Grrl Power #946 – Passive enthusiast
I see some of you guessed, if not this exact thing, then at least what the general function of the encapsulated nodes off of each orb might be. As for what each specific power might be…
As the stinger suggests, I like passives. Well, it depends on the game, but I tend to like them when they’re not lame like “1% Better Chance to Block.” There are a few different kinds of Passives, and the ones that extend existing abilities aren’t really what I think of when I think of Passives. You know, stuff like “10% of damage inflicted is Vampiric,” or “Do 50% extra Damage to enemies below 25% health.”
The stuff I like are passives that grant new abilities, but without any of the management overhead. They’re quality of life improvements. “5 meter automatic loot radius,” or “Reflect an attack that would have killed you – 5 minute cooldown.”
Then there are the ones that “proc” (an acronym for a Programmed Random OCcurrence – I didn’t know that until just as I was writing this and looked it up). Basically you get an unreliable power. “20% chance to dodge incoming ranged attacks,” et cetera. I’m less excited about those. It honestly depends of the proc rate. See my previous rant about lame upgrades.
Some Passives functionally take the place of attribute points. If you think about it, “Strength” in a game doesn’t do anything by itself. Strength is what’s used to calculate Carrying Capacity or Melee Damage or Jump Height or whatever. But if you could buy “Increased Carrying Capacity” or “Improved Melee Damage – Level 3” or “Hardiness – 1 Extra Health Pip,” you’re effectively acquiring the end result of buying attribute points. It could be suggested that it’s designed to be a more engaging manner of character advancement than just dropping a point into an attribute.
A lot of games RPGs have Too Many Powers in my opinion, and you only have so many hotkeys, so cynical game design analysis aside, I tend to gravitate toward passives. Give me a big hit for bosses, an AOE for swarms of things, a fun traversal ability, maybe some stealth/backstab options, and a lot of quality of life passives, and I’m happy.
The new vote incentive is up! Some of you got sort of invested in Lapha and Garamm, so her she is testing out her new duds. I don’t know if or when they’ll show up in the comic again, (probably more a question of ‘when’) but we’ll have to see if she got any other options besides the tail. Personally I’d go for retractable, venomous fangs, but presumably if you get those, you also have to get a special upgraded pancreas or liver or something, in case you accidentally bite the inside of your own cheek with your fang.
As usual, there are a few variants over at Patreon, and as is becoming more common, a little follow-on comic.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
Since I don’t see it anywhere else yet, let me make the point that best part of this new power is that she won’t fall and die if she ever gets knocked unconscious at altitude. The bad news is, this now makes it much more likely that she will be knocked out while flying at some point. Remember back when she first signed up, and made the argument that comic book characters with super healing powers (for instance) tend to get impaled or otherwise injured way more often than those who would not survive such abuse? The gods of comic plot logic will not be denied!
I wonder if it’s actually a kinetic buffer that provides passive protection against well, kinetic force applied to her.
i believe that would be more in line with the shield passive. but i’d be interested if it was a G-force dampener.
Classic Larry Niven Gravity Brake that converts momentum into heat.
Yeah but Maxima’s reply applies here, those powers are not showy and hence the writers need an excuse to show them off. This new passive will be REALLY useful when Sydney has to shield and shoot on the eldritch aliens again.
Kinda?
I mean, sure, she won’t be falling. But on the other hand, she won’t be falling. Drifting lazily down while shielded and shooting still makes you a much easier target to hit than one which just went from a straight line flight to a parabolic* fall at 10m/sec^2.
Handy for not hitting the ground if done at low altitudes, since we’ve seen Sydney get bounced around inside her force field a few times. But at altitude I think I’d almost always prefer to go into free fall than be an almost sitting duck.
Looking back at the fight against the kaiju and swarm of fighters, she earned 2 EXP points and didn’t die. So unless someone is going to claim, without any evidence that I can recall, that she would have done even better if she was just drifting gently down instead of falling when she was in that fight, I think that the utility of this feather fall passive is yet to be demonstrated.
.
* Potentially parabolic path pending powerset particulars. I’m still unclear if Sydney retains any forward momentum once she stops using the flight orb, or if her deceleration is immediate and inertialess. In either case her path down is still 10m/sec^2, either arcing or straight down. Both are probably more difficult to hit than a nearly motionless target.
Forced brake in the air that allows her to fire at overflying enemies without dropping her shield. Pretty handy tactical maneuver.
And that’s literally just the first thing to pop into my head. Now, take a large pill, and go watch some Netflix.
seems like I’ve seen a maneuver like that before….
I’d recommend FuboTV or Sling. or rent something on amazon.
She’ll be slowly drifting down… in a nearly impregnible force field. I think she can tank a hit or two while she blasts the drones.
Because of Sydney’s tendency to not pay attention all I can think of is her absentmindedly walking off a ledge and not falling like a loony tunes character.
You can bet that she will pull that trick (a few times)- walk off a ledge and have her legs keep walking as she slowly sinks, or just walk off a ledge and look around a foot or three from the edge, look down and then panic-fall :D
*meep meep*!
She will of course first beg Dabbler for a miniaturization device that allows her to appear to pull a “Oh oh” sign out of hammerspace
I kind of doubt DaveB will do that, so are there any decent artists out there who would? and can we raise money to get it made?
If you pay DaveB enough I am sure he can be convinced.
“Does this game have fall damage?”
“Sydney! No! This is real life!”
Not 100% sure she wouldn’t fall to her death, @Boson Buddy. We’ve seen the orbs go dormant when she falls asleep naturally. So they may or may not act situationally appropriate. It depends I suppose on how much plot armor they’ve been coated with.
They are advanced enough that I would expect them to have pretty good user-assist functionality. Witness how the air ball came to her hand when she needed it underwater, despite her not having any reason to call it because she didn’t know what it did.
If she’s at high enough altitude to black out, and DOESN’T fall, she could very well die anyway from oxygen deprivation…
unless the air ball can do something about that?
Remember that the air ball already has it’s passive node activated
It used to keep her from getting the Bends-hiposaturation when she changes the size of her shield
Except this is an easy one to demonstrate. In fact, it can be done so dramatically even. She can pull a descending Storm pose.
Fly above, let go of fly orb, grab shield and PPO, and descend slowly as a fiery orb of destruction in the classic angry X-men storm pose.
I hope that she can turn it on and off. There is situations where it is needed to fall at normal speed. As a thrill affectionado, I would also be very sad if I couldn’t feel vertigo ever again.
Worst case scenario, she now has neutral mass and the only thing weighting her down is her clothes. She will have to learn to skip around like a spaceman, wear weighted clothes and be wary of strong winds :P
If that were the case, there’s no way she would have been able to walk around without noticing. I think it just grants limited hovering that can be activated unconsciously.
Sydney said and showed she was afraid of heights without it…and as someone also with a fear of heights, she probably does not have any joy from feeling vertigo like you do. Tis unfortunate, but to each their own…
imagine being strapped into a roller coaster and not be able to plummet four stories as the track dips
I’d imagine that the passive protects her against freefalling but not against being carried by a person or a roller coaster straps
Remember, she does still have the ability to fly. I can’t think of a situation where she’d need to fall at normal speed while using two orbs, so if she needs to fall she can just grab the flyball and move straight down.
But she might be in a situation where she would like to fall at normal speed using no orbs at all. Jumping in to the pool for example.
I also wonder how would this “featherfall” affect walking down a really steep stairs.. or would it affect slides? :D
IMHO, there are many situations where it would be beneficial if you could turn this passive off and on.. both in and outside of combat. And I suspect it could be simpy done with mental commands similarly like she controls the orbs themselves.
As someone who lived with vertigo near constantly for the best part of 10 years…fuck that.
When I was in college I heard a story form a friend, it was winter, windy, and the buildings tended to concentrate the wind in that area. there was a construction site and it had a chain-link fence. not only did she get stuck (big coat) but another girl got stuck on the fence. (after laughing at the first ones distress.) the gust let go and they were able to continue on. I think we need to let women be more curvy. the idea that a woman in a coat could be a kite is disturbing. (at least once she got up there we wouldn’t hear the names she’d be calling us.)
For example, if she is on a fast elevator, and starts headed down, the elevator will accelerate down. and she will not– until she uses her head to put a hole in the elevator ceiling.
It just came to my attention that she already have the passive for the green ball, which I assume is the life support. I’m gonna throw the idea that it tends to her health to some extend and could be the reason why she can eat all this ludicrously spicy food without self combusting.
That’s more of a “Charles Atlas Superpower.” She can eat ridonkously spicy food because she’s built up her tolerance over a lifetime of eating spicy.
Daniel here, and I’m going to agree with ^Confused here^, seems the spicy tolerance is a Sydney thing, no Orbs needed…
I’m actually thinking if the Life Support Orb already had the passive node activated, then it’s quite possible we’ve already seen it in action!
Back in #540, Sydney was scuba diving to test some of the Orbs, when she released the wrong one and her mask got knocked off as the shield’s bubble burst. In 541, as she tried reclaiming the mouthpiece, the then unknown Green Orb – Life Support – flew into her hand and activated, creating a bubble of breathable air for her & Max when she entered it -https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-541-bubble-untrouble/ . I’m wondering if the automatic flying into her hand & forcing activation is the “passive” ability of the Life Support Orb – detect hostile atmospheric conditions (Humans can’t breath water) and take immediate action to restore survivable conditions. I’m thinking the reason it hasn’t activated when the air started getting thin during extended shielding (restaurant carpark fight mainly) is because the air wasn’t actually toxic yet, just…….less than optimal? Perhaps it was JUST ABOUT to force its use when Sydney popped the bubble?…
I guess only time will tell…
Since the address didn’t work 1st time…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-541-bubble-untrouble/
Assuming that the orbs are an nth level civilization’s idea of a space explorer’s transport and protection gear, and assuming that the air orb’s designated function is life support, it would be reasonable for the passive function to be an automatic bio screening filter that prevents the orb user from picking up any nasty alien bugs.
Or its passive is regeneration and she just hasn’t been hurt enough for it to kick on.
It just came to my attention that she already have the passive for the green ball, which I assume is the life support. Thinking what Sydney has had since the beginning that could be considered superhuman, is her ability to eat ludicrously spicy food without self combusting. Maybe the green ball tend to ther health to some extend.
She reported being lightheaded in the restraunt Brawl. Later there was he entire nmini arc when she picked up the Rebreather. Then keeping the rebreather because they figured out airball
The unknown orb is the manual.
…and it has always been working but you have to be using Truesight to see the display. And she’ll need the comm ball upgraded to the point where she can read the writing and understand the speech in the instructional videos. In the interim there may be some value in the videos even without language translation.
Also, Truesight requires the AR (augmented reality) path of upgrades to get audio, olfactory, olfactory off (What an incredible smell you’ve discovered!) and sloodvision as well as kinaesthethic translation.
The sloodvision is very important, as well as the vinkulosity detection.
But whatever you do: don’t lesnerize!
Continue maxflexing Lexx quotes and I will have no choice but to gelitexuate.
The unknown orb is the manual and it IS working but you have to use the Truesight orb to see the virtual display.
I’ve always been told that “Proc” is short for “Process”.
Or “procedure”. In all of programming, a called proc is a procedure. The distinction between a prod and a function is that a function returns a value, whereas a procedure just does something. (In most languages)
Programmed Random Occurrence
I once played a game where the upgrade gave a 1% chance for 100% extra damage, and another upgrade gave a 1% faster attack…
Thing is, you could upgrade both 100 times. And buy a third upgrade for a 1% chance at quad damage, only if the double damage had procced.
It was slow to upgrade, but you got there in the end… or like me got bored and moved on to other games
If I could get “Reduce Refractory Period to One Second” I would consider that a superpower.
A) More of a power stunt.
B) An evil genie would give you your wish, with no modification. The obvious side effect would be that you are never sexually satisfied. Ever.
well, for like, a second….
Best. Unlock. Ever.
Syd. Your very next pip, and this is at highest possible priority:
Get Passive Activation on that shield.
my first thought too, with my second thought being “what if she can’t turn it off?”
And the one after that on the seventh orb
After doing that, she’ll have gold skin, and Maxima will get miffed that someone’s stealing her look.
It’s a “continue last command” function.
Syd probably also broke her ‘rule of two orb use’. Which probably means she can use a extra orb that are connected by a pip as well
It’s not really a new power in that Sydney still can’t steer, change velocity (except to automatically slow down her falling speed, sort of like having a “safety switch”) or hover without having the Flight Orb in her hand; it doesn’t even work well as any kind of autopilot.
If we consider this passive ability as a “safety switch” more than anything else, it’s just a way that protects Sydney from any “harmful lingering effects” if she loses her grip on an Orb; If she stops actively using the Flight Orb, at least the falling won’t hurt.
I dunno about it not working as any kind of autopilot.
Let’s say she’s stuck somewhere out past the furthest boondock and can’t tell, by naked eye alone, where the nearest planet is. I mean, if you’re at Sun/Earth L4 for example, or somewhere equally distant, it’s hard to know which of those bright specks you can see is actually a planet and which thousand-or-so are just bright stars.
Now Syd has an automatic flight function that moves her toward the nearest gravity well. Now, we can hope that there’s enough ‘intelligent design’ here that it won’t just feather-fall her into the sun. We can hope that there’s an override rule that will prefer a speed faster than 3 meters per second when it would take more than a week. We can even hope that it’s smart enough to prefer planets where the user can survive without exercising powers.
Those caveats aside though, it does in fact look like Syd has an autopilot that can solve a navigation problem for her.
Because ‘finding the nearest ground’ isn’t always as easy as our experience would lead us to think. In some cases, you can throw yourself very hard at the ground, get distracted at the last moment, and miss. That’s what they call ‘orbit.’
We don’t know that. YET.
Currently she’s not touching any orbs.
Featherfall might turn off if she touches two orbs when neither
is the Flyball.
She’s *virtually touching* the Flyball when in Featherfall.
Actually touching beats virtually touching.
Touching the Shield and Trusight orbs *AND* using Feather sounds like
a rule violation.
What rule? At first she said she could only use two words at a time because that’s because as soon as an orb got released it stopped displaying the power. Now we see there is an instance that she could let go of an hour and the power still continues. So the ‘rule of two’ is only 2 actively controled. And we still haven’t seen whether she can actually control two other orbs at the same time that she’s in ‘featherfall’ – right now it’s a possibility.
Now if the green ‘air’ orb passive control works similarly, she could potentially have an Air supply constantly while also using pew-pew and shield.
a thought that i just had that more deals with the last page
when the orbs are set to upgrade and Sydney has grabbed one can she move them around if she’s not trying to remove her hand?
I suspect there is something unusual going on with sydney’s “Featherfall”. We already know her flight is not physics based, as she has a set speed limit, a oppose to hiro can pass Mach 1 but only with gravity assist. Is she simply floating, or falling safely? Can this effect be controlled?
She’s falling slowly, not safely, just slowly
Featherfall: 0.5 meters per second.
Newtonfall: 9.75 meters per second per second.
Landfall: 75 mi/h
Skyfall: 007 m/s
Starfall: K-3rd
Fallout: 2.3 games/year
Fall: 620-750 nm
Boomfall: Less than 50 mph
Badda-Boomfall: look stunning in thermal bandaging
Footfall: 32 km/s
Dunno how to do in-line links, so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall
It could be safely? Seems like the orbs do have a lot of safety features for the user and others (ie, the shield not dissecting people, the teleport not teleporting her in a solid object, etc.
Her orbs suppress vertigo while she’s flying,
New function gives passive orb activation at all times for slowfall,
That might be why the vertigo suppression is now active at all times.
think its more the passive tells body “have no fear” cause floaty power is here. now that its constant active
“Do 50% extra Damage to enemies below 25% health”? Them or you?
‘Them’ is fine IF you’re only trying to kill things. Which isn’t always the case…
You’ isn’t good! Personally, I hate being below 25% health and avoid it vigorously – even doing 50% extra Damage isn’t enough to tempt me to ‘run lean’. And deliberately ‘running lean’ isn’t worth the extra Damage (too easy to slip up and die).
Well, if it’s a well designed game, then every unlockable ability should have synergy with a few others, and ideally, have a “perfectly optimal” build path that maxes one or two synergies in the skill.
If you had a skill that made you do 1.5x damage when you’re below 50% health, then that’s when you introduce a “take 50% less damage when below 50% health” and make it four or five points to get that good, then another four or five points to make “take 75% less damage when below 25% health” and then you’ve got yourself a tank.
If it’s built around dealing more damage when you’re in “desperate” health, then there should be other abilities that make you harder to kill in “desperate” health, therefore maximizing damage and survivability in that range.
It would mean you’d start the fight out weak, and like an anime protagonist, get stronger as the fight goes on, until you’re doing 10x at 1% health, and have a 99% dodge chance and 99% damage reduction.
That’s if a game is good. Ultimately you could just make the player do 1.5x damage and give them x5 more health, but making your health essentially logarithmic means healers can get to you in time, after healing DPS.
If you make a guy do more damage, but not tank more damage, then yes, they “run lean” and risk death, especially since they’d draw aggro for doing way more damage.
It would technically work if like, you’re a DPS and the boss hits the whole party with an AOE, allowing you to do more damage, interrupt it’s targeting and move set, and then the healer heals everyone and your damage drops, and the aggro goes back to tank, it might be useful, but that’s WoW levels of 10000 hours of playtesting to tweak perfectly.
Tl;Dr, all skills should build into a max level god tier outfit, it’s just whether you know how to build into it, and which out of a dozen you pick.
The only game I’ve seen that mechanic implemented, it doesn’t start working until *after* the attack that reduces you below 50%. IOW, if you’re at 55%, the hit that would ordinarily do 30% damage will leave you at 25% as usual, and *THEN* you get to start taking a 50% reduction off attacks that come in after that. To really work the way you’re thinking, it would have to split the attack up, so you take the first 5%, then half of the remaining 25%, reducing the damage on the shot that takes you into damage-reduction range to 17.5%.
There were also combat perks like “never takes more than 5% damage from any electrical attack” that made it absolutely irrelevant how big the attack was. You could collect those (against different damage types) and make even a fragile character into a seeming tank, until somebody makes an attack corresponding to the one that’s not in your collection.
In paper Mario thousand year door, you could get badges that give a boost only while in Danger or Peril in health. However, this was a fixed value, and you could reduce your max down to Danger. This made it easy to be so powerful to one-shot anything, it didn’t matter you couldn’t take a hit. Never seen anything else that abusable, though I have managed functionally immortal characters, tank build with auto-rez.
Reality is a pretty lousy videogame. When you take damage, it debuffs you.
True, but the resolution and framerate are amazing.
nah, the resolution is slowly deteriorating every few months/years, pretty soon, mine will be down to 8-bit
Usually, that “Extra dmg% when at x% health (own)” is usually a last gasp ‘surge of adrenaline’ kinda thing
You are getting weaker, and you need to finish this fight now rather than a boost to your fighting abilities
Kind of Ironic Dave talking about games having too many powers when Sydneys well on the road to having ALL the powers =).
She has to live that long, and they still don’t know what triggers a level up, or how much is required to reach the next level, if it’s like most games, the amount needed for the next level also increases
Her current loadout is enough to make a sane person safe from almost anything.Thankfully Sydney has an entire super team including budget superman to look after her so living long enough to get all the levelups will be easy.Im pretty sure “levelups” are just based on usage since I strongly believe the orbs are designed with built in safetys which only unlock on how much theyve been used,Of course thats just my opinion.For all we know the real reason she levels up so damn much could be cause they feed offve stupidity.
Where “well on the road” is “Gets an average of about 0.8 experience points per [reader] year.” She will be a total monster by the year 2055.
Shes a total Monster now and in universe shes getting level ups at a monstrously fast rate-youd rather she “ding” each morning and achieve supersaiyan in a week?.
So if maxima grabs the fly orb would sydney float down untill she hits the maximum range of distance from the orbs and just stop there like she was on a string?
Neither, maxima would get dragged along :P
The orbs were stopped by concrete (well, technically, they stopped Sydney). Maxima could hold the orbs, and it’d stop Sydney.
Still feel Cora came in just before a beast mode panic could have happened and Sydney’s fear force the orbs to blast through the few inches of concrete.
Somehow I just didn’t picture Max as the toenail-polish type.
She isn’t wearing any kind of makeup, not even lipstick, that’s just how her shiny golden body looks
Lipstick no, but I’m pretty sure that’s nail polish – don’t recall her nails always being that stark red (and some of the other female characters have red nails too). Max isn’t uninterested in feminine habits, just has military habits – they’re not incompatible.
I know a female army mechanic that hasn’t worn a dress since childhood, enjoyed working in a slaughterhouse, and could easily take most guys I know in a hand-to-hand fight. She still wears makeup and nail polish on occasion even when not ‘dressing up’ just because she likes it; makes for an interesting contrast sometimes with the engine oil stains.
Okay, that is a face on the bottom of Ari’s mug, right? o_O
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbbtAGVpShA
Wooo! Called it! I explicitly said “Featherfall”, too.
Note that Sydney already had a passive. I’m thinking that one is “have the orbs orbit you and move at your command, so you don’t have to grab them from your backpack”.
The passive she has is the green air orb, and it activated in the pool many eons ago by jumping to her hand and making air.
Dave thought out what all the stuff does long ago. Occasionally he forgets details, but the general complex operation has already been integrated into the story line, and is internally consistent with the later reveals.
“have the orbs orbit you and move at your command, so you don’t have to grab them from your backpack” is exactly my own thoughts on what the Green passive does. I’m seeing Green as “Life Support”, not necessarily “Make Air”.
Currently re-reading the archives, and realized that this page is a direct callback to this one: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-351-vertigyaah/. I’m surprised Dave didn’t call it out. Maybe it was unintentional?
Maybe he did, in the last three characters “AH!”
i think thats a backronym for PROC. when I first heard the term and used it in games, it was short for processed. the random action processed on this use.
This kind of passive trait can be VERY annoying in certain circumstances. For example, when trying to rapidly descend stairs on foot… If she is ever in a firehouse, she’ll never get to pretend to be a Ghostbuster and slide down the pole. She’ll be forced to use the fly ball any time she needs to rapidly descend.
In science terms you really need 2, preferably three data points to draw a line like “passives” but having Sydney wasting her next two plot points on something boring like that would be tedious from a story perspective.
Shield passive has got to be pretty tempting now.
Either an amazing upgrade, or makes your life hell.
Passive on the comms ball = Universal Translator?
Passives on the on the pewpew, henticle, and shield orb will be interesting I think. And the life support orb. Possibly will keep the shield filled with a proper atmosphere whenever shield is engaged? This could be fun.
Green “Life Support” orb has always had it’s Passive online, since before the comic began…
Some time go there where available in World of Tanks which gave you passive bone on your tank.
For Example “0% bonus to your vision range” or “0% reduction on repair time”. Yes, the values are right and they were the only ones.
At least they did stack.
So Halo now has Featherfall. So she can now no longer engage in diving competitions or Bungee jumping, unless there’s some way to turn the passive functions off.
Was why I previously said automatic rather than passive, autopilot in aeroplanes, cars & assumed spacecraft still needs a pilot at controls.
In most games a passive skill is always active, needed or not.
An automatic skill triggers when needed, but only when needed.
My guess is the automatic feather-fall is active over a safe fall distance from a solid floor & ignores the inside of the shield, holding & sliding down a firepole or diving into deep enough water would be classed as a safe fall, she might auto-hover if she tripped over as that would be preventing an uncontrolled impact injury & Sydney grade wall of expletives.
If knocked out underwater I suspect both AI pipped orbs would automatically activate, an air pocket to prevent the bends & fly ball to raise her up to the surface, whereupon an outside rescue is easily possible.
and the trigger could be “i dont want to go splat” thus it triggers thus able to control the float speed other wise supe rman dive into bed going to take forever XD
the question there is if it only works when she is in freefall, or if it applies when she is connected to or inside something.
this featherfall for instance if it does not turn off while inside something could present an annoying problem if she i8s riding a rollarcoaster, or a plane during descent, causing her to float up and pretty much end up holding the safety bar to make sure she goes down with the coaster like a balloon tied to it, or in the plane being very glad she has the seat belt on or would end up against the cieling…
of course the creators of these orbs may have never considered these scenarios or anything like them as the orbs supply flight and a forcefield, if these are based on a space ship..why would a space ship have to worry about traveling around inside another vehicle?
Would her PPO be a Passive Aggressive?
Could be, but I suspect more an anti-ordinance/anti-materiel mode, the PPO’s anti-missile missile if you will.
Stopping bullets of any size (including missile tips, arrows, slingshot stones & fast inbound balls) within reason & the weapon it came from if any.
An aircraft avoiding Sidewinder heatseeking missiles will launch flares vs radar guided they’ll use chaff.
Sydney’s PPO would probably use a safe distance multi-target mode similar to the rapid fire scattershot she unlocked as the 3rd PPO pip, it could even require PPO mode pips unlocked to use those modes defensively, which would lower the OP level of the AI’s PPO pip.
Fan Skilltree is updated.
https://jcc10.gitlab.io/GrrlPowerSkilltree/
I spent 2 hours trying to figure out a bug with it. It was a stupid bug.
* applauds *
What’s really fun is going through the recent comics and finding discrepancy’s in them.
944 has the rapid fire missing it’s unlock (fixed in 945, though it’s on the wrong side compared to the other unlock visible.)
None of them have the weird “It may be locked for some reason” look that some had in the past.
My guess is for the comm-ball to have a universal translator or telepathy as it’s passive and the light hook to have telekinesis as it’s passive, though if pushed I’d bet more on the translator option than the others.
Hey Jcc10 / Wwjdtd,
Had a thought for your orb pip tree, maybe a mirror flip option showing Sydney/Halo’s PoV & the Flipside?
Shouldn’t the bottom lone node on the commball be teleportation?
IIRC the first time she got a point she had to do commball because she tried to use it’s truesight on the tree, so she bought that lone node, then later noticed a new setting on the commball that let her swap with her illusion.
Thank you!
It occurs to me Sydney didn’t finish her thought from last page, when Zephan mentioned the linking nodes. Sydney said she has an idea what they do and began to say something about when she is holding the flight orb…but accidentally grabbed it so had to spend the point.
I am curious about her theory and what she experiences in regard to the connecting node between the orbs, as she had one between flight and the PPO it looked like.
Hmm, what will the passive shield do? Might activate when it detects something hard and fast approaching Syd, or it might. . .make her happy she has the air generating orb at hand.
As for that one, it’ll probably ensure she never has to bother touching it. At least.
The pew-pews could get dangerous. Maybe it’ll shoot only when Syd thinks murder thoughts. Or, the least destructive possibility is probably she can set it to provide continuous fire in a direction until she turns it off.
The ol’ molestorb, I can’t think of anything it would do passively that won’t be pretty overpowered. It would be like a third hand, or more like an elephant trunk. Maybe it could hold an extra orb. Well, that should be one of its ultimate upgrades at least.
And as for the truesight, well, it would be dull if it overlapped with what Syd’s new glasses do. Maybe it will shield her and/or the orbs from surveillance. Or it’ll just open up the orbs’ help menu.
It just now hit me that we already saw an ability activate passively. The air ball.
When it comes to skill upgrades, I prefer combo/stack potential. Straight stat upgrades are cool, new powers are also cool, but stuff like adding critical hit potential to splash or DoT damage, and then having a skill that will upgrade splash radius based on stacks that increase with every crit, or one of my personal favorites: BL2’s B0re skill for the Zer0 character. where if you shoot a critical spot the bullet will pierce through and give massive bonus damage to the next hit. Sounds good but not special, until you realize that lining up a headshot on a mob enemy with a crit spot on a boss will allow you to completely SHATTER their healthbar.
Passive skills that aren’t stat-related in my experience are mostly ‘quality of life’, in that it makes it easier to go about doing your thing with the more active skills, and overall makes your experience smoother.
In this case, the obvious implication is that this drastically reduces the problem she experienced on that Alien planet fighting Grumpy McSquidward & Co, where she couldn’t shoot and fly at the same time because she had to stay shielded, and would drop if she had to shoot.
passive falling cool but what the hell is the passive for “death laser”
auto-aim perhaps?
longer comment below, but homing shot or lightning rod to absorb energy attacks when shield is down
She is definitely going to go on a level-up grind.
We still have people to chip in opinions on the skill tree.
I am thinking that her character arc is pretty deeply tied into the changes in her abilities as she levels up, and we should expect surprises there.
Getting the Comm upgraded might add language ability which also turns out to provide some intelligence facility. She can understand Dabbler when she talks math about the Nth wormhole, for an example.
She fills the center and suddenly she gets to choose adding one of 6 new balls and she also sees that beyond each of those six balls are five different balls. Why not seven balls? See now I wouldn’t know that.
But in the end is she still Sydney?
Neil Asher?
Is that you?
(For those who don’t get the reference, these kinds of identity crises are a common plot in Neil Asher’s science fiction books.)
Question. Is that like – active all the time? Sydney dives from the high board at a swimming pool, takes five minutes before the splash. Sydney throws herself across a beach ball field, completely misses the ball? What I’m asking is – if she wants to “fall faster” does she now have to use the fly orb, or is it something she can turn on or off at a will – like calling the balls to her hand is?
Ooo good point. I can see a lot of situations this can have a negative outcome. Including her having to suddenly dive for cover in a fight when she has been using two non-shield balls in the melee. I wonder if the ‘featherfall’ then is only in the direction of gravity. She jumps hard in one direction, expecting to land 5 feet away, ends up 20 feet away face planted into a wall still going about the same speed sideways she jumped at. If it affects all directions and just slows relative motion to the nearest large gravity influence (IE the planet), then jumping become a total slow motion montage.
My favorite passive ability is and always will be health regeneration.
been busting my brain trying to figure out a passive for the PPO (street cred established), and I think there are two that might be possible; homing shots, and an idea I like better- absorbing incoming hazardous energy, i.e. laser, gamma ray bursts, emp pulses, lightning strikes, a lightning rod if you will.
and it just dawned on me what the lighthook might have, super strength?
Whatever the passives for the shield and shoot orbs are, they’ve gotta be “minor” enough to leave her a reason to actually grab her balls from time to time. The shield passive is allowed to be good, but if it makes her totally invulnerable, then we never get to see her make a high-stakes choice about it again.
Swatting incoming projectiles is the “obvious” shoot passive. I think that’s probably okay, because there are other ranged attack forms to worry about – anything that’s not a projectile, basically. Wind, lightning, gamma lasers, gas, poison, etc. And would a point-defense capability engage animals? Would bullets be too fast for it to react to?
And we should think about the non-obvious possibilities. What if the bang ball has a passive ability to “absorb” incoming energy attacks and then re-emits them, along with its own thing, next time it is used on purpose.