Grrl Power #564 – It’s time to play Beat. That. Deathtrap!
This whole time the Black Reliquary thinks it’s alerting the Council’s authorities there’s a party going on. I guess no one had invented parity checking when they built the vault. Not that it would have done any good in this case, other than the Vault knowing the alarms weren’t going through.
Ancient death traps always make me wonder how they tested ancient death traps. Really I guess the only way is to trigger them, clean up the carnage afterward and reset everything. Indiana Jones and the Goonies and other 80’s movies made those a big plot element, but so many of them weren’t just a trap door, they were shit that brought down the house. One Eyed Willy set up a Rube Goldberg that caused the wall of a cave to collapse and his pirate ship to set sail. That would be a real pain in the ass to test. And presumably One Eyed Willy was the Einstein of Engineering to set all that up in the first place without access to a laptop. (Let’s all ignore the fact that the hemp rope or twine and wooden gears he used to pull all that off would probably have rotted beyond usefulness in that wet cave.)
In fact any base or tomb or prison or whatever that self destructs at the end of a movie (that doesn’t just involve a bomb or a reactor melting down) somebody rigged that to happen, and in almost every instance they did it without computer aided engineering, and probably couldn’t test it because they’d have to rebuild the whole base if they did. That’s putting a lot of faith in your masons. Also, wouldn’t it make you nervous walking around in a base where the whole thing was rigged to could come down at a moment’s notice and the self destruct mechanism was a bunch of ropes and gears that a rat or termites could fuck up without any warning? Evil Overlords aren’t probably super in to hazard pay, but man, henchmen should really unionize.
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Evil Ceiling Nullified. Switching to Hastened Evil Wall.
Switching to none copy right lazer grid totally not stolen from resident evil
OR
removing walls for gorgon head stone gazes would be my follow ups
*peeks in Sciona’s portable hole*
Yup, a whole bunch of mirrors in there. Looks like you correctly anticipated her next counter-move.
I vote for large scale liquid helium bath. that should slow them down some.
Some of the council probably live in the stuff.
Still think the failsafe should have been teleporting the entire thing into the black hole in the center of the galaxy.
Thats assuming they have enough range, or power. you are talking about a distance measured in lightyears.
So teleport the whole mess into the outer core of the sun. That should take care of most things; Achilles is likely the only thing that won’t be killed outright and he would be kind of stuck. 150 million km ~= 8 light minutes, but that still might be beyond the range of the mage that is setting this thing up.
you know, some things cant be destroyed not because of their durability, but because of what hapens when they are missing. you cant beckless with that sort of things.
be reckless damn it! be reckless!!
starts recklessly chanting summons for cthulu ……. ok I’m being reckless happy.
Sorry Cthulu is not within contact range from the Earth dimension right now. He said something about ‘needing to get to a minimum safe distance’.
I think you’ll find she said it was that time of the aeon!
Says alot when even an unmitigatedly evil being thinks you went too far Scions!
Either that or that was as a compliment!
I get the feeling that if they could just teleport the Armageddon level objects away then they would have just destroyed them via the sun.
+1
Yeah. Keter class objects are always damnably difficult to dispose of.
because something like 682 would just start slowly eating the sun, then destroy the earth as a giant star lizard.
Nah, he would just adapt an ion drive that shoots out of his mouth and fly back to earth and wreak havok.
The trick to having a Load Bearing Boss system is to have the default state be stable, and have the self-destruct system simply do something that significantly de-stabilizes it.
Something like having the foundation supported by dozens and dozens of narrow stone pillars- structurally sound for bearing weight, but then the self-destruct rams something sideways into them. And don’t have it be gravity-powered, but rather have it be something that requires maintenance to activate, as opposed to something that requires maintenance to not activate.
Of course, One-eyed Willy was a pirate, and so probably didn’t care so much about safety.
Don’t forget that this is a vault that has been in use for three thousand years. Squashing artifacts, capable of destroying the world, due to a period of lax maintenance, may cause one or more of them to become miffed.
That may be something worth risking if ‘the wrong hands’ are the ones who will suffer the immediate consequences, but not something you really want happening on an otherwise good day.
OK so they had a failsafe but it wasn’t much of one. With how easy explosions make taking out a first layer of defenses they really needed to have multiple layers.
Surely they want a faildeadly? “If this works, you die instantly. If you stop it, you die slowly and in agony”
Solid point. Diamond-tipped even.
I’m sure he’ll appreciate being tipped a diamond. That’s a huge tip.
So basically filling the room with lots of fun chemicals that start with “dimethyl”.
Testing and setting death traps. Refer to this one: https://escapepod.org/2012/11/01/ep368-springtime-for-deathtraps/
That was a great story. Thanks for pointing it out.
Why not augment the 500-ton ceiling-stone hydraulically? They’re 1000 meters underwater, still, right? Plus or minus. Have the void above the stone vented to the ocean, either magically or mechanically. (Like that disintegration ray burns a hole through the rock to the water.)
That would add a couple thousand tons of pressure on top of the stone, in addition to the weight of the stone itself. Those jacks would collapse like they were made of wet spaghetti.
For an extra kick, assuming the room is sealed (and Sciona’s method assumes it is) the pressure in the room will climb rapidly as the stone descends- right as the stone is maybe a foot from the floor, inject a fuel- the pressure will auto-ignite it, exploding and immolating most everything in the room, and consuming any and all oxygen remaining.
Doc.
I think the descending ceiling is a last resort. Makes it hard for the artifacts to be accessed after it goes off. They want ‘fatal’ not ‘unrecoverable’.
And that last paragraph… you realize that you’re describing an Internal Combustion Engine as a death trap, right? Which is awesome.
This is just the antechamber, the artefacts are stored in other rooms through the ‘teddy-bear’ doors
Just make sure that the chamber next door never meets this one then. An anti-matter explosion that big would be a planet killer!
The thing to bear in mind is that Sciona has an insider who supplied her with comprehensive details about how the vault works. So every defense that could be incorporated would simply require one extra precaution, when entering.
In this case a variety of solutions present themselves. Cast dispel magic on the disintegration effect (or use electronic or mechanical trap disabling techniques for the other options) to stop the hydroponic process from even starting.
And shove a bung in the fuel inlet, to counter the latter version.
Or take advantage in the design flaw and trigger it prematurely, as an easy way of taking out the pop-up weapons defenses, without having to resort to the use of major blood magics. That would have saved Sciona a lot of magical power that she could keep in reserve for dealing with unexpected issues, like heroes turning up to foil her cunning plan.
As we can see, from the above scene, dealing with the fiery aftermath of such immolation would not be an issue for the villains.
easiest solution to the explosive fuel mixture – does Sciona need to breathe? If only half of her coterie needs oxygen, then you just pump in a bunch of inert gas.
Tomb sealing scene from the 1955 Land of the Pharaohs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1E-nSNjzlY
I though of that one too. Didn’t know about the YouTube segment though. Thanks.
I hope they had a food-replicator down there, with them. Must say that the ratio of boys to girls seemed to be a bit off too, for long-term guardianship. Unless they had some means for immortality, in which case a stable population would be important in a closed community.
nope, back then it as considered an HONOR to be picked to be buried with your Pharaoh, though i admit they were quite blase about it all, and IIRC the high priest was NOT supposed to get buried, as he’s the one that would have had to finish the sacred rites and then bless the new ruler, etc.etc… oh well, that’s Hollywood logic for you.
The fact everyone was leaving gave the impression it was the end of the era, with Khufu not having any children or heirs
Normally, the High Priest would have left, but someone needed to explain to Joan Collins how evil she was
Now I get why folks go on about Joan Collins cosmetic surgery. Boy does she have some mileage on her.
I was wondering how she got out, but then I realised that she probably escaped with the documentary crew. They must have gotten out somehow, or we would not have the footage.
“…such a dick, Sciona.” If anyone in this comic other than Cooter was the victim of it, ANYONE, even the damned late warlord of Galtyn, I’d agree. But it was Cooter.
Miniwargaming presents: BEAT. MATT. BATREP!
I see the council had this place built like most governments build low security facilities-Find the lowest bidder and pocket the rest of the budget.
Seriously for a facility designed to keep out potential invading armys of supernatural beings with full access to magic and technology that would make a technophile from a thousand years in the future orgasm its pretty casual to break into so far.Any place stacked to the ceiling with possible planet ending items should have permanantly vaporise 1000 Dabblers working together as its minimum security setting and if that fails a final setting of dimensionlocking the place so noone can teleport and nuking the entire facility and everything within 50 miles.
Of course this is the same council that decided that in a community where decapitation can be considered a mild inconvenience by some races not to incinerate Sciona and widely disperse the ashes so its not like theyre any good at their jobs ^^.
They did incinerate her and widely spread the ashes. They just missed a bit.
They incinerated her and widely spread the ashes? I’d love to see how that went down. Did some minion run off with the top of her head and couldn’t be tracked down? Did it roll under a table and get missed in all the excitement of collecting a nigh-headless body for the burning ritual and after party? Was the collecting of the body handled by one of her inside connections, who conveniently forgot to mention that the top of her head was missing?
Yorp did say “[t]hey just missed a bit.”, they underestimated just how important that bit was…
Yes, I can read, thank you. And I responded specifically to the “missed a bit” part with my 2nd-4th questions. So what you thought you were adding by repeating what he’d already said escapes me.
Was explaining how they possibly knew a bit was missing, but didn’t think it was important without the rest, or did you not want answers to your questions? o_O
Personally have trouble recognizing rhetorical questions :(
DaveB (and anyone else, really) – If you haven’t heard of it before, you should check out a webcomic called Supervillainous. The main character is a super-villain known as the Crimson Claw. Not only are Claw’s henchman unionized, they’re currently on strike. Plus, the very first chapter of the comic involved Claw’s problems after he hired the Trapmaster to install some deathtraps in his fortress. (After all, no self-respecting super-villain can be expected to have a lair without deathtraps, right?)
He asked about childproofing them.
“Even a hardened criminal loves his son.” And his daughter.
I like three-dimensional villains.
Well, when depicted in two dimensions. I am not so keen on meeting them in person.
how death traps stay in good repair? Memalins: opposite of gremlins who like to tear things apart, memalins maintain ancient traps secret doors and various D&D mechanics. It’s in one of the 3 point monster manuals.
“drink this Cooter”
“drink this, Cooter”
Punctuation saves lives. Except this time.
Cthillia was quoting Sciona, who appeared to be speaking to Cooter, but was actually speaking to the vampire.
;-)
Eh, the henchmen unionized in Nodwick (by Arron Williams, it’s online now, go give it a read, it’s hilarious – comic.nodwick.com ), and it didn’t help much. Probably because the Adventurers Guild had too much say in how they ran things.
I find it surprising that Sciona and company had enough foreknowledge of the vault’s defences to know to bring floor jacks with them in the first place. O_o I also wonder if said floor jacks are still in place or if the ceiling is going to continue collapsing now. ^^;
The vampire assisting them above is one of the senior Twilight Council diplomats. So Sciona clearly had precise schematics and defenses inventory directly from a source capable of supplying that information.
And if the full details are not available to the senior diplomats, in each faction, then one or other of the two vampires probably wrangled themselves a position on the ‘Black Reliquary Defense Review Subcommittee’ or somesuch, precisely for that purpose. Or were originally targeted for recruitment, by Sciona, because they held a position with access.
♫If you go down in the woods today♪
♫You’re sure of a big surprise♪
♫If you go down in the woods today♪
♫You’d better go in disguise!♪ ♥
♫For every bear that ever there was♪
♫Will gather there for certain♪
♫Because today’s the day the♪
♫Teddy Bears have their picnic♪ ♥
You recon the big metal teddy bears are coming out to play?
It’ll be glorious! We’ll have tea and blood crimpets! I hear vampires make the best crimpets!
Oh dear. My spell check put crimpet in place of crumpet.
Meh. *shrug* ♥
What’s that AHHHH Crack Refresh in the last panel? Can’t quite make out what is going on…
I imagine it is because of censorship. It would be inappropriate to show a closeup of refreshing their builders’ cracks. ;-)
i think what it was is Death-Gaze broke some sorta magical thingie that cools the ambient temperature when broken
‘Magical thingie’ was a captured fairy, and he had a name, once
RIP cirno?
What they should have done is made it so that the floor area can’t support the weight of the ceiling, and ensured that it could not support the ceiling weight for 2x the height of the room. That way the ceiling would, punch those jacks right through the floor and would have kept going.
As a side note, every one of us is pretty much in here formulating the textbook for “How to be a proper villain.”
:-)
Actually, in hindsight, the problem is that no vault is mole-proof.
yes, meat plus chocolate equals win ^^
They could have tried putting down mole traps. Sciona only opened up a micro-wormhole, so it could probably only allow a mole of matter to pass at any given time.
Either that or they should have trapped the mole when he was burrowing through the archives, digging up the vault plans.
You guys are awesome.
‘Awesome’, ‘Insane’, take your pick :P
So disregarding collateral damage for a moment. When all other traps fail. Fill the room with explosive gas (possibly some liquid nitro for added measure), and make the room go boom. If that fails, ensure the floors are too weak to handle the boom, making what is below a pit of lava. Even if they survive, I am sure they will wish they hadn’t. Then trigger some magically reinforced drop off on the ceiling to seal the chamber above. Boom. Problem solved.
Excuse me, we would like to have a word with you about creating an unsafe working environment for the Dark Reliquary guardian, maintenance crew and inspection teams.
Plus there are a list of grievances from the artefacts, who feel that they are no longer welcome in their home!
Good news on that front. the self repairing walls would protect the artifacts from those death traps. As for the crew? Eh…. To protect such destructive forces. Casualties resulting from such drastic measures are to be expected. Especially if it is in the name of preventing Armageddon.
In the area of other comics with Henchmen’s Unions, I suggest https://narbonic.com/
OF course, DaveB is no doubt aware, as a member of the conspiracy of daves.
A founding member, one would assume, if his indentifying initial is anything to go by.
He may not know yet. The past founding may still be in his future.
And this is why you have at least 5 layers of traps in places like this. With three more layers that only a few people know about, and why you truth scan your security knowledgeable staff every so often.
It seems to me as though simply having the weapons mounts be mobile, running in tracks spiraling up and down the walls perhaps, would have given the ‘fiber’ some added challenge in destroying them all. Their own movement wouldn’t impact their accuracy at all of course since it would be a known factor and automatically compensated for, while it would have made hitting them far more difficult.
A useful suggestion One which could produce an improved system, with enough development. So finely honed it would do as you say. But before reaching that point there would be a number of issues to overcome. We do have pop-up weapons,* yet I am unaware of any systems which try to use defensive dodging.
Giving us a clue that practical matters might be a problem. Although it could be that such has simply not been considered at a time and place when these kinds of weapons have been needed. However there are a number of issues apparent:
1) Complexity. Pop-up mechanisms are inherently complicated and more likely to suffer a breakdown or operational failure (e.g. sticking in inclement weather, such as freezing temperatures or a sand storm) than a fixed emplacement. In the UK we would fear ‘leaves on the line’ (or a snowflake). In this vault it might be condensation.
2) Tracks add a large extra point of failure. Notably from battlefield damage. Even if an attack misses the pop-up turret, it has a good chance of damaging or destroying the track. Damage would ruin the carefully planned firing routines, as the turret may travel slower over such parts, or be deflected, due to warping. Whilst destruction would result in the turret being stuck (at best) or falling off and being useless, even if the weapon remains in perfect working order.
3) Costs. A well-oiled pop-up turret might remain operational for decades with minimal maintenance. Whereas an exposed track would need regular check-ups and oiling/maintenance. Or (assuming super-self repairing materials) at the very least regular inspections, to make sure that no debris has fallen on the track, nor fungus started to grow on it.
* For instance UK airfields in WWII needed to have defenses that were close to the runway,* which meant that they needed to retract, when not in use, so that they did not interfere with aircraft operations. Plus it made a handy surprise in the event of paratroopers trying to land at the airfield, given that aerial reconnaissance would have a hard time spotting such defenses.
Whilst longer range weapons were around, Britain had lost much of its support weaponry at Dunkirk, so needed to reserve the better ones for front-line troops. So others had to make do with cheaper, easier to produce, weapons. For machine guns, and the like, one of the trade-offs was on range.
Note that I did not suggest “defensive dodging.” Only a series of random movements designed to do make hitting the turrets more difficult. If there were two spiraling tracks which overlapped each other than a simple random selection of which way to turn at each intersection, modified by the central system which wants to keep the turrets reasonably separated from one another and of course eliminate any collisions.
1) The turrets already have moving parts. The weapons were not exposed until Cooter was detected after all. So while moving along a track does add some complexity it does not change the fact that the weapons themselves already have moving parts.
2) If a Roomba can detect a stairwell and avoid falling off of it, then a sophisticated weapons turret can detect that the track in front of it is damaged and change directions. Hell the damage sensors can be in the track itself as well as having collision detection built into the turrets. Information about any damage is shared with the central system so that all of the other turrets will also avoid that section of track.
3) Costs would be increased, certainly. But that cost seems to be easily justified given the results we’ve seen for stationary weapons turrets. “It’s too expensive to build something that won’t be immediately destroyed so we’ll stick with the system which were be immediately destroyed in the prior attack” doesn’t seem to be a very good cost-benefit analysis. Re: Debris. No debris is falling onto the tracks in an enclosed vault. Also see 2) regarding collision detection and avoidance for debris during a combat situation. And as for fungus, no fungus should be growing in an enclosed, climate controlled vault. Also, if fungus can disable your millions of dollar sophisticated weapons system you have done something horribly wrong.
1) Pop-up turrets (such as the ones on the airfield I described) have not become a popular paradigm, usually falling into disuse, when the maintenance costs become too prohibitive. They are rarely replaced, like for like, as the numerous design compromises (complexity of ammunition supply, breakdowns, wear and tear, size limitations, stabilisation issues etc) do not make an effective option.
Add in rails and each and every one of those is magnified. No longer does your ammo have to be fed from a secure armoured location below the turret, now it has to be kept within it. Leading to a greater chance of an ammo explosion and limiting the amount that can be stored. Energy weapons would have issues of their own. Just to elaborate on the one problem.
2) Roombas are slow moving. They are not moving at high speed to
dodgeavoid being hit by incoming attacks. Sensing damage and being able to stop before reaching it are two very different things. The higher speed you travel at the harder it is to do that. Slow down too much and the concept ofdodgingavoiding incoming attacks looses any advantage over a static pop-up weapon.3) You have no guarantees that your moving weapons platforms would have lasted any longer against Sciona’s attack than the static ones. They were magically directed counterattacks striking the aggressor. Most game mechanics I know, with that kind of feature work regardless of the
dodgingevasive maneuvers that the aggressor takes.Plus I still maintain that the turrets + tracks make a larger target than just the turrets. The German army used a lot of train-mounted weaponry and they were easy targets. Yours do have the advantage of alternate routes, but as the tracks get chewed up, the evasion options go down.
Finally do not forget that Sciona has access to all the defense plans. Which would include the patterns that the turrets use in
dodgeevasion. So could predict where theroombasturrets will be just as easily as they can themselves. Net defense improvement nil.Therefore you would have a costly complex system, with numerous combat disadvantages, but which could be destroyed just as quickly. With 3 decades (recently)/ 3 millennia (overall) of increased costs and nothing to show for it.
That said do recall that I was only pointing out the complexities that would need to be overcome. Highly advanced galactic technomagic could overcome such issues, if the galactic community was willing to risk it on Earth. Without the disadvantages a mobile weapons system would indeed be superior to a static one.
You keep making comparisons which make zero sense. Who cares if a Roomba moves slow, it costs $200. How much do you think any of those weapons systems costs? A few hundred million each, perhaps? Now add some sensors to the track and some collision avoidance. Do you think that doubles the cost? And even if you could make an argument that it did, again the cost-benefit analysis of “utterly destroyed because they weren’t moving” vs. “possibly surviving by moving” makes any cost considerations completely moot.
Making a cost analysis alone is flawed. You make a cost-benefit analysis, to make sure that the price is worth the return. In this case I am arguing that without galactic super technomagic the return would be less than zero (the system would be more vulnerable with the ‘improvements’).
Yet if you were to calculate the costs of humanity acquiring galactic super technomagic (let us say self-repairing metals, to deal with the maintenance issues and pocket dimensional space, to deal with storing sufficient ammunition in a safe environment), the dollar value would be more than the GDP of the planet!
The cost to the galactic community could be considerably more than that if it boosted humanity’s technomagic by 1,000 years. It could contribute to unleashing a scourge on the galaxy!
Mind you that is offset by Armageddon devices falling into the wrong paws. So I am not saying the costs are not worth it. Just that it is only justifiable paying them if the defense system goes from ‘can be overcome’ to ‘cannot be overcome’. Or at least pushes it sufficiently along the scale to make the favourable outcome the more likely.
Maybe One-Eyed Willy’s trap was meant to bring down the entire cave on the intruders, and sink the boat, but it failed and the entrance opening and the ship sailing off was the Rube Goldberg machine FAILING :)
One of the GURPS magical items is an identity paper that will provide credible-seeming credentials, to explain the owner’s presence (it is automatic, so they have no idea what it will say until the need arises).
That is except for on a critical failure, on the requisite bluff check. In which case it ludicrously over-reaches its claim, such as proclaiming the individual to be a member of the royal family or an incarnate deity!
Nicely balanced by the critical success doing the same thing, but with the reader believing it!
“Of course your eminence, you are welcome to remove the reliquary whenever you wish to. There was no need for you to abseil in from the skylight.”
Sounds like a certain time travelling alien busy-body with a boner for this planet and it’s inhabitants
Yea. Barring the critical failures bit, which was the key part. The Doctor’s paper can fail, but it does not do so quite so spectacularly. His document has a ‘play it safe’ option. Whereas the magical version uses the philosophy of ‘if predictions are that the reader will not accept a simple option then … GO LARGE!’.
So this does happen in real life, and not just in movies!
Ooh as another note, these sound effects could be spiced up. I mean… if these get boring. I mean, if… uh… not that I’m implying anything or somesuch, but if I was implying something, I assure you that the implication would be clear and direct, and not in a rambling kind of side-motion that seems to become more ambiguous the longer that the…. Uh…
Think the old Batman style, not only do the effects have bends and different fonts, but they have a background that emphasizes the intended sound. Like a brick, or a splash of water. Or those jaggedy-edge things. Or bubbles. or.. yeah. Well, the backgrounds can be generic from a file, then copy-pasted and stretched to fit, and you’d have to keep track of the fonts names (or make a custom font pool).
They can either cover up an action with a noise, or be mostly transparent.
Then again there is the visual aspect, that you don’t want to cover up too much, yet keep the impact of the noise available.
Of course, you have to empathize with the readily available potency that standard text bent around an object can project, but there’s only so much bending of time and space available, that this gives an essence of speed to the production. But then again, prefabricated sound effects with interchangeable backgrounds are also pretty quick to deploy.
Hmmm.
Hmmm mani pani hmmm.
I’m still wondering why this vault isn’t flooded with a mixture of chlorine and halon. Then flood with the ambient seawater as a failsafe. Then electrify. Then expose some nuclear fuel rods. Or really anything unilateral for that matter; impossible to diffuse so much as needing to be worked around.
It seems whoever built this vault – and its alarm system – took classes from the Comic Supervillan School of Ineptitude. (CSSI a.k.a. “sissy”)
Yes, a plot which requires that the good guys be incompetent for the bad guys to get one past them isn’t a very good plot. And right now the good guys are acting fairly incompetently. At least this is the Council, and not Archon. Archon wasn’t penetrated by a single vampire trying to sneak in. And the sneaker-in was Council. So we have a developing pattern of incompetence from those guys.
As previously discussed in-universe, some artefacts might contain a magical virus, or be keeping an evil entity from entering the world, etc.
Some artefact characteristics might be countering some of the many proposed solutions.
Yay! We’ve flooded the vault with sewater. Oops, artefact #162 contacted seawater – all fish in the ocean will now rapidly be turning into giant armoured amphibious meat-eaters, if they don’t just die.
Yay! We’ve exposed the vault to nuclear fuel rods. Oops, that powers up artefact #252 to start the planet-cracking process.
Yay! We’ve flooded the vault with chlorine. Oops, artefact #351 which, while intact, restrains the entity Sugarcube (don’t ask), has an extremely delicate shell and is kept under a very finely calibrated mist. Too wet and the shell will dissolve, too dry and the shell will dry and crack. What will chlorine mixed with a fine mist do to that shell? [see: corrosion]
Plus, due to the same betrayal within the Council that made this raid possible, Sciona et al. would have known about and been able to take counter-measures against any such precautions (tada! lead-lined synthetic-coated self-contained air-tight power-armoured hazmat suits)
If there had been no betrayal of knowledge, the combination of “fire weapons” on (presumably) each detected moving creature, “burn/boil” any survivors, and “bring the roof down” backup would have probably been very effective.
As has also been the case historically, prior information is the winning point here, I feel.
+1
Nicely said.
No. Instead:
===
Yay! We’ve flooded the vault with seawater. Luckily we didn’t do so by having a direct pipe to the ocean, because that would just be stupid and would be a built-in way to potentially enter the vault. No, we integrated the water tanks into the vault itself, and use pumps to fill or empty the vault from the tanks.
===
The same application of simple logic applies to all of your other “We’re too stupid to breathe without orders” scenarios.
Considering the level of skill this council seems to have, you bring up a good point; they probably would have pumped seawater directly into the room. No plan survives contact with a moron.
That’s the dumbest rejoinder I’ve ever heard. My point since you obviously didn’t get it is that the defenses are piss poor. Maxima could literally walk right in there, and she’s not the only super with her level of power. The level of incompetence displayed by these guys is breaking my suspension of disbelief.
The vault was designed somewhere between 30 and 3,000 years ago, yet they have only discovered the true potential of supers within the last week. So you are criticizing with the benefit of hindsight. You always need to judge people’s actions on the information they had available at the time.
Even at the lowest estimate Maxima had not even become a super at that stage! Nor were comparable supers on the scene at that point either. They have only been coming into their own very recently, thus prompting the scenes we have seen unfolding in the comic.
It does not take much to break the suspension of disbelief for someone who only seeks out flaws, without giving similar credit for mitigating factors.
traitors are good at fucking up defensive measures
For some reason that reminded me of Harem teleporting into the armoury.
And this is why a fall away floor into a vat of Hollywood Acid is preferable to a slow crushing ceiling. Well, that, and the fact that the fall away floor doesn’t leave a big mess splattered all around the room that will have to be cleaned up after the room is reset.
*puts acid-immune sharks into the liquid*
What? Hollywood Acid begs for an extra touch! Style counts.
let me tell you few little factoides. the very first combine was built by a man with a third grade education and he was a farmer to boot.
at one time we planted entire forests and laid out the role of every tree crotch and branch in that forest to provide new timbers for every part of sailing ships. the life span of the ship was calculated till the very first trees where mature enough to be harvested, a plan was given to the foresters for the pruning of each tree at what intervals to make frames and knees to within a few degrees of the angles needed.
the roof beams and cruks need for the main hall at Cambridge collage where at the proper sizes 115 years later when the roof and upper gallery needed to be replaced. they where planted the same year the hall was finished and for the 115 years had been tended to produce sound timber for the entire job according to a prescription written by the timber framer that designed the structure.
these where not done with computers and for the most part where done by people that could not read. it wasn’t important for a builder to know how to read and write. and didnt take decades of work to produce.
in the modern world we forget that many skills where handed down from master to apprentice and each iteration learned a little bit more than the last. the human brain is a superb computer capable of modeling a result form partial data faster than any super computer ever built. all that is required is the proper training. w can even change its programming on the fly, constructing basic operating instructions in seconds and rewiring entire sections in days. imagine what those old boys could do, with both the computer in there heads and a somewhat fast mid range Dell. (provided that they could read or that the dell was programmed to present information and could take information in the way the user needed. (not a strength in our computers today)
Interesting info.
Death traps and self-destruct systems are probably built the way Mythbusters would build them. They make a small-scale prototype to demonstrate, then build and test each individual component, then assemble it all together at Kirk’s Rock and blacken the desert sand.
Someone who makes a career at that could confidently pass the plans to an architect to integrate. And it works FLAWLESSLY!
Except when it doesn’t. That’s got to be a serious black mark on your record, because in that line of work, you don’t get many chances to demonstrate your successes.