Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days [Archive]

Gez

2016-10-08, 02:54 PM

While I'm at it, I disagree with this. The AIs think non-intuitively all the time. There is nothing rational about Enesby's love of puns, for example.

On the contrary, it makes perfect sense for Ennesby in particular. Keep in mind he was originally designed as the AI behind a virtual boys band, the New Sync Boys, NSB. So large parts of his core programming were devoted to language functions useful for commercial songwriting, and that definitely includes wordplay -- puns, portmanteaus, rhymes and alliterations are all useful there.

On the other hand, an AI grown to control and operate a spaceship would focus less on wordplay and theatrics and more on preserving structural integrity and the safety of the crew and passengers. (For a warship, add combat maneuvers, enemy detection, and all types of countermeasures and counter-countermeasures and so on.) Ennesby likes wordplay because it's something that was originally useful to him, so he was grown to like it.

Also, intuitive thought and rational thought are not the same thing, they're in fact mostly opposite (rational thought is reasoned, whereas an intuition is something where you are not consciously aware of how exactly you came to that thought). So pointing out a behavior you deem irrational as an example of non-intuitive thought is not really a cogent argument.

eschmenk

2016-10-08, 03:42 PM

Petey is once again teraporting planets around for unknown purposes.

Once again? :smallconfused:

FWIW, reasons I was angry at Broken Wind:

1) The previous update, especially the joke, but also the fact that it talked about Kaff failing to realize something while ignoring the fact that didn't realize it either and it had less of an excuse, made it seem like a complete jackass.

2) I blame Broken Wind as much for Kaff's death as I blame Kevyn. It's inexcusable that it had no STS missiles ready in the middle of a battle. I would think it would be SOP that it would have missiles on some sort of hot standby when away on missions and especially to not get some ready in the middle of a battle seems absurd. Yes, it didn't know that it would have anything to shoot at, but it also didn't know that it wouldn't.

A few other potential targets for STS missiles:

The Esspies might have tried to use Gift Horse to ram Broken Wind.
The Toughs might have somehow learned where the Esspies were teraporting from.
Cindercone might have needed an STS missile fired at it, either to repeat McConger's trick or to simply blast a location the Esspies had seized.
The Esspies might have had small ships hidden in the hollow TPU noodles or larger ones hidden under the ocean.
The Esspies might have had something very valuable that Karl of Kaff could have threatened to destroy if they didn't cease their attack.
Other things?

The fact that McCogner managed to get his STS missile ready in a timely manner makes Broken Wind's failure look worse, if that's possible.

The one possibility of making this a moot point wrt Kaff's death would have been if there had been no path to get the missiles from their launch bays (where the live missiles would have been) to where the Esspies were. I had rationalized that, even though it made little sense, maybe their weren't any hatches near the fabbers. The current update makes it rather clear that there are quite a few. Basically, then, the update reopened the whole issue of Broken Wind's inexcusable failure leading to Kaff's death and took away the last chance that Broken Wind wasn't one of those responsible for it.

3) Any reminder about Broken Wind's responsibility in Kaff's death is also a reminder of how stupid it was for the Toughs to be flying around in Broken Wind and Cindercone in the first place. (I've vented about that elsewhere.)

4) When I read the previous update, given how things have been lately, I anticipated that none of the characters in the comic would be smart enough to think of using water to help cool down Broken Wind. It was actually a pleasant surprise that Flinders did. But obviously Broken Wind didn't. I could live with that and, despite my reaction, I think the current update is much better than some of the other recent ones, but there is too much attached baggage for me to agree that it's "comic gold." And since I had already thought of water and steam explosions the day before, the joke wasn't as fresh as it would have been otherwise and that makes a big difference toward how funny jokes seem. I do agree that Broken Wind's facial expression was well done, though.

I think I'm so annoyed at the characters' apparent stupidity because it's a symptom of bigger problems. Basically, HT isn't bothering to come up with ways for them to behave that would be more intelligent and the readers are expected to just go along with it. For example, the Toughs are stupidly flying around in ships that people would want to steal (even though they could easily afford better ships that wouldn't have that problem) so that HT doesn't have to bother coming up with a different reason for the Toughs to be attacked whenever he wants that to happen. That really annoys me. I guess there is at least a couple of problems with these sorts of things.

1) I have trouble believing that HT can't see the problems with his stories. He's good at evaluating other stories and he's done much better in the past, so how could he not see the problems in his stories? He would criticize a movie that was as bad as what he's writing (there is no way the current book would cross his "Threshold of Disappointment" as a movie), so it seems like laziness for him to not do better.

2) I can't help but feel like he's insulting the readers' intelligence. It's almost as if he's saying, "I think you are too dumb to notice how stupid the story is getting and how many holes there are in the story."

Also, intuitive thought and rational thought are not the same thing, they're in fact mostly opposite (rational thought is reasoned, whereas an intuition is something where you are not consciously aware of how exactly you came to that thought). So pointing out a behavior you deem irrational as an example of non-intuitive thought is not really a cogent argument.

Yes, I should have said "intuitively," not "non-intuitively." I said the exact opposite of what I meant. Sorry about that. (Unfortunately, I can't edit the comment, probably because the thread is locked.)

The point I was trying to make still stands. They AIs often think as intuitively as everyone else. The may not go about it in the same way, but somehow they make decisions that seem as intuitive as what humans do.

The Glyphstone

2016-10-08, 05:36 PM

Okay, Credomar was technically a space station, not a planet.

NEO|Phyte

2016-10-08, 05:52 PM

The fact that McCogner managed to get his STS missile ready in a timely manner makes Broken Wind's failure look worse, if that's possible.

Mac had an entire missile, Kaff grabbed a warhead from the ship's munitions. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that when your bomb comes with a propulsion system, it's a bit easier to not be at ground zero getting it where you want it to explode.

eschmenk

2016-10-08, 06:07 PM

Okay, Credomar was technically a space station, not a planet.

Did Petey ever move Credomar? I remember Lota doing that, but I'm not sure that Petey even knows where it is. I had to double-check the wiki to make sure I was correctly remembering what Credomar was, so I could easily be forgetting something, though.

Mac had an entire missile, Kaff grabbed a warhead from the ship's munitions. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that when your bomb comes with a propulsion system, it's a bit easier to not be at ground zero getting it where you want it to explode.

I wasn't talking about the warhead Kaff grabbed.

The Glyphstone

2016-10-08, 06:20 PM

Nope, you're right again. It was Lota, not Petey.

factotum

2016-10-09, 02:11 AM

Mac had an entire missile, Kaff grabbed a warhead from the ship's munitions.

Something just occurred to me about that. Why couldn't Kaff have ordered Broken Wind to teraport that warhead as near to the Esspies as possible and then set it off? Why did he have to run it manually in there? Did I miss something saying the Esspies had set up their own TAD?

As for today's strip. I think I've mentioned before how silly it is that everyone apparently knows where Uli-Oa is and have decided to come after it now Oisri has been snatched away from them. Do none of these galactic powers have enough ships to send them after two targets at once? The UNS were perfectly willing to trade away a *battleplate* for the sake of an 8km-wide ball of PTUs, yet they can't be bothered to send one after a planet-sized chunk of the same material?

HandofShadows

2016-10-09, 07:15 AM

Such fine tuned tereports are something the ship didn't have proper equipment for. The people going after Osir are likely more the "black bag" folks and the operations are not quiet "official" and so they have limited forces. The U.N.S. was a bit more official so it had more resources (And a better reason than pure greed). The .4c rock that came in could not be targeted accurately because of the nano coating on it. People only knew it was there because of it's gravity which likely isn't enough to get an accurate targeting solution with and No Ships were in range (It was well inside the defense zone when it was detected.) Also the UNS forces are there at the behest of Petey.

eschmenk

2016-10-09, 08:59 AM

Something just occurred to me about that. Why couldn't Kaff have ordered Broken Wind to teraport that warhead as near to the Esspies as possible and then set it off? Why did he have to run it manually in there? Did I miss something saying the Esspies had set up their own TAD?

Nothing said that the Esspies set up their own TAD, but I just assumed that they boarders brought portable TADs with them. Obviously they wouldn't want Toughs teraporting into their rear or just teraporting in a weapon. We saw the damage Captain Landon's (name?) group did when it used the teraport cage to get into the Esspies' rear on Cindercone.

That said, I wonder why Broken Wind couldn't have used gravity to move the warhead. If some ship (I can't remember which) had the fine control to move bullets [EDIT: paintballs(?)], why couldn't Broken Wind move warheads? And if it couldn't use gravity, why wouldn't it have some bots like the ones that moved the baffles on board Cindercone? I guess we're just not supposed to think of things like that?

Of course, the biggest question would be why didn't Broken Wind have some missiles already assembled and ready to fire given that it was in a battle where it might have needed to fire them quickly?

As for today's strip. I think I've mentioned before how silly it is that everyone apparently knows where Uli-Oa is and have decided to come after it now Oisri has been snatched away from them. Do none of these galactic powers have enough ships to send them after two targets at once? The UNS were perfectly willing to trade away a *battleplate* for the sake of an 8km-wide ball of PTUs, yet they can't be bothered to send one after a planet-sized chunk of the same material?

Yes, it does seem pretty silly, although some civilizations may have heard about Uli-Oa later than others and it can take large bureaucratic organizations a long time to make decisions. OTOH, dictatorial governments can make decisions quickly. HT is making it look as if all governments thought, "We can't get ORSI! What do we do now?", then they all took about the same amount of time to decide to try to capture Uli-Oa, then arrived at about the same time. The UNS just happened to beat them thanks to Petey.

In the UNS's defense, though, part of the reason it was at ORSI was because the wreckage of Morqueng (sp?) was there. But given that Morqueng crashed there, it's surprising that they didn't arrive first and have that area secure before everyone else arrived. That wold have been well before they could have heard of Uli-Oa. Maybe the DME caused problems? But if they brought enough forces to deal with the DME, unless they took huge losses, they should have been able to dominate anyone else who arrived. :smallconfused: (I'm sure this is far beyond anything we are supposed to think of.)

Such fine tuned tereports are something the ship didn't have proper equipment for.
Why would you say that? We saw Ebbie being teraported into medical, which I think was aboard Cindercone or Broken Wind. Do you have a link that shows that they have only crude teraport equipment? If they do, that's just one more inexcusable failure on the part of the Toughs. They are super rich. Why wouldn't they buy and install decent equipment on their ships?

The Glyphstone

2016-10-09, 09:55 AM

Wasn't it explained that Iafa was locked out of fine-manipulation of onboard gravitics for 'security' reasons, I.e. they were afraid she would go bonkers again and kill them all?

HandofShadows

2016-10-09, 09:58 AM

Or the fairies could have brought along a mobile TAD.

This as well.

Wasn't it explained that Iafa was locked out of fine-manipulation of onboard gravitics for 'security' reasons, I.e. they were afraid she would go bonkers again and kill them all?

eschmenk

2016-10-09, 12:53 PM

Wasn't it explained that Iafa was locked out of fine-manipulation of onboard gravitics for 'security' reasons, I.e. they were afraid she would go bonkers again and kill them all?

No, I don't thinks so. I could easily be forgetting something, but I don't remember that. I thought she went directly from KILL THEM ALL to hiding inside Enesby to taking over the can of sky where she automatically had control over robotic long gun ships that could easily wipe out entire civilizations. I don't recall any limitations being put on her in the can of sky and don't think she had any crewed ships after her crazy phase. Also, a ship's AI could plaster everyone on board up against bulkheads simply by providing no internal gravitics while they accelerated the ship, so I don't see how locking out fine control of gravitics would help much. Granted, if a crazy ship's AI wanted to keep the ship's china and glassware while killing the crew, the ship's AI might have a little trouble figuring out how to do that without fine control. :smallamused:

The Glyphstone

2016-10-09, 01:22 PM

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-08-25

I knew it was stated somewhere. It's not said why, but she is 'locked out of the ability to weaponize internal gravity, for security reasons'.

eschmenk

2016-10-09, 03:45 PM

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-08-25

I knew it was stated somewhere. It's not said why, but she is 'locked out of the ability to weaponize internal gravity, for security reasons'.

I didn't even remember that AI was called "Iafa" :smallredface: I was thinking of the one back in the can of sky.

It would seem odd that the restriction would have prevented it from moving the warhead, though. That wouldn't be a matter of weaponizing the gravitics, except in a very indirect way. The restriction must be pretty general if the restriction prevented it from doing that. :smallconfused:

The Glyphstone

2016-10-09, 04:09 PM

It's not completely unreasonable though, for someone as paranoid as Tagon can be, to just flatly prohbit any sort of offensive use of gravitics internal to the ship, even indirectly like moving munitions around. Even if that would still leave many ways for a crazy AI to kill its crew, it'd make him feel safer.

eschmenk

2016-10-09, 09:01 PM

New comic (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-10-10): A French lesson! Not necessarily a correct one, though. Does anyone know if the spelling is correct? [EDIT: Spelling has been fixed.]

The UNS is station keeping, rather than helping a friendly vessel that's in distress? Did the UNS send other ships to help? (I kind of hope not; I would like to see how much damage the steam explosions would cause, but I'm afraid we won't get to see that.)

factotum

2016-10-10, 02:38 AM

The UNS is station keeping, rather than helping a friendly vessel that's in distress? Did the UNS send other ships to help?

We've got no evidence that the Toughs actually told the Manicouagan about their problem--maybe that's what Petey is here to talk about?

eschmenk

2016-10-10, 08:40 AM

We've got no evidence that the Toughs actually told the Manicouagan about their problem--maybe that's what Petey is here to talk about?

Kaff told the Admiral that Cindercone had been boarded by hostile Ebbies and I think the Admiral saw Kaff learn that Broken Wind was boarded, too, at the same time. It would seem to be a bit ridiculous if the ships hadn't been broadcasting updates in addition to that. Why make Petey do what you could do yourself? Normally, in scifi one expects space ships to imitate current day surface ships, which do broadcast messages if they get in trouble and need help. Before this update, I had thought that the UNS ships were flying through the Toughs' TAD field and still too far out and to be able to help. I don't know why Karl wouldn't have sent them the codes to terraport in so they could help repel the boarders, but I was willing to overlook that. Since the Ebbies had also attacked and stolen a UNS ship, the UNS would have had plenty of motivation to help. (The Ebbies might have brought portable TADs with them, which might have kept UNS ships from porting right next to the Tough's ships or there might be some other way to rationalize it not working, though.) But if the Manicouagan is station-keeping, it's already through the Tough's TAD field and it's not trying to go anywhere.

I suppose another possibility is that there was a time skip and Broken Wind's heat problems have already been resolved. Or, as I already said, it could be that some UNS ships are helping, but Manicouagan isn't one of them.

So far, it also seems odd that we haven't seen more signs that the UNS is concerned about what happened to Gift Horse. Perhaps Bala-Amin was hunting for Captain Landon because she wanted him involved in chasing it down, but other than that, we haven't seen the UNS do anything. (Since Landon's help wasn't authorized, I'm not counting it.) Granted, they could have been doing things that we haven't learned about yet.

BTW, the French spelling error was corrected overnight. Originally, it was, "Mon Dieux" IIRC.

halfeye

2016-10-10, 10:59 AM

We've got no evidence that the Toughs actually told the Manicouagan about their problem--maybe that's what Petey is here to talk about?

They did tell Petey?

I think Petey has something else on his mind, though so far I have no idea what that might be.

mouadj

2016-10-10, 11:17 AM

There is much more talking these days

eschmenk

2016-10-10, 11:19 AM

BTW, another thing that seems very weird it that there hasn't been any signs that the UNS is concerned that the ships just arrived might be boarded by the Esspies. How would they know that the Esspies don't have the ability to teraport through TAD fields, or have super-stealthy ships that you can't detect even when along side. They should be trying to figure out how the Esspies boarded Broken Wind, Cindercone and Gift Horse so they can make sure it doesn't happen to them. Maybe they should even be planning to neutralize the Esspies so they won't have to worry about fighting a war on two fronts. I doubt they know that the civilian Esspies are clueless, but even if they do, they still should be worrying about the military Esspies doing something.

They did tell Petey?

I think Petey has something else on his mind, though so far I have no idea what exactly that might be.

Well, they did tell him about what Kaff was doing, so Petey would have known much of it. Beyond that, Petey has a way of finding things out. I'm pretty sure he knows everything that goes on in the Admiral's TAC room, for example. (If he's there now, he can probably also be there when the Admiral doesn't see him.) However, I think Petey is probably there to talk about something else, too.

ADDED:
Just as some guesses, maybe the scientists finally learned something very significant and they (and the information they learned) need to be rescued? (I would hope that Cindercone would still be able to do that much, but maybe not.) Maybe Petey knows the information and thinks the Admiral needs to know it, too, for military reasons. Maybe Petey has figured out how to use the Esspies to help defend their planet and needs the UNS to cooperate, despite what the Wing Commander just did. Maybe one of the big fish the Orangutan was hoping to catch got cooked, so the battleplate may as well grab it and serve it for dinner? More seriously, the Orangutan was hoping for a big sonar pulse from the impactor hitting the planet, and maybe the sonar equipment spotted something very important, so the "Petey learned something of military significance" seems to be the most likely idea to me.

I'm expecting the current book to end pretty quickly. Cindercone is damaged and can't fight at all and Broken Wind is badly damaged, so there wouldn't seem to be any reason for them to remain where they are. I would expect both the them to grab the remaining scientists if possible and flee back to the can of sky for repairs. (Unfortunately, I don't think there is much of a chance that they would be replaced.) The Toughs have lost too many named characters to be a very effective fighting force for a while, so I'm expecting the next chapter to be about them recuperating and repairing and talking and talking and talking some more. That would probably be the first chapter in the next book.

----------

Tuesday's comic (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-10-11): Yet more delay in finding out what Petey wants. To some extent it's so bad it's good, but there isn't enough to it to be all that funny.

JavaScribe

2016-10-12, 08:04 PM

So how did the fleet fighting over Oisri learn about Uli-Oa? I thought it was known only to the Espererin and the Toughs.

eschmenk

2016-10-12, 08:43 PM

Wednesday's comic (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-10-12): Petey ignores the fact that the UNS would have to control the wealth before they could share it. If the Esspies can infest the PTUs that would be stolen, and a bunch of Esspies want to hold onto the PTUs, they might be a rather large problem. (IIRC, the civilian Esspie leader was willing to pack up and leave if given the three PTU ships, but not the Wing Commander. Now I doubt the Esspies will get the three ships, so they all might fight for the PTUs at Uli-Oa. The three ships weren't delivered, were they?)

Thursday's comic: Didn't the Admiral complain about Petey meddling in Monday's comic? Now he's suggesting that Petey does more meddling? Why can't he decide if he likes Petey's meddling or not?

But you know what, it's so great that Breya became the Secretary General (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2015-03-15) so that this admiral who can't comb his hair makes huge policy decisions without her input (or input from anyone else who might have succeeded her). :smalltongue:

So how did the fleet fighting over Oisri learn about Uli-Oa? I thought it was known only to the Espererin and the Toughs.

All of the characters have assumed that the scientists were not going to keep it a secret and everyone would quickly find out. The Toughs were talking as if a huge war was inevitable all along. That's why, as factotum and I have already said, it seems like a big plot hole that there weren't already others attempting to reach Uli-Oa before the UNS did. Why did all the combatants wait until ORSI wasn't available? Odds of getting a significant piece of ORSI was very low given that there was so much other competition, so why not switch to the alternative?

The Glyphstone

2016-10-12, 09:11 PM

I'm almost dead certain the admiral is being sarcastic here.

eschmenk

2016-10-12, 09:38 PM

I'm almost dead certain the admiral is being sarcastic here.

Maybe, but to me it doesn't work any better as sarcasm. Petey just did it and would probably do it again. If the other person can respond very reasonably, "OK, I'll do that," any sarcasm isn't going to be very effective. He'd have to be so ridiculously stupid that he doesn't know that Petey could do it.

tonberrian

2016-10-12, 09:45 PM

eschmenk

2016-10-13, 01:21 AM

Personally I think something that couldn't be predicted is going to happen. Probably something to do with the control module that they were pinging for when the relativistic object hit. Petey's estimate on the worth of Uli-Oa is going to be a vast underestimate.

I think so too, except I'd say that it can be predicted, at least vaguely. As I said before, I think there is a good chance that the sonar pulse from the impactor hitting the planet is going to reveal something important. Remember the orangutan scientist was excited about what the sonar pulse was going to reveal, although he may have been hoping to find where the big fish were at if the fishing joke is part of the story. In any case, I think they may get a good image of the control module from the pulse and learn more about it. And yes, figuring out how to make the PTUs would be more valuable than the PTUs themselves (Teach a man to fish vs. give a man a fish) so I expect the control module would help them do that somehow. Maybe it would be a control module for a huge anni plant required to make the PTUs, for example.

Normally Cindercone and Broken Wind should return back to the can of sky for repairs, but perhaps they will realize that the control module is so important that they will stay and try to retrieve it or study it or something before it can be destroyed in the upcoming war. :smallconfused:

Kornaki

2016-10-13, 06:16 PM

Maybe, but to me it doesn't work any better as sarcasm. Petey just did it and would probably do it again. If the other person can respond very reasonably, "OK, I'll do that," any sarcasm isn't going to be very effective. He'd have to be so ridiculously stupid that he doesn't know that Petey could do it.

He knows Petey can do it and he is expressing annoyance at Petey wasting his time instead of just doing whatever he is going to do. If god is going to act he should just do it instead of reprimanding everyone for not being as good as god for doing it.

Drascin

2016-10-14, 01:35 AM

The koala god is losing his patience with the Admiral, seems. But then, the loss of a friend hits all of us. I feel I can cut Petey a little slack for being curt.

factotum

2016-10-14, 02:25 AM

He knows Petey can do it

He *thinks* Petey can do it. He's probably wrong on that front--we've already seen from other strips that Petey is having trouble fighting the dark matter beasties from Andromeda since they've set up their own core generator now, and Petey's comment in today's strip reinforces that.

tonberrian

2016-10-14, 07:07 AM

I think we're about to see why having the core mind of an AI gestalt be one that was originally totally insane is a bad idea. :smalleek:

ryuplaneswalker

2016-10-14, 08:27 AM

I think we're about to see why having the core mind of an AI gestalt be one that was originally totally insane is a bad idea. :smalleek:

Alternatively Petey is angry, I don't think we have seen Petey truly angry ever have we? it is understandable why he is angry too because he put himself in a position where he couldn't save one of his best friends because he was saving a bunch of children who were unable to share and are about to make that sacrifice completely pointless..by not being able to share again.

eschmenk

2016-10-14, 09:58 AM

I think we're about to see why having the core mind of an AI gestalt be one that was originally totally insane is a bad idea. :smalleek:

If you are talking about Petey, I don't. I'm not even seeing signs that Petey is going beyond acting annoyed. Given that Admiral Needsacomb was apparently endangering the lives of many people in addition to himself by being both stupid and obstinate and Petey had already tried begging, I can't blame him for showing a little annoyance. It was appropriate for the situation and apparently necessary, too. At the moment, Petey seems to be getting what he was after, after all.

I think Petey's apparent emotional response would have been perfectly appropriate even if Kaff hadn't been killed.

Wayson

2016-10-14, 10:22 AM

Alternatively Petey is angry, I don't think we have seen Petey truly angry ever have we? it is understandable why he is angry too because he put himself in a position where he couldn't save one of his best friends because he was saving a bunch of children who were unable to share and are about to make that sacrifice completely pointless..by not being able to share again.

I'm wondering if this might be the tipping point that pushes Petey from being a benevolent deity concerned with minimizing casualties into becoming... something else. I'm not going to say 'omnicidal' yet, because it'll probably take a while to work up to that point, but I could see him deciding that the galaxy needs a firm hand at the helm, and since none of the slow organics are up to the task, they'll all bend the knee to him.

eschmenk

2016-10-14, 10:37 AM

He *thinks* Petey can do it. He's probably wrong on that front--we've already seen from other strips that Petey is having trouble fighting the dark matter beasties from Andromeda since they've set up their own core generator now, and Petey's comment in today's strip reinforces that.

Nah, it would be trivial for Petey to meddle with the UNS. Just as an example Admiral Needsacomb was already angry because Petey had infiltrated his TAC room and was bothering him, so imagine how upset he would be if Petey started broadcasting the conversation over the hypernet so everyone in the galaxy could join in. Petey wouldn't need to do something on the scale of moving ORSI to make the Admiral's day be even worse than it already was.

Since Admiral Needsacomb thinks that Petey is annoying even when Petey isn't trying to be annoying, it would have been stupid of him to sarcastically challenge Petey to do things that would annoy him even more.

ryuplaneswalker

2016-10-15, 08:24 PM

I'm wondering if this might be the tipping point that pushes Petey from being a benevolent deity concerned with minimizing casualties into becoming... something else. I'm not going to say 'omnicidal' yet, because it'll probably take a while to work up to that point, but I could see him deciding that the galaxy needs a firm hand at the helm, and since none of the slow organics are up to the task, they'll all bend the knee to him.

Na, if anything Petey would just pack it up say "You crazy nutters are on your own."

The Glyphstone

2016-10-15, 09:32 PM

Probably not coincidental, but the last time Kevyn was in charge, Tagon was also dead. I guess 'Chief Mad Scientist' translates to 'First Officer' in the Tough's chain of command.

Grey_Wolf_c

2016-10-15, 09:41 PM

Probably not coincidental, but the last time Kevyn was in charge, Tagon was also dead. I guess 'Chief Mad Scientist' translates to 'First Officer' in the Tough's chain of command.

Seniority. Also, last time he hated the job so much he broke physics to get Tagon back in command, so here's hoping.

GW

eschmenk

2016-10-15, 09:45 PM

New comic (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-10-16)

Did Broken Wind not bother keeping Cindercone informed, or did Cindercone withhold the information from Kevyn? It would be a good idea for the senior officer for the company to know that he's now the senior officer and needs to start making the big decisions! And when will Kevyn learn that Broken Wind has no crew on board? If no one bothered to tell Kevyn that Karl was unfit for duty and that he needed to take over, I doubt they would have told Kevyn about the other stuff.

Nice way to start off being in charge of the entire company. "Because I kind of want to pack up and go home." That should really help Flinders with her confidence.

One more thing, why the hell was Flinders surprised that Kevyn was highest ranking officer remaining and he would take charge of the company for now? She used to be competent.

NEO|Phyte

2016-10-15, 10:11 PM

factotum

2016-10-16, 02:25 AM

Not sure how many people in this thread threw money at the Planet Mercenary kickstarter, but looks like backer PDFs on the 70 maxims book got sent out. Looking forward to the dead tree edition, though reading through the version with in-universe annotations is making me kinda sad that they couldn't find a way to make it work and opted to remove them for the final product.

My concern is that the dead tree version is going to be, well, a bit skimpy without the handwritten annotations. The maxims themselves aren't very long, and the "scholarly" analysis at the bottom of each page is barely a paragraph at best. The handwritten notes are what really make the book, IMHO.

ryuplaneswalker

2016-10-16, 09:09 PM

Probably not coincidental, but the last time Kevyn was in charge, Tagon was also dead. I guess 'Chief Mad Scientist' translates to 'First Officer' in the Tough's chain of command.

Who else is crazy enough to be in charge of Schlock, It takes a Badass like Tagon, someone crazy enough to shell his own position like Tagon Sr..or someone crazy enough to wear anti matter grenades on his shoulders.

eschmenk

2016-10-16, 10:08 PM

Who else is crazy enough to be in charge of Schlock, It takes a Badass like Tagon, someone crazy enough to shell his own position like Tagon Sr..or someone crazy enough to wear anti matter grenades on his shoulders.

Murtaugh just bribed Schlock to obey her. (I thought that was pretty weak.) That was the time when the Toughs accompanied they balloons to Earth as security and a civil war almost broke out. Karl, Kaff and Kevyn didn't go, so Murtaugh was in charge of Schlock. Yes, she would have been under Karl at the time, but Murtaugh seemed to be operating very independently, rather than Karl being involved.

factotum

2016-10-23, 10:11 AM

HandofShadows

2016-10-23, 10:42 AM

Making it harder to recover might be the point. They would be out all over the place picking up the expensive gravel is still easier than getting killed fighting.

eschmenk

2016-10-23, 11:45 AM

You know, I'm not really convinced about this plan of Petey's. For a start, if he's going to blast Uli-Oa into expensive gravel with relativistic impactors, a lot of said expensive gravel will be either vapourised or travelling out of the system at high speed and thus quite hard to recover.

If you change "easier" to "more rewarding," I would agree with HandofShadows. That said, I'm beginning to wonder about Petey. He already knew Kaff was dead and given the jokes about how fast he processes things, he should have been through all the stages of grief already. Has he been dumbed-down, too?

In any case, I think that Petey is probably making a mistake. The control unit is probably too valuable to be destroyed. It's possible that Petey is just playing dumb and has plans to make off with the control unit when everyone is gone and no one is looking, but I doubt it.

ryuplaneswalker

2016-10-23, 06:35 PM

eschmenk

2016-10-23, 06:59 PM

I think he just wants to throw more rocks at the people who killed Tagon.

His aim is way off then. :smallbiggrin:

(OK, at least one of them was left behind (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-10-22).)

smuchmuch

2016-10-25, 02:12 AM

And here I though it was "publish or perish"

McDouggal

2016-10-25, 08:06 PM

Went through a black hole.

Or a sun.

I'm not sure which, but black hole seems more likely.

memnarch

2016-10-25, 09:40 PM

I bet it's the DMEs again.

eschmenk

2016-10-25, 09:52 PM

I'm not sure which, but black hole seems more likely.

Even though it would have had to come back out again? :smallconfused:

I stopped reading SM for a while, so I don't know the answer to this: Was a DME attack ruled out for some reason? A DME attack would be the first thing I would think of. Unless it was ruled out, it should be the first thing Dana and Foxworthy should have thought of, too, of course. But they didn't say that they assumed it was a DME attack. Why not?

Another idea would be some sort of an accident.

Added: memnarch Ninja'ed me a bit.

factotum

2016-10-26, 01:57 AM

I'm not sure DMEs can actually *create* massive gravitational gradients, can they? They'd surely be a lot less sensitive to other people using gravy around them if they could do it themselves.

guttering flame

2016-10-26, 02:34 AM

I stopped reading SM for a while, so I don't know the answer to this: Was a DME attack ruled out for some reason? A DME attack would be the first thing I would think of. Unless it was ruled out, it should be the first thing Dana and Foxworthy should have thought of, too, of course. But they didn't say that they assumed it was a DME attack. Why not?

The baloonoid culture devoted vast efforts to hide from the DME from what I recall. That's why they made so much trasuranic material. Maybe they also had a pact of mutual nonaggression with them?

My pet theory: faulty engineering made the structure collapse when overstressed.

They'd surely be a lot less sensitive to other people using gravy around them if they could do it themselves.

It's wormholes they're sensitive to. It's a weaponized acupuncture to them

eschmenk

2016-10-26, 07:47 AM

I'm not sure DMEs can actually *create* massive gravitational gradients, can they? They'd surely be a lot less sensitive to other people using gravy around them if they could do it themselves.

That's how they fight. And as guttering flame said, they seem to be hurt by wormholes. That's why TADs and teraporting hurt them.

The baloonoid culture devoted vast efforts to hide from the DME from what I recall. That's why they made so much trasuranic material. Maybe they also had a pact of mutual nonaggression with them?

They were at war with them. If there was a treaty of nonaggression, why would they need to hide from them?

HandofShadows

2016-10-27, 06:37 AM

Well, now we have a very good guess at what happened to Uli-Oa. Dark Matter Beasties. And that comes as zero surprise to me. The Offans build the Can Full of Sky with the clear intent of hiding from the DME and if you notice even the Robo Faries are "built" in a way to avoid detection from the DME's (and "programed" not to use Annie Plant's).

Kornaki

2016-10-27, 07:14 AM

Another audience insert in the comic. Howard, you know she's talking to you, right?

eschmenk

2016-10-27, 08:48 AM

and if you notice even the Robo Faries are "built" in a way to avoid detection from the DME's (and "programed" not to use Annie Plant's).

The robo-faries are from the Pereri system (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-04-20), not Uli-Oa. One clan of them happened to find and colonize Uli-Oa presumably long after the DMEs destroyed it. How could they be relevant to the DMEs attacking Uli-Oa so much earlier?

The Wing Commander tried to steal Broken Wind, Cindercone and Gift Horse and take them to the Pereri system -- the home of the Esspies. He was successful with Gift Horse. That's why it's no longer there.

I stopped reading SM for a while, so I don't know the answer to this: Was a DME attack ruled out for some reason? A DME attack would be the first thing I would think of. Unless it was ruled out, it should be the first thing Dana and Foxworthy should have thought of, too, of course. But they didn't say that they assumed it was a DME attack. Why not?

We have our answer: They were just acting stupid, like so many other characters. :smallyuk:

Another audience insert in the comic. Howard, you know she's talking to you, right?

Yeah, that was especially ironic after all the big x is big updates. :smallsigh:

tonberrian

2016-10-27, 08:08 PM

And now we know why this is unusual. (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-10-28)

guttering flame

2016-10-28, 01:03 AM

Seems I was not so far off the mark. It was faulty design that let the being escape. :smallbiggrin:

factotum

2016-10-28, 02:35 AM

ryuplaneswalker

2016-10-28, 06:30 AM

Danita (??) may think the other guy is going from scientist to novelist, but given everything we know, the idea of using a Pa'anuri as a power source actually makes sense. Oisri being a method of creating dark matter entities is explained, the destruction of Uli-Oa makes sense, and it gives a motive for the Pa'anuri attacking the Milky Way, which has been conspicuously absent until now.

Well the Dark Matter aliens seemed to have been attacking the Gatekeepers because Teraporting was harmful to them, it does explain the "Wipe out the Galaxy" bomb in the core that seemed to make little sense however.

factotum

2016-10-28, 06:44 AM

Well the Dark Matter aliens seemed to have been attacking the Gatekeepers because Teraporting was harmful to them

Except they'd already made a deal whereby the Gatekeepers would suppress any attempts at creating teraport technology and force everyone to use their wormgates, so there was no need to attack them (or trick them into destroying the galaxy via a flawed core generator, which is what they actually did). Plus, how does teraporting in the Milky Way hurt Pa'anuri in Andromeda, two million light years away?

Kornaki

2016-10-28, 07:02 AM

It's a little unfortunate that the big reveal that explains ten years of plot is so anti climactic.

Slayn82

2016-10-28, 07:55 AM

Beyond the machine rebellion, exists the Power Source rebellion.

So, we have proof of a second instance of a Dark Matter Entity appearing or being born from a massively giant Annie Plant. Annie Plants use massive amounts of Gravitics to compress matter into Neutroniun, not unlike some Stars do.

Maybe the DME's are intelligent beings naturally born on certain stars?

HandofShadows

2016-10-28, 08:33 AM

Danita (??) may think the other guy is going from scientist to novelist, but given everything we know, the idea of using a Pa'anuri as a power source actually makes sense. Oisri being a method of creating dark matter entities is explained, the destruction of Uli-Oa makes sense, and it gives a motive for the Pa'anuri attacking the Milky Way, which has been conspicuously absent until now.

IIRC didn't Oisri come from outside the Milky Way Galaxy?

factotum

2016-10-28, 10:18 AM

IIRC didn't Oisri come from outside the Milky Way Galaxy?

I don't think that was ever stated, but willing to be proven wrong? It wouldn't have been as much of a surprise when a DME erupted from Oisri if it had come from outside the galaxy, methinks.

eschmenk

2016-10-28, 11:37 AM

Even Danita seems to be annoyed that it took so long to get an explanation. :smallamused:

And now we know why this is unusual. (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-10-28)

To be clear, we already knew that Uli-Oa was unusual. All other stockpiles of PTUs had been destroyed far more completely. This provides some additional details about Uli-Oa's destruction.

So, we have proof of a second instance of a Dark Matter Entity appearing or being born from a massively giant Annie Plant.

I don't think they actually were annie plants. The UNS assumed that Oisri was an annie plant, but there was a DME inside, rather than neutrons. I think it seemed similar to an annie plant and the UNS jumped to the wrong conclusion.

I don't think that was ever stated, but willing to be proven wrong? It wouldn't have been as much of a surprise when a DME erupted from Oisri if it had come from outside the galaxy, methinks.

Yes, it was just wandering around inside the Milky Way (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2011-12-30), as far as I know. I don't recall any mention of it originating elsewhere.

I wonder if this is analogous to the trope about civilizations advancing until the create intelligent machines that destroy them. Maybe in this universe, civilizations keep advancing to the point where they start creating and using DMEs that destroy them. :smallconfused:

factotum

2016-10-28, 04:42 PM

Alent

2016-10-28, 07:49 PM

The archive seemed pretty certain that it was AIs that resulted in the deaths of organic life, though, not DMEs? Also, if the Pa'anuri had the power to directly destroy all life in the galaxy, I don't think they'd have been messing around persuading the Gatekeepers to build a faulty core generator.

Oafans refer to the Pa'anuri as "lightless wind" as I recall? Their AIs are all named after winds.

The Gatekeeper AI's rambling about "Ascegnarok", maybe it wasn't talking about the ascension of immortality suite people, but AIs?

Edit: And Elf channels Tagon's "Never tell me what you can't do as if it's something nobody can do." line without even realizing it. :smallbiggrin:

eschmenk

2016-10-28, 10:30 PM

The archive seemed pretty certain that it was AIs that resulted in the deaths of organic life, though, not DMEs? Also, if the Pa'anuri had the power to directly destroy all life in the galaxy, I don't think they'd have been messing around persuading the Gatekeepers to build a faulty core generator.

As Petey said, the archive was wrong. Also, as far as we know, not even the gatekeepers are advanced enough to be building new Oirsis yet, so we haven't gotten to the sort of situation I was guessing about yet. Anyway, if your enemy can easily be talking into destroying himself for you, why not do it that way even if you could destroy the enemy if you tried? :smallsmile:

factotum

2016-10-29, 02:00 AM

As Petey said, the archive was wrong.

Petey said the archive was wrong because he *wants* it to be wrong, not out of any proof--he doesn't want to be the AI that destroys all life in the Milky Way, yet the archive is telling him that's what will inevitably happen because it always does.

ryuplaneswalker

2016-10-29, 06:36 AM

Except they'd already made a deal whereby the Gatekeepers would suppress any attempts at creating teraport technology and force everyone to use their wormgates, so there was no need to attack them (or trick them into destroying the galaxy via a flawed core generator, which is what they actually did). Plus, how does teraporting in the Milky Way hurt Pa'anuri in Andromeda, two million light years away?

I figured they were just vindictive jerks until now.

eschmenk

2016-10-29, 07:04 AM

Petey said the archive was wrong because he *wants* it to be wrong, not out of any proof--he doesn't want to be the AI that destroys all life in the Milky Way, yet the archive is telling him that's what will inevitably happen because it always does.

No. The archive's logic was just plain silly. First of all, it didn't understand the observer effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)) correctly.

In quantum mechanics, there is a common misconception (which has acquired a life of its own, giving rise to endless speculations) that it is the mind of a conscious observer that causes the observer effect in quantum processes. It is rooted in a basic misunderstanding of the meaning of the quantum wave function ψ and the quantum measurement process.
The archive even exaggerated that misconception and thought that objects could be destroyed simply by observing them or if there was too much knowledge of the observations. Not only that, the archive took the observer effect misconception and applied it to the entire universe. It thought the problem with the AIs was that they knew too much. It thought that simply by knowing everything about everything, everything would automatically be destroyed. That's silly!

HandofShadows

2016-10-29, 07:11 AM

I figured they were just vindictive jerks until now.

Genocidal jerks would be much more accurate. The DME tried to kill the entire Milky Way Galaxy even though the Gatekeepers had been keeping their end of the treaty. (and kill species that had done nothing to them) Apparently the DME only consider peace treaties as a time out so they can figure out how to genocide their enemies.

ChowGuy

2016-10-30, 01:30 AM

Genocidal jerks would be much more accurate. The DME tried to kill the entire Milky Way Galaxy.
Genocidal jerks would be much more accurate. The DME tried to kill the entire Milky Way Galaxy.

Plus, how does teraporting in the Milky Way hurt Pa'anuri in Andromeda, two million light years away?

Because gravitic effects from our galaxy can't possibly affect anything that far away? Oh, wait, they can (and do). That's why the Pa'anuri
told the Gate-Keepers they were building the Core Engine for in the first place - to prevent the two's eventual merger.

Oh, but surely that's an event a few billion years in the future, and it's not like there's anything the "Annoying" baryonic life could do to them before that? After all it's impossible to teraport/wormgate all the way to Andromeda.

Except Wor of God (and not just Petey, or even the narrator) says it WAS before our galaxy was "dropped out" of their universe. [u]That was ultimately their goal, the extinction of life here, being no longer of concern to them, would merely have been a side effect.

factotum

2016-10-30, 02:30 AM

ChowGuy

2016-10-30, 03:13 AM

That footnote basically just says "It's possible to teraport to Andromeda if you use enormous amounts of power". Firstly, until the Pa'anuri taught the Gatekeepers how to make a core generator, who would have the power to spare or the inclination to do so? Secondly, when people actually teraport in, then you can start making plans to destroy them--pre-emptively planning to destroy an entire galaxy just on the offchance somebody in it might develop a technology that hurts you doesn't seem like a great use of resources.

Actually, although I screwed up the quote tags, what the footnote explicitly says "So much power, in fact, that it hasn't been done other than experimentally." Which is to say. it has been done. We just don't know how long ago. It wouldn't surprise me if the primary reason the Gate Keepers were suppressing teraport technology (and ulikely any hint of the ancient Oafan generation technology they gleaned from The Archive) was not merely to protect their monopoly on FTL communication (which we know the Pa'anuri are also capable of) but because they were under treaty obligation to pevent anyone from developing the technology to do so. It also wouldn't surprise me if that's why the Pa'anuri were at war with the in the first plan.

And the only resources they needed to "use" was some [dis]information, and possibly a few "observers" unless the later had planned to ecape through the Zoojack System wormgate. Which we still have no plausible reason for their shepherding other then that was also a treaty obligation on their part,

guttering flame

2016-10-30, 03:15 AM

Does a world where the Book of 70 Maxims is their bible really care about justice?

ryuplaneswalker

2016-10-30, 06:46 AM

Actually, although I screwed up the quote tags, what the footnote explicitly says "So much power, in fact, that it hasn't been done other than experimentally." Which is to say. it has been done. We just don't know how long ago. It wouldn't surprise me if the primary reason the Gate Keepers were suppressing teraport technology (and ulikely any hint of the ancient Oafan generation technology they gleaned from The Archive) was not merely to protect their monopoly on FTL communication (which we know the Pa'anuri are also capable of) but because they were under treaty obligation to pevent anyone from developing the technology to do so. It also wouldn't surprise me if that's why the Pa'anuri were at war with the in the first plan.

And the only resources they needed to "use" was some [dis]information, and possibly a few "observers" unless the later had planned to ecape through the Zoojack System wormgate. Which we still have no plausible reason for their shepherding other then that was also a treaty obligation on their part,

Them Suppressing the Teraport was explicitly part of the peace treaty, that is the whole reason they were keeping it under wraps because the Dames and the Gatekeepers were at war however many years ago until the peace treaty was given and the whole core generator trap was created.

eschmenk

2016-10-30, 08:37 AM

Except Wor of God (and not just Petey, or even the narrator) says it WAS before our galaxy was "dropped out" of their universe. [u]That was ultimately their goal, the extinction of life here, being no longer of concern to them, would merely have been a side effect.

Actually, I think Word of God may have been unreliable there. The Gatekeepers obviously had a huge gate set up to terraport between the two galaxies, so it probably had been done non-experimentally, too. In that case, Word of God was probably based on the knowledge Kevyn had available to him, not the absolute truth.

It wouldn't surprise me if the primary reason the Gate Keepers were suppressing teraport technology (and ulikely any hint of the ancient Oafan generation technology they gleaned from The Archive) was not merely to protect their monopoly on FTL communication (which we know the Pa'anuri are also capable of) but because they were under treaty obligation to pevent anyone from developing the technology to do so.

Like ryuplaneswalker, I thought that was established definitively, but I can't remember when or how.

factotum

2016-10-30, 11:32 AM

The Gatekeepers obviously had a huge gate set up to terraport between the two galaxies

Wormgate technology is explicitly *not* the same as teraport--that's why the Gatekeepers used it, because it was set up so as to not cause harm to DMEs.

eschmenk

2016-10-30, 12:00 PM

Wormgate technology is explicitly *not* the same as teraport--that's why the Gatekeepers used it, because it was set up so as to not cause harm to DMEs.

OK. I was thinking it was basically the same, except the wormholes were static and therefore the DMEs could avoid them. Come to think of it, though, since the gatekeepers were copying people, maybe the matter entering a gate was destroyed and identical matter was created at the destination gate without anything passing through any wormholes. It's been so long since I thought about the gates, I don't remember much of what we knew about them. :smallconfused:

Anyway, it seems that the DMEs had plenty of reasons to want to wipe out life in the Milky Way galaxy.

halfeye

2016-10-30, 12:28 PM

OK. I was thinking it was basically the same, except the wormholes were static and therefore the DMEs could avoid them. Come to think of it, though, since the gatekeepers were copying people, maybe the matter entering a gate was destroyed and identical matter was created at the destination gate without anything passing through any wormholes. It's been so long since I thought about the gates, I don't remember much of what we knew about them. :smallconfused:

Anyway, it seems that the DMEs had plenty of reasons to want to wipe out life in the Milky Way galaxy.
They're doing the same in Andromeda, just a different way.

keybounce

2016-11-01, 11:46 PM

Trojan Horse?
(http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-11-02)

HandofShadows

2016-11-06, 07:45 AM

Marcelinari

2016-11-06, 10:41 AM

Well it's over and there wasn't even any more deaths. And a certain someone has yet ANOTHER pet AI. :smallamused:

If Mutaugh owns the city, doesn't that kinda make her the owner of the how darn place?

No, I don't think so. The city and Uli-Ola are different entities, which both happen to belong to the civil Esspie authorities for similar reasons. They owned the city because they built it. They own Uli-Ola because they discovered it first, and have been in residence on it in excess of anybody else. Murtaugh's ownership of their city does not void their claim to Uli-Ola, and although Murtaugh can theoretically evict them from the city, she cannot remove them from the planet except by use of force, which, though effective, is not a legally-justified method of taking something. If they can continue inhabiting Uli-Ola, their residency claim will never elapse, and given that Esspies are (semi-?)robotic life-forms which don't require atmosphere, I suspect that they could survive without buildings for long enough to build new ones.

eschmenk

2016-11-06, 11:47 AM

Well it's over and there wasn't even any more deaths.
And that's yet another thing that calls into question how many deaths and injuries there needed to be on board Cindercone and Broken Wind. It would be pretty sad if the Toughs didn't have any EMP grenades or similar weapons handy or if they just didn't think to try using anti-electronics weapons against robots, but apparently one of those is true. :smallsigh: Of course, that's in addition to all the other ridiculous things the Toughs did (or failed to do) that made them so vulnerable.

No, I don't think so. The city and Uli-Ola are different entities, which both happen to belong to the civil Esspie authorities for similar reasons. They owned the city because they built it. They own Uli-Ola because they discovered it first, and have been in residence on it in excess of anybody else. Murtaugh's ownership of their city does not void their claim to Uli-Ola, and although Murtaugh can theoretically evict them from the city, she cannot remove them from the planet except by use of force, which, though effective, is not a legally-justified method of taking something. If they can continue inhabiting Uli-Ola, their residency claim will never elapse, and given that Esspies are (semi-?)robotic life-forms which don't require atmosphere, I suspect that they could survive without buildings for long enough to build new ones.

The problem may that there may not be any other location at which they could feed off the tree (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-05-01). Who knows? Trying to figure things using logic, as you were doing, isn't particularly helpful in a story that makes as little sense as this one does.

The civilian Esspies intended to (probably) evacuate and give up their claim on Uli-Ola from the very beginning (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-05-08). However, The Wing Commander wanted more. (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-05-09) Apparently either Petey isn't going to give them time to receive the three hulls before bombarding the place, or the hulls aren't functional ships that the Esspies could use to evacuate themselves. HT probably hasn't bothered explaining that. In any case, having the Toughs evacuate the Esspies isn't a new idea (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-05-04). That was from six months ago.

I haven't completely gone back to not reading the comic at all, but I'm just reading one week's worth at a time or catching up when the discussion makes me curious now.

factotum

2016-11-06, 05:54 PM

It would be pretty sad if the Toughs didn't have any EMP grenades or similar weapons handy or if they just didn't think to try using anti-electronics weapons against robots

What makes you think such weapons would even work? Military-grade robots are going to be shielded against stuff like that--otherwise there would be no point in ever using them, since you could disable the very expensive robot using a cheap grenade.

eschmenk

2016-11-06, 07:31 PM

What makes you think such weapons would even work? Military-grade robots are going to be shielded against stuff like that--otherwise there would be no point in ever using them, since you could disable the very expensive robot using a cheap grenade.

1) Because we just saw an EMP weapon work against the robots and 2) Para just said that the robots had vulnerabilities against EMP weapons.

Note: I'm not saying that it makes any sense, but that's the way HT wrote the story.

Grim Portent

2016-11-06, 07:55 PM

eschmenk

2016-11-06, 08:22 PM

I doubt the Toughs had any idea EMPs would work until after Para got her hands on one of the nearly dead bio-mech-suits (and whoever knows how many dead ones) and started poking around in it. They knew basically nothing about Esspies and their military capabilities before this, so them knowing EMPs are effective would be rather unlikely.

Well, of course they probably didn't know in advance (although maybe they should have), but why not try using an EMP just in case it might work! They would have found out that it did. Wouldn't that have been better than being killed or injured?

In many battles, it's a matter of finding out what your enemy's vulnerabilities are and trying to take advantage of whatever mistakes the enemy makes. Why didn't they try to do that?

BTW, I eventually got tired of listing all of the obvious ways in which the Toughs acted incompetent lately, so I stopped. One of the ways I probably haven't mentioned yet is: Why in the hell didn't Flinders at least try to find out what the Esspees' vulnerabilities were, as she was supposed to do? The obvious people to ask would have been Petey (why did they wait until Kaff was about to die to ask for help -- it wouldn't have cost Petey anything to give them any information he had) and either Bala-Amin or Sorlie (since it was a UNS ship and personnel that needed protecting, they might have provided any information the UNS had). Based on the way HT showed her behaving (whining about not being Ebby and acting like it would have been merely a biological issue -- even though they were robots!!!), I'm sure she didn't even try asking them. :smallyuk: I don't know if it would have helped, but she should have at least tried. :smallsigh:

Of course even if Flinders had behaved competently she might not been able to get the information, but even then my first point would still apply.

One more thing: Para did have data for the robo fairies (the Esspees bug forms). I don't know how useful that would have been in knowing about any EMP vulnerabilities for their large form, though.

halfeye

2016-11-07, 11:51 AM

One more thing: Para did have data for the robo fairies (the Esspees bug forms). I don't know how useful that would have been in knowing about any EMP vulnerabilities for their large form, though.
She did find out the large forms are alive without an Esspee inside, or was that after you wanted her to know about EMP vulnerability?

eschmenk

2016-11-07, 01:06 PM

She did find out the large forms are alive without an Esspee inside, or was that after you wanted her to know about EMP vulnerability?

That would have been after what I was thinking of. To be clear, it wasn't that I wanted Para to do anything. I don't even know if the information she had could be relevant. I just mentioned it for the sake of completeness. I'm sorry if that confused things.

smuchmuch

2016-11-07, 06:45 PM

You seem adamant in seeing plot holes everywhere.

Apparently either Petey isn't going to give them time to receive the three hulls before bombarding the place, or the hulls aren't functional ships that the Esspies could use to evacuate themselves. HT probably hasn't bothered explaining that. In any case, having the Toughs evacuate the Esspies isn't a new idea (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-05-04). That was from six months ago.

If the hulls were functional spaceship and how much time Petey would give them is irrelevant because they aren't recieving the hulls now. Because of the action of their wing commander, they are now in default of contract and the Tough owe them nihil. In fact if anything, now they owe the Tough something, aka their city.

Also remember that as far as anyone outside, (like say the UNS (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-10-24)), the Esspies just commited piracy, without knowing that these actions can be atrritbuted to a rogue faction of the Esspies. (as the Esppies tree coms are down). So no love lost.

Weither Petey would knock Uli-Ola to rubble with the Esspies still on it... it would be pretty out of character, so I imagine then there'd be another arangement then.

HandofShadows

2016-11-09, 04:03 PM

Schlock's line today is a callback to something a waaaaaay long time ago. :smallcool: And demonstrated his character growth as well.

eschmenk

2016-11-09, 07:06 PM

You seem adamant in seeing plot holes everywhere.

I'd rather not see them. I just can't avoid doing it and still read the comic. They just seem obvious to me.

If the hulls were functional spaceship and how much time Petey would give them is irrelevant because they aren't recieving the hulls now. Because of the action of their wing commander, they are now in default of contract and the Tough owe them nihil.

If that were true, the conversation between Murtaigh and Kevyn last Sunday (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-11-06) wouldn't have made any sense. Kevyn was looking for a way for Murtaugh to recover her costs. If she didn't have to give the Esspies anything anymore and hadn't already done so, she probably wouldn't have any costs to recover! Murtaugh claimed that the contract specified a different penalty, which was that she could claim their tree. She didn't say anything about not having to deliver the three ships or hulls.

Granted, there might have been some chance that Murtaugh could have been stuck with the ships or hulls because she paid for them but they hadn't been delivered yet, but in that case she could have sold them and recovered most or all of her costs. If she needed to do that, she should hurry and sell them before Petey's plan could result in Ula-Oah's PTUs being distributed. Since she didn't seem to be worried about the price dropping, apparently she doesn't have any ships or hulls that she needs to sell, so this idea seems unlikely.

Do you have any evidence that the contract worked the way you claimed it does?

In fact if anything, now they owe the Tough something, aka their city.
Whether or not they would owe the Toughs (Murtaugh, actually) something doesn't automatically have anything to do with whether or not Murtaugh owes them (or already paid them) something.

Weither Petey would knock Uli-Ola to rubble with the Esspies still on it... it would be pretty out of character, so I imagine then there'd be another arangement then.

IMO, it seemed pretty out of character for Petey to hit it the first time with the Esspies still there. If Petey had any arrangement in mind, he obviously didn't share it with the Admiral or Flinders, based on what they have been saying. Having said that, he might have made arrangements if no one else did or might have a plan that he didn't mention. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

I'm waiting for some pages to accumulate before reading them, so I don't know what's in the pages since Sunday.

factotum

2016-11-10, 02:16 AM

IMO, it seemed pretty out of character for Petey to hit it the first time with the Esspies still there.

Uli-Oa is a big object, and the impactor he threw at it was fairly small--I'm sure he specifically aimed it in order to not hurt the Esspees. It acted as a pretty good demonstration of what would happen to them if they stick around, though, which presumably the Toughs will use as a negotiating point when they ask them to leave!

eschmenk

2016-11-10, 12:12 PM

Uli-Oa is a big object, and the impactor he threw at it was fairly small--I'm sure he specifically aimed it in order to not hurt the Esspees. It acted as a pretty good demonstration of what would happen to them if they stick around, though, which presumably the Toughs will use as a negotiating point when they ask them to leave!

Right, it's more that Petey didn't come up with a complete solution (planning where the Esspies would move to, etc.), then contact them himself and act superior while telling them about his plan. Maybe the Esspies already have that figured out and he knows that they did, but it's rare for Petey pass up a chance to talk about his superiority. It could be that the civilian Esspie channels were already locked out by the time he would have tried talking to them. I don't remember the order in which things happened.

factotum

2016-11-12, 04:31 PM

OK. So, why did the ancient Oafa feel the need to have a mobile 8km wide teraport cage in their arsenal? :smallconfused:

NEO|Phyte

2016-11-12, 05:08 PM

OK. So, why did the ancient Oafa feel the need to have a mobile 8km wide teraport cage in their arsenal? :smallconfused:

Depends a lot on where the other end of the cage is.

:edit: Unless it is to teraport cages what the long gun is to plasma-based weapons.

Alent

2016-11-12, 05:26 PM

OK. So, why did the ancient Oafa feel the need to have a mobile 8km wide teraport cage in their arsenal? :smallconfused:

Probably a few reasons.

1: Presumably, teraporting large quantities of atmosphere via Teraport cage to the can of sky makes more sense than trying to ship it. (Ahah, each half is a teraport cage (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-03-10).)

2: Consider the Toughs using Teraport cages to deploy troops into the mob asteroid. Now consider doing the same thing with multiple warships. The smaller warships that the Oafa built used large numbers of small sturdy hulled gunships. Cindercone isn't a Cargo ship. It's a TAD breaching carrier that launches carriers.

3: Sudden death option for a pa'anuri battery that's thrown it's AI loyalty collar.

Kornaki

2016-11-12, 09:55 PM

I thought they were in a crazy rush because everyone was coming to kill them and Petey was blowing up the planet. Are those not true?

factotum

2016-11-13, 02:49 AM

Maybe Petey's solution has been communicated to the incoming ships? Or maybe those ships, not being battleplates, take longer than six hours to traverse the TAD zone. Anyway, the strip Norren linked to suggests they were loading these things with materials, teraporting those materials to where they were needed, rinse and repeat.

Now, are they planning to do something similar with the Esspee tree-city? Pretty sure they're not going to want to keep the thing aboard Cindercone long, considering what's happened already.

guttering flame

2016-11-13, 04:23 AM

What the heck is this gun (-ship) thingie? :smallconfused:

HandofShadows

2016-11-13, 07:57 AM

Now, are they planning to do something similar with the Esspee tree-city? Pretty sure they're not going to want to keep the thing aboard Cindercone long, considering what's happened already.

I doubt it as Cindercone is a huge teleport cage.

What the heck is this gun (-ship) thingie? :smallconfused:

A Gunship! What ELSE could it be? :smallbiggrin:

eschmenk

2016-11-13, 08:09 AM

I thought they were in a crazy rush because everyone was coming to kill them and Petey was blowing up the planet. Are those not true?

Well, the UNS put up automated defenses, which may be slowing down the "everyone." However, Petey thought it was important to keep everyone from being killed in the fighting, but people were being killed already by the automated defenses, so it's already too late to completely prevent that. Anyway, presumably there is a big rush to stop the killing and Petey is in a big hurry to shred the planet and yes, everyone is probably trying to get through the defenses as quickly as possible.

Yeah it doesn't make much sense that there isn't more of a sense of urgency, but that's nothing new.

Meanwhile Captain Landon is AWOL, but doesn't seem to be in any trouble. Bala-Amin seems to either not know or not care that the UNS research ship that had scientists aboard who seemed to be reporting to her has been stolen, even though she seemed to think that the research they had been doing was extremely important. :smallyuk:

Anyway, the strip Norren linked to suggests they were loading these things with materials, teraporting those materials to where they were needed, rinse and repeat.

Now, are they planning to do something similar with the Esspee tree-city? Pretty sure they're not going to want to keep the thing aboard Cindercone long, considering what's happened already.

I'm not sure why they wouldn't just terraport Cindercone wherever they want the tree to go. The only problem would be if Cindercone couldn't terraport close to the destination. Maybe they've been completely surrounded by hostile TADs. Using it as a cage would still require a receiving terraport cage at the destination which would limit where you could send the tree.

However meta-logic probably trumps any in-story logic, so I agree that they probably will use Cindercone as a terraport cage. (HT just revealed that Cindercone is a terraport cage so it will be used as one and it's not as if in-story logic matters much.) If they actually are going to use Cindercone as a terraport cage, they probably are terraporting the tree into the can of sky, which is the only place a receiving cage would be located, AFAIK. Presumably, they would use the one Sorlie was investigating. The Esspies will probably be moving into the can of sky.

I have no idea why someone didn't think of the Esspies moving into the can of sky at the very beginning of the arc, though. :smallsigh: Murtaugh's contract with the Esspies was stupid (in several ways). If the balloons wanted the scientists to be able to study the ball of PTU strands, then the balloons should have been the ones to offer the Esspies something in return for permission. But of course, that's just in-story logic.

About the only reason I can think of for using the "world movers" as terraport cages, rather than terraporting the loaded world movers would be if the DMEs couldn't sense the terraport cages, but could sense the terraports that didn't use cages. I hope that's explained sometime.

If they are going to use terraport cages, I would think that something more like Kevyn's beach head cage (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-02-02) design would have been better than big spheres. The idea would be that you would just throw gravel into one cage and have it fall out of the other. The cages would be moved around to wherever they were needed.

halfeye

2016-11-13, 10:06 AM

Well, the UNS put up automated defenses, which may be slowing down the "everyone." However, Petey thought it was important to keep everyone from being killed in the fighting, but people were being killed already by the automated defenses, so it's already too late to completely prevent that. Anyway, presumably there is a big rush to stop the killing and Petey is in a big hurry to shred the planet and yes, everyone is probably trying to get through the defenses as quickly as possible.

Yeah it doesn't make much sense that there isn't more of a sense of urgency, but that's nothing new.

Meanwhile Captain Landon is AWOL, but doesn't seem to be in any trouble. Bala-Amin seems to either not know or not care that the UNS research ship that had scientists aboard who seemed to be reporting to her has been stolen, even though she seemed to think that the research they had been doing was extremely important. :smallyuk:

I'm not sure why they wouldn't just terraport Cindercone wherever they want the tree to go. The only problem would be if Cindercone couldn't terraport close to the destination. Maybe they've been completely surrounded by hostile TADs. Using it as a cage would still require a receiving terraport cage at the destination which would limit where you could send the tree.

However meta-logic probably trumps any in-story logic, so I agree that they probably will use Cindercone as a terraport cage. (HT just revealed that Cindercone is a terraport cage so it will be used as one and it's not as if in-story logic matters much.) If they actually are going to use Cindercone as a terraport cage, they probably are terraporting the tree into the can of sky, which is the only place a receiving cage would be located, AFAIK. Presumably, they would use the one Sorlie was investigating. The Esspies will probably be moving into the can of sky.

I have no idea why someone didn't think of the Esspies moving into the can of sky at the very beginning of the arc, though. :smallsigh: Murtaugh's contract with the Esspies was stupid (in several ways). If the balloons wanted the scientists to be able to study the ball of PTU strands, then the balloons should have been the ones to offer the Esspies something in return for permission. But of course, that's just in-story logic.

About the only reason I can think of for using the "world movers" as terraport cages, rather than terraporting the loaded world movers would be if the DMEs couldn't sense the terraport cages, but could sense the terraports that didn't use cages. I hope that's explained sometime.

If they are going to use terraport cages, I would think that something more like Kevyn's beach head cage (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-02-02) design would have been better than big spheres. The idea would be that you would just throw gravel into one cage and have it fall out of the other. The cages would be moved around to wherever they were needed.

I'd think they needed a matched pair of Cindercone class terraport cage ships. Or, maybe Cindercone is a matched pair of terraport cages?

eschmenk

2016-11-13, 01:22 PM

I'd think they needed a matched pair of Cindercone class terraport cage ships. Or, maybe Cindercone is a matched pair of terraport cages?

Yes, I think they need something that matches Cindercone, too. That's largely why I predicted that they are terraporting the tree into the Can of Sky and would use the ship/cage that Sorlie was investigating as the destination cage. It's the only other cage that matches Cindercone that's currently up and running, AFAIK.

Here is the meta-logic: Gee, we find out that Sorlie has a huge terraport cage inside the Can of Sky and that Cindercone is a huge terraport cage, too, and we find that out when a huge tree needs to be moved from where Cindercone is to somewhere else. Surprises can happen, but the Checkov's gun / Duex ex Machina and how it will be used seem rather apparent in this case.

Although I probably don't need to say it, just to be clear, I think each cage needs to be fully enclosed for the terraport to work, so each end needs both halves. (A full ship at both ends.)

factotum

2016-11-14, 03:06 AM

Well, no need to speculate any longer--it *is* an enclosed Cindercone-class ship at both ends of the teraport. I guess that's *marginally* faster than just teraporting the entire ship to the destination and then teraporting back? The question now is, where have they transported the city to? Not the can full of sky, by the looks of it (and that wouldn't be a great idea anyway, given the Esspees' tendency to mess with things they shouldn't be messing with).

ryuplaneswalker

2016-11-14, 07:31 AM

HandofShadows

2016-11-14, 08:26 AM

If there is any justice they teleported the Esspees to somewhere very dangerous that will kill them slowly.

Hey, these Esspees didn't do anything wrong. The military commander stabbed them ALL in the back and happily walked away to let them die.

As the two ships being a huge teraport cage it can be a LOT faster you don't have to worry about TAD's or travel time for large amounts of bulk material.

factotum

2016-11-14, 10:50 AM

As the two ships being a huge teraport cage it can be a LOT faster you don't have to worry about TAD's or travel time for large amounts of bulk material.

Teraporting the entire ship isn't any slower than just teraporting the contents, though...that's kind of the problem with teraport in the first place, it's an instantaneous travel-anywhere device, which is generally plot-breaking. Hence the widespread deployment of TAD devices, and the teraport itself having to be open source so the Toughs don't have a huge advantage over everyone else.

guttering flame

2016-11-14, 11:14 AM

Teraporting the entire ship isn't any slower than just teraporting the contents, though...that's kind of the problem with teraport in the first place, it's an instantaneous travel-anywhere device, which is generally plot-breaking. Hence the widespread deployment of TAD devices, and the teraport itself having to be open source so the Toughs don't have a huge advantage over everyone else.

Teraporting within the ship circumvents the TAD fields. More importantly, they probably makes it harder for their Pa'anuri enemies to detect this form of teraporting

factotum

2016-11-14, 04:54 PM

Teraporting within the ship circumvents the TAD fields. More importantly, they probably makes it harder for their Pa'anuri enemies to detect this form of teraporting

Can't help but think that you're likely to be in control of the TAD at any location where you've got a defenceless 8km cargo ship parked, so that's not really a restriction, and we have zero evidence so far for the second point.

ryuplaneswalker

2016-11-14, 07:20 PM

Hey, these Esspees didn't do anything wrong. The military commander stabbed them ALL in the back and happily walked away to let them die.

Oh well I am amend my statement. Somewhere that will kill them quickly then.

eschmenk

2016-11-14, 10:01 PM

Can't help but think that you're likely to be in control of the TAD at any location where you've got a defenceless 8km cargo ship parked, so that's not really a restriction...

Yeah, unless you're the Toughs, of course. In the current case, the UNS may have their own TAD up over the top of the Tough's TAD. We know the UNS's TAD goes further out. Since the Toughs didn't allow the UNS to teraport into the Tough's TAD, so I doubt the UNS will give the Toughs their codes.

It seems to me that if the ancient balloons wanted to terraport gravel into the can of sky, they would have just terraported the gravel directly without bothering with the World Mover ships. I don't know if we will ever get an in-story reason for why they didn't.

Alent

2016-11-14, 10:31 PM

Yeah, unless you're the Toughs, of course. In the current case, the UNS may have their own TAD up over the top of the Tough's TAD. We know the UNS's TAD goes further out. Since the Toughs didn't allow the UNS to teraport into the Tough's TAD, so I doubt the UNS will give the Toughs their codes.

It seems to me that if the ancient balloons wanted to terraport gravel into the can of sky, they would have just terraported the gravel directly without bothering with the World Mover ships. I don't know if we will ever get an in-story reason for why they didn't.

Hazarding a guess, I would say the fact that Teraports are harmful to the dark matter entities they were using as power sources for world forges might have something to do with them wanting to build adequate shielding to keep the lights from suddenly going out mid construction.

factotum

2016-11-15, 02:35 AM

It's possible that a teraport using the cages at both end uses less power than a regular one? When you're transporting this amount of material that might be significant.

Cikomyr

2016-11-15, 10:15 PM

So he wants to talk to... A Chu?

(Gesundheit!)

factotum

2016-11-18, 02:44 AM

OK, why did the Toughs feel the need to encase the Esspee tree in snow? It's a bit early to be in a Christmassy mood... :smallconfused:

Alent

2016-11-18, 03:16 AM

OK, why did the Toughs feel the need to encase the Esspee tree in snow? It's a bit early to be in a Christmassy mood... :smallconfused:

They're draining the ocean inside Uli-Oa.

guttering flame

2016-11-18, 03:53 AM

They're draining the ocean inside Uli-Oa.

Won't the water/ice just disperse over time?

factotum

2016-11-18, 06:37 AM

They're draining the ocean inside Uli-Oa.

And their reason for doing so is...? I wasn't aware there was a galactic water shortage.

ryuplaneswalker

2016-11-18, 07:45 AM

And their reason for doing so is...? I wasn't aware there was a galactic water shortage.

Isn't "Screwing with the space bugs that killed their captain" a good enough reason to do whatever they want to the home of said bugs? No not all the bugs are responsable..but I don't think the toughs care, nor should they in my opinion. I personally would have Tereported their tree near a sun..and fabbed a space sized magnifying glass.

factotum

2016-11-18, 11:34 AM

Grey_Wolf_c

2016-11-18, 12:04 PM

But, again, how does burying their tree in snow help in that regard? It seems like an incredibly petty and pointless thing to do purely for revenge, especially given the resources required to make it happen (it must take a lot of power to teraport so much water around).

The water may legitimately belong to the Espee city, or at least no-one else wants it in the way of the mining-by-percussion project in the big ball o' PTUs and therefore the Toughs have figured out how to charge extra for it.

(i.e. I'm falling back on the good ol' "if the Toughs are doing it, it's because there is more money in it than in not doing it" stand-by explanation)

GW

Urzamax

2016-11-18, 02:50 PM

You know, unless I'm misinterpreting something, Juab seems to be a UNS ship. Why is the UNS helping the Toughs chop down the tree? Petey's deal?

guttering flame

2016-11-18, 03:14 PM

The water may legitimately belong to the Espee city, or at least no-one else wants it in the way of the mining-by-percussion project in the big ball o' PTUs and therefore the Toughs have figured out how to charge extra for it.

(i.e. I'm falling back on the good ol' "if the Toughs are doing it, it's because there is more money in it than in not doing it" stand-by explanation)

GW

One of them now owns the tree-city (according to her contract with the robo-fairies). Maybe they want to make her new real estate a financial success.

halfeye

2016-11-18, 03:16 PM

It's simpler than that, the thing they want is a mile below sea level or more, if they get rid of the sea, they can get at it more easily. :smallbiggrin:

Rockphed

2016-11-18, 03:32 PM

It's simpler than that, the thing they want is a mile below sea level or more, if they get rid of the sea, they can get at it more easily. :smallbiggrin:

That is actually pretty perceptive. I approve of this theory.

Here, have a hat made of highly-conductive metal.

ryuplaneswalker

2016-11-18, 09:31 PM

factotum

2016-11-19, 02:08 AM

Having a place buried in snow makes that place 100% less good to live in

In this case, though, the same would apply if you buried the place in plasma, and it would probably be quicker and easier. :smallsmile:

Anyway, current strip says they just did this as a test of the Cindercage's capabilities. Which is fine, but why did they need to do it more than once, in that case?

Alent

2016-11-19, 03:40 AM

In this case, though, the same would apply if you buried the place in plasma, and it would probably be quicker and easier. :smallsmile:

Anyway, current strip says they just did this as a test of the Cindercage's capabilities. Which is fine, but why did they need to do it more than once, in that case?

Kevyn is probably throughput testing. IE - How fast can we load up/unload, at what rate can we teraport what we've loaded, etc.

HT has been dropping "Para needs to build automated cargo loaders to make cargo loading and unloading as fast as possible" hints this entire book. Pretty sure they're about to revisit that subject.

ryuplaneswalker

2016-11-19, 07:44 AM

In this case, though, the same would apply if you buried the place in plasma, and it would probably be quicker and easier.

The quick part is the problem, the bugs slowly starving to death buried under a billion tons of snow is far more appealing than a quick painless heat lance.

hajo

2016-11-19, 06:01 PM

Kevyn is probably throughput testing. IE - How fast can we load up/unload, at what rate can we teraport what we've loaded, etc.
I guess, their next cargo-move will involve some nice, big chunks of the PTU from Uli-Oa,
and preferably from the area of the control-station.

Cikomyr

2016-11-19, 09:22 PM

...you know, having Petey promise me "a bunch of big favors" would probably make my head spin a bit.

Just think of how much you could have with it.

eschmenk

2016-11-19, 09:51 PM

It's simpler than that, the thing they want is a mile below sea level or more, if they get rid of the sea, they can get at it more easily. :smallbiggrin:

I got the impression that they don't care about it anymore. Do they still care?

(The reason for teraporting the water was already explained in comic.)

Rockphed

2016-11-19, 09:55 PM

...you know, having Petey promise me "a bunch of big favors" would probably make my head spin a bit.

Just think of how much you could have with it.

So who are the two people speaking in the first panel? It doesn't make sense if they are Murtagh and the Espee, but I cannot see anybody else who it could be.

eschmenk

2016-11-19, 10:15 PM

So who are the two people speaking in the first panel? It doesn't make sense if they are Murtagh and the Espee, but I cannot see anybody else who it could be.

It's Murtagh and the Espee, with the Espee speaking first. It comes across as unnatural and partially wrong to me, but no more so than many of the conversations in the comic. What about it didn't make sense?

What I would like to know is how did they manage to get the second World Mover there with all of the TADs up. It's only a 12 light-minutes away from Uli-Oa. Either the TADs should extend much further than that, or the approaching ships should already be attacking Cindercone. And why is the cabin superstructure incompatible? Does that just mean because of the damage done by the invading Esspies?

smuchmuch

2016-11-19, 11:07 PM

Either the TADs should extend much further than that, or the approaching ships should already be attacking Cindercone.

Weren't the TADs around Uli Ola int either the toughs int he first place or the UNS ? (with wchich they probably could easily get the &aauthorisation to port a ship in ?)

factotum

2016-11-20, 02:13 AM

What I would like to know is how did they manage to get the second World Mover there with all of the TADs up.

There was a note "18 hours later" a couple of strips ago, so one assumes the other Cindercone could have teraported outside the TAD and flown in under conventional power, just like the Manicouagan did. Alternatively, the Toughs just asked the UNS ships to give them the keys to their TAD--they *are* nominally working together, after all.

HandofShadows

2016-11-20, 07:52 AM

Huh. I was right. Someone IS very rich. :smallcool:

halfeye

2016-11-20, 07:55 AM

The reason for teraporting the water was already explained in comic.

Sure, but after I posted my guess.

ryuplaneswalker

2016-11-20, 08:29 AM

Huh. I was right. Someone IS very rich. :smallcool:

What do you do when God owes you a favor?

eschmenk

2016-11-20, 09:00 AM

Weren't the TADs around Uli Ola int either the toughs int he first place or the UNS ? (with wchich they probably could easily get the &aauthorisation to port a ship in ?)

No. Everyone else was putting up their own TADs, too.That why the admiral just said (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-11-18) the Toughs were teraporting water "under the noses of six overlapping teraport area denial fields." We were also told much earlier that the latecomers were having to keep starting further and further out because of all of the additional TAD fields that the arriving forces kept adding.

There was a note "18 hours later" a couple of strips ago, so one assumes the other Cindercone could have teraported outside the TAD and flown in under conventional power, just like the Manicouagan did. Alternatively, the Toughs just asked the UNS ships to give them the keys to their TAD--they *are* nominally working together, after all.

That was actually a week ago, (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-11-13) but it still has the problem that all of the people who wanted to fight over Ula-Oa would have had the 18 hours to reach Ula-Oa and start fighting over it, too. Some of them probably would have attacked Cindercone and Broken Wind. So where are they? Given that they were so determined to fight, it doesn't make sense that they would have just stopped and waited to see if Petey would shred the planet for them to all share, even if he promised that he would do so.

Sure, but after I posted my guess.

Right. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

Imgran

2016-11-20, 10:41 AM

What do you do when God owes you a favor?

Never use it, but let the whole world know about it, and watch my enemies very carefully leave me alone for the rest of my life. Having a one-use favor from a deity is like having a nuke -- since it's one-use, it's at its most powerful if you never use it, but maintain the constant threat of using it if something irritates you enough.

The only problem with that strategy is the clingers-on who fully intend to try to get me to use that favor on them or something important to them. I'd have to put myself somewhere relatively difficult to access just to cut down on favor-seekers, and that takes a lot of the fun out of it.

Other than that, my life would probably somewhat resemble Mark Twain's "the 1,000,000 bank note" in that my best asset is something I can't use to meet daily needs, but makes daily needs far easier to obtain anyway.

Narkis

2016-11-20, 11:18 AM

This seems like setup for the upcoming RPG. A "cool" neutral refueling station ran by "cool" aliens for the PCs to call home and pick up supplies, an ancient ruined world for the PCs to explore and scavenge and a bunch of competing alien races around making things difficult.

HandofShadows

2016-11-20, 12:00 PM

Well, that "world" is going to be slowly destroyed by kinetic bombardment. So I doubt it's a good setting for exploration.

Imgran

2016-11-20, 05:05 PM

Well, that "world" is going to be slowly destroyed by kinetic bombardment. So I doubt it's a good setting for exploration.

On the contrary, it's the kind of setting almost perfect for exploration, an RPG based on this kind of world could be carried almost entirely by exploration. Exploration is going to be the big industry at Uli-Oa for as long as there's still PTU's to be harvested.

After all, everyone knows Uli-Oa is incredibly valuable, but no one knows exactly how valuable, and there's a hint of potential scientific knowledge to be gained here too, so before anything can be broken apart and salvaged at the cost of potential science value, it HAS to be explored, catalogued and quantified, and that means there's money in doing it. LOTS of money, since we're talking about one of the toughest substances to manufacture in the world and therefore one of the rarest and most valuable, over and above the value of artifacts and scientific knowledge that can be gained. All of that has value, and that value will bring the speculators, scavengers, legitimate businessmen, pirates, and scholars by the shuttleful.

With a lot of money to be had in both exploration and exploitation, the espy city and probably many other nearby makeshift structures and service centers are going to be swamped with speculators, scavengers and explorers, and no few pirates, for generations. As a scifi-Wild West setting, it doesn't get much better and the plotlines almost write themselves -- you can pick a character based on any of dozens of professions from the mercenary that protects a given race's salvage interest to the scholar seeking the knowledge of the Ancient Oafans to the bedraggled law enforcement officer trying to make everyone play nice (I actually favor the last one, with the entire Rogue's Gallery literally descending on this place, RPing as a wing marshal trying desperately to maintain some semblance of order would make for a rich plot with many different directions to go)

Anyway I've rambled enough. TL:DR, the potential for an RPG setting is pretty rich, either for a tabletop RPG or for a video game.

factotum

2016-11-21, 02:55 AM

On the contrary, it's the kind of setting almost perfect for exploration, an RPG based on this kind of world could be carried almost entirely by exploration. Exploration is going to be the big industry at Uli-Oa for as long as there's still PTU's to be harvested.

I think you're missing the point. Petey is going to use relativistic impactors to blast Uli-Oa into gravel. Anyone who happens to be on it will be obliterated at the time. That's why they've moved the Esspee city of it, and it's why they're unlikely to have it as part of the RPG.

guttering flame

2016-11-21, 03:46 AM

I think you're missing the point. Petey is going to use relativistic impactors to blast Uli-Oa into gravel. Anyone who happens to be on it will be obliterated at the time. That's why they've moved the Esspee city of it, and it's why they're unlikely to have it as part of the RPG.

Can Uli-Oa be dismantled so easily? It's made up of the toughest substance in existence. Even at relativistic speeds can ordinary rocks do more than minor damage?

Cikomyr

2016-11-21, 06:58 AM

I think i missed or forgot a bit of conversation.

What information did Murtaugh learn? What did she actually pay for it? Why cant she use it?

factotum

2016-11-21, 07:13 AM

Can Uli-Oa be dismantled so easily? It's made up of the toughest substance in existence. Even at relativistic speeds can ordinary rocks do more than minor damage?

The one impactor that already hit seems to have done plenty of damage. You'd have to ask Petey for clarification on the details, though, it's his plan, not mine.

2xMachina

2016-11-21, 07:54 AM

We need teraport cages that fit into themselves, so they can teraport anywhere & then, teraport anything.

HandofShadows

2016-11-21, 08:58 AM

I think i missed or forgot a bit of conversation.

What information did Murtaugh learn? What did she actually pay for it? Why cant she use it?

They learned how the World Forge worked, but don't have the resources to use that info. http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-11-06 But maybe someone else does.

maybe

2016-11-21, 08:59 AM

I think he did the only morally acceptable thing by killing everyone.

eschmenk

2016-11-21, 05:48 PM

We need teraport cages that fit into themselves, so they can teraport anywhere & then, teraport anything.

IIRC, the Esspees did that during their attac on the Toughs' ships. But you need to have at least one cage at the destination to start out with. (Or no TAD field up, in which case the cages are unnecessary.)

factotum

2016-11-27, 03:55 AM

Alent

2016-11-27, 07:57 AM

eschmenk

2016-11-27, 10:07 AM

OK, I'm a little puzzled now. I can understand why they had to rip the cabins out of Cindercone since the entire interior is now a teraport cage, but why did they also have to remove Cindy herself? Surely the ship still needs some sort of AI to run it? Or is the problem that Cindercone has passed back to Oafan ownership, while Cindy belongs to the Toughs?

Chinook was controlling Cindercone's twin directly, the same as with the long gun corvettes. Apparently ships like that didn't normally have crews or AIs. The ships sold to UNS INT-AF-INT via Petey didn't seem to have AIs, either. Apparently Broken Wind originally did (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-03-02), though, but Broken Wind's boats don't. I guess ships like Broken Wind had AIs that controlled other ships and boats.

Enesby's argument about replacing the "integrated A.I. matrix" in Broken Wind didn't apply to Cindercone, apparently because it didn't already have one. Presumably the Toughs just pulled the AI computer core from Bristlecone and installed it in Cindercone.

BTW, I'm wondering how many people have been missing the fact that, despite Ennesby saying that Broken Wind was "ready to fly without a major refit," nearly everything we've seen in any interior shot of any of the ships (or boats) wasn't part of the original ships. Talk about major refits! (The huge hole inside Cindercone would be about the only exception.) The Oafa were just huge bags of hydrogen. Floors would just be in their way. A room that would be good for a human would be much too small for them. The decks, walls, etc., that we see would have been added for the sake of the new occupants. That's yet one more reason why it was stupid of the Toughs to use the ships rather than selling them for scrap and buying something that met their needs much better or at least using the money from the ships they did sell. Perhaps Iafa forced them to keep Broken Wind as part of the deal, but why would that have applied to Cindercone?

NEO|Phyte

2016-11-27, 11:40 AM

I suspect a bit part of the reason they kept the oafan ships rather than selling for mad stacks of cash would be time and availability.

Petey 1.0 was a fluke, a properly powerful military ship isn't something you can just throw a bunch of money at and drive away from a shipyard with. It'll take time for all the orders that were there before yours to finish, it'll take time to reconfigure between jobs, it'll take time to build the thing. Then add in on top of that not necessarily having access to all the shiniest hardware options because governments don't really like nongovernments having all the fun toys. Which admittedly is the sort of problem you can theoretically throw money at to fix, but still.

Plus, you know. Long Gun. And Kaff's long-established liking of extravagant ships.

Also, they DID sell a bunch of oafan hulls, that was literally (part of) the reason they went to Earth.

eschmenk

2016-11-27, 12:26 PM

Petey 1.0 was a fluke...
Yes, so? They have plenty of money this time.

...a properly powerful military ship isn't something you can just throw a bunch of money at and drive away from a shipyard with.

Why not buy a used ship from a mercenary company? If you pay several times what it's worth, you should get one quickly. Since they took Oafan ships instead, they didn't get their ships quickly because they were forced to build usable interiors for the ships before they could use them. The ships were made for Oafa, not people who are heavier than air, as I just said. They never got around to adding weapons suitable for fighting the enemies the Toughs were likely to face.

Plus, you know. Long Gun. And Kaff's long-established liking of extravagant ships.
Um, the ships that the Toughs took didn't have any Long Guns. (Neosyncronicity was taken by Enesby separate from the Toughs and wasn't replaced.) Also, how does Kaff's "long-established liking of extravagant ships" lead to him being satisfied with such inferior ships that don't meet the Toughs' needs? Heck, it turns out that one was merely a teraport cage and they didn't even know it could do that much!

Also, they DID sell a bunch of oafan hulls, that was literally (part of) the reason they went to Earth.

I think that was the Oafa, not the Toughs, selling to the UNS in that case. The Toughs were merely facilitators.

I already mentioned that the Toughs sold hulls to UNS Int-Af-Int via Petey, though, so I obviously knew that they sold some hulls. Repeating myself for about the hundredth time: The question is why didn't they buy something that met their needs better than what they have with all the cash that they got?

NEO|Phyte

2016-11-27, 01:10 PM

Even without the teraport cage, Cindercone was still a freighter large enough to transport things like battleplates or space stations. The ability to haul freight is never a bad thing.

As for meeting needs, the ship you have is never the ship you want. Also I'm not entirely sure what needs aren't being met, the ability to repel boarders? That's more on the crew than anything, and also their decision to lock the AI out of being able to gravy the insides.

And even if they did have better ships, the laws of dramatics would just refactor their threats to still be just as threatening. Bigger numbers can't save you from plot.

halfeye

2016-11-28, 08:45 AM

Bigger numbers can't save you from plot.
Yeah. And vice versa (think about it)? Maybe?

I do think that there's still a risk of Kav Tagon reappearing. I think we've seen the science module in the process of recapture, so it looks as if the Espees did really bad.

Cikomyr

2016-11-28, 09:07 AM

Someone can tell me again why they cant simply restore a backup?

They HAVE to have backups. You can backup people now!

Grey_Wolf_c

2016-11-28, 09:17 AM

Someone can tell me again why they cant simply restore a backup?

They HAVE to have backups. You can backup people now!

They keep the back-ups of their brains distributed in the person itself, schlock-wise. Total body annihilation also takes back-ups. No reason given that I can recall as to why not keep a secondary back-up somewhere else (although I'd be quite worried about both identity theft and Theseus' Ship paradox).

GW

factotum

2016-11-28, 04:02 PM

No reason given that I can recall as to why not keep a secondary back-up somewhere else

I imagine there would be significant bandwidth issues in transmitting all that data to a remote location, and given the likelihood of total body annihilation is not that high, it's presumably a risk they consider worth it--just like you or I have a significantly higher risk of death every time we get behind the wheel of a car (as compared to sitting at home), but we do it anyway because the benefits are worth the additional risk.

Cikomyr

2016-11-28, 10:09 PM

I imagine there would be significant bandwidth issues in transmitting all that data to a remote location, and given the likelihood of total body annihilation is not that high, it's presumably a risk they consider worth it--just like you or I have a significantly higher risk of death every time we get behind the wheel of a car (as compared to sitting at home), but we do it anyway because the benefits are worth the additional risk.

How about making a weekly backup whenever you are at home? And send monthly backups to a safe location?

eschmenk

2016-11-28, 10:42 PM

How about making a weekly backup whenever you are at home? And send monthly backups to a safe location?

Why couldn't the nannies make backups while the person sleeps? That would give daily backups.

Could the nannies have bailed out of Kaff's body once they realized he intended to commit suicide?

NEO|Phyte

2016-11-28, 10:45 PM

PhantomFox

2016-11-28, 11:53 PM

Followup question: are the nannies mobile enough to have made it to minimum safe distance?

Do you want orks? Because this is how you get orks.

HandofShadows

2016-11-29, 02:56 AM

Followup question: are the nannies mobile enough to have made it to minimum safe distance?

VERY much doubt it. That was an anti-ship missile and it make a very big BooM. Not to mention the entire ship had to be abandon because of the thermal after effects.

factotum

2016-11-29, 03:21 AM

OK, current strip: unless I'm misremembering, the Wing Marshal has never met Chinook before. So, the can full of sky is now famous enough that everyone knows the AI who runs it. This is the main thing that annoys me about current plotlines in the strip--people know things that there is no reason they should know, and no explanation is ever given!

It's not even that it's required the Wing Marshal knows who Chinook is--he could have said "Who are you?" and Chinook's response would have made just as much sense.

Rockphed

2016-11-29, 03:37 AM

Never having met her is not the same as never having heard of her. She was, after all, interacting with the espees before his betrayal.

factotum

2016-11-29, 07:30 AM

She was, after all, interacting with the espees before his betrayal.

Can you point to the strip where that happened? I don't remember her directly interacting with the Esspees?

HandofShadows

2016-11-29, 08:20 AM

Can you point to the strip where that happened? I don't remember her directly interacting with the Esspees?

Oh, she most certainly did. :smallbiggrin:

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-05-28

eschmenk

2016-11-29, 08:33 AM

Followup question: are the nannies mobile enough to have made it to minimum safe distance?

That wouldn't have been a problem if the nannies abandoned Kaff soon enough. He had to carry the missile a long way from where it was stored to where he set it off, so they would have started at a safe distance. They probably would have needed to have a way to transfer their data before the Broken Wind was submerged in the water, though, or they might have risked being washed out of the ship.

There was even one strip where Kaff ordered Bunny to remain in a safe location because he was expecting to need her after the battle was over. That was before we learned of his plans, but perhaps he had already come up with them by then. That could mean that Kaff went out of the way to back himself up quickly before he revealed his plan to anyone. I don't know how he would have done it, but HT could retroactively reveal a way to do it if he wants to bring Kaff back. In any case, I think of Kaff as probably just being temporarily gone.

Cikomyr

2016-11-29, 12:35 PM

Rockphed

2016-11-29, 01:17 PM

That wouldn't have been a problem if the nannies abandoned Kaff soon enough. He had to carry the missile a long way from where it was stored to where he set it off, so they would have started at a safe distance. They probably would have needed to have a way to transfer their data before the Broken Wind was submerged in the water, though, or they might have risked being washed out of the ship.

There was even one strip where Kaff ordered Bunny to remain in a safe location because he was expecting to need her after the battle was over. That was before we learned of his plans, but perhaps he had already come up with them by then. That could mean that Kaff went out of the way to back himself up quickly before he revealed his plan to anyone. I don't know how he would have done it, but HT could retroactively reveal a way to do it if he wants to bring Kaff back. In any case, I think of Kaff as probably just being temporarily gone.

Simplest way to back himself up: chop off a hand and stick it in a nanny bag somewhere safe. Considering the text of his message, I do not expect Kaff to resurface in that fashion.

HandofShadows

2016-11-29, 03:42 PM

Simplest way to back himself up: chop off a hand and stick it in a nanny bag somewhere safe. Considering the text of his message, I do not expect Kaff to resurface in that fashion.

I actually went and checked to see if he had done that. But no, he had both his hands. :smallfrown:

factotum

2016-11-29, 04:29 PM

Oh, she most certainly did. :smallbiggrin:

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-05-28

OK, point conceded, I guess! :smallsmile:

eschmenk

2016-11-29, 08:37 PM

Why couldn't the nannies make backups while the person sleeps? That would give daily backups.

Could the nannies have bailed out of Kaff's body once they realized he intended to commit suicide?

The point i was making is that you need to transfer the backup outside of your body.

Yeah, I was assuming that the nannies would take the backup data with them.

Also, Petey somehow had nannies jump from Schlock to not-Vog and make a change to not-Vog's brain, which seems to indicate that Petey has some ability to interact with nannies. It seems possible that the nannies might have been copying the backup data to Petey to to some other system outside Kaff all along somehow. Just as a matter of general policy, Petey would have wanted to make sure he couldn't loose Kaff permanently and, Petey being Petey, he probably would have found a way to ensure that he could bring Kaff back from the dead even if Kaff's body was completely obliterated and all nannies destroyed, I think.

Windscion

2016-12-02, 12:11 AM

Topic: Petey making new Pa'anuri DaMEs.

Make a sapient DaME and enslave it: immoral and dangerous.

Make a non-sapient DaME and harness it: First, not clear if it can be done, because if it can be done, surely the ancient races would never have made a sapient one? Secondly, still kinda queasy on the morality front. Third, at best a repeat of old mistakes.

Make a sapient DaME and *do not* enslave it. Raises possibility of diplomacy, peace. Recall that Andromeda's core is 35x size of Petey's. Diplomacy sound good under those circumstances. Still plenty risky of course. But certainly a possibility Petey has considered. After all, a DaME can be contained by a network of T.A.D. fields. And the new world forge might be used to create an evacuation fleet should the PD decide the best plan is to find yet another galaxy to move to.

Which raises the whole question of why have a wormgate to (from?) Andromeda, anyway? (Besides "plot", I mean.) But that's another can of wormholes.

factotum

2016-12-02, 03:59 AM

Beginning to wonder if this supposed galactic devastation that the Archive claims is guaranteed to happen is actually due to the creation of Pa'anuri rather than rogue AI?

HandofShadows

2016-12-02, 08:23 AM

Only starting to wonder? I've been convinced for awhile now.

Rockphed

2016-12-02, 11:23 AM

Only starting to wonder? I've been convinced for awhile now.

Yeah, the idea has been telegraphed pretty hard.

Windscion

2016-12-02, 10:15 PM

Well, crud. There goes my hope that Petey has a better plan.

The Glyphstone

2016-12-03, 09:01 PM

Someone can tell me again why they cant simply restore a backup?

They HAVE to have backups. You can backup people now!

And apparently they did.

Rockphed

2016-12-03, 09:16 PM

And apparently they did.

Though we still do not know that they will use them. I'm not sure if I hope they do or hope they do not.

Alent

2016-12-03, 09:22 PM

Though we still do not know that they will use them. I'm not sure if I hope they do or hope they do not.

Well, Kaff said his plan required needing the doctor later, and he intentionally backed himself up before his suicide run, so it would seem reasonable to consider that putting a "DO RESURRECT! DO RESURRECT!!" on file.

eschmenk

2016-12-03, 09:23 PM

And apparently they did.

Yeah, I guess that isn't enough of a surprise for spoiler tags. Without any specific explanation, it still seems like a Dues Ex Machina, even though it was expected.

Though we still do not know that they will use them. I'm not sure if I hope they do or hope they do not.

Oh, I'm sure they will.

Well, Kaff said his plan required needing the doctor later, and he intentionally backed himself up before his suicide run, so it would seem reasonable to consider that putting a "DO RESURRECT! DO RESURRECT!!" on file.

Did it really take him 40 minutes to carry out his suicide plan? Seriously, Broken Wind's AI couldn't prepare a missile to fly itself to the target in 40 minutes, so Kaff had to back himself up, make preparations, then pick up the missile then run to the target -- all of which took 40 minutes! How long until after the attack began would Broken Wind finally get missiles ready, just in case they might be needed?

NEO|Phyte

2016-12-03, 09:56 PM

How long until after the attack began would Broken Wind finally get missiles ready, just in case they might be needed?

Based on the size of the warhead Kaff had been manhandling and the amount of damage it ended up doing to the ship, the only situation in which those missiles would have been useful in repelling boarders would be to blow themselves up. It is unclear how spacefuture technology changes the ratio, but given how little of modern missiles are actually the payload, it is rather unlikely that the full missile would be able to fit through the hallways anyway, which is why Kaff had taken the warhead out.

Also it only would have taken 9 minutes to warbuck the annie on a propulsion unit to use in transporting the warhead. Not sure we've ever gotten a technical rundown on what exactly warbucking is supposed to be, but I suspect it is along the lines of 'amp up the output so this thing can manage combat-grade shielding and movement'

The Glyphstone

2016-12-03, 11:13 PM

Yeah, I guess that isn't enough of a surprise for spoiler tags. Without any specific explanation, it still seems like a Dues Ex Machina, even though it was expected.

We could see the gods' chariot hanging up in the rafters over the stage, but it's still a Deus Ex Machina. Till now, only AI's have had stored gestalts, the concept of being able to store a living person's gestalt is out of total left field. There would have been no reason to develop REDHack to begin with if that was available.

Not going to lie, Howard has really disappointed me here. As much as I figured it was unlikely, I hoped he was willing to be gutsy enough to kill Kaff off permanently since the comic is in its twilight slope.

tonberrian

2016-12-03, 11:19 PM

The Glyphstone

2016-12-03, 11:33 PM

Not quite, I mean we did kill off Schlock and backed him up. It's really the logical extension of REDHack, not something else.

I hadn't counted Schlock because he's basically a data storage system to begin with; a sufficient chunk of him on ice somewhere could store a backup copy of him. But that is a fair point, and it was Petey who debuted that ability in the first place. So I guess it's not as out of left field as I first though.

Rockphed

2016-12-04, 12:24 AM

We could see the gods' chariot hanging up in the rafters over the stage, but it's still a Deus Ex Machina. Till now, only AI's have had stored gestalts, the concept of being able to store a living person's gestalt is out of total left field. There would have been no reason to develop REDHack to begin with if that was available.

Not going to lie, Howard has really disappointed me here. As much as I figured it was unlikely, I hoped he was willing to be gutsy enough to kill Kaff off permanently since the comic is in its twilight slope.

I agree. This book, while interesting, had severe mood-whiplash and pacing issues. Maybe if I sat down and read it all in one go it would flow better.

I did not, on the other hand, find either of the last 2 books to have those problems. I still think that Massively Parrallel is an order of magnitude better than the books that have followed it.

Ibrinar

2016-12-04, 01:43 AM

We could see the gods' chariot hanging up in the rafters over the stage, but it's still a Deus Ex Machina. Till now, only AI's have had stored gestalts, the concept of being able to store a living person's gestalt is out of total left field. There would have been no reason to develop REDHack to begin with if that was available.

Not going to lie, Howard has really disappointed me here. As much as I figured it was unlikely, I hoped he was willing to be gutsy enough to kill Kaff off permanently since the comic is in its twilight slope.
The way they became immortal unless completely obliterated was by having nanites in their body that saved the important data about how to reconstruct them, aka a local backup. When he began running with the payload I thought about him just cutting of his hand as backup but the only reason I didn't assume they have separate backups is for story telling reasons, it was never mentioned so I assumed that implication of the tech had been ignored to leave an option for character death. If you ignore meta reasons, inless they are somehow unable to extract and transmit the data from the nanites for some reason it always was a direct consequence of the tech.

guttering flame

2016-12-04, 02:56 AM

factotum

2016-12-04, 03:29 AM

Not going to lie, Howard has really disappointed me here. As much as I figured it was unlikely, I hoped he was willing to be gutsy enough to kill Kaff off permanently since the comic is in its twilight slope.

That might still happen, given that the Commodore appears to be given the choice of whether to bring him back here...we won't find out if he did or not until the next book, though. I agree, though, if they *do* bring him back and thus completely negate the feels Howard has been trying to inject into the end of this book, I'll be disappointed. As for why the backup is forty minutes old, maybe it's a rule that they take one when there's a chance they'll be going into combat? We don't know exactly how long it took from the Esspee teraport cages being discovered to Tagon's self-sacrifice moment.

Question is, since we now know Red-REO has backups which are capable of completely re-creating a person--why do they even have these Laz-X categories? Seems to me that restoring someone perfectly to a state they were in a couple of days ago would be preferable to restoring them as they are *right at the point of death* but losing a couple of percent of them, as they had to do with Murtaugh.

Grey_Wolf_c

2016-12-04, 06:09 AM

Question is, since we now know Red-REO has backups which are capable of completely re-creating a person--why do they even have these Laz-X categories? Seems to me that restoring someone perfectly to a state they were in a couple of days ago would be preferable to restoring them as they are *right at the point of death* but losing a couple of percent of them, as they had to do with Murtaugh.

My guess? Theseus' Ship paradox. If you restore the original body, like with Murtaugh, it feels like they are still the same person they were, but if you simply flush the body, make one from scratch and give it the external memories, that is a "new" person.

GW

Gnoman

2016-12-04, 07:49 AM

It does raise the question what (legal) rights temporarily totally dead persons like Kaff have? If the people around them (Kaff's dad) say 'Screw him!' can they keep Kaff dead delete him in long-term-storage edited appropriately? If their children and company deputies want their job and money will Kaff start over as a penniless cadet? Will we have another trial over it with our favorite attorney/judge?

The dialog in this strip seems pretty clear on it, actually. The Kaff Tagon we knew is dead. They can use backups to create a new individual with the same appearance and memories that might call himself Kaff Tagon, but it will be a new legal entity, just like the Gavclones (all gateclones, for that matter - the only reason that they were able to execute that one guy for DUI was because he committed the crime before being cloned and thus the new one was still guilty) or the Kevyns.

Karl Tagon's decision here seems to be a case of what to do with his son's personal effects rather than the executor of a living will.

eschmenk

2016-12-04, 10:53 AM

The dialog in this strip seems pretty clear on it, actually. The Kaff Tagon we knew is dead. They can use backups to create a new individual with the same appearance and memories that might call himself Kaff Tagon, but it will be a new legal entity, just like the Gavclones (all gateclones, for that matter - the only reason that they were able to execute that one guy for DUI was because he committed the crime before being cloned and thus the new one was still guilty) or the Kevyns.

That doesn't mean that there won't be a lot of jabbering about it. We don't know how universal Bunni's viewpoint is.

If it's like the book that just ended, there were be some jabbering about it, then it will be completely forgotten as an issue. Nothing ever came of Murtaugh's worries about what she was missing nor all the ethical issues over not-Vog. We never even learned if Petey preserved not-Vog as a separate personality somehow.

Based on the size of the warhead Kaff had been manhandling and the amount of damage it ended up doing to the ship, the only situation in which those missiles would have been useful in repelling boarders would be to blow themselves up. It is unclear how spacefuture technology changes the ratio, but given how little of modern missiles are actually the payload, it is rather unlikely that the full missile would be able to fit through the hallways anyway, which is why Kaff had taken the warhead out.

Of course you wouldn't send it down the hallways! You would send it around outside Broken Wind and send it in through a hatch. That's what I've been saying all along. If if needed to blow holes to make a path, you would send several. Also, if not having a path would have been a problem, why wouldn't the AI have said so?

Also, another thing I had said earlier was that the main reason to have ship-to-ship missiles ready to fire is that the Toughs couldn't be certain that the Esspies didn't have small ships hidden somewhere. There was no reason to assume that sending boarders through cages would have been the only means of attack.

Also it only would have taken 9 minutes to warbuck the annie on a propulsion unit to use in transporting the warhead.
Which is far too long! You can't wait 9 minutes after it becomes obvious that you need to shoot a missile to be able to use it. Why didn't Broken Wind have missiles on hot standby given that they were in a area that they were expecting to become a war zone? I've raised that issue several times already!

The final issue is why does the most recent page say 40 minutes if what you said is correct? Did Kaff not know he was going on his suicide mission 40 minutes in advance or is what you said wrong?

Demon 997

2016-12-04, 11:01 AM

I'm definitely torn between whether this is a huge cop out from killing the central character, or if it's just moving the story to a more philosophical level, where the tension is no longer the question of death in combat, but what to do if you cannot die, Ship of Theseus but with your brain, and all the other attendant bits.

That said, you could do some of both with doing an arc or two without Kaff, and seeing how the story functions without him, before he's brought back, somewhat changed, and with the people around him changed.

His relationship with his father is hugely shifted for one. The father has dealt with his death, and heard what Kaff was able to say as he went to his death. The cloned Kaff knows that happens, can hear the message, but hasn't felt or processed that himself. That's potentially a very weird and interesting dynamic.

keybounce

2016-12-04, 01:54 PM

Meta topic: The "50 page per thread" seems to be a misfit for this comic; I think one thread per book would fit better.

Topic: So re-reading the last book, it ended with the revelation that the Schuul were behind the attempt to overthrow the Sol government. Perhaps this next book on immortality will be looking at the question of "What do you do with people that really want you dead, or at least everything that makes "your society" your society dead?".

(Ok, English majors, what's the proper way to punctuate that?)

Hmm. That would be interesting. It's one thing to ask "This person wants to kill me. We have immortality".

It's something else to ask, "This group wants to destroy our way of life, without destroying our life. What do we do in response"?

That might even be relevant to modern real life, as a sci-fi parable for the world we live in. I mean, we come to this story break right as we come to someone in power that could change our way of life for at least a full generation, and now the chance for a story to look at the question. It's almost like it was planned :-) (ref: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0912.html)

NEO|Phyte

2016-12-04, 09:26 PM

The final issue is why does the most recent page say 40 minutes if what you said is correct? Did Kaff not know he was going on his suicide mission 40 minutes in advance or is what you said wrong?

All we know regarding the nature of the gestalt backup is that it occurred 40 minutes before Kaff's death. Maybe it's an automated event on a regular timer, maybe Kaff was feeling particularly twitchy that day, but unless the timescale of the boarding action is way the hell off, it was unlikely to have been a 'back myself up before I kill myself'.

:edit: for reference, when Kaff fully committed to his run, there was a stated two minutes of time before the boarders finished whatever that woop wooping was about (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-09-09).

As for using the ship missiles indoors, we don't have enough external information to say for certain if they could or could not have flown a missile to where it needed to get, but given that Kaff has a tendency to like to survive so he can get paid, if it was feasible he probably would have gone for that rather than manhandling a warhead. Similarly, we have no stated information (to my knowledge) on how long it takes for missiles to be made battle ready, the 9 minutes was for warbucking a normally nonmilitary propulsion unit to serve as a warhead delivery system.

:edit the second: poking around a bit in adjacent strips, assuming the strips happen in a linear order chronologically between scene changes, there was at least three minutes of Kaff running with that warhead before the final countdown, based on impactor time to impact comments.

guttering flame

2016-12-05, 01:29 AM

factotum

2016-12-05, 04:13 AM

OK, so any bets on what this is going to turn out to be? Guessing it isn't going to turn out to be the actual afterlife...

eschmenk

2016-12-05, 09:10 AM

The problem was they installed too many safety features. The AI couldn't use weaponized gravies inside the ship or fly missiles inside it. Not harming itself (By aiming missiles at itself) was of course disallowed as well. I miss the explosive-experts (ordnance technicians??) though. This was the perfect opportunity for them to shine.

If those were really the problems, why did the AI act as if the only problem was its failure to have any missiles ready to fire in the middle of a space battle? Whether you are correct or not, HT's writing was pretty bad.

The Glyphstone

2016-12-05, 09:13 AM

OK, so any bets on what this is going to turn out to be? Guessing it isn't going to turn out to be the actual afterlife...

I think this is the 'storage buffer' where NuTagon's gestalt is stored. He's been reactivated, but not yet downloaded into meatware for whatever reason.

Windscion

2016-12-05, 01:32 PM

If so (and I can think of no better explanation) this blurs the line between AI and meat-sophont even further.

guttering flame

2016-12-05, 01:55 PM

Shouldn't a Virtual Reality heaven created by our mercenaries have more oomph?

Windscion

2016-12-05, 06:18 PM

It's not heaven, merely Eden.

keybounce

2016-12-07, 01:42 PM

Shouldn't a Virtual Reality heaven created by our mercenaries have more oomph?

Ahh, here's my bet (I'll put 20Q on this on the Erf forums if you want):

This is Petey's VR. Petey has stated that he wants to take some sociopaths out of circulation. So, he's trying to make a pleasant enough experience that Kaff will accept staying in A.L. instead of R.L.

This implies that we'll have a way for A.L. Kaff to talk with the rest of his staff.

Hmm. A little immortality, as an artificial lifeform. It's not the first treatment of the idea in fiction.

Which blurs the line a bit. Where is the line of life and death, when death is just an AI gateway? When your gestalt can be turned into a computer simulation, heck it can be turned into multiple simulations -- what would it mean to have 5 AI copies of you, and three regrown copies of you?

What will happen to the concept of "Life" in this post-longevity world?

Rockphed

2016-12-07, 02:35 PM

Ahh, here's my bet (I'll put 20Q on this on the Erf forums if you want):

This is Petey's VR. Petey has stated that he wants to take some sociopaths out of circulation. So, he's trying to make a pleasant enough experience that Kaff will accept staying in A.L. instead of R.L.

This implies that we'll have a way for A.L. Kaff to talk with the rest of his staff.

Hmm. A little immortality, as an artificial lifeform. It's not the first treatment of the idea in fiction.

Which blurs the line a bit. Where is the line of life and death, when death is just an AI gateway? When your gestalt can be turned into a computer simulation, heck it can be turned into multiple simulations -- what would it mean to have 5 AI copies of you, and three regrown copies of you?

What will happen to the concept of "Life" in this post-longevity world?

Well, didn't the Bradicor die out because they uploaded their brains into computers and then forgot who was who?

HandofShadows

2016-12-07, 03:17 PM

Well, didn't the Bradicor die out because they uploaded their brains into computers and then forgot who was who?

The system was destroyed in what were called The Personality Wars. But I don't recall much more.

factotum

2016-12-07, 04:12 PM

Well, didn't the Bradicor die out because they uploaded their brains into computers and then forgot who was who?

As I recall, the Bradicor were split into two groups: the ones who replaced their brains with Schlock-style memory banks, and the ones who uploaded themselves into computers. Pretty sure the ones who uploaded themselves into computers died because of computer failures, not because of forgetting who they were.

Cikomyr

2016-12-07, 10:54 PM

I personally am very happy that they actually make backups.

I think i made clear that i found the idea of them lacking backups to be a bigger plot hole than them suddenly having one.

The Glyphstone

2016-12-08, 12:46 AM

Though now I have to wonder why Tagon recorded that goodbye message to his father, if they could just copy him out into a new body from the backup.

Kantaki

2016-12-08, 12:51 AM

Though now I have to wonder why Tagon recorded that goodbye message to his father, if they could just copy him out into a new body from the backup.

Because he was going to die?
It's not as if the back-up is the same person.
He will just have Tagon’s personality and memories up to ~a hour before the original’s death
Schlock was pretty depressed because of something along those lines some time ago.

ryuplaneswalker

2016-12-08, 02:15 AM

Though now I have to wonder why Tagon recorded that goodbye message to his father, if they could just copy him out into a new body from the backup.

I am going to say he was a bit too in the moment, The idea that he can blow himself up and get rebuilt from a back up is very likely to not be in his conscious thought stream for years. He has spent 40 years with the idea that "If I blow up I am gone" and a few months with the idea "if I blow up they can rebuild me"

Cikomyr

2016-12-08, 09:49 AM

the Tagon that lived that extra 45 minutes is dead.

He is the one who came at certain realizations. And needed to say Goodbye.

Mobius Twist

2016-12-08, 10:55 AM

Though now I have to wonder why Tagon recorded that goodbye message to his father, if they could just copy him out into a new body from the backup.

The "Continuity Flaw" (https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2001-03-20) is one concept that is woven throughout Schlockverse, almost as if the author intended for a large portion of his work to reflect this and subvert popular character immortality. We kind dodged it when Tagon died the first time and Kevyn literally travelled back in time to save him. No so much any more.

eschmenk

2016-12-08, 11:16 AM

The "Continuity Flaw" (https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2001-03-20) is one concept that is woven throughout Schlockverse, almost as if the author intended for a large portion of his work to reflect this and subvert popular character immortality. We kind dodged it when Tagon died the first time and Kevyn literally travelled back in time to save him. No so much any more.

True, although it was glossed over when Kevyn gate-cloned himself before committing suicide.

Cikomyr

2016-12-08, 10:06 PM

Score one for the AI

Rockphed

2016-12-08, 10:37 PM

True, although it was glossed over when Kevyn gate-cloned himself before committing suicide.

As memory serves, Kevyn used the "I'm not the person who blew up target Alpha" to excuse his killing of the not-so-security detail.

Ibrinar

2016-12-09, 02:55 AM

I don't believe the exact same person would ever do different things in the exact same scenario (though it is almost impossible to replicate a scenario exactly and the person wouldn't be quite the same after doing it once so you can't exactly test that without duplicating someone), so that is not a problem AI whose name I forgot!

factotum

2016-12-09, 03:33 AM

so that is not a problem AI whose name I forgot!

His name is Tailor, because that's what he was created as--although he's been reprogrammed as more of a medical bot these days.

Anyway, the fact *this* Tagon has learned how he died might mean he would think harder about how to avoid that situation if it happened again, so put him in exactly the same situation and he might well behave differently. Impossible to tell, of course, since it's vanishingly unlikely he'll ever be in exactly the same situation...

guttering flame

2016-12-09, 06:16 AM

His name is Tailor, because that's what he was created as--although he's been reprogrammed as more of a medical bot these days.

Anyway, the fact *this* Tagon has learned how he died might mean he would think harder about how to avoid that situation if it happened again, so put him in exactly the same situation and he might well behave differently. Impossible to tell, of course, since it's vanishingly unlikely he'll ever be in exactly the same situation...

Shouldn't it be the opposite? Assured of his resilient backups, Tagon will fearlessly rush toward danger next time. The best part of it is he'll never remember the painful final moments, only the excitement of a bit before.

factotum

2016-12-09, 07:38 AM

Shouldn't it be the opposite? Assured of his resilient backups, Tagon will fearlessly rush toward danger next time.

Except this Tagon knows he's not the original. The original is dead and ain't coming back.

eschmenk

2016-12-09, 08:37 AM

Though now I have to wonder why Tagon recorded that goodbye message to his father, if they could just copy him out into a new body from the backup.

I wonder if Tailor is the one who created the backup, perhaps without Kaff knowing about it. IIRC, Tailor wasn't in any of the scenes after Kaff died, which would avoid the question of why he didn't tell anyone about the backup. It could even be that this is a backup of Tailor, who might have been destroyed by the Esspies.

I'm not sure I remember, but wasn't Tailor a gift from Karl to Kaff originally? Maybe preserving and updating Kaff's backup was something he did for Karl's and Kaff's benefit?

Shouldn't it be the opposite? Assured of his resilient backups, Tagon will fearlessly rush toward danger next time. The best part of it is he'll never remember the painful final moments, only the excitement of a bit before.

He will experience any painful final moments, then die, then not remember anything. He'll know that there will be an identical replacement to take over, but he won't experience that.

factotum

2016-12-11, 03:48 AM

Whoops. Unless I miss my guess, this strip is implying that Int-Aff-Int have got access to long gun technology somehow? That can't be good news.

Slayn82

2016-12-11, 10:22 AM

Are they test firing it on Jupiter? Because it looks like they are test firing it on Jupiter, or a similar Gas Giant. And that talk about spacefaring sophonts adding their own lights to the sky isn't helping.

We know the Paanuri could take a lot of the energy output from their central star to power their Buuthandi. We know how Wormhole Cannons work. At least an entire planet worth of energy could be linked to powering one of those cannons and do so much damage.

Narkis

2016-12-11, 11:03 AM

eschmenk

2016-12-11, 11:15 AM

All that jibber-jabbering, and we still don't know who created Kaff's backup and why they did it? Given all of the other things that haven't ever been explained, I wonder if we'll ever find out.

Are they test firing it on Jupiter? Because it looks like they are test firing it on Jupiter, or a similar Gas Giant. And that talk about spacefaring sophonts adding their own lights to the sky isn't helping.

We have seen that UNS Int-Aff-Int has a base (headquarters?) on Europa (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-12-29). That's probably why factotum assumed it was them. All we know is that there is a button to press that may be on Europa. We don't know if the gun is there or if it is somewhere else.

We know the Paanuri could take a lot of the energy output from their central star to power their Buuthandi. We know how Wormhole Cannons work. At least an entire planet worth of energy could be linked to powering one of those cannons and do so much damage.

Or maybe that have a huge anni plant or numerous smaller ones plus a lot a fuel. Whichever is more convenient. *shrug*