muzik wrote:Maybe we should aIso label them as reflectorless rotating oscillators, but categorise them by how many times you can successfully loop them?
That seems like a good plan. The short form could be "1x RRO", "2x RRO", ... "8,12x RRO", though I'm not sure how you translate that into words. "Reflectorless rotating oscillator where eight copies or twelve copies can fit in the loop, dividing the period by eight or twelve respectively" seems kind of long, but above 1x the part about getting a lower-period oscillator is important.
For example, this
discovery by drc is definitely an RRO --
Code: Select all
x = 30, y = 26, rule = B3/S23-a4i5i6ci
bo25bo$3o23b3o$25b2o2bo$o25b2obo2$5b3o20bo$4b2ob2o$3bobob2o$3bo3bo$4bo
2bo$4b3o19b3o$26b2o10$13bo$13bobo3bo$10b2obobo3b2o$14b3o3b2o$15bo3b2o!
-- but it's not a 3x RRO, even though three copies can fit in the loop, because the period doesn't get reduced. (Really this is a 4x RRO, but for this example just pretend that four copies don't quite fit.)
Doesn't seem like there will be any need to list all factors in most cases -- "12x RRO" implies "1,2,3,4,6,12x RRO". However, it doesn't necessarily imply "8,12x RRO", because 8x only reduces the period if the full period is 12N for even N. The soldier bug is period 12*46=552, so 8x happens to work.
There might be very weird cases where the copies support each other at some periods but fail catastrophically at other periods. Seems like the hypothetical "support" cases wouldn't actually quite be RROs, though, any more than a quarter of a galaxy is an RRO.