Grrl Power #859 – Tumbelina
Sydney has reigned in her worst instincts, but it’s still going to be a long day for her and Peggy. At least Sydney didn’t attempt her dive roll with her gun in her hand. She’s smart enough… well, she’s smart enough to know that’s a dumb move without having to worry that Peggy would make her do about a thousand burpees for a stunt like that. For the record, Sydney would do about 19 of those before she threw up.
Admittedly, this is a little premature for Sydney to be running this course, but there are reasons Arc-SWAT is trying to get her up to speed so quickly. Not the least of which is that she’s repeatedly proven herself to be indispensable in the field.
I meant to put little paintball splats all over this course, but I forgot. No reason they can’t use the course for multiple things, as long as no one double books. I guess if it’s a live fire course they have to replace all the plywood in there every so often, so Sydney gets to break in the new build.
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I bet that most dedicated live fire arenas do not have plywood partitions. Soft cover is too likely to lead to fatal accidents, when somebody unseen is hit through a ‘wall’. Rather they will be made of nice solid concrete or brick. So that the trainees can get the feel for urban fighting, whilst minimising the risk that one of them will be taken out on a stretcher.
While likely true for RL liv e fire courses, I wonder if courses for super would be better to be disposable. Would concrete stand up to training with the PPO?
Well, no. But plywood might be a tad more flammable than concrete, which seems a potential hazard.
All the better for teaching restraint. As Maxima said, “Before you fire [at a target], look behind them. Assume you will miss them and hit that.” Chipping concrete doesn’t have the same salutary effect in that regard as having to put out (several separate stands of) burning plywood.
Actually, plywood is the norm. Easier for replacement and rearrangement. The outer walls are made from concrete filled cinderblock mostly. The bad thing about indoor live-fire courses became the bullshit standard of carrying weapons at the low-ready instead of high-ready. It’s harder to turn and bring your point of aim up than to push your rifle out and shoulder it. But with supervisors on catwalks above you, invariably someone got shot in the ass for being an ass, so low-ready was made standard for training.
Makes sense, I guess. There will only be so much space dedicated to live fire training and it would be easy to become over familiar with a particular course, leading to complacency and reduced experience in varied situations.
The only ones firing live rounds, are the ones on the course
Note how the walls are not plywood
Correct. But “the walls” are the perimeter walls, the barn walls. All internals appear to be timber, particle board and plywood. This does not seem to be a “normal” live fire setup, it really is a theater set assembled in a large room or a barn.
And in this set up, I really hope there are no “extras” hiding behind the scenery. They should all be in the viewing lounge.
“Soft cover is too likely to lead to fatal accidents”
thats not how shooting ranges work. The soft cover here is not a TARGET, but rather a shooting position for the shooter to shoot FROM. the idea is to get used to shooting around obstacles, like say shooting through a doorway while leaning on the door frame. A realistic scenario that isnt just you shooting at a target while surrounded by empty space and standing still. No one is counting on those plywood cutouts to stop a bullet because you will never be shooting TOWARDS them. you will always be shooting away from them. Also, most courses are only built to allow one person on the range at a time. Gun ranges that can handle multiple people at a time are the standard ‘everyone in a line’ type. The tactical courses such as you see here generally cannot handle more than one. As you progress through the course you will always be shooting in generally the same direction because that is the ‘safe’ direction (meaning no people). so you may end up running past targets you shot at to get to your next shooting position to shoot a target that was beyond the previous target. you will not turn around and shoot the other direction. this is why you cant have more than one on the range at a time. if someone was farther along the course than the other person than the first one would be in the line of fire for the one behind him and could get shot.
Just a couple notes:
1. I have done a combat roll with a gun in hand, the Safety on an AR15 is placed where it is and designed the way it is so that enabling and disabling it can be trained in to the process of firing the weapon. Trigger Discipline does not need to be discussed, protecting your sights and the barrel crown should at least be noted.
2. Double booking could actually improve the training. A paintball tourny in the middle of a timed obstacle course may not produce the best time, but it will make things more realistic.
3. Can we call this the Danger Room?
looking at this comic, i suddenly realized that sydneys power to project ghost image of herself would be useful here, and at some future point she might be able to upgrade to be able to project a crowd of images to confuse oppenents
The last thing Maxima needs is 18 Sydney clones
Just need to reiterate, nobody is shooting at Syddles. Syddles will be shooting at some (but not all) cardboard cut-outs.
And maybe link to the Pew Pew Orb so all the illusions can shoot
I love how, while Peggy is facepalming, Seneca is watching with amused fascination at the entertainment. While eating another cupcake.
Because she knows she’s no longer in charge of Sydney’s training :P
I think Peggy wants to continue taking pride in her work as range master and head of firearms training, and Sydney dinking around the course setting a new low doesn’t exactly contribute to that. She’s probably especially annoyed after hearing about Sydney’s quick marksmanship improvement and getting her hopes up for a correlating improvement on live fire (and maturity).
The panel where Sydney screws up and invents new vocalizations in her frustration is a big mood.
Surely someone out there has the superpower ‘delete paintball stains’? I am reminded of true original D&D, the three small books in the plywood (see, I am back on topic) box, for which someone posited the existence of zeroth level spells that most people had, like ‘sweep floor’ and ‘bring water in coffeepot to boil’.
Pretty sure most of those are covered by Prestidigitation, but perhaps new sorcerors wouldn’t realize that they could do more than one thing with that cantrip.
Because mage-types tend to use Wisdom as their dum(b)p-stat
That’s a much more recent edition of the rules than the iirc 1973 edition.
0^{th}level spells are the most general, but they consume purse energy. Some 0^{th}level spells consume more purse energy than the spellcaster has. It may be that a spellcaster can have negative purse energy. Negative purse energy is dangerous, because it tangentially annihilates positive purse energy. Despite that negative purse energy idly grows faster than positive purse energy, a careful user of negative purse energy can decelerate his growth of negative purse energy and accelerate his growth of positive purse energy.
{\sl This has been a private service announcement by the *NAME corporation—your pain is our gain—from Galytn macroëconomics.}
It is good to see Sydney attempting the shoot house while she ia at the peak of her abilities.
Having said that, how many of the Sydney faces in the last few panels were illusions?
I still think its cute they think she’ll ever be in a position to use her firearm. Considering hte force field prevents her from shooting one in most situations.
Granted. There is that one shadow teleporter.. Who. I need to point out. is STILL literally the only thing to bypass her shield in a meanigful way. Even scans don’t really work. Magic auras either.
I’m still curious how that dude’s powers work to let him do that.
buut i’m pretty sure i’m miss remebering and he vapped next to her then she put the shield up . that makes a lot more sense. so i’m sure thats what actually occured.
if i recall, the guy could phase, not teleport. He came up through the floor.
Correct, he came up through the floor behind her, and she got knocked down before grabbing the shield orb.
Reading this again I’m suddenly reminded of a scene from Dan and Mab’s Furry Adventures because of that little comment about Mission: Impossible at the bottom. Two characters that were friends just living together reach an awkward point in their relationship where it’s clearly not going to upgrade to ‘friends with benefits’ or ‘he/she is my girl/boyfriend’ level but they’re avoiding discussing it so as the female member is explaining things to her mother we see a panel cut to a flashback of him using suction cups to try and stealthily bypass her across the ceiling and her adding how she needs to remind him that humming wasn’t a good idea while he was doing it. You just know he was humming the Mission: Impossible theme when he was doing it.
http://www.missmab.com/Comics/Vol_760.php