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A Champion in Earth Bet [Worm/Original Setting]

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[X] Regeneration. As it stands, you are closer to death than life. This should restore you to full health over the next couple minutes.
-[X] Maximum Regeneration. Take a dozen seconds to return to full health; that'll make the rest of the fight easier.
--[X] Once fully regenerated, switch to Teleportation + Mental Superspeed
[X] Offense is the best defense. The Simurgh may be over a thousand miles away, but you shouldn't give her time to adapt her plan.
 
[X] Regeneration. As it stands, you are closer to death than life. This should restore you to full health over the next couple minutes.
-[X] Maximum Regeneration. Take a dozen seconds to return to full health; that'll make the rest of the fight easier.
--[X] Once fully regenerated, switch to Mental Superspeed + Long-Range Super-Senses

[X] Hunker down. Maintain a safe distance between yourself and the Simurgh while you catch your breath and recover from your injuries.
-[X] After healing get a good look at where the Simurgh has dropped you, with Mental Superspeed + Long-Range Super-Senses it should be easy to get a good idea of what objects the Simurgh could throw at you.
--[X] In particular get a look at that weapon that she used against you. It could be useful as a way to hurt her while maintaining Mental Superspeed + Long-Range Super-Senses to do the aiming.

The Simurgh can see ANYTHING we start to send her way until we do another cosmic probability shift, however, her current position is enough to kill us in one blow. I suggest we heal for the fight, then a layout of our environment, and do some hard thinking.

While I don't think we will be able to surprise her with mental superspeed, it does mean that we will be able to completely map our immediate environment and get ready for the actual fight.
 
[X] Regeneration. As it stands, you are closer to death than life. This should restore you to full health over the next couple minutes.
-[X] Maximum Regeneration. Take a dozen seconds to return to full health; that'll make the rest of the fight easier.
--[X] Once fully regenerated, switch to Teleportation + Mental Superspeed
[X] Offense is the best defense. The Simurgh may be over a thousand miles away, but you shouldn't give her time to adapt her plan.
 
Uh, the bomb was a one-shot.

The problem is that hesitating for 12 seconds gives her 12 seconds to recalculate free of interference.
 
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We could probably pull another comic super luck to put her preparations on the back foot again. Besides I don't think she works sequentially, she can almost certainly skim the short term probabilities while she is fighting us. It just means that she cannot look as far into the future if we risk our lives to attack her now. After healing we would just need a longer term plan and to star off with an unlikely choice and she will be on the back foot again.
 
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Alectai said:
Uh, the bomb was a one-shot.

The problem is that hesitating for 12 seconds gives her 12 seconds to recalculate free of interference.
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I agree.
[X] Plan Alectai

@daemonkeeper

Ziz doesn't have a brain.
She has a planet-sized space-whale supercomputer.
She can calculate and predict whatever she wants to calculate and predict.
The more time she has to do so, the more time she will use to screw us over.
 
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Here's the thing, her just planning doesn't make her capable of executing a plan instantly.

She has to reassess the possibilities, and zero in her ideal outcome. That takes a non-zero period of time. But it does mean that every second after we flip the table, she's stacking more advantages on herself. She's at her most vulnerable right now, so we need to take the opportunity to start inflicting damage, and restricting her options.

Regeneration + Super Reaction Time should let us recover faster than she can damage us, as her Telekinesis isn't known for being particularly powerful so much as it's ludicrously precise. Our passive defenses can probably tank what she throws out with minimal damage.

Again, all of her data suggested that we should be fucking dead right now. We're not--it'll be even less likely that we subsequently choose to attack. She'll get her data together quickly, but not instantaneously. And forcing her to start with "Don't get pummelled by the Avatar" instead of "How do I finish him off" buys us time to recover while restricting her actions, and starting to wear away at her ablative armour to boot.

One more thing comes to mind. Don't forget that the Smurf is Blind to the present. A Long-Range Teleport and an immediate attack should give us a guaranteed hit, and she'll have a harder time withdrawing once we're in her face.
 
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[X] Plan Alectai


We get a few seconds after we change fate where all of her old plans and predictions are off and wrong. Especially when every future just now was meant to not include us but it does. We need to take advantage of her not knowing what happens next because it can only happen 3-4 more time and then we can't win (she doesn't know we have limited shots if we get here to retreat we can recharge)
 
OFFICIAL ZIZ FIGHT MUSIC (save for upcoming update)

Accept no substitutes.
Alectai said:
Okay, full stop, we know that the Smurf is capable of predicting and reacting to anything we do, and the only way to disrupt her planning is to use our Fate Hack, which changes the numbers.

In short, the longer the fight goes on, the more advantage she seizes.


[X] Offense is the best defense. The Simurgh may be over a thousand miles away, but you shouldn't give her time to adapt her plan.

[X] Some rapid sequence of the above (please describe!).
--Long Range Teleportation into combat distance
--Shift to Regeneration and Mental Super-Speed once we're in CQC. Maintain pressure while we recover--her telekinesis is scary, but it's fundamentally a physical force, which should be handled by our recovery time. If she tries to kite us, shift from Mental Super-Speed to Long-Range Super Senses and take the opportunity to recover. She's too intelligent and has too good precog for ranged attacks to work, so we need to keep in relative reach.
--Once we're close to full strength, shift to Long-Range Super Senses instead of Regeneration Be prepared to shunt over to Teleportation to respond to any stunts of hers.
--Be prepared to change strategy entirely, and keep our Fate Manipulation primed to flip the table again at need.
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I agree with the overall thrust of this strategy. The counter to precog is take actions that render their foreknowledge moot. Outside of our fate-bending power, the easiest way to do that is speed blitz - it doesn't matter if she knows what's coming if we're acting too quickly for her to do anything about it.

Buuuut. Our first order of business is healing up while simultaneously not getting ganked while we heal up. So as much as I'd like to put everything into maximum Regen, that feels like a trap to me because the Simurg can see that we're just sitting around healing. So we need a secondary power that limits her capacity to act or narrows her field of choices. We might be able to get away with a few seconds of MegaRegen (like 1~2 seconds), as long as we immediately swap over to getting in her face once we're out of the danger zone.

Thus outside of a small initial burst of healing I think we should stick on the Mental Super-Speed (MSS) and leave it there for the rest of the fight. It is by far our most important power in that it allows us the luxury of being able to think and plan out what other secondary power we need to adapt to circumstances, or, more pessimistically, it at least allows us to keep up with the Simurgh. If she fires the antimatter ray again we'll have enough warning to shift over to the maximum defense power, or max teleport to avoid it entirely, etc. MSS also gives us the option of a poor mans speed blitz when paired up with teleportation, which covers our offense.

So to plot out the rapidly shifting powers:
MegaRegen for 1~3 seconds.
MSS + Teleport to get in her face. Having taken a few seconds to regen, I'm not comfortable teleporting into range of her without MSS to keep us from getting blindsided.
MSS + Regen to stall for time. Keep pressure on her while we recover.
MSS + Var. Adapt to circumstances. Swap to Super Senses every once in a while to note any changes in the surroundings and hopefully catch on and destroy any new traps.
 
FunkyEntropy said:
OFFICIAL ZIZ FIGHT MUSIC (save for upcoming update)

Accept no substitutes.

I agree with the overall thrust of this strategy. The counter to precog is take actions that render their foreknowledge moot. Outside of our fate-bending power, the easiest way to do that is speed blitz - it doesn't matter if she knows what's coming if we're acting too quickly for her to do anything about it.

Buuuut. Our first order of business is healing up while simultaneously not getting ganked while we heal up. So as much as I'd like to put everything into maximum Regen, that feels like a trap to me because the Simurg can see that we're just sitting around healing. So we need a secondary power that limits her capacity to act or narrows her field of choices. We might be able to get away with a few seconds of MegaRegen (like 1~2 seconds), as long as we immediately swap over to getting in her face once we're out of the danger zone.

Thus outside of a small initial burst of healing I think we should stick on the Mental Super-Speed (MSS) and leave it there for the rest of the fight. It is by far our most important power in that it allows us the luxury of being able to think and plan out what other secondary power we need to adapt to circumstances, or, more pessimistically, it at least allows us to keep up with the Simurgh. If she fires the antimatter ray again we'll have enough warning to shift over to the maximum defense power, or max teleport to avoid it entirely, etc. MSS also gives us the option of a poor mans speed blitz when paired up with teleportation, which covers our offense.

So to plot out the rapidly shifting powers:
MegaRegen for 1~3 seconds.
MSS + Teleport to get in her face. Having taken a few seconds to regen, I'm not comfortable teleporting into range of her without MSS to keep us from getting blindsided.
MSS + Regen to stall for time. Keep pressure on her while we recover.
MSS + Var. Adapt to circumstances. Swap to Super Senses every once in a while to note any changes in the surroundings and hopefully catch on and destroy any new traps.
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An interesting analysis. A nitpick, though:
One level of Teleport lets you jump 40 miles or so every six seconds. Handy for repositioning, but it's not gonna get you in the Simurgh's face. You need two levels of Teleport - your entire secondary power pool - to reach her in a single jump.
 
sun tzu said:
An interesting analysis. A nitpick, though:
One level of Teleport lets you jump 40 miles or so every six seconds. Handy for repositioning, but it's not gonna get you in the Simurgh's face. You need two levels of Teleport - your entire secondary power pool - to reach her in a single jump.
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There's a recharge timer for the teleports? That...that changes things a bit. It basically makes the base teleport non-viable as a means of closing the immediate gap since just getting close is going to take time which she can use to prepare (will be useful late for re-positioning, though). Travel time is time that could be better spent either getting in her face or healing, so that leaves us with a very basic dilemma:

1) Do we think we can survive in our current weakened state whatever immediate (and subsequent) counters she has if we max teleport next to her right now.
2) Do we think we can survive whatever she can come up with by taking (X) seconds to heal before max teleporting in.

The important thing to remember is that as a non-Fate ability she will see the teleport coming which means she might very well be able to hit us with something before we can switch over to more defensive powers.
 
FunkyEntropy said:
There's a recharge timer for the teleports? That...that changes things a bit. It basically makes the base teleport non-viable as a means of closing the immediate gap since just getting close is going to take time which she can use to prepare (will be useful late for re-positioning, though). Travel time is time that could be better spent either getting in her face or healing, so that leaves us with a very basic dilemma:

1) Do we think we can survive in our current weakened state whatever immediate (and subsequent) counters she has if we max teleport next to her right now.
2) Do we think we can survive whatever she can come up with by taking (X) seconds to heal before max teleporting in.

The important thing to remember is that as a non-Fate ability she will see the teleport coming which means she might very well be able to hit us with something before we can switch over to more defensive powers.
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Again, the concern is that the Simurgh is blind to the present, and requires a non-zero time to calculate the future. Taking her moment of reconsideration to force her to prioritize "Minimize my damage" over "Finishing the job" is the best window we'll get to close in.
 
Alectai said:
Again, the concern is that the Simurgh is blind to the present, and requires a non-zero time to calculate the future. Taking her moment of reconsideration to force her to prioritize "Minimize my damage" over "Finishing the job" is the best window we'll get to close in.
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The thing though is that max teleport will allow us to close whenever so the question we need to ask is at what point do we think we'll be able to survive her immediate retaliation after making the jump. I'm totally with you on getting in there and keeping her on the back foot as soon as possible, I'm just not sure if "right now" is possible.
 
FunkyEntropy said:
The thing though is that max teleport will allow us to close whenever so the question we need to ask is at what point do we think we'll be able to survive her immediate retaliation after making the jump. I'm totally with you on getting in there and keeping her on the back foot as soon as possible, I'm just not sure if "right now" is possible.
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My bet is that we will, her TK isn't known for particular strength, and our passive defenses can likely endure her conventional attacks.
 
Hm, can we get a quote on just how powerful Simmy's TK is when she is not sandbagging?
That said, IIRC the Simurgh's true strengths lie in her prophetic abilities, and that her TK is merely a means of actually acting on her precog and postcog.
 
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FunkyEntropy said:
There's a recharge timer for the teleports? That...that changes things a bit. It basically makes the base teleport non-viable as a means of closing the immediate gap since just getting close is going to take time which she can use to prepare (will be useful late for re-positioning, though). Travel time is time that could be better spent either getting in her face or healing, so that leaves us with a very basic dilemma:
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Basically, partial investment in teleportation lets you get to the Simurgh in a few minutes (about half the time you would need to fly there), and total investment in teleportation lets you reach her in seconds.
Much like partial investment in Regeneration lets you heal in minutes, and total investment in Regeneration lets you heal in seconds.
(Keep in mind that to a large extent, this Quest is running on Mutants&Masterminds rules... and in M&M, power levels and what they allow you to do are exponential.)
 
Alectai said:
My bet is that we will, her TK isn't known for particular strength, and our passive defenses can likely endure her conventional attacks.
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OTOH she's on Hard Mode which apparently gives her access to bullshit like, "push away surrounding air molecules so she can fly at super/hypersonic speeds without creating a sonic boom." And, unfortunately, it looks like even with max teleport it's going to take a couple seconds to reach her which means she'll probably have time to prepare something:
sun tzu said:
Basically, partial investment in teleportation lets you get to the Simurgh in a few minutes (about half the time you would need to fly there), and total investment in teleportation lets you reach her in seconds.
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So whatever we do we should at least invest a second or two to regen out of the red zone before heading in. So something like this:

R/R - spend a few seconds getting health back
T/T - get in her face before she can prepare anything particularly nasty
D/D - max defense to not die in the seconds immediately following the teleport
D/LRSS - having survived the initial reprisal, need to figure out what she's doing without dying to subsequent attacks
T or D to MSS/LRSS - Dodge/Tank whatever she's doing while updating for new threats, until safe to switch to Mental Super Speed
MSS/var - Once it's safe to go to Mental Super Speed we can much more quickly react to whatever she's up to, swapping out the second slot to adapt to the situation.
 
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Alectai said:
Okay, full stop, we know that the Smurf is capable of predicting and reacting to anything we do, and the only way to disrupt her planning is to use our Fate Hack, which changes the numbers.

In short, the longer the fight goes on, the more advantage she seizes.


[X] Offense is the best defense. The Simurgh may be over a thousand miles away, but you shouldn't give her time to adapt her plan.

[X] Some rapid sequence of the above (please describe!).
--Long Range Teleportation into combat distance
--Shift to Regeneration and Mental Super-Speed once we're in CQC. Maintain pressure while we recover--her telekinesis is scary, but it's fundamentally a physical force, which should be handled by our recovery time. If she tries to kite us, shift from Mental Super-Speed to Long-Range Super Senses and take the opportunity to recover. She's too intelligent and has too good precog for ranged attacks to work, so we need to keep in relative reach.
--Once we're close to full strength, shift to Long-Range Super Senses instead of Regeneration Be prepared to shunt over to Teleportation to respond to any stunts of hers.
--Be prepared to change strategy entirely, and keep our Fate Manipulation primed to flip the table again at need.
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An interesting approach. Things to keep in mind:
1)At your current state of injury, it'll take a minute or two for partial regeneration to bring you back to full health.
2)"Shunting over to teleportation" isn't much of an answer to Simurgh surprises - you need a moment to shunt your secondary power pool, and then another moment to teleport.
 
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