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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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Redshirt Army said:
I'm not convinced we have one. I wouldn't be surprised if there simply wasn't a limit on how much energy grief can generate.
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There must be some limit to either how much energy a given quantity of grief can generate, or how fast it can be made. Otherwise, the incubators would just collect a bit of grief, and then ramp up its energy production until it can reverse entropy/power their civilization/whatever they do with it.

Regardless, what matters for the quest is that this quantity or rate of energy production is absurdly large. While I'm not against playing with anti-matter, Godwinson is right that we could also just do whatever we want with the grief. In this case, we can just make the explosion without bothering to create a hydrogen bomb or glob of anti-matter first. Even better, we can probably choose which type(s) of energy we make, so we don't need to worry about radiation sticking around afterwards. We basically are a clean nuke.
Plus we can choose the yield of the explosion. Iowa is somewhere in this uninhabited stretch of tundra? Hydrogen bomb size. Iowa is sitting in a building over there? Just big enough to vaporize the building.

It also means that we can power the entire planet with completely green energy. We just need to create the infrastructure (or allow governments/companies to make it) to move the energy to where it needs to go.

Anti-matter and bombs do have one benefit though. We can throw them at Iowa without being right beside them. We don't know what powers they have, so the further away we are while we nuke them (figuratively speaking, probably), the better.
We could do airburst though. Fly up above them and let out a nuke-sized explosion.

Or Walpy-chan. We could do that to her too.
 
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Sentient Tree said:
There must be some limit to either how much energy a given quantity of grief can generate, or how fast it can be made. Otherwise, the incubators would just collect a bit of grief, and then ramp up its energy production until it can reverse entropy/power their civilization/whatever they do with it.
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That the Incubators cannot create unlimited power from a limited supply of grief does not necessarily imply that Sabrina can't.

The rest of your post is accurate, though.
 
Sentient Tree said:
Well, that's a pretty simple test we can do. Try to make grief that 'destroys' energy, rather than creates it. Cooling grief.

Edit:
Like a refrigerator, but it doesn't dump the heat anywhere.
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IIRC, we tried to delete Grief once and it didn't work.

Or were we trying to create Grief at will? :thonk: can't check the planner right now, but I think we can't outright delete Grief.
 
Onmur said:
IIRC, we tried to delete Grief once and it didn't work.

Or were we trying to create Grief at will? :thonk: can't check the planner right now, but I think we can't outright delete Grief.
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Right, but the proposed test is to make Grief that absorbs energy, not to try to delete grief.

Just like Sabrina can't create more grief ex-nihilo, but can make grief that emits energy.
 
Re: Walpurgisnacht: I'm going to say some stuff cuz I'm bored.

The most useful thing we could do would be to plan out how to evacuate the civilians much further away if needed.

Traditionally, Homura's strategies are molded by an absolute limit on how much magic she can expend and failure to simply get Madoka away without a resultant contract. This puts two constraints on her: she only has so much time out of timestop before WPN hits Madoka, and she only has so much time in timestop before she runs out of grief seeds.

Our existence breaks one of those constraints: Homura now has arbitrary time in timestop. The ability to move Madoka and all the people Madoka would consider contracting for the sake of protecting would break the other: then we would have vast quantities of time out of timestop.

At that point? I mean, if we break both of those constraints then if we find we can't hurt WPN enough we could literally pull back and invent more things to try. That seems to me to be the best optimization available, since it means we could, potentially, go "alright, this isn't working: let's risk trying antimatter" and it lets us do that without engaging the risk prior to an actual need for it... Also, organizing some setup for that seems like it would involve, like, no risk whatsoever.

So... As far as the talk of bigger boom goes, it all seems to me like it all just boils down to "what's the coolest, most obvious way we could maybe make ourselves better able to hurt WPN?" It seems like it's not actually got any real relationship with optimization... I can understand speculating about it, I mean, it's the old classic! "What if we tried a bigger boom?" But... That's not always the right question. At all.
 
Redshirt Army said:
Right, but the proposed test is to make Grief that absorbs energy, not to try to delete grief.

Just like Sabrina can't create more grief ex-nihilo, but can make grief that emits energy.
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Sooo... it does sound doable.

Couldn't we do this already with basic Grief control, by literally grabbing molecules and holding them put? At least assuming we got control that fine.
 
Onmur said:
Sooo... it does sound doable.

Couldn't we do this already with basic Grief control, by literally grabbing molecules and holding them put? At least assuming we got control that fine.
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More than that, doesn't, I dunno, basic grief do this? Like... If we throw a ball at a panel of grief, the grief doesn't gain the kinetic energy transferred unless we want it to, right?
 
Kaizuki said:
The ability to move Madoka and all the people Madoka would consider contracting for the sake of protecting would break the other: then we would have vast quantities of time out of timestop.
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Alternatively, again, we could take the fight into distant outer space, or at least to the Moon and/or one of the Lagrange points.
 
Redshirt Army said:
Yeah, pretty much. I would be absolutely astonished if we weren't able to absorb energy with grief.
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That's absurdly simple. Will the grief to not reflect any energy. Particle bumps into it and stops, because there was no energy return into it. If you wanted to be really mean, fast-moving grief fog set to do that while frequently shedding the resultant particle accretion, and watch as the air temperature plummets.
 
Godwinson said:
That's absurdly simple. Will the grief to not reflect any energy. Particle bumps into it and stops, because there was no energy return into it. If you wanted to be really mean, fast-moving grief fog set to do that while frequently shedding the resultant particle accretion, and watch as the air temperature plummets.
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Yes, exactly.
 
NitroFumetsu said:
...as I was catching up, someone mentioned a Lag Witch?

That sounds suspciously like King Crimson?
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Aurora, the SB Witch. A giant Toucan that rests upon the SB server. Whenever she damages the box, her and her Familiars flicker out of existence (but keep moving unseen).

We've had her basically from the start, and she's our most special Clear Seed, if not our most loyal. :p
 
Kaizuki said:
Re: Walpurgisnacht: I'm going to say some stuff cuz I'm bored.

The most useful thing we could do would be to plan out how to evacuate the civilians much further away if needed.
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Yeah, this line right here is what I meant in my rant by backing things up and having preparations ready for if the first attempt fails.

Annnnd now I find myself going through the plans in my head.

Start the evacuation plans by talking to Homura about where Walpurgisnacht typically hits first, prioritize the evacuation there, with enough leeway for if her spawn point moves (Because even if we can theoretically evacuate everyone, things go wrong, and even things like the possibility of the meguca running the evacuation just plain getting tired in the middle of timestop means we should start with the most at-risk. Just in case.)


Acquire a high power teleporter like Taniguchi Emi (or just Sakura, Mami, Homura and a lot of timestop time,) and evac everyone in Mitakihara just before WPN shows up.

Or even many teleporters. If we really wanted to, and we were willing to drive a harder bargain than usual, I'd imagine clear seeds give us the leverage to hire a significant chunk of the Red Bird Association.

Make sure we run drills on whatever plan we use before the day itself.

If we can, we can just get everyone out of the city straight. If we can't, but we have portals available we can link them to Tsuruya's claimed building. Use the portals to connect the various evacuation zones to move, which will be partially helped by the fact that many will evacuate to there of their own accord anyways. If it's endangered, one of Yuki's power or the portals can link from there to just plain out of the city.

Debating asking If Tsuruya can claim the... I'm assuming it was a convention center? Where everyone evacuated to in canon. Would allow it to be more defensible, especially if her nexus here can't link to Fukushima.

Basically, funnel everyone to a few specific spots (aided by the fact that those spots are where the mundane evacuations are already going) and from there to out of the city. Specifics probably depend a lot on who we can get to help us though.
 
My $0.02:
My position is not and never has been, "We should make antimatter!" It is, "Given proper precautions, analogous to what one should do when working with, say, chlorine pentafluoride, antimatter is not inherently unsafe." Saying that antimatter will badend the quest no matter what is doomsaying.
 
Again, it is presumably much easier to move a single entity away from everybody (either into space or over the pacific), than it is to relocate (presumably) hundreds of thousands of people.
 
HoodedHero007 said:
Again, it is presumably much easier to move a single entity away from everybody (either into space or over the pacific), than it is to relocate (presumably) hundreds of thousands of people.
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This is a nice idea, but in practice, assuming that we will be able to teleport Walpurgisnacht is probably the worst idea I have ever heard.

Likewise, assuming that we will be able to just eject it into space by other means is probably also up with other terrible ideas.

We know that we can move civilians. That makes it a much safer plan than banking on moving Walpurgisnacht, the Queen of Witches.
 
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HoodedHero007 said:
Again, it is presumably much easier to move a single entity away from everybody (either into space or over the pacific), than it is to relocate (presumably) hundreds of thousands of people.
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Given that those hundreds of thousands of people don't have Walpurgisnachts ability to literally shrug off any effects that don't fit the Stage Constructing Witch's thoughts on DRAMA, I wouldn't be so sure about that.

More generally, Walpurgisnacht isn't going to be a pushover. She literally can't be - she's a narrative witch, with the backing of all of Homura's previous failed attempts backing up her credibility as an endgame villain. If she doesn't have the power on her own to be a threat, then she'll cooperate/merge/subsume Feathers as necessary until she is a threat.

Frankly, I think any plans to deal with Walpurgisnacht that don't include contingencies for her suddenly being immune to timestop are overly optimistic.

Kaizuki said:
This is a nice idea but in practice, assuming that we will be able to teleport Walpurgisnacht is probably the worst idea I have ever heard.

Likewise, assuming that we will be able to just eject it into space by other means is probably also up with other terrible ideas.

We know that we can move civilians. That makes it a much safer plan than banking on moving Walpurgisnacht, the Queen of Witches.
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Yes, thank you.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
More generally, Walpurgisnacht isn't going to be a pushover. She literally can't be - she's a narrative witch, with the backing of all of Homura's previous failed attempts backing up her credibility as an endgame villain. If she doesn't have the power on her own to be a threat, then she'll cooperate/merge/subsume Feathers as necessary until she is a threat.
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...

Uh, Redshirt? Between that and this...

Redshirt Army said:
Frankly, I think any plans to deal with Walpurgisnacht that don't include contingencies for her suddenly being immune to timestop are overly optimistic.
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First off,

:Citation Needed:.

Secondly... This is some amazingly sketchy posting you're up to here. I mean, firstly, there is to the extent of my knowledge no evidence whatsoever and some against for the first quote you wrote. I like to think, at this point, that I know something about PMMM, and suffice to say that not only does PSP Golden appear to directly contradict what you've said but, again, I'm not aware of any evidence supporting what you said.

And... You're presenting this as fact. There is no "I think" or "I believe that" in that first quote.

If you were somebody else I wouldn't blink an eye. But I know full well you've been here for years, and I was under the impression you were familiar with at least the majority of the source material.

So, uh, I usually hesitate to say this sort of thing, but in that context, this appears to be a pretty outrageous post you've made.

It's possible, to be sure, that you know something I don't. But I haven't the faintest idea what that might be.

And it's equally possible you've just made a mistake.

But either way, I'm thinking you should really quickly either provide a source, or retract that post.
 
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Kaizuki said:
not only does PSP Golden appear to directly contradict what you've said
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Ah, in the interest of clarity, the point I'm making here is that if assembling the holy quintet and sharing all secrets with each other is sufficient to defeat WPN then, I mean, that would seem to suggest that A) there are clear ways to beat WPN that don't involve planning for WPN suddenly being able to ignore time stop, and B) that if WPN "scales to match opponents" (again, there is no evidence for that) then apparently the holy quintet is enough to tell scaled!WPN to fuck off.
 
Kaizuki said:
Ah, in the interest of clarity, the point I'm making here is that if assembling the holy quintet and sharing all secrets with each other is sufficient to defeat WPN then, I mean, that would seem to suggest that A) there are clear ways to beat WPN that don't involve planning for WPN suddenly being able to ignore time stop, and B) that if WPN "scales to match opponents" (again, there is no evidence for that) then apparently the holy quintet is enough to tell scaled!WPN to fuck off.
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WPN is a narrative witch. In the PSP golden end, it folds to the Mitakihara 5... because Homura finally succeeded, overcame her issues, and got the main protagonists to work together.

She earned the victory on narrative grounds. If Walpurgisnacht failed to fold, then it would be a Diabolus Ex Machina, a cheat, a failed story.

Call in @AuraTwilight if you want to confirm this - Walpurgisnacht's nature is Helplessness, and she can forcibly impose that on others. Walpurgisnacht can canonically become immune to anything if she wants to, for as long as she wants to. It comes up in a lot of the canonical side media.

The Holy Quintet united didn't defeat Walpurgisnacht because of powerlevels, they defeated her because the Holy Quintet united.
 
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Actually, there is evidence that Walpy scales to opponents, since it dies to Mami and Timeline 1!Madoka. They both die, yes, but it's more than Homura ever really accomplishes.
 
Eh, I prefer the theory that Madoka killed it by gemsmashing herself (like kyouko does in the last timeline) rather than scaling.
 
I wouldn't really call it "scaling", per se, so much that Walpurgisnacht only dies if she chooses to let herself die. She's especially fond of tragedy, so she'll readily accept Madoka's heroic sacrifice, but if the stage is particularly thoroughly set for a heroic victory, she'll go along with that narrative too.

Trying to calculate Walpurgisnacht's "power" is to misunderstand her purpose on a both in and out-of-character level.

Kaizuki said:
But either way, I'm thinking you should really quickly either provide a source, or retract that post.
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As a citation I provide Madoka Portable, where Walpurgisnacht can become immune to all damage for several turns with an ability on an RNG timer, which can cause runs against her to become literally impossible with bad luck, and the Phantom of the Kill crossover event, where Walpurgisnacht has a passive ability (explicitly noted to impose helplessness in the stat sheets!) that reduces all incoming damage against her to zero... unless Madoka and Homura cooperate and do a combination attack.

Both of those had direct oversight from InuCurry.
 
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RE: Scale of WPN, A point of note here:

There's the long looming possibility that we're a, dewitched, Walpurgisnacht.

If so, this would mean that Madoka made her wish and to fix everything, in part, for Walpurgisnacht.

So that she could be human, sure, but even so, for WPN.

And yes, Madoka's also made her wish for everyone else but we've also seen that both Sayaka and Kirika are notably stronger this timeline. Oriko meanwhile seems to have a bit more control over her visions here that she did in her mangas.

Even Mami is different from our knowledge really: We've no basis to say she's outright stronger, but she does have friendships that weren't in our memory (Kazumi), and she is notably a worldwide renowned magical girl.

Madoka's wish may or may not have reset the timeline in and of itself, but certainly led to the event, and I'd argue that all of the above points pretty thoroughly towards her wish having an effect on this timeline's potential.

So yeah, if Sabrina is WPN, and Madoka reset the timeline so she could be a human being... the resulting potential accrual could mean the Walpurgisnacht of this timeline may be stronger than usual.

EDIT: Yeah, UKG!Brina is competing with the WPN hypothesis now, but we haven't exactly confirmed or falsified either of them.
 
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