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Since the last audience participation omake was hella fun...

Send me your questions for a Naurelin Q&A! I'll even do it PHO style. Either PM them to me, or tag me on the message.

Keep in mind that Dragon will be screening suggested questions for inappropriate material. Include a PHO handle, or I'll mangle your SV username appropriately (like how MP-Pi Player became Phi_Listener, and Ack became Blargh in one in-story discussion).

I'll let this run for a couple of weeks, and post the results.

Have at thee! :)
 
@Kryslin

Non-serious question: Who would win in a fight between a F-15 and a dragon? Not necessarily Naurelin as the dragon in question, although her own assesment could be neat.

More serious question - how hard is it for a dragon as big as Naurelin to land vertically, if that's even feasible? If it isn't, what's the shortest "landing roll" that Naurelin's ever pulled off?
 
And this destroyer leader has sent off her own submission for the Q&A. And even avoided shipping stuff somehow. Guess the plotter wasn't being manned :V
 
These are worthy of an answer now:

Ash19256 said:
Non-serious question: Who would win in a fight between a F-15 and a dragon? Not necessarily Naurelin as the dragon in question, although her own assesment could be neat.
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Dragon vs. F-15 Eagle : Depends on the dragon. The aircraft is far, far faster than the dragon, so can choose the range of engagement. If this was 2e D&D, I would say the F-15 would get several retaliation free attacks, but all the dragon has to do is hit once, either physically or magically, and the fighter is now a former fighter. An A-10 would be a far batter choice for a dragon dogfight. Still, one cloud of breath weapon, and the plane has a problem.

Ash19256 said:
More serious question - how hard is it for a dragon as big as Naurelin to land vertically, if that's even feasible? If it isn't, what's the shortest "landing roll" that Naurelin's ever pulled off?
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All dragons can launch vertically, though most prefer to jump from a higher elevation. It's the all important crouch, raise wings, jump and beat the wings down, and keep doing so to gain altitude. Really big dragons growl at gravity and tell it to bugger off, and take off anyway.

Normally, the only dragons that can land vertically without assistance are the tiny-small-medium dragons, most of which are young. In Naurelin's case, she cheats, since she can control her motion with her para-whatever power. Certain magic items help, such as a Tail ring of Manueverability. Or in Helbrede's case, use of Feather Fall after folding her wings up.
 
Kryslin said:
An A-10 would be a far batter choice for a dragon dogfight.
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For what it's worth, it's my understanding that the A-10 actually has a lot of trouble hitting things with that gun (especially targets in the air - it has enough trouble with stationary tanks on the ground sometimes, and made heavy use of bombs and missiles in its greatest success story in 1991) and that it can't get through even some tank armour that was contemporary with the aircraft's deployment.

You'd probably have more luck relying on high speed and homing munitions, since in either case the defensibility of the aircraft isn't all that much of a factor (if it's hit in a big way, then it's not resisting the damage so much as trying to fly without a missing bit, and the F-15 can endure a surprising amount of body damage including losing a wing) while its ability to avoid and generate hits certainly is.

A dragon can't hit you from ten miles away, after all, and a fighter can - in fact, with typical Clumsy manoeuverability of D&D large dragons it can probably guarantee hits unless dragons happen to be stealth. (And metallics might well not be.)
 
@Kryslin

Do you have any advice for dragons looking to join up with cape law enforcement in the Land Down Under? Asking for a friend.

And feel free to mangle my name all you want. I'm curious to see what you come up with.
 
Hmm given all the other children of IO to show up I am part of me wonders how long before Nathair Sgiathach shows up and the possible reactions to Hiel and him running around on the same plane.

Another part of me just wonders how frustrated Falazure got in attempts on Nathair life, I somehow picture it got pretty absurd after a while.
 
Wasn't it mentioned in story that there's speculation that Nathair and our lady of pranking and deliveries are the same person and it's all a long running prank? Or am I thinking of another prank loving deity?
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
Wasn't it mentioned in story that there's speculation that Nathair and our lady of pranking and deliveries are the same person and it's all a long running prank? Or am I thinking of another prank loving deity?
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I think there was some discussion when she was introduced that mentioned that everyone, or at least some, who is aware were confused on if Hlal and Nathair are the same being.
 
I think it's Hlal and Aasternian, and another dragon's mentioned that they let her think she's pulling the wool over everyone's eyes.

I'm not sure, Hlal's a tricky one.
 
Kryslin said:
I think it's Hlal and Aasternian, and another dragon's mentioned that they let her think she's pulling the wool over everyone's eyes.

I'm not sure, Hlal's a tricky one.
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Everyone knows Aasternian is actually Hlal. Therefore it has to be a prank, meaning Aasterian is a separate person from Hlal, because something so obvious wouldn't be all that fun. Meaning Aasterian is Hlal in Groucho Marx glasses, because she knows everyone would dismiss it as too obvious a prank. So Aasterian is real...
 
Nathair Sgiathach apparently is much tiny than the rest of his kin given his normal size is apparently two feet long with gossamer like butterfly wings and prehensile tail, he also apparently always wears utterly enormous smile.

He also unsurprisingly as a god of fairy dragons and Pseudodragons loves apple pie, especially apple pie made with honey and white raisins...

Given that fairy dragons will go to epic lengths for apple pie, I half wonder what counts as epic lengths for a god of fairy dragons...
 
Alane1 said:
Given that fairy dragons will go to epic lengths for apple pie, I half wonder what counts as epic lengths for a god of fairy dragons...
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Managing to get the apple pie three days before it is baked.

EDIT:
Actually, I used that one in a game before when the players encountered the avatar of a trickster deity. The god's avatar was sitting there eating a delicious smelling pie when the players came across him. They had zero clue who they were dealing with, and insulted the deity quite badly. A week later in game the party's cook had just made some amazingly good rolls in sequence. First one was to construct a camp oven. Then there were seriously good rolls made for gathering food for the party's meal. And finally the cook ended up getting a borderline epic roll for baking a Shepard's pie for the party's supper. I'm talking with the modifiers due to tools and ingredient quality (as well as the quality of the camp stove's construction) the player's nat 20 cooking skill roll ended up being a total of 46 or so. At level 7, as I recall. He took it out of the oven... and the Shepard's pie vanished.

The pie they'd seen the avatar eating? It was the one they had just finished cooking a week later.
 
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saphroneth said:
For what it's worth, it's my understanding that the A-10 actually has a lot of trouble hitting things with that gun (especially targets in the air - it has enough trouble with stationary tanks on the ground sometimes, and made heavy use of bombs and missiles in its greatest success story in 1991) and that it can't get through even some tank armour that was contemporary with the aircraft's deployment.

You'd probably have more luck relying on high speed and homing munitions, since in either case the defensibility of the aircraft isn't all that much of a factor (if it's hit in a big way, then it's not resisting the damage so much as trying to fly without a missing bit, and the F-15 can endure a surprising amount of body damage including losing a wing) while its ability to avoid and generate hits certainly is.
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The A-10 is slow enough to not overshoot a Dragon before engaging multiple times, carries a truly impressive amount of ordinance, and is overengineered to hell and back. Yes, the gun is less then effective against modern tanks, but works well enough against anything with thinner armor, and has the high rate of fire that you want in air-to-air engagements. The A-10 might have trouble tracking a fast moving flying target, but by A-10 standards a dragon isn't fast.

Most importantly of all, dragons lack either the consistent thermal output or the radar return of an aircraft, which are the main ways an F-15 locks onto targets. As a ground attack aircraft, the A-10 has a better chance of locking on to a dragon, simply because they are closer to the sorts of things an A-10 would be sent out to attack; bunkers and hardened positions that require video or laser targeting to lock on to.

PS: Question sent.
 
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Jacen1 said:
Most importantly of all, dragons lack either the consistent thermal output or the radar return of an aircraft, which are the main ways an F-15 locks onto targets. As a ground attack aircraft, the A-10 has a better chance of locking on to a dragon, simply because they are closer to the sorts of things an A-10 would be sent out to attack; bunkers and hardened positions that require video or laser targeting to lock on to.
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If we're conceptualizing that the A-10 gets laser support, then why are we wondering if the F-15 can lock onto something in the first place?

Meanwhile if both are relying on their own internal ability to generate a firing solution, the issue the A-10 has is that it had trouble in tests using the gun to hit stationary tank targets on the ground (indeed it has a habit of creating blue-on-blue situations because of the difficulty of seeing things and the wide spread of the main gun) and the non-gun munitions are mostly ground-attack only (and are how the A-10 did most of its work in actual engagements anyway).


I think the issue of lock depends on the dragon. I wouldn't be willing to assume a large Metallic Dragon with golden scales didn't have an enhanced radar return, after all, and even large birds (vultures) have radar cross sections, just not very big ones (bigger than any modern stealth aircraft, though); trees similarly have radar cross sections which is why they're filtered out by modern radar based on their null velocity relative to the ground. Dragons are a lot bigger than vultures and could be expected to have a much larger radar cross section as a result, regardless of their scales, unless you assume their scales happen to be made of radar absorbing material (when the "metallic" factor would if anything argue in the other direction).


Similarly, an ice dragon (like a White) might not have a strong thermal signature, but a fire dragon (a Red, Gold or Brass) is more likely to have something that's at least noticeable.


Based on this analysis I think the easiest dragon to target/shoot down would be a gold or brass dragon (metallic scales, Fire subtype so larger heat signature), and the hardest would be a Black dragon (not metallic, no abnormal heat signature, hard to see at night) or in daylight a non-Red Chromatic.



I have to say, though, I'm not volunteering to try it out. Or be nearby, really.
 
@Kryslin

Question for Naurelin and the other Dragons: How do you guys/girls fell about Snoot Booping Asking for a friend myself

(As for PHO handle either use my own @Spartan-025 or use Athenian-520 don't mind which)
 
It was established way back in the 3rd arc when Naurelin underwent her flight testing that she does have an IR and RADAR signature that she can be detected and tracked by such as a dragon. If she can be tracked, she can be locked onto by either a SAM or AAM. an AIM-9 might not do much, but some of the larger AAMs would.

So, it would be safe to assume that metallic dragons and some chromatics have a sufficient RADAR cross section to be tracked. Any fire using dragon is going to be hot enough for an IR seeker to track. Hunts-The-Ice would be very hard to track, even with IR looking for the cold spot in the air. Our unnamed black would be very hard to spot at night, and a spray of acid into the engines would seriously mess things up.

The biggest problem with this exercise is the fact that the descriptions for Magic are written for the game rules, which is mainly based around close quarters engagements, and balanced for play. Which means distances in feet, and time spans that can be easily kept track of. There was a joke in an old Mecha RPG, that if you had a couple of football fields to use as a hex map, they'd send you the real ranges. There was another tactical game that had the ranges closer to reality, which means that Lasers had a range of 40km - basically to the horizon - with damage falling off over distance.

So we'd have to either bring dragons up into the real world, or the F-15 into the game world to make a serious comparison.

Re: The A-10 in Air-to-air - the one encounter for an A-10 that involved use of the Avenger was against a Hind attack helicopter. They couldn't lock a AIM-9 onto it, so the pilot lined up on the helicopter in his gunsight, and squeezed off a burst. The Hind disintegrated.
 
Kryslin said:
Re: The A-10 in Air-to-air - the one encounter for an A-10 that involved use of the Avenger was against a Hind attack helicopter. They couldn't lock a AIM-9 onto it, so the pilot lined up on the helicopter in his gunsight, and squeezed off a burst. The Hind disintegrated.
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So it has a +5 GAU-8/A Avenger of Disintegration then...
 
Kryslin said:
Panpakapan!

Welshie facepalmed. Leander, have you been watching anime again?

Yep! Leander, ready.
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Kryslin said:
Oi, the lot of us are rarin' ta go! That would be the mental models of Leander, Perth, and Hobart. Those three were thick as thieves in whatever they were doing, either supporting each other in operations, or whatever cockeyed scheme they were working on.
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I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, or if I'm missing something, but it appears you've got two reactions from Leander here. If they are separate ships with the same name, there would probably be some kind of change in name convention for addressing them.
 
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