Week 5 Sophick Mercury
SOPHICK MERCURY
by Villfuk & panic
METRICS
Cost-Cycles Pareto Frontier
REAGENTS
Elemental Silver (×2)
Elemental Quicksilver
PRODUCTS
Sophick Mercury
NOTES
The Pareto Frontier metric is computed from all your scoring submissions according to the following process:
- Start with a filled-in rectangle. One side of the rectangle represents Cycles and ranges from 27C to 526C. The other side of the rectangle represents Cost and ranges from 50G to 299G.
- For each solution you submit, remove the part of the rectangle which your solution is better than in Cost and/or Cycles. That is, remove all the points in the rectangle for which both the Cost is greater than or equal to the solution's Cost and the Cycles are greater than or equal to the solution's Cycles.
- The area of the remaining shape after removing these points is your Pareto Frontier metric score.
To make it easier to compute this score, we are providing a pareto visualization tool—drag your solutions into it to see the shape of the pareto frontier and the resulting metric score.
...However, consider the machine (b), which is much slower yet significantly cheaper and more compact. Which is better? Of course, neither can be said to be strictly better or worse than the other - on one occasion, the productivity is advantageous, while on other occasions it wouldn't be sensible to spend much space or machinery for the needed transmutation. The following is a material called "Sophick Mercury" - the alchemists of yore considered it a fundamental component in breaking down metals and reassembling it into other forms. Students are to devise multiple engines that can produce it, and to note trade-off between the speed and the machinery needed.
download: OM2024Weeklies_SophickMercury.puzzle (where do i put this?)