Grrl Power #672 – Engage… your advanced math skills
On the plus side, Sydney does have her phone on her and it probably has a graphing calculator app. Not a 4 Dimensional Space Calculus one though.
If I was Sydney, I would have put that second point into either the shield and topped that out, or immediately put a second point into the warp tree. It would suck to get the warp speed upgrade, and only be able to go the actual speed of light, because, you know, as fast as that is, it’s still like 4 years to the nearest star from Earth. 4 years. Sydney may have all the air she can drink, and she’s got a granola bar in her utility belt, but she certainly doesn’t have the supplies for an extended trip.
Let’s be honest, she doesn’t even have the patience to get from Earth to Neptune at lightspeed, which is like 4 hours.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Well we certainly have plenty of interesting stuff to debate over this upcoming weekend…
– What, if anything, did that point Sydney spent in the central heptagon accomplish?
– What new feature did Sydney notice in panel 6?
– Does Sydney now have access to the Vogon’s Hyperspace Bypass?
– Will Sydney need to take advanced classes in hyperspace rocket surgery and nine dimensional quantum calculus in order to actually use any of the new powers she just bought?
– Does the Flight Orb now boast a convenient “Home” button, just like a web browser? If so, what location is currently bookmarked as “Home?”
It’s interesting, the “FTL/Warp Drive” track has several pips on it. However, the fact that it apparently provides a wormhole method of transport means that those pips don’t relate to speed, they probably relate to RANGE.
Pip 1 = Milky Way
Pip 2 = Galactic cluster (8 Chevrons)
Pip 3 = Galactic supercluster (9 Chevrons)
Pip 4 = Where would you like to go?
And since that track has a line going off into nothing at the end, perhaps that goes to… WHEN would you like to go?
Well, lets hope she does NOT enter a wormhole without solid knowledge on the exit and the dangers involved.
Wormhole travel is dangerous as it’s not as simple as a mere tunnel of space, the gravitational forces in there would at best play havoc on Sydney’s sense of balance, even with the fly orb not to mention ones sense of time will get severely distorted, not to mention that in the event of the wormhole collapses, she’s dead, as the resulting collapse of space will essentially crush every building block of every atom in her body into nothing in an instant, she essentially stops existing.
And that does not even touch on what might be on the other SIDE of the wormhole, which if she just opens one blindly could be anything from her intended destination to a black hole, not to mention that the amount of energy needed to keep a wormhole open, let alone stable, would be utterly insane.
Allow me to lay your fears to rest with one word: shield.
Yes, the more we learn about the orbs, the more it looks like they are God-level technology. If Sydney actually knew what she was doing, her adventures would become really boring realy quickly. ‘The (Perfectly Safe) Adventures Of Tthe Ridiculously Overpowered Goddess Halo And Her Adoring Goofy Sidekicks.’
Now we have the ‘Adventures Of Tthe Ridiculously Overpowered Maxima And Her Adoring Goofy Sidekicks.’
I suppose one could see the orbs as “God level technology”, given that Krona has stated that they are linked to the deep code, the fundamental underpinnings of reality itself. As such, their owner-operator would be insanely overpowered.
On the other hand, DaveB has mentioned many pages back that part of the reason he decided to restrict Sydney to just two orbs was so she wouldn’t be ridiculously overpowered. I expect that DaveB will continue to keep restrictions like these on Sydney, no matter what future powers she unlocks; so as to not ruin her as an interesting character.
I was going to argue for the center pie wedges being “concurrent orb usage”, but this is a very good counter argument. I would like to see Halo and Varia running at least 3 orbs together in a battle though (e.g. Varia w/ one hand on Halo’s shoulder).
I would try firing her PPO at max again. center pips might just be skill tree V 3.0
More efficient would be for Sydney to ride piggy-back on Varia, possibly in a harness so Varia doesn’t need to hold her on. Then they could use 4 orbs.
What if Sydney hooks her left arm with Varia’s right arm at the elbows? Even if Varia’s power relies on skin-to-skin contact, all they’d have to do is roll up their sleeves. That way, both of them could still leave both hands free.
“With our power combined, we become…Quadraplex!”
While the orbs must be held in the hand to be used, we haven’t yet seen if Varia’s abilities have a similar limitation. If she can absorb powers from Sydney by touching her some other place, 4 would be possible.
I mean, we don’t actually know that Varia can use any orbs when touching Sydney. Her gestalt power doesn’t duplicate – it lets her port along with Harem, but not do the multi-body thing for instance. All we know is that it wasn’t an obvious power.
Those orbs were made by at least a Class IV civilization on the Kardashev Scale.
Actually her fly orb includes local gravity. If it is to be used for wormhole travel, surely it can negate any ill effect from the gravity field around.
And as a whole, the fly orb doesn’t really care much about the laws of physics, so maybe its warp mode just plainly ignores the process of creating a wormhole altogether.
Hope she doesnt enter a wormhole, with no knowledge of whats ontheother side AGAIN. Although to be fair the portal in space time kinda pull Archron through, rather then them entering it.
Maybe Pip 4 = When would you like to be?
Since wormholes don’t actually really ‘see’ distance per se, the extra pips might reflect how much mass/volume she can transport via that method
Err…
When was it established that flight has warp drive capabilities, and what are the chevrons you’re talking about?
He refers to Stargate (popular SciFi Series) centered about wormhole travel – Normal Stargate adresses consist of 6 chevrons (coordinat symbols you could say) for destination and a seventh for your current origin. With an extra chevron you can travel to nearby galaxies and the 9th chevron was used to travel to very distant galaxies (it was a super adress for a stargate on board of a spaceship traveling galaxies and spreading new gates…)
As far as the center heptagon…my guess is it’s the number of orbs that can be concurrently controlled…from 2 to 3, up to a max of 7
Not likely. The two orb limitation comes from the fact that they only work when held in her hands, and she’s not getting more hands. Also, as said elsewhere in this discussion, it’s a story method of limiting her so she doesn’t get ridiculously overpowered.
My guess is it’s an ease-of-use or user-interface upgrade. Would explain the new graphic in the last panel.
That setup would also force a user to demonstrate ability before getting “easy-mode” turned on, as a sort of age-gate… Well, maybe maturity- gate, you know what I mean.
So you don’t give phenomenal god-like power to a chipmunk, or something.
My guess is that the central heptagon allows Sydney to put an orb on autopilot.
Like, she can set up her shield, or pick a flight speed range with the flight orb, or hold something with the lighthook—and then she can set that orb in the middle of her halo and the orb remains active. But she can’t change anything about what the orb is doing until she takes it back in her hand.
The utility of this varies from orb to orb. She could not put the PPO on autopilot, because it requires active guidance. Maybe with the flight orb on autopilot, she couldn’t do more than hover.
Ironically Hyperspace is a bypass. There is no reason to destroy planets for that. Just reaching real space or identity would be a difficulty. However gravity can still affect you. Why the Empire’s Graviton Cannon Cruiser can not only snatch you out of hyperspace, it can keep you from going back into it. Though while in hyperspace you are untouchable by most anything else. As long as phasically move in and out of it. Shutting down your FTL without use of the phasic generator could be a rough ride and you may not want to survive it if you should come out with your body in parts or like a living pretzle. No one really knows it is all “in the math” as they say.
I’m guessing that it doesn’t require any further investment but that it might take Sydney a little while to figure out what it accomplished.
“OnStars, how can I help you?” That last panel, every time she says something like that…
OMG! Not another telephone help service staffed by a foreigner with an alien accent!
Looks like a wormhole to me…
The blue part of the topography? definitelly looks like that. As for the red lines and circles, however… The lower left part seems to be linking the blue coordinate system to the shortest(?) path through what I assume is the wormhole. The less red curve going through the center appears to be going alongside a “wall” in the wornhole (probably the path requiring least energy expenditure?). The rest of the red lines, however, eludes me.
The graph just explains the basic rule of geometry “The shortest distance between any two points is a curved wormhole”.
….. did you just use the word “basic” in a sentence about non-euclidean geometry?
It’s a relative term.
When it comes to relatives, the in-laws aren’t nearly as worrisome as are the outlaws…
Outlaws are more fun, and more welcome, to have around than in-laws
The red lines are dark matter, which ceases to be dark once you enter non-eucledian space. It’s best to go around that stuff.
Interstellar Sat-Nav! Smashing! I can just see it. Please select the destination of your wormhole. In 200000 light years, turn right, to follow the M40.
Simply not knowing what each point does is just such a massive problem, solvable only by filling all upgrades- which may not even be possible (total points limits for whatever reason). DaveB’s point about the actual distances between stars and planets and how fast even light speed is is why any space-faring series absolutely needs some form of FTL. More practical and specific to this, Sydney may get the upgrade to travel to Earth, but it may kill her if she doesn’t get the upgrades to survive the trip because how would she know?
Well… She already survive an FTL transport.
So far, the orbs have been really user-friendly. I don’t think they would let you travel that fast if your shield still lacks skill points.
They let her set fire to a forest near her home.
They let her blow up a tank and get caught in the blast.
They let her drop her shield while underwater.
So the orbs are supposed to never let her set fire to any Flora? What if she’s battling a plant monster? And she could have stopped herself from getting caught in the blast of the tank if she had put in the shield. Also what if she needs to take down her shield while underwater? The orbs aren’t going to stop her from doing stupid things if that’s what she wants to do. If they did, Sydney wouldn’t really be in control, and she’d be a puppet to a higher power.
The most powerful tools are the ones that place no limits on their use. It can be dangerous to let the user do WHATEVER THEY WANT, but in the hands of a disciplined user, the results can be worth it.
Absolutely. However; even powerful devices have controls that don’t let you just brush them and whoops there goes the San Andreas fault… The entire thing.
Note jet fighters that have that red cover on ordinance. Syd demonstrated one with the tank vs the PPO.
Are those fast travel bookmarks?
I’m going to guess yes – or “previously visited planets” (please don’t clear your planet history)
(sarcasm)Tch! Yeah! Like the NSA doesn’t record that too…(/sarcasm)
That’s pretty much what I’m thinking. It looks a LOT like a tracking log with more dimensions than we usually get them in. She may be able to do a return to map point, or sent the com orb light bee there and then do the teleport trick even if she can’t fly there in a reasonable time.
Sure the light bee doesn’t move that fast, but the tracking log may allow it to materialize there instantly.
Just an idea.
Hm. The blue part of the topography(?) apparently represents a wormhole, the lines themselves probably link places with the same spacetime curvature. The bottom red line seems to deline the “closest” coordinates in the wormhole, the one next to it is an outline 90 degrees to the right, both giving the shape of the wormhole’s “walls”.
As for the last curve (the one with the circles), I am somewhat baffled. It seems to be linked to the “90 degree” red outline, but what exactly does it describe…
Combine the 90 degree of wormhole travel with Harem’s “there was too many of me”. She might be in a different reality. Or a parallel earth. It would explain the lack of a starchart as well. The lines probably designate her relative position in both universes.
At a guess–it represents the realtime path that would be taken in order to arrive at the same destination that the wormhole shortcuts to. Note the way the line curves around the circles; it seems to show a trajectory using gravity slingshotting.
Looking at the symbols, it seems clear to me that she’s going to warp back home through Earth’s Stargate.
So, no Relativity in this universe. If Sydney got up to the speed of light, then no time would pass for her to make the trip.
Depends if it is light speed or hyperspace/warp drive.
With the latter you aren’t travelling relative to the speed of light, you are travelling under another set of physics so all that relativity goes out the window. Often it is compared to punching a hole into another universe (or wrapping a bubble of one around yourself) where the universal constants are different.
Because, with normal light speed travel, no time would pass for the traveller but will pass for everyone else.
Eg, if you took a trip to Alpha Centauri and back at light speed, no time would pass for you, but you’d get home 8 and a half(ish) years later.
An accident that does happen in something I’m writing…
I recall an anime series where, after eradicating a bunch of hostile aliens in another galaxy, the heroines had to limp back home in the remains of their robot on auxillary power (used the main power core to blow them up).. ended up back on Earth after 50.000 years had passed..
That actually sounds really interesting. Now I kind-of want to know the name of the series.
Gunbuster.
Final scene of the series is poignant, heartbreaking, heartwarming and inspiring – great series.
All six episodes of teh series. I’ll watch it a bit later today.
Just watched the full series, and the last episode is so heart-wrenching :(
yeah it was crazy series… hmmm
If you travel actually at light speed under conventional special relativity the rather than very nearly at it, aside from that being impossible due to needing infinite energy, the distance contraction would also be infinite so from your perspective you’d be at alpha centauri and earth at the same time, and everything beyond and behind…
Well GPS works, so they’ve got relativity. They’ve just got stuff that bypasses relativity like wormholes.
…. also, if the shield has trouble surviving the squidwalkers; high-explosive blasts / tactical nukes, then it probably can’t survive accidentally plowing through interstellar dust at .9c.
Actually, GPS works for us because we’ve accounted for relativity in its design. In a universe without relativity, GPS would still work, it’d just work a little differently.
In a world without relativity, light would have infinite speed, thus make GPS useless
In a universe without relativity, or with a different relativity, light speed would not be infinite, but finite. It would have a set speed that would based on a foundational frame of reference. Meaning it would change depending on the direction of observation do to changes in the relative motion of the earth, solar system and galaxy. GPS would still work as long as it was designed to take that into consideration.
In a world without relativity, there are a number of possibilities for the speed of light. If, for example, you keep Maxwell’s equations, you get a privileged reference frame, luminiferous aether, and light going exactly the same speed as it does for us.
If by “relativity” you mean the weird time and gravity distortions that happen when traveling at a significant percentage of light speed, then it would totally simplify a lot of things.
It would be a totally Newtonian universe.
The speed of light could still be 1,079,252,848.80 km/h, except that it might not effectively be a universal speed limit as it is in our universe (because of the effects of relativity).
GPS satelites would not need to compensate for different speeds in in the apogee and depoee of their orbits and calculate out the time dilation, because there would be none.
The “twins paradox” of time dilation caused by one twin traveling close to light speed wouldn’t happen, the trip would seem to have taked the same amount of time regardless of whether you were the ‘stay at home” twin or the “traveling twin” and they would both be the same when they returned.
So, if the speed of light was infinite, instead of distance between satellite and receiver being determined by the time taken for the signal to travel, there would be a different observable measurement, such as signal strength for the system to be based upon. That’s how other radio-based navigation methods work, when the signal time is too short to measure.
So, thoughts on this. I can’t quite make it out, but the little bar she’s looking at resembles a series of planets to me, which would make it something of a ‘history’ button. Empty space is most of what there is, so it would make sense to only offer ‘standard’ options until the user has a better idea of what to do.
Other thoughts, like possible exploits/clarifications in Sydneys orb powers:
1) Depending on how well she can control the orbs, she might be able to use them to hover, simply by cramming them under her vest/shirt and having them lift her up. A normal person might try to stand or sit on them, but I’m accounting for her… dex stat. Assuming it works, it would be hilarious to see her slowly spinning in place because she can’t stop them from trying to orbit. Still, it’s an option for lift that allows her to laser and shield at the same time.
2) Since it’s not animated, I’m a bit curious on how the Light Bee works. We see it rush out, but we can’t really tell if it’s a X seconds to target, regardless of distance, or if it’s just something there for our visual convenience. Since she turns on the telepresence form to scout, I’m assuming she can’t see out of the Light Bee itself, but either sends it to a specific location (inside of the warehouse), or if she can send it to people. It would be a way to try and FTL with, if she can have it pop near someone she knows. I might be misremembering though.
3) I’m a bit curious exactly how they work with her hands. We know she experimented, trying to touch them to other parts, but I wonder if having it rest against the back of her hand, and then using her other fingers to touch the controls would work.
I’m guessing that the orbs need the number of nerve endings available in her hands. If so, they ought to work on other areas of her body that also have a large number of nerve endings. But those areas are generally not all that dextrous(except the tongue… ) so she would end up ‘setting’ an orb such as the Shield orb with her hand, then tucking it in ‘somewhere’ to free up that hand. Of course, if she suddenly have to make an adjustment… it can get tricky.
Yup, those balls must have been made in Atlantis, for their Octopus overlords.
If it is based on nerve endings, then her feet might work well. There’s a rather lot there. Will need some duct tape, though.
She’s already tried her feet. They don’t work. (Unless the central point turns that on, but that would seem strangely specific…) This was reported back when the balls were introduced.
Actually…that works.
We know she said she couldn’t teleport, and now, with the first upgrade, she can.
That may indicate how many spheres she can use at once. She may not need to tuck it in her mouth, though. She might just be able to hold two in one hand.
In fact, notice how the first two marked pips have a large circle filling out the outer circle.
Granted, the first time we saw this, she wasn’t using any spheres and two of those circles were still filled.
Feet have a lot of nerves and with some training can be quite versatile tools. Most modern humans have not any training for that.
Might be that the nerves in her feet are too degraded(?) for the orbs to connect. That means with some feet agility exercise she could upgrade her ball manipulators to four.
… we don’t have details on her experiments in that regard, do we? I mean, if she was trying to figure out how many she could use at once, and the balls had a software cap of “2” at the time, and she was already at that limit via orbs in her hands, then those placed in contact other places (feet, mouth, whatever) wouldn’t work. Later, when someone asked, she might say “no, the feet didn’t work”… when the hands only limit is actually just coincidental with how she was testing “how many at once.” Does Sydney really seem the sort to think things through and try all aspects to you?
If you revisite that page you can see she was only trying to activate a single orb on other body parts without any success… I don´t know if she ever tried two in one hand…
Ah, there it is – 589. Still, though: That’s just a quick flashback. Compare to the “Faith and Begorra” image of her getting arrested. It’s unclear if that’s details of what was actually attempted.
589? I think you meant 098 – 589 is the shower scene where she punches Dabbler in the Gazorpazovum and some private stuff of her…
Based on previous pages:
1. orb must be in hand to work. “nerve endings” idea by A_Lion above would mean orbs could fire off during orgasm if used as sex toys. ok, I’m a perv for even coming up with that thought….
2. Yes, she knows where light bee is going and can see out of when it gets where she wants it.
1) I thought of the nerve ending thing as well, but didn’t comment on it, as it didn’t seem terribly useful unless she wants to kiss it or something. I suppose one variant on that would be to have the orbs rotate around her hands so she’s in contact with all of them and then has them flip around to activate the buttons.
2) Okay, do we know how she targets it? Can she select ‘next to Maxima’ or ‘back home’ as a setting and it flies there immediately, or would she have to wait for the light bee to fly there?
Any thoughts on Hover Mode?
Here’s how she controls light bee:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2402
As for hover mode, pretty sure light bee can do that, no prob, based on bee paths shown.
I meant more my theory on supporting herself with ‘inactive’ orbs while using two others.
Looking at it, it seems like she can send it somewhere, knows when she’s clear of an object, but still needs to ping it to see where she’s going to go next. That assumes that this investigation is typical usage, as it would also make sense to look to make sure she doesn’t pop where someone can see her.
I don’t think we’ve got a full set of info on it, IE whether she can send it to a specific location. It doesn’t bother me if she hasn’t thought of it, but I’m mostly curious.
How intuitiive!
(Dee Dee voice) Ooooooooo , what does this button do?
Also , the colour scheme of that righthand image matches Dabbles. Hmmm.
Hopefully it isn’t opening a new wormhole to random location. Probably just as her team arrive on the planet below.
Fingers crossed it’s the old wormhole that took her there and she can open it a crack to get through.
Boy, wouldn’t thaat surprise anyone watching the mountain where the terminus of the magic wormhole used to be located. \Seeing Sydster piledrive out of the mountain would be, interesting? (not to mention seeing and possibly measuring the energies released coming out of a wormhole – radiation, kinetic, gravimetric, etc.)
Upon thinking about it, would a phase/string shift from one string state (of the Shield (and thus its contents) allow for a temporary shift to a different dimensional space consisting of “wormholes”? The home button would be handy for finding your original location, if not at least your original dimension (much the same as we are in a 4 dimensional state with an x and y and z axis as well as a tau (or time) axis). Heck, for all we know, these orbs may well have been created by some omega dimensional beings above the sigma dimension…
Home might not be your own home, but home for the orbs…
Blip!
8 armed alien with orbs (Looking at Halo) Hey, are those Xr’vblox’s training marbles? We were wondering where he lost those!
hehe Sounds like an anime I watched once :/
It doesn’t take any time to travel the speed of light. At least not for the one traveling the speed of light.
FTL is better, as it warps space, not time. Lightspeed us great for one way trips, but you don’t actually arrive there faster then the bad news you are bringing… :p
Those things (space and time) are the same intertwined thing. But your point is well taken.
Probably better to say the FTL doesn’t use the same rules for space/time manipulation, usually by creating a pathway to another version of reality (i.e. Babylon 5) or by creating a pocket dimension where the rules work differently (i.e. Star Trek’s warp bubbles).
I suppose the wormhole / tesseract trick of creating a shortcut between two points in space/time is really just a variant form of creating a pathway to another version of reality.
Another possibility, is that in this branch, each pip represents a new type of travel
– parallel universes (note, it has been suggested in prior discussions that the portal to this world may have been to a parallel universe) Also, there was that short story crossover where a hero from a different universe stopped by Sydney’s universe.
– time
– different dimensions (eg different planes in d&d)
– What would the 4th pip be, if this was the system?
It’d probably be branch representing a different level of reality, the current branch representing 3-Space (anywhere in the universe when fully filled).
The next branch being 4-Space (anywhen in the universe)
Then you get 5-Space (Multiverse, Parallel Earths, Alternate Timelines)
Beyond that is 6-Space (Omniverse, Grrl Power-verse to MCU…)
4th pip for the 4th wall maybe ? ;)
Sydney: “Wait… I purchased a skill… based on MATH? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Maxima: “Did anyone else just get a chill down their back?”
Math: “I did!”
Dabbler: “It tingled. …in a NICE way!”
*following the map eventually leads to a shape of a confused smirking Math. Math on earth gets a chill, then gets sledgehammered by one of the superheroine’s for taking too long staring in one place*
Did she just find a single this going to translate her skill tree into a language she can understand? Also safety keep you from accidentally splatting yourself when you try to fly or do something else that could be dangerous.
It looks like “View available destinations by icon”.
Earth was the last planet “Orbed” to, as that’s where Sydney found them.
***********
Wouldn’t it be a goofy turn of events if she appeared on a planet with
short plain people and she was a gorgeous space Amazon to them?
It could be an X Ray of her inner ear. lol.
Wait, what did she put the other point into? She had two, we go from the Decision Paralysis to putting one point into the Trivial Pursuit piece without seeing her place the other one
Probably into the first pip of that string she unlocked on the fligh orb. It looks that does allow FTL flight – if she’s able to figure out how it works! Maybe that line of symbols that has appeared in the last panel allows her to set co-ordinates for a destination? Except there are at least six or seven of them by the looks of it, and anyway, if she doesn’t know what kind of grid they use it’s useless to her. Personally, I’m hoping it’s like a history bar: a list of the last destinations the orbs have been to. Then she only has to find the symbol for Earth which logically should be the last one – or the first, since it’s not sure if the list goes left-to-right or vice versa. (And maybe Alari Prime’s already in the list, since that’s where she currently is… She could end up on various alien worlds this way, but it’s still vastly better than setting off in a random direction and hoping for the best.
She put the first pip into the speed upgrade, since she was talking about it being a foregone conclusion about putting it there, under the notion that the unlocked path would be like a warpdrive or something (to help her get home).
She ‘earnt’ THREE Points fighting the Squiddlings: first one gave her the Mach 16 boost, third one she placed into the center, second one went… ?
The second one went into the new branch unlocked when the first point went into mach16 as she was hoping it was some kind of warp functionality.
Where was that shown?
It wasn’t shown explicitly but Sydney had made a number of comments of her intentions and then last page: “definitely going to get the hopefully probably warp drive”
The second point went to speed. The first point went into the center area:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1166
It has no visible change though.
User manual noticed?
Cries as she has not used her points in the most munchkin way
Maybe it’s because she’s had more than 2.6 seconds to decide? She did mention impending decision paralysis/indecisiveness, last scene…
Upcoming storyline: Leon is tasked with adding a new FTL navigation program to Sydney’s arm computer. To test and adjust it he needs to travel with her a bit. Something goes wrong and they get stuck on a paradisaic planet for an episode…
Hmm, nope. this way lies turning into a lizard.
ok, 2 lights means Alpha C is 2.15 years away….10 lights is about 5 months….100 times light speed is 15 days plus a bit…but someone said 900 light years yesterday, which at 1000 times c is almost a year.
She’d hafta be going far faster than a thousand times the speed of lightto get any significant galactic distance before she starves.
Hope she finds a wormhole going her way on that map.
oh, yes – and the point my uncaffienayted brain was trying to make is one of those orbs must provide food if the whole set = space ship. unless the aliens it was designed for can eat starlight.
If they are okay with traveling for years inside that shield, one of the orbs better be an entertainment orb. (Or maybe the original owners were incapable of getting bored, which would make them incredibly alien!)
The problem with food from an alien orb:
(Quellek): Are you enjoying your Kep-mok blood ticks, Dr. Lazarus?
(Alexander): Just like mother used to make.
++
Does it have a “last visited destinations” list?
Soooooo… anyone else notice the thing she’s looking at in the last panel is a *pink* thingy. On the blue orb. And its appeared after she’s just filled in a central which could possibly be interpreted as a joining or meta control node.
Additional orb crossover or control activated? Please yes.
Dave got the math right! Its 4.02 hours at lightspeed between Earth and Neptune when they are closest to one another. My caveat is that you need to add up to approximately 20 minutes to your flight if Neptune isnt as close as it can be to Earth for the extra distance up to and including 200,000,000 miles
Anyone think that blue center mass she added a pip too allows her to use more than ball now??
Not sure. The ones that were already filled in belonged to the Flight and Shield orbs, but I don’t remember those behaving any differently from the others. If I read the skill tree correctly, the one she’s picked now belongs to the Mystery orb. Seeing these are the central part of the skill tree, and have an unique shape, you’ld expect a radical influence on how the affected orbs work, but I don’t see it. Then again, the other two have that connected pip in the outer ring filled in. Maybe that’s necessary? Or, perhaps that new string of symbols on the Flight orb is an effect from the Mystery orb?
Now,how’s Sydney going to pull this one off?
Sydney “Halo” Scoville, Jr. ladies and gentlemen, who is about to attempt a truly impressive feat.
We’ve seen her in the frying pan – the attack of the mountain base
We’ve seen her in the fire – Alien planet with an Alien Armada and a Huge Angry Robot
We’ve seen her in the house that is also on fire – MORE Huge Angry Robots
And now, she’s gone from the frying pan, to the fire, to the house that’s on fire…. will she be able to take the next step?
Can she jump from the Frying Pan, into the Fire, into the House on fire and onto the planet that is plummeting into a Sun?
I for one, think she can.
Lets watch and find out.
LOL! If anyone can, it’s Sydney!
The real question is can she get to Earth without getting lost and is there already aliens looking for her who she will miss by try that?
In point of fact, ALL planets are falling into their respective Suns. Most are just on paths that will take them several hundred billion years to actually get there.
Yeah in this metaphor its not one of those… its more one of the “lets slap rockets on this puppy and aim her at the sun!!” kind….. and yes I’m fairly sure there are space red-necks that do EXACTLY that for fun.
Hey Dave, can you maybe put a picture of the skillweb up somewhere easily findable? Maybe a link in the About page or Sydney’s bio or somesuch?
The wiki was super helpful. This comic has the best view of the full skill tree:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1166
There is a clean pic with no speach bubbles on Dave’s DeviantArt page.
https://www.deviantart.com/davebarrack/art/Halo-s-Skilltree-Wallpaper-01-428873707
Is the centerpiece by itself a selection? I first thought the inner double ring and the center is linked since the points are round pieces that get placed but there is no point on the ring outside the new centerpiece…
Yes i was also thinking the inside segments were simply a ‘bonus’ unlocked and lit up as the inner ring was completed. Get all 7 and get something good. Turns out it is actually it’s own thing…
That center track is the one that interests me – It has seven segments available to fill, and two were filled initially before Sydney put a third point into it just now. Sydney has seven orbs total, and is able to use two simultaneously … did no one else’s mind immediately jump to the idea that that third point lets her control a third orb at once?
Not immediately, no.
AAH! Carpool Tunnelling! I know what I said and I stand by it. If people can name instergalactic transport methods after bugs and insects I can name them after automobiles!
I suppose the targeting option would work best if she had a MAP!
Considering the RSI’s she could get from traveling that way,…
Can Sydney operate her phone with one hand? If she can’t she’s going to have to land.
If Sydney were in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri and traveled to Earth at light speed (or just under light speed) then the journey would take ~4 years according to a clock on Earth. However, because Sydney is moving very fast, the distance between the planets would contract in HER reference frame, and the distance would be much shorter (at light speed it would actually be zero!).
So, very little time would actually pass for Sydney, and the lack of food and water would be a non-issue. Four years would pass on Earth during her trip, so that would be inconvenient, but she would not starve.
Is that a circle button for return to planet? I wonder… Return to the last planet you were on, the planet where they bonded with their host (earth) or return to the planet of the maker?
if it IS that last one… for the Arisians’ sake, I hope Sydney can tone it down long enough for them to put the interface in English and send her on their way.
Or at the very least, a user manual
“There better be a hell of a payoff when I fill it all the way up.” It looks like three of seven slots are filled in at the center, so is she planning to put the next four pips in the center just to find out?
Why sydney? WHY?! Why would you go for a totally random upgrade like that when you already know what you need? You need a stronger shield as well as the hopeful space travel. I mean, now you have seen the upper limit of your blast blocking, time to make it stronger! You know, just in case this wormhole thing is not an instant fix? Take down the other humungulus creatures you have been fighting, get some more points and move on then! You were fast approaching making the big guys trivial. But no, you decided to slap a point in the mystery section instead.
because plot but yes it was stupid to do
Because she’s a gamer and that middle track is a mystery. Sure she doesn’t know what exactly the pips around the orbs do, but she knows the upgrade the powers. That middle track could do anything, and that is something she needs to explore.
Protip – you can’t actually drink air.
Or…can you? Aren’t all gasses technically liquids?
Technically, gases are fluids, as are liquids, the difference is primarily density.
Calculations of gas flow and behavior are modeled with fluid dynamics equations.
Well… Gasses and liquids are fluids, but gasses are not liquids, and vice versa. One important part of the definition of a liquid is that it has collapsed into an incompressible form.
Although fluid dynamics is used to model both liquids and gasses, on a basic level it has way more to due with mass, energy, and momentum in a system than it does the medium. When you start caring about the medium, you look up a bunch of factors in tables from when people did the really nitty gritty specific problems. When you are the one solving those nitty gritty problems, I typically like to think that those people are transcending what we usually think of as fluid dynamics.
I just had a thought, what if that central indicator isn’t a bank or anything but a power output that increases the effectiveness of all orbs? As in once all are full we finally see what that one orb can do an such.
I’m now thinking that filling up the center might let her do something like Maxima can, shifting her available power between the orbs. Or maybe it gives her the ability to respec her points. If it’s a pure respec, I would expect some kind of limit on it, but I also think it would be a ripoff to need to spend 7 points to respec every time, unless the orb designers figured that getting these pips, aka blowing up Kaiju for fun, is actually pretty damn easy.
I’m doubting the respec part but the power distribution to other orbs make sense, but I still think that if that gets filled up, it might make the abilities of all orbs power increase.
what if the worm hole is location of one but its like a current aka Star ocean. like the ocean current you see in finding nemo and they surf it. or a worm hole high way. technicly that’s how starwars hyper space is you can plot a random course BUT there are common routes that haven’t changed in eons and those are the main trade routes.