dvgrn wrote: ↑February 6th, 2023, 8:35 am
It seems possible that this is a solvable problem, or maybe just not a problem at all, but the other question that I'm not sure about yet is how exactly to set things up so that the exact same bit sequence will successfully build things out near the blinker and also near the epicentre. Wouldn't you need a second target object near the epicentre in your
original example pattern, to provide a target to build your fixed-location glider gun along with the DBCA, ECCA and all of the other epicentral stuff?
Eventually your blinker will start out a parsec away or more, so it can't be used to help with making a target at the epicentre. In fact, won't the pattern only start to become a sawtooth when the blinker is hundreds of parsecs away? The contribution of the gun glider cells will get swamped by GPSE ash cells until then.
Here is a revised blueprint which should solve this problem:
Code: Select all
x = 7035, y = 6975, rule = B3/S23
7034bo$7034bo$7034bo112$3o2$12bo$13b2o2$14bobo$16b2o$15b2o$17bo6768$
221bo$221bo$221bo$221bo$219b2o$218bo$218bo15$207b3o32$9bo$9bo$9bo6977b
o$9bo6977b4o$7b2o6978bo3bo$6bo$6bo6982b3o9$7007bo$7007bo$7007bo14$b3o!
The target blinker is now at least a parsec away so that the return gliders won't arrive until after the crash{a}, which only sends northeast gliders which can be blocked somehow. This is important because the epicentre now has stable ash which we can use. While the DBCA will be constructed near the blinker, it will send southwest gliders all the way back to the epicentre to build the ECCA{b}. Then, it will activate the pseudo-BSRD, which will send the bits back to the ECCA{c}. The ECCA will then destroy the DBCA, turning it into an eater and some turners, then construct the Corderfleets, Corderabsorbers (with seeds for the small GPSE predecessors) and the gun.
An alternative idea would be to keep the ECCA near the DBCA, but this means the Corderabsorbers have to be constructed entirely with slow^2 gliders, which is not worth the decrease from not having to build a pseudo-BSRD.
{a}: The first gliders from the GPSEs travel a parsec before becoming binary slow salvo gliders, which travel at least another parsec out to the blinker, than at least a third parsec back, so they have traveled at least 3 parsecs, so the switch engines should have traveled at least 1, meaning they crashed into each other.
{b}: They will hit the ash from the GPSEs and the collision (and possibly the NE gliders from the collision) and turn it into the ECCA.
{c}: This raises the possibility of an optimization where the ECCA is not built with self-destruct circuitry and the pseudo-BSRD deactivates itself after receiving n gliders, reactivating the DBCA which then shoots out gliders that eventually destroy the ECCA. Since we probably won't ever build a Sawtooth 51, this is purely a theoretical exercise.
EDIT: To clarify, the 54-cell version is definitely constructible, while the 51-cell might not be. We would need to synthesize these switch engine predecessors to show that a 51-cell sawtooth exists:
Code: Select all
x = 52, y = 11, rule = B3/S23
2$2bo$3b2o39b4o$43bo$4bobo36bo$6b2o33b2o$5b2o$7bo!
Any sufficiently advanced software is indistinguishable from malice.