Grrl Power #181 – Power UP!
:)
I’m so tempted to leave just the smiley as the comment but, well you guys know I can get a little verbose in these. I really enjoyed designing this, and yes, I know what all of the nodes do. I have an Illustrator file with a very spoileriffic text layer. :) It turns out that Maxima was correct about Sydney leveling up – just in a more literal sense than she knew.
I’m the sort of guy that enjoys designing skilltrees recreationally. Diablo II is one of my all time favorite games. It had a pretty basic skilltree in it, until the 1.10 patch that added the skill synergies. Personally I’m ambivalent about how skills worked in Diablo III. It has its merits but being able to swap skills out whenever you want dilutes player agency IMO. Currently I’m enjoying Path of Exile quite a bit – and it has a rather unique skill system. The actual abilities are either random drops or quest rewards, which I was leery of at first, but after a few playthroughs you start stockpiling skills and can build just about anything you want. The interesting thing about PoE’s skilltree is that it’s all passive abilities – a massive, interconnected web of abilities, rather reminiscent of the Final Fantasy 10 Sphere Grid.
After playing a little Path of Exile, I almost went back and redesigned Sydney’s skilltree and made it far more complicated, but decided to leave it as is for now. It’s not like she can’t discover additional features in the future. :)
Hi there, my name’s Halo! I’m a big time Superhero and this is my first big endorsement, so listen up!
Patreon, for those of you who haven’t heard of it before, is like Kickstarter for microtransactions. Instead of funding one off projects, Patreon is for giving ongoing support to independent artists you enjoy. It creates a steady source of revenue they can come to depend on to help support their projects or even just pay their bills so they can concentrate on making more of what you love.
If everyone who read the comic pledged $1 per month (much cheaper than XBOX Live, a monthly subscription to Xmen, or A sandwich) DaveB could live in a house made entirely of caviar and ponies. If one tenth of readers pledged that much, he could still make his living off the comic and produce extra pages on a regular basis. Granted he’s doing that right now, but until the Patreon campaign hits a certain level, his saving will eventually erode to the point that he will need to find a full time job. So please consider contributing even a small amount (or a big amount, we’re not picky) to support the comic if you’ve enjoyed it so far, and DaveB will continue to endeavor to improve his art and writing and will keep entertaining for many years to come! Thanks!
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
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Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
ahhhhh! Sphere system like FFX =D
Was just going to ask if it was FF-related
First thing I thought of :)
So now she can spend extra skill points levelling up her balls?
Does she have to pay 50 gold if she wants to respec?
I’m guessing the outer nodes are for new subskills, and the inner circle of nodes are for power? Because that’d match her flight and forcefield being strongest, which matches her character page.
No, but we get to bet that much on where she’ll place it.
This… Mother of god…
Please let her have the ability to reallocate skill points.
Please, oh great and powerful DaveB.
That would just make her a more cumbersome version of maxima’s powerset.
Seems interesting that she has skill points off orbs she doesn’t know how to use.
Yeah, noticed that as well: 1 of 5 for one of the brown w/ internal cloud, and 1 & 2 of 5 for a second one, and 1/1 and 1/3 for the green unknown
Woooo, skill trees… *glazed-over look*
That is pretty damn amazing. And now I really want to find out what that extra spoiler-tastic Illustrator layer is.
Here’s to many more years of Grrl-power to find out!
Many, many more years.
(We still don’t know.)
Maybe Sydney should hover with her finger over the the nodes of the unknown orbs to get tooltips.
That made me laugh out loud, then I stopped and thought, maybe it would! They seem fairly user friendly, with built in safeties, so why not built in user documentation?!
Too bad the language setting is stuck in a language nobody here can read even Dabbler. Of course, one of the tool-tips says “Hello Sweetie” in Gallifraian.
You know what it does have that look to it.
Or one of them says “Ask the Nerorian”
I like the one that says post no bills in zoanic nyanian (royal script).
Halo’s powers wouldn’t be nearly as interesting with clear, readable instructions, but an abstract picture or animation seems like it would fit the UI-theme without giving away too much.
Oh good lord she’s Leveling Up!
Now which Orb is it going to go into or will it go into the main wheel in the Center? Oh now we wish the Orbs had instructions, especially if there is a time limit on how long she has to add the Level up “Glowy thing.”
Dave, this is cool.
Probably auto-allocates based on what was used
I see her using her orbs every chance she get now XD
I like how the flyball and forb have a central section lit up, and the flyball and PPO have a linked dot lit up as well. I’m guessing because they were used in conjunction for the level-up EXP?
I like the grey sections and the lines without nodes,which adds some mystery to the level up system
I didn’t even realise they persisted in the 5th panel; I thought they were still in the process of being drawn. Nice touch of mystery indeed.
Power stunts, anyone?
Obviously the greyed-out circles are skills that Sydney doesn’t yet have the prereqs for…
Interesting. Even the Unknown orbs have some skill points in them
I’m bettng the first “pip” for all the orbs is the “Availability” pip. As in “you can now access this power”
Oh, DaveB. I found one more place to update the 5-pointed star to the 6-pointed star. Take a look at the current voting incentive.
I would put the skill point in the node between Energy Blast and tentacle
I disagree. Until she figures out what all those things do, she’s probably best putting points into forcefield, especially a branch which hasn’t got anything in it. It could mean the difference between life and death.
The longer she survives, the greater the chance of her actually learning how to fully make use of her balls.
Actually she has 4 orbs in the forcefield branch that I bet are for the shields strength.
I’d be tempted to add it to the nearly filled-out branch of the fly-ball and hope the greyed-out branch becomes accessible. Just to see what it does.
I love the fact that, while someone like Zephan would probably wonder if they have any significance to an ancient culture or what language the symbols are in or something, Sydney’s gaming mind instantly recognises “skill tree”
What if the orbs are so user friendly they adopted a leveling program best suited for the user.
I find the thought that the orbs are smarter then Sydney to be both worrisome and worthwhile.
Ever played Fate/Stay Night? All the characters have stat sheets, skill lists with levels, etc. described in RPG terms. Thing is, Fate/Stay Night is a visual novel, not a RPG. The RPG-like sheets have no bearing whatsoever on the game. But canon is that the main character understands the characters’ abilities in those terms. So it could very well be that Sydney’s mind interprets it as a skill tree because that’s the easiest way for her to understand how it advances.
Alternately, it actually is a skill tree, but whoever created the orbs made them with a skill tree-like interface for the same reason that we make games with skill trees.
Or it is some very advanced beings version of a game.
Curiouser – there are several (I counted at least seven) trails that lead off into nothing and fade out. And a couple in the inner ring not connected directly to anything.
I wonder if the cameras are still going. This array should be considered classified info.
Might not be that big of an issue, Dabbler stated something to the effect of their light doesn’t register on her scans so it might not get picked up by the cameras, I’m not at all certain mind you, but it seems possible.
Live TV broadcast kinda nullifies that desire. Unless Kale‘s thought below turns out to be actual.
IF it’s visible to everyone else it’s probably pure nonsense to 99% of the people seeing it. (the 1% being those like dabbler, and possibly rpg nerds like sydney)
The trail leading to infinity off of the fly ball activates the Interstellar Overdrive.
(Anyone who gets that reference wins an effervescing elephant).
You mean she’s a Pusher? (and that is a distinctly ancient media reference)
Obviously not. Everybody knows Pushers can’t do anything without everybody else.
Not only that, but what may not be immediately viewed as relevant is that there are different widths to the connecting lines between the skill powers, thin or thick which by the fact they are used ar different places, suggests (partly because Dave B has been devising this for a while) that that differentiation means something specific.
Yes, skill trees are fun. The skills system in Diablo III was one of a long list of things I disliked (voice acting and writing being worse offenders). For one thing, it meant that your character was now identical to every other character of that class and level, a step backwards from D2 as far as player customization goes.
I’m rather curious as to how Sydney levels these orbs and why they even have a ‘leveling’ system built in, but I’m sure those will be explored over time.
Dave… I get the feeling you might be a DDO player? >_<
Is that Dungeons and Dragons online? I never played it actually. I was never a fan of MMOs in general for a number of reasons, one being the time investment. The only one I ever put more than an hour into was WoW, and that was only because a friend got me an account under that friends with benefits plan they had where you got huge XP bonuses while you adventured together. Even then I thought the game felt grindy, and the moment that buddy xp bonus lapsed I quit.
yeah all MMO’s are somewhat grindy. Haven’t played DDO in a long time but it was better than most in that respect. the main reason to grind through charecters in every server is with enough you could unlock most of the classes/races in the Store for free. (the store would simply unlock them in all the servers without the grinding)
Everything I’ve read about Path of the Exile would make me call it an MMO. You say you’ve been playing it. What makes it different?
Path of Exile. No “the.” Sorry, slip on my part. My question remains, though.
I had thought someone had played Path of Exile. It has a skill tree that reminds people of Kaduz.
Difference between a MMORPG and hack & slash MMO most likely.
PoE is only an MMO in the sense that lots of people are on the same servers at the same time, but the only time you ever see other players is in town, and even then it’s usually like 6-10 people just selling stuff at a vendor. ALL of the adventuring is instanced, so if you turn off global chat, it’s like playing a single player game. If you invite someone to your party, only then can they enter your instance of a dungeon/coastline full of monsters, essentially turning into a co-op game for only up to 4 players I think.
Grindy? *eye pop moment*. It would only take a few weeks casual play to get to max level. Then again I cam from Anarchy Online where the first player to reach max level took months to do it.
Well in Diablo II you can get from level one and play into Hell difficulty in under 20 hours. When you say it would only take a casual player “a few weeks” to max level in your game, all I can think of is how many other things I could accomplish in that same amount of time. Take 10 characters into Hell difficulty in D2, read 60 novels, draw 20 pages of the comic, stuff like that.
Not that I haven’t dumped a ton of time into video games, don’t get me wrong. The amount of Diablo 2, Doom II, Counter-Strike, Rocket Arena, and CoD4 multiplayer I’ve logged before I started drawing the comic would either impress or depress anyone. It’s just now that I’m doing the comic, nearly any time I put in to video games makes me feel guilty that I’m not drawing or doing something else productive.
I’m betting she puts the point into the main shield branch. The cast page says it’s a five, but it only has four points right now.
What interests be the most, though, are the nodes that connect the different branches. Might those be for new powers that require both orbs?
I think those will allow aspects of both connected orbs to function in a new way. For instance, take a look at a couple of the current powers:
The tentacle from the pseudopod tentacle orb presumably has an upper limit on its range. ie how far it can stretch to poke or grab something.
One aspect of the Comm Orb is that it can project an image of Halo to a remote location. Significantly though she cannot touch anything with it.
If she has a power up point to allocate freely now and puts it in the dot connecting the Henai orb to the Comm Orb, she may unlock the ability to touch things in a remote location. Which might manifest in one of two different ways. Either the tentacle can appear in the place that her image is being projected and function normally there. Or it simply allows her to touch and otherwise interact with things physically as if she were there.
Given that she would need to be holding both the pink orb and the yellow orb at the time, in order to invoke both powers, the latter seems of limited use. Given that both her hands would be full and would thus make manipulating objects rather cumbersome. So a remote tentacle seems more likely.
One caveat to that being that the projected image need not project the balls too. So perhaps her image’s hands would be able to manipulate things as if she were not holding anything. * However, that said, I imagine that none of the power ups that appear on connecting lines between two orbs will function unless the two relevant orbs are being held.
* And holding another pair of balls, with her virtual hands, is probably prohibited if that is the case.
look at the introduction part where she was using her comm orb, fake-syndey was also holding the comm orb so that’s a no-go on multy-orb hack.
Two points. One, an image projector which has something obvious in it which shows it is an image is of limited strategic use. So logically an artefact set as powerful as the orbs are would likely take that into account. i.e. Giving the option of not displaying the projection orb when creating an image.
Two, panel 5 of the the Comm-orb demonstration show Sydney pulling faces without the yellow/tan orb visible. Ok, she might be hiding it in the palm of her hand but if so, I cannot see it. Until shown otherwise, I feel it reasonable to assume that she is not required to project the image of it when creating her duplicate. Which allow my previous comments to stand as written.
Late reply is late.
Look at the last panel of same page. Both Sydney’s are holding a Telepresence Orb.
True comment is true comment.
I did phrase my comment carefully to take that into account mind. Specifically “… she is not required to project the image…”. All it takes to prove that an exception is possible is the one example.
Although I do concede that there is no particular reason for her to switch between showing it and not, in that scene. So you make a worthy point.
It may simply be a flaw in the design. Or alternatively deception never was the intended purpose. It could simply be a tele-conferencing feature.
HALO POWER UP
just not the pewpew orb until you control it better lol
Maybe that’s what one/some of the PPO’s slots are for? Ease of use or accuracy are always in the trees.
The red orb has a single power radiating off of it. Perhaps that is the ability to disable friendly fire? Very handy if you want to use the PPO on a villain holding a hostage.
They all have a single double line power coming off
Following on from somebody else’s suggestion that double lines indicate a requirement to use two hands (for lines connecting two different orbs it requiring each orb being held, in this instance requiring a single orb to be held in both hands), and assuming this hypothesis is also correct, it would require that the Pew Pew Orb be held in both hands to fire it without risk to any friendlies in the area of affect.
first she would need a TRILLION acurracy at this point to hit her target and ONLY her target
and well for the rest i can only say “good luck sydney and the rest of the team” hehe
as most probably the rest of the team is thinking hehe
I probably should have explained it better. By saying that friendly fire is disabled I meant that the blast would be unable to harm allies or innocent bystanders, even if they are hit by it. Some mechanism would simply make them immune to the damage.
There are a number of ways it could be done, from the simple one that the blast could shape itself such that it avoids friendlies. Or allies could be phased out from this plane of existence for a moment, until the blast had cleared, and they could safely return. Similarly with teleportation or blinking out of the time stream for a moment or two. And so on.
Thinking on it, whilst those suggestions would work, thematically she would only be holding the PPO, which does not have those kind of powers. It has fiery powers. So simply granting immunity to fire for allies would fit better.
Ok Sydney, you put that new point into the Force Field orb. Get yourself an absolute defense.
Also, whoot whoot! Sphere grid!
looks like 36-37/143-144 dots so far, the middle wedges are hard to check
ring in the middle is disconnected from the looks of it, but all the orbs are connected to the other six by the lines, which there are 3 sets of seven lines.
clarification: the glowing ring doesn’t seem to have any direct connection beyond lining up with the orbs. other then the lines connecting the ring together intersecting with other.
Maybe is the number of orbs you can use at the same time.
Anyone else notice the orbs are in a different position in frame 5. Wonder if Sydney can spin the grid so she can reach the grid slots at the top.
Yeah, looks like the array rotates with the orbs.
Frame 5 from sydney’s point of view while frame 1 is from mirror side point of view.
Nope. Look at panels 1 and 5. The grid is rotating.
Ooooohh, pretty. And extremely kewl, too.
My first thought upon seeing this (without reading Dave’s commentary) was that Sydney had finally found the ‘Help’ Menu for her Orbs. Skill / Ability Tree is good, though. I note that even the ‘Mystery / Do-Nothing Orbs’ have a few levels. Very interesting, that.
I would also conjecture that Sydney, using her Role-Playing Game skills and general geekiness, has figured out, more or less, that this is a Skill Tree – hence the “DING, Mother F@#$%^” reaction in the last panel.
I’ll be the point sin the mystery orb are the scan protection abilities.
Very possibly. Either one of the mystery orbs could be a protection orb that will handle things more subtle than the Forb is designed for. Such as resisting scanning. Or it could be that they both do, as you imply. Perhaps with one blocking magical intrusion and the other psionic or technological?
You need to be holding the orbs before use their powers.
Theory discarded.
For most uses, but not all. For instance she can mentally control their flight as demonstrated in her fights. Plus they can do stuff without her holding them. Such as stopping her from getting too far away. Providing her with protection could very well fall under the same category.
They (or the makers of the orbs anyhow) clearly do not want the orb controller to get out of range. Dying would logically also cause similar inconvenience to whatever agenda they are following. So reducing the ways of killing the operator would operate to a similar end as tethering them to the orbs. We know that Sydney has not choice over the tethering. Why would they give her any choice about not poisoning or otherwise harming herself?
And who says that a high enough skill doesn’t eliminate that requirement? After all, high level skill typically reduces cost (mana, whatever), increases range and/or accuracy, improves effect (damage, defensive ability), etc., etc., etc.
So high skill could remove the requirement to hold the orbs. And if so, imagine what a powerhouse Sydney would be at max level, with all orb powers available at the same time and with whatever other improvements top skill levels brought with them!
Looks like Sydney has already been leveling up in several areas.
It will be most interesting to see where this leads.
Sydney… or the orbs’ previous master?
those could be the “lvl 1” stats. aka the “Attack,defend,item,magic” commands.
Love the ‘ding’ sidney made once she figured out what happened :)
heh, reminds me of my guildmates when they just levelled up, yelling the same thing on the guild channels :p –
now we just need Leon to send her a GG message on her cellphone or her flight transponder :p – because he was surely watching the sequence from his screens :p)
Her flight transponder is missing, last seen in comics #170
DaveB said he just forgot to draw it. Maybe it slipped up her sleeve?
He has since updated it. F5 to refresh your displays and see it. Likewise on the previous page where it should have appeared.
This made me think. Maybe the unknown orbs have passives. : D
The fact that they don’t have a five-point power branch like the active orbs supports that idea. The brown one does have two five-point branches, but they’re different.
Yea, as with the ‘resist detection’ suggested above. Or, alternatively, they might be meta powers. Ones that affect all the others. For instance Sydney may have just unlocked the ‘enlarge’ capability. Currently she has only applied it to her force field. But, if correct, she could apply it to any of the others.
For instance ‘mass flight’, ‘Godzilla-sided projected image’ (although she has already done an oversized one in her ballroom demonstration), ‘humongous fireball’ and ‘train-sized tentacle’.
Or one orb is passives and the other meta powers?
I was wondering if one of them was an extra life orb. It could be entirely passive at first but be capable of powering up one ability quite a bit temporarily at the cost of one “life”. The “lives” might have a large recharge time, or be based on her average skill level.
I demand the skill-tree as a wallpaper!
Also… isn’t there a hole missing in Achilles’ shirt?
And don’t tell me you wouldn’t “DING!” too if you got a level-up as superheroXD.
I’ll second that as a request instead of a demand. You might also consider making that one a T-Shirt. I’d buy a t-shirt with that diagram on it. =)
I’ll third that as a request for all spots _taken_ as an incentive, with a two-week delay for non-paying viewers.
Derp. All spots taken are identified, otherwise as above.
Me three!
Also I suspect one if the two orbs contains a manual, it couldn’t be accessed before as it was still callibratin itself to her.
The other orb is obviously either energy absorbtion or passives.
+1
“Woooo!” indeed :p
I want that wallpaper too ^^
Yep, the damage on Achilles’ shirt is missing the lower big damage and the smaller side-damage. We only get to see the center and upper damage on this page.
Otherwise,… this damn looks like the Skyrim skill trees, especially the one from the PPO, blacksmithing in Skyrim if I remember right.
Ohhh…. shiny!
That face in the last panel….perfect mix of joy and drunk on power XD. What I wonder is these unlocks are from previous orb owners, so depending on how many prior owners they’ve had……she might not get many levelups. Better plan your allocations well Sydney :D
Based on the nodes that already have points, it looks like there have only been one or two other owners. I see two build patterns. One is an experiment; every type of node has a point. The other is a balanced build; there are at least three but no more than four points in the main branch of each active orb.
Seems like each of the powers has a link to the others. The two unknown orbs might manifest entirely through their links in this case, and have their passive boosts on the main tree.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the outer nodes are for powers that can get better, the gray areas are for powers she can’t use yet because she requires enough strength in an existing power, and the middle parts are so she can effectively use two orbs together for combination attacks… and the middles ones that don’t connect…..yea got me there
Perhaps they deal with the user’s inner strengths. Two lights indicate Sydney’s progress to enlightenment?
Or maybe they are esoteric powers, unconnected to the use of any specific orb. Such as resistance to toxins? For instance capsaicin.
To me the center wedges look like one big node that needs seven points to activate (two points were put into the smaller nodes that link to the activated wedges). It’s probably something awesome like an eighth orb (in which case the theoretical ninth orb would need eight points) or the ability to use powers without touching orbs (that might be OP for only seven points).
My theory on the middle ring is that it is for ‘last power used’ (or last combo). She was last holding the flight and shield orbs before the display activated. It could be useful to know if one or more orbs need time to recharge back to full power.
My theory is that the inner ring grants all orbs the powers of the light up segment,which means that the can fly and are indestructible,because some put their skill points into the fly and shield orb segment of the inner circle
That makes sense. So if she put a point into the one corresponding to the pseudopod tentacle orb, then all of her orbs might grow tentacles (and/or hatch)?
!!!
I think I just fell seriously in love with this comic. This is brilliant. No, wait. This is totes amazeballs.
+1
I would put the point in the center under the PPO, looks like the inner layer probably allows for the proficient use of the orb in combo. Such as the flight and Forcefield orb are link that way. The one under the PPO might make it so she can fire through the forcefield.
Or she could put it in the red unknown branch with the two points in it already, my guess would be that since there are five slots with two filled that might be the number or orbs she can activate at one time and maybe once they are all unlocked she wouldn’t need to hold them anymore.
One last guess would be that since all the orbs are connected to the two unknowns the two may act as a power booster and the other may allow for passive abilities or auto activation.
Hmmm. My instincts tell me to take the last flight upgrade in that nearly filled chain, possibly unlocking the grey chain. On the other hand, unlocking stuff for the unknown orbs seems like it could give clues to what they do – especially taking a circle connecting them to another orb, if it unlocks some kind of synergy.
So, are the middle dots a representation of the fact that she can only use two orbs at a time?
Are the grey ones currently invalid options? Then shouldn’t a lot more of them be grey?
…Are the orbs themselves clickable? Some of the circles around them are lit up…
Now I wonder how they calculate XP.
—————
My advice for Halo:
First: Take a smartphone pic of the skills chart, for later study.
Second: Try to summon tooltips – or error messages in alien writing, by choosing a grey circle. Save text for possible translation.
Third: Pick a synergy between an unknown orb and the shield orb; maybe hitting the shield with it active will result in something, now.
Fourth: Start grinding for XP!
Not that Sidney knows about it, but Dave revealed that Dabbler’s off-colored eye is a cybernetic implant that can record video. I am sure she is recording the display for further study. What we need to take bets on is whether she reveals that function and offers a hardcopy to Sid.
If her eye is recording, then several million home systems are probably doing so simultaneously too, via the world-wide tv broadcast.
Now, Dabbler said she can SEE the glow, but it’s not showing up on “ANYTHING” …. does that mean that one of her eyes could see the glow, and the other couldn’t, or that her eye saw it but it wasn’t in any recording?
The 2nd option sounds less likely. If the glow wasn’t recordable or detectable, I’ll guess this levelup display is also stealthed.
Okay, lets see how this Skill Circle works
All:- have a single branch with a strange extra-wide linkage
Energy Blast:- has 3 branches; extra-wide linkage; 5-point branch (with the 3 selected); and a strange 6-linked group of doubles
Flight:- has 4 branches; extra-wide single linkage; a pink 4-point branch (that seems to extend beyond the 4th point); 5-point branch (with first 2 filled); 2nd 5-point (with 4 points filled) with all 5 pointing to another 4-point pink branch with an extra-wide link to another point leading to nothingness (posible the blue-5 needs to be fully filled before the pink becomes selectable)
Forcefield:- 4 branches; extra-wide single linkage; normal single empty; 2-point with an extra-wide link to 3rd point (that has a very long tail to nothing), empty; 5-point with 4 points filled (difficult to see, but guessing the first point has been filled)
Unknown Brown:- 3 branches; extra-wide single; 5-point with first selected; another 5-point with 2 selected
Unknown Green:- 3 branches; extra-wide single, selected (maybe that allows the user to see/interact with the Skill Circle); 3-point with first selected; 4-point empty
Tele-Sight:- 6 branches; extra-wide single; 4-point empty; 5-point with 4 selected (only guessing the 5th is actually part of the same branch, difficult to see the link because of Les’ hair); 5-point with first selected; 2-point with first selected (4-point branching from the first); single empty
Hentorb:- 5 branches; extra-wide single; 5-point with first selected; 5-point with 3 selected (pink extra-wide connected to 5th); 4-point with first selected; 5-point with first selected
They all have a connecter with each other, with Flight and Energy Blast’s selected
A seemingly unconnected ring in the center that has a bubble that lines up with each Orb, Flight and Forcefield selected (with corresponding ‘wedges’ selected in the center circle)
The distribution of nodes seems unusual. I can think of lots of ways you could modify the PPO, beam width, pulse duration, rate of fire, strength, type of beam, accuracy, range, etc… yet it only has three branches.
But flight and hentorb seem to have way more branches than I can imagine use for.
With the flight orb It’s hard to think of variations of beyond speed and carry weight, yet it has two unfilled pink branches, and a possible connection with the PPO. I can’t even imagine what all those options could be.
And the hentorb has four main branches, one with a bonus node at the end, and one extrawide linkage. Again, what could that do? Strength, length, flexibility? It seems like a lot of branches and nodes for something fairly limited, unless it has some substantial extra unknown abilities.
The two unknown orbs seem to have the least number of points selected, maybe that’s why they appear to do nothing. Their abilities might just be very limited at this stage.
I have the idea that one of the flight orb branches may deal with space flight.
Maybe when used in conjunction with the Forcefield
Might also want to mention that the Flight Orb has its own limited Force Field…
I can think of a lot of modifiers for each ball, and the already known information gives hints to guess some things. I will most probably be wrong in some/all cases, but here are my thoughts.
Every single ball is connected to every other ball, but only the flightppo link is enabled. This is probably to allow some kind of combo, but who knows.
The inner, unconnected circle has 1 point for each ball, and only two are enabled. Casually that’s the amount of balls Syd can use at the same time. I guess if the balls where in Dabbler possession she would only be able to use two despite her four hands, until she enabled more points in that circle.
The strongest powers shown to date are:
1.- Telepresence/Truesight capable of seeing through succubus glamour
2.- Forcefield capable of withstanding Maxima’s punches and lightwork presentation
3.- Flight fast enough to keep up with Maxima’s cautious test without Syd even noticing
Telepresence/Truesight ball. It was stated her truesight is remarkably strong to see through a succubus glamour, and right there she has 4 points. Dabbler isn’t a pure succubus, so there may be stronger glamours around, but Syd there is a fifth slot available too. Her telepresence is kind of weak, not allowing her to interact with objects (open door, use computer, switch off alarms) or to change it’s apearance, but there are lots of available points in that ball. Maybe some even allow her to fire the PPO or shield through the telepresence at some point. I’m guessing the “forked” branch allows one point to solidify the telepresence and four to change it’s appearance, but this is a wild guess.
Forcefield ball. It has 4 points too, and I guess they are for strength. The rest? How about a non spherical shield? Or a shield that can filter some kinds of energy/matter? Right now the shield can be crossed by light, and it was mentioned in her rol game that an opaque shield may be useful. Maybe keep the air inside when on space/underwater? Or allow it to be renewed when on earth?
Flight ball. Can she flight into space? May be under water? How much weight can she fly with? Maxima pushed the speed little by little, but they didn’t reach her limit so… how fast can she flight? Since she was fast, I guess the 4 points are for speed. The 2 points may be the “flight shield” against swallowing bugs, and upgrading it may allow faster flight, flight without the forcefield ball or underwater flight. Space travel would require a really high speed, so maybe the “grey” dots attached to speed are for space travel. The grey lines on the other side may be anything. Fly other people/objects?
PPO. If the 3 points are for streng, she is strong, but still can upgrade it. The circular group may be bean modifiers. Rapid fire bean (machine gun), sustained bean (laser), wide bean (to cover an entire area), high energy bean (with recoil? slow reload?), tracking bean (chasing a fixed target)…. There are a lot of options.
Energy tentacle. This has the most enabled branches, and there are too many options to guess what they are. May be length and width of the tentacle. May be strength to lift objects. May be number of posible tentacles.
The unknown are the most difficult to guess, but the green one is the only ball with a “wide link” enabled. I’m guessing it’s some kind of “always enabled” thing. If it were to heal her, it may be useful to auto heal once a predetermined degree of damage reached, even if she is unable to reach for the ball to activate it. This could work for the forcefield to enable it under surprise attacks, the PPO could return fire automatically, the Flight could stop her from falling from buildings, the truesight could allow to always see through deceptions, …
One point to think over.
The orbs already absorb radiation or else everyone would have been cooked by the IR radiation created by Maximas little demonstration. So the question would be can they block out anything that is above a certain threshold (as measured in W/m^2), is there another option or there literally a hole in the spectrum it can protect against.
Also we discussed a bit about how to keep the shield transparent, well some options would cause distortion or dimming, and still protect against damaging attacks in the visible spectrum.
Don’t forget that the Comm Orb has two completely unrelated powers. The Fly Ball may have some other power(s) it can use that Sydney has not discovered yet. Which could be as unrelated as True Sight is to telepresence. And, being greyed out (rather than pinked out), I would say that they cannot be unlocked yet.
No.
I flatly refuse to call the comm ball unrelated powers merged at random. We have to be looking at Sydney not being skilled. I would call this the “OPTIC ORB” Sight, illusions, and claravoayance, all sight effects.
By extension, the flight orb may in fact include other travel powers beyond flight, I could easily see teleportation and/or dimensional travel being the greyed branches.
On the other hand, if the four-point on the Comm is the truesight, then it’s safe to assume that the telepresence effect is one of the other two, and is thus upgradeable, perhaps even into a full teleport.
A latter page makes it clear that everybody here did indeed way understate the ability of the flight orb.
Partially because Dave did it INTENTIONALLY. By marking it on the sidebar as “Flight” it causes us to forget that it’s not flight, but a localized gravity field. In short Sidney isn’t flying, she’s changing gravity for herself.
Look at her hover, watch how her hair floats down to her feet, no matter where they are.
We’re looking at star trek “Warp engine” style power here. How many things have we seen in the show done by playing with the field from the engines?
We’re talking Telekensis.
We’re talking inertial dampeners and artifical gravity for spaceships powered by her orbs.
Weaponize it dirrectly, and you just turn up the field and crush anybody short of Achiles into jelly.
The com ball has illusion-themed powers, so I wouldn’t really say they’re unrelated. Also, has anyone considered that the flyball could be a psychokinesis group of powers? That allows for a bunch of different branches besides flight speed and capacity.
Ok. So theory. Pew Pew Orb (I do not overestimate my hipness) and Flight are connected. The Pew Pew Orb seemed to autoswitch with the Force Field orb during Sydney’s demo. So the connection between flight and Pew Pew Orb has something to do with that? Maybe? Going on big limb with this theory. Seeing as that is the only time we saw Flight and the Pew Pew Orb used at the same time and that is the only odd circumstance thats all I got.
The one that has me most puzzled is why so many lights in the Hentorb tree are already lit up? Has Sydney been ‘experimenting’ with that one a lot and unlocked more than she has demonstrated to date? Or do the branches indicate basic characteristics of a tentacle? For example one being the strength it can lift, another the flexibility a third the distance it can stretch.
I find it strange because, by contrast, the seemingly much more complex Comm Orb has vastly different powers (truesight and image projection) yet has a similar progress tree to the tentacle orb. With exactly the same number of nodes lit up.
Well Sydney can write cursive https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1020 with the Hentorb, so that implies a great deal of control over shape and length. I wonder how long she had to practice before she could do that?
Good point.
Known: While Sydney is unpredictable, she is also completely without gorm or gile.
This must be the first time she’s leveled them up, or she’d not be nearly that freaked. From this I conclude that Halo is somebody else’s “save game”. Unless filling in the middle ‘power’ circle lets her reset the entire grid she is going to have to live with the choices of others before her. More likely such a “charge” would “pulse” more power “out” into the paths that fade to nothing. As this option gives the author the most future proofing, I put my mythical coin in this pile.
Another solid point, Sydney has been testing her orbs before. Some amount of practice of the previous user, plus some amount of testing in secret, plus the known testing in the comic. The levelup (still in her hand) is VERY valuable.
Also note, she isn’t talking to herself and reading off labels that other’s can’t see… either she just understands it without having to talk it out, then impulsive behaviors would have the point spent already … OR … she’s still just as clueless. I’m guessing for clueless as there’s no reason to lock down the unknown orbs yet.
Now, my take on structure analysis:
Strip away all the dangly bits. There’s two structures.
Structure 1: Central ring. 7 spots on the circle, septigram with wedges in the middle.
Two possibilities, the selected elements matter and are paired up with the Flight and Forcefield orbs, or they are not paired and are simply 2 of 7 in power. If this does not matter, then this does not matter, so we will skip that. If it DOES matter, it explains the comparatively higher power of her Flight and Forcefield abilities.
Structure 2: Connecting every orb with every other orb is a thick line, the only two orbs that have this line that is empowered with a “Ding” is Flight to Energyblast. Please, somebody reply to this and tell me this also makes you think Metroid “screw attack”. Every single orb is able to link to every single other orb with implied gains in the unlock.
Structure 3: Bringning back the danglies, as mentioned above there is one in common with every orb cluster. I’m going to just tag this as “upgrade” though if our beloved writer has played too much Path of Exile, then these could be “keystone” style upgrades that change the entire feature of the orb, and would be a bad thing to put a point in right now.
Structure 4: The individual dangly sets.
If we could even get hints as to what they are, we’d have such tasty things to chew on.
Energy Blast: 3 out of 5. I’m going to go with power. It’s a rather solid attack, but clearly not maxed. The other structure is familiar. 6 powers, each of them with an upgrade. One powered and upgraded, this explains the “likebutter” with added explosion. Picking a “ding” here would likely upgrade another form of shot. The faded path, if we use game mechanics, is status effect adds.
Flight: Best guesses, assuming that you accept my theory that more core power is required to make the faded bits acceptable slots for a “ding” then we can set them aside for now, and concentrate on displayed abilities. Using D&D as our key for notation, on two attributes, one is flight class, also known as agility. I hereby assign agility to the 2 of 5 path. It has no offspring. We’ve seen her float and hover, but not dodge gracefully. If we accept this scale, then we can make 5 of 5 filled “hummingbird”. The other line I can simply down to “power”. 4 of 5 filled. This explains the amount of speed she can reach and how fast she can reach it. I like this path for power due to the implication that upgraded flight will require more power. There are a few others, 4 that fades, and one that fades instantly, I can’t even guess, but there’s an implication that flight will be her most complex power.
Forcefield: Simple enough, 4 points of 5, it’s power. There’s a single dot, some stand alone shield ability. The path that leads down into the sealed off grey, my pet theory is exotic shield abilities, possibly up to and including air generation and purification.
Brown & Green Unknowns: Unknowable. I will say that because the previous Halo filled the “special” point on the green orb, I would call the green the more power of the deus ex machina orbs.
Tele-True: A mostly obscure orb. 4 points spent out of 5 in one ability, I want this to be truesight. That there is one more level possible when it is already the most powerful truesight that has been detected to date is something I would particularly enjoy. I do not expect points to be spent here, I do not expect to find out what these represent. It’s just not flashy enough. If the previous Halo had not spent those points there likely wouldn’t be any in here at all.
Hentai Orb: Again obscure. I’ve more hope for this one filling out over the years, mostly because Sydney is the sort of girl who will spend “DING” here, just to find out. Though while she is under supervision she might not get the chance.
So, where to spend it? She’s a number of powers that she could take up a level. She could unlock a new shot type. These are rather solid guesses of mine and I can easily picture Sydney being as good at this mess as I am. I can also picture her better, but as I said, I don’t see her having instant understanding. A point into structure 1, in the Energy Blast wedge. I’d put it in structure 2. Link two known orbs and experiment while holding both. Energy Blast and ForceField, see if she gains the ability to fire OUT, or make shields that cut objects. Energy Blast and Hentai Orb would be just her style.
Possible error: I’ve noticed that the brown unknown orb has no grey lines, no hidden upgrades. The green one could be explained by the keystone skill change, but the brown has no explanation other then something missing. This may or may not be intentional, might be the angle, or might be nothing. I will be watching.
Most of what you say seems entirely reasonable to me.
But I do question just how much control Sydney has over the “levelling up” process – at least at this stage. It could be that point allocation has so far been an automatic or (maybe) preprogrammed thing. Usage (quantity and/or quality) would seem a likely basis for this levelling up, but some kind of “preset” cannot be discounted.
Noting also, that there are aspects of how Sydney first acquired the Orbs that we are still not privy to.
I don’t see automatic distribution leading to her with 4 points in truesight.
If we look at random tinkering we’d see balanced… we don’t see that, and lets face it, sidney isn’t balanced. She chases shiny. Things with effects we can see. She also couldn’t get away with testing “pew pew” very much.
Maybe. Who’s to say?
If we want to be paranoid about it, maybe she’s been using Truesight A LOT and just been unaware of it?
I say put the point into the “Keystone” slot on one of the orbs she already knows how to use well (flight or shield), then experiment to see how that orb’s function has changed since adding the point. This way she get’s an upgrade to a power she knows how to use and that is useful to superhero work, and she can attempt to extrapolate the Green orb, which already has that upgrade. As I look at it, I think that the “keystone” slot represents the same or similar major modifier to each orb, something basic that enhances its use but can’t be iterated upon, like automation or hands-free control.
That is one that I am having difficulty rationalising. It seems to favour the previous owner camp.
But if she was flying over the forest when she tried testing her red orb, that might explain it. We have only seen a memory of the aftermath, rather than the actual incident. Perhaps her small-scale testing of the red orb had given controllable effects. But when she flew whilst playing with it, she inadvertently activated a stronger combined power that got out of hand?
This is not what I expected to happen with her orbs. I have no words to describe this…
It is beautifully complex yet still easily comprehensible. I can’t wait to learn more about what each node means.
So, since she has 35 already spent level orbs… I’m guessing it’s not so much her leveling up as the orbs themselves leveling up. She’s just the most recent weilder of them.
Oh, and before anyone starts coming up with ideas why Les is sucking his finger in the first panel: he had stuck that finger into his pocket with melted marshmellows last page (no clue what is going on with his 3 fingers in the 5th panel though, so let the wild speculations fly!)
They appear to be covered in mallow.
Okay I just had a weird idea (not unusual for me). What if he orbs are a GAME system based in reality. Think about it. If you were a very powerful race this might be what a mobile gameing system would be like. There might be millions of them somewhere.
How would this one show up in our ocean than?
Remenents from a family’s spaceship that crashed here?
Have you ever seen a lost & found box? People leave the strangest things behind.
Somewhere, out in the great void, is a very unhappy teen-aged alien nerd who has lost his hand-held game system. Should have put it away when your parental unit insisted that you pay attention at dinner time.
I just realized that it’s been the same day (and a flashback at that) for almost the entirety of this comic. Three+ years, one day.
That’s a busy day.
Welcome new reader, hope you enjoy the interesting life of Sydney and her friends (and others)
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Love it.