Sathar Math

jedion357's picture
jedion357
January 18, 2012 - 8:57am
TerlObar wrote:


And Sathar "clips" have the equivalent of 16 SEU.  The sathar use a base 8 (octal) numbering system (since they have 8 digits) and the clip holds 2 eights (written as 20 in their system) SEU.  The basic rifles of the SWI era can be set to either 1, 2 or 4 SEU giving four to sixteen shots per clip.  Typically, they are set to 2 SEU per shot for eight shots per clip (Shoot for 4 rounds, reload for 1).  They also have a power pack that holds 64 SEU (8 eights or "100" in octal).  It weighs 8 kg if you using the standard powerpack weights or 3 kg if you use a lighter weight system where the beltpack weighs 2 and the backpack 4. 


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I like the idea of octal math for the worms- its alien and fits them.

As I understand it Octal would be:

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 or 10, 11,12,13,14,15,16 or 20, and etc.

I think I would prefer to use 8 instead of 10 and 16 instead of 20 to lesson confussion.
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!
Comments:

TerlObar's picture
TerlObar
January 18, 2012 - 10:06am
Actually it would be 0-7, 10-17, 20-27, etc.

Typically octal numbers are represented as 0nnn or 0onnn (They are used in computer science a little bit) where nnn is the octal value.  The zero or 'zero-oh' is to denote them as octal instead of normal decimal or hex (which is prefixed with 0x).

So 16 would be write as 020 or 0o20.

However, I agree, we should just use decimal numbers to present statistics and just remember that everything is based on a base 8 system.
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iggy's picture
iggy
January 18, 2012 - 10:12pm
Yes, the core four races would commonly just say that a Sathar clip holds 16 SEU not 020 or octal 20.  Only Sathar sociologists and odd computer scientists would try to speak to others in octal.  The rest of the people would just convert it to decimal and speak that to each other.
-iggy