(10,1)c/88 pi reaction! Possible new macro-spaceship speed?

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ihatecorderships
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(10,1)c/88 pi reaction! Possible new macro-spaceship speed?

Post by ihatecorderships » April 23rd, 2021, 6:10 pm

Sorry for making a new thread but just...
Wow.

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 x = 15, y = 26, rule = B3/S23
3b2o5b2o$3b2o5b2o14$6b3o$6bobo$6bobo7$2o11b2o$2o11b2o! 
The pi duplicates itself (10,-1) and (-10,-1) in 88 generations
I was thinking we could use some rakes to create more blocks for the pi to counting climbing. We could also delete the other pi so it doesn't get out of hand.
Might be new macro-spaceship speed?
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Re: (10,1)c/88 pi reaction! Possible new macro-spaceship speed?

Post by bubblegum » April 23rd, 2021, 6:21 pm

No. This will not work. For a macro-spaceship construction via climber, you need a reaction that puts out at least what it takes in, like the (23,5)c/79 Herschel climber in the waterbear. Yours eats four blocks and duplicates one pi. This may be plausible in itself (long shot), but if you suggest to just delete one pi to make room, no.

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Re: (10,1)c/88 pi reaction! Possible new macro-spaceship speed?

Post by dvgrn » April 23rd, 2021, 6:25 pm

ihatecorderships wrote:
April 23rd, 2021, 6:10 pm
Might be new macro-spaceship speed?
To work as a climber/caterpillar reaction, you really need a reburnable trail of objects, and preferably an optional signal output of some kind with every cycle of the climbing reaction.

Otherwise your candidate spaceship is just going to end up using up lots of objects -- like the blocks in your example -- with no workable way to get them replaced.

If you try starting with a common active reaction like a pi, century, glider, Herschel, etc. in the Seeds of Destruction Game, you'll be able to recognize its "reaction envelope" in the SoD display. You can experiment with adding sacrificial objects around the edges, and very quickly you can usually come up with something that re-creates that same reaction envelope. But it's very very rare that you happen to discover something that also re-creates the object that you sacrificed... which is why people don't succeed in building caterpillar-type macro-spaceships very often.
ihatecorderships wrote:
April 23rd, 2021, 6:10 pm
I was thinking we could use some rakes to create more blocks for the pi to counting climbing. We could also delete the other pi so it doesn't get out of hand.
All you need for those two tasks is a rake that travels at (10,1)c/88 -- which is not an easy thing to build, without somehow making use of the same reaction that you posted. But that reaction doesn't create output gliders, and even if it did, there would be a lot of work needed to figure out how to design an over-unity mechanism that could reflect enough output gliders back to build more blocks. The fact that this is very difficult is more or less why macro-spaceships are so impressively "macro".

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Re: (10,1)c/88 pi reaction! Possible new macro-spaceship speed?

Post by MathAndCode » April 23rd, 2021, 7:44 pm

Frankly, I don't think that this reaction is very impressive. Pi sequences are common regardless of whether or not the junk that made them included a pi sequence, and the fact that there are two sequences is not impressive because the reaction started symmetric.
Also, I don't think that this reaction deserves its own thread, but if a thread is made for it, it should be in the Patterns forum, not the General Discussion forum.
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