Oolite Bulletins

DaddyHoggy wrote:

For example, the creators of Star Trek (TNG) knew, no matter how ridiculous a number they thought of as memory storage capacity or processing speed of the main computer on the Enterprise they would be proved wrong in short order and so they created the "Quad" - and refused to compare it to any currently understood convention for memory or clock speed. Quite sensible really.

... and now we have the Quad Core. So even their complete invention gets overtaken by reality.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

DH current thought from several top scientists say that if you put the energy from a star for a fraction of a second into a set of 2 conductive plates the space between would open up a wormhole or rip to somewhere else. That's not made up. Scientific basis for starwars hyperspace.

Star trek the biggest problem they have is they make up gobbledygook to explain the poorly thought out equipment and insult the intelligence of the thinking man while hypnotizing the low brow in the street.

I like a lot of star trek story. I get turned off whenever I hear them trying to explain their science as it sounds like a lot of witchdoctor mumbojumbo shaking and a dancing and a holloring around to look important.

At least with star wars it's not about the tech, it just happens to be there and makes a great story and just so happens to be the most realistic.

On the social side of it what is more realistic that man wants to war and kill and be just like he's been for 100000 years+ or to become all buddy buddy with all his neighbors. Nice dream but that's all it is, a dream. You can't deny human nature. That is why oolite rocks because it is based on greed and death and follows the progression to greater and greater carnage in the human future. That I can believe. That is realistic. Another plus for oolite realism.

oh and ADCK just use a little CLR that'll take care of the scale for yah!

Selezen: I thought that they referred light macht as the percent of speed of light so 0.35 would be a 3rd of a percent of light speed. I thought i read that in the elite manual. Might be wrong.

Before I became I lecturer in Modelling and Simulation and before I worked as a rocket scientist for the MOD for 13 years, I worked at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories - I have been a genuine Particle Physicist so thanks for the egg sucking lesson...

As Robert Holdstock was left to his own devices (mostly) for the Trader's Manual for Elite, he coined the phrase LM to mean Light Mach, but it's long since been agreed that since injectors and the Torus drive allow you to go silly speeds, LM cannot be the equivalent of Mach since most ships on injectors would be going FTL. Therefore, it is assumed that LM is some kind of normalised, sales pitch kind of figure that doesn't actually represent a fractional part of the the speed of light.

"I worked as a rocket scientist" awesome!

so if anyone goes to you "it's not rocket science", you'd know that already!

Killer Wolf wrote:

"I worked as a rocket scientist" awesome!

so if anyone goes to you "it's not rocket science", you'd know that already!

One of the funniest things ever (if you're a a scientist) - a lecture given by one of my old bosses discussing how cheap and cheerful MANPADS track targets and solve their PN courses and "do the maths": <yadda yadda yadda> <blank looks from audience> "it's not rocket science..." <pause> <thoughtful introspective moment> "...actually, I guess that's precisely what it is."

The LM argument is one I've had before. I accepted that fundamentally, the "Mach" name is applied to the "Mach number", defined by Ernst Mach as the speed of sound, so it has no relevance to the speed of light whatsoever!

There is no definition for the meaning of Light Mach, and it's only ever used next to the ship stats in the manual. As it's written it looks like a decimalisation rather than a percentage (especially as it has no % symbol next to it) thus I've always taken 1 LM to be light speed and 0.35 LM to be just over a third light speed.

On injectors, ships would be going about twice as fast - up to about 0.7LM as far as I can work it out observationally. The Torus Jump takes it to about 3 times as fast, so up to about 0.9 to 0.95 (just below light speed). How does the Torus work then, and how can it accelerate from 0.35 LM to nearly light speed without rendering everyone and everything inside into chunky salsa? Simple - it changes the gravitational constant of the universe by creating a toroidal hyperspace energy barrier between the ship and the rest of the universe - in essence harnessing hyperspace energies to allow the ship to share the properties of hyperspace without actually entering it. That's why the mass lock happens - another mass in the same space disrupts the barrier and collapses its structure.

Berman and his cronies took the glorious future of Trek and screwed it up entirely. in the 20 years since Roddenberry's death, Trek has been filled with battles and wars, culminating in the Dominion on screen and the Borg in the novels (which are now apparently semi-canon since the end of the official on-screen presence of the crews). Mind you, think about society and technology - war and conflict promote technical advancement as new defensive and offensive systems are developed and then enter civilian life. Cellphones and GPS are two examples. Maybe the Trek universe enjoyed peace for too long and stopped developing technically!

I think from within the code itself - it's 3x for Injectors and 7x for Torus drive - that's why LM can't* be related to he speed of light otherwise any ship capable of 0.34+ on max throttle will be faster than light on injectors.

* bearing in mind that Oolite is a game not a simulation and therefore "can't" is actually a completely arbitrary term to use... (given speeds like scales of distance is completely broken)

Selezen wrote:

On injectors, ships would be going about twice as fast - up to about 0.7LM as far as I can work it out observationally. The Torus Jump takes it to about 3 times as fast, so up to about 0.9 to 0.95 (just below light speed).

Nope. Injector speed equals 7 times normal speed, and torus speed equal 32 times normal speed. Thus even the slowest ships in the original set at least scratch 1LM if on injectors.

Ah, well that's news indeed! Thanks for the correction. I feel another "technical paper" coming on.

I'll base it on DH's statements, since it's from the code. if the injectors can break light speed then there's a "scientific anomaly" in the logic - if the speed of light has been broken, then how come events on screen can be interpreted properly - if light speed has been exceeded then events would be seen after they had occurred.

Interesting.

My Torus drive theory still pans out, as the hyperspace barrier should warp space enough to allow some flexibility in the visual "perception".

No! I've just (probably mis-)remembered somebody else quoting something taken directly from the code - I'm sure Cmdr McLane is actually correct!

I'm not correct either but I could have sworn I read that light mach was actually a percent of light speed(0.35 means 0.35% of light speed). If you think of it that way the speeds do make a lot more sense and some other problems are avoided.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

I'm not correct either but I could have sworn I read that light mach was actually a percent of light speed(0.35 means 0.35% of light speed). If you think of it that way the speeds do make a lot more sense and some other problems are avoided.

You'll have read somewhere (it's in the original Trader's Manual after all) that the speed is called "Light Mach" - but what's clear is that it can't actually be a direct percentage of the speed of light for two reasons 1) the distance scales of Oolite are all wrong so it can only be true that the speed ones are also incorrect 2) given that Injectors are 7x top speed and torus is 21x top speed a Cobra Mk3 does almost 2.5x speed of light on injectors and over 7x speed of light on the torus drive...

So the speeds don't make any sense...

I'll clarify:

The top speed of the cobramkIII is 0.35 lightmach

assume its 0.35% and that it is the top speed of the ship on torus drive.

1050kps on torus drive.

32.8kps at max speed throttle only.

Probably only 10x what it should be and no light speed problems.

I always assumed that everything was off scale and this fits right in.

0.35%?

Not 35%?

Given that the Torus drive multiplies the top speed of the ship (whatever it is or whatever unit its measured in) by 21-fold, neither of these assumptions are correct.

Light Mach is just a buzzword used by the sales man to make you go "ooohhh, that's fast" and buy the ship.

Hehe!

Just trying to find some way for what IS in the elite manual to make some sort of sense for reality. Issues of scale aside I would say it works rather well as the torus drive is 32x max throttle speed. What's 1/10 the speed of what is listed(using this method) when dealing with all the other issues of scale. If you want to make the distances and speeds 10x what they are now...no, let's not go there. I'm quite happy with it for the most part. Good work Developers!!