The Factory Floor

elemtilas

01:13

Thank you, too, @James!

Secret

13:51

yesterday, by dot_Sp0T

30

A: My time machine can go back farther than yours -- why?

The time-machine's dependent on its reference core, a thing from the past that can be dated back to a certain period or even point-in-time (e.g. a painting, book, pebble). The more historically/culturally significant a thing is, the better it works for time travel. While a pebble or rock can bri...

Role-play mode: That explains why I am no longer in active development of time machines and go on for the more precise "graphing" technique

Time travel has so little freedom when it comes to making pinpoint accuracy modifications of the timelines

Morris The Cat

16:27

@FailusMaximus I have questions about your magic guns =P

Failus Maximus

yup?

feel free to ask

@MorrisTheCat

Morris The Cat

ok, so first point

500m/s is SLOW

where bullets are concerned

so you're not going to be getting ranges beyond a couple hundred yards no matter what

Ranger

So I said I'd give SE some time and see where they went. I was planning on giving them until the close of the year to make actual, appreciable forward progress on any of its numerous trip-ups. They haven't, and apparently they've decided to take feedback and hide it and hide discussion. Since this is an actual, appreciable regression, I'll go ahead and head out now. See you guys, I hope you all take care where your lives take you. Good luck in all you do. :)

5

If you want to contact me, @AndyD273, @James, and @Green know how to reach me.

Morris The Cat

a .45 handgun is 900m/s

Failus Maximus

yeah, I know, these speeds are basically equivalent of black powder weapons

Morris The Cat

16:30

right

so

An important limitation is how rapidly these weapons can repeat that 'throwing' action

e.g. rate of fire

is the field continuous? e.g. it can toss projectiles as rapidly as you can get them into the barrel?

Failus Maximus

the tech level of those weapons is ~ 19th to early 20th century, (obviously, not direct equivalent)

Morris The Cat

they had gatling guns in the 19th century. ~3000 rounds per minute

so if the magic can handle the output, you could absolutely have very high rate of fire magical submachine guns

but not assault rifles. Short range only

Failus Maximus

yeah, that is indeed possible

Morris The Cat

barrel doesn't have to be solid, because you don't have to contain pressure

ideally you wouldn't want PHYSICAL rifling, you'd want to 'twist' the magical field so that the throw also applies the twisting rotation

Failus Maximus

depends on what you mean by short, as things like gatling allow for 800~900 m max range

Morris The Cat

16:33

just like a football quarterback.

Failus Maximus

maximum useful range*

Morris The Cat

not at 500m/s muzzle velocity they don't

Failus Maximus

yeah, they do, that was effective range of gatlings and rifled musket lines

well maximum effective

Morris The Cat

I mean... the projectile can still do DAMAGE at that distance

Failus Maximus

that means suboptimal, but still possible

Morris The Cat

16:34

but that's against mass formations

you're not going to hit a man-sized target on purpose at that range reliably with a projectile that slow. not if he's moving anyway

Failus Maximus

indeed

hitting target that far is kinda like hitting at 2km with bolt action

Morris The Cat

You could have really spiffy looking wrought-iron kind of barrels, that are mostly hollow

basically the longer range and more accurate you want the weapon to be, the longer and larger you want he projectile to be

which means less ammo the guy can carry

Failus Maximus

according to what I've seen from rifled musket shooters, 300 m is realistic sniping range, with 800-1000 m being thing of extremely high skill and some luck against stationary target

Morris The Cat

well, I'll yield to that research then

I mean... keeping in mind that at 1000m it takes the bullet TWO SECONDS to get to the target

Failus Maximus

300 m is still only for people who have traine to snipe with that weapon

Morris The Cat

16:39

anyway

Failus Maximus

as I said, 1000 m is maximum sporting shooting against stationary target

not practical, just flexing

+ that is with extremely carefully made ammo (where ammo needs to be perfectly made and basically identical)

in black powder weaponry, mass produced ammo was not that perfect, so in real combat, apart from sharpshooting teams, others indeed were better to shoot under 200m

Morris The Cat

well, I'm going to assume that you don't have the manufacturing limitations that caused that

does your advanced magical society have assembly line manufacturing?

Failus Maximus

magic civilizations have some perks that mechanical civilizations doesn't

Morris The Cat

or do you want it to be more steampunky where everything is still handmade

Failus Maximus

tbh, I plan more of these civilizations, some of which will be further, and some of which will be less and some of which more developed

also, allow me corrections, since I didn't notice before

Morris The Cat

16:46

oh, hey

the CLEVER thing to do

Failus Maximus

the fastest shooting gatling could do 1100~1200 rounds /min

not 3000

Morris The Cat

That was a limitation of being hand-cranked

Failus Maximus

3000, we talking about modern electric ones

Morris The Cat

when GE was developing the minigun, they actually took a civil-war era gatling and fired it at 3000rpm just by putting the electric motor on it

and in your case, it's MUCH easier

because you just have to replicate the feed system, you don't have to have rotating barrels unless the magic process that's throwing the bullets generates heat

so, that's a question

Failus Maximus

it isn't, my magic has some restrictions, and it's probably gonna be handcrank operated guns till 1950 equivalent of magic tech

Morris The Cat

16:48

Does throwing the projectile generate heat? Does it generate recoil? Is there a 'cooldown' that limits how quickly it can repeatedly throw projectiles?

could you, perhaps, use magic to condense ice projectiles out of the humidity in the air so you don't have to lug your ammo supply around?

THAT'D be slick

maybe only your tropical civilizations can get away with that. You wouldn't be able to use a weapon like that in the desert

Failus Maximus

there are 2 limits - it does have recoil, but it's cooldown is limited only by feeding mechanism

Morris The Cat

Is the 500m/s force applied really abruptly, or more gradually? Do we need to worry about barrel length relative to the size of the projectile?

the more rapidly you're accellerating your projectiles, the more limited your material choices are, because you have to worry about shattering

so that'd determine whether your magical weapons look more like modern SMGs, or more like muskets

Failus Maximus

most weapons only accelerate 5-10 cm past the end of the barrel

Morris The Cat

so longer barrel = slower accelleration = less stress on the projectile

assuming that you're always going to hit that 500m/s

Failus Maximus

elite soldiers(such as sharpshooters) might get ones that do so bit further, but it isn't advised

Morris The Cat

16:54

interesting

i'm going to go get some lunch and think about this.

Failus Maximus

mainly because if somehow larger piece of ground ended within the acceleration zone
- all energy for multiple shots is consumed instantly
- the gun propells itself ackwards, pierces through the gun holder and anyone standing behind him

it accelerates all solids within the zone, so more such objects within the zone
1. faster the energy burns
2. harder it kicks back

and if, say if, you suddenly have 10 kg object, all magic energy stored in the gun's magic core is instantly consumed, and recoil is massive

especially if there's energy for shooting 200 small projectiles in the gun

because all that will go into the ground and also into your gun via 3rd newton's law

Morris The Cat

17:22

That's worth defining as well

how big are these cores? Does each core have a certain amount of mass it can throw before it's depleted?

if so, your longer-ranged weapons that throw heavier projectiles are also going to go through their cores more quickly

are your soldiers likely to be carrying spare cores? Can they be swapped out easily and quickly?

or does the gun have to be disassembled to replace it

AndyD273

18:54

@Ranger hmm, k

James

@AndyD273 So that happened. @Ranger Quitter.

AndyD273

Yeah. I wonder if it's the start of a new wave. some people have kinda put it out of their minds, since things have been quiet for a little while, but if SE does something stupid to remind them, then it could snowball

James

I've really done nothing except visit chat since the whole fiasco started.

Failus Maximus

Cores as in a way like engines (and some other kinds of magic cores do work as such) with magic energy tank included.
Magic core used in rifle and pistol weapons is around eyeball sized, and are usually swapped after certain number of shots. The magic engineers made it so that gun can be reloaded with new core in matter of 15-20 seconds. Such core can usually handle around 100-200 rifle shots before it runs out of energy, or 200-500 with pistol calibre. Pistols can't handle much more than rifles, because they have shorter barrels and need to reach much faster accelaration to even reach 400 …

advantage is that because no explosion is happening inside, barrel can be made of wood with inside covered with thin layer of magic reflecting rare metal (silver, copper, gold, or their alloy)

that makes the barrel far lighter than it would be in a regular gun of same length

AndyD273

@James Me too. I think I posted one or two answers, just because they seemed like really fun questions, but otherwise I've been pretty detached. Especially after the humorless creatures of darkness came through here.

Morris The Cat

19:08

creatures of darkness?

James

@MorrisTheCat Some strangers came through chat one day...

Morris The Cat

oh

trolls, basically

?

Gryphon - Reinstate Monica

@MorrisTheCat Andy made a joke a while back, some wandering mods found it offensive, it was deleted.

James

@MorrisTheCat Pretty much.

@Gryphon-ReinstateMonica Also this.

Bellerophon

@AndyD273 I believe the polite term is humour-impaired.

Morris The Cat

19:17

Wandering Mods...

roll for initiative! What's the encounter level? What TREASURE TYPE??!!

Bellerophon

@MorrisTheCat I assume the treasure would be blue diamonds.

Morris The Cat

yellow stars! GREEN CLOVERS!

I love frame challenges

Ask the wrong QUESTION you do, yeSSSSS.

nods in muppetly wisdom

2

AndyD273

@Bellerophon I wasn't trying to be polite, I was trying to dial back the venom.

Also, you have too many u's in there.

Morris The Cat

19:33

That's just your opinion, filthy colonial. =P

Bellerophon

@MorrisTheCat Or is it coulounial?

Gryphon - Reinstate Monica

@AndyD273 We won the most recent war we've fought against you, so we're clearly right.

Mephistopheles

@Gryphon-ReinstateMonica Huh? What was it?

AndyD273

@Gryphon-ReinstateMonica If you won, that means you can claim all the unused u's and take them to your snowy stronghold in the north.

@Mephistopheles A meme. A pretty bland one too.

Mephistopheles

@AndyD273 Did it involve the n-word?

AndyD273

19:42

@Mephistopheles knowyourmeme.com/memes/…

Gryphon - Reinstate Monica

@Mephistopheles War of 1812. You invaded, we pushed you back, took Detroit while heavily outnumbered, looked at Detroit, and then decided you could keep it, so we all went back to our original borders (admittedly somewhat biased summary).

AndyD273

@Gryphon-ReinstateMonica You dodged a bullet there... (as a northern Michigander)

Mephistopheles

@Gryphon-ReinstateMonica "You"?

Gryphon - Reinstate Monica

@Mephistopheles Andy is an American. I'm Canadian.

Mephistopheles

@Gryphon-ReinstateMonica And I'm Hungry

Gryphon - Reinstate Monica

19:45

So "You" refers to the US, and "we" refers to Canada.

AndyD273

And I knew which war you were talking about before you said... yay for not being clueless :)

Mephistopheles

I foun this neat material and wondered if large flying creatures could make use of it:

Resilin

Resilin is an elastomeric protein found in many insects and other arthropods. It provides soft rubber-elasticity to mechanically active organs and tissue; for example, it enables insects of many species to jump or pivot their wings efficiently. Resilin was first discovered by Torkel Weis-Fogh in locust wing-hinges. Resilin is currently the most efficient elastic protein known (Elvin et al., 2005). The elastic efficiency of the resilin isolated from locust tendon has been reported to be 97% (only 3% of stored energy is lost as heat). It does not have any regular structure but its randomly coiled...

Morris The Cat

@AndyD273 is from Michigan, that's at least HALF Canadian.

Minnesota might as well be called South Manitoba

they probably wouldn't even notice.

AndyD273

@MorrisTheCat Eh, my parents were transplants from warmer climes

Gryphon - Reinstate Monica

@MorrisTheCat Hey, you guys were stupid enough to take Detroit back, we're not stupid enough to take responsibility for that mess again.

Mephistopheles

19:49

I'm starting to understand Eren's decision.

Feeds

21:05

We've tested it on 30 different days and it hasn't gotten one wrong yet.

Morris The Cat

21:27

so... .27% yes, is what I'm hearing.

Bellerophon

@MorrisTheCat I'm not sure that's how accuracy works.

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