Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Wing Commander Saga => Topic started by: Captain Moran on December 18, 2009, 01:18:55 pm
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Ok, recruits. Time to study up.
http://gizmodo.com/5426453/the-physics-of-space-battles
The interesting thing is that WC DOES follow some of his premises regarding ship design. "I conclude that the big ships would have many weapons, pointed in many directions; the small ships would have a few weapons, with the main weapon systems pointed in one direction."
Trouble is his ships would not look nearly as FRAKKING COOL as the ones in WC.
Moran out.
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that took a little while to read but to be hones it is worth it and a very plausible scenario, well thought out a definite read for anyone thinking about a "realistic" mod.
The bit about gyros is useful enough i think i might incorporate it into the little project I'm working on
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Though I might not be involved in WCS...but what exactly does this have to do with the mod?
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Though I might not be involved in WCS...but what exactly does this have to do with the mod?
Ummmm. Well, Wing Commander involves, er, battles in space. I thought some science behind the fiction might be interesting.
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So does Star Trek, and Star Wars, and Babylon 5, and FreeSpace, and Battlestar Galactica, and Stargate: SG-1, the subject sounds more like a General Discussion topic than a Wing Commander topic.
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It belongs into WCS section - simply because it belongs here.
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It's a decent analysis. Makes little mention of two critical components, though: heat and drive systems.
I don't think manned fighters are likely at all.
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For short range patrols a fighter controlled remotely is better no limits on G-force less mass.
But once you start getting a good distance away from the mother ship the time the time it takes
radio signals to go back and forth gives the manned fighter a reaction time bonus. This can already be seen in multi players games were the difference between a 50ms and 200ms ping decides out comes of rounds.
There is also the fact we have been able to jam radio signals since the 60s A manned fighter that losses communication is disadvantaged but can still operate has a single unit. Remote controlled drones how ever become helpless targets.
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In which case I doubt that fighters, period, are likely at all.
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:rolleyes:
Still trying to convert us to your missile boats?
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Not in particular, no, but from an engineering standpoint the consensus seems to be that manned fighters don't make much sense in space.
The big reason that fighters are useful on Earth is because they can go over the horizon very rapidly - they can move in a way that ground or sea-based craft can't. There is no horizon in space, and everything moves the same way.
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Small craft is hard to hit and easy to mask with jamming systems, so if you have good ECM and decent engines, they make sense.
A battleship needs more energy to change it's vector of movement and is a bigger target for manual aiming, while fighter can quickly change speed and direction of it's flight.
Also, consider that the longer the warship is, the more limited is it's turning due to G forces experienced at the farthest point of a ship. A fighter can turn quickly, because it's pilot would be not far from it's center of mass, so G forces would be smaller. GTD Raynor's crew close to forward beam cannon would experience about 10G when turning at 11dps, while fighters can turn much faster (I'm giving you the values for Raynor, because I calculated them only for it). Also, fighter pilot can be in seated position all the time, when warship's crew may need to stand up sometimes (for example to path up damage), which further limits manouverability (not many people can stand when a ship is pulling 4G). Not to mention fighters can enter atmosphere, which extends their usefullness.
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No, actually, we're not really certain that a small ship is harder to hit in space. Especially not when your weapons are big fields of debris, lasers, and missiles.
It's not clear that ECM would work particularly well in space either. We can't make the assumption that stealth works at all up there.
Turning rates aren't that important; this isn't the atmosphere. What matters is acceleration, delta-V, 'smash'. Space fights won't involve turning; they will likely involve ships with massive relative velocities jousting at each other one in (probably mutually destructive) pass.
The most crippling problem is that fighters cannot carry enough fuel to do anything useful on the solar system scale, particularly if you handicap them with the mass, power and acceleration limits imposed by a human pilot.
All of the above carry the caveat 'at least with current technology.'
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Concerning stelth and space combat:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/
especially under "common misconceptions", then look for "stealth"
--> http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html#nostealth
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Yeah, I'm a reasonably big fan of that page. Seems decently well-sourced.
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I already spent days on it. It's great.
btw: Does anyone here know Infinity?
http://www.infinity-universe.com/
A lot of topics similar to this one is discussed in their gameplay forums. I'm totally waiting for that game.
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I'm in general not a big fan of scientists or scientific websites / books / whatever which excell in telling people what is impossible.
Thinking that you can actually use the current knowledge of mankind to predict was it totally impossible to do is just one thing: arrogant as hell. How do these people want to know what is possible in the future. 50 years ago we were happy to have a nuclear reaction working. 100 years ago cutting an atomic core in half was considered totally impossible. (don't nail me down on this one, if anybody had a theory on this already a 100 years ago, I didn't look it up, it's just an example to get the point across)
There is one single rule in any science: Any law we have is only a theory. You consider it to be true if it has a reasonable empiric background and hasn't been proven to be false. And that's the entire issue.. you cannot prove anything to be true in physics. you can only prove it to be false. newton's laws of mechanics, the simple acceleration formula was considered to be true until einstein came along with his theory that refined that appraoch. newton's theorems are still basically true, unless you approach light speed. Who's to say there will never be a refinement of einstein's theories that have a loophole to play a trick somehow. It might be the case that nothing can travel faster than light. But we cannot prove that. We can only state that so far nobody has managed to prove otherwise.
I'm not even saying that it is arrogant to say that we probably won't find a solution in the next 100 years. But to say that something will still be impossible in 5000 years... that's not just arrogant, that's simply incredibly stupid. That is saying just one thing "I already know everything and you scifi guys are idiots".
Well sorry folks. I consider anyone an idiot who thinks he's smart enough to predict what will be possible in a thousand years.
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Well, part of what you said is wrong. You have to distinguish between what is a theory, and what is a law in science. That's quite a big difference.
And it explains your newton-einstein-example quite well.
search this page
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3al.html
for "It's Just A Theory" and read downwards from there on. It sums it up a little. (just two paragraphs)
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I'm in general not a big fan of scientists or scientific websites / books / whatever which excell in telling people what is impossible.
Thinking that you can actually use the current knowledge of mankind to predict was it totally impossible to do is just one thing: arrogant as hell. How do these people want to know what is possible in the future. 50 years ago we were happy to have a nuclear reaction working. 100 years ago cutting an atomic core in half was considered totally impossible. (don't nail me down on this one, if anybody had a theory on this already a 100 years ago, I didn't look it up, it's just an example to get the point across)
There is one single rule in any science: Any law we have is only a theory. You consider it to be true if it has a reasonable empiric background and hasn't been proven to be false. And that's the entire issue.. you cannot prove anything to be true in physics. you can only prove it to be false. newton's laws of mechanics, the simple acceleration formula was considered to be true until einstein came along with his theory that refined that appraoch. newton's theorems are still basically true, unless you approach light speed. Who's to say there will never be a refinement of einstein's theories that have a loophole to play a trick somehow. It might be the case that nothing can travel faster than light. But we cannot prove that. We can only state that so far nobody has managed to prove otherwise.
I'm not even saying that it is arrogant to say that we probably won't find a solution in the next 100 years. But to say that something will still be impossible in 5000 years... that's not just arrogant, that's simply incredibly stupid. That is saying just one thing "I already know everything and you scifi guys are idiots".
Well sorry folks. I consider anyone an idiot who thinks he's smart enough to predict what will be possible in a thousand years.
All of the above carry the caveat 'at least with current technology.'
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*yawns*
Sorry, couldn't resist.
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Yeah, reality can be boring.
But most of the time I find it rather interesting. Especially because there is a lot of things most people don't know.
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Well, part of what you said is wrong. You have to distinguish between what is a theory, and what is a law in science. That's quite a big difference.
Ok, prove to me scientifically that any of these laws is correct. You can pick one. And I mean PROVE. Not provide an empirical study that confirms it, but a proof that it is 100% correct and always will be and that nobody will ever be able to find an exception.
if you can do this, I'll recommend you for the next nobel prize... or better yet, the position of god.
Edit: Oh and.. don't show me anything that has less than 20 pages, as it will most likely not be sufficient to do this, since it has never been done before by anyone so far.
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It's not possible. It is, however, extraordinarily unlikely that anybody will break thermodynamics.
Now for goodness' sake
All of the above carry the caveat 'at least with current technology.'
[/quote]
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Concerning stealth and space combat:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/
especially under "common misconceptions", then look for "stealth"
--> http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html#nostealth
I'm aware that stealth in space is difficult to pull off, but by "ECM", I didn't meant just stealth.
Electronic Counter Measures can include: absorption or deflection of waves used by sensors (main concept of stealth), screening, decoys, noise emitters (they saturate space with various signals that have no meaning and make detection difficult), maybe even interference jamming (emitting EM waves which cancel out waves emitted by ships by destructive interference, this is likely to by used by really advanced aliens). Combining several ECM measures with tactics like hiding close to planets and asteroids would greatly reduce reliability of ship sensors.
You may know that the enemy is there, but pinpointing him may be a problem. You need to have exact coordinates to fire a beam (unless you're slashing and praying for lucky shot) and missiles can be shot down, so bombers may be usefull to bring those missiles close to enemy ships and fighters to defend against bombers.
My entire statement assumed that you may use jamming good enough to keep the enemy from pinpointing you and that both sides have access to it.
An idea that the enemy is "somewhere about 100km from there, roughly in that direction" isn't going to be enough when firing weapons.
Also, tactics may really vary considering the weapons themselves, a laser beam can be reflected, gamma beam is an energy hog, missiles may be shot down, remote controll can be jammed, AI may be just stupid (it it's not, it may be too inteligent and realize it's going to "die")...
In fact, the only way of finding out how future space battles will look would be to take a trip into future (if we will be lucky, even this may not help, as humanity may abandon warfare at all in the future, or, if we are unlucky, become extinct due to weapons we already have).
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We know all that about ECM, we're just saying it's not likely to work because you can simply look and see where a ship is in space. Drives are very, very bright.
Lasers can't be reflected, either. Far too powerful. A mirror will act as armor, increasing burn-through time, but it will not apply immunity.
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Other sensors can be manipulated by ECM, though. Also keep in mind that technology might be able to manipulate visible wavelengths to a degree by that time as well, making jamming systems to most viable means of self defense. Space combat, should we be foolhardy enough to engage therein, will be hellish at best...
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This is a discussion of realistic space combat, though, not possible magitechnology!
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As I said, many depends on technology level, reliability of weapons, reliability of defensive measures, place where fight is taking place and a lot of other things.
Looking is difficult on great distances, just try to find a planet on a night sky. You may use a telescope, but they are fragile. You may also try to close the distance and that's where strikecraft comes in.
This is a discussion of realistic space combat, though, not possible magitechnology!
We are dicussing exactly that: possible technology, advanced enough to be difficult to distinguish from magic, as theories are all that we have in that field.
If you want a space battle done in modern tech, just look up and try to find one. They're impossible, unrealiable, too expensive and serve no purpose today.
Americans intercepted a falling satelite quite recently, but that's all. If a space warfare reaserch is going on and achieved anything, it's classified.
Lasers can't be reflected, either. Far too powerful. A mirror will act as armor, increasing burn-through time, but it will not apply immunity.
Who said anything about completely reflecting them? I was just pointing out possiblities which increase number of variables appearing during a space engagemnet, effective counter to lasers in one of them, but I didn't stated how effective it is. Not all missiles will be shot down either.
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There's a difference between extrapolating using technology we think we could build but haven't yet, and technology we can't yet build. Even cloaking a ship with metamaterials won't get around simple thermodynamics.
Magitech is arbitrary and silly for purposes of this discussion.
And no, looking is actually really easy at long distances. According to some estimates you can, using modern technology, perform a complete sky survey in under 4 hours (a blink of the eye in space combat terms.)
Strikecraft do not 'come in' anywhere. Unmanned missile buses may, though.
Go read the Atomic Rockets page.
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The only law of science we have not been able to disprove is that every action has a equal and opposite reaction.
We are at the same point with FTL has da Vinci was with manned flight.
We have some idea how to go about doing it but we lack the support technology to do it. It is likely that space combat will go threw phases has technology changes.
The first generation of space warfare is in place already with surface to space missals.
And remotely controlled intelligence satellites.
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The only law of science we have not been able to disprove is that every action has a equal and opposite reaction.
Well, no, there are lots of other laws that do not appear to be violated under known circumstances. Conservation of mass/energy, conservation of momentum and angular momentum, so on.
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Strikecraft do not 'come in' anywhere. Unmanned missile buses may, though.
Now, the question is if they will really be unmanned, as AI is still inferior to human in some matters.
A remote controlled strikecraft may also be possible, but as I said, this connection can be jammed.
Also, "Strikecraft" is a catch-all term for fighters and bombers, manned or not. Unmanned missile boats may count as strikecraft, but I'm not going to discuss terminology here.
Whether they will be manned or not is a question separate from physics and closer to informatics and AI developement.
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Actually, no. A manned space fighter has to provide an evironment that a human, if not several, can live in. That means it has to provide radiation shielding, life support (heating/cooling/Air), it is constrained in terms of maneuverability by what the human body can handle, AND it has to provide the pilot(s) with at least a justified hope that they will survive being shot at.
Computer-controlled vehicles may be less flexible in terms of decision-making than vessels with canned monkeys in them, but since they do not have to waste tonnage (which directly relates to reaction mass) on canned-monkey-support-systems, they have a far bigger usable payload. Meaning that a computer-controlled vessel with the same capabilities as the human controlled one can be built smaller, or a vessel of the same size can be more capable.
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Right.
And you may not (I'd say probably don't) particularly need reaction time or good decisionmaking in a long-range space fight. You pick your target from - possibly - AU away and send your killer robots. They spend days or months in transit, the target sees them coming, countermeasures are deployed, and either you kill them or you don't. Evasion is probably impossible depending on how heavy the target's vector vs. the delta-V of your kill vehicles.
Up closer signal lag becomes less of an issue.
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This is a discussion of realistic space combat, though, not possible magitechnology!
:wtf:
I'm serious, actually. I've based that statement off of reading similar articles to the example given below:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090520151438.htm
Suckit.
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This is a discussion of realistic space combat, though, not possible magitechnology!
:wtf:
I'm serious, actually. I've based that statement off of reading similar articles to the example given below:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090520151438.htm
Suckit.
I've read the article myself and I don't need to 'suck' anything. That won't work to make vessels invisible in space.
First off, it covers the visible band; the ship will still be glaringly bright in thermal.
Second, it does nothing to conceal the ship's drive.
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Yes, I came off a little rash.
However, dismissing this entirely is not pertinent. "ECM" (or any other name you devise for a jamming system) is not perfect - you're simply harder to target. "Visible spectrum shielding" would simply be one more way to make a combatant harder to engage. Even if you know the target is in theater and have a general idea of where it is... heck, even if you know where it is, but can't target a key location on the vessel for whatever reason, your combat effectiveness has been effectively dropped in favor of the enemy.
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Maybe, but when you can precisely locate the target in spite of the stealth and when locational damage isn't so much the order of the day as KEW IT IN THE BELLY, I'm not sure it's worth the effort to 'cloak' your ship when all you're doing is possibly eliminating star-transit detection. If even that!
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Keldor, I'm very sorry to say that but you still don't get the point. I really recommend that you read more into the basic stuff for science, because what you asked for is not going to happen and cannot happen either.
So I'll move on to to real discussion here:
Concerning manned flight and Da Vinci:
That's simply not true, from a scientific point of view. It was an engineering problem, not a scientific one. You have to distinguish between that. If it is physically possible that an insect or a bird flies, then it is also possible that a human can fly. Everything beyond that is engineering.
And there are a lot of laws in physics which don't have any exceptions we know of. That's because some things just work in a way that makes it totally impossible that the exact opposite can ever happen. There will never be a material that heats up but can't emit radiation. It can't. It breaks not only one law but a dozen or more. (ok, that might be a bad example, I am not a physicist.... I'll search for a better one.)
Of course theories (not laws) don't explain some things that happen. There is quite a number of effects you can't explain with current theories. But none of the theories or their exceptions violate a law of physics. That's why it is called a law.
And every time a cool new thing in nature is discovered and somebody thinks "wow! It violates a law of physics" it takes only a very short time to realize that it doesn't.
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Let's just say I don't find this discussion interesting enough to stop working on my thesis to read any pseudo scientific websites.
I've studied electronics engineering and computer science and I've worked my way through Air Force Officer school. I think my education is at a high enough level to make up my own mind about science and its possibilities.
So please stop wasting your time trying to convince me of something I'll never accept anyway.
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I don't talk about that particular page but about the fact that your criticism of that page is just based on false assumptions.
And neither is it your business for what I am spending my time, nor does having a degree prevent you from being ignorant towards science.
If you don't want to discuss that topic (which is your right), just don't post, but don't post something wrong and expect others (who want to discuss that topic) to accept it.
btw: Deciding that you refuse to accept something without even wanting to listen to any arguments is not that smart to begin with. I see no kind of scientific background in that.
The only one of the stated reasons of yours that I accept is that you don't have the time to take a look at that at the moment because of your thesis.
(Also good luck with that, it can be quite time consuming. I know that.)
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Let's just say I don't find this discussion interesting enough to stop working on my thesis to read any pseudo scientific websites.
I've studied electronics engineering and computer science and I've worked my way through Air Force Officer school. I think my education is at a high enough level to make up my own mind about science and its possibilities.
So please stop wasting your time trying to convince me of something I'll never accept anyway.
I thought your assertion was that 'we don't know what abilities technology will give us in the future'. I don't think this is in any particular dispute.
Why you felt the need to suggest that the Atomic Rockets page was pseudoscientific when it's filled with aerospace engineers and solid equations is beyond me. Trolling is grounds for monkeying on HLP.
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Why you felt the need to suggest that the Atomic Rockets page was pseudoscientific when it's filled with aerospace engineers and solid equations is beyond me.
Maybe because I consider any scientists that spend their time telling people what CAN'T be done instead of trying to find out how stuff CAN be done speudoscientists in general. I know several people like that and I don't like their take on science. Call it a personal opinion and let's leave it at that.
Trolling is grounds for monkeying on HLP.
First of all, since when is stating an opinion trolling. Second of all, I'm not susceptible to threats either.
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Maybe because I consider any scientists that spend their time telling people what CAN'T be done instead of trying to find out how stuff CAN be done speudoscientists in general. I know several people like that and I don't like their take on science. Call it a personal opinion and let's leave it at that.
I wouldn't consider them pseudosciencists, but rather normal scientists without imagination, afterall, even Einstein's theories weren't accepted at once (and even Einstein himself fell into this trap, he might have been able to discover that the universe is expanding, but rejected that as an absurd. And later, Hubble discovered that Einstein's initial calculations were right and universe is expanding). One quantum physicist once said that "If an old sciencist says that something is possible, he's propably right. If an old sciencist says that something is impossible, he's propably wrong" (or something like that, I read the quote in Polish).
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Why you felt the need to suggest that the Atomic Rockets page was pseudoscientific when it's filled with aerospace engineers and solid equations is beyond me.
Maybe because I consider any scientists that spend their time telling people what CAN'T be done instead of trying to find out how stuff CAN be done speudoscientists in general. I know several people like that and I don't like their take on science. Call it a personal opinion and let's leave it at that.
That's not what these scientists say at all.
Please read threads:
All of the above carry the caveat 'at least with current technology.'
I have never disagreed with you that things now considered impossible may become possible. This discussion, however, concerns our current best guess as to what space warfare will be like.
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I do tend to notice this with both yourself and NGTM-1R, though, Battuta:
You do eventually seem to ease up on other's opinions, but you assert yourself in a very forceful manner which makes a progressive discussion very difficult, especially if the views of the other individual are not in complete alignment with yours. As you staunchly stand by your sentiments (which is not wrong...), you do seem to dismiss that which you do not agree with for quite some time before considering the opposing position.
Please do not take offense to this - it's merely an observation. I'm certain I've demonstrated my share of shortcomings as well.
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Fair enough, I'll try to work on it.
KeldorKatarn: I shouldn't have brought up monkeying. That was an unfair use of mod power, and I apologize.
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KeldorKatarn: I shouldn't have brought up monkeying. That was an unfair use of mod power, and I apologize.
Accepted