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Transposition, or: Ship Happens [Worm/Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio | Arpeggio of Blue Steel]

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armorfiend said:
I'm not sure you understand quite how large hurricanes actually are. A given hurricane can cover a couple of percentage points of the actual planet, when measuring the total area covered over time.

Leviathan does bad things to the cities he attacks, yes. But he doesn't attack everything on a multi-thousand-mile swath hundreds of miles long, for a week or so at a time.

His attacks typically happen with a couple of hours notice, which means no grand weather effects that could cause damage to anything outside the local area. Remember, just because he can do a lot of damage doesn't mean that it's normal for him to do so.
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It is true Leviathan doesn't -attack- thousands of miles, but he doesn't go out of his way to prevent collateral damage either. One has to remember that 1) the water Leviathan uses has to come from somewhere, and 2) it all has to go somewhere after he stops manipulating it. So, there is potential for hurricane level flooding damage in the areas surrounding Leviathan's target.
 
Stahor said:
More related to the story, i find hard to believe that Lung regeneration did not outpaced simple strangulation, and you had him close big hole in seconds, and even if conflict was judged too small scale, even with his default level he had to recover from oxygen deprivation extremely fast.
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Well, if it helps to consider it from an alternate angle and make things atleast a little more plausible. Sleeper holds I believe technically work by cutting off blood flow to ones brain via squeezing shut the main artery. And the description I believe did mention her being able to press/crush Lung pretty well in that area. And because it's a blood flow block, it means near immediate loss of oxygen in the brain and I think it's supposed to set in quite rapidly, especially if you get a really good hold of the relevant arteries. I wouldn't be surprised if he was out in 10-20 seconds, though intense struggling might make it happen even quicker?
ensou said:
Plus ships with actual large cannons (which are totally a logical thing for the Fog who have frickin' laser-beams particle cannons),
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I'm not sure why they can't be laser beams? Do they actually do something not laser beam like? Ultra-high power lasers are used to induce fusion in matter after all (Via heating and extreme compression of matter, so much so that I believe solid balls are compressed quite a way down from their original diameter), so explosions and other interesting effects are hardly unheard of in a powerful laser.

Petawatt-Exawatt class lasers for instance, if they could fire for a single second, would cause tactical to strategic nuke sized explosions even. So even in ultra short pulse modes the effects they can have can be quite extreme. (Exawatt class lasers are even speculated to be able to force virtual particles out of the background, which is why scientists are hard at work to develop such a laser to see this)
 
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Guardsman_Sparky said:
It is true Leviathan doesn't -attack- thousands of miles, but he doesn't go out of his way to prevent collateral damage either. One has to remember that 1) the water Leviathan uses has to come from somewhere, and 2) it all has to go somewhere after he stops manipulating it. So, there is potential for hurricane level flooding damage in the areas surrounding Leviathan's target.
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Ahh... not exactly.

It's a question of volume. He doesn't typically drown cities, really. Just floods them with heavy rains and the like. But say he did, and carried enough water to do so.

Sure, it sounds like a lot; swamping a city and all... but. Let that back into the ocean... and it'll just get swallowed up. Water running off the coast will disperse more or less evenly. Just like every other storm that occurs in nature.

It's like dropping a jug of water into a parking lot or a swimming pool. Only things very near that point would be affected. Nearby cities might see a bit of a swell or a storm surge, but they get that all the time. Most residents wouldn't even notice.

Again. He doesn't call up hurricanes. People would notice and comment if he did. And even if he did, well, hurricanes haven't stopped business yet. One more hurricane every year and two every fourth year, wouldn't be enough to do the job.

I'm going to stop arguing this here because if I've not made the point now it's not one I can make. Suffice to say, the world is a very, very large place, and the endbringers- and their effects- are very, very small. They're larger than a person, but much smaller than humanity.
 
armorfiend said:
Brockton Bay's shipping is absolutely dead. There's a bigass ship sunk across the channel, a number of smaller ships around it, and nobody bothered to remove them or dredge a new channel. So only shallow draft vessels can get in and out. It makes complete sense that BB as a city is fucked.
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Schielman said:
As a general question does anyone remember why specifically Brockton Bay's economy tanked? I remember canon saying that the import/export business dried up and that's why the gangs were able to take over, but I have a hard time believing that the Dockworkers would shoot themselves in the foot that hard. If they single-handedly sunk the Bay's economy, I imagine that would have gotten them on EVERYONE's shit list. Also, Brockton Bay's economy probably would have made a comeback of some variety.
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I dont remember if there's ever an actual canon part that really talks about it. But I think it went something like the Dockworkers went on strike, City didnt come to the table, dockworkers threaten to sink a cargo ship over part of port that dealt with cargo shipping blocking it off, City called their bluff and the dockworkers sank a cargo ship there making that part of the dock unnavigable without raising and salvaging the wreck.

In other words, both sides did the wrong thing at the right time to trash their own economy.
 
Mercenary said:
I dont remember if there's ever an actual canon part that really talks about it. But I think it went something like the Dockworkers went on strike, City didnt come to the table, dockworkers threaten to sink a cargo ship over part of port that dealt with cargo shipping blocking it off, City called their bluff and the dockworkers sank a cargo ship there making that part of the dock unnavigable without raising and salvaging the wreck.

In other words, both sides did the wrong thing at the right time to trash their own economy.
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Just found this and Honed during my weekly trawl for new fics, and I'm extremely happy to see them somewhere I can comment freely (rather than 1 review per chapter) :D.

Talking about BB shipping, I had thought that the initial sinking was by a third party, and blocked the channel to large vessels. This was then compounded upon by a rush on the insurance companies by other boat owners who scuttled their now trapped ships rather than band together for a potentially very expensive salvage op to clear the channel.

The dockworkers may have had some hand in the underlying cause of the formation of the graveyard (potentially via a strike/series of strikes) but I don't think that they would act in such a fashion as to completely kill their source of income...


On the topic of the abilities of mental models... Has anyone started to put together a list of feats? Just so we can get an idea of exactly what this Taylor could achieve. I would start a list if it wasn't so late where I am (and if I knew that one didn't already exist).
 
ensou said:
It reminded be of medieval armor, except less metal.
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reminded me of
ensou said:
professional-looking costume I'd been seen as a real hero,
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I'd be seen as
ensou said:
wasn't the Emma I had known. Not the one the that had I faked camping in her backyard with.
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that I had faked
ensou said:
myself, I really wanted to get out and just dosomething af
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do something
ensou said:
the Empire Eighty-Eight was its usual rascist self
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usual racist
ensou said:
PHO. People talked them about 'going Skynet', something
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talked about them
ensou said:
would make heroing all that much easier. I couldsleep,
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could sleep
ensou said:
I was having none of it, and stuck a set fields directly in his
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set of fields
ensou said:
processes, and my false blood would unidentifiable from the real thing under a microscope.
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would be unidentifiable
ensou said:
It was word that I somehow knew described the Fog perfectly
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was a word that
ensou said:
completely different. Dauntless meant being unafraid,undaunted, determination through resolve and spirit. Relentless meant never giving up,
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unafraid, undaunted, determination
ensou said:
hadn't started out that way, but as the conversation had
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Error here, I forget what.
Pretty good so far, ensou. I look forward to seeing what comes next.
 
Pyrotech51 said:
Talking about BB shipping, I had thought that the initial sinking was by a third party, and blocked the channel to large vessels. This was then compounded upon by a rush on the insurance companies by other boat owners who scuttled their now trapped ships rather than band together for a potentially very expensive salvage op to clear the channel.
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You'd think people doing that would get hammered for fraud and whatever the government could think to nail them with. Considering they wouldn't take kindly to blocking up the harbour and it would be way to transparent.

So are you sure that happened? You'd think people would realize this...
 
For designing her ship she might want to research in roughly the following order:

1) What are all the technologies and sciences available to her? This is beyond that just those for steamrolling humans that have roughly 20th century tech.
2) What are all the most difficult tasks that she plans to need the ship to be able to accomplish? Some might be rather nebulous like fighting Endbringers (which can in environments that are impractical to fight unless the ship can fly or even go into space), while others might be to have a medical facility that can treat nearly anything or various workshops and factories.
3) What are the constraints of the design (like does it need to have a maximum depth of hull below the surface (to avoid scraping the bottom of certain harbors) or width (to fit in certain gaps to harbors or through canals without damaging the surroundings), living space requirements, security both internal and external, etc. A possibly big design constraint is that she might not be able to have any support and specialties that would make up a "real fleet".

While you could have the outer form have little to do with what is internal if you have something like reality warping tech, in other cases the outer elements would determine the limits of firing arcs of weapons (although missiles that are agile enough to take paths to hit targets no matter the direction of location can mitigate that to some amount), propulsion direction biases, weak points that can be exposed if protective fields are somehow bypassed or weakened (like if important communications and sensors are grouped together in obvious vulnerable locations on the surface), accessibility and security, etc.

She might want to look up things like the Bolo anthology, various science fiction military stories and games and speculation that cover over a long period of time. It should be noted that designers of World War 2 ships had a lot of technological limitations, construction limitations, political limitations, and tunnel vision based on what they "know to be true". An example of an internet website that has a lot of research onto the design of that time and how they performed this could be useful: NavWeaps
 
TJG said:
2) What are all the most difficult tasks that she plans to need the ship to be able to accomplish? Some might be rather nebulous like fighting Endbringers (which can in environments that are impractical to fight unless the ship can fly or even go into space), while others might be to have a medical facility that can treat nearly anything or various workshops and factories.
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Fog ships can deffinetly fly. They are for all intent and purpose space ships pretending to be ww2 ships. Fog battleships are pretty much sea based bolos.
 
I hope she dosen't make a water based ship, or at least she doesn't only do it anyway (Doesn't limit herself). Want some people sized vehicles perhaps for the street level stuff but mostly was hoping for an air type ship (OR SPACE). Like a anti-gravity gunship/airship swarm or flying Avenger Battle Carrier.

Or even the Space Battleship Yamato. :D
 
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List of Mental Model Feats by Stahor
  • Informational
    • Pyrotech51 said:
    On the topic of the abilities of mental models... Has anyone started to put together a list of feats? Just so we can get an idea of exactly what this Taylor could achieve. I would start a list if it wasn't so late where I am (and if I knew that one didn't already exist).
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    01. MM is sturdy enough to withstand direct hit from Fog missile
    02. At Heavy Cruiser processing power can create at least 20 subnodes, while keeping control of MM and ship-body. [Somewhat hard to see in the scan, but in my hardcopy i can see number 20]
    03. Can form projectile weapons in seconds, that even in small scale can chip concrete. Also clothes and hair changing,
    04. Can fly with very little assist without using Klein Fields.
    05. It's possible to use Klein Field as AoE blunt force attack.
    06. MM can react fast enough to catch bullets in flight.
    07. It's possible to use Klein Field for
    07a. Implosions
    07b. Gravity attacks
    08. It's possible to use Klein Field as telekinesis.
    09. Nanomaterial constructs can be used to rip armored vehicle armor by brute strength.
    10. Nanomaterial constructs can be used to stop tank shells without use of Klein Field.
    11. MM can access hardened computer systems and absorb information in seconds. [Given nature of the scene, Makie and snipers don't notice any meaningful pause, so it had to happen very fast, I sceculate that maybe ven faster than human harddrives can output information if used in conventional way]
    12. MM can see beyond visible spectrum. Also see p. 11.
    13. After stopping multiple rockets and tank rounds, MM's Klein Field only slightly filled.
    14. MM can jam radio and radar.
    15. MM can analyse organic body instantly.
    16. MM can move fast enough, while carring human child that APC gun operator can't aim at her.
    17. Thanotonium Reactor is not a requirement to fire Photon Cannon.
    18. MM can analyse chemical compounds.
    19. Nanomaterial can emulate organic compounds down to cell structure.
    20. MM can create independent AI and robotic body that can function without use of nanomaterial. [Economic victory through automated shipping you say?]
    21. Yamato has two full fledged MMs and donate processing power to Yukikaze. Yukikaze MM require 2% of Yamato processing capacity, while Repulse donates 24.58% to Vampire, with Vampire forgetting things and Repulse noted to be at full capacity.


    Markings guide
     
  • Informational
    • Logically Random said:
    The best way I have found that think of the Fog is as clarktech spaceships made of nanomachines cosplaying as WW2 warships and role playing as teenage girls.
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    "Role-playing" isn't quite accurate. It's true that they're not actually human, but still... When you're role-playing, you remain aware of your normal self and, one might say, are only pretending to be whatever you're role-playing as. When the evening is over, you'll go back to normal.

    Iona, Takao and the rest aren't pretending. They may not be human, and it's questionable whether they can really be described as teenage, but they are what they are. There's nothing *more* to their minds hiding behind the scenes, not really.
     
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    Baughn said:
    The missile didn't explode, at least not until afterwards. So your statement is technically correct, but...
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    Should still have a strong armor piercing ability though, right? One might argue the explosion afterwards would actually be the weaker part of the entire thing as well. Your shells exploding on the outside of tanks is typically considered undesirable compared to the alternative after all.
     
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    Twinned Confusion by Baughn
  • Apocrypha
    • Omake: Twinned confusion

    In a certain house on the outskirts of the docks, late on Tuesday night, a man sat staring at a blank TV.

    He wasn't handsome, this man, unshaven and tired-looking as he was. Perhaps once upon a time he might have been. Perhaps once, years ago, the room would have been vivid and full of laughter. His wife, expounding on some odd and ancient poem, his daughter and her almost-sister giggling while giving their own absurd readings.

    Today it was a lonely, dark grey. His wife was gone. His daughter's sister had betrayed her. He would have given anything to help, had he only known how. His daughter, as was recently usual, wasn't even here.

    She'd started leaving home for most of the day, and he'd seen videos of this new hero, this 'Relentless'. It obviously wasn't her. And yet, the way she held herself—the way she moved, and her choice of words when she spoke—and changers existed. He'd done the research, hoping to disprove it but knowing from old conversations that he wouldn't.

    What kind of father was he, to hope that his daughter had merely joined a gang? What kind of person was he, not to ask?

    The silence of the house was broken by the creak of the front door, and his daughter's low voice, speaking to someone. Then the sound of running feet.

    Danny started to his feet, eyes wide with sudden surprise.

    "Grandpa!"

    Red eyes glinted in the darkness. A girl came leaping out, arms extended into claws as she—embraced him, hugging every bit as hard as Taylor ever had. He staggered backwards, blankly focusing on the lightweight bundle clinging on to him.

    "Hi!" She grinned upwards, silver hair cascading around her as she came to a halt. Then she twisted her head to look back. "See? I told you I can be human. All those hours reading weren't for nothing!"

    Shocked eyes flickered up to follow her gaze, finding Taylor standing in the doorway, one hand covering her reddened face while the other held on to the collar of a second young girl. This one was a redhead, and had her feet planted at an angle while struggling to run forward and join her—sister?

    "Er… Dad? I… this isn't how I wanted to let you know. Anna,     stop—No, that's not how it works, he hasn't even met you yet!"

    In Danny's mind she had a definite resemblance to Emma. They both did, the way they were jumping around.

    He hadn't quite gotten over his shock enough to think about that.

    "Hmm. Hmm. Hmm…"

    He looked back down, to where the first girl was saying "Hmm" out loud, her face tense with concentration. Then her eyes lit up with understanding.

    "Mom's right! I haven't even introduced myself." She held up a hand, still clinging to him, and somehow failed to drop to the floor. "I'm Casty! But call me Cass! Drone-type,     technically, but I'm preeee~tty much a destroyer. Mom is lending me some of her mind. Nice to meet you, erm… gramps?"

    A few seconds passed in silence. Casty frowned. Taylor flushed even redder.

    "You're supposed to shake my hand now," she pointed out, grabbing his hand with her own. He allowed her to shake it without resisting.

    "Taylor? What—What is going on?" He looked helplessly at his daughter. Casty was—and there were two of them, but Taylor might—oh. Well, no. "How do I have two ten-year-old granddaughters?     Why do I have two ten-year-old granddaughters? When did you—" He cut himself off. That made no sense. Absently, he put a hand around Casty's back.

    He thought he could see Taylor beginning to steam, but her stance grew more relaxed as she saw him doing so. Somehow, he'd done something right.

    — — —

    "This is it?" Cass eyed the house dubiously. "Wooden frame, metal-reinforced—no, metal wiring. A few spots of rot. No radar stealthing. No armor, no weapons emplacements…" She looked uncertainly up at Taylor. "Are you sure this is home?"

    Four foot nothing, sporting odd red clothing, red eyes and silver hair flowing halfway down her back, Casty looked like nothing so much as a child cosplaying. Taylor knew better.

    "Iona-    'neechan already explained this," Anna said self-importantly. "It's because Mom used to be human. She still hasn't had time to fix everything, but that's okay, it just means there's more for us. That's originally why she made us, so don't complain. Aren't you looking forward to it?"

    "We-well, of course I am!" Cass huffed, blushing and looking away. "I was just concerned, that's all. Ann, what about you, aren't you worried about Mom having to live somewhere like this?"

    Taylor sighed.     How did she get into these situations?

    "Because you're responsible and you love us," Anna piped up. "Now come on, let's go say 'Hi!'"

    She opened the door.
     
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  • Apocrypha
    • As world-building is instinctive and automatic for me, here's a quick blurb about these two. @ensou: You're welcome to use, abuse, ignore or change any of this to as large or as little degree as you feel like.

    They're twins, in the sense that they're the same age and have identical capabilities. Their personalities and appearance are rather different.


    Casty:



    This is an expy of Casty Rianoite, which is why I have a picture. She's a bit of a spitfire; calling her a "Tsundere destroyer" would not be completely erronous, although without her counterpart Delta she has less reason for the 'Tsun'.

    She's opinionated, quick to action, and extroverted. Between the three of them, she's the most likely to decide that what they really need is to turn Brockton Bay into a fortress bristling with guns, and she isn't above hiding that decision from her family if she thinks they'd disagree. On the other hand she trusts Anna implicitly, and is unlikely go against an actual order. The fact remains that if things get really bad, she might go looking for help even if Taylor wants to keep others out of it.


    Anna

    Casty's sister; her personality is a made-up combination of (Taylor's memories of) Anne Rose Hebert and her idea of what Emma used to be like, back when she liked her. Neither Taylor nor Anna are aware of any of this, although it'll be fairly obvious to Danny. It might also be obvious to Emma, should they ever meet.

    I didn't nail down very much else about her. She's a bit more hesitant than Casty, which more often manifests as taking long enough to make a decision that Taylor has a chance to hold her back by the scruff of her neck. In the omake that was literal, but more often it just means that she actually consults others before deciding what to do.

    Red-haired, but doesn't match expectations for that hair-color at all.

    One of her favorite people is Iona, and she often spends her evenings chatting with the submarine whenever the latter isn't busy, although the power demands of an interdimensional connection means that isn't always an option. As a result, she's picked up a few of Iona's habits.
     
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    Eh, not sure if posting this now is best but it was talked about a bunch and might be important later so...

    The Fog explicitly cannot fly. They can merely float on air, as seen several times involving super gravity cannons.

    "I've analyzed the footage many times, and I've come to the conclusion that the fog are capable of using the directional energy of the Klein Field to surface but that it badly degrades their mobility." Surface is an odd word choice, but the page has a picture of Haruna and Kirishima floating in mid air over a hole in the ocean, so the meaning is clear.

    "...They [Haruna and Kirishima] created force-fields directly above and below fixing their location in space. But the fields required to stabilize such a huge mass had to generate extremely strong resistance. The result was that while they were able to intercept the rockets and missiles fired they weren't able to dodge them." This is from chapter 69, after Gunzou has his talk with Ashigara and Haguro.

    That's also interesting because it means that combining and charging a super gravity cannon wasn't heavily restricting their mobility, and they would have been surprisingly agile while fighting something above water.

    Edit: Earlier they mentioned they had planes, but they were too small to use a Klein Field making them too fragile and that making them bigger reduced their agility too much, so they got rid of them.

    Edit2: That doesn't mean they couldn't develop a means to make ships that can fly, but they'd basically have to invent a new way to use their tech to do it, and that level of innovation seems beyond Mental Models as of yet.
     
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    seether28 said:
    Eh, not sure if posting this now is best but it was talked about a bunch and might be important later so...

    The Fog explicitly cannot fly. They can merely float on air, as seen several times involving super gravity cannons.

    "I've analyzed the footage many times, and I've come to the conclusion that the fog are capable of using the directional energy of the Klein Field to surface but that it badly degrades their mobility." Surface is an odd word choice, but the page has a picture of Haruna and Kirishima floating in mid air over a hole in the ocean, so the meaning is clear.

    "...They [Haruna and Kirishima] created force-fields directly above and below fixing their location in space. But the fields required to stabilize such a huge mass had to generate extremely strong resistance. The result was that while they were able to intercept the rockets and missiles fired they weren't able to dodge them." This is from chapter 69, after Gunzou has his talk with Ashigara and Haguro.

    That's also interesting because it means that combining and charging a super gravity cannon wasn't heavily restricting their mobility, and they would have been surprisingly agile while fighting something above water.

    Edit: Earlier they mentioned they had planes, but they were too small to use a Klein Field making them too fragile and that making them bigger reduced their agility too much, so they got rid of them.

    Edit2: That doesn't mean they couldn't develop a means to make ships that can fly, but they'd basically have to invent a new way to use their tech to do it, and that kind of innovation seems beyond Mental Models as of yet.
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    That's Fog "alien logic" at play.

    They're ships, they float. Cuz Fog logic. Air, water, whatever. They are ships, so they float. Or sail. Cuz ships. Ships do not fly, they sail. Tell a fog ship to sail on dirt and it will. But flying? That's for planes. And birds. Not for ships. Cuz Fog logic.

    There's a scene where Kongo talks about time and tactics.

    It boiled down to "We conquered the oceans, and THEN we realized time was a thing, and that cause and effect was a thing. Using this we discovered tactics. And that was pretty cool."

    Super alien warmachines... able to conquer the world, but discovering causality was a HUGE thing for them.

    Edit: "Whoa, wait a sec, actions have consequences? Wierd. How do we use this brand new idea as a weapon?"

    Fog are kinda like wizards. Powerful, but... kinda dim in some ways.

    Edit: Now that I think about it, it's even worse. After conquering the oceans, they discovered cause and effect. Then they WEAPONISED it to create "tactics"... They're like every poster on this forum... "I discovered [thing], neat! Yay! Now, how do we use [thing] as a weapon to slay our foes?"

    The Fog would weaponize "love" if they could...
     
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    Dave said:
    The Fog would weaponize "love" if they could...
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    After looking at the wiki for the series, Taylor would definitely need something along those lines as it does not appear that any of the base technology would be of real use against the Endbringers and she might draw the same conclusions after carefully researching them and trying to figure out their full capabilities. For that matter, they could even make any use of the canon technology somewhat useless due to the collateral effects of them probably capable of deflecting any Fog weapon into the surroundings (most easily for Behemoth, Leviathan might stick dense moving walls of water in the way to create huge steam explosions that flash boils everybody within range, etc.). Unless she can develop some sort of countermeasures to them, she probably would only be capable of support or clean-up at best.
     
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