Grrl Power #1037 – Rough(ly equivalent) trade
I imagine two billion dollars is an easier sell if it’s mostly in backhoes, cement mixers, and those asphalt Zamboni trains that resurfaces roads all in one go. Even though a bank transfer (or however massive inter-country transactions take place) would be a lot easier than loading up a shitload of cranes and dumphoes and trenchers and bigger diggers and whatever this is, or this, and put them all on a boat and ship them halfway around the world. But hey, at least Deus has ocean access now.
A BelAZ 75710 will set you back about $6 million, which honestly is a lot less than I would have guessed. Of course, a CAT 797 can carry ~85% as much weight but only costs $3.4M. Probably better off with two of those.
I assume the BelAZ transformer would turn into something where the dump bay or whatever it’s called would fold up into a massive shield. The wheels are frikkin huge though, so unless the toy makers could come up with a way to unroll the wheels and turn then into part of the arms or legs, I think it’d have to turn into something with a shield and the world’s largest pair of inline skates.
Yes, there was a BelAZ 75710 in the Transformers movie with Devastator, (maybe it was a generic “large dump truck”) but I’m not aware that it did anything besides become the left leg, so it doesn’t count.
Totally unrelated to anything, but the first skit in this video is definitely one of the better things that’s happened on the internet recently. I haven’t even played Elden Ring but it’s still >chef kiss noise<
April Vote Incentive is up! Looks like someone had better make sure their life insurance includes acts of Snu Snu.
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Who wouldn’t want to make Devastator out of ultra-class construction vehicles?
It would be Ultra Classy.
Super Hard Interdiction Energy Laser Defense = S.H.I.E.L.D.. Someone having a Marvel moment?
They lampshaded that in Agents of Shield.
“What does this say to you?”
“Someone really wanted it to spell out ‘Shield’.”
Hey the real life military likes coming up with fighty names too.
The Nazi’s named their tanks after wild cats.
Modern helicopters are named after different wild cats.
You’ve the centurion tank, the Olifant mk-1(south-afrikan for elephant mk-1), boeing super hornet, F-15 eagle, Lockheed Martin Raptor, destroyer for entire category in naval warships.
Look up British Royal Navy warship names. Fearless, Courageous, Revenge. And the best warship name and motto ever…. HMS Dreadnought. “Fear Nothing, and Dread Nought”
However, lets not forget the good ships Gay Viking, Gay Bruiser, Adonis or the Adam & Eve. Royal Navy nomenclature could be rather eccentric
1 i 100% agree with Sydney and ive said the same about a transformer based on it
2 David Willus (roomies, shirtpacked) would be the one to ask though they have done wheels that are themselves transformers so thats an option too
They did make a Power Ranger series themed around trains, Power Ranger Lightspeed Rescue. It was delightfully dumb. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K5ZGhx4QIM
My kids were addicted to the Power Rangers and TMNT throughout their childhood my youngest wore out a VHS copy of the first TMNT movie I cringe anytime I see an add for either of them LOL
Bigger is not always better and OMG, if you start the speakers going on that ride, you will probably knock planes out of the sky!
Besides, can you IMAGINE the OSHA requirements for such a tricked out vehicle on a job site? Ugh… Even the richest of supervillians have to know when the paperwork outweighs the fun factor.
It’s not enough to just conquer the world for a true supervillain, you got to do it in style too.
I doubt Deus has to worry about OSHA while in the countries he controls in Africa.
Other people outside the US have their own versions of OSHa in other places (even in Africa!) and you KNOW Deus has imported bureaucrats. He has to at least PRETEND to care about worker safety, right?
Then again, I DO want to see some local inspector demanding a bribe to get the clearance for such a vehicle and having to explain to Deus in person why.
I have dealt with OSHA types in two countries and they were mostly cool, but some of their stories… Ugh!
Deus is the Hank Scorpio kind of supervillain. He genuinely cares about the well being of his minions. Happy and safe workers are the key to conquering the world.
Considering, in various works of fiction, how many times as the downfall of the super villain come about through the betrayal of a dissatisfied minions. Either directly turning against the villain themselves, or indirectly through helping the heros.
Deus is FAR smarter than most villain types, that is abundantly clear.
If the employees are happy, there is less chance they will betray you or steal from you. Still a chance, but less. Funny how so few managers these days seem to realize that or care.
The thing about being super rich is that you don’t have to do paperwork if you don’t want to, you have people to do the boring parts for you.
“can you IMAGINE the OSHA requirements for such a tricked out vehicle on a job site?” – kalenath
And that is why you need the full however-many-tonnes of load capacity. “Paperwork? Certainly sir, feel free to look through it!” [Points to half a forest’s worth of hard-copy in the back.]
I worked in the Alberta tar sands for a bit and we had to use the same roads as those loaders. First nightmare I had in years involved one. Their tires are as wide as most pickups and no word of lie, if they drove over a truck they wouldn’t even notice. We were trained to look at the tires as they passed us for any signs of swelling or damage, because when one of those tires blow its like several sticks of dynamite and would destroy anything near it so they had to be checked regularly.
Unfortunately, shortly after my stint someone was killed by one at the same mine I was at. From what I read, they msjudged the loader’s speed and tried crossing the road at the wrong time and got crushed. For obvious reasons, those loaders ALWAYS have the right of way. Someone I worked with also said if they had to dump their load in the wrong place, like on the highway for any reason, it cost millions of dollars. Since it would take regular backhoes hours to days to dig out how much is in them, shutting down the mine roads, etc.
Tl/dr Everything about those loaders is serious business.
The 797’s are crazy. I rotated for a year on the floor of the Caterpillar East Peoria plant where they manufacture the transmissions and I’ve been on plant tours of the Caterpillar Decatur plant where they’re assembled and the Firestone Bloomington plant where they manufacture the tires.
400+ Ton payload. Moves deceptively fast. The mind boggling thing for me is that they can be 3 pass loaded by the rope shovels at the mines.
The transmission for the truck alone weights 14,000-15,000 lbs. They were a pain in the butt because they had to shut down my main inbound dock every time we used the overhead crane to load the flatbed.
After they’re ‘assembled’ in Decatur they’re shipped as components on 5+ rail cars and assembled on site.
While on the plant tour at the tire manufacturing facility someone asked if there was any R&D into making the tires bigger. The response was that they could make the tires wider, but they couldn’t make them taller. Taller tires would be uneconomical because they would count as “over sided loads” and logistics would get a lot harder.
‘Tl/dr Everything about those loaders is serious business.’
1st rule I ever learned on a construction site: Don’t assume the operators can see you and DO NOT assume they can stop even if they do.
Bigger may be cool, but when things go wrong, it makes a hell of an expensive mess even if no one dies.
I was flat out told, they will NOT stop. Even if they know they ran you over, they will continue to their destination. Not even because of the costs involved. It’s just more dangerous for them to remain on site (iirc, though don’t quote me, the roads that they travel on are built for them to drive on, not park on, so stopping could actually make them sink). They might radio the hit in if they realized it happened, but that’s a big if.
We drove trucks and every one had a long pole with a light on it, to make us more noticable, but I noticed once when driving past early on that the pole only goes HALF WAY up the loaders. So you’d need to be a looooong way away for them to notice.
Fun story from a lumber mill. They had golf carts to drive around in and put flags on them to be seen between the stacks of lumber. They removed them when they realized the operators where playing the “how close can I get to the flag without hitting it” game.
Drove commercially for 40 years. Hell had a 4 wheeler ram the back of a C class ( one step below CDL) when they misjudged the fact that a big truck might,oh you know, have a somewhat sudden lag in acceleration while grabbing the next gear up. Pretty much the guy skinned everything from the top of the radiator up back to the windshield on a full sized Chrysler 300 and all I felt was a slight shudder that I’d thought I missed a gear and only an after thought of that could possibly be something hit me and better check that I pulled into a gas station across the intersection to check and find some paint and antifreeze on my anticlimber. While it’s never happened to me I’ve talked to other drivers that had a 4 wheeler misjudge the speed of a semi on the interstate and pretty much embed themselves in the rear of the trailer and the only way they found out was getting flagged down by other drivers that they had a dead 4 wheeler hung up in the back of the trailer.
Actually, you’re better off with the BelAZ because these are mostly used in open pit mining, and that means a long, narrow road circling down into the pit. Larger trucks means fewer trucks on the road at the same time.
Anyway…
If you’re looking for more reading material…
you may want to consider ‘The Vixen War Bride’ series by Thomas Doscher.
Blurb on aamazon:
With the destruction of their home colony, Captain Ben Gibson and his Army Rangers have nowhere else to go.
Six months after humanity’s victory in Earth’s first ever interstellar war, a group of soldiers are tasked with running a convoy refueling base in a rural part of the occupied enemy world. When they arrive, they find the local village has been abandoned in anticipation of their arrival by the panicked residents. Fearing a possible humanitarian crisis, the troops have to go into the alien wilderness to find them, reassure them that the humans are not the savages they’ve been taught they are and bring them back.
And it won’t be easy. They will have to overcome language barriers, a fearful and hostile population, cross-cultural miscommunications, almost no support from the Army, and their own demons to succeed. With no idea where to start, it looks nearly impossible until the sudden arrival of a dirty, disheveled priestess who confesses to a host of war crimes and demands she be executed for them.
—
Can anyone guess what the miscommunications are?
Might have potential. I like stories that navigate cultural stuff usually. One of my favorite part of Delvers LLC was the POV sections from the… animal people… dang, I just listened to the books again and can’t remember what they were called. Anyway, the “Ibi” jaguar clan, talking about how they would hold their ears or swish their tails, and how Henry was a “truth hisser” because he called everyone on their doublespeak and bullshit.
Yeah the rotf dump truck really didn’t have a notable robot form we could make out. A proper BelAZ would def have some presence and height among most others in Robot Form. I could easily see two of the wheels folding down to become feet and the other two being part of the shoulder armor. The dump bin could become a cape or something like Sentinel Prime’s character did with his fire engine alt mode. Though I suppose they could do what some figures have done in the past and have part of the vehicle form eject off to become a combat deck like Energon Towline did.
And yeah why do we not have more Train Characters? Outside of Astrotrain the only dedicated train characters are all part of combiner teams and Optimus the one time he became a sorta train thing.
Damnit now I’m ranting on Transformers again! Curse you Dave!
What’s wrong about ranting and nerding about Transformers?
Once I start it is hard for me to stop! Then I start annoying all the old folks at work with my fandom rantings!
Put one set of tires at the end of the arms.
Shoot the lug nuts off as 75 caliber machine gun bullets and then throw the tire as an oversized Captain America bouncy shield.
Have all the wheels detach to become various weaponry or minicons!
Blingy big truck? Right, that had better appear in the comic – yon things are cool. Can you squeeze in a Bagger dragline extractor as well?
S H I E L D eh? and construction equipment is a very very tame trade compared to what I expected
Oy …………….. just try and imagine how big the speakers are on that imagined truck! They are like 20 feet tall!
Okay I admit seeing those on a massive dump truck like that would be cool as hell…. that crazy guy got a point.
There’s no way they could bring one of those trucks in a Bayformers movie without doing something to make it such.
The pictures…
Not certain about the first. It could be the Bagger 1473, but a Bucket-wheel excavator, anyway. Incredible machines. Only really suited for massive sized open air mining such as shallow coal fields.
The second is your run of the mill bulldozer. The only thing slightly unusual about it is the colour, and that it has 2 ‘ripper teeth’. Boring.
The Third is an Allcons TW-series bucket-wheel Trencher(Trench digger). Makes wide ‘v’shaped trenches that can easily bee reinfrced with concrete.
*giggle* farming equipment.
I see I’m not the only one that felt compelled to look those pics up. That last one would be one of the most useful to have if one’s intent is to upgrade the local agricultural production
No, you want one that digs narrow trenches for agriculture.
There’s two main reasons to dig trenches on farmland.
1. Drainage because of marshland or excessive rains. You dig narrow trenches, fill in coarse gravel, lay a perforated pipe down that leats to a ditch/channel or larger pipe, add more gravel and possibly a fiber cloth of some kind, then replace the dirt.
2. Improved irrigation in dry areas. Here you really want to use pipes and water spreaders on the end, and bury anything that doesn’t have to be on top, but if that’s not possible, you want narow ditches to transport water because it means less surface area and less evaporation.
Generally, wide ditches is avoided because it wastes arable land.
The wide trenches is for handling storm and flooding situations.
Damn! You beat me to it.
So, a belaz 75810 is about 60 feet long, arguably making it about as big as devistator if it were to transform.
Just when one thinks it’s impossible to love Sydney more…
Anyway, to introduce a Transformer version of that truck, just make a new version of the truck Constructicon, but with that model.
If they made a Train Transformer it would be defeated by a handful of guys on horses. It seems like it would be hard to keep straight and would quickly go off the rails. The AI would be overly optimistic, always thinking it can even when it shouldn’t. It would also have a diesel addiction and keep on chugging.
If Michael Bay got ahold of it, it would wind up looking like a Human Centipede reference.
I think overalls can be quite sexy! But I’m a country boy at heart.
Looks like Sydney is either going against type or thinking waaay outside the box or both!?
So… I’m just going to ask this but…
Mr. Super Deus has a state of the art fab lab that can make things from scratch. So why can’t he build one? It shouldn’t be that hard to make giant dump trucks that can transform into robots and devastate the world can it?
State of the art fabs are uneconomic for products that aren’t high value per kg; The energy investment per kg is too high. A foundry is a cheaper way of making steel castings, a tire plant a cheaper way of making tires.
Basically, a very versatile, rather than efficient, production process.
Also, comparative advantage: Even if he can economically make huge dump trucks, he’s better off making combat jets, and selling them for huge dump trucks.
Because he can sell one fabbed fighter plane for ten of those trucks or more and probably take the same amount of time or less to do so. Leveraging time and money!
“Mr. Super Deus has a state of the art fab lab that can make things from scratch. So why can’t he build one?” – Sentinel135
Besides the economic reasons mentioned by Brett and RED, there’s also the engineering aspect to consider.
A fighter plane mostly consists of relatively narrow and flat pieces, especially if it’s made in ‘kit’ form for ease of maintenance, repair, and modification. As such, the printing ‘aperture’ can be relatively small – not many Fabbers in a row, not very far open, makes it easier to be sure everything’s going where and how it should be.
A mass mover such as this might have a lot of panels, but many of them are large in more than one dimension. And a lot of parts, such as the engine block and transmission, may well be large in all three dimensions. That’s a lot of ‘aperture’, meaning a lot of Fabbers and some tricky precision work needed to keep everything aligned (including the heavy bits that have already been made). Or you just get a few kilotons of sand, some only moderately expensive wooden mould templates, and use the complex casting techniques that have a century or so of process optimisation behind them.
Make Mine Marvel! Sooo many different interpretations of S.H.I.E.L.D. On another note in our reality, Belarus isn’t going to be exporting that big AZ dump truck anytime soon considering their support for the war on Ukraine. One wonders, if that war was ongoing in the Grrl Power world, what would Deus’ reaction be? I mean, granted he has no problem taking over land from other countries, but he doesn’t wipe out entire cities and commit a wholesale slaughter of the civilian populace. Would he take advantage by trading with Belarus and Russia or would he, like most of the rest of the world send aid to Ukraine.
Then there’s the whole Supers’ issue. So far Putin is holding off on Nukes and chemical weapons. Would Super Humans be placed roughly in that same category? I can’t imagine a Ukrainian Super not taking an active role in the defense of their country. Perhaps Zelenskyy might order any Ukrainian Supers to only serve in a support role, search and rescue, supply and such in order to hopefully avoid Russia deploying its Supers. Can you imagine the effect of teleporters or portals on helping to evacuate civilians and bring in supplies? And then you have volunteers Supers, of which Deus has an abundance. One thing for sure, you would not want Vehemence anywhere near that war zone.
Superman refused to get involved with WWII because “it wouldn’t be fair” and Max and Sydney would fall into that category as well. Another point here is Superman wasn’t a “super” until he came to earth, interesting tie-in there too…
Putin would definitely use supers if he had them. He seems to think he’s liberating the Ukraine from not being under his control.
I can imagine that Deus would sell Ukraine weapons. Not too many, and not too efficient. He would want everyone to see what they do to the enemy. Ukraine has a functioning internet and the fighters are actively posting videos. And a ‘Watch us blow holes in obsolete Russian armour with the Maxima Industries ‘Little sun’ Plasma Projector,’ video or ten would NOT hurt sales… Another soldier holding up a bulletproof vest with the Maxima logo and saying ‘getting hit by a 50 caliber hurts like Putins ramblings, but this vest stopped it with no more than a couple of bruised ribs’. Yeah, they wouldn’t be able to manufacture them fast enough.
Military forces all over the world are already watching the conflict to see what works or not. Because while everyone wants the newest and best tech, what they really need is combat-proven new tech.
Is this related to my April Fool’s Joke about “Rough Trade Coffee” (‘You can taste the suffering!’)? Probably not.
First off, Dave, I recognize your holy and justified struggle with where to put the spine/binding on the SHIELD manual so it can reasonably be facing outward… put it at the top? Yes, excellent choice.
And yet it appears that in panel 3 Max is still holding it the wrong way.
No Max is holding it right, it’s a post binder – no side/end/spine binding just 2 covers sandwiching a stack of papers.
Dave, if you’d like to see a BelAZ 75710 transformer, you might also enjoy a Bagger 288 transformer.
Deus just wants to as cool as a Ukrainian farmer.
The dump truck component of Devastator was named Long Haul, and he definitely transforms into more than Devastator’s left leg. Here’s his robot form: https://imgur.com/EX2zhzT
I don’t think he’s a BelAZ though.
@Dave B. The second picture is of the Euclid TC12 bulldozer with rear road plows. AKA The Jolly Green Giant
The last picture is of Tesmec’s 60-metric ton-class Bucket Wheel trencher.
Love that Sydney’s knowledge of the world’s largest dump truck shocked them all. C’mon, Sydney is literally the queen of random. Frankly, I’m shocked that they’re shocked lol. And this is just so you know, and not to sound snarky (apologies if it comes across that way) the “bigger digger” is a bucket wheel excavator normally used in strip mining for removing the overburden (the soil/rock that’s on top of what you want to mine), the “whatever this is” is a normal bulldozer seen from behind with ripping teeth (the teeth can be lowered and used to break up the ground which can then be pushed using the blade) and the ” or this” is another bucket excavator but one that has been designed to dig irrigation or drainage ditches (the bucket wheel digs the majority and the wedge blade carves the final shape. Soil falls out of the buckets near the top of the wheel onto the conveyor belt which can then place the soil to either side of the machine for collection, the big bucket wheel excavators work the same way but the conveyor runs up the arm to the main body so that it can be dumped directly into dump trucks.)
I’m sure her store sells Transformers comic books and collectibles.
She’s likely had half a dozen in-depth conversations with her customers about missed opportunities in the Transformers lineup.
“Like really! They don’t have an SR-71A Transformer? The X-Men would TOTALLY fly that!”
There are several, actually. And many more that are only reminiscent of the Blackbird.
They have SR-71’s.
They don’t have SR-71A’s which are the “passenger model” of the jet which the X-Men use in the Marvel Comics (and that model of the jet exists nowhere outside Marvel Comics).
Oh. I was not aware of that. However, I imagine that some of the SR-71-inspired “Cybertronian jet” transformers might be similar.
The look on Deus’ face when Sydney gets the name of the truck right and he doesn’t remember it.
I don’t know if it was that truck but I’ve seen some massive ones when they were carving away the mountain to widen a highway I drive regularly. Massive backhoe, it was sitting off in the distance and suddenly scale kicked in and I realized it could scoop up my car at least three times over.
Later I passed them transporting it (or a similar one). Middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, they’d closed off 3/4 of the lanes of traffic. I just see the flashing lights, maneuver as needed and then look over and all I can see is TREAD. The top stuff wasn’t there, it was only the base (maybe half the base, I could only make out one tread). They needed three lanes and a massive flatbed just to carry PART of this thing.
So, my take. Deus wants a trade agreement with the US because it messages that at least one superpower is down with what he is doing.
Doesn’t the Titan class Devastator have one of those dump trucks? Long Haul, the largest member of the team, he turns into the lower torso and hips of the combined mode. Of course the toy isn’t scaled right but he does more than turn into a foot.
So he can 3D print whole aircraft but can’t make a tricked out monster bulldozer? Weak.
It’s the opportunity cost.
If he switches over production to 3D print something he can easily buy, then he’s not using that time and those resources to manufacture the things he can’t easily buy.
Engineering. When your manufacturing cost/complexity is effectively governed by what 2D aperture you can print it through, it’s far easier to make something that’s all long flat bits rather than something with lots of big 3D components.
I bet Deus will be fabbing a transformer toy of it for his office shelf, after what she said…
While technically not a train as he was simply a steam engine and tender there was a locomotive Transformer. Astrotrain Decepticon triple changer was robot,steam engine and space shuttle. Seem to recall another Transformer that was at least the cab unit of the classic Japanese bullet train but with the CRS kicking in I can’t remember the name or alignment.
There are three of them, actually.
Is there someplace we can see previous vote incentives?
They’re up on DaveB‘s Patreon page, although it can take some looking to find them among the hi-res comic pages. (Perhaps adding a tag for ‘Incentives’ or ‘Extras’ would help.) As for non-paid options, I don’t know – some have gone up on his DeviantArt page, but I think only a few.
My grandfather was a heavy equipment operator. He worked on the Alcan highway during WWII, and a lot of road and dam construction during the 50’s & 60’s. My father put himself through college in the early 60’s working summers as an HEO, plus the GI bill. I wasn’t an HEO, but when I was in the Army I was driving around in M60A3 tanks, plus the 2 1/2 and 5 ton trucks.
So, long about way of saying, driving heavy equipment is fun.
Anyway, that first thing is called a “bulldozer” .
In case you were just talking about that thing in the back, it’s called a ripper, because it rips up the ground so it’s easier to dig up.
The other thing is a trencher. It digs trenches that you can put pipes or fiber optics or whatever in and then fill it back up.
Yeah, he SAYS he’s _building_ these countries up. But what is he using that Bagger 288 for?
Running lights would be easy. Jumpy suspension? That can handle multi tons? What kind of suspension do those things have, anyway.
Sidney gaining points in both intelligence and geek cred. Especially for indirect Michael Bey dig. Direct dig would have been worth more points, again, in both geek and intelligence cred. :/
IMHO
*inhales*
THE LEADERS OF THE WORLD SAT DOWN AROUND A SECRET TABLE
THERE WAS A THREAT TO HUMANKIND THEY MUST DEFEND AGAINST
TO FIGHT AGAINST GODZILLAS THEY JUST SIMPLY WERE NOT ABLE
DOOM ROBOTS FROM THE FUTURE COULD BE MET WITH NO DEFENCE
*pause, breathe*
THE LEADER OF THE GERMANS STOOD WITH A TRIUMPHANT ROAR
“I get it! We shall build a machine that’s totally great!”
A MASSIVE STEEL LEVIATHAN WITH BLADES COVERED IN GORE
BEELZEBUB HIMSELF WILL FEAR
THE
BAGGER
288