Schlock Mercenary VI: Eat It, Kill It, Make Friends With It, Take a Bath in It

[Cikomyr]

Para is straight on the.money.

Someone who actually worked on the archival process of the remains is probably the single best find you can have. It'll speed bump your research by an unimaginable amount.

[Douglas]

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Elf isn't thinking big picture enough. Para didn't find a technological trove, she found the index to ALL the technological troves.

[memnarch]

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Elf isn't thinking big picture enough. Para didn't find a technological trove, she found the index to ALL the technological troves.

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I dunno. I wouldn't be able to remember the specifics of everything in a library I ran; I'd use the computers for the details. In this case, I'd think it'd help them narrow their search a lot more, but it's a bit much to assume that it's an easy shot to the tech they're after.

[factotum]

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I dunno. I wouldn't be able to remember the specifics of everything in a library I ran; I'd use the computers for the details. In this case, I'd think it'd help them narrow their search a lot more, but it's a bit much to assume that it's an easy shot to the tech they're after.

You're not an Oafan.

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Since a lot of their memory appears to be held in the form of nanobot-written aluminium sheets on the interior of the balloon, one assumes it's *far* more reliable and easy to remember than the squishy pink meat memory us humans are stuck with...

[ryuplaneswalker]

You're not an Oafan.

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Since a lot of their memory appears to be held in the form of nanobot-written aluminium sheets on the interior of the balloon, one assumes it's *far* more reliable and easy to remember than the squishy pink meat memory us humans are stuck with...

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Alternatively he might know where the computer that has the index is, since the computer in charge of the computers..went a little cray cray.

[eschmenk]

Sunday's comic:

Quotes are from two weeks ago:

He likes being a mercenary. Being a chief justice would interfere with that.

Seems plenty consistent to me. For Massey the magic had been in getting to write up a constitution wholecloth. Not just going through existing laws to figure out how they work, but coming up with your own and making sure they fit your idea of the ideal laws.

And now a copy/paste error has him babysitting his new constitution indefinitely.

I take it you expect architects to want to act as maintenance crews for their masterwork buildings as well?

Because you expect the architect of a constitution to just LOVE the idea of maintaining it. It is the exact same situation.

Massey seems to be pretty satisfied with his new job so far.

[tonberrian]

Sunday's comic:

Quotes are from two weeks ago:

Massey seems to be pretty satisfied with his new job so far.

Yes, and I also said he would probably be. Thank you for ignoring that to make a point. That was really clever of you.

[Bulldog Psion]

So, any RPG backers here who have seen the half-finished art for the alien races in a more realistic rendition that Howard sent an email about yesterday?

[eschmenk]

Yes, and I also said he would probably be. Thank you for ignoring that to make a point. That was really clever of you.

Actually, I just forgot and didn't read that far down when I was quoting things. But yes, you're right, you did. Sorry about that.

[tonberrian]

I can't seem to access the images for everything on the page, but only the images. Anyone else having issues?

[NEO|Phyte]

Site's not loading at all for me, getting Server Not Found.

[The Glyphstone]

I'm loading it just fine.

[Alent]

I had to reload a few times to get everything to fill in, seems to just be running a touch slower than the timeout's happy with?

[tonberrian]

Seems to be working fine now for me too. Odd.

[Brance_a_Lot]

Have to say, I like the Ob'enn and Elephant(Neophant) characters the most. Least favorites are the Amorph and the Gzeaul(the first one), but he mentioned that some of the art isn't finished yet.

[factotum]

Interesting. It appears the original Oafans were a lot larger than their present-day descendants, which maybe explains why they built such a honkin' great habitat when they were trying to hide from the Pa'anuri!

[Bulldog Psion]

Have to say, I like the Ob'enn and Elephant(Neophant) characters the most. Least favorites are the Amorph and the Gzeaul(the first one), but he mentioned that some of the art isn't finished yet.

Yes, I agree about the Ob'enn and Neophant, definitely. Really the pick of the lot.

I realize it's likely going to be common in the finished product, but it's a bit amusing to me that the Purp lady is wearing 2015 clothing. My first thought was, "Is she a Society for Creative Anachronisms member?" (Or the Schlock-era equivalent thereof.)

[eschmenk]

New comic

From last August:

Oh, come on! After that ridiculous circus involving Bunni acting like a clown, the Toughs are going to go on an adventure without us finding out about the result or the intent of the surgery that was apparently done on Vog? Did Petey try to create both Vogs so that the rights of both would be respected, or did he choose one of them or what? How long are we going to have to wait to find out?

I can barely remember what the issues were anymore. Is Paul^[*] Taylor going to wait until we completely forget about it and won't care anymore? The stuff we've had in the meantime wasn't exactly exciting, so why not tell us what happened instead?

So will we finally learn what happened to the Vog personalities or will we just see Bunni acting like a hypocrite again, but with respect to a new patient? At this point, the best we can hope for is that we will be told, not shown, what happened, but I'm not even sure we'll get that much.

AFAIK, the RPG project isn't expected to be completed until April. Now I'm thinking that it may be an occasional issue for the next six months or so or maybe longer. The training is currently occurring the conventional way. It could be that the upcoming mission will be used to show that the Toughs didn't learn what they needed to, so they will need attempt a different training method and more RPG elements might be added at that point.

^[*] That should have said Howard Taylor. Paul Taylor has a different comic that I used to read.

[halfeye]

Paul Taylor has a different comic that I used to read.

Ta, I wondered where that had gone, must have been dropped from the http://www.thewebcomiclist.com/latest/ list. I wonder why they do that.

[eschmenk]

Ta, I wondered where that had gone, must have been dropped from the http://www.thewebcomiclist.com/latest/ list. I wonder why they do that.

They use a bot. Apparently it is misconfigured. I went ahead and reported the problem. I got this back:

Thank you for reporting Wapsi Square for not showing as updated correctly, we will look into this and shall hopefully have this fixed soon.

I don't use The Webcomicslist site, so if that doesn't work, you might want to follow up on it. You can report it here.

[halfeye]

I don't use The Webcomicslist site, so if that doesn't work, you might want to follow up on it. You can report it here.

Thanks, but I make exceptions to my cookies ban for sites I like, that isn't one of them, and I'm certainly not giving them my email address. Beside which it's happened with other comics before on that site, I suspect it's a page length thing, or maybe "if you get popular pay us", if it was really unintentional they'd have fixed it by now.

[Cikomyr]

Im siding with Capt Tagon on this one. Its his job to figure the easiest/cleanest way to disable potential threats.

If preserving the sails is one of the mission objective, Commo. Tagon should have had it specified earlier in the mission briefing.

[Discus-Spinner]

As Tagon Senior said, the clue is in the word "goodwill", which Junior had apparently heard. Disabling someone's propulsion system is rarely good for that.

[factotum]

The main issue is that the sail is the only thing stopping this habitat from falling into the star. Detaching or destroying it would be tantamount to signing a very long-drawn out and slow death warrant for the inhabitants, and would not make a great first impression!

[Marnath]

As Tagon Senior said, the clue is in the word "goodwill", which Junior had apparently heard. Disabling someone's propulsion system is rarely good for that.

The main issue is that the sail is the only thing stopping this habitat from falling into the star. Detaching or destroying it would be tantamount to signing a very long-drawn out and slow death warrant for the inhabitants, and would not make a great first impression!

You're both forgetting the part where Captain Tagon's ground team would also die if the habitat was attacked. It literally doesn't matter what other variables there are because the Tough's first priority has always been survival. Kaff has burned contracts before and flown off penniless just to save his people. I really doubt he cares about hurting the Gatekeeper's feelings, especially not to make daddy proud.

[Discus-Spinner]

It's now defined as at least partly a goodwill mission. If he doesn't believe that he can preserve goodwill without taking unacceptable risks, then the mission is already a bust and he should just go home, rather than faffing about generating more trouble and expense for everyone without any chance of getting paid for completion.

[eschmenk]

It's impossible to know what's going on.

1) The mission has been described as a goodwill mission several times, but it's impossible to know who the goodwill is supposed to be earned with. Who is supposed to benefit from the mission? That's never been stated!

2) It's impossible to know how the goodwill will be earned. This page seemed to imply that an archive hosted in a cluster of pods was involved in earning the goodwill. Perhaps some group wanted the archive retrieved. Perhaps some group wanted a copy of the information from the archive. Maybe the idea was to help find the original copies of missing persons who may have traveled through the wormgates. But that's just a guess. It's never been stated.

3) The recent pages seemed to be acting as if there is just a single habitat rather than a cluster of pods hosting the archive. Is that a retcon? If not, is this just the first of several habitats that they will have to visit?

4) Flinders stated as a fact "[I]f we're nice, they'll let us look at [the archive]." Why is Targon acting as if there is a chance they might be attacked? There would be no excuse for Flinders to say way she did if she hadn't somehow established that they would not be attacked as long as they were nice. She never said how she did it, but she must have done it somehow, or she's such a terrible analyst that they should have fired her.

5) How could Flinders say what she said given that Karl had said that the residents had opened fire on their rescuers? Is that another retcon or is Flinders such a terrible analyst that the Toughs should have fired her? And how could Flinders be so terrible now if she was so good earlier?

6) The recent Sunday page seems to imply that the accessing the archive is the object of the mission. Unless the people currently in the habitat need help accessing their own archive, which seems unlikely, they aren't going to benefit from that, so it's unlikely that the goodwill is supposed to be earned with them. However, Karl keeps acting as if harming them wouldn't be consistent with it being a goodwill mission. Why would Karl act that way?

7) The artwork makes it look as if the Toughs are flying past the sail. So why didn't they put a cloud of missiles in their shadow and send it on the far side of the sail as they went past? The people in the habitat wouldn't be able to see the missiles from the habitat.

8) Why in the world are the Toughs having their discussion now? They are far too close to the habitat! They should have already established communications with the people in it or have a plan for what they are going to attack if that's what they are going to do.

It seems ridiculous that there would be this many questions. It's no fun to read a story if you can't tell what's going on.

9) Where is Cindercone? I think that there is a chance that there is a good reason we haven't been told the answer to this so I didn't include that in the previous group of questions, but that lack of information does add the the general lack of information.

It's now defined as at least partly a goodwill mission.

That's not new. I'm not sure, but I you seem to be assuming that the idea was to earn goodwill with the residents of the habitat. If that's the case, the fact that they opened fire on their rescuers in the past makes it seem stupid to go on a mission to earn goodwill with them. The Toughs hopefully would have realized that before they left.

[NEO|Phyte]

Man, why do I keep doing this, I don't normally analyze what goes on in webcomics.

1) The mission has been described as a goodwill mission several times, but it's impossible to know who the goodwill is supposed to be earned with. Who is supposed to benefit from the mission? That's never been stated!

2) It's impossible to know how the goodwill will be earned. This page seemed to imply that an archive hosted in a cluster of pods was involved in earning the goodwill. Perhaps some group wanted the archive retrieved. Perhaps some group wanted a copy of the information from the archive. Maybe the idea was to help find the original copies of missing persons who may have traveled through the wormgates. But that's just a guess. It's never been stated.

3) The recent pages seemed to be acting as if there is just a single habitat rather than a cluster of pods hosting the archive. Is that a retcon? If not, is this just the first of several habitats that they will have to visit?

4) Flinders stated as a fact "[I]f we're nice, they'll let us look at [the archive]." Why is Targon acting as if there is a chance they might be attacked? There would be no excuse for Flinders to say way she did if she hadn't somehow established that they would not be attacked as long as they were nice. She never said how she did it, but she must have done it somehow, or she's such a terrible analyst that they should have fired her.

5) How could Flinders say what she said given that Karl had said that the residents had opened fire on their rescuers? Is that another retcon or is Flinders such a terrible analyst that the Toughs should have fired her? And how could Flinders be so terrible now if she was so good earlier?

6) The recent Sunday page seems to imply that the accessing the archive is the object of the mission. Unless the people currently in the habitat need help accessing their own archive, which seems unlikely, they aren't going to benefit from that, so it's unlikely that the goodwill is supposed to be earned with them. However, Karl keeps acting as if harming them wouldn't be consistent with it being a goodwill mission. Why would Karl act that way?

7) The artwork makes it look as if the Toughs are flying past the sail. So why didn't they put a cloud of missiles in their shadow and send it on the far side of the sail as they went past? The people in the habitat wouldn't be able to see the missiles from the habitat.

8) Why in the world are the Toughs having their discussion now? They are far too close to the habitat! They should have already established communications with the people in it or have a plan for what they are going to attack if that's what they are going to do.

It seems ridiculous that there would be this many questions. It's no fun to read a story if you can't tell what's going on.

9) Where is Cindercone? I think that there is a chance that there is a good reason we haven't been told the answer to this so I didn't include that in the previous group of questions, but that lack of information does add the the general lack of information.

1/2/6) I suspect that the mission is intended as goodwill towards the gatekeepers in general, not the habitat specifically, which is why they are trying to not just assault the habitat.

3) It was a cluster of habitats that were opening fire on attempted rescue attempts, presumably the archive itself was only in a single one of those pods.

4) I feel that the 'they'll let us look at it if we're nice' is implicitly tied to the 'if they want to be relocated' in the previous sentence. If they don't want to be relocated, things are obviously trickier, which is why two strips later is talking about how while the sail's capabilities aren't a threat to a shielded ship, it could attack the habitat itself just fine.

5) Regarding the whole attacked their rescuers thing, perhaps they're hoping that the guys have mellowed out in the intervening time between then and now? Pretty sure that it's been years since that dyson balloon got popped, and there's no indication that any attempt at communication with the habitat happened since the initial rebuffed rescue attempt.

7) A solar sail doesn't seem like it'd be much good if it doesn't include a way of detecting stuff in front of you. Especially in the case of a scrap of something that once fully encapsulated a star.

8) Considering the sheer size of the fragment, it is rather difficult to say exactly how close they are to it, they may well still be hours away from engagement/communication ranges. Also probably a general pacing concession, even with a daily update schedule, stuff would drag on forever if they did their on-screen planning before getting to the thing they're planning for.

9) Cindy is in-system, unless she teraported back out offscreen, don't know that we have anything more precise than that. Presumably once something comes up where having an oversized cargo hauler is important, she'll turn up again.

[eschmenk]

3) It was a cluster of habitats that were opening fire on attempted rescue attempts, presumably the archive itself was only in a single one of those pods.

Karl: "...these pods hosted some important archives." That's clearly plural. Maybe they are only interested in one of the "important archives" and there is a specific habitat where it is located?

4) I feel that the 'they'll let us look at it if we're nice' is implicitly tied to the 'if they want to be relocated' in the previous sentence. If they don't want to be relocated, things are obviously trickier, which is why two strips later is talking about how while the sail's capabilities aren't a threat to a shielded ship, it could attack the habitat itself just fine.

Obviously? Why would it be trickier to access an archive if nearby people don't want to be relocated? Do you need to destroy their living spaces to get to the archive or something? Relocating people and accessing archives seem to be two unrelated activities. Flinders didn't indicate that there was any connection between them.

5) Regarding the whole attacked their rescuers thing, perhaps they're hoping that the guys have mellowed out in the intervening time between then and now? Pretty sure that it's been years since that dyson balloon got popped, and there's no indication that any attempt at communication with the habitat happened since the initial rebuffed rescue attempt.

So it's OK for Flinders to state factually that everything will work out fine just because she hopes it will? But they way, you have raised at questions 10 and 11: What ability to communicate does the habitat have? What communications has anyone attempted with it recently? For all we know, the habitat could have galaxy-wide hypernet access like everyone else seems to have. I intentionally didn't raise those questions, but since you brought it up...

8) Considering the sheer size of the fragment, it is rather difficult to say exactly how close they are to it, they may well still be hours away from engagement/communication ranges. Also probably a general pacing concession, even with a daily update schedule, stuff would drag on forever if they did their on-screen planning before getting to the thing they're planning for.

The artwork shows that they passed the fragment and were between the fragment and the habitat on Wednesday's update. Flinders had implied already on Sunday's update that they were close enough to have detected any weapon signatures. They should have been within communication range already at that point unless you can reliably detect weapons further out. Also, the sail has to be within communication range of the station if the people in the habitat are going to control any sail-based weapons and we know the Toughs are closer than that. If they were traveling at about 0.3c, it would take about 0.2 seconds to travel the distance across the fragment. The station is probably multiples of that distance from the fragment and the Toughs may be traveling slower, but it still should take less than a minute to reach the station, I think. Even if that's wrong, they almost certainly were within communication range already.

Your suspicions about 1,2 & 6 are reasonable, but there is a large number of other guesses that would be reasonable, too. Maybe you don't care, but I think it would be better to know. As far as 7) goes, the sail is damaged so maybe any sensors wouldn't work. In any case, it's too late to consider it now since the Toughs are already past the sail.

[NEO|Phyte]

Obviously? Why would it be trickier to access an archive if nearby people don't want to be relocated?

Because the last time those people didn't want to be rescued, they were violently declaring such. If they're willing to talk now, sure it's possible they can diplomacy their way to a peek at the archive while otherwise leaving them alone, but the general assumption of the toughs seems to be 'if they aren't interested in a rescue, they're probably going to be aggressive about it again'

So it's OK for Flinders to state factually that everything will work out fine just because she hopes it will?

Just because you know Plan A is most likely a bust doesn't mean you shouldn't make it anyway.

But they way, you have raised at questions 10 and 11: What ability to communicate does the habitat have? What communications has anyone attempted with it recently? For all we know, the habitat could have galaxy-wide hypernet access like everyone else seems to have. I intentionally didn't raise those questions, but since you brought it up...

We haven't been informed on either, presumably we'll find out once the toughs attempt to communicate. If the habitat had hypernodes, one would expect that they would have been contacted by the rest of the gatekeepers directly, unless there's some sort of crazy splinter cult nonsense at play. Assuming they didn't have some sort of crazy isolated pods nonsense going on, there must have been some method of inter-pod communication, we just have never really gotten any real data on these guys, aside from they like to put balloons around stars and they used to be keeping the rest of the galaxy from developing the teraport.