Three1415

I would hazard the hands of a clock.

I am using 0.90...You have a terrible Internet connection, I am guessing? Alas, that is unfortunate. I do not wish to leave you out, but it is not really practical for everyone else to downgrade, so I do not really see any other option.

These are my initial orbits: There is not much difference from last time, except that the bomber is in extremely high orbit (mainly to avoid being captured by Ike); everything else is the same. Persist

It seems...rectilinear. I do not really have enough experience to just a vessel based only on screenshots, but it does look formidable. Also, the second revision of my ships is complete; I replaced all of the useless smaller missiles with Sepratron-powered Structural Pylon torpedoes on my fighter, added another 6 I-Beams and more xenon to my bomber, and swapped the small missiles for two 3.75-ton penetrators on my battlecruiser. I optimized tonnage to perhaps an overly large extent: My fleet mass now sums to 299.615 tons. I suppose I shall set up first again...Does anyone else have an opinion on the new turn order?

Hmm...I think I may have discovered the cause of the mass-disparity bug: There is a conflict between the config file's mass for the Sepratron and the mass displayed--0.0125 tons versus 0.0725 tons, respectively. This would also explain why no-one else has noticed outside this thread: Sepratrons are rarely used except as missile propulsion, and certainly civilian ships never use them in sufficient quantity to really notice the difference. Also, does anyone know who I would go about asking to try to get this thread made into a subforum?

0.90 does not appear to break anything or really change KSP that much, and it would be more convenient for everyone else, as I am fairly certain that most of us have already updated... Very untrue here. In circumstances where any ship from the opposing side has the potential to seriously damage or destroy any ship of yours before you can react (due to the turn-based mechanic), it is far better to have more but weaker ships; this is because of the disparity in armor efficacy versus weapon efficacy, as it is difficult to survive attacks from well-built ships regardless of the difference in the two vessel's masses.

I think we need to move on to 0.90 and have everybody re-place their ships, as it is not just the mass-bug (that was present before) but the fact that most of our ships wiggle themselves out of existence once you come within render distance--I checked last night, and the ships that inevitably disintegrated themselves were: All of ScriptKitt3h's ships; the RIMS Whitehall and the RIMS Hoplite; and my C3V Zytkow. Zamovinar's ship and ejudedude's fleet were comparatively unaffected, though they were still jittery, as were the remaining ships from the other fleets. Also, about turn order: Should we restructure turns in order to attempt to compensate for Lanchester's laws which favor larger numbers of weaker ships? Here, the person with the least number of ships would get the first move, the player with the second least number of ships the second move, etc. If there were two or more players with the same number of ships, the fleet with the lesser mass would get the earlier turn. With this system, the turn order would now be: Zamovinar (2 ships); sdj64 (4 ships, less mass); Scriptkitt3h (4 ships, more mass); ejudedude13 (5 ships, less mass); and me (5 ships, more mass). Additionally, I would like to propose an idea I had last night: Could we ask moderators or whoever has control over these things if the Battle Club could get its own sub- or sub-sub-forum? These threads are certainly active consistently enough and with enough volume to warrant it, and it would allow us to make our own separate threads for each battle and therefore be more organized. What do you think? Finally, I can set up a new 0.90 persist in fairly short order (I have some retrofits and renovations [my "R&R"] still to do), or whoever else is ready now can do it if they wish.

I think those are good; it is probably for the best if armament cannot be stolen and fired in one turn, but rather "made off with" by the attacking ship. The last rule also requires that a player somehow grab a freed weapon anyway, as to transport it with one's vessel one has to have some method of attaching it. What does everyone else think? EDIT: Ninja'd Also, everyone ensure that your ships are not disintegrated by the recent update; I loaded up ScriptKitt3h's 0.25 persistent and most of our ships were experiencing 30+ g's of Kraken summoning (suffering which I prolonged by promptly enabling "Unbreakable Joints" and time-warping at 4x speed while laughing maniacally) that seemed to start after an autosave. I do not know if Zamovinar's persist will do the same; let me check... EDIT 2: Never mind, as that is an even older one. But beware the Kraken. EDIT 3: Previous edit rescinded--it is still happening in Zamovinar's persist...Unless we are battling in 0.25, I think everyone shall have to re-place their ships.

What are the rules concerning the retrieval of missiles and armaments from enemy vessels? If the enemy ship is disabled but still functional and has lost a missile, can one retrieve it oneself? Or need the opposing craft be completely destroyed? I simply wish to be clear on this before we begin our battle, as my ships' armament (primarily I-Beams) has a tendency to disarm enemies rather than kill them outright, and I wish to put any freed munitions to their best (for me, at least ) possible use.

So, who still needs to set up for the Duna battle? I know I need to retrofit the Zytkow and the Fermi again, but I do not know what others must do... EDIT: *Shudders at massacre of physics terminology* Anyway, something I have noticed in regards to this: Projectiles high in momentum (i.e, SRBs or liquid-fueled torpedoes) are more useful for rending or shearing off ships' hulls or external armor, whereas those with high kinetic energies (i.e, lightweight, fast-moving missiles such as I-Beams) are far better at doing penetration damage and gutting internals (even when they do not phase through armor) while leaving the exterior relatively undamaged. I assume this has something to do with how KSP handles energy versus momentum dissipation, but it is probably worth investigating further. Also, ejudedude, to what extent is the I-Beam propelled by the explosion of whatever serves as its mount? I wonder how effective bullet-style weapons would be...

Hmm...I feel I am falling behind in the arms race, but I was relying on battle data to help me improve my vessels...NEED...MORE...DATA! Also, I think I shall likely be pulverized in the Duna battle, or at least outgunned, considering that my fleet is armed with almost entirely I-Beams, and from what limited testing I was able to do they do not appear to make for extremely effective missiles.

Same here. I should have an abundance of time after this week...

I apologize for not posting my turn, but I have been rather busy as of late (wonderful end-of-semester fun-time) and, though I have attempted to complete my turn repeatedly, it keeps glitching out and forcing me to start over...Also, hopefully we do not have to reset everything for 0.90.

After approximately two hours simply sitting here at my computer thinking about this, I have concluded that portals, which I define as "wormholes with surfaces topologically glued together" (or, alternately, "wormholes in n-dimensional space that consist of at least two n-1 dimensional balls whose surfaces are considered identical") are impossible in any n-dimensional space, not just for n=3. First, considering the specific case of a portal composed of two 2-balls in three dimensional space, I have concluded that the structure would resemble a black hole whose event horizon had been "unfurled" from a 3-sphere into a 2-ball. For obvious reasons, this structure would likely be impossible to produce in this universe; it could simply not be generated, with any attempt yielding a "standard" black hole (more on this topic later in this post). Generally, the reason such an object would have an appearance like that of an "unfurled" black hole is that neither light nor matter, once "in" the portal, would be able to get out again. This is more easily understood with light, and thus I shall use it as an example: As light in our three-dimensional world is transverse, with a magnetic component perpendicular to an electric component both perpendicular to the direction of motion, such a wave attempting to pass through a two-dimensional boundary region should get "stuck" and not be able to re-emerge, analogous to the behavior of a true event horizon. As matter also possesses wave-like characteristics, it, too, could get lodged in the two-ball as well. Likewise, this phenomenon would give rise to Hawking radiation emanating from the portal, and the description of this structure as a whole seems to demonstrate the holographic principle, wherein an object's surface (in this case the unfurled event horizon) should have characteristics indistinguishable from the actual object (in this case the black hole itself), which seems to emerge naturally from this hypothesis. As all of the above principles may be generalized to any number of dimensions, one can draw similar conclusions for these objects for any value of n. I now consider the case of a mapped set of n-balls in n-dimensional space. This is equivalent to "rolling up" the object from the previous paragraph back into what we would think of as a "normal" (if that can really be applied to such an extreme structure) black hole: An n-ball with an n-sphere event horizon that swallows light and matter alike (due to gravitational forces this time, but this is essentially equivalent to the catastrophic tear in space-time that the portal displayed), more specifically a Schwarzschild (or perhaps the other types as well, depending on their parameters) black hole (to use an example from our universe). Like the mapped balls here, Schwarzchild black holes are considered to have two "ends," but the other side can never be reached; this is likely a generalization of the non-traversability of mapped balls in any number of dimensions. Finally, I come to true wormholes, as in their classic formulation as Einstein-Rosen bridges. These are, like in the paragraph immediately preceding this one, n-balls in n-dimensional space, but they are connected by an n+1 dimensional "tunnel" traversing each mouth. Unlike the previously presented models of a wormhole discussed earlier, these do appear to be traversable, but must be stabilized with such strange things as exotic matter in order to not instantly collapse. Thus, my verdict on the subject of instantaneous transportation is: [also serves as a tl;dr] Portals (mapped n-1 dimensional balls in n-dimensional space): Impossible to create, and not traversable anyway. Analogous to a "standard" black hole. Black holes (mapped n dimensional balls in n-dimensional space): Extant, but likely not traversable. Wormholes (n dimensional balls in n-dimensional space, connected by an n+1 dimensional bridge): Possibly extant, probably traversable. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hooray for walls of text! Also, keep in mind that much of this is speculative, if reasoned out, and by no means proven; gedankenexperiments can only take one so far, and not necessarily to the correct conclusion (although I am fairly confident in this analysis due to the emergence of real-world characteristics).

In my opinion, this claim makes little sense. Life should be prevalent simply because, if one includes the entire universe and every object in it as "species" undergoing Darwinian selection, the structures that will become most common are the ones that can replicate themselves most efficiently--i.e, life under my general definition of it (any self-replicating, evolving structure). Thus, life should be the most prevalent object in the universe, simply because it intrinsically exhibits the characteristics most beneficial to increasing its numbers.

This is interesting. I, too, experience such a feeling; when I hover my cursor over a link, for example, I feel it as a button-like sensation, although I am unsure if this is just conditioned by being used to clicking such links. However, a possible correlation: I also am synesthetic, specifically lexical->visual, where I "see" spoken words as subtitle-like text...Perhaps people who are already synesthetic are more prone to acquiring this additional synesthetic form, or at least to being conditioned in a Proustian manner? A curious phenomenon indeed.

Also, just a note: Two-dimensional "portals," like the ones seen in the eponymous game, are impossible in a three-dimensional universe; any wormhole in our universe would appear to be a three-dimensional bubble-like structure, and entering from any angle would cause one to be transported to the other end, emerging with the same velocity (i.e, the same speed in the same direction).

I shall try again with your persist, but if I lose another ship to spacetime anomalies, you will need to re-upload. But the ships that have randomly exploded during my testing were not under fire or even under attack, and were both yours and my ships; another bug that has happened repeatedly is a sudden, random orbital velocity increase or decrease (the plummeting bug is just a particularly extensive case of this) which propels one ship away from the targeted vessel.

Well, even if it is corrupted (there is certainly something weird going on, because I have been experiencing things like sudden losses of all orbital velocity, ships randomly detonating, etc.), I can still display the new iterations of my fighter and flagship: The improvements have increased my total tonnage by nine tons, but, as I was previously unaware of the misreported-masses bug, my fleet is actually significantly lighter than I thought: Even with the additions, total mass is ~293 tons.

...That should be everyone, should it not? If so, I shall begin my turn...

Um...No, he did not. sdj64 did, however. Actually, I think this is the largest battle ever conducted in KSP--1400 tons of warship is not, I believe, paralleled in previous battles.

You can stay in, I should think: You have already set up, and the only reason Zamovinar's spot was open was because he was having computer trouble, so we should certainly not prevent him from playing...Five players is probably fine. Also, small missiles are apparently intrinsically ineffective, which is rather disappointing...I shall still use the slightly-improved ones, however.

Unless I am missing something, there does not appear to be a persistent linked in here...Anyway, retrofit in progress (*sounds of furious construction in background*)...

Hmm...After some testing against sdj64's ships, I have discovered my small torpedoes to be utterly useless. I know how this can be rectified ("UPGRADE IN PROGRESS!") but I would have to upgrade my deployed ships; would anyone have a problem with some last-minute refitting before the battle begins?

It is quite formidable . By far the most significant gain (loss?) is due to Structural Intakes, however: Girders (Large I-Beams) are the same length and have the same impact tolerance as the former (80 m/s), but Structural Intakes are 0.0102 tons, versus 0.375 for the I-Beam, a massive (literally) 35-fold reduction in tonnage. Structural Intakes are significantly more difficult to build with, however, which is unfortunate, but otherwise they are overpowered.