Re: spoon-discuss: Re: spoon-business: Winning v2.0

[Wonko <dplepage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quoth Glotmorf,

> On 5/27/02 at 10:07 PM Wonko wrote:
> 
>>> I see a couple problems with your master plan.  The first one is here: by
>>> dropping your Entropy buoyancy, you instantly raised your Entropy to 41.
>> That
>>> makes the rest of this message illegal, since all of the sentences that
>> follow
>>> this one contain words longer than one syllable. (There was a reason why
>> I
>>> broke my dimship actions into three messages.)
>> 
>> No, I can't send msgs when my Entropy is high. At the time I sent the msg,
>> my Entropy was low, so it was legal. The actions didn't take effect until
>> they reached the forum, by which time the msg had already been posted.
> 
> Well, if we want to split hairs, the characters that contained the first
> action hit the forum before the rest of the characters did; therefore, the
> action took effect before the rest of the message reached the forum.
> 
> If we REALLY want to split hairs, r440 doesn't talk about whether you can send
> messages; it says "all eir messages posted to the public forum".  God help us
> if that could be thought to include messages that had already been
> posted...but if it did, that would include the message that causes your
> Entropy to be too high.
> 
>>>> [[
>>>> Here's what I believe will happen:
>>>> 
>>>> At the end of the nweek, thanks to my Ships, Global Entropy hits 500.
>>> 
>>> The second problem is here, and it comes from Rule 493:
>>> 
>>> "A DimShip is capable of carrying a Player through DimSpace by taking on
>>> virtual dimensional values: Buoyancy (positive virtual value) and Ballast
>>> (negative virtual value)."
>>> 
>>> Note the singular, and the use of the word "carrying".  Without using
>> physics
>>> that make my head hurt, I don't see any way that multiple DimShips can
>> carry
>>> you at the same time.  Therefore, even though you have five dimships
>> with 100
>>> entropy buoyancy each, it is my opinion that they don't give you more
>> than 100
>>> entropy buoyancy at any given time.
>> 
>> The singular implies that that's what a dimship does. With multiple
>> Dimships, each one fulfills its function. You're making the mistake of
>> forcing your own ideas of what should be onto what is. You speak of using
>> 'physics that make my head hurt' as the only way Multiple DimShips could be
>> employed, but there is no such thing as 'physics' in Nomic.
>> 
>> If you must project some semblance of real-world physics upon them, think
>> of
>> them as little flying machines tied to me with strings. A dozen of them
>> could then pick something up and pull it twelve times as far as any one of
>> them could alone.
>> 
>> Although even that's not accurate, as there's no connection between
>> DimShips
>> and any real-world analogy.
> 
> Let me rephrase.  R493 talks about a DimShip carrying a Player.  It doesn't
> talk about carrying a DimShip that's carrying a Player, so presumably DimShips
> can't be nested.
> 
> The rule talks about a Player displacing emself from eir current DimSpace
> location.  Which means if e employs a DimShip, e is displacing emself from
> where e actually is.  If e then employs a second DimShip, e is displacing
> emself from where e actually is.  This means displacement isn't cumulative in
> the sense that two DimShips displace one twice as far in a dimension as a
> single one does.  It may, however, mean two DimShips allow one to be displaced
> by as much as 100 in two dimensions rather than one.  But that doesn't give
> you an Entropy of 542.
> 
> The "little flying machines with strings" picture is awfully pretty, but it
> doesn't mesh with the rule, since the rule says that a Player does not travel
> to a specific location in DimSpace; therefore, it's not a question of a Player
> being taken so far, and then so much farther, because the Player doesn't go
> anywhere.  Even if the little machines could carry the Player a distance all
> at once, each of the machines is limited in how far it could take the Player
> from eir original location, so all of them together are simply limited
> together.

By the rules:

"If a player owns a DimShip and has launched it, then rules that check eir
dimension values will check the values of eir virtual dimensions."

I have 500 virtual points of Entropy. Thus, my virtual entropy is 500.
Therefore, any rule checking my Entropy will check my virtual entropy, and
be given 500.

Perhaps I'm also being displaced from my location, but that's beside the
point. The point is that anything looking at me sees my virtual Entropy -
500.

-- 
Wonko