Grrl Power #1029 – Sticker shock
The discussion in panel 2 is entirely predicated on the crew of that gunship not returning fire. If I was them, I’d toss a flare into the gas tank of that pickup and dive down the side of the hill and hunker down under a thick blanket. This assumes that as them, I still would have played the gunship sequence of Modern Warfare games and understand how easy it is to spot dudes on infrared. That, or I’d only attack gunships when it was 98.6 degrees out.
You can’t really claim to have the “most advanced military” based on a single piece of tech. If you gave whoever has the least advanced military on the planet (insert joke about Russia’s embarrassing showing in the Ukraine here) and gave them one handheld Phaser, they don’t automatically become the most advanced military all of a sudden. I think it’s really more of an average across your entire force. Deus is just needling Maxima a bit there in panel three, while also implying that other nations might be interested in his tech. I can’t imagine that Japan wouldn’t jump at the chance to have real live force fields. Well, in reality, I think Japan’s diet is probably super conservative, but I like to think their leadership is basically the average homeroom class from any given anime, only 20 years later, meaning that while most of them are pretty forgettable, about a third of them have really formulaic personalities but notable hair. Oh, and at least a few would be interested in force fields.
A lot of discussion about the physics of force field technology on the previous page. That’s always amusing when people get deep into the weeds about fictional tech, cause unless you’re dealing with a long running show that has ample evidence of the tech in action, it’s really all just speculation. And let’s be honest, even then, the way any piece of tech is presented is usually pretty inconsistent, because unless you have some whip-cracking series continuity overlord, the writer from one episode is going to say that transporters can beam up people from within a cave system from geosynchronous orbit, and another writer will say someone stealing a ride from the shuttle bay will be out of transport range in the time it takes Picard to say “Beam them out of that shuttle.”
As an aside, I think the shows that were the best about technology continuity were Stargate SG-1 and The Expanse. To be fair to something like Star Trek, a multi generational franchise has no hope of maintaining any sort of continuity, tech or otherwise, especially when they idiotically keep doing prequel shows. Of course nothing in Enterprise matched established TOS or TNG continuity. Calling it a comic-book-esque alternate timeline/multiverse doesn’t make it any less disappointing.
Anyway.
Obviously airtight spherical shields wouldn’t work on a modern jet or prop plane for a number of reasons. The simple answer to what happened on the previous page is that maybe an appropriately equipped plane sitting on an airfield can form a dome over itself to keep from getting strafed or bombed. This page shows a series of static shields forming to intercept an attack. This method would be much more problematic for front-on attacks, but then maybe the shields blit in and out, creating a static wall that only exists for a microsecond. Actually, it’d probably have to create them 2 or 3 deep to keep stuff from slipping through during the blits.
BTW, I’m looking into what happened to the page header. WordPress updated and who knows? Maybe it doesn’t honor .php includes anymore? It’ll return when I get a chance to dig into the backend a bit.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: It’s done!
210K words of weapon building, dinosaur fighting, harem satisfying, lumberjacking, moderate diplomacing, bad guy chopping action. Also some humor.
I got the pencils done for March’s incentive, and I like what I’ve got so far, but it was a multi-character piece and I thought it would take to long to color correctly, so I started over with a single character piece and it’s coming along quite nicely IMO. It just isn’t done yet. If it’s not done for Thursday’s comic, it’ll be up with next Monday’s. The good news is I should have a decent head start for the next incentive, so one of these months I’ll get it up with the first comic of the month.
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before Max does her debrief it will take a decade. when the debrief is over, the US will throw a lot more engineers at the problem. these are high paying jobs and the engineers can be shat upon. (don’t ask how I know) Dues woefully underestimates the DOD’s.. buy America first feelings.
Agreed, the CIA or some other acronym agencies could steal the tech with working models, full data and theory with the maintenance manuals and the DOD would reverse it, let boeing screw it al up and then get domestic. SMH. But, I was at the user end of the products.
yeah, and while im sure that Deus fully expects that the CIA or other US agencies will try to steal the tech and has something planned the US also has arc dark with its own magic, super tech and supers on its payroll
realistically shield technology will not remain a secret from the US goverment for long, but this is a comic book and the villain need to be a threat so i expect that something goes wrong
I agree that the US won’t throw money at the problem. They’ll just throw a single digit at it.
One
Single
Digit.
And then they can put a reverse force field around her to reduce the carnage her experiments cause.
“Dues woefully underestimates the DOD’s.. buy America first feelings”
I will never underestimate America’s ability to throw good money after bad money at anything. I’ve done too many cases involving the federal government to not expect the federal government to be generally incredibly wasteful on spending.
First thing that came to mind is the insane SLS operating cost after the equally insane schedule and budget overruns. And the Webb telescope, although that at least actually launched eventually and will do some cool stuff.
And the fact that the defense budget went up this year after ending the only war we were involved in. And, and, and… o_0
“… after ending the only war we were involved in.”
And which one would that be? There are several to choose from, POST 1946.
“Were {currently and officially} involved in” meaning Afghanistan. The budget not only went up in spite of the largest active military involvement ending, Congress approved $28 billion more than requested.
forgive me… since I work in that industry, I don’t mind the spending. as long as my company gets work…
And that’s how the whole system works.
Indeed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrwzEbVYRNE&t=189s
One thing everyone seems to be missing out on if Deus is willing to sell the tech then he has something waaaaaay better that he’s not sharing! Basic tactical thinking; sell the advanced tech but keep the best stuff for yourself “just in case”.
Yep, save the best inventions for yourself. At least until you’ve had your fun.
actually, he should have the weapon that penetrates the shield. because otherwise he would disappoint Pander.
With regards to technology being inconsistent, I remember seeing a youtuber who made close to a hundred videos about the retconning in the first season of STD alone. He also made them for Picard, STD 2 etc
That doesn’t sound like an amazing use of time. I mean, maybe one video per episode, but not ten.
lets see… red letter media produced some epic critiques of the Star Wars Prequels that are longer than the movies themselves.
then there’s a video explaining why a particular movie, that I’m trying hard not to remember, is awful. it is over 2 hours long.
I’m sure some people can find some others…
And Mauler did the same thing for the sequels but each review was over 12 hours :)
that’s understandable. there was rather a lot wrong with the sequels. though 12 hours is a lot of critique.
Deus needs to schedule a demonstration for the military’s top brass right near the end of June. That way he gets them salivating for his merchandise just as “Christmas in July” starts. Due to the way the U.S. government handles its budgets all federal agencies rush to spend every last penny in their annual appropriation during the final quarter of the fiscal year. Some genuinely crazy purchases get made during this time.
Rutan’s proposed replacement for the A10 was ten times cheaper and had a better performance profile than the one that the Air Force brass chose. It isn’t that crazy purchases get made, it is that they are dead-certain that they aren’t crazy and want to spend as much as they possibly can. Deus’ price is the right price, and Maxima knows it. She’s just trying to bargain him down, without any backing.
Granted, a PDC-style minigun/pulse laser could probably be made way cheaper than two billion dollars/unit.
But you have to consider that if Galytn has shield-tech they’re willing to export, even black-boxed, they have a way to bypass it.
I read a book called “The Guns of the South” where someone had supplied the Confederate Army with AK-47s. When the suppliers eventually got cornered, they found out that while they were selling the *hell* out of the AK-47s they pretty much were uninterested in selling the Uzis they were defending themselves with.
Never sell your best tech. Note that Poland is possibly getting F16s, not F35s.
The F35 is an export weapon, Poland is part of NATO and cojld certainly get some if they’re ready to pay for it.
The F16 they’re getting are as replacement for Mig-29s, replacing those with F35 would be a steal.
as others have said the F-16s are there just to replace their old soviet planes quickly while they are being send to ukraine so that poland isnt left undefended in case russia tries something stupid, i wouldnt be surprised if after the little stunt russia tried to pull we see an increase in the number of orders for F-35s
Different planes for different jobs. F-35s are moderately sneaky for a wide range of long-range jobs, and some of the variants are good at getting in and out of tight spaces. F-16s are quick and relatively straightforward to work with, have decades of operational and logistical efficiencies already worked out, and they’re a lot cheaper to buy and to run. If you don’t need the fancy stuff, you may as well get the basic version – it may even be better anyway at the basic jobs that you actually need, simply because it doesn’t have to split its focus to cover the jobs you don’t.
Most importantly, Poland’s air force already operates 48 of the F-16’s and have trained pilots for them.
Bulgaria already had 16 of the F-16’s ordered from last year.
Slovakia already had 14 of the F-16’s on order.
So yeah, we’d be replacing their planes. But we’d be replacing them with planes which they were already equipping themselves to own, service, and pilot.
this is it. it takes years to implement a new jet. as big as the price tag looks… go look at the sustainment costs. these jets are amazing. they can break sitting on the tarmac.
The F35 was meant to be a double engined strategic striker. What it is: a single-engined hangar queen. The place to repair those engines, for everyone in the world? It’s in Turkey, just across the way from where the conflict currently is.
The Poles are smarter than you think.
IF, I were maxima I would just point out the capitalist alternative. They already have access to space, and aliens. And they can just hire a team of aliens who know what they’re doing. Yes it’ll be expensive but less expensive than Deus’ prices. Pay a man for a space ship, vs pay a man to teach you how to build one.
Somewhere there’s a super who can do that or bypass it.
The Mighty Halo as an example.
Hey, wait… if Deus has the tech, and is building it on Earth, then Earth can’t be embargoed on that tech.
Basically, as soon as Earth has FTL, so they can get there, they get the rest.
Of course, Deus will have thought that through and will already have figured out how to slow down Earth’s entry into interstellar commerce.
Seems like there might be an unfortunate accident at that reverse-engineering facility.
Very good point. He’s putting in all the effort to make this technology ‘earth’ technology. While some people may raise a stink that he didn’t do it ‘legitimately,’ that has issues. Namely that keeping up the tech trade embargoes help Deus, the person who ‘cheated.’
While the comic has gone out of it’s way to make sure Deus comes out ahead each time, the logical outcome here is that he put in the effort… to lower trade barriers for everyone but him.
Remember the Robotech force fields? They didn’t have enough power to cover the entire ship, so a room full of teenage girls were moving force field dots around using joysticks to intercept incoming fire.
Must have been really good at Pong.
Missile Command trackballs actually
They had the power, they just hadn’t developed the tech far enough at that point to cover the entire ship. Once they did they could cover the ship in a perfect spherical force field that could absorb massive repeated volley attacks, with its main problem being it had a limit it could absorb before overloading and exploding outward with devastating consequences.
They had enough power to cover the ship they just hadn’t developed the technology that far yes, it was just in the infancy stage and they could only cover small portions of the ship at first. Once they finished developing it they could cover the entire ship against massive attack volleys, it just had a problem that the field absorbed the attacks and would eventually overload and explode outwards with devastating effect.
Sorry about the extra post, the comments section was a bit unresponsive earlier and wasn’t letting me see my replies went through.
I’ve found the best way is to assume it went through (Gawd those germanic leftovers look bloody horrible at times!) and keep going. Then reboot the browser and most of them should report for duty. I’ve also found that CTRL-F5 does not always force a full reload, which indicates a remote caching problem. FWIW I use Pale Moon 29.4.0.1 x64. I suppose I should upgrade soon :[
Deus is big on the big sale . I wonder how much information he’s getting from scanning them right now.
I’m with Maxima. It’s way overpriced. And you’re better off figuring it out yourself because then you can’t be cut off from supply.
A very good point. Buying black box you’re dependent on the supplier for everything related to it including repairs and upgrades (and you never know if they’ve got backdoors that can shut it down or otherwise bypass). Reverse-engineering it from an alien ship you know what you’ve got and aren’t dependent on someone else to maintain or improve on it.
TBF another reason for the high price might be that he expects his customers to only by a few, so as they can try to reverse engineer them. And yeah, America has an alien ship, but the other countries don’t, so everyone outside of America’s close allies will probably want to try to compete with America by buying from Deus. Honestly I’m shocked that Deus is even trying to sell to America in the first place rather than focusing on other countries. America may have the largest military budget, but the incentive is distinctly less enticing for America and more so for any other country. Heck North Korea for instance would be orgasmic as the prospect of a nuclear delivery system that can’t be shot down, even if it is relatively slow
It could be a shakedown sort of situation.
“Well, see, if you don’t buy it, someone else will…”
Doesn’t the US have someone who can go back to Whatsit Station and buy stuff direct? Ditzy kid, likes comics.
She can’t get the tech out of fracture legally until Earth actually arrives there via their own power.
But, if she thought about it — and if there was a serious danger to the USA — she could do exactly what Deeus did.
yes, sydney technically can whetever she wants, she could go with a shit ton of money or some magical artifacs or whatever buy some stuff say “oh yeah its not like im going to get this into a pre FTL planet or something like that” then jump into the gateway and boom, now the US also has hyper advanced alien technology
The dome or bubble forcefield for the aircraft on the ground (probably because the canopy is open) makes sense to me as it would also protect groundcrew refuelling, re-arming, and performing necessary maintenance on an aircraft between sorties.
Then in-flight the forcefield could be quite close to the skin of the plane which wouldn’t unduly affect its aerodynamics when activated.
I love this comic but it takes to long for the pages to run out and i read to fast
I hear that but I will re-read a story line to keep caught up lol.
If the rules say that aliens can’t help new civilizations with advanced tech, but if it is not that hard to cheat, and there are no apparent penalties, then most of the new civilizations are going to be dominated by aggressive cheaters and criminals. Or maybe there are going to be active penalties, and maybe soon? Or perhaps this is all a test, sort of an accelerated Great Filter. The fact that the first thing we build are super-weapons seems like a bad sign.
Advanced tech? No, that’s not advanced tech to us. See this guy? He already has it on our planet. We just want to make our own rather than buy it from him. So, whatta you got on sale?
Deus is really banking on America ego problem with always wanting the shiniest military tech. Something tells me he will ask for far less from other nations
Not that he is wrong or anything
Nope. He sets his price at “all the traffic will bear.”
On the other hand, he will offer generous payment terms and leasing options. Especially to the first nation in any given theatre of operations.
The U.S. needs 3.
One to protect the bearer of the Football.
One for *Redacted*
One to figure out how to defeat this technology.
And one to rule them all, and to the Deus bind them.
I guess Peter Dinklage needs to go on a journey then.
the red neck war… limited time offer, be able to acquire your own Russian tank. who could ask for more?
just joking half serious, this could very interesting.
“um sir, what’s your reason for visiting Ukraine? business or pleasure?”
“oh heck miss, Little bit of both”
I want to kill some Russians, so both.
The goal is to defend the country and win the war, not kill soldiers. Now, as war is, killing enemy soldiers is just something you have to do to increase the chances of winning. It is a bit sad… During WWI, american songs were about teaching the Kaiser a lesson (often fatally). Today, many seem to think it is a good idea to kill people just because they belong to a people whos leader(s) are evil… I am all for having the big ass P assassinated though. I just don’t have the resources to get it done.
“War therefore is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.”
–Carl Von Clausewitz
2 billion dollars is a really big ask compared to the typical military budget, right?
Think about it though; if you had 6 planes that were nearly invulnerable to ground-to-air or dog fights it would change the face of any war in short order.
Add in a small fleet of ships and armored equipment similarly equipped and no one would try anything!
At least for a short while until they got their hands on the tech lol.
Think about it, earth has supers.
Max is faster, better protected and has more firepower than those jets and while she is on the top of the chain i guess there are several other supers who can deal with those small scale shields.
max has enough firepower that she leaves broadsides from battleships in shame, yeah the US has an insanely powerful weapon
sydney is also pretty fucking powerful
You may have six planes, but how many pilots and sets of ground crew do you have that are trained on them? If you can’t hurt the front-line tanks, cut off their logistics tail.
No sorry. The US uses its cheap old planes like the still-operational B-52s for the first strike, because the current planes are too expensive to risk. This is still true even though the parts for the 52s need to be hand-made nowadays.
Once the ground has been pounded, then they come out with the shiny shiny videos of how effective the newer massively more expensive planes are doing. Against no real opposition.
Reading Dues is starting to be really grating, can he be taken down a few pegs please?
his none stop senseless boasting just draaaags endlessly.
Regarding panel 2 and the first paragraph of notes, I think it would be even more effectively intimidating BECAUSE the gunship isn’t returning fire. If I’d just sent a rocket at a plane, and it didn’t even notice me, I’d be bugging out of there even faster
What happened to the title header?
WordPress updated and broke something. I’ll look into it when I have time some evening.
While you have the hood open take a look at the comment section. You may need to put a new hamster on the wheel running that because the posts have been running frustratingly slowly for the past few pages.
That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Uneditable, undeletable comments force readers to triple check their posts.
Encourage? Maybe. Force? Definitely not.
Silly question DaveB, and you don’t have to answer if security is a problem… Are you serving your own, or through a provider?
Going back to the training in the canyon Deus and Archon have a problem incoming that they are both unaware of which could end up having a major impact on his plans.
Sidney’s trips to the Facture have attracted Official attention and it is not the good kind. When the results of that attention manifest it will not be a hard task to determine that Deus did not in fact develop his breakthroughs himself. Especially if the investigators do not come barrelling in but rather send the first teams in undercover as it were.
Deus’s “stargate” isn’t detectable by them so far while Sydney’s if a huge flare that is hard to miss but I do agree Deus may find himself taking to some irate galactic police types. And both the Alari and Tom’s loaners my go away on Him quick lol.
Except Deus has plausible deniability in that he has the Alari there. You can be sure he’s integrated some Alari tech into his workflow and has tons of documentation on exactly how he developed the tech from knowledge brought by his Galytn citizens of Alari refugee descent.
Wile it would be an illegal uplift if the Alari just gave Earth tech, it would not be illegal “uplift” if they just conquered Earth, and since they came as refugees, the question isn’t even valid to ask. There is no law forcing refugees to live below their technical ability. The creation of a viable tech tree is a necessity to maintain their standard of living from before the destruction of their planet.
Thus, it is not illegal transfer of tech.
Pretty sure that it’s in the powerpoint he’s already prepared for the Xevoarchy.
I think that argument won’t fly with the Galactic Police. The ban against the transfer of advanced tech overrides the refugees maintaining their previous standard of living. They’re required to adjust their standard of living to whatever backwater planet they choose to set down on. Aliens have been visiting and even living among humans for millennia and have not given them anything. Even Dabbler has not given Archon any advanced tech, although she’s free to use it on her own. So, nope, Deus is in deep shit once the space police arrive. The Alari too for the illegal transfer of tech to a backwater civilization.
And what exactly has Deus done that the Xevoarchy would care about? I think there’s a substantial misunderstanding about the nature of their restrictions.
I suspect it wouldn’t be phrased as “a right to live in the style to which they are accustomed”; as you say, that’s too open to the subjectivity of said rights. It’s more likely to be phrased as “a people salvaging what’s left of their pride, by trading for their needs rather than having to beg”. The fact that most of what the Alari refugees have left to trade is high tech and intangible knowledge is surely no fault of their own, let alone of the altruistic Humans who offered them sanctuary!
I’m no purist, but man-firing-manpad-on-back-of-pickup doesn’t count as a technical, the weapon has to be attached to the pickup for it to count.
That results in a Shake-n-Bake situation. Video on web. Not for faint hearted.
Whats stopping America just buying one, than they have Sydney and some representatives go to Fracture Station and buy some of their own printers? Literally copy and paste
Nothing, really. Earth might get spoiled with alien tech in short order soon.
butterfly wings for everyone!
They’d have to get through Fracture customs, like Deus did.
Oh also they’d need something which would be useful for trade. Deus figured out something for that but aside from porn, episodes of Archer, and future Fel ships, I’m curious what else they’d think others would want in trade.
Maple syrup, rare plants (e.g. weeds) and animals (rats) for collectors, political / reality shows… anything unique they can’t get from another planet.
Thinking of that last panel, why are they even bothering? Anvil has muscles in places that most people don’t even have places, and I am not talking about a male/female thing or just because she is so tall.
Because she’s a very attractive female and they’re basically just flirting with her. They’re showing off their own “mundane” strength levels, showing obvious respect and admiration for her superhuman strength, and getting to chat her up at the same time.
And you never know, one of them might just be running a Lost Puppy Rescue Service :)
She’s increasing her dating pool potential. Sydneys gonna have to start The Lion King tour dating service to keep Anvil happy.
What, so she can Be Prepared for The Circle of Life? Oh, she just can’t wait to be queen.
It’s funny that if sh*t goes down, Anvil is busy powering up
Must…not…be…pedantic. Oh, the hell with it.
She can absorb kinetic (moving) energy. They are stationary, so she just gets a mild workout.
If they were to punch her or throw her off a roof, then she gets to absorb that energy.
My years of physics and engineering training thank you for saving me the trouble.
They could of just been rebels etc… Deus was making a point in this story true military would just keep trying until ordered otherwise and the plane would have to fire a warning shot or just take out the target.
For some reason this reminded me of the old Charlton Captain Atom comics and the general who decided CA was property and sold him to aliens to use as a gladiator fighting in games to entertain them in exchange for a missile system (for which they mocked the general for his paying for something they considered so antiquated).
I’d love to read that. Did the general get court martialed afterwards, when someone pointed out he’d just violated the 14th Amendment on top of all the other criminal offenses he’d committed?
That would be an unrealistic outcome, even by comic book standards.
Like Torabi says that was totally not going to happen. The good Captain made his way back (turns out the super-evolved aliens were vulnerable to radiation and as his protective costume was damaged and his energy recuperated he was basically killing them all so they sent him back to Earth) and when the general stupidly declared how he was US property and tried to order him around he promptly filed his resignation and left the service. Never managed to get the next issue to see what happened (or even if there was one).
Depends on how that shield works… It can *be* the engine…
Say, it’s an energy membrane that pushes out and in.
And the out, is unbalanced to effectively make a force that pushes the whole thing in a particular direction.
Remember that old Kid show Catch phrase. “Knowing is half the battle”
That is more than a little true when you are talking about tech. Just knowing that something can be done jump starts the development by several magnitudes.
A government might be ready to throw some token dollars down a rat-hole based on the off chance their scientists can develop something that is useful, or accidentally discover something different in the process.
But if they know for a fact that something is possible the sky would be the limit.
This whole storyline is very unfortunately-timed, considering the current events.
I have trouble treating Deus with sympathy right now, considering the fact that there’s the real-world version of his politics happening a few hundred kilometres from where I am…
Of course, Deus has not moved to shelling cities and shooting helpless civilians… but that’s what his politics lead to.
yeah, autocracies suck
Stay safe. I’m sorry you’re having to go through this garbage.
There’s Real Life, where at the moment Putin/Russia sucks like a day-old dog turd…
And there’s Comic Life where Deus is stirring the pot — when Xuriel Tantalis isn’t. Or is.
The trick is to see the difference.
There’s no reason that the Diet wouldn’t be interested in force fields. It perfectly fits Japan’s military policy of only maintaining a self defense force.
Sure, you could load an ICBM with forcefields to keep it from being destroyed before detonating, or put it on a vehicle intended to ram stuff with the forcefield (I’ve done that using shield mods in Space Engineers, you’d be surprised how devastating shielded rams can be), but Japan doesn’t have ICBMs, nor does it have vehicles that would be good for ramming.
I mean…having a plane that literally no one except the person who owns this plane can counter is…really, REALLY important.
Note how much effort was spent on those black helicopters nobody knew America had?
Anvil is missing from this page’s Who’s Who.
Looks like Anvil is date shopping again.
Her and her little spoon needs. She just wants a significant other who can hold her down!
1. I’d be ready for some backstory about how Deus got that scar. Graphics included.
2. I’m ALSO ready for backstory showing the earlier relationship between Max & Deus.
3. I’ve got to admit the story line panels with Deus feel like dull filler. Can he fight? Is he a super?
4. When will the administrative body watching for oversight of “primitive” civilizations obtaining inappropriate/illegal future/advanced technology step in, and remove Deus permanently, along with his illegally obtained tech?
Re 4: They are unlikely to. If primitive barbarians manage to steal “fire” (future level tech) and manage to get it, they have shown ingenuity, in essence, deserved it. The party failing to defend the tech is more than likely to be found guilty of the spreading. And what are “GalGov” going to do to punish the Alari? Impound their home planet? To late. Fine them? The Alari has no significant resource on a galactic scale. I doubt Genocide is part of the galactic penal code. Ditto racial Enslavement.
Modova is a bad choice for ilustration it’s a country at Ukraine’s fontier
Moldova is 2.6 milion Inhabitant country whit a GDP (PPP) of 36.886 billion $ – reminder GDP (PPP) Germany 4.743 trillion $, France 3.322 trillion $, Italy 2.610 trillion $- and Moldova was not protected by Nuclear umbrella , Molodova is not a member of E.U nor N.A.T.O.
Romania and Poland benefits for 2 nuclear umbrella , E.U – France’s warheads – and N.A.T.O warheads – US, France, UK warheads -.
Question fo DaveB – In lieu of Sydney’s Space Kaiju report, has the team set up contingencies for saving Japan? And if Japan has supers , are there a pair of teen pop idol summoners there that can summon something like Godzilla?
Only it started out like a godzuki and needed walkies and noms?
Imagine housebreaking involved houses breaking…
A first and last time they played fetch and It came back with a super train dangling. (I think I discovered the next big webcomic hit or Hollywood series.)
I want to know if either Max or Sydney can penetrate the shield. If they can, that would take the wind out of Deus.
they certainly can, we have already seen maxima pierce an even stronger shield before
Maxima could easily punch a hole in that shield. Remember the invasion that put Earth on the galactic politics map? She cut through a capital ship with exponentially stronger fields like it was a loaf of bread. Sydney’s power output could probably overwhelm the system overall, but in a more “dump more DPS than its regen” kind of way.
Maxima almost certainly can, based on her coring of the Fel cruiser. But that took a bit of concentration (both mental and energetic), which may be substantially harder to do against a fast-moving target. We’ve no evidence either way yet for Sydney, so judgement must be reserved.
But even if they both can, that’s two women against however many of these gadgets Galytn can deploy. They can’t be everywhere at once, and sometimes it only takes one attack to get lucky for the whole game to be lost.
If Sydney can’t blow it out of the sky with the PPO then she can open a causeway to deep space right in front of it. Plus, since she can make causeways at ground level (cf getting grakz for Neil), she can be wherever she is needed in seconds.
Sydney may be able to move between places in seconds, but that assumes that [i] she knows all the places she’ll need to be and [ii] she has enough seconds to get around all of them and do what she needs to at each one. With a modicum of sneakiness on Galytn’s part, or sufficiently widespread and well co-ordinated attack vectors, she simply wouldn’t be able to find all of the targets and deal with them all before at least one has done its business
Ok, this is going to drive me nuts if I don’t say it. It’s AC-130U, not AC-130-U. Also, AC-130J is the new hotness.
Just want to point out that ‘the Ukraine’ is what Russia call Ukraine to imply that it is a region and not a nation unto itself.
I sympathise, but:
“Ukraine
“from Russian or Polish ‘Ukraina,’ literally ‘border, frontier,’ from u- ‘at’ + krai ‘edge.’
“So called from being regarded as the southern frontier of Poland or Russia.”
(Online Etymology)
We don’t have to like them, but we do have to understand them. This way, we might prevent a Nuclear War.
Local Gazillionaire decides he’s the only one smart enough to reverse engineer alien tech and now some plucky teenage from whereveristan is gonna reveal that he discovered the secret to mass produced zero point energy and is using it to power a 1960’s ray gun.
Haha, I had the opposite idea from most people. I was thinking “$2B is way too low!” I was comparing it to our most advanced current tech. A nuclear sub costs $2-5B. The newest aircraft carrier cost $13.3B. I could see this shielded plane having a similar “projection of power” capability to one of those. Honestly, the only thing probably stopping Deus from charging more is the fact that the US wouldn’t trust him haha.
That’s a good point.
At first thought I was actually pretty nonplussed by the shielding.
Sure shielding is cool and such, but on first sight it has as much “projection of power” as a really effectively and fuel consuming armored tank or airplane, but on a technological level it’s of-course a different story.
Might also do well to remember this comic is not set in 2022
The 2012 price for the USS John F. Kennedy(the new one) was budgeted at $11.4b, so it’s a fairly good price point. Given how long it takes to build them and that a carrier group is mostly comprised of ships to protect the carrier, $2b/ea becomes a rapidly affordable number.