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26

Discussion / Estimating the Plot Power levels of the Touhou cast

« on: February 08, 2009, 09:30:14 PM »

If there's one thing I've learned from watching plot power discussions on Board 8, it's that they actually can be reasonably objective.  While the average RPG character doesn't have much in the way of quantitative plot power, the average, say, Marvel character will usually have a database on how much they can lift, how much they can blow up using their mind, and so forth:



What I'm going to try to do in this topic is get a ballpark estimate for Touhou characters.  The unit of measurement I will be using is Kilograms.  Before anyone objects "but you can't account for speed with kilograms"--on the one hand, not really, but on the other hand strength to a large degree determines speed; to use more comic examples, the Hulk can leap 2 miles in a couple seconds.  Any of those "near lightspeed" characters like the Flash needs insane strength to accelerate from 0 to 1,000,000,000 km/h (easily enough force there to lift up a skyscraper).

So...anyway, on to actual Touhou stuff.  (Spoiler warning I guess)

OFFENCE

Let's start with the outlier from Highly Responsive to Prayers:

(B-route)
(A-route)

This is an explosion that looks like it could, say, blow up the moon pretty easily (about 10^22 kg).  That said, I really don't know what's going on in that scene.  These are two of the bad endings, and my best guess is that it's Reimu saying "what does this button do?" *kaboom* "Bad Ending #1: try to win without continuing so that you don't blow yourself up".  Furthermore, if Reimu could blow up a moon-sized object with relative ease, then the plot of Imperishable Night doesn't make a whole lot of sense (why don't they just blow up the fake moon?)  Moon-sized explosions and creating a fake moon are abilities that seem to be used only outside of combat, at any rate.

So...alright, Master Spark:



Juding by the picture...it's about 12x the height of Marissa (witch hat included).  She's probably like...4 feet tall, 5 feet with the hat.  That makes Spark about 60 feet in diameter (Actually I'll say 50 just because it's a round number).  In manga, Master Spark has been shown to blow through the walls of buildings.  I could definitely see it blowing through multiple walls, or multiple floors if it was aimed vertically.  Okay, so how big of a building could it incinerate?

Hmm...just because I have the numbers handy...the World Trade Center was 208 feet x 208 feet x 1362 feet and 5x10^8 kg.  This is too large in every dimension probably, but if we scaled this down by a factor of 4 in every dimension we'd get 52 x 52 x 340--within reasonable dimensions for Master Spark.  The weight of this smaller skyscraper would be (5x10^8)/4/4/4 kg = 8x10^6 kg.

DEFENCE

Well...canonically pretty much every character in the series has tanked a Master Spark and kept on fighting so that's 8x10^6 kg.  Granted, the characters are also small enough that they don't get hit by the entire energy blast of Master Spark.

Alright, so I looked to Perfect Cherry Blossom, Sakuya A against a character of not particularly special durability (Youmu).  SakA fires out 30 knife waves, roughly 5 times per second, so 150 knives per second.

Youmu has 4 spellcards and 4 openers, which take SakB approximately 20 seconds each to kill (time-slowing accounted for).  This means that Youmu tanks approximately 20,000 Knives moving at...based on in-game I'd estimate 150 km/h (100 mi/h).  The knives aren't generic, either--Sakuya tells us they're made of silver.  So...okay, 150 km/h silver knife, that's enough to kill, say, a 100 kg human.  So... 20,000 knives x 100 kg = 2x10^6 kg.  (Of course, this doesn't kill Youmu or anything; she comes back for another round in stage 6).  Surprisingly within the same order of magnitude as Master Spark.

For another example, Utsuho is pretty content chilling at the center of a nuclear reaction:

(She's in there somewhere).
Now, nuclear weapons vary greatly, but the standard nuclear bomb seems to create a blast of approximately 2x10^7 kg of TNT.  10^7 is a little higher than other numbers we've seen for durability, but on the other hand Utsuho is canonically very durable.




So...those are all the semi-functional examples I could think of at the moment.  A lot of the other stuff is just "whee, magic" which doesn't translate into a clear kg value or anything.  Still, it's surprising how all the ones drawn from in-game fights come out to a very similar order of magnitude.

27

Discussion / Ideal Royal Succession

« on: January 12, 2009, 11:07:43 PM »

So...the British monarchy acts under a system where sons inherit before daughters, and older children inherit before younger children.  This seems highly unlikely to change anytime soon, but it does raise the question of, assuming you have to choose a monarch out of direct descendants based purely on age and gender, what particular algorithm is the ideal choice for the 21st century.

Before I move on, let me first say that this topic is not a discussion on whether or not England should still have a monarchy.  (The answer is yes because it brings in truckloads of tourism money).

Let me also say that I firmly suspect that the question of who is next in line to Elizabeth II is probably completely irrelevant.  She's 82, and in good health, and her mother lived past 100.  By the time Lizzie is 110, presumably scientists will be able to transplant her brain into a robot (probably a little girl robot since we seem to be a lot better at building 3-foot biped robots than 6-foot biped robots), and then Lizzy-2 will reign as Robot Queen of England forever, and all will be right with the world.


So...anyhow, what are the qualities of the best monarchs in England, at least in terms of age and gender?  A quick Google search points out the three candidates for greatest monarchs are...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6936537.stm
Queen Victoria
Gender: female
Age: 18 when she took the throne

King Henry VIII
Gender: male
Age: 17 when he took the throne

Queen Elizabeth
Gender: female
Age: 24 when she took the throne

But...okay, what made a good monarch 500 years ago may not be what makes a good monarch today (notably, Henry VIII would be a bit of a disaster, what with the 8 wives and wanting to change the church of England).  So...what makes a good monarch today?  An interesting question.  Looking at the duties that Elizabeth II performs (beyond just smile and wave), notably she meets and consults with the Prime Minister regularly.  At first she was the student--famously the first Prime Minister she swore in (Sir Winston Churchill) said to her "girl, I'm going to teach you a thing or two about politics," 55 years of experience and consultation later she acts as a voice of wisdom and experience to the current Prime Minister, which actually sounds pretty useful to me.  In other words, an ideal monarch would, much like Victoria, Elizabeth 1, and Henry 8, take the throne at a young age to experience a longer term.

Which raises the first concern about the current succession structure.  In the unfortunate event that Super Robot Elizabeth does not happen, we'll see 80-year-old Charles succeed to the throne; not only would he have a relatively short time to build up the wisdom of the prime ministers, but 80-year-olds learn a lot slower than 18-year-olds so he'd absorb less of it during the same time.  In fact, Elizabeth's youngest son would probably be at least 64 by the time she dies.  Seems to me you should be prepared to look among grandchildren / great grandchildren as well.  So the question becomes: how young do you go?  Say, 2-year-old is obviously too young.  Elizabeth II's father declined to take her on tour with him when she was 13, saying that she was too young for a strenuous month-long tour, and there's a fair bit of merit to that (for the same reason the olympics puts a minimum age on Gymnists--kids with unnatural stress when they're growing can get screwed up).  Okay, but we have Victoria and Henry starting at 18 and 17 respectively; let's see...legal age to drive a car in England is 17; sure I guess--if you can drive a car you can rule a country.  Okay, so how about the youngest direct descendant over the age of 17.

Next we come to gender.  Now, arguably England's best monarchs have been queens (Henry VIII made a lot of changes, but that's not really what we're looking for in the modern day).  Now, looking into why, among other things both Elizabeth and Victoria never married, keeping themselves open as bargaining chips; this is hardly relevant anymore.  On the more relevant end, I've also heard the argument that the British were historically more willing to defend the honour of the queen, die for the queen, etc, which...is kinda relevant to the modern pure-figurehead role, actually.  In practical considerations, going back to the age discussion, women stop growing earlier, and tend to live longer.  In terms of symbolism, perhaps I'm cynical, but I suspect the elected prime minister will more often than not be male, so having a female symbol of power too is a nice balance.  Statistically, teenage girls are less likely to commit murder than teenage boys, so the risk of "I just turned 17 and need the current monarch to die now" scenarios is somewhat lessened.

That said, while a lot of little things seem to be stacked towards females here, there is an argument for non-discrimination just because the monarch you get will be younger on-average if you don't discriminate.  Which...well, let's run some statistics on the current royal family:
1952-1976 (0 years difference; same heir)
1977-1980 (10 years difference: Anne vs Andrew)
1981-1998 (14 years difference: Anne vs Edward)
1999-2000 (32 years difference: Anne vs William)
2001-2004 (34 years difference: Anne vs Harry)
2005-2023 (0 years difference; same heir)
2023-?? (4 years difference; Severn vs Louise)
Alternatively if the genders were reversed it would be mostly a 0-2 year gap until 2005 (4 year gap), then 2007 (6 year gap) then 2020 (19 year gap).  Hmm...yeah, really not liking these 20-year-gaps; I guess fairness and equality win over sexism; sunshine and rainbows for everyone!


So...my proposal:
The youngest direct descendant over the age of 17.

28

General Chat / IMPORTANT UPDATE: IRC Room

« on: December 22, 2007, 04:42:28 PM »

For those who don't know (or those who do but are setting up a new computer) we have an IRC room which typically has about 30 people in at any one time.

Server: irc.lunarnet.org
Room: #rpgdl

If you're looking for your own IRC client, check into mIRC. You can AIM Halbarad if you need help setting it up (I use Gaim/Pidgin myself, which is a more general chat program not as taylored to IRC).

We're back to sharing a server with Soulriders, so you should be able to use their Java client if necessary - or you can use other public clients, such as mibbit.com.