powerplant building idea

SinbadEV · Post by **SinbadEV** » 10 Sep 2006, 20:31

I remember seeing someone online getting it to work... if was only hot enough to start fires... which owuld be hot enough to light sales and such

... now I need to find the link.

edit: found it... http://www.solardeathray.com/ is this site a fake?

Erom · Post by **Erom** » 10 Sep 2006, 20:48

A friend of mine (also MIT connected) once used a giant frenel lense to burn stuff into lawns. It was hot enough to cook the grass to a nice brown, but it took ages to actually set it on fire. It would be nearly impossible to set something thin like a sail that had fluid cooling on both sides from the wind on fire.

SinbadEV · Post by **SinbadEV** » 10 Sep 2006, 21:02

TANGENT:

I had this idea for a real would invention, basically we set up a grid of fiber-optic repeaters that would take sunlight from one side of the world and send it to the other side of the world, after the enormouse inicial costs to set it up, you could have sunligh-lighting available everywhere on the planet at once.

KDR_11k · Post by **KDR_11k** » 10 Sep 2006, 21:29

Repeaters read the incoming signal and send their own, I don't think that'd work.

SinbadEV · Post by **SinbadEV** » 10 Sep 2006, 21:30

Well... repeaters isn't the word I'm looking for... but I think your right it wouldn't work...

Egarwaen · Post by **Egarwaen** » 10 Sep 2006, 21:35

esteroth12 wrote:in the retest, people were challenged to get it to work... and some people from MIT almost got it, it just burned it too slowly to be a feasable weapon

The MIT Test.

It was, in fact, viable, but was heavily dependent on weather conditions. I think Boston is slightly farther north than Greece, so Archimedes would have had stronger sunlight. Also note that Archimedes did not actually have to set the ships on fire. "Serious smoke" from no obvious source would probably have been enough to panic the sailors. Still, within ten minutes of good sunlight, five people working with about a hundred mirrors managed to create an open flame. Assuming Archimedes had a few dozen Greek troops at his disposal to move mirrors around and an entire harbour to work with, he'd easily have been able to obtain similar results.

They also ran a test with the Mythbusters in which they obtained similar results.

SinbadEV · Post by **SinbadEV** » 10 Sep 2006, 21:50

Honestly the most valuable effect here would be to entirely blind everyone on the ships... that plus smoke, plus, if the suns right, proper open flame... especially if you get lucky and hit a keg of lamp oil or something...

Egarwaen · Post by **Egarwaen** » 10 Sep 2006, 22:14

Or one of the very flammable projectiles used to attack other ships and set them on fire...

esteroth12 · Post by **esteroth12** » 10 Sep 2006, 22:26

or you could shoot an arrow with a burning rag doused in oil on it... :\

Egarwaen · Post by **Egarwaen** » 10 Sep 2006, 23:50

esteroth12 wrote:or you could shoot an arrow with a burning rag doused in oil on it... :\

Ah, but everyone used that. Not everyone had an Archimedes who could make your ships smoke and set them on fire with light.

esteroth12 · Post by **esteroth12** » 10 Sep 2006, 23:51

um... yes...

now, to de-derail this thread...

maybe you could hack an aquatic structure to be built on land... then you could use the tide strength, too

j5mello · Post by **j5mello** » 11 Sep 2006, 04:11

i if u put tidalgenerator=1 into the fbi of a unit it will make the map specified amount of energy whether or not its in the water

esteroth12 · Post by **esteroth12** » 11 Sep 2006, 04:14

then you lied earlier!

but cool, no hacks needed...

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 11 Sep 2006, 04:49

What if you developed a unit that took the wind energy production value and multipled it by the tidal to find the true energy production and simulate microwave transmitted energy?

Targon · Post by **Targon** » 11 Sep 2006, 17:54

Is it possible to have a unit's DPS dependant on windspeed or tidal strength?

esteroth12 · Post by **esteroth12** » 12 Sep 2006, 01:21

you can if you can get the windspeed/tidal strength, and through script speed up/lessen the rate of fire... but I dunno if it is possible to call the windspeed/tidalstrength directly

Snipawolf · Post by **Snipawolf** » 12 Sep 2006, 01:53

Hmmm... Sounds interesting.. The battlefield can aid or harm one side...

I like that idea, a lot!

j5mello · Post by **j5mello** » 12 Sep 2006, 02:51

from what smoth said:
tidal cannot be pulled in as its just a fbi tag and doesn't interact with the script at all.

Wind speed can handled in the script and as such u can fiddle with that though don't ask me how

Caydr · Post by **Caydr** » 12 Sep 2006, 04:06

Wind output is controlled by a multiplier in the unit file, although I'm not sure if Spring uses this sytem or just checks for the wind multiplier tag and gives the default amount of energy.

KDR_11k · Post by **KDR_11k** » 12 Sep 2006, 08:33

Apropos script interaction, how does a script know the wind strength and the metal it's extracting? Or is that unknown under Spring and you just use random turn rates?

Spring RTS Engine

powerplant building idea