Can Worldbeaters beat the military?

[Chuckg]

No, but it might be the Air Force...

 

Folks, like I said a few posts earlier, make damn sure your team plane can hang with modern air-to-air interceptors.

 

Or else what was a whole team full of 500-point combat monsters on the ground might be sitting ducks for two Very Competent Normals in F-18s when they're in the air.

[Kintara]

Oh, I agree that if the group has a plane, and the Air Force wants to kill them, the group should know that they need a pretty badass plane to fly with impunity. Still, even a rather sub-standard plane is pretty difficult to put down if the pilot has superhuman skill.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg

Because 'the genre' is about more than just stepping on mere human opponents like they were roaches?

Nope. Superheroes and Supervillains have continually demonstrated the ability to ignore normal humans. Cap wades through Hydra Agents almost as if they weren't there. He chases Strucker through scores of Hydra Agents with guns, etc. and knocks them out of his path and still catches up to Strucker. And that's Cap, not even talking about Thor or Superman or the Hulk or the Flash or Nova or Firestorm or Wonder Woman etc.

[megaplayboy]

If they can't beat the military, they're not exactly "worldbeaters", are they?

[Guest Champsguy]

Originally posted by Chuckg

No, but it might be the Air Force...

 

Folks, like I said a few posts earlier, make damn sure your team plane can hang with modern air-to-air interceptors.

 

Or else what was a whole team full of 500-point combat monsters on the ground might be sitting ducks for two Very Competent Normals in F-18s when they're in the air.

 

Sigh.

 

Yes, they might be, except for the fact that an F-18 isn't designed to hunt normals. As a matter of fact, it can't.

 

You remember when we tried to hit Saddam Hussein back at the beginning of the war last year? We needed him to stay in the same place for several hours for us to get a bead on him. If he decides to walk down the street to the 7-11, that F-18 doesn't do any good.

 

Yes, if a super decides to suntan in the Washington Mall, and doesn't move for an hour, then you can send in the jets. But I lived in Washington for 3 years. There's a subway entrance that's about a 2 minute walk from the Washington Monument (and that's me with my 6" of running and 2 speed, taking half-moves because I'm only walking). F-18s can't track supers at all.

 

Am I playing the military stupid? Nope. But I'm not giving them any free rides, either.

[Kintara]

Well, Champs, he said "air-to-air" because he was talking about when the team is in their team jet. Of course, I would have to say that the group would need to be pretty stupid to fly around in a jollopy of an airplane if the US Air Force wants them toasty (Edit: . . .if only because it's a waste of an airplane, they aren't cheap, even the less state-of-the-art ones).

[gewing]

Yes. Finally someone with a fairly accurate feeling for the weapon, imo.

 

Then there is the low end of the military weapon scale. The apache uses a 30mm LOW velocity autocannon. It uses 2 rounds, High explosive Incendiary and Dual Purpose, which is a small shaped charge (2 inches steel penetration or a little more) and has fragmentation effect. It should be more than 3d6+1, though how much, I am not sure. Even the weakest 20mm cannon in use has 2 times the kinetic energy of the .50 machine gun, but they are usually explosive too...

 

I don't know, BUT...

 

_______

Note to Champsguy, yes, tanks can hit targets 100 feet off the ground, depending on the range. The new standard US shaped charge round doesn't penetrate as much as some others, but it is a discarding sabot round with a proximity fuse, it travels over 4000fps iirc, and is designed to be quite useful versus helicopters.

EDIT ALERT, I had too many zeros there... Sorry,

 

Air defense artillery, such as the Gepard 2x35mm or the ZSU versions, or even the old 20mm vulcan air defense system will elevate to 90+ degrees, and can shoot at -5-10 degrees. They will have at least a chance of shredding most flying supers. Stunning them if not.

 

Originally posted by Metaphysician

Okay, US tanks use two types of ammo in real life: depleted uranium sabot, and HEAT ( shaped charge ).

 

8d6 RKA sounds about right for the sabot round, though personally, I'd cut it down to about 6d6 RKA and add double Armor Piercing, or *maybe* AP and Penetrating.

 

For HEAT rounds, 6d6 RKA, maybe with one level of Armor Piercing, but with a linked 2-3d6 RKA Explosion.

 

Sound about right??

[gewing]

I disagree with him on one thing. The ARMOR on the front of the tank might be salvageable, the vehicle frame inside it, all the other armor, and the crew are all pulped. Poor tankers. Now they are Crunchies.

I always assumed that the 8d6K Exp was some kind of HE round. Still iffy, but then the AP round would be 8d6 K AP or what, 6d6 2xAP? Steve admitted he made an obvious error on the .50 BMG, he accidentally put the damage from the .50 Action express pistol round.

 

I am just as bothered by the Katana being far and away the best blade in the game, and the Naginata being too heavy for a 4'10" wife of a samurai to use with any effect. She would get better damage from a dagger, iirc.

 

 

Originally posted by Agent X

Yep. It's gonna lose one function, right?

 

I would play it like you describe. There isn't a nice, tight way of describing the fragility of many of the internal workings of the tank provided, is there?

[Chuckg]

Originally posted by Champsguy

Sigh.

 

Yes, they might be, except for the fact that an F-18 isn't designed to hunt normals. As a matter of fact, it can't.

 

Time for me to be sarcastic again.

 

Champsguy, as anybody with the reading comprehension of a 3rd-grader could tell, I was talking about an F-18 shooting down the team airplane while the team was in it... which is the best place for a normal F-18 pilot to take on an entire team of superheroes, unless one of them happens to have MegaScale flight or a No Range Penalty EB he can use accurately from inside the team plane.

 

How the hell even you managed to miss this point, I've got no damn idea, except maybe to suggest that you should stop obsessing so hard on rebutting what you think I'm saying that you can't see what I'm actually saying.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg

Time for me to be sarcastic again.

 

Champsguy, as anybody with the reading comprehension of a 3rd-grader could tell, I was talking about an F-18 shooting down the team airplane while the team was in it... which is the best place for a normal F-18 pilot to take on an entire team of superheroes, unless one of them happens to have MegaScale flight or a No Range Penalty EB he can use accurately from inside the team plane.

 

How the hell even you managed to miss this point, I've got no damn idea, except maybe to suggest that you should stop obsessing so hard on rebutting what you think I'm saying that you can't see what I'm actually saying.

I don't think he missed the point. I think he rejected the point. You are bringing up hypotheticals that ignore the complexity of the attributes that supers bring to the contest.

 

Supers in a plane is not the issue. The only supers I know of who fly around in planes do fly in planes that are easily superior to modern military tech. Spidey isn't going to fly up in the air to be an easy target. He's gonna run to ground, flit through alleys, and possibly dive into the tunnels. Then show up behind the military forces and all heck will break loose.

 

Supers generally will be able to choose the fight. It's the nature of supers.

[Chuckg]

[Agent X sez]

> The only supers I know of who fly around in planes do fly in

> planes that are easily superior to modern military tech.

 

Dude, read this part of my post...

 

"Folks, like I said a few posts earlier, make damn sure your team plane can hang with modern air-to-air interceptors."

 

As well as a quote from an earlier post of mine...

 

"It is not a coincidence that my own team plane design *did* have Insvisibility to Radio, No Fringe -- a Darkness vs. Radio Jammer - a Force Field generator to back up the kendrium hull -- and enough MegaScale flight to leave even an SR-71 sucking its exhaust. It was specifically *designed* to give the laugh to the US Air Force.

 

But many superteams, even such notables as the X-Men or Avengers, don't get quite that paranoid in their superplane design."

 

So, Agent X, you just joined Champsguy on the list of people that I strongly suspect aren't even bothering to read my posts before they go and get all worked up over them.

 

'Cause this amazingly arcane principle that you think you just discovered now, I've already been saying since at least yesterday. I was not saying 'The US Air Force can and will kill any team plane that flies', I was saying 'Make sure you don't forget the basic precaution of buffing up your team plane to the point where you no longer have to worry about hostile interceptors.'

 

You and Champsguy both are so locked into thinking of me as some nut with an agenda that you can't even read what I'm writing in plain English without mistranslating it in your heads into something totally different. And this tendency of you both is rapidly reaching the point where it's becoming *vastly* unproductive and really getting in the way of a good covnersation.

 

So *QUIT IT*, already. And learn how not to [bleeping] straw-man, the both of you.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg

[Agent X sez]

> The only supers I know of who fly around in planes do fly in

> planes that are easily superior to modern military tech.

 

Dude, read this part of my post...

 

 

 

As well as a quote from an earlier post of mine...

 

 

 

So, Agent X, you just joined Champsguy on the list of people that I strongly suspect aren't even bothering to read my posts before they go and get all worked up over them.

 

'Cause this amazingly arcane principle that you think you just discovered now, I've already been saying since at least yesterday. I was not saying 'The US Air Force can and will kill any team plane that flies', I was saying 'Make sure you don't forget the basic precaution of buffing up your team plane to the point where you no longer have to worry about hostile interceptors.'

 

You and Champsguy both are so locked into thinking of me as some nut with an agenda that you can't even read what I'm writing in plain English without mistranslating it in your heads into something totally different. And this tendency of you both is rapidly reaching the point where it's becoming *vastly* unproductive and really getting in the way of a good covnersation.

 

So *QUIT IT*, already. And learn how not to [bleeping] straw-man, the both of you.

I see you are in jerk mode again.

[Chuckg]

Right, it's *so* jerkish of me to demand that you should actually, Heaven forbid, actually pay simple attention to what you're trying to refute.

 

I like to treat people with precisely as much respect as I am myself treated -- which explains why neither you nor Champsguy are getting any, 'cause it's the *real* height of jerkishness to go slamming on somebody's argument when you can't even tell what it is. If you can't even be bothered to pay your debate opponent the minimum respect of reading to what he's posting before you start sneering at it, then you can bite my shiney cybernetic ass.

 

Now, we can go around and around for as long as my stubbornness holds out -- which, as you already know, is an incredibly long time -- or you can simply acknowledge your basic error of reading comprehension and go back to whatever the heck you were doing before you chose to butt in. Your pick.

[gewing]

I agree, they are going to be able to choose the fight, most of the time. BUT, IF the military is after them, They will try NOT to let the Supers choose the time. Yes supers would be very hard to hit, relative to tanks. Yes they are faster than normals. Sometimes, that doesn't matter. If the normal gunner is holding his action waiting for the turret to traverse, well any super who stands still long enough to do much within 1000 yards is a sitting duck. Personally, I would guess that at most of the Military are not speed 2, and that quite a few are speed 4. That changes the situation a little.

 

Supers would be like powered armor a/la Starship Troopers (BOOK, not crappy movie) If you could hit one, you could take it out, but they move erratically, tend to go through or over buildings, jump out of alleys, etc.

 

So hitting them probably comes down to one of 3 things. LUCK (even a schmo can roll a 3) Precision and range(surprise helps here too), or AREA EFFECT.

 

An Hellfire missile IS a precision weapon. A Maverick is too. The Hellfire can have one of 4 warheads so far, iirc, Shaped charge, penetrates 1 meter plus of steel, anti-"ship" which penetrates, then detonates with a fragmentation and incendiary effect to set small ships on fire (fragments rupture fuel hoses, etc) There are 2 new ones, a fragmentation that is made to DEVASTATE everything in a large room when fired through the window, but not kill everyone in the apartment building (I would guess small fragments in large numbers) and there is a new Thermobaric (Fuel air explosive) version.

 

The maverick has 2 warheads, one is a 7" diameter 130 lb shaped charge. Bye bye anyone it hits, bye bye anything less than say 10 def it near misses. Actually, if Plate mail is 8 def, I would say it would kill anything less than 15 def within 5 meters. Then there is the anti-ship/bunker version. 310 lbs, penetrating blast warhead. Better hope it misses...

 

Note, the Hellfire travels at well over mach one. it is 7 inches in diameter, and its engine burns out by 2000 meters, iirc. Kind of hard to spot on the way in, if you didn't see the launch. Then there are things like the British Starstreak anti- aircraft missile, they don't call it a hyper velocity missile for nothing, laser beam rider that tosses out 3 guided aphe darts at mach 4+, and the new Line of Sight anti tank, mach 5, and the developmental european one, mach 7!

 

 

Area effect is where it gets nasty. Very hard on the scenery, and the normals in it.

 

If supers become a threat to a nation, they will be targetted as such. If one of the "worldbeaters" takes the white house hostage, he better have a big force dome over it, because the Vice President would probably order a pair of B-2s to drop 32 2000 lb guided bombs on it, because of course nukes would be out of the question...

 

Artillery would be able to flatten an area quite effectively. Supers would probably hear the incoming rounds, but it might well be too late to do much, if they are doing a proper time on target, they better be able to dive for cover at least 50 yards.

 

 

Anti aircraft weapons would imo be the most effective way to deal with supers. A 1000 round per minute 35mm or 40mm gun that can mix Proximity fused with APFSDS (4+inches penetration in steel) with radar and infra red tracking is probably the biggest threat, imo.

The Standard newish russian system, with 2 2 barrel 30mm cannons, (iirc 3600 rpm) and 8 guided missiles would be a pretty serious threat too.

 

I hope Terje will post his Scaling rules, they would solve much of this problem. I would rather play super normals, or low end supers, but my definition can easily run to 350 points. I have little interest in Cosmic powered games.

 

Finally,

The military may not be able to wipe out super teams at will, but supers SHOULD be worried when the military shows up.

IF for no other reason, the supers will probably be blamed for whatever property damage/loss of life ensues. And if the military is involved, it probably WILL ensue.

 

 

 

Originally posted by Agent X

B]I don't think he missed the point. I think he rejected the point. You are bringing up hypotheticals that ignore the complexity of the attributes that supers bring to the contest.

 

Supers in a plane is not the issue. The only supers I know of who fly around in planes do fly in planes that are easily superior to modern military tech. Spidey isn't going to fly up in the air to be an easy target. He's gonna run to ground, flit through alleys, and possibly dive into the tunnels. Then show up behind the military forces and all heck will break loose.

 

 

 

Supers generally will be able to choose the fight. It's the nature of supers. [/b]

[Chuckg]

I dissent to the extent of saying that it would take enormously extreme circumstances to have the VP order the White House arc-lighted... you just don't write off the President of the United States, much less several thousand innocent people, unless you've got something much more dire than a 'simple' hostage situation in progress.

 

OTOH, if Mechanon had, for example, established positive control of a missile silo and was T minus one minute to launch, I /can/ see the President ordering the use of deep earth penetrators to take out the silo -- and everyone in it, including the captive Air Force officers -- rather than allow Mechanon to successfully execute a nuclear launch. In that case, you're talking about the lives of dozens of servicemen vs. the lives of millions of innocents. The Air Force crew, given a choice, would probably volunteer... although they'd obviously much rather never have been caught in the jam at all, of course.

 

I actually ran a variant of this adventure (that I mentioned earlier on this thread), where the US Navy sent A-6's to drop smart bombs on one of their own shipyards, rather than allow Mechanon to hijack a nuclear missile submarine. Fortunately, the wonders of precision-guided munitions allowed them to only blow up a pier in the process, as opposed to having to sink their own boat or kill large #'s of their own people.

[gewing]

If Mechanon or some such is known to be in ONE PLACE long enough, and is holding the president, the football, etc,.... I could see it. Admittedly it was an extreme, and poorly chosen example. I was going to use the UN, but...

 

Originally posted by Chuckg

I dissent to the extent of saying that it would take enormously extreme circumstances to have the VP order the White House arc-lighted... you just don't write off the President of the United States, much less several thousand innocent people, unless you've got something much more dire than a 'simple' hostage situation in progress.

 

OTOH, if Mechanon had, for example, established positive control of a missile silo and was T minus one minute to launch, I /can/ see the President ordering the use of deep earth penetrators to take out the silo -- and everyone in it, including the captive Air Force officers -- rather than allow Mechanon to successfully execute a nuclear launch. In that case, you're talking about the lives of dozens of servicemen vs. the lives of millions of innocents. The Air Force crew, given a choice, would probably volunteer... although they'd obviously much rather never have been caught in the jam at all, of course.

 

I actually ran a variant of this adventure (that I mentioned earlier on this thread), where the US Navy sent A-6's to drop smart bombs on one of their own shipyards, rather than allow Mechanon to hijack a nuclear missile submarine. Fortunately, the wonders of precision-guided munitions allowed them to only blow up a pier in the process, as opposed to having to sink their own boat or kill large #'s of their own people.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg

Right, it's *so* jerkish of me to demand that you should actually, Heaven forbid, actually pay simple attention to what you're trying to refute.

 

I like to treat people with precisely as much respect as I am myself treated -- which explains why neither you nor Champsguy are getting any, 'cause it's the *real* height of jerkishness to go slamming on somebody's argument when you can't even tell what it is. If you can't even be bothered to pay your debate opponent the minimum respect of reading to what he's posting before you start sneering at it, then you can bite my shiney cybernetic ass.

 

Now, we can go around and around for as long as my stubbornness holds out -- which, as you already know, is an incredibly long time -- or you can simply acknowledge your basic error of reading comprehension and go back to whatever the heck you were doing before you chose to butt in. Your pick.

Amazing, how you berate me for not responding to your post the way you want me to because I 'didn't read it carefully enough or at all' - and yet, you seemed to miss the point of my statement: That your conversation about supers in planes and military planes isn't particularly useful in this discussion.

 

I suppose I could get on my high horse and talk about your use of straw men and the like but there is no need. I just tire of your attempt to paint others as ignorant, sloppy, and the like because they pick and choose what they wish to discuss - just like anyone else on the board... including you.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by gewing

I agree, they are going to be able to choose the fight, most of the time. BUT, IF the military is after them, They will try NOT to let the Supers choose the time. Yes supers would be very hard to hit, relative to tanks. Yes they are faster than normals. Sometimes, that doesn't matter. If the normal gunner is holding his action waiting for the turret to traverse, well any super who stands still long enough to do much within 1000 yards is a sitting duck. Personally, I would guess that at most of the Military are not speed 2, and that quite a few are speed 4. That changes the situation a little.

 

Supers would be like powered armor a/la Starship Troopers (BOOK, not crappy movie) If you could hit one, you could take it out, but they move erratically, tend to go through or over buildings, jump out of alleys, etc.

 

So hitting them probably comes down to one of 3 things. LUCK (even a schmo can roll a 3) Precision and range(surprise helps here too), or AREA EFFECT.

 

An Hellfire missile IS a precision weapon. A Maverick is too. The Hellfire can have one of 4 warheads so far, iirc, Shaped charge, penetrates 1 meter plus of steel, anti-"ship" which penetrates, then detonates with a fragmentation and incendiary effect to set small ships on fire (fragments rupture fuel hoses, etc) There are 2 new ones, a fragmentation that is made to DEVASTATE everything in a large room when fired through the window, but not kill everyone in the apartment building (I would guess small fragments in large numbers) and there is a new Thermobaric (Fuel air explosive) version.

 

The maverick has 2 warheads, one is a 7" diameter 130 lb shaped charge. Bye bye anyone it hits, bye bye anything less than say 10 def it near misses. Actually, if Plate mail is 8 def, I would say it would kill anything less than 15 def within 5 meters. Then there is the anti-ship/bunker version. 310 lbs, penetrating blast warhead. Better hope it misses...

 

Note, the Hellfire travels at well over mach one. it is 7 inches in diameter, and its engine burns out by 2000 meters, iirc. Kind of hard to spot on the way in, if you didn't see the launch. Then there are things like the British Starstreak anti- aircraft missile, they don't call it a hyper velocity missile for nothing, laser beam rider that tosses out 3 guided aphe darts at mach 4+, and the new Line of Sight anti tank, mach 5, and the developmental european one, mach 7!

 

 

Area effect is where it gets nasty. Very hard on the scenery, and the normals in it.

 

If supers become a threat to a nation, they will be targetted as such. If one of the "worldbeaters" takes the white house hostage, he better have a big force dome over it, because the Vice President would probably order a pair of B-2s to drop 32 2000 lb guided bombs on it, because of course nukes would be out of the question...

 

Artillery would be able to flatten an area quite effectively. Supers would probably hear the incoming rounds, but it might well be too late to do much, if they are doing a proper time on target, they better be able to dive for cover at least 50 yards.

 

 

Anti aircraft weapons would imo be the most effective way to deal with supers. A 1000 round per minute 35mm or 40mm gun that can mix Proximity fused with APFSDS (4+inches penetration in steel) with radar and infra red tracking is probably the biggest threat, imo.

The Standard newish russian system, with 2 2 barrel 30mm cannons, (iirc 3600 rpm) and 8 guided missiles would be a pretty serious threat too.

 

I hope Terje will post his Scaling rules, they would solve much of this problem. I would rather play super normals, or low end supers, but my definition can easily run to 350 points. I have little interest in Cosmic powered games.

 

Finally,

The military may not be able to wipe out super teams at will, but supers SHOULD be worried when the military shows up.

IF for no other reason, the supers will probably be blamed for whatever property damage/loss of life ensues. And if the military is involved, it probably WILL ensue.

Why do you think the military has significant numbers of speed 3 or 4 threats?

 

Things like the dive for cover of 50 yards - That's a little under 25 hexes which plenty of supers can do.

 

Let's remember the military has gotta make perception rolls before they even make attack rolls. Let's remember that Superman is the guy who will take the direct approach and Batman is the guy who takes the indirect approach.

 

The military can't beat Supers with conventional tools.

[Chuckg]

> Amazing, how you berate me for not responding to your

> post the way you want me to because I 'didn't read it

> carefully enough or at all'

 

Which you obviously didn't, if you thought for one second that I was unaware of the potential for team superplanes to exceed the tech level of F-18s.

 

> and yet, you seemed to miss the point of my statement:

> That your conversation about supers in planes and military

> planes isn't particularly useful in this discussion.

 

The point of your statement can't be made in the first place unless you entirely miss the point of *mine* -- i.e., that it was a caution to all aspiring superplane designers to /make sure/ that your plane has the necessary wherewithal to ignore off-the-shelf air superiority fighters, because if you overlook that precaution, then it's going to hurt. Aircraft capability does not just grow on trees, after all, it has to be deliberately built in.

 

This line of reasoning is obviously /quite/ useful to a discussion of supers vs. the military, no?

 

There, I've only said it... three, four times, now. Eventually, I'm sure it'll finally sink in. Until then, feel free to keep making electrons die for absolutely no useful purpose.

[Chuckg]

> That's a little under 25 hexes which plenty of supers can do.

 

You live in a campaign where "plenty of supers" can routinely make a DEX roll at minus 25?

 

Ach, der twinken!

[Chuckg]

As for the other points...

 

> Why do you think the military has significant numbers of

> speed 3 or 4 threats?

 

Three words -- Holding Your Action. With an entire army full of guys, you can all take shifts and still have plenty of people available to go on every phase.

 

[snip, already addressed above]

 

> Let's remember the military has gotta make perception rolls

> before they even make attack rolls.

 

Well, if the supers are using attack powers on something, the forward observer shouldn't have much problem noticing what hex they're in.

 

And if they're not? /nods/ Invisible types can sneak by, that was already conceded... God, at least two days ago.

 

Of course, not every super buys Invisibility or the uber-stealth package, so making this statement of yours a /blanket/ statement might be a bit much.

 

[snip]

> The military can't beat Supers with conventional tools.

 

To quote Spike -- "Don't you ever get tired of fights you know you're going to win?"

 

Unless you're running a campaign based on the Teragen Pantheon, taking the attitude that normals will always be helpless vs. supers, even with the biggest guns in the world and odds of literally 'an entire army vs. you' is really *not* genre.

[Kintara]

To quote Spike -- " Don't you ever get tired of fights you know you're going to win?"

 

No, I think that a good, clean kill takes pure artistry.

[Chuckg]

Feh. When was the last time you just threw yourself into it, fists and fangs?

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg

> That's a little under 25 hexes which plenty of supers can do.

 

You live in a campaign where "plenty of supers" can routinely make a DEX roll at minus 25?

 

Ach, der twinken!

Forgot about the Dex roll

 

Thanks for the unnecessary accusation in German though.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg

As for the other points...

 

> Why do you think the military has significant numbers of

> speed 3 or 4 threats?

 

Three words -- Holding Your Action. With an entire army full of guys, you can all take shifts and still have plenty of people available to go on every phase.

 

[snip, already addressed above]

 

> Let's remember the military has gotta make perception rolls

> before they even make attack rolls.

 

Well, if the supers are using attack powers on something, the forward observer shouldn't have much problem noticing what hex they're in.

 

And if they're not? /nods/ Invisible types can sneak by, that was already conceded... God, at least two days ago.

 

Of course, not every super buys Invisibility or the uber-stealth package, so making this statement of yours a /blanket/ statement might be a bit much.

 

[snip]

> The military can't beat Supers with conventional tools.

 

To quote Spike -- "Don't you ever get tired of fights you know you're going to win?"

 

Unless you're running a campaign based on the Teragen Pantheon, taking the attitude that normals will always be helpless vs. supers, even with the biggest guns in the world and odds of literally 'an entire army vs. you' is really *not* genre.

I have no clue what model you are using but whatever it is, it isn't representative of mainstream comics.