Marvel Rebirth: Discussion

[Flex Lord Splash]

Yeah my computer has been out of commission. I later decided to remove that part from my last post because it was so late so just pretend that I never said anything.

[Havelock Vetinari]

Ah.

 

 

Peter muttered something to himself. "g=-0.001m/s," and the knife slowly began to hover in his hand.

 

A friend did the calculations, at that close to zero gravity, someone is losing an ear to a flying knife.

 

Unless you're shaving Big Foot, in which case, go for it. Fellow's like ten feet tall.

Edited December 27, 2013 by Basilisk

[Krayzikk]

Hey guys, my apologies for the delay on the Jameson post yet again. I was planning to have it done yesterday, but events outside of my control and a dose of creativity-sapping stress killed that thought pretty quickly.

 

I am, however, working on it as I speak, and it will be done either late tonight or tomorrow. The former is what I am shooting for.

[Constructelf]

Okay, so what would the gravitational acceleration need to be in order for the knife to just hover there?

[Havelock Vetinari]

I can proudly say I have no idea at all.

 

I'd ask Ymper, he is much more erudite then I in that particular field. He's been press-ganged into service as "science officer" more time then I can count.

[Light]

Ah, Cupcake Killer.

 

How I wish I didn't live in the same house as you.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

I'm typing this on _ broken keybo_rd, so be_r with me.

 

If g is low enough for the knife to 'hover,' it is low enough for the slightest outside influence to send it flying - the inerti_ of _ knife is pretty low, so it wouldn't t_ke much.

[Blair the Cat]

Kaithas, are you having the dream about demonic ponies again?

[Havelock Vetinari]

I can already tell you are one who enjoys tasting the fears of others.

 

I approve.

[Krayzikk]

Kaithas, are you having the dream about demonic ponies again?

You. Play with your toys elsewhere. I need his mind left intact so I can shuffle my workload onto him.

[Blair the Cat]

It explains my character, that's for sure.

[Havelock Vetinari]

Kaithas, there are worse things then demonic equines in the dark. Rest assured.

 

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

Where flap the tatters of the King,

Must die unheard in

Dim Carcosa.

[25K Now!]

You would totes get along with my sister.

[otter]

Do I have to go get my langes schwert.

[AuRon the champion]

 

Kaithas, there are worse things then demonic equines in the dark. Rest assured.

 

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

Where flap the tatters of the King,

Must die unheard in

Dim Carcosa.

 

Hades? Like, you-gotta-have-blue-flare hades?

[Constructelf]

No, the Hyades is the nearest star cluster to the Solar Systrm. Anyways, that quote was from the King in Yelow, a story about a play that supposedly drives you mad it you read the entirety of it.

[Havelock Vetinari]

Indeed.

 

King in Yellow is a classic. If you can find it, read it.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

 

 

Manhattan no longer really existed.

This seems a bit of an exaggeration, given the figure on page 15, reproduced below for the sake of convenience.

 

 

0.74% of Manhattan - 0.053% of New York City (0.25 sq mi) - Estimate of 17,630 dead

If it was intended to be an exaggeration on the character's part, then that's understandable, if really over-the-top.

[Alex Humva]

Considering it's a few orders of magnitude off I'd say it stopped being over-the-top and just outright became a drama queen.

[Krayzikk]

Having reviewed those figures, Ymper, I must regrettably inform you that they are not quite accurate. As I explained to a few people over Skype, the area of damage is actually much, much larger than that.

 

The number my fellow staff and I settled on, and depicted the scene with in the posts that followed, the radius of the blast area was between two and two and a half miles. Thus, a diameter of between four and five miles. Now, the map the staff used for reference is this;

 

http://www.aaccessmaps.com/images/maps/us/ny/manhattan/manhattan.gif

 

Additionally, we went by Wikipedia's entry on its land area, namely, about twenty two square miles. The Sleeper exploded a way up from Battery Park, at least having reached the same general area as city hall on that map, if not a bit higher. Even before running the calculations for the general area of the affected region, we can see a distinct level of devastation just by mapping the diameter north to south. The blast wiped out most of the south side, and perhaps a bit beyond. Note the scale on the map.

 

Additionally, you're citing four or so words from the narration of a roughly seven paragraph post, ones placed in such a manner that the intent of dramatic impact is clear.

 

If you have any questions or comments, I'd be glad to hear them. But this is the scale that we've been working from.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

The only posts I've found that made statements about the blast size seem to have gone with the 0.25 square mile figure that I based my calculations on. Could I have a quote for the larger blast radius, as I am having some trouble locating the post for it?

[Advent Child]

Judging from my knowledge of NY as best I can, at an eyeball's glance with no math included, that would mean the damage at the very least would reach up to about 17th street, give or take some, destroy both the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges and extend slightly into Brooklyn itself. That's scary.

Edited December 28, 2013 by .:Advent Aeternale:.

[Wyrd Bid Ful Araed]

Are you going to take into account the likely evacuation of the area? I know there'd have been no time for an official one, but I think most people's reaction to a giant robot walking around firing missiles would be to run. Especially in the Marvel universe where that's just another Tuesday. The twenty or so minutes that the Sleeper took to get somewhere then blow up seems plenty of time for people to get as far away as they can

[Krayzikk]

The only posts I've found that made statements about the blast size seem to have gone with the 0.25 square mile figure that I based my calculations on. Could I have a quote for the larger blast radius, as I am having some trouble locating the post for it?

"The blast extended from about two miles from the epicenter in any direction, the sheer scope of the damage breathtaking, even if the event hadn't been."

 

That's taken directly from a post of mine. I couldn't tell you on what page, because I took the quotation from a backed up version of the post in a text document, but it should be a few pages back. It wasn't expressed in any official posts because as of yet there haven't been any to express that value in.

 

And I am not sure where you'd be pulling a quarter mile from, because I do not recall anyone expressing such a value in the topic.

 

@Advent; That's the general scale we've been working with, yes.

 

@Adders; Most certainly. I haven't had the opportunity yet to go into detail with that, but I have been working under that same conclusion. A few posts by multiple people have referenced such evacuation.

[Havelock Vetinari]

Well, considering how many times NY has been attacked, taking into account reinforced buildings, even normal buildings being able to dull a blast quite a bit....

 

Plus the shelters that have to exist if this universe has even the slightest "cause-and-effect" thing going....

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Alright, first mention of the quarter-mile figure is in this post, as quoted below.

 

 

"It... it appears that... I'm just being told that a... a square quarter mile of New York City has... has been levelled."

 

Ran a search on epicenter, that being the most likely suspect from your quote, and found the relevant passage in this post, linked for context. The display name history of the poster for the first mention of the quarter square mile figure does not put them among the staff listed in the first post, making this quite simple - I based my numbers off an erroneous figure, missed or forgot about (either is plausible) the official figure, and proceeded to cause a train wreck by being the biggest moron currently holding a calculator.

 

Revising figures and wiping Cardiff off the map within the next 24 hours. The Welsh are going to be kind of miffed at HYDRA.

 

Alright, 12.6 square miles for New York. That's... yeah, that's a couple of orders of magnitude bigger than what I thought I was working with. Arbitrarily double the radius for Blackpool, to account for fewer structures in the way of the blast wave, and you get about 50 s... yeah, Blackpool's gone. Rebuilding isn't even an issue, the main push of the after-event effort would be to try and find survivors and erect temporary shelters on the nearest flat ground. London's still mostly not-dead, but a larger area than before is [tea and] toast.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Ymper Trymon

[Havelock Vetinari]

Yeah, going by what I found, most of the survivors would be in sturdy buildings and underground, of which there would be many, considering how often this happens to NY.

 

I'm honestly shocked the City Council just hasn't made bunkers mandatory at this point.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Yeah, New Yorkers would have several possible ways to try and hide, which just makes the job more complicated for the US gov't and the Romans.

 

By comparison, Blackpool and Cardiff didn't see many giant monster attacks. Supervillains kind of mostly ignored them, and so they were mostly... well, mostly not built as crazy-prepared as NYC.

 

You'd kind of need full-on bomb shelters for Cardiff to have stood a chance, and I don't think that was the case there. Maybe some old air raid shelters left over from the Blitz, but I don't know how many of those would have still been in use, and I don't think they'd have been sufficient for this anyway.

[Alex Humva]

From what I've been told, NYC hasn't seen a major attack in 17 years, so their protections... might be a bit lackluster.

[Havelock Vetinari]

NYC was hit dozens of times in the last RPG.

 

If they don't have any defenses in place, then this wasn't an attack. This was evolution in action.

[Krayzikk]

Also, something that occurred to me that people might not realize, so I figured I'd mention it here.

 

As I explained to someone yesterday, while New York is still crazy prepared compared to most of the world, it isn't nearly as crazy prepared as it ought to be for one simple reason; prior to the events of the first game, it hasn't dealt with any extreme happenings for almost twenty years. When the Phoenix rampaged nineteen years before present day, it wiped out almost all of the high profile empowered beings, both hero and villain, of the day.

 

Hydra, being Hydra, also suffered from this and the numerous beat downs it received in canon, so it also was more or less under the radar for that time as well, if not earlier. So after all of this, the only events that occurred within New York, or much of anywhere for that matter, were low level mutant events. Things like bank robberies, or brief fights. We didn't start getting high profile events again until the events of XMDD, and we didn't get to this tier of events until way, way late game XMDD with the Battle of New York.

 

As such, while preparations were put in place decades ago, long times of disuse rendered much of the citizenry unused to this sort of thing. Preparations in place from before the Phoenix probably still exist, but newer buildings and the like are less likely to have them, and people under the age of thirty haven't ever really encountered this level of conflict and catastrophe due to empowered beings.

 

Which basically boils down to New York being crazy prepared compared to most of the world, but they grew lax. Something that will almost certainly change very shortly, but for the moment, they were not as well prepared as they would have been if attacks had continued consistently after the Phoenix.

 

EDIT: Wow, it would seem that I expected this just in time.

 

The major attacks last game were Enforcer Tower, and the end-game battle. Well, and sort of Riker's Island.

 

The other events didn't graduate much above what would have been considered a slow day in the days before the Phoenix.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Simon the Digger

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Yeah, in the context of the RPG, there have to have been some defenses put in place after everything the city has been through - maybe no new ones lately, but bunkers don't go away unless you pay to dismantle them.

 

Staff get the final word on whether such things exist in their city, but given their insistence that this RPG does not take place in a world of incompetence, a toughened city seems a fair assumption to me.

 

Plus, seventeen years, compared to the time since Cardiff last saw anything like this (unless someone nailed Cardiff in the last RPG, and no one told me), means NYC is relatively likely to be well-prepared for this sort of thing.

 

EDIT: Yeah, basically what he said.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Ymper Trymon

[Havelock Vetinari]

....So. Evolution then. There is no excuse for that kind of terminal foolishness considering the last RPG.

 

I don't even feel bad now.

 

Heck, the human race's combined IQ probably went up because of this.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Basilisk

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Um, no, not really. They were as prepared as could reasonably be expected from civilians under the circumstances - true, I would have put an AFB or two in the area and dropped a MOAB or ten on the Sleeper as soon as it surfaced, but that's not thinking like a civilian.

 

People have a tendency to start thinking, ten years or so after the last major disaster, that the danger has passed.

[Krayzikk]

Yeah, in the context of the RPG, there have to have been some defenses put in place after everything the city has been through - maybe no new ones lately, but bunkers don't go away unless you pay to dismantle them.

 

Staff get the final word on whether such things exist in their city, but given their insistence that this RPG does not take place in a world of incompetence, a toughened city seems a fair assumption to me.

 

Plus, seventeen years, compared to the time since Cardiff last saw anything like this (unless someone nailed Cardiff in the last RPG, and no one told me), means NYC is relatively likely to be well-prepared for this sort of thing.

 

EDIT: Yeah, basically what he said.

Yes, Ymper basically nailed it.

 

Old defenses still exist, provided they were ones that didn't require much maintenance. And compared to most of the world, NYC really is crazy prepared, because other cities haven't really been hit by much of anything in far, far longer than NYC.

 

But such a duration of time with so little took away much of the active preparation. One of the reasons NYC was always so prepared was because the citizens were used to such things, they were almost hyper competent compared to how the average person was anywhere else. Ninety percent of them were extremely genre savvy.

 

But twenty years later, most of those people have grown old. They're not the people in charge anymore, and there are more people who grew up in the times of peace and quiet than there are those who lived during the days that you might get attacked by, say, Dr. Octopus just walking down the street. The events of late last game and early this game are the wakeup call, because most of the world has been acting like those days are far behind.

 

They're being reminded that those days are coming back, and they are once again living in a world where there is always danger.

 

EDIT: Again, Ymper basically nailed it.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Simon the Digger

[Havelock Vetinari]

Even if only 15% of what happened in canon, if only 5% of what happened in the last RPG, is considered an event in the past of this RPG, then NYC should be a fortress state, they'd have static defenses. Even if the city wouldn't do it, the government would, because having an area everyone and their mother likes to attack at the drop of hat....well, that's the kind of predictability military planners love. Killzones, traps...etc. Whole nine yards.

 

Heck, there are still defenses left over from the Cold War in use today. Defenses so paranoid that a flock of birds can set them off.

 

Considering none of this happened, my sympathy for the government and NYC is at....

 

Well. Like I said. Evolution in action.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Basilisk

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

I do admit some curiosity as to the status of military defenses in the area, as opposed to structural ones - artillery and airfields, that sort of thing.

[Krayzikk]

I do admit some curiosity as to the status of military defenses in the area, as opposed to structural ones - artillery and airfields, that sort of thing.

With regards to NYC proper, very little. Artillery is almost non-existent, and any airfields nearby are military installations probably comparable to what would be in the region in the real world.

 

Again, the issue comes down to a lack of preparedness. These are the sort of things that, at the height of superpowered activity, would have been maintained almost religiously. But after ten years of peaceful times and no indications that those days are returning, maintenance slips a bit, and then a bit more. And then installations are shut down for being a use of resources that are more needed elsewhere, and active defenses are felled by a budgeter's pen.

 

Previously, the Enforcers had active facilities in the area. Enforcer Tower in particular. But these too fell, the latter in an attack, and the former dismantled due to the shutdown of the Enforcers. Between last game and this one the changes focused on bringing the military back to strength, but significant emphasis was placed on the idea that SHIELD would be able to doe their job, and prevent future attacks. After all,they only failed in the Battle of New York because they were blindsided by a group thought by everyone to be long dead.

 

Now that this has proved to not be the case, there will be very hefty changes coming over the course of the next few in-game months/weeks.

[Havelock Vetinari]

I think I need a break from RPing in general, on another note.

 

I'm taking a two week breather. I've gotten in what? Four? Five debates over minor matters in the past week or so? Pretty clear I need some breathing space.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Basilisk

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Ah, so the rush to demilitarize that took out the Enforcers took out a lot of standard military stuff, as everyone rushed to put their eggs in the SHIELD basket.

 

Well, I can't honestly say that I'm surprised.