Distance Learning for fun and profit...

Just need to apply the napalm or similar. I believe Bonesaw is supposed to have installed deadman switched doomsday options like plague viruses or neurotoxins.
She explicitly did not do that and in fact only very rarely works in epidemiology because Jack finds plagues boring. But other people don't know that and she's certainly capable of doing so when she wants to.

edit: also it would probably only take one pandemic for the government to decide "okay, it's worth the collateral to just wait until the next time you attack a small town and hit you with a nuke".
 
Last edited:
Just need to apply the napalm or similar. I believe Bonesaw is supposed to have installed deadman switched doomsday options like plague viruses or neurotoxins.

Ehh, drop her into the Sun, it can take it. Crawler can go into the intergalatic void.

I think Kaiser got that reminder rather firmly when he got visited by one of the USAs Intel alphabet souls.

What do you mean? Kaiser never got any government agents visiting him, don't be silly.
Max Anders does know better than to annoy the government.

...

I kinda says something when the (pretend!) Nazi is one of the smarter parahumans in the Bay, doesn't it?
 
What do you mean? Kaiser never got any government agents visiting him, don't be silly.
Max Anders does know better than to annoy the government.

Silly me how could I forget that such an upstanding Citizen would know better than to get involved with anything as dangerous or as illegal as a gang.
 
Last edited:
Extra Fanon, considering that canonically Bonesaw modified herself to such a degree she can just pop her own head off and skitter (heh) away, worst comes to worst.

Now, adding some kind of super-acid denial system in case she is (mostly) captured, sure. but armageddon-tier plagues? Nah.
Not dramatic enough I guess. Makes me wonder why Wildblow went the route he did for that.
 
Well canon version of S9 are unrealistically OP. Wildblow made obvious mistake and plot hole with them, cause no amount of upgrade will make your brain immune to ballistic effects of 7.62 AP round at all, ergo it hits your forehead- you die no matter what kind of material infused in your skull.
 
Oh don't remind me of another plot hole which is bonesaw, that's just so ridiculous it's no even funny. Release diseases my ass, by what means, lol.
 
And then Taylor reveals she can both track parahumans over city-wide distances and disrupt/break their powers from working at will...
Do Endbringers also have a subspace channel? I read descriptions that they also are kind of a projection, the core being the portal/connection endpoint and the real thing somewhere else, but, that might be fanon. If not, scrambling this kind of connections would have implications ...
 
Not dramatic enough I guess. Makes me wonder why Wildblow went the route he did for that.

Ehh... I would say that being able to whip our her spine, choke someone with it and then stick it back in is plenty dramatic.

The whole 'deadman plagues' thing is likely from the fact that Nilbog has those coupled with some outheors not wanting to use Cauldron as answer for 'why has nobody come down on the S9 like the wrath of god?'
 
Not sure about the pie (maple pican, anyone?) but as to the cake, i'm sure mpPi would be happy for it - as long as it is real (science is never good when the cake is a lie. :p )
Can we leave out the pecans? I love pecan pie, but I hate the pecans. Are they really necessary?
Pointing out that someone has the definition of a term wrong is not arguing semantics.
Uh, that is exactly what arguing semantics is.
Not dramatic enough I guess. Makes me wonder why Wildblow went the route he did for that.
Because Wildbow is a hack?
 
"At least. The ramifications are significant in a large number of fields. The railgun project will benefit from it immediately, but there are a huge array of possible areas that will also see massive changes."

In all honesty I'd make railgun point defence/ CISW first since refitting that on ships and tying into the AEGIS would be a amazing boon to protecting the a ship against anti-ship missiles.

Picking up what was left of the device, which she'd determined after some time was meant to be an optical diversion field generator, or what PHO termed a cloaking device, she shook her head in wonder
Nice if Squealer made a cloak I wonder how she hid her cars emission signatures though.
 
Honestly, once Taylor creates a cape disrupting tech the US government will drop everything to mass produce them and go to town on bastards like the Fallen whose been defying the law of the land and getting away with it due to the plethora of Masters and its leader's anti-Thinker ability.

Air droppable mass deployment of power jammers/disruptors would do nicely to fuck the Fallen and allow conventional forces to mop them up.

When Taylor lets stuff like that known the various higher ups that know about her will be sorely tempted to move her to a heavily fortified military base and put a couple of divisions worth of troops to defend her, at least until they can go sweep the various Masters and other threats to Taylor's well being aside by using her cape disruption tech (if she develops it).
 
Pointing out that someone has the definition of a term wrong is not arguing semantics. Dragon is a Tinker because you fight her like a Tinker; that is what 'being a Tinker' means. How her power works is irrelevent to the question of how PRT troopers are supposed to handle her, and that is what the Tinker/Thinker/Brute/Shaker/Etc. classifications are defined in terms of.
Yes, and no. The PRT classifications are semi-arbitrary, and do not actually relate to the operation of Powers or Shards. They also assign ratings in multiple categories to individuals, such as The Library of Alexandria being a Mover, Thinker, and Brute. So, while her ability to create advanced technology might earn Dragon a Tinker rating, her ability to reverse-engineer Tinkertech in a scientific manner is a Thinker rating. Skitter, for example, starts out as Master 5, with low-level Thinker and Shaker ratings, then progresses to Master 8 / Thinker 1, and winds up Master 10 / Thinker 3 / Everything Else 2, before becoming Weaver.

Since we're not talking about fighting Dragon, but about whether Taylor can understand her tech from a Super SCIENCE! perspective, the lack of black-boxing in the items that Dragon produces as a Technology Thinker is an important distinction.
 
Last edited:
Taylor can, apparently, understand Tinkertech AND HOW IT WORKS (in capitals and everything.) Given the various types and expansive fields covered by tinkertech (miniaturization (can't remember), modular design (Kid WIn), and Dimensional Jump Tech (Haywire), to name but three) I'd say that once she gets access, she will have ALL THE IDEAS!
She can understand this tinker tech which is at the simpler end. Can she understand other types we don't know. Personally I'm kind of hoping no or at least having it really difficult. After all she does have a shard doing the work so it wouldn't make sense
I worry about a visit from mannequin or a certain endbringer. Or are they not paying attention because it's not technically tinker tech?
Why wouldn't he? Its still making a better world which he would hate and how many people actually believe its not tinker tech? From an outside perspective it certainly seems that way after all.
 
There's also the possibility that Squealer's shard is the 40k Ork technical manual, and that she's actually a telekinetic/psyker.

Ok, that has horrifying implications, but sounds really really cool.

Okay, now I want someone to write this

ME TOO!

If they wanted a mass driver that can be built with today's technology, but needed advanced training to repair and maintain, then DARPA would be investing in Coilguns.

However, part of the requirements is that someone with a high school education, and not one that majored in Science, can keep them running.

Mechanically, a Rail Gun is the simplest possible Mass Driver; it consists of two conductive rails, a power feed, and a loading mechanism. A barely literate wrench monkey with a tech manual could keep the thing going.... if it weren't for the fact that current available rail materials degrade with each shot, limiting the usable life of the gun.

A Coilgun would not have the same issues. However, they are far more complex.

Now imagine the nightmare situation where gunners with an IQ in the lower quarter of the possible range have to set parameters for each shot taken with the "smart" AG ammo. Suddenly, making more complex weapons makes less sense when the user may well have an IQ of under 50...

(This is not intended to be an attack on our Fighting Men. Rather, it is an evaluation of how important it is to keep operational difficulty down so the largest number of military men can use the weapon. Plus, the military tends to have the more intelligent and educated recruits be assigned to non-combat roles, where their high intelligence can be better applied, or else have them undergo Officer Training instead. So, the average gunner will tend to be... not significantly above average mentally, shall we say...)

Part of the problem with Coilguns is that you have to extend your barrel to get higher muzzle velocities, and you get exponentially diminishing returns for increasing the length of barrel. You can get away with a shorter barrel for higher energy densities in the magnetic coils, but that runs into problems of melting the barrel if you go too high. Superconductors would certainly help there, but you're still limited by your power supply and how tight you can make the magnetic fields.

Railguns, however, get a much better return on barrel length, and making the rails out of superconducting material means that one of the major sources of degradation goes away. You still have to deal with friction-heating of the rails due to the round being accelerated at who-knows-how-many-thousand gravities along its length, but that's a materials science issue, not an electrical one.

Suffice it to say, Railguns are far simpler, and more efficient at what they do, at the cost of having to replace the rails every so often. Coilguns don't require as much replacement, but what maintenance they do require tends to be quite extensive, and they're simply not as efficient at delivering a hypersonic projectile to the target.
 
Since we're not talking about fighting Dragon, but about whether Taylor can understand her tech from a Super SCIENCE! perspective, the lack of black-boxing in the items that Dragon produces as a Technology Thinker is an important distinction.

Yes, this is what I was talking about and why the arguments were bothering me so much. That doesn't matter what the PRT or public classified her as, but as she is a *thinker* not a *tinker* her stuff would be inherently better from a science standpoint because lacks the *inherent* black-boxing that essentially all actual *tinkertech* has!
 
Except that Dragon is a Tinker. She was dying from Tinkertech degradation when she Triggered and gained the ability to maintain herself.
Dragon triggered from Saint's emotional torture, and I have seen no source that states she was dying at the time and if she were Wildbow would have said so at length, because it is an easy way to make the world worse.
 
Last edited:
Ok, that has horrifying implications, but sounds really really cool.



ME TOO!



Part of the problem with Coilguns is that you have to extend your barrel to get higher muzzle velocities, and you get exponentially diminishing returns for increasing the length of barrel. You can get away with a shorter barrel for higher energy densities in the magnetic coils, but that runs into problems of melting the barrel if you go too high. Superconductors would certainly help there, but you're still limited by your power supply and how tight you can make the magnetic fields.

Railguns, however, get a much better return on barrel length, and making the rails out of superconducting material means that one of the major sources of degradation goes away. You still have to deal with friction-heating of the rails due to the round being accelerated at who-knows-how-many-thousand gravities along its length, but that's a materials science issue, not an electrical one.

Suffice it to say, Railguns are far simpler, and more efficient at what they do, at the cost of having to replace the rails every so often. Coilguns don't require as much replacement, but what maintenance they do require tends to be quite extensive, and they're simply not as efficient at delivering a hypersonic projectile to the target.
Minus the one other major problem that caused them to get removed from the Navy project, and that is the simple fact that the earth is round. Turns out, when you get them really efficient, you can't properly hit targets at max range because the rounds go in a straight line and you have to angle down through the ocean/land, and it makes the entire point of the those destroyers, being able to pinpoint strike non sea targets much harder than traditional ordinance. Hence the reversion to guided strike missiles.
On the other hand, if you get a spaceship going ala The Expanse, extremely long range, ridiculously fast straight shot first strike/instant kill weapons are just what the doctor ordered. Also, being able to float in atmosphere would let them aim the railguns down to where they needed to go. So I could totally see the research on railguns getting revitalized.
 
Room temperature superconductors are already something that would break the bank.

Handheld MRI scanners.
That would probably do a lot for healthcare, especially in rural areas where they don't have enough money to get the equipment shipped all the way out there. Sure it would likely need training, but once the operator has been trained, sending a flashdrive is a lot easier than sending a patient.
FYI we actually have a room temperature superconductor now it's the reason you might have seen people saying "room temperature and pressure superconductor" since it only works under a very high pressure.
 
I am annoyed that only like two people have realized that the reason PtV is stuttering is because Taylor is pushing against PtV's custom restriction Eden programmed in, as subspace analysis is directly part of the "no Entity targeting Paths allowed" restriction.

Dinah and Coil style precogs are different, most thinker Shards can still easily precog Taylor, but much of the data Taylor herself is generating is, again, some variant of Exo-Cycle data forbidden for hosts regardless, meaning an intentional blindspot is placed into the simulation given to the host.

Tldr: Contessa gets "Exception Error Captured: Input Ranges X through Z Forbidden" errors for any steps that involve Taylor, while most precogs get "Exception Error Squelched: Output Ranges X through Z Forbidden" errors when Taylor simulated.
 
FYI we actually have a room temperature superconductor now it's the reason you might have seen people saying "room temperature and pressure superconductor" since it only works under a very high pressure.

Yeah, as is it requires pressures not seen outside the cores of gas giants and stars. Still, it's a step in the right direction! We started with superconductors that required liquid helium and temperatures within a few degrees of absolute zero, now we have ones workable in temperature ranges much higher than that. It's the first step that's the hardest one, but the subsequent steps are easier.
 
Back
Top