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hkmaly

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Posts posted by hkmaly


  1. Hey, I was faster by whole minute despite writing more!

    2 hours ago, mlooney said:

    And it seems Tedd has some issues with a talking wand named Kevin and not knowing what it's going to do.

    I don't think she has any issues with it. She just states the fact.

    1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

    Does anyone else think the middle panel looks like da Vinci's Last Supper?

    ... no?

    1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

    Also, TV trays. I don't think I've seen them since the Sixties.

    They make lot of sense here.


  2. 11 hours ago, mlooney said:
    13 hours ago, ijuin said:

    An engine’s “rated” power output is not the maximum that it is capable of—it is the maximum “safe” output. Whereas civilian engines are designed to be unable to exceed their rated output as a safety measure, military engines in real life have no such limits—they can be over-driven, though at the risk of excessive strain causing a breakdown. It is analogous to afterburners on a turbojet engine—A lot of extra energy/fuel is thrown into the engine in order to get extra thrust, but at far lower efficiency than normal operation, granting diminishing returns.

    On a rocket, which is what impulse power is, even assuming it tosses ions out as reaction mass, you have 2 unrelated items.  You have the fuel that gets the reaction mass up to speed and you have the reaction mass.  Modern rockets just happen to combine the two, this is not a requirement.  If a rocket is rated to x number of newtons, that is what it's rated to.  Adding more power to the part that makes the reaction mass moving should not do any thing.  Assuming that the "normal" power supply of the impulse drive is can run it at full power, there isn't any thing you can do by adding more power from the warp coils.   Of course, Star Trek impulse drives might be a type of reaction-less drive, like some form of gravity drive, in which case my point isn't true.  Given that the "science" of Star Trek propulsion is flaky at best, I'm willing to take it as given that both the super light speed and sub light speed drives on ships are both "magic" in that they can't exist given our current understanding of physics.

    As I said, I don't really "get" that rerouting power can make the engines stronger. Maybe little for short time as the afterburn if the default power source doesn't already have capacity for that, but not much. However, I do get that rerouting power could be solution when the default power source for them is damaged.

    1 hour ago, ijuin said:

    If by "robots", you mean sapient ones like Data, it's pretty well established that Dr. Soong made breakthroughs that nobody has yet been able to duplicate, with Data's creation of Lal being the closest to success that anybody has gotten. In the episode, "The Measure of a Man", Cmdr. Maddox had wanted to reverse-engineer Data in order to attempt to duplicate him, and the plot of the episode revolved around establishing that Data had the right to refuse to be taken apart. Other sapient Artificial Intelligences have also mostly been stumbled upon "by accident", such as the holographic Moriarty or Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram Mk. I. It seems that Federation technology is not yet up to the challenge of reliably creating sapient AI on demand.

    It didn't used to be. Seems they solved it in Picard.

    1 hour ago, ijuin said:

    If, however, you mean non-sapient automated drones, we have seen those being used, especially in areas hazardous to organic life--e.g. exterior work on starships in space dock, or the Exocomps.

    We did saw them, but MUCH less than we should.

    1 hour ago, ijuin said:

    Actually, an ion rocket is a good example here. Any engine that accelerates its reaction mass using an electromagnetic field will accelerate it more strongly in proportion to the strength of the field. In other words, increasing the power to the electromagnets will increase the specific impulse of the engine. This, in fact, is how the VAriable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) engine achieves the "variable specific impulse" in its name.

    There is limit how much power you could route to the electromagnets before you fry them. But yes, the impulse engines seem to be something like that and it explains how you can route power to them at all.


  3. 11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    On 6/8/2020 at 5:02 AM, hkmaly said:

    Not speaking about "what could have been" if the Crusade wasn't sabotaged by TNT and then abandoned.

    I never saw that. I had high hopes for Space: Above and Beyond. Fox's track record of trashing successful shows truly sucks.

    You need to stop letting TV stations limit what you see. Use the internet.

    Or, maybe, don't. It's debatable if the show get far enough to be worth it. It showed lot of promise but ...

    16 hours ago, mlooney said:
    22 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    ... oh. Right. THAT kind of figures. And strings.

    Doing vector math "digitally", either with a calculator/computer or by hand would be way harder that moving a figurine and 2 counters about.  The string makes it fairly easy to plot your future location, just put one end on the past location, one on the current location and extend the vector the same length as it is from past to current.  Put counter down.  Move counter to reflect this turn's movement, then move past to current.

    Yeah I got it. I got distracted by figures being used for numbers.

    16 hours ago, mlooney said:
    18 hours ago, ijuin said:

    For example, in "Star Trek Beyond" (the third JJ movie), when the Enterprise loses her warp nacelles, Scotty rerouted the warp core's power output to the impulse engines.

    In the real world, adding more power wouldn't make that much difference in the output of the impulse engines.  I assume that that are designed to take as much power as is reasonable for what ever it is that they use for sub-light movement.

    I suppose the point of that move were not about how fast they will be flying.

    11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    OTOH, without f=ma, you are not moving at all.

    That's technically true, however note that gravitation is going to move you without any thrust being involved, AND by affecting every atom separately.

    12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    On 6/8/2020 at 5:02 AM, hkmaly said:

    Compared to Romulan or Klingon ships, they are optimized differently. First federation ships optimized for war as Defiant.

    Meh, they were all designed to look impressive but people who where more artist than scientist. 2001 got space travel right, and at times it is boring; I could not get my kids to sit still to watch it. Star Wars does better that Star Trek in the 'ships look functional' department.

    The original Romulan war bird, which I believe was only used in one early episode, had a broad flat back so it could display a war bird emblem (because, as we all know, evolution is always parallel down to the nth detail, so of course Romulans had raptors (original meaning; hawks, eagles, falcons, and such)). And so it goes. Every thing about TOS is 'because it looks cool', not 'because we thought it out and this makes the most sense'. Trying to fit a rational scientific framework is after the fact.

    These ships all bend a bit of space time around them. Wouldn't a compact shape, something like an egg, make the most sense? Presumably, this is the most energy costly thing they do, and would be the thing they need to most optimize. Where would you stick the engine? Maybe dead center, because "Hell, if it fails, we're screwed anyway" and "Might as well give it as much shielding as possible".

    What you wouldn't do is stick a long spar on the front of your ship that needed would be contained in that warp field, unless for some reason, your entire engine section was lethal and needed to be separate, in which case, what's up with the broad, thick wings? The Discovery in 2020 was long for that reason, but the living section was a ball, and the spar was just that, a long structure for transferring force from the engines way in the back. (basically a tower, if you view thrust as 'down', and it does indeed look like a utility tower)

    So, I ask you, which of these two scenarios makes more sense:

    A. The federation thinks that dragging along a bunch of extraneous whatever is good ship design.

    B. "Hey, you know what would look cool? A saucer. Space ships are saucers, right?" "Nah, it's been done. The Jupiter II was a saucer." "Well, maybe we could have a saucer that's part of a ship." "That could work." "I'll stick it on top."

    I might design a ship that looked like the Enterprise. It would be much smaller, and you'd drive it from the bottom section. The removable saucer section would be for delivering the pizzas.

    I'm not saying that the ships they are using are optimal. There is just ONE faction with optimal ships: Borg.

    I'm saying two things:

    1) Even in-universe, it makes sense to include artists in ship design, because they DO have some reserve and all ships being spheres would be bad for psychology. Granted, they SHOULDN'T give them free hand - they should give them strict limits so they don't overdo it ... which I suspect happened in multiple cases in Star Trek, including USS Enterprise A (constitution class). Although frankly even THAT can happen in-universe, it would be unlikely to happen THAT much - or for a flag ship.

    2) The compact shape of warp field is not ONLY thing they need to put into consideration. Also, the shape of warp field is not sphere - it's SUPPOSED to be ellipsoid, with the short axis being perpendicular to the warp nacelles, which NEEDS to be somewhat apart to generate the field correctly.

    The other considerations would include that for combat, it IS useful to have some "small" side you can point to the enemy, but not too small as you need weapons on it. Some ships also ARE supposed to be able to fly in atmosphere, for which the "wing" shape makes sense. And, of course, Romulan ships have a gravitation singularity (black hole) somewhere, presumably OUTSIDE the hull - that's where the D'Deridex shape comes from.

    I'm quite sure the "fat wing" shape with warp engines near the left and right ends IS the optimal ship shape for ships which ARE supposed to visit atmosphere at least sometimes, while the optimal shape for ships which don't would be, well, saucer - ellipsoid roughly matching the shape of warp field, possibly with "cuts" and warp engines being on SHORT and LONG pylons so they are not INSIDE the ships and are therefore easier to get rid of.

    Of course, only federation ship which would be at least close to pass would then be the Defiant. And, well, the original Romulan raptor seems to be most logical ship they have.

    BTW, regarding the raptors ... there IS a thing called parallel evolution. It makes MUCH more sense that Romulans have birds resembling ours than that THEY themselves are looking as humans with pointy ears.

    12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    Consider, in Star Trek, the fields are able to hold an atmosphere against the vacuum of space, yet a shuttle can arrive and depart though it. Orly? And this makes more sense than, oh, an airlock? Or better yet, what we currently do, dock on the outside and come in through a sealed passageway?

    The shuttle has field on it's own. What you see is interaction between the fields, like how big stuff is able to get through the cell membrane despite the cell membrane staying water-tight.

    12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    The inertial dampers of Star Trek implies anti-gravity technology, and indeed we briefly see that in use in one movie. It should be ubiquitous. Star Wars gets that.

    We see their artificial gravity technology all the time when they are walking in the ship instead of floating. That said, they seem to be VERY bad at changing parameters of that field - it would be much more useful if they would be doing that. Except, of course, in one episode of DS9 where ensign Melora Pazlar turns off gravity in JUST HER ROOM.

    12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    Where are the robots? We have one android character, his failed brother prototype, his failed daughter, ... did I miss any? They should be all over the place. Star Wars get that.

    They were on much more places in ST:Picard, until they were banned. Data was a prototype and Noonian Soong deliberately didn't mass-produced it ; generally, federation didn't have THAT good technology for artificial intelligence, and seems that they didn't liked humanoid robots who don't behave like humans ...

    ... but you are right that we should see MUCH more NOT-sapient robots around, even if it would be just for keeping the corridors clean.

    12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    Extra engines, generally dedicated to a specific purpose, and power is not generally reroutable. Reroutablity of power is costly on a mobile platform. It works fine on the ground on our non movable electric grid. It works well in a large facility, like the pneumatic distribution systems that used to be in vogue, or the huge stream plant that powered the archaic steel mill I once worked in. An airplane or ship may have extra engines, and be somewhat functional if they are not all working, but they don't swap power between them. And they are hampered in their mission.

    Reroutable power makes enough sense for ships to be worth it, because stuff can break and you then will be far away from any help if you don't have way to fix it temporarily. Remember that those ships are BIG - bigger than your steam plant, probably.

    Also, speaking about ships ... consider an aircraft carrier with nuclear reactor. Propulsion: 2 × Westinghouse A4W nuclear reactors, 4 × steam turbines, 4 × shafts. I find very unlikely that if one of the reactor is shut off, the ship starts turning left because one of the reactors powered screws on left side and other on right. No, they can reroute the power. AND they probably can run even with the reactors off, on batteries or diesel generators, still using the some screws.

    12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    Also, the things that are missing in Star Trek, like robots? Cost.

    The stuff we don't see due to cost are likely the ones missing most.

    12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    Gene Roddenberry created a vehicle too tell stories. He had an agenda, but it was not about creating great science fiction, it was about social narrative. That is was enjoyable space opera as well, eh, that's kind of gravy.

    For having an agenda about social narrative he was quite good in designing technology. Like, not hard sci-fi good, but if you compare it to Star Wars ... of course, I'm speaking about the established technology, not the particle-of-the-week stuff.

    12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    On 6/8/2020 at 5:02 AM, hkmaly said:

    I like TOS. I read all of it. (Granted, that was translation of books which were published in 1991 so it was definitely later than the TV.)

    And, well, when TOS first aired it wasn't on our TV's. We actually saw TOS after TNG, so TNG was my introduction to Star Trek.

    If you ever see the episodes, you will probably cringe, and wonder how anyone ever watched them. The production values were not up to current standards, and William Shatner's portrayal of Capt. Kirk is notoriously over the top. Mostly, the stories are pretty good, and Early NG is a recap of a few.

    I did. I'm not sure if all of them, but yes I did cringle and that's why I'm saying it's better to read the books, where I can enjoy the stories without the "production values" stuff.

    However, I don't think I agree with your opinion on Shatner. Granted, I was able to enjoy Andromeda despite the Hercules in main role. I mean, seriously, he mostly acted the same as in Hercules.

     


  4. 13 hours ago, Scotty said:
    13 hours ago, mlooney said:

    While we don't know about other wizards, I assumed that they either got the spell or they didn't and didn't have a choice about what it's range and effects were.  Could be wrong and I don't have any canon sources to back that up, but that is what it seems like they do.  Tedd, as a seers and wand-maker runs under a separate set of rules.

    Pandora made it sound like Tedd's glove was a unique invention by Tedd and only usable by Seers. Standard wizards could get the ability to make wands, but it doesn't seem like they could ever have the ability to customize spells, maybe rewriting a spell uses a heckton more power than just plain copying a spell to a wand and only Seer's have access to that amount of power. Pandora also did say that Tedd had the power and mind to bend worlds to their will, after all

    I agree that the ability to customize spells is unique to Seers - seems normal wizard can only copy the spell verbatim - but I don't think it's question of power. Sure, Seers are very powerful, but that doesn't need to be related. I think it's ability, just like being wizard itself is ability which, for example, Nanase lacks despite being very powerful.

    That said, that quote from Pandora likely speaks not just about raw power but Tedd's ability to utilize it as well.

    13 hours ago, Scotty said:

    Well yeah, but that's more like Grace being able to mix and match parts of different forms to create new ones, Tedd can mix and match different parts of spells that they've "Seen" to create new ones.

    Actually, if seers are supposed to be able to rediscover magic rules after reset, it seems they are even more powerful than that, able to even discover spell components they never saw (but are somehow similar to what they saw). That's something Grace can't do - all new components she got from the TF gun.

    13 hours ago, Scotty said:

    There was a DLC for Elder Scrolls:Oblivion that included an altar where you could create custom spells using spells that you knew. have a spell of Shocking Grasp and one of Fire Bolt? you can use those to make a spell of Burning Touch and Lightningbolt.

    I tended to create spells that was ranged and did fire, lightning and frost damage in an AOE. ;)

    Well, the standard "let's use the ability to get as overpowered as possible" path. I would be likely to do that as well. I could also try for something more interesting but I would likely hit the limits of how the creating of custom spells worked ... I mean, seriously, only way they would satisfy MY idea of versatility would be to put a turing-complete programming language into that. Speaking about which, do you know about any game like that? I probably wouldn't have time to play but I would definitely put it on TODO list.

    15 hours ago, mlooney said:

    Sarah asked him about why he wanted a ranged version of a clothing modifier spell when she first started working as his lab assistance.   As a side note, do we call Sarah his assistant nor or is she fully his apprentice by this time?

    Difference between assistant and apprentice is not difference in level, it's difference between looking at Tedd as scientists and looking at him as wizard. Unless you speak about the fact that with Sarah not being wizard, she can't actually learn any spell from him. She's limited to training her magic capacity long enough to awaken and get some spell herself.


  5. https://www.egscomics.com/comic/party-164

    Turns out Monday comics was NOT finished during the day :)

    The quote is from The Die is Cast, said by Chief O'Brien to Doctor Bashir. I must admit I needed to search for that.

    And it seems the party is very much for Ashley ... well, ok, the movie IS relevant to the magic which is topic of party, but I'm pretty sure everyone already saw that movie. Multiple times. Probably even Susan.

    And on Elliot's place, I would be at least little uncomfortable with my bisexual girlfriend bonding over romance with someone else like that. Especially considering she CAN have squirrel romance with Grace.

    Also, I would hope that Ashley's wizard training will be different, but truth is transformations are likely to be important part of it if Tedd is supposed to help at all ... well, at least not the upsetting ecosystems bit.


  6. 1 hour ago, mlooney said:
    2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    Hard to say if those are only two options Tedd has.

    I suspect that if Tedd "sees" a spell with a line of sight, even if that is miles in distance, he can make a wand that has that range.

    THAT is practically certain. What's not certain is if 1) he already saw such spell (for example, Nanase's fairy is quite long range ...) and/or if 2) he can do such wand WITHOUT seeing such spell.


  7. 1 hour ago, mlooney said:
    3 hours ago, hkmaly said:
    14 hours ago, mlooney said:

    That's the basic system I use, however it's modified to use figures, not counters and is free form, not tied to a hex grid.

    ... well, "not tied to a (hex) grid" sounds EXACTLY as "too much computing to be practical for game".

    There is no computing done.  It is an analog system the depends on figures or counters to indicate past, current and future location.  A bit of string is used to plot your current vector, which places your future location.  You then apply your move for the current turn to the future location counter.   You then move the past counter to the current location, move the ship figure to the future location, and plot via the string the future location.  Weapons then fire...

    ... oh. Right. THAT kind of figures. And strings.


  8. 15 hours ago, Scotty said:
    20 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    Well, of course, in fact Tedd needed to work hard on making the first drumstick wand only work on touch, but it seems likely he did the same in case of these ones.

    I suspect Tedd has 2 modes they could put on the wands, touch, which is probably similar to needing to be in contact with a watch, and a beam, which would certainly be based on Ellen's delivery method, whether or not the beam can be made visible or invisible is another matter though, I'd lean towards maybe.

    Tedd probably doesn't need Ellen - the long-range form may be taken directly from TF gun. I mean, it's uryuom technology, not magic, but apparently they are similar enough - and based on what she says here making it extremely close-range was deliberate decision.

    Hard to say if those are only two options Tedd has.


  9. 19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    Remember that most time, federation skips were supposed to be for exploration, not battle. I think the starfleet designers overthough that.

    You can believe every Federation propaganda flyer you read. They are a military corp, a space Navy, if you will, in armed warships. You can give an armed warship a humanitarian mission, but it's still a naval vessel.

    Compared to Romulan or Klingon ships, they are optimized differently. First federation ships optimized for war as Defiant.

    19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    However, specifically the warp naceless ... they are not rockets. They don't produce thrust. They generate subspace field. And, presumably, they were not exactly safe to be around, and putting them on pylons might make easier to get rid of them if they were going to explode.

    Since the technology does not actually exist, it is a bit ludicrous to argue at length about it. I believe part of the issue may be conflicting sources. One early star trek novel I read described the nacelle's as being made of antimatter. Ludicrous. Pointless. Irresponsibly hazardous.

    What we actually know: The warp nacelles house the warp engines. Not the only engines on the ship, but the primary motive power for interstellar flight. No amount of thrust is going to move a star ship interstellar distances in a Star Trek reasonable amount of time. Some messing with the space around them has to be involved.

    That does not negate the need for some thrust. I've seen several references to the engines acting as Bussard ram jets, and I believe it was referenced on the show. That is sufficient for interstellar travel, but not on Star Trek schedule. So they also bend the medium. We have little experience with that. I think it's safe to say, though, that there are forces involves, even if it is space itself somehow dragging the ship along.

    The warp fields form a subspace bubble distorting the spacetime continuum. The forces applied to the inside of the bubble may be minimal or zero ... or the other way, infinite. In article about intertial dampers it's mentioned that starship can't jump to warp speed without them - possibly, the pylons don't need to transfer any power because without the dampers, nothing would be sturdy enough, and with them, it's irrelevant.

    19 hours ago, ijuin said:

    Furthermore, Federation starships are not held together by the strength of their physical structure--they are held together by forcefields--the "structural integrity fields". The structure only needs to hold on its own under relatively low strain because when the ship has power, the forcefields provide 99% of the strength.

    And structural integrity fields, yes.

    19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    So, the ship moves forward, for the most part based on whatever hocus pocus in in the nacelles. The nacelles are causing that, f=ma, thrust is involved. And those spars are not designed to handle a forward thrust. It is elementary statics. You want to long part in the direction of the force. On TOS, they are orthogonal to the force. Total fail. NG got it much better; the pylons are swept, and are much thicker in the direction of force.

    You can never get to speeds higher than light with f=ma.

    19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    I'm not sure your last bit follows; even on the pylons, they are too close for safety. and you have to leave them far behind if they are imminently going to explode. The pylons just take longer to climb down.

    In case of explosion, shorter pylons would be sufficient. There may be different effect in play, though. Also, the warp engines needs to be at specific position so the warp fields will surround the ship.

    But, yes, I prefer the later ships as well.

    19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    (yes, there are some engines in back of the saucer).

    The separable saucer makes little sense. It was canon in TOS, though you never saw it. I guess at some point they had to show it. It's not for emergencies, per Generations; that should have been, "Eject the damaged core", no movement of personnel, which was ludicrous anyway, and you save more of the ship. IIRC, in one earlier NG, the saucer was detached to do orbital station keeping when the bottom went off on some errand. Seems it you wanted this capability, something other than crippling both halves of your ship would be better.

    Did you see multivector attack mode of uss prometheus? That's how the separation can be useful!

    And you are right, the separation was not for "simple" core damage. The idea was that in case of hopeless battle, saucer section will separate and escape, while the rest of the ship will confront the enemy. That's why most weapons are in the stardrive section and why it's bridge is named "battle bridge". Would sound like quite logical solution for cases where the ship is far from any help ... except the saucer section has no warp engines so it can't get too far. Oops.

    19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    So you said you did not like TOS; I was young when TOS first aired, and there was nothing else like it. Cheesy though it may be, I will remember it fondly for boldly going where no show had gone before. That said, much of the Star Trek canon is, "Let's do this", "Oh, that was dumb", "Nah, we can rationalize it."

    I like TOS. I read all of it. (Granted, that was translation of books which were published in 1991 so it was definitely later than the TV.)

    And, well, when TOS first aired it wasn't on our TV's. We actually saw TOS after TNG, so TNG was my introduction to Star Trek.

    19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    "Oh, dear, our engines are disabled. Let's use the impulse engines!" Not specified in great detail what these are, but the warp engines are offline. Interstellar distances. You are not going to get there in your lifetime unless you are bending space. Maybe interplanetary distances, certainly station keeping in orbit, most assuredly maneuvering into a space dock, where warping space is prohibited, but not for going  home.

    Yes, impulse engines are used for maneuvering and short distances and can't possibly reach FTL speeds.

    19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    ... they got it correct in few scenes in Babylon 5, but I think it didn't lasted long.

    What could have been ... Babylon 5 was written as a five year series, with a plotted story line. TV with a story line that begins and ends is common in British TV, but is rare in America. Near the end of it's run, it became unclear that it would have the full five years to complete the story, so the writers rushed the end, then added new material, diluting what was once a coherent vision.

    Not speaking about "what could have been" if the Crusade wasn't sabotaged by TNT and then abandoned.

    12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    I like how Mayday (Traveller-related GDW Box game) handled movement. Each turn, your default future move was based on your current position marked by your token and your velocity; use a second 'future position token' to show this. You can apply thrust to modify your velocity. Planetary masses apply gravity as non optional thrust based on distance. Mark modified future position with a third kind of token. Everyone update their current position and default future position. It is very quantized, restricted to hexes, with enough resolution to work.

    I think this would be best or close to best system to allow the 2D movement in way ships move in space without using computer and fast/simple enough for game. I also saw it somewhere and it PROBABLY wasn't Traveler.

    11 hours ago, mlooney said:

    That's the basic system I use, however it's modified to use figures, not counters and is free form, not tied to a hex grid.

    ... well, "not tied to a (hex) grid" sounds EXACTLY as "too much computing to be practical for game".


  10. 2 hours ago, mlooney said:
    2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    In standard magical duel, you stay in place and throw spells at opponent. Whatever they are doing seems to involve more running ... oh, wait, these wands are not actually long-range. OF COURSE the duel with them is going to involve lot of running and resemble the game of tag.

    Wands don't have tp be short range, but I auapect these are.

    Well, of course, in fact Tedd needed to work hard on making the first drumstick wand only work on touch, but it seems likely he did the same in case of these ones.


  11. 15 hours ago, mlooney said:
    16 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    Susan apparently watches and comments her playing.

    She has expressed a desire to do that before, right after Sarah put her on fairy duty.

    https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2011-10-10

    I think she was doing it before already, and she just commented about it when put on fairy duty to assure Sarah that she is fine with that.

    So, yes, it's consistent with previous cases.

    15 hours ago, mlooney said:
    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    16 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    Technically, only Grace is playing.

    Which means that Susan in the game is Grace's avatar, in case that point was missed. So the attitudes are Grace's.

    Oh, good point.  However the start of the game indicated that it's not Grace, but in fact Susan.  Maybe they swapped who was running the game at some point.

    This is obviously flashback to before start of this arc, not what's happening now on different meta level.

    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    20 hours ago, mlooney said:

    With commentary about what naked means in the context of the game. 

    Dan is reading this forum. Or, possibly, he gets the same questions from other quarters.

    This idea is nowhere near revolutionary enough to require single source. Lot of people could have it independently.

    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    16 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    Sarah and Ashley are likely playing some version of tag with magic wands. Sarah is distracted, Ashley has advantage!

    It's all fun and games until the cat eats your shrunk friend. Bad kitty!

    In EGS, shrunk people are so durable the cat wouldn't be able to chew them. Not that just being in cat mouth is that pleasant experience.

    7 hours ago, mlooney said:
    11 hours ago, AFNB said:

    I suppose that's something like a magical duel just for fun and lols - which is how I saw it.

    Once I noticed Ashley, that was my idea as well.  Grace and Susan are playing video games while Sarah and Ashley are playing around with magic.

    In standard magical duel, you stay in place and throw spells at opponent. Whatever they are doing seems to involve more running ... oh, wait, these wands are not actually long-range. OF COURSE the duel with them is going to involve lot of running and resemble the game of tag.

    4 hours ago, Scotty said:
    17 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    Sarah and Ashley are likely playing some version of tag with magic wands. Sarah is distracted, Ashley has advantage!

    Oh, carp, you already came up with that idea lol.

    :)

     


  12. 14 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, hkmaly said:

    And in battles, ships actually DO change orientation.

    That clip's battle has more orientation changes than most, and you can see it adds to the sense of actually being in space, but it is mostly a conventionally unified 'up' among all of the participants, with minor changes during maneuvers. Not really a counterexample.

    Therefore the next sentence.

    14 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    The cube, not so much; from what we've seen it has an internal 'up'.

    We saw very little of it ; it's entirely possible the cube is internally divided to six pyramids with independent "up", or even more complicated solution.

    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    And they always manage to transport upright, which makes sense, the transporter would have to be awful smart about things like that or you'd transport embedbed in walls or hanging in the air, getting the orientation right should be a part of it's function.

    Before transporting, they need to scan the target location to find walls and detect direction of gravity, yes.

    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, hkmaly said:

    It almost seems that even after centuries, StarFleet captains still didn't adapted to three dimensional thinking.

    Kirk criticizes Khan for that in one movie, then beats him with what is essentially a submarine maneuver, marginally 3D; 1D in a third direction.

    In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, hkmaly said:

    Basically, space battles are modeled as airplane battles.

    Yes, basically. Airplanes mostly keep their orientation, especially with long range missile weapons, less so in a dog fight. But the environment they fight in has an orientation. Climbing costs speed and fuel, and diving, while it has it's advantages, must be closely monitored and quit before the ground is encountered.

    So it makes somewhat adequate story telling, is perhaps not so jarring in small encounters, but in large ones, like your post, you have to wonder.

    Yes.

    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, hkmaly said:

    It could be argued that agreeing to specific "up" would have advantages for diplomatic reasons, ...

    The view screens could do that, if it is of any import. You'd want that for the face to face talks. Although, if I can mess with my settings so I'm sideways at meetings, ...

    You can. But, besides video meetings, it can be useful for cases where, for some diplomatic reasons, you want to exchange shuttles instead of transporting. And in general, if people who have troubles thinking in 3D are common, aligning to same "up" is a reduction of "alien" feeling, which may be good idea in diplomacy ...

    ... and, well, there might be diplomats - even starfleet diplomats - who get nauseous when looking at ship positioned differently. Now, sometimes you WANT to confuse the other side like that, but usually you don't.

    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, hkmaly said:

    Something Ender got very fast: "Enemy gate is down".

    ... not that we saw that much of that thinking in the movie ... but at least one good case.

    Yes, and Ender is a genius hero for wrapping his head around that.

    There was quite a bit in the battle school, when they were doing suited battles.

    The movie (and the book) was exceptional in that it actually incorporated space tactics.

    Yes, Ender is a genius.

    I was commenting that it was better in the book because the movie needed to be shortened too much.

    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, hkmaly said:

    Aerodynamic shapes are aesthetically pleasing. That may be only reason starfleet (and romulan) designers needed.

    They were certainly the only reasons the human designers needed for the TV series.

    I am not a fan of the earlier ship designs in Star Trek. Thrust should be oriented such that it intersects the center of mass, otherwise it produces torque. All of the early designs do not appear to have this right.

    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    The spindly struts on the original Enterprise look like they should snap right off. They are oriented to look like they are the opposite of designed to properly transfer the force.

    Remember that most time, federation skips were supposed to be for exploration, not battle. I think the starfleet designers overthough that.

    However, specifically the warp naceless ... they are not rockets. They don't produce thrust. They generate subspace field. And, presumably, they were not exactly safe to be around, and putting them on pylons might make easier to get rid of them if they were going to explode.

    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    The war birds at least have the pylons for the ward nacelles right, they look like the are built to transfer lateral force. The spindly struts on the original Enterprise look like they should snap right off. They are oriented to look like they are the opposite of designed to properly transfer the force. Other things the war birds do right; small small command an control center, as you would expect in space, also smaller target, not the huge, flamboyant disc that is extraneous weight to haul and easier to hit.

    That said, I like the war birds design more too. And it OBVIOUSLY makes more sense for battle because Romulans ALWAYS think about battle.

    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    Although, even with that, I don't get why in the battle scene you posted, when one of the Federation ships gets hit in the saucer, but not in the command center (nor in engineering, which is not in the saucer), why is it a fatal blow?

    Federation starships in general are very easy to explode. Remember that no matter where they are hit, there is good chance some console on bridge will blow up. Must be some fatal flaw in basic design.

    However ... I don't think it was fatal. I mean, assuming it's the same ship we speak about ... I think that after being hit near the midle of saucer, there was another hit near the back, into engines (yes, there are some engines in back of the saucer). And even that might not necessary be fatal in "everyone aboard dead" sense, although it probably made it unable to continue fighting.

    15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    Also, why does said dying ship suddenly veer of to the side? A dying object in space should keep going in the same direction.

    Gas / air leakage creating unexpected thrust?

    I think this battle, being in DS9, actually can be explained relatively well, there are however cases where something similar happens and there is no explanation possible.

    12 hours ago, mlooney said:
    13 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    What you're saying is true, and actual shallow 3D maps really well as a 2D map in Traveller, the orientation of each combatant are significant and not constrained to the 1D separation of the two, not to mention the movement vectors. With two combatants, you end up with three orientation dimensions each, a velocity and an acceleration each, minimum, although a missile would want higher order movement data, and then 1D separation, so 11D or more. So if you're asking "how far away are we?", 1D is enough, but not in a battle.

    This is already true on Earth, related to shooting down airplanes and moving robotic manipulators.

    All mitigated by considerations like, "Thust is always in the direction of the nose of the ship." Collapse two dimensions, one for each combatant.

    I'm thinking, though, that level of detail would be counterproductive in a RPG. Keeping things simple for story telling is a goal.

    Edge of Imperial Space, my current SF RPG uses 2D map with vector movement for space combat, regardless of the number of ships or missiles in play.  If there was a simple way of doing 3d combat with minis I would use that.  

    I'm pretty sure there isn't.

    Even using computer 3D combat gets confusing fast. At least until you have true 3D holoprojectors like on Star Trek, and based on how bad are their captains at utilizing 3D space, they STILL didn't train enough on them. :)

    Wait one more point ...

    13 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    All mitigated by considerations like, "Thust is always in the direction of the nose of the ship." Collapse two dimensions, one for each combatant.

    Would be quite stupid limitation, but what you see in most movies is even worse: MOVEMENT is always in the direction of the nose of the ship. That's true for airplanes, mostly, because airplane which is not moving in direction of it's nose is effectively crashing already, they are not stable like that. For star ship however that's not true at all, their inertia is quite big but they can't use wings to maneuver, they need to use thrust  ...

    ... they got it correct in few scenes in Babylon 5, but I think it didn't lasted long.


  13. 2 hours ago, mlooney said:

    OK, now we get the real Grace, the real Susan and the real Sarah playing the game. 

    Technically, only Grace is playing. Which makes sense considering it's singleplayer game.

    Susan apparently watches and comments her playing.

    Sarah and Ashley are likely playing some version of tag with magic wands. Sarah is distracted, Ashley has advantage!

    Hmmm ... when can this be happening? Obviously later than current main story ...

    Regarding commentary:

    So, Susan is ok with that because she likes wearing little and apparently, her embarrassment won't trigger in this situation. Makes sense compared to her behaviour after Goonmanji 2.

    And the question if NPC see something different is left on reader. Ok.

    Also, why android? You can totally build a cannon into human head as augmentation. Granted, it's not exactly safest or sanest option, but if you combine it with healing nanites ... (done in Schlock Mercenary ... well, ok, technically it was gun, not cannon, but if you want real cannon it would need to be huge mecha ... thinking about it, for huge mecha headcannon or two wouldn't be extraordinary).


  14. 29 minutes ago, mlooney said:
    44 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    Fable, probably not. There are differences in game costumes in other games, though. Can't find the exact case with changed "under-equipable-clothes-underwear" I remember, but see these examples:

    Is Fable a Japanese game that was ported to English or did it start out English?

    Well I don't know for sure but it was produced by British video game developer studio ...

    Of course, this game is not Fable. It's (checks arc name) Parable. So something completely different. :)

    Maybe in EGS universe, Parable IS originally Japanese game and replacing the big boobs with the blue lines was something done between original and international version due to censorship.

    Or, maybe in EGS universe britain is not so prudish due to Noriko's influence ... you know, stuff like saving Queen's life three times ...


  15. 23 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:
    1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

    It would be nice if that would be true, but no: money are currently debt.

    Well, in a fiat currency system, there has to be some entity with the power to create money.

    As long as that entity KEEPS the money, it does nobody any good. Not even the entity that created it.

    So that entity can either:

    (a) buy stuff - and eventually own everything, which idea has serious issues;

    (b) lend the money out, presumably to entities expected to be able to repay it;

    (c) give it away - and how does it decide how much to give to whom?

    Actually, government already does a lot of deciding who should it give money. And there is specific fiscal politics instrument which basically means that central bank will print money and buy government iou's with it. So, it can be argued that option "c" would be better.

    ... that argument works very badly on anyone with any sort of experience of how badly governments work. Basically, in current system governments pay lot of money to banks just to get some sort of oversight and incentive to not be stupid (or, possibly, someone to blame when they realize that actually fulfilling campaign promises would be catastrophic.)


  16. 51 minutes ago, mlooney said:

    Are you saying that the Japanese edition of Fable has different versions of the basic  character models?  That strikes me as a bit odd. 

    Fable, probably not. There are differences in game costumes in other games, though. Can't find the exact case with changed "under-equipable-clothes-underwear" I remember, but see these examples:

     


  17. 10 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    13 hours ago, ijuin said:

    As for crashing with the top up, what little control they had during descent was being used by Data to put them into the safest orientation for the landing.

    He did indeed appear to be surmising that he needed to. Note, though, that this always happens. Fictional space has an orientation, and ships are always upright. When two meet in battle, they are both oriented with the top in the same direction. It's not just Star Trek. Look at the big battle scenes in Star Wars; all the ships have the same 'up'. This, among other things, seems tactically unsound.

    Which part of sphere - or cube - is "up"?

    And in battles, ships actually DO change orientation. But it's true that they do it much less than they could. Basically, space battles are modeled as airplane battles.

    It could be argued that agreeing to specific "up" would have advantages for diplomatic reasons, but keeping that "up" in battle seems suboptimal.

    It almost seems that even after centuries, StarFleet captains still didn't adapted to threedimensional thinking. Something Ender got very fast: "Enemy gate is down".

    ... not that we saw that much of that thinking in the movie ... but at least one good case.

    10 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    Although, for not being designed to land, the saucer seems oddly aerodynamic.

    Aerodynamic shapes are aesthetically pleasing. That may be only reason starfleet (and romulan) designers needed.

     


  18. 9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    "What if" scenarios like this may seem simple on first look, but in reality are no more reliable than the "what if Newton have as much success in alchemy as he had in optics".

    Then your precious metal standard would have the value of the lesser of it's current value and the value of producing it from other materials. We can actually do that now. We can synthesis gold from other elements. The cost to do so is prohibitive. The gold may well be an unstable isotope as well.

    ... actually I think producing gold was NOT what Newton made possible there. Although it's some time I've read it ...

    And yes: technically, we can already turn lead into gold, as alchemists wanted. It just needs unpractical amount of energy. No such luck with other alchemy goals, yet: no elixir of immortality, no universal medicine, no universal solvent.

    And electromagnetic waves are very useful but don't really allow everything aetheric manipulation was supposed to. Specifically, it doesn't allow to attract asteroid from space to Earth, which was part of plot in mentioned book ...

    9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

     ... then, few governments tried to abandon it and start printing money and found that they can get rich by it.

    That didn't really work out for them. No one has ever printed an excess of currency without damaging their economy; in the extreme cases devaluing their currency to such an extent that is became essentially worthless; no one remains rich, the regime changes, and the perpetrators are no longer in control.

    It worked for the first because they got other nation's gold before people understood how printing the money works. It stopped working since then, of course. Except for the perpetrators, those generally are able to find some way to get rich (certainly involving trades of those printed money for something more stable).

    9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    Hitler came to power in the wake of one of these events, it was likely a factor.

    Germany couldn't afford gold standard between wars due to reparations for the first one, so yes, definitely factor.

    10 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    Since the abandonment of gold standard, we (whole world) are basically living on debt. We can't really return to gold standard without paying that debt - which is impossible. Only if in future we somehow manage to transition to different system (possibly post-scarcity economy) without major crisis the Great Depression would be fun when compared to, we could say it was good idea.

    An alternate point of view is that we've expanded the economic standard to include a variety of goods and services, not just one scarce metal. It makes more sense if you think about it that way.

    It would be nice if that would be true, but no: money are currently debt.


  19. 8 hours ago, mlooney said:
    9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    9 hours ago, mlooney said:

    Back with Rhoda and Catalina, who seem to think Susan is naked.

    I have to be honest, I'm not tracking Dan's thinking here. Are these Schrödinger 's clothes? I feel like something is being lamp shaded, and I'm not in on what.

    What Susan is wearing is what a character wears when all "equipment" clothes are removed.  With the "Never Nude" flag turned on she shows with underwear.  That is what I'm assuming based on what The Dan has said before in this story line.

    Assuming? I would consider this directly confirmed by previous comics.

    8 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

    Now if our reality is itself a simulation, one might wonder what kind of filters are in effect that cause us to be shocked or offended by things that are effectively black bars or euphamisms to the observers one level up

    7 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    8 hours ago, mlooney said:

    What Susan is wearing is what a character wears when all "equipment" clothes are removed.  With the "Never Nude" flag turned on she shows with underwear.  That is what I'm assuming based on what The Dan has said before in this story line.

    That much I got. I guess I'm taking in-game unremovable underwear at face value. For me, the question boils down to, "Why should it be otherwise?" The comic implies that Cat does not even see the underwear, nor Rhoda, who is not wearing more herself.

    Naked: "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it does."

    Yeah, there are two options: Either the "Never Nude" underwear is some filter on higher meta level and Susan is only one seeing it, OR other people technically also see it but because it's as much nude as you can get, they consider it being nude.

    7 hours ago, mlooney said:

    I suspect that Rhoda's tube top and short shorts are equipable clothing and if she was to remove it she would actually end up with what Susan is wearing, never mind the fact that those "underwear" actually show less skin than the "overwear" top she is currently wearing.   I'm just assuming that, I could be wrong.

    Certainly. If Rhoda's tube top wouldn't be equipable it would look EXACTLY as Susan's underwear. And that it shows more skin? Videogame logic.

    (Also, maybe Japanese edition has smaller "Never Nude" underwear. I read article about games like that.)

     


  20. 1 hour ago, ijuin said:

    The Enterprise-D overall is a bit over six hundred meters (two thousand feet) long. The secondary hull (i.e. the non-saucer part) is three hundred and a bit not counting the warp nacelles. The hard part of getting people out of there is climbing the decks--the lowest deck is Deck Forty-Two, and the interface between the primary and secondary hulls is somewhere around Deck Twelve or so, which means up to thirty decks to ascend, with the elevators probably not having enough capacity to carry everyone quickly. To evacuate everyone that quickly, they would have to use the transporters to pull out those who were too far away. With a stated eight transporter rooms in the Saucer section, and assuming six people per transport cycle and two transport cycles per minute over four minutes, that allows evacuating about 380 people via transporter in four minutes, which is a third of the Enterprise-D's entire crew.

    If they have some evacuation protocols, that might work - with most people already in saucer and if they were transporting the people from lowest decks while the ones in higher decks used lifts ...

    1 hour ago, ijuin said:

    Standard complement for the Enterprise-D was between 1000 and 1100 crew, not counting passengers and children.

    Yeah, not counting ... seems that totally it could be 6000 with maximal capacity 15000.

    1 hour ago, ijuin said:

    Deanna Troi was officially a Lieutenant Commander at this point in the story--there was an episode during the series where she was taking the Command Officer's examination, where she had to send Geordi La Forge to his "certain death" in a simulation in order to prove that she was psychologically capable of sacrificing a friend in order to save the ship if need be. However, yes, you are correct that it should not have been her, but rather Data, at the helm for the entire sequence.

    1 hour ago, ijuin said:

    As for crashing with the top up, what little control they had during descent was being used by Data to put them into the safest orientation for the landing.

    Definitely sounds like it should be Data.

     


  21. 3 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    Comparing price of car is useless, it's technology and is changing too much. Even basic stuff like bread could be unreliable as people eat differently now. "General price levels" are supposed to get the correct comparison, but I wouldn't be too sure they got it correctly ... the reasoning is probably still correct, but it's funny when you use exact figures taken from today commodity exchange and then process them with equation based on guesses.

    The traditional object cited is a good quality men's suit; an ounce of gold buys you a good quality suit. I think it's been a fairly good illustration historically, but gold is rather high right now relative to suits.

    You mean, fashion is too sane for current prices of gold.
    Although, maybe if you include the smartphone, which definitely needs to be part of that suit nowadays ...

    1 hour ago, ijuin said:

    My point was, gold at present is at a significantly higher price relative to most goods and cheap services than it was in the days when the value of currency was pegged to the price of gold, and this is because there is less gold available in comparison to the overall amount of goods and services. If we had maintained the backing of currency by gold (i.e. had not abandoned the Breton-Woods system of convertibility of currency to gold at rates fixed by governments), then there would necessarily have been massive deflation over the past several decades.

    More likely, the amount of gods and services would be lower. Which might not necessarily be bad, if it would mean less shitty low-quality products with short durability and instead something which lasts ...
    ... obviously, there might be some problem with having less gold available per person (there were just about 1.6 billion people in 1900) but on the other hand, it is debatable if the wealth is really spread in way which makes common people having more wealth that would be possible in gold-based economy.


    "What if" scenarios like this may seem simple on first look, but in reality are no more reliable than the "what if Newton have as much success in alchemy as he had in optics".
    Only two things are certain: the world will be different ... and rich people wouldn't be as much rich as they are now. After all, allowing rich people to be more rich was the main reason why the change was done, no matter what anybody is claiming.

    Oh, and, obviously ... it would be very unlikely to happen. Because the abandoning of gold standard was not decision made randomly. Governments were having increasingly bigger problems with getting enough tax revenue even before world war I, and afterwards it was obvious there is not enough gold to pay for the war ... then, few governments tried to abandon it and start printing money and found that they can get rich by it. Of course rest of the world followed. (Oh, and then second world war happened.)

    Since the abandonment of gold standard, we (whole world) are basically living on debt. We can't really return to gold standard without paying that debt - which is impossible. Only if in future we somehow manage to transition to different system (possibly post-scarcity economy) without major crisis the Great Depression would be fun when compared to, we could say it was good idea.


  22. 21 hours ago, mlooney said:
    21 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

    Out of fifteen girls in my first grade class in 1957, three of them were named "Sandra". So one kept "Sandra", another became "Sandy" and the third went by her middle name, "Jeanette".

    My 9th grade English class had 5 or 6 "Michael", which is the name I go by.  The teacher, instead of using other given names for the students adopted the simple solution of calling every body by their last names "Mr. Looney" or "Ms. Smith".  Going by my first name wouldn't have helped much, there were 2 "Joseph" or "Joe" other than me in that class.

    ... I remember that there were five students with same name as I had but don't really remember how teachers were solving it ... well, probably using last name, as we rarely have middle names around here. Officially.

    18 hours ago, Scotty said:
    23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    Also, yes, the name Jay being masculine DOES seem suspicious, ESPECIALLY with the clarification mentioning that "Jack" was rejected BECAUSE there was female named Jack in Mass Effect 2 ...

    It wouldn't be too difficult to assume that "Jay" is simply referring to the first letter of "Jill" like she prefers to answer to her first initial, either because there's another Jill in her classes or she thinks it goes with her hairstyle, it could be a image thing, "Jill" doesn't sound rebellious when you shave part of your head like that, but "Jay" does, and it's not like she's giving yourself a new name when all she'd do is sign stuff with J. Lastname.

    That's true. However, it doesn't match well with what Dan said in the commentary.

    15 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

    Susan,
    Don't give up on your first name so easily
    Some day you may want to open up a a little cafe that only serves morning meals

    I don't think she would ever want that.

    14 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

    And if you check out Dan's tumblr for this comic, he gave it the title "The Ultimate Strategy" which would kind of fit Grace making her boobs even bigger to distract Diane in the final panel.

    Exactly.

    We don't see enough of her to know for sure, but the context suggests that's what she did.

     


  23. 21 hours ago, mlooney said:

    The plot of the 1st Equestria Girls movie:  Sunset Shimmer, a pony that self exiled to the human world, sneaked back into the pony world and stole Twilight Sparkle's magic crown for reasons.  Twilight and Spike went through the mirror to get it back before Sunset could use it for evil.  Once there Twilight met up with the human versions of her Ponyville friends and got the crown back.  The final "fight" scene is the one where the magic light show and demon transformation happened.  That's were the "The talking dog is the weird thing" line happens.  Only 2 of the cast were translated ponies during this movie, Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer. 

    More here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyEquestriaGirls1

    Also Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Little_Pony:_Equestria_Girls_(film)

    Quote

    The concept is simple enough: take the characters of the hit TV show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and put them in high school. Now the Mane Six must deal with things such as peer pressure, planning for school dances, popular girls with attitude problems, and yes... even boys.

    Oh. I get it. Not enough of target audience are into bestiality so putting the ponies into high school was only way to collect on the "sex sells". Well, as much of it as is acceptable in G-rated show.

    More seriously: So just two characters actually transformed. That might be little better.

    19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    20 hours ago, mlooney said:

    And that was to avoid the expense of landing the space ship every week.

    Now that's just silly. The enterprise was built in orbit, in a space dock, and is not suited to landing.

    Didn't stopped Voyager.

    13 hours ago, ijuin said:
    20 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    Many years ago, while the series was still new, I read a book, The Making of Star Trek. Per that book, which I barely remember otherwise, the transporter sequences each cost $10,000, in late 60s dollars. All done by manually overlaying film sequences.

    And that $10 grand was out of a total budget per episode of about $100 grand. Yes, that’s right—every single transporter sequence took up about a tenth of the episode’s entire budget.

    Yeah, that would explain the cardboards.

    10 hours ago, Drasvin said:
    15 hours ago, mlooney said:

    Good point.  The did have the Enterprise "land" in at least one of the movies.

    I've heard that any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.

    How many hundreds of people are on Enterprise again? I suspect there were some causalities. Or at least should be.

    19 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:
    1 hour ago, ijuin said:

    Here is the scene, if you wish to watch it:

    That was worse than I remembered. You don't evacuate that many people in four minutes. The Enterprise D is supposed to be huge. You don't crawl the length of engineering and the shuttle hanger, then up a series of ladders in four minute. But most of those folks there were evacuating should already have been in the saucer. Why is the counselor, who holds no formal rank, driving the ship, rather than a helmsman? I always wonder, too, why every space ship that crashes is oriented with the top up.

    Some comments.

    Obviously, it's because only named characters are allowed to do something as important as crashing piloting the ship. From named characters, she might really be the most suitable one left.

    Generally, you shouldn't think too much about it, because then you realize that either the computer is clever enough to pilot the ship by itself, or those few people on bridge wouldn't be enough.

     


  24. On 6/4/2020 at 5:17 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

    There are cultures like that, and they tend to be very small. money has it's uses, in any system, to track value; makes barter and even leveling easier. And negatives, like hoarding.

    I agree ... I'm just saying that communism disagree.

    On 6/4/2020 at 5:17 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

    Re: Money has no value, that's a newish thing. For most of history, money had the value of the metal it was made of. Even so, debasing currency is also very old. Paper started as promises to surrender metal, but now it's just faith in the economy.

    For most of history, money was supposed to have the value of the metal but it only worked because everyone believed that. If the metal was not used for money, it's price would react much quicker on how much it's mined at that moment.
    Granted, the metal the money were made of had SOME value. Currently, not counting the faith in economy of specific country (and, seriously, how much faith you have in say Greek economy? Oh, right, they are paying with Euro so it's Germany economy holding the faith up), the money have less value than the electrons used to store them in bank's electronic systems.

    On 6/4/2020 at 8:05 AM, ijuin said:

    Basing your money on a commodity (such as a metal) always brings the problem that you can not consistently grow your money supply to match your economy. If the economy grows more than the money supply, then you get deflation, which is economically equivalent to everybody receiving interest on all held money--i.e. it encourages people to hoard money and not invest it in creating/adding value.

    Not that anyone ever wanted to grow money supply just to match the economy. Banks always grows the money supply more, creating inflation, which is sort of tax on holding money. Which means that people who were working honestly all their live saving for retirement were ALWAYS robbed by their governments.
    Also, if economy really grows, you can get even MORE rich by investing in right way.

    However, it's true that inflation encourages you to invest even if you don't know into what, which is, again, a good mechanism to steal from people who spend too much time working to have time to play the economy.

    Based on success of capitalism in last few centuries, it seems that the system is better than all tried alternatives, but it's definitely not fair. Well ... maybe that's it: maybe unfair systems have better results than fair ones. Maybe it's good to have system of moving money from people who would only spend them on comfortable retirement to people who have ideas how to make world better. On the other hand, this kind of thinking is dangerously close to deciding to just kill those unproductive old people. After all, if they believed the promise they will enjoy their retirement, maybe they will believe the promise they will enjoy their afterlife ... oh, wait, THAT motivation system was also tried many times through history.

    On 6/4/2020 at 8:05 AM, ijuin said:

    Let's compare some prices: In 1908, the US dollar was worth 1/20 of a troy ounce of gold ($20/oz.). The Ford Model T debuted that year at a price of $850, equivalent to about $24,000 today. That puts the price of the car at about 42 ounces of gold--3 1/2 troy pounds. Today (03 June 2020), the price of Gold on the New York commodity exchange closed at $1,700.80/oz. 42 ounces at that price would be worth $71,400. Thus, the value of gold has increased by a factor of three relative to general price levels over the past 112 years.

    Comparing price of car is useless, it's technology and is changing too much. Even basic stuff like bread could be unreliable as people eat differently now. "General price levels" are supposed to get the correct comparison, but I wouldn't be too sure they got it correctly ... the reasoning is probably still correct, but it's funny when you use exact figures taken from today commodity exchange and then process them with equation based on guesses.

    On 6/4/2020 at 8:05 AM, ijuin said:

    Let's say that you want to grow your economy at 2.0% per year (an slightly-below-average amount for industrial nations over the past three centuries). In order for gold-backed currency to keep up, you would have to mine as much gold over the next forty years as the entire history of mankind. And then you would have to double that amount over the NEXT forty years after that, and so on. Eventually you will need more gold than could be recovered even if you diverted all non-essential activity towards gold extraction.

    There are LOT of people who wants to grow their economy at some value. For some reason, they are very surprised that the economy doesn't care what they want. But, yes, mining all that gold likely wouldn't make it better.