[Spoilers] 2 Firefight Errors

[Fifth of Daybreak]

So I put in a data point at about the northernmost point, then went ten miles away, and filled in what the approximate circle would look like with her possible range. The southwestern portion of the island is cut off, so the most distant point attainable still in the approximate range would be in the southeastern most tip of the island as it stands. The circle tool wasn't as precise, so it's not all to scale, but the line showing the diameter is pretty close to scale. 

Peter, I'll do another mock up showing you the new ranges for it in kms, and add a few more data points, so you can take a look. That should be about perfect for a fix.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Fifth of Daybreak

[RShara]

Fifth of Daybreak--So anything in the SE, unless it's off the island, doesn't seem to be very useful?  SW, and NE are the two directions that are most useful.

 

Peter, yeah 5 km would work, but then you'd have to change the line where they say

 

 

“I’ve considered this before,” Exel said, thoughtful. “A five-mile radius means she could be almost anywhere in Babilar and still have influence here. Her base could be over in old New Jersey, even.”
“Yes,” Tia said, “but each time she appears, she narrows that down for us. Since she can only make projections five miles away from wherever her base is, each time she does appear, we learn more about where she might be.”

 

 

Changing southeastern to northeastern seems the simplest solution.

Edited January 16, 2015 by RShara

[Fifth of Daybreak]

Fifth of Daybreak--So anything in the SE, unless it's off the island, doesn't seem to be useful?  SW, and NE are the two directions that are most useful.

 

Peter, yeah 5 km would work, but then you'd have to change the line where they say

 

Any sighting outside the red circle would completely contradict their supposed knowledge of Regalia's range, and cause them to scrap the whole plan. The SE is the farthest portion of the island away from the sighting in the north I made without leaving the range she would have based on that sighting. Northeast would be useful, but once you used that, due to the SW NE tilt of the island, when dividing the island with a circle, you'll always have the SE the southernmost portion left. 

 

 

Edit: Here's what some data points would look like closer to the center of the city where David was when confronted in Central Park using the 5km range.

 

 

Edited January 16, 2015 by Fifth of Daybreak

[RShara]

Any sighting outside the red circle would completely contradict their supposed knowledge of Regalia's range, and cause them to scrap the whole plan. The SE is the farthest portion of the island away from the sighting in the north I made without leaving the range she would have based on that sighting. Northeast would be useful, but once you used that, due to the SW NE tilt of the island, when dividing the island with a circle, you'll always have the SE the southernmost portion left. 

I'm sorry, I guess I'm confused.  Even looking at your drawing, the only part of the island outside of the red circle is to the SW.  If, as Voidus suggested, they use the far NE and far SW, they should be able to pinpoint her location fairly well.  Data points in the SE wouldn't be very useful if they already have them in the NE and SW

 

 

Blue is the NE and SW that I'm talking about.  Orange is in the most SE portion of the city.

[Fifth of Daybreak]

And in that scenario, you are correct. What I'm saying is that we can both come up with as many scenarios that would support each theory, because it's not wrong, it all depends on the data you gather. If they were able to get a data point in the most northern portion of the island first, then the southwest wouldn't be a part, and southeast would gather you the most data. We can't say that their assumption is wrong because we don't know the data set they are working with, and it could be more similar to one I've proposed than yours. The only reason SE would be a wrong way to go is if there were no possible ways to have that area as the last place to explore. I can draw up a diagram that uses more points and would demonstrate that, because it is possible, and therefore, they cannot be wrong without us seeing their data. 

[RShara]

Ah, I see what you're saying.  It could work, but I think it'd leave too much area to search through.  This is with data points as far north as possible, then to the SE

[Fifth of Daybreak]

Your northern point is about 3 miles south of where Manhattan extends to though. If the point where more northern to begin with, it would work better, and not be as broad. There are too many variables we don't know that could justify the statement. I still think it can work as printed. 

 

Edit: In fact, if the went due east from Fort Lee, the very first sighting of Regalia is north of your norther point. 

Edited January 16, 2015 by Fifth of Daybreak

[RShara]

According to googlemaps, Manhattan goes up to Marble Hill, which is well within the circle.

 

Edit:  My brain just stopped working...lol.  Too much to do.

Edited January 16, 2015 by RShara

[Fifth of Daybreak]

According to googlemaps, Manhattan goes up to Marble Hill, which is well within the circle.

 

I'm not sure what you're alleging. I think some of the confusion is on my part. My very first diagram shows a data point on marble hill, with the ten mile diameter going south. I then added the circle to show an approximation of the curvature of the circle that represents any place on the map ten miles away, and beyond her range if she was sighted in Marble Hill. I should have deleted the lines in the northern portion of the map, as they aren't relevant. If that was one of the data points they had to work with, a sighting at Marble Hill, then that would only leave  the area inside the circle in my first diagram, cutting off the SW portion of the city.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Fifth of Daybreak

[PeterAhlstrom]

Changing southeastern to northeastern seems the simplest solution.

No, because a lot of the action takes place between Turtle Bay (a real place) and the southeastern section as David is trying to get there. I can't move everything way up to the other end of the island.

 

If it helps, you can also pretend that Manhattan runs straight north-south instead of at an angle. I think they're essentially using "uptown" as north and "downtown" as south.

Edited January 16, 2015 by PeterAhlstrom

[Fifth of Daybreak]

I still think everything is accounted for. They mention it covers a good deal of Babilar and some in New Jersey, and it would be difficult to accomplish. It is possible to get it figured out using the range selected. Anything else is explained by data points Exel was able to dig up from the population.

[Galavantes]

Yes he´s been very bad but still in a position where he could recover, probably. He certainly wouldn´t have started to suddenly murder other Reckoners without it.

 

I really hope Prof is redeemed. The book alludes to two separate possibilities:

 

A - Exploiting Prof's weakness and capturing him, keeping his weakness in effect long enough that the corruption fades away. This was alluded to by David talking about doing exactly this to other Epics. The problem I see with it is that how do you know if the corruption is gone as opposed to an Epic pretending to be better just to be let go? Then murder-fest.

B - Prof himself spoke about having to put down a friend who has been corrupted like putting down a rabid dog. There is symmetry in Prof himself having to be put down. I would be sad, but it would make for an extremely compelling ending. 

[Observer]

Would narrowing Regalia's radius and then relying on subtleties in the landscape to make triangulation effective work as the easiest possible fix? I'll be honest and say that I live almost entirely in my head and have a poor concept of space, so I don't know how effective that would be. Still, inexpensive and small fixes seem like they'd be best, as opposed to large overhauls.

[vineyarddawg]

Peter already pointed this out, mostly, but for the sake of thoroughness, I'll say what I was thinking, too.  You can't really have data points in the north, because almost all of the action in Babylar takes place in the middle and southern part of the island (and in the bunker, which is way out to the east on Long Island). When David goes out to Central Park and all the way up to Harlem (the north end of the park) I got the distinct impression that this was possibly the northernmost data point the Reckoners had gotten so far.  I might be mistaken in my impression, but that's the conclusion I drew from David's implication that he thought it would be a useful data point.

 

To be honest, I'm not sure that there's a super-easy solution, other than just reducing Regalia's suspected range to something like 3 or 4 km.

[curi]

regarding the plan where you get 2 datapoints far apart that make circles that barely overlap: you can design it like that if you know where her base is, but before you know the base location you can't know what 2 perfect spots to get data points in.

as a process of discovery of base location, what should happen is is you get some not-great data points somewhere which narrow it down some, then you try to get more data points at the right distance (in any direction, tho perhaps limited by where the city is) to narrow down some of the remaining area.

so at first they want any data (preferably towards the edges though, datapoints in the middle still probably not really gonna help due to her large range relative to manhattan size), and then once they get some decent sense of the base location they need pretty specific data at the right distance so a circle drawn around the new data point will cut into a portion of the possible base locations area.

the leeway on the how wide an area provides useful datapoints is basically the same size as the current leeway on where she could be. if u have her narrows down to a 500 meter diameter, then the useful data points will be approximately in a circle around that, 5 miles away, and that circle will have 500 meter thickness (tho if ur right on the edge of the useful data points, u'll only get a small gain, like only removing 1 meter from her possible base locations. so from a practical perspective, the width of the circle around the possible base locations denoting useful places to get a data point is even narrower than the area you already narrowed her base down to).

i think this perspective is a bit different than starting with knowing where her base is, then figuring out a minimal set of datapoints that would perfectly pinpoint it. part of the problem is you don't know which datapoints will be useful until you know roughly where her base is. the more accurately you know where her base is, then the more accurately you can know what datapoints you need to pinpoint it more (and the fewer places in the city are useful anymore).

regarding a fix for the book without moving where the action is: just saying south instead of southeast would help i think. and making it sound like they want one datapoint in the south in a key location (or arc of locations with a thickness), rather than just needing data from the south in a vague general way. and lowering regalia's range could help too.

 

You can't really have data points in the north, because almost all of the action in Babylar takes place in the middle and southern part of the island (and in the bunker, which is way out to the east on Long Island).

i don't really agree with this because i think some of their data comes from before the novel starts. they would have data points from where regalia had been seen in the last year, say, while some reckoners were monitoring the city. and they could ask people who lived there where regalia had been seen. older data or data from non-reckoners is going to be a bit less reliable (maybe she moved at some point, maybe someone misremembered the exact location, maybe someone was making up a story), but i figured in the book they were using some data like this, not just relying only on fresh sightings during the story.

 

EDIT

 

 

(click the picture to expand) ok i drew another picture but i suck at art so bear with me. not perfectly to scale, etc. red is where her base could be (realistically you won't narrow down to exact circle which makes things a bit more complicated but the concepts are similar). green band is where you can get useful data points to narrow down further (the more in the center of the green band the better, the edges aren't as good). orange is very loosely manhattan (it's more than 10 miles long so this does fit). if it was perfectly to scale, the green band width would match the red circle width (diameter). then the black shows an example datapoint within the green band (useful, though in this case not on land) and then the circle around it (about the right scale relative to the green circle size, not 100% perfect but pretty close).

 

i wanted to get across really clearly the green band thing. any datapoint that's inside of the green band (like in the white area inside) is too close. the circle around it would include the entire red area, so you wouldn't learn anything. any datapoint outside the green band (the white beyond the band) would be too far, the circle you draw around it wouldn't overlap the red at all. the green band is where you can get a datapoint, then draw a circle around it for where regalia could be located to appear there, and have it overlap part of the red (so you could narrow down to only that part of the red. or rule out that part of the red if your datapoint was she didn't appear and you think she can't appear there).

 

note some parts of manhattan are too far south in this case (it depends where her base actually is specifically, if her base was further south you could have the entire southern green in water). not in the green band. not useful. you don't just want the furthest south possible. note also, the green band shrinks every time you narrow down her base location. it starts out really big and gets smaller with every new useful data point. so there's a kind of discovery process over time, you don't wanna think about it as just jumping to the end where only 2 datapoints matter. earlier datapoints even if they get obsoleted could have been useful along the way.

 

EDIT 2:

 

i wanted to also say, this is not triangulation, don't think of it like triangulation.

 

triangulation is (wikipedia) "In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by measuring angles to it from known points at either end of a fixed baseline, rather than measuring distances to the point directly (trilateration)."

 

that's rather different. like it has to do with angles between stuff, and triangles. unless you're a math guy who knows a lot about triangulation, i'd suggest just forgetting about triangulation and leaving it out of the conversation.

 

also the goal here is NOT to get data on all sides of regalia and kinda surround her with data points. it's about having this green band and getting a data point in it which then narrows the green band and the possible base locations, and then getting another data point in the new thinner green band, and repeat. (note once you have just one single data point, it gets you a very big red circle and a very thick green band, this is basically how it works from the very start after you have one data point then you can do it like this. though at that point with only one data point, the red and green will actually overlap)

Edited January 17, 2015 by curi

[Fifth of Daybreak]

Peter already pointed this out, mostly, but for the sake of thoroughness, I'll say what I was thinking, too. You can't really have data points in the north, because almost all of the action in Babylar takes place in the middle and southern part of the island.

They head to Babilar from Fort Lee, and we're not quite sure whether the fight with Obliteration leads them north or south. It's possible they followed him north, which would make their very first data point when Regalia confronts them in the very Northwest on the way back to New Jersey. That leaves the SE as the furthest area away from the first data point. Here's a mockup of what that would look like:

Edited January 18, 2015 by Fifth of Daybreak