tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77365622491332068592024-02-20T02:20:13.261-08:00Khanid CorsairTreasure Hunter, New Eden Naturalist, and Aspiring Pirate LordTabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.comBlogger143125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-8233493108782936292016-02-11T12:17:00.000-08:002016-02-11T12:17:16.089-08:00Wormhole Dynamics: Gravitational Waves confirmed!!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Glee!!<br />
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Imagine my surprise when I turn on the TV after a long day of cramming some good science into students' heads, to find that gravitational waves have been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35524440" target="_blank">found</a>!!<br />
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My <a href="http://khanid.blogspot.co.uk/p/wormhole-ynamics.html" target="_blank">Wormhole Dynamics</a> model for the EVE universe just became a little more real!<br />
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Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-47426962495564051222016-02-02T00:31:00.000-08:002016-02-02T00:31:21.221-08:00Wormhole Dyanmics: The EVE Gate<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Jove, Sleepers and Talocan have all been known to be able to manipulate wormholes, even before the Seyllin Incident. So far the only explanation for this is that they are ancient races in possession of handwavium, allowing them to do so. But if you've agreed with me so far, you're ready for the big reveal.<br />
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For our current natural wormholes to appear, you need a source of gravitational wave. For capsuleers, this was provided to us by the Seyllin Incident, literally thumping reality hard enough to produce the waves.<br />
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The Drifters, Rogue Drones and Sansha have all demonstrated their capacity to at least control static wormholes with structures in space. I've assumed that these are, in fact, wave generators. However, we know that some Jove and Drifter ships are capable of producing wormholes on their own, perhaps using on board generators.<br />
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But what if you were an advanced civilisation, with the capacity to build structures such as the Jove Dyson cloud? Would you be satisfied with only being able to use natural gravitational waves to travel through space? Like sailors before steam engines, you'd be at the mercy of the winds. What if there were some way you could generate waves enough to supply a system? What if it were big enough to supply a whole cluster with a steady supply of gravitational waves to form standing wave bridges?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXwe7ZnwoqTdcort0dZOe2QgJMnVHabirvhdDW2F0090VYJEI8plpFjieKze_3ndeOY6R1v9htwMqHo3H2lskSjl0zKH13EoafgXErsqX7pW3UqOCAPFFhKLkS1UC9iB0ZsmxL60b928qq/s1600/eve+gate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXwe7ZnwoqTdcort0dZOe2QgJMnVHabirvhdDW2F0090VYJEI8plpFjieKze_3ndeOY6R1v9htwMqHo3H2lskSjl0zKH13EoafgXErsqX7pW3UqOCAPFFhKLkS1UC9iB0ZsmxL60b928qq/s320/eve+gate.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
The EVE Gate.<br />
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It is a colossal gravitational wave generator, supplying New Eden with a reliable source of gravitational waves.<br />
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Think again back to the Seyllin Incident being a stone thrown into space-time, causing these ripples. Usually these oscillations would simply disappear over time, the energy lost by the moving wave. The reason we still have the effect of wormholes, and indeed the increase in wormhole activity, is that something is adding waves into the cluster.<br />
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Again, a practical examples would be this; go to a sink, and fill it with water. Put your hand on the surface, and push up and down gently. You'll soon start to see the water moving up and down like crazy, forming the peaks and troughs of standing waves. Your hand, in this case, represents the EVE Gate.<br />
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Now we know why it is impossible to approach. The storms raging around it is the quite literal upheaval of space-time. Ships that approach are likely to be shaken apart by the gravitational stress.<br />
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In the beginning, this was quite stable. But now, as time goes on, the technology is starting to fail, and the wave generator experiences some periods where it does not oscillate at its maximum strength. These are the periods which allow the Sisters of EVE, or just the curious, to go and look closer.<br />
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Some of you will now say that we know our ancestors passed through the EVE gate to enter the New Eden cluster. I don't dispute that. However, I can say that perhaps the wormhole they passed through was not the Gate itself, but probably a wormhole produced by resonating with it.<br />
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And now we can say why the EVE Gate is perpetually producing light. It is the energy given off by the frequent oscillation in space-time... an effect we see mirrored in other wormholes.<br />
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That's pretty much the end of what I have to say about my hypothesis. It's probably not the explanation for how things actually work in New Eden, but it was a very happy thought I had, that seemed to get everything to line up. In any case, I hope you had fun working through my mad ramblings. I also hope you picked up on some real world Physics, and maybe are a little inspired to go and find out more. </div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-1729326730902521972016-02-01T00:37:00.001-08:002016-02-01T00:37:38.267-08:00Wormhole Dynamics: The Seyllin Incident<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If you've followed me down my rabbit hole this far, you have both my thanks and admiration. Takes a good deal of patience to read through the ramblings of a mad man.<br />
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But now we've hit a real pay off in explaining one of the more major events in EVE, the Seyllin Event.<br />
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Recall that the Seyllin Incident was the detonation of vast quantities of Isogen-5, causing a vast chain reaction that destroyed several planets, and began the first appearances of natural wormholes in New Eden. Capsuleers were now able to enter Anoikis space, and scavenge amongst the civilisations resident there.<br />
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The intent behind this detonation aside, we can now say why it caused the appearance of wormholes using the gravitational wave model.<br />
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The detonation of Isogen-5 caused a massive fluctuation in space-time. Yes, that sounds like science fiction gone wild, but all it means is that 4-d space received a huge pulse. We basically moved the rubber sheet of reality up and down. <br />
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As an example, drop a rock in the middle of a pond. You generate a series of waves, propagating away from where you dropped the rock.<br />
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<a href="http://www.ccbarlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Water-drop-in-pondFotolia_41270412_XS-300x200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.ccbarlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Water-drop-in-pondFotolia_41270412_XS-300x200.jpg" /></a></div>
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This pulse combined in several places, adding to other gravitational waves bouncing around the cluster. In some cases, the amplitude was of such magnitude as to dump huge amounts of energy onto planets, shattering them. These shattered planets are all in orbit of Ao-Blue class stars, and are all the first ones in their system. Now we can say why they were destroyed, perhaps without the need for Isogen-5 caches.<br />
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The pulse sent out by the detonation had a certain amplitude. These stars just happened to be at the right distance from the epicentre. They also may have had a similar effect on space-time around them. In essence, they all bend the rubber sheet of reality the same way. What may have happened as the pulse passed through the system is the same effect as a wave crashing on a beach.<br />
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The pulse simply lost it's energy as it passed through the contortion of space time caused by the Ao-Blue star. Just like when a water wave hits the shore, what was once a gentle oscillation turned into a great wall of energy crashing down onto mass... and of course, the rocky planets bore the brunt of this.<br />
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These planets were literally hit with a gravitational tsunami.<br />
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<a href="http://www.fundingexchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Tsunami-Wave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.fundingexchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Tsunami-Wave.jpg" height="211" width="320" /></a></div>
The resulting waves reflected from other massive objects, and any other sources of gravitational waves, then started to form the great rolling mess of gravitational waves needed for the first natural wormholes to appear.<br />
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That is what opened up Anoikis to capsuleers. We are now living in space-time which is fundamentally different from what was here before.<br />
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But you may be wondering how the Jove and other ancient civilisations were able to harness these waves before the event. I'll expose this idea to public opinion before getting to that... as it is getting even deeper into assumption and what ifs...</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-24984620880727641172016-01-31T01:14:00.000-08:002016-01-31T01:14:58.930-08:00Wormhole Dynamics: Wormholes as Standing waves<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Now for the development of wormholes as standing waves, giving us startling explanations and implications for wormholes in New Eden.<br />
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Recall my post on standing waves? The ones that look like this:<br />
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Harmonic_Standing_Wave.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Harmonic_Standing_Wave.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
This shows how two waves can come together to form what appears to be a static oscillation in a medium. My example before was a rope, but now we're going to apply this idea to a rubber sheet analogy of space time.<br />
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For a start, space-time is 4-dimensional. It's not nearly so easy to imagine a wave in this environment, without lying a little to ourselves, and pretending the universe is one big sheet of rubber. I'm also assuming here the maths works out. I'm still at the beginner stages of tensor calculus, and so can't prove it yet.<br />
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The idea is this:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Gravitational waves are generated at two sources at a distance from each other.</li>
<li>As they move towards each other, they form a standing wave in between them.</li>
<li>The peaks in the waves add to each other to cause the necessary contortion of space-time.</li>
<li>Elsewhere in the universe, a similar event happens.</li>
<li>These two peaks join each other, as discussed in the previous post.</li>
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This is possibly how wormholes in New Eden are formed. From this model, we can now see why wormhole space is sometimes dominated by large mass objects, such as black holes and pulsars. These large objects are causing the necessary gravitational waves to produce natural wormholes. They are also "lowering" the surrounding space-time to make such peak to peak connections easier.<br />
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This also explains why wormholes have seemingly random destinations, whilst statics are known to remain in place.<br />
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Statics are locations in space where gravitational waves are somewhat constant. There is an ebb and flow of amplitudes, the energy of the waves, but these places are where standing waves can easily form. Essentially, it is a place where a number of gravitational waves comes together to form the peak needed to bend space-time into the wormhole bridge.<br />
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However, the exit location is not always the same. This is because, unlike the two black holes joining model, the other locations wave peak is not always fixed. What the static wormhole will do is fix itself to the "closest" possible wave peak. I say "closest", because at this point distance becomes a very tricky concept.<br />
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Imagine this: Rather than New Eden's space time being a fairly even and calm pond, like a smooth rubber sheet, it is more like a rolling ocean, with waves and tsunamis crashing around all the time. <br />
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<a href="http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/ovZkFMuxZNc/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/ovZkFMuxZNc/maxresdefault.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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See the area in between the two spheres?<br />
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A standing wave can readily form there, treating those two circles as fixed points. Now it's unlikely for a spherical object to produce a gravitational wave, so those two spheres really just represent wave generators.<br />
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The idea of random wormholes forming due to massive objects bending space-time doesn't work. For New Eden's wormholes to vanish and appear, we would need masses appearing and disappearing, seemingly at random.<br />
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But if these waves are so prolific in the cluster, shouldn't we feel the effects? Wouldn't time and space be warping all the time, making space travel, and just general communication a nightmare?</div>
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The reason we don't see the effects of gravitational waves, beyond wormholes, is that the gravitational waves are pathetically low energy. The only time they are strong enough to cause an effect on mass is when we have these standing waves, resonating and adding to each other to increase the amplitude of the wave.</div>
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<a href="http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/212_spring2011.web.dir/michael_hirte/waveinterference.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/212_spring2011.web.dir/michael_hirte/waveinterference.jpeg" height="236" width="320" /></a></div>
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Now we can say why the Drifter wormholes and Sansha wormholes are constructed the way they are.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv_pcRZuBYIeCTbXXI_5JssllpCjwDv81NX1xg2ZtXvcJrKps9ANq8CyKc3qKqWScQjz03ptOrBRZMk_xBjkRwr6D85qc7QrOOnZStHMdqYqcZRTXpZfLs4CukB7hyphenhyphen06AogOUKwhZlda6r/s1600/stablehole.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv_pcRZuBYIeCTbXXI_5JssllpCjwDv81NX1xg2ZtXvcJrKps9ANq8CyKc3qKqWScQjz03ptOrBRZMk_xBjkRwr6D85qc7QrOOnZStHMdqYqcZRTXpZfLs4CukB7hyphenhyphen06AogOUKwhZlda6r/s320/stablehole.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The structures are placed there to create an artificial gravitational standing wave, which can then link up to whatever location they desire.</div>
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We can also extrapolate from here, by saying that some ships may be able to carry gravitational wave generators to produce short term standing waves. These will not be as stable as the gated ones, meaning that only some locations are favourable.</div>
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If this is the case, we can now explain why the Seyllin Incident caused the appearance of random wormholes, and perhaps present a new perspective of the function of the EVE Gate itself.</div>
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Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-54390657548084553472016-01-30T03:59:00.000-08:002016-01-30T03:59:15.875-08:00Wormhole Dynamics: Gravitational waves and Wormholes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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So now we're going to bring this all together, which should present us with a good model for understanding wormholes in EVE, and from which we can extrapolate to both the mechanics of the Seyllin Incident, the mechanism of the Jove Dyson cloud network, and even the function of the EVE gate.<br />
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See, I told you it was a happy thought.<br />
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The idea behind wormholes, as predicted by relativity, is that 4-d space-time is manipulated in such a way as to create a bridge from one location in space time to the next.<br />
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<a href="http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/images/blackholes_wormhole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/images/blackholes_wormhole.jpg" height="208" width="320" /></a></div>
I covered this already. The issues arise with that negative energy in the throat of the wormhole. Remember that the acceleration due to gravity is so strong there that not even light can escape, meaning that travel across it is fairly impossible. There must be some mechanism or some exotic matter to make that jump possible. <br />
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At least if you were a particle.<br />
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Waves, on the other hand, are all about the transfer of energy rather than the movement of particles. Indeed in a wave, although there's definitely something moving, particles do not, in fact change their location in the direction of movement. They oscillate up and down, but they don't go forward and back.<br />
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More on that in a second.<br />
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The wormholes are generally thought to be made by large masses causing contortions in space-time. Fairly simple to understand in terms of the rubber sheet model. You get two masses pushing down at the same time, and they may connect. <br />
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But that's not the only way to get a rubber sheet to move. And caveat now, this is where the Science becomes mostly fiction. I'm not good enough to put the numbers to this hypothesis yet.<br />
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We can also get our sheet to move by applying a wave. In the case of space-time, a gravitational wave. <br />
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If we get the peak and trough of two gravitational waves to link up, then we can also create the bridge between two locations in space. Which is super exciting!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCZq6XaqzJrDa4_sliXWD67V2S7ECQn3PuMCJlfuRSJOBRFTX7HvY609z-MSsuuqHwbA9QL0szMkU3r1v4NcKDb7stJ5vQH6vWJzplzlVa6tUql0s84vA2Ce8-2_-zoLGKYZvP9uWLF-5R/s1600/wave_parts_wormhole.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCZq6XaqzJrDa4_sliXWD67V2S7ECQn3PuMCJlfuRSJOBRFTX7HvY609z-MSsuuqHwbA9QL0szMkU3r1v4NcKDb7stJ5vQH6vWJzplzlVa6tUql0s84vA2Ce8-2_-zoLGKYZvP9uWLF-5R/s320/wave_parts_wormhole.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Placeholder for better image</td></tr>
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The large mass model is static. Once the bridge is made, it's there until the energy is all lost from radiation of exotic particles. The formation of them also needs an awful lot of matter to cause the contusion of space-time. Not something a ship can reliably carry around with it.<br />
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The waves don't need as much mass, just an oscillation of local-space time. Ok, we need moving masses for this to happen, but the key point here is that the mass does not need to be IN the wormhole.</div>
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This goes a long way to describing how our ships can seemingly shift between locations in space at low energy. At the centre of the wormhole as we see it, our ships actually catch the anti-node of the wave as it becomes flattened into 'normal' space-time. <br />
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As the wave then oscillates back to it's peak, our ships are carried with it, and cross over to the other wave peak as it comes in. When the second wave flattens out again to 'normal' our ships are deposited back into a new location, and our autopilot moves us away from the peak area where this exchange happens.<br />
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This is why all ships have the same entry distance to wormholes, and larger ships with more mass appear further away. More massive ships must move further away so as not to be caught in the wormhole oscillation again. Less massive ships are less affected by the contortion of space time.<br />
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This now explains why wormholes in New Eden have a lifetime based on the mass of objects passing through. Massive objects around the wormhole act as dampening. The more massive objects that pass through, the greater the dampening effect. The energy of the wave is absorbed in moving the ships from one location to the other. Once enough energy is absorbed, the amplitude of the wave falls so that it no longer causes these bridges in space time. <br />
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It also explains why light from the other side of the wormholes is able to pass through without colour changes due to gravitational red shift. It is quite literally being carried from one section of space on the gravitational wave, rather than having to pass into and out of a very high gravitational field.<br />
It's also consistent with the ripple effect we see being emitted from wormholes. They move, rather than being static.<br />
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There is so much more to talk about, but I'll expose this to public opinion first. But if this is correct, or at least good enough for EVE, then we can now explain random wormhole appearances, ship board wormhole generators, the exact reason for the Seyllin Incident, and what the EVE Gate actually is.<br />
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Additional: If anyone can help me make a nicer image for this waves touching idea, please get in contact... I lack the graphical skills.<br />
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Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-16672002437743531092016-01-29T04:21:00.001-08:002016-01-29T04:21:42.792-08:00Wormhole Dynamics: Standing Waves<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This is a bit of relatively simple Physics that you've most likely seen before, and has a lot of application in The Real World outside of the lab.<br />
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Warning: This may not look like much when it comes to EVE, but it is vital to understand this model of wormholes. Bear with me... it will all make sense soon.<br />
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You'll mostly be familiar with a travelling wave, like the gravitational ones we saw last time. These waves appear to move in a certain direction. The peak of the wave looks like it's moving forward.<br />
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Standing waves are exactly what they say they are... waves that appear to not propagate forward. The peaks still move up and down, but they're not going anywhere.<br />
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Standing_wave_2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="106" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Standing_wave_2.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
This is an example of one. See how it goes up and down but doesn't appear to travel?<br />
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Well this is actually what happens when a waves reflection is added to itself. <br />
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Imagine that thick black line is a rope, and you're at one end of it. Your flick the rope up and down, creating a little pulse down the rope. If it's not attached to anything, well, that pulse will just kind of disappear when it gets to the end.<br />
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However, if you then fix that end to a wall, the pulse will be reflected back at you.<br />
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Wave_equation_1D_fixed_endpoints.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Wave_equation_1D_fixed_endpoints.gif" /></a></div>
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If you keep moving the rope up and down, oscillating it, you will produce a travelling wave down the rope. Nothing you've never done before. Now imagine that the wave you send down the rope is the faint blue line in the image above. <br />
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Of course, the wave you send is going to be reflected back, just like the pulse earlier. That wave must travel down the rope just like the one you send. This is shown by the faint red line in the above image.<br />
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It turns out that waves that pass through each other just add themselves. So when the peak of the reflected wave meets the peak of the incoming wave, they add to produce a very big peak. If a trough adds to a peak, we end up with nothing happening.<br />
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In a standing wave, the peaks are always in the same place, and there are certain areas on the rope where nothing is happening. The stationary points are nodes, and the peak parts are anti-nodes.<br />
This concludes our Physics lesson for today, and in the next post we'll start bringing these ideas together to my happy thought.<br />
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If you'd like to see a standing wave, grab yourself a piece of string now, attach it to something and start wiggling it. You should get a standing wave. If you don't have string, the best way to see a standing wave is to go get up on your feet, and go to a mirror. When in front of the mirror, raise your right hand (or left depending on dominance). Then, gently oscillate your hand back on forth. You should see someone doing a standing wave.<br />
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... You'd be surprised how many people won't get that. <br />
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Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-29567298410024187922016-01-28T09:47:00.001-08:002016-01-28T09:47:21.948-08:00BB 71 - Decision Fatigue<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the </em><a href="http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.co.uk/p/blog-banters.html"><span style="color: #888888;"><em>Blog
Banter page</em></span></a><em>.
</em></blockquote>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>Too Many Ships Spoil the Sandpit?</em></blockquote>
</div>
<em><br /></em><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>We all like important internet spaceships right? The more spaceships the
better right? Or are we getting too many to be easily to remember them all. A
Mastodon on scan? That the hell is that and what does it do? Oh! Never
mind!</em></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>Are we getting too many ships. Is it too complicated to remember them all
and what their traits are? Do FC's these days need an encyclopaedic knowledge of
ship types unless they want their fleet to DIAF. With more and more ships being
released each year will we ever reach "too many" or do you think there can never
be too many important internet spaceship types?</em></blockquote>
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</em><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>Banter on!</em></blockquote>
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</div>
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<div>
I'll take a short break from <a href="http://khanid.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/wormhole-dynamics-gravitational-waves.html" target="_blank">Physics</a> to talk about Psychology. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As a numbers and EFT Warrior nerd, I'm generally in favour of getting more ships in space. The mere mention of a new destroyer or frigate is enough to get me excited, and blasting out into space. More usually it's just going to give me more glorious hours with the spread sheets, trying to calculate the most efficient fit.</div>
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But, I do know it's not always the best thing for a player.</div>
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I'm sure someone else will get on to power creep and redundancy of role, and even market saturation. What I'd like to look at is the idea of decision fatigue.</div>
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<div>
Consider the dressing habits of two men, who we'll call Alan and Bob. </div>
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</div>
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<div>
Alan wears suits to work, and has a home clothes and weekend rotation of 5 jeans and 5 t-shirts. He has 3 jumpers for when it's cold, and 1 coat for when it's freezing. He has 2 pairs of shoes, one smart, one comfortable.</div>
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</div>
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<div>
Bob has suits, blazers and smart style jackets for work, with a variety of tie styles for work. He has a walk in wardrobe full of clothing for home, and has generally worn each garment 3 or 4 times. His winter clothing is carefully selected to coordinate with each other, and his shoe rack extends the length of his bed room.</div>
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</div>
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If you see these two gentlemen together, you will have no doubt that Bob is better dressed. Alan is rather plain in comparison. But over time you will notice Alan coming in to work, on average, 10 minutes earlier than Bob. Not only that, but Alan's productivity is 10% better than Bob's, even though they will be putting in the same effort.</div>
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</div>
</div>
<div>
It comes down to this idea of decision fatigue. Bob, before he even leaves the house, must decide which set of clothing he will wear that day. Which tie goes with this shirt. Can I wear a jacket, or should I switch to a suit. Do these shoes coordinate with the suit I've put on. This coat works well with these shoes, but now I need to change my shirt.</div>
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Alan throws on whatever is in his rotation and is out the door, having made no decisions that day.</div>
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<div>
The exaggerated example there shows the results of decision fatigue. The more decisions you make will lead to an eventual deterioration of the quality of your decisions. </div>
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<div>
Decision fatigue can lead to a few problems.</div>
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</div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Reduced ability to make trade offs: You tend to make poorer cost-benefit conclusions because you're tired of decision making. </li>
<li>Decision avoidance: It's exhausting already, so you simply don't make the decision.</li>
<li>Poor self-regulation: Your discipline is reduced, and you tend to take easier options.</li>
<li>More impulsive behaviour: You take your first conclusion, rather than think about a problem.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Bringing this back to EVE, having a glut of ships and fitting options forces you to make a hundred decisions before even undocking. Before you've really started the game, you will already be making poorer decisions, and starting to feel the effect of fatigue.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
I'm sure all of you will have noticed the above behaviour in your piloting at the end of a session.</div>
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<div>
Much worse, if it takes you too long to select and fit your ship, then you simply may not undock at all. You will have made yourself exhausted by the fitting window alone, and the thought of jumping around star systems for a fight is just... tiring.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The additional problem to this is timing; the more time you spend in the market browser picking the frigate you want to fly that day, the less you're spending in space.</div>
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<div>
And yes, this problem is doubled for FCs, who will not only need to consider individual ships, but also fleet composition, and role of each capsuleer. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
It's a delicate balancing act. Good gameplay is all about making meaningful decisions. You feel good about choosing that rail gun over the blasters when you kite a Comet to death in your Atron. But you do need to make sure there's not too many decisions before an outcome is made.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
My advice: Don't think too hard about it. Have a stack of a ship and fit you like, burn your way through it, then start again. Decision making is only fun when you find the result of it, be it good or bad.</div>
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<div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
All right, back to Physics, and building my new model for New Eden wormholes.</div>
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Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-83834288404836673622016-01-28T01:18:00.001-08:002016-01-28T01:18:14.833-08:00Wormhole Dynamics: Gravitational Waves<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The first step to understanding this model, is to remember one of the basic ideas behind relativity.<br />
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Space-time is almost like a blanket or rubber sheet, stretched across... um, we'll leave that analogy there. But imagine it as a stretched sheet. Put some massive objects on it, and it will distort the sheet, giving some nice gentle valleys and pits. Gravity is merely the acceleration experienced by an object as it falls into one of these pits.<br />
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<a href="http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/07/87/4c/07874c46e4bc0172e7ac5e90222fbf70.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/07/87/4c/07874c46e4bc0172e7ac5e90222fbf70.jpg" height="141" width="320" /></a></div>
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This was Einstein's idea, and spawned a vast array of new and wonderful ideas and hypotheses, one of which was gravitational waves.<br />
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Put simply, the sheet can have waves moving across it, just like waves on the surface of the ocean. These fluctuations in space time are gravitational waves.<br />
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These ripples can be generated by two massive objects orbiting each other, as shown by this picture here of two neutron stars orbiting each other.<br />
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<a href="http://www.thephysicsmill.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/LIGO-Lab-Gravity-Waves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.thephysicsmill.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/LIGO-Lab-Gravity-Waves.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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See how the distortion in space time propagates away from the stars?</div>
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These are phenomenally hard to detect, and there is a search right now to find them. The evidence we have for it now really just involves seeing a slow down in orbital speeds of two known neuron stars orbiting each. This lost energy must go somewhere, and it is believed it's carried off by this gravitational waves.</div>
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The reason they are so hard to detect is because gravity is actually a fairly weak force. It takes an awful lot of matter to make an appreciable gravitational field (which you know, since it's taking the whole mass of the Earth to keep you from flying into space...). The gravitational wave is obscured by all the other forces around us. Even my above example is in dispute.</div>
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<br /></div>
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However, in New Eden we already have fairly hard evidence for things which should only be hypothetical. Black Holes are merely mundane window dressing to wormhole corps shenanigans, and wormholes themselves are prolific to the point of common feature. What I am suggesting, and will be building from, is the idea that gravitational waves are not only present in New Eden, but actually strongly affecting the cluster.</div>
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Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-77932128234616186242016-01-27T03:42:00.000-08:002016-01-27T03:42:12.742-08:00Wormhole Dynamics: A happy thought...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Every so often, the hundreds of thoughts you have per day neatly line up into one coherent idea.<br />
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It happened to me a week ago, and I've been happily doing the crunching and analysing for the past few days.<br />
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The first thought that came in was when I was preparing a lesson on Standing waves for my students. They're not too tricky to wrap your head around, but the maths can look difficult if you're not used to describing with equations. Typically this is where we sort the experimental from the theoretical Physicists (the engineers having bee identified from the previous topic on microwaves, and measuring the speed of light using toast and a microwave oven).<br />
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I was just looking for some examples of standing waves that were different from the normal laser and musical instrument stuff, and came across a gravitational wave. Quite cool, but not really what I needed, so I moved on.<br />
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In the evening I happened to read up this <a href="https://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/carolines-star-4-kardashevs-children/" target="_blank">post</a> from Rhavas, talking about the latest chronicle, and the sweeping conclusions to months, and indeed years, of research and analysis. In it my own findings of a closed wormhole system were confirmed, along with my reasoning for it. He, and a number of commenters go on to predict doom, gloom, and the coming of a super-powerful race of technological wizards.<br />
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I read, and in typical capsuleer fashion, wondered just how such a new race would eventually be farmed for scrap and loot. <br />
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It did bring back to the fore of my mind, just how prolific wormholes in New Eden are, and sent me back to my project of understanding how wormholes worked in our cluster. The recent chronicle had confirmed that they were mostly artificial, a remnant left by accident or design from the Talocan. <br />
After butting my head against the same brick wall for a few hours, trying to get everything to work, I gave up in frustration and turned on the TV.<br />
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As luck would have it, The Big Bang Theory was on, a re-run of an old episode. You, of course, are entitled to your own opinion, but as a Science teacher and eclectic nerd, the show resonates with me. And in this particular episode, Sheldon was equally frustrated with a problem he couldn't solve with his examinations of electrons moving through graphene, which was definitely something I could relate to. The punchline is him standing in the middle of a restaurant amongst shattered plates and exclaiming wildly, "It's a wave! A wave!"<br />
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And that's when I had my happy thought.<br />
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It IS a wave, isn't it... </div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-79236061376706916352015-12-19T07:01:00.000-08:002015-12-19T07:01:16.256-08:00Risk aversion, and the costof thinking: Part 3<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I didn't really intend for this to become a three part series, but out of looking at this <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep16880" target="_blank">paper</a> some advice for pirates, or Faction Warfare militias popped into my head.<br />
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The goal of this advice is to reduce the cognitive load on people trying to enter PvP. By reducing that particular barrier, you will see a rise in the number of people fighting in your particular systems.<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Getting new players in system</h4>
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Stock the station market.<br />
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One of the biggest issues facing new PvPers, in particular for solo PvP, is the logistical problem of getting ship to combat zone.<br />
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My very first foray into Faction Warfare involved fitting up a frigate from my base station, and then making a 30 jump journey to the warzone. Upon entering, I had 2 minutes of delightful combat against a Rupture, and then blew up. I got him down to structure though, and drunk on this perceived success, I eagerly warped back to my base to re-ship.<br />
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I got about halfway before I realised I'd need to get all the modules for the ship again. And in my home base, that meant a trip to Rens to get everything. Transport it back to my base to fit up the ship. Then 30 jumps again to find a Rupture, most likely long gone.<br />
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In short, a lot of thinking to get back into the fight. <br />
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My next PvP encounter would be years later, when I assumed the title Khanid Kataphract, and really applied my brain to getting into PvP.<br />
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Anecdotal evidence, but it's my experience. <br />
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Just think what could have happened if all the things I needed were right there in that very system. I could have re-fit instantly, maybe gotten a second try at that Rupture, and maybe even my first kill mail. <br />
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Stock the local stations with goods. Allow newbies to simply bring ISK with them, and not an indy with everything they think they need. Not only does it reduce the starting costs of PvP down, but it means they can change their fits without wasting ISK. <br />
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For FW neutral markets can be a massive boost. Militias can be locked out of stations, meaning that assets can be locked away. Great for denying space from the enemy, but the problem there is you've denied space to your enemy. Why are you in Faction Warfare if not to PvP? Why then take actions that actually restrict targets from coming to you?<br />
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If you work very hard, and find your home base far from the front lines, you've basically turned your PvP arena into a deserted back water. It takes even more thought power to reach you, so why even bother?<br />
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If you want to have more PvP, make it easy for PvP to take place in your system. Stock the markets. Don't camp the jump gates. Don't mock in Local. Make your space somewhere people actually want to come to.<br />
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Reduce the effort it takes to get there, and people will come.</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-60615464447840495802015-12-18T05:18:00.000-08:002015-12-18T05:18:32.095-08:00Risk aversion, and the cost of thinking: Part 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Before we just looked at the cost of thinking as some of the background.<br />
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It's worth mentioning now, that this is mostly layman conjecture on a single <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep16880" target="_blank">paper</a>, which is relatively recent. It's by no means a water-tight discussion from an expert, but rather the fevered ramblings of a pretend scientist on the internet.<br />
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That said, I hope some of this sparks a little bit of your own thoughts, or gives a little clarity to what you may be thinking about already. <br />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Risk aversion to cognitive effort</h4>
Strictly speaking, this is a study of shifts in attention, and the perceived thinking effort that goes into it. If your attention is dragged all over the place, you tend to feel like you're being strained, or feel as though you are putting in a lot of work.<br />
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However, it does show an aversion to risky cognitive effort. It says that, given a choice between a safe, low thinking activity, and one which MAY require a high amount off thinking, people will tend to choose the simpler one.<br />
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Put simply, people don't want to find themselves in a position where they don't know how much thinking is needed.<br />
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I actually see this first hand in the classroom, particularly with students with Special Educational Needs. If they go into a lesson not knowing how much thinking they need to do, they will generally resist any attempts by you to teach them. Give them a set of criteria, and tell them directly what they will be doing at the start, and they will tend to put in effort. <br />
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This study also notes the difference between thinking effort and physical effort. <br />
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How many times have you heard the advice from solo PvPers: sometimes you just have to jump in and hope for the best. This is rationalised by these findings. Physical effort, actually getting yourself into combat, is usually rewarded with dopamine. That rush you get and the euphoria after a fight is a result of this reward. <br />
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This study tells us that there isn't as strong a link between a reward for thinking about a problem, as actually accomplishing it. Whereas that first fight you have will encourage you to do more, the thinking about the problem, even if a solution is successful, may not motivate you into more thinking time.<br />
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I'm not sure how valid a point that is, as my own experience tells me I enjoy analysis and logistical thoughts. So there is some more work that needs to be done there. But running with this idea that thinking effort is a detractor from activities, we can go on to the general risk aversion of EVE.<br />
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This means that a capsuleers risk aversion to more dangerous activities in EVE is not really down to a cost-benefit analysis of the physical cost, but rather the heavy thinking load involved in getting started.<br />
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Why do you think fitting guides and tactics advice are so popular?<br />
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Again, referring to mining. Mining as an activity is very easy to start in. You are hand held in the tutorials, and after less than an hours training, you are a successful miner. There are layers of mastery on top of that, but those layers of mastery are actually guided by ship progression. You work towards your first barge, then exhumer, then Orca. At the very beginning, you know how much thought you will put in, and where you're going.<br />
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Contrast that with PvP.<br />
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For Faction Warfare, you generally haven't got a clue where you're going, what you'll do when you get there, which ship you'll need, or what you'll do when it blows up. The preparation for entering even the most rudimentary PvP is, quite frankly, hard work. <br />
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In other words, what keeps people from entering EVE's PvP is less about risk aversion to money loss, but more about the aversion to the thinking effort needed to put in. <br />
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It's not really about losing the ship (although it does sting when you lose your shiny new faction battleship). It might be about knowing what to do afterwards, or even how to get into a situation where you can lose your ship.<br />
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Er... I mean, a competitive situation. Parking an indy about Jita's main station and shouting about the stack of PLEX in your cargo hold is a great way to lose a ship.<br />
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Next time, I'll discuss how, if you are a PvPer, can encourage people to actually come to your systems to fight.</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-17672112728270580252015-12-17T08:55:00.000-08:002015-12-17T08:55:02.658-08:00Risk Aversion, and the cost of thinking: Part 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Whilst I was fact checking for one of my last posts, I stumbled across <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep16880" target="_blank">this paper</a> on nature.com.<br />
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Risk aversion is one of the key phrases thrown around by pirates and other competitive players who bemoan the fact that newbies and less skilled capsuleers do not line up to pad out their kill boards, and we see it in most peoples' blogs and forum posts eventually.<br />
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I've never really looked up the Science behind risk aversion, so when I saw it here, I had to take a look. It's a social science paper though, so not my specialty. If any of my three readers think I've made a mistake, then please correct me.<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">
The cost of thinking</h4>
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Simply this; If you have to think about the task, it devalues the reward.<br />
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We do little cost-benefit analyses of actions we take every day. A simple example would be seeing a lollipop on the other side of the road. You will calculate the physical effort it takes to get to the lollipop against the reward of eating the lollipop. If the reward is acceptable to you, you cross the road, and devour the sweet, sugar kebab. If not, you'll continue on your way to the gym.<br />
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An EVE example would be selling an item. You see on the market a buy order in Jita 5 jumps away for 10,000 ISK, and a region wide order for 8,000 ISK. If, to you, the 2,000 ISK is worth the effort of travel, you hop in your frigate, and head to Jita. If not, you sell to the Region order.<br />
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What this study shows is not the Physical effort cost, but rather the cost of thinking about the problem; in the words of the study, how cognition devalues your reward.<br />
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Again in EVE terms, you could spend 10 minutes browsing the market for the best buy order, or you just hit sell instantly. You know you can get a better price by browsing markets, or even setting up your own sell order. But if it's a round of projectile ammunition you're looking to just clear your hangar of, then it's not really worth your thinking time.<br />
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The more you have to think about obtaining your reward, the less likely you are to even try it. To use Gevlon's language, you are a slacker, and probably a moron too for not thinking. In other terms, you are simply trying to most efficiently use your bodies current resources. <br />
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So what? Time is money. Nothing we didn't already know. What the paper tells us isn't that, and in fact suggests that time spent thinking isn't as important, but rather the effect it has on motivation to complete tasks. The more you need to think about an action, the less the perceived value of the reward, which affects your willingness to even attempt a task.<br />
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The best example of this was the old Planetary Interaction or even Scanning interfaces. To complete any of these tasks required a good deal of planning, memory load on remembering menus and options. This meant that many capsuleers were turned off from it before they even started. The reward became diminished because the thought work was too high.<br />
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On the other side of the scale, mining requires barely any thought at all. Okay, that's probably unfair to miners, who strive for efficiency with each laser cycle, but it's undeniable that fitting a laser and pointing it at a stationary rock is much lighter on the brain than say, setting up a manufacturing line. This is why many EVE capsuleers start off with mining. It has a clear reward with minimal thinking, and as discussed in a previous post, the mechanical process is well supported by a currency reward.<br />
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How this applies to risk aversion is what I'll discuss in the next post. <br />
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Just one more thing before we go. This study also shows that there isn't much of a link between task avoidance and the amount of eye movement involved. What that means in terms of EVE, is that UI layout is only important where physical movement of mice is involved... at least in terms of encouraging people to do activities. <br />
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So for an effective UI, keep your information spread out, but your action buttons clustered together. But then again, you knew how to set up your own hot keys already. Right?<br />
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Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-53780892558259163902015-12-16T08:49:00.000-08:002015-12-16T08:49:09.261-08:00New Eden Conflict Drivers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Gevlon over at Greedy Goblin wrote an interesting piece on <a href="http://greedygoblin.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/where-are-conflict-drivers-in-eve.html" target="_blank">conflict drivers</a>.<br />
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Thought provoking is par for the course for him, and I envy his ability to manage both blogging, a trade empire and his day job. But provoked my thoughts are, and I started to think about the conflict drivers in Faction Warfare low-sec. <br />
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</div>
The obvious answer is the Faction Warfare loyalty points, as the four militias battle over the complexes. There are a few reasons why this is not tremendously satisfying.<br />
<div>
</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>We rarely encounter fleets going all out over single complexes.</li>
<li>The majority of plexers will simply run if the fight is not winnable.</li>
<li>Those that do stick around were looking for combat anyway.</li>
<li>Pirates are there... and they care not a jot for LP.</li>
</ul>
So as conflict drivers go, LP is somewhat failed. Those that chase after it tend to steer clear of conflict, and the greatest conflicts are not driven by them.<br />
<br /><br />
Gevlon goes on to talk about ideology being the conflict driver for larger groups. I'm a scientist (or at least pretend to be for my students and on the internet), so let's look at some research.<br />
<br /><br />
LP is currency, hence why it appears in your wallet. It's a slightly odd currency, in that it's not directly transferable, but you use it to indirectly inflate your wealth. <br />
<br /><br />
Traditional economics says, do more work, then get better paid. Work hard, you get the best salaries, don't do any work, and you get, well, minimum wage. The best way to imagine this is a carrot to the stick of starving to death. Or to put it in Gevlon language: morons and slackers go broke.<br />
<br /><br />
It turns out that money is a fairly poor motivator for creative or cognitive tasks. It works great for something more mechanical (i.e. mining), but rewarding with currency for something that requires more brain power actually makes people perform worse, not better. <br />
<br /><br />
If you've ever wondered why null-sec can field such large fleets of relatively low-skill pilots, whereas you find it difficult to get your small 5-man elite gang together, this is why. Locking target and firing without regard to thinking tactically can be easily rewarded with a salary or farming space. Luring your fellow small gang PvPers with the same isn't going to work as well, as they need to fly creatively, and thus need a better motivator.<br />
<br /><br />
This <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc#t=636" target="_blank">video</a> explains it neatly in ten minutes, but please don't treat it as the end of the story. I'm still looking up research papers to verify.<br />
<br /><br />
It turns out that to properly motivate people creatively, you need to remove money from the equation. Make it so that the next pay check is not a consideration, and they are instead focused on a larger goal, something beyond themselves. <br />
<br /><br />
In essence, a cause worth fighting for, or working towards.<br />
<br /><br />
It's not that hard to see. Nearly all of the successful meta-groups of New Eden follow this plan. Examples include EVE University, who devote their own time to teaching Unistas for free. Dotlan is a fairly sophisticated piece of coding which others use for free. The CSM is another, well publicised example. Even Goonswarm, with their goal of epitomising the villains of EVE have a larger goal.<br />
<br /><br />
You now see why conflict in Faction Warfare exists at all. People are genuinely fighting for their faction. Pirates there are genuinely fighting for their independence, or more often to master their PvP skills. It's a fairly common trend for FW militia pilots to drift over to piracy once ISK becomes an irrelevance. One of the more famed pirates in New Eden often talks about the complete lack of PvE he actually does!<br />
<br /><br />
This is at work in Gevlon's own war against the "Emporium", as he calls it. Mordu's Angels are well subsidised by him, so they no longer have to worry about where their next ship is coming from. This allows them to tackle the problem of dismantling Gevlon's target much more creatively, hence their success. I remember a clear example where the Goons hell-camped a staging base, and the Angel's simply switched tactics to interceptor roams, able to slip past the bubble camps and carry on their harassment of goon money makers. Thus, their fluidity in approaching challenges creatively shown.<br />
<br /><br />
So yes, he's right. Ideology in the EVE universe is pretty much the sole conflict driver. But at least now we can see the mechanism by which this works.<br />
<br /><br />
I wrote in the recent <a href="http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/dear-ccp-i-want-space-pony-and-space.html" target="_blank">Blog Banter</a> about wanting a reason to fight on the Amarr side. This hypothesis goes a long way to rationalising my feelings on wanting some more moral high ground on the Crusade side of the conflict.<br />
<br /><br />
So, a nifty hypothesis, but still in need of evidence to back it up.</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-57413206523113413802015-12-14T09:13:00.000-08:002015-12-14T09:13:24.997-08:00BB70: Dear Santa, I want to be good, but...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'm Amarr.<br />
<br /><br />
Well, not strictly true, since I'm Khanid. But I used to fly through the Crusade, and still carry my rank there.<br />
<br /><br />
<em><strong>Dear CCP, I want a Space-Pony and a Space-Puppy and a....</strong>If CCP was
Santa and you could ask for anything (in-game obviously) what would it be? A new
type of ship that is tailored to your game-play? A change to mechanics? A
battleship mini-doomsday weapon? Proper hats for your avatar? Opening of that
bloody door? There are so many different options depending on what you do and
what you want to get out of Eve Online. What would you like to see in your
virtual Christmas stocking from CCP?</em><br />
<em><br /></em><br />
<a href="http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/dear-ccp-i-want-space-pony-and-space.html" target="_blank">Blog Banter 70</a><br />
<br /><br />
A problem I've been struggling with is that the Amarr are objectively the bad guys. Slavers, conquerors, religious zealots. There are actually very few nice identities to claim once you choose to fight for the Crusade. <br />
<br /><br />
That may be the draw for a lot of people, but it's hard to put your all in when you know all you're doing is perpetuating the subjugation of star systems, and spreading dogma which you only pay lip service to yourself.<br />
<br /><br />
I can't be loyal to my home. I was born a Khanid. I trained in the War Academy. I was a knight of the Kingdom. But when my faction's history is literally a litany of the peoples enslaved or destroyed, you don't want to go and fight for them.<br />
<br /><br />
The only reason I struggle with it, is because I particularly like Amarr ships. I love the slicer, and the Navy Omen, and I enjoy using laser canons. For that reason alone, the best option would be for me to join the Crusade.<br />
<br /><br />
But... I don't want to be the bad guy. I'm not even a particularly good <a href="http://khanid.blogspot.com/2013/12/war-record-pulling-trigger.html" target="_blank">pirate</a>.<br />
<br /><br />
It's worse now. Following current events. For the longest time, the Empire was run by Empress whose own mind may not have been her own. Why would any reasonable person fight for such a ruler? You know <br />
<br /><br />
The succession trials are going on <a href="http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/world-news/house-tash-murkon-dominates-in-imperial-succession-trials-finals-set-against-house-kor-azor/" target="_blank">now</a>. I only hope the next Emperor is more... sensible than the last. An emperor worth following.<br />
<br /><br />
I still remember <a href="http://khanid.blogspot.com/2013/11/arzad-and-character-of-crusade.html" target="_blank">Arzad</a>. The freighter destroyed and the slaves inside murdered for a simple, petulant display of cruelty and strength. That's not worth fighting for.<br />
<br /><br />
So, dear Santa. What I would like is a reason to be proud of being Amarr again. Doesn't have to be much. Just a little moral grey area. A reason to fight in the Crusade beyond money. Beyond ships.<br />
<br /><br />
Something to hold on to when the hull's about to breach.<br />
<br /><br />
Other than that, a sack of spare parts for the Astero, some Christmas lights for the drones, and a pair of socks that cleans easily after being dunked in pod goo.<br />
<br /><br />
The usual.</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-10892432697358861782015-12-08T10:26:00.000-08:002015-12-08T15:17:01.631-08:00The New(-ish) Punisher: Nice bonus, wrong hull<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It would be fair to say I'm out of New Eden at this point. My subscription has lapsed, and I don't have time to really do anything in it these days.<br />
<br />
<br />
My recent forays into Physics have turned me into a Physics teacher. Ironic, or merely inevitable, I'm not sure.<br />
<br />
<br />
Either way, in between writing reports for my classes, my mind wandered over to what's happening in space these days, apart from the usual ground breaking discoveries which people now consider mundane (we took a picture of Pluto guys!). I went to the Features and Ideas section of the Eve-O forum, which is my usual stomping ground for intellectual stimulation. Most ideas there lack thought, but the creativity is abundant!<br />
<br />
<br />
I noticed this: <a href="https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=451065&find=unread" target="_blank">Balance Smorgasbord</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
It certainly is a delight of different updates!<br />
<br />
<br />
The punisher caught my eye as significant, however. <br />
<br />
<br />
It's gaining a turret, dropping its damage bonus for the old cap bonus. Nice, but I think the Rifter would be the better hull to put that on. 4 turrets and application bonuses make the Rifter into much more comfortable ship to fly, rather than operating on the knife edge between heated scrams and fall-off. <br />
<br />
<br />
So nice bonus, but the wrong hull there.<br />
<br />
<br />
It did get me thinking about the Tormentor (which also got a buff) and the Punisher though. <br />
<br />
<br />
Why doesn't the Punisher have drones?<br />
<br />
<br />
I get that the Tormentor is the starter ship for the high firepower Amarr ships, sporting a pair of drones in addition to its 3 lasers. It also has the mid slots to fit a full trinity tackle, meaning it has a chance to dictate range. The only downside is capacitor management, and less tank than the Punisher. It's faster too, hence why the Tormentor is picked more for solo work.<br />
<br />
<br />
The problem is this: the Tormentor has all the options, and redundancy built in. <br />
<br />
<br />
It has the mid slots to dictate range, or at least mitigate the effect of faster ships. The good optimal on pulse lasers does the rest. It has the drones to pick at kiters who can stay out of range, and again, the web and scram to catch kiters with some clever maneuvering.<br />
<br />
<br />
The Punisher has the same effective range, but no way to keep it's target where it wants it. It can barely catch up to targets either. There is simply no answer to a kiter beyond tanking the damage, and hoping for rescue. Even if you manage to slingshot a kiter, with no web to stick them in place, they're going to be able to coast past your scram range.<br />
<br />
<br />
I want to suggest that the Punisher either get a mid-slot or a drone bay comparable to the Incursus. And I'm more in favour of the drone bay.<br />
<br />
<br />
Just as with the Incursus, that single drone gives the Punisher hope against kiters, where its tank can absorb incoming fire, with the drone wearing down the opponent. It mirrors the Incursus nicely, simply swapping a resistance bonus for a rep bonus. Incursus still has the edge being lighter on its feet, and the Punisher retains its good damage application.<br />
<br />
<br />
Two drones would be an extravagance, and negate the advantage of the Tormentor.<br />
<br />
<br />
That said, I'm genuinely hopeful for the new (-ish) Punisher. More gank and tank may help it out. I doubt pilots will be encouraged to use it solo though.<br />
<br />
<br />
And yes, I know not every ship should be designed with solo warfare in mind, but I don't like fleet fights, and I talk for my particular combat style.<br />
<br />
Edit: I wrote Tristan earlier, when I meant Incursus... and I wrote it several times too. Let this be a lesson; never blog whilst tired.</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-67069262292257094812015-07-06T11:19:00.001-07:002015-07-06T11:19:05.988-07:00Wormholes: Closed network<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This isn't going to be long, as it's a fairly easy observation (and doesn't require a single shred of maths!).<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The New Eden wormhole system is a closed network. Put simply, at this stage of wormhole exploration, we know that there are a finite number of systems that are reachable by wormholes. These generally receive new connections every few hours... quite a regular event for a natural cosmological phenomena.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What's more, is that the locations of these wormhole systems, whilst we cannot tell their distance or relation to the populated systems, are all generally in the same parts of space. This again, is a fairly simple observation to make: looking out at the surrounding nebulae of wormhole systems we can see that they share features and colour spectra.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.tigerears.org/2011/04/24/wormhole-colours/#wormhole-colour-matrix" target="_blank">Wormhole colour guide by Tiger Ears</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Knowing this, we can deduce a few possibilities.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Locations of natural wormhole viability</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It could be argued that these areas of space are places where wormholes are particularly viable. Perhaps something to do with the presence of large mass features (pulsars, black holes etc.), these just may be locations where space-time more readily folds in on itself,</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It can then be argued that the Seyllin event led to the New Eden cluster becoming suddenly more susceptible to wormhole formation.The exact mechanism of this is definitely something that deserves more research, and means that wormholes are more likely to be natural phenomena. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Artificial wormhole network</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A somewhat more extraordinary possibility would be that the wormholes we experience in New Eden are in fact constructed. Much like our own jump gate network, each system connected to wormholes already appear to be inhabited. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We don't find many completely empty systems... and in fact there are some systems in New Eden which are even less populated than wormholes. A short trip through even High security empire space will show you transit systems, with some asteroid belts, temporary anomalies and a pair of jump gates. In comparison, wormhole systems appear to be stuffed full of Sleepers.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This hints that wormholes are actually a network to settled systems. If they are artificial, then it would explain why there are some features of wormholes not predicted by relativity. Or, you know, relativity is wrong. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>The middle ground</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Odds are that the answer lies somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. The Sleepers created a technology allowing them to create wormholes, and those more densely inhabited systems (Class 6s) are simply systems where exit wormholes form more readily.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If New Eden was not originally a place where wormholes formed easily, then it's reasonable to assume the Sleepers left the cluster, and simply closed the doors behind them. The Seyllin event, as destructive as it was, re-opened those doors.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What might be more relevant is that the wormhole network became unstable. We have seen over the years the number of wormhole connections across New Eden increasing. Low sec connections recently increased, and some scientists have predicted Null-sec systems are about to be affected in the same way.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This increasing destabilization of the wormhole network is already opening up new systems previously inaccessible to capsuleers. It may be that there are some systems that were also locked away by Sleepers... systems housing dangerous, or criminal Sleeper factions. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Maybe what we know as Drifters?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Pure speculation, of course. But something we can start looking for; structures that control wormholes for a start. But something even better, would be structures, or destroyed structures designed to inhibit wormhole creation. The Sleeper equivalent of a Cyno inhibitor.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Evidence to look for:</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Wormhole control structures (working or wrecked)</div>
<div>
Common features between newly opened wormhole systems<br />
Maps and terminal stations</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Additional: I can't find the dev blogs or forum posts for changes to wormhole spawn rates in low and null sec. I've seen other writers talk about them, but I can't find actual evidence of it. I'd appreciate someone find me the links, to prove to myself that I didn't just dream them.</div>
</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-90193495699628106422015-06-29T13:18:00.002-07:002015-06-29T13:25:10.483-07:00BB64: New E-War not needed, and Defenders against drones<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo!</em> With the Aegis release we will see missile boats get their own version of the tracking enhancer and the tracking computer. On the forums there have been calls for new 'missile defence eWar' to counter these new modules. Is this needed? Are smartbomb 'firewalls' enough? Do defender missiles need an overhaul to make them actually worth using? Do we need the missile version of the remote tracking disruptor? Or do we go all Star Trek and have Point-Defence Phaser Banks? <a href="http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/eve-blog-banter-64-torpedo-torpedo.html" target="_blank">Banter on</a>!</blockquote>
<br />
<b>Effect of the new modules</b><br />
<br />
I've always found missiles to actually be the best weapon system... with a caveat attached to it.<br />
<br />
Now, I understand that on paper they don't compare with the raw firepower of turrets, nor the engagement range of drones. There's the issue of travel time, which I only consider an issue for large fleets and their insta-pop philosophy. <br />
<br />
The caveat is that I nearly only use frigates and small weaponed ships, and most of my missile fits tend to be rockets. Travel time is rarely an issue when you're within spitting distance of who you're unloading at. <br />
<br />
And missiles are intensely reliable, and the new "tracking" modules make that even more so. <br />
<br />
Provided you can maintain lock and range, you will always be putting out the same damage onto your opponent. This gives you great wiggle room in engagement range. You can go point blank, or kite out to scram range without changing ammunition. This little Rifter-style trick is a lot easier to pull off with missile boats.<br />
<br />
They will also keep firing without capacitor. Neuts are fairly redundant against missile boats, particularly if they're running buffer or ancillary booster fits. Again, this makes missiles reliable under cap warfare.<br />
<br />
It doesn't end there though. One of the most underused ammunition types are Friend or Foe missiles. FoF missiles are great to keep in your hold for the annoying jammers and sensor dampers out there. They'll keep pumping out missiles even under ECM, meaning your kiting Condor still has a chance of taking out something, even if you can't target back. Just, er... be careful if you're in a gang.<br />
<br />
That reliability in most situations is balanced out by the middling damage output. Caldari compensate for the fairly low firepower by massive hull bonus or lots of launchers. Minmatar balance them with drones. Khanid ships balance it by being bricks.<br />
<br />
These new modules... aren't really going to do much to affect that balance. They're going to make a slight difference in firepower application, making them even more reliable than ever, and it'll be nice to finally get the full damage application out of the Talwar running a target painter. More important than that, it'll give an extra option for the lows rather than a full ballistic control unit. That'll be nice, considering how tight CPU fitting usually is on missile boats.<br />
<br />
Of course, this is spoken as a small ship pilot. I'm sure someone driving bigger boats will get more mileage out of these new modules. But as far as little ships go, I don't see much changing in the way we will fit or fly. I don't think we'll need a missile specific E-War to counter them.<br />
<br />
<b>Defender missiles</b><br />
<br />
That said, Defenders could do with a more general use. Right now they're too niche. I've seen a few suggestions thrown around, and one I think has the most merit is giving them a role of shooting down drones too. Seeing as how a number of frigate hulls now carry one or two drones as a secondary, it might see a bit more use, particularly on Rifters with their utility high slot. That would go a long way towards addressing the Tristan dominance, and balancing the advantage kiting drone users enjoy.<br />
<br />
It would also make the idea of escort frigates/destroyers more viable. A single frigate with Defender missiles in its highs could support cruisers by picking off drones, all while still contributing in the usual way of tackling and applying firepower. Since all cruisers carry at least a few drones, this would be quite significant... assuming they simply aren't primaried off the field. In which case at least one salvo is wasted on a frigate popping drones.<br />
<br />
I don't see much wrong with that, unless programming them to target drones is a problem. If a ship simply loads only Defender missiles to exclusively counter drone boats, they'll still need to spend the time reloading back to normal missiles to apply firepower again. Even a Tristan without drones can do significant damage in that 10s reload time. And if that Tristan has Neuts instead of turrets, well, that's just the fitting roulette we all play.<br />
<br />
Actually, having written it out like that, Defenders targeting drones seems like a really good idea...</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-50261778304983744652015-06-09T13:12:00.000-07:002015-06-09T13:33:01.109-07:00Wormholes and light<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
After looking at gravitational lensing, and seeing how, in terms of General Relativity, light acts under a gravitational field, I've found something rather interesting with the wormholes in New Eden.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
If you fly to any wormhole, you can generally tell its destination by looking at it. We can see the some of the distant nebulae of the joining system. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim1Bc-FYyCOa39qK1YD1XtVFPDP-999LH3VFf2FnaFk3SLDS6qtClHlyoQq7ehe0PJBVU_kfjbqnKIYEThr3mJhrf8fqkxSHoQLsVhqNLjtTE2i3kGtqDwr9U5u3h59eGQ_zG0TwUs4gHQ/s1600/2015.05.21.16.38.57.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim1Bc-FYyCOa39qK1YD1XtVFPDP-999LH3VFf2FnaFk3SLDS6qtClHlyoQq7ehe0PJBVU_kfjbqnKIYEThr3mJhrf8fqkxSHoQLsVhqNLjtTE2i3kGtqDwr9U5u3h59eGQ_zG0TwUs4gHQ/s320/2015.05.21.16.38.57.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
This one is from earlier. You can see the grey and reddish nebula in the middle.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCoNAA_S7-p6QPKSzwXP6UdGiVq1yLe8xGvU0F-pG2Lzu_FajaiAQ4hUvg0_DK80oXOKJ2IzVf7O-nE3LetJY7nnNvxB3sTIJC0ki7SkvvaxvJyNcLUDdPDGDAAj8xWh43oh91ec4_lzO4/s1600/2015.05.21.16.38.13.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCoNAA_S7-p6QPKSzwXP6UdGiVq1yLe8xGvU0F-pG2Lzu_FajaiAQ4hUvg0_DK80oXOKJ2IzVf7O-nE3LetJY7nnNvxB3sTIJC0ki7SkvvaxvJyNcLUDdPDGDAAj8xWh43oh91ec4_lzO4/s320/2015.05.21.16.38.13.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
A zoomed out picture for reference. The system of the observer (i.e. me) has the mix between red and yellow nebulae you find in between the Empire and the Republic.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The issue is this... the light is the same colour as the nebulae on the other side.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Sounds absurd to argue that, and clearly the light is being affected. However, you need to know that light acts a little different in gravitational fields than other objects.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Let's do an experiment: Drop something. Go ahead, I'll wait.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
It should have dropped to the ground right? That object (and I hope it wasn't expensive) starts accelerating to the ground. It's losing gravitational energy, and transferring that to kinetic energy. The velocity increases.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Light as it falls towards a gravitational field also gains energy. But it's light. It's already going as fast as anything can go. Photons are too small to fit acceleration gates or traditional warp engines. It simply can't go any faster. That additional energy needs to go somewhere.</div>
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<br /></div>
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To understand what's going on here, we need to know an equation:</div>
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<a href="http://www4.nau.edu/microanalysis/microprobe-sem/Images/Equation01-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www4.nau.edu/microanalysis/microprobe-sem/Images/Equation01-3.jpg" /></a></div>
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E = energy<br />
h = Plank's constant<br />
c = Speed of light<br />
<b style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;"><span lang="el" xml:lang="el">λ </span></b>= wavelength<br />
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Plank's constant and the speed of light are both physical constants. We can't change them. This means that Energy has an inversely proportional effect on wavelength. More energy results in a shorter wavelength. Less energy, larger wavelength.<br />
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Here's a diagram of the EM spectrum. Larger wavelengths of light are on the right, shorter ones are on the left.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/EM_spectrum.svg/1280px-EM_spectrum.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/EM_spectrum.svg/1280px-EM_spectrum.svg.png" height="171" width="320" /></a></div>
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As light comes closer to the wormhole, we would expect it to get more blue. As it moves away from the hole, we'd expect it to get more red. </div>
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We don't see light coming through the wormhole changing colour, regardless of distance from the hole.</div>
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This means that light is energy balanced coming through. </div>
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This is weird. </div>
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It's almost as if light is unaffected by the hole's gravitational field... at least in the center of our perspective. But we know that objects exiting the wormholes are affected by their mass. Larger ships tend to be ejected further away from the wormhole than smaller ones. Mass also affects wormholes. More massive objects destabilize wormholes faster.</div>
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And we still have the gravitational lensing effect, as predicted by General Relativity around the hole. We even see some ripples within the center of the hole, which suggest the lensing effect there.</div>
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This needs further observation to find out what's going on here. Why? I do not believe these wormholes to be natural phenomena. I believe them to be constructed, but out of control. And above all, I believe I am having a lot of fun learning the maths behind all of this! </div>
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Seriously, I'm learning how to do tensors. Up until now I hadn't even heard of them!</div>
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Update: I should point out that the increase in energy is actually due to time dilation. Just needed to make that distinction to the analogy I gave above. Light is affected by gravitational fields, but not in the same way as objects with mass.</div>
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Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-76342847415297243542015-06-07T05:05:00.002-07:002015-06-07T05:05:35.215-07:00Unpacking the Turret Equation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Maths can tell us a lot about how the universe works.</div>
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Well, that's not quite right. It helps us describe the things we can see happening without spending a huge amount of words to do so. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Perhaps the most used maths equation in New Eden describes how turrets work. And at first glance, it's a fairly daunting one:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZss5l14mx3wWmMn_6gWt5atHRWTFv1mgjlYO68b5TdLudYLvszgbBoxaLFCGfyKT6EoDdFjYZ8U_YHBS08QlPXUj3ZWkXxhQTNVN_K2Fkihbk-biD-SNDssj4pZpstUd8XSRL4cE9-5VZ/s1600/tohitequation.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="31" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZss5l14mx3wWmMn_6gWt5atHRWTFv1mgjlYO68b5TdLudYLvszgbBoxaLFCGfyKT6EoDdFjYZ8U_YHBS08QlPXUj3ZWkXxhQTNVN_K2Fkihbk-biD-SNDssj4pZpstUd8XSRL4cE9-5VZ/s400/tohitequation.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Note that it's 0.5 to the power of all those other bits, not 0.5 multiplied by the other terms. That's important.</div>
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Now it looks really complex, and in some ways it is. However, by unpacking all those terms we can see that it's not all that scary, and will go some way to explaining your own intuitions and feelings about how to fly space ships.</div>
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However, I realize not everyone gets a kick out of doing maths, so I'll include summaries at the beginning of each post so you don't have to sift through all the numbers. </div>
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<b>Summary of points:</b></div>
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<b>Lower chance to hit, means less hits.</b></div>
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<b>Lower chance to hit, also means less damaging hits.</b></div>
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<b>Make sure you train Motion Tracking and Range skills, so you can get more chance to hit.</b></div>
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Now lets do some maths.</div>
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Here is an overview of how turrets operate:</div>
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</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Fire gun.</li>
<li>Chance to hit is calculated (using the above equation).</li>
<li>A random number is generated. This is X.</li>
<li>If X is less than Chance to hit, you hit.</li>
<li>If X is greater than Chance to hit, you miss.</li>
</ul>
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X is always going to be a number between 0 and 1.</div>
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E.g.</div>
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Rifter shoots auto cannon at Punisher.</div>
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Chance to hit = 0.77</div>
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X is generated.</div>
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X = 0.56</div>
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X < Chance to hit.</div>
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Punisher takes damage.</div>
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The way damage is calculated is a further calculation based on X.</div>
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</div>
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<li>Damage modifier = X + 0.5</li>
</ul>
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So in the above example:</div>
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X = 0.56</div>
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Damage modifier = 0.56 + 0.5</div>
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= 1.06</div>
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What does this tell us? If we have less chance to hit, then the damage of our shots will also be quite low. </div>
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E.g. </div>
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X = 0.1</div>
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Damage modifier = 0.1+0.5 = 0.6</div>
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X=0.9</div>
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Damage modifier = 0.9+0.5 = 1.4</div>
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If X is higher, we can achieve more damage. They're just harder to get a hit.</div>
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The exception to this are wrecking shots. These occur when X < 0.01. At that point, the modifier is 3, the New Eden equivalent to a critical hit. This means even if you have a very tiny chance of hitting a target, you still have a 1% chance at doing some damage.</div>
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To imagine it another way, every 100 shots you should get at least one hit. Line up 100 Tornadoes with one artillery canon, and at least one of them should be able to get a shot on an interceptor in range.</div>
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That said, the equation suggests that turrets have infinite range. I'd like to run a test one day, seeing if this is the case, seeing if an Executioner at 100km would be able to hit another ship with pulse lasers. Should only take about a thousand or so shots to see if this will happen.</div>
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All this is base off the equation on Evelopedia. If it's known to be incorrect, let me know, before I waste my time writing about it. I had fun unpacking it for myself, but there's limited value in writing about it for other people to use.</div>
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Also, picture of a Punisher:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ925NMpId3BP7m4zrzkqcXdSvkBMLCAmGPDNoN5X_84DQOnXKJ6j2GxkUQ0wfHiGP9GOju1YuJeCXZowTUUO4gFUuCSLkOVPATFTKUrSyimvyPg288jrhwyGTcUEmWqtl7ok1Phmpr3kK/s1600/2015.06.03.17.12.42.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ925NMpId3BP7m4zrzkqcXdSvkBMLCAmGPDNoN5X_84DQOnXKJ6j2GxkUQ0wfHiGP9GOju1YuJeCXZowTUUO4gFUuCSLkOVPATFTKUrSyimvyPg288jrhwyGTcUEmWqtl7ok1Phmpr3kK/s320/2015.06.03.17.12.42.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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No reason, I just thought it was pretty!</div>
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Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-40386404364335143192015-05-29T07:17:00.000-07:002015-05-29T07:17:58.062-07:00Drifters, Wormholes and General Relativity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
You may be wondering why I think understanding the hard Physics behind worm holes is important.<br />
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Well, the first reason is that I love dissecting the universe around me.<br />
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The second reason are these guys:<br />
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</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-cHC3n2KniPhHe1JTcESEx6ZEAigsxqxD4FAv1sAz0sZPl7z2MNON1PVcIWUqdYJ0dUrpH2g0UCOq-4jCw7ra8IGW0BumCnB2HpctZs74TdjTYkOH4svVM7ygfMuBjMlthYWGGF4TYgy2/s1600/drifter.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-cHC3n2KniPhHe1JTcESEx6ZEAigsxqxD4FAv1sAz0sZPl7z2MNON1PVcIWUqdYJ0dUrpH2g0UCOq-4jCw7ra8IGW0BumCnB2HpctZs74TdjTYkOH4svVM7ygfMuBjMlthYWGGF4TYgy2/s320/drifter.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
Drifters. You may have seen them wandering around scanning things. I want to look at them in more detail, but for now I'll focus on this part of the battleship.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRFwT2xx3Mhe17b1TytlA1IjYieAqZcpnOpPaX-IPDwz0gzBPB7g2J9GmsKQ9dYM8PgtvbAxLffGM6c8DCNo5EeHS1eJQ0UhvpDr_XhPq1bVLnbPPh3xC_muOwgzny28pGgNR8gnhQ0-xt/s1600/lightbend.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRFwT2xx3Mhe17b1TytlA1IjYieAqZcpnOpPaX-IPDwz0gzBPB7g2J9GmsKQ9dYM8PgtvbAxLffGM6c8DCNo5EeHS1eJQ0UhvpDr_XhPq1bVLnbPPh3xC_muOwgzny28pGgNR8gnhQ0-xt/s320/lightbend.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Notice they don't have traditional engines.<br />
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Looking closely at them we can see light bending in odd ways around these spikes, which occasionally twitch as the Drifters move.<br />
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What does this mean?<br />
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Well, it's a phenomena we see quite a lot around wormholes.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirUfDlHs3stYcrdrI_X61rcwpyK3fnXvZY_sgnuSaQbRamWsY9u6vdFrBNwLSwwirvM9xEoa_Ooess8zffAV2Cy3NjWA0EYsZpjd6KeAiKgUR3x5y8AOQTC_Sr8vBzjicfsvsKovUnO4DI/s1600/2015.05.21.16.38.50_gravlensing.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirUfDlHs3stYcrdrI_X61rcwpyK3fnXvZY_sgnuSaQbRamWsY9u6vdFrBNwLSwwirvM9xEoa_Ooess8zffAV2Cy3NjWA0EYsZpjd6KeAiKgUR3x5y8AOQTC_Sr8vBzjicfsvsKovUnO4DI/s320/2015.05.21.16.38.50_gravlensing.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Look at that beauty of a shot! The nebula on the right side is almost entirely bent around the wormhole, so we can see it on the other side.<br />
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Now, we know this is not refraction, or reflection. There is nothing for the light to reflect off there, and if it were diffracting through some medium (which we don't observe anyway) we would expect to see some differences in wavelength, or some splitting of the light. We don't see this... the observed colour stays the same.<br />
<br />
So what's going on here?<br />
<br />
The light is being bent by gravity.<br />
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Which doesn't make much sense! Gravity is a force of attraxction between objects of mass. Light, has no mass. So how is it being bent around?<br />
<br />
Well it's to do with the principle of equivalence.<br />
<br />
In my last post I talked about the acceleration on an object caused by gravity, and I did some maths to support the theory using planets in a low-sec system. So, you should be happy with the idea that a object subject to gravity experiences an acceleration pulling it towards another object of mass.<br />
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Put simply: Big planet pulls you down.<br />
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But acceleration doesn't just happen due to gravity. The more commonly observed version of acceleration is seen in space ships going quickly!<br />
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So, imagine these two situations: capsuleer on a planet (in a gravitational field), and capsuleer in a Rifter accelerating away.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqYhwkQfXokh4EQg2D71jfyVX64_Ow0W5NtIG9TTLOLo_pAby89dZFCk6tKTRVI6jdZMnVmgp9SFqOKdJLkq2cbIsFR1cTZ9TY74cfIAGFe1d5MPzeKqeI21ikGnUO9oHvNhw3-HMmZ7DG/s1600/equivalency.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqYhwkQfXokh4EQg2D71jfyVX64_Ow0W5NtIG9TTLOLo_pAby89dZFCk6tKTRVI6jdZMnVmgp9SFqOKdJLkq2cbIsFR1cTZ9TY74cfIAGFe1d5MPzeKqeI21ikGnUO9oHvNhw3-HMmZ7DG/s320/equivalency.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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(Apologies for the picture of the Rifter. I still need to plug in the Advanced Photoshop skill book...)<br />
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If the pods camera drones weren't working properly, there'd be no way for the capsuleer to know if they were on the planet, or in the Rifter. Both are experiencing the same force pulling them down. In effect, we can see that these two situations are entirely equivalent to each other. Principle of equivalency.<br />
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This helps us to visualize what would happen to a beam of light moving across the Rifter when it's accelerating. So, let's have a Punisher get a wrecking shot on the Rifter.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPffK6YZCdJCCzjwSaAXuJk4wEu6Uqkij0cIdKtiT0oBlzC1B_EpCelWtJRyyedD8tSpcS78wIc6Ehzl492FzBVtfmqyghSaACwvZAJSiTy5-D02hP1NaXzGfCrA7OFoDgUcx_SJqR6GxI/s1600/equivalency2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPffK6YZCdJCCzjwSaAXuJk4wEu6Uqkij0cIdKtiT0oBlzC1B_EpCelWtJRyyedD8tSpcS78wIc6Ehzl492FzBVtfmqyghSaACwvZAJSiTy5-D02hP1NaXzGfCrA7OFoDgUcx_SJqR6GxI/s320/equivalency2.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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As the beam moves across, the Rifter moves a little further forward. For the poor capsuleer about to eat hard vacuum, it looks like the beam is curving into the direction of the force pulling the capsuleer down.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGhyphenhyphenjBzx32QpLOys-QqPeG4H888o7NiaV0CDBfgZ6ysAL9Y9j2yCm0Ivr2aivTgQXEPmWcumzgMXtXr-iVLYHl3dpQ1jipE5DnUfkX_wD9tVfgDbGMC9NOw1eA4n2HhITjzYnCWTyyPPxz/s1600/equivalency3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGhyphenhyphenjBzx32QpLOys-QqPeG4H888o7NiaV0CDBfgZ6ysAL9Y9j2yCm0Ivr2aivTgQXEPmWcumzgMXtXr-iVLYHl3dpQ1jipE5DnUfkX_wD9tVfgDbGMC9NOw1eA4n2HhITjzYnCWTyyPPxz/s320/equivalency3.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The accelerating Rifter and the capsuleer on the planet are in equivalent situations. Therefore, light is curved into the direction of the pull of gravity.<br />
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Going back to our Drifter: since we can see the distortion of light here, with no apparent medium, we can say that the Drifters use some kind of manipulation of gravity as a method of propulsion.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4paPE47iOcCt8O4kAvynOd0ddZnY7cWh4JdLaK76_caHORCr0uI8HKZfcuoK4vMRX7MrFGBJhgZsaFtN93qH4tLKxeZv6KgkF4NAWQq3WPW9pOW6YNym8fAUyaelqj1LhrgYIDMrv3rKa/s1600/lightbend2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4paPE47iOcCt8O4kAvynOd0ddZnY7cWh4JdLaK76_caHORCr0uI8HKZfcuoK4vMRX7MrFGBJhgZsaFtN93qH4tLKxeZv6KgkF4NAWQq3WPW9pOW6YNym8fAUyaelqj1LhrgYIDMrv3rKa/s320/lightbend2.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
See the way the Concord battleship bends to the rear of the Drifter? The direction of gravity is being pulled towards the rear of the vessel. Kind of weird, but this detail can be examined later.<br />
<br />
For now, it's fairly obvious that Drifter propulsion is based from gravity.<br />
<br />
<b>Further study</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Would Gallente gravimetric sensors be better at detecting these Battleships?<br />
Do Drifter weapon systems operate on the same principle?<br />
This is true for sub-light speeds. What do Drifters do the achieve warp?</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-42300132767939473992015-05-27T15:29:00.002-07:002015-05-28T01:54:15.249-07:00Wormholes: Basic Gravity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
... or just making sure the laws of Physics are consistent in the cluster before going forward.<br />
<br />
I had to do maths today, so to make up for it, here's a picture of the ISV Rhys Tai, my current ship.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm9RWZIyxTUJAm3V2SpXjgrCUzmv7uwAE3-BaHzR1QOL-tErvqk3ZwARMM3de7Znyp5wJ4g4JjozcHHeukmP685L_uh9KzBMa07pzqyAJnbRPUdwrkj9SWJLlf1jBOkX2xFkvuUGFhqfO5/s1600/2015.05.27.21.34.46.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm9RWZIyxTUJAm3V2SpXjgrCUzmv7uwAE3-BaHzR1QOL-tErvqk3ZwARMM3de7Znyp5wJ4g4JjozcHHeukmP685L_uh9KzBMa07pzqyAJnbRPUdwrkj9SWJLlf1jBOkX2xFkvuUGFhqfO5/s400/2015.05.27.21.34.46.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Beautiful shot of Caroline's Star in the background.<br />
<br />
I started with the assumption that gravity as we know it still applies to New Eden. If I were thinking meta-game, I doubt the developers would create a whole new set of Physics to create their universe. However, a lot of Physics does come down to constants, and once the equations are set, it's relatively easy to sneak some curve balls in in there.<br />
<br />
So. Basic gravity.<br />
<br />
The force of attraction due to masses of objects is ancient science.<br />
<br />
These laws were laid down before even the Amarr and Khanid got off our planet. How they weren't lost under a deluge of religious dogma, I don't know. I can only hope reverence for the EVE Gate made such advances possible. But I digress.<br />
<br />
The equation is relatively simple:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkNcZwtoml_dNoDaM-0VmEgl3rHlO12AGvpw6NTarLSe20Zdax9p5zpMMf8omTs95WTgIvaiaJ8SdvhAN-EPmpeRoXgFqwPau8GaAgXAhiYJ7xRpj3nUoNWBf-DbgKO48lvi4OZeA9HhGt/s1600/NewtonEquation.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="80" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkNcZwtoml_dNoDaM-0VmEgl3rHlO12AGvpw6NTarLSe20Zdax9p5zpMMf8omTs95WTgIvaiaJ8SdvhAN-EPmpeRoXgFqwPau8GaAgXAhiYJ7xRpj3nUoNWBf-DbgKO48lvi4OZeA9HhGt/s200/NewtonEquation.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
This is where m1 and m2 refer t the objects being attracted to each other, and r is the distance between them. G is a universal constant, used to equate mass, distance and force. And that's what we just need to test now. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
If that G constant is different then we essentially need to start all over again understanding New Eden Physics. Happily, testing it really isn't that hard for a capsuleer! </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The part of the equation we need to test is this bit in red:</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLwFmjsomAP528GbQCATzV7ENjndMvL1THWERLkFF2F1W-T-SptLrLj0mCjx5fdPPBxXcOhDZb03t9Z2COZmGmhpxDmyjzhiaYTSUmlu6IZ-13a52NK_HSG2EFj_Lr7k0paUb7uu0__LsC/s1600/NewtonEquation1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLwFmjsomAP528GbQCATzV7ENjndMvL1THWERLkFF2F1W-T-SptLrLj0mCjx5fdPPBxXcOhDZb03t9Z2COZmGmhpxDmyjzhiaYTSUmlu6IZ-13a52NK_HSG2EFj_Lr7k0paUb7uu0__LsC/s1600/NewtonEquation1.png" /></a></div>
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This bit describes our surface acceleration on a planet.You might have seen this as a 'g' back in school (usually as a very human friendly 9.8m/s^2).</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
As capsuleers, our pod and ship sensors give us access to a whole bucket load of information we'll never need. Fly out to a planet, and check its information, and you can get its mass, radius, and even its surface gravity. Which means we can safely check our equations work, without too much hassle.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So that's what I did. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQqQKyldIImycip6dMtfogsYU-1LffR9jsrCw3CherWdzDSmoy5KCr1uednjw5u7d-gklVA-dXUI867Zczk85L6vW3kpIe1AAKsF5jKR-DPHQm4ZTblXRDId6WsL2LNW2gb3W6jvXAhcf6/s1600/shemahi1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQqQKyldIImycip6dMtfogsYU-1LffR9jsrCw3CherWdzDSmoy5KCr1uednjw5u7d-gklVA-dXUI867Zczk85L6vW3kpIe1AAKsF5jKR-DPHQm4ZTblXRDId6WsL2LNW2gb3W6jvXAhcf6/s320/shemahi1.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOaxD_sKCMQjE6iI6Y-tTXO9WzG9qK_N0j8_2dSQNoYCJzMsbR1Rwimy8sNIQvwyDTEsCVZI9Ek3O2qJy_GZEjR5aY2XIfx8VY22Qd_ZTbY6nptnly5V7uJETeYbIEbV4U6rUUXunHuBTs/s1600/shemahi9.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOaxD_sKCMQjE6iI6Y-tTXO9WzG9qK_N0j8_2dSQNoYCJzMsbR1Rwimy8sNIQvwyDTEsCVZI9Ek3O2qJy_GZEjR5aY2XIfx8VY22Qd_ZTbY6nptnly5V7uJETeYbIEbV4U6rUUXunHuBTs/s320/shemahi9.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
These are some planets in the Shamahi system. Low-sec in case you were wondering. There's also Shamahi 9 up in the first picture of this post. Well done to Angry Gamers Incorporated for securing some POCOs in this system!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I checked the data, did the maths, and good news! Our basic equations for gravity, and the constants used hold up in the cluster... at least for this system. To be sure, we still need to check if this holds up in more exotic spaces (wormholes and Thera in particular).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But for now, I'm satisfied that my basic understanding of gravity can be applied in New Eden. I wasn't really expecting to find anything different, but it's always a good idea to check the basics before running off into black holes.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Now for General Relativity, and seeing which parts match up to our wormholes.</div>
</div>
</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-7391696593354371982015-05-21T13:30:00.002-07:002015-05-21T13:30:55.452-07:00Wormholes: Basic function<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
'Basic' in this case being a relative term. But not a specific relativistic term... Or a special relativity term.<br />
<br />
Wow, I managed to get confusing in the first paragraph. Let's start again?<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPNvXZOfN8nVX5VW4d8hwDXbQCva59mCjBn7UaRK0S_3JNNG5QjVi71p2TL80l5YfPA5aT34syLs56jBOfcNnqAGcRvB5lOG3EsV3CZyj4i6tI7w3SxTOp_GsQp-kh7JtV6PXnk8pFT2IG/s1600/2015.05.21.16.38.13.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPNvXZOfN8nVX5VW4d8hwDXbQCva59mCjBn7UaRK0S_3JNNG5QjVi71p2TL80l5YfPA5aT34syLs56jBOfcNnqAGcRvB5lOG3EsV3CZyj4i6tI7w3SxTOp_GsQp-kh7JtV6PXnk8pFT2IG/s320/2015.05.21.16.38.13.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Low-sec wormhole, captured from the deck of a Svipul scout destroyer</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Wormholes are areas in space which allow you to travel from one point in space-time to a very distant one.<br />
<br />
In practical terms, you go in one end, and pop out somewhere else, which could be theoretically on the other side of the universe. And in New Eden, that's exactly what it does. Scan it down, pass through, and you've found a short cut between Jita and Dodixie.<br />
<br />
If all you're looking for is how to use a wormhole, then that's pretty much it. Nothing special, just a glorified jump gate. <br />
<br />
According to the maths, it's not quite that simple. And I'll avoid maths as much as I can, and stick to description and analogy. <br />
<br />
What's really important to remember is that this is all analogy. To really understand it, you need to know the equations. Language and human perception is simply not robust enough to comprehend what's happening. That's not to say you're dumb for not being able to, it's just that our imagination is more developed than our ability to perceive... one of the little quirks of the brain being primarily a predictor rather than a reactor.<br />
<br />
You've probably seen this?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/images/blackholes_wormhole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/images/blackholes_wormhole.jpg" height="208" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Makes it easier to understand.<br />
<br />
Two things to remember:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>The green grid represents 3D space-time.</li>
<li>Look at the yellow line. It does not jump off the green sheet. It follows it down the pipe.</li>
</ul>
You may have seen various sci-fi shows where you'll see ships zipping down tunnels. That's not really happening. You're not going to see a tunnel, and any wormhole resident will tell you that doesn't happen in New Eden. <br />
<br />
You literally go in and come out... barring a few seconds where even the capsule can't process what's happening around it. No tunnel effects like you get from a jump gate, or acceleration lines you'd see from a intra-system warp.<br />
<br />
Wormholes in New Eden aren't like acceleration tubes. They are literal short cuts. The best analogy is just a tunnel through a mountain. You still go at walking pace. It's just that the distance is shorter.<br />
<br />
Here's a nice piece of evidence to show this:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjchU3GBRTJciiBuriPDnWYCUc6jRTwgcymOFg8dZwt-TE4sP1qaQYlIdFosOUKDb_V4bT6gMi2gZbKUS37PZO-7CZ4HTo9DYsDz87p37Zqb_e_NFKdl8kRqE2Gwj_B_7hltYl9FI_5zrrb/s1600/2015.05.21.16.38.57.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjchU3GBRTJciiBuriPDnWYCUc6jRTwgcymOFg8dZwt-TE4sP1qaQYlIdFosOUKDb_V4bT6gMi2gZbKUS37PZO-7CZ4HTo9DYsDz87p37Zqb_e_NFKdl8kRqE2Gwj_B_7hltYl9FI_5zrrb/s320/2015.05.21.16.38.57.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Light passes through from the other side off the whole. We can see the system on the other side... I believe this one is a C4? You can identify them from the colour.<br />
<br />
However, and I'm going to say this a lot... it's not that simple.<br />
<br />
This, in fact, is kind of weird.<br />
<br />
Light isn't acting as expected, or at least as far as my limited knowledge at this stage goes. I need more information. Time to hit the books, and do more research to understand what I'm seeing here.<br />
<br />
But for now, that's a basic overview of what a wormhole does.<br />
<br />
Just as an aside, if I start talking about things that you don't understand, please let me know. I teach Physics now, and there are certain things I just assume people know. If you could comment on bits and pieces that confuse you, or you simply weren't taught, it's actually going to help me outside of the pod, and help me deliver better lessons to students.</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-64384213151345761152015-05-20T05:15:00.000-07:002015-05-20T05:15:30.980-07:00Understanding wormholes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
Whilst looking through exotic matter hypotheses to solve our antikythera conundrum, I re-visited my old literary stomping grounds of wormhole theory.<br />
<br />
I'll get the connection out of the way, so that others can begin wild speculation: traversable wormholes, in order to satisfy general relativity, need some exotic matter of negative density to keep them open. I won't even pretend to know the details or the maths behind it, but I may come back to it at some point.<br />
<br />
The tinfoil bait? Antikythera could be an exotic material used to keep wormholes open.<br />
<br />
Not really so far-fetched an idea. Our jump gates rely on similar technology. However, since its being used to make Entosis links, it does look unlikely.<br />
<br />
Either way, I started looking at wormholes again.<br />
<br />
Like any true nerd, I grew up thinking I knew more about the universe than I actually did, and delusions of my academic prowess led me towards reading Physics journals far above my level. Needless to say, I did not understand half of what was there.<br />
<br />
And I still don't.<br />
<br />
This is a problem.<br />
<br />
Especially since I just used a wormhole to get from Molden Heath to Genesis yesterday.<br />
<br />
And I get the feeling that wormholes are going to play an even more significant part of New Eden's development from this point on.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj429t5IniC9duKfQMuJlCoL4t9UOZL2xRr5YqtAaQ-XeN7wt-OsBnox9C5WU_qRmWvCN-SdMBpXfP4eA4L3oDPeCh98nAzcTjm0NXFRACHXnTNxYn2WBQGTjM9HEA29E3yffoY25-9KBgz/s1600/stablehole.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj429t5IniC9duKfQMuJlCoL4t9UOZL2xRr5YqtAaQ-XeN7wt-OsBnox9C5WU_qRmWvCN-SdMBpXfP4eA4L3oDPeCh98nAzcTjm0NXFRACHXnTNxYn2WBQGTjM9HEA29E3yffoY25-9KBgz/s320/stablehole.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<span id="goog_778181290"></span>And I think looking a little more closely at this theory would help us to understand just what the EVE Gate is.<br />
<br />
And to keep things at least a little interesting, I'll get some pretty pictures of wormholes to go with it!</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-43387367962568608102015-05-16T06:17:00.000-07:002015-05-16T06:17:29.607-07:00Evidence: Distribution of Jove Observatories<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So I was curious about this, since I read someone talk about the Observatories being more concentrated in Curse. So what is the actual concentration of observatories across New Eden?<br />
<br />
I started off by recording my own findings in Derelik, simply listing the observatories I found. Realizing this would take me months, I instead did some research to see if someone had done the work already.<br />
<br />
Thanks to <a href="http://www.schildwall.info/drifters/index.html" target="_blank">these guys</a> who did the grunt work. Saved us all a lot of time!<br />
<br />
So, from there it was a simple analysis: divide the number of observatories found in regions by the total number of systems in each region.<br />
<br />
Here's the results for Empire space (rounded figures of course).<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgamy48Mzp5nyVyPp-C3y2-d2K5uEG0YiSFvEadCgrXqYsjG-5wgVYUhsNHmxnbi5-m8ESdGsU4kPky0lVmzfyy0WWzVq61AJ21W47OKHxNqEOZZuMyGrnhN3zNAxgTjPpDnLwHVQmyN3LD/s1600/table.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgamy48Mzp5nyVyPp-C3y2-d2K5uEG0YiSFvEadCgrXqYsjG-5wgVYUhsNHmxnbi5-m8ESdGsU4kPky0lVmzfyy0WWzVq61AJ21W47OKHxNqEOZZuMyGrnhN3zNAxgTjPpDnLwHVQmyN3LD/s400/table.png" width="338" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
And null sec.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJW5m6k-t1XckE5Ce94hFvdZu-gV_tKYoZebKE-I0TSxxX79faADYax3oEeaWkMtUcvOFxeEf_Lz5krIoUxIOxfmxrgiVdyxivy7x2F9O50wJzo6-yKN91G42VN-Y8rAwsZ8XFi3mFfbUK/s1600/table2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJW5m6k-t1XckE5Ce94hFvdZu-gV_tKYoZebKE-I0TSxxX79faADYax3oEeaWkMtUcvOFxeEf_Lz5krIoUxIOxfmxrgiVdyxivy7x2F9O50wJzo6-yKN91G42VN-Y8rAwsZ8XFi3mFfbUK/s640/table2.png" width="345" /></a></div>
<br />
<u>Conclusion:</u><br />
Pretty evenly distributed. The outliers aren't really that that compelling, and Curse actually has less observatories per system than others.<br />
<br />
That doesn't mean we can't learn anything though.<br />
<br />
The spread across space is even, both in Null, Empire and Pirate space. From this we can say that the Jove were watching <b>everyone</b>. And with equal interest. That's not to say the density of information collected is evenly distributed too, but they were quite thorough in casting a net over the whole cluster.<br />
<br />
Which is curious: What would be the point in having such a massive station to observe a fairly minor flow of traffic? Smaller stations or even scout ships would have been much more efficient.<br />
<br />
Two possibilities to consider:<br />
<br />
1) The Jove installed these stations in advance just in case humans moved into it at some point. I can only assume their resources must be massive to build in such a redundancy.<br />
<br />
2) The observatories have another function beyond observing humans.<br />
<br />
With the assumption that antikythera is used to observe cosmological events, I put forward the hypothesis that this is in fact part of a large observatory network, to look for a cosmological, but elusive feature. Having a net this large, with faster-than-light communications between them would make a telescope of phenomenal resolution.<br />
<br />
So this would lead us to look at just what information these stations collected.<br />
<br />
Questions:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>What does antikythera actually do?</li>
<li>What information did these observatories collect?</li>
<li>Would this additional information have been extracted by the Drifters already?</li>
</ul>
</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7736562249133206859.post-52610809248117340592015-05-16T04:44:00.000-07:002015-05-16T04:47:21.322-07:00Evidence: Scope video<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFy2KTGYlYI&list=PLQvKSs1k6DLND_n1eyjHLML_0G__CEqMg&index=8" target="_blank">Scope video</a><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZFy2KTGYlYI/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZFy2KTGYlYI?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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Well, here's a little evidence as to why the Jove observatories all had consistent damage marks. They were dismantled in the same parts by Drifters and Circadian Sleepers.<br />
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So one question answered. My conclusion before was wrong about the internal explosion, and instead was a careful extraction by another force.<br />
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The video states that Antikythera was being harvested by the Drifters and Sleepers. What this does and why they want it is unclear.<br />
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We can speculate its purpose form its name; it refers to a startling find of an ancient cosmology 'computer'. Don't be mistaken... it was a hand powered gear calculator, not a fully electronic piece of equipment. It predicted movements of observed stars. Nearly accurately too!<br />
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Again, whoever gave it this name in New Eden apparently knows more than we do, and is disinclined to share. I'd rather not draw serious conclusions from interpretation of a name, but if this substance is needed to observe some cosmological phenomena, it could give us a reason for the observatories.<br />
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<u>Hypothesis:</u> The observatories are only incidentally used to spy on the Empires and capsuleers. I suggest it was actually used to search for a cosmological event throughout the New Eden cluster.<br />
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The Jove were looking for something in space. Not to gather more information on the inhabitants of New Eden. This would explain the name observatory, as opposed to listening station, and why so many stations were needed as opposed to cloaked ships.<br />
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So. Questions to answer:<br />
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What does antikythera actually do?<br />
What is the actual spread of Jove Observatories across New Eden?<br />
How old are these things?<br />
What information is collected by these observatories?<br />
Why do the sleepers still hang around the observatories after the antikythera has been extracted?</div>
Tabletop Teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16804201908210463999noreply@blogger.com0