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Welcome! 03/05/2016
Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change. If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away. I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
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hkmaly
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Days Won
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Posts posted by hkmaly
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On 3/17/2025 at 9:11 AM, mlooney said:Having Hope burst out with information is one way to tie up loose plot points.
We waited almost 11 years for that, since this page.
On 3/17/2025 at 1:49 PM, Darth Fluffy said:So would a nuclear device in downtown Moperville. Granted, you might still have unanswered questions, but the resolution of plot points would be clear.
... you say just when most of the cast is in room outside reality and likely wouldn't be affected by it at all.
Besides, Hope wouldn't be affected, Magus and Adrian are currently outside the city and I'm even not speaking about Lord Tedd.
On 3/17/2025 at 8:18 PM, Darth Fluffy said:You'd think Pandora would pass on the reason not to do that.
You mean the "it may cause magic reset" bit? I don't think she missed this risk is no longer valid.
19 hours ago, mlooney said:She needs to learn real-world history at least.
Why? She needs to learn real-world NOW.
12 hours ago, mlooney said:I don't think immortals cast spells the same way humans do.
Agree.
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On 3/17/2025 at 9:07 AM, mlooney said:Rainbow hair is seldom scary. Hot, maybe, depending on the person it's on, but not scary.
You are not thinking about the right rainbow.
Anyway, I wasn't talking about someone scary BECAUSE of rainbow hair. Just someone scary who also has rainbow hair.
Although, if the hair is not fixed rainbow but randomly going through all the colors of rainbow all the time, it may be quite scary.
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On 3/10/2025 at 1:57 AM, ChronosCat said:It seems to be becoming increasingly common (or at least is in style) for dragons to be depicted with four limbs, the front ones being wings. (One of the many things that bugged me about the Hobbit movie trilogy was that Smaug was given that body design when he really should have had the classic dragon design; Tolkien even drew him with six limbs in his own illustrations! Also I was recently looking to replace one of my Dragonriders of Pern books and was frustrated to see the cover-art for the latest reprint give the dragons and fire-lizards only four limbs when it's made very clear in the text of the books that they have six limbs.)
People doing illustration for books ignoring the text is not recent ; Pratchett always complained that the illustrators seem to draw the people younger than they are.
Smaug having less limbs is unfortunately not the only difference between Hobbit movie and Hobbit the book. Or should I say Red Book of Westmarch?
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9 hours ago, mlooney said:Blonde is optional. Redhead will also do. And sometimes raven haired.
What about full-on rainbow?
(I might need some time to get used on commenting here again. If anyone will be looking for me, check reddit.)
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41 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:The bowling double date starts here, March 19, 2024. The explicit reveal is here, September 19, 2024. It wraps up shortly after, on September 26, 2024, three comics later. The last panel is possibly a hint that Lucy already knows about magic. In EGS time, it may be concurrent with the game tournament events;
I meant EGS time.
Thinking about it, we can't even be sure it already happened at this point of main story.
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On 3/3/2025 at 8:45 AM, Darth Fluffy said:Seems Arthur made an awful judgement call. He could have put together some innocuous spells that would have satisfied her; instead, he cut her off and made her search on her own; he lost control of the situation.
Lot of parents are making same mistake. One would expect they would remember how it didn't worked on them ...
On 3/3/2025 at 9:41 AM, Darth Fluffy said:Follow up: In the bowling double date, Diane learned Rhoda had magic. She inferred Catalina did as well. She could have shared it with the main case. Lucy sort of was in on it, but seemed confused.
I'm not sure there was time to tell already. How long ago was it?
On 3/3/2025 at 6:39 PM, ijuin said:Modern thinking is that Dragons combined traits of Pterosaurs and Theropod dinosaurs.
Note, however, that the usual western dragon has six limbs (and tail), which is a trait not shared with any other land vertebrate on Earth and practically impossible to evolve given how limbs of vertebrates are encoded in DNA.
Of course, there are several other mythological species with same trait, and it's also common on Spinx (Manticore A-IV) or Pandora for example.
And we know the same is true for dragons in EGS, or at least one dragon.
PS: I just found out this forum is alive again. Why didn't anyone told me?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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".
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6 minutes ago, ijuin said:The magic tag/duel thing sounds like it might make a fun short NP story.
... hmmm ... I think it would be harder to make it entertaining than Goonmanji II, but on the other hand, maybe if it was shorter ...
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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).
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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 ...
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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.)
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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:
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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.
Story Wednesday March 19, 2025
in Comic Discussion
Posted
Of course, next arc COULD be 2030.
Or, you know, maybe it will go great and we will have actual progress. Note how smoothly integrating of Diane went.