Grrl Power #1176 – Downgrayedd
I’m actually rooting for Maxima’s plan, but when it can be not inaccurately spun as “Superheroine plans on unleashing death portal in order to further empower her own militarized super powered police force.” mmmmaybe some peer review is in order.
This is the “potentially catastrophic danger” Dabbler mentioned on the prior page. Like a garden, dungeons need to be pruned and harvested, or they will level up and spill past their borders. Gardens have levels in this analogy.
Actually, that’s just one of the potential dangers. Anytime you have a large concentration of mana in one place, like when you’re initializing a core, things can go wrong in many ways.
I’m fairly confident that a modern military could kick the shit out of most of what might come out of a dungeon IF they were ready for it and educated about what they were fighting. If they were caught by surprise and didn’t have silver ammo or whatever they might need, sure, they could get their ass kicked pretty hard, but it’s hard to see an AC-130 gunship having a hard time against an army of orcs. Okay, sure, if the orcs have a shaman, things could swing pretty hard. And against an army of earth elementals, 5.56 ammo is just not going to help, and who knows if a 20mm Vulcan can penetrate the hide of an Elder Dragon, but that’s kind of my point about education and preparedness.
Also, let me just throw out a pet peeve of mine, is when dudes in fighter jets fly within the arm/wingspan of the giant monster. An F-22 carries AIM-9 Sidewinders, which have a range of TWENTY-TWO MILES, and/or AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles which have a range of up to THIRTY (nautical) MILES. And nautical miles are longer than regular miles! Oh, and by the way, they do have a minimum range of like 0.6 miles. And guess where the idiots in the jets are in every fucking monster movie? That’s right, circling the monster’s head from fifteen feet away or doing loop de loops around its ballsack. And then the generals are all mystified and sad when the pilot roster goes red one after another. It’s fucking stupid.
Of course, my picture in panel 6 of the battleship installation, in reality, wouldn’t be nearly that close to the entrance. If I’d drawn it correctly, you probably wouldn’t be able to see most of the defenses. You got a battleship with 14 inch guns with a range of 7 miles? Obviously you don’t put the thing 300 yards from the entrance. You put it, what, 4 miles back? 5? And this is in an unscalable valley killbox with tons of AA and guns up on top of the walls, and if you’re really doing it right, electrified bands of sheet metal lining the valley walls every 50 feet or so. At least, that’s how you do it right, but as Gault points out, that’d all be crazy expensive. Expensive enough that eventually budgets get “optimized” and after a few decades all that’s left is 600 feet of non-contiguous fencing and a guy with a sidearm operating a plywood toll booth with one of those arms that goes up and down.
FYI, I caught a cold. I’m not saying that to brag, just to let you guys know. And it’s not like, “the end is nigh” sick, or anything, just, I have some low grade crud that’s been adding some drag factor. I actually rarely get sick. Like, I get a proper cold maybe every six years or so. It kind of makes me feel bad because my wife gets a normal amount of colds and, well, the occasional migraine, which I’ve never had to deal with. But when I do get sick, it’s always some low grade crap that takes forever to burn through my system. It’s not Covid either. I got tested twice. Pretty sure it’s just a cold. Maybe the flu? Ah, remember when people just caught run of the mill common colds? Those were the days.
So why am I telling you? On Monday, I wrote one page (I normally write two each Monday) and then I drew… one panel of the comic. Mostly I just stared at the screen, or really, a few inches in front of the screen, nudged dialog text around the page, tried to find a reference for an impossible angle I was drawing (I seem to have a real S-Fucking-Tier talent for drawing shit at angles for which there is no photo reference) and then returned to staring at my screen. The kicker is, on Tuesday, I rewrote part of the page and couldn’t use the one panel I drew. That’s actually ok because the page is better with the rewrite, it’s just kind of funny that I had to ditch my all-day panel. Anyway, I am slowly improving, but there’s a real possibility that a page or two from now might go up with only flat colors or something cause, man, it’s been slow going this week.
Also I’m aware I still owe you a new vote incentive. I’m not going to skip a month or anything, I just hope once I get fully over this I’ll be newly energized and can make up for lost time. That’s how sickness works, right?
The June vote incentive is finally up! Maxima is prepping for her night out.
And in the Patreon variants, she gets (un)dressed and takes a look through all the makeup options.
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Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Get well soon. There’s been an uptick in airborne illnesses lately. RSV, flu, Strep A, Chickenpox… And most governments ignored the WHO which asked that infrastructure, systems and procedures for Sars-Cov-2/C19 remain in place. The Welsh government deleted the welsh wastewater monitoring yesterday, today the Welsh wastewater monitoring (@WEWASH3) deleted the post saying that the wastewater monitoring was being deleted…
At my local drugstore none of the pharmacists wore masks even with one of them coughing heavily.
Mask up, wash your hands etc.
People are just excited that the covid restrictions are finally gone, so they are getting sloppy. While the normal flu and such aren’t as big as a threat, since they are more easily treated. It’s people that have weaken immune systems that are actually at risk, and I’ve seen many of the elderly going mask-less in stores etc… I’m a 2 time cancer survivor with only 1/3 a kidney, my wife has stage 4 COPD, my 89y/o father has stage 2, my kid sister is in stage 1, and my youngest son has asthma. We all still wear masks.
I’ve started licking doorknobs and hand rails now that the covid restrictions have been lifted. Need to supercharge my immune system!
do it the way kids do it…. eat mud pies. (i recommend Ice cream to improve the flavor) just be careful- hoof and mouth disease is no joke.
I know at least five people who have gotten Covid since June, two in the last week. I was one of the ones in June myself, after avoiding it for years.
I live in Florida, so we have covid, malaria, zika, and leprosy. Tsetse flies have also been discovered in the central region of the state.
From what I’ve seen generally those novels have it that dungeon creatures have some bizarre aspect of their non-native physiology that renders all conventional weapons useless except against the absolute bottom-most monsters. That way they can justify why they’re training and sending in kids with game panels to be monster hunters because only rare people that unlock one has any hope against the invasion.
Get checked for a sinus infection. As a long time chronic sufferer, of the cold goes past ten days for me it usually has morphed to a low grade sinus infection that will linger forever without antibiotics.
Yeah, and then when you get the antibiotics, dissolve one of them in water and administer it via netti pot. It’s the “nuke the site from orbit” response to a sinus infection. Why dissolve the antibiotic in your entire body when you know exactly where the infection is?
My own dragons have cellular crystal carbon that hardens on the outer layer, as skin and scales do. So effectively naturally produce diamond filament lattices. Not sure on the math on what that can withstand but for story purposes it just needed to make sense to withstand hits from swords, arrows, and such. With a mana drain field to reduce damage from most spells below a certain grade depending on the age of the dragon and potential special elemental or energy fields to act as special barriers.
Of course they could be one shot by the higher tier characters Of such stories but they might as well be Disgaea characters even back then.
On the dungeon, I would say even at lower levels if not properly culled I could see a mutation or special predator inside the dungeon level up and surprise the defense to break out.
-Thst time I got reincarnated as a slime.
And
-So I’m a spider so what
As ideas on that, something smart with dangerous level up potential managing to get around adventurers and prey on other monsters till it is too strong to contain any longer.
and reincarnated as a sword,
I haven’t seen that one. If its on Crunchyroll or Netflix I can add it to my already too long viewing list.
Max, you and Dabbler are the only ones that have a prayer of dealing with what is in your dungeon. And you can’t just use any natural cave system, ask any spelunker, there’s ALWAYS another way out of any cave system.
DaveB, it’s just so we can SEE the monster(s) are in fact under attack, even tri-barrels can reach a target from hundreds of meters away. It’s like the Star Wars battles, in the real world, the ships would be miles away from each other and unable to see them from any kind of window. And don’t get me started about the TIE fighter’s screaming engines and the sound of the explosions! We bounce a laser off the moon all the time to check how far away it is, that’s 247,000 miles away, that 594,000 round trip!
I’m just saying to cool your jets Max, talk to people that KNOW this stuff and use common sense. I haven’t see her this excited since Sydney came home! It’s almost like she’s asking to build her own playground LOL.
In Max defense, she has “the Superman problem”. She has to hold back and probe her opponents till she finds the strengh necesary to beat them without turning them into a blody mass of meat. Monsters? She can do and try anything againts them and she also earns valuable resources.
… If they are that far apart, then how the fraggle rock can they expect to hit shit? Unless the shots are hypersupersonic, the target has plenty of time to get the fuck out of the way
People keep saying there is no sound in space, bollocks! The ‘problem’ is there is no ears in space to detect the sound
…once again, I genuinely can’t tell if you’re doing a bit, or ifyou’re actually that thick.
I’m pretty sure G was making a joke, mainly because of the last two sentences.
This place is just magic like that.
fighter engagement. “Thank you Hollyweird.” (snark) due to a few WWII gun cameras and hollywood glamorization, “all action must be within one shot (frame). and no matter how unrealistic, IF it “LOOKs” cool go with it.!
no one wants to ‘see’ the flight time of the shot. But the reason for firing at range is it gives you a chance to see the effect and change options, or disengage if it is fight you cant win..
Although you’re right Dave that short distance shooting is dumb when long distance weapons do the job there are many reasons to use short distance weapons in exceptional situations like random monster attacks.
If the monster turns out to be able to resist your strongest weapons risks will be taken.
Examples of risks that might be taken with modern weaponry causing them to close in.
Spotters for better aim(actually actively used in modern warfare), closing in with kinetic weapons like railguns, bombing with experimental mixtures(it’s easier to make a droppable bomb of some mixture than a missile), information gathering, walling off non-airborne enemies, supply issues(no bullets: better stab, happened at least in the first world war).
This kind of reminds me of the anime and light novels of Gate: And so the JSDF Fought.
Gateway to a fantasy world appears in downtown Tokyo and their version of the Roman Empire sends through an army that includes Orcs, Beastmen, Trolls, and cavalry Dragons to conquer and seize slaves.
They do well until the JSDF turns up, and then the slaughter begins.
The gate is secured and a base is established in the fantasy world that entire armies of that world get wiped out trying to take.
A modern army would be on the backfoot if a Dungeon “suddenly appeared”, at first.
Then they’d organise and counter it. How quickly though is debatable.
If I remember correctly, some people aren’t happy with Gate specifically because of how one-sided it is.
It is also extremely patriotic and conservative too, so, not the best anime out there.
Extremely patriotic and conservative too, so, the best anime out there. is of course the other view
And yes it would be just that one sided. If you want to see it is action watch any good video on the Battle of the Somme. Or Passchendaele or for a smaller scale Edson’s Ridge. Modern weapons make massed ground assault a very poor decision (Iraq v Iran shows this as well)
It being that one-sided only happens if you ignore half of all classical fantasy.
It isn’t really that conservative. It’s not glorifying war. The empire in it does. The JSDF does not, and in fact doesn’t *want* to use force, but it does because it has to to protect its citizens and allies.
And it’s *supposed* to be one-sided. It’s a bunch of Medieval guys who think War is glorious and slavery is okay going up against Cold War-era Weaponry. There’s no way in Hell plate armor is going to help when you’re up against a Mortar or .50 cal. Or Artillery.
I always thought this was a far more realistic depiction of what would actually happen. It isn’t a perfect anime, but it was still refreshing to see something that didn’t just handwave all modern everything into obscurity. Maybe bullets can’t put down Elder Liches, but only the most powerful (or incorporeal) things would be resistant/immune to basic physics. If a 7.62 AP round can’t pierce the orc, if a javelin missile doesn’t scratch the dragon, an arrow or a fireball fireball are equally useless.
I thought it was funny that they had modern armour, helicopters and weapons, but were flying Phantoms.
They were flying F4 Phantoms, their helicopters were Cobras, and they’re packing M16’s, so you’re looking at Vietnam War era equipment here almost across the board. Which included flack jackets that look pretty close to what is depicted.
If it was modern equipment, their gear wold have looked like the printer got the resolution wrong and pixelated the cammo pattern.
Dave, is this all some long term plan to go all litrpg on us 13 years in? I’m okay with that, I was just wonderking.
I mean Sydney’s orbs have a sphere grid, so at least one character has been LitRPG since day 1.
Take care Dave.
does someone have a spare ninja or something to deliver appropriate cold remedies?
We seem to be on a pun strike so some of these people must be getting bored.
Not guildy of a strike at all, although solidarity with the WGA et al would be nothing to sniff at. While a few puns flu through my head and I’m not opposed to (affectionately) causing new strains for certain forum members, I don’t want to overdose either. Mostly just been focused on other things.
I for one would welcome a delivery of punicilin to protect Dave against pundemics.
I agree that it’s stupid that fighter pilots go close range to giant monsters.
I also don’t like it if guns are literally useless. E.g. in DragonBall it’s not just the Saiyans, but even Master Shen (teacher of Tien Shinhan) caught bullets from some automatic gun Launch fired at him during one of the tournaments.
Goku repeled a headshot in the first episode. Guns were never effective in Dragon Ball.
Real jet dogfights (which are vanishingly rare) are extremely anticlimactic to watch as they take place miles apart, far beyond visual range, and are conducted almost exclusively via tactical displays and sensor packages. A light blinks on the radar and an alarm sounds, some buttons are pushed, and then both pilots take evasive maneuvers and wait to see if anyone gets hit. On a clear day the winner might see a puff of smoke on the horizon.
Far more fun to watch a Top Gun ballet.
Actual air combat is nothing like the movies. I have never been in a fighter myself, but I have talked with lots of pilots, many with combat experience. From WWII and later, I talked with lots of pilots and most of them agree.
in air combat, there is rarely any place to hide. There is no fair. There is no glory. There is RARELY any music involved. Although I have heard a few odd stories…
Airplanes in movies are one of the things that CGI has definitely made worse. Most of the WWII vets are gone now but it seems like screen writers tend to go for the comic book version as told by somebody who knew somebody who was there.
If you’re going to park a battleship offshore of the dungeon, like with the fighter aircraft, the Iowa class battleships could fire a 1 ton shell 20+ miles. There were some plans for advanced shells with an even further range.
20+ mile range is fine when you’re firing on a fixed target, or one that can’t change course very fast, but unless your projectile is hypersonic, you’re going to miss from 20 miles away even if your aim is spot on. It’s going to take 40 seconds to arrive, why would your elder dragon still be standing in the same place at that point?
I suppose you could make it stay still long enough if you leave some treasure and virgins in a strategic location. But then it would be easier to just bury the bomb under the bait.
Yes, because it’s absolutely impossible to lead shots with indirect fire. And the enemy will absolutely magically know the instant a shot is fired from that very long distance and dodge accordingly.
Mate, the things were designed to fire on moving targets that don’t want to get shot, while moving themselves.
Against things with a turn radius like battleships and cruisers. There’s a reason we don’t use 1 ton shells to target F-15s. Artillery and AA use sheer volume of projectiles or guided/targeted munitions against tanks, soldiers, and air targets.
If the dragons and tarrasques are dumb beasts, they might move in straight lines and get hit. Anything with any survival instincts will shift position on approach, particularly after its buddy gets turned into red mist from some unseen attack.
Was getting ready to mention guided projectiles. Some are GPS controlled with onboard comms, plus a huge variety of laser-guided munitions that track a target being painted by a spotter that has line-of-sight (human on the ground or more likely via drone these days).
Most guided stuff isn’t 1ton or higher for the simple reason that under normal warfare the more likely something is to be critically missed the more likely it succumbs to lower payloads(armor is heavy).
Beasts aren’t normal.
Although Godzilla reacts pretty slow and doesn’t really dodge they’ve an armor level exceeding a star fortress and still move much faster and dragons react pretty quickly for their massiveness and can even dodge..
The things were designed to shoot capital ships, because nothing else has the amount of armor requiring such power.
Those things have heavy movement restrictions and are the size of a small city.
An enemy doesn’t have to know a shot is fired to dodge it they can simply go a direction you don’t expect in their rampage.
Modern artillery shells steer to hit the target. They use radar or optical or image recognition to land where desired.
Speaking of potions, if Dabbler ever decides to make an ancient Gaulish power potion,how would she look in the robes of an ancient Gaulish druid?!?
How would Dabbler look in robes? “Barely In” would be my guess!
Dabbler would look sexy in those robes. How else could Dabbler look?
Do you really have to ask? But the cast of Grrrl Power should definitely cosplay Asterix characters.
Nodding yes, nodding no…and might as well be sick with the amount of smoke I’ve blowing through.
To what degree is this project analogous to a nuclear reactor specifically for radioisotope production?
Can’t trust caves? Build it above ground or put tunnels in some geologically stable mountain.
How about a salt mine. Isn’t salt to magic what lead is to radiation?
the location for the new dungeon is the recently sized underground base of the robed trope abusers. granted they converted a missle silo to make that. (supposedly they have made luxury shelters from decommissioned missle silos) so they have the secure space to install it.
as for an alternative spot- area 51 is already a toxic waste dump that’s classified to within an inch of its existence build it there. supposedly there are other places like that in the far west that are not as famous.
Can confirm there is a lot of empty space and solid geography in Nevada (and adjoining states) suitable for containing dangerous operations a long, long way from civilization. Picking some abandoned mines would let it be deep underground in rock, with the bonus of the remaining precious metals being available for mana / loot generation.
“the dragon cast ‘protection from normal missile’
I don’t think sidewinder should count as normal missiles.
Are they magical?
Well, no
I stand my point.
Protection from Normal Missiles does not protect against explosions in the slightest, and only reduces the damage from normal missiles (unless you’re going with the AD&D version). If the target isn’t harmed, the warhead is still going to go off and reduce it to meat chunks. A warhead detonating is no more a missile than a fireball is.
What are these missiles going to lock onto? Need a heat source or radar return, not likely to get either off most D&D monsters.
you are thinking of old as fuck missiles, modern missiles use multiple sensors from heat, radar to visual, lasers and others, a dragon would be hit
Dave, your world building is great. It will be interesting to see how the dungeon thing works out however as it seems like you will be mashing some different worlds and power levels together. Most of us are familiar with the standard strength of dungeon monsters. Many of the supers in your world are god tier or higher. You should make up a realistic character sheet for Maxima using DnD rules. Her stats would be crazy. I don’t know if you would give her a lot of hit points, or just give her some kind of powerful damage resistance. Might be fun as a vote incentive? As always, thanks for the content.
I disagree.
Although I would love to have a Max stat sheet.
That’s not a choice Dave can safely make. If he publishes something like that it would be a dangerously complex expanse of the canon, which will have to be considered for hundreds of scenes, so unless it becomes explicitly non-canon, if we as a community want Max stats we will have to make them ourselves.
Which is fun by the way.
We do have an indication about how hard she flies, due to her race with Halo and the commentary, also we have a general indication of
power level due to the Vehemence hits and the measurements by Cora’s crewmen.
As for super durability: The best indications we have are Brut’s undressing compared with the overnuke for the first(clothing) layer of defense and Vehemence’s attempt at killing her.
As general power level without calculations she is basically “one nuke par shot”.
The last time I tried to calculate Max’s punch strength I met my match in trying to find out the standard tensile strength of a parking lot.
My calculations rested basically on the height of the dirt spikes created by her hit, which I now realize only sets a minimum strength not a maximum, because depending on when the panel is taken the spikes can get bigger and wider and we don’t know how deep Vehemence’s spell reaches.
I think we can calculate the moment of panel based on the amount of damage already done to the parking lot and set a maximum depth based on the kind of sand shown, since it seems to be all first layer sand, due to a lack of variations in colors of the dirt spikes.
We’re dealing with an asphalt parking lot(dark color and no visible plates or bricks) not older than 7 years, because it’s basically undamaged.
probably made specifically of WMA to be more specific.
I can’t find the standard depth for crushed aggregate for Texan parking lot.
I will note that Dave B has stated that he has a stat sheet for most of the Characters, which he uses as a guideline for the things they can do. Maxima, for instance, is a high level brick, but her greatest ability is her Uni-power to switch her strengths around.
Max (and presumably the rest) is pretty clearly built out using the Hero system. It allows for constructing power pools (like Max uses) as well as the “Pick two of these 7 preconfigured power sets” that Sydney uses. Dave has never (to my knowledge) said so, but he’s dropped a lot of hints.
Counter argument on regular military versus monsters.
Most missile ordinance is not designed to target meat. Heat seekers want a Hot target like a jet engine. If your dragon is not significantly hot then the missile simply will not lock on. Same goes for radar guided munitions. They are calibrated for metal, not flesh. So they do not lock onto a flock of ducks. So a movie with an air force suddenly facing dragons might have to use guns at first. At least till the missiles are adjusted to fire at meat targets.
As for the range of naval guns. I know in WW2 you had extreme ranges, and practically no chance to hit your target at those ranges. One presumes that modern targeting computers could correct for this. But who uses big guns anymore to have invested in it. Which brings back the line item in the military budget talked about before.
Which brings it back to soldiers with guns. Sure the rifles I trained on had ‘potential’ ranges of over 1000 yards. But I know as a USAF service I was not trained to shoot at those ranges, and from what I have heard. Neither is the average army soldier. It is much closer combat.
Now one could put a containment guard post at the entrances of the dungeon. But if these things spontaneously generate new monsters. When does a burrower break containment?
Good point.
Although I have to point out that in return manually guided and aimed weapons like drones and everything used in the world wars would become a lot more interesting.
The problem with them in normal combat is that effective signal jamming equipment can be bought on ebay for $30,- making them suddenly badly or unguided, but we can assume that Godzilla doesn’t have access to a jammer.
Still your point stands that since the stuff used in modern warfare is aimed at mechanized opponents there is a lot less investment in these manually guided munitions, and the most effective way to get majority of the military arsenal on a big hump of meat is to have someone get really close to provide direct on the ground feedback for the artillery, which could totes be the primary job of the pilots in monster movies.
As who invests in big guns: the navy. Naval warfare is the one place where more armor still helps. In the air you crash with the amount of armor needed to resist standard bullets on the ground you lose all fuel efficiency to protect yourself against modern anti-tank weapons, but in naval warfare you can carry basically add all the weight you want with barely any hit in fuel cost and still have competitive speed and mobility.
As your point of monster spawning. Good point and bad news. Going by how Zeph described the building process the mana will slowly flow over to the rest of the world making more and more oft it behave like a very low level dungeon.
Military-grade laser guiding is not jammable so easily. As for flying targets that are hard to target precisely, we’ve known for nearly 70 years how to safely nuke an air target with no danger to ground personnel, by creating a 1K-ft diameter ball of superheated plasma. Granted, that test* was done at around 19K foot altitude due to its 2kt yield, but a similar weapon could be fired safely at an altitude of say 1-2K feet if the warhead were replaced with the one from a far smaller handheld device with 1% of that yield, but still a 500+ ft instant casualty radius. You wouldn’t want to use the original one as-is (designed to detonate just above the ground) and contaminate your dungeon.
Shot “John” of Operation Plumbbob, the same series that led to the inadvertent creation of the fastest ever man-made object.
Laser guided stuff is higher risk though requiring live spotters under jammed conditions.
As for the anti-aircraft weaponery remember that a causality radius based on superheated plasma could be different for beasts that excreeds fire from just under their brain(like dragons) or are in any other way heath specialized, so although the method is still worth investigating it won’t be just a catch it all.
I would suggest the laser guided stuff is fairly common in the US military still. also… that type of seeker is well understood so it would be fairly easy to switch heat seeker and radar guided munitions to laser guided. so retrofitting existing missiles is deliberately easy. it is rocket science, but it is well understood.
That’s not actually as big a problem as you think. There are both wire-guided missiles and laser-aimed missiles that can take care of the problem available right now, and redoing that software probably isn’t as hard as one might think, especially if the fliers are well over bird size.
The laser and wire guided will actually help.
As for the retrofitting.
You would be right if I for one moment believed this software was properly documented and/or not locked in some military defense contract.
The software was provided by some large defense contractors who probably hired some temps to do 90% of it under the assumption no major changes would be required, with only the critical stuff done in house by people currently on completely different career paths with tons of libraries and such and is holding all maintenance information secret from the government.
Apple tended to take around half a year to fix an actively exploited IPhone vulnerabilities and that is an actual software company.
These are defense contractors, to them software is a fun sidegig.
These missiles hopefully have no internet update system, are full of military and proprietary secrets and they do direct sensor analysis.
Updating anything requires coordination with hundreds of independently functioning IT, teams collaboration of the applicable defense contractors(different types, different contractor, different code), a programmer par missile type to disentangle the mess that’s the code base and real world measurements about the distinctive properties of these creatures.
Hardware adjustment will be easy for the missiles though.
‘These are defense contractors, to them software is a fun side gig.’
where I am, and yes my company is in this market, (great business model- when the customer uses the product successfully they need another one) there are more software people than mechanical and electrical engineers combined. the engineering department is run by a former software engineer. also one of the two most senior engineers primarily writes this kind of software. Welcome to Texas, please clean your shoes.
I know multiple people who work for various defense contractors doing software for military hardware, including jets and smart munitions. While they obviously can’t talk specifics, I gather that even though it’s often “older” tech they do have extremely good testing support and can integrate new functionality nearly as fast as at any commercial company software application they’ve worked for.
Which, granted, isn’t as fast as you’d think, but should be plenty fast enough given that the dungeon will mature gradually and the engineers will have support from Archon and the Council on integrating Arcanum++ into the weapons packages – if it isn’t already (*cough Machina Industries cough*).
Can cameras defeat the gaze of Medusa? I mean, reflections do, so shouldn’t cameras? Sure, the newer stuff don’t use mirrors, but I tend to think that drone pilot isn’t going to get turned to stone from 100 miles away while they’re in their chair…
Drone operators might get a Lil stiff if it’s an anime medusa…
Looking at a video image instead of through a lens should be absolutely fine. Binoculars or the like without the mirror in the way would probably get you stoned at a distance.
Honestly If the security needs to be THAT secure its not a s difficult as you would think.
You place the dungeon wherever it needs to go (i dunno ley lines or what have you)
And then you build a military training base around it.
You dont have to worry about budgetary optimization at that point.
For example …
The point of Fort Knox is to be a place where the US can store its gold reserves safely and conveniently.
It just so happens that Fort Knox is also a primary training school for every Armored unit in the US Army.
After all that Armor School has to go somewhere … might as well make it part of the defences.
So if you want to get in (or out) not only do you have to deal with the guards walls and vaults … you also have to deal with the huge pile of instructors and their dumb ass tankers running around all over the place.
With Tanks.
In the GrrlPawer verse It would be hilarious that a Dragon that answers to the name Uncle Sam made a home in Knoxville. (And the real reason why US is stamped on all the gold) And has been known to walk about looking like
Makes you wonder what is under Fort(s) Moore (Infantry) Sill (Artillery) Leonard-Wood (Engineers)and Jackson (Everyone Else)
First things that come to mind are Uruk Hai, Ghosts, Goblins, and something like hogwarts respectively
ANd that is just basic training centers. Advanced Individual Training is also a thing so you have many more options for specailized dungeons.
I dunno what would be under Ft Carson but i hope it isnt mind flayers.
Halo “Their silly. I mean the South Koreans alone would volunteer enmass to guard a gate, praying for a breakout. He’ll, if that’s a real risk, just put the dungeons on Mars or the moon.”
General- “Private Scoville are you aware of the logistics involved in flying to Mars or even the moon? It’d take years just to …”
Halo bubbles up and slowly spins clockwise while smugly grinning. “Alternatively I could call my boyfriend and we could hire them for the short hops.”
Max “I know a pretty good geomancer too. Site prep would be essy.”
Deus frowns, “How’d you get his number? I hate it when my plans get stepped on.”
Definitely offworld…
hazards not mentioned.
Lawyers and legal actions
Government agency bunfights…EPA (environmental impact statements, anyone?) International NGO’s
Activists “Your wall is blocking the orc’s migration route”
Or the ones who break into a mink farm and release all the minks. Not that I’m concerned about trespassers escaping, but if they leave the gate open….
Sid has interstellar capability….Find a world with existing high Mana levels where civilization got knocked into the stone age…. Or maybe Venus or Mars would do.
Using Sydney or Frix for transport has the same limitations as relying on Max to keep a dungeon in check, a single point of potential failure. But there has been exposure to offworld tech and even some limited opportunity to have a look at it, or in Deus’ case a lot of opportunity. It shouldn’t be long until orbital vehicles start getting cheap. Once you are out of the gravity well going to Mars gets a lot easier. Pretty soon they are calling in ARC-Swat to play Doom in real life.
Another major difference here is that in one case failure results in death to all, while in the other it results in Alpha Centauri looking kind of moody.
Speaking of the gravity well, I’m really excited for all the zero-G mana research breakthroughs the Council-Archon-NASA partnership is going to unlock.
Portal Gates can be set up off world in system that leads to underground facilities that cover dungeon.
Gate breaks? Open and close right doors and it’s over.
Also in this universe it would make sense to train the military to fight the kind of monsters you find in dungeons. For example you need fire against trolls and nukes against the torrasque.
This. Forget the cost, it needs to happen. I mean, Deus already has an army of demons, you need to start training them now.
Also weapon testing.
What do you use against ghotsts?
How do I aim at flesh.
How do I detect kobolds?
‘What do you use against ghotsts?’
backpack vacuums
‘How do I aim at flesh.’
center of mass, use incendiary or explosive rounds. maybe LG artillery.
‘How do I detect kobolds?’
infrared. use laser guided munitions or suicide drones. also remember…. there is a minimum safe distance for tank guns. (one more reason not to get too close to the big boys)
Hell, Fort Irwin would be perfect. Pretty well isolated out in the Mojave, and the National Training Center is already there. And Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake next door in case heavier ordnance is required.
Is it just me or is Max channeling Sydney in panel 3?
Maybe. Also I’m sure Deus would do a lot of hand waving for MAxima.
Maxima’s fingers in panel 3 are unsettling. Without knuckles hands just look like sausages with nails.
Best to not tack on MORE to that military budget, which is what they’d have to do regardless, just for some healing potions for their Super’s division, and maybe use that money on the populous, but Maxima probably doesn’t care enough about the populous over her own military career.
Isn’t a modern military kicking the hell out of fantasy monsters pretty much the plot of the anime GATE?
Also, I never understand why in monster movies if jets shoot anything at the giant monster it’s air to air missiles. They have relatively tiny warheads. If nothing else at least they should be firing Hellfire or Maverick anti tank missiles, something designed to destroy something tough and not fragile like a fighter jet. Or even better dropping laser guided bombs or even bunker busters from a high altitude. Any of those are a better idea than flying close enough to the monster to be in grabbing distance just so they can fire their cannon at them.
Just make the vote incentive about chibiDabbler and Sidney explaining dungeon cores or something. Not all vote incentive need to be beefcake grade weapons.
My reaction to this proposal would be to call some people with actual experience in conventional(non-super) strategy and ask them to sit at the table and comment on what they could and couldn’t handle.
General Faux would qualify, but really any officer read in on Archon stuff would qualify.
As for my first containment proposal:
Those armies of creatures don’t sound like they could march very far from the dungeon without food or water.
– Put the dungeon complex in the desert or sea with some plumbing to keep the dungeon itself fed.
– Build a fortress/call a war ship
– Stock it with enough to defend [b]itself[/b] and some top tier sensory equipment to track anything sneaky.
– large cannons
– mines
– anti-aircraft weaponry
– some kind of sturdy wall.
– anti-teleportation wards(they canonically exist in the magical community as shown in the vault break)
– machine gun
– mage
– infrared camera’s, sonar, radar, (magical tracking?), targeting lasers, standard camera’s, seismograph, detection traps
– Get the artillery on speed dial.
– a few high bandwidth, high infrastructure communication channels and a satellite phone(no real need to secure it against others listening in I don’t expect a lot of wiretapping from dungeon monsters).
– secure the fortress/ship against non-point blank effects from missile strikes.
– A year worth of supplies
– A way of armored transport
There is no big investment in supply lines needed, since the assumption is that Archon will be able to recover within a month to relieve the poor backup defenders and that otherwise the rest of the military will be able to jump in within a year.
The tactic would consist of letting the majority of opponents slip past the defenses and just whither away due to lack of supplies and mana.
The active military presence would be there to gun down anything that could actually make it through the wastelands.
If they couldn’t, due to weapon limitations they could provide targeting information for the artillery.
This post is proof that ArcLight has very likely already got several internal dungeon concepts in the works, and Max is just now getting on the wagon.
those guys have to have something to charge their time too when they are not helping people identify their ‘accidents’
I guess Max likes grapes.
Is Sydney going to get a Solo Levelling montage? Cause she could do with a power levelling session.
Did Max /really/ just make a “Deus ex” joke with him actually in the room!?
That better come up later!
He has a point: It’s all fun and games until a dragon gets loose.
Is that a Gold Digger reference I spy? Abyssalisks are definitely top tier monsters.
Mythic Tier Raveners are basically overpowered Pathfinder dracoliches!
New term to me, but I love the portmanteau either way.
Very well said, Dave, both in the comic and in author’s comments. It’s for these reasons that I won’t watch the Jurassic Park fiasco. At the end of the day, the huge scary dinosaurs are animals. They aren’t bullet-proof, they don’t breath fire or teleport or have laser eyes. They are reasonably killable as long as you’re prepared and not an idiot.
Ok, so Moon dungeon it is.
then the Ice warriors show up, or worse that water stuff.
When I built a nether portal, I was not expecting a zombie pigman to step through.
Ok – your 3d reference problem could be greatly alleviated if you learn Blender to the point of “make simple cubes/spheres” and “import stuff other people have made”.
Bonus if you learn how to mess with the lights for shadow references! Or figure out shades for Maxima’s reflective skin!
Double Bonus if you can import 3d assets approximations of your main characters from HeroForge!
If it’s any consolation, I feel fine.
Recover and be well, sending waves of healing and good vibes your way.
Regarding the discussion, are Ultimate dungeons capable of generating Cthulhu type entities? Scary AF. But if you want a secure location for seeding a dungeon, the USA owns several dozens of islands with zero population. Most of them are off of Alaska but there are a few in the Pacific tropics. Shemya Alaska comes immediately to mind as it is well isolated and has a considerable military infrastructure with a large airfield and ports. Weather is a bit harsh but not as cold as much of the Alaska mainland. Here’s a list which doesn’t really contain all of the USA owned territories:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_the_United_States_by_area
For more tolerant climes there is Kwajalein island with considerable military infrastructure.
I think for socio-political reasons, much of Alaska might not be a good location due to its proximity to major foreign powers. Not only would there be an increased security and political cost, we don’t exactly have a great track history of using islands very responsibly.
Meh, Russia has never really cared for that side and you could do it as a political response to a nuclear Svalbard weapon test. The military presence would be needed anyway to keep the monsters in and if the Russians attack letting the beasts free would be the safest option anyway.
Also placing scary hardware close to iffy borders is a time honored tradition.
Look up the location of most nuclear power plants.
Not just Russia; China, Japan, and North Korea have some pretty strong opinions on our Pacific installations as well. Which, yes, are often placed there deliberately to make a point, but maybe the Grrlverse is farther from WWIII than our timeline seems some days.
The military line item cost is a terrible argument. There is already an immediate, strategic-level “do or be destroyed” crisis on their hands.
They know aliens are out there and at least some are not friendly. Destroying a ship is good, but what about a fleet? Can they stop an orbital bombardment before 50% of humanity is dead? Can they stop aliens from firing “rods of god” from the edges of the solar system? What about stealth ROGs? Can they respond quickly enough to hellspawn summoned during a UN session? Can they detect all the stealth options available to magic or advanced technology, across the entire world, well enough to guarantee nobody establishes a base beneath Antarctica, builds up a hidden force, and then launches a multi-prong global invasion?
Then there’s Batman’s Rule: always prepare for the protectors’ fall. If Max is mind controlled (parasite, hypnosis, magic, alien tech, whatever), do they have anything that can put her down? Detect the problem? Prevent it? What if Max just decides to go rogue?
The entire world just found out their police and military are entirely incapable of handling very real, present threats. There are so many possible scenarios they need to consider. Training and preparing to fight all of them would be the work of a generation (at least); screw the cost and get started. At least train the future trainers! That’s what a dungeon should be there for, not ingredient farming- training!
…also, put the dungeon above-ground in Antarctica. Anything that escapes probably can’t survive long there, probably can’t hide, can be tracked by satellite and thermal imaging, is far away from any civilians or infrastructure, and it’s harder for terrorists to reach. Just carpet bomb anything that overruns the facility. Or even nuke it if required. Not a guaranteed “solve all” but as good as you can get on the planet.
You’re totes right.
Normally testing weapons in real world conditions is restricted to the level of your opponent times 2 for non-war crime like operations.
A mythic dungeon could totally change that.
Also there is the more urgent danger of a literal army of demons and supers with the twice by different basically super powered entities stated goal of world domination currently active in Mozambique.
The consideration isn’t the budget needed to contain(basically free training on arbitrarily challenging conditions).
The consideration is ability: can we make and contain an even stronger dungeon.
We have satellites pointed at Antarctica. One of the reasons we can be very uncertain as to what is happening in Antarctica is cloud cover is a major thing there. So remote sensing as a way to check if the dungeon there is overrun might not be timely.
“…also, put the dungeon above-ground in Antarctica.”
There’s an international treaty preventing that called the Antarctic Treaty. The treaty obligates all parties to use Antarctica for PEACEFUL PURPOSES ONLY. Any measure of a military nature is prohibited, and any use of nuclear explosions or any sort of waste or otherwise dangerous materials are also prohibited. It’s been in place since 1959 and the signees are Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the UK, the US, and the USSR. Also any non-signatories are going to be prevented by the joint limited military presence on its OUTSKIRTS which is ONLY allowed to prevent anyone from establishing one nation’s military presence there.
Soo…… the United States creating a possibly world-ending dungeon scenario in Antarctica for providing a branch of its military healing potions, and which would require a constant guard to make sure the aforementioned end of the world scenario does not occur, and which would require regular visits by a woman who is classified as a weapon of mass destruction to even USE the place for its intended non-world-ending purpose, would likely not be allowed.
Anything that escapes probably can’t survive long there, probably can’t hide, can be tracked by satellite and thermal imaging, is far away from any civilians or infrastructure, and it’s harder for terrorists to reach. “
Since 1959… of course! I just realized where all the aliens from Area 51 got moved to when the Air Force converted the facility from bio research to experimental aircraft. Everything would maintain stasis and storage far more cost effectively down in Antarctica, and being near the South Pole would hide all sorts of magnetic phenomena. Plus no pesky civilians from Las Vegas rattling around the fences all the time.
And the other countries mentioned must have also been in on the UFO secret already to get a share of the new facility.
You are such a little wisenheimer, you know that right? :)
Just practicing new material to feed the conspiracy theorists for my entertainment, this is a fun twist I’ve never heard elsewhere. :D Which is surprising, considering it actually works better than many versions I’ve come across.
It occurs to me that ‘space’ and the Moon also have such “play nice together” treaties. Mars might but I’m not sure, but it has too much joint interest to not be contested. But nothing has been said about Venus or Ceres, so Deus could set up some operations there pretty much uncontested with no increased costs.
“Mars might but I’m not sure, but it has too much joint interest to not be contested. But nothing has been said about Venus or Ceres”
Actually there’s an international treaty called the Outer Space Treaty which was adopted by the General Assembly of the UN (resolution 2222 (XXI)). in 1962, and was signed by the US, the UK, and the USSR in 1967 and was then entered into force by the entire general assembly.
Not that the UN has a great track record on upholding treaties, but still… :)
https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/introouterspacetreaty.html
Turns out most of outer space is already owned by other civilizations, so the scope of that treaty is clearly invalid for the vast majority of ‘outer space’. We don’t know what the galactic rules of ownership are, but presumably Terrans should get control of their own system, say out to the Oort cloud. But a revision is clearly in order.
And within those boundaries, Deus can drive all the materiel he desires through the loopholes, with far less of a stretch than he’s doing with the demon army invading neighboring countries. Particularly if the rest of the world takes too long to establish space travel capability.
– “For the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind”? Deus only has the interests of the entire world at heart by developing and commercializing alien tech. Mining the asteroid belt’s resources is the only way to bring those resources to the masses.
– “Free for exploration and use by all States”? Any country in the world is welcome to pick their own asteroids and do the same, or use the products he builds, just need to reimburse Machina Industries for the costs of acquisition, transport, fabrication, R&D, marketing, legal costs, etc etc. Plus a reasonable profit margin, of course.
– No “nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction” – no problem, the security forces protecting his manufacturing facilities from terrorists or non-Terran raiders have no need for mass destruction, precision destruction will do just fine.
Etc etc.
That battleship looks like it was carried into the middle of a desert and set down into a ditch fitted to it. Pretty sure that’s not what’s happening but it’s hilarious to me. Talk about “Land battleship”.
So we won’t get to see the Grrrl Power version of an inverse GATE manga? Awww.
Minor grammar notice, haven’t seen anyone comment at around 68 comments in, so here goes…. panel 6, the line “permanently stationed division….” the word ‘stationed’ is spelled ‘stationied’. In case it can be fixed. That is all, moving on.
That’s not a grammar issue, it’s a typo error
Maybe Grammer just wasn’t wearing her glasses.