Grrl Power #1026 – Earl Gray, hot!
There’s a fair amount to talk about on this page, but all I want to do is talk about the benefits of bubble mail. Sure, the AC is bad. Like, if the wind blows, the armor starts to disappear. But it comes with a +5 Comeliness bonus. (Or Charisma. I think Comeliness was only included in one edition of D&D.) Then there’s the penalties to being grappled, the bonuses to seduction rolls, and if you change into bubble mail while you’re trying to avoid being tracked, it erases your scent. It probably changes your scent to lilacs or rose hip or whatever the absolute cheapest shit most guys buy smells like. If you’re running through a field of lilacs or “dude chemicals” then that would definitely help. Also, if you equip bubble mail, then put a shirt on over it, then you seriously risk alienating me.
Can I have a tangent here? It bugs the absolute shit out of me when I see people in movies/TV pull a shirt on over wet shoulders. Not damp-but-basically-toweled-off, like their shoulders have been turtle waxed and they have standing beads of water all over their skin. When I do that, (basically never but it has happened) I might as well have a layer of honey on my skin for how much I have to struggle to pull the shirt into place. I assume actors and actresses undergo special training to do this without ripping a tendon in their elbow or tearing open the seams of the shirt.
I’m amused by the idea that Dabbler has been walking around like that since the shower, including the ride on the… helicopter wing aircraft* from the previous page. I guess Maxima was trying to ignore it, but decided she wasn’t going to change her outfit without getting a rise out of her.
Also, Deus has Mass Fabricators. At least now we know what he was doing on Fracture Station.
* Is there a name for planes with rotors built into the wing for VTOL like a helicopter? You see them in sci-fi a lot, like the gunship in the blue cat native Avatar movie (not the dumb Shyamalan disaster). That was really more of a helicopter though. I had a heck of a time googling them. I don’t think they’re aerodynamically advantageous enough to warrant a lot of R&D at the moment.
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Now I’m wanting Dabbler to hook up with Kalifa from One Piece.
As a lesbian, I approve.
Dazzler I don’t think you can distract Deus at the moment. He’s too enamored with himself to notice you
we will not blame her for trying. not at all.
I think everyone here can appreciate the effort though.
Pissing of Maxima and getting another checkmark on the Make Maxima Say Bingo is definitely on the table, however.
Yup that mail also has +5 agro for hetro females, and -5 wis for hetero males
Oh i think those stats modifiers are actually affecting everyone across the board.
So that’s how magic armor works.
I think you forgot the racial giving her 20% chance to charm a male regardless of orientation.
Max,the more you comment on it,the more you’re giving Dabbler what she wants.
Even when she doesn’t, dabs still gets what she wants.;)
Planes with rotors in the wing/body fall under ‘Lift Fan’ vehicles apparently
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_fan
Lockheed Martin F35B is the only example to enter service, although you might regard the Hawker Harrier as qualifying (although the fans are in the fuselage)
The Hawker Harrier is a Jump Jet
Agreed; “Lift Fan” seems to be the generic name.
There is a fictional example used in the 1930 film Just Imagine.
Those aircraft are classified as vtols because they achieve vertical take off but I they are called rotary wing aircraft.
Okay. So he has Mass Fabs now.
So now Sydney’s glasses can be made on Earth.
Everyone can stop complaining about Sydney’s glasses now. :)
Are those Matter Fabricators transmuting elements or is it a printer with Iron cartridges, Chromium cartridges, Carbon cartridges (etc.)?
*Error* *Replace Boron cartridge then restart.*
If they’re transmuting they’d be great for disposal of toxic waste. Also non-toxic waste.
A molecular assembler/disassembler can destroy any toxic waste that isn’t a radionucleotide.
Even if it is radioactive, there’s ‘safe’ disposal methods like inert glass sequestering.
Whan you have Santa Claus Machines and sources of things like carbon, (organic waste, atmospheric CO2) silicon (sand) iron/aluminum, (scrap metal) and hydrogen (water) there’s not a lot of things you CAN’T build.
Atom Sorting.
Be careful refilling the Plutonium cartridge.
gimmie some heat man, we need some heat over here!
Final boarding to Fhloston Paradise!
Don’t you mean Phlogiston?
What’s crazy is that even though the discovery of oxygen dismantled the phlogiston theory about 250 years ago, our current methods of modeling heat transfer still follow almost the exact same analysis, as if heat were a physical substance. We forget how much difference the nuances make; those old chemists/alchemists were pretty smart people.
Hey. if it works why question it?
OK, OK, I know, General Theory of heat vs Quantum Heat Theory :P
Negative. I am a meat popsicle.
Well silly me! Natch, I saw the movie — several times, I have a daughter — but completely didn’t remember the space-ship’s name.
We currently kinda sorta have the tech to take carbon out of the atmosphere and turn it into things. But the energy cost is ginormously humongously outrageous. There’s a reason the carbon economy works that way that it does where it comes from long chains in the earth and becomes a single molecule of gas: entropy.
That only works if you have the design file. Think 3D printing, taken to the next level with multiple materials.
The basic design of Sydney’s glasses could already be made on earth.
Just take a normal set of AR glasses with Sydney’s amount of vision correction and you’ve what you want.
The challenge lies in the software surrounding it and the ftl communication tech.
Things they would need to figure out are: Aim helping software probably based on image recognition, deeply advanced situation recognition, translation software for extra-terrestial languages, ftl communication.
Also required: the ability to conceal what is projected from someone looking at you (such as nudie pics from a big hairy boyfriend, as previously established), full-lens visual field, probably-better-than-visual cameras, significant amounts of processing power, and power storage or generation that is off the charts in terms of power per unit volume (and per unit weight). Probably generation, if we’re being honest, which also leads us to heat dissipation (also of the processor). Stealth tech to hide the giant EM signature, if you have any interest in sneaky operations, which also cuts out remote processing of the data, barring advanced alien secure communications tech. Honestly, also stealth tech to keep the display from lighting up your face if you use it at night time. Is that a thing with these glasses? Because I could see them being night vision but they would be generating light which would be majorly anti-stealth…
The lighting up the face problem and the ability to conceal what is projected from someone who is looking at you, has been fixed with direct retinal projection(standard go to method), the EM signature can be hidden with isolation(you control the device), energy requirement don’t exceed that of a mobile phone, full-lens visual field is fixed with transparent glasses and AR instead of VR.
Massfabs are where 3D printers are going to be in the future. I have one and it’s amazing what I’ve been able to print out, now take it up several notches and you have massfab! Granted we aren’t anywhere near the tech to convert energy to matter and back again but at this time we can print houses, space ship fuel tanks, bridges, they are even experimenting with bio-matter to print human organs and food! It’s amazing the things we can come up with if we’re not focused on making better weapons lol.
I once worked on a case (part of the discovery aspect of the case) involving a patent about 3D printing of human organs. :)
I legally can’t go into any detail about it though. :(
But 3D printers are definitely going to be important in the future in more ways than just manufacturing with filaments.
Well, thanks for sharing that much. I know that NDAs and privelege can be a bit intimidating, so putting even that much into print took guts.
NP. :)
I just can’t say more mainly because I don’t want to be sued or risk my bar certification. As anonymous as I am, there’s probably enough RL info about me available that it wouldn’t be hard for a dedicatedly obsessive person to figure out who I am. :)
What I wrote doesn’t actually give any more information than is already publicly available, hence there’s no privilege involved. Especially since I’m not giving the name of the firm I was working for or the company which they represented or anything specific about the patent.
https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/3d-printed-organs-nearing-clinical-trials
https://theconversation.com/3d-printed-organs-could-save-lives-by-addressing-the-transplant-shortage-132491
Cool stuff.
…. but I was mostly ninja-baiting with the pun on “guts” and “into print”.
I did see an article about 3D printing some animal organs. These were NOT complex, but could be “layered up” by the “printer” to provide some structural non-cartilaginous tissue. This would have been about 10 or 12 years ago?
If it has to do with giving a singer back his voice, I’ll skip the organ recital. (Sorry, resistance was futile)
Too late. Pander has heard you.
But, IF you’re quick, prepare a cup of Ginja for her. Don’t forget the cup MUST be chocolate.
Ninja hit squads are en route. You may very well need 3D printed organs by the time it’s over for your pun crimes.
Can we also stop complaining about her concealing her glasses’ features from her chain of command? Because that’s what I’ve been complaining about.
Yes we can.
The problem people have is that she has some sort of unfair advantage as a result of super-tech. But now it’s basically just glasses, and it’s helping her with an existing deficiency on her part. Just like having normal glasses is an advantage for her compared to if she had no glasses. Just… more so.
Just like Peggy having a high-tech artificial leg is an advantage over having a peg leg or hobbling around on crutches. Or now having (in the near future) a new gene-forged leg apparently. I never really saw the big deal with Sydney having the glasses as an advantage, especially given the team DID have glasses which brought up information on their enemies at the Restaurant fight.
The big difference is that Syddles’ Cora-specs are reliable in combat.
Having said that, did the Team ever have specs-on training drills with mock kombat?
I’m all for Sydney having all the advantages she can from Cora’s glasses. Heck, give them to the entire team – once ArcLight approves them. It’s the massive operational and security secret backdoor that I have issues with.
I doubt that Dabbler has allowed them to examine any of her gear. That’s just part of the deal. Archon deals with the exceptional and the unknown. Super powers are a big unknown, but they accept that risk because the advantage is too great to leave to their enemies.
Good point, Archon trusts Dabbler’s equipment even though she presumably hasn’t let them analyze it. But she keeps it to herself and is a trusted member, whereas Cora is unknown and issued her tech to another team member – arguably the most powerful one. Max wouldn’t let Sydney use a Machina-issued rebreather that Archon requested until it was screened; she and ArcLight are going to blow a gasket when they learn Halo has been secretly wearing AI-enhanced glasses with intergalactic comms.
Is that a control panel on the side that is covered by other Massfabs whenthey are closed? Looks like Deus installed them wrong.
The little green thing on the side? That looks like the ‘additive construction emitter’ (3-D printer head)
More units open up depending on how big whatever your fabbing is. (3 blocks to support whatever you’re fabbing, 4 more to print up the layers)
If I was DMing and a player wanted to do the bubble clothes thing via a spell, I’d probably have it be an illusion, like silent image (minor illusion is immobile, so as soon as they moved they’d step out of it) or disguise self (usually used to impersonate others, but since it disguises your clothes as well you could just be yourself but wet and coated in bubbles to hide any naughty bits). Granted, I would also allow it to be a reflavor of mage armor if they wanted it to provide AC, as that would be absolutely hilarious! I do silly, personalized reflavors of spells all the time, so I’d love it if somebody did that!
BTW, in my setting most magic gets personalized to the caster, as the spell names in universe are a way to describe the result, rather than referring to a standardized appearance/effect, so when Daemonicus Skullflame casts fireball it looks way different than when Fuzzy Wuzzimus does (these are names I just made up on the spot, but now they will be NPCs should I remember them when I finally get my campaign off the ground), but they both have the same mechanical effect. The exception to this is when a wizard copies a spell into their spellbook, if they came up with it themselves (as in, they took it as part of a level up), then it’s their version of the effect and is personalized to them, but if they copied out of another wizard’s spellbook or if they copy a spell scroll into their book, then they get the version the original author used, so if Daemonicus Skullflame copies Melf’s Minute Meteors out of Fuzzy Wuzzimus’ book, then it conjures six pink, fluffy hearts that explode in pink sparkles and glitter upon impact, dealing 2d6 fire damage, since it’s the version of Minute Meteors that Fuzzy came up with, even if Daemonicus cast it.
The best bit about illusory clothing, is that you can tell when people are using True Seeing against you!
Sounds like the way the Hero RPG system works. YOu define the effect separately from the side effects and special effects. You can buy a one-target 6d6 energy blast for 30 points, and it can be a fireball or an iceball or an electric zap or whatever. If you want it to be area effect, that’s +1/2, so 15 points more if there’s no other alterations.
When you actually use it, the special effect (fire, water etc) may have side effects like extra damage on the paper golem, half damage on the salamander, ice causing a slight slowing of a water elemental, or whatever.
Sooo, I guess Deus already knew she was an alien/demon? If he didn’t, he does now.
This is probably covered by a strip I just don’t remember. I mean, he knows other things exist, so why not her?
He at least can be assumed to know she’s an alien, from ARC’s perspective, since that was publicly announced during the press conference with Cora, and since that cat is out of the bag, they have no need to hide it from Deus in particular, even if he somehow managed to NOT find out about the contents of said press conference (which I would find shockingly unlikely). I don’t know if ARC knew if Deus knew about magic and such before he publicly used Infernals in his army, so they might choose to keep Dabbler’s succubus heritage close to the chest (heh) until they confirm he knows, and if that Infernal army IS Tom’s (as it looks to be), he at least in theory has access to that intel, even if he isn’t immediately privy to it. Like, magic and demons are still secret information, even with supers and aliens being public information now, and Dabbler’s status as a demon and powerful magic user is at least nominally secret, presumably even from those who are privy to the broader existence of magic and demons, not that they have the authority over Dabbler to prevent her from sharing whatever she wants about herself, since she is only a contractor rather than enlisted, so she’s free to share whatever personal information she wants with whomever she wants so long as it doesn’t endanger any operations, national secrets, or the personal information of others on the team.
“… so they might choose to keep Dabbler’s succubus heritage close to the chest (heh) …”
Wouldn’t we all?
1) We all know Harem is telling Deus lots of stuff, so there’s no chance that he doesn’t know.
2) It’s public knowledge that she’s alien and that her “battle form” is her real form, so there’s no reason to think that Deus wouldn’t know, even without Harem.
Way, way back when Halo’s powers were revealed, Deus is shown commenting that overcoming the power of succubi glamours means they are extraordinary.
He’s known since before Halo joined, at the least.
I mean, WE know Deus knows all kindsa stuff, WE know he has an informant, I would say it would be a safe bet for US to make that Deus knows pretty much anything that might come up in canon because Deus just seems to know things, for some reason, either via powers or an extensive information network. I wasn’t talking about what WE know Deus knows, I was talking about what ARC KNOWS Deus knows, as well as what they can safely admit to knowing he knows. THEY have to operate under the assumption that Deus doesn’t know what they know he knows until they know that A, he knows they know he knows, AND B, they are willing to admit they know he knows to his face. Even if they know he knows, and even if he knows they know he knows, and EVEN IF they know he knows they know he knows, they might not be ready to admit they know he knows they know he knows. Because operational security is need to know, and he doesn’t NEED to know, even if he knows and they know he knows and everybody knows that everybody knows, nobody should admit to knowing who knows what until the other party admits they know what we all know because it’s all a game of counter intelligence chicken. BOCK BOCK BOCK BAGOCK!!! Y’know?
That went some… weird places, there.
I was wondering if you’d ever find your way out of your knows?
I’m still waiting for Harem to get busted for being a double agent. Hopefully that’s coming real soon…
Technically, she’s on assignment with SmugD (Maxi already pulled her aside about sleeping with the enemy, yes Pander, he is considered the enemy, just not a hostile one… yet)
So far he’s just been an enemy of needless poverty due to corrupt governments/politicians but like I’ve said who knows what his endgame is or who it’ll effect.
“(Maxi already pulled her aside about sleeping with the enemy,”
For feminist reasons, not because he’s actually the enemy. She was going to go on a long feminist diatribe about silk work and ‘the long history of female spies having to compromise…’ blah blah blah.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-604-rooftop-relationship-roundup/
(panel 2)
Nothing in there saying he was the enemy. Just that ARCHON doesnt trust Deus. Ironically be doing things which are actually making ARCHON untrustworthy. Plus…. borderline illegal unless they got a warrant through some secret FISA court. Which itself is still arguably constitutionally suspect. Like most things involving FISA court warrants.
“yes Pander, he is considered the enemy, just not a hostile one… yet”
So Deus is the enemy, but ARCHON’s the one doing untrustworthy and hostile things like… spying. :)
Btw… how exactly has Deus been an enemy?
I’m not going to bother go too much into this, because Scarsdale put it PERFECTLY. The only thing Deus has been the enemy of is poverty, starvation, corrupt murderous regimes, and unsatisfied libidos. Because none of those things can exist for long with Deus around.
All praise Deus, amen.
Right, keeping tabs on people is hostile, but invading a neighbouring country because you want a direct route to the coast is not?
“Right, keeping tabs on people is hostile”
1) ‘Keeping tabs’… nice spin, yourself. :)
2) ARCHON is already supposed to abide by certain rules. Such as, yknow, the Constitution. Since they’re part of the US government. Which is supposed to be bound by the Constitution.
3) I don’t have a problem with ARCHON spying in general. I’m just pointing out that if you’re going to call them heroes and Deus a villain, then it’s an unfair view. Deus realizes they are spying anyway, and winds up using Harem to spy right back. But ARCHON started it. :)
Also there was already war with Mozambique before Deus was involved.
Also the people in that region were begging Deus to come in to help and provide infrastructure.
Also Mozambique was a failed state. Deus’s company is not failed by any means, and isnt doing anything evil to its employees.
“invading a neighbouring country because you want a direct route to the coast is not?”
War between different nations is legal. The government of the US spying on its citizens without a warrant is not.
Dabbler was revealed to be an alien to the world at large several hundred pages ago.
Hahah. Max with the 1000000x yard stare(Assuming she actually could?)
Was looking some of the variants up, and I agree lift fan or lift engine is probably the closest.
There are a number of similar technologies and there have been attempts to develop VTOL, but I think in general they are only preferred as something other than a tech experiment when you are limited to runway size, ie carrier aircraft.
I’m not an aerospace engineer, but I think while you might be able to build one, it’s going to be much less efficient and useful than other modern alternatives.
That is true, but Deus has access to postmodern technology. We can’t build a MCU Quinjet or a Helicarrier because we don’t have anything like ARC reactors, BattleTech fusion engines or Star Wars repulsor lifts.
He can.
It’s one of those ‘at any conceivable level of technology, unless your technology has dramatically different base principles, it’s more efficient to do it similar to how we’ve been doing it’ things, though. It’s not hard to come up with what it would take to build it to work – that’s just a matter of increasing the power/mass ratio some more, which we’ve been doing since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
The problem is that at any given power/mass ratio, you’ll have better performance if your engine is dedicated to either lift or thrust. Splitting the use of the engine just means extra overhead in both mass and complexity. So unless you have a very specific need for the split, it’s better to not have it.
Now if a gravitic drive were possible that might get around that, but there’s no evidence so far that such is even possible.
“… but I think in general they are only preferred as something other than a tech experiment when you are limited to runway size, ie carrier aircraft.”
I’m with you on that. GIven there were only two non-Russian VTOL models built, the Harrier and the F-35, and they are both horrendously successful fighters/close-in air support rather than transport, we’re left with basically the Osprey which seems to nicely fill a gaping niche in that mode.
Even there, the Osprey’s design was specifically aimed at a similar sort of special case to the Harrier and the F-35B. Vertical launch is useful or even essential for some special cases, but it’s horrendously fuel-inefficient and tends to impose significant design constraints. If you have the option to use a paved runway, or even the catapults and wire-traps of a carrier, you do so!
Short or vertical launch/landing capability is useful for naval aviation, but it’s far from essential – we’ve been launching and recovering fixed-wing craft from ships for decades. Among the USA’s armed forces, it’s only the Marines who use the VTOL ‘B’ version of the F-35; the Navy uses the conventional ‘C’ version built for catapult launch and wire-trap recovery. (The ‘A’ version is the Air Force version, which doesn’t carry around either set of heavy extras because they don’t operate from places where they’d be needed.)
The primary design case for the Harrier was for the RAF in Cold-War Germany, not the Navy. Airfields are a big, obvious, and immovable target; it’s a good bet that they’d be receiving a lot of attention early in any conflict. But if you don’t need a runway, you can disperse your aircraft to as many clearings in the woods as you can find and keep the fight going. Even if one does get tracked back to its den, that doesn’t expose the rest of the squadron. Of course, in order to resupply those satellite bases you’d need a similarly vertical cargo capability. Helicopters are fine for this, but tiltrotors like the Osprey can get better cruise speed.
Radar profile is another big consideration. Between advances in stealth tech and aerospace engineering, VTOL and variable-sweep wings are no longer worth the tradeoffs in weight and reduced capability.
The Swedes were in the same sort of boat, that’s one reason that the Draken and the Viggen were STOL, to use straight sections of highway.
I noticed the US Marines were the big supporters of the Harrier, probably because they’d be operating where forward airfields are little more than quarter-acre paddocks.
Ducted fan is the other common term for aircraft like that. For an interesting, though long, read on early VTOL aircraft, take a quick look at the Wikipedia entry for the Avrocar VZ-9.
There’s quite a good joke about the Avrocar in Spinnerette, of all places. The Canadian Superhero team have one and reckon it is the most dangerous vehicle they’ve ever encountered – which is Truth In Television
Even the Osprey doesn’t rely on its rotors for direct lift throughout much of its flight regime. Unless you have a magical-alien tech power source your vertical lift equipment becomes dead weight once you transition to forward flight. On a relatively small aircraft such as a fighter you can get away with it. The Osprey gets away with it by repurposing its lift system as forward propulsion. The bigger the aircraft, the more problematic this becomes. Generally, with aircraft any time you enlarge something the power requirements increase exponentially. Coming from the world of remote control airplanes and rotorcraft we can get away with things that full size aircraft designers can only dream of. Smaller aircraft can get away with inefficiencies that will ground larger aircraft. By the time that you get to something the size of a medium transport all of your power and useful weight is tied up jut getting into a hover.
I’ll make a mention of this here because my nephew is in Air Force Aircraft Maintenance. The Osprey is a horrible example of VTOL simply because of the amount of maintenance it requires. He says for every hour it is in the air, you need to do 10 hours of maintenance on it. Ironically, if it was JUST used as an aircraft or a lift, it would be fine, but the rotary wing machinery is what snafu’s the rest of the stuff up.
I don’t think he’s worked on Harriers. I should ask him about them.
==RED
“… but the rotary wing machinery is …”
I’m not really surprised. The USA is very big on elegant design, but most times simple old-skool over-engineering is what’s needed.
Um… I think Deus made a mistake or two.
1. Is appropriating tech he should not be able to build therefore repair/replace is going to be a fun time.
2. Showing people he has actively told he is going to take offer the world about it.
3. Told them that it is inevitable.
4. Given time for them to get out world aid.
5. Not seduced Dabbler.
6. Not distracted Sydney enough.
7. Ticked off Maxima.
What tech did Deus “appropriate”? Are you claiming Deus is a criminal?
thefreedictionary claims appropiation is “the act of setting apart or taking for one’s own use” which he has done with lots of tech like aircraft technology and such, but since it’s placed under this specific page I would say mass fabs.
He’s not a criminal, because he has not been convicted of crime. I do though claim he is a thief for stealing from the vault with magic artifacts.
No, no, no… He was taking the most valuable artifacts for safe-keeping until the damage to the Vault could be repaired.
He will give them back some day, when he’s satisfied the Vault security is up to scratch :)
I mean, all that stealing of magical artifacts tends to be seen as a crime.
Every one of those is a comment on strategy, and so far his strategy is working fine, tyvm.
1. We don’t know whether the mass printers can print repair parts for mass printers. Given that the logo is in English, I’m betting that those mass printers were built in Galytn using alien knowledge.
2. His style is to blatantly announce that he is going to (almost legally) take over the world and make things better for everyone. This eliminates the ability of anyone else to claim that he’s an evil mastermind. He can respond, “Sure, so tell me how many million Africans *you’ve* raised from danger and poverty to safe upper-middle class.” (See “Take Over the World” Power Point, page 2)
3. It is inevitable. Live with it.
4. Out world aid for what? To keep Deus from making everyone’s lives better?
5. It’s in the Power Point, page 23 footnote
6. Power point page 35. Do you KNOW how many giant shiny keys there are around Galytn for emergency jangling?
7. See panel 5. Annoying Max is like jangling keys in front of Sydney. She loses focus on what’s important.
1. Deus obviously knows how to build and repair a Mass Fab by now. He bought two. He now has dozens. Cleatly he figured out how to make them. He did not buy dozens of them on Fracture. Probably also bought the technical specs and info on how to maintain them.
2. He is doing it legally and without declaring war on the US or its allies. In fact with minimal war period. Mostly with economics.
3. And?
4. World aid for what?
5. Okay that is one good point but Deus might consider it counterproductive to his goal of seducing Maxima. And the inevitable threesome afterwards.
6. Sydney is plenty distracted.
7. She is clearly not all that pissed off. Not at Deus anyway.
They’re called “tilt rotor” aircraft.
The page on “Annular lift fan aircraft” at wiki has links to some relevant stuff about trying to fly around that way.
The little graph in the top right shows the huge difference between “blasting hot air downwards” and “driving wings around yourself in a circle,” with other options in between.
There’s a bit of an issue where the helicopter works great at low speeds but if you try to push it forward through the air too fast the rotor going backwards on one side is barely moving through the air so it stall and the helicopter rolls over that way, falls out of the sky and explodes, killing everyone on board, and a fixed wing has a minimum speed at which it’s useful so you have to get going fast before you can stop relying on the rotors to keep you up.
We do have fast jets that can fly at 120 kt and helicopters that can exceed 200 kt, so there’s room for the transition, but you still have to find a way to keep the wings out of the way of the rotors’ work when doing VTOL stuff and the rotors out of the airflow when doing high speed stuff.
Crude maths for the hoverbike thing in Subnautica Below Zero came out with: “You can just get off the ground with 20 litres of fuel, and that’ll last you about 30 seconds.” Doubling the engines gave it about 10 minutes of flight time, I think. Not good.
For comparison, the Robinson R-22 can lift 100 l of fuel and burns 31 l per hour with a cruise speed of 90 kt.
The elegant solution isn’t seen very often but it’s known as, variously, auto rotor, auto gyro and gyro copter.
Autogyros do a fantastic job of taking off with very little runway, but are limited to a very low airspeed, can’t hover in place for sustained periods, and can only carry a few people at most (most are single seat craft). Fun personal toys, not at all suited to commercial or military applications though.
“There’s a bit of an issue where the helicopter works great at low speeds” that is why the fast ones use, turbojets, for forward thrust!!!
Airwolf theme INTENSIFIES
Nothing to do with the thrust available, everything to do with the aerodynamics keeping it up. Go fast enough that ‘airframe speed relative to surrounding air’ becomes comparable to ‘rotor tip speed relative to airframe’, and you start to lose a lot of lift from one side of the rotor while gaining a lot of drag on the other side.
It may be possible to partially compensate for the loss of lift with a counter-rotating twin-rotor design similar to the Chinook or the Osprey (in vertical mode). As one rotor loses lift on the port side and the other on the starboard side, it may be possible to keep the craft balanced. But you’d need to keep enough total lift to stay in the air, and it’ll do nothing for the increased drag. Not to mention the structural engineering headaches of those changes in loading – a very good way to induce fatigue failures in the rotor driveshaft.
Arrogance, thy name is Deus.
Seriously, as if there weren’t enough reasons for the G7 to eject him from Gatlyn.
Also as soon as you say “a reasonable semantic argument could be made”, it can’t be.
<>
Please elucidate. Us dumbclucks can’t see the disparity.
«Also as soon as you say “a reasonable semantic argument could be made”, it can’t be.»
Please elucidate. Us dumbclucks can’t see the disparity.
(Used twinned angle brackets, just DUMB>)
«Also as soon as you say “a reasonable semantic argument could be made”, it can’t be.»
Please elucidate. Us dumbclucks can’t see the disparity.
This version… I immediately did an Alt-left, substituted the angle-quotes and reposted. Which got delayed by digestive processes. And appeared when I reposted the hard way.
I hate WordPress.
In any case, he did make the semantic argument, and it’s not “reasonable”, it’s dispositive.
That’s Earth tech.
Given that the logos on the side are in English, the mass of those printers is at least 10x what he brought back from Fracture, and Galytn has people that understand the tech, it is incontrovertible that it’s tech made on Earth.
And given who Deus is, it’s designed to be sustainable. (Because anything less would be a flaw in his plan.)
What he’s doing with that line is just NOT saying is how he got it.
He wants people to assume he got it from his Illari (sp?) alien citizens, where it’s actually a blend of what they had and what he brought back from Fracture, as modified by his genius to bootstrap a sustainable economy.
Sorry, an edit went sideways. This phrase “Galytn has people that understand the tech” was meant to show that the tech was supported sustainably by Earth people, so it’s Earth tech.
Deus has his own wormgate, he could easily have made multiple trips. And stickers with English phrases are cheap and easy to slap over any alien symbols.
But starting from a small fabber, as long as it’s universal, you can build up to any size you want, so long as, with each step up in size, the individual pieces fit in the workspace of the prior fabber.
And anybody designing a fabber is going to make sure the individual pieces are sized that way, because being able to scale up at need is such a great feature.
You really only run into trouble if it requires some material or party you can’t fab or source, which if properly designed would only be if it was deliberately crippled to maintain the market. But that sort of trick falls apart after a while, so I think we can assume the one he bought was capable of scaling.
Used to discuss these issues a lot at the Foresight institute, gaming out how Drexlerian nanotech could be used.
“Used to discuss these issues a lot at the Foresight institute …”
And there was I, thinking you’d been OD’ing on Schlock and Jenkinsverse.
the conversation is about whether the world will come down on Deux for his conquests. The real question is how soon before they cobble together an alliance using that as justification so they can go and steal his tech base.
Now I’m wondering if that is what he is hoping for. The powers that be instigating his neighbours to attack him, so they can get that tech.
Deux on the other hand gets to ‘protect’ himself, and move in and help restore the war damage that occured when they unjustifiably attacked him.
Ah figured out Deus’ power. “Legal loophole”
Until there is a law in the books that says you can’t, and you are under the onus of said laws, it is not illegal.
I think his power is he gains a tiny tiny amount of any womans “power” that he sleeps with. Hence his book collection which implies he might be preeeeetty OP
That’s a subpower of being Obscenely Rich
I think it is “faith”. He’s able to do whatever others believe him capable of doing. Which is why he tells people his plans so non-chalantly.
And I think I remember him subtly telling Sciona something like that.
At this point I gotta say I’ve never seen anyone be chalant. It’s a designer in Switzerland, I think.
Oooh I love these!
… also non-chalant, “indifferent, unconcerned, careless, cool,” 1734, from French nonchalant “careless, indifferent,” present participle of nonchaloir “be indifferent to, have no concern for” (13c.), from non- “not” (see non-) + chaloir “have concern for,” … (ONline Etymology)
And in the grand tradition of the English language, if there is a prefix on a word you can use that word *without* the prefix. It often confuses the bejesus out of your listeners, but hey! It’s fun!
Curious why he would show them this.
this would make all countries go ballistic towards him. which ok he might want that. Still If America decides “well that there is a threat to job security, WE WANT IT. Then suddenly america sends in supers to destroy the country in search of oil/Mass fabs
Would also think the energy requirements for these would be stupid. so he might also just have gotten that.
Because they’re probably going to find out anyway, and voluntary reveals build trust.
He’s already explained that he values trust in relationships, and that’s sensible even if he were a totally selfish bastard, because trust makes things run better. And he’s pursuing some sort of long term plan in his relationship with Arcon, so he wants them to trust him.
And they clearly do, within limits.
*Addendum
Also galactic forces that go “well you cant have that” and then decend on him to destroy the Fabs
^ This!
It falls under the category of “Do we really want THEM to have that? They were harmless when they were stuck on that rock for our tourist’s amusement! What if they come out here with their squabbles when they have people who can one-shot a dreadnaught!” There is no way he can convince the Galactic Patrol with that flimsy Argument and no means of bribing them.
WIGE
The *first* fabricator isn’t Earth technology. But if you use it to create another fabricator, then it’s made on Earth, by Earthlings, using Earth raw materials, so clearly the *second* fabricator is Earth technology.
(And I would bet he bootstrapped himself from one fabricator, rather than smuggling a factory’s worth of stuff out of Fracture Station.)
Yep, step one of a molecular autofabber is to print up a bunch more of them, thereby granting yourself infinite wishes.
Looks like Dabbler is trying aggravate Max,as usual!!!
Oh god, is it getting Supreme Commander up in here?
“An army can be created anywhere in a matter of hours.”
The existence of supers with portal powers would already make every strategist throw up their hands in despair. Teleporters are bad enough, but a portal can deliver anything or anyone to an otherwise “secure” location instantly. Magical shields and unobtainium-lined facilities are about the only countermeasures avaialble.
Deus already has at least one. See, er… some comics ago.
Definitely, but at least portal-stopping technology and magic exists in the setting (can compare the terraport from Schlock Mercenary).
But when you combine this portal/FTL tech with Supreme Commander style mass fabricators? Shit gets absurd. Especially when you get automated systems involved. The Supreme Commander AI isn’t very bright, but if it had no unit cap and no limit to how many engineers it could micromanage save how many computers it built, you could have an entire planet covered in less than 30 multiples of however long it takes to double its most bottlenecking expansion tech.
Strategy gets extremely messed up. One year you have an uninhabited system, the next year you have a fleet of ships outmassing all the fleets of all the races of 40k combined, including the Tyranids. And if even one of those ships escapes to another solar system, the next year you have that same issue. Those ships could easily visit every single star system in the galaxy at once with a fleet numbering in the millions and replicate the feat there.
Exponential growth is wack when you get the doubling times down to a year.
Does Dabbler act like this on every mission? TBH I’m not all that amused. But that’s just me, and I’m just being grumpy. It seems like there are better times and places for such exposition (emphasis on expose).
Tend to agree, I’m fairly over Dabbler’s personality. Her skillset and intelligence are amazing, but she acts like a spoiled, self-centered child. Plus she likes to go murder-hoboing with Cora, so I can see why Max barely tolerates her presence on the team. I can actually see Max working to evict her someday once Archon has the requisite personnel, but for right now she’s irreplaceable.
“… but for right now she’s irreplaceable.”
Nobody’s irreplaceable. Often “Hard to get along without”, but not irreplaceable.
Depends what you want to accomplish and how fast. Dabbler is Archon’s:
– strongest magic user (although the wide variety of abilities makes this hard to define)
– most experienced fighter (due to her age and variety of galactic opponents)
– only battle mage (ArcLight works behind the scenes)
– most advanced inventor by a long shot (Gidget doesn’t do active combat)
– only direct connection to galactic culture and tech (until recently, due to Cora – Dabbler’s invitee)
– strongest liaison to the Council (not only, but a major one)
– only connection to Tom and demon affairs
– probably some other stuff I’m forgetting right now
Xuriel might well be all of those, MAYBE. But you just put your finger on the most important bit: “… spoiled, self-centered child.”
In my book. responsible people (as everybody in Archon EXCEPT Xuriel is) don’t wander around displaying their wares like ho’s on a side-street. The Team is here to do a job, not for Xuriel’s entertainment. If Xuriel can’t get her mind off Maxi’s alleged prudishness, then she should not be allowed on missons, especially delicate missions. If nothing else, her uncorrected shenanigans reflect badly on Archon.
“What happens in Archon Base STAYS in Archon Base.”
OTOH, … No. My personal standards are not for dismantling, they were developed the hard way, unlike Xuriel’s. I would correct her standards with a swift kick up the khyber, frequently.
Having ranted, I accept this is DaveB’s comic, he writes what he writes. If I don’t like it, I can leave.
It’s rare that I meet a human being that I wouldn’t describe as a “spoiled, self-centered child”, so I find it hard to understand the distinction you think you’re making. What makes her different from the other characters? Her behavior is more sexual than say, Sydney, but I wouldn’t say it’s more extravagant, and she has the excuse of being an alien from a different culture.
Xuriel’s overt sexuality isn’t really the issue, it’s her complete disregard for the standards of her teammates and Earth culture in general. She’s traveled to many cultures, and “when in Rome” is a pretty basic and widely accepted standard of living in a foreign culture. Which she barely even acknowledges let alone follows. Sure, she’s funny to read in-comic, but she’s a manager and PR nightmare.
Flaunting herself and engaging willing partners publicly (at whatever level) is obnoxious but ultimately tolerable, up to a certain point at least. But she’s publicly and repeatedly harassed multiple team members who aren’t receptive to it, most notably physically assaulting her commanding officer (in public and in private). Then she blows off the complaints because “humans are prudes” so clearly their mores and personal autonomy have no value to her. She’s friendly and fun with those that want to engage in her style, but shows a complete lack of regard and even active hostility for anyone who doesn’t play into her self-centered world view. Right now for example, she’s prancing naked around a foreign military installation because she wants to be the center of attention, actively creating problems instead of helping solve them, just because she thinks it’s funny to annoy Max. Doesn’t matter that she’s using nudity as a weapon instead of wearing a clown wig and screaming “look at me”, either approach is completely intolerable from a functioning adult, much less a paid military consultant.
On Earth, maybe.
When you’ve observed enough different cultures, maybe they all start to seem silly and arbitrary. If they’re all different enough that there isn’t much common ground, and what’s acceptable in one culture is horribly offensive in another, and vice-versa, maybe you decide it’s not worth trying to accommodate them all.
They’ll put up with her, or they won’t. She’ll fight back, or she’ll leave. I don’t think she recognizes any culture as having any particular authority. Especially if that culture is the oddball, and unlike a majority of other cultures she’s encountered.
That’s nearly a textbook definition of a sociopath. And it’s not like Earth’s crazy backwater ideas of “modesty” and “manslaughter” are new to Dabbler, or at all unique to the galaxy. She and Cora are both known to the law enforcement on Fracture (an intergalactic hub) as murder-hobos, so clearly Earth has a fair amount in common with the galactic minimum thresholds.
And even if we hadn’t seen galactics following Earth norms in-comic (Fracture, the NYC tourists), the practice of adhering to the local customs can’t possibly be just “an Earth thing”, it’s a fundamental requirement for open relations between any two culture, otherwise any foreign presence would be completely untenable.
And now they have Mk 1 Eyeball proof that he had violated the offworld tech embargo. Tho if they are anything like NATO/West and their asstalk with Russia and Ukraine, they will do sweet fuck all about it.
Ukraine should never have trusted NATO/West when they said they’d protect them if they gave up the nukes they had when the Soviet Union collapsed.
But that’s a Xevoarchy ban on offworld tech, not a Terran one. I’m not aware of any international laws banning the acquisition of galactic tech, what exactly do they charge him with? The in-comic US (and presumably every other nation) is desperate to get their own hands on galactic tech right now, Deus just beat them to it.
Right, and they’ve already got Cora working with them to help them circumvent that ban themselves.
Depending on how it works, I imagine the aircraft would fall into the tilt-rotor category of Vtol similar to the osprey
Tilt Fans and hover tanks are great thanks to David Drake, but we already know their issues.
Alien tech that Deus can replicate needs to be about power density , to power all those tilt fans without you wight limit being 95% fuel. Or to make that gauss rifle more than single shot.
On the other end of the scale is nanite tech and you don’t really see the “might” until it eats an empire one morning.
I would have been more impressed if he had created 64K of communication satellites in a continuous string of pearls orbit , each with a single “communication laser” that could punch a soldier from orbit. aka a Tesla Ring
Interestingly enough the gauss rifles are already available for sale in real life. Yup man-portable and admittedly only in alpha prototype at the moment, but being launched as a production model.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAHKS0nVlL4
Although being as how this comic provokes interesting comment, I’d be surprised if I am the first to have pointed this out.
Bubble mail must have an even higher AC than chain mail!
Such a good game. Shame that Planetary Annihilation is such a different beast
Well, that explains how he’s been progressing so fast. And Dabbler really does make the most out of having general illusions.
it’s one of the things I love about this series. net change. no matter what happens to Deus, this tech is going to get out and it’s going to disrupt everything.
Dabbler deeply underestimates what one can achieve with a controlled environment, no need for efficiency(it’s a demonstration) a lot of creativity, a bunch of supers and a lot of money.
With the resources and tricks available here I could fly around with a jetpack, while randomly teleporting, I could tell her what she is wearing under her bubblewrap illusion and/or I could win a flying speed contest with Maxima.
Ooh, the implication is that he can transmute elements to each other on the fly
A. still just an implication could easily be faked,
B. we can already do this, just truly inefficient and not in plain view.
The word you’re looking for is Tiltrotor… or Tilt-rotor. The US Military uses the V-22 Osprey (and so does ARCHON) so using that moniker would be acceptable as well…
That vehicle does not look like a tiltrotor. A quick web search showed the closest the industry has come – including a viable name for the beast – is the Ryan XV-5 Vertifan. Two prototypes, both crashed due to causes not involving the fans.
To be honest… what’s going on in our world RIGHT NOW really puts Deus’ actions in their proper context.
Right now, as we speak, Putin has sent Russian troops in to kill and conquer because he wants to restore his beloved USSR, and in the process reminding everyone that he was a KGB agent, and what the KGB really were. The people who live in Russia agree: he’s a mob boss, their economy sucks, he’s made their lives worse in so many ways.
By comparison, Deus removed a genuine monster from power, replaced said monster with a much more humane administrator, greatly improved the lives of his people… and to top it off, actively did everything he could to avoid a military confrontation. And when it did go down, he ensured at LEAST 80% of the other side’s forces would survive (I say at least because we know 80% surrendered. We don’t know how many retreated, or were injured but not killed).
Russians think Putin is GREAT. He is the man who restored a measure of law and order and stabilised the currency (more or less) after the anarchy and hyper-inflation of post-Soviet years.
Not all of them, plenty of internal outcry from civilians today (as there has been for decades). But I’m really hoping we won’t get into all the IRL WW3 horror here, I’m torn up enough about it and come here to escape.
I really doubt it can be “reasonably” semantic when literally everything in that tech is at least a century ahead of everything else on earth. A century being generous since we did just get a spaceship. Sure, you can semantically argue that. But reasonably is a no go. Although… I doubt it really matters since space trading only has hard limits on FTL vs non-FTL planets and nations.
Here’s an article about matter duplicators:
https://boingboing.net/2014/11/06/neil-gaiman-how-i-learned-to.html
Here’s a SciFi story from 1958. Spoiler: Aliens think Earther civilization wouldn’t be able to survive them. HA!
http://www.vb-tech.co.za/ebooks/Williams%20Ralph%20-%20Business%20as%20Usual%20During%20Alterations%20-%20SF.txt
Used to be a guy selling plans for a vtol wing rotor in the mechanics magazines. Never saw one completed though.
But for weird you can buy, I think Falx Air Hybrid Tilt-Rotor Chopper can’t be beat.
Comeliness was introduced as a concept in Dragon Magazine #67 (November 1982; the “Loyal Readers” column by E. Gary Gygax, pp.61-62), back during AD&D 1e as the “actual physical appearance” stat (everyone was using Charisma as that, which Charisma is, in fact, NOT). It was an optional stat in 2e, I think.
I’m not sure what kind of shirts DaveB’s been wearing, but I’ve definitely never had any problems pulling on a shirt after a shower.
https://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/blog_files/a/6a00e553a80e10883401901e2d5869970b-400wi.jpg
Seinfeld’s puffy shirt?
I strongly suspect that Deus is not going to be effected by her blatant attempt to distract him/get him to accidentally reveal more than he intended to. Assuming he isn’t inherently immune, he likely has some item/implant/routinely reapplied effect that protects him from passive, mind-effecting shenanigans.