Re: Smaller sawtooth
Posted: October 31st, 2015, 10:33 pm
I actually did notice that, but decided to post the new 177 in the expansion factor 121 form, based on the comments chris_c and calcyman made on the prior version (which was indeed originally posted with the ship one step closer.)dvgrn wrote:Um... for Sawtooth 177, however, it's perfectly possible to move the spaceship one diagonal step closer, cutting the bounding box by one column. No Dark Side trickery, really, just Yet Another Corollary-Snipe:
The multiplier goes down from 28 to 23, the same odd multiplier as the compactified Sawtooth 189, so the sawtooth only reaches its minimum every other cycle. At 23*(121^N-1) for odd N, the minimum is 187 due to the two boat-bits, so the expansion factor goes up to 121^2 = 14641.
calcyman wrote:I concur; the canonical version should have the minimum expansion factor (121 in this case) and attain its minimum population in generation 0. Subject to those constraints, it's fashionable to minimise the bounding box.