Grrl Power #1477 – Skewer-a-golem (Like Build-a-bear but the opposite)
I calculated Max could cover 10 kilometers at Mach 10 in three seconds. And we all know how reliable my math is. Still, Max can move pretty fast.
More than one person pointed out that modern security cameras are actually pretty good. Not alien tech good, obviously, but all of my knowledge of security cameras comes from… well, TV. You know, famously accurate TV. And also a cheap security webcam I got like 10 years ago, not the kind that comes with a closed circuit monitor, one of the kinds you need local wi-fi and a smartphone for. It wasn’t terribly good resolution, and got blown out by daylight easily. Honestly, I don’t know why TV shows bother with all the “Enhance… enhance…” stuff since security cameras are so amazing these days. No, of course I know why security cameras on TV suck, to draw out the investigation and so that main characters can show their new technique for “Enhance… enhance…”
Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.
Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.
I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.
Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Everyone knows TV security cams have infinite resolution, you just have to yell “Enhance!” at the video to use it.
The one I got however doesn’t need that, it just needs the idiot who broke into my apartment to stand around in front of it for five minutes playing on his phone. (And me to not hit ‘submit’ halfway through the comment.)
My only question is… Was it worth calling Max, really? Why was it suddenly so important to do something non-lethal to Babezilla?
Sure. She’s a potential recruit. Also, y’know, the news helicopters and such, it’s good to show that ArcSWAT is able to do super-powered good cop stuff and not just go straight to militarily try to blow her head up. Although it WAS on the table as a backup.
Her being disqualified is bad, but mostly for Cora and the others that bet on her. Not so much of a priority for Archon.
And also, more than that…they specifically only said OK to this with the proviso that they could call her back, extremely rapidly. They were able to use her for this but it also could easily have been considered a good “test run”, to confirm that she can be back rapidly.
It could also double as a means of providing an alibi that a certain contestant could not possibly be Max in disguise, because look, she is still obviously on Earth able to deal with stuff.
As others have mentioned on previous pages “Max shows up in a rush, defeats a threat and rushes away in the same thirty seconds Ixah inexplicably left the arena” is the opposite of an alibi. Insofar as simultaneity is a thing in space.
That only works if you know Earth has access to an Ethereal Causeway or similar instantaneous interstellar travel capable technology.
If you don’t, it’s just a random coincidence which I’m sure Archon has a scenario already in place to reasonably explain away.
Alternatively, Max seemingly being able to access Ethereal-Causeway-level-feats could also make her appear entirely out of league to anyone potentially trying to mess with her.
Another consideration here is that the timestamps on her videos will probably wind up altered, if the stream wasn’t stopped/put on a delay when stuff started happening, which will make it hard to line things up even if someone goes through the trouble of trying to do so. We also have to consider why they are concealing who Max is:
1) They don’t want anyone on Earth to know she’s “out of town.” Her taking out Babezilla makes it clear she isn’t.
2) They don’t want anyone on Earth to know she’s taking part in what amounts to a bloodsport competition, for morale reasons. Nobody who this would impact is in any position to put two and two together (and those on Earth that are in such a position already pretty much know she’s actually Ixah).
3) They wanted to set her up as a “ringer” to maximize early betting profits. That’s already been accomplished.
4) They don’t want to broadcast just what the limits to her abilities are. This is probably the only one at serious risk here, but then that’s only if she’s actually pushed to her limits during the tournament. So far, that hasn’t really happened.
5) There may be some legal ramifications with the Exarchy, but I don’t think the Babezilla episode really raises to the level of going beyond a reasonable doubt (at least I assume space law uses such a standard), plus the Exarchy’s ability to monitor Earth has already been compromised so they may well be unaware the Babezilla thing even happened.
There are probably more, but those feel like the big ones, and I don’t think this really caused any significant issues. If there’s a repeat (or worse, more than one), then there might be problems, but as it stands this basically just confirmed to Deus that Max is Ixah, and he was likely fairly confident that was the case already (if Harem didn’t outright tell him as part of her Triple Agent schtick).
Max couldn’t let earth doubt she was there.
If she didn’t show up, everyone with and without UBCA feed would wonder: “Why didn’t Maxima show up when the team clearly needed her? Is she incapacitated? Is she not on the planet?”
Previous only Sciona and Deus had a idea it might be Maxima and she thus might be off planet. Neither is prone to spread that information.
Now anyone on earth watching UCBA might know this was Maxima. But they also know that she apparently can get back at FTL speeds. So unless they can jam Etherium Causeways, it is not a exploitable weakness.
Knowing it is her is pretty irrelevant, unless you can stop her from comming back at will.
Many good points from the other contributors here.
To summarize them, remember the military context of the story. Lt.Col. Leander & Gen. Faulk would have spent considerable time & effort contingency planning before the UCBA mission was ever green-lit. When the Babezilla incident occurred, the several contributed factors were taken into consideration before Harem received orders to convey to Maxima. Among these would be the value of conducting an Aether-Causeway response drill while Maxima was in space at such distance. I believe that would have tipped the balance in favor of the recall no matter what other negatives existed. For the Lt.Col.’s part, all she did was obey orders.
Of course, with some compression schemes you actually can ‘enhance’ forever. The problem being that after a certain point they’re just making up plausible details, and if you soon too much the many angled ones crawl out of the screen and eat you.
Just not worth it for the added resolution.
Any “enhance” is just making up details.
With a still image this is basically true – with a video you can do some fancy interpolation from prior and following frames to reconstruct details that would be quite difficult to pull from any one frame. Its a little akin to using an extended exposure, but requires a lot more math.
Question: If you leave the arena you have 26 seconds to return to it, given how short fights can actually be especially when individuals are bringing out massive hardware, weapons, magic etc is this not a massive advantage?
In those 26 seconds 1/2 the field could be down and the other 1/2 have expended a lot of their resources to do it.
Fully understand being given a timeframe for a “ring out” if you are forced out of the field but if you voluntarily leave it feels like there should be more of a penalty?
And if you get this 26 seconds every time you leave (I know that has not been stated) then couldn’t a really fast fighter dance in and out of the zone and wait until there is only one left?
Even if the 30 second timeout refreshes every time you return, it wouldn’t still necessarily help all that much: large amount if not all of the contestants are geared/built to dish out heavy damage and survive said heavy damage. Speccing into a “speedster build” you would presumably lose some of that (which in return would hurt your performance at the final 1v1 at minimum). Not to mention other contestant(s) would be waiting for your return after pulling that off once or twice, so unless you could lap the arena grounds in a blink of an eye, dancing in and out of the arena would put you directly in front the opponent you just stepped away from.
Obviously the aforementioned handicap wouldn’t apply to Max, but then again she’s not a purpose built biodroid but merely a overqualified individual for a mundane throwdown like U.C.B.A…
true, a rule of 30 seconds ‘total’ out of bounds would likely be advisable and even that 30 seconds could make a huge difference in who’s still standing when you get back into the ring…if someone were to spend the whole fight hopscotching in and out of bounds it would be…. boring.
maybe its there so people have a chance to reequip? say you brought all your anti magic equipment but theres one psychic enemy using psionic energy, so you just can’t win. but you can have extra equipment waiting outside the ring like having a side deck, and that 30 seconds is there so the audience doesn’t get bored while you argue with your team quartermaster on why you suddenly don’t want the mana eater sword anymore and why they should let you take the mass driver cannon instead
this is a licensed sport, with corporate sponsored fighters, theres a good chance most of them have more equipment available than they can carry at once.
Judging from #1469, can she even kill Zerathax that way, if he “can reform himself from any nearby stone or sand”? Unless Magic Sword, of course.
She doesn’t need to kill , just incapacitate or get a submit..
I think there’s a limit to what a silico-crystalline life form can take in ways of rapid acceleration and deceleration.
Like getting brought up to several Machs worth near-instantly by SpeedyMax mcStabby, then bleeding off all that energy by re-arranging the structural integrity of a large rock pillar..
Something , something massive amounts of microfractures, exceeding or interfering with the regenerative capability he has.
He’s not “a silico-crystalline life form”. Per #1469, he’s a demon *possessing* a construct. Sounds closer to Concretia than anything else.
Max has dealt with a similar power set before. Remember the sand guy in Dues’ country?
Eh, she needed Sydney to melt a massive disc of sand to prevent him recharging.
I doubt she wouldn’t be able to convert the same area to lava if she really maxed her nukes. Sydney just thought of it first. And did less collateral damage than lava would.
You are forgetting the option “punch the dude into space”.
Darude was mostly incorporeal. Kinda hard to hit that. This guy seems very corporeal.
Did you guys miss where the attack carried Zerethrax? That stone pillar is one of Mount Atrocitus’ legs. Max can quickly leave the immediate area, having placed both Zerathrax and Eats Chicken in position to feed off of Mt. A. Maxima lined up her re-entry trajectory for that purpose.
Remember the sword neutralizes magical energy, and demonic possession is magical energy at use.
So yes, the impaling should be draining it of magical energy and making it very difficult to reform, in addition to probably shutting down a lot of its offensive power.
But, we’ll probably soon see, I am guessing.
Cover story? Getting up enough speed to STAB
Making a pitstop to recharge? Supercharge?
A 250% powerboost that has to be dumped into the opponent ASAP?
I’m waiting for the commentators to commentate.
Ixah is flirting with disqualification.
During press conference, she will say that she just needed to take a quick piss. And drink a red bull. For the flight speed.
Good math actually. Mach 10 is 3.4 KM a second.
Well, that involves assumptions. Speed of sound isn’t a constant, it varies depending on the medium sound is travelling through and the density thereof, and this ain’t Earth…
Eh, it’s not too far off to just arbitrarily set a number for Mach that is based off of the speed of sound in a given medium at a given density at a given altitude.
Kinda like how we arbitrarily defined the meter to be the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of 1 second.
Which is *suspiciously* very similar to the 1960 definition of 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the EM spectrum of the Krypton-86 atom.
Which is *suspiciously* very similar to the 1889 definition of the distance of two engraved lines on a platinum-iridium bar that was always kept at 0 degrees Celsius.
Which itself is *suspiciously* similar to the 1791 definition of 1/10,000,000 of the shortest distance from Earth’s equator to the North Pole passing through Paris, France (assuming an Earth flattening of 1/334).
Why is that suspicious? It’s the exact same distance, just defined in progressively more precise ways.
Agreed, the Speed of Sound on Earth can vary depending on your elevation or altitude.
The classic Mach 1 number is, I believe, the Speed of Sound at Sea Level (or just above it).
Yeah, 3.4KMS is nice. I guess, for say a sidearm. But, I’ve gotten so old and jaded that until we are talking about say .1C. Meh, it just ain’t moving that mass fast enough for me. Granted, I get nervous with that .9C stuff that masses in the 1.345 × 10^23 kg. Because oofdah, the clean up on that. I have to get out the serious mop and bucket then.
p.s. anyone else irked that most writers seem to think railguns have zero recoil? (eye twitches)
To be fair science friction, rail guns probably have some ability to absorb the recoil. if only to keep the shooter’s wrist from being broken. I know in halo one of the justifications for the extreme snipering only a Spartan can do is because the power armor absorbs the.recoil from said sniper rifle.
A gun can’t “absorb” recoil. It can spread it out over a longer period of time, it can be super heavy so that it accelerates less (same momentum though), or it can launch something else.backwards to counteract the momentum (hot gasses, another projectile, etc). A hand held railgun can not easily do any of these.
There’s Felt Recoil and Actual Recoil.
Actual recoil is a constant (if the same system is firing the same load every time) that can be mitigated, redirected or reduced.
Felt recoil is what the operator feels and can be affected in ways beyond mitigation, etc. For example a heavier firearm will have less felt recoil than a lighter weapon firing the same ammo.
A Spartan’s power armour is probably absorbing a lot of the felt recoil allowing them to keep on target better than someone without PA firing the same weapon.
40K has a similar issue with its Bolt weapons.
Handheld railgun…. probably not. Railgun in general though? Yeah. Consider this. Railguns need a giant dump of electrical power, all delivered within a few hundred microseconds. That power has to be generated, stored and delivered, and how to do that is a significant engineering choice.
A good proposal for a “recoilless” railgun would be one that fires a heavy, relatively slow projectile in the retrograde direction using explosives, then uses induction coils around its trajectory to harvest a massive dump of electrical power to charge the coils on the railgun pointed forward.
Explosives at rest are an efficient way to store a large amount of energy and have it available, all at once, at a moment’s notice. No delay to spin up a generator, no need charge a giant supercapacitor or keep one charged. Delivers power at a rate comparable to the capacitor dump, and because momentum is compensated by the countermass it doesn’t place undue stress on the shock-mounts under the weapon.
So you get a fifty-kilogram countermass going mach-one in one direction, and a one-gram relativistic slug going about 0.2c in the other direction. There is conservation of momentum, but almost all the explosion’s energy gets packed into the one-gram slug. If there’s something behind you that you want to keep, then it has to avoid or vaporize the countermass, but that’s relatively easy.
Assuming you actually can build electromagnetic coils good enough to do the acceleration in the first place, this is a reasonably sound engineering approach.
you already have inertial-less flight, an inertial-less railgun is not big of a stretch
Another item that The Expanse go right. There was even a line about needing to calibrate the Rocci’s after market railgun to the engines so that everyone wasn’t thrown into the ceiling every time it fired.
One of the dinosaurs was assassinated. The rest were innocent bystanders.
Dude was using firepower to overcompensate a bit for poor marksmanship. He actually missed the target by a hundred fifty feet, but given his choice of ammo and weapon it didn’t matter.
Let’s hope next time one of us pisses off the galactic overlords, we draw a higher class of assassin. Better aim, better efficiency, less collateral damage. Maybe even a touch of discretion and professionalism.
Too our audience- why do you think Ixah had to suddenly leave the arena?
A- The Grax caught up to her? (Why is Grax suddenly popular again?)
B- She drank too much Power Juice (tm. Also a sponsor here)
C- left the stove on. (10 simple household accidents you too can avoid.)
D- personal adjustment ( subscribe to mega enhanced super slo-mo for selected highlights and replays.)
E- Ladies don’t poot in public. ( shot of hostess giggle pointing during previous season. )
F: Had to build up enough velocity to shank Xerathrax, punch through Kaboomoid and continue on to piledrive Eat-Chicken into Mt. Atroticus.
That all four of them more or less lined up for ‘Ixah’ to take out in a single Move Through Attack will have the space bookies crying for one reason or another.
To be fair is also about memory. High quality video is easily twenty times the data storage of basic low resolution footage. And when your keeping maybe months of records on hand in case something happens well, not every small shop is going to keep a 2 TB drive just for that.
potato video footage backed with clean audio does more for evidence that 8K res vids.
The only add on needed is telemetry data showing wifi , B/T , and such proximity info to ID the person.
Multi Jurisdictional Task Force makes most of it’s arrests via that extra telemetry not a good face pict.
From a guy working in Video Management System : usually the crappy resolution has very little to do with the camera itself but rather other constraint, mainly memory and bandwith. Storing 4k h.264 at 60 fps and at standard bit rate can translate to roughly 100 GB per camera per day, and compliance usually ask for either 30 or 90 days of retention. So most commerce end up lowering quality to save on space so they don’t have to pay for a closet full of server just to keep that data.
Bandwith is similar, very rarely will small-medium (and even some big company out of experience) will have a dedicated network for video surveillance, so if you have hundreds of GB of data transiting at all time on you network, other things get slowed down which is not always advisable.
Fun fact, there are usually 2 set of settings used, one for live and one for playback, so you can most of the time get a better view when viewing a live video stream then you would on a playback (because storage isn’t a factor only network) and most modern camera have a “accumulate then dump” mechanism allowing them to just upload video to the server at X interval and keep a local copy until then (sometime at an actual higher resolution then what will be uploaded)
Storage space requirements can be improved by using motion-activated recording instead of continuous recording. By bird feeder camera, home security cameras and the security cameras at my model train club’s clubhouse all use this method. The home and train club’s camera systems can hold a couple of months of active video this way.
Lol, every camera setup I have used/installed record at a higher level than live view. Sure I can crank the live view setting, but I did a hotel a while back, live view was 720P, record 1080P. One setups I have is a silly Lorex, record at 1080P, live view at 480P.. that system is soooo horribly encoded that doesn’t matter the computer you’re on but remote playback (ie anything other than a monitor plugged directly into the DVR) runs at 100% cpu, doesn’t matter if it’s a 2 core 3rd gen i3 or an AMD Threadripper. Another system I have records in 2K and 4K, most the cameras are only 100mbit, rather than 1gbit.. which is funny, but live view is 720P and I can increase is per camera on demand if I’m actually watching stuff. Now that I think of it, I’ve never witnessed a system that live views higher than recorded, mind you I typically look at Hotel, gas station and home setups.
Enhance… Enhance…
Is supposed to show of the genius of the character.
They’re the one who thought of focusing on that particular identifying detail, which allowed the investigation to continue.
Even in 4K it could be useful and valuable, just for noticing far away stuff and small stuff.
Is that a sword in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
Why are these extraterrestrials using seconds and kilometers as measurements? Those are purely Earth-based human inventions. I’d expect the greater galactic species to be using other forms of measurement for distance, time, weight, etc.
Their words are being translated into something most humans can understand. These multi species centres have advanced translation technology.
They aren’t. Nor are they speaking in English. It’s all auto-translated from whatever language / units they are actually using into the language / units preferred by the viewer.
Dave B with the Deep Cut costume change. I see you, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century!
They called Max back from a we-could-get-all-sorts-of-space-tech stakes fight for THAT? Booooo.
I get that it’s a way to flex Max’s power, but if there’s no repercussions from this (like finding out Zeus gave Giant Girl a million-dollar superchat to attack ARCON, just to see if Max showed up,) I’m going to be disappointed.
Deve, if they can track her entering and leaving play area, they can track her anywhere on the planet. Someone in their security department knows that she left the planet and then shortly thereafter reappeared in the same place moving in the opposite direction still at high velocity.
. ”
Every Tesla automobile mounts at least eight cameras, and those are one-point-three megapixels per frame. Which isn’t that impressive in terms of resolution, but when you have overlapping fields of view from different angles and get dozens of frames from slightly different points of view within a few milliseconds, you can integrate them and and reconstruct a 4k resolution view in most directions. But it’s only 4k for things more than about 6 meters away from the car. If something is so close that only one camera captures it, then it’s one-point-three megapixels at 15 (or 100) fps. You can get some image enhancement on reconstructed frames from the 100 fps footage, but it’s still just one camera.
They only store about fifteen frames per second long-term, because they have only limited space onboard to keep their data. That cuts about 80% of the bits the cameras record, and that glorious 4k integrated view comes down to barely 1080p. But they keep all the bits short-term for a minute or two, and if the car detects a ‘bump’ or vandalism, or the driver triggers ‘make a record of what just happened’ then they don’t throw the bits away for storage.
“vandalism” in many cases consists of raccoons ripping the windshield weatherstripping out of cybertrucks, trying to get into what they sincerely believe is a dumpster.
Re: security cam resolution “As seen on TV”, perhaps the script writers have not kept pace with the technology? At the least, reality is not their first consideration. Imagine how a great series like “The Rockford Files”, where communication was often critical to the story, would change if if had to be written now, as opposed to 40-odd years ago.
Before I forget again, let me include another character who is far more likely than the Xevoarchy to have detected the Causeway and the details of Maxima’s journey: the Nth-tech T-head in the snazzy sweater. Did he/she ever get named?