Floatstone (CivBE)

Resources

Floatstone
Resource in Beyond Earth
Yields	None
Notes	Used by powerful late-game Units and Buildings.

Game Info

Floatstone is a strategic resource used in levitating units in the late game phase. It's visible from the beginning of the game, and is accessed with a Floatstone Quarry. It has special uses for Purity-aligned factions. David McDonough states, "(the Purity player) specializes in the float-stone, and they figure out how to mill it into a particular kind of ore that they can use to levitate truly massive objects. Their highest levels are the LEV-Tanks and the LEV-Destroyer, which is essentially a battleship that flies."

• Yield: +3 Energy (with Floatstone Quarry)
• Upgrades: None

Strategy

Floatstone is heavily used for Purity affinity units, and for several other specific levitating units. However, from terrain point of view, its usefulness is far lesser than that of Xenomass and Firaxite, due to the fact that the tile yield of a Floatstone resource isn't that exciting, and that there are no special buildings improving them.

Floatstone is required for the following units:

• Aegis
• LEV Tank
• LEV Destroyer
• Rocktopus
• Holomatrix

Floatstone is required for the following buildings:

• LEV Plant
• Mantle
• Skycrane

Floatstone is required for the following wonders:

• Armasail
• Crawler
• Drone Sphere
• Holon Chamber

Civilopedia entry

Created by the same extreme volcanism that produced the extensive fields of basalt and deposits of firaxite, “floatstone” was discovered by the first planetary survey teams. This is a vesicular, pumice-like rock that appears to be a magnetic monopole as predicted by Joseph Polchinski’s theories in particle physics and quantum gravity, which does not occur naturally on Earth. On this planet, however, untethered floatstone – a metamorphic rock – appears to “float” suspended above the ground due to the interaction of its monopole with the planet’s strong magnetic field radiating from the core. In some instances, the repulsion in the resultant B-field (in the Amperian loop model) is strong enough to lift even several metric tons of mass, effectively placing the stone in a very-low level geosynchronous orbit above the surface. Being pyroclastic, floatstone has a low density which contributes to its repulsive lift. It has several commercial uses – as an abrasive, a building material, a filtrate, insulation, and substrate for crops. But its most promising use might be in the field of magnetic levitation (mag-lev) transport. Although Earnshaw’s theorem precludes paramagnetic materials on Earth, the combination of diamagnetic material (such as processed floatstone), superconductor servomechanisms and harmonic absorbers offer the possibility of efficient mechanical levitation for vehicles on this planet. If such is realized, floatstone may turn out to be of critical strategic importance to the colonization effort.

Images

An Aquatic floatstone quarry shown on a Rising Tide loadscreen