Grrl Power #419 – Lacking in tactics
Leon’s so good in fact that Peggy would accuse him of cheating if it didn’t make her seem bitter. That’s just what you get from playing games of that nature as much as he has. High level players memorize things like how long it takes people to get from their spawn point to certain other points on the map, even how long it takes someone to move from almost any point on the map to anywhere else. The firing characteristics of all the guns, what you can shoot through and how much that reduces the damage, etc.
Peggy’s not looking to make Sydney a diva at this game specifically, just get her to start thinking about basic tactics. Almost any game could work too – there are few games that involve no strategy at all, but she’s trying to avoid abstract lessons right now. She’s using Counter-Strike to teach basic lessons about positioning and cover. Plus a few rounds of this helps break up the regular training routines.
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Better than Math? Maybe it’s the guns…
math is the archmaster of hand to hand.
not sure about furniture-fu.
but eagle eye he may not be.
I would have tipped on Harem, actually.
I mean 5 players that literally communicate telepathically….
They aren’t telepathic… it’s one mind. That can make it considerably harder.
True. I’m not sure how well she reacts to do something really challenging mentally with several bodies at once. I don’t think we’ve been there so far in the comic and I’m not sure whether Dabbler’s science corner covered that one.
as we know thanks to Maxima’s vengeance, and Sydney’s Sydnyness, certain stimuli can affect multiple bodies.
also, as we know from elsewhere, if she is in a conversation she might forget to move her other bodies, so distracting one also distract the others.
shot one, all reel in pain. but otherwise, before the first hit, they would be quite efficient.
except being a sniper requires a great focus.
and any other more focus intensive task.
Actually, could see Harem making a good sniper, what with having four spotters who don’t need to communicate verbally and can be placed in multiple locations
Obviously she would need proper training, just like anyone else, but if she passed she could rival (or even exceed) Peggy
Mortar operator, too.
Do… they still have those? In a modern US military force (obviously scum like ISIS or similar would still be using spears and stones if they could)
…huh? Mortars are one of the most awesomely useful weapons ever invented and every military on the face of the Earth ( and almost every batch of wannabe guerrillas) uses them, and the come in sizes ranging from “I almost don’t mind carrying this around” to “Let’s make some craters”.
Actually, they are more popular than ever. They are very mobile, comparably light and these days the projectiles can even be guided by laser.
Who wouldn’t want to have a man-portable artillery support in his squad?
Yes, they still have mortars. They’re powerful, lightweight, inexpensive and accurate. If it ain’t broke… :)
Can only picture the ones from WW2 and Vietnam, can’t imagine what a ‘modern’ mortar would look like
Infantry mortars haven’t changed that much since 1918: Stokes got it right in the first place. They are made of better lighter materials these days, and the sights are better too, but the basic design and operation would be totally familiar to Eugene Sledge (look him up, it’s worth your time). Add in a laser rangefinder and a simple ballistics program on someone’s smartphone and Bob’s your uncle.
Current US 60mm (company-level) mortar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M224_mortar
Current US 81mm (battalion-level) mortar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M224_mortar
Current US 120mm heavy mortar (the Marines use something a little different):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soltam_K6
It’s sort of like trying to improve upon a knife. You can change the material for durability and weight but the basic design is going to be pretty much the same. :)
Good spotters alone don’t make you personally a better shot though.
We do know that she’s developing a form of martial art that uses her multiple bodies and teleportation, so there is some capability of complex tasks being done in junction
Focused on just one target though.
And also easier, since you don’t even need to telepath (that’s a verb, damnit!) “Hey, look out behind you!” when you just know by seeing it with body 3 that there is someone behind body 5. And we’ve been told (via the cast page) that she is working on a martial art that uses her unique power set.
It would be awesome for body 3 to see someone behind body 5, and while body 3 is shooting at a completely different target body 5 points the gun over her shoulder or just swings one arm behind her and without needing to actually look with body 5 shoots the person behind body 5 using body 3’s perception of the target.
The “two gun kid” maneuver which is so prevalent in movies and video games but which is so impractical in real life might be a perfect fit for someone who actually has 5 pairs of eyes on any given situation and can process the input from them all simultaneously. Any given body might be able to fire at one target using its own eyes and simultaneously fire at a target completely out of visual range of that same body using the eyes of a different body. A pair of pistols would be a lot easier on the weight limits for her teleporting than a single carbine while also being more practical for a gestalt being that can fire in two directions at once with any given body so long as they have both vantage points under observation by any one body. So a win-win! Other advantages would be being able to fire at any given target from multiple directions at the same time, reducing or eliminating any cover or concealment the target might have, and also providing an excellent disorientating and demoralizing effect.
yes they can fire *at* two targets at once. beut being limited to standard binocular vision like the rest of us they can only hit one target at a time while actually aiming down the sights.
True. The only way it could be done is with laser sights. That might work.
C’mon. You KNOW that all it’d take would be one scantily-clad female in-game, and Math would be useless.
ok, math isn’t ever going to win a overwatch tournament.
but counters trike doesn’t have those.
Anyone else think the reason Math is the champ are because he has about 5 billion Aim Bots?
err Leon that is
Not necessarily. Let me explain by example:
Friend of mine was an avid on- and offline Alien vs Predator player. He usually preferred Alien or Marine. He also played so often that he had most to all maps memorised. Once during a game as Marine, he ran along some rooms several times. One of which had several screens and lights. On one of his passes, he noticed there was one red light too many. Boom, headshot to a cloaked Predator.
He wasn’t cheating or botting. He just knew there was no red light at that particular point from playing that map so often. That left one of the Predators’ weapons as only possible source. That gun is always mounted at the same place on the body, right next to the head.
Seemingly impossible skills at a game like this can come from cheats or bots. (Someone always headshotting people even though they are running, walking, jumping and strafing in a completely irregular pattern: Yeah, he’s cheating.) But it doesn’t have to.
yeah, that’s the first thing i thought about too, but A/N provides him some decent excuses.
i don’t play CS, so i don’t know if things like “shoot through” cover apply there, but otherwise players do tend to play as “optimally” as they can, on higher lvls, while taking into consideration the enemy also taking in their best.
although, you cannot account for literarily everything, so there might still be some addons giving him more info than he should have.
in the picture he is seeing running akimbo with a Golden gun and a sniper rifle, getting no scopes are hard to begin with but he’s not even looking at the cover he shot and and still got a double headshot not to mention Deagles are used at short range yet he sniped a dude much further down and blew up a barrel with a guy behind it also without looking.
If not Aimbot then hax
Not just ‘sniped a dude much further down’, but that guy was inside a tank!!
that map has no tanks, it does have tan ramps and shadows which might look like a tank when depicted in art (source: i own and have played CS altho just against the bots so i recognize that map)
That certainly looks like a tank barrel right beside the “SPLAT”, if it’s not, then what is it?
By the splat there’s another archway, like the one Leon just came through, and a guy dropping his rifle, I’m not sure where you are seeing a tank.
I’m pretty certain, if only from how the Leon figure moves in it, that the pic is not meant to be taken as “actual footage from the game”.
Just saying.
She doesn’t mind playing games, unless someone is playing with her mind.
This is actually a nice way to get the basics down, since it gives a virtual hands on experience that a classroom does not. Of course, once they have mass produced dabblers tickle gun, they can use that to practice in the field. beats paintball, anyway.
Wont be, dabbler does not share tech. How many times must this be stated?
Though I could imagine her willing to lend them some tickle guns for training purposes. If only because she’s got a hunch what a guy like Math (for example) might try to use it for as well. ;)
I’d imagine the Black Hulk is pretty good at this, seeing as how he sees everything in slow motion
Only when his power is on.
Otherwise hes just like everyone else.
Adrenaline (his power) does make you see everything in slow motion. It also gives you amazingly fast reflexes. Then again it gives you crap for control/ aim Until he learns to slow his actions to the speed of his control, he’d be great at seeing/ avoiding the enemies, but lousy at hitting them.
They would probably still want him to run the course at “normal” speed a few times – or else jack up game speed so his slo-mo effect isn’t.
This kind of training isn’t about powers – otherwise Sydney would probably waltz through the course with her Shield up and never-you-mind.
Sydney’s powers are different though. They aren’t always on. Bulk is always in slomo
That’s expressly not how he described his powers.
He is in 10x slomo when watching a vase fall down. I’d say it’s safe to assume that he’s always in slomo on any kind of obstacle course
Glass of water actually
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1737
yeah, the shield isn’t always on, neither are you constantly crouching in the cover, expecting to see an enemy.
if she is aware enough to cover, she is aware enough to shield up.
Except that using the shield means she can’t use something else. The idea is that she still has a chance to survive without that shield
To bad this universe is set in 2012 and not present day, or you could give them all VR Vine and have them actually move around
No, DaveB said that the beginning was a flashforward, So it is present day.
How was the beginning a ‘flashforward’ when her cars’ WOF clearly stated it was 2011? You saying she has been in training for over four years and still not qualified? o_O
Retcon exists you know…
As does Word of God…
Also she does have parking tickets, so expired parking permits as well?
No he’s saying the Dave didn’t foresee that it would take 4 years to get through the first day, and how many months to get the next 3. Because of the problem of a variable amount of comic time passing each page, but 2 pages a week real time “present time” becomes a weird thing. This is why most comics don’t make any reference to/ have details with dates, and rarely deal directly with current events (like Obama being president).
Now that he’s seen how this can cause problems with timelines, Dave will probably make such details more generic/ nebulous in the future.
When in doubt care less about when the comic is and what technology Dabbler has ****ed up… or with… or touched provocatively. I’m just gonna go over there now…
Dabbler doesn’t share her tech though
Is that an FN P90 that Sydney’s using?
Yeah, definitely looks like a P-90 to me, especially since she’s reloading on the top. I’m mostly familiar with them from TV shows, but that might be why Sydney picked it to use too.
I love that gun solely because it was used in stargate so much haha.
As someone who played a shitload of CS back in the day, it’s a pretty good gun. Sydney was attracted to it because of the 50 round clip and the high rate of fire.
… And, of couirse, the ‘Stargate’ connection never was a consideration for her. ;)
“This is a weapon of terror. It’s made to intimidate the enemy. THIS is a weapon of war. It’s made to kill your enemy.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjlCVW_ouL8
Um, yeah. I loled at it cutting through a 18″ across log. I don’t care if the rounds are Teflon coated*, that is not happening, not even with several clips. And she didn’t even spend the entire clip since she was still able to cut the rope with a round from the same clip.
And I especially loled at the two guys standing downrange right next to the targets, just so there was no delay when the head honcho wanted the target swung back and forth. Like that would happen on any well run range! The “No injuries for XXX days” sign would be in constant readjustment.
* I was curious about the mention of Teflon coating, thinking that something like a tungsten or plain old hardened steel coating might make for a better armor piercing round. I found this on Wikipedia:
So, a good lubricant perhaps, but nothing you’d really feel was necessary to mention when trying to talk up the killing power of your weapon. And nothing that would in any way provide the cutting power the YouTube clip suggested.
How about the fact they have the power to do the same at five times the distance?
Pretty sure that that clip (heh) had quite a bit of poetic license involved in both aim and effect.
The point about teflon rounds is that the coating lets you use harder, more penetrating materials for the bullet itself. The coating aids penetration a little, but isn’t the main point.
>p90
>good gun
I mean, if you ignore pretty much the entire metagame and just look at the stats… then yeah.
Don’t… don’t greentext here.
We have a reputation to uphold.
speak for yourself m80
I like this description for the P-90 :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjlCVW_ouL8
https://beforeitsnews.com/mediadrop/uploads/2014/33/384f04bde67aaba2119a06eec2d338861f8af3aa.jpg
Love how the Leon avatar is all “Dum-de-dum, just another day blowing holes in noobs.”
And that “Deagle” unsound effect.
Not to mention being redonk flexible.
it’s 2016 the year of VR
pretty sure ARCHON would be using HTC Vives
Haptic-feedback body suits
and a room full of Virtuix Omni treadmills in a radial pattern
Gaming Rig Terminals LANetworked
into a super computer for a game server
Except, we are still in Sydney’s “memory time” set in 2011
but Dabbler, that other gadget girl, Arc-SPARQ) and Leon.
also the military has been able to afford decent VR for a while, especially in the us.
not that the basic tactics can’t be shown in a decent FPS
They may have VR setups, but this is just Tactics 101. The format isn’t as important as the basic lessons.
it’s easier to teach tactics in an immersive 3d environment
than staring at a 2d screen.
Paintball would be a better teaching tool than call of duty
Not necessarily, and even if it is, the increased quality of learning might not be enough to counter the increased set-up.
What set up? Find an unused forest, supply the gear, and that’s it
Back in the late 80’s, you didn’t need these fancy schmancy gas-powered guns and protective pansy-arse gear, just a simple gun and goggles
Goggles are a must. But a good set of baggy camo cover-alls over your street clothes is handy for reducing the pain of impact. And a plastic mask for the lower face is nice if you don’t want to get shot in the face or mouth. I had a friend who was actually shot in the teeth, and spent the next 30 minutes puking up his breakfast.
Yeah, of course you are going to wear some sort of extra protection (some jackfart shot me in the back from just a few feet away, it didn’t count as we hadn’t re-entered the combat area, but it still tingled) but not the full riot gear most ‘modern’ paintballer’s use
Actually, all we had was the goggles and some old clothes we didn’t mind getting some paint on (wore brothers army shirt, not camo, plain olive)
I bought the camo coveralls at an army surplus place, cheap. That protected my street clothes from most of the paint, and after washing the red and blue splashes off of them they severed double duty as hunting gear. And then you have to wear an orange vest over them anyway, lol. And they were really lightweight material, semi-sheer very close up but full on camo at any distance, so very handy for running around in the summertime shooting paintballs at people.
Wasn’t knocking the camo, was just saying we didn’t have those
Paintball would be better in many ways. However, if your trying to use a game to teach basics, then putting it in an atmosphere that prevents powers from getting in the way is a better move. Also I’m pretty sure Sydney would fall apart after 10 min of paintball… Shes too out of shape. This applies to some of the VR stuff to. Having played it, VR can get tiring when you really get into it.
If she’s exhausted enough from PT to take the Batman’s man in vain, she’s too exhausted to do physical VR. Video games would be something they already had on hand that could substitute for training that would require exertion.
From my experience, at least half the people stuck in vr-game/paintball/laser-tag match without any real preparation will completely freeze up and learn nothing. About half of the rest will spaz out and think “Hey cool, vr!” if placed in the former.
Give them some basics first in a media that is both practical use of skills but 2D enough for them to be able to concentrate on the lesson. Then you can send them off to the full immersive ones.
2D to do the book learning.
VR to do the basic applications.
Paintball for practical training.
You DO NOT throw noobs in the deep end unprepared.
Good sum-up!
All you need to do is say it’s theoretical super powered combat simulation practice and BOOM! Smash Bros tournament/Sydney revenge!
SSB tournament is a MUST now!
I’m curious, if each ARC member was a Smash character, who would they be? For instance, since Shulk has the ability to redistribute his skills, Maxima would be Shulk. Halo is the one who has a little of everything, and can pull out surprise moves, so she’s Toon Link (emphasis on Toony). Dabbler likes to use a sword and magic, so Robin.
Maxima would be Shulk with good frame data.
Except Shulkie doesn’t fly or have energy blasts or superspeed.
Aerial Recovery in Jump Mode, and Speed Mode (faster than Sonic).
Oh. I meant in the comic books. I don’t actually play Smash Brothers.:) Good to know though.
Knowing Arianna, they probably have a custom game with themselves as characters.
And a deal to release a toned down version in a year or two.
I’m not even joking when I say that if DaveB made a video game about GrrlPowerComic, I’d so buy it.
I was in line first.
But I will allow you to cut in front.
Thank you :)
Now I don’t have to cut you.
Buda is part of Hungary’s capital Budapest (made from the merge of Buda & Pest). So the second panle for me is almost as if it had “PARIS, PARIS, PARIS” or “BRONX, BRONX, BRONX” written all over it :D
Every time someone uses a KRA-KOW! sound effect, I’m twitching.
How about Pacs-kii as a sound effect [grin] now I’m hungry.
My favorite sound effects remain NURP! and GODDATHUNDAAA! https://i401.photobucket.com/albums/pp93/spikespiegel_ngaf/herc136_03.jpg
And, of course, this perfectly timed little number here: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/2e/7c/09/2e7c09ea63f006224b338a3fbe47e324.jpg
I prefer the rarely seen RAKOVLAAAAMMM!
With a side effect of MINTSAAUUCCEE?
Oh right! I feel you :D
Who else believes that Leon ‘cheats’?
Probably has a simple aimbot
“It takes a 1000 hours practice to master a skill.” How many hours of video game shooters do you think he’s played. High level programmers/ hackers are VERY good at logic/ tactics, and having see how so many other players act, he can predict what they are about to do and how to counter it. He doesn’t need to cheat.
I would agree. Leon is probably above cheaters who need assists to be good. For him, combination of excellent memory, intimate knowledge of the game’s physics and inner workings in addition to probably memorizing the stats for most if not all of the equipment and weapons and map layouts. Oh and lots of practice.
Try to remember he tends to play 3-5 games at a time when bored.
She STILL has not gone to that media course.
Maybe she has and it simply wasn’t worthy of further mention. You really wanna sit through several pages of Arianna lecturing Sydney about PR imaging? I don’t.
Do you understand the concept of a running gag?
That’s when you accidentally swallow a bug when you are jogging.
*rimshot*
I thought that was you.
Alright, medio course 101, keep your mouth shut in front of the media. And… any questions?
“Yes, I…”
“What did I just say about your mouth?!”
“Raises hand.”
I thought the rule was kill all reporters, then let them ask questions.
I thought it was one of the things she “Montaged” through.
AWPOOM
This will be my sound effect whenever I use the awper hand in TF2 from now on
Leon thinks he is ‘all that, plus a bag of chips’? Let’s see him out in a real paint ball game (an original free-range paint ball game, not one of these artificial indoor games with limited movement)
Good point, I imagine they’d be training in paintball soon
you miss the point, he’s memorized the details of the game, in a real paint ball match Peggy would wipe the grass with him but in CS he knows all the things that would seem like magic to a beginner
video games of this nature are like Groundhog Day, if you do em enough times you can rob the armored truck before the guards know what hit em
Also, it’s a different skillset, as Peggy said.
CS doesn’t care how fast you can run a mile in full gear.
CS doesn’t care if you have proper stance for aiming.
CS doesn’t let you climb outside of designated areas (or creative jumping).
CS doesn’t let you do a lot of things until you find interesting side effects and glitches that are exploitable for fun and silliness. Fus Ro Dah!
The point is: vidya games ain’t real life, in vidya games you can jump down from 20 foot building, maybe suffer a little injury, but even if you drop to 10% health you can still run at full speed, but most allow you to fully recover by waiting a few seconds without any medical aid
Sydney has no damn valid complaint: she should know that you don’t stand out in the middle of the open, certainly not while reloading: if she hasn’t played these sorts of games before, she should at least have watched movies
They don’t reload in movies
He’s gotcha there.
And regardless of whether they do: Half the time they don’t care shit about cover. Four out of five times that they do, they use things as cover I could put a hole in and hit them behind with my calibre .22 sports pistol. Never mind anything that has actual penetration power.
Half the time the “hero” stands in the middle of a 3-way intersection with bad guys firing from all sides and doesn’t even lose his hat.
https://hellinahandbasket.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bad-guy-firearm-training-300×249.jpg
Yeah, I find it obnoxious in so many action movies the hero succeeds not because he uses cover or any kind of tactics intelligently, he’s simply a good shot and all the bad guys are just awful, like you said they stand out in the open or walk down the street and shoot back at the 29th guy who popped up and thankfully missed.
Stargate SG-1 would be one of the few that actually involve cover, and reloading (lots). The one time Oneal was killed, he did the stand in the open thing, and got shot. The rest of the team went down when they broke cover when he went down. Was a first season episode.
I think Teal’c’s son once commented on how insane it was that Teal’c and Bra’tak just stood out in the open firing their staff weapons and didn’t get hit by any incoming fire.
I think that also nicely highlights their different training. Teal’c and Bra’tak are both trained to be imposing servants of their god. They need to be seen. Also, they’re durable due to their symbiote. As such there’s less risk to them, they’re trained to be unafraid of death, and the psycological battle of the imposing figure striding through is a key point of their training and goal as first prime.
That’s pretty much how Teal’c responds to his son – that them standing there calmly firing back intimidates their enemies causing them to miss :)
Seems a bit… unrealistic. But hey…. the Jaffa are mostly a superstitious bunch, given they think they’re following gods. I like that Stargate SG-1 does bother to bring these tropes up though.
It can actually work. But only really against un- or only very basically trained troops. And all it takes to completely fail is one lucky hit.
But let’s not forget that the average opponent most Jaffa faced where either revolting slaves or people with rather low tech level (hardly able to do any damage on a Jaffa’s armour, never mind having any power left to actually wound the Jaffa afterwards) about to be enslaved.
Doing battle as imposing as possible makes sense in those scenarios.
Like in “The Humanoid” from 1979: during the final fight, the hero manages to hit every target, but the bad guys shoot worse than the Storm Troopers (even the damn robodog is a better shot, and it doesn’t even have hands!!!)
How about Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare? Clint is in the middle of a single man assault on a freaking Nazi castle, and he mows down dozens or hundreds of Germans with elan. But every time a gang of 5 German soldiers run around a corner and things look bad for Our Hero, they all have to pause to work the action on their rifles and Clint just mows them down with his never empty sub-machine gun. And that “pile of Germans rounds a corner, they all look down at their weapons and frantically start trying to load them or something and then Clint kills them all” scene is repeated time after time after time. I’ve played a drinking game about that repeating scene, it’s one intended to get everyone good and lubricated.
The first Lethal Weapon movie managed to incorporate not only the heroes taking cover but actual reloading of weapons. And slides locking open. I was impressed. That said, the way Gibson’s character (Riggs? It’s been a long while) fired blind around corners (and I mean, he emptied entire clips while just hanging his pistol around a corner that bad guys had run down!) at a crowded dance club would/should have gotten him cashiered, but he’d be alive to not collect his pension at least.
Playing games on laptops? Ewwww. No wonder they can’t keep up with Leon. :P
He was probably not even bothering to look at the screen and was multitasking at the time while fragging them.
Hmm I wonder if that’s a wallhack Leon’s using.
it may be obvoius to most of you who’ve already posted, but…what exactly is a …’Deagle’?
A kind of gun, specifically the Desert Eagle handgun.
It is the “sound” he’s making as he prances past the enemies killing them without looking.
Both of the above combined, actually.
In Counter Strike the Desert Eagle is most of the time called a Deagle. It’s an expensive pistol with low rate of fire and massive damage. It’s considered hard to use, but in the hand of a good player it can be devastating.
The joke here is that Leon, the hacker, is pawning everyone else in the game, repeatedly doing head shots with the ‘Deagle’ and taking out the opposition by shooting through soft walls with a snipers rifle no-scoped while running…
By the way shooting through certain walls it possible in CS, and if you clip the corners they are slightly softer. So what he’s doing here is not entirely impossible, as long as you forget that he can’t use two weapons at the same time…
So, in other words, he is cheating
…or his prowess is being exaggerated in that panel, for comedic effect.
The Desert Eagle has a very large grip, because it is made to fire very large rounds (.50 and .357, although .45 is an option) and the clip needs to fit inside the grip. I can palm a basketball and I find the Desert Eagle to be an awkward pistol to hold and fire. I would not own one for that reason alone.
Would have thought they’d go more rainbow six or some other clancy game, gives a much better cover/tactics game (and lot’s more halo/CS players getting hosed for things like what sydney just did). I’m still amazed every time I see actual people do stuff like though, doubly so if they call it ‘cheap’. There’s no cheap in war, just living and dead.
Tom Clancy games are not realistic though.
The US Army use to use it’s own game called America’s Army.
America’s Army was actually a recruiting tool – for training, they do just about everything in meatspace
No, they have video game reconstructions of embassies and other high value targets that they use to train specific tactics for specific missions at specific locations. knowing EXACTLY what to expect from the terrain gives them the same advantage in real life as Leon has in these games.
Reading Dave’s comments: I thought I recognized that map! My dad used to play CS all the time, and I watched. That is a very faithful representation of the map. I can’t recall the name though.
Looks like DE_Dust to me
It’s DE_Dust_2. I used screenshots from the game since that seemed the best way to convey what they were playing.
I can attest that the US Military does in fact start our training in computer simulators. I say computer simulator because we were expected to do everything by the book. This is where fun comes to die.
In one simulation, our vehicle had a flat tire. We had to change it. Call in random IED (bombs). And five to ten shots were fired in total, those shots had to be justified. (Just seeing some other human control player is not cause to shot them, they did not have a weapon out either. Just glad it was not me.)
All over a two hour training mission.
I heard about an incident with an assault helicopter simulator early 2000’s. The instructor decided to teach the people using it the value of double checking intel. Granted his true term for it was “Freaking them the F* out”
They flew the helicopters up over a hill and as they were passing over a herd of sheep, the sheep opened fire with Surface to Air missiles
I think you are thinking of this story:
https://www.pprune.org/military-aviation/362489-air-defence-kangaroo-s.html
Probably. Then again I wouldn’t be surprised that if it was done once, it was probably done again by someone else. So it’s possible both stories are accurate
Probably just another version of the story where they forgot to deactivate the rocket launchers when they laid kangaroo sprites over the simulated infantry.
Well, if by ‘rocket launcher’ you mean the default infantry weapon, which threw beach balls.
Any particular branch? I ask because I read, back in the day the Marines redid Doom to look more realistic because they were not allowed to go out with the laser combat system to practice on each other.
No idea at this point. It’s been years since I heard about it. Check with Unmaker’s article though. That states 1 branch anyway
It helps to know the game too.
My old gaming cafe:
1) someone in battlefield 1942 flew 2 planes simultaneously. You just have to hop from one to the other periodically to keep them both in the air. still not sure how he did it. We never used hacks.
2) in game glitches such as placing a mine on the front and on the back of a volvo on certain maps. The car sunk in the ground. If you were in it, you were invisible along with the car. You could leap out, kill, leap in. and if you did it right, nobody saw who made the kill
3) one of our lan players liked to long distance snipe. So the player who could fly 2 planes, flew a plane across the map and up the mountain where the sniper was. Hopped out as the plane was flying up, knife killed the sniper, hopped back in and continued to fly.
4) jeep + exploding packs + hill= taking out a helicopter if you time it right
5) knifing a tank on multiplayer can cause newer players to hop out to see where the sound is coming from, then you can take the tank and kill them.
6) a dune buggy and driver will kill a plane that runs over it while taking off. the buggy will be damaged and the driver will survive.
7) It is possible in Battlefield 2, for a person to shoot down a plane with a pistol if the plane’s near death.
8) if you stand next to a flagpole while a plane is trying to divebomb kill you, the plane will explode against the flagpole. and you will only be half damaged.
I’m actually quite loving the colouring in the top panels – especially Panels 1 and 4. Panel 1 would make a great bookmark or magnet I believe.
Eschewing ink outlines makes a nice difference.
+1. That oil-painting illusion is awesome!
So this is the training that Sydney has to endure???
So Leon is the master of virtual Gun Kata?
Just one more reason for Sydney to date him. She has previously mentioned a preference for someone who claims to be ‘the best there is at what I do’.
Remember when Sydney and Leon first met and she asked him some questions, I felt they left one out…
Sydney : Favorite Marx brother?
Leon: Zeppo!
At least he didn’t say Karl. :)
I would just throw in that a game like X-COM is brutal about cover and standing out in the open. No where near the same pace as an FPS but from a pure tactics perspective pretty interesting. That and your team can die. Losing teammate to poor tactics (or just bad luck) hits ya hard.
X-COM is great at the “Take cover or you will certainly die horribly. Don’t take cover and you will only probably die horribly” school of hard knocks. Before you get your first body armor tech upgrade and manage to actually buy the gear (the economics can hurt you just as much as the aliens sometimes!), the survival rate of your troopers is not terribly good.
Yeah, I said that wrong. It should have been: “Don’t take cover and you will certainly die horribly. Take cover and you will only probably die horribly.”
X-Com is good for teaching the importance of cover, it does however suffer a bit from the “I have my gun barrel stuck up your nose, why do I only have a 54% chance to hit you?” issue. ;-)
it is kind of amusing to see the huge bulky Ren scrunched up in front of that regular sized laptop and sandwiched by two tiny women.
i liked the lineless computer simulation art. i like it when art is stylistically different in dreams, computer games, or whatever reality setting change occurs in the story.
I don’t play many shooters, but I’ve never heard of someone complaining about being shot while reloading. Is that common in the Counter-Strike community?
Back when I played Goldeneye and everyone was on the same machine, on terrain that had no cover, it was common to yell “reloading” or “NO GUN” to get a break from fire when you couldn’t return fire. It was considered a cheep shot to kill somebody that couldn’t shoot back.
Oh, Goldeneye, or POW-POW, as my little brother used to call it, that was some fun times.
Probably the nostalgia talking there.
Yeah, we used to have the cry of “unarmed” for similar reason – meaning other players either engaged in a slap duel with you, or left you alone – deliberate kills of or by an “unarmed” player by or of an armed player meant the killer forfeited that protection for the rest of the match.
In real combat, though, you take the cheap shot – unless you suspect it’s a trap.
If you suspect it’s a trap, you take the cheap shot with a tank round
That always drives me nuts in those kinds of games. I’m usually really good, think tactically, am a good shot. But then I’ll get my team behind me, set up a trap for the enemy, have a good crossfire going, and one dude walks in, spins around, and drops 3 in headshots. (and then complains when we suggest that they have a nice aimbot…)
There are some Police Dramas on TV could benefit from this kind of training. Thinking of all the times on shows like Major Crime/The Closer where a detective stands out in the open either yelling “Police” or about to open fire on someone, only to be lucky they didn’t get riddled with bullets.
Leon’s shot in the last panel seemed a bit of a stretch, even in a VR Comp-Sim. Double handed, out in the open, and shooting through a thick steel and wood door. Probably just the way Peggy envisions him.
IIRC the AWP is a high powered sniper rifle that absolutely can shoot through various cover, and the people who knew the game well knew *exactly* what cover it could shoot through, and at what angles. I suspect the “AWPoom” sound effect is deliberate, as is the “DEagle” as he shoots the desert eagle.
Not even surprised that Leon is the best in that game.
Leon is probably cheating. In fact his super power is probably technomancy; or technopathy, even technokinisis.
He’s able to see and read the code.
I always pictured Sydney playing Sid Meier’s Pirates;
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/554
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1011
Apart from the fanservce the anime ‘No Game No Life’ is a fairly accurate rendition of this.
Loving panel number one. Sydney’s glasses are a significant visual trait but will she ever get tactical goggles with lenses in her prescription?
Considering a standard army grunt like me got army glasses and a gasmask with corrected lenses, I’d say chances are good. At the very least, they’ll probably finance her flexsteel frame sports glasses with plastic lenses. Quite durable, those.
One of her new friends is an alien inventor that has lived for hundreds of years and has created a set of artificial arms for herself, as well as a cybernetic eye. They can do better than some lousy lenses.
Nah, give her the lenses just integrate them into her equipment with a heads up display, given that this is someone who frequently will have her hands literally full when in combat but needs to be able to monitor her equipment.
We’ve already seen that they’re looking at giving them heads up displays for Arc light to feed them Intel on their foes.
Can’t quite tell if her booger hook is on the bang switch when she’s reloading. o3o
It is, but she’s not getting rubber band snapped for it because that is how the game sprites are designed. It would be impossible for her to follow the rules for safer gun handling.
Who is that big, muscular guy between Peggy and Sydney? Surprised it’s not Leon.
That’s Ren, the not-the-Black Hulk. He’s one of the other recruits
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1736
Didn’t think he was that… ‘big’, tall yes, but not ‘bulky’
Ren, page 320.
To be fair, Sydney has a force field. In general, she could afford to be out in the open and even act as a firedraw
This training is required of everyone, same skill sets and so on. Besides, Sydney might find herself up against someone with the power to deactivate her Orbs and all she has to defend herself with is an Uzi.
Oh, I don’t disagree that it’s useful training. But it’s never going to be the first instinct of someone with total protection to dodge.
And that is why the movie Superman Returns was so short. In the first fight scene against the guy with the minigun, Superman just stands there all invulnerable as the guy empties his mini-gun against him, then Superman just stand there all invulnerable as the guy gets up and almost empties his pistol against him, and then Superman just stands there all invulnerable as the guy fires the single Kryptonite bullet he had at point blank range into his eyeball, killing Superman instantly…
Wait, that’s not how the movie ended? Well, it should have! Sure, sure, having the bullet bounce off Superman’s invulnerable eyeball was a neat effect, but since he isn’t invulnerable to Kryptonite he should never just stand there and rely on his invulnerability to almost everything to be a panacea which always prevent him from being injured. Because invulnerable to almost everything isn’t the same as invulnerable to everything. Just ask Baldur (pretty much the Jesus of the Norse mythology) about mistletoe someday. Or ask Achilles about that heel of his. Or Sigurd about that same heel related weakness.
If there was a chunk of Kryptonite that close to him, Supes would already know because he’d be feeling the pangs of debilitating weakness.
Not if they stored the bullet in lead
This would be the same movie where Luthor shanks Superman with a kryptonite knife, and yet Supes is still able to pick up a kyryptonite laced continental mass and fly it above the atmosphere and fling it into the sun. So yeah, don’t be telling me about any pangs of debilitating weakness, unless you’re referring to the plot.
That’s not even mentioning all the ricochets that could harm innocent bystanders…
Kryptonite is rare (at least in most versions of Superman) no reason to think even supervillains have it let alone regular criminals.
I would suggest that Sydney might learn some of those lessons better by tuning her play style to the single-player campaign of No One Lives Forever than from Counter-Strike… and she continue to practice while Peggy et al. were off dealing with other trainees. That game focuses a lot on sneaking around and not getting caught, and even has some scenes where leaving a body behind to be found will blow the mission. Plus it’s a spy game, so, gadgets ;-)
Years ago, there was a first person shooter called “Hidden and Dangerous”. Glitchy as all get out and *very* easy to mess up a mission, but I loved it for several reasons.
1) Twitch masters sucked at it. Gameplay was slow and tedious and mostly involved moving very slowly as much as possible and taking careful aim. Breathing messed up your aim, but you could time it if you paid decent attention (A slight wobbling of the tip of the weapon was your clue). Dudes gamboling across the field of play died fast and hard.
2) Getting shot was a BAD thing. If you got shot in the foot or hand, you wouldn’t die from it. You would, however, be stunned for two to five seconds AND you would flinch quite visibly, revealing your position. Getting shot in something really important (chest or abdomen) meant *much* longer stun time and you’d probably pass out/die with the second shot.
3) Cover *really* mattered. Shooting out of weeds was possible but you *really* wanted a solid rock or log or tree nearby.
4) Every scenario required some surveillance of the target area before you started your run, so as to get an idea of the routines of the various guards and soldiers. Rushing in was pretty much always suicide and patience was a virtue.
Never really caught on, as a game could last typically 30 minutes or much longer depending on how many players were in the scenario (max players was 4 I think – we did a lot of 2v2 games). The campaign was a lot of fun but not very re-playable. Really good LAN game but more nerve-wracking than exciting. :D
A solid rock or log? *pshaw* Some chick with a P-90 is just going to cut through that cover with a half clip of Teflon coated bullets, so why bother?
Good point. I forgot to mention the weaponry available was typical-soldier gear from WW1 & WW2.
You know, old timey low tech, low calibre stuff.
I am surprised that Sydney isn’t demanding that they be playing ‘HALO’.
Oh, she tried, but she was informed, in no uncertain fashion, that that game will never be played at ARCHON-HQ :P
Really she should consider it a relief.
Because if she ever lost, the “I beat Halo at her own game” jokes would never stop.
That was one of the reasons :D