Kristopher

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? I've watched it before.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? That's what I tihought.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? Nope, not really that goofy, it's simply a matter of the electrical repulsion of trillions of atoms, IIRC.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? Does the light hit the front of the train car an infinite number of times, or just once?

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? What phrasing should I have used that wouldn't have taken up three more lines and wouldn't have draw a different nitpicky response, that would have summed up that fact that the motion of both the source and the "observer" have to be taken into account for Doppler shift of light or sound, while not obscuring the main point that Doppler shift and Relativity aren't the same phenomenon?

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? Yeah, I get what you're saying, I've gotten that all along. What I've been saying is, how the hell? The light appearing to do something different, I can accept. The light actually, physically doing all three and more? No, that's just goofy. And I don't know how to put it more plainly than that.

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but... Leaded candidate for the first story arc is as follows: First, the background. Through deceit and double-dealing, rogue elements of four factions, each for their own reasons, were lead to create a "synthoid" (artificial person) navigator -- Perfectionists (humans dedicated to the controlled genetic advancement of the species), Sinvat-hoc (alien species who mastered their own genetics to the point that all members of the species are created to serve specialized role), Dewin (alien species who almost all possess at least a minor "touched gift"), and android representatives of the former robot slaves of the Propiet warrior culture. None of the factions understood what the others actually hoped to get out of the experiment. Of course, there was a quadruple-cross (at least), and the synthoid navigator and the ship she was being shipped on disappeared. The player characters come in when they're hired to locate the ship, "all expenses paid", by one of the factions. Of course, they're not going to be told what they're looking for, but instead they'll be fed a story about a kidnapping or something. As they follow leads, they're going to realize that someone has covertly installed a sort of beacon into their ship in such a way that they'll need a "spacedock" and probably a dim-drive engineer, to remove it without causing a lot of damage to the ship's dim-drive (which is what generates the field that allows the ship to enter otherspace and thus make FTL transits). This is going to link them up with the eccentric NPC who will become their ship's mechanic, hopefully. When they finally find the ship they're looking for, it's wrecked and dead in space, having been fired on at exactrly the wrong moment as it made an otherspace transit. The crew is dead and the systems ruined. Luckily, the sythoid navigator is still in hybernation in her chamber, and a few other strange items can be recovered from the ship as well, including some kind of experimental biocomputer mainframe. The synthoid navigator is actually mindlinked into the biocomputer mainframe. Even with data and samples from the Dewin to work with, the Perfectionist and Sinvat-hoc scientists had trouble creating an artificial Navigator, and neither the experimental biocomputer nor the sythoid is capable of functioning as a Navigator alone. As noted, the PCs (and crew if any) don't know any of the truth of this, and as far as they know they've rescued a kidnapped young woman and salvaged some strange technology. And that's when the fun really begins... PS: The PCs are told that the young woman's name is "Anna". On the hybernation chamber, the readout says "Anesidora".

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? So if an electron is neither a wave nor a particle, and that "avoids your question", you're saying that the light neither hits at the same time nor at different times?

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ???

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? I'm not asking about someone moving along with the train. I'm asking about the light.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? An electron is an electron, as a photon is a photon.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? The question I'm asking has nothing to do with limited experience or brain evolution or common sense or intuition or anything of the sort. Does the light, itself, physically hit the ends of the train car at the same time, or not? Pick one. I'm not asking what someone on the platform would see, I'm not asking what someone on the train would see. I'm asking about what the light does.

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but... Music To Establish the Atmosphere - Arcane by Soma EDIT: I didn't realize that was only 30 seconds, I'll see if there's another link somewhere. Try the one at Yahoo Music.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? Fine, fine. I'm not saying anything about the GPS signals or any other experiements. Obviously, there's a lot of confirmation there. But the idea that the light in the train thought experiment can actually, physically strike the ends of the train car both simultaneously and at different times is nonsense.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ???

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? Then the universe wouldn't be objective. You can't have it both ways.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? Which is coincidental, not causal, and not related to the effect being claimed in the "passing train" example.

Re: "Tightening the Curve" on damage Thanks. OK... I don't do odds enough to always recall the correct math, I was waffling back and forth between 6*6, and 6^6, as I was posting that. Good to know. Yeah, 1 in 46656 is rare enough for me.

Re: "Tightening the Curve" on damage There's something to be said for turning killing damage into dice that work like normal damage dice, but still ignore non-resistant defenses. On 6d6, the odds of getting 12 BODY should only be 1 in 36, right?

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but... As part of forgoing the urge to stat up everything, I've decided to play the AI/remote NPC out based purely on the special effect for now. If it becomes necessary to stat it up for some reason, I'll have to come back to it. Meanwhile, with the first session coming up, I only have the two players, as the others were all too busy in the coming months to make the sessions on a regular basis. One is playing a somewhat-noir PI, who is a former member of the space forces military police of his homeworld and has a bioenhanced sense of smell. The other is playing a burned-out former prodigy with a prodigious gift for navigating otherspace, who sees otherspace in mathematical terms from what the player has told me. I'm working on getting them into a story arc and together in the first session. For possible plot seeds so far, I have the following, some of them shamelessly "inspired by" other sources in fiction: A special delivery to the private world or station of an eccentric, wealthy person -- unknown to them, they have a stowaway who is trying to find and kill said person. A job to sneak onto a quarantined planet and recover something, and then get out without being detected, or at least without their ship being IDed. A job to find someone's "missing relative", but their employer is actually someone seeking to do the missing person harm. A job to rescue someone's teenage child from some fringe group, only they're not told the kid went willingly. Trying to recover an artifact that only a highly skilled navigator or other "touched" person can open/access. Hired to do something in the territory of one government that their another government can't be directly linked with. Somehow discovering that one faction of the "robot horde" (former slaves of the now-shattered Propiet "warrior species") is kidnapping Navigators to use as the cores of "otherspace navigation biocomputers" Neither of them has much at all in the way of engineering/advanced technical skills, so I'm hoping to hook them up with a particular NPC along the way, as well, who might be almost more trouble than she's worth. I have to do one more solo character creation session with each of them, but I'm pretty sure the burned-out navigator is going to have a ship of his own. Any ideas or thoughts?

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? BTW, I am sorry about getting worked up and derailing the thread. I'm going to have to do a lot of reading to reconcile that train example with an objective universe, I'm afraid. I am convined that the universe is objective, so everything, IMO, has to work from there.

Re: "Tightening the Curve" on damage I don't see standardizing damage to closer to the average as something that should draw some sort of compensation downside.

Re: "Tightening the Curve" on damage If it's done as normal damage, then the character's non-resistant PD and ED apply. Trying to think of how that will affect things.

Re: "Tightening the Curve" on damage "Lets first damage through, applies last" -- means that at least 1 BODY gets through, and the Def from the talent applies after all other defenses?

Re: "Tightening the Curve" on damage