How do you beat the Talisman?

[Trajan]

Oh oh...I feel a physics joke coming on.....

IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS? (Spy Magazine, January 1990)

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of
living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects
and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only
Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since
Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist
children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million
according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census)rate of 3.5
children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at
least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different
time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to
west(which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This
is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has
1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney,
fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat
whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the
sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8
million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we
know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept),
we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2
million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least
once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that Santa's sleigh
is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For
purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses
space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional
reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming
that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds),
the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably
described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more
than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could
pull TEN TIMES the normal anoint, we cannot do the job with eight, or even
nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even
counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison
- this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer
will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short,
they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer
behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake.The entire
reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa,
meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater
than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim)would be
pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's
dead now.

...........there are, of course many (eight that I know of) rebuttals to this theory.

Cheers!
Trajan

[geoschmo]

Gee Trajan, I've seen pictures of Queen Elizabeth and she doesn't look much over 140 pounds to me.

Geo

[Trajan]

I had the same thought when I read this.

Cheers!
Trajan

[Growltigga]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Gee Trajan, I've seen pictures of Queen Elizabeth and she doesn't look much over 140 pounds to me.

Geo

Whoever is showing disrespect to our Queenie is on extremely dangerous ground...

I have today made very good friends with a senior IRS bod in the states (called Stuart Gotobed I kid you not I havea business card to prove it)

Any colonial oik from American who shows the slightest disrespect to our Liz will be thouroughly investigated I can tell you....

[jimbob]

(but Prince Charles jokes are thoroughly encouraged, chaps)

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Growltigga:
Whoever is showing disrespect to our Queenie is on extremely dangerous ground...

LOL. Gt, pulls your claws back in buddy. I meant no disrespect at all.

[CW]

This is possible, but it takes a LOT of ships. The biggest advatage using swarms of small ships is that the difficulty in hitting them makes up for how easily they go poof when hit. Against a Tailsman fleet you lose this advantage. It's better to go with fewer larger ships that can hold up to the damage longer, since their defensive disadvantage is irrelevant anyway. In the end you will land more shots against him for the same amount of resources.

If you are using subverters against someone with talisman, it *IS* probably better to go small. AI targeting is flawed and even if you have the highest level of combat sensor, your ships won't shoot at 5 targets in one turn in simultaneous games. Build a whole bunch of light cruisers with a single virus pack and a large mount subverter each, tell them to deliver the "message" up close and personal is perhaps the best thing to do. The biggest resource wastage with small ships is that you have to build a lot more engines, so if you play with a newtonian propulsion mod the waste is a lot less significant.

By the way, fully filling up a hull is NOT a design requirement! You can always use the swarm tactic AND large/heavy mounts together. The base cost for a dreadnought is only 850 minerals more than an escort.

[ August 07, 2002, 13:12: Message edited by: CW ]

[Gryphin]

* double checking the thread title *
Phew, for a moment I thought I had miss-clicked and ended up in the Canttina.

[Puke]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Puke, I think you are too married to the ship tonnage is displacment thing.

actually, thats is exactly what i was arguing against. mass is the only important factor, so inside vs outside only effects what is or isnt protected by armor. i guess im petitioning to rename external mount missiles to 'single shot' missiles.

oh well. what was it that the Sex Pistols said about the Queen?

[Growltigga]

"Right", camera pans left to Growltigga busily typing an email to his new chum Stuart "Feed me the ground flesh of taxpayers" Gotobed, doyenne of the IRS.

"Dear Stuart,
As discussed, I should be so grateful if you could organise for a full IRS audit to be carried out against the following individuals whi I know are obvious felons, procrastinators and tax-dodgers

G Perley of Dayton OH and a Mr L Puke of California

I do believe the death penalty is called for in both cases. In fact, I understand that the death penalty in Ohio is carried out by the condemned being played country and western music repeatedly until one's head explodes. In California, I understand that the prisoner is repeatedly poked in the genitalia with a surf board until death, in either case, please can I have ringside seats"