Closing in on 500 viable LOTE patterns run 100,000 iterations or beyond, yet another example of "could not have seen it coming":
where a growing "comb" of puffer trails each modifies the next producing a gap between settled puffs wide enough for a track laying engine to later pass through, that mechanism mediated by a ship "signal" from one modified puff to the next in the trail.The two horizontal tracks crossing the right teeth of the older comb were soon seen to be produced when that signal was interrupted. Having revealed something so unexpected, the pattern jumped the queue for running on towards 150,000 iterations, but it almost defies thinking about the subsequent discovery of the same structure repeated, only rotated 90°. Second time around the puffer trails ran across the locally dominant ship stream from the original Delta, initially in its chaotic zone but soon moving into a repeating zone. So that signal was interrupted more frequently. with the tenth cross track in evidence before reaching 150,000, but as yet no clear repeating structure so it is already running on towards 200,000 which will hopefully get done while I'm down the coast. |