morning :)

Morning!

How was everyone's weekend?

12 days long... :)

or so

@bilbo_pingouin ...that's not a weekend.

@James A 4. On an unspecified scale. Yours?

@James on the other hand, yesterday was Monday... and also not really a week end. Especially for the 90% of the World who are not in the USA ;-)

but if you want more precise, I had some fun at a medieval wedding on Saturday... with the newly wed walking under a "sword bridge" made by the guests, on a music of LOTR, among reconstructed castle ruins... :)

@NexTerren 27. Definitely a 27.

@bilbo_pingouin That sounds nerdtastic

and fun...were medieval weapons allowed to be carried?

swords were accepted. I had none, since... well, I don't have any, and it would be somehow problematic in a plane.

with swords, here, I meant blades of any types

from metal to plastic, from daggers to two-handed weapons

I've seen a few bows, but usually more toys-like

essentially it was combining a LARP with LARP-er and a wedding.

non-LARP-er I wanted to write

like parents, children of your friends, etc.

That sounds fun... :)

@bilbo_pingouin I mean, even for the rest of the world Monday is at one of the two ends of the week.

Has anyone heard of Factorio?

@Green Well, now I have.

@Green A factory management game... the one or two I played for free over on Kongregate left... something to be desired.

Play it yourself?

@NexTerren In a 48 hour period, I had the game open for 12 of those hours.

So it sounds like you had a good sample. Still fun after 12?

It's a game about automation. If you micromanage your units, you're doing it wrong. Which I find is a delightful departure from Starcraft-like games where if you don't micromange your units you're doing it wrong.

@NexTerren I love this game. It scratches my itch of managing flows instead of sources.

@NexTerren I expect it to be fun for the next 168 hours.

@Green 168 specifically, 'eh? So 180 hours of gameplay.

At least.

Well once I catch up on my reading and play through the titles I got last year... maybe. Uhg. Not enough time in life.

@NexTerren Have you ever played Eve Online?

@Green Spreadsheet Simulator 2016? Alternate title of "The game where real-life background checks are done on people, and it's a job, not a game?" Why yes, I've heard of it!

@NexTerren I was going to draw a comparison in complexity of supply chain between Eve and Factorio then decided against it because Eve is still way more complicated, even when talking about just the manufacturing part of Eve.

Some masochistic part of me says he'd enjoy Eve, but so far common sense has been victorious in that struggle.

I liked EVE, but I could tell I wasn't doing it right

I liked to be surprised by the missions, rather than checking the wiki to see what weapons to equip

@NexTerren I enjoy playing Eve with other people that I know. I can't bring myself to even open the client if I don't have anyone else to play with.

Right now I kind of want to get into ARMA even though I'm really not great at shooters. Just it seems like it has just the right level of depth without reaching the "dedicate your life to this game or you'll be a pox upon your team!" levels of dedication that some online games have.

@NexTerren I've seen some youtube videos of people that ArmA3 crazy crazy deep. To get really good will mean dedicating some portion of your life to the game...unless you're already an infantryman then you're whole life is dedicated to the "game".

Oh, I don't want to be an... officer or whatever. Just be a minion, part of a larger operation. I played such a role back when Planetside 2 was new, and I enjoyed taking part of the squad/platoon tactics, even if I wasn't the one calling the shots.

Of course my enjoyment was somewhat hampered, as during larger battles I literally got fewer than 1 frame per second in that game...

oh yeah, I would love to be a grunt in a game

But I am no longer a poor college student and I can afford a machine that actually can play games.

@NexTerren Amen! Putting a shiny new (and fast) GPU in a box is a great feeling.

Turning all the settings to Ultra in all your favorite games and still getting >60fps is even better.

Indeed!

I'm at the point where when I can't do that, I start shopping for a new card. It's wasteful, but...

@NexTerren A 1070 or 1060 would suit me nicely.

@Green In my case right now: amazon.com/gp/product/B01GCAVSIO/…

@NexTerren You bastard.

@Green :D

Did you pay that retail price for it?

@Green Well I got it directly through Amazon, but when the price dipped. $750 or so?

Dang.

Yeah, yeah. Terrible spending habits. But I'm frugal elsewhere. I swear.

@NexTerren Dude, your spending habits are your own. ;)

I need to start being more frugal, I'm gonna have to start paying car insurance soon

for the last few months I've just been buying whatever random things have popped into my head.

luckily I got a great deal on those four dozen rubber ducks

I wish I had extensive expendable income...

@James Wasting it all on expensive studio grade microphones?

@NexTerren Nah...kids, lol

Though I do need to get out and get a new mic this week.

What are we debating?

@UncleTres now that you mention it, can anyone provide arguments as to why the film 'Blazing Saddles' is funny?

...If a question has 20 answer I think its pretty obvious it is too broad...

@DaaaahWhoosh Never heard of it

@UncleTres many people consider it the funniest movie of all time

@James no, it just mean there are many ways to skin a cat, but a knife is still better than a rock

@DaaaahWhoosh Peer pressure I think. Someone decided it was funny and it became a thing...that no one understands.

@UncleTres Right but the question should have enough constraints that some options are obviously better than others.

@James that example is true yes, but I still think the number of answers does not correlate to the questions broadness

I disagree. If 20 people can write sufficiently different answers (and still answer the question) you didn't define the question well enough, at least that is my opinion.

@James I concur

hmm, maybe. Still regardless of the number of answers, most of the time there is still a definitive best answer

@UncleTres Maybe a best thought out/best written answer sure. But the question doesn't make it the best answer which is kind of the whole problem.

Even the short crappy answers, cover the points of the questions asked just as well.

So yes, while some answers are clearly better than others, that doesn't make them any better, in relation to the question that was asked, than other answers that are not as good.

I suppose, but we can agree that the question itself should determine its broadness and not the number of answers?

Yes I can agree with that. I would say lots of answers is a potential indicator of a question that is too broad. Mainly meaning, I am going to carefully read a question with 10+ answers to see if the question is the problem.

is there a way to divide up large numbers so that people from any country can understand?

like if I have 600,000 and want everyone to know it's six hundred thousand and not six hundred, how can I do that without saying 600000

and alternately if I have 600.000 how do I explain that that's six hundred?

600,000.00

I take my cue from how many zeros are after the period. If it's three, then it's probably the European notation of 000.000,000.

@NexTerren Seconded. That's unambiguous.

hmm, I wonder how difficult it would be to write a computer program to accurately figure out which notation is being used

@DaaaahWhoosh Oh! Did you get a chance to make a vector version of that icon over the weekend? I'm interested in seeing how it looks.

@NexTerren oh... no, I did not. Still need to do that. I tried redoing in in GIMP with a 96-pixel square, but I couldn't get the spacing right

I still think it'll fit though

Legit, if you can still tell what's going on at 96x96 I think it's a winner.

I mean it technically doesn't HAVE to be vector I imagine (okay that with @James) as long as we get a raster of sufficiently large size that we can scale down.

I haven't done much work with vector images, but it's going to start out on paper so I imagine that's going to be hard to convert

Ah, yep. I don't think there's any real (good) way to convert a scan/digital drawing to vector.

I guess some time this week I can try to get a somewhat-final greyscale version up

colors may take a while... anyone here good with colors?

@DaaaahWhoosh Scientific notation, maybe?

@HDE226868 yeah, that'd probably work

hooray for science

I want to do that Bill Nye "Science Rules!" voice, but it's not working.

it's the thought that counts

Remember me!

Hey all, I got my Fanatic badge!

@AndyD273 whoooooooooo

over-the-Internet high five!

Only started over 5 times...

it felt so good to finally be able to go to sleep on the weekend and not have to worry that I forgot to browse worldbuilding that day

Yeah. I had a bit of a scare sunday morning, along the lines of "@&*&$, did I log in yesterday???"

Apparently I had. Or my backup script worked...

@AndyD273 Automation for the win!

That's how I got it on SO. Since it's a programmers exchange, I didn't think it was cheating to write a program to solve the problem.

@AndyD273 I agree. Script writing is valid.

I think I was over 200 days concurrent before I turned the script off

What icon are you working on?

@AndyD273 podcast icon

Is the podcast up yet? I have been out of the loop for a while

@AndyD273 No, we have done a mic/vid check but not recorded anything yet.

Do you have a sample of the icon up anywhere?

Last weekend was a holiday in the States and we have several participants who were enjoying themselves some other way than talking about Worldbuilding.

@DaaaahWhoosh made a sketch. I think it looks amazing but I don't have a copy.

@Green Yup, a major part of the reason I was panicking sunday morning

@Green I think I added that sketch to the meta thread

... that image showed up larger than I wanted it to be

The dragon looks cool...those are good lines.

yeah, I really want there to be a dragon

I had it in my site design, and they took it out

I fully support the inclusion of dragons.

I challenge you all to give me one thing that dragons do not make better.

BBQ. If they show up, there isn't enough for everyone else.

But they can start the grill immediately and the grocery store is close by.

@James Meetings. Because they already dragon enough.

Even if they eat all the other attendees.......

I wonder what dragon meat would taste like

Dragon can threaten people that talk to much. = Better

Chicken.

@DaaaahWhoosh Chicken obviously.

@James Get it? Drag on? Dragon? Geeeeteeeet?

@NexTerren ...well I do now. Puntastic.

@James How many people do you think could over come the instinctual "stay still, stay quiet, stay alive"response to talk at all when a dragon is around?

@Green Depends...what color dragon are we talking?

Are we going with D&D definitions?

@Green Is there another definition set?

(And that is the sound of the rabbit hole opening its mouth very very wide).

@James I'm sure there are....I'm just not very familiar with them.

@Green Well, there's Pete's Dragon which is either Purple or Green.

I sorta treat DnD definitions of races as the baseline for fiction. I.e. if someone asked how my elves work I would say "They are like DnD elves except... exclusion stuff"

@James I'm the same, but I tend to use Tolkien when Tolkien is available. I've found more people familiar with Tolkien than D&D.

Although I imagine literally every campaign I've done over the past ~5 years as a DM/GM or player has been a custom setting having something to do with not using the D&D monster manual as my baseline.

Have you seen the 5e manuals? The art is freaking awesome.

@James My venture into 5e involved me doing a TPK with a pack of wolves for our first battle. We reverted back to old rule sets after that.

@NexTerren I can’t upvote comments on deleted posts, but I wanted to acknowledge your excellent reaction to the coconut answer's feedback.

@JDługosz Good morning, JD.

And yeah, I honestly thought that was the case when I posted it. Coworkers and I researched the issue after one coworker was drinking basically pure coconut water and his doctor told him to cut it out. This was... mm. 3 years ago, though, so either I'm recalling something wrong or the doctor/research was in error.

Dude didn't have any dispositions that would affect him specifically (that he told us, at least), he was just doing it because of some workout something.

(A coworker in my office was asking another coworker how they spell their last name. I interjected with "C. O. O. L. G. U. Y." The first coworker typed the whole thing out then burst out laughing.)

And you can see the deleted answer, @JDługosz ? I wasn't sure who could/couldn't. I thought it might just be mods.

Wasn't sure if there was a point to me even leaving a final comment, since if it was just mods I doubt they would even have seen it.

@NexTerren You should give it another shot. Its amazing how much simpler and yet still effective they made the ruleset. Gone are the days of +37 BAB, the math is so much easier. Some friends and I have been running a 5e campaign for like 2+ years. We are level 30 something at this point and make a regular habit of traveling to other planes to fight quasi deities.

@James That group is long since dissolved (we tried it when it first came out) and my current group I game with exclusively goes 4e (if they want the gamey side) or Fate (if they want the story side).

My sorcerer has literally destroyed entire armies...I may have shifted a few points to the SE on the alignment scale that day.

Tsunami is a fun spell...

@James Well, well, well. We get a small insight as to what you do with power.

Random thought to consider as I leave: Floors indexed at 0, so ground floor is 0, basement is -1, and the floor above ground floor is 1, then 2, 3, and so on. Good or bad idea?

@NexTerren great idea

@NexTerren If you work with a bunch of people who are accustomed to zero based arithmetic, it'll be great. Everyone else will be confused as hell.

I've heard that there are some places where the 1st floor is the one above the ground floor

I do know that basements usually count backwards starting from 1

like the garages in my apartment, G1 is above G2

@DaaaahWhoosh France is the one I've heard of where this happens.

@Green yeah, that's probably it. But there's at least a precedent somewhere

I think '0' would be weird to see in an elevator, but 'L' seems to work pretty well in most cases

@DaaaahWhoosh But at least in my area it goes L, 2, 3, etc

If it went L, 1, 2, 3 and someone told me my destination was on the first floor, I'd be walking around the ground floor for a long time

@NexTerren Honestly my personal favorite move for a single target or a small group is to cast reverse gravity, pummel them with spells while they are stuck bobbing in the air 100 feet off the ground, then end reverse gravity and cast disintegrate on them while they are falling.

@James Wouldn't just letting them fall back the ground hurt enough? 100 feet up is a really long way to fall.

@James Remind me to never anger you.

Wait, if this is in a cave, casting reverse gravity would cause the target mob to "fall" into the ground twice.

So apparently a person falling from 100 feet takes 2.5 seconds. If the reverse gravity persists though, you could cast it and see how long it takes them to reach LEO... The rest is just a waste of mana

@AndyD273 Anti-grav-ing an enemy mob to LEO with a single spell seems seriously overpowered.

wouldn't it just be LE? You gotta be moving really fast to be in orbit

@Green As opposed to his other method? It's actually fairly simple, reversing gravity instead of anti gravity. You aren't fighting gravity, you're just falling off the surface

and unless they respond really really fast, they'll be so high that reversing it back will be just as fatal as doing nothing

@AndyD273 I'm no 5e expert but I imagine the spell has both a distance and time limit, so if they fall they'll fall outside the effects of the spell.

Whether it's anti-gravity or negative gravity, the effect is the same. Mobs get into LEO fairly quickly. I was commenting on the overpoweredness of casting one spell that just makes all the enemies disappear. (Although, there is the downside that it makes all their loot disappear too).

@AndyD273 and in the case of the distance limit they would 'fall' until they were outside the range of the spell, and then bob along its upward limit.

Is this question too large of scope? I hope it's not, as I find it quite interesting. If it is, I was hoping to work with the asker to fix it up before people VTC'd it: worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/54379/…

@Green You'd think but in DnD falling damage is only d6 per 20 feet or something.

@James Well, it's a fantasy game. You can't expect it to follow real life physics.

@Green So the spell creates a 50ft radius...or diameter...whatever up to 100 feet. So basically they fall up until they hit 100 feet, then they start falling down again...then up...until they are just sort of floating or oscillating at 100 feet off the ground

So a max of 30 damage when they fall from 100 feet?

@Green yep

WAIT! What if you cast overlapping reverse gravity spells. Something that gets into the overlap would have to make an armor save or something to avoid being torn apart by a 2g difference.

that would be hilarious. But you'd need two casters. Almost all spells that have a duration require concentration and you cannot have more than one concentration spell active at any given time. So for example you cannot both be hasted and fly.

@James Well, just put two wizards in your party. Duh ;) (And I know it's not that easy.)

actually if you had two casters with say flying mounts, you could keep stacking the reverse gravity spells until they actually were in LEO...

Considering its an 8th level spell...at high level with certain feats you could conceivably with two casters stack them up to ...800 feet, give or take.

if you reversed the gravity in an area, would there be any noticeable difference in the air?

@DaaaahWhoosh probably not in a 100 ft tall cylinder

in a room it might be an effective means of air cooling

or... heating?

yeah, heating

@NexTerren [worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/…

So 36 users can see deleted posts.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_water shows nutritional info of coconut water.

It has a section on excessice consumption that mentions your point. A daily supply of K would be about a gallon of liquid, so toxic amounts would require some unreasonable amount.

@NexTerren sounds like England. Very confusing to Americans who use stairs rather than pushing buttons and think the first floor is the second.

@Green I suspect most rampies at major airports wouldn't be too bothered, but that's because they're used to working around roughly dragon-sized things that are capable of ingesting humans without too much effort

that actually raises a question in my mind though -- how do dragons keep themselves clean? dirt, bug-splats, etal cause all sorts of havoc on wing performance (as they mess up the boundary layer flow), which is why aircraft probably get washed much more frequently than cars do (pilots will even wash planes they're renting for the day. when was the last time you heard of someone running a rental car through a carwash?)

@Shalvenay Maybe they groom themselves like cats?

@NexTerren that could work, I suppose!

Howdy, what are we talking about?

@UncleTres I just brought up dragon grooming, that's all. (have this image of a dragon sitting on an airport ramp getting washed by a bunch of rampies crawling all over him with buckets and rags :P)

hmmm

talk about red carpet service xD

Maybe something like this

@UncleTres would probably have to be less muddy though -- airfoil leading edges need to be pretty squeaky-clean to work well