Grrl Power #671 – Level duh(p)
Hopefully that blue shit from the downed orbital defense platforms isn’t wildly radioactive cause it’s scattered all over that… mountainous plain? I don’t know what I drew there.
Someone mentioned it in the comments, but the orbs won’t go into upgrade mode if they’re in use, so she doesn’t have to worry about them flipping into skill tree mode at 50,000 feet or while deflecting a hail of bullets or anything.
It would have taken Sydney an hour to get half way around the planet, (according to actual correct math, and not the nonsense I put out) and no way she had the patience to actually fly that long. Still, she probably put 5,000 miles between herself and the bads before she hunkered down to see if she’d earned some points. I mean, come on, Sydney, if you’d flown around to the other side of the planet, it’d probably be daytime. That’s standard operating procedure for most planets.
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Every RPGer’s nightmare
I would say spend the second point on the shield and check its effects before company arrives. The possibility is either it beefs up her sheild or makes it larger. If it’s something different, it’s better to know now before getting in a tight spot.
I agree with this course of action. Speed and defense are probably the best thing she’s got going for her and she needs to keep them up. If she’s attacked again then she can Farm another point and try boosting her attack but right now speed defense and possible gone
I also agree. Come on Sydney, you don’t want choice paralysis at a time like this.
I’d put the bonus point on that central wheel.
It might allow her to use more than two orbs at a time. Fly, shield, and PPO for survivability. Fly shield and atmosphere for space travel.
That’s too speculative an action for a combat situation.
I’d be thinking, if not now but before she runs out of MOBS to fight, she should put another point into her Brown Orb (the one that gives her air inside of her shield). If the first point gives her air, then we might extrapolate that the rest of it gives her more options with Life Support functions. Ergo, before she tries to make any interstellar journeys, she’ll also need food & water too.
It would also be kind of handy if one of those dots gives her Cargo Space too…Then Sydney wouldn’t have to ask Dabbler to cut off any body parts just to get her own Hammer Space…
:D
But for the now I’d agree that Sydney should stick between Flight, Firepower & Shield alternating between them before she runs out of targets to grind on.
Looking at the older, less filled out skill tree:
https://www.deviantart.com/davebarrack/art/Halo-s-Skilltree-Wallpaper-01-428873707
I notice in particular the empty pips off each that are a single orphan with double lines. This suggests they may require two power-ups to activate. So, if Sydney is really interested in that warp drive, the orphan off the flight orb might be her best bet. Try one power-up on that empty pip and find out if it needs the second to activate. If it does, burn it and MAYBE that’s the warp (or portal) function.
If it only requires one power-up, then the second can spent on shield. Hard call there. The double-lined orphan might have unusual protective capability (how about invisibility?), or fill the last pip in the current string that are mostly active … that seems to be serving her quite well, so filling that string would maximize the capability she currently has. Meaning, probably can withstand a harder hit than she’s already taken with less danger of shield failure (&/or, faster regeneration, since that’s probably integrally related)
Hey, Dave? Maybe a link on the front page that goes directly to Sydney’s skill tree in it’s current state? Possibly within her Who’s Who profile box so it’s always available when Sydney makes an appearance on a page but doesn’t otherwise clutter the page.
If we do get an official link to an active skilltree (there’s an interactive one by a fan someplace already), I’d like to see both current and historic status. Some things won’t make sense (esp. for new readers) if they see a fuller skill tree in one spot and a training-level Halo in action ignoring various capabilities.
(there’s an interactive one by a fan someplace already)
Link?
https://jcc10.gitlab.io/GrrlPowerSkilltree/?
should get you there.
I was looking at those strange pips as well. One orb has their’s slotted. Any speculation as to what that means?
I would also love to know how the initial slots were chosen? Did the Orbs just go, “Hmm, we think you can handle this…bzzt”. Did she get the default starting set? Or is she carrying on from the previous owner?
Those questions have not yet been answered in canon.
Personally, my leaning is toward the speculation that when Sydney encountered the orbs, they probably did some sort of a scan/evaluation of her, then pre-filled pips according to her projected abilities, and then proceeded with imprinting with her. Given that the orbs are so integrally a part of her, it seems unlikely that there was a previous owner, they were an ‘open set’ of orbs and bonded/imprinted with the first being they encountered that met minimum criteria.
I emphasize that’s my personal head-canon at this point. I consider the orbs to be advanced tech, probably with some form of AI. Can’t wait for the day that they establish an even more intimate link with Sydney and begin to talk to her. If I’m guessing along a valid line of reasoning, then there is an interesting possibility that there may be a “Point Of No Return” beyond which Sydney will become so bonded & integrated with them that they will effectively bond into a symbiotic, inseparable being. Probably a class of cybernetic organism.
I’ve had a few theories about the single double-lined pip on each orb. At first, I thought it might mean that the orb worked without needing to be held – since the green orb (whose function was unknown at the time I came up with it) had it selected, I imagined the green orb was supplying Sydney with some ability she wasn’t aware of.
Now that we’ve seen the green orb in use, and know at least part of what it does, I have a new theory. During the underwater test, Sydney had bungled an orb switch, and dropped her shield. The inrushing water had knocked the breath out of her, and she was panicking, struggling to get to air. She certainly wasn’t thinking about her orbs, or about trying out an untested one. SHE NEEDED AIR… and the green orb flew right into her hand.
It’s the only orb that has ever acted that way. Sydney has started falling a few times, after letting go of the Flight Orb – she kept falling until she actually willed the Flight Orb back to her hand. I think that single double-lined pip activates some heuristic within the orb, which tells it when Sydney NEEDS the orb, and responds to it.
Honestly, if I had to pick only one orb to have a ‘comes when needed’ behavior, I’d want it on the orb that lets me breathe.
Aha! She has a first aid kit! Also, another upgrade…
Allocating skill points…when you don’t know what they’ll give you… its worse than choosing a character name in a Role Playing Game!!!
Upgrade your shield, Sydney. Survivability is you primary concern here
Yep. Given that she’s established that these enemies are capable of stressing her previously-impervious shield with a single hit, upgrading it seems like a really good choice.
*Then* she can farm kaiju for more upgrade points… :)
Even if she doesn’t want to stay and farm it is still a good idea if they pursue or corner her again.
Yup, when in doubt, choose life (or shield/survivanility), everything else can be sorted out later.
Shield is good for short term survival. Her goal might be getting away. Then she needs long term survival. The “make air orb” could be a better choice for that.
Hopefully the upgrade for the air orb does cause it to generate chlorine gas. So, yeah, shields.
Oops, does not cause it
I doubt that. If the orb makers needed chlorine to survive, the first level would have done that.
I’d put one in the connector between fly orb and shield orb. Possibly being able to use both with one activation would allow her to dodge while shooting.
<— THIS.
Potential problem: Those “primary links” might not do what we guess. What about the tail at the top of flight, and at the end of the chain on shield? together, those might mean “single orb use”, while the primary connector might mean something like “the secondary of flight (stay calm) now applies to shield”
I follow US Grant’s example on this: Sidney’s got a decision to make, she doesn’t know what the right answer is, here’s a plausible strategy to take, and DOING NOTHING IS ACTIVELY DANGEROUS BECAUSE THEY’RE LOOKING FOR HER RIGHT NOW. Best to just dump the point in; if it doesn’t do anything useful, well, she’s no worse off, either. The real killer here is indecision.
Optimization is easy in a survival situation like this. The PPO is already capable of destroying these enemies. The shield is not able to withstand more than 1 of their blasts. The branch with 3 pips can be presumed to be shield strength. Potential intrastellar or interstellar travel with the next flight branch. 1 point in each.
I’m hoping she gets a moment to think and upgrade on her terms. Her previous few upgrades were panicked or suggested to her from someone else. I would like to learn more about Sydney’s character and how she thinks.
She actually CAN’T do nothing – grabbing a ball chooses that one for an upgrade. Well, she can but she’d kind of just sit there and wait for them to whammy her.
The flight/PPO link is already active and it doesn’t seem to do much. Whatever the orb-link skills are, simultaneous use they are not.
I’m pretty sure the central ring of nodes is self-abilities for the orbs (notice how they’re flying and impervious to damage and magic), and individual orb nodes are obviously ability upgrades, but I’m really not sure what the interlinks are or do. If they cause the abilities to mix then shield+flight would possibly cause the shield to become self-propelled, so Sydney could move herself around by moving the shield. It would, however, be very bad for dodging, because her flight is her inertial dampener, and without it she wouldn’t be anchored to the shield.
But then, the flight+ppo is active… does this mean Sydney has some kind of ramming attack mode? TRON laser-trails? It’s quite a mystery.
I would disagree, the flight/shield connection is probably what allows her flight mode to keep the wind off.
what if you need the shield PPO and flight PPO links to be able to use the PPO while flying and shielding? so still possible unless my memory of that link not being filled in is wrong :s
Remember Sydney’s “like touching a star” moment? She’d already tested the PPO before, so why was it a surprise that time? Well when she did that, it was while she was flying. And PPO and flight orbs are linked. This is the basis of my theory that the interlinks are literally the option to combine the power of two orbs at use at the same time into one function.
Wild guess at the centre option is how many orbs are permitted to be in-use at the same time.
And since I’m here, why do games have progression trees? Mechanically they’re to force the player to get used to one set of skills at a time so they’re not overwhelmed/confused/distracted. Applying that same premise here; Sydney’s not earning points. The “points” are being awarded dependant on her ability to make use of what she’s been given so far. The more she learns to, the more options she’ll be given.
On that premise, the initial setup of the skill tree is probably not the orbs default state, but an assessment of what setup best fit what she was capable of using at the time. The orbs are linked to her mind, and reflect her personal strategic capacity.
But then, what implications does making conscious choices over your available modes of thought have? Is that going to have psychological repercussions later on?
Progression trees are also a way to extend gameplay and make it more enjoyable by giving you a purpose and reward for sidequests and/or grinding.
The flight/PPO link is probably what lets her shoot through the shield.
Shields or PPO would be my vote. Lighthook would probably have more utility, but the immediate situation is pure combat.
I feel now would be a good time to post a link to a pic of her full skill tree.
Till they get an updated version I guess you could just add in the extra bits to this one.
https://www.deviantart.com/davebarrack/art/Halo-s-Skilltree-Wallpaper-02-428874048
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2942
DING MUTHAFUCKAS!
There are links connecting to nothing coming off of Flyball, PPO, the end of Flyball’s “hopefully, probably Warp Drive” track, the end of the Shield Orb’s 3-pip track and the end of the CommBall’s 4-pip track (after the double linked nodes)
Hmm… If Sydney can’t respec her pips to different orbs, filling in that orphan node on Flyball might provide navigation assistance?
There are link nodes between the orbs. Both side to side and across. Possible combining abilities?
Geese, it’s like I didn’t spend hours and hours creating this.
But seriously, I wish it could be a recommended link, on every page where the skill-tree is brought up.
A link to an interactive skill tree in which the skill tree portion is a blank white square? O_o Or would we need to do something to have the tree appear in that area?
It takes a minute to load for me, but the skill tree is there.
This. is. AMAZING. *favorites it*
A blank white square. No explanation of how to activate it. Very frustrating link, and obviously not very well tested across web browsers. I’m guessing it works very well for your specific installation and configuration, but design considerations for what other people use and how they configure their browsers were not a priority. Definitely not ready to be a prominent link on the front page of the comic.
Ahh didn’t think of that, Checked again with the available browsers I have to hand:
Works in Firefox & Chrome.
IE/edge broken formatting and white box.
you need to implement a loading bar
It doesn’t work for me either, tested on FF 47, Chrome 52 and IE, all I see is just a white box. I made sure to disable any adblockers but no dice.
This is pretty good. Hope you didn’t skip too much of your homework while making it.
And don’t forget: she doesn’t have any idea what each slot does beyond being linked to a particular orb. That’s gotta up the frustration and worry factor by 10.
And don’t forget that she doesn’t know what each slot on the tree does, only what orb they’re linked to. Allocating points blind is just gonna make the analysis paralysis worse.
Sorry for the extra post.
That’s why the speed/shield combo makes the most sense. Spending one point on the possibly-warp-drive? branch will answer that question. And shield orb only has one branch with any points already in it so it’s a good bet that branch is for shield strength. Filling that will have predictable results: If the speed upgrade gave her a jump from mach 4 to mach 16 then an upgrade to shields should give a jump from just-strong-enough-to-survive-a-direct-hit-from-a-megasquid to no-worries-I’m-OK-mate.
No Respec available ever, possible death and 2 choices to give me a potential edge…no pressure just a permanent game over state.
Well, it kinda depends… walkthroughs at this point of the game tend to disagree. According to some, you’re stuck at the credits screen for eternity. According to some, it’s just a black screen. And according to some walkthroughs, you can start a new game, but you’re still stuck for a couple decades going through the tutorial level again.
Either way, yeah, bit of a bummer.
Tutorials for decades…..a fate worse than Game over.
I prefer half lifes 2s tutorial. It was optional.that way when you resumed or wanted to refresh your memory you could run it again
define other side……………….. technically Norway is “the other side” of South Africa and over 6,300 miles away but they are the same hour
True. Alternatively the Alari homeworld could have some weird orbital mechanics so that it’s perpetually twilight over the whole planet, but that probably requires some high-end planetary engineering to make life viable there.
Oh well, Syd flying north-south instead of east-west is easier, and lets Dave keep drawing those pretty night skies.
As for the skill choices: Pip 1 is going onto the Flight Orb’s freshly unlocked “hopefully, probably warp drive” track. Pip 2? I think she may drop it on that orphan node that the “Unknown” orb has, in the hope of getting something that let’s her figure out what it does.
Warp Drive doesn’t help much if you’re Lost in Space.
She needs to be NOT THERE!
I agree – speed is life, according to fighter pilots. The best defense isn’t a good offense, it’s being somewhere else. Hopefully out of range.
Miyagi-sensei said something to that effect too. “Best defence, no be there” or something like that.
Sydney already seems to be able to outrun them already, at least on the scale of panetary/geographical movement to where she can gain some time before they eventually catch up. So I’d say one point to sheild (better survivability) & the second point to firepower (maybe she’ll be able to nail them through their own shileds).
Just ask SuperButterBuns: “The best offense, is a
good deBeing a coward!”I thought the best defense is More Dakka!
I don’t care how weird the orbital mechanics are – that won’t be enough to let even a majority of the planet be in perpetual twilight. If you have a vaguely spherical object, in a star’s habitable zone, then roughly half that object’s surface will be directly lit by the star at any given moment.
If you have antipodal points, then at least one of them will be in sunlight at any given moment (the sun may be on the horizon for both) but you could, for example, leave one half an hour before sunrise and arrive at the other half an hour after sunset (give or take a few minutes) staying under night the whole way…
“Alternatively the Alari homeworld could have some weird orbital mechanics so that it’s perpetually twilight over the whole planet, but that probably requires some high-end planetary engineering to make life viable there.”
It could be a rogue planet, kept warm by fusion/magic, with the moon being lit artificially because they used to have a sun and now they’re just echoing its onetime phases out of nostalgia. (They didn’t care about creating a false sun because they were nocturnal and not nostalgic for sunlight; alternatively, the “imitate a sun” satellite got destroyed with the rest of their civilization.) Fusion power is “probably in the next century” tech for us but aside from fusion it wouldn’t be a very high-tech project. BIG, but not high-tech. It would take a lot of time, engineering, and infrastructure for us to do the same for Earth, but no truly new discoveries except fusion power. (And we could probably do it with fission if we found a lot more fissile materials.)
Or it could just be dark because of the nuclear winter from all of the giant explosions?
Not with all those stars visible from the surface or the surface visible from orbit, no.
Define other side, Norway is over 6300 miles away from South Africa but same time zone
Time zones aren’t a great way to define “opposite side” at extreme latitudes like Norway and South Africa. Taken to the extreme, someone at either North or South Pole can stand in (nearly*) all time zones at once, or move to “opposite” ones in only a few minutes.
I think most rational people would define “opposite” as the antipode or direct opposite side of the planet’s center, give or take a few thousand miles/kilometers for colloquial/illustrative references. Your examples (60° N and 30° S) are roughly at 1/4 around the Earth’s circumference
* Yes, I am a certified** nerd who has studied time zones and map projections for fun and profit. This stuff matters!
**Yes, actual certificates. Nerd.
She is going to need food and water at some point. Maybe the ‘air generator’ can be upgraded to provide sustenance?
That’s what I thought. When was the last time she had any food or drink? And how much longer can she keep this up? I keep coming back to this: she’s had a stressful week with not enough sleep, she was at the end of a long day when she ended up here, and she has been fighting almost non-stop since she came to this place and how long ago was that? Hours? She may be treating this like a game, but adrenalin alone can keep her going only for so long, and then she will crash and crash hard! In fact, now that the immediate danger is over (for now) that adrenaline rush should be wearing off. Choice paralysis might actually be the start of it. (Not that that would be odd, considering she strikes me as the kind of gamer who loves to spend a long time deciding whaat to level up.)
That was my first thought also. She may have some minimal supplies in her “utility belt” like a bottle of water and an energy bar but they won’t last. Also sleep could become a problem.
That’s what I was thinking. Maybe it is more of a “life support” and will enable her to find safe (or make) drinking water and food. Water is more important, however.
Looking at the skill tree, the green ‘air’ orb has only two of its own node activated: one of those isolated ones that has a line running all around it (perhaps what enabled it to move to her hand when she let go of the shield orb under water) and the other node is the first of a string. Maybe that one enables the ‘produce air’ function and further nodes in that string will enable the production of water and food?
But, remember the orbs were recognized by Squid Team 6. This means they are probably not Terran. Air and water may be common needs, but who knows what biology any food it makes may designed for. For all we know they may use cyanide to flavor their food like we use salt. Even if it is was a close match to Terran biology, we use left handed amino acids to build our proteins. They may be a right-handed biology.
I think the aliens “recognized” the orbs the same way Gwen “recognized” the orbs: by the conspicuous absence of anything else.
Still think there’s more to it – the alien scanned Dabbler first and did nothing even though Dabbler actively tried to shield herself. Then it scanned Sydney’s orbs (and it did get some readings off of two of them – the shield orb and the air orb by the looks of it). Then it immediately called Squidward who tried to nuke them. It’s the orbs themselves that spooked them.
BTW, the shield orb was active when Sydney was scanned, and the air orb is the only one to have that double lined pip filled in. I wonder if that was the reason why the alien could scan them but not the others? Because I’m pretty sure DaveB did that on purpose.
Did… did she just find a way to open her Status at any time?
Kinda looks like she did. As a way to get to the skill tree , figuring out that spinning the orbs in that particular way would be a near impossible thing to just guess at. It now kinda looks like there is a rudimentary tutorial mode built in
Has anyone suggested that the remaining Mystery-Orb might be the “User-Manual”?
:P
Anyway, my vote is to fill the 2 slots in the smallest circle (under the PPO & Comm Orbs).
This circle currently has only 2-out-of-7 filled (Shield & Flight).
Once all 7 are filled-in, my “OCD” would then start filling-in the 7 “Crossed”-slots INSIDE the circle, then the 7 “Crossed”-slots OUTSIDE the circle, & finally the outermost 7 “Connected”-slots.
I’m curious to see what happens when all 28 of these “Core Nodes” are filled-in, & these planet-killing “Kaiju” look like a good “fast grind” scenario, if Syd can just “farm” them carefully.
If that’s the case and sydney can summon it at will, she’ll be able to work with krona to hopefully analyse the code behind her balls :) – they’ll at least get a bit more insight on them
Yeah I was thinking that myself considering that she started spinning them in the specific pattern that normally opens the skill tree. We know that she has a lot of control over them not exactly sure how that works but it works for her
It’s strange, really: she has perfect control over how and where they move, meaning they understand and and respond to her mind – and yet she has to hold them to access their powers. It suggests to me that the people who made the orbs could probably use them without having to touch them, allowing them to use all seven at the same time. Hope they never come to get their property back! Sydney would be utterly crushed if she had to give up being the Mighty Halo!
Or, possibly, the critters that made them have 7+ hands*, and didn’t imagine Halo’s limbitations, as it were?
* probably been suggested before.
Assuming bi-lateral symmetry, they probably had eight hands and were spiders…
Yeah, they needed the final hand free for obscene gestures while flying.
Then no wonder the orbs picked Sydney! Her verbal bird-flipping skills are second to none, AND she knows what geture the “Shocker” is..
Can you imagine if one of her sheild upgrades gives her Sonic Amplification? It could make her cursing more deadly than the PPO!
Sydney is such a geek nerd she would quote this scene :D
Plus: “My name is a Killing Word!” :P
Or to hold it out in front, making a fist in true superhero style.
I think that that will only work if there is a point to spend. Otherwise, she just gets a spinning balls display.
There are three possibilities for what just happened:
A) Total coincidence – she started swirling the orbs just as they were about to trigger the whole upgrade routine anyway.
B) She’s discovered a way to manually trigger upgrade mode (provided there’s at least one point to spend) – which may or may not mean the automatic trigger is deactivated.
C) She’s discovered how to open the upgrade screen manually which will work whether there’s an upgrade point ready or not.
The only way to distinguish between those last two is to try it again after upgrading and see if it works. There’s no real way to distinguish between the first two possibilities – without knowing what earns points, it’s possible that sitting quietly in a darkened room for an hour is what earns the points and triggers the upgrade screen and it’s just coincidence that it’s at the exact moment that she does the manual swirl – the best we can do is say that it’s consistent with being triggered manually.
There’s also a question of how she dismisses the upgrade screen if she doesn’t have points to spend…
Makes you wonder what other functions can be activated by making the orbs moving in certain ways.
Lets hope she stumbles upon some kind of space restaurant. Because it’s been several hours of high adrenaline activity already.
I heard this one is nice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Restaurant_at_the_End_of_the_Universe
Yeah, a restaurant named Milliways.
Or upgrade the air producing orb make food.
I just had a disturbing chain of thoughts.
-Suppose the green orb could be upgraded to supply food.
-What kind of food? That would depend on the user. It already makes air that Sydney can breathe, which means it’s considering her metabolism and biological needs. I’m assuming it would do the same for food.
-We have all seen what Sydney eats.
-So, if the green orb would start producing Carolina Reapers in sufficient quantity to satisfy Sydney’s MIGHTY NEEDS…
She might have a new weapon to use against the Squidwards.
So killing opponents does give exp. As far as we can tell.
Or maybe it is still that during a fight she needs to do many different things. I could imagine the creators of a real upgrade device going for something like “Now you have a firm grasp on the things you have and are ready for the next”. One consequence of that would be, grinding has declining returns.
If it’s new things give upgrades, she was in a tractor beam possibly for the first time (probably pointless) and teleported out also. Disabled the tractor beam freeing herself. 2 points?
The orb system is science/tech based. So, I’d lean toward more measurable/quantifiable factors and statistics. Suggest: the orbs automatically track total energy output (or, absorbed/deflected as per shield) as she uses the functions, and also tracks the number of uses and energy output through each function. Possibly graphed over time, so if there are large expenditures of energy through numerous functions over a short period of time, higher/faster upgrade(s) become available.
Even if that speculation has validity, probably other factors. But, the point is that it’s probably based upon a system of quantifiable factors as they can be directly observed through the user interface. It’s a measure of performance of the user, and when that user is ready to coordinate more complex & powerful options. The whole “How many kaiju did you kill today?” statistic would be vastly more imprecise to validate for user experience & skill, and doesn’t factor in more creative uses that are non-combat related.
I’ve maintained for months that it seems like the Orbs give her upgrades when she masters the previous upgrades, as a new upgrade is used enough, it triggers another upgrade. She used the Teleport to get out of a tractor beam and made good use of the new speed upgrade, so she got two upgrades.
Something like that would be my guess too.
The approach from some RPGs – you have spent all your life studying magic without getting any good, now kill something with your dagger and become a legendary magician – doesn’t make much sense to me.
For D&D 3.5 at least, *my* interpretation was that reality is based on general perception and belief, not hard rules. The gods have power because of the people who believe they have power, and adventurers have power based on what they’ve done. The belief is that anyone who accomplishes something must have some power or skill to do it, and anyone powerful must have a combination of accomplishments and narrative justification for being powerful. That works with things like luck based feats: heroes and villains both seem to beat the odds. They don’t have anticlimactic deaths unless there is some other narrative reason for it.
Considering she needs to grab the orb to upgrade, can she really spend the points on different orbs?
Let’s hope she grabs the shield and flight orbs separately or that is likely to fill in the space between the two orbs instead of the “really close to light speed drive” and “tougher shield” upgrades.
Presumably the orb would be released once she’s made the first choice, and would have to be grabbed again for the second.
Truthfully, I would be tempted to upgrade speed twice, this way she might, just might be able to zip around the planet far enough and fast enough to be able to take some naps. Water will be problematic but we have seen some around.
I’d say different branches of the air orb sounds like food, water etc could be somewhat in the right direction.
Well, she does want to come back to Earth at some point, plus we don’t know whether that water is drinkable. Her best shot is leaving, fast. Obviously, her best shot at that is waiting for Earth team to take her back.
The comm-ball might let her actually communicate with Earth at some point, which would help her more (a lot of guesswork here though). She may have a bit of rations or things to help her in her pouch, that’s what I’d plan and she wants to be (like Batman) so it’s a solid assumption that she would have energy bars and a bit of water there.
So, she has immediate survival sorted out (plus killing negasquidwards), and her fear is that the TP trick could get figured out. So to maximize her survival, while of course waiting for backup, I’d try to get more combat-ready. Better firepower might annihilate the mothership, better shield might make her all but invincible, better communication might get her back faster… but of course better transportation might make her able to TP to Earth directly. And there’s still an unknown orb!
Going back to Earth possibly trailing a flock of huge realllly pissed off squidwards isn’t the best strategy. Go to Alpha Centauri, look for followers, then go home if it’s clear.
One of the problems may be that she has no idea where earth is from where she is.
Yes, at that distance she needs a powerful telescope to even be able to see the sun, and that is assuming she is somehow able to recognize it among countless other stars in an alien sky! Frankly, I don’t think she’s going to find her own way back. I still expect someone to find her – though how they will react when they discover she’s been killing gigantic alien kaiju like they’re little rabbits is anybody’s guess.
If she’s in this galaxy, or any of its satellite clusters (including the clouds of Magellan), she could (ie, the comm/nav orb could) navigate using pulsars as landmarks, errr, skymarks.
That’s presuming she knows how to calculate Earth’s position based on triangulating on the pulsars around it. She probably watched Stargate SG-1, but they didn’t bother to go into the very precise measurements, calculations, & resulting info to be able to discern that. Some pulsars pulse so fast, you cannot tell they’re pulsing with the naked eye (It’s why the rapidly replaced but otherwise static images of film projections seem to be moving smoothly to our eyes), and it requires special equipment to measure all of that…which Sydney doesn’t have.
Regarding the drinkability of the water: Sydney could increase her chances if she could capture the water and slowly cook it with the PPO orb. Then if she could find a way to capture the steam that comes off when the water is clearly boiling she could condense it. This would make the water much safer to drink.
Unfortunately, her opponents do have a spacecraft. Even if the drones are weak, it can always drop more squids or may even have sizeable weapons of its own. So speeding around might buy Sydney a few moments, I don’t think it’s a viable long term solution if only because if she goes extra-atmo, an actual spacecraft should be able to easily keep up with her, and if she hides somewhere on the planet, between the squids and the ship itself, they should be able to strike anywhere within a few minutes, even if only the drones.
At this point, Sydney seems to really only have a few options–try to hide, possibly in a sea save somewhere that she can hold out with the shield and air bubble until she drowns by accident, starves to death, or dies of dehydration. If she’s hiding, if rescue comes for her, how will they find her?
Second option is to run, that means warp travel. But she doesn’t have it or know how to use it at any rate. Also, where will she go, how fast can she go, and could the squids follow her?
Third option is to annihilate the squids and their ship, or at least drive them off or hurt them so bad they leave her alone. So something like upgrading flight and shield to make herself a bullet with a brain or double upgrade the blaster orb and see if it’s strong enough to down the ship (preferably on top of the squids).
Can’t she save the points for later?
If she can, then she (and we) doesn’t know how.
She has just learned to open the skill tree manually and found two skill points in the bank.
So she just needs to learn how to close it without spending.
Right now, upgrading is imperative… but the selection is stressful. What to do. What to do.
It may be that the skill tree won’t close with unspent points
Or
Unused points become void if not spent within a set time.
Put both into speed Sydney. You’re going to be trying to cross over 900 light years of distance in less than a day. You’re going to need to go fast.
Problem with puttiling both into speed. She has no way to navigate over interstellar distanace. Most likely thats part of the comms ball functionality.
I say flight and shield. As those are pretty important right now. Especially since one of those were able to stress her shields
Seems like a reason to go for the comm ball, though.
So far, it seems like the most diverse of them all. It provides telepresence, truesight *and* teleportation? What do these have in common that makes them all belong to a single ball? As functionality goes, I’d think that teleportation in particular was more in the area of the flight ball.
Which also appears to make it the one where it’s hardest to predict what an upgrade would do. Except, of course, for the unknown and until recently unknown.
The common denominator seems to be “hey what’s going on over there? I wanna check it out.”
or maybe “miscellaneous that don’t fit elsewhere”. You never know when you may need to cut soke wire or open a bottle. https://youtu.be/KQREVP3WDaU
I probably missed it, but where did the 900 light years come from? I thought we had no idea even if she was in the same universe.
Actually it was 700 light years. DaveB said it at the bottom edge blurb of a page
I’d go with one of the empty, linked, slots: Looks like the remaining unknown Orb has six empty links connecting it to other six orbs. Pick one of those.
Probably the Shield-unknown option, since the shield is what she already uses most of the time.
If continue grinding then extra to shield
If getting away NOW then I’d put it to line connecting Fly and Communication+teleport one – might open LONG distance teleportation or something else interesting for interstellar travel
Maybe really long distance communication. A holographic Sydney pops up in the comic shop.
Sydney: What the? Hey, I know this place.
Joel: Yikes! Sydney, what are you doing back there?
Sydney: And teleport!
Joel: ???
Sydney: I said teleport, you stupid piece of junk!
[ Sydney’s image seems to get brighter and she turns her head to look behind her, a look of fright appearing on her face. ]
Sydney: Teleport! Teleport, now! [ Disappears ]
Joel: What was that all about?
[ An hour later ]
Sydney: Hey, Joel!
Joel: Yeaaa! Don’t sneak up on me like that!
Sydney: Help me Joel; you’re my only hope.
Joel: I don’t see a robot here for me to take to the rebels.
Sydney: Can you get a message to Archon?
Joel: Why not tell them yourself?
Sydney: I can’t touch anything. [ Swipes arm through the counter ] See? And I can’t seem to appear there; it is always here.
Joel gets paper and pen.
Sydney: Okay, I am alive and healthy for now, but under fire. Need evac. I have upgraded speed twice and comms, but still don’t know which way to go. I can show up in my comic shop, but can’t teleport that far, it seems. I will try to come back again in a few hours.
Joel: How fast do you want me to get that to them?
Sydney: Call them on the phone. I put it on the speed dial for the shop. [ Bright glow on the side of Sydney’s body, which slowly fades from view over a few seconds. ]
Sydney: You want some more of me, you poor excuse for a mushroom stalk?! Eat hot plasma, walrus lips! [ Disappears as she lets go of the yellow orb. ]
So she definitely probably spent one point on additional speed?
It’s the second point she’s unsure of?
It might be that in each upgrade cycle that no orb can be chosen more than once.
Putting it in the unknown orb makes no sense (Use The Force, Sydney!)
Is ‘Choice Paralysis’ the first symptom that she is near collapse?
Nah that is just a healthy sign of long term planing and weighting all options. Normaly you would try to understand what each possible upgrade has to offer and how well you can use it in short term and in the long run. Problem here is she can not know for sure what the effects are and IF it is realy point well spend. That will often lead to overthinking all possibilities. In my opinion her best choice given the situation is Shield upgrade + PPO upgrade and try to get rid of the squid so she can camp for rescue and possible earn more points. Her own travel abilities at the moment are not enough to take her home and you can not be sure if they will be with later upgrades. Fighting the squids was very successfull so better offensive and defensive and she should be able to take them down.
Anaylsis paralysis is also something that certain types of brains struggle with anyways.
To quote a technical recruiter who learned I was an engineer (switched fields) while sitting down to start an interview over lunch:
“Do you know how to starve an engineer?”
“How?”
“Take them to a restaurant and give them a menu.”
Blank orb could be the master orb…basically allowing to link and control all the other orbs at once keeping one hand free for max orb usage …that means orb use via master control isn’t as pure or strong as main orb in hand use… cross linking allows power combos? Boosts? Or control of linked orbs?
Get speed and shield linkage right now…warp speed is gonna need warp capable shields or phase shields letting her spit at normal physics and ignore cosmic rads and particle impacts…and maybe planets too.
also– why haven’t we seen any signage around ?
You know big add poster on a building “Drink Blood Kola!” For that morning pick me up!
OR their version of starbucks/dunkins… she’d so totally check out a restaurant if just to see what spices they had…the ones with the biggest and brightest warning labels might be the ones to catch her eyes though…
I don’t think the blank orb is the master orb letting her do what you’re saying, but that is a great concept for an orb :)
Their society may have progressed beyond the need to put ads on every vertical surface.
Or…
They were all digital holographic signs and the power is out.
Or all ads were destroyed. They are easy to aim at!
Anything have to say, will most likely get me ISP-banned, so will just say… <– that
Five level-ups in one week, that’s not bad for a raw recruit… Seriously, if this goes on, she’ll be unstoppable!
I wanted to put out my thoughts on Halo’s flight, so this is not the best time :)
IF her flight is not acceleration, but micro-teleportation, it would act like we see.
– Absolute speed, X teleports per femptosecond
– Minimal air displacement / friction heating
I think there is one thing people are overlooking. I do not remember her killing anybody the first time she got a point to upgraid. so I do not think it is a kill/xp system but a use/xp system. so the more she uses the orbs not the killing gets her xp to lvl up. In that case. I would put points into offence. that way she can take out the badguys and their shit a lot easier. then grind out more points safely.
The massive number of low level mooks(The fighters in space)
At this point, we have no way to establish that she has killed any living being at all. The “low level mooks” may all have been remotely operated drones. The high level “squidly/squidward” may be remotely operated drones, sort of like cyborgs. It may turn out that the only living Calamarian is the pilot of the ship.
Now I have this image of a Calamarian TV Show in my head. The Six Billion Dollar Squid. (Shudder)
The Pilot in Farscape?
Very plausible.
Okay,what does Sydney have planned!? A way out of there…?
When you’re lost you’re supposed to stay in one place to be rescued.
She has to choose between being rescued dead or lost in interstellar space alive.
If I were her I’d put a point into that orb which provides teleportation, then one under shields if she’s not forced to spend them both on the same orb. This plan would be “try recall home teleport, if not, probably better shields for a little more grinding”. If she can get 2 points at once, OF COURSE she can get an extra point if the shield help her survive the next grinding bit…
Halo found a horse shoe shaped ship. Probably best to stay outside.
There aren’t any eggs on it, why would there be.
When she gets back to Earth she’ll be more powerful than any other super there is.
DaveB, your Patreon page is demanding personal information in a manner that is highly suspicious, and preventing me from seeing your 2x rez page.
What information is it demanding? Mine recently demanded my country for “tax purposes” despite the fact I’m pretty sure I already gave that. That’s the only thing it asked for though.
It’s all of Patreon that’s doing that. Patreon is trying to get a handle on where their user-base is located it seems. It’s generic though – country and state/region/territory.
It should already have that info via my credit card. Address, City, State, and Country are all required when submitting payment via credit card.
Credit card info gets scrambled, though, by security software. That’s standard OP.
Payment information should be kept separate (and encrypted so even they can’t get to it) from customer information.
Well, I still won’t trust it until I read, from DaveB, that it is on the up-and-up.
Alright, but I’d like to suggest, alternatively, that you just try to log in to Patreon, from Patreon’s website itself and see if the same thing happens, as it did for me.
Might be faster than waiting.
Worth a try. Thanks
Tried it, but still being very rudely blocked from even logging in at the home page.
Because it’s something that Patreon is doing site-wide.
I forgot about my usual response to this sort of information bullying: use it as an opportunity to apply disinformation.
It sort of looks like Sydney’s found one of the Engineer’s ships (from the Aliens franchise). If you find any mysterious eggs… maybe keep your shields up, Sydney.
If she finds any eggs, open up with every available function of the PPO orb. From orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Alternatively, draw orbital bombardment from the spiral ship. They seem to have some impressive ordnance for such a task, probably superior to anything Sydney can muster at this point.
But, I still like the head-canon vision I have of Sydney walking into a room of eggs, brief pause as it registers, then full-on Sydney spaz-out as she panic-fires off All Of The Things in the shortest timeframe possible.
That’s why the Squidwards are here. The Engineer ship crash-landed on the Alari homeworld, and the planet is now overrun with Xenomorphs. Xenomorphs with Alari energy wings. The Squiddies are simply following Omega Protocol – glass the planet, make sure nothing is left alive.
Well thanks to Halo creating chaos the Zoidbergs will probably also be xenomorphisized.
I’d still like to see Sydney start to go for one orb, only to have the unknown orb quickly pop itself into her hand, forcing her to upgrade it. “Damn it girl, I can get you out of this mess if you would just turn me on!”
My theory is that the single double-pip on each node is the auto-engage function – the life support orb is the only one that has it, and the only orb that has ‘volunteered’ at an appropriate time.
If this is discovered to be true, my first available point would go the shield’s auto-on node to making Mr Bubble self-activated to prevent being taken by surprise in an attack.
That is a very good & highly plausible theory!
*passes you a plate of cookies & a glass of milk*
“Oh thanks, but I’m trying to watch my… wait, are those chocolate chip? Well, I’m sure 1 or 2* can’t hurt.”
* dozen
You thought they were chocolate chip, butt they were, infact, raisins!! Mwahahaha :P
I don’t care what kind of cookies they are, as long as I get to watch Dabbler bake them.
*ackt! pttt*… okay actually with the milk these aren’t bad at all, maybe I’ll only have 5 or 6 though.
Filling in one of that type on an important orb to see what happens could be a good idea, and if it turns out to be the orb volunteer/suggestion, then the next upgrade once out of immediate danger, put it in the unknown orb, in hope that it reveals its function.
Flight orb is your best bet for warpspeed, and it probably will not be in the line that is already partly filled in. So pop both choices in the other branch of it.
Maybe warpspeed might be connected to your teleport, but if you don’t end up with FTL you can still go back to farming. With whatever extra flight/gravity powers you gain.
*wiggles tail to cast anti-paralysis spell*
*somatic component tickling Sydney*
Yeah, she needs speed, speed, and more speed.
Even if she gets warp speed with the next dot on the new fly orb line, she’s REALLY far from Earth, where even lightspeed would take about 700 years, since she’s 700 light years away based on what they said earlier.
At lightspeed, she would stop feeling the effects of time, she would not age, but all of Earth would be 700 years older. IE in the future!
That is so not how it works. :)
It’s close though. She’d still age normally and it would take a thousand years for her to go a thousand light-years but time passed on Earth would be longer still.
That’s backwards. Sasha is pretty close to right, this is how it works, with the caveat that actually there is no prediction for travelling *at* the speed of light, the math just breaks down at that point. But just make it 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% the speed of light and it’s so close to exactly right that it makes no real difference.
I don’t know why some people are saying 700 light years and others are saying over 900, and I don’t feel like going back through the comics for clues. Let me round to 1000. If she travelled at just-under the speed of light, the time passed to go 1000 light years would be 1000 years on earth but much shorter for Sydney. At 99.9% of the speed of light, it takes about 16 subjective days (Sydney days) to travel one light year, but just over one year from Earth’s perspective. This is especially a problem if Sydney is already in the future.
This site does a pretty good job of doing the math for you. https://www.emc2-explained.info/Dilation-Calc/#.W7NQy0ZKguU
Let’s say Sydney can push herself and fly for 24 hours straight, and she has to travel 1000 light years, after which Earth’s technology will be good enough that the planetary AI will detect the hero of myth has arrived and will send her back to 8 seconds after Dabbler and Maxima had a conversation. Then she’ll have to travel 99.999999999625% the speed of light. Not likely that humans will ever be able to accelerate to that speed relative to Earth, *but* we have detected particles that go faster so it’s not literally impossible for matter to move that fast in this universe without superpowers and magic.
Oh right, it’s been too long since I messed with Lorentz contractions. Right for the person doing .99c the distance contracts.
As for the 1000 light years I just picked a random number.
Arriving on Earth 700 or so years in the future. ..
“Why is there a statue of me here?”
I’d say one at the beginning of the new line she unlocked, as planned, and then put the other in the single pip coming out of the base of the fly orb. If the only other known single pip power is a good example (comm ball teleport) those single pip ones might be extremely useful.
Warpspeed won’t do her much good if she doesn’t even know in which direction she has to go. She has no star charts, and even if she did, how is she going to recognize our solar system? In movies it always looks so easy, with all the planets lined up neatly, but in real life it would be hard! Imagine that by some incredible stroke of luck she manages to actually reach our solar system, how is she going to FIND Earth with nothing but her own eyes? Her best bet would be to station herself near the Sun with her back to it and stare at the same part of space for a long time, hoping she will notice one tiny speck of light that isn’t stationary among all the others that are. That would indicate a planet – though probably not Earth since both Mercury and Venus are closer to the sun. Finding those would at least tell her in which plane Earth’s orbit would be. It’s a job an experience astronomer would have a hard time with, using nothing but their eyes, and Sydney so far has shown no knowledge of astronomy besides what she may have picked up from podcasts and the like. (Of course, finding our Sun among all those stars in the Alari sky is ot even possible without a telescope, even if she knew where to look.
Bottom line: even if Sydney HAS warpspeed, she would be much more likely to end up moving even further away from Earth.
Solidly argued. Plus Sydney has learnt the hard way that flight navigation is a real problem, and that was when only a couple of minutes away from her own home!
However if we work on the hypothesis that the additional line comprises the FTL options of the Spaceship Halo, what is that likely to contain? One possibility is that it might just be progressively faster speeds. So the first pip could be 2c, the next 4c, then 8c and so on.
But, as you point out, that would be completely useless unless it incorporated navigation or other means of going to the right destination. The orbs are well designed, so ‘completely useless’ is not their normal modus operandi. Therefore it is likely that a navigation system (or some alternative) will be incorporated either as a secondary effect (such as the anti-vertigo feature of the flyball) or as a separate skill.
The mundane flight path does not have navigation though, so the former seems less likely (but not implausible as flight can be used by just looking at where you are going, whereas most useful destinations desired in interstellar flight will be invisible to the naked eye).
So if navigation is a separate skill, where might it be found? The telepresence orb is one possibility, as the teleport power does have a limited navigation associated with it. But that is very very limited (knowing if there is something blocking the path of the lightbee). Plus it has really diverse powers, most of which do not seem to be related to navigation. So guessing that would be taking a random shot in the dark.
Another option might either be the air orb, working on the assumption that it is providing environmental support and that navigation may be a system related to that. But that is rather stretching it. The other mystery orb of course could have all the bridge functions of a ship, including a help function? But it is a real gamble as Sydney has no idea at all what it does.
So various options worth exploring, but not necessarily likely to result in something useful in combat or evading. Just look at the air orb function, for instance, something like that would require methodical experimentation, and the middle of combat is not the best place for such.
Therefore I am happy with suggesting the option I did, as the first option may unlock an FTL capability of some sort, with the second and later skills providing useful additions to it. Of which, as you pointed out, the most urgent of which would be navigation. One pip is useful for getting to objects you can see, the second for those out of sight.
Although I agree with Korugar that the single pip on the flyball is a good alternative. Which would depend on the type of FTL unlocked with the first pip. If it allows 2c flight then the next pip may just increase that, in which case the solo skill would be a safer second choice. If though it opens a stargate or pops Sydney into hyperspace (i.e. where an upgrade speed seems unlikely) then I would stick to my suggestion.
Picturing the unknown orb as a navigation orb sounding like Han Solo. “Traveling through hyperspace ain’t like dustin’ crops, kid. You fly too close to a star, or bounce too close to a black hole, that’ll end your little trip right quick.”
My thought, too. Maybe toss the eggs at the giant Lovecraftian monster?
Did… did Sydney actually manage to activate the skill upgrade without it doing so on its own?
Wow!
Am I the only one who noticed her ponytail’s come undone?
The thing Sydney is hiding under was seen at the wormhole portal and previously described by DaveB as (part of) one of a number of satellites/space stations. If it was a manned (Alari-ed) ship it might be a good place to look for food and water and maybe some sidearm weapons she can have as a backup to her orbs. Since it was a spacecraft they might even have star charts.
Scavenging alien sidearms probably isn’t the best idea for Sydney – even if they are so idiot-proof as to literally say “front towards enemy” on them, she can’t read the instructions and might end up taking her own leg off by holding it sideways.
Plus, given how tough the PPO is, they wouldn’t do much for her aside from the universal intimidation factor, and just the orbs alone already scare the local plenty.
What she really needs is a “set and forget until not needed” upgrade to the shield orb.
Something about that wreckage makes me think of the protoss pylons from starcraft. Might just be the color association of the gold body and scattered blue crystals, but looks a like wreckage of one.
Clearly, they needed more of them.