Nuke

computing the energy of a collision is not really that hard compared to actually running the collision detection algorithm. problem is its not hard to come up with absurdly large energy numbers from conventional ground based weaponry. doing the same for weapons in space where the differences in velocity alone are pretty large, you might end up breaking the floating point unit. also the term dps doesnt really make sense in the real world. what you really want is a single high yield impact with as much energy as possible to effectively one hit the target. rapid fire is usually either used in area denial, say a kill zone with machine guns. in psychological warfare, suppressing fire. or to ensure a single solid hit, which is the idea behind the gau-8. any one round can kill a tank, but you fire 300 of them because it ensures you hit something critical like tha magazine. dps is strictly a video game thing that is used for rating a weapons performance, a grossly simplified mechanic that does not take into account the physics of the projectile. most games use a hitpoint system so rating a weapon by the rate of hitpoint depletion makes sense, but in the real world its significantly more complicated.

buy all the things!

i was talking to one of my friends, in their own language. i said "meow".

sometimes i am ashamed to tell people my country of origin as we seem to ge going down the toilet lately.

i have a hunch that additional resources aren't far beneath the surface. stuff that doesn't last long on the surface may be quite abundant a few meters down. moon spelunking required.

what if you use high energy particles rather than photons. highest kev particles possible very near the speed of light. space craft is essentially a large stack of particle accelerator rings with a hab ring on top of it, maybe a reactor around the hub point. whole ship would spin for gravity. a spindly thing maybe a klick in diameter, ring cross section maybe only a few meters across with the hab only being a single deck maybe 20m long.

i was actually playing around with steam's streaming feature and was able to play doom (the new one) on my raspberry pi tablet, streamed from my main pc. all be it with some intolerable latency. probably wouldn't be as bad with ksp as its not an fps. id have to move my license to steam though and i don't really want to do that. still looking for a solution that isn't tied to a particular release platform.

you can wax philosophical all you want. there are ways of dealing with that kind of thing.

a good question is one that goes somewhere, leads to new information, and more importantly new (good) questions. the meaning of life is a stupid question because it doesn't go anywhere. you can spend a lifetime hung up on it and not learn a thing in the process.

as far as heating is concerned pay careful attention to tdp numbers. when buying an aftermarket cooling solution, make sure it can perform at or above those specs. stock coolers are usually engineered to match the tdp requirements for a non-overclocked cpu and are fine for the most part. the 3600 is only a 65w tdp so i wouldn't worry to much about overheating. you should be able to use whatever brand gpu you want. the 1660 is likely a better budget option. ray tracing, if thats what you are after, probably isnt stellar on the 2060 (im running a rtx2070 super and i can barely run the rtx quake 2 demo at 1080 with reasonable framerates). the 1660 is pretty much the same chip without the ray tracing stuff enabled, and would save you money. real time ray tracing is too new for viable budget options to exist at this time. for cases look for a mid tower with at least 3 good 120mm+ fan slots and dont spend over $100 on the case, and i would aim even lower on a budget build (say around $50). i went and browsed cases in this price range and frankly i dont know what modern case designers are thinking half the time. case standards are in dire need of a re-think. but look for a case that has the fan mounts and make sure they're not obstructed by drive cages and the like. newegg usually has good photos and id suggest studying them. power supply, 500w is probably enough for a 3600 and a 1660. im running a significantly more power hungry rtx2070 super and 8086k on a 600w sfx supply. consult a psu calculator if you are unsure. buy a good brand with a good rating. people go by the 80+ ratings but thats more an efficiency rating and is no guarantee of the supply's longevity. but higher efficiency does mean lest waste heat the supply has to get rid of. for mobo i think the micro-atx form factor is the most bang for your buck. mini-itxes are nice, but you end up paying a little more on average for compactness, and there are fewer upgrade options down the line. full atx is also slightly more expensive, and no point unless you need a lot of add in cards or a dual video card setup (none of which are budget friendly). micro atx is usually good middle ground, you get some upgradability like 4 ram slots and 2 or 3 card slots. pay special attention to memory speed, pcie gen, and make sure it supports your cpu. make sure it has all the connectivity you need (if you want m.2 or enough usb ports, usbc, etc). i really like m.2 drives as it cuts down on the cabling and they are fast in nvme mode. and really shop around look at specs and photos and so on. gen your memory directly from the qvl for that board for best results.

thats a pretty decent budget for a near top of the line machine. but id put it into cpu power instead of blinkenlights. some tips to save money: cases, drives, monitors and peripherals can all be reused. sometimes case fans (if they are of a high quality). stock coolers are fine for most builds. dont get ripped off on psus, thats where they usually get you. so far corsair is the only brand that hasn't screwed me. try to get free shipping even if you have to order your parts from 10 different companies. search for coupon codes, free shipping is pretty common among them. if you are building one now, go ryzen, they are currently cheaper and better than intel and are more honest about their tdp numbers. you do not need fancy ram, stick to the standard (not oc) clock rates. rgb, overclocking and water cooling are all money pits, avoid. having lots of rgb will increase the wiring nightmare tenfold.

the meaning of life is to not ask stupid questions. insane questions are ok though.

depends on what you mean by 'gaming pc'. you can put a lot of money into fancy cases, water cooling, and rgb. or you can do without and end up with a pc you can actually afford. either one will play games just fine. ultimately what determines gaming performance is your video card. spend anywhere in the $200-$300 range in the current generation of cards and you will have enough performance for most games. you can spend more but you start running into diminishing returns.

i got early access to mechwarrior 5, and its pretty good so far, except some issues with joysticks.

id always used the kerbal approach to model rocketry. tape and glue a bunch of paper towel tubes together, old plastic easter eggs made good nosecones. if you have to adapt a small motor diameter to a wider tube diameter, you would get balsa stock from the hobby shop and some hole saws. of course these days id just 3d print some of the accessories, nosecones/motor adapters/fin assemblies. my big problems is i can't get the damn motors shipped here on the cheap.

leave forward porting of mods up to modders. then you can just download the mods you want.

i think there is a fine line between replayability, and introducing artificially gruelling grind so you can claim higher value over other games. games like kerbal and minecraft certainly have a lot of replayability, but if you are a completionist you can get to the end of the game in a sane amount of time. if it takes you months or years to get to the end of the game, you are likely to burn our before experiencing everything the game has to offer, and therefore the games have less value per time played.

what about an inner hydrogen bag inside a helium bag. helium would act as a buffer gas to the hydrogen (which is going to leak out through any material) and occupy a shell around the lifting bag. if a high enough hydrogen concentration is detected in the helium buffer, just vent it through a solenoid valve at the top of the buffer bag (if the whole thing is spinning this might get difficult and might require multiple valves) and replace it with compressed helium from a tank somewhere.

the most metal beatles song ever.

old timey game design had its merits. with regards to elite dangerous, i think it has more or less the same problems as elite 2 and ffe. granted i was only able to play it for an hour or two before i gave up. needless to say after hours mining metals, on landing i got the landing gear mixed up with jettison cargo, not only did i lose several hours of work i got a fine on top of it. i gave ffe several days, and i hadn't teched up in any meaningful way. all these games had a huge problem with grind. its at least an order of magnitude worse than the original elite. this doesn't have anything to do with the flight mechanics. in the original elite i could have a ship turn a sizable profit in a few runs and you would be fast on your way to having a ship that could explore other avenues of play. subsequent games i had to scrape by on hair thin margins. games like this really need a grind slider in the difficulty section, kerbal has one, and its nice to be able to shut down the grind on subsequent playthroughs to save time. games should not feel like work. the op's point about 'respect for time' is highly valid. the old standard of 40-60 hours of gameplay which was a common rule of thumb in 90s games. its a good rule because it suits both developers and players alike. if you give a gamer a game that never ends, they arent going to have time to play new games and that hurts sales and the industry as a whole. its also bad for the gamer because you burn out long before experiencing everything the game has to offer. the developer can get around their half of the problem by going f2p to make up for fewer titles by more nickel and dime payments. f2p really isnt new. in the 90s we had shareware and demos, it was so ubiquitous that i think 75% of my cd collection was purchased because i liked the demo/shareware version. dlc isnt new either, in that we had official (and in some cases 3rd party) expansion packs filling the same role. what f2p usually does differently is intentionally make games grindy to improve the bottom line at the expense of the gamer. its gone from number of games you buy to how long you play our game. after my first experience with f2p (mechwarrior online, which i still play out of sunk cost fallacy) i have decided that i will not play any more f2p games. another huge problems modern games have is the lack of diversity. too many established genres and conformity to other games. adoption of systems that have become standard issue (achievements for example) which can be exploited to cover up bad/lazy core game mechanics. abundant asset reuse and use of stock assets make games look the same. games on a handful of game engines that all seem to share a similar look and feel to other sibling games on the same engine. niche genres are not taken seriously at all, and if you are a fan of those you are lucky you get a 3rd rate f2p or maybe an indie game. one final problem id like to touch on is the politicising of games, which i wont go into in any detail because of this forum's policy on the subject. like all media games have become another mouthpiece for various forms of ideological extremists. this has been a problem with tv and movies too, but its exceptionally alarming in games because of the appeal of younger audiences. id like to name some examples but im leaving them out because i dont want to start a forum war.

just got back from ad astra. it was a resounding meh. its sort of like how 2001 would have turned out without kubrick directing. i mean it had great visuals, but the plot was seriously lacking. slow pace and not as much action as the trailers would have you believe. little attempt at any kind of world building or character development. plot doesn't make sense at all.

which people? certainly not all of them. i could count the games i have enjoyed from the last decade on one hand (present company included). previous decade maybe 3 times that. golden era 90s games, i got a cd case full of excellent games from that period. obligatory get off my lawn. the point was back in ye olde golden age of gaming, games had to be in a much better state at release. internet was slow if you had it at all and so the games needed to run well right out of the box. now they will dump an alpha game on you, call it a beta, and release a zero day patch.

just remember 1995 buggy < 2019 buggy. i dont think ive ever encountered a game-killing bug with ffe. buy a game today and your lucky if the damn thing even works.

close to the pad like that it hasn't picked up enough acceleration yet to stretch out the tail. its still heavy and hasn't picked up much speed. when the first stage starts running on fumes and acceleration peaks, thats when the tail stretches out. ive had rockets in kerbal jump up to 5 or 6 gs before the tank goes dry. of course i like to launch with an oversize first stage, which is pretty much the saturn v in a nutshell.

good, this will make ion engines more fun.