newtonian motion

[Puke]

quote:

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Originally posted by Quikngruvn:
Sorry, I got carried away..

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not at all. i understood your point from the begining, and it is totally valid. what you are overlooking is that while it requires exponentially more thrust for a larger ship to spin, it requires them both far more thrust to move, say, one sqare on the tactical grid. unless the square is not much greater in size than the ship its self.

lacking my old physics ledgers, I cant pull up formulae for you, but let me give it a shot extrapolating from some basic geometry (granted I slept through geometry yet paid attention through physics, but guess which one comes readily to mind 7 years later? danm that. odds are my math is going to be invalid, so feel free to point out any glaring flaws) what we need to do is get a feel for the scale of the game:

in order to get an idea of scale, we need some rough idea of what a square is on the tactical grid. while they seem to have sides with length equal to the lengh of their diagnal, we will presume for a moment that they are insted standard geometric squares and not these bizarre geometrically impossible things. we can extrapolate that each of the (roughly) 63 squares along the side of the tactical map is 1/63 of a strategic square, which is in turn 1/13th the diamater of the stellar system in question. given that pluto is roughly 5.9 billion KM from the sun at its average orbital distance, we can simplify and say that the average solar system in se4 is 10 billion km in diamater. 1/819 of this distance (which is the size of a tactical square) is roughly 12 million km.

The Nimitz class carrier displaces about 97 metric KT and is roughly 330 meters long. if we figure that our escort is about 1.5 times the mass then we can presume (okay, its a crappy presumption, but its the simplest way of doing it) that its length would increase arrithmetically to 495(or 500)meters, the baseship following at 5000 meters. (and those distances are generous condisering that space vessels could be far more dense than earth based surface-ships, since they dont need to worry about silly things like displacing water)

now, with the .5*pi*D formula to find the longest distance traveled in a rotation (or half-rotation, as it were), we come up with about 7850m for the baseship and 785m for the escort. just in case you think im nitpickingon the distances you chose, im NOT: this is just to give you as much distance as possible regarding comparative lenght of a turn (that is, it would have been far more beneficial to my point if i had simply kept your numbers). I am in complete agreement that the core of your arguement reamins the same, and remains unchallenged.

BUT, we have ships that appear to be capable of transversing a minimum (basic engines) of 6*12billion meters(escort) or 2*12billion meters in one turn, from a standing start. now the original point of the thread was that they can not accelerate beyond this, and they can accelerate in the oposite direction without overcoming their own momentum, but we have obviously lost track of that at this point.

now, while I grant you that my flippant referance to turning being 'free in space' was something akin to Cisco's flatulant claims that bandwidth is free, the gist of the argument remains the same. the ammount of thrust expended to rotate a ship, a distance of no more than 7,850 meters, is significantly less than that required to transverse the 12,000,000,000 meters in one square. therefore, turning has no right costing any movement points, and even if a baseship takes longer to do it than an escort, it will happen in a space of time that is completely miniscule compared to the space of time required for either of the two example ships to move one square.

now, to forestall any other attempts at wwf-smackdown-style acrobatics being purprotrated against my logic, let me forstall your arguements by saying that you could further deconstruct this by supposing that a turn consists of a ship accelerating for the first half of its movement and decelerating for the second half, thus removing the requirement for a ship to overcome momentum on a turn.. i dont know where that would really get us, but i can imagine someone trying to take it somewhere. furthermore, i could go on to deconstruct your turning argument by stating that due to the increased length of the base ship, you can apply thrust further from the axis of rotation and achieve more velocity per joule than if they were closer to the axis of rotation (as is the escort's). but since im not actually arguing against your point, i wont go into the proof.

I usually try to keep things light-hearted, so I have to appologize if I have inadvertently turned this discussion into a logical testosterone fest. furthermore, i have to appologize for my abhorant spelling and guestimated mathmatics. Since I have been in basic agreement with you from the start, you probably dont need to expend quite so much effort running rings around me while I am only attempting to stand still and point in a related direction.

I do want to encourage further disucssion though. I enjoy a friendly intelectual conversation, and i usually tend to have more to learn than i do to offer.

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 13 July 2001).]

[dogscoff]

*narf*

[Spoo]

quote:

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1/819 of this distance (which is the size of a tactical square) is roughly 12 million km.

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Ah, but you forget that scale has no meaning in Se4. By your system a planet would be 24 million km across -20 times the diameter of the sun! (But then again planets and stars are shown as the same size. Go figure.)

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Assume you have a 1kg squirrel
E=mc^2
E=1kg(3x10^8m/s)^2=9x10^16J
which, if I'm not mistaken, is equivilent to roughly a 50 megaton nuclear bomb.
Fear the squirrel.

[Puke]

quote:

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Originally posted by Spoo:
Ah, but you forget that scale has no meaning in Se4. By your system a planet would be 24 million km across -20 times the diameter of the sun! (But then again planets and stars are shown as the same size. Go figure.)

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well, thats because, um... the diamater of planets are measured by the diagonal of the square, which is an abstract representation of three dimensional space, and thus you can traverse what should be a shorter distance along the x axis by, umm.. utilizing the z axis, which is on a smaller scale.. and ahh... well, heck, even if you measure a square by the size of a planet, i think my point holds water.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dogscoff:

*narf*

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point taken, i stand narffed. i shall leave this thread alone.

[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 13 July 2001).]

[capnq]

It seems pretty silly to even pretend every object on the map is drawn to scale. Consider that the length of even the smallest 150kT Escort is a significant fraction of a planet's diameter.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[Quikngruvn]

What's really happening is that the tactical squares are really only 1000 miles across (1600 km for y'all raised on metric), and that the image we see of a tiny planet is its equatorial cross-section, but the image of a star is really just a teeny, tiny sliver, and the remaining 99.99% of the star is actually behind the map....

I was going to post a rebuttal to Puke this afternoon, but my logic hit a brick wall (repeatedly, and now it hurts like a...). Spoo's already pointed out the 15 million mile-diameter moon, so there's obviously a bit of ambiguity in the scale of distance and the scale of time in tactical combat.

So, for the sake of sending this thread on a completely different tangent, I suggest that a tactical square represent 1000 miles, a tactical turn represent 5 minutes, and thus tactical combat Last no more than two and a half hours per skirmish. (I also thought about 10000 miles and 1 minute, but since I couldn't decide in favor of any value over the other, I went with my original arbitrary instincts.)

Naturally, any planet and star images would have to be altered. Since a star would take up the whole of the map, maybe just have part of the star visible (an arc taking up, say, part of the top of the map). Ships that get to close to the star's edge could take solar damage, eventually burning to a crisp. 'Course, then the map would have to be bigger, but a scrolling and zooming map could take care of that.

I can't continue my line of reasoning until we at least agree on a scale of time and distance. I gotta hear your opinions on this... (sound of can opener and a worm falling to the floor).

Quikngruvn

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"That which does not kill you will make you stronger." -- Nietzsche

P.S. You know what would be really cool? Movement cost for turning in tactical combat....

[This message has been edited by Quikngruvn (edited 14 July 2001).]

[Magnum357]

Good point! I definitly do not consider the Strategic and Tactical Sqaures to scale in "Real world" situations. I like to think that a Tactical Map is a pretty small fraction of a Strategic map and Tactical Squares are a pretty huge area themselves (the old Board Starfire had big Tactical Hexes that equaled about 50,000 Kms or something like that). So to me anyway, the reason why the ships look like they are turning on a dime is because the each square is such a vast distance that the acutual "Turn Mode" of a ship due to mass is unmeasurable because it is such a vast distance of area. Just my theory of looking at it.

[Quikngruvn]

quote:

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Originally posted by Magnum357:
So to me anyway, the reason why the ships look like they are turning on a dime is because the each square is such a vast distance that the acutual "Turn Mode" of a ship due to mass is unmeasurable because it is such a vast distance of area. Just my theory of looking at it.

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I saw this after I posted my message below. Puke's already convinced me that as it stands, a tactical square is vast. My problem is with the ambiguity of scale.

Another thought: Take a DUC V, range 5 from its target. Imagine a uranium marble (or basketball, or Yugo) being bLasted toward its target and travelling millions of miles before it smacks into the side of the offending vessel. Even with sophisticated computers with the latest and greatest tracking system, that's still a heckuva shot!

OK, I promise I'll shut up now (at least till tomorrow).

Quikngruvn


[This message has been edited by Quikngruvn (edited 14 July 2001).]

[capnq]

OTOH, tactical squares are so small that ships can't move past each other, or stack together without colliding.

< walks away from monkey wrench, whistling innocently >

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[Quikngruvn]

quote:

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Originally posted by capnq:
OTOH, tactical squares are so small that ships can't move past each other, or stack together without colliding.

< walks away from monkey wrench, whistling innocently >

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...BUT are big enough for missiles to wind through or direct-fire shots to pass through....

I'm beginning to realize how Pandora felt....

Quikngruvn