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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Caliban" data-source="post: 56156" data-attributes="member: 284">One of the assumptions I'm using for this is thatA) High level mages have better things to do with their time than doing grunt wor for a corporation.  At 17th level you are one of the most powerful individuals on any planet.    The Emperor can command the services of high level spellcasters (thus the Long Road was built), but most will corporations won't be able to hire them for the sustained effort that creating permanent teleport circles between two moving objects would take. B)  The beanstalk is actually much more economical over the long haul. ( As in over a 100-200 year period.  A company run by dragons wouldn't have any trouble taking the long view.) For the concept of industrial magic to work, you need to be able to use spells in a mass production setup, which means low level spells that can be cast by many different mages.   This is why I'm trying to limit myself to cantrips and 1st level spells for the big engineering projects.  You can get higher level mages to create one-off items that incorporate more powerful spells, but they rarely do that as a full time job.   They just can't afford the XP expenditure unless they are active adventurers (in which case item creation isn't their full-time job, adventuring is). There probably is one or two permanent Teleport Circles on the station.  The Imperial Legion based there probably has one, and the Draconis Combine section probably has one.   Neither of them would be used for transporting ordinary cargo.   Instead,  they would only be used for very critical cargo:  Stuff that absolutely has to get there right now, or for wealthy patrons able to afford the much higher cost of the trip.   There main reasons I didn't go with Permanent Teleport Circles:1) It would have the 850 pound weight limit.    You would need about 60 of them to transport 25 tons of cargo, and it would still have to be in 850 pound units.   A single 25 ton vehicle would have to be broken down into parts and then re-assembled on the other side. 2) Trying to do it with Starcasters (since they don't have the weight limit) wouldn't be economical in the long run.   They aren't reliable in within a planetary gravity field.  Even if you found a way around that,  they would have to be recharged after 50 teleports.   To match the beanstalk, you would have to do 1,440 teleports of 25 tons each, every day.   You would have to drain 29 starcasters  every single day.   Keeping the mages on staff to recharge that many starcasters, every single day would cost more that the beanstalks in a few decades, even if you could find enough mages with the XP to spare. 3)  Style.   Industrial magic should have a mass-produced, factory feel.  Also, I wanted the Industrial Might and Magic company to run on the backs of the little mages, not the great archmages.</blockquote>

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