Congratulations, Alex! Excellent tower.
And two nice tweaks by Votart, too. The second one for 1602 looks particularly effortless.
mark_man wrote:...a good turn out in the end
And a missing sixth entry from Arunion, delayed by graphics card "upgrade" issues......
And two completely different strategies both had a chance of winning.
Great challenge.
The counter-intuitive effect is that the taller the tower, the more the inertia works in your favour to keep things balancing upright. And, the mass of the dillo becomes less and less signifcant against the rotational inertia of a really big tower, like these ones. That's why the dillo impacts and shenanigans at the top of a long wobbling tower don't have much effect on the movement of the
centre of mass of that tower. And, so many nodes to tweak makes it super-easy to tune the balance to be just as you want it.
If only the bottom anchor had been a few cm to one side or the other.....
Meanwhile....
I figured I'd need less material for a cantilever than a tower, but the dropping counterweight / deflector plate costs too much in the end. The long rope segment in Mark_man's tweak (for $1550) costs $42. That's the win right there.....
Now that I've seen how a loose dropped plate can deflect the dillo, I have ideas for improving it. It most needed a "deployable counterweight", such as a hinged section of backbone (a simple interlocking beam might be suitable), because the delayed dillo release means a cantilever balanced for a dillo will have rotated too far before the dillo arrives. The simple release of the plate I used is a further unnecessary $20 expense.
I'm still wrestling with the exact details, but it
feels like a perfectly timed cantilever could have won this.
Thoughts, anyone?
EDIT: Something like the two failing attachments......