Overweight spaceship
| Overweight spaceship | |||||||||
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| Pattern type | Miscellaneous | ||||||||
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| Number of cells | 15 | ||||||||
| Bounding box | 8 × 5 | ||||||||
| Discovered by | John Conway | ||||||||
| Year of discovery | 1970 | ||||||||
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An overweight spaceship (or OWSS for short) is a would-be spaceship similar to the lightweight spaceship, middleweight spaceship and heavyweight spaceship, but longer. On its own an overweight spaceship is unstable. While the latter two xWSSes produce belly sparks that would die off, an overweight spaceship produces an egg that does not vanish but interferes with the body.
Naming
As there are an infinite number of overweight spaceships, it becomes neccessary to distinguish between sizes. This is often done by assigning each overweight spaceship a number corresponding to the length of its "line" section in its less dense phase. As such, the smallest overweight spaceship is referred to as the "7WSS".
In this naming system, "4WSS", "5WSS" and "6WSS" would correspond to the lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight spaceships (although using such terminology is never recommended), and "3WSS" to an underweight spaceship (roteightor segment).
The length of a spaceship's belly "spark" can be seen to be this value minus four; a 7WSS's belly "spark" is three cells in length.
As a spaceship component
An overweight spaceship can be escorted by true spaceships to form a flotilla. There are several possibilities for escorting one overweight spaceship via two standard spaceships.
For an OWSS with a top "spark" length over 4, the minimal escort size difference is 4, as shown below. It is also possible to stabilize an OWSS with more OWSSes, which then have to be stabilized by more xWSSes. Some sufficiently large extensions like this can be seen as a stabilisation of a period-4, one-dimensional agar, similar to a greyship (although ultimately lacking the 50% density requirement to be truly classified as one).[1]
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Glider synthesis
Many lengths of overweight spaceship can be constructed by means of glider synthesis.[2] Recent syntheses are collected in the xq4 synthesis listed in Catagolue;[3] a number of older recipes can be found in Mark Niemiec's synthesis database.[4]
In other rules
The non-totalistic rule FattyLife (B3-n4nt5qr6i/S23)[5][6] is specifically tailored to support the overweight spaceship with spark length 3, making it a p8 spaceship (xq8_27deeee6).
References
- ↑ https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&p=141393#p141393
- ↑ Martin Grant (June 5, 2019). Re: Small Spaceship Syntheses (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
- ↑ Adam P. Goucher. "synthesis-costs/xq4 census". Catagolue.
- ↑ Overweight spaceship flotillae at Mark D. Niemiec's Life Page
- ↑ B3-n4nt5qr6i/S23 (FattyLife) (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
- ↑ FattyLife (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
External links
- Overweight spaceship at the Life Lexicon