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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greenfield" data-source="post: 5496427" data-attributes="member: 6669384">You mentioned the "Fetish for smelting", and then joined in on the debate over how Aluminum is smelted.  Only after that point was lost did you decide that you were never really talking about that.Try Wall of Fire, altered by Energy Substitution and made permanent, for the endless power source.  Or Fabricate to smelt the metal, once you know how.  It's that problem of "once you know how" that messes that one up.I'm presuming that it's from several separate sources because we've effectively discarded the idea of making a parabolic mirror on the scale needed, with a focal length in the tens of thousands of miles.  We've been talking about that for some time.  Now, if you want a single flat mirror 200 miles across, it can direct light at a single target, providing that the target is 200 miles across.  It won't focus it.  Now if you have a way to fabricate a lens 200 miles across, somehow bypassing the volume limits of the spell, that would be interesting.  You'd still face the problem of grinding it so it has a focal length in the tens of thousands of miles, a goal that was discarded as impossible quite a while ago.All you've done is relocate the problem, without actually solving it.   So use magic to establish the exact time someplace else.  Not hard at all.  Use spherical trigonometry to calculate your position.  Now you have some useful numbers.What will you do with them?  We'll pretend that you can somehow Spot a reference point to measure from using those numbers. At most they'd count as "Aid Another" and give you a +2 to a Spot check being made with a penalty in the tens of thousands.  And they definitely won't help you when the attack roll comes.It rebuts it in noting that mapmaking, even with years of effort, wasn't a precise science, and in many ways still isn't.  (Try navigating around Washington DC some time.  Depending on which map you use, Prince Street either crosses Kings Street or runs parallel to it.  I'm not kidding.)  Knowing *exactly* where something is isn't nearly as easy as some might think, particularly when you don't have aerial photography.  (Flight exists in D&D, as it did during the Civil War via balloon.  Photography during the war tops anything available in D&D, and it still wasn't enough to make a difference.)Because inertia and temperature affect a beam of light?Okay, temperature actually does to some extent, but since you have no way to stabilize the temperature over the target, from ground level up to the stratosphere, it hardly makes a difference.  But just for giggles, take a .22 caliber gun out someplace isolated.  Strap it down to a concrete block.  Fire it.  The slugs will carry for almost a mile.  If your theory is correct, two shots fired within a second of each other should strike almost in the same hole at that distance.Now try it again at a closer target.  Say 200 yards.  Now again at 100 yards.  Now at 100 feet.  Now at 10 feet.Tell me how close you have to get to pop them both in the same hole.  I'm betting that it's somewhere in the 10 foot or less range.  And that's with mass produced ammunition, powder counted to the exact grain, in a finely machined weapon.  Now, when it comes to aiming your huge mirror and lens, we get the fun of accounting for thermal expansion of your supporting frame, part of which will be in sunlight and part in shadow.  And the temperature change will be an ongoing process as your platform orbits.  The mirror will distort, an alteration invisible to the human eye, but more than enough to send your 200,000 mile shot off into never never land.  The castle you're aiming for will be the safest place in the world, with regards to your weapon, since it will be the one place that can't be hit by accident.   Quoting ideas as you think they should work, without actually doing the math.  The Hamster Cannon example played with this, that someone had a basic idea of "Conservation of Momentum", and forgot that the world wasn't the stationary foundation of the universe.  Here's another example that people often get wrong.If I try to drive from LA to San Francisco, it's about 400 miles.  If I drive that in 8 hours, I average 50 miles an hour.  If I want to drive it in 4 hours I need to average 100 miles an hour.So if I want to split the difference between an 8 hour trip and a 4 hour one, and drive it in 6 hours, how fast do I have to drive?Gut level response typically says 75 miles an hour, splitting the difference between 50 mph and 100 mph.  And that answer is wrong.  Do the math if you don't believe me.That's what I mean by "gut level".  The answer that feels right if you don't think about it too much.Regarding black holes:  "Infinitely small" is a misnomer.  Immeasurably small would be a better way to say it.  Space distorts, making such a measurement meaningless, or so the theory goes.  And yes, the idea that an outside observer could "see" the impact is also a misstatement, a "gut level" answer, if you will.  But the point is that the time dilation is specific to the frame of reference.  The "outside observer" doesn't suffer the illusion of an infinite delay in falling.  Presuming that they had some way of observing the moment of impact, it would happen in linear time.Considering the length and detail of your post, I find that hilarious.  You've added tangent after tangent to this discussion, and when I've tried to dismiss some as irrelevant, you've worked to drag them all right back in again.   Were you trying to describe your posting style, or is that just a happy coincidence? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Easily possible, if you're willing to ignore the rules of the game, while simultaneously ignoring the laws of physics.  Only by selectively choosing which rules to use, and when, can this be done.  If you try to follow either real world laws of physics, or game world rules as written, it can't be done, short of a barrel full of Wishes.</blockquote>

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