So correct me if I am wrong, but since this is a game, and physics/logic need not apply,but anyone with a single rank in life science (or engineering or mysticism), time and a place to do so can change UPBs which weight 1 amount into items that weight a greater amount. The easiest example of this to me is the rations. Those weigh 1 bulk, and 1000 UPBs weigh 1 bulk. However since rations are 1 cr and I can create them with 1 UPB I can create 1000 bulk of rations, given time (which to an android with an iridescent aeon stone is basically free. Most GMS would I assume put the kibosh on this, but RAW I believe it works. Am I wrong?
So correct me if I am wrong, but since this is a game, and physics/logic need not apply,but anyone with a single rank in life science (or engineering or mysticism), time and a place to do so can change UPBs which weight 1 amount into items that weight a greater amount. The easiest example of this to me is the rations. Those weigh 1 bulk, and 1000 UPBs weigh 1 bulk. However since rations are 1 cr and I can create them with 1 UPB I can create 1000 bulk of rations, given time (which to an android with an iridescent aeon stone is basically free. Most GMS would I assume put the kibosh on this, but RAW I believe it works. Am I wrong?
You are correct. You can take 1000 UPB (which cost 1000 Credits to get) and turn them into 1000 Credits worth of rations.
Though I fail to see how this 'breaks the game with crafting'. Perhaps you would explain?
You can turn 1 bulk into 1000 bulk. That level of converion of anything physical can get gamebreaking.
As Gilfalas pointed out, UPB crafting does not affect PC wealth, and it's easy to tell SF economics was built for the end goal of crafting to remain useful without altering power levels.
Unless you mean break the game via availability of resources?
In that sense, yes, crafting skills are quite useful investments.
There are two main options with liquid wealth:
1. Carry it in credits, which have zero weight.
2. Carry it in UPBs, which have weight, but can with time be crafted into anything within the PC's crafting tech range (which can be tons of useful gear!).
This doesn't break the game, as it's fundamental to the design of the game. PC-crafted items are even tougher, so there's another perk too.
The UPB/Credit difference does give an advantage to stronger PCs who can carry more UPBs, but not much since most PCs will have a base of operations to store UPBs in, i.e. a starship.
There has to be some incentive for losing financial liquidity, and 90% of an item's resale value!
ETA: After seeing your new post.
Your example might be physics breaking, but please present a scenario in which effectively buying more bulk of rations (or anything else) is game breaking.
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Also remember, bulk represents a combination of unwieldiness and weight, not simply weight alone.
The inflation in bulk between UPBs and rations might be a matter of changing volume, not mass.
Yah. 10 lbs of lead weighs the same as 10 pounds of styrofoam. (duh) But the styrofoam takes up 100 times the volume of the lead.
Yes I understand that bulk is an abstraction however rations aren't something that is particularly lighweight or fluffy (for give me for my word choice, it's late). For comparison grain works out to the same amount of bulk per credit/UPB.
I should clarify in general I don't actually dislike the crafting system, it is a very convenient system and generally not problematic. I haven't come up with any game breakers in practice do to the system, but making mass from nothing can lead to problems. That being said there's literally magic, so you know things are relative. Basically I worry about creating 5000lbs of stuff from 10 lbs of stuff (using the most reasonable bounds of the 5-10 per bulk guideline).
Imagine sending a rocket off with a 100,000lb payload, but once it gets to the destination it's now a 50,000,000lb rocket, and still moving at the same speed as it was with the 100,000lb payload.
I'm am not the best a breaking the game, but I can see this being exploited in ways similar to the create water cantrip.
If you do things purely by RAW, the potential exploit is still fundamentally limited by time. The crafting rules as presented do not appear to offer any options for crafting items in bulk, so you're stuck converting UPBs to your food of choice one at a time. Unlike other categories, food and drink have no starship expansion bay option that reduces crafting time, so the very best you can achieve is one quarter base time with 11 ranks in Life Science.
That is 1 UPB converted to 1 set of field rations per hour.
You might argue that this time could be reasonably reduced; the exact crafting text is that creating an item normally has a base time of 4 hours, so a GM might reasonably say that this conversion has a much lower base time, and that the conversion is therefore much faster. But a GM might also reasonably say that despite RAW, UPBs alone aren't good for much in the way of food for most species, so you'd better have some additional materials on hand that make the end result something resembling edible.
Even ignoring time, this hardly allows for any sort of kinetic kill vehicle and related shenanigans. You can increase the mass all you want, but Starfinder doesn't model speed in a way that matters here.
Given that the UPB seem to be some kind of really tightly packed nanite bundle that can be instructed to form itself in a lot of different ways making rations from them does not seem to be that odd. The mass differences are interesting but if you look at most of what they create tends to be heavier/bulkier than one UPB it does seem to indicate that they are either really compressed/condensed or once they start building they are getting feedstock from the local environment that the UPB is utilizing to create what it needs. The feed stock could in theory be basically anything just stuff for the nanites to work with.
Given magic is also a think there is a non trivial chance UPB are literally magically creating whatever extra feed stock they need or have access to "pull it from somewhere".
I also forgot the just add water possibility. Much of the weight of any organic thing is water. If the nanites can create the other stuff it may just be a matter of either directly adding water as it is created or letting the UPB pull moisture from the air. Basically reconstituting super dehydrated food at that point.
I really don't think the UPB converting to food is making mass from nothing. I think the UPBs are the equivalent of small capsules containing nanites and some raw materials. When programmed to produce food, they produce it in the same way that a plant seed does. They use ambient energy (well, supplied electricity, probably) to pull carbon dioxide and water from the environment and combine them to make sugars and then use those sugars in other chemical processes to make hydrocarbons and proteins (with Nitrogen). Instead of the acorn turning into the oak tree, it just turns directly into a granola bar.
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So, I looked up “bulk” online. The most common definition is
Magnitude of mass or volume
Starfinder defines bulk as
. . . the bulk of items, which accounts for both their weight and their unwieldiness
So it’s easiest to view UPBs as incredibly dense. They have “bulk” due to their great weight, while in a space suit it’s the larger size that makes it “bulky.”
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BTW, I’m not finding anything in the UPB description (page 233) that actually says you can use it to make edible items. They are described as the basis for technology in the Pact Worlds. Every example is of an inorganic item. You can likely trade 3 UPBs to a restaurateur for a common meal. But the description says that meal is probably mass produced, not that it was produced from UPBs.
Turning UPBs into food is derived from the crafting rules on P. 235, which list food and drink as valid crafting options based on the Life Science skill, and which state that all crafting requires UPBs with a total value equal to the crafted item's price. As no other guidelines are given save for salvaging for 10% value at the GM's discretion, it must thus be inferred that as food and drink can be crafted, they can be crafted with UPBs.
It is not clear that this is entirely intentional in terms of fluff, but it is still RAW.
A bit off topic, but that bit about restaurants is one of the many things that stuck out to me as weird about the default setting. Like... why would you go to a restaurant to have a mass produced meal? Sure, that's basically what you get at a /fast food/ joint, or a chain "pretending" at being a restaurant like Applebees, but a real restaurant (ie, everything that's not a chain, and any chain of at least mid tier and above) would presumably still make real food. There will always be a market for that.
If you go to a restaurant they likely are using their UPB to make the ingredients to cook your food. Sure you can go directly to the finished product but basically what that is doing is making a literally exact copy of what you have the template for. So if you have a burger template every time you use it you are making that exact same burger that will taste exactly the same every time.
I am pretty sure people would go to the restaurant just for a change of pace.
I assume there are high end establishments that probably do serve "real" food but for a lot of restaurants there are a ton of advantages to using UPB for ingredients. A lot of a restaurants overhead is wastage from ingredients that have to be tossed out as they get to old to serve. There is always the fine balancing act of ordering enough supply so you don't run out but not so much that the wastage eats your profits.
With UPB a lot of that problem goes away. The UPB can be stored safely without any danger of them rotting/getting moldy/going bad. That day you can make exactly enough fresh supplies to cover your day. It also allows you to have the highest possible quality ingredients as you can get your templates for exactly what you want and so you can have a consistent level of service for your customers.
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I"m not seeing it as actually using the UPBs as food. The crafting section says you need "skills, materials, tools, and time." (Instead of "skills, UPBs, tools, and time.") And the UPB description says you might need other materials.
So I see it as using the UPBs to perform the thermal and enzymatic processes to prepare the food. The base ingredients would be organics like grains and proteins. The UPBs would also form the containers in which the finished product is stored.
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A bit off topic, but that bit about restaurants is one of the many things that stuck out to me as weird about the default setting. Like... why would you go to a restaurant to have a mass produced meal? Sure, that's basically what you get at a /fast food/ joint, or a chain "pretending" at being a restaurant like Applebees, but a real restaurant (ie, everything that's not a chain, and any chain of at least mid tier and above) would presumably still make real food. There will always be a market for that.
There probably is a small market for small-batch cooking. But you could also flip that around and say "why would you stay at home when the meal is exactly the same price and quality as what you get in a restaurant?" Especially in a place like Absalom Station where 1) you wouldn't have to store your meals and 2) the nearest restaurant is probably less than a block away.
There's some (real) research into how people relate to foods. Some of the most amusing experiments have involved serving people identical prepackaged products. Every experiment shows that 1)people rate the food better if they are charged more, and 2)people rate the food better if they are given a story about the way the food is sourced and prepared. "It's from a local farm about 10 miles away that's been in the same family for four generations. The chef met the farm owner when they were volunteering at a river cleanup. . ."
Maybe in Starfinder they've finally accepted that they can't tell the difference.
It's likely any "real" meat or veg source they get would have been grown in a lab anyway. Once you have cheap, reliable nano-tech, there's no way a 'farm' of any size could compete. Moreover, they'd be seen as negative because of the environmental aspects, most likely.