Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme

[tonberrian]

I don't like where this is going...

[factotum]

It's going straight for Credomar by the sounds of it. Can't see any way for it to be avoided, either, because LOTA can hardly power the station off something other than the annie plants.

[diremage]

Fortunately we already had two entire story arcs about how dangerous actually being present on Credomar at any time was, and how everyone was forcibly evacuated as soon as LOTA could find a place to put them.

Lota's last words will be, "LOTA WAS RIGHT!"

[Mechalich]

Fortunately we already had two entire story arcs about how dangerous actually being present on Credomar at any time was, and how everyone was forcibly evacuated as soon as LOTA could find a place to put them.

Lota's last words will be, "LOTA WAS RIGHT!"

Lota's currently engaged in a direct hypernode-relayed conversation with Petey. Blowing up Credomar just means Lota ends up in the Oafan infosphere along with all the other 'casualties.' To this point. Somewhat oddly, the nature of digitization technologies has made it so that materiel is now more valuable than lives in this war.

[Rockphed]

Lota's currently engaged in a direct hypernode-relayed conversation with Petey. Blowing up Credomar just means Lota ends up in the Oafan infosphere along with all the other 'casualties.' To this point. Somewhat oddly, the nature of digitization technologies has made it so that materiel is now more valuable than lives in this war.

I give even odds that either Lota fires back before Lota dies or Lota has figured out how to be harder to find than the DMEs expect.

[HandofShadows]

Hard to think that LOTA and Petey didn't consider the possibility that the DMB would find and shoot Credomar. Also the Credomar pictured last page looks different than back in Longshoreman. The original was much longer and thinner.

[sihnfahl]

Hard to think that LOTA and Petey didn't consider the possibility that the DMB would find and shoot Credomar. Also the Credomar pictured last page looks different than back in Longshoreman. The original was much longer and thinner.

At least, try to find and shoot it.

Fire and move has always been a good anti counter-battery response...

[factotum]

At least, try to find and shoot it.

Fire and move has always been a good anti counter-battery response...

The implication here is that the Pa'anuri have identified the specific power signature of Credomar, which presumably doesn't change as it moves around. There's no way they can identify its location from its shots, because of it being a long gun.

[Willie the Duck]

The implication here is that the Pa'anuri have identified the specific power signature of Credomar, which presumably doesn't change as it moves around. There's no way they can identify its location from its shots, because of it being a long gun.

This is the part where the story believability hits a rough patch for me. If they can do this -- get a reading on the power signature of power sources (apparently either from across the galactic divide or more likely by sensors on their massively damaged fallen knight's armor, which can communicate with them across said divide), detect which power source in the other galaxy that corresponds to (on a station that Petey supposedly can't find), and hit it with their inter-galactic longgun rays-- how is this even still a fight? It seems like they should have already won if that's the kind of thing they can do.

[tyckspoon]

This is the part where the story believability hits a rough patch for me. If they can do this -- get a reading on the power signature of power sources (apparently either from across the galactic divide or more likely by sensors on their massively damaged fallen knight's armor, which can communicate with them across said divide), detect which power source in the other galaxy that corresponds to (on a station that Petey supposedly can't find), and hit it with their inter-galactic longgun rays-- how is this even still a fight? It seems like they should have already won if that's the kind of thing they can do.

We've known they can detect annie-plants for a long time - there was an entire plot/subplot about it which lead to them sniping one of PD's cities and leading to the emergency relocation and reconfiguration of said cities to not be reliant on annie-plants. We have not been told *how* or if there is some sort of countermeasure that could be taken aside from 'run dark until you absolutely have to use annies, then go somewhere else ASAP and go back to running dark.' Nothing that's happening here is showing a previously-unknown capability - if anything it's just LOTA overestimating LOTA's ability to hide.

[factotum]

Well, we've already seen that they're entirely capable of targeting specific annie plants in the Milky Way galaxy from when they were "walking" their shots, trying to find Petey's cities--every single one of those shots hit an actual valid target, as far as we can tell. I would assume that pin-pointing every single annie plant in the Milky Way and blowing them up would take a hella long time and drain lots of power, though, especially if they have only the one long gun that can reach so far.

[EDIT] Ninja'd by tyckspoon!

[Willie the Duck]

Yes, we knew they vaguely knew about all the annie plants in the galaxy (although that each had their own flavor or frequency or whatever that they could detect from over there I think is new information) and could target them at will, and it was basically a case of 'too many targets to know which were actually vulnerable' situation. It is specifically that this patch of Pa'anuri resurrection ship somehow can both get a annie plant fingerprint for the annie plant(s) that produced the longgun shot, and communicate that information back to Andromeda (and then that the DMEs can say, 'oh, so it's #34567304 that did that? Okay, well we know exactly where that specific plant is. Move that one to first in line for the death ray.') that I am considering frightening new information on their capabilities and one that strains my 'so why haven't they already won?' meter more than a bit.

[Rockphed]

Contrariwise, we did recently see Petey mustache twirl in a massive psi-op to get the DMEs to behave the way he wanted. I wonder if they actually have a second, closer long gun that is about to be ripped apart so they can fire back at the DME long gun.

[tyckspoon]

I guess for me it seems pretty reasonable that A: long-guns have a pretty distinct power signature due to their method of operation (has to power up and spin an array of annie plants, creating both a massive spike in energy produced/used as well as what is probably a highly distinctive gravitational distortion) and B: LOTA/the Credomar facility, as the largest known long-gun in the Milky Way, has an especially visible and identifiable signature. Also a little bit of C: firing the long-gun intergalactic distances probably uses large amounts of annie fuel, and having done so twice in fairly rapid succession may create a window of opportunity where Credomar cannot be easily relocated because it needs to spin down from the shots/may need to be refueled before it can teraport out and hide again.

Edit: Which is to say they probably already had the Credomar annie-plants flagged, but being able to match those to 'somebody just fired 2 long-gun shots at us and this particular set of annie-plants activated for both of them' lets them fairly positively match them to being a long-gun, so now it's worth spending the energy to spin up their own gun and take them out.

(Admittedly if any or all of this is true it might be worth taking a couple panels of expository info-dump to say so, as it seems very pertinent to how an intergalactic war could be prosecuted. I suspect it will also tie back into the 'We need to rediscover the secrets of mega-structure engineering' thread, because the Milky Way people are going to need a lot more weapons on Credomar's scale if they're going to seriously threaten Andromeda.)

[Radar]

This is the part where the story believability hits a rough patch for me. If they can do this -- get a reading on the power signature of power sources (apparently either from across the galactic divide or more likely by sensors on their massively damaged fallen knight's armor, which can communicate with them across said divide), detect which power source in the other galaxy that corresponds to (on a station that Petey supposedly can't find), and hit it with their inter-galactic longgun rays-- how is this even still a fight? It seems like they should have already won if that's the kind of thing they can do.

Not sure what they can do, but we can be fully sure, they cannot just aim this precisely. At least not immediately. For the core generator they needed to walk their shots and they knew exactly where it was.

edit: who wants to bet that Schlock was teraported to this long gun megastructure?

[Lizard Lord]

Wasn't the whole point of the story arc where we learn that the Pa'nuri can track annies that they can't differentiate which annies they are shooting at? I thought that was why they were shooting at random targets before finally destroying one of Petey's cities.

[Mechalich]

Wasn't the whole point of the story arc where we learn that the Pa'nuri can track annies that they can't differentiate which annies they are shooting at? I thought that was why they were shooting at random targets before finally destroying one of Petey's cities.

That was before they had any active units in the Milky Way though, because Petey was 'swatting' aside all incursions. Now that they have such units, they are presumably using them as spotters. This does mean that the Pa'anuri are sustaining an intergalactic hypernode connection, which has been established as being extremely energetically expensive. However, given the massive size of Andromeda's core, perhaps they have power to burn.

I actually suspect the loss of Credomar may have been a ploy. It was literally just established that it's not actually a threat, which makes sense given that while it can blow holes in the Pa'anuri warship it can't actually disable it.

Contrariwise, we did recently see Petey mustache twirl in a massive psi-op to get the DMEs to behave the way he wanted. I wonder if they actually have a second, closer long gun that is about to be ripped apart so they can fire back at the DME long gun.

The Pa'anuri have two really big threats - their core generator and the intergalactic longgun that powers it, with the latter probably being impossible to charge without the core generator. Both of those physical objects are probably too large to actually destroy from the Milky Way, but they could perhaps be potentially disabled if the Pa'anuri controlling them are killed. Hypothetically, if Petey has been able to combine longgun and teragun technology he could build some kind of 'teralonggun' and snipe down the Pa'anuri controlling the weapon, thereby providing a window for the Toughs to seize control of it and oooh...use the Pa'anuri long-gun to blow up the Pa'anuri core generator in a Neosyncronicity style self-destructive final shot.

[factotum]

Also a little bit of C: firing the long-gun intergalactic distances probably uses large amounts of annie fuel, and having done so twice in fairly rapid succession may create a window of opportunity where Credomar cannot be easily relocated because it needs to spin down from the shots/may need to be refueled before it can teraport out and hide again.

Credomar didn't fire intergalactic distances? It was aimed at the Pa'anuri incursion in the Uvoth system, which is in the Milky Way.

Anyway, Credomar is gone, although it appears LOTA survived--not sure if that's going to be significant later on.

[geoduck]

Credomar didn't fire intergalactic distances? It was aimed at the Pa'anuri incursion in the Uvoth system, which is in the Milky Way.

Anyway, Credomar is gone, although it appears LOTA survived--not sure if that's going to be significant later on.

That's assuming the rest of Credomar doesn't blow up as well.

[factotum]

That's assuming the rest of Credomar doesn't blow up as well.

Can't see why it would, to be honest? The annie plants are all around the middle, where the Pa'anuri blast hit, and most of the rest of the thing is just an empty tube, so there's nothing to actually blow up in the end sections.

[Max_Killjoy]

Someone really needs to create "TAD II" at some point...

[HorizonWalker]

I understand that this is pedantic, but the Long-gun Of The Apocalypse is not Credomar. Credomar is a human city-state that used to occupy the inside of the Long-gun Of The Apocalypse.

[Willie the Duck]

I understand that this is pedantic, but the Long-gun Of The Apocalypse is not Credomar. Credomar is a human city-state that used to occupy the inside of the Long-gun Of The Apocalypse.

You are right (about both things).

[tyckspoon]

I understand that this is pedantic, but the Long-gun Of The Apocalypse is not Credomar. Credomar is a human city-state that used to occupy the inside of the Long-gun Of The Apocalypse.

Ok but can we agree that 'the structure that formerly housed the human city-state of Credomar' can colloquially be referred to as 'Credomar' and everybody will understand what you mean? Although I suppose LOTA is also an accurate and more correct name for the weapon/structure.

[sihnfahl]

"Counter battery? What's that?"

[HorizonWalker]

Ok but can we agree that 'the structure that formerly housed the human city-state of Credomar' can colloquially be referred to as 'Credomar' and everybody will understand what you mean? Although I suppose LOTA is also an accurate and more correct name for the weapon/structure.

The trouble is that when y'all started talking about Credomar, I got confused and thinking civilians were involved, because I distinctly recall Credomar being, very specifically and explicitly, the name for the human community that used to live there.

So... no, not everyone will understand what you mean. I sure didn't at first.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Ok but can we agree that 'the structure that formerly housed the human city-state of Credomar' can colloquially be referred to as 'Credomar' and everybody will understand what you mean? Although I suppose LOTA is also an accurate and more correct name for the weapon/structure.

Except now I supposed the artificial intelligence known as LOTA is going to live somewhere else (that might be why this happened, to get the character in a place where they can be used again?) so LOTA is going to be a more confusing name as well as we move on.

Poor nameless structure (except for the original UNS name which I didn't bother to remember, something about a discontinuous particle beam weapon?), we hardly knew thee.

[Kornaki]

Ugh, the story has officially fragmented for me again. It felt like he had put it back together for a while and I was really enjoying everything, but now it's just blue armored blobs having what I assume is witty banter. I don't even remember WHICH galactic core this is supposed to be taking place at. I certainly have no idea what is exploding or why I care about it.

[diremage]

Ugh, the story has officially fragmented for me again. It felt like he had put it back together for a while and I was really enjoying everything, but now it's just blue armored blobs having what I assume is witty banter. I don't even remember WHICH galactic core this is supposed to be taking place at. I certainly have no idea what is exploding or why I care about it.

Yeah, based on the eyeballs and the talking head I'm assuming that's Schlock, but given the explosion, either Schlock is in the -wrong- galaxy or the explosion is in the wrong galaxy. Or else Schlock caused the explosion, which makes it even more idiotic for him to complain about running away from it.

This comic is usually pretty well written in my opinion but today's strip fails for me on a number of levels.

[factotum]

I assume the explosion has something to do with the Pa'anuri long gun or core generator in Andromeda, not sure why Schlock has to be in the wrong galaxy?