Comic for Monday, March 18th, 2019
So, I have a bit of bad news; not only is this comic a tad light on content, I think I am going to skip Thursday to reestablish a buffer. To be clear, this doesn’t mean I’m just going to kick back on a beach or something, I’m still going to draw the comic, but I think it’s not proven historically to be a good idea to try and run pen to publish without a buffer, so I’m going to take a day off to get at least a little ahead.
I think the light has reemerged here though, as the problem project that has sort of derailed things is… sort of leaving the scope of things developers deal with. Though I would argue it never really entered the scope of something a developer deals with either. Unfortunately I’m not quite sure what that means yet, as my company really doesn’t want to give me back to my old project, so we’ll see what bright idea they are hatching now.
As for the actual comic…
Well, obviously something on this scale I have to be somewhat stylized in how I draw it. The special effects budget is limited after all. It’s one of those things that I felt I should spend space on though, as it helps convey relative relevance. Notably the last few times we’ve seen Kally’s Dragonfire it has not actually hit the ground. Dragonfire is the same general category of magic as the rupture magic we see quite a few IDS people use, and was originally devised from red constructs. The calculation itself can be divided out and used on its own – we have seen everyone from Ila to Nick Otte use it – but if you asked Kally… Dragonfire is rather more pure application.
We’ll probably learn more about it later one, but suffice to say it is neither literally fire, nor entirely just a beam of heat/energy or the like, it’s primarily a data-category effect that uses the real world as an interface medium, which quite a few things do. Transmission is typically easier than remote action, and far more effective at attempting to bypass resistance. Of course, it has it’s own flaws – we’ve seen that neither Rupture nor a remote action data attack like Rovak’s Explosion worked on Tyler. But, well, transmission of data scales better I guess you could say. Using real energy to to transmit (like the lightning arcs or Camillia’s light/laser-like ability) can be more efficient, but has it’s own pros and cons, which if I get into here we’ll be here all day.
How exactly Dragonfire works though is something that most people in-comic could not answer either. It is ludicrously scaled up from more typical applications of Rupture magic, and well out of the range of something a mage can produce directly via a calculation. It is far from the only tactical class magic known, but is fairly unusual in it’s category. There is quite a theoretical divide in IDS researchers if Kally could in principle use dragonfire without the dragon, with many arguing the fundamentally the power comes from her anyway, while others pointing out that if she was powerful enough to produce an effect like that, the rest of her magic should be equally as absurd, rather than just very powerful. For what it’s worth, Kally think the debate is ridiculous. Dragon’s breath fire, people don’t.
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Site was hacked again 🙁
Trying to fix. I lost a bunch of comments in the process.
If you see posts coming from “PastUtopia” but they are in Korean and contain links to malware, please do not click them. This should be obvious, but yeah, that’s the site being hacked again 🙁 I don’t speak korean, and don’t typically advertise malware 😐
I will try to restore the comments, but I don’t know if I can.
Comments should be restored for today’s page… but it was sort of a hacky manual process so (a) I apologize if I missed something, (b) I’m really sorry if anyone has email notifications enabled and just got spammed, (c) what a mess; sorry about all this. We just have to hope it’s actually fixed now.
Aw, but I CAME here for malware advertisements I can’t read. What am I supposed to do now?
Don’t sweat it and the transparency is greatly appreciated. Hackers are like ants, there’re always more no matter how many you step on.
Rater than targeting the construct, I would think you are much better off targeting the mage. Provided the Mage has power, it can reconstruct the construct. Atter himself was standing on the ground.
As others have mentioned hitting something small, far away, with a beam without computerized targeting means you fire and then move in whichever direction the target is. While “pointing” weapons works at short ranges, if you have a brain that properly resolves the parallax solution, over longer distances it isn’t all that accurate. Military arms training teaches that aiming is important and when it should be done. Depending on pointing, if you are distracted, it throws the aiming off since you are aiming by looking.
You can see this effect with a different kind of weapon …an automobile. When driving, any driver begins to veer in the direction they are focusing on. Its a large reason distracted driving is so dangerous. So what happens if a driver is focused on something inside the vehicle and to the right…they drive right, unless they twist to interact with the thing then they turn left. That has greater consequence to oncoming traffic.
The issue there is that there are heavy suggestions that at this point ATTER IS THE CONSTRUCT. Which throw all that logic out the window.
We’re pretty sure Atter *is* the construct, which makes this idea less useful.
Excellent point. But let’s put it this way. Atter has control of the construct. He has three choices we can come up with:
1. Hide far away from the construct while controlling it.
2. Hide nearby, inside a war zone while controlling it.
3. Hide inside the construct (or possibly merge with the construct).
If Atter wasn’t insane, then we could eliminate #2. But even with Atter’s insanity, #2 is pretty unlikely.
So if Kally and Fluffy approached the construct and are attacking with the dragon’s mega ‘pew pew’ attack (sorry, couldn’t resist!), then the highest probability target is the construct. Either to destroy the construct or to destroy Atter inside the construct or to destroy the merged Atter/construct entity.
So if Fluffy is aiming for the construct, what is panel 4 showing?
1. Fluffy ‘walking’ it’s attack towards the mostly-unmoving construct?
2. Construct dodging, and Fluffy’s attack is chasing?
3. Or does Fluffy’s attack have a shockwave component?
All of these questions will probably be answered Monday. We hope.
I’m pretty sure the first two panels are Naomi saying something like “if you are any where near the big red construct, take cover now”. And the last panel is the artist trying to convey that Kally has cranked up the dial a nuke to maximum yield, its all blast-wave from the off panel hit. And I believe her first target is Atter-Godzilla.
For some reason, the first two panels make me really scared of Naomi.
I’m not entirely clear on why she’s targeting ground in a sweeping line, here. Isn’t she facing a flying !terrasque controlled by Atter?
I’m thinking that the ground may be collateral damage at this point. Her shot doesn’t seem like it would have lost much damage potential over extended ranges, and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t using a scope for her strike.
So the question comes down to how far away she’s attacking, and by how many degrees did she miss. Because why get in range of a tarrasque if you don’t have to.
Although this could just be the rule of cool getting involved.
Either Atter is dodging her attack, or we’re looking at the shockwave of her attack simply passing nearby. I’m leaning towards shockwave; Atter doesn’t look very agile in his mutant godzilla body.
Or maybe she is targeting the ground. But that seems like a ‘Hollywood’ thing to do: hit the ground so we can see how powerful the attack is against normal targets. Of course, maybe PastUtopia is indulging himself with a bit of explosion fun.
Look at the last page again, guys. She’s targeting the Kor’s World soldier that Ila is distracting with her HVW/sniper rifle.
Atter’s form wasn’t flying the last time we saw it.
Depending on how far away she is, sweeping a line would be way more likely to hit. Degree is pretty easy to get right, but range-finding distance would probably be harder. If you hit close and sweep past it is more or less guaranteed to hit. It would cause massive destruction, but it doesn’t seem Kally is particularly concerned by that right now.
Firing a flamethrower and a full auto weapon have some things in common. It’s a bit like using a fire extinguisher. Often it is easier to walk the impact point that to repeatedly aim+fire.
The only thing stopping Mium from {DROP TABLE target} is some ACLs he can navigate like water. The only thing stopping Kally from DoSing your existence into oblivion is… self-restraint, maybe? Decisions are powerful forces of nature. Marketing seeks to hack that. Part of why I hate them: their intent, their success, and the consequences for others.
Marketing reaches into people’s brains and updates fields on a whim.
I just wish they didn’t find it funny to mash the keys so often.
I’m now amused by the spectacle of some middle manager in IDS trying to convince Kally to breathe dragon fire without summoning Fluffy.
That …looks like something that even Ila might find impressive. O.o
It might even make an….impression…on the Kor’s World soldier. ^^