Grrl Power IV: Constantly Expanded Universe

[Traab]

/does his "I was right!' dance

And as for the authors note, it makes sense, its just a more extreme version of the example maxima set of the difference between pointing her finger (which can turn buildings into mulch) and pointing her gun when it comes to instinctive threat recognition. So it makes sense she wouldnt be in full "OMGOMGOMG IM GONNA DIIIIIE!!!" mode because this is just so far outside full comprehension it wont be till she can actually stop for a bit and think about whats going on that it will likely hit her how close to death she is right now. I hope she also realizes it would be wise to finish this fight and seek shelter as the last thing she wants is to take a breather mid battle, only for her orb upgrade to happen again and put her in danger like last time. *EDIT* I also wanted to add, After this whole long battle sequence is over, Im imagining sydney with another few points to spend on flight, getting back home and going to max saying, "Race you to the moon!" Heh, seriously though, I wonder if that last point in her flight orb has boosted her speed enough tot ruly challenge max for the number 1 spot, and if her next point will leave her in the dust. (If its space travel it has to, mach speeds dont really cut it till you hit a lot of digits.)

[Ibrinar]

Anything beside faster than light (or faster than light by the way of teleportation) doesn't really cut it if she wants to get before most of the team retires or dies.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Took me a second read through to realize the aliens tried to hit Sydney with a crossfire attack.

[Traab]

Anything beside faster than light (or faster than light by the way of teleportation) doesn't really cut it if she wants to get before most of the team retires or dies.

Like I said, a LOT of digits. Mach 10,000,000 might be a start. As for the crossfire, yeah that was a close one. I know it took the first guys special ground blast to bring her shield to the red, not sure what would have happened if two regular attacks hit at once.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Let's see, depending on temperature, pressure, humidity, etc Mach 1 is ballpark 500mph. So Mach 10,000,000 is roughly 5 billion MPH. The speed of light is 186,000 MPS, so about 669,600,000 MPH. So the posited speed is roughly 7.467c, meaning that unless Sydney is within about 150 light years of Earth, everyone will indeed be retired before she gets home.

[halfeye]

Let's see, depending on temperature, pressure, humidity, etc Mach 1 is ballpark 500mph. So Mach 10,000,000 is roughly 5 billion MPH. The speed of light is 186,000 MPS, so about 669,600,000 MPH. So the posited speed is roughly 7.467c, meaning that unless Sydney is within about 150 light years of Earth, everyone will indeed be retired before she gets home.

At sea level, mach one is 760 mph.

We know Sydney is 700 light years from Earth.

It's going to require teleportation to get her home in time for tea.

[HandofShadows]

That's why Dabbler said she made a call a couple pages ago. To have somebody go and pick up Sydney.

[Traab]

I stand by my comment, 7x the speed of light is a reasonable start. /sniff And yeah im aware that she needs another 10000x that much to make intergalactic travel a reasonable thing to do. But hey, I think 7x light speed means she can explore the solar system fairly well. She could go from the sun to the ort cloud in a couple months at worst.

[Keltest]

I stand by my comment, 7x the speed of light is a reasonable start. /sniff And yeah im aware that she needs another 10000x that much to make intergalactic travel a reasonable thing to do. But hey, I think 7x light speed means she can explore the solar system fairly well. She could go from the sun to the ort cloud in a couple months at worst.

Unless that last orb can generate food and water, anything further than about a day and a half's travel (realistically, probably even shorter than that) is still all equally out of reach.

[Traab]

Unless that last orb can generate food and water, anything further than about a day and a half's travel (realistically, probably even shorter than that) is still all equally out of reach.

In all honesty its worse than that. The orbs seem to power down when she sleeps. So its possible even gluing the shield orb to her hand wouldnt help much since as soon as she nods of for a nap it will flicker off anyways.

[Keltest]

In all honesty its worse than that. The orbs seem to power down when she sleeps. So its possible even gluing the shield orb to her hand wouldnt help much since as soon as she nods of for a nap it will flicker off anyways.

Nah, sleep isn't the biggest limitation. People stay awake overnight even without chemical help, and if she was planning a trip she could pack some caffene pills or something in her utility belt. Taking days or weeks worth of food and water with her in the bubble would be significantly more difficult.

Not that going a couple days without sleep would be good for her, mind you, but its not a hard limit the way dying of thirst would be.

[sihnfahl]

Nah, sleep isn't the biggest limitation. People stay awake overnight even without chemical help, and if she was planning a trip she could pack some caffene pills or something in her utility belt. Taking days or weeks worth of food and water with her in the bubble would be significantly more difficult.

A few days worth of food - say, 4, constitutes about 3 gallons of water (for drinking and reconstituting freeze dried meals) and four 2.5k calorie meals. That's about 25 pounds of water, and, say, 8 pounds of food. That'd fit in a ruck.

Now, another issue to keep in mind is the logistics. Being unable to let go of the shield ball means all meal, waste and hygiene issues have to be done one-handed. Doable, but inconvenient. And needs a lot of practice.

Then you have the issue of trash and used fecal and urine bags to deal with. They'll be accumulating within the shield, and she can't get rid of them. Even if they give her waterless cleaning scrubs for hygiene, the rest adds up in, uh, smell. And space; the shield presumably can only expand so far...

Edit: The biggest problem for Sydney would be the -boredom-. Space is big. And empty, for the most part. Sure, she'd probably go bonkers over the fact she's doing the Star Trek thing for a hour or so, but then the tedium of travel and the emptiness would grind.

[georgie_leech]

That's why Dabbler said she made a call a couple pages ago. To have somebody go and pick up Sydney.

That's not what "made a call" means in this context. "Made a/the call" means making a choice based on available (incomplete) information that may or may not be the correct one.

[Keltest]

That's not what "made a call" means in this context. "Made a/the call" means making a choice based on available (incomplete) information that may or may not be the correct one.

In the context of the conversation, it could go either way, although frankly im inclined to think it was a literal communication, because it wasn't Dabbler would would have been making the call in the decision making sense, it would have been Max.

Plus, earlier, she outright says "I need to make a call".

[Traab]

A few days worth of food - say, 4, constitutes about 3 gallons of water (for drinking and reconstituting freeze dried meals) and four 2.5k calorie meals. That's about 25 pounds of water, and, say, 8 pounds of food. That'd fit in a ruck.

Now, another issue to keep in mind is the logistics. Being unable to let go of the shield ball means all meal, waste and hygiene issues have to be done one-handed. Doable, but inconvenient. And needs a lot of practice.

Then you have the issue of trash and used fecal and urine bags to deal with. They'll be accumulating within the shield, and she can't get rid of them. Even if they give her waterless cleaning scrubs for hygiene, the rest adds up in, uh, smell. And space; the shield presumably can only expand so far...

What about the systems astronauts use for dealing with waste? Remember, this shield isnt going to be dropped, she has all that area to work with. Im sure they can come up with some simplified methods of waste containment for short term (week or less) trips. Plus they could probably finagle a specialized suit for her to wear that allows her to keep the orbs in with her. Close up the suit, let go of the shield orb for a sec, recreate shield with trash on the outside. No need for an oxygen supply either, just protection from space for that brief exposure. Sure this is all more complicated than "grab flight orb and go!" but I bet it could be made to work. IF the orbs dont shut down when she sleeps, even if they are in use (due to being strapped to her hands.)

[Onyavar]

Have Dabbler and Harem already stopped being cryptic, by the way?

The way Max was acting in 666, it looks like she doesn't know what a call Dabbler made, and what experiences Harem had to share.
But, um, I read the page again and she probably does. And the solution will be dramatically revealed soon(ish) by Dave.

[Rogar Demonblud]

What about the systems astronauts use for dealing with waste? Remember, this shield isnt going to be dropped, she has all that area to work with. Im sure they can come up with some simplified methods of waste containment for short term (week or less) trips. Plus they could probably finagle a specialized suit for her to wear that allows her to keep the orbs in with her. Close up the suit, let go of the shield orb for a sec, recreate shield with trash on the outside. No need for an oxygen supply either, just protection from space for that brief exposure. Sure this is all more complicated than "grab flight orb and go!" but I bet it could be made to work. IF the orbs don't shut down when she sleeps, even if they are in use (due to being strapped to her hands.)

The system astronauts use is a big, bulky space suit. You still need separate systems for eating, although the high calorie sludge packs they eat would make the issue simpler. Sydney will need to not wear gloves (to hold the orbs) and go without a helmet (you can't put one on by yourself, and you can't eat wearing one).

[sihnfahl]

What about the systems astronauts use for dealing with waste?

In suit or out? In suit basically breaks down to collection bags. In stations, water drains down a tube, collected and recycled in filtration systems; solid waste is sucked into a bag, compacted, dehydrated and stored for eventual disposal.

Remember, this shield isnt going to be dropped, she has all that area to work with.

Something I kept in mind when I said 'presumably the shield can only expand so far'. And in zero-G, it'll be floating around. They'll need to restrain things somehow. Still, presumably a finite area.

Plus they could probably finagle a specialized suit for her to wear that allows her to keep the orbs in with her. Close up the suit, let go of the shield orb for a sec, recreate shield with trash on the outside. No need for an oxygen supply either, just protection from space for that brief exposure.

If you go that route, though, why not create a large bag made of similar material for carrying more than a few days' worth of food and water, and another that she can crawl into long enough to be able to use both hands? Grab the air orb and it fills out to a makeshift shelter. She's not limited by mass in that theoretical situation, only volume. She'd also be able to catch a few winks like that, too... if the shelter's big enough. A sphere with a 5 foot radius would be ample, if my math's right.

[Traab]

In suit or out? In suit basically breaks down to collection bags. In stations, water drains down a tube, collected and recycled in filtration systems; solid waste is sucked into a bag, compacted, dehydrated and stored for eventual disposal.


Something I kept in mind when I said 'presumably the shield can only expand so far'. And in zero-G, it'll be floating around. They'll need to restrain things somehow. Still, presumably a finite area.



If you go that route, though, why not create a large bag made of similar material for carrying more than a few days' worth of food and water, and another that she can crawl into long enough to be able to use both hands? Grab the air orb and it fills out to a makeshift shelter. She's not limited by mass in that theoretical situation, only volume. She'd also be able to catch a few winks like that, too... if the shelter's big enough. A sphere with a 5 foot radius would be ample, if my math's right.

But she is traveling through space at beyond relativistic speeds. Got a bag that could handle that? Honestly, there are so many issues, I withdraw my statements. She needs to teleport intergalactic ranges. Actual space travel just does not work with even the slightest thought to the problems involved. Here is the biggest one, pancaking on literally everything between you and your target. I say pancake, I mean "annihilated by atomic fire that decimates whatever region of space you are in at the time" But seriously, you cant just "fly through the galaxy" Not without some way to plot a course that dodges everything from planets and stars to tiny rocks the size of grains of sand. Maybe a mythical sci fi super computer can handle processing course changes at beyond light speed, sydney is not that hyper.

Sooooo yeah. No standard space travel. Either her orb unlocks a hyperspace style of travel that can handwave this all away, or she figures out how to teleport. Hey, maybe her new flight unlock creates energy formed stargate style wormholes that she can control the end point of by thinking about it! Woosh! A stargate portal opens in front of her, she flies in, and a second later we pan back to earth, the mercury bubbling looking portal opens and sydney bloops out, crashing into max shield first in a comical display inside the breakroom of archon! She now owes them a new couch. (She can afford it)

[sihnfahl]

But she is traveling through space at beyond relativistic speeds. Got a bag that could handle that?

Why would it need to handle that? Slow down and stop for the rest period. Just hang out in space, continue trip in morning.

But, still, yeah, logistically, it's a nightmare.

Sooooo yeah. No standard space travel. Either her orb unlocks a hyperspace style of travel that can handwave this all away, or she figures out how to teleport.

Well, yeah. Alpha Centauri is just a mere 4 light years. A day trip would require so much speed it'd be kinda ... silly.

To do it in 8 hours, you'd need to do 734828171647.95 mph. Or roughly mach 965354928. That's a bit of a step up from mach 4.

[Traab]

Why would it need to handle that? Slow down and stop for the rest period. Just hang out in space, continue trip in morning.

But, still, yeah, logistically, it's a nightmare.


Well, yeah. Alpha Centauri is just a mere 4 light years. A day trip would require so much speed it'd be kinda ... silly.

To do it in 8 hours, you'd need to do 734828171647.95 mph. Or roughly mach 965354928. That's a bit of a step up from mach 4.

Well yeah, but like I said, speed is only one of the problems with day tripping around the universe. One of VERY FREAKING MANY! It doesnt matter if she can go mach 60 quintillion if the first time she smacks into something with more mass than the vacuum of space she dies instantly she wont even make it out of the solar system. Especially since we now KNOW her shield has an upper limit to what it can tank. Im pretty sure hitting a rock the size of a fist at way past lightspeed would do it. So if dave has any sense, her speed will max out at like mach 6 or whatever, but the next set of skills unlocks levels of hyperspace, wormholes that target wherever you want, or whatever. Basically a way to travel super fast without having to worry about any of that.

[HandofShadows]

The speed upgrade worked.

Spoiler

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And boy did it. Mach 16? Unfortunately, it looks she needs it.

[Traab]

The speed upgrade worked.

Spoiler

Show

And boy did it. Mach 16? Unfortunately, it looks she needs it.

I wonder if each pip was a 4x boost or if this was like the final upgrade so it was the largest jump as the reward for maxing out the tree sort of thing? Also yeah, I get the feeling that max will have to REALLY put her back into it if she intends to keep her number 1 slot. I figure stat dumping will be heavily involved. Now, im honestly surprised she is running at this point. Unless the attack didnt actually do as much damage as she hoped taking down those last 3 would have almost certainly gotten her that last point or two needed. Maybe she feels it was too big a risk as dodging one attacker is easy enough but three would have been a lot harder to avoid making the one deadly mistake. I also wonder if now the mother ship is getting involved. Those look like shots fired straight down from orbit.

[HandofShadows]

Running is the smart thing. While she could handle one safely enough the trick she used probably wouldn't work for much longer. A good idea would be to go to ground so she can use her next point (maybe more than one?) to upgrade her shield so it can tank more damage without going into the red.

[Traab]

Running is the smart thing. While she could handle one safely enough the trick she used probably wouldn't work for much longer. A good idea would be to go to ground so she can use her next point (maybe more than one?) to upgrade her shield so it can tank more damage without going into the red.

I dunno, its a gamble but if she spends it on the next flight orb upgrade line she might be able to just LEAVE. I mean, thats the working theory at least, the next tier is space travel of some sort. If she picks shield she might get stronger, but then she is still stuck fighting till her next level up at least. And now she is in trouble as she cant just run and hide apparently. Not unless she can make it around the curvature of the world enough to escape the death beams from above.

[AvatarVecna]

Spoiler: Eyes and Speedsters

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I put forth all of this with the understanding that I am not an eye scientist, but rather a video gamer and a comics nerd who has looked up stuff like this for speedster discussions, fps arguments, and a perspective on driving vehicles.

On a very very technical level, the eye and brain working together have an effective fps (and that isn't really the right term for it, but it's the easiest to understand) of between 300 and 1000 (which is a physiological limit based on how fast nerves can process that they've received some kind of input). I think this difference between 300 and 1000 is "low stress situation" and "high stress situation", to simplify things a great deal, and is likely tied to the reason why the world seems to slow when sudden things happen and adrenaline kicks in - our framerate increased, which in a certain sense can make things seem like they're going slower even though they're not (like Black Hulk's power in GrrlPower, but the normal-people version).

However, when put in front of screens with variable fps rates, people could generally guess the approximate framerate up to ~150 fps, which is a decent guess for when the difference in quality largely becomes too small to really measure. The reason for this, as best as I can figure, is that with 300 fps on the eyes' nerves at the lower end, going above 150 fps on the monitor meant that the eyes go from seeing a single monitor fram for 2+ eye-frames at a time to less than 2 eye frames at a time; the brain can tell how many eye-frames a monitor-frame is visible for and extrapolate from that, but it doesn't know how many monitor-frames it misses in between eye-frames, so above 150 it becomes a guessing game (although this figuring on my part is based on my explanation in the next paragraph, which I fully admit may very well be completely wrong since I'm not an eye scientist in any capacity and have only googled bits and pieces about this over time). There's also been military tests that concluded that soldiers could detect sharp changes in visuals that lasted just under 5 ms (~1/220th of a second, to be a bit more precise), with enough visual accuracy to get a good guess at object identification.

So, how this works, sort of? And definitely simplified? The eye is a video-camera, transmitting live images to a server elsewhere (the brain), which sends commands based on this visual stimulus to a computer elsewhere. The eye takes 300-1000 pictures per second and transmits them at ~100 m/s to the occipital lob at the back of the brain, which takes ~1.5 ms, at which point a decision is made, a signal is sent to the nerves/muscles to do a particular thing, and they start doing it. This doesn't cost a throttle of fps processing speed, since there can be multiple images sent to the lobe at once, making this 1.5 ms act more akin to lag than anything else. The overall process takes ~.25-.28 seconds (not counting the last step of "actually moving your body"), and the place where you can really work to improve that time is the italicized step of "making a decision".

Your brain is making a conscious (and simultaneously reflexive) decision based on the newly-received information and is comparing it to similar situations to figure out what it should tell your body to do. As a result, the more you do a thing, the more exercised your muscles are for doing it, and the more comfortable your brain is in making quick decisions (since it's made this kind of decision based on this kind of data a lot more). This, in essence, is why "practice makes perfect" in just about everything, but for the purposes of "training your body to react quickly", you can generally get the non "moving your meatsack-puppet" part of the process down to ~.11 seconds, less than half the average response time. So, from detecting visual stimulus, to the part where you actually start moving your body, there is a delay roughly a ninth of a second long, for those whose reactions are optimized to human peak. Very generally speaking, while normal people are in the .25-.3 range on average, and 1st person shooter gamers tend to hover more in the .175-.225 range (with the best reaching that .11 threshold). However, speedsters have powers that let them move at absolutely ridiculous rates, and to avoid slamming into things they couldn't detect, there's almost certainly a part of their power that increases the speed at which they receive and process stimuli (which we've seen with Maximum catching the bullet, Maxima disassembling a grenade mid-arc, and Mach The Knife's maneuvering during the Big Brawl).

All of that being said, though, Sydney's orbs aren't really personal powers, and tend to operate more like she's using a machine, or driving a vehicle (to the point that the most solid theory for the orbs' purpose is "personal spaceship"). And driving a vehicle - even a very fast vehicle - doesn't increase your existing reaction times. We can probably expect Sydney to perhaps be in the gamer group - not the best, but better than average...but that's for moving her meatsack puppetbody, and the orbs may very well operate more on a "physical contact, mental trigger" level, so we can probably assume that they let her cut that speed down a bit...and let's assume it lets her operate at peak human reaction time going from "visual stimulus" to "doing a thing" of .11 seconds (and yes, this is a big assumption, but it's useful for the following paragraphs). Let's see what she could do with that at various speeds.

Let's suppose that Sydney is going along at speed X, she is laser-focused on where she's going, and very suddenly an object appears directly in her path. Assuming the power of the flight orb lets her accelerate from full speed to 0 in a span of time so immeasurably small that it doesn't matter, and that she wouldn't suffer anything from this sudden extreme deceleration because space orb magic, how far would the thing in front of her need to be for her to not run into it?

Her Velocity	Min. Safe Distance
5 m/s	0.55
10 m/s	1.11
25 m/s	2.77
50 m/s	5.55
100 m/s	11.11
350 m/s (~mach 1)	38.88
700 m/s (~mach 2)	77.77
1350 m/s (~mach 4)	150.00
2700 m/s (~mach 8)	300.00
5500 m/s (~mach 16)	611.11

So what does that chart mean, for people who don't know metric? At Sydney's previous top speed of ~mach 4, assuming that she has perfect human reaction time due to space orb magic, and assuming that she has perfect, consequence-free deceleration, if the object appearing in front of her is less than 500 ft away, she will slam into it before she is capable of reacting/decelerating (roughly 1.5 football fields)...and for her current top speed of ~mach 16, that number jumps to 2000 ft or roughly 6 football fields end to end. And again, that's assuming she's paying perfect attention, has perfect human reaction times, and perfect, consequence-free deceleration. If any of those three things becomes less than perfect, that distance grows. Significantly.

For example, if Sydney actually has reaction times more on the slow end of average due to lack of practice at dodging skyscraper-alien beams (...probably, yeah), and assuming she's a bit scatterbrained (...probably, yeah), then even if she still has perfect consequence-free deceleration, she only stops in time if the object suddenly appearing in her path starts out a mile away.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Highly trained fighter pilots can't react fast enough at Mach 2. No way Sydney can do it at anything supersonic.

[Keltest]

Highly trained fighter pilots can't react fast enough at Mach 2. No way Sydney can do it at anything supersonic.

I don't see why the super speed upgrade wouldn't also come with super reflexes to actually be able to use that speed. So far I think the orbs have done a decent job of circumventing the most obvious things that would impede their basic functions.

[halfeye]

Spoiler: Eyes and Speedsters

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Her Velocity	Min. Safe Distance
5 m/s	0.55
10 m/s	1.11
25 m/s	2.77
50 m/s	5.55
100 m/s	11.11
350 m/s (~mach 1)	38.88
700 m/s (~mach 2)	77.77
1350 m/s (~mach 4)	150.00
2700 m/s (~mach 8)	300.00
5500 m/s (~mach 16)	611.11

Spoiler

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What are the units of length in the right fields of that table?

If Sidney can be around the world in twelve minutes, she can be out of line of sight in three minutes. Which is a lot of dodging, even though we don't know how long it's taken so far. Oh boy, that's a goody, it's two hours, so half an hour to get out of sight, if the thing is stationary, much less if it's orbiting away, and much more if its orbiting in the same direction or following.

I should have known it was wrong, orbit is 18,000 mph, and that takes about half an hour. It's also unclear as mentioned earlier in this thread which mach is in use here, the number of planes that can make mach two at sea level is very few if there's one, which there may well not be (the X15 at full power? did it ever fly that low on full power?)

[Traab]

I don't see why the super speed upgrade wouldn't also come with super reflexes to actually be able to use that speed. So far I think the orbs have done a decent job of circumventing the most obvious things that would impede their basic functions.

That would sound like a cheap cop out, except we already know holding the flight orb eliminates all sense of vertigo and also g forces are annulled because she has no idea how fast she is going till max tells her. If she shut her eyes with her shield up she would have no idea she is moving, let alone at mach 16. So the idea that it grants her superior reaction time isnt THAT far fetched. That said, she isnt threading needles here, she is dodging ginourmous explosions that likely are multiple blocks in diameter so its kinda hard to judge her actual reaction time as its tough to judge the distances she is traveling.

One final note. Anyone else see the similarities between the circle above each explosion and sydneys aiming circle? Possible clue? Or just random design choice displaying a shockwave in front of the fireball itself?