In the future of space, it's easy to transmutate any matter

>>51221794
just say that it can't be. It worked for Star Trek with their latinum or whatever it was called.

>>51221794
You can't.

Scarcity is still possible with high-tech fabricators/replicators if what you're replicating incorporates rare elements but if you can just synthesize those rare elements, that eliminates that.

All I can come up with is that it is an element or a compound that's too complex or unstable to be synthesized.

>>51221794
Maybe the replicators need the chemical breakdown of what they're replicating programmed in and the fuel is too complex to be figured out by randos and the mining guild keeps that shit on lock.

>>51221888
>Scarcity is still possible with high-tech fabricators/replicators if what you're replicating incorporates rare elements
What kind of thing would be naturally occurring on any kind of planet/asteroid but hard to replicate?

>>51221794

You don't. Your setting is retarded, deal with it.

>>51221794

It takes more energy to transmute matter into FTL fuel than the fuel itself actually outputs.

>>51221888
>unstable
This

>>51221794
FTL fuel isn't made of baryonic matter.

>FTL fuel
I remember a blog about the most unstable piece of shit molecules ever created, and how even an overly strong beam of light made that fucker explode. Have the fuel so comically reactive that any attempt to make it in a commercial replicator would take out a city block. Like a very extreme bitcoin mining--you COULD mine bitcoins on a PS2, but it would literally take 5 million years to earn a dollar. Only the guild has the quality replicators to squeeze out the finest FTL juice without killing everyone.

>>51221794
Literally Trek with dilithium

>>51222073
this makes sense, though

>>51222040
Gold, as a basic example. Your basic personal replicator probably wouldn't have access to gold, for as long as technology is incapable of synthesizing gold in an economical fashion. So if they try to use a blueprint that requires gold, they'd either be met with an error or they'd need to tamper with the blueprint to replace the gold with a suitable (and more common) element that won't impede the functionality of the produced product. That would likely require more than a layman's knowledge of what they're replicating and more than a layman's knowledge of the replicator software.

That is, unless you have a ludicrously efficient infrastructure that is capable of rapid delivery of even the rarest minerals.

>>51221794
Oh, that's simple. The fuel would have to contain enormous amounts of energy to facilitate FTL travel. It could easily be the case that the energy expenditure needed to transmute things into it is therefore too high for it to be cost-effective to synthesize instead of harvest. It's like oil. We could create artificial oil in a chemical reactor. But we've got it coming out of the ground, it's easier to just harvest it.

>>51221794
Just say it can be done, but it requires too much energy to do so in large quantities.

>>51221794
The premise makes it scientifically impossible; if you accept transmutation then you accept that all things are possible.

Now replication? That's something else entirely; you still need base elements to replicate things.