriculture. Cornstalks, husks, and cobs could be used for fuel while the corn itself would be used as food. That kind of kills two birds with one stone. You wouldn't necessarily need to choose one over the other- you could eat and still brew up fuel meth/eth.

I know it's bad science but a suspension of disbelief is needed here.

Perhaps some sort of enzyme or something was developed to help in the alcohol field brewing process.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I know it's bad science but a suspension of disbelief is needed here.

Perhaps some sort of enzyme or something was developed to help in the alcohol field brewing process.

Well, they did put aliens into Twilight Nightmares, so who knows?

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Perhaps some sort of enzyme or something was developed to help in the alcohol field brewing process.

In the RPG Cyberpunk 2020 the main fuel used in vehicles is a (fictitious) type of alcohol they call (IIRC) CHOO2 which provides much more energy when it is combusted than ethanol or methanol. I think maybe it contains extra oxygen molecules compared to natural forms of alcohol but I can't remember exactly (it has been more than a decade since I last played Cyberpunk 2020). In the CP 2020 universe CHOO2 largely replaced fossil fuels and was produced using some kind of genetically engineered bacteria.