Nicole appears and lets Sonic know that Snively and the Iron Queen have decided to make a little visit and were able to sneak in without her knowing.

Advanced Security System my foot. I think the only one she caught was Miles (who wanted to be caught) after snatching up the group immediately after they moved into the city. Everyone else I could think of either broke in, broke out, or snuck in, or snuck out of New Mobotropolis already. Even the Prowers (with Tails' help) were able to disable NICOLE's security long enough to escape.

Looks like New Mobotropolis isn't as great as it seems at face value. I wouldn't be surprised if they were forced to move again before the end of Iron Dominion.

I think Nicole's defense system deserves a little better credit than that. Enerjak and the Iron Queen were both out of the ordinary characters -- a near deity figure and a technomage -- and Nicole and the nanites have their limits. (Super Sonic could only stale-mate Enerjak.) Mammoth Mogul mannaged to escape but he basically had a deal with Sonic. Since Nicole and the nanites are a computer program and robots it would make sense that one of their biggest weaknesses would be internal sabotage. It's also been quite successful in keeping Dr. Robotnik out, with the exception of when he caugt Enerjak. Technically New Mobotropolis and the Eggman Empire were 'allies' during that crisis.

But I do think that something terrible will probably happen to the city sooner or later; nothing is forever -- especially in a monthly comic series! I hadn't thought of New Mobo going down during the Iron Dominion storyline but I suppose the Iron Queen would have the best chances of success out of Sonic's rogue gallery. I sort of feel like it would be 'too soon' in an out-of universe way.

I think Nicole's defense system deserves a little better credit than that. Enerjak and the Iron Queen were both out of the ordinary characters -- a near deity figure and a technomage -- and Nicole and the nanites have their limits. (Super Sonic could only stale-mate Enerjak.) Mammoth Mogul mannaged to escape but he basically had a deal with Sonic. Since Nicole and the nanites are a computer program and robots it would make sense that one of their biggest weaknesses would be internal sabotage. It's also been quite successful in keeping Dr. Robotnik out, with the exception of when he caugt Enerjak. Technically New Mobotropolis and the Eggman Empire were 'allies' during that crisis.

But I do think that something terrible will probably happen to the city sooner or later; nothing is forever -- especially in a monthly comic series! I hadn't thought of New Mobo going down during the Iron Dominion storyline but I suppose the Iron Queen would have the best chances of success out of Sonic's rogue gallery. I sort of feel like it would be 'too soon' in an out-of universe way.

No sorry, I'm going with Administrative on this one. If a highly advance piece of technology cannot even sense the presence of foreign bodies among the premises, then the citizens of Knothole should move. XD

I think she needs a little more time trying to perfect the whole system in general. Learning on the fly is going to suck, especially when protecting these people.

I think Nicole's defense system deserves a little better credit than that. Enerjak and the Iron Queen were both out of the ordinary characters -- a near deity figure and a technomage -- and Nicole and the nanites have their limits. (Super Sonic could only stale-mate Enerjak.) Mammoth Mogul mannaged to escape but he basically had a deal with Sonic. Since Nicole and the nanites are a computer program and robots it would make sense that one of their biggest weaknesses would be internal sabotage. It's also been quite successful in keeping Dr. Robotnik out, with the exception of when he caugt Enerjak. Technically New Mobotropolis and the Eggman Empire were 'allies' during that crisis.

But I do think that something terrible will probably happen to the city sooner or later; nothing is forever -- especially in a monthly comic series! I hadn't thought of New Mobo going down during the Iron Dominion storyline but I suppose the Iron Queen would have the best chances of success out of Sonic's rogue gallery. I sort of feel like it would be 'too soon' in an out-of universe way.

No sorry, I'm going with Administrative on this one. If a highly advance piece of technology cannot even sense the presence of foreign bodies among the premises, then the citizens of Knothole should move. XD

So... what did they have in Knothole to detect foreign bodies? Maybe, at most, a handful of scattered guards? By that logic they should have moved from there as well.

And where would they move to? A place that has no advanced protection when they at least have some here? How's that any better?

Nicole is a super computer. That makes her powerful. It doesn't make her omniscient and infallible. A computer of any level is still going to have its limits, and we've already seen that she doesn't have the focus or power to do everything at once. Compare it to a home computer; say doing things like keeping the power going, holding all the info in the library/hospital/whatever, and maintaining her body, the shield and every single physical structure in the huge city are all intensive programs. They use a lot of resources and memory to run all at once (we already know this, since she can't properly project her body while the shield's going - they share resources). And then you tell the computer to constantly in-depth scan and keep track of every single individual file or thing it comes into contact with - firewalls and virus scanners asking you to verify every kilobyte of info while running all of your heavy-duty programs. You're not going to get a peak performance out of the thing and eventually it'll all stop working the way it should.

I don't think it's practical for Nicole to recognize and track every single entity coming and going within the city. From an in-story POV, it'd be a drain on resources - might be kind of annoying if she can't keep the walls solid because her focus is so thinly spread (you're taking a shower and -oops- your house disappears because Nicole decides up her scanning - bet people would be happy with that). From an outside POV, it'd make for a boring story - if Nicole has no limits, then everything is too easy and there's no conflict or threat at all. As is, she can scan for things at a closer level if her attention is called to it - the same as running a computer scan on a specific folder or drive when needed instead of having everything scruntinized constantly. No, she may not lock everyone into the city and ID every moving body within at all times, but her attention can be called to a problem and she can focus on it from there. I'm sure if things had gotten out of hand, Jules could have said "Hey, Nicole, Scourge is in my house being an ass" and she would have popped up, but it didn't come to that. As is, Espio did call out to her to get her attention, and when they noticed a potential problem, she did do a scan for other likely threats. That's far more pratical for a computer.

The city may not be perfect, but saying they should move because their imperfect defense system is somehow worse than no defense system makes no sense. New Mobotropolis survived the Egg Fleet, which is more than can be said for Knothole and Albion. Certainly Knothole wasn't aware of every single person entering the city.

One. The moving bit was a joke, it wasn't meant to be taken seriously and apologizes for that.

Two, What I'm saying is that with all the amazing things that she can so being about to detect to Snivley, at the very least a known enemy to the Freedom Fighters let alone Knothole was within the city wouldn't be that much of a stretch?

Yes, Snively's a known enemy, but he had the Iron Queen defending him with her Magitek. IQ is able to at the very least scramble/distort NICOLE's network a little bit so she couldn't sense them, which make sense given her powers. I don't think it's that much of a stretch to have Regina and Snively in the city given Regina's powers.

I withheld a response until I actually read the issue for myself.

I don't think it's practical for Nicole to recognize and track every single entity coming and going within the city.

I don't think so, either, which is why she shouldn't even try in the first place. If her resources are being spread so thin then maybe she shouldn't try doing security. Realistically NICOLE can't be expected to be everywhere and doing everything at all times. There's hundreds of mobians living in New Mobotropolis now. Surely some of them can help her out so she doesn't run herself ragged trying to be the first line of security for the city.

They had mobians doing guard duty the old fashioned way for ten years. When the guards see something dangerous coming they alert NICOLE and she put up the shield well before they get to the city. Again it won't stop everything (Enerjak would've gotten in no matter who was Guarding) but they may have stopped this from happening ... or the monkey riding on the bloody cloud with lightning from coming in.

Just having mobians on Guard Duty didn't help Knothole in the end but NICOLE's way isn't doing much for them, either. I thought a major part of Knothole's downfall was because it just plain wasn't a good idea to build a huge city so close to enemy territory over the discreet village they had before but that's for another rant. What they need here is to figure out a way to have both NICOLE and the mobians working together to provide the best possible protection for the city.

But to be truthful just plain ol' security seems like the least of their problems. Bunnie, Monkey Khan, Julie-Su, Jules, and (probably) NICOLE herself are all in serious danger staying out here in the open. If for no other reason they should find a place where they will be safe from Regina until they figure out how to deal with her Magitek.

I somewhat figured that since Nicole is 100% mechanical/electronic herself, and the Iron Queen being a techno-mage, that she simply worked some casual electro-voodoo and muffed up Nicole's detection systems...

Personally, I'm enjoying the irony of it being the Mobians getting screwed over by fancy tech when they're meant to be against guns and all of that techie stuff because it was Overlander/Robotnik business.

It's been a good few years since Max tried to have all of the Robians dismantled, and things've been getting political again recently - how long do we give it until we have a Mobian renaissance, Nicole's being told that she's being turned off and Kahn, Jules and Bunnie're detained "for their own safety"?

I am sure Nicole is doing her best, but yes they do need a better security system, and I can see the situation Sam mentioned happening.

lol MK has Gotenks hair! That so had to be intentional. I've really liked these past 2 issues. I liked this one the best.