I’m sure pirates knew the answer. Probably fighter pilots as well.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    8 months ago

    Even assuming open 2D sea and a pursuer turn radius of, let’s say, 20 ship lengths, I’m sure that depends on boundary conditions like how far it has to go to escape and the position/speed/orientation the ships start with.

    Obviously, if we start with a pursuer right off the stern, there’s no escaping.

    For real ships, there also will be a time limit, because someone will run out of supplies first. The way I imagine doing this would basically be to find a pattern where no matter what the pursuer does they can’t board, but it doesn’t matter if you run out of hard tack while the people chasing are still well-fed. Cannons would change the logic here too.