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What Rains You Bring (Worm/Diebuster)

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@CuttleFish2.0 - The first read confused me a lot, but I put it to a combination of me reading between work, so I'm constantly backtracking what I already read, or reading too far, and the fact that I personally have problem following combat scenes when it goes long, so on re-read I started writing out what I think is happening, which actually helped out a lot.

I know you mentioned several times that you're on a roll right now, and I'm really, really, really happy with the influx of updates on this fic. So whatever is working for you, it's great! And I figure I'll write out my reactions to the chapter while, you know, it's fresh and all, and better now than procrastinating into never! :V

Going for my 3rd re-read, some thought before I settle down:

Kinda disappointed the Taylor & Lung team-up wasn't longer, and more noticeable, give the build-up for it seemed to started back in arc 2, but there's Chevy's interlude to conclude.

What's the state of Taylor's dress/costume right now? With all the abuse, water blast, water spear, Leviathan repeat punch to the face, Leviathan 'bleeding' over her, etc... does she even have a facial cover anymore? Or is it like the fan-art, all ripped?

@Khaos:

- Original armband showed where Leviathan is with a red dot, which is input by capes in the field, except there was 50 dots at once due to it making a bunch of water echoes. Taylor hijacked it and turned it back into one red dot, and 49 green dots to show the water echoes, not much of a hardware issue there.
- Not sure what you're getting at here.
- Goes back to point #1, it's not so much as coordination as her pointing out where the real Leviathan is.
- Dragon's suit did take a slap to the face and had to jet out of there, I think. Some other potential explanation could be that it sounded like Taylor did it to her own armband first, then implemented it to rest. And battle field isn't a good time or place for 20 questions, I think the policy of 'wtf oh wait it's working better gogogogogo with it' is more in effect?
- Point #1 again. She's pointing it out for every cape where Leviathan's body is, so people can converge on it instead of its water echos.
- Not sure what you meant here.

So yeah.
 
Czlyydwr Llrngwl said:
Canon has several such idiot balls built in, I'm afraid.
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No reason to keep idiot balls that are the result of the writer not sufficiently thinking about it rather than genuine character flaws.
DualFront said:
She reprogrammed the armbands because she was the only one who could tell where Leviathan actually was, which is definitely beneficial to the other defenders.

That requires there to be drones capable of surviving in the middle of Leviathan's storm, assuming he doesn't just destroy them out of hand.
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Surviving inside a storm is not that difficult with regular tech. With Tinker tech it should be easy.
What's difficult is surviving the tsunami like waves and the water shadows... for ground based assets. Flying assets are immune.

Yanslana said:
@Khaos:

- Original armband showed where Leviathan is with a red dot, which is input by capes in the field, except there was 50 dots at once due to it making a bunch of water echoes. Taylor hijacked it and turned it back into one red dot, and 49 green dots to show the water echoes, not much of a hardware issue there.
- Goes back to point #1, it's not so much as coordination as her pointing out where the real Leviathan is.
- Point #1 again. She's pointing it out for every cape where Leviathan's body is, so people can converge on it instead of its water echos.
- Not sure what you meant here.

So yeah.
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Basically, there's no reason why water shadows shouldn't register differently from time space warping material Leviathan to radar, sonar, IR sensor and whatever Tinker based sensor Dragon would be using.
- Not sure what you're getting at here.
- Dragon's suit did take a slap to the face and had to jet out of there, I think. Some other potential explanation could be that it sounded like Taylor did it to her own armband first, then implemented it to rest. And battle field isn't a good time or place for 20 questions, I think the policy of 'wtf oh wait it's working better gogogogogo with it' is more in effect?
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There should be some kind of battlefield control, that they don't is idiotic. If Gallant has shown no effectiveness against Leviathan, and limited morale boosting effectiveness, it simply make sense to have him retreat, via flying cape or helicopter. Again, I don't think it's a good idea to keep plot holes.
 
Khaos said:
Surviving inside a storm is not that difficult with regular tech. With Tinker tech it should be easy.
What's difficult is surviving the tsunami like waves and the water shadows... for ground based assets. Flying assets are immune.
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You're assuming Leviathan can't directly control the storm, too.
 
DualFront said:
You're assuming Leviathan can't directly control the storm, too.
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He's never shown such capacity. So either he doesn't have it, or if he does he lets flying capes get away with it*, no reason why he wouldn't let drones also get away with it.

*I don't think I've seen "struck by lightening" or "dead by super strong rain/wind" victims against Leviathan.
 
cyberswordsmen said:
I found a pair of errors. Maybe someone mentioned them before but they aren't really a big deal.

1. Brandish. You describe her as a blaster in the story. That isn't her power. She creates melee weapons out of energy and can turn into an invincible ball. You can fix it by just switching her for her sister Lady Photon, who has similar powers to her kids including Laserdream who is already present.

2. You said Shadow Stalker phases her bolts into people. She can't actually do that with her crossbow. She can phase herself and what she is carrying but once she fires the bolt it loses the effect quickly. If it loses the effect quickly it would just be firing a normal bolt. If it doesn't she wouldn't be capable of using the crossbow within a minimum radius which doesn't match her close in fighting style. Getting the phasing effect would require her to fire it from the exact distance that the effect would wear off inside of the target which requires immense luck or timing. Melee attacks wouldn't have that problem. Also Taylor might not know that so if you intended it to be an IC mistake it's fine as is.
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Lady Photon is in fact who I meant to have there, for some I was mixing them up in my head, thanks for pointing it out. As for the second issue, I dunno if its important to actually expend the time to do anything about it right now but if it does get addressed I'll do it when I edited the whole thing again.

Yanslana said:
@Khaos - ah ok.

@CuttleFish2.0 - I read through the whole hijack armband scene and didn't think it was idiot ball or whatever, it read normal and believable to me; wanted to put that out there. :V
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Funny thing, Dragon does use drones in canon but they are apparently monitoring the tidal waves, Armsmaster mentions them when he faces off against Leviathan. I could handwave it by saying they're doing the same thing now, with the justification that Dragon can't legally fly drones over a city, once again laying the blame squarely at Richters feet. It sort of works, but I'll admit I don't have a good answer for this particular concern.
 
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CuttleFish2.0 said:
Lady Photon is in fact who I meant to have there, for some I was mixing them up in my head, thanks for pointing it out. As for the second issue, I dunno if its important to actually expend the time to do anything about it right now but if it does get addressed I'll do it when I edited the whole thing again.
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The second one is a believable in character mistake for Taylor to make so as long as you don't make it a plot point later, it doesn't' need to be addressed. I am correct that Taylor is making that statement based off of rumors and PHO not official documents obtained via hacking right?
 
CuttleFish2.0 said:
Funny thing, Dragon does use drones in canon but they are apparently monitoring the tidal waves, Armsmaster mentions them when he faces off against Leviathan. I could handwave it by saying they're doing the same thing now, with the justification that Dragon can't legally fly drones over a city, once again laying the blame squarely at Richters feet. It sort of works, but I'll admit I don't have a good answer for this particular concern.
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Dragon, vanquished by municipal ordinances. :(
 
Khaos said:
There should be some kind of battlefield control, that they don't is idiotic. If Gallant has shown no effectiveness against Leviathan, and limited morale boosting effectiveness, it simply make sense to have him retreat, via flying cape or helicopter. Again, I don't think it's a good idea to keep plot holes.
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Battlefield control requires discipline and practice. Since a significant percent of the capes responding are villains, its hard to get either.

This is another example of where I think Cauldrons focus on more capes instead of more coordinated capes really shows its weakness. You have to wonder how many more capes would be alive if the whole endbringer response was more disciplined as opposed to throwing capes at it and hoping it goes away.
 
Fredo said:
Battlefield control requires discipline and practice. Since a significant percent of the capes responding are villains, its hard to get either.

This is another example of where I think Cauldrons focus on more capes instead of more coordinated capes really shows its weakness. You have to wonder how many more capes would be alive if the whole endbringer response was more disciplined as opposed to throwing capes at it and hoping it goes away.
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Yes.
Khaos said:
Best line of the whole chapter.

That being said, I'm not enthusiastic at the idea of Taylor optimising Dragon's armband software in this very case. Though I have little doubt that a buster machine can write software better than Dragon:
- Taylor's is limited by the the hardware of armbands themselves, they can't provide more information than their already installed sensors are designed to do, which as far as I can tell is limited to cape position and health.
- Which suggest that there is another sensor net dedicated for battlefield control since Dragon is quite capable.
- Implementing full battlefield control and coordination within the armbands is fully within Dragon's capabilities, that she doesn't do it suggest some legal constraint, or capes actually not following her orders.
- Dragon knows her armband software is being rewritten, that she doesn't do anything including asking Taylor why at all is interesting.
- It seems that Taylor reprogramming the armband was mostly for her own benefit.
- I seem to remember that canon has reported locations for Levi instead of a certain location, which doesn't make sense, medium altitude AWAC drones could locate Leviathan's position with absolute certitude. This doesn't even need to be under Dragon's control.

In short, as written, Taylor reprogramming the armbands and linking them to her doesn't provide much compared to what should already be within the capabilities of Dragon/PRT/Proctectorate. It leaves a bad impression of established characters being handed an idiot ball.
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Some kind of coordination not total control, should work though.
 
Khaos said:
Best line of the whole chapter.
- Implementing full battlefield control and coordination within the armbands is fully within Dragon's capabilities, that she doesn't do it suggest some legal constraint, or capes actually not following her orders.
- Dragon knows her armband software is being rewritten, that she doesn't do anything including asking Taylor why at all is interesting.
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-Dragon's built-in restrictions prohibit her from creating an AI above a certain level. That ceiling is probably below what is needed for an effective autonomous command and control system like you propose
-Right now they're in the middle of an Endbringer battle, and somebody just flash-updated the armband tac-net to be more efficient AND patched in an additional sensor feed that is locked in on Leviathan's location and isn't fooled by his Water Clone no Jutsu. It's weird and Dragon's probably gonna dissect the new code line by line after the fight's over, but for now it's working, it's not trying to infiltrate her core processes, and it's giving them a better chance of stopping Leviathan from wiping the city off the map. Figuring out who did it and what they did can wait until later, Endbringers wait for no hero.

Fredo said:
Battlefield control requires discipline and practice. Since a significant percent of the capes responding are villains, its hard to get either.

This is another example of where I think Cauldrons focus on more capes instead of more coordinated capes really shows its weakness. You have to wonder how many more capes would be alive if the whole endbringer response was more disciplined as opposed to throwing capes at it and hoping it goes away.
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I see the problem: Contessa asked PtV for a path to a parahuman army. She neglected to specify a WELL-COORDINATED parahuman army.
 
JumperPrime said:
-Dragon's built-in restrictions prohibit her from creating an AI above a certain level. That ceiling is probably below what is needed for an effective autonomous command and control system like you propose
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We're talking about something the USAF or the US Army could field in 5-10 years if they had the need and the budget, not the next AI.
And if that's still too much of an expert system, just have the drone remotely piloted by PRT officers.

-Right now they're in the middle of an Endbringer battle, and somebody just flash-updated the armband tac-net to be more efficient AND patched in an additional sensor feed that is locked in on Leviathan's location and isn't fooled by his Water Clone no Jutsu. It's weird and Dragon's probably gonna dissect the new code line by line after the fight's over, but for now it's working, it's not trying to infiltrate her core processes, and it's giving them a better chance of stopping Leviathan from wiping the city off the map. Figuring out who did it and what they did can wait until later, Endbringers wait for no hero.
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That's mostly what I meant by interesting.

@CuttleFish2.0 : If the canon plot hole is bothering you, the easiest way to solve it is to alter canon a bit, just add something like "Leviathan's power went far beyond simple hydrokinesis, its water clones were nearly indistinguishable from the original: visual, thermal, radio sensors were totally fooled, even gravimetric sensors only reported a minute difference, only the time distortion of its core provided a clear identification of the original. That probably explained why target identification had been so chaotic up to now, only materially hitting the clones reliably identified them. No longer, this time, I was there."
 
JumperPrime said:
I see the problem: Contessa asked PtV for a path to a parahuman army. She neglected to specify a WELL-COORDINATED parahuman army.
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Actually, we don't know what she asked for. Here's the quote:
Fortuna frowned. She couldn't be paralyzed like this. "How- how would we stop any powerful monster?"
"Weapons? An army?" the woman suggested.
One hundred and forty-three thousand, two hundred and twenty steps.
It was doable.​
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It's plausible that she asked for weapons, and not an army. Or for both, and the Path never went far enough so as to turn the weapons into an army (because of Simurgh and Scion interrupts)
Khaos said:
We're talking about something the USAF or the US Army could field in 5-10 years if they had the need and the budget, not the next AI.
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Dragon is prohibited from making automated assembly lines. That's how far her restrictions go.
 
Yog said:
That was the comment on how low her "don't create A.I.s" threshold is.
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I thought that was the "don't multiply" limit.
IIRC, she doesn't constantly monitor the Birdcage herself, meaning that the expert system dedicated to monitor the Birdcage has to be quite advanced.
 
I think my favourite bit was early on.....

Scarlet Pumpernickle? THE HELL? ..... ok, that amuses me and is why people need marketing to pick their names.

BEHOLD! He is the Red Bread!
 
Finbar said:
I think my favourite bit was early on.....

Scarlet Pumpernickle? THE HELL? ..... ok, that amuses me and is why people need marketing to pick their names.

BEHOLD! He is the Red Bread!
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You, uh, do get the reference, right?



(Cape names can get idiosyncratic. Canon has someone called "Shotgun Westley", described as wearing a "princess bride"-style mask)
 
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Khaos said:
I thought that was the "don't multiply" limit.
IIRC, she doesn't constantly monitor the Birdcage herself, meaning that the expert system dedicated to monitor the Birdcage has to be quite advanced.
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"Don't reproduce (create A.I.s)" overlaps with "don't multiply". Here's the quote:
Entire fields were denied to her because she was unable to create artificial intelligences herself, and all production of devices had to be handled by her, personally. She couldn't even put together an assembly line production for her creations on her own. Any attempt made everything grind to a halt. The only way around it was to delegate to humans.
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Birdcage is monitored by a pre-existent Richter program (his household maintenance system). Dragon is allowed to modify / upgrade existing A.I.s, but not to create new ones.
 
Yog said:
"Don't reproduce (create A.I.s)" overlaps with "don't multiply". Here's the quote:

Birdcage is monitored by a pre-existent Richter program (his household maintenance system). Dragon is allowed to modify / upgrade existing A.I.s, but not to create new ones.
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Parsing the quoted sentence it seems that she can't create AIs, which I don't think an expert system for flying a drone is. And that she can't have assembly lines, unless she delegates to humans, that is having General Atomics work build the drones could work.

Having said that, it's not like Dragon is the only Tinker available, flying drones with radar, visual and thermal imagery, pattern recognition should be fully in the realm of what Armsmaster or Kid Win, or even as I said General Atomics are able to do.
 
The way Princess seemed to zone out over Shadow Stalker's unconscious body, staring at the mask, then suddenly demonstrates flight and proceeds to kick Leviathan's ass - what are the odds they (PRT, whoever) will be thinking "second trigger"?
 
Amrynel said:
The way Princess seemed to zone out over Shadow Stalker's unconscious body, staring at the mask, then suddenly demonstrates flight and proceeds to kick Leviathan's ass - what are the odds they (PRT, whoever) will be thinking "second trigger"?
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That's a completely reasonable assumption given the circumstances.
 
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