Sorry Pam, I got thrown off, I didn't know we'd suffered the wider system failures yet.  Noticing them was going to come up later into the afternoon upon an attempt to return.  Maybe split your post and save the second half for later?

I understand the time line is a bit confused, so to clarify:

1) Zombie rain
2) Leaving port, gone fishing,
3) Chat chat chat
4) In the evening the engine breaks.

Radio interference starts in the morning, but it's a general problem, not a specific issue with John's equipment. Some say it's sunspots, others respond they are talking out of their donkeys, nobody knows for sure.

Heh, almost wrote nobody nose there, which is more or less correct - for sure it's nobody's nose - but doesn't make any sense :P

Makes as much sense as talking out of their donkeys..

Well, it was either donkey or a synonym thereof :P

BTW, the chinook engine didn't really register when I read it... Mostly because I didn't quite remember what a chinook engine really is.

For those who are not versed in physics, a chinook engine is a power plant that can provide heat and electricity for a small village.

I'm not kidding: those things range in power from 1.6MW to over 3MW.

The average European house uses at most 3kW, so even accounting for a 20% efficiency in power conversion (1.6MW/5 = 320kW of electric power) you can hook 100 houses to the weakest chinook engine, and still have power to spare.

So, when I read the specifications, I tried to imagine the effect one of those things would have when mounted on a boat that was designed to handle maybe, and I said *maybe*, one tenth that power.

Let me tell you, it wasn't a pretty picture.

Now, I am willing to consider, for the sake of discussion, that John is (or knows) an engineering genius, who was able to constrain this 2MW aircraft beast so that it behaves exactly, but exactly, like a 200kW marine engine - because if it doesn't, it will probably kill everyone on board.

The question is: why? Why go through all that trouble, when there are so many disadvantages and no benefit to speak of?

The engine is expensive to buy and hard to maintain, its spare parts are difficult to find, its tolerances are so small that adapting something else to work as a spare part is basically impossible, and last but not least, it guzzles so much aircraft fuel that its range would be significantly smaller than that of a plain, boring marine engine, not to mention harder to refuel. And the extra power cannot be used anyway, since it would tear the boat apart!

It seems to be a near-perfect example of "awesome but impractical"...

They would also be very loud. Helo crews usually wear ear protection and speak to each other over headsets. Starting those engines up at the dock would attract a lot of attention and people at the base are going to want to know where they came from.

Super-powered engines on a boat sound good in theory, but don't work as well in practice. Putting too big of an engine on a boat is just going to make it stern heavy, and your speed is going to be limited by your hull. If you exceed the hull speed too much, you're just going to get sucked under the waves.

> They would also be very loud.

Scaring away all the fish in a 50-mile radius...

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw...wesomeButImpractical

It can probably be done - easiest way by hooking it up to an alternator or a dynamo and using the resulting electricity to power a large electric motor - but again... Why?
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:16, Mon 20 Aug 2012.

There's more than a pluthera of counterarguments and corrections that could be made, but it's really not important or worth the time and consideration to pseudoscience-engineer up a unique equipment point that was meant for nothing but content flare.  Boats of these sort typically use massive engines in the first place, the size of small cars (Not car engines, the size of an actual car).  Basically the premise of the leftover scrap engine being used was based on the idea of how many non-propeller based watercraft operate with jet force.  If we swap engines back to the original that the boat would've had, we're not going to have any narrative technical delays with mobility, because the old engine has zero digital components and barely any electrical.

Sorry guys, my life's pretty much hijacked at the moment, grr >.<

Merry Xmas everyone! We are still alive, Maya prophecies notwithstanding :)

So I see.

Dare I wish everyone a happy new year? I do. Happy 2014 everyone.

Not sure how many others still have the game on their list...  but same back to you.

One more year has come and gone. Once again, Merry Christmas to those who are still around.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:30, Thu 25 Dec 2014.

Hope you're all alive and well :)

2015 is almost over... Can't believe how quickly time goes by. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2016, everyone.

Another year another message. Merry Xmas everyone.

Merry Christmas everyone, and a happy... 2018? Already?

Merry Christmas, everyone, and a happy 2019.

And to those who are still around, have yourselves a Merry Christmas, and a happy 2020.

Ever get so tired of the shortfalls and constraints of attempted RPG video games that you end up thinking about the ancient practice of using our imagination?

So... 2020 happened. Happy new year, everyone?

...yeah. Happy 2022 everyone. Hope you are all well.

If anybody could inform the GM that we are all quite done playing the Pandemic RPG, and would like to move on, that would be swell.

2023. I think COVID is largely done with us? Happy new year everyone.

Happy new year to those who are left.