Exot's ability to copy other materials is rather interesting, but right now it is so slow and unpredictable that it is more likely to be in the way and hinder creativity than to actually produce any new inventions. The copying means that you cannot combine exot with most other materials without it breaking mechanisms and rearranging stuff over time.

So, to make exot more useful, I propose that we should introduce a way to control the rate of which exot copies other materials.

One of the simplest ways would be to make the rate depend upon the temperature. A temperature range of 50 degrees – from 50°C to 100°C – would be suitable for this, I think, since it would make it easy to exactly configure the exot without it freezing stuff or setting them on fire.

Thus, exot that is below or equal to 50°C would not copy other elements at all. Every degree would then increase the rate of copying by 2 percentage points. Exot with a temperature of 75°C would thus copy half (50%) of all the particles it touches. For exot that is 100°C or warmer, all (100%) of the particles that touches another copyable particle will be converted with each pulse.

@nmd (View Post)

I don't follow you. Which reactions are you speaking about? And how is this worse than the current state, when it copies relentlessly no matter what reactions it is taking part of?

Being able initiate copying whenever you want, by heating exot up, is actually one of the strenghts of this suggestion. And just to make things clear, the copying would still not be that rapid at all, since exot only copies at the very end of the slow pulses. It would mostly serve to make the copying reliable instead of random.

@Catelite (View Post)

Yes, that would be a very good solution to the problem of unwanted copying.

However, I still feel that if the copying is ever going to be used it needs to be more controllable and reliable. Even just amping it up so it always copies 100% of the time would make it more usable, especially if you can activate it with neutrons.