Magic and Technology of MGLN

[arkhangelsk]

Question though, if such things are illegal, why are not Graf Eisen and Laevaetien no illegal, although they could just as easily do what I wanted my device to do, if not worse? I mean sure I could put a whole through a person, but what's that compared to a sword or a sledge hammer? :3

I mean Vita would just have to go in and shatter the shield, and then Signum goes in for the kill :3

Granted it's not their character, but that's the essence of what I want to achieve with my device.

Technically, because GE is technically pseudomatter.

The rationale behind the law isn't really that well thought out really. Just as one simple example, what is Arcenciel if not a weapon that can be operated by a child?

Still, it is a brilliant plot device - it keeps logical weapons like high velocity bullets out of the picture. Just understand that Midchildrans are very very brainwashed and don't really see the illogic and hypocrisies of their policy, and you'll do fine.

[ghazghkull]

Technically, because GE is technically pseudomatter.

The rationale behind the law isn't really that well thought out really. Just as one simple example, what is Arcenciel if not a weapon that can be operated by a child?

Still, it is a brilliant plot device - it keeps logical weapons like high velocity bullets out of the picture. Just understand that Midchildrans are very very brainwashed and don't really see the illogic and hypocrisies of their policy, and you'll do fine.

*Grins evilly* Hmm...then I can possibly work in...XD

Thank you for the tip off. My hat's off to you :3

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

We only had some nice long arguments about it two weeks ago...

[Wild Goose]

Don't remind me. It took ages of busting to get you to nerf the max velocity to 850m/s from 2km/s. *sighs*

Regarding physical weapons, current OC understanding (this ain't quite the right word, but it's the best I can come up with atm) is that usage of slug throwers is kept to either criminals or the OFM, who are TSAB black ops (Delta Force/SEALs/ODST/The Unit/Mutter-effing Halo) and have to lock up their guns when not on mission/training. Although the way Alpha is heading, I wouldn't be surprised if the OFM lost their guns at the end of things...

[Keroko]

It would have been more fun they had left it to the last minute, instead of deciding it with a few minutes left to go, though. It was anticlimatic.

True, that was rather anti-climatic.

Now, where did Jail get those from, eh? I thought Precia, like, disappeared into the some dimensional void or something...or was she not carrying the thing with her?:confused:

Not all of them, besides, the Jewel Seeds we saw in Nanoha weren't all the Jewel Seeds in existance, concidering the TSAB already knew about them. Jail probably got them from his sponsors.

But they were clearly activated and running.

A car can be activated and running, but it takes a person to conciously hit the gas pedal before it reaches 200 km/h.

They are having a bad earthquake. Admittedly, it is pretty bad for a bunch of tiny seeds, but it isn't planet destroying.

The actual word used in the Japanese was 崩壊, which means "collapse", "breakdown" or "decay". It is actually a pretty broad term that can mean far more than annihilate.

That only makes it worse. Remember, Lindy talked about 'the adjacent world' most likely she was talking about the dimensions, which would make sense with the word 'collapse' meaning that the entire dimension in question collapsed, or multiple dimensions in this case.

Thus, you admit that you have absolutely no first-hand evidence for determining how bad it'll actually be .

Nor do you have any first hand knowledge for determing it wouldn't. On the other hand, I have the entire cast behind me supporting my case, whereas you have only theories with no base or even support. Just because the world wasn't destroyed doesn't mean it wouldn't have been, and the cast supports my view that it would have.

Fine. Does it look like 84 (or even 840) of those tiny "fragments" put together could "completely annihilate" worlds.

More then that, but yes.

IIRC, the place they are guarding is auctioning away Lost Logia. Since RF6 is guarding the place, it is clear that at least some Lost Logia are cleared for sale.

*double checks* Yes, you're right. They are talking about legal Lost Logia.

This means that you were right that not all Lost Logia are dangerous. It also helps explain some things I was wondering about, like why Hayate was allowed to fly around with a Lost Logia.

It does not, however, make the Jewel Seeds harmless. In fact, it helps debunk your theory that the characters were talking about the destroyed worlds out of paranoia. Obviously they are very much aware on how powerfull various types of Lost Logia are, which means that if they say Jewel Seeds can destroy the world, they can.

[ghazghkull]

Don't remind me. It took ages of busting to get you to nerf the max velocity to 850m/s from 2km/s. *sighs*

Regarding physical weapons, current OC understanding (this ain't quite the right word, but it's the best I can come up with atm) is that usage of slug throwers is kept to either criminals or the OFM, who are TSAB black ops (Delta Force/SEALs/ODST/The Unit/Mutter-effing Halo) and have to lock up their guns when not on mission/training. Although the way Alpha is heading, I wouldn't be surprised if the OFM lost their guns at the end of things...

Mind you I'm asking on a general scale, basically in accordance to the fluff that the series itself has provided, and from the sounds of things, the way I'd like to have him combat is illegal by TSAB laws, which therefore limits the amount of physical damage down to mostly just burns from direct contact, which therefore means to actually kill someone would require a proxy, such as a falling piece of masonry, or other such rubble.

Am I correct?

[Keroko]

Canonically, magic does have the abillity to kill. However, unlike real bullets they can be put to a 'stun' or 'rubber bullet' setting, so to say.

[arkhangelsk]

A car can be activated and running, but it takes a person to conciously hit the gas pedal before it reaches 200 km/h.

Even when someone is pushing on the gas (Precia) to the point of overload ... well, the earthquake was impressive, but crediting the observed performance with the capacity for the destruction of the world (much less dimension) seems very ... optimistic.

That only makes it worse. Remember, Lindy talked about 'the adjacent world' most likely she was talking about the dimensions, which would make sense with the word 'collapse' meaning that the entire dimension in question collapsed, or multiple dimensions in this case.

Great, now entire universes collapsed in your mind, in the face of the pictures, which show nowhere near the amount of catacylsm needed to collapse an entire universe in a reasonable timeframe.

Nor do you have any first hand knowledge for determing it wouldn't. On the other hand, I have the entire cast behind me supporting my case, whereas you have only theories with no base or even support. Just because the world wasn't destroyed doesn't mean it wouldn't have been, and the cast supports my view that it would have.

You have about three characters, two of which are from uncertain accreditation of the TSAB (curse StrikerS for this - we could have pretended they somehow made it work before that), and the third is all of 9 years old, speaking in an unknown context (we can't even decide whether they meant a universe, a planet, or a civilization when they blubbered sekai ...), with them having an unknown amount of knowledge about the particular Lost Logia involved ... some strong backup you have there when faced against the very consistent visible evidence of it falling far short.

Either there's something funny with dimensional dislocations (such as, they are ridiculously easy), and thus there's a contextual misunderstanding on our part, or else...

More then that, but yes.

What PART of those things look like they can destroy worlds even with a million of them put together...

[Nightengale]

Speaking of dimensional yada yadas, what does the event in the end of S1 where Yuuno cannot return to Mid-childa for a few months due to some sort of dimensional 'whatizit' consider itself to be anyway? Instability?

If dimension dislocation and instability runs in the same veins, doesn't that pretty much just mean the destruction of highways that connect worlds?

[Sheba]

Speaking of dimensional yada yadas, what does the event in the end of S1 where Yuuno cannot return to Mid-childa for a few months due to some sort of dimensional 'whatizit' consider itself to be anyway? Instability?

If dimension dislocation and instability runs in the same veins, doesn't that pretty much just mean the destruction of highways that connect worlds?

I guess something like planetary movement. There were times it gonna take longer for someone to go to mars, depending on its orbital position.

[Keroko]

Even when someone is pushing on the gas (Precia) to the point of overload ... well, the earthquake was impressive, but crediting the observed performance with the capacity for the destruction of the world (much less dimension) seems very ... optimistic.

It takes time before the car reaches the point of overload. If you slam the breaks before that happens (Lindy), no overload.

Great, now entire universes collapsed in your mind, in the face of the pictures, which show nowhere near the amount of catacylsm needed to collapse an entire universe in a reasonable timeframe.

Oh come on, they're called dimensional dislocations for a reason, you know? Not 'planet dislocations' not 'continent dislocations' not 'city dislocations' dimensional dislocations, meaning the effects apply on a dimensional scale.

You have about three characters, two of which are from uncertain accreditation of the TSAB (curse StrikerS for this - we could have pretended they somehow made it work before that), and the third is all of 9 years old, speaking in an unknown context (we can't even decide whether they meant a universe, a planet, or a civilization when they blubbered sekai ...), with them having an unknown amount of knowledge about the particular Lost Logia involved ... some strong backup you have there when faced against the very consistent visible evidence of it falling far short

Either there's something funny with dimensional dislocations (such as, they are ridiculously easy), and thus there's a contextual misunderstanding on our part, or else...

Yes, I have about 3 characters, and the fact that the distortions are called 'dimensional distortions' how much characters do you have supporting that Jewel Seeds would not have destroyed the world had Precia been left to do her thing?

What PART of those things look like they can destroy worlds even with a million of them put together...

Oh, just the fact that everyone involved, who have been dealing with this for the greater part of their lives and thus know a lot about it say they will. That, and the fact that they risked their lives to stop it, even to the point where the ship's captain herself stepped in when things were reaching critical points.

[tshouryuu]

Mind you I'm asking on a general scale, basically in accordance to the fluff that the series itself has provided, and from the sounds of things, the way I'd like to have him combat is illegal by TSAB laws, which therefore limits the amount of physical damage down to mostly just burns from direct contact, which therefore means to actually kill someone would require a proxy, such as a falling piece of masonry, or other such rubble.

Am I correct?

Canonically, magic does have the abillity to kill. However, unlike real bullets they can be put to a 'stun' or 'rubber bullet' setting, so to say.

I'm going to regret this... but ghazghkull, I have figured out a way for you to have what you want but still be TSAB legal except that your mage cannot use it as a common attack since there isn't any sure barrier breaking magics and if there's any it would be high level.

[dkellis]

What PART of those things look like they can destroy worlds even with a million of them put together...

Probably the same part wherein ten kilograms of a sort of silvery-white metal, if properly prepared and "activated", can be put into a bomb which can wipe out a city.

They may not look all that threatening, and the way Scaglietti used them may not be very powerful, but I'm inclined to believe the characters when they say that it has the potential to create great destruction.

[arkhangelsk]

It takes time before the car reaches the point of overload. If you slam the breaks before that happens (Lindy), no overload.

Actually, they were already recorded as being on overload power before Lindy began moving.

Oh come on, they're called dimensional dislocations for a reason, you know? Not 'planet dislocations' not 'continent dislocations' not 'city dislocations' dimensional dislocations, meaning the effects apply on a dimensional scale.

Here's mine: The descriptor is qualitative instead of quantitative. A little shimmer that does no one harm, as long as it touched dimensional space is rated dimensional (jiken).

Yes, I have about 3 characters, and the fact that the distortions are called 'dimensional distortions' how much characters do you have supporting that Jewel Seeds would not have destroyed the world had Precia been left to do her thing?

In exchange, I have all the observations on my side. I don't know about you - where I came from, that's the preferable position.

Oh, just the fact that everyone involved, who have been dealing with this for the greater part of their lives and thus know a lot about it say they will. That, and the fact that they risked their lives to stop it, even to the point where the ship's captain herself stepped in when things were reaching critical points.

In other words, you agree that they don't look like they could, and you are merely blindly trusting dubious authorities speaking in unknown context with an unknown amount of knowledge.

[dkellis]

In exchange, I have all the observations on my side. I don't know about you - where I came from, that's the preferable position.

Would you mind recapping those observations? I'm not really seeing anything that decisively contradicts the possibility that the Jewel Seeds might cause the vaguely-defined destruction of the world.

In other words, you agree that they don't look like they could, and you are merely blindly trusting dubious authorities speaking in unknown context with an unknown amount of knowledge.

Yes. Yes, I am. It's all we have to go on, really.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Arc, you're going a bit over the top. Plot relevent information says normal jewel seeds cause massive catastrophy if allowed to run out of control. Implications say world devastating or even ending/destroying. And there is a way this would happen that falls into the terms of 'running out of control'.

A hundred years ago, I'll bet you nobody thought little pieces of slightly grey metal that catch fire in the air could blow an entire city away. These little pieces of metal turned out to be uranium and plutonium, and the action is called a runaway chain reaction, resulting in the famed Nuclear Explosion...
THAT would be the threat of unstable jewel seeds. Not just, yay power surge... more like... "OH F**K! Catastrophic chain reaction!" on a dimensional level. Dimension Nukes.

[PhoenixFlare]

I hope you guys don't mind an honest opinion. :3

There are basically two ways to view the current issue, and none of them are actually wrong or right.

Ark is stating his opinions from the visual perspective, whereas the rest comes from the verbal side. His opinion is more towards, "I'd not believe it until it's proven true (by visual expectation)." The rest is leaning more for "I believe it's true (by verbal statements) until proven untrue."

If you see it from his point of view, they are not totally wrong. Neither are those supporting verbal statements from the character. It would be better if the verbal statements are actually confirmed by some believable visuals (like, the earthquake affecting other continents as well instead of just Uminari alone), but unfortunately, the producers did not seem to take it into account.

That leaves us to judge the issue by our own perception. Is there really a point of contention here? :3

[Keroko]

Actually, they were already recorded as being on overload power before Lindy began moving.

Not true, Precia had only started to activate them shortly before Lindy arived and supressed them.

Here's mine: The descriptor is qualitative instead of quantitative. A little shimmer that does no one harm, as long as it touched dimensional space is rated dimensional (jiken).

The description may be qualitative, but that does not change the fact that Lindy still said that many worlds collapsed. In a qualitative description, this ranks as a 'high dimensional dislocation' that did destroy several worlds.

In exchange, I have all the observations on my side. I don't know about you - where I came from, that's the preferable position.

No you don't. All you have is a world that wasn't destroyed because the process was stopped before it had gone beyond the point of no return. That does not equal it being impossible. Your observations are purely speculative, whereas the characters words and actions are far more objective.

For example, how does a volcanic eruption start? Often it does so with an earthquake. However, the earthquake is the least of the concern of the inhabitants, it is what follows the earthquake that is more dangerous. Just because the cast managed to stop the proccess before it could get beyond earthquake level does not mean that automatically the earth would not have been destroyed.

In other words, you agree that they don't look like they could, and you are merely blindly trusting dubious authorities speaking in unknown context with an unknown amount of knowledge.

Please don't put words in my mouth. I never agreed that they don't look like they could. Don't twist my words.

[dkellis]

Personally I'm just operating under the belief that we have no idea what a Dimensional Distortion even looks like, or what is involved therein. It could very well be that a minor earthquake in a Japanese city is an apparently non-sequitur precursor to reality itself folding up in mind-bending ways.

[arkhangelsk]

Now that I'm back home, I'm rechecking the episodes themselves. My spot is even better than I thought it would be - the Ep8 dialog is not really in my way at all! I think I'll do a throughout job and punch it all into a webpage, so wait for it.

[Keroko]

Of course, I'll do some further re-checking myself too.

[Jimmy C]

My spot is even better than I thought it would be - the Ep8 dialog is not really in my way at all!

Is it? I wonder if we're watching the same episode at all. Here are the lines that I feel support the case that the Seeds are world-wreckers. Italics are my emphasis.


0:10:49.03, How they're supposed to be used is unknown, but depending on the user...
0:10:53.48, ...it can harness enough power to not only destroy a single world, but all of dimensional space.

But you say they don't know what they're talking about, right? So let's move on.


0:11:05.67, The Lost Logia you two are searching for... the Jewel Seeds...
0:11:09.50, are crystallized forms of energy for dimensional interference.
0:11:12.97, If several Seeds were activated together, a dimensional distortion would occur and, worst case scenario...
0:11:19.05, a dimensional dislocation could be created because they're so dangerous.
Again, you say they're talking rubbish, they have no idea what Jewel Seeds are or that they can do this, right?


0:11:22.92, When you fought that black mage, that flash of light was an explosion which had a huge impact on space.
0:11:27.98, That was a dimensional distortion.
0:11:36.94, Even using a couple thousandths of its power can cause that large of a disaster.
0:11:44.14, The effect of gathering and activating several of them to their fullest extent at once is unfathomable.

See? They barely used the Seed's power in ep7 when they hit it, and it produced an event that was detectable across dimensional space, not confined to a single dimension.
There you go, these are the lines that support our case. Will you please show something to support your case? Simply undermining ours isn't helping you, you know. Do you have visuals that flat out contradict what is said here? Not just halfways like the earthquake dying down before it could shatter the planet.

Here's another analogy for you.
A room is on fire, the firemen arrive. One of them says, "If we don't stop it, it will burn down the house, then the whole neighbourhood" They proceed to extinguish the blaze before it spreads. Good job.
Except you say to them, "You're dumb. You don't know what you're talking about. That fire could never have burned down the neighbourhood. It's not big enough, therefore it can never be big enough."
That's how I see your argument. How do you see it?

Of course, I'll do some further re-checking myself too.
You go, Keroko! I may not agree with you that the Cradle is a planet destroyer, but I do agree that the Seeds are.

[Keroko]

You go, Keroko! I may not agree with you that the Cradle is a planet destroyer, but I do agree that the Seeds are.

Oh yes, that was how this started wasn't it? Talk about argument derailment. :heh:

Think of it like this: If Jewel Seeds can destroy a planet, why would a Lost Logia warship, which was made to destroy things, not be able to?

[Jimmy C]

If Jewel Seeds can destroy a planet, why would a Lost Logia warship, which was made to destroy things, not be able to?


I just rewatched StrikerS ep19 where Jail gloats about his new toy. Looks like I misremembered the line. He said it created and destroyed a world in the old times. If that was meant literally, then yes, I have to conceed that that thing does have a planet killer weapon onboard. That would also mean it has something that can create habitable planets, too.
Otherwise, the simpler meaning is that it was used to forge an empire, then felled it.
But yes, the way things are, Jail could have been speaking literally. Oh dear.

[Avatar_notADV]

Please don't post the dialogue. You're gonna make me go check mine, and... well, I mean, I can talk about it, but I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to actually post the scripts, huh? ;p

There's been mention of nuclear reactions as an example of "whoa, these things have only a little power on their own but go off huge if you cook 'em just right". The metaphor is more apropos than you know. Think about the precise engineering necessary to design a proper implosion-core weapon; if everything isn't rigged just so, to a precision that's almost stupid, the hydrogen fusion fails to occur. You still get an explosion, but it's a peewee explosion, not the full Monty, as it were. (This happened to North Korea when it did its nuclear test, we presume from the pathetic yield detected.)

Ark's certainly correct in that world-destroying is a whole different kettle of fish from the sort of power the Jewel Seeds tend to leak randomly. (Keep in mind that such power is actually said to be what, less than 1/10,000th of the actual power of a Jewel Seed.) Precia is trying to make them go critical, for the tremendous boom that follows; she needs the distortion to happen, because she's looking to use that as a path to Alhazard. Whatever - she's a bit nuts too... She's involved in a long process, not really with the number that she calculated would be necessary, not really with the reactor support she was counting on, not after Nanoha went and sealed it.

Is there any wonder that Precia's attempt didn't display its full power? Not enough material, not enough energy, not enough time, and then you have Lindy (an accomplished mage in her own right, though if we're going to go all Ark-like, we never actually see her use her own magic other than this; so how strong is she?) actually in there attempting to stop it from happening. Instead of the multiple-dimensions-falling-to-ruin event that Precia was going for, we get a destroyed Garden of Time and a little shakin' observable elsewhere, plus enough instability that local travel is somewhat hampered for months.

(This argues that the Garden of Time is, for all intents and purposes, really "close" to Nanoha's Earth.)

Keroko, well... a nuclear carrier has a big load of nuclear material, so why can't it blow up with a multi-megaton explosion? Mostly 'cause that's not what it's made for, huh? ;p We don't see anything that leads us to believe that the Cradle can go Death Star. We -can- believe that, in the proper orbit, it can become an unassailable platform, and that nothing on Mid is properly defended from that. Presumably it could destroy Mid in the sense that you could just hang up there in orbit and pound away at it until nobody lived there anymore, but you could also do that with an Arc and patience. (Could you? We have no idea what the recharge requirements on that thing are, after all. Maybe it's one shot and back to dock for replenishment/repair?)

[arkhangelsk]

Is it? I wonder if we're watching the same episode at all. Here are the lines that I feel support the case that the Seeds are world-wreckers. Italics are my emphasis.

That's what happens when you rely entirely on a fansub. They are OK for most things, but get into situations where the meaning of individual words matter and they don't always hold up:
http://arkhangelsk.onlinewebshop.net/analysis/jewelseed.html

Look at my analysis of the same passages and see if it makes sense to you.

But you say they don't know what they're talking about, right? So let's move on.

Not only me, but they flat out admitted they don't really know what they are talking about. Further, the line you quoted does not specifically refer to Jewel Seeds, but Lost Logia in general.

By the way "all of dimensional space" is not actually in the Japanese. If anyone has observed evidence of a Lost Logia (ultimately the only way to know) that "destroys all of dimensional space", there will be no one left to note this, because everyone will be dead.

Again, you say they're talking rubbish, they have no idea what Jewel Seeds are or that they can do this, right?

I note that. I would like to ask. How likely is this worst case scenario? Does it cover a 25% slice or a 0.01%? How big would the dimensional dislocation be in the worst case scenario?

See? They barely used the Seed's power in ep7 when they hit it, and it produced an event that was detectable across dimensional space, not confined to a single dimension.

Isn't that to the credit of the detection instruments? In the real world, there was a cool flash. Once it dissipates, none of the buildings around us were damaged. And what disaster? They said eikyou, effect. How that became disaster is beyond me.

Here's another analogy for you.

You've just rephrased the whole forest fire thing, while ignoring the consequences of any analogy of this type.

Try this. The house is burning, but there is no flammables around the house already.

[dkellis]

I've probably forgotten or lost track in the back-and-forth, but what exactly is the disagreement here?

[Keroko]

Whether the Jewels Seeds would or would not have destroyed earth in the first season.

[arkhangelsk]

Please don't post the dialogue. You're gonna make me go check mine, and... well, I mean, I can talk about it, but I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to actually post the scripts, huh? ;p

There's been mention of nuclear reactions as an example of "whoa, these things have only a little power on their own but go off huge if you cook 'em just right". The metaphor is more apropos than you know. Think about the precise engineering necessary to design a proper implosion-core weapon; if everything isn't rigged just so, to a precision that's almost stupid, the hydrogen fusion fails to occur. You still get an explosion, but it's a peewee explosion, not the full Monty, as it were. (This happened to North Korea when it did its nuclear test, we presume from the pathetic yield detected.)

Actually, even that is not appropriate An atom actually has a lot of stored energy (E=mc^2), and a successful nuclear reaction only releases a tiny part of it.

Ark's certainly correct in that world-destroying is a whole different kettle of fish from the sort of power the Jewel Seeds tend to leak randomly.

I think no one disagrees that the observations aren't helping them.

(Keep in mind that such power is actually said to be what, less than 1/10,000th of the actual power of a Jewel Seed.)

The term used is nanmanbun no ichi, which ranges from 1/1E4 to 1/1E5. Don't say I don't believe in them. Take what they said literally (didn't they want me to do that), take the actual damage (all flash, just about no bite to the surrounding buildings), multiply by 100,000 for a whole Jewel seed, times that by 21 for all 21 jewel seeds. There, the amount of damage they can do, at least if they weren't BSing somewhere.

Precia is trying to make them go critical, for the tremendous boom that follows; she needs the distortion to happen, because she's looking to use that as a path to Alhazard. Whatever - she's a bit nuts too... She's involved in a long process, not really with the number that she calculated would be necessary, not really with the reactor support she was counting on, not after Nanoha went and sealed it.

She has 9/21 Jewel Seeds, which, with the reactor, is enough to still reach criticality. So, logically, she has a little less than half of everything. Thus, we can extrapolate the correct power for 21 seeds using what she did.

Not enough material, not enough energy, not enough time, and then you have Lindy (an accomplished mage in her own right, though if we're going to go all Ark-like, we never actually see her use her own magic other than this; so how strong is she?) actually in there attempting to stop it from happening.

Nobody knows, though supposedly Distortion Shield is S-ranked according to NanohaWiki so...

Keroko, well... a nuclear carrier has a big load of nuclear material, so why can't it blow up with a multi-megaton explosion? Mostly 'cause that's not what it's made for, huh? ;p

But he'll then ask why can't it draw a similar amount of power.

[dkellis]

Whether the Jewels Seeds would or would not have destroyed earth in the first season.

Ah, so at least I'm not completely off the mark for that one.

My interpretation is that the Jewel Seeds had the potential to do wonky things to the dimension Earth inhabits, thereby making it very possible for them to indeed destroy the Earth. However, to do so, they had to be used (or misused) in some very specific ways.

Now, whether Precia was indeed using the Jewel Seeds in that particular dimension-distorting way is not known. The TSAB, rightly so in my opinion, did not want to take any chances.

So the Jewel Seeds could have destroyed Earth, but whether they were actually going to do so is unknown, thanks to our heroes' intervention.

Also, the Jewel Seeds could have done any number of other things that have nothing to do with destroying Earth, but are just as undesirable for the TSAB. Again, whether they were actually going to do so is just as unknown.

So. Does that contradict anything that's been argued so far?

[arkhangelsk]

Not true, Precia had only started to activate them shortly before Lindy arived and supressed them.

Definitely untrue. They could tell that Precia was going for a bousou hatsudou at the very beginning of Ep12, and Lindy only came near the end. The strength of vibration was not even increasing in any obvious way throughout the period

The description may be qualitative, but that does not change the fact that Lindy still said that many worlds collapsed. In a qualitative description, this ranks as a 'high dimensional dislocation' that did destroy several worlds.

Read my webpage:
http://arkhangelsk.onlinewebshop.net/analysis/jewelseed.html

Please don't put words in my mouth. I never agreed that they don't look like they could. Don't twist my words.

I was under the assumption that if you truly believed the visuals showed otherwise, you would have objected on that point instead of appealing to authority.

[Jimmy C]

Look at my analysis of the same passages and see if it makes sense to you.
I would if I could, but I cannot reach your page or your site right now. Are you sure it's up and running properly?
One thing, can you get another person who knows Japanese to back you up on your interpetation of the dialog? I just want to make sure you did not unconciously bias it in favor of your stance.

You've just rephrased the whole forest fire thing, while ignoring the consequences of any analogy of this type.

The main point of my analogy is you're accusing Chrono, Lindy and the rest of the Asura's crew of not knowing how to do their jobs. That, I consider rather offensive. I look forward to seeing you back up that accusation, once I can read your page.

[arkhangelsk]

I would if I could, but I cannot reach your page or your site right now. Are you sure it's up and running properly?

All I know is that I can reach it, and when I punched up other pages previously, ATC has no trouble going to them. Have you tried heading there via the index page - maybe that'll work.

One thing, can you get another person who knows Japanese to back you up on your interpetation of the dialog? I just want to make sure you did not unconciously bias it in favor of your stance.

Well, since it is on the webpage, I suppose that anyone that really has an opinion could discuss it. If anything the biggest problem is that it is too stiff, because I'm emphasizing on catching every last piece of meaning even at the cost of prose - the same trend I use when translating anything. Anyway, since you can't read it I guess I'll dump the text out:10:46 使用法は不明だが、使いようによっては世界どころが次元空間さえ滅ぼすほどの力を持つことも有る、危険な技 術。

The method of usage is unknown, but depending on the use, not only Worlds but dimensional space can be destroyed (or ruined, or wrecked...) - that's the level of power it has - a dangerous technology.

Commentary:We learn that some Lost Logia have the power to destroy dimensional space. Clearly, Ep7 of SS prove beyond any doubt that not all Lost Logia have nearly this much power, and here no one said that the Jewel Seeds necessarily have this much power.
Competence: We also learn that the TSAB does not know very much about these Lost Logia things, except that they are dangerous and potentially destructive in certain situations. Are these the experts we are to rely on?
===
11:03: あなたたちが探しているロストロギア、ジュエルシードは次元干渉型のエネルギ結晶体。

The Lost Logia you are searching for, the Jewel Seeds are a Dimensional Interference type energy crystal.

11:13: 幾つが集めて特定の方法で起動させれば、空次元断層間内に次元震を引き起こし、最悪の場合次元断層さえ巻き 起こす危険物。

If a few (several, some) of this dangerous object are assembled and activated with a special method, it will cause a dimensional vibration in space. In the worst case situation, it will even induce a dimensional dislocation.

Commentary: OK, we finally start talking about Jewel Seeds.
===
11:22 君とあの黒衣の魔導師が打つかっだ時に発生した振動と爆発、あれが次元震だ。

The vibration and explosion caused when you and the black clad mage clashed ... that's a dimensional vibration.


11:37たった一つのジュエルシードの全威力の何万分の一の発動でも、あれだけの影響があるんだ。

Just one Jewel Seed activating X-ten thousandth of its full power - it caused that much effect.

11:43 複数個集まって動かした時の影響は計れ知れない。

The effect when several are assembled and activated are incalculable.

Commentary:Cynical Nanoha: Oh, OK. Yeah, I remember the flash was pretty bright, but the city was ridiculously unharmed. And we weren't exactly thrown at Mach 3 at the walls. OK... 0 times 100,000 times 21 Jewel Seeds. What is 0 actual damage * 2.1E6? Oh yeah, zero... :D
Competence: Designate the effects of the explosion you saw X. X(100,000)(21). That should be a start. Anyway, they've admitted that they can't calculate the actual damage, so maybe we shouldn't be blind trusting their pronouncements...

We've also stopped talking about Jewel Seeds in specific the end of the last second (correction here: sentence).
===
11:47 聞いた事あります。旧暦の４６２年次元断層が起こったときの事。

I've heard about someting before. The things that happened when a dimensional dislocation occurred on Old Calendar Year 462.

11:56 ああ。あれはひどい事だった。

Aaa ... that was a horrible thing.

11:58 隣接する平行世界は幾つも崩壊した。歴史に残る悲劇。繰り替えちゃいけないの。

A few (several, some) of the parallel worlds bordering were broken down (collapsed / decayed). A tragedy that is left in history. We can't let it happen again.

Commentary:Throughout all of this, no one actually said that this dimensional dislocation was caused by Jewel Seeds, only that a dimensional dislocation occurred. We don't hear whether Jewel Seeds will produce dislocations of this size (are they all the same size?), bigger, or smaller. We don't know whether it was even a single type of Lost Logia, or the work of ten, or if a Lost Logia was involved at all.

Also, the fact that several worlds were affected may have been an unfortunate coincidence. Note that the worlds affected were parallel worlds that were bordering. Parallel world generally means worlds that are nearly identical to each other. Worlds as different as ours and Midchildra [addition: generally] don't count. And because they are so similar, they are probably on 3D (correction: similar coordinates in 3D). Being nearly identical universes, they'll have their planets in similar locations and they are neighboring. In short, the different planets of the parallel worlds are extraordinarily close together in dimensional spacetime, making them easier to affect all with a single blast.Conclusion: In conclusion, the dialogue does not provide any real guidance as to the power of the Lost Logia as long as a dislocation of unknown size can be created. While a dislocation is not good news, the dialogue clearly says nothing explicit about it being world ending. That, when combined with the fact that everything that occurred can be handled by single mages, along with the fact that the High Council seems willing to allow Scarlietti to "steal" the Jewel Seeds for his Gadgets, leads to the inevitable conclusion that Jewel Seeds are not all that powerful.

The main point of my analogy is you're accusing Chrono, Lindy and the rest of the Asura's crew of not knowing how to do their jobs. That, I consider rather offensive. I look forward to seeing you back up that accusation, once I can read your page.

Actually, I've switched my axis of attack already. Now I had re-surveyed the positions and calculated that they are not in my way, I don't have to lawnmower them.However, thanks to StrikerS, it is by now a statistical average that TSAB people, on average, just aren't very good. I don't think anybody on this board seriously debates this anymore. I just don't know why people that completely agree the TSAB don't have the first clue about tactics suddenly insist they must be infallible experts on Lost Logia.

Further, even if it were not for that, Lost Logia is not very well understood by the TSAB. And even if it were an understood subject, Lost Logia will be the equivalent of very advanced engineering and even granting there's a specialist somewhere at Fleet HQ that has intricate knowledge about a particular type of Lost Logia, realism actually dictates that the frontline staff won't have that technical knowledge. Is it really so "offensive" to suggest that they might not know everything? It is certainly a lot less offensive than the conclusion that they don't know tactics, since basic tactics should be part of every officer's repertoire.

[Mirificus]

Do we know what a dimensional dislocation entails? Perhaps it severs connections between the dimension and others, meaning its no longer accessible through teleportation tech and magic. That would be bad from the TSAB point of view but not necessarily catastrophic.

[ghazghkull]

Do we know what a dimensional dislocation entails? Perhaps it severs connections between the dimension and others, meaning its no longer accessible through teleportation tech and magic. That would be bad from the TSAB point of view but not necessarily catastrophic.

I don't think they ever really elaborated too much on what a dislocation does, but I think it's safe to say some of it's destructive capabilities are akin to the Omega Particles from Star Trek in some sense.

It is very possible that it'll rip the very fabric of some dimensions rendering the areas useless, including the dimension it initially formed in. Well that's my theory, since it seems to be a rip in reality, that and the word 'dislocation' gives me other ideas.

Another idea is that it literally relocates the world/planet the dislocation occurred, along with any neighboring dimensions. Like I said though, it's just a theory at this point.

[XenahortCharybdis]

Actually, I've switched my axis of attack already. Now I had re-surveyed the positions and calculated that they are not in my way, I don't have to lawnmower them.

However, thanks to StrikerS, it is by now a statistical average that TSAB people, on average, just aren't very good. I don't think anybody on this board seriously debates this anymore. I just don't know why people that completely agree the TSAB don't have the first clue about tactics suddenly insist they must be infallible experts on Lost Logia.

Correction: Competency in Science = Competency in Tactics is as good as saying Competence in Cooking = Competence in Smoking Pot, and therefore does not compute at all in any logical sense.

They are two independent abilities.

Further, even if it were not for that, Lost Logia is not very well understood by the TSAB. And even if it were an understood subject, Lost Logia will be the equivalent of very advanced engineering and even granting there's a specialist somewhere at Fleet HQ that has intricate knowledge about a particular type of Lost Logia, realism actually dictates that the frontline staff won't have that technical knowledge. Is it really so "offensive" to suggest that they might not know everything? It is certainly a lot less offensive than the conclusion that they don't know tactics, since basic tactics should be part of every officer's repertoire.

The TSAB, however, obviously has a information dissemination network, and I'm very sure that they have the common sense to go look up their network for information on their current quarry, especially if it's something potentially hairy like a Lost Logia. If they don't do that, they not only fail as an Army, or a Peacekeeping Force, they fail as people who actually care.

[Avatar_notADV]

I'll get meta for a second.

Nobody here is arguing that the writers intended for the TSAB to be a moronic, useless military organization. Nanoha does plenty of things in Strikers that are, from the perspective of someone familiar with the functioning of a modern fighting military, dumb as hell. Yet Nanoha isn't -supposed- to be lousy at her job; she's supposed to be freakishly dedicated and notably good at it, from her reputation and the reactions of the other characters. The shortcoming isn't something the writers intended to write into the show; it's an artifact of the writers themselves not knowing anything about any militaries besides the useless rump of the JSDF, and not even a whole lot about that. Within the context of Strikers, Nanoha is a competent officer and an excellent trainer; the defect is that said context is warped pretty far from reality, in ways that it shouldn't be, and in ways that can only be accounted for by the shortcomings of the writers.

Lost Logia work differently. There are no real magical devices with which they may be compared. We can't judge the context in relation to reality because there's no correspondence whatsoever. Thus, so long as the show's internally consistent, there's no reason to carry over an "idiot judgment" from one category to the other - characters can have no clue about modern military management (because the writers had no clue), yet be totally on the ball when it comes to Lost Logia (because everything that the writers know about the topic is correct by definition, within the context of the show.)

Now, if the writers were contradicting themselves horribly, that would be different. If they could track Nanoha down because she had some sealed Jewel Seeds, but they couldn't track Fate or Precia the same way, that would be an example of a contradiction. We really don't have any of those, however - the Lost Logia behave the way the characters in the show expect them to behave, and when they behave differently, the characters notice and are surprised/shocked/you get the idea.

That doesn't mean that the writers sat down before putting pen to paper on Nanoha and talked about the capabilities of the category of Lost Logia. In fact, in my experience, this is probably not the case; I've had situations before where I've constructed a fairly elaborate explanation for weirdness in a show, had the opportunity to ask the writers about whether it was a correct model of their thinking on the topic, and gotten back a polite equivalent of "duh, we did it 'cause it looked cool?" Specifically, I'm almost certain that things like the structure of the TSAB's armed forces, or the function of unison devices, or Belka anything, hadn't even been considered when Nanoha season 1 went into production. Just not how they do this sort of thing, more's the pity... Which of course means that it all gets cobbled together on the fly.

On the other hand, if you keep in mind that Nanoha was, initially, a joke show on the same level as Komugi, it's doing pretty damned good. Sure, it's not hardcore science fiction, but it's a long way from the initial concept of "magical girl spinoff of an obscure erotic game", now isn't it? ;p

[arkhangelsk]

Correction: Competency in Science = Competency in Tactics is as good as saying Competence in Cooking = Competence in Smoking Pot, and therefore does not compute at all in any logical sense.

They are two independent abilities.

Actually, an understanding of Lost Logia will fall into Engineering.

The TSAB, however, obviously has a information dissemination network, and I'm very sure that they have the common sense to go look up their network for information on their current quarry, especially if it's something potentially hairy like a Lost Logia. If they don't do that, they not only fail as an Army, or a Peacekeeping Force, they fail as people who actually care.

If they actually cared about their profession, their tactics and moral-psychological training won't be in such a pathetic state.

As for their "information dissemination network", you'll notice that in the BoD incident, any small scrap of information found is entirely due to them just happening to have a personal friend in Yunno. They don't even seem to have regular librarians for searching. Wonderful "information dissemination network" there! And of all the scraps of information found, amazingly, there is not one scrap of quantitative data (for the Cradle incident, they did a little better, managing to scrap up a very incomplete map (yeah, it is nice to know where the Control room and the reactor is, now can we have the rest of the ship's corridors stenciled in?) Yes, they just know everything there is to know about Lost Logia, all right...

It is obvious that you and ADV are still looking at this from the Literary point of view. However, if you are to do that, you'll have to acknowledge that in the context of the show, even they admit they don't really know a whole lot about Lost Logia*. Which makes sense because Lost Logia are obviously much more advanced magitech than items in Midchildran service. But it does wreak havoc on attempts to use them as unimpeachable authorities.

From a SoD point of view (a POV I desperately tried to avoid when watching MGLN, but Ep17 and onwards was just too much), it is scary to think how weak their knowledge of Lost Logia really is. When even these people admit they now very little...

*The line where they say they don't know the method of usage is very important. In the real world, understanding of "machinery" is roughly on three levels - the operator, the technician, and the engineer, the first requiring the least understanding of its working principles and performance. When they admit they aren't even on Level 1...

But whether they were going to eat the world or not, it was nice that the TSAB (or rather one Captain) did its best to help anyway. Much better than in the next arc, when we were 5 minutes from being Arced because of inadequate deployment of forces... Isn't that effort enough? Why does everyone insist they have to be engineers?

[Jimmy C]

Ark, you've made your point. I'm conceeding this one. We'll see next time.
That should be a start. Anyway, they've admitted that they can't calculate the actual damage, so maybe we shouldn't be blind trusting their pronouncements...

Look, I know you don't think highly of the Bureau's abilities, but even you should have been able to equate that with "unimaginable". As in "you DO NOT want to add these numbers". But since it fits you vision of Bureau personnel being morons, go ahead.

In the real world, understanding of "machinery" is roughly on three levels - the operator, the technician, and the engineer, the first requiring the least understanding of its working principles and performance.

That nice ladder does not apply when technical information on said machinery is not available, in any way. For example, when an 18th-century farmer digs up flying machine, with no instruction manual and no technical documentation. Even the best engineers of that age wouldn't be on Level-1 in that case. That's the Bureau's situation with regards to Lost Logia. Do you think they are idiots because of that? Do you think our best people could do better?

[arkhangelsk]

Ark, you've made your point. I'm conceeding this one. We'll see next time.

Look, I know you don't think highly of the Bureau's abilities, but even you should have been able to equate that with "unimaginable". As in "you DO NOT want to add these numbers". But since it fits you vision of Bureau personnel being morons, go ahead.

That nice ladder does not apply when technical information on said machinery is not available, in any way. For example, when an 18th-century farmer digs up flying machine, with no instruction manual and no technical documentation. Even the best engineers of that age wouldn't be on Level-1 in that case. That's the Bureau's situation with regards to Lost Logia.

Very true. Did you notice that I said it "made sense" they didn't know much about Lost Logia? This is not to make them sound like morons, or idiots, just being matter of fact. It is NO INSULT to say that they don't know much about it. In fact that is the story's setup if you want to talk literary.

The only problem with this is to those who insist on using them as unimpeachable authorities. But as it turns out it doesn't really matter if they are or not in this context. Maybe it is not me that's in a state of denial :D

[XenahortCharybdis]

Very true. Did you notice that I said it "made sense" they didn't know much about Lost Logia? This is not to make them sound like morons, or idiots, just being matter of fact. It is NO INSULT to say that they don't know much about it. In fact that is the story's setup if you want to talk literary.

The only problem with this is to those who insist on using them as unimpeachable authorities. But as it turns out it doesn't really matter if they are or not in this context. Maybe it is not me that's in a state of denial :D

If that was the only problem, then this has been a waste of the 2 minutes it took me in total to type those replies.

One last shot at you, though.

Engineering falls under Physics and Maths (which are themselves related). Physics falls under Applied Science. Therefore Engineering itself in a way falls under Science too :D

You're not in denial, that title belongs to Chaos...nevermind.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Random post for the IRC...

Resonance as I'm talking of deals with adding energy to waveforms.

Say you have two waves, one with a +4 crest, and -4 trough, and then another with a +3 crest, and -3 trough.

When they two waves interact in a compatable fashon, resonance occures. Depending on the phase of the interaction, you could have two effects.

1 - destructive resonance. The trough of the 3 wave meets with the crest of the 4 wave, resulting in a new wave energy of +1 -1.

2 - constructive resonance. Like above, only the crest of the 3 wave meets the crest of the 4 wave, and vice versa the troughs. The result is the waves synch up and add together. Creating +7 -7 wave.

It's a pretty quick term of what I'm trying to say, but here's the wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance


Anyway, resonance can be quite powerful. When working with sound waves, a good example of constructive resonance is an opera singer shattering glass with their voice. What happens is that the glass's natural vibration frequency matches up with the frequency of the singer's voice. The resulting constructive resonance builds vibration energy in the glass until it reaches a physical limitation of the mateiral, and breaks.

[arkhangelsk]

It is important for people not to get overenthusiastic about Resonance:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Myths/Myth_Science.html

BTW, I'm throwing material onto my new site (http://arkhangelsk.onlinewebshop.net). How many people other than JimmyC are having trouble accessing it?

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

They need to update their info on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Read the Wiki info that coincides with that in my article.

Oh by the way Arc, that was just to throw something at them about Unisons for a covnersation in the IRC. My thought is that the Unisons may have some kind of constructive resonance with the user's magic that increases the effective power, without actually, well, increasing power outright. It's complicated, but it was something I tossed in.



Anywho, something interesting. I was at WalMart earlier... Looking at some airsoft rifles.

I noted one that looked like a shotgun, using a simple spring action mechanism fires its rounds at 106 m/s. (It was labeled on the box.) Another one, an A17 (Airsoft version of an M-4 Carbine), which was electric, fires rounds at 97 m/s.


In fact, I'm double checking. The Shotgun is... This (http://www.sportsauthority.com/product/index.jsp?productId=1995889&cp=2028376&page=2&pageBucket=0&parentPage=family)... Fires its BBs at 350 f/s. (106.68 m/s)
The Rifle is... this (http://www.sportsauthority.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2921472&clickid=body_rv_img) and fires 262 F/s (79.6 m/s... so I got that one backwards in my memory.)

Now that REALLY makes me irritated. Magic ATTACKS are as slow, or slower than the stuff coming out of TOYS!


But at the same time, it gives me an idea.

[Mirificus]

They need to update their info on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Read the Wiki info that coincides with that in my article.
There isn't anything extraordinary about resonance as ark noted. The total energy is proportional to the square of the amplitude and the energy has to come from somewhere.

If you really want to use Wikipedia:

In the case of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, this mode was negatively damped (or had positive feedback), meaning meaning it increased in amplitude with each cycle because the wind pumped in more energy than the flexing of the structure dissipated.

The oscillation in the bridge was self-induced (torsional flutter), the wind supplying the power, and the motion supplying the power-tapping mechanism.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

The problem is people here don't even know the context I was speaking of unless they were in IRC last night, so don't jump to conclusions now. I didn't introduce anything wild, just that constructive resonance may be one of the things a unison device does to improve user power. (Or rather both make the user utilize their power more effectively and add on their own power to the mix. ) It would explain compatability issues if Unisons produced certain frequencies that only get the best effect if they resonate constructively. Incompatabilities would occure as the Unison's pattern gets more and more out of phase or frequency with the user until it actually starts to appraoch destructive resonance and actually weakens a mage.


Let me break down how this may work.

The Mage and the Unison both have distinct magical energy of their own. I'll mark the mage as 5 and the Unison as 5. Equal magic apeice... These are their normal peak magical energy amplitude values.

Now, first assumption of a unison is that it merges and adds power/ability equal to itself to its master mage.

But the issue of compatability and the fact that we don't see them actually have distinct instance of power boosting except for Agito with Signum.

It could be based of frequency and phase resonance. And here's how.

If you apply a moderately compatable Mage to a Unison, say Vita and Rein, the waveforms don't match up all to well, but they still occaisionally have complementary peaks. Allowing a slight increase in power here and there with added abilities coming from the extra mind working from the same space and vantage as the actual mage. In this case, the 5 and 5 power combine to be something like 6 or 7.

If you take a more incompatable mage, such as Zest and Agito. (I would argue Zest is far stronger in his full drive without Agito mucking him up, but he used her because his condition was so absolutely shitty that full power was dangerous.) In this case, the incompatability coming from being out of frequency, and out of phase actually results in destructive resonance, in which Zest actually loses power by being unisoned. (Again, they unison more because Zest's condition is but SHIT. And in Unison, it would be more Agito's power that did the work.
They're slightly incompatable, but both are Belkan, so they still work. And what you get is 5 and 5 coming out to 5 still, or even 4.5 or 4.

Then you get totally incompatable, where the frequency and phase are so bad it's worthless. 5 and 5 cancel out and make 1 or 0.

But take an almost perfect, or even a perfect unison compatability match like Agito and Signum. The phase and frequency line up nicely and nearly all the peaks match up, and the result is 5 and 5 make 10. You get maximum unison performance that it just seems that you get this monster power boost in one mage, with the combined skill and awareness of two mages.

[arkhangelsk]

Wouldn't that be more analogical to Constructive Interference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference)?

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

You're right... how'd I get that mixed up with Resonance?
*Scratches head...*

I know it well enough at least... Even if I screw up the wording sometimes.

[Sheba]

Now that REALLY makes me irritated. Magic ATTACKS are as slow, or slower than the stuff coming out of TOYS!




FFS, we are talking about anime, and you try to bring RL logic and rules in an anime!

Are laser instantaneous in Star Wars? Would Han Solo and Chewbacca be able to dodge shots from stormtroopers if it was the case? Would Luke's X-wing can do it against a squadron of Tie fighters? No! But they do it anyway for the sake of rule of cool. And how come Arnie was able to stand still after the Predator's self-destruction? Have we seen anyone moaning about it?

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

FFS, we are talking about anime, and you try to bring RL logic and rules in an anime!

Are laser instantaneous in Star Wars? Would Han Solo and Chewbacca be able to dodge shots from stormtroopers if it was the case? Would Luke's X-wing can do it against a squadron of Tie fighters? No! But they do it anyway for the sake of rule of cool. And how come Arnie was able to stand still after the Predator's self-destruction? Have we seen anyone moaning about it?

*Slaps Sheba with a fish.*

Don't give ME trout!

I will moan about it as I see fit!

There's suspension of disbelief, and then there's insanely silly. (Lasers in Star Wars aren't actually lasers by the way.) When you've got pop guns that shoot faster toy bullets than 99% of all magic attacks, how in heck do magic users expect to hit anything. I mean, we've got mach one capable flight mages, and then attacks that are about as fast as a football being thrown down field. Obviously the easiest form of attack is to fly over targets and drop magic spheres which explode! Not only can you out run their counter attacks, but anyone chasing you can't hit you because they're flying faster than their own attack, and it'll just slam right back in their face after it hits air ressistance.

The more flaws I discover, the more insult to simple COMPETENCY I discover. It's getting to the point where I'm ready to declare it as bad as Dragon War (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1WAcDqe7OE). You can't get much worse than Dragon War when it comes to insult to competency.

[Wild Goose]

I dunno. If you assume that Nanoha flies at Mach One, then Divine Buster must be faster than that since it overtook her.

Look, you're stressed, I'm stressed, go and sleep and leave this alone for a while.

Furthermore, let me remind you of something. This is not Zeropoint. This is not GURPS. This is most certainly not PSDF or Omoi. This is Nanoverse. Deal with it and suck it up.

[Avatar_notADV]

Yeah, at the end of the day, we're still talking about anime here. Same genre where two guys can spend fifteen minutes carving into each other with swords and both walk away afterwards... there's going to be some suspension of disbelief involved for the visual medium, along the order of "why not attack them during the transformation sequence" and all that.

Specifically, in Nanoha, we don't ever see anyone actually outrunning a magical attack; outmaneuvering, sure, and there's plenty of stuff that's incoming on Fate that's not much faster than her (and she's pretty quick). So presumably, people don't outrun magical attacks.

It's useless to break out the protractors and rulers and start measuring the advance of pixels across the screen to try to deduce weapon speeds. That's like doing the same thing for City Hunter and determining that the "crucial bullet" scenes have a bullet moping along instead of speeding to the target. No, it's just that the action's slowed down for dramatic effect, just like in every other show that's existed since the beginning of time! It's just easier to come to that conclusion for City Hunter because we know how fast bullets are supposed to go, and the bullets in City Hunter certainly act like normal bullets. With Nanoha, we don't have the external reference, but that's no reason to assume that you can get away from a Divine Buster by simply outrunning it...

[Sheba]

Come on, Ryo Saeba doing cool stuff like blowing up a tank with a 357 bullet even before gun-fu came to existence is GAR. :D

[Kikaifan]

The difference between soaring aspirations and limping reality is a constant (though unintentional) theme in MGLN...

:heh:

Yeah, at the end of the day, we're still talking about anime here. Same genre where two guys can spend fifteen minutes carving into each other with swords and both walk away afterwards... there's going to be some suspension of disbelief involved for the visual medium, along the order of "why not attack them during the transformation sequence" and all that.

Specifically, in Nanoha, we don't ever see anyone actually outrunning a magical attack; outmaneuvering, sure, and there's plenty of stuff that's incoming on Fate that's not much faster than her (and she's pretty quick). So presumably, people don't outrun magical attacks.

It's useless to break out the protractors and rulers and start measuring the advance of pixels across the screen to try to deduce weapon speeds. That's like doing the same thing for City Hunter and determining that the "crucial bullet" scenes have a bullet moping along instead of speeding to the target. No, it's just that the action's slowed down for dramatic effect, just like in every other show that's existed since the beginning of time! It's just easier to come to that conclusion for City Hunter because we know how fast bullets are supposed to go, and the bullets in City Hunter certainly act like normal bullets. With Nanoha, we don't have the external reference, but that's no reason to assume that you can get away from a Divine Buster by simply outrunning it...

I'd say that the liberal use of slow motion for attacks is pretty apparent in Nanoha too, in the melee combat. The clash that Chrono interrupts in the first season and the beginning of the ep 7 Signum/Fate fight were especially obvious as I recall them.

And of course they distort time in other ways too- portray simultaneous events in consecutive shots, or crib from manga and jam one text bubble's worth of speech into one panel's worth of animation regardless of whether saying so much in such a situation makes any sense.

[arkhangelsk]

Yeah, at the end of the day, we're still talking about anime here. Same genre where two guys can spend fifteen minutes carving into each other with swords and both walk away afterwards... there's going to be some suspension of disbelief involved for the visual medium, along the order of "why not attack them during the transformation sequence" and all that.

Specifically, in Nanoha, we don't ever see anyone actually outrunning a magical attack; outmaneuvering, sure, and there's plenty of stuff that's incoming on Fate that's not much faster than her (and she's pretty quick). So presumably, people don't outrun magical attacks.

Unfortunately, they can dodge them. This very fact makes it blatantly clear that the speed ratio is very low. And they keep talking during their fights. Talking is a great scaling tool for time. They might be on 20x time compression otherwise, but while they are talking or grunting, it must be pretty darn close to 1:1.

It's useless to break out the protractors and rulers and start measuring the advance of pixels across the screen to try to deduce weapon speeds. That's like doing the same thing for City Hunter and determining that the "crucial bullet" scenes have a bullet moping along instead of speeding to the target. No, it's just that the action's slowed down for dramatic effect, just like in every other show that's existed since the beginning of time! It's just easier to come to that conclusion for City Hunter because we know how fast bullets are supposed to go, and the bullets in City Hunter certainly act like normal bullets. With Nanoha, we don't have the external reference, but that's no reason to assume that you can get away from a Divine Buster by simply outrunning it...

Actually, going ful SoD and breaking out protractors and rulers to determine weapon speeds is the only method which can ever possibly have a result. Each person having his own opinion is fine, but not, for example, in the OC thread where everyone has to more or less work together. So what's the arbitrator.

How can we say, for example, that ATC setting his Lance Rifle's speed at 2000m/s is out of balance, other than by breaking out protractors and rulers (actually it is mostly the pixel counting tool) to say that mage combat simply doesn't move that fast (though it is recently determined that their shaped charge explosions could move that fast...)

[Avatar_notADV]

Hey, reality doesn't necessarily mean there's a source for your answer; in a lot of cases, there's just no real answer in canon. Rather than try to make up technical specs, though, isn't it better to measure stuff relatively? It's not beyond belief that someone could come up with a "quick beam" that is harder to dodge than a normal one because it propagates faster, okay, but why do you have to hang a number off it that you figure is no good? ;p

When you're writing fic, using the known characters as a baseline is generally a good idea. If you've got Nanoha and Nanoha's reputed to be really, really good at something, your original character ought to have a really, really good reason to have something that's got better performance than her in pretty much any category. One trick pony, lost logia assist, ate his Wheaties that morning, what have you.

I stay out of the OC thread - the only thing I write for Nanoha is, er, canon. ^^

[arkhangelsk]

Hey, reality doesn't necessarily mean there's a source for your answer; in a lot of cases, there's just no real answer in canon.

If there is an answer in the canon, and you refuse to see it, then you ignore a part of canon.

Rather than try to make up technical specs, though, isn't it better to measure stuff relatively? It's not beyond belief that someone could come up with a "quick beam" that is harder to dodge than a normal one because it propagates faster, okay, but why do you have to hang a number off it that you figure is no good? ;p

Because it is part of the reality of MGLN. One must open their eyes to unpleasant realities, not shut them.

When you're writing fic, using the known characters as a baseline is generally a good idea. If you've got Nanoha and Nanoha's reputed to be really, really good at something, your original character ought to have a really, really good reason to have something that's got better performance than her in pretty much any category. One trick pony, lost logia assist, ate his Wheaties that morning, what have you.

Within the TSAB, that's a reasonable generalization. Or even enemies that use the same types of magic.

But what if you have a "crossover" situation. This does not mean necessarily crossover with another anime. It can also mean, for example, your original enemy organization that oh, uses mass weapons. In that case, what is the correct relative merits and demerits? How would you assess them, if not first by taking a good look at the onscreen performance to use as a reference?

[Kikaifan]

Actually, going ful SoD and breaking out protractors and rulers to determine weapon speeds is the only method which can ever possibly have a result. Each person having his own opinion is fine, but not, for example, in the OC thread where everyone has to more or less work together. So what's the arbitrator.

I don't see how consenting to accept results produced by a flawed methodology is any better than consenting to some arbitrary middle ground of opinion.

[Keroko]

Because it is part of the reality of MGLN. One must open their eyes to unpleasant realities, not shut them.

You'll have to look on the other side of the fence as well though, since this discussion started as a Nanoha/SEED crossover, you'd be bombing the Gundams as well, as there is no way Gundams can be accurately controlled by the cockpits that we see on the screen. Two handles to cover for arms, hands, legs, head, torso, flight, weapons etc. etc? Do they even use all the other buttons we see?

And yet, everyone accepts that Gundams are that easy to control.

[arkhangelsk]

I don't see how consenting to accept results produced by a flawed methodology is any better than consenting to some arbitrary middle ground of opinion.

The SoD methodology is a parallel to how we will have analyzed all of this had they actually been flying in our skies. People will be calculating angle and range rates to come up with their speeds (they'll sigh with relief) and effective ranges, measuring their blast radiuses to come up with their power. The methodology is scientific, and science has been serving us quite well for several hundred years now.

You'll have to look on the other side of the fence as well though, since this discussion started as a Nanoha/SEED crossover, you'd be bombing the Gundams as well, as there is no way Gundams can be accurately controlled by the cockpits that we see on the screen. Two handles to cover for arms, hands, legs, head, torso, flight, weapons etc. etc? Do they even use all the other buttons we see?

And yet, everyone accepts that Gundams are that easy to control.

I thought the SEED crossover thing was only for the FanFiction thread, but nevermind. I hate Gundam - basically Gundam shows don't even get a hearing. However, it is obvious in this case that some kind of AI assistance is involved in the control system. That's how they do it in Full Metal Panic (though you have more input there than two joysticks) and Muv-Luv Alternative (the title character even tries to exploit the AI's predictive features).

[Kikaifan]

Scientific methodology has served us quite well for hundreds of years in which reality was dictated by consistent physical laws instead of the whims of animators. If it's impossible to take an accurate measurement, science can't help you.

[arkhangelsk]

Even a real scientific instrument cannot always take an accurate measurement. That does not stop people from continuing to scientifically determine things.

[Avatar_notADV]

There's a level of uncertainty beyond which measurement is no longer useful. Specifically, you cannot get results that are more certain than an uncertain measurement; if your instruments only give you an answer to plus or minus ten percent, you cannot use them to come up with a measurement that only varies plus or minus five percent.

Measuring things like speed or distance from animation is way, way less accurate than plus or minus ten percent. Animators going for a given visual effect may not be consistent with past scenes of the same action - even something as simple as loading a cartridge will take different amounts of time depending on which scene you're talking about. Nor are they worried about keeping it consistent in that fashion - if they can achieve the same effect with fewer frames of animation, or if they have to speed something up a bit to match the piece of music they have, they'll do it, even if it plays hob with the measurements.

You -could- still use statistical analysis to determine a mean value; that way, outliers caused by weird animation frames or what have you will tend to be reduced. You'd also be able to come up with a reasonable analysis of the variance from that mean, which would give you an idea of exactly how much the animators tended to vary that particular what have you. However, that doesn't help you much for Nanoha, mostly because statistical analysis requires a certain amount of "events" with which to process, and very few things in Nanoha happen frequently enough to yield a statistical result closer than "wild-assed guess". Even something that happens 20 or 25 times will still yield quite poor numbers simply because of the nature of statistical analysis, forget the actual variances involved. (And it gets complicated even more if you consider re-used animation, which will tend to reinforce certain numbers without necessarily stating that the values derived from that footage were the "correct" ones...)

One of the important tools of the scientist is a keen appreciation of what his tools are capable of, and what they're not. You can flail around with the latter, but it's not really science anymore...

[arkhangelsk]

However, that doesn't help you much for Nanoha, mostly because statistical analysis requires a certain amount of "events" with which to process, and very few things in Nanoha happen frequently enough to yield a statistical result closer than "wild-assed guess". Even something that happens 20 or 25 times will still yield quite poor numbers simply because of the nature of statistical analysis, forget the actual variances involved. (And it gets complicated even more if you consider re-used animation, which will tend to reinforce certain numbers without necessarily stating that the values derived from that footage were the "correct" ones...)

Let me ask you. If you saw them in real life doing a move again and again with such similarity that it looks like they are reusing animation, how would you conclude things?

One of the important tools of the scientist is a keen appreciation of what his tools are capable of, and what they're not. You can flail around with the latter, but it's not really science anymore...

Yes, but he doesn't decide to throw in the towel and decide that half-a*sed intuitive guesses are better. Do you think such problems are unique to analyzing MGLN?

Do you think there is no arc of values when discussing, say, Star Wars? In fact, Star Wars values arc over several orders of magnitude. Compared to that, anything MGLN can offer will likely be at least in the same order of magnitude.

Let me ask you. How will you handle it if such things happened in real life. Generally, you will take the most powerful measurement that you believe you have taken reliably. Because no matter how psychologically asinine it seems, it is much easier to rationalize them using lower values than using the lower value as base and rationalizing the high value.

Which is why, by the way, Trekkies and Warsies used to fight each other to the death over the "high-end" incidents. It isn't good enough to just process it out with "averaging". Once even a single high incident is established as reliable, it becomes the base.

[Avatar_notADV]

One points out that real life doesn't work like animation. If I see something in real life, I can go measure it -in real life-. I don't have to worry about how many frames the animators decided to animate in that sequence. And I can do it again and again if I need to... ;p

I actually used to discuss Star Trek tech issues, back in the old BBS days. Then I realized that the writers weren't working off a realized model that they were referring back to - the tech did what the plot needed it to do, regardless of whether it was consistent with past shows or not, regardless of whether it would be inconvenient for future shows or not. And Star Trek actually had people trying to hold together consistency on that kind of issue, which is generally not the case with anime.

Then I aged fifteen years and rewrote most of Eva. You can understand why I'm a bit jaded... ;p So no, of course they're not unique. Precisely because they're not unique, I can safely blow 'em off...

I'm not saying that it's impossible to analyze the show and get some figures; however, I -am- saying that it's impossible to conclude that those figures are representative of anything that the creators had in mind, as opposed to just how it worked out when they drew it. That goes double for a show like Nanoha, which, to put it honestly, played it really fast and loose with animation quality here and there.

Not only is it impossible to conclude that, it's not even plausible to -assume- it... but a lot of that is personal judgment; I do have some rather applicable experience on that topic, but that doesn't mean that reasonable people can't disagree.

Seriously, though, when it comes to writing, aren't the intuitive guesses you mention just as good? You -shouldn't- be pulling numbers out of a hat and then looking them up against known values to see what kind of implications they have. If you're designing a magical shot, you don't just say "oh, it's three million thaums" and then look up on the table and say "uh, my rookie pilot is more powerful than Hayate, lol!" The correct way to do that is to decide the implications you're looking for, then reference the numbers... except by that point you don't even really need them.

Take the season 1 "magical power reading", when they pull out a big number to measure Nanoha and Fate's power. Never happens again, right? Even though there's plenty of opportunities to measure whether a particular mage is powerful or not, right? That's because, at the end of the day, putting a number on everything just leads to the "THAT'S OVER 9000!" school of thinking, and this ain't Dragon Ball.

[arkhangelsk]

One points out that real life doesn't work like animation. If I see something in real life, I can go measure it -in real life-. I don't have to worry about how many frames the animators decided to animate in that sequence. And I can do it again and again if I need to... ;p

Actually, in real life you may only have one real observation. In animation or film, you can replay over and over again to fix the observation more precisely. So it isn't ALL a one way street.

I actually used to discuss Star Trek tech issues, back in the old BBS days. Then I realized that the writers weren't working off a realized model that they were referring back to - the tech did what the plot needed it to do, regardless of whether it was consistent with past shows or not, regardless of whether it would be inconvenient for future shows or not. And Star Trek actually had people trying to hold together consistency on that kind of issue, which is generally not the case with anime.

Actually, it doesn't matter whether they are or not. We look at the end product. These days, the Trek transporter is a very shafted machine. Episode after episode of them not working pile up until The current estimate actually proposes that you can protect yourself from a Trek transporter by hiding inside a Faraday cage or by standing next to a transformer :D

That's of course NOT what the authors intended - they really intended them to be exceptions, but that's the law of unintended consequences. 400 exceptions means it is a rule.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to analyze the show and get some figures; however, I -am- saying that it's impossible to conclude that those figures are representative of anything that the creators had in mind, as opposed to just how it worked out when they drew it. That goes double for a show like Nanoha, which, to put it honestly, played it really fast and loose with animation quality here and there.

That's one of the beauties of the SoD system. You stop caring about what you thought the creators had in mind. If the creators thought they were making a competent force but weren't, you just take what you see. If their idea of a kilometer draws out to be 100m (people have a tendency to overestimate distance), then the shot was 100m. If they draw it alternately to 100 and 200m, then sometimes they can shoot to 200m. Interesting, you seem able to take the first idea but not the others.

Seriously, though, when it comes to writing, aren't the intuitive guesses you mention just as good? You -shouldn't- be pulling numbers out of a hat and then looking them up against known values to see what kind of implications they have. If you're designing a magical shot, you don't just say "oh, it's three million thaums" and then look up on the table and say "uh, my rookie pilot is more powerful than Hayate, lol!" The correct way to do that is to decide the implications you're looking for, then reference the numbers... except by that point you don't even really need them.

If that's the consequence you got out of scientific analysis, maybe the real question is whether you are writing the right story.

Take the season 1 "magical power reading", when they pull out a big number to measure Nanoha and Fate's power. Never happens again, right? Even though there's plenty of opportunities to measure whether a particular mage is powerful or not, right? That's because, at the end of the day, putting a number on everything just leads to the "THAT'S OVER 9000!" school of thinking, and this ain't Dragon Ball.

Fortunately, the magical power reading doesn't have a unit attached. The rank system just substituted for it in looser terms.

[Kikaifan]

Actually, in real life you may only have one real observation. In animation or film, you can replay over and over again to fix the observation more precisely. So it isn't ALL a one way street.

Reviewing a recording to refine your measurement doesn't change that the recording represents only one observation of one event. Ask Fleischmann and Pons what one observation is worth.

That's one of the beauties of the SoD system. You stop caring about what you thought the creators had in mind. If the creators thought they were making a competent force but weren't, you just take what you see. If their idea of a kilometer draws out to be 100m (people have a tendency to overestimate distance), then the shot was 100m. If they draw it alternately to 100 and 200m, then sometimes they can shoot to 200m. Interesting, you seem able to take the first idea but not the others.

The creators had a world made of physical matter in mind but the entire thing is clearly just a series of drawings. The creators had human characters in mind but clearly their anatomy is anything but human. The creators had Earth in mind as the setting but there's no evidence that anything other than 'Uminari City' and 'some ocean' exist.

At some level you're accepting the creators' intent, or your entire system would self-negate when it reached the conclusion that the setting it is being applied to isn't real.

[tshouryuu]

Hi guys sorry to interrupt, but a group of us (me, Lowegear, AdmiralTigerclaw, WildGoose, Jimmy_C, LimitedEternal, ghazghkull) were discussing about barrier jackets. We came up with something like this and would like for you guys you see if what we think can be correct.

Barrier Jackets - A theory
BJ defends from kinetic impact
BJ does so via bleeding the energy into the atmosphere, dispersing the energy (incidentally producing those cool clothing flapping scenes when mages block shots)
BJ primary defense against Kinetic Impacts is the default Field which is set to anti-kinetic
Thus, as BJ is set to protect against hi-energy kinetic impacts, beams travel slower so as to not have to deal with the kinetic protection
Kinetic protection is kept on the BJs due to risk of falling/being thrown really freakin' fast
Similarly, BJs protect against bullet penetration by bleeding all that kinetic energy into the atmosphere, thus leaving no penetration (The impact will still be painful though)
This explains also why melee works against mages. And it may be the reason why the ban on conventional weapons is successful.

In summary, the faster the attack, the more the BJ protects and the slower the attack, the less the BJ protects.

What do you guys think?

[arkhangelsk]

Reviewing a recording to refine your measurement doesn't change that the recording represents only one observation of one event. Ask Fleischmann and Pons what one observation is worth.

Actually, one observation about one event is often a practical limit. You can only have so many cameras anyway.

You seem to be of the type that insists that if the Observation is imperfect, you think that wild-a*sed guesses are equal.

The creators had a world made of physical matter in mind but the entire thing is clearly just a series of drawings. The creators had human characters in mind but clearly their anatomy is anything but human. The creators had Earth in mind as the setting but there's no evidence that anything other than 'Uminari City' and 'some ocean' exist.

At some level you're accepting the creators' intent, or your entire system would self-negate when it reached the conclusion that the setting it is being applied to isn't real.

For the second question, they do, however, state that it is Earth, though. They don't just imply it is, the 97th World is clearly Earth.

The first and third question are a little harder, because it is anime. But ultimately the base question is the same. What will we do if this were all real, that this represents a real situation. The anime, thus, becomes the recreation of that situation, and one of the few sources we have (we have the manga and the one novel too). Are you going to throw up your hands or are you going to buckle down and analyze?

[Sheba]

In summary, the faster the attack, the more the BJ protects and the slower the attack, the less the BJ protects.


It's kinda how fighters in Dune Universe dealt with personal shields.

[arkhangelsk]

Hi guys sorry to interrupt, but a group of us (me, Lowegear, AdmiralTigerclaw, WildGoose, Jimmy_C, LimitedEternal, ghazghkull) were discussing about barrier jackets. We came up with something like this and would like for you guys you see if what we think can be correct.

Barrier Jackets - A theory
BJ defends from kinetic impact
BJ does so via bleeding the energy into the atmosphere, dispersing the energy (incidentally producing those cool clothing flapping scenes when mages block shots)
BJ primary defense against Kinetic Impacts is the default Field which is set to anti-kinetic
Thus, as BJ is set to protect against hi-energy kinetic impacts, beams travel slower so as to not have to deal with the kinetic protection
Kinetic protection is kept on the BJs due to risk of falling/being thrown really freakin' fast
Similarly, BJs protect against bullet penetration by bleeding all that kinetic energy into the atmosphere, thus leaving no penetration (The impact will still be painful though)
This explains also why melee works against mages. And it may be the reason why the ban on conventional weapons is successful.

In summary, the faster the attack, the more the BJ protects and the slower the attack, the less the BJ protects.

What do you guys think?

I can buy the idea that they protect against bullet penetration, but is somewhat marginal since as far as can be seen, BJs are pretty darn soft (clothing like) things that even the wind can sometimes ripple. If they are made of a material with high tensile strength despite the apparent softness, then they can prevent outright penetration, but a soft material cannot provide enough deceleration in the short distance to stop the bullet ("bleed" all KE), so the bullet still touches skin along with the clothing and may even penetrate part way until the clothing can finally apply enough deceleration. Worse, the softness of the BJ favors the bullet - it does not deform (taking the KE with it as strain energy) as it will against a hard surface - the clothing and skin does all the deforming.

Overall, it is more believable to mumble that they use Panzergeist to defend against bullets. That, at least, is hard, and even Signum freezes when using it.

As for the idea that the BJ will somehow be more protective against a high velocity attack, well, that is pretty hard to buy. Whatever the mechanism, sheer velocity, all other factors being equal, will force the dispersing system (with no clear mechanism mentioned) to disperse more KE and give it a shorter period of time to do it in.

[Kha]

I can buy the idea that they protect against bullet penetration, but is somewhat marginal since as far as can be seen, BJs are pretty darn soft (clothing like) things that even the wind can sometimes ripple. If they are made of a material with high tensile strength despite the apparent softness, then they can prevent outright penetration, but a soft material cannot provide enough deceleration in the short distance to stop the bullet ("bleed" all KE), so the bullet still touches skin along with the clothing and may even penetrate part way until the clothing can finally apply enough deceleration. Worse, the softness of the BJ favors the bullet - it does not deform (taking the KE with it as strain energy) as it will against a hard surface - the clothing and skin does all the deforming.

Overall, it is more believable to mumble that they use Panzergeist to defend against bullets. That, at least, is hard, and even Signum freezes when using it.

As for the idea that the BJ will somehow be more protective against a high velocity attack, well, that is pretty hard to buy. Whatever the mechanism, sheer velocity, all other factors being equal, will force the dispersing system (with no clear mechanism mentioned) to disperse more KE and give it a shorter period of time to do it in.Think water. Move your hand slowly and it yields; slap it harder and your hand would hurt. Possibly replicates this effect, or even just hardens momentarily upon impact? It's a magic material after all.

[arkhangelsk]

Think water. Move your hand slowly and it yields; slap it harder and your hand would hurt. Possibly replicates this effect, or even just hardens momentarily upon impact? It's a magic material after all.

I knew that this "water analogy" would come up. I've actually considered it myself.

However, that's not quite the same thing. The water actually still puts up resistance - it is just that your velocity is slower so you don't feel it as hard. If it is high velocity, the forces acting on your hand is harder so it starts to hurt, but if you ignore the pain, you should still reach out further down than you would if the velocity is slower, all else being equal (its hard to do it with a hand because when you are moving it down, you concurrently apply force even if you try not to).

As for hardening momentarily upon impact. The best way to get past a hard material is still a tougher penetrator and a high velocity. Unless it has a gate velocity during which it does not harden. That could work, except then the Gate is set all wrong. 60m/s is still ~200km/h, and 16m/s will still be ~50. Do you really want your BJ to not protect you against things of that velocity range coming at you.

[PhoenixG]

About the water analogy, You forget about the surface impact. A large surface gives more resistant than small surface. If the object is small it will penetrate deeper than an big object that travel at the same speed.

In summary, the faster the attack, the more the BJ protects and the slower the attack, the less the BJ protects.

The size of the attack also matter.

(From IRC)
Nanoha falls through concrete (thanks to eisen) -> little damage on BJ.
Eisen hit Nanoha's BJ -> destroys outer layer of BJ.

The energy that hit Nanoha's BJ is about the same, so size of the attack matters.

[arkhangelsk]

Eisen hit Nanoha's BJ -> destroys outer layer of BJ.

I thought that was the Reactor Purge running. But indeed, you are correct that area of attack matters too, but that's something that favors conventional weapons. Divine Buster is a literal shotgun blast. Not to mention of course hydrodynamics - just change from sticking your palm flat to sticking it into the water vertically, and penetrating becomes much easier.

[PhoenixG]

Well I'm leaning that BJ is unable to protect against conventional weapons.

[Nightengale]

Depending on what factor we're talking about, it doesn't make sense for BJs to not have protection against conventional weapons, considering stuff like sudden G-forces are heavily dampened by BJs, clearly.

I'm almost wondering if BJs have any dampening effect on things like extremely loud sound or something. Being in the constant presence of explosions and probably strong lights doesn't seem to have any degree of effect on mages.

[Wild Goose]

I can buy the idea that they protect against bullet penetration, but is somewhat marginal since as far as can be seen, BJs are pretty darn soft (clothing like) things that even the wind can sometimes ripple. If they are made of a material with high tensile strength despite the apparent softness, then they can prevent outright penetration, but a soft material cannot provide enough deceleration in the short distance to stop the bullet ("bleed" all KE), so the bullet still touches skin along with the clothing and may even penetrate part way until the clothing can finally apply enough deceleration. Worse, the softness of the BJ favors the bullet - it does not deform (taking the KE with it as strain energy) as it will against a hard surface - the clothing and skin does all the deforming.

Overall, it is more believable to mumble that they use Panzergeist to defend against bullets. That, at least, is hard, and even Signum freezes when using it.

As for the idea that the BJ will somehow be more protective against a high velocity attack, well, that is pretty hard to buy. Whatever the mechanism, sheer velocity, all other factors being equal, will force the dispersing system (with no clear mechanism mentioned) to disperse more KE and give it a shorter period of time to do it in.

...we're not talking about the fabric. Please reread point 3. "BJ primary defense against Kinetic Impacts is the default Field which is set to anti-kinetic."

I want to point out that the Barrier Jacket, as stated by Rein in A's to StrikerS, consists of 2 main forms of magical defense: a Barrier and a Field. The Barrier is the smaller scale version of a full on protective barrier. The Field, as explained by Rein, can be set to specifically be anti-condition, such as anti-cold (that being the example she used.) Thus, to expand in fuller form of the theory:

The Barrier Jacket is the last-ditch defense of a mage against attack/falling. The Field is set to dampen the effects of kinetic impact (note that they way Rein explains the Field, is that it has a dampening effect on the conditions it's set against), spreading out the impact across the mage's body and bleeding the energy away into the atmosphere.

We're not referring to the fabric of the BJ at all. We're talking about the Field that is part of the BJ's defenses.

EDIT: To follow on to Nighty, the current theory is that the Barrier Jacket's protections are from two sources: Barrier and Field, as stated by Rein in A's to StrikerS. The Barrier serves to protect against beamfire and probably winds etc. The Field is probably set to protect against environmental/element threats, such as cold (Rein's example), and possibly loud noises, impact, etc. This is the theory we're discussing.

The 4 types of defence are Barrier, Shield, Field and Physical Shield. Rein makes no mention of the Barrier Jacket's fabric having Physical Shield properties, only mentioning that it uses a combo of Barrier and Field.

Furthermore, mentions of Panzergeist vs Knight Armor/Barrier Jacket are apples & oranges. The Barrier Jacket is the last ditch defense. It's like wearing a "bulletproof" vest. The Barrier and Shield spells and Panzergeist are like summoning tank armor to protect you. Totally different things. Note that Fate took one helluva fall in A's and yet is alright, while nobody would dream of tanking beamfire without at least a Shield.

Also, "beams travel slower" is meant relatively in comparison to rifle rounds. And I recall a huge amount of arguing on rifle rounds being faster than beams, and it being decided that beams were faster.

Also, Ark, I would like to point out that 100meters cannot possibly be the max range of beam attacks as Vice was sniping the ball Drones on the Cradle and that was too far to be 300 feet. I've paced it out and measured with own eyes how large human targets appear at 300 feet.

EDIT: Dispersing system: Magic.

There's a reason this show is called Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.

[arkhangelsk]

Depending on what factor we're talking about, it doesn't make sense for BJs to not have protection against conventional weapons, considering stuff like sudden G-forces are heavily dampened by BJs, clearly.

They do protect to some extent. But a bashing is generally a wide area blunt (thus non-aerodynamic) attack equivalent.

I'm almost wondering if BJs have any dampening effect on things like extremely loud sound or something. Being in the constant presence of explosions and probably strong lights doesn't seem to have any degree of effect on mages.

Ep7 A's suggests No. Or at least it doesn' t suppress things nearly enough. Tricks like Eisenguel would have no meaning if the standard defense can attenuate them to the point that their suppressive effect is lost. This, I'm sure, is something that would hold even to someone from the Literary POV.

[Wild Goose]

Ep7 A's suggests No. Or at least it doesn' t suppress things nearly enough. Tricks like Eisenguel would have no meaning if the standard defense can attenuate them to the point that their suppressive effect is lost. This, I'm sure, is something that would hold even to someone from the Literary POV.

I think it probably is similar to earplugs and flashbangs. The bang may be somewhat muted but still painful, and bright light can be physically painful; don't ask me how it is, I can only speak from personal experience of bright lights (and getting yelled at for shining a spotlight into someone's eyes).

Eisengehaul is a magical flashbang on an uber scale, I have no problems with it.

EDIT: Another ignored post? :rolleyes: C'mon, surely you can find something to reply to the theory of how Fields protect from Kinetic impact.

[arkhangelsk]

...we're not talking about the fabric. Please reread point 3. "BJ primary defense against Kinetic Impacts is the default Field which is set to anti-kinetic."

I read it. However, even in Reactor Purge, it isn't the barrier / field that blows, it is the fabric (and we are using that term metamorphically). This suggests the fabric and the defensive barrier / field complex are one, with the "fabric" being the visible portion. :D

I want to point out that the Barrier Jacket, as stated by Rein in A's to StrikerS, consists of 2 main forms of magical defense: a Barrier and a Field.

Actually, Nanoha said all of this, but never mind...

And if a field stops "environmental effects", like temperature and gases, which generally intrude into the defensive area at low velocity, it is difficult to imagine it stopping a discrete high velocity object.

If anything, it'll be the barrier's "gentle-stop" function that provides the canonical anti-shock protection.

Further, despite several paragraphs, you still had not gotten to within a lightyear of my main objection. Call it a field, call it a barrier, but why will it be more effective in attenuating high velocity than low.

Also, "beams travel slower" is meant relatively in comparison to rifle rounds. And I recall a huge amount of arguing on rifle rounds being faster than beams, and it being decided that beams were faster.

In other words, it means conventional weaponry. By the way, objective measurement suggests that MGLN beams, unfortunately, are not faster during their transit phases. Why do you think the weeping went on for so long.

Also, Ark, I would like to point out that 100meters cannot possibly be the max range of beam attacks as Vice was sniping the ball Drones on the Cradle and that was too far to be 300 feet. I've paced it out and measured with own eyes how large human targets appear at 300 feet.

Wow, how did this total red herring get in here. In any case, I should hope Vice can shoot over 100 (heck, he should shoot over 600) - he's a sniper and he actually has a stock and scope.

[arkhangelsk]

... you guys have been on IRC too long. With posts, even a 24-72 hour delay is not really running.

I think it probably is similar to earplugs and flashbangs. The bang may be somewhat muted but still painful, and bright light can be physically painful; don't ask me how it is, I can only speak from personal experience of bright lights (and getting yelled at for shining a spotlight into someone's eyes).

That's why I'm only willing to go as far as they don't suppress nearly enough. Another problem with them a strong noise attenuation is that they will attenuate all noise, including voices (like a earplug), yet they have little trouble talking to each other.

[Wild Goose]

Will reply more in-depth tomorrow, quick glossy reply before i sleep. Ah, waking up at 5 am...
I read it. However, even in Reactor Purge, it isn't the barrier / field that blows, it is the fabric (and we are using that term metamorphically). This suggests the fabric and the defensive barrier / field complex are one, with the "fabric" being the visible portion. :D
...regards Reactor Purge, Keroko and TK had a hugeass argument over it; can't remember the specifics on whether the fabric is converted into mana or whatsits.

Actually, Nanoha said all of this, but never mind...

And if a field stops "environmental effects", like temperature and gases, which generally intrude into the defensive area at low velocity, it is difficult to imagine it stopping a discrete high velocity object.

If anything, it'll be the barrier's "gentle-stop" function that provides the canonical anti-shock protection.

Further, despite several paragraphs, you still had not gotten to within a lightyear of my main objection. Call it a field, call it a barrier, but why will it be more effective in attenuating high velocity than low.
Actually we're trying to hash out WHY it will be better. I'm playing advocate for the Field theory. I personally think it's the Barrier that does it, but I want to hash out and see if the field is a possibility.

There's a reason we called it a theory and called for discussion.

In other words, it means conventional weaponry. By the way, objective measurement suggests that MGLN beams, unfortunately, are not faster during their transit phases. Why do you think the weeping went on for so long.
This was a typo; I intended to type "rifle rounds" and mistyped beams.:heh:

Wow, how did this total red herring get in here. In any case, I should hope Vice can shoot over 100 (heck, he should shoot over 600) - he's a sniper and he actually has a stock and scope.
I have Asperger's. Most of the symptoms, anyway. This was totally random and i wanted to put it in because i figured might as well since i was posting.

... you guys have been on IRC too long. With posts, even a 24-72 hour delay is not really running.
Actually, it's only since Friday for us Azns that Outer Cadia went to IRC; but even before then, OC moves a helluva lotta faster than the other threads on Animesuki, it seems.

[PhoenixG]

And if a field stops "environmental effects", like temperature and gases, which generally intrude into the defensive area at low velocity, it is difficult to imagine it stopping a discrete high velocity object.


Stop is a bit strong word. It's more reduce the effect. If it's able to stop the effect one can even swim in lava without feeling the heat for example. -.-

[arkhangelsk]

...regards Reactor Purge, Keroko and TK had a hugeass argument over it; can't remember the specifics on whether the fabric is converted into mana or whatsits.

Well, Tk and I don't always agree on everything either (he's a much bigger fan of the subspace bag than I am), so even if he has a conclusion, it is not impossible I may have another.

There's a reason we called it a theory and called for discussion.

When tshouryuu posted it up, it sounded like almost a done deal that you guys already finished hashing out on IRC and just wanted to see what "The Big Pessimistic Rock" (me) had to say since I don't go to IRC :D

[SpaceBrotha]

And if a field stops "environmental effects", like temperature and gases, which generally intrude into the defensive area at low velocity, it is difficult to imagine it stopping a discrete high velocity object.

and why is that? if the field is set to resist cold, it merely is stopping energy from transferring between the user and the environment, hence providing safety from cold...
why not merely adjust the field to resist objects from outside from moving to the inside, effectively creating a dampening field... and the rapid slowing would wreck havoc to just about anything that enters the field.


Further, despite several paragraphs, you still had not gotten to within a lightyear of my main objection. Call it a field, call it a barrier, but why will it be more effective in attenuating high velocity than low.

Then mind telling me why water stops a higher velocity bullet far more effectively than a slower moving bullet?
AFAIK, it was because the bullet cannot take the forces that affect it upon entering water, and breaking apart, thus lessening the amount of force (and hence distance) needed to fully bring it to a halt...
...and since the water resists harder when the bullet enters with a greater velocity, the bullet breaks down faster if it has a greater velocity.
And the entire field is part of the BJ provided by an intelligent device, which seem to have rather good sensory capabilities (bardiche noting suzuka and arisa when they were still rather far away, and out of LoS) so the field would be adjusted to dampen the bullet by the time it was shot, thanks to the AI in the device.


In other words, it means conventional weaponry. By the way, objective measurement suggests that MGLN beams, unfortunately, are not faster during their transit phases. Why do you think the weeping went on for so long.

Actually the speed seems to vary quite a lot, from vices sniper rifle and nanoha divine bustering vita being good examples of seemingly near instantaneous travel of the beam, while some of the 'regular' beam attacks are slow enough to be dodged...

[Keroko]

Wow, how did this total red herring get in here. In any case, I should hope Vice can shoot over 100 (heck, he should shoot over 600) - he's a sniper and he actually has a stock and scope.

And why should that increase range? Accuracy, yes, but range?

Actually the speed seems to vary quite a lot, from vices sniper rifle and nanoha divine bustering vita being good examples of seemingly near instantaneous travel of the beam, while some of the 'regular' beam attacks are slow enough to be dodged...

Hence why we have the entire 'what do the creators intent VS what do we see' debate. It is obvious that simply observing is not an accurate measure of deciding that magic is faster or slower then normal projectiles. Judging by Vice and Nanoha, we can assume that magic can travel at similar speeds, but the action is merely slowed for dramatic effect.

[Nightengale]

I think debating on the 'range' thing just because Vice has something shaped like a proper weapon is kinda moot. Canonically, Vice is a out-range specialist to the point that despite he's good enough to be called an Ace however limited he is, so that kind of range should be no problem to him.

Since Teana, if I recall, was closer to an all-rounder round of shooter with her last limiter allowing her attack range to be greatly increased, it's doubtful that it's as far as Vice's maximum range.

Hence why we have the entire 'what do the creators intent VS what do we see' debate. It is obvious that simply observing is not an accurate measure of deciding that magic is faster or slower then normal projectiles. Judging by Vice and Nanoha, we can assume that magic can travel at similar speeds, but the action is merely slowed for dramatic effect.

There's also different types of magic as well, from homing ones to ones quoted 'high velocity.'

[tshouryuu]

I read it. However, even in Reactor Purge, it isn't the barrier / field that blows, it is the fabric (and we are using that term metamorphically). This suggests the fabric and the defensive barrier / field complex are one, with the "fabric" being the visible portion. :D
One question why are you talking about barrier purge when we're talking about the fields? I don't really get this.


Actually, Nanoha said all of this, but never mind...

And if a field stops "environmental effects", like temperature and gases, which generally intrude into the defensive area at low velocity, it is difficult to imagine it stopping a discrete high velocity object.

If anything, it'll be the barrier's "gentle-stop" function that provides the canonical anti-shock protection.

Further, despite several paragraphs, you still had not gotten to within a lightyear of my main objection. Call it a field, call it a barrier, but why will it be more effective in attenuating high velocity than low.
We don't know exactly. That's why the theory was posted. To see if what I posted with help from the rest could actually be the reason. I mentioned it.

The barrier jacket protects in proportion to the amount of kinetic energy applied behind an attack/impact.

Exactly how it does this is unknown. We think that the field of a BJ bleeds the kinetic energy into the atmosphere. Or It maybe like what SpaceBrotha mention, the field acts like how water stops a higher velocity bullet far more effectively than a slower moving bullet.

Personally I'm asking could this theory hold any water at all. Its a theory. Its not like we have a mage to test this out on or a barrier jacket to break down to see how it works.

[arkhangelsk]

and why is that? if the field is set to resist cold, it merely is stopping energy from transferring between the user and the environment, hence providing safety from cold...
why not merely adjust the field to resist objects from outside from moving to the inside, effectively creating a dampening field... and the rapid slowing would wreck havoc to just about anything that enters the field.

Wouldn't that usually be called a shield. Stopping cold and gases is a matter of stopping low velocity objects (in atmosphere, cold and heat is mostly transmitted by conduction and convection, both relatively low velocity), as opposed to stopping something capable of crossing the field space in a fraction of a second.

AFAIK, it was because the bullet cannot take the forces that affect it upon entering water, and breaking apart, thus lessening the amount of force (and hence distance) needed to fully bring it to a halt...

Actually, the force to stop it would have been the same. When the bullet breaks up, the area of the bullet's frontal cross section effectively increases, so it reduces the pressure. And even then, the bullets took up to 90cm to break. A Barrier Jacket will be lucky to have nine centimeters to work with, so the bullet is far less likely to break before hitting skin with its higher KE.

...and since the water resists harder when the bullet enters with a greater velocity, the bullet breaks down faster if it has a greater velocity.

Most people will resolve breakup problems by toughening the shell of the round, such as using steel rather than using soft lead, rather than reducing velocity.

And the entire field is part of the BJ provided by an intelligent device, which seem to have rather good sensory capabilities (bardiche noting suzuka and arisa when they were still rather far away, and out of LoS) so the field would be adjusted to dampen the bullet by the time it was shot, thanks to the AI in the device.

ROFTLMAO. Arisa and Suzuka were enormously easy detections in the kekkai. They were pretty much the only two unidentified lifeforms, which means Bardiche picked them up out of a noise level of roughly zero. How that translates to picking up tiny supersonic bullets is difficult to imagine.

Actually the speed seems to vary quite a lot, from vices sniper rifle and nanoha divine bustering vita being good examples of seemingly near instantaneous travel of the beam, while some of the 'regular' beam attacks are slow enough to be dodged...

Actually, Nanoha DBing Vita is one of the slower examples of high powered beam speed - so many seconds elapsed that it was rated at only 16m/s. Vice's sniper rifle had a more decent velocity though.

And why should that increase range? Accuracy, yes, but range?

Effective Range is partially a function of accuracy. Bullet velocity being another factor.

Hence why we have the entire 'what do the creators intent VS what do we see' debate. It is obvious that simply observing is not an accurate measure of deciding that magic is faster or slower then normal projectiles. Judging by Vice and Nanoha, we can assume that magic can travel at similar speeds, but the action is merely slowed for dramatic effect.

Creator's intent is almost useless, especially in situations where they hadn't thought about it. Even if you catch them in an interview and they quick-wit up a semi-usable answer, it is very doubtful that's what they thought when they made it. So what is canon, is it their intention as they drew the slides or their retroactive thoughts during a post-production interview? Endless debates here alone for no result.

Obviously, what happened is that some rounds do travel faster than others, but it will be a rare one indeed that even has the speed of a pistol bullet.

One question why are you talking about barrier purge when we're talking about the fields? I don't really get this.

The point is how integrated the whole BJ system is.

Exactly how it does this is unknown. We think that the field of a BJ bleeds the kinetic energy into the atmosphere. Or It maybe like what SpaceBrotha mention, the field acts like how water stops a higher velocity bullet far more effectively than a slower moving bullet.

As a general defense system, a defense method counting on convenient target characteristics is extremely iffy. When they tested the bullet on water thing on Mythbusters (http://mythbustersresults.com/episode34), they were using lead bullets, which are soft and thus easier to deform. Change it with a tough material like AP-steel and that effect goes.

Yes, a higher KE incident means more energy that can potentially go into deforming the bullet. However, which side takes most of the KE damage greatly depends on which side is stronger, and since a BJ defensive complex, to all presentations is relatively soft and flexible, it won't be winning many such fights.

[Keroko]

Wouldn't that usually be called a shield. Stopping cold and gases is a matter of stopping low velocity objects (in atmosphere, cold and heat is mostly transmitted by conduction and convection, both relatively low velocity), as opposed to stopping something capable of crossing the field space in a fraction of a second.

I believe Signum already showed us that fastmoving projectiles can be stopped with a Field as well. True, they were magical projectiles, but projectiles nonetheless.

ROFTLMAO. Arisa and Suzuka were enormously easy detections in the kekkai. They were pretty much the only two unidentified lifeforms, which means Bardiche picked them up out of a noise level of roughly zero. How that translates to picking up tiny supersonic bullets is difficult to imagine.

he only mass carying object withing the area moving at supersonic speed perhaps?

Actually, Nanoha DBing Vita is one of the slower examples of high powered beam speed - so many seconds elapsed that it was rated at only 16m/s. Vice's sniper rifle had a more decent velocity though.

Which begs the question, why didn't Vita simply dodge it? If it was so slow moving surely she would have been able to dodge. This is yet another example that the speed witnessed on the timer =/= actual speed of the beam.

Effective Range is partially a function of accuracy. Bullet velocity being another factor.

Now it's 'effective' range all of a sudden? Range in this case is how much space the beam can cross. I see no reason why scopes and stocks increase this.

Also, with the use of mental scopes, you can already eliminate one of the advantages of a rifle, leaving you with the stock.

Creator's intent is almost useless, especially in situations where they hadn't thought about it. Even if you catch them in an interview and they quick-wit up a semi-usable answer, it is very doubtful that's what they thought when they made it. So what is canon, is it their intention as they drew the slides or their retroactive thoughts during a post-production interview? Endless debates here alone for no result.

Obviously, what happened is that some rounds do travel faster than others, but it will be a rare one indeed that even has the speed of a pistol bullet.

So if we see people dodging or blocking bullets in anime, or if we see the bullets flying, that automatically means that the bullets are going slower then usual?

[arkhangelsk]

I believe Signum already showed us that fastmoving projectiles can be stopped with a Field as well. True, they were magical projectiles, but projectiles nonetheless.

Panzergeist? That'll be a very hard field that bears little resemblance to a BJ. Signum was basically a statue when it was activated.

he only mass carying object withing the area moving at supersonic speed perhaps?

They are small, they don't emit even the slightest of magical waves... and so on. And if it detects say a rifle round at 300m (very optimistic), it'll have 1/3rd of a second to complete vector calculation, calculate the correct setting for the field, adjust the magic ... a very busy 1/3rd of a second indeed!

Which begs the question, why didn't Vita simply dodge it? If it was so slow moving surely she would have been able to dodge. This is yet another example that the speed witnessed on the timer =/= actual speed of the beam.

Why didn't Quattro or Dieci at least try an evasive maneuver while Nanoha and Fate were charging? Psychologically, she's so shocked that Nanoha even attempted the shot she couldn't move.

Now it's 'effective' range all of a sudden? Range in this case is how much space the beam can cross. I see no reason why scopes and stocks increase this.

Most of the time, when people refer to range, they refer to the effective range. When you look at a RPG-7's "range", most of the time they tell you 300 or 500m, even though the round itself self destructs at 920m.

Also, with the use of mental scopes, you can already eliminate one of the advantages of a rifle, leaving you with the stock.

There we still go. Stabilization is important in long shoots, unless you plan to burn your energy with unchoked shotgun blasts.

So if we see people dodging or blocking bullets in anime, or if we see the bullets flying, that automatically means that the bullets are going slower then usual?

Show me scene, show you answer. Sometimes, time compression is a valid answer - for example, when that missile detonated in uber slow motion in Behind Enemy Lines. One shouldn't just assume it to get out of a slow speed, though.

Good night.

[Jimmy C]

While this is very interesting, can we get back to the point?
Is there any indication of magical defense construction that can make conventional weapons ineffective in Nanoha? Tshouryuu thinks there has to be in order for the ban to be practical.?
I hadn't thought of that while we were discussing the conditions that could make the ban possible.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Something I suggested to go with shour's comments, but I don't think made it into the conversation as a whole, was that jacket defense fields and barriers reacted smartly.

I'm thinking in terms of experimental Carbon Ballistic Cloth or some kind of carbon buckyball ballistic gel (which I can't find anywhere, but a conversation I had with someone.)

I think it's the carbon buckyball gel I'm thinking of.
Anyway, normally it's gel-like and sealed in packets.

***Pause

I found the post... it was on spacebattles... and it was crystle gel lattice suspended in a liquid.


For your armor problems there's actually a simple solution. Carbon ballistic cloth (hereafter referred to as CBC)

Basically, take carbon nanotubes (buckytubes) and make a very thight-weave fabric with them. Very strong stuff (theoretically) can be made while at the same time being flexible. For added stopping power back the CBC with a crystal structure suspended in a liquid (something like this). When hit with kinetic energy the crystals lock up, making it rigid. Otherwise its flexible (this stuff is currently in development. Sadly I don't have any links, if someone could provide them I'd be grateful). As an added bonus, carbon can take a substantial amount of heat, which would make it capable of taking charged particle beams to some extent.

Alternatively you could use a form of CBC on the joins, with armor plates where you don't need motion. Would probably provide better protection than just CBC alone, and allow the strength augmentation. Having CBC with plate armor also allows for you to more easily establish the desired escape segments.


What I'm suggesting is that the field and barrier acts on par with the crystal gel suggested by that Spacebattles poster. Normally it's soft and moves freely, but an impact, such as a bullet or high force blunt impact compress the field and trigger the barrier. (Who says the barrier's the ouside?)
At this point it becomes rigid to prevent impact directly to the wearer as much as possible.

Smart-Jacket barrier jacket. The jacket iself could even be made of carbon nanotube-like materials in the fabric to further increase the effect.

[Keroko]

Panzergeist? That'll be a very hard field that bears little resemblance to a BJ. Signum was basically a statue when it was activated.

I was unaware that 'did not move' means 'unable to move at all' these days.

They are small, they don't emit even the slightest of magical waves... and so on. And if it detects say a rifle round at 300m (very optimistic), it'll have 1/3rd of a second to complete vector calculation, calculate the correct setting for the field, adjust the magic ... a very busy 1/3rd of a second indeed!

You have to remember it's a computer, not a human being.

Why didn't Quattro or Dieci at least try an evasive maneuver while Nanoha and Fate were charging? Psychologically, she's so shocked that Nanoha even attempted the shot she couldn't move.

Bull, according to your logic there was plenty of time to recover from her shock after she fired and move, and yet she didn't. She didn't even put up a defensive measure, despite being a combat veteran. Why? Because she didn't have the time.

Most of the time, when people refer to range, they refer to the effective range. When you look at a RPG-7's "range", most of the time they tell you 300 or 500m, even though the round itself self destructs at 920m.

There we still go. Stabilization is important in long shoots, unless you plan to burn your energy with unchoked shotgun blasts.

Yes, but the scope is still not an advantage of the rifle, as any device has one.

Show me scene, show you answer. Sometimes, time compression is a valid answer - for example, when that missile detonated in uber slow motion in Behind Enemy Lines. One shouldn't just assume it to get out of a slow speed, though.

So if you understand that, why do you still deny that much of the combat animations in Nanoha are slowed down for dramatic effect, but not representative of the rounds actuall speed?

For example, in A's 4, we see Chrono firing his Stinger Blade Execution Shift, and the projectiles move at a slow pace. As soon as Zafira raises his shield those very same projectiles suddenly hit the shield with what in anime standards is bullet speed. Did they accelerate to that speed in 1 second? No, they always were that fast, the animation was simply slowed for effect.

While this is very interesting, can we get back to the point?
Is there any indication of magical defense construction that can make conventional weapons ineffective in Nanoha? Tshouryuu thinks there has to be in order for the ban to be practical.?
I hadn't thought of that while we were discussing the conditions that could make the ban possible.

My logic is that if a barrier jacket can protect a mage from crashing through five layers of concrete, it can sure as hell stop a bullet. The mage was larger, and far less designed to pierce, and yet smashed through five layers of concrete and got out unscratched. I haven't seen a bullet acomplish the same feat.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

I wouldn't say 'unscratched'. Jacket or no, she was down long enough that Yuuno managed to hop the distance to check on her. But still, surviving impact through five layers of Steel Reinforced Concrete in an office building is on the order of magnitude of a bunker buster bomb.

What about an explosive reactive effect? I can see that blasting the concrete...

The other problem I'm still concerned about myself is accelleration. The same scene she goes through all that concrete is one where Signum struck we with enough force to go from 0 relative, to enough speed to cross the office building's height in a second, back down to 0 after impact.

Internal organs turn to mush there when the outside of the body tries to accellerate faster than maybe fifteen Gs. Conversation with shour suggested some kind of G suppression,diffusion, or magical inertial damping. But if that were perfect, it would be better to have her BOUNCE off the building, unless it fails under uncontrolled circumstances.

[Keroko]

With unscratched I meant 'no apparent injury' heck, it doesn't even seem to limit her movements after she dusted herself of and went back into the fray. Sure getting knocked through that building rattled her up, jacket or no, but with that kind of force force any normal person would have gone splat against the roof.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Use the correct terms then, or you give the opposition ammunition! Arc don't need more ammo!

[Keroko]

unscratched. Not a scratch on the body. I thought it'd be obvious. *shrug*

[arkhangelsk]

I was unaware that 'did not move' means 'unable to move at all' these days.

Generally, if you can defend and maneuver, that's what you'll do.

You have to remember it's a computer, not a human being.

How does being a computer grant it instant calculating speed?

Bull, according to your logic there was plenty of time to recover from her shock after she fired and move, and yet she didn't. She didn't even put up a defensive measure, despite being a combat veteran. Why? Because she didn't have the time.

Despite being a combat veteran, she has never seen a 100m shot. It is obvious she's shocked all the way through.

Yes, but the scope is still not an advantage of the rifle, as any device has one.

Actually, barrel alignment is still more ergonomically intuitive then off axis.

So if you understand that, why do you still deny that much of the combat animations in Nanoha are slowed down for dramatic effect, but not representative of the rounds actuall speed?

The point is that you must have a time reference before you can claim time compression.

Technically, when you claim a compression, you are actually throwing a small piece of evidence away. Thus, your theory will automatically be inferior to any theory that keeps it. Be extra careful when the conclusion gained by including time compression just happens to be what you wish.

For example, in A's 4, we see Chrono firing his Stinger Blade Execution Shift, and the projectiles move at a slow pace. As soon as Zafira raises his shield those very same projectiles suddenly hit the shield with what in anime standards is bullet speed. Did they accelerate to that speed in 1 second? No, they always were that fast, the animation was simply slowed for effect.

Anime standards bullet speed = Not.

My logic is that if a barrier jacket can protect a mage from crashing through five layers of concrete, it can sure as hell stop a bullet. The mage was larger, and far less designed to pierce, and yet smashed through five layers of concrete and got out unscratched. I haven't seen a bullet acomplish the same feat.

A mage also has far more mass, which allows the penetration to occur at a lower velocity. Add that we can't see exactly what happened, but that Defenser is already up. The possibility of an active defense can't be ignored here...

[Avatar_notADV]

I'm willing to grant the devices a hell of a lot of computing power. We have at least some idea of how hard it is to come up with artificial intelligence. We're granting that the devices are at least proto-sentient, and that they're actual AIs (and not, by contrast, trapped souls... except maybe Bardiche? That's unclear.) If the devices have the computing power to run their own personalities, and not -only- their own personalities but also other things as well, then they've got enough excess to do anything we ourselves find reasonable.

Calculating ballistic trajectories is -really easy- for a computer. (It's what they were built for!) Assuming that the device can see the projectile, it can figure out where it's headed, and evade/prompt the user to evade, or get ready to get smacked. On the other hand, the device can't automatically erect a magical barrier instantly - the barrier jacket has to actually take the hit.

I don't like the "slow shields" / Dune theory. For one thing, in Dune it strongly affects how they engage each other in hand-to-hand combat, whereas in Nanoha, they emphatically don't go for slow counters; Signum and Vita's fighting styles are more oriented towards overwhelming the enemy's defense, not sneaking through it.

Crucially, though, nobody really takes pot-shots at any of the characters with what we'd consider to be normal weapons, so it's tough to say. You'd THINK that it'd be easier to protect against a .44 magnum than a Starlight Breaker, right? But we don't actually know that, and "can protect you against a big magical blast" isn't necessarily the same as "can protect you from a lil' piece of metal moving really quickly".

As far as the reasoning behind the ban, the major objection presented in the show is that non-magical weapons can get out of hand, destroy whole cities, yadda yadda. Makes me feel that it's more of a cultural choice than something based on hard reason - they didn't ban pistols and nukes in the same sweep because they couldn't tell the difference, but because that difference didn't -matter- to them. Maybe they encountered a technology-heavy opponent in the past or something? Or had a civil war where there were nukes tossed around? (Now -that- would explain why there's so many bloody ruins!)

At the same time, it's interesting that Jail didn't resort to conventional weaponry either. The law isn't a problem to him, using banned technologies isn't a problem to him. That suggests that either he's just obsessed with his cyborg systems (plausible), or that they're not that effective in the face of even meager magical opposition. Specifically, it's interesting that he didn't mount a conventional weapon on the gadgets, given their AMF properties! (One of them did have rockets...)

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Jail DID use conventional weapons here and there... unless those missiles the drones were firing in StrikerS 11 at 14:45 WEREN'T missiles. And they look a lot like missiles to me. Really pathetic missiles, but still missiles.

[Kha]

Jail DID use conventional weapons here and there... unless those missiles the drones were firing in StrikerS 11 at 14:45 WEREN'T missiles. And they look a lot like missiles to me. Really pathetic missiles, but still missiles.Just a shot from the hip: In terms of what owns what, Bullets > Magic Barrier > Missiles? That way, a mage just has to have barriers to tank the missiles and dodge the bullets.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

But those were pathetic missiles. More like Macross micromissiles really.

If you want to bust barriers, you'll need a REAL missile, like a Harpoon Anti-ship missile. But then again, the drones were just to distract.

[Jimmy C]

Specifically, it's interesting that Jail didn't mount a conventional weapon on the gadgets, given their AMF properties!
We don't know if their beam guns were magically powered or not. And the Air Figthter Drones certainly carried air-to-air missles.
One important difference between Nanohaverse magical attacks and conventional weapons is that the former is self-sustaining. As long as the mage is fit, she can continue to launch attacks with the magic from her Linker Core.
Conventional weapons do not exist in isolation and more importantly, come in finite quantities. You can only carry a limited ammount of bullets, missles, explosives, etc into battle. Once they're expended, you need to rearm.
Manufacturing that ammo - alone! - requires massive industrial resources. Jail would have needed another factory just to build bullets if his drones use projectile guns. I think it would have increased the resource requirements for his operations by one third. It would also increase the size of his "cannon fodder" drones. If they had to carry bullets, the Type-1s would have been the same size as the Type-3s. Maybe he figured the performance of missles was worth the effort to build them, but bullets in the quantities needed were too much.

[arkhangelsk]

While this is very interesting, can we get back to the point?
Is there any indication of magical defense construction that can make conventional weapons ineffective in Nanoha? Tshouryuu thinks there has to be in order for the ban to be practical.?
I hadn't thought of that while we were discussing the conditions that could make the ban possible.

OK, the picture gets clearer. Tshouryuu is using Counter-Induction. Instead of thinking from what they clearly do have, he insists there is a requirement and wants to make up a system. The block bullet part is actually the less offensive part. The more effective against HV part is more.

Frankly, if I were some TSAB Battalion Commander tasked with taking out a bunch of conventional weapon wielding freaks, I'll request something a little tougher than the soft, fluffy BJs that seem to be the norm. Pseudomatter armor plate will work better - basically hard and tough. You use hard plate to stop penetrations and add the BJ's buffering effect and we can start doing something, at least against light weapons.

After that, it is a matter of organization. Given a simple linear situation, the battalion is to be organized into the following components:

1st Echelon = the best shielders
2nd Echelon
"Tail" = healers; I might need lots of them.
Elite mages (if I have any).

After teleporting as close as possible towards the enemy, I'll put my 1st echelon into a shallow box formation. Their task is to erect a shield wall and cover my 2nd echelon. Elite mages are to fire suppression at the enemy with area fires (read: randomly lobbing rounds). When you are badly outranged, suppression is your best friend. They should really be using natural cover too, but closure now is the other best friend, before my elites run out of energy to fire suppressive fire. If I don't have elites then the formation is still the same.

The 1st echelon has to last until we get to oh, say 50m. The 2nd echelon advances under the cover of the lead echelon. Forget overwatch unless I have a few snipers (with rifle-shaped devices with stocks) in my team - it'll slow down my SOA and overwatch is nearly useless if the overwatching units cannot engage the enemy effectively. At 50m, the line is to assault, and the support fire lifted. If there are no second lines that have to be suppressed, the elite mages are to advance to act as cavalry. Whether they are to come in close to fire, or outflank the enemy, or otherwise depends on my estimate of the situation.

The 2nd echelon attacks the enemy in pairs, so that one is always shielding, until the range gets into point blank. The healers come and heal the corpses.

By doing this, I should be able to attack a light weapon armed conventional line without losing my whole battalion. After this, I start writing another futile paper to TSAB higher-ups: "The Value of Magi-mech support on the battlefield...", followed by letters to the parents of the fallen...

We don't know if their beam guns were magically powered or not. And the Air Figthter Drones certainly carried air-to-air missles.
One important difference between Nanohaverse magical attacks and conventional weapons is that the former is self-sustaining. As long as the mage is fit, she can continue to launch attacks with the magic from her Linker Core.
Conventional weapons do not exist in isolation and more importantly, come in finite quantities. You can only carry a limited ammount of bullets, missles, explosives, etc into battle. Once they're expended, you need to rearm.
Manufacturing that ammo - alone! - requires massive industrial resources. Jail would have needed another factory just to build bullets if his drones use projectile guns. I think it would have increased the resource requirements for his operations by one third. It would also increase the size of his "cannon fodder" drones. If they had to carry bullets, the Type-1s would have been the same size as the Type-3s. Maybe he figured the performance of missles was worth the effort to build them, but bullets in the quantities needed were too much.

On the flip side, if it increases the effectiveness of his drones, he'll have to build less of those suckers.

NOTE: For the rest of you, wait. I actually have a busy workday today and so can't spend nearly as much time sneaking off replies to you.

[tshouryuu]

OK, the picture gets clearer. Tshouryuu is using Counter-Induction. Instead of thinking from what they clearly do have, he insists there is a requirement and wants to make up a system. The block bullet part is actually the less offensive part. The more effective against HV part is more.

Frankly, if I were some TSAB Battalion Commander tasked with taking out a bunch of conventional weapon wielding freaks, I'll request something a little tougher than the soft, fluffy BJs that seem to be the norm. Pseudomatter armor plate will work better - basically hard and tough. You use hard plate to stop penetrations and add the BJ's buffering effect and we can start doing something, at least against light weapons.

After that, it is a matter of organization. Given a simple linear situation, the battalion is to be organized into the following components:

1st Echelon = the best shielders
2nd Echelon
"Tail" = healers; I might need lots of them.
Elite mages (if I have any).

After teleporting as close as possible towards the enemy, I'll put my 1st echelon into a shallow box formation. Their task is to erect a shield wall and cover my 2nd echelon. Elite mages are to fire suppression at the enemy with area fires (read: randomly lobbing rounds). When you are badly outranged, suppression is your best friend. They should really be using natural cover too, but closure now is the other best friend, before my elites run out of energy to fire suppressive fire. If I don't have elites then the formation is still the same.

The 1st echelon has to last until we get to oh, say 50m. The 2nd echelon advances under the cover of the lead echelon. Forget overwatch unless I have a few snipers (with rifle-shaped devices with stocks) in my team - it'll slow down my SOA and overwatch is nearly useless if the overwatching units cannot engage the enemy effectively. At 50m, the line is to assault, and the support fire lifted. If there are no second lines that have to be suppressed, the elite mages are to advance to act as cavalry. Whether they are to come in close to fire, or outflank the enemy, or otherwise depends on my estimate of the situation.

The 2nd echelon attacks the enemy in pairs, so that one is always shielding, until the range gets into point blank. The healers come and heal the corpses.

By doing this, I should be able to attack a light weapon armed conventional line without losing my whole battalion. After this, I start writing another futile paper to TSAB higher-ups: "The Value of Magi-mech support on the battlefield...", followed by letters to the parents of the fallen...



On the flip side, if it increases the effectiveness of his drones, he'll have to build less of those suckers.

NOTE: For the rest of you, wait. I actually have a busy workday today and so can't spend nearly as much time sneaking off replies to you.
arkhangelsk, Let me repeat, I'm talking about the fields that come with the BJ not the actual material of the BJ itself...

[arkhangelsk]

Refer to post 831 (http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost.php?p=1450362&postcount=831).

[Wild Goose]

I want to remind everyone of something: when I theorised that the Fields don't work on slower attacks, i'm referring to "slower than rifle rounds." Vita and Signum as fast attackers, but are still slower than rifle rounds.

Unless y'all now wanna start arguing mages are faster...:rolleyes:

Fact is, I think it's probably the invisible barrier that absorbs the brunt of the attack and the field which slows it down. Refer to StrikerS Episode 4 when Erio scratches Nanoha's BJ.

[arkhangelsk]

What I'm suggesting is that the field and barrier acts on par with the crystal gel suggested by that Spacebattles poster. Normally it's soft and moves freely, but an impact, such as a bullet or high force blunt impact compress the field and trigger the barrier. (Who says the barrier's the ouside?)
At this point it becomes rigid to prevent impact directly to the wearer as much as possible.

Smart-Jacket barrier jacket. The jacket iself could even be made of carbon nanotube-like materials in the fabric to further increase the effect.

A trigger? Wow, man, sounds like my MV should go up so that it'll be all the way through before the barrier activates. Since a new defensive magic generally takes a second or so to deploy at least...

By the way, even granting it'll harden, its ability to "defend more effectively" as KE goes up (tsoushurryu's stipulation) will only apply if it is tougher than the projectile - the KE goes into deforming and destroying the round itself.

So, granting that it can toughen itself up enough to gain a strength advantage over a Terran bullet, it can indeed be "bulletproof" and thus save Mid mages from the embarassing fate of being crunched by a non-mage power who hasn't even really mastered spaceflight beyond the orbit.

However, it won't grant it much protection against their own ammunition. Whatever techniques are used to toughen up the suit in principle can be applied to projectiles as well, and not having to compromise b/w the soft and hard forms, it'll be tougher and thus the suit itself does most of the deforming, with deformation generally increasing with KE.

Now that I've played this little game, I'll point out again that this is an example of Counter-Induction, and it is a game of unfalsifiable endless speculation, with its only justification being someone's concept that BJs must have this functionality. At least Keroko tried Induction...

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Trigger? FTW you smokkin'?

Trigger's a weak term I admit. But I was thinking more of an inherent propperty. Like the crystal lattice gel, significant force impact makes it 'solidify' and become rigid. I'm not saying BJs can't be defeated, I'm just trying to help find a function principle how say You can knock a person stupid with your bare hands one moment and cut the fabric on their jacket, and the next moment someone gets smashed from zero, up to several hundred MPH, in under less than half a second, hurtling through the roof of an office building through five floors to come to a stop almost as fast, with the same destructive force as a bunker buster bomb's penetration. Normal humans, even reinforced, being mostly water, would become a bloody smear on the roof concrete... or at least have their internal organs adequetly pulped from the accellerations, or be smeared all over the inside of their barrier.

First Law of Thermodynamics, which magic has not violated, and that energy has to go SOMEWHERE. Where the FORK is it going?

[arkhangelsk]

Frankly, given that we saw little of what happened there, and your concession of the normal limitations of that BJ, wouldn't a simpler, more consistent explanation be active defense on Bardiche's part? After all, he had already fired off Defenser to ward off Signum's blow - is it too much to think he can aim that at the ground to protect Fate?

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Not good enough, and I actually fired that one and it got shot down. Defensor is directional, and that doesn't remove the effects of going from 0 to 200+ in under a second and back down to 0 just as fast.

EDIT: See, the problem with a barrier is that it is expressly stated to be a 'shell' of sorts.

The trouble with insane uncontrolled accellerations is that having something that's two feet in front of you won't really help it protect you from the other adverse effects of accelleration. Such as the desire for your body to go off in that direction while your internal organs desire to stay put. Newton calls that the second law of motion, I call it Sudden Prompt Local Accelleration Threshhold Syndrom. Or SPLAT!

That is STILL a massive concern with uncontroleld events.

[Keroko]

Generally, if you can defend and maneuver, that's what you'll do.

Psycological impact. Signum tells Levantine to 'bestow her armor' armor is made to move in. That aside, we know it is possible to move around with Fields, as everyone does it all the time. Increasing the density of the Field does not make in unable for someone to move.

How does being a computer grant it instant calculating speed?

Not instant perhaps, but very fast calculating speed. They have the technollogy to create sentient AI, they're leagues beyond the type of computers we have.

Despite being a combat veteran, she has never seen a 100m shot. It is obvious she's shocked all the way through.

For such a long time?

Actually, barrel alignment is still more ergonomically intuitive then off axis.

Uhm... I may be misunderstanding a few words here, but what does this have to do with the physical presence of a scope?

The point is that you must have a time reference before you can claim time compression.

Technically, when you claim a compression, you are actually throwing a small piece of evidence away. Thus, your theory will automatically be inferior to any theory that keeps it. Be extra careful when the conclusion gained by including time compression just happens to be what you wish.

*sigh* okay, another example, A's 5, around the 10:32 mark, Signum and Fate fight while viewed from a distance, they move fast, hitting eachother, rebound, and return multiple times within 1 second for several seconds in a row. When we move in for a close view, it suddenly takes them several seconds for those blows to hit. This is a clear and blatant sign that action is slown for dramatic effect.

Anime standards bullet speed = Not.

Okay, so I'll rephrase it: Chrono's Execution Shift moves as fast as bullets.

A mage also has far more mass, which allows the penetration to occur at a lower velocity.

But five layers of reinforced concrete? :eyebrow: Seriously, if a barrier jacket can stand up to that and let the mage come out only slightly rattled, then they sure as hell can stand up to a bullet.

Add that we can't see exactly what happened, but that Defenser is already up. The possibility of an active defense can't be ignored here...

Defenser is a frontal defense, even if it was active it wouldn't have done Fate any good.

[arkhangelsk]

Not good enough, and I actually fired that one and it got shot down. Defensor is directional,

So aim its directionality at the ground! Have you tried that?

and that doesn't remove the effects of going from 0 to 200+ in under a second and back down to 0 just as fast.

The main problem is that the barrier jacket is too thin.

Even if I grant the barrier jacket INFINITE strength, it isn't going to save Fate. The barrier jacket might be invulnerable, but Fate isn't. If that jacket hardens up in the fashion you suggest on impact, Fate's innards will be subject to even greater decelerative forces and become mincemeat even faster.

Her best chance, in fact, is distance. "Give", as they call it. It provides precious extra milliseconds to decelerate, decreasing the deceleration to a more human number. Exactly the kind of thing the relatively far from skin Defensor will give that skintight BJ field / barrier complex won't...

[Keroko]

So aim its directionality at the ground! Have you tried that?

Won't work, there is already a defenser aimed at blocking Signum's strike. Unless you're saying that Bardiche can instantly cast multiple defensers within the timeframe of one second (which I sincerely doupt) there was no way a defenser was active when Fate hit the building.

The Barrier Jacket's field, however, was.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

So aim its directionality at the ground! Have you tried that?



The main problem is that the barrier jacket is too thin.

Even if I grant the barrier jacket INFINITE strength, it isn't going to save Fate. The barrier jacket might be invulnerable, but Fate isn't. If that jacket hardens up in the fashion you suggest on impact, Fate's innards will be subject to even greater decelerative forces and become mincemeat even faster.

Her best chance, in fact, is distance. "Give", as they call it. It provides precious extra milliseconds to decelerate, decreasing the deceleration to a more human number. Exactly the kind of thing the relatively far from skin Defensor will give that skintight BJ field / barrier complex won't...

I'm not disagreeing with you there, I'm only saying that the blow defense is part of the issue. That's why I've been calling this a CONCERN not once, not twice, but THREE times lately.

Also, the GIVE isn't enough in the sequence. 200 to 0 in under a second will STILL Kill You Dead [/RAID!?]

The jacket has to:

1 - Defend from physical/magical impact.
(Field and Barrier)

2 - Defend from outragous accellerations. Especially concerning the external body components having accellerations != to internal organs.
(???)

3 - Provide atmospheric filtering conditions.
(Field)

4 - Provide basic comfort.
(Fabric and Field)

[arkhangelsk]

Psycological impact. Signum tells Levantine to 'bestow her armor' armor is made to move in.

Not all armor is made to do that, and not all armor is made for you to move with any ease.

That aside, we know it is possible to move around with Fields, as everyone does it all the time. Increasing the density of the Field does not make in unable for someone to move.

Does Panzergeist look like the standard strength standby field?

Not instant perhaps, but very fast calculating speed. They have the technollogy to create sentient AI, they're leagues beyond the type of computers we have.

I keep telling you, you are a sentient Natural Intelligence that is leagues beyond the computers we have. Now, how good are you with ballistic equations? Spotting bullets? Calculating their appropriate mechanical characteristics and the best theoretical defense according to mechanical engineering? Putting that theory into practice?

For such a long time?

Why not?

Uhm... I may be misunderstanding a few words here, but what does this have to do with the physical presence of a scope?

It is easier to aim when the barrel is pointing in the same direction. When the barrel is significantly off axis, there's two ways to present the mental scope - a muzzle eye view suddenly replacing your normal vision - rather discomforting, or a reticle that's not centered in your vision. Either will hardly make it easier to aim.

*sigh* okay, another example, A's 5, around the 10:32 mark, Signum and Fate fight while viewed from a distance, they move fast, hitting eachother, rebound, and return multiple times within 1 second for several seconds in a row. When we move in for a close view, it suddenly takes them several seconds for those blows to hit. This is a clear and blatant sign that action is slown for dramatic effect.

Better, but:
1) Even if I accept time manipulation, why isn't the far view a candidate for speeding up? This is actually more likely, since the far views at least have little noise, while the close view have them clashing, calling out attack names ... etc. Any time you have sounds (much less voices), there are real crimps as to how much the time can be compressed or dilated before all the sound goes to h*ll.
2) Why can't they just have changed the mode of engagement from fast skirmish to more determined grind.

Okay, so I'll rephrase it: Chrono's Execution Shift moves as fast as bullets.

Show me the analysis. Don't give me feelings. Do some work for a change.

Won't work, there is already a defenser aimed at blocking Signum's strike. Unless you're saying that Bardiche can instantly cast multiple defensers within the timeframe of one second (which I sincerely doupt) there was no way a defenser was active when Fate hit the building.

The Barrier Jacket's field, however, was.

Read what I wrote about the field. He'll only have to fire two and do it right. After Signum hits her, she can interrupt Defenser and reactivate it. Or he can just reorient it, whichever produces a better cycle time.

Compared to the problems of the Barrier Jacket field, a little extra ability on Bardiche's part is nothing. Further, maybe they had rotated during the fall and just happened to be in the right position, for all you know - as I said, we saw almost nothing.

I'm not disagreeing with you there, I'm only saying that the blow defense is part of the issue. That's why I've been calling this a CONCERN not once, not twice, but THREE times lately.

Also, the GIVE isn't enough in the sequence. 200 to 0 in under a second will STILL Kill You Dead [/RAID!?]

200km/h or 200MPH? Let's take 200MPH, that's 320km/h, which is just 89m/s. If I get a full second to stop, that's only ~9Gs (a G is about 9.8m/s^2, so round it off to 10m/s^2) - for one second. That's a perfectly survivable figure - plenty of fighter pilots have done it.

Even 200m/s to 0 in a second is just 20Gs. An ejection seat is 20Gs - again, entirely survivable.

If the event is brief enough, even several hundred Gs is survivable. The brain supposedly can take up to 300Gs transient without real damage. There's no need to dream up some Star Wars like inertial compensator.

Actually, it'll be pretty funny if some kind of inertial compensator was around. Those things work fine on a ship. But in this case, here's what would happen:
1) Fate hits rock, suffers deceleration.
2) The deceleration has to be neutralized to save Fate from being turned into mincemeat, so Inertial Compensation fires off to accelerate her, so her net deceleration is reduced to a more tolerable level.
3) Fate literally gets shoved through rock by her BJ's inertial compensator.
4) Hits second layer of rock.
5) Cycle repeats.

OUCH! :D

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

200km/h or 200MPH?

200 MPH +
(Emphasis mine)

She's got to be hitting that building at above Terminal.


Let's take 200MPH, that's 320km/h, which is just 89m/s. If I get a full second to stop, that's only ~9Gs (a G is about 9.8m/s^2, so round it off to 10m/s^2) - for one second. That's a perfectly survivable figure - plenty of fighter pilots have done it.

Fighter pilots, sitting upright in a rocket chair designed not to kill them, where the transfer of momentum was verticle along the spine, the least motion to the brain will be in this axis. And even then, Ejecting pilots air trained adults in peak physical condition. Ejection tends to do bad things to the average person.
Fate's tough for her age, but she's still a child.

Even 200m/s to 0 in a second is just 20Gs. An ejection seat is 20Gs - again, entirely survivable.

Again, in a sitting position in one direction in which the human body is the strongest. Fate took a blow from slightly above and in front. Ever heard of whiplash? Yes, I'm sure you have. And that's just a neck injury that could result from a few Gs in the wrong direction. Fate accellerates in two directions with phenominal force both times, probably a lot more than an Ejection Seat too... since Ejection seats only have enough kick at 20 Gs to throw someone just clear of the jet. She gets thrown the distance of an office building exceding six stories plus impact with the building itself suggests enough force from her drive through all that reinforced concrete that she would have kept going. 200 mph is my estimated lower end, but I'm thinking perhaps well above 400 mph...

But I think this would be up your alley really. It's A's episode 2. I believe it will be perfect for your measurements so long as we know the average height of a given story on most buildings. (Standard height right?) Since the blow and impact are all in one scene, and verticle, it's a same-plane calc. Just what you need.

If the event is brief enough, even several hundred Gs is survivable. The brain supposedly can take up to 300Gs transient without real damage. There's no need to dream up some Star Wars like inertial compensator.

Again, it depends on direction of accelleration. The brain doesn't take very many Gs when the force is applied in for example an unintended rotation to the side. Knockout blows from pro boxer's punches aren't exactly ejection seats of force, but there's enough Gs in the head-spin to cause minor brain damage. (Because that's what a concussion IS.)

Actually, it'll be pretty funny if some kind of inertial compensator was around. Those things work fine on a ship. But in this case, here's what would happen:
1) Fate hits rock, suffers deceleration.
2) The deceleration has to be neutralized to save Fate from being turned into mincemeat, so Inertial Compensation fires off to accelerate her, so her net deceleration is reduced to a more tolerable level.
3) Fate literally gets shoved through rock by her BJ's inertial compensator.
4) Hits second layer of rock.
5) Cycle repeats.


Might explain a thing or two.

[Keroko]

Not all armor is made to do that, and not all armor is made for you to move with any ease.

Armor that renders you immobile? Do show. Signum is a close combat specialist, her having a defence that renders her immobile makes no sense at all.

Does Panzergeist look like the standard strength standby field?

Standart strength? Yes, for a Field. Standby? No. However that does not automatically mean that the user is rendered immobile. The fact that Vita described it as one of the main defences for a Front Attacker (which need to be in constant motion) tells us otherwise.

I keep telling you, you are a sentient Natural Intelligence that is leagues beyond the computers we have. Now, how good are you with ballistic equations? Spotting bullets? Calculating their appropriate mechanical characteristics and the best theoretical defense according to mechanical engineering? Putting that theory into practice?

Allright, I'll give. However, this renders the idea of Bardiche recasting or rotating the Defencer moot as well.

Why not?

Her being a combat veteran for one. I can understand she is shocked, but to the point where she doesn't even bother to dodge the attack? No. The only way that makes sense is if she couldn't.

It is easier to aim when the barrel is pointing in the same direction. When the barrel is significantly off axis, there's two ways to present the mental scope - a muzzle eye view suddenly replacing your normal vision - rather discomforting, or a reticle that's not centered in your vision. Either will hardly make it easier to aim.

One can learn to aim rather easy when playing computer games, that does not equal knowing how to aim a real rifle. Same basic principle here, if you learn how to aim with a system like Nanoha's, you'll naturally increase in skill.

Better, but:
1) Even if I accept time manipulation, why isn't the far view a candidate for speeding up? This is actually more likely, since the far views at least have little noise, while the close view have them clashing, calling out attack names ... etc. Any time you have sounds (much less voices), there are real crimps as to how much the time can be compressed or dilated before all the sound goes to h*ll.

The far view was the candidate for speeding up. Did you miss the line 'viewed from a distance'?

2) Why can't they just have changed the mode of engagement from fast skirmish to more determined grind.

Because that means they would have decelerated to that speed in 0,000000001 second. They went fast, frame change up close, they went slow. There was no delay, no shift to a different fight, it was fast -> slow.

Show me the analysis. Don't give me feelings. Do some work for a change.

Well I'm sorry if I don't throw complicated scientific terms into the discussion. Some of us prefer simple terms.

Anyway, Chrono created a large amount of projectiles, which fired at a snail's pace during the 'effect scene' It takes a full 3 seconds for only a handfull of the projectiles to cross a close up view. As soon as Zafira puts up a barrier, we see a hail of those projecties hit the barrier, the entire bombardement of projectiles is over in only two seconds, each individual projectile hit the barrier under even 1 second.

Read what I wrote about the field. He'll only have to fire two and do it right. After Signum hits her, she can interrupt Defenser and reactivate it. Or he can just reorient it, whichever produces a better cycle time.

If she deactivated the defenser as soon as Signum hit her, the blade would have gone through and hit Fate. The only way to survive the blade would be to keep it up untill she is out of the blade's reach (in other words knocked away) during the knocked away and hit the building scene is a timespan of 1 second. 1 second. And that is not even taking into calculation that Levantine has already shown the abillity to simply break through Fate's defences (as the 14:37 mark shows) which would mean that reorienting is simply out of the question.

Compared to the problems of the Barrier Jacket field, a little extra ability on Bardiche's part is nothing. Further, maybe they had rotated during the fall and just happened to be in the right position, for all you know - as I said, we saw almost nothing.

Ironic that suddenly Bardiche gets a lot of credit when it is in your favor, since a few quotes ago you were questioning his abillity to calculate such things.

[Jimmy C]

On the flip side, if it increases the effectiveness of his drones, he'll have to build less of those suckers.

If it was only a reduction of, say 20%, I don't think it would impact ammo production significantly. He'd still a factory for the job. Also, it looks like he preferred more drones over better drones, so he could send them to more places to find "interesting stuff" for him. So a cheaper approach was acceptable.

[SpaceBrotha]

Just a side note here, did any of the parties who are arguing about the radical deceleration involved in the part where someone is thrown through a wall and stops at the next wall consider that the first wall IS still there, and has to slow the person down quite a bit when they crash through it?
I mean, if the velocity remained the same, wouldn't that person just keep on going through the NEXT wall as well?

So the actual G's involved in the whole stopping process would be radically smaller than what they would be if they went from 200m/s to 0m/s instantaneously...

[arkhangelsk]

Fighter pilots, sitting upright in a rocket chair designed not to kill them, where the transfer of momentum was verticle along the spine, the least motion to the brain will be in this axis. And even then, Ejecting pilots air trained adults in peak physical condition. Ejection tends to do bad things to the average person.
Fate's tough for her age, but she's still a child.

Actually, ironically, it'll seem that a back posture is even more survivable. Maybe she fell on her back, or on her belly (less favorable apparently but still somewhat better than vertical).

Again, in a sitting position in one direction in which the human body is the strongest. Fate took a blow from slightly above and in front. Ever heard of whiplash? Yes, I'm sure you have. And that's just a neck injury that could result from a few Gs in the wrong direction.

Obviously, she got lucky.

Fate accellerates in two directions with phenominal force both times, probably a lot more than an Ejection Seat too... since Ejection seats only have enough kick at 20 Gs to throw someone just clear of the jet. She gets thrown the distance of an office building exceding six stories plus impact with the building itself suggests enough force from her drive through all that reinforced concrete that she would have kept going. 200 mph is my estimated lower end, but I'm thinking perhaps well above 400 mph...

I've accounted for up to 200m/s, which is over 400mph.

Anyway, why am I required to do all calculations to disprove everyone's dreams?

Again, it depends on direction of accelleration. The brain doesn't take very many Gs when the force is applied in for example an unintended rotation to the side. Knockout blows from pro boxer's punches aren't exactly ejection seats of force, but there's enough Gs in the head-spin to cause minor brain damage. (Because that's what a concussion IS.)

Actually, it is said a hard slap produces a transient acceleration of several hundred Gs - transient, but there you go. Most slaps I presume do not knock people out. And how do you know Fate did not suffer from a concussion? As someone else pointed out there was plenty of time for at least a brief blackout before Yunno came in.

Armor that renders you immobile? Do show. Signum is a close combat specialist, her having a defence that renders her immobile makes no sense at all.

But that's what we saw. You really have no evidence other than your own denial that she can move while casting Panzergeist, whether you want to call it a Field, a Barrier, a Shield or whatever.

Standart strength? Yes, for a Field.

How would you know that? It is said that Panzergeist is power greedy.

Standby? No. However that does not automatically mean that the user is rendered immobile. The fact that Vita described it as one of the main defences for a Front Attacker (which need to be in constant motion) tells us otherwise.

She said that a Field of Some Sort is one of the defences for a Front Attacker. She did not say Panzergeist, much less Panzergeist that can shrug off Photon Lancers like they were ping pong balls. Strictly speaking, she did not even say that you can really move while using a Field, but since it is one of the defensive options, well, you have to use when you have to, right?

Her being a combat veteran for one. I can understand she is shocked, but to the point where she doesn't even bother to dodge the attack? No. The only way that makes sense is if she couldn't.

Now you are drifting into iffy psychological zones. Maybe it is the fact she is a veteran - she thought she saw it all. In a few seconds, she has to push aside a preconception formed by several hundred years of combat experience. A newbie might just see it and say "Crap, she's aiming. Better start dodging."

One can learn to aim rather easy when playing computer games, that does not equal knowing how to aim a real rifle. Same basic principle here, if you learn how to aim with a system like Nanoha's, you'll naturally increase in skill.

But it will still hardly be as intuitive. By the way, when you use a scope in a computer, it'll also be down your virtual barrel most of the time, since they are emulating real guns.

The far view was the candidate for speeding up. Did you miss the line 'viewed from a distance'?

The way I analyze sentences, when you say "This is a clear and blatant sign that action is slown for dramatic effect." I conclude that you are emphasizing the slow down, not the speed-up.

Because that means they would have decelerated to that speed in 0,000000001 second. They went fast, frame change up close, they went slow. There was no delay, no shift to a different fight, it was fast -> slow.

Frame change? Frame change means unknown time skip.

Anyway, Chrono created a large amount of projectiles, which fired at a snail's pace during the 'effect scene' It takes a full 3 seconds for only a handfull of the projectiles to cross a close up view. As soon as Zafira puts up a barrier, we see a hail of those projecties hit the barrier, the entire bombardement of projectiles is over in only two seconds, each individual projectile hit the barrier under even 1 second.

Maybe they just accelerated?

If she deactivated the defenser as soon as Signum hit her, the blade would have gone through and hit Fate. The only way to survive the blade would be to keep it up untill she is out of the blade's reach (in other words knocked away) during the knocked away and hit the building scene is a timespan of 1 second. 1 second. And that is not even taking into calculation that Levantine has already shown the abillity to simply break through Fate's defences (as the 14:37 mark shows) which would mean that reorienting is simply out of the question.

Actually, IIRC, the defenser avoided that fate by allowing the blade to accelerate it.

Ironic that suddenly Bardiche gets a lot of credit when it is in your favor, since a few quotes ago you were questioning his abillity to calculate such things.

Not really. Call it a hierarchy of plausibility. I don't like to hand out unproven freebies. However, in comparison to the concept of having that ridiculously thin barrier jacket protect her, then in comparison getting Bardiche to handle it is the slightly more favorable and plausible option. Does that make it clear?

Further, this computation is much simpler. Defensor. Direction: Approximately down. Distance: Maximum extension. Power: Max (of course) Fire.

Further, the same can be said of you. One post ago, you were willing to say Bardiche can calculate trajectories and set up defenses in 1/3rd of a second. Now, he can't even re-activate the Auto-Guard in what according to you is a second?

[Keroko]

But that's what we saw. You really have no evidence other than your own denial that she can move while casting Panzergeist, whether you want to call it a Field, a Barrier, a Shield or whatever.

We know it is a field, denying this is impossible. Why is it that eveything is better when you analyse it without evidence, but not others? We never saw Vice shoot farther then Nanoha, in fact so far Nanoha clearly outranged Vice, but according to your logic, he uses a rifle, thus he has better range, but when I say it makes perfect sense for Signum to be able to move with Panzergeist it's 'denial?'

How would you know that? It is said that Panzergeist is power greedy.

Source?

She said that a Field of Some Sort is one of the defences for a Front Attacker. She did not say Panzergeist, much less Panzergeist that can shrug off Photon Lancers like they were ping pong balls. Strictly speaking, she did not even say that you can really move while using a Field, but since it is one of the defensive options, well, you have to use when you have to, right?

She said 'Field' and then showed an exact copy of Panzergeist with her own magic collor. That should say enough: Panzergeist is a Field.

Now you are drifting into iffy psychological zones. Maybe it is the fact she is a veteran - she thought she saw it all. In a few seconds, she has to push aside a preconception formed by several hundred years of combat experience. A newbie might just see it and say "Crap, she's aiming. Better start dodging."

Still does not account for that fact that, by your logic, she just stood there even when the beam aproached her at an unacceptably slow pace.

But it will still hardly be as intuitive. By the way, when you use a scope in a computer, it'll also be down your virtual barrel most of the time, since they are emulating real guns.

Yes, but you're not holding the gun, now are you?

The way I analyze sentences, when you say "This is a clear and blatant sign that action is slown for dramatic effect." I conclude that you are emphasizing the slow down, not the speed-up.

Right, so to make it clear: I meant that they went from fast-paced combat from a distance, to slowed down version combat up close for dramatic effect. The scenes you saw in close-combat were not the actual speed a third party would see when on the scene.

Frame change? Frame change means unknown time skip.

Now you're just in senslesly denying. The scene was 'clash clash from a distance' shift to 'clash up close, slowed down for effect' to say that there is 'an unknown time skip' between those two scenes is pure denial.

Maybe they just accelerated?

Which, even if true, does not change the fact that they hit at the speed of bullets.

Actually, IIRC, the defenser avoided that fate by allowing the blade to accelerate it.

The defenser avoided being shattered by letting the blade accelerate it? Explain.

Not really. Call it a hierarchy of plausibility. I don't like to hand out unproven freebies. However, in comparison to the concept of having that ridiculously thin barrier jacket protect her, then in comparison getting Bardiche to handle it is the slightly more favorable and plausible option. Does that make it clear?

Further, this computation is much simpler. Defensor. Direction: Approximately down. Distance: Maximum extension. Power: Max (of course) Fire.

I still don't see why a defenser must be in place. The 'ridiculously thin Barrier Jacket' generates a permanent Field, remember?

Further, the same can be said of you. One post ago, you were willing to say Bardiche can calculate trajectories and set up defenses in 1/3rd of a second. Now, he can't even re-activate the Auto-Guard in what according to you is a second?

I yielded that point to you, if you recall. However, you are contradicting yourself at the moment.

[arkhangelsk]

We know it is a field, denying this is impossible. Why is it that eveything is better when you analyse it without evidence, but not others? We never saw Vice shoot farther then Nanoha, in fact so far Nanoha clearly outranged Vice, but according to your logic, he uses a rifle, thus he has better range, but when I say it makes perfect sense for Signum to be able to move with Panzergeist it's 'denial?'

Considering that the longest documented shot of Nanoha is 100m or thereabouts, and according to WG, Vice managed to shoot over that when he shot at the drones ... that at least is gone, unless you would like to dispute Wild Goose's findings, which will require you to range the shots yourself.

Source?

OK, my memory was messed a little here. To be exact, the DVD booklet says "At full power, it can generate a field that can withstand even bombardment magics, but at full power its consumption is extremely high."

But at least it shows, certainly, that not all "fields" are created equal.

She said 'Field' and then showed an exact copy of Panzergeist with her own magic collor. That should say enough: Panzergeist is a Field.

Oh, she randomly put out some red flames and you thought it was "an exact copy of Panzergeist", which was more like a purple glow?

Fine. Panzergeist is a field. Now justify your belief that all fields allow mobility.

Still does not account for that fact that, by your logic, she just stood there even when the beam aproached her at an unacceptably slow pace.

What part of psychological shock do you not get.

Yes, but you're not holding the gun, now are you?

The fact your game character presumably has the gun on HIS shoulder means the game abstracts this part.

Right, so to make it clear: I meant that they went from fast-paced combat from a distance, to slowed down version combat up close for dramatic effect. The scenes you saw in close-combat were not the actual speed a third party would see when on the scene.

Oh, so indeed the close scenes were slowed according to you. Just as I thought. And so I ask you again, why is the far scene being accelerated not even a candidate. It contains much less detail. There were no voices and few sounds - sounds play h*ll on any significant time compression / dilation theory - we might have believed that Planet Namek was really going to blow up in 5 minutes and the delay is because we were seeing everything in super fast time if not for the sheer amount of dialogue :D

Now you're just in senslesly denying. The scene was 'clash clash from a distance' shift to 'clash up close, slowed down for effect' to say that there is 'an unknown time skip' between those two scenes is pure denial.

Why? What is a scene transition for except to mark a time shift. 5 minutes could have passed and you won't even know.

Which, even if true, does not change the fact that they hit at the speed of bullets.

I've quickly analyzed the scene. It took them 3 frames (28583-28586) to cross about 5 Zafira heights (say 10m). That's 10m every tenth of a second. Or about 100m/s. Your idea of bullet speed must be really slow... and there are plenty of scene cuts and distance to allow an acceleration phase any way you cut it.

The defenser avoided being shattered by letting the blade accelerate it? Explain.

It is a variant of sliding with the blow. If Laevantein swipes down, and Bardiche descends with it, then the full force of the blow is dissipated. I thought this principle is common in melee. Certainly, there's no sign the defenser broke.

I still don't see why a defenser must be in place. The 'ridiculously thin Barrier Jacket' generates a permanent Field, remember?

The key is in the distance from which they can deploy your defense. The BJ is an extremely short distance from the body. Thus, even if I grant the field infinite strength, it will be forced to stop Fate over an extremely short distance and thus in an extremely short time. This increases the deceleration and severely decreases the chance Fate will get out of it in one piece. A Defenser has more flexibility in deployment, thus allowing more time for the deceleration, which greatly increases the chances she'll get out of it in one piece.

By the way, I've analyzed the sequence. Fate took from Frame 12859 (loss of flash) to Frame 12894 to fall into the building (smoke pillar). That's about 35 frames. The distance ... i frame 12858 (last frame with a light point to allow a distance fix), the distance between building and point is ~291px. A window is about 5px tall. Figuring they are about 2m tall, the scale is 2.5px=m. So 291/2.5=116.4m, and that over 35 frames = 99.77m/s, so the average speed was about 100m/s.

I yielded that point to you, if you recall. However, you are contradicting yourself at the moment.

Not really. There is such a thing as hierarchy. For example, I don't believe RH has stabilization, remember? However, if you can show me a shot of her shooting at a clearly impossible range for a human in that posture, then in comparison to the idea that that Nanoha is inhumanly leet in shooting, all of a sudden, suddenly the stabilization theory gains plausibility.

Might explain a thing or two.

It is only kind of funny there, but had this happened on a solid piece of ground, not an elevated floor, this might have happened:
1) Fate hits ground, decelerates.
2) Compensator fires to accelerate Fate so deceleration won't be fatal.
3) Ground continues to resist, creating greater decelerative force. Compensator accelerates harder.
4) Steps 2 and 3 begin to recycle rapidly (as in microseconds). The forces and pressure surges. Suddenly, the compensator gives out because it overreached its limit and Fate dies from deceleration.

Another possible fate:
1) Fate hits ground, decelerates.
2) Compensator fires to accelerate Fate.
3) Ground yields. Fate is plunged into the Earth by massive accelerative forces from the compensator.
4) Fate is trapped inside Earth, asphyxiates.

[Wild Goose]

I want to point out something.

Vice shot at a range beyond 100 meters.

Nanoha is said to be able to outrange Vice.

Logically, Nanoha thus can shoot beyond 100 meters.

Also, all these claims of surviving impacts and stuff at 400 MPH... if this is so, why do cars going at 60-80KMH KILL people with the impacts?

*yawns*

[arkhangelsk]

Hah? When was it said that Nanoha can outrange Vice? This little statement must have missed me in flight.

And what does it mean by "outrange"? Does it mean Nanoha's beam can hold itself together for a longer distance? That's very possible because Nanoha is so much higher in power. Or does it mean the ability to get real hits at particular distances? Ergonomics here... even counting that most Blasters are unchoked shotgun blasts.

For your second question, it is partially because impacts involves a lot of vagaries. Which part hit? Where? Which angle? ... etc. There are also many mechanisms of death, such as being crushed by your own car, something a little different. However, given their stated decelerations, it is certainly possible to live through.

For all we know, if Signum blasted Fate down the same way again, she wouldn't be so lucky.

[Wild Goose]

I think you were the one who said Nanoha outranged Vice. Or something. I'm too tired.

I wanna point out something on stocks: they help the accuraccy but you don't really need them for sniping if you have a good bipod. Carlost Hathcock's 2,200 meter kill was with a scoped M2 machine gun with no stock. SEALs train with the MP5N's stock retracted.

[arkhangelsk]

I think you were the one who said Nanoha outranged Vice. Or something. I'm too tired.

Even if I was drunk and did utter something like that, look at my statistical average on this subject.

I wanna point out something on stocks: they help the accuraccy but you don't really need them for sniping if you have a good bipod. Carlost Hathcock's 2,200 meter kill was with a scoped M2 machine gun with no stock. SEALs train with the MP5N's stock retracted.

True, a bipod is better than a stock and a tripod is even better for stability - but it isn't like RH or the other staffs got that as an option either.

[Avatar_notADV]

Well, we've seen that Mid mages have a method of cushioning ground impacts - Yuuno used it to save Nanoha from falling early in S1, and Chrono managed to brake right at ground level in A's after getting walloped by Mask. (But the first was an active-type defense - RH didn't do it on its own - and the second may have just been Chrono's flight spell recovering...)

We know Fate is just plain quick; obviously if she's using Sonic Move, that's a significant amount of acceleration that she's being cushioned against. So it's at least not beyond the ability of a mage to survive that kind of acceleration in other circumstances (and, indeed, she did survive it.)

Actually, here's a good question - how often do we see a character sustain an injury through the barrier jacket? That would give us an idea of what it takes to penetrate the jackets, and the sorts of things it protects poorly against.

Hm... Season 1, we don't see a lot of this. Chrono got a head wound in the Garden somewhere, and Yuuno's taping up Nanoha's ankle, but we don't see either injury happen. (Let's discount the outliers, like Fate grabbing on to an unsealed Jewel Seed, or Fate's mom going through her jacket like hot butter.)

Fate's jacket takes a lot of damage from Nanoha's Divine Buster and then Starlight Breaker, but Fate doesn't actually sustain much in the way of damage (even though she had an uncontrolled fall into water at the end.)

A's, however, is full of this sort of thing...

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Trouble with first season is that through all the fighting, they weren't trying to seriously harm each other. Nanoha wanted to pummel Fate into listening, and Fate just wanted to spook her into not getting in the way. Plus that was purely magical attacks in nature. 'Phasers Set to Stun.'

In A's however, the stakes went up when Vita kind of lost it and nearly killed Nanoha. And the Wolkenritter weren't exactly holding back for love nor money. Signum was most certainly in the fight to put Fate down after the counter-attack on Vita.

[krisslanza]

Trouble with first season is that through all the fighting, they weren't trying to seriously harm each other. Nanoha wanted to pummel Fate into listening, and Fate just wanted to spook her into not getting in the way. Plus that was purely magical attacks in nature. 'Phasers Set to Stun.'

In A's however, the stakes went up when Vita kind of lost it and nearly killed Nanoha. And the Wolkenritter weren't exactly holding back for love nor money. Signum was most certainly in the fight to put Fate down after the counter-attack on Vita.

Actually I need to disagree. The Wolkenritter were not attempting to kill anyone: Vita wanted to fulfill their goal without killing a single person. She just kind of lost it. They only fought to incapacitate their enemies.

There are a few exceptions (Like Signum mentioning to Fate that she might not be able to stop her [Fate] without killing her).

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Attempting and what acctually occures are two different things. Vita was most certainly going into Hammerziet on Nanoha. She's not exactly known for her Self Control. You can say all the stuff you want, but when backed into a corner, they fought full on... If that resulted in some killing... OOPS. Signum made that clear even if she expressed regret in doing so.

[Mirificus]

I wanna point out something on stocks: they help the accuraccy but you don't really need them for sniping if you have a good bipod. Carlost Hathcock's 2,200 meter kill was with a scoped M2 machine gun with no stock.
Of course there was no need for a stock. The M2 was kept stable by the tripod, not to mention that it has no provision for a stock.

SEALs train with the MP5N's stock retracted.
When the stocks are retracted they brace MP5s using their slings.

For any kind of aimed fire, you want the gun to be as stable and supported as reasonably possible. Stocks, bipods and slings are all simple and reliable mechanical aids that can help with that. The need for stabilization holds true for any kind of ranged weapon. The less stable the weapon platform, the less accurate any fire from it will be.

[ghazghkull]

When the stocks are retracted they brace MP5s using their slings.

For any kind of aimed fire, you want the gun to be as stable and supported as reasonably possible. Stocks, bipods and slings can all help with that.

I can attest to that :3

I just recently took a range course during the summer, and my shooting accuracy jumped from a lvl once i started using a sling, because the rifle was now being supported on my arm, via the sling :3

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Amen as well to stablized firearms. Gotta have your weapons stable, or your bullets go everywhere but where you want them. I don't know how many rounds I fired using the wrong arm to pull my weapon into my shoulder, but half of them liked to be two meters off target... and all that from just a little fatigue wobble at 200 meters.

Once I realized I was using my supporting hand to pull my M-16 into my shoulder, and switched to my trigger hand, the fatigue was nixed and I qualified on that run. (I had like, four runs on qualification day, and botched most of them because I couldn't stay COMFORTABLE in the prone, or the barrel would wobble all over the place. Not exactly making it easy to figure out what's wrong either when it's 98 degrees F in high georgia humidity with a Drill shouting at you to "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE DAMMIT!" They thought I was scared to miss. I ain't scared to miss when I know I'll miss when the sights are off to the LEFT, the RIGHT, or just plain out of allignment.)

[SpaceBrotha]

Not exactly making it easy to figure out what's wrong either when it's 98 degrees F in high georgia humidity

I can tell you that it's no easier when it's -20 celcius and you're not allowed to use gloves in your trigger hand... after an hour or so of holding the nice lump'o'iron in your hands it becomes kinda hard to actually feel anything. not to mention trying to adjust the damn thing with them numb fingers...
...and i never found prone to be the problem when firing, it was crouching... standing was done at half range, so i never had a problem with that... and no one stands straight in a fire fight anyway, unless they intend to leave feet first...

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

I can tell you that it's no easier when it's -20 celcius and you're not allowed to use gloves in your trigger hand... after an hour or so of holding the nice lump'o'iron in your hands it becomes kinda hard to actually feel anything. not to mention trying to adjust the damn thing with them numb fingers...
...and i never found prone to be the problem when firing, it was crouching... standing was done at half range, so i never had a problem with that... and no one stands straight in a fire fight anyway, unless they intend to leave feet first...

We trained in foxhole sandbag and prone firing only. Trouble with the range was the rocks and sand. But I hear you in the cold stuff. The training was what I would call mismanaged. Trying to train too many people how to use their weapons effectively without anyone actually qualified for teaching. No wonder it takes three weeks... I could get a person to understand the firing concepts and what to watch out for with just a day with them. Firearms safety however, that DOES need to be pounded into skulls over three weeks. But If I can qualify with messed up vision (glasses with 3 year old presciption... and scratched, and I was plinking those pesky 300 meter targets just fine) I can certainly teach a few people how to hit something unless they were just plain horrible. Not exactly a cakewalk skill, but at the same time, it's not an X-games skill.

[Keroko]

Considering that the longest documented shot of Nanoha is 100m or thereabouts, and according to WG, Vice managed to shoot over that when he shot at the drones ... that at least is gone, unless you would like to dispute Wild Goose's findings, which will require you to range the shots yourself.

I'm not contesting Goose's findings, however, you should remember that Subaru -who is by no means a ranged expert- also formed a Wing Road at pinpoint accuracy along the same range. Are you saying that Subaru outranges Nanoha now?

OK, my memory was messed a little here. To be exact, the DVD booklet says "At full power, it can generate a field that can withstand even bombardment magics, but at full power its consumption is extremely high."

But at least it shows, certainly, that not all "fields" are created equal.

Duh, at full power anything will start being huge consumptions of energy. And anything can be adjusted with power, Barriers can be made sturdier, beams can be made stronger, I don't see how this matters to Fields alone, nor how it makes them 'power greedy'

Oh, she randomly put out some red flames and you thought it was "an exact copy of Panzergeist", which was more like a purple glow?

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab20323.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab20323.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab09110.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab09110.png)

Looks pretty similar, don't you think?

Fine. Panzergeist is a field. Now justify your belief that all fields allow mobility.

because A: Signum described it as an armor, and B: Signum is a close combat specialist. A defense that pins you down is a useless defense for a melee specialist, it only allows those with range to stay away from your weapons while you sustain fire.

A far better explanation for Signum to stay put is the intimidation effect it would bring, which is exactly what happened.

What part of psychological shock do you not get.

Oh I get it, I just don't buy it. A veteran shocked to the point where they can't even move out of the way of a snails pace attack? Sounds rather unbelievable.

The fact your game character presumably has the gun on HIS shoulder means the game abstracts this part.

So you're saying that if you play enough shooters, you will automatically be able to aim right with a real gun as soon as you pick one up?

Oh, so indeed the close scenes were slowed according to you. Just as I thought. And so I ask you again, why is the far scene being accelerated not even a candidate. It contains much less detail. There were no voices and few sounds - sounds play h*ll on any significant time compression / dilation theory - we might have believed that Planet Namek was really going to blow up in 5 minutes and the delay is because we were seeing everything in super fast time if not for the sheer amount of dialogue :D

Because there is no need for acceleration. You'll notice that acceleration of scenes happens almost never in anime, whereas slowing does. Now, I know you'll protest against this reasoning, so I'll give you another example: A's 2 around the 16:50 mark clearly shows a real time situation thanks to Nanoha on the foreground. In the background, we see high-speed flashes of battle. That is how fast mage battles normally are.

Why? What is a scene transition for except to mark a time shift. 5 minutes could have passed and you won't even know.

because the scene was made to be a shift of focuss.

I've quickly analyzed the scene. It took them 3 frames (28583-28586) to cross about 5 Zafira heights (say 10m). That's 10m every tenth of a second. Or about 100m/s. Your idea of bullet speed must be really slow... and there are plenty of scene cuts and distance to allow an acceleration phase any way you cut it.

*tired sigh* See, this is why I keep telling you that frame-by-frame analysis of anime doesn't work for calculating trajectory speeds in anime. You can grab almost any series that has rapid fire bullets, like, say, macross and do the same analysis and finding the real bullets fired by aircraft suddenly extremely lacking in speed.

It is a variant of sliding with the blow. If Laevantein swipes down, and Bardiche descends with it, then the full force of the blow is dissipated. I thought this principle is common in melee. Certainly, there's no sign the defenser broke.

Ah, now I see what you mean. Anyway, this technique is questionable depending on the situation. Sliding with the blow can sometimes give your oponent the advantage he needs to land a blow, it's a much better idea to slide sideways and create an opening. With shields, like it would have in this situation, then yes it works, but I wouldn't advice the trick with a sword. Bardiche though, shows no sign of doing so. In fact, he blocks the hit dead on.

But that's beside the point. At any rate, there is a clear sign that the defenser got broken. Note that when Signum strikes the defenser, she struck exactly where Bardiche's head was, when Yuuno found Fate, Bardiche's head was all battered up. Clearly the hit (a Shiden'Issen I might add, and a normal hit was already shown penetrating Fate's barrier later on) broke the barrer and hit Bardiche.

The key is in the distance from which they can deploy your defense. The BJ is an extremely short distance from the body. Thus, even if I grant the field infinite strength, it will be forced to stop Fate over an extremely short distance and thus in an extremely short time. This increases the deceleration and severely decreases the chance Fate will get out of it in one piece. A Defenser has more flexibility in deployment, thus allowing more time for the deceleration, which greatly increases the chances she'll get out of it in one piece.

And yet, there is increased evidence that the defenser got broken at the moment. I believe Tk once posted a real life video of someone in an armor taking blows the size of trucks, so there is a limit to your theory.

Also, I will once more (though I doupt you will even listen) point out that this is a magical girl anime. Now note that last word. In anime, many things happen that are not conform to the laws of physics, that's what makes them fun to watch to begin with.

In A's however, the stakes went up when Vita kind of lost it and nearly killed Nanoha. And the Wolkenritter weren't exactly holding back for love nor money. Signum was most certainly in the fight to put Fate down after the counter-attack on Vita.

I'd like to argue that one, actuallly. In the manga it was stated that they did hold back a lot during the fights (which is supported by the fact that neither Signum, nor Vita, nor even zafira use their ultimate techniques untill the final fight).

[Wild Goose]

Of course there was no need for a stock. The M2 was kept stable by the tripod, not to mention that it has no provision for a stock.


When the stocks are retracted they brace MP5s using their slings.

For any kind of aimed fire, you want the gun to be as stable and supported as reasonably possible. Stocks, bipods and slings are all simple and reliable mechanical aids that can help with that. The need for stabilization holds true for any kind of ranged weapon. The less stable the weapon platform, the less accurate any fire from it will be.

Oh, I'm well aware of all this. I was just tired and annoyed with ark's insistence on stocks and wanted to get in an admittedly faulty argument before I slept. :heh:

Considering that the longest documented shot of Nanoha is 100m or thereabouts, and according to WG, Vice managed to shoot over that when he shot at the drones ... that at least is gone, unless you would like to dispute Wild Goose's findings, which will require you to range the shots yourself.
So basicaly in StrikerS, Quattro was just 100 meters away from Nanoha.

Yeah. Really. :rolleyes:

As Keroko keeps saying and as I keep trying to point out, this is a Magical Girl Anime. Thus, stadia ranging and frame timings are going to be inherently flawed due to Magical Girl anime conventions as well as one simple thing: technological limitations of anime.

For another example, the Super Robot Wars games on GBA. You can have hugeass mecha and even bigger ships taking up the same space on the grid as the smallest grunt mecha. Why? Simplification and technological limitations of the platform. The same happens in anime; they need to cut production costs so they'll simplify as much as possible, which means that any timings/stadia ranging is inherently flawed.

Also, regarding people surviving 400MPH impacts: when a body freefalls down it eventually reaches a speed of 200MPH. Barring unusual exceptions, when that happens to people, they die on impact when they hit the ground.

[ghazghkull]

We trained in foxhole sandbag and prone firing only. Trouble with the range was the rocks and sand. But I hear you in the cold stuff. The training was what I would call mismanaged. Trying to train too many people how to use their weapons effectively without anyone actually qualified for teaching. No wonder it takes three weeks... I could get a person to understand the firing concepts and what to watch out for with just a day with them. Firearms safety however, that DOES need to be pounded into skulls over three weeks. But If I can qualify with messed up vision (glasses with 3 year old presciption... and scratched, and I was plinking those pesky 300 meter targets just fine) I can certainly teach a few people how to hit something unless they were just plain horrible. Not exactly a cakewalk skill, but at the same time, it's not an X-games skill.

LOL I easily taught a rookie in the basics of shooting a lvl-2 standard qualification within 15 minutes :3

In the program I took during the summer, there are four lvls of qualification, 1-4, with 4 being the highest. I walked away form that course with a lvl 4 qualifcation, although my shooting has probably by now degraded back down to a lvl 3, possibly due to a lvl 2 now because I haven't been on a range since then T.T

I'm not contesting Goose's findings, however, you should remember that Subaru -who is by no means a ranged expert- also formed a Wing Road at pinpoint accuracy along the same range. Are you saying that Subaru outranges Nanoha now?

Yeah...I have to agree with Keroko. Nanoha's and possibly Hayate's range of fire is immense. Not may characters could possibly match their range. Plus here's the thing...Nanoha is an Ace! She's going to have superb range.

Oh I get it, I just don't buy it. A veteran shocked to the point where they can't even move out of the way of a snails pace attack? Sounds rather unbelievable.

The day I see that happen is that day I get myself shot for being a stupid idiot and not dodge something I had pleanty of time for. Vita did not. Here's a something that might help you get an idea: try considering that it's the anime version of Matrix time.

So you're saying that if you play enough shooters, you will automatically be able to aim right with a real gun as soon as you pick one up?

I can say right now: IMPOSSIBLE!

The configuration of the sight on games is utterly different to what you see on a real sight. Plus, it's a computer screen.

Secondly, even if you play a crap-load of real life ARCADE shooters, it's not going to prepare you for the real thing. The sights are not properly zeroed, the real things are way heavier than the arcade units, and most of all, RECOIL! It's going to leave a hell of a bruise if you're not ready for such impacts, compared to the taps that those shooters do.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

I can say right now: IMPOSSIBLE!

The configuration of the sight on games is utterly different to what you see on a real sight. Plus, it's a computer screen.

Secondly, even if you play a crap-load of real life ARCADE shooters, it's not going to prepare you for the real thing. The sights are not properly zeroed, the real things are way heavier than the arcade units, and most of all, RECOIL! It's going to leave a hell of a bruise if you're not ready for such impacts, compared to the taps that those shooters do.

Agreed...

There's a saying floating around.

"It is said that marksmanship is as simple as aligning the sights and squeezing the trigger. It is also said that playing the piano is as simple as hitting the right notes in the right order."

[arkhangelsk]

I'm not contesting Goose's findings, however, you should remember that Subaru -who is by no means a ranged expert- also formed a Wing Road at pinpoint accuracy along the same range. Are you saying that Subaru outranges Nanoha now?

Define "pinpoint" and "at the same range." I've had it of believing your pronouncements - they never seem to come true on objective analysis.

Looks pretty similar, don't you think?

I have 20/200 in one eye (damage) and my other is not 20/20 even corrected thanks to extreme myopia. I must wonder what your eyes are like to call that flame and that glow "similar"... by the way, you started out with "exact copy". Now it is only "pretty similar"? :D

because A: Signum described it as an armor, and B: Signum is a close combat specialist. A defense that pins you down is a useless defense for a melee specialist, it only allows those with range to stay away from your weapons while you sustain fire.

A far better explanation for Signum to stay put is the intimidation effect it would bring, which is exactly what happened.

Actually, armor is generally restricting. People tend to only move because of unarmored or at least less armored weaknesses in their armor, known as joints. Tanks move on their unarmored tracks. APCs have exposed wheels because armored skirts will restrict their ability to turn. Armored ships move propelled by unarmored screws.

Now look at PG. It is all encompassing. Do you see something resembling an opening to allow movement? If you see one, give me a screenshot. Thanks.

Flip B around. As a close combat specialist, Signum needs a method to survive the long range encounter phases of combat ... even if it restricts movement.

Oh I get it, I just don't buy it. A veteran shocked to the point where they can't even move out of the way of a snails pace attack? Sounds rather unbelievable.

It is still coming at her at the speed of a car (16m/s).

Because there is no need for acceleration. You'll notice that acceleration of scenes happens almost never in anime, whereas slowing does. Now, I know you'll protest against this reasoning, so I'll give you another example: A's 2 around the 16:50 mark clearly shows a real time situation thanks to Nanoha on the foreground. In the background, we see high-speed flashes of battle. That is how fast mage battles normally are.

You mean that geometric line dance? Isn't that just a phase of high speed skirmish combat?

Slowing down is pinned down when they start having sounds. Try halving the speed of the playback one time and seeing what happens to all the sounds. That did not happen. So if you insist time manipulation took place, it must be the one without such sounds that yields the place of realtime.

*tired sigh* See, this is why I keep telling you that frame-by-frame analysis of anime doesn't work for calculating trajectory speeds in anime. You can grab almost any series that has rapid fire bullets, like, say, macross and do the same analysis and finding the real bullets fired by aircraft suddenly extremely lacking in speed.

As I said, anime bullet speed = not. But you promised me bullet speed. I don't see it.

But that's beside the point. At any rate, there is a clear sign that the defenser got broken. Note that when Signum strikes the defenser, she struck exactly where Bardiche's head was, when Yuuno found Fate, Bardiche's head was all battered up. Clearly the hit (a Shiden'Issen I might add, and a normal hit was already shown penetrating Fate's barrier later on) broke the barrer and hit Bardiche.

IIRC the damage to the head was next time. But either way, even if it was broken, the Defenser could simply be regenerated. It is supposed to be a fast acting Auto Guard, you know...

Also, I will once more (though I doupt you will even listen) point out that this is a magical girl anime. Now note that last word. In anime, many things happen that are not conform to the laws of physics, that's what makes them fun to watch to begin with.

I'll deal with this paragraph along with a similar one from WG.

I'd like to argue that one, actuallly. In the manga it was stated that they did hold back a lot during the fights (which is supported by the fact that neither Signum, nor Vita, nor even zafira use their ultimate techniques untill the final fight).

Definitely agree.

Oh, I'm well aware of all this. I was just tired and annoyed with ark's insistence on stocks and wanted to get in an admittedly faulty argument before I slept. :heh:

So basicaly in StrikerS, Quattro was just 100 meters away from Nanoha.

Yeah. Really. :rolleyes:

Considering the lack of ranging cues in that one, how would you disprove this?

Also, regarding people surviving 400MPH impacts: when a body freefalls down it eventually reaches a speed of 200MPH. Barring unusual exceptions, when that happens to people, they die on impact when they hit the ground.

So, why do people insist that thin little BJ, without even the give of an airbag, saved Fate?

As Keroko keeps saying and as I keep trying to point out, this is a Magical Girl Anime. Thus, stadia ranging and frame timings are going to be inherently flawed due to Magical Girl anime conventions as well as one simple thing: technological limitations of anime.

For another example, the Super Robot Wars games on GBA. You can have hugeass mecha and even bigger ships taking up the same space on the grid as the smallest grunt mecha. Why? Simplification and technological limitations of the platform. The same happens in anime; they need to cut production costs so they'll simplify as much as possible, which means that any timings/stadia ranging is inherently flawed.

As I've always said, I really tried to turn my brain off while watching MGLN, having gotten a bit tired of overanalyzing the Star Wars universe. Ep17 exceeded the limits on the tactical part, but I still tried to close my eyes on the technical. You will notice I didn't really get into the Magic and Tech thread until later on. I let Tk3997 do most of that stuff. But then I got sucked into technical discussions ... and that was that. SoD came back, full force. And when I go into SoD mode, I stick with it best I can.

The problem with you ("you" in the group sense) is that you are inconsistent in whether you take the SoD perspective or not. A typical argument with Keroko, for example, goes like this:

A: MGLN combat is close ranged (really trying not to look too closely).
K: No it isn't! Look at EpX of Y. Nanoha shot at Vita, who was a dot in the sky!
A: (Grabs frame; ranges) It was a 5px blob. The range is only about 100m, unless you want to insist on a zoom (but then no ranging is possible).
K: It looks further than that to me.
A: I did objective calcs. You used your subjective feelings.
K: Urr (realizes he isn't winning that way). It doesn't count! It is only anime! Anime cannot be ranged!
A: Then why the f*ck did you try to use "Vita is a dot" as an argument. Is it because all of a sudden, the conclusions of stadia ranging proved inconvenient?

It is one or the other. Presumably, Magic&Tech thread means we actually try and use everything (what little there is) to analyze out something. Fine. By the way, I'm sure some nipticker's going to bring up the "funny looking humans" in anime as a counterpoint, so I'll take the initiative here. Anime, admittedly, is not film, but the basic rules apply - how will you analyze it if you are told the anime depicts real events. Here's an example: Being an anime, the visual is a recreation and thus does not have as overriding a status as in live film. , if they actually said the range was 500m, but it looks like 100, we'll (probably) accept the 500m and rationalize the visual as a forced perspective recreation (in live film, generally we call the blabber an idiot :D). Then of course are the pesky anime conventions (male and female eyes don't look that different...) But the golden rule - how will you analyze it if you are told the anime (and manga) depicts real events, that Uminari and Midchildra actually exists, that the 97th is actually us?

Another thing IMO is Maximum Plausible Data Retention. Technically, when you claim Anime Convention or Blooper, you are throwing a small piece of potential data away. Sometimes this is justifiable. For example, if a real handgun (say it is identifiable as a Glock) was depicted at "anime bullet speed" (read: NOT), you might throw away that data, referencing the real-life bullet velocity (think: the gunfight happened in your world, with a Glock). Anime humans you can do it similarly, by referencing real humans. But what reference will you use to throw away speed data on magical rounds or the appearance of a magical dragon. So, data retention.

At least as important as that, however, remains the need for simple [b]consistency:
1) If you want to say you don't have a lot of faith in anime stadia ranging, fine. However, at the very least don't tell me in your previous / next line that Vice shot at over 100m based on the visual and your experience of target sizes at certain distances - that's just an informal form of stadia ranging. And don't contest a range concluded based on stadia-ranging - it is obviously the ranger had a different base assumption on the rangeability of anime, and since you have no hard references (you said you don't think there are any), on what basis do you contest his conclusions?
2) Don't think timings and speeds are reliable? Fine. But don't tell me next sentence that Chrono's shots moved at "bullet speed", and don't casually contest someone's analysis of bullet speed for the above reason.
3) Want to say they "defy physics"? Fine. We accept that with Animaniacs. But don't tell me then that Fate is going to die without a magicobabble inertial compensator that realistically will put her in even direr straits. Yeah...I have to agree with Keroko. Nanoha's and possibly Hayate's range of fire is immense. Not may characters could possibly match their range. Plus here's the thing...Nanoha is an Ace! She's going to have superb range.

Hayate's range is good ... on indirect fire artillery bombardment. Nanoha ... well, we've ranged it.

I don't even want to comment on Ace = superb range arguments...

The day I see that happen is that day I get myself shot for being a stupid idiot and not dodge something I had pleanty of time for. Vita did not. Here's a something that might help you get an idea: try considering that it's the anime version of Matrix time.

You will shoot yourself afterwards. At that moment, being in shock means just that ... you don't think much at all.

Well, we've seen that Mid mages have a method of cushioning ground impacts - Yuuno used it to save Nanoha from falling early in S1, and Chrono managed to brake right at ground level in A's after getting walloped by Mask. (But the first was an active-type defense - RH didn't do it on its own - and the second may have just been Chrono's flight spell recovering...)

Glad you agree.

We know Fate is just plain quick; obviously if she's using Sonic Move, that's a significant amount of acceleration that she's being cushioned against. So it's at least not beyond the ability of a mage to survive that kind of acceleration in other circumstances (and, indeed, she did survive it.)

Or maybe she's just resisting it like a good pilot. I do notice that Sonic Move does not often get activated very long - a few seconds, say. Maybe that's why. Further, the acceleration configuration of Sonic Move is unclear - it is entirely possible that the entire body is accelerated at once (instead of a rocket booster at back creating a pressure) - in that case the body won't feel stress.

Actually, here's a good question - how often do we see a character sustain an injury through the barrier jacket? That would give us an idea of what it takes to penetrate the jackets, and the sorts of things it protects poorly against.

The fastest one will be how Nanoha and Vita got shanked by a Type IV. Sein managed to cut Erio's hand even without any blades on her part.

Hm... Season 1, we don't see a lot of this. Chrono got a head wound in the Garden somewhere, and Yuuno's taping up Nanoha's ankle, but we don't see either injury happen. (Let's discount the outliers, like Fate grabbing on to an unsealed Jewel Seed, or Fate's mom going through her jacket like hot butter.)

Fate's jacket takes a lot of damage from Nanoha's Divine Buster and then Starlight Breaker, but Fate doesn't actually sustain much in the way of damage (even though she had an uncontrolled fall into water at the end.)

The jacket is supposed to be magical - Nanoha is "deleting" the magic with her anti-magic strike.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

OBJECTION! (http://www.sheezyart.com/view/1545154/)

Ark is bringing excessive Lawyer Skills to the thread! Such excessive argumentive skills grossly overkill the combined argumentive skills of all other parties involved and are an argumentive mismatch.

The INSANE party moves to have Ark discharged from the conversation until he can learn to tone the eloquently woven speach patterns down to managable levels.

[Avatar_notADV]

Exactly, and it's interesting how Fate's jacket frays at the edges as it takes that magical damage. Especially if we contrast it to Nanoha getting nailed by Vita head-on in A's ep 1; the jacket takes limited damage, but near-total for the area effected, and Nanoha obviously took a good amount of damage as well. (Enough that her vision was going in and out, so that's a head injury, though whether that was an effect of the hit or of going through the wall afterwards is unclear.)

For similar reasons, I'm not sure we can count the IV shanking Nanoha. We know that the gadgets pack anti-magic field technology; maybe they go through barrier jackets more effectively than normal. (At the same time, we see Signum's barrier jacket/armor/whatever breached at least twice by sharp weapon attacks from Fate. Maybe jackets aren't good against "slicing"?)

[arkhangelsk]

OBJECTION! (http://www.sheezyart.com/view/1545154/)

Ark is bringing excessive Lawyer Skills to the thread! Such excessive argumentive skills grossly overkill the combined argumentive skills of all other parties involved and are an argumentive mismatch.

The INSANE party moves to have Ark discharged from the conversation until he can learn to tone the eloquently woven speach patterns down to managable levels.

What mismatch? For one thing, b/w everyone that has at least something to say about my positions, I'm outnumbered about 5:1. Two, I write all the "daytime" replies (roughly 2/3rds of the total) without the benefit of easy access to sources -I'm going by memory. My night replies I write while fighting fatigue from a day of work. Third, I'm sneaking out replies with my superiors breathing down my back.

If I'm winning anyway, who knows? It might be because my position is fundamentally strong (though I might make a tactical misstep here and there) :D

[ghazghkull]

What mismatch? For one thing, b/w everyone that has at least something to say about my positions, I'm outnumbered about 5:1. Two, I write all the "daytime" replies (roughly 2/3rds of the total) without the benefit of easy access to sources -I'm going by memory. My night replies I write while fighting fatigue from a day of work. Third, I'm sneaking out replies with my superiors breathing down my back.

If I'm winning anyway, who knows? It might be because my position is fundamentally strong (though I might make a tactical misstep here and there) :D

For pity sake, YOU'RE OVER RATIONALIZING EVERYTHING!!!!

Granted there are some things you can rationalize into real world physics.

HOWEVER, there is only so much you can actually rationalize. The rest of it is bloody native to the ANIME!

The physics, the rationalization, the way battles occur, it is relative, to the anime, and only the anime. Trying to bring real-world physics into a make-believe world that has its own rules and properties of physics just doesn't work. It's like your matter and anti-matter, or your AC and DC. They equal no-no!

[Wild Goose]

Alright, alright, ENOUGH.

Jesus, this was just a discussion on whether fields have antikinetic properties.

Now, as I said before, the general idea was that the field could be set to repel HV rounds which travel faster than beams, hence beam combat and melee would be viable because they'd be slower than the HV and wouldn't be caught by the anti HV field. This is a guess, a logical guess. (I am well aware that a wrong conclusion can be obtained logically from a flawed perspective.) I personally think it's more likely that the barrier on the BJ is what provides most of the protection; in Episode 4 of StrikerS, where Erio scuffs Nanoha's BJ, she says that he penetrated the jacket and hit the fabric...

With regards to the stadia ranging: I was trying to point out, Ark, that stadia ranging is inherently flawed. You'll note that when I mentioned Vice and sniping the drones on the cradle, I was trying to make a point to you on ranges and how we cannot get hard figures, but guess.

To continue, ark, 7arcs makes h-games. Their understanding of physics are already off-track! H-games. Where the money shots involve guy cumming and emitting more sperm, more jism, more white stuff, more seed of his loins, more little soldiers, than is humanly possible. This cannot be reconciled to reality.

I'm not going so far as to say that real-world physics don't compute to anime. But it's foolish to keep forcing reality onto an inherently unrealistic medium.

NOW, EVERYONE, PAY ATTENTION.

Emotions are running too high in this thread. I am therefore calling for a 36 hour timeout on Magitech. No posts. No replies. No mentions to it. Time out begins at 1500 GMT +8 / 0700 GMT / 0300 EST, or 35 minutes from now. Take this time to step back and cool down.

Then come back and post.

EDIT: 1435 (GMT+8): This means that you can post from now until 1500, fellas. Get your last shots in if you will. Cadians, I'll see you in the homeland.

[arkhangelsk]

Alright, alright, ENOUGH.

Jesus, this was just a discussion on whether fields have antikinetic properties.

Amazing. We are discussing something physical when this show isn't supposed to have real physics...

Now, as I said before, the general idea was that the field could be set to repel HV rounds which travel faster than beams, hence beam combat and melee would be viable because they'd be slower than the HV and wouldn't be caught by the anti HV field. This is a guess, a logical guess. (I am well aware that a wrong conclusion can be obtained logically from a flawed perspective.) I personally think it's more likely that the barrier on the BJ is what provides most of the protection; in Episode 4 of StrikerS, where Erio scuffs Nanoha's BJ, she says that he penetrated the jacket and hit the fabric...

I call this Counter-Induction. Justifying abilities not by what is shown in canon, but by random speculations of perceived needs in lieu of using what's definitely there.

With regards to the stadia ranging: I was trying to point out, Ark, that stadia ranging is inherently flawed. You'll note that when I mentioned Vice and sniping the drones on the cradle, I was trying to make a point to you on ranges and how we cannot get hard figures, but guess.

The moment you actually try and make a guess on the range he shot at, even if it is just "over 100", it means you believe in stadia ranging.

To continue, ark, 7arcs makes h-games. Their understanding of physics are already off-track! H-games. Where the money shots involve guy cumming and emitting more sperm, more jism, more white stuff, more seed of his loins, more little soldiers, than is humanly possible. This cannot be reconciled to reality.

Nice thing about SoD. We don't have to think about what 7Arcs makes.

NOW, EVERYONE, PAY ATTENTION.

Emotions are running too high in this thread. I am therefore calling for a 36 hour timeout on Magitech. No posts. No replies. No mentions to it. Time out begins at 1500 GMT +8 / 0700 GMT / 0300 EST, or 35 minutes from now. Take this time to step back and cool down.

I won't say my emotions are running too high, but I have no objection to using 36 hours for something else (like translating the DVD booklets). Frankly, answering several opponents in sequence is tiring. (Besides, if I agree, there's the small advantage that I currently happen to have the last big word in, never a bad position :D)

See you in 36. Out.

[arkhangelsk]

Hey Ark, I think I've got a good candidate for a 'best case' beam shot. I'm stuck using youtube, my methods aren't great, and the scene is screwy, but I thought I'd throw it out there so we can have an alternative to this crap about beams being slower than a fast ostrich.

Ep6, original series? You'll have to wait at least 13 or 14 hours then if you want my commentary. Use this time to at least confirm the episode number.

I can write some replies while at work, but nothing that involves frame analysis.

In the meantime, you can take a look at some stuff I whipped up during the Cease-Fire:
http://arkhangelsk.onlinewebshop.net/analysis/transonic.html

Index Page:
http://arkhangelsk.onlinewebshop.net/

Tell me if you can even get into the site. Some people swear they can't...

Oh, and yes, the cease fire has ended a few hours ago. 3AM today.

[Kikaifan]

Oh, it is over?

Alright, checked. It is episode 6. And your page isn't working for me. I am in India right now though.

Or had a civil war where there were nukes tossed around? (Now -that- would explain why there's so many bloody ruins!)

I thought that was kind of implicit in the shot of the nuke-scale weapon going off in the city when they discussed the reasons for the ban.


Hey Ark, I think I've got a good candidate for a 'best case' beam shot. I'm stuck using youtube, my methods aren't great, and the scene is screwy, but I thought I'd throw it out there so we can have an alternative to this crap about beams being slower than a fast ostrich.

In episode 6 of the first season, Nanoha and Fate start beamspamming at each other between the buildings.

Time: Fate fires 4 shots in just under 4 seconds, with 3 shots from Nanoha between them. Youtube = can't count frames, but since there are slight gaps between each beam that means the average duration of each beam's flight is under half a second. Assuming the animators aren't playing tricks, of course.

Distance: Although max range is extremely hard to determine in this shot because the beams originate and terminate off-screen, there is a helpful building right in the center of the pan that all the beams pass behind. Determined the width and height of the screen at the building's depth by assuming that one window + interval to the next window = 1 story = 3 meters.

Fate's final shot crosses the screen on its diagonal. If the shot were parallel to the plane of the screen and had crossed the face of the reference building, it would have had a visible length of ~70m.

However, the shot is three times as wide when it exits the screen as when it enters, implying considerable movement towards the screen as well as across it, and it passes well behind the reference building, so the distance it visibly crosses must be greater than 70m. Add to this its unseen offscreen motion and a range exceeding 100m doesn't sound too unlikely- and this is from an attack fired by Fate, as a child, at one second intervals, while maneuvering.

This also gives basic beam attacks a speed of at least 150m/s, which is at least faster than an arrow.

This thing really isn't much help but since I bothered to make it I'll throw it out.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/sneaks/fightmap2.jpg




I guess I'm late for that whole armor argument, but I'd always assumed the actual matter/pseudomatter of the barrier jacket was magically active and supporting an always-on omnidirectional barrier capable of stopping physical attacks, like the ones that protected Fate and Signum when they scored those glancing hits on each other at the beginning of their ep. 7 duel. I mean, if they can stop you from breathing nerve gas without covering your face I don't see why they can't stop you from eating a bullet, too.

[arkhangelsk]

Alright, checked. It is episode 6. And your page isn't working for me. I am in India right now though.

OK, I am trying a new webhost. Tell me if this one works any better:
http://arkhangelsk.987mb.com/analysis/transonic.html
http://arkhangelsk.987mb.com

This thing really isn't much help but since I bothered to make it I'll throw it out.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/sneaks/fightmap2.jpg

Quite frankly, I can't make out anything from your diagram with its painted on lines with numbers on them. I'll see if I can get some better shots when I get home.

I guess I'm late for that whole armor argument, but I'd always assumed the actual matter/pseudomatter of the barrier jacket was magically active and supporting an always-on omnidirectional barrier capable of stopping physical attacks, like the ones that protected Fate and Signum when they scored those glancing hits on each other at the beginning of their ep. 7 duel. I mean, if they can stop you from breathing nerve gas without covering your face I don't see why they can't stop you from eating a bullet, too.

Your chemical warfare suit can save you from gases, but tell me you can tank bullets with it.

[Kikaifan]

Yeah. I just slapped a bunch of screenshots together and drew the beam trajectories on so I could look at them all at once instead of replaying the scene over and over again.

I'm using the ability to filter out the gas as evidence that the barrier jacket includes a layer of invisible, always-on protection effective against matter. The assumption that it can deal with high-energy attacks as well is a product of the numerous instances in Nanoha in which characters appear to benefit from such an invisible defense.

[krisslanza]

Your chemical warfare suit can save you from gases, but tell me you can tank bullets with it.

This may be true but are you comparing a chemical warfare suit to magical clothing?

I still say a barrier jacket could easily stop a bullet - if not a few dozen.

[arkhangelsk]

Yeah. I just slapped a bunch of screenshots together and drew the beam trajectories on so I could look at them all at once instead of replaying the scene over and over again.

I went over the same frames you did and finally figured out which is which. But that's also the biggest problem with the idea that those are actually beams (ignoring the inconsistency in speed with emissions that are confirmed to be beamspam) - the trajectories of the characters will have to be most contrived, almost as if the only reason they are moving is so they can get hit by the enemy's beams (for example, Nanoha moving just so that she can get hit by Emission#3). And I thought I was supposed to be the one that had an unfairly low perception of their intelligence!

And it is even worse than the diagram show because you missed something from not being able to go frame by frame. Nanoha's Emissions are better, but take that Fate Emission 1. Going frame by frame, you'll realize for a moment, it dips to a far more vertical angle, then goes from descent to ascent for a frame! Emission 5 is similar. What nice attack beams!

Further, there is no sign of them doing this kind of combat once we switch to the close up. Combining all these absurdities together makes me conclude that those were probably not attack beams at all, but rather the manifestation of two powerful mages' aural emissions (and the aura of the reactivating Jewel Seed?) interacting with each other.

By the way, can you tell me if you can actually access my page?

I'm using the ability to filter out the gas as evidence that the barrier jacket includes a layer of invisible, always-on protection effective against matter. The assumption that it can deal with high-energy attacks as well is a product of the numerous instances in Nanoha in which characters appear to benefit from such an invisible defense.

I won't mind that. But I'll hesitate to just write "bulletproof" without even objectively analyzing its performance or seeing if it is possible to abscribe survivability to other things - such as active defenses, Autoguards ... etc.

Remember, Rein's barrier jacket was penetrated by a bug (Ep7 SS), so much it reached skin (poor Rein, still feel sorry for her there). If you did the DVD frame by frame, it was torn before the CPA! Yes, I know Rein's is only a A+, but she also had a much smaller area to defend. Is this supposed to inspire in me confidence that a barrier jacket will stand up to bullets?

This may be true but are you comparing a chemical warfare suit to magical clothing?

I still say a barrier jacket could easily stop a bullet - if not a few dozen.

I was poking fun at this abuse of inductive logic - ability to stop gases = ability to stop bullets?

[krisslanza]

I won't mind that. But I'll hesitate to just write "bulletproof" without even objectively analyzing its performance or seeing if it is possible to abscribe survivability to other things - such as active defenses, Autoguards ... etc.

Remember, Rein's barrier jacket was penetrated by a bug (Ep7 SS), so much it reached skin (poor Rein, still feel sorry for her there). If you did the DVD frame by frame, it was torn before the CPA! Yes, I know Rein's is only a A+, but she also had a much smaller area to defend. Is this supposed to inspire in me confidence that a barrier jacket will stand up to bullets?


To be fair it IS a magical bug. And Rein seems to be particularly weak to them.
A physical bullet =/= magical bug


I was poking fun at this abuse of inductive logic - ability to stop gases = ability to stop bullets?

Ah yeah that makes more sense...

[Jimmy C]

Combining all these absurdities together makes me conclude that those were probably not attack beams at all, but rather the manifestation of two powerful mages' aural emissions

I would like to know what you mean by "aural emissions" and how they would "interact" with each other. I can't even begin to think about how to discuss this when I have no idea what you're talking about.

By the way, can you tell me if you can actually access my page?

This time, I could.

[arkhangelsk]

I would like to know what you mean by "aural emissions"
and how they would "interact" with each other.

Think DBZ.

[Jimmy C]

You remember that but not Ranma? Geez. Nevermind.
Anyway, you'll have to explain. I can't form a connection here.
And it would be best if you have some hint, at least, that such things as "aural emissions" like you're describing here exist in Nanoha. Beyond "that's what I think this is.".

[Kikaifan]

I went over the same frames you did and finally figured out which is which. But that's also the biggest problem with the idea that those are actually beams (ignoring the inconsistency in speed with emissions that are confirmed to be beamspam) - the trajectories of the characters will have to be most contrived, almost as if the only reason they are moving is so they can get hit by the enemy's beams (for example, Nanoha moving just so that she can get hit by Emission#3). And I thought I was supposed to be the one that had an unfairly low perception of their intelligence!

I attempted to plot the movement of the characters based on where their foe was aiming, but remember that the real cause-effect order is the other way around- one character aims at the other based on the other's movements! Their movements are contrived to avoid getting hit- thus the zig-zagging motions- and their attacks attempt to follow those motions.

Though I'll admit that the huge movement Nanoha has to have made after firing the fourth (her second) beam in order to be anywhere near where the fifth (Fate's third) was aimed is a little ridiculous. Perhaps flash move was used.

And it is even worse than the diagram show because you missed something from not being able to go frame by frame. Nanoha's Emissions are better, but take that Fate Emission 1. Going frame by frame, you'll realize for a moment, it dips to a far more vertical angle, then goes from descent to ascent for a frame! Emission 5 is similar. What nice attack beams!

Further, there is no sign of them doing this kind of combat once we switch to the close up. Combining all these absurdities together makes me conclude that those were probably not attack beams at all, but rather the manifestation of two powerful mages' aural emissions (and the aura of the reactivating Jewel Seed?) interacting with each other.

I have trouble buying that. All of the Fate emissions move down and to the right, while all of the Nanoha emissions move up and to the left- the exchange still definitely has the appearance of being between two people aiming at each other (or at least in some general direction), not random discharges.

A different sort of issue your explanation brings up is the question of why, if magic can accidentally create giant arcs of energy that move at least ten times faster than their beams, have mages not based their attack spells off that effect?

I did do enough pausing to see that Fate's beams distort wildly, appearing to be arcs between two points rather than the flowing streams of energy the beams are usually depicted as. I can only explain this difference as a result of her using quickly-fired pseudoelectric magic, presumably without the multiple focusing rings that she often uses in A's and StrikerS.

(Well, actually I'd explain it as the animators changing the look-and-feel of magical combat somewhat each season, but since I'm using your system right now I'll leave that aside)

By the way, can you tell me if you can actually access my page?

Yup. I was really surprised by that Sturm Falke article, the shot always looked terribly slow to me and I'd assumed it was just a very high-tension bow shot. I'd forgotten all about it being described as supersonic.

I won't mind that. But I'll hesitate to just write "bulletproof" without even objectively analyzing its performance or seeing if it is possible to abscribe survivability to other things - such as active defenses, Autoguards ... etc.

Remember, Rein's barrier jacket was penetrated by a bug (Ep7 SS), so much it reached skin (poor Rein, still feel sorry for her there). If you did the DVD frame by frame, it was torn before the CPA! Yes, I know Rein's is only a A+, but she also had a much smaller area to defend. Is this supposed to inspire in me confidence that a barrier jacket will stand up to bullets?

Mostly for sophistry's sake: in the scanlation I have of the StrikerS manga, Nanoha refers to 'our barrier jackets and Rein's clothing' as though the two are distinct and need to be separately named. It could just be another name game like with knight armor and guardian beasts, but one could take it as evidence that they aren't really on the same plane. Also, the bugs can be used as nodes (is that a good term?) for attack spells, so it could have been magically-charged or something.

Now, in general I've favored the view that mages have extremely strong physical defenses for two reasons. One is the intuitive effect of watching them survive city-killer blasts- if a strong active defense can stop something that looks like a nuke, I start expecting their passive defenses to be able to handle small arms fire, and probably more, even with the caveat that 'same scale as a nuke' doesn't necessarily mean 'as hard to defend against with magic as a nuke'.

The second, of course, is that scene where Fate displaces a large amount of reinforced concrete and emerges intact that you just spent so much time arguing about. Suffice to say that while I agree that it's possible she used some unseen active method to survive the impact, with a few rare exceptions like the scene we're discussing above Nanoha has always been a show that liked to take combat slow and show the viewer action and reaction at length so I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect, as I do, that she didn't.

[arkhangelsk]

I have trouble buying that. All of the Fate emissions move down and to the right, while all of the Nanoha emissions move up and to the left- the exchange still definitely has the appearance of being between two people aiming at each other (or at least in some general direction), not random discharges.

But one can hardly call them aimed (or even pointed shots of any kind either, without the people "evading" in ways that just "zig" them right into a beam...

A different sort of issue your explanation brings up is the question of why, if magic can accidentally create giant arcs of energy that move at least ten times faster than their beams, have mages not based their attack spells off that effect?

That will be trivial compared to why do they use slow beams at all if those in Ep6 were actually beams.

It will be kind of like deliberately using a 50m/s round in a rifle.

It is not clear that those "giant arcs" of energy actually are in any way harmful. Even the very impressive looking glow of the Jewel Seed did remarkably little damage - RH and Bardiche were damaged, but even the two girls weren't visibly harmed, to say nothing of the surroundings. Fate only got burnt because she has to go touch the darn seed. Light does not equal harm.

There are certainly some applications of MGLN magic that are very fast - for example, telepathy. It does not stand that we can thus turn the telepathic signals into attacks!

I did do enough pausing to see that Fate's beams distort wildly, appearing to be arcs between two points rather than the flowing streams of energy the beams are usually depicted as. I can only explain this difference as a result of her using quickly-fired pseudoelectric magic, presumably without the multiple focusing rings that she often uses in A's and StrikerS.

But 60+ degrees? Fate's magic generally thus fly straight, not zigzags.

(Well, actually I'd explain it as the animators changing the look-and-feel of magical combat somewhat each season, but since I'm using your system right now I'll leave that aside)

In SoD terms (which by the way is the common standard when it comes to extracting quantitative technotactical data from fictional sources, not "my system") I'll class it as an emission. And this is no unique event.

You might compare it to the scene a little earlier when Arf was stated to be releasing a massive amount of magical energy over a wide area to excite the Jewel Seed. You'll notice that not only did she manage to knock out the electricity (or at least lighting) all over town (I've always said the Original was best at making things look l33t), but you also see those arcs in the distance (if you measured the speed of those arcs, you'll doubtlessly also find them very fast). But that's not a beam, not even a real attack (they want the magic power spread around a wide area, not concentrated into "beams"), and caused no damage to anything of import.

Or maybe Ep9, when those Jewel Seeds were activated and were running amok. In addition to towering light and a storm, they also randomly had these blue emissions - one of which smacked Arf (but apparently didn't do more than trifling damage either).

Further, the one great similarity of all these incidents is someone firing off her magic to excite a certain area. Then the emissions really get going. One can infer then, that the excitation energized the airborne mana to a higher energy state or otherwise made it easier to produce visible manifestations.

Summing up the evidence with my points before, I feel it is safe to class them as emissions.

Now, in general I've favored the view that mages have extremely strong physical defenses for two reasons. One is the intuitive effect of watching them survive city-killer blasts-

The city was fine after SLB went through it, but I see your point. Still, it does not inspire me any confidence when barrier jackets and Knight's armor have been damaged or penetrated by:
1) Bugs's windblast
2) Sein's hand (Erio's) (can't blame magic blades here...)
3) Low velocity (compared to bullets) swipes and glances of blades (not a lot of pressure there).
4) Completely penetrated by Type IVs (Type 1s and IIIs produce AMF, but there's no evidence of it from II and IV, and ruther, even a strong AMF has little visible effect against BJs - or we'll be enjoying some nice naked scenes).

I certainly buy that Mid-tech could have made something that can block bullets and blades. But the BJ just doesn't seem to be it. The real pity is that it isn't that hard - the BJs just badly need a single, much neglected component - hard armor plate.

The second, of course, is that scene where Fate displaces a large amount of reinforced concrete and emerges intact that you just spent so much time arguing about. Suffice to say that while I agree that it's possible she used some unseen active method to survive the impact, with a few rare exceptions like the scene we're discussing above Nanoha has always been a show that liked to take combat slow and show the viewer action and reaction at length so I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect, as I do, that she didn't.

I see. Well, I take a different approach to these things generally. Without contradicting evidence, I tend to go for what is most plausible (or at least the least implausible). For example, the BJ or an active shield might have saved Fate in that one. It may indeed be true, as Wild Goose suggests, that neither would have realistically saved Fate. However, the shield certainly has a much better chance scientifically due to the increased stand-off distance that will lower peak accelerations and peak forces and pressures. So the choice b/w the two is obvious.

[Avatar_notADV]

Purely devil's advocate here...

Is being penetrated by Sein's hand really germane to the discussion? We're talking about something that can penetrate practically anything. Penetrating stuff is what Sein does! If she can go through a mile of armor, I don't think saying "she can go through a Barrier Jacket" necessarily means that the Jacket is flimsy...

[Jimmy C]

But one can hardly call them aimed (or even pointed shots of any kind either, without the people "evading" in ways that just "zig" them right into a beam...

When was this scene again? It strikes me that the only way you can say that they flew into the beam deliberately with such conviction is that it showed her flying into it after it was fired. Was this the case?

[arkhangelsk]

When was this scene again? It strikes me that the only way you can say that they flew into the beam deliberately with such conviction is that it showed her flying into it after it was fired. Was this the case?

We don't know. We can't even see them throughout that scene. However, look at Kikaifan's proposed flightpaths. For them to be true, the two must basically be flying themselves into the emissions again and again, thus my comment.

Purely devil's advocate here...

Is being penetrated by Sein's hand really germane to the discussion? We're talking about something that can penetrate practically anything. Penetrating stuff is what Sein does! If she can go through a mile of armor, I don't think saying "she can go through a Barrier Jacket" necessarily means that the Jacket is flimsy...

Sein "dives" through solid material like it is water, presumably by exploiting the true degree of emptiness in matter, but she leaves it unharmed. The Deep Diver was off as Sein surfaced. Thus, if she hurt Erio, it is with her hand. A fingernail, maybe :heh:

[Jimmy C]

We don't know. We can't even see them throughout that scene. However, look at Kikaifan's proposed flightpaths. For them to be true, the two must basically be flying themselves into the emissions again and again, thus my comment.

In that case, I'm puzzled. What about an alternative explaination that they're better at aiming than they are at dodging? Since you are so convinved that they're flying into each other's shots, you must have discounted that for some reason already. What was it?

[arkhangelsk]

In that case, I'm puzzled. What about an alternative explaination that they're better at aiming than they are at dodging? Since you are so convinved that they're flying into each other's shots, you must have discounted that for some reason already. What was it?

First, as I said, I don't really believe they are beams at all, so they aren't running themselves into them.

As for them aiming, while Nanoha's emissions at least tend to go in one general direction, Fate's emissions zigzag (not visible in Kikaifan's picture) over 60 degrees from frame to frame. Crediting any kind of "aiming" or "control" to the process even if they are beams is ridiculous.

But back to Kikaifan's picture. Let's start with Fate's path.

Fate fires (1), then dives (2), right into Nanoha's beam. OK, that might just have been a bad choice.

She then continues her dive, fires back (3). Now, she begins a slow, arcing turn (what enthusiastic dodging!), right into a beam (4). Despite this, she does not inverse (does she want to get hit again or what?), but continues her turn to fire back (5). But then, with no threat, she turns again to fire (6).

But that monstrosity is nothing compared to poor Nanoha. Let's consider the light blue path first.

Nanoha gets hit (1) and jinks up to fire back (2). Now she dives, in a much longer jink (why?), thus allowing Fate to target and hit her (3). She then jinks up briefly again to fire (4). One will think Nanoha has learned the folly of long jinks by now, but no, she zooms forward until she gets hit again (5), without taking a shot opportunity. She jinks up, a bit more this time (6) to fire back (why a long jink to shoot this time?), and then she jinks a long dive again, right into Fate's beam (7).

Let's look at the Dark Blue line, an alternate path. Nanoha gets hit (1), flies backwards to return fire (2), jinks down in a very long run (3) and gets hit, zigs up (4) short to fire (nice, learning that short zigs = good), before dashing forward in a straight run to get hit (5). Then she goes the same as the blue path.

If those are the paths they took, both have a death wish, Nanoha more so. It definitely does not have any sign of evasive intent.

[Jimmy C]

Question then: Since neither Nanoha nor Fate are in view during the sequence, can we be sure they actually got hit when you thought they did?
Kikaifan's path is only an estimate after all. It's possible those positions aren't the ones Nanoha and Fate were in when they were actually firing. What then?
Anyways, they're nine and this was their first stint as mages. So what if their performance was less than stellar at this time?

[Kikaifan]

But one can hardly call them aimed (or even pointed shots of any kind either, without the people "evading" in ways that just "zig" them right into a beam...

I'm still not getting you on this one. I'm assuming that they move first, and then the beam is fired. I don't assume that they move into the beam, just that they were at or near the point the beam was aimed at around the time it was fired.

That will be trivial compared to why do they use slow beams at all if those in Ep6 were actually beams.

The obvious answer would be that the 'slow' beams are in fact in slow motion. This scene is valuable precisely because it breaks from normal Nanoha style and shows an exchange of shots at full speed without constantly switching back and forth to show the actions and reactions of each combatant in close-ups.

It is not clear that those "giant arcs" of energy actually are in any way harmful. Even the very impressive looking glow of the Jewel Seed did remarkably little damage - RH and Bardiche were damaged, but even the two girls weren't visibly harmed, to say nothing of the surroundings. Fate only got burnt because she has to go touch the darn seed. Light does not equal harm.

Accepted.

But 60+ degrees? Fate's magic generally thus fly straight, not zigzags.

I can't frame-by-frame it, but to me what it looks like is happening is that-

1. The point of the beam moves across the screen in a straight line.
2. The portion of the beam immediately following distorts.
3. The beam 'straightens out'
4. Then fades, leaving behind little remnants.

Could be explained by either the initial portion of the beam forming a path that the rest of the magic follows in better focus, or a sort of 'train wreck' effect caused by the compression of the middle part of the beam when the front hits something. I like the first better. At any rate, the fact that the beams all fade out and only leave remnants over their straight path suggests to me that the majority of the magic is moving in proper beam form.

I'm pretty sure I've seen beams 'rear back' or distort before/while hitting something in other shots too, but I'll have to look later. Think it's there in Nanoha and Fate's beam-o-war in episode 5 and when they go up against the big mecha with the shield in the Garden of Time at the end.

In SoD terms (which by the way is the common standard when it comes to extracting quantitative technotactical data from fictional sources, not "my system") I'll class it as an emission. And this is no unique event.

You are its chief proponent around here though.

Anyway, agreed that random magical discharges with limited effect against mages are common enough, but the consistent direction and timing of the beams in the scene still gives me the impression of weapons fire first.


Other things:

As to the assertion that the scene doesn't match the closeups of the combat, at the very least Nanoha has Raging Heart in shooting mode before and after, indicating she was or was trying to fight at some range.

It's possible they might have been using those intermediate-power 'mini-beams' they create by charging up their basic attacks that show up occasionally in the first season and then disappear until Nanoha 'cools down' Teana in StrikerS.

The city was fine after SLB went through it, but I see your point. Still, it does not inspire me any confidence when barrier jackets and Knight's armor have been damaged or penetrated by:
1) Bugs's windblast
2) Sein's hand (Erio's) (can't blame magic blades here...)
3) Low velocity (compared to bullets) swipes and glances of blades (not a lot of pressure there).
4) Completely penetrated by Type IVs (Type 1s and IIIs produce AMF, but there's no evidence of it from II and IV, and ruther, even a strong AMF has little visible effect against BJs - or we'll be enjoying some nice naked scenes).

I certainly buy that Mid-tech could have made something that can block bullets and blades. But the BJ just doesn't seem to be it. The real pity is that it isn't that hard - the BJs just badly need a single, much neglected component - hard armor plate.

Barrier Jackets, as per the name, include integrated barriers (that or my scanlation of the StrikerS manga is terrible). They aren't just being protected by the cloth. Apparently they're conveniently invisible most of the time, but that glow that shows up on Signum and Fate when they score those glancing hits on each other at the start of the A's 7 fight looked like it might be the thing.

The problem with using examples of BJ and their wearers taking damage from 'physical' attacks is that it's always against opponents using magic or magitech. There's pretty clear evidence that the 'magic sword' excuse is a valid one- Fate's barriers can displace hundreds of kilos of concrete in a high-speed collision, but they can't deflect Laevatein's blade (which, incidentally, gives off arcs of magic in Signum's pink when it hits them). Extending that to 'magic fists' (Arf gets magic arcs just from punching Zafira, YnS breaking Nanoha's shield) isn't hard.

I don't know what to say about that windblast though. That's just ridiculous. Though StrikerS is the season where Hiryuu Issen got deflected by some tiny projectile that looked like nothing so much as one of Kirby's air-puff attacks.

[Wild Goose]

Quick posting on the run:

On Rein's BJ being penetrated by the windblast, if you look at it more closely, Rein was grazed by the wings of the bug. Note how fast the wings are moving; we know that insect wings move very fast for them to gain their lift, much as how the hummingbird is a living helo because of the madly flapping wings. Considering that these insects seem somewhat harder physically than organic bugs, getting hit by the wings, even if just a graze, would be like getting hit with a lawn strimmer using a metal wire instead of plastic.

Scaled for Rein and plot, of course. And probably not as bad as my above example, or walking into a helo's rotors... (remembers hearing about one of his Dad's friends, a Malaysian AF mechanic, who got up one day and walked right into a Sea King's tail rotor, or about the Marine Cobra pilot in Vietnam who landed at the foot of a hill, got out, ran uphil, and got hit in the head by the main rotors.)

She wasn't hit by the windblast, but a direct impact. It was a graze, but it was just enough to hurt.

Also, consider that these bugs are magical...

[arkhangelsk]

Question then: Since neither Nanoha nor Fate are in view during the sequence, can we be sure they actually got hit when you thought they did?
Kikaifan's path is only an estimate after all. It's possible those positions aren't the ones Nanoha and Fate were in when they were actually firing. What then?
Anyways, they're nine and this was their first stint as mages. So what if their performance was less than stellar at this time?

Well, since we can't see them at all, how do we even know that they were aiming, or the shots came of their own volition, or that they were shots?

I'm still not getting you on this one. I'm assuming that they move first, and then the beam is fired. I don't assume that they move into the beam, just that they were at or near the point the beam was aimed at around the time it was fired.

Let me ask you. Why does Nanoha, for example (according to you), do short jinks to shoot, and long, long jinks that give people time to aim otherwise?

The obvious answer would be that the 'slow' beams are in fact in slow motion. This scene is valuable precisely because it breaks from normal Nanoha style and shows an exchange of shots at full speed without constantly switching back and forth to show the actions and reactions of each combatant in close-ups.

Here's the problem. From the SoD point of view, the "slow" beam scenes, which contain lots of sound, have their timerates pretty much locked. You might be able to bump it up / down 10% but that's no help considering the base crudeness of our observations. Scenes like this one with few sounds are victims of being sped-up, if I'm to assume they are beams at all.

Appealing to literary analysis methods don't do you any good here. A detailed scene has priority then over a non-detailed one there too.

I can't frame-by-frame it, but to me what it looks like is happening is that-

1. The point of the beam moves across the screen in a straight line.
2. The portion of the beam immediately following distorts.
3. The beam 'straightens out'
4. Then fades, leaving behind little remnants.

Actually, since you can't see either of our combatants positions, it is not even clear (if they are beams), that the first and last parts are the "straight part". Maybe the "distorted" part is on the right course to target. Or maybe none.

You are its chief proponent around here though.

Anyway, agreed that random magical discharges with limited effect against mages are common enough, but the consistent direction and timing of the beams in the scene still gives me the impression of weapons fire first.

Quite frankly, the first impression it gave me (remember that right up until Ep17, I was really trying to turn my brain off) is that it is a cheap special effect drawn in by 7Arcs to show that there's a lot of energy in the area. Because there is no way something that random can be sane weapons fire, not to mention that about the only similarity it has with known attacks is that it glows.

SoDwise, it probably has to do with how the mages energy's interacted in the air. For example, it might be them arcing between two pillars of power. But frankly, it is really hard to say because we don't even see our targets.

It's possible they might have been using those intermediate-power 'mini-beams' they create by charging up their basic attacks that show up occasionally in the first season and then disappear until Nanoha 'cools down' Teana in StrikerS.

What mini-beams. And if those mini-beams are any use as weapons, they should have thrown them at each other.

Barrier Jackets, as per the name, include integrated barriers (that or my scanlation of the StrikerS manga is terrible). They aren't just being protected by the cloth. Apparently they're conveniently invisible most of the time, but that glow that shows up on Signum and Fate when they score those glancing hits on each other at the start of the A's 7 fight looked like it might be the thing.

Yes, the cloth is part of the barrier / field structure. It is all, ultimately, formed by magic.

The problem with using examples of BJ and their wearers taking damage from 'physical' attacks is that it's always against opponents using magic or magitech. There's pretty clear evidence that the 'magic sword' excuse is a valid one- Fate's barriers can displace hundreds of kilos of concrete in a high-speed collision, but they can't deflect Laevatein's blade (which, incidentally, gives off arcs of magic in Signum's pink when it hits them). Extending that to 'magic fists' (Arf gets magic arcs just from punching Zafira, YnS breaking Nanoha's shield) isn't hard.

That's why used those only as secondaries. Also the blade is not always "powered up".

I don't know what to say about that windblast though. That's just ridiculous. Though StrikerS is the season where Hiryuu Issen got deflected by some tiny projectile that looked like nothing so much as one of Kirby's air-puff attacks.

Actually, the DVD booklet spent some time going over that. Apparently, Agito's powers as a Fire-magic user extended to cancelling out flames that other people put. That "Kirby air-puff" is a shockwave. :heh:

Quick posting on the run:

On Rein's BJ being penetrated by the windblast, if you look at it more closely, Rein was grazed by the wings of the bug. Note how fast the wings are moving; we know that insect wings move very fast for them to gain their lift, much as how the hummingbird is a living helo because of the madly flapping wings. Considering that these insects seem somewhat harder physically than organic bugs, getting hit by the wings, even if just a graze, would be like getting hit with a lawn strimmer using a metal wire instead of plastic.

Do you think I say such ridiculous and depressing things on a whim or even based on normal speed playback? :frustrated: I've watched the DVD subs from Coldlight very carefully before reluctantly coming to this conclusion. I might not think that BJs are bulletproof but I honestly thought they were tougher than god-d*mned tissue paper. :heh:

Look at this depressing frame sequence and weep :frustrated: :
http://arkhangelsk.987mb.com/analysis/ss07depress.html

Scaled for Rein and plot, of course. And probably not as bad as my above example, or walking into a helo's rotors... (remembers hearing about one of his Dad's friends, a Malaysian AF mechanic, who got up one day and walked right into a Sea King's tail rotor, or about the Marine Cobra pilot in Vietnam who landed at the foot of a hill, got out, ran uphil, and got hit in the head by the main rotors.)

Imagine if your Dad's friend died before he even walked into the rotor. :(

[Jimmy C]

Well, since we can't see them at all, how do we even know that they were aiming, or the shots came of their own volition, or that they were shots?

I asked you about position, and you want to ask about aim and other stuff? If you don't have an answer on the position issue, I can accept that. Don't try to distract me by changing the subject.

[Kikaifan]

Let me ask you. Why does Nanoha, for example (according to you), do short jinks to shoot, and long, long jinks that give people time to aim otherwise?

When did I say that? All I assumed in that plot was that the beams were aimed with fair accuracy so they were probably near where their opponents beams went around the time they were fired. I drew lines with little extra movement to get a general idea for what was necessary but I have no idea exactly how they were maneuvering, just that a lot of back-and-forth was happening on Nanoha's part.

Here's the problem. From the SoD point of view, the "slow" beam scenes, which contain lots of sound, have their timerates pretty much locked. You might be able to bump it up / down 10% but that's no help considering the base crudeness of our observations. Scenes like this one with few sounds are victims of being sped-up, if I'm to assume they are beams at all.

Timerates shouldn't be considered locked by sound in anime. Look at the scene where Nanoha gets knocked off the building at the start of A's. There's sound in that, but she still falls for an impossible amount of time.

Appealing to literary analysis methods don't do you any good here. A detailed scene has priority then over a non-detailed one there too.

Cinematographic analysis. There's nothing literary about slow-motion.

Actually, since you can't see either of our combatants positions, it is not even clear (if they are beams), that the first and last parts are the "straight part". Maybe the "distorted" part is on the right course to target. Or maybe none.

I think perhaps you're missing the forest for the trees in this case. Watch it in full motion and you see straight beams with momentary distortions. Same deal with that windblast sequence- animation is about the end effect, not the contents of each frame. Animation in action sequences often wildly deforms characters in individual frames to enhance the appearance of motion in the end product. Nobody would claim that the limbs of the characters in question temporarily turned into noodles or large blurs.

Quite frankly, the first impression it gave me (remember that right up until Ep17, I was really trying to turn my brain off) is that it is a cheap special effect drawn in by 7Arcs to show that there's a lot of energy in the area. Because there is no way something that random can be sane weapons fire, not to mention that about the only similarity it has with known attacks is that it glows.

Apparently we have wildly divergent definitions of 'random'. Anyway, I thought it was weapons fire the first time I saw it and I don't think it looks anything like the random magic arcs you get in the rest of the series. I don't recall ever seeing any that big that didn't come off a jewel seed, either.

What mini-beams. And if those mini-beams are any use as weapons, they should have thrown them at each other.

Fate's charged photon lancer against Nanoha in ep. 4, Nanoha's charged divine shooter against Fate in 6, Fate combining the remnants of her phalanx shift in 11, then it's never seen again until StrikerS 8.

Basically they say the name of one of their lightweight spells but end up firing a single beam that looks smaller than their 'full' beam spells. They also don't use the spell rings IIRC.

That's why used those only as secondaries. Also the blade is not always "powered up".

Hm?

[arkhangelsk]

I asked you about position, and you want to ask about aim and other stuff? If you don't have an answer on the position issue, I can accept that. Don't try to distract me by changing the subject.

OK, let's talk about position. One huge problem with Kikaifan's theory, IMO, is right there. If we assume they are attack beams, they will indeed be fired in the positions that he painted (we can shuffle them forward and back along those lines a bit, but the general location is locked - a variant of TMA). And if we assume that they were actually aiming, then they will indeed have to be in that place. Except that the positions when plotted out don't make a whole lot of sense.

We can, of course, abscribe it to stupidity. But along with all other problems, it is probably easier IMO to just say they aren't beams.

When did I say that? All I assumed in that plot was that the beams were aimed with fair accuracy so they were probably near where their opponents beams went around the time they were fired. I drew lines with little extra movement to get a general idea for what was necessary but I have no idea exactly how they were maneuvering, just that a lot of back-and-forth was happening on Nanoha's part.

Your diagram actually shows with fair accuracy roughly how they would have been moving had your theory been true. Your lines are actually the consequence of your theory.

Timerates shouldn't be considered locked by sound in anime. Look at the scene where Nanoha gets knocked off the building at the start of A's. There's sound in that, but she still falls for an impossible amount of time.

Emergency flotation magic slowing the fall. Heck, even non-flight capable mages are supposed to have these in their pockets.

Cinematographic analysis. There's nothing literary about slow-motion.

Nor is there about fast-motion.

I think perhaps you're missing the forest for the trees in this case. Watch it in full motion and you see straight beams with momentary distortions. Same deal with that windblast sequence- animation is about the end effect, not the contents of each frame. Animation in action sequences often wildly deforms characters in individual frames to enhance the appearance of motion in the end product. Nobody would claim that the limbs of the characters in question temporarily turned into noodles or large blurs.

When the entire attack is maybe 5 frames long, and it jerks up and down for 2 or 3 of them, then that's a major deviation, not something to be casually filtered out as noise.

Apparently we have wildly divergent definitions of 'random'. Anyway, I thought it was weapons fire the first time I saw it and I don't think it looks anything like the random magic arcs you get in the rest of the series. I don't recall ever seeing any that big that didn't come off a jewel seed, either.

Well, how about the arcs that came down when Arf excited the air - you have to take into account that that was much more of a long-shot.

Fate's charged photon lancer against Nanoha in ep. 4, Nanoha's charged divine shooter against Fate in 6, Fate combining the remnants of her phalanx shift in 11, then it's never seen again until StrikerS 8.

If I remember correctly, those are very small, and the scale of the animation so large those particles are unlikely to have been more than crawling in comparison to the speeds they show here. For example, all those balls are within a few meters of Fate in Ep11.

[krisslanza]

The city was fine after SLB went through it, but I see your point. Still, it does not inspire me any confidence when barrier jackets and Knight's armor have been damaged or penetrated by:
1) Bugs's windblast
2) Sein's hand (Erio's) (can't blame magic blades here...)
3) Low velocity (compared to bullets) swipes and glances of blades (not a lot of pressure there).
4) Completely penetrated by Type IVs (Type 1s and IIIs produce AMF, but there's no evidence of it from II and IV, and ruther, even a strong AMF has little visible effect against BJs - or we'll be enjoying some nice naked scenes).

I certainly buy that Mid-tech could have made something that can block bullets and blades. But the BJ just doesn't seem to be it. The real pity is that it isn't that hard - the BJs just badly need a single, much neglected component - hard armor plate.


4. Type IVs are the stealth drones right? I believe it mentions a Barrier Jacket's barriers don't activate if you're hit by surprise. They need to have time to react. Also we don't know if they have some special blades since they seem to be made for assassination.

Also I doubt hard plate does anything. Ginga's barrier jacket has what looks like a hard plate breastplate but by going on this logic it would imply someone whose barrier jacket is say... A knight's armor should be stronger then say Nanoha's which is a variation on a magical girl outfit.

I believe a barrier jacket's look is purely cosmetic (With some exceptions, since Fate's barrier jacket is so revealing in order to make her "faster") and even if your jacket was just some dental floss it'd be as protecting as a suit of armor. Granted the mages both had the same level of magical talent. A jacket's "defense" probably stems from the mage's talent. (So hence Nanoha's barrier jacket would be a lot stronger then say Erio's, Erio is only a C rank or B rank mage isn't he?)

[Mirificus]

4. Type IVs are the stealth drones right? I believe it mentions a Barrier Jacket's barriers don't activate if you're hit by surprise. They need to have time to react. Also we don't know if they have some special blades since they seem to be made for assassination.
Special blades in the absence of evidence... meet Occam's Razor.

Also I doubt hard plate does anything. Ginga's barrier jacket has what looks like a hard plate breastplate but by going on this logic it would imply someone whose barrier jacket is say... A knight's armor should be stronger then say Nanoha's which is a variation on a magical girl outfit.
The "knight's armor" we've seen is also mostly made of cloth. It really has nothing to do with whether how effective hard armor would be compared to soft armor.

[krisslanza]

Special blades in the absence of evidence... meet Occam's Razor.

Occam's Razor?


The "knight's armor" we've seen is also mostly made of cloth. It really has nothing to do with whether how effective hard armor would be compared to soft armor.
Yeah I know that. Hayate thought it up and said she'd make "knight-like clothes".
I'm just saying I wouldn't imagine if you thought up a barrier jacket that looked like a suit of platemail would be any more protecting then Nanoha's.

[Avatar_notADV]

Well, let's analyze barrier jacket coverage, shall we?

First off, we can assume that there is, at the least, an argument for not just going out in a barrier jacket done up like a suit of plate mail, as nobody does that (and it's the rather obvious thing to do, if there was an advantage to be gained, huh?)

If we look at the barrier jackets used by TSAB people, they tend to have pretty full body coverage, excluding the head. The standard uniform is basically a normal military outfit with added breastplate. Chrono's duster-jacket is not only badass, but covers basically everything except his noggin. Crucially, I don't remember anyone using a helmet anywhere, which is -really- suggestive; obviously there is some sort of head protection provided by the barrier jacket, or they'd definitely go in for some kind of head-covering. (Qualify this: it's an anime, helmets cover heads/hair/faces, making characters hard to identify, so you can expect that named characters will not wear helmets even when otherwise indicated. Starship Troopers movie syndrome.)

The most exposure of any named character's barrier jacket is Subaru, who has big uncovered areas (legs and torso). Not truly proof - Subaru's much more durable than standard-issue human and can get by with less protection, possibly. Others have mentioned Sonic-mode Fate, though I don't think that's so much a matter of "weight" as "repurposing" - some of her BJ elements are devoted to propulsion instead of protection.

That said, it's obvious that the barrier jackets can protect even exposed flesh - Elio's legs, Tia's arms and legs, Subaru's stomach and legs, Hayate's legs (possibly an oversight in the design phase there - how important does a paraplegic think her legs are, anyway?), practically everybody's head. Thus, the protective capabilities aren't just "tough magical cloth" and presumably aren't enhanced by sticking actual metal in there. (Then again, who knows?)

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Occam's Razor?

Occam's Razar, a philisophical and scientific understanding that when there is a lack of hard scientific proof, when pressented with multiple possible solutions, the simplest solution is most often the correct one.

IOW: Nature Favors Simplicity. And the simplest answer is usually the right one.


Well, let's analyze barrier jacket coverage, shall we?

First off, we can assume that there is, at the least, an argument for not just going out in a barrier jacket done up like a suit of plate mail, as nobody does that (and it's the rather obvious thing to do, if there was an advantage to be gained, huh?)

Mass and freedom of movement. The same things that keep us from putting people in plate armor now. For the defensive advantages it would give, the drawbacks in mobility are too great due to weight problems. Though this may well be a thing of the past if the research into powered exosketons makes it into the mainstream. The main problem at this point is power supply.


If we look at the barrier jackets used by TSAB people, they tend to have pretty full body coverage, excluding the head. The standard uniform is basically a normal military outfit with added breastplate. Chrono's duster-jacket is not only badass, but covers basically everything except his noggin. Crucially, I don't remember anyone using a helmet anywhere, which is -really- suggestive; obviously there is some sort of head protection provided by the barrier jacket, or they'd definitely go in for some kind of head-covering. (Qualify this: it's an anime, helmets cover heads/hair/faces, making characters hard to identify, so you can expect that named characters will not wear helmets even when otherwise indicated. Starship Troopers movie syndrome.)

A bit of an arbitrary reason to not have helmets, but we can handwave that away. Though, someone probably could have come up with Unique helmet designs, or at least head covering.


The most exposure of any named character's barrier jacket is Subaru, who has big uncovered areas (legs and torso). Not truly proof - Subaru's much more durable than standard-issue human and can get by with less protection, possibly. Others have mentioned Sonic-mode Fate, though I don't think that's so much a matter of "weight" as "repurposing" - some of her BJ elements are devoted to propulsion instead of protection.

Freedom of movement more likely. Likely she moves faster than her own fields in terms of reflexes and physical speeds. Removing them gives her that much more ability to move freely. At very short reaction times, the scale of time starts to drop into the 'every milisecond counts' range.

That said, it's obvious that the barrier jackets can protect even exposed flesh - Elio's legs, Tia's arms and legs, Subaru's stomach and legs, Hayate's legs (possibly an oversight in the design phase there - how important does a paraplegic think her legs are, anyway?), practically everybody's head. Thus, the protective capabilities aren't just "tough magical cloth" and presumably aren't enhanced by sticking actual metal in there. (Then again, who knows?)

Actually, assuming you could deal with the weight issue, putting armor plating on a mage would improve the ability to withstand blows. It becomes a layered defense. The magic barrier would work as always, but the armor plate would provide the same protection as its non-magic counterparts. Depending on composition, density, and thickness, that COULD be significant... But again, at the cost of weight. From a practical standpoint, this would be one-up on barrier jackets as normal. But with practical plate armor designs, you can't get the frilly fancy costume designs quite as well.

[arkhangelsk]

4. Type IVs are the stealth drones right? I believe it mentions a Barrier Jacket's barriers don't activate if you're hit by surprise. They need to have time to react.

Fat lot of good that will do against a bullet then... if I've got time to react I'll be putting up a god-darn shield!

Also I doubt hard plate does anything. Ginga's barrier jacket has what looks like a hard plate breastplate but by going on this logic it would imply someone whose barrier jacket is say... A knight's armor should be stronger then say Nanoha's which is a variation on a magical girl outfit.

Depends on the kind of attack. Against a bullet-like attack, however, hardness (in the layman sense) does matter. Being magical, the UTS in physical terms may indeed be the same either way, but the hard plate (make it of whatever) quickly spreads impact force over a large area without any magicobabble and does not deform as much. The soft fabric might not actually be penetrated, but it'll deform and stretch under the bullet's pressure, so the bullet actually burrows into flesh, which is not what you want.

I believe a barrier jacket's look is purely cosmetic (With some exceptions, since Fate's barrier jacket is so revealing in order to make her "faster") and even if your jacket was just some dental floss it'd be as protecting as a suit of armor. Granted the mages both had the same level of magical talent. A jacket's "defense" probably stems from the mage's talent. (So hence Nanoha's barrier jacket would be a lot stronger then say Erio's, Erio is only a C rank or B rank mage isn't he?)

Actually, it'll seem that the barrier jacket's look correlates to some extent as to how well it defends.

Well, let's analyze barrier jacket coverage, shall we?

First off, we can assume that there is, at the least, an argument for not just going out in a barrier jacket done up like a suit of plate mail, as nobody does that (and it's the rather obvious thing to do, if there was an advantage to be gained, huh?)

Personally, I'll have thought stocks for long-range shooting is a rather obvious thing to do as well (for even longer ranges a bipod / tripod is welcome, but I'll grant a Device is supposed to be mobile).

On the other hand, the knights originally asked for armor before settling on knight-like clothes. Let's face it. Armor ain't fun. Nobody asks for it if they can do as well dressed in pajamas.

Crucially, I don't remember anyone using a helmet anywhere, which is -really- suggestive; obviously there is some sort of head protection provided by the barrier jacket, or they'd definitely go in for some kind of head-covering. (Qualify this: it's an anime, helmets cover heads/hair/faces, making characters hard to identify, so you can expect that named characters will not wear helmets even when otherwise indicated. Starship Troopers movie syndrome.)

The most exposure of any named character's barrier jacket is Subaru, who has big uncovered areas (legs and torso). Not truly proof - Subaru's much more durable than standard-issue human and can get by with less protection, possibly. Others have mentioned Sonic-mode Fate, though I don't think that's so much a matter of "weight" as "repurposing" - some of her BJ elements are devoted to propulsion instead of protection.

That said, it's obvious that the barrier jackets can protect even exposed flesh - Elio's legs, Tia's arms and legs, Subaru's stomach and legs, Hayate's legs (possibly an oversight in the design phase there - how important does a paraplegic think her legs are, anyway?), practically everybody's head. Thus, the protective capabilities aren't just "tough magical cloth" and presumably aren't enhanced by sticking actual metal in there. (Then again, who knows?)

Well, not many people have actually clubbed them in those places. I will note that Teana got clubbed in the leg by Deed, rendering it almost unusable. Fate gets wounded ... in the leg. Subaru gets really bloody after taking Overdetonation ... in the uncovered places. Oh, I'm sure there's something protecting them elsewhere, but it is not at all clear that it is of the same strength as the stuff protecting the covered areas.

As for the lack of helmets ... well, we know that helmets are protective, and still not everyone puts them on when using their motorbike.

Of course, given SS Ep07, maybe the truth is that the jacket's covered positions are equally unprotective (not quite the same thing), but then we'll really need hard plate...

Oh yeah. While we are on the topic of things that have penetrated barrier jackets, how could I have forgotten Precia's whip? A real bullet stopper - Fate's jacket...

Mass and freedom of movement. The same things that keep us from putting people in plate armor now. For the defensive advantages it would give, the drawbacks in mobility are too great due to weight problems. Though this may well be a thing of the past if the research into powered exosketons makes it into the mainstream. The main problem at this point is power supply.

Actually, we are putting people in plate armor again - Interceptor Body Vests have little pieces of plate inserted so they'll handle 7.62 fire.

Actually, assuming you could deal with the weight issue, putting armor plating on a mage would improve the ability to withstand blows. It becomes a layered defense. The magic barrier would work as always, but the armor plate would provide the same protection as its non-magic counterparts. Depending on composition, density, and thickness, that COULD be significant... But again, at the cost of weight. From a practical standpoint, this would be one-up on barrier jackets as normal. But with practical plate armor designs, you can't get the frilly fancy costume designs quite as well.

Can't they at least put some plate in vital areas, like the breasts (thus accentuating them while covering the heart?)

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Actually, we are putting people in plate armor again - Interceptor Body Vests have little pieces of plate inserted so they'll handle 7.62 fire.


While that IS plate armor, the concept is something more like full scale total body armor from head to toe VIA a Knight.


Can't they at least put some plate in vital areas, like the breasts (thus accentuating them while covering the heart?)

To get effective coverage against all these nasty wide area impacting magical attacks alone, you need more than a breast plate. Half the shit explodes on impact. You also need to protect key blood vessels and other vital areas. Wouldn't do you any good if you had a nice heavy armor brest plate, and had a hole blown in your stomach in which your intestines would spill out of and cause you to bleed to death slowely and painfully, now would it?

The heart is a near instant kill, but any major injury puts Grim on Standby. Injuries to major arteries could result in fatal blood loss. And you could get injuries like this from a lucky puncture wound to the leg.

[arkhangelsk]

To get effective coverage against all these nasty wide area impacting magical attacks alone, you need more than a breast plate. Half the shit explodes on impact. You also need to protect key blood vessels and other vital areas. Wouldn't do you any good if you had a nice heavy armor brest plate, and had a hole blown in your stomach in which your intestines would spill out of and cause you to bleed to death slowely and painfully, now would it?

The heart is a near instant kill, but any major injury puts Grim on Standby. Injuries to major arteries could result in fatal blood loss. And you could get injuries like this from a lucky puncture wound to the leg.

True. But the normal defenses seem reasonably able against wide area magic attacks (or is it because most of them are set on "anti-magic" rather than physical?) What's needed is reinforcement against sharp, high pressure blows - bullets, blades ... etc.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Which also have counters, called 'armor piercing'.

Like I said, to get GOOD physical armor against today's gear, you need to get the good materials... usually high density, and very heavy. And to get that in any decent coverage, you'll have to cover the body pretty well. Which, if you don't have a mechanism to counter it, leaves you with too much bulk, and no mobility, and that in turn, allows the bigger weapons to hit you more easily.

(And why I opt for powered exoskeletons to support the armor. All the mobility of a man, all the armor of a mini-TANK.)

[Wild Goose]

Just something I wanna chime in: during Operation Enduring Freedom, US troops basically had just vests covering the chest and back. What happened was that while they had decent protection front and back, but no side protection and groin protection; IBA vests protect more areas on the body than the earlier vests.

As for the plates, US body armor has been using plates since the early 90s; read Black Hawk Down: the Rangers and Delta operators had insert plates for their body armor, but most only put their plates in front, leaving their backs unprotected. IBA isn't really that new... well, except for being the first type of body armor to have protection for the groin.

Compared to 10, 15 years ago, IBA (and the USMC variant FSBEV, which is held to be better) protect more parts of the body. They also reduce your mobility and you cannot run as fast.

And yes, as ATC said, it's a neverending race between body armor and armor-piercing rounds. At the moment, the side which can whip out the HMGs and use them wins: NO body armor available right now can tank a .50cal round. (And I've heard that body armor makes things worse if you're shot with the Mk211 Mod 0 Raufuss HE/API round, since it slows the round long enough for the HE to detonate. Apparently if used on human targets, the round blows through and the HE detonates afterwards. And this isn't even talking about the AP penetrator... mind you, this is a moot point, since most people die from being hit by .50cal rounds.)

I'm thinking that perhaps the reason barrier jackets are so light may have to do with mass and inertia... I'll think about it more and come back later when I've thought it out more properly.

[Keroko]

On the subject of armor: Saying 'Barrier Jackets don't protect areas that are not clothed' makes no sense. Sure, for people like Teana and Nanoha, who are not in te frontlines, it makes sense, but when you look at how many melee fighters leave their legs uncovered, it loses that sense.

To explain, in armed melee combat, one of the primairy areas to get hit is the leg. Arms are close secondery, torso is tertairy. A melee fighter leaving his legs uncovered is risking serious and easy injuries, even though armor can be put on without removing or even reducing mobillity. If all that is needed is a layer of cloth, then it makes even less sense to leave the legs unguarded.

Now, if we look at the amount melee fighters in Nanoha leave their legs uncovered (Signum, Vita, Erio, Arf, Subaru) it is safe to asume that Barrier Jackets do in fact cover for unclothed areas. The only other alternative would be to asume nobody in Nanoha save Vivio knows anything about melee fights.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

TWO Erios now? Do we have CLONES?!

*Tigerclaw prepares to nuke the thread.*

[Keroko]

TWO Erios now? Do we have CLONES?!

*Tigerclaw prepares to nuke the thread.*

Yup, we have clones. Fate, Erio, Vivio... that's 3 clones from the top of my head, and the numbers are technically clones as well, so....

[Tk3997]

4. Type IVs are the stealth drones right? I believe it mentions a Barrier Jacket's barriers don't activate if you're hit by surprise. They need to have time to react.Which would still be a HUGE weakness that anyone with a gun and the tiniest skill in camouflage could exploit.


Also we don't know if they have some special blades since they seem to be made for assassination.Because just adding this as another example of how jackets really aren't effective against psychical impacts is clearly totally illogical this muhc better...

Also I doubt hard plate does anything. Ginga's barrier jacket has what looks like a hard plate breastplate but by going on this logic it would imply someone whose barrier jacket is say... A knight's armor should be stronger then say Nanoha's which is a variation on a magical girl outfit.Why is that illogical? If I say "Jacket" and "Armor" one would tend to assume the later would offer rather more protection then the former. Further a kngiht would be fighting in close presumably against other people wielding psychical weapons it would only be sane to expect they'd want and try to gain more protection. Just like real knights and foot soldiers did, while archers wore at best leather with metal studs if that.


I believe a barrier jacket's look is purely cosmetic (With some exceptions, since Fate's barrier jacket is so revealing in order to make her "faster") and even if your jacket was just some dental floss it'd be as protecting as a suit of armor. Granted the mages both had the same level of magical talent. A jacket's "defense" probably stems from the mage's talent. (So hence Nanoha's barrier jacket would be a lot stronger then say Erio's, Erio is only a C rank or B rank mage isn't he?) We had pretty much this exact same debate before in the OC thread anyway I never bought any of that “invisible shield outside of jacket” nonsense then and still don’t. As said I’ve seen this augment before and it’s nonsensical IMO. Not least of all since canon itself in booklets and such talks about how the amount of material matters and sonic form is hyped repeatedly as being extremely dangerous due to weak coverage and probably thin layers. This ONLY make’s sense if the jacket itself is the primary defensive competent.

Also say you got someone to just look at Nanoha having no preconceptions do you think they would look at it and the jackets and go. “Hmm you know despite them being called jackets and armor and stuff having different modes I bet that the material is acutally totally irrelevant and instead it’s acutally invisible force fields protecting them from harm”. That really is basiclly your argument in a nutshell and it’s rather stupid IMO.

Barrier jackets have never really shown resilience to bladed or kinetic weapons mages ability to mess with gravity seems to allow them to sustain more blunt impact force then you’d expect possibly by screwing with inertial and spreading impacts (which even modern soft armor can do), but that’s a different then deflecting bullets or knives.

It also neatly helps explain why guns are outlawed if the jackets provide marginal protection at best and almost none on uncovered areas then while one guy with a gun might not be much of a threat a platoon dug into hard cover


Yeah I know that. Hayate thought it up and said she'd make "knight-like clothes".
I'm just saying I wouldn't imagine if you thought up a barrier jacket that looked like a suit of platemail would be any more protecting then Nanoha's.If it was thicker and hard it might well be, it would also probably weigh more mind and while knights where far more agile then many would think the armor did still impede movement somewhat.

That said let's face it Hayate at that time was not any kind of armorer or tactical genius when she thought this stuff up as you noted she thought up "knight like cloths" not armor, but basiclly glorified costumes. The Knights might have called them "armor" out of habit, but let's face it wasn't "armor" under sane definition.

This is Armor
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/Tk3997/cpe1.jpg
This is Armor Too
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/Tk3997/AR006_H031_Option.jpg
This is NOT armor this is a pretty dress:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/Tk3997/akibakko-11728467877294.jpg

Well, let's analyze barrier jacket coverage, shall we?

First off, we can assume that there is, at the least, an argument for not just going out in a barrier jacket done up like a suit of plate mail, as nobody does that (and it's the rather obvious thing to do, if there was an advantage to be gained, huh?)The fact that most of these people thought up jackets at the age of 9 or 10 is a bit of an issue they'd have not a clue what makes effective armor and given there exhibited tactical ineptitude in other areas even years later assuming they'd learn better and change is hardly a given either.

If we look at the barrier jackets used by TSAB people, they tend to have pretty full body coverage, excluding the head. The standard uniform is basically a normal military outfit with added breastplate. Fancy that a combat uniform with armor plates, but I thought those gave no advantage? :rolleyes:

Chrono's duster-jacket is not only badass, but covers basically everything except his noggin. Crucially, I don't remember anyone using a helmet anywhere, which is -really- suggestive;
Of rampant stupidity.


obviously there is some sort of head protection provided by the barrier jacket, or they'd definitely go in for some kind of head-covering. Or there idiots many European armies went into WWI without helmets sure they they didn't need them and Delta force operators wore hockey helmets with all the ballistic protection of a Fez in Mogadishu.

(Qualify this: it's an anime, helmets cover heads/hair/faces, making characters hard to identify, so you can expect that named characters will not wear helmets even when otherwise indicated. Starship Troopers movie syndrome.)
Which is no excuse a modern combat helmet dosen't obscure the face much (since the guy needs to you know SEE) and given the flowing manes on half the characters you could ID them by hair alone...


The most exposure of any named character's barrier jacket is Subaru, who has big uncovered areas (legs and torso). Not truly proof - Subaru's much more durable than standard-issue human and can get by with less protection, possibly. Basically a certainty IMO.


Others have mentioned Sonic-mode Fate, though I don't think that's so much a matter of "weight" as "repurposing" - some of her BJ elements are devoted to propulsion instead of protection.Then why even bother changing appearance? If it's just swamping around some force fields it changing shape makes no god damn sense.

That said, it's obvious that the barrier jackets can protect even exposed flesh - Elio's legs, Tia's arms and legs, Subaru's stomach and legs, Hayate's legs (possibly an oversight in the design phase there - how important does a paraplegic think her legs are, anyway?), practically everybody's head.Which is why we see like a half dozen extremity injuries in Strikers alone... Acutally the jackets don't seem to do much of ANYTHING for the limbs IMO even minor hits seem to do serious damage.

We've never seen anyone hit int he head, probably because it would kill them instantly given the lack of protection for there skulls. :rolleyes:


Thus, the protective capabilities aren't just "tough magical cloth" and presumably aren't enhanced by sticking actual metal in there. (Then again, who knows?)Acutally all evidence and logic says they probably are with perhaps some inertial dampening properties imparted via gravity manipulation.


Mass and freedom of movement. The same things that keep us from putting people in plate armor now.Acutally plate armor wasn't that bad it weighed significantly less then what a modern soldier is expected to march in. Even in armor a knights could run, roll, and even do handstands in it.

0kKLgSTkCEo
xm11yAXeegg

And when one can FLY via anti-gravity this is even less of an issue.


For the defensive advantages it would give, the drawbacks in mobility are too great due to weight problems. Again weight becomes sort of a secondary concern when one can fly on anti-gravity... It might matter for the suckers stuck on the ground like Teana, but for someone like Nanoha; not nearly as much.

Though this may well be a thing of the past if the research into powered exosketons makes it into the mainstream. The main problem at this point is power supply.
And moving, and syncing with the user, and being affordable, and reliable enough for feild use. I don't expect any kind of exo-skeleton for at least 20 years and that will be a model to help carry a bigger pack; not an armor plated juggernaut that can shrug off swarms of bullets.

A bit of an arbitrary reason to not have helmets, but we can handwave that away. Though, someone probably could have come up with Unique helmet designs, or at least head covering.
Or we can just go with the fact that like many other aspects of the TSAB militray the lack of helmets is a case of raging incompetence.

On the subject of armor: Saying 'Barrier Jackets don't protect areas that are not clothed' makes no sense. Sure, for people like Teana and Nanoha, who are not in te frontlines, it makes sense, but when you look at how many melee fighters leave their legs uncovered, it loses that sense.It makes perfect sense IMO given the mountain of evidence to support it.

To explain, in armed melee combat, one of the primairy areas to get hit is the leg. Arms are close secondery, torso is tertairy. A melee fighter leaving his legs uncovered is risking serious and easy injuries, even though armor can be put on without removing or even reducing mobillity. If all that is needed is a layer of cloth, then it makes even less sense to leave the legs unguarded. First off we must note that a large number of these melee fighters "armor" was designed when:
A: They were 9 or 10
B: Had there "armor" designed by said 9 and 10 year olds.

Yeah sure you could argue they should know better now, but momentum is a powerful thing and it's worked so far so what motive would they have to change?

Further in this case IMO you’re using a real world examples that doesn’t really work here. Yes when your only method of movement is your legs they’re indeed a prime target, but when you and your enemy can FLY the equation changes drastically and they become vastly less important. After all most cuts to the leg are intended to decrease the opponents mobility against an enemy that uses flight for that mobility this is rather worthless. The only real point to cut at them is to in duce bleeding, which you could do just as easily to other areas so the legs lose much of there importance as targets.

Never mind that we see a bunch of extremity injuries during the show which would tend to say that indeed they aren't that well protected. Also you seem to just assume that this cloth will be light; in fact cloth thick enough to act as armor weighs an amount like armor too even without armor plates a modern Kevlar flak jacket weighs around 10 pounds for instance despite being made of "Cloth".


Now, if we look at the amount melee fighters in Nanoha leave their legs uncovered (Signum, Vita, Erio, Arf, Subaru) it is safe to asume that Barrier Jackets do in fact cover for unclothed areas. The only other alternative would be to asume nobody in Nanoha save Vivio knows anything about melee fights.Of those only one of them can't fly, although later he starts riding a mount so even he loses most of the drawbacks of unprotected legs.

Further more it was acutally rather common for men to have a helmet and breast plate and no real protection on the legs or arms in real life. Full plate while it had it's upsides was somewhat encumbering and it was difficult to march in it also reduced endurance of even very fit men considerably. This is the same reason modern troops still normally only have vests and helmets despite experiments with full armor systems; that shit is heavy, HOT (a commonly overlooked fact is that body armor can act allot like winter clothing... even if you happen to be in a desert), and constricting.

I'm not arguably that everyone in Nanoha should start wearing plate armor or massive bomb suits as those both have downsides as noted, and might not fit there situations best. I will argue thought that the Jacket IS what provides the protection and they all ought to be wearing frikkin helmets and heavier torso protection in most cases.

[Keroko]

I'm not buying the 'because they're stupid' argument. Yes, it was stated that the amount of clothing defines the strength of the defense, but that can be explained differently, and far more logically: The Barrier Jacket generate a Field and Barrier, this is a fact. Now, if the Barrier Jacket is what generates this, then logically, when there is more jacket (as in, more fabric) then the defenses become stronger, as there is more source to generate said defences.

We have seen those 'invisible' defenses in action. The 'Fate through the building' part is not a good argument because of the screencut I'll admit, it could work either way. During A's, however, Signum and Fate scored glancing blows on eachother, and you clearly saw Barriers popping up. Now do note that neither was focussed on defending in that scene, both were launching attacks:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab20440.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab20440.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab20401.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab20401.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab20539.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab20539.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab20562.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab20562.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab20605.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab20605.png)

[Kikaifan]

I just mentioned that talking to Ark but I guess no one read it.

Also Fate's Plasma Lancer shot in the same fight hits Signum straight in the face (and she sure as hell didn't look like she was 'expecting it') and does nothing. And the blast on that one looked comparable to photos I've seen of tanks getting hit by missiles.

There's nothing strange about the IV's being able to penetrate a barrier jacket, they're magitech weapons. I doubt their blades compare to Armed Devices, but if they can stealth I don't see what's odd about them having powered weapons.

[arkhangelsk]

I'm not buying the 'because they're stupid' argument. Yes, it was stated that the amount of clothing defines the strength of the defense, but that can be explained differently, and far more logically: The Barrier Jacket generate a Field and Barrier, this is a fact. Now, if the Barrier Jacket is what generates this, then logically, when there is more jacket (as in, more fabric) then the defenses become stronger, as there is more source to generate said defences.

No great problems there. But by that extension, the parts not under clothing can only be at best minimally protected by the "leftovers" coming from the jacket.

We have seen those 'invisible' defenses in action. The 'Fate through the building' part is not a good argument because of the screencut I'll admit, it could work either way. During A's, however, Signum and Fate scored glancing blows on eachother, and you clearly saw Barriers popping up. Now do note that neither was focussed on defending in that scene, both were launching attacks:

I've got no objection to the part where they have at least a thin barrier - they must at least have a thin film over the nose to have had any anti-gas capability. Whether they are nearly as capable outside the clothed area is another question entirely.

You will notice, in your example, that the blade was trailing very easy through the so-called barrier. Sure, it is interacting. Whether it will have stopped or even significantly hindered the blow is a whole different story.

I just mentioned that talking to Ark but I guess no one read it.

Also Fate's Plasma Lancer shot in the same fight hits Signum straight in the face (and she sure as hell didn't look like she was 'expecting it') and does nothing. And the blast on that one looked comparable to photos I've seen of tanks getting hit by missiles.

[quote]There's nothing strange about the IV's being able to penetrate a barrier jacket, they're magitech weapons. I doubt their blades compare to Armed Devices, but if they can stealth I don't see what's odd about them having powered weapons.

How many times do we have to see those things get penetrated by windblast (even if I grant it is the bug itself it isn't all that much better), whips ... etc before we just conclude they just aren't very protective against those things?

[Keroko]

I've got no objection to the part where they have at least a thin barrier - they must at least have a thin film to have had any anti-gas capability. Whether they are nearly as capable outside the clothed area is another question entirely.

The deflected blows were clearly outside the clothed areas. Picture it like a shield generator of any random sci-fi ship, if you will, just because the generator is located somewhere else doesn't mean that certain areas of the ship don't have protection.

How many times do we have to see those things get penetrated by windblast (even if I grant it is the bug itself it isn't all that much better), whips ... etc before we just conclude they just aren't very protective against those things?

Whips? As in S-rank Precia's device? And yes, the bugs aren't really encouraging (if I recall, there was a small riot of Rein being hit by those things at all when that scene aired) Heck, Shamal even said its impossible for Rein alone to defeat those bugs, so whether that says something about the bugs strength or Rein's weakness is subject of debate.

Wind blasts that make the clothing flap are done for effect. When hair and clothing moves, it simply gives more of an image that they are flying at high speeds.

[arkhangelsk]

The deflected blows were clearly outside the clothed areas. Picture it like a shield generator of any random sci-fi ship, if you will, just because the generator is located somewhere else doesn't mean that certain areas of the ship don't have protection.

It sure as heck looked as though those blades were moving really easily through the barrier. If not for the barrier, the blades would just have swiped nothing.

Whips? As in S-rank Precia's device?

It wasn't a magical attack. It was a whipping. You can try and come up with rationalizations for individual incidents, but when they add up what is really happening should be clear.

And yes, the bugs aren't really encouraging (if I recall, there was a small riot of Rein being hit by those things at all when that scene aired) Heck, Shamal even said its impossible for Rein alone to defeat those bugs, so whether that says something about the bugs strength or Rein's weakness is subject of debate.

I wasn't here then, but there was that riot. Anyway, the DVD makes this clear - she was cut ... by windblast ... apparently to the skin. Obviously, if she continued to advance, she'd be cut in far more places by bugs flying close.

Wind blasts that make the clothing flap are done for effect. When hair and clothing moves, it simply gives more of an image that they are flying at high speeds.

That means that they are soft. Which means that even if I grant them an extremely high tensile strength so it won't break (and considering Precia and Rein maybe even this is generous), they won't be able to decelerate a bullet properly because they'll "give" too much, just like they give to the wind.

It is IIRC one of the reasons we don't use spider silk for bulletproofs - yes, they have good strength but they stretch far too much.

[Keroko]

It sure as heck looked as though those blades were moving really easily through the barrier. If not for the barrier, the blades would just have swiped nothing.

It looked as if those barriers were scratching over the barrier, and would have hit both mages faces if they had continued. heck, there were sparks arching over the contact, which shows pressure being aplied, which means the weapons would have gone further had the barriers not been in the way.

It wasn't a magical attack. It was a whipping. You can try and come up with rationalizations for individual incidents, but when they add up what is really happening should be clear.

Does it need to be a magic attack? It's a magic weapon, which means its strength exceeds normal weapons. Signum certainly didn't need a 'magic attack' to break Fate's Defencer:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab21007.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab21007.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab21057.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab21057.png)

And note that this was a conciously activated Barrier, not an auto generated one.

I wasn't here then, but there was that riot. Anyway, the DVD makes this clear - she was cut ... by windblast ... apparently to the skin. Obviously, if she continued to advance, she'd be cut in far more places by bugs flying close.

By windblast? To the skin? :eyebrow:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab29691.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab29691.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab29693.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab29693.png)

I'm clearly seeing a wing hit the jacket and no tear to the skin, though.

That means that they are soft. Which means that even if I grant them an extremely high tensile strength so it won't break (and considering Precia and Rein maybe even this is generous), they won't be able to decelerate a bullet properly because they'll "give" too much, just like they give to the wind.

It is IIRC one of the reasons we don't use spider silk for bulletproofs - yes, they have good strength but they stretch far too much.

I never argued that Barrier Jackets are soft (the entire 'hardening on impact' sounded rather silly to me too) and I never said that it was the fabric that stopped or softened impacts. The Field and Barrier generated by the jacket do.

[tshouryuu]

We had pretty much this exact same debate before in the OC thread anyway I never bought any of that “invisible shield outside of jacket” nonsense then and still don’t. As said I’ve seen this augment before and it’s nonsensical IMO. Not least of all since canon itself in booklets and such talks about how the amount of material matters and sonic form is hyped repeatedly as being extremely dangerous due to weak coverage and probably thin layers. This ONLY make’s sense if the jacket itself is the primary defensive competent.

I have to disagree. There is canonical evidence of "invisible shield outside barrier". Please take note that in StrikerS Ep12, 15:07-15:11, Sein specifically asked Lutecia to turn off her field and barrier. If you look further, there was no visible change in her barrier jacket at all which would suggest that there are invisible fields and barriers surrounding her.

Also say you got someone to just look at Nanoha having no preconceptions do you think they would look at it and the jackets and go. “Hmm you know despite them being called jackets and armor and stuff having different modes I bet that the material is acutally totally irrelevant and instead it’s acutally invisible force fields protecting them from harm”. That really is basiclly your argument in a nutshell and it’s rather stupid IMO.
See the above for evidence of invisible force fields.

Barrier jackets have never really shown resilience to bladed or kinetic weapons mages ability to mess with gravity seems to allow them to sustain more blunt impact force then you’d expect possibly by screwing with inertial and spreading impacts (which even modern soft armor can do), but that’s a different then deflecting bullets or knives.

It also neatly helps explain why guns are outlawed if the jackets provide marginal protection at best and almost none on uncovered areas then while one guy with a gun might not be much of a threat a platoon dug into hard cover

Nice explanation but incredibly idealistic imo. What's stopping criminals from using guns against mages? Have you considered this point? You won't abandon a type of weapon unless its proven to be ineffective against a common defense. Having BJs provide a defense against bullets would be a better explanation imo on why the ban is effective in the first place.


If it was thicker and hard it might well be, it would also probably weigh more mind and while knights where far more agile then many would think the armor did still impede movement somewhat.

That said let's face it Hayate at that time was not any kind of armorer or tactical genius when she thought this stuff up as you noted she thought up "knight like cloths" not armor, but basiclly glorified costumes. The Knights might have called them "armor" out of habit, but let's face it wasn't "armor" under sane definition.

This is Armor
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/Tk3997/cpe1.jpg
This is Armor Too
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/Tk3997/AR006_H031_Option.jpg
This is NOT armor this is a pretty dress:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/Tk3997/akibakko-11728467877294.jpg

The fact that most of these people thought up jackets at the age of 9 or 10 is a bit of an issue they'd have not a clue what makes effective armor and given there exhibited tactical ineptitude in other areas even years later assuming they'd learn better and change is hardly a given either.

So here is the question, what is stopping the Knights (who have combat experience) from politely asking for something better? Something that provides more protection? In fact in A's ep6 12:30-12:58 Hayate, Signum and Shamal were talking about Knight armour. Hayate said that she won't have the knights fight for her asks if knight-like clothes is okay and Signum said yes and that she does not mind one bit. If the physical Knight armour itself was important, Signum at the very least would disagree with the clothes and ask for actual armour. Another thing, what's stopping Hayate from researching proper armour? She is in the library when this topic about knight armour was broached you know.


Acutally all evidence and logic says they probably are with perhaps some inertial dampening properties imparted via gravity manipulation.

The theory proposed was that Fields of a barrier jacket provide defenses by bleeding off exceed kinetic energy. How much energy was bled off is in proportion to how much kinetic energy behind the attack. So the faster the attack, the more protection is provided.

First off we must note that a large number of these melee fighters "armor" was designed when:
A: They were 9 or 10
B: Had there "armor" designed by said 9 and 10 year olds.

I want to dispute this. First, Fate was trained as a fighter. Why would she get away with her BJ in S1 and S2 if it wasn't effective? Unless you're telling me that her trainer (Linis) is incompetent at teaching. Second, Hayate frequents a library and has her knights who have much experience in combat. Unless you're also telling me that she is unable to do research on armour and her knights are so stupid not to request actual armour when its needed, then I have nothing to say.

Yeah sure you could argue they should know better now, but momentum is a powerful thing and it's worked so far so what motive would they have to change?

Because its stupid and dangerous not to change unless its effective?

[Tk3997]

I'm not buying the 'because they're stupid' argument. Yes, it was stated that the amount of clothing defines the strength of the defense, but that can be explained differently, and far more logically: More logically then "more clothing coverage and thickness = better protection?" :eyebrow: This should be good for a laugh.

The Barrier Jacket generate a Field and Barrier, this is a fact. Yeah, but Field and barrier =/= body encasing energy sheild and the fact that the clothing defines protection is also a fact as are the tons of examples of people punching and kicking and clubbing each other without even a hint of this magic field.

Now, if the Barrier Jacket is what generates this, then logically, when there is more jacket (as in, more fabric) then the defenses become stronger, as there is more source to generate said defences.
Note the automatic assumption that this field takes the form of the matter impeding energy shield you want and not some kind of dampening feild for magic or the like. Also note we've seen barrier applied to at least two different kinds of spells already so its ambiguous at best. In my theory the "barrier" is the magically reinforced jacket itself with a field that deadens magical attacks projected over it as well. Works well for magic attacks, dosen't do jack for most physical impacts depends on the jacket for defense.


We have seen those 'invisible' defenses in action. The 'Fate through the building' part is not a good argument because of the screencut I'll admit, it could work either way. During A's, however, Signum and Fate scored glancing blows on eachother, and you clearly saw Barriers popping up. Now do note that neither was focussed on defending in that scene, both were launching attacks:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab20440.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab20440.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab20401.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab20401.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab20539.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab20539.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab20562.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab20562.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab20605.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab20605.png) Sigh… I can’t believe your even TRYING to use this an example do you think we’re all BLIND or something.
Let’s see:
1- The fields are visible
2- They’re being projected into space ahead of the user not hugging the skin like some invisible armor suit.
3- Neither of them is acutally doing anything else spell related when the fields pop up (they're just swinging at each other)
4- Following the above they bear a strong resemblance to the earlier field spell (name escapes me) Signum used to deflect an attack IMO; though over a somewhat smaller area.
5- Also on that note we have probably dozens of examples of punches and kicks among other things impacting unhindered on the target at later times lending more weight to this being an active defensive spell not a passive aspect of the jackets.

At best this is an example of a little seen or unnamed defensive spell it’s not any indication of a body encasing invisible force field projected from barrier jackets IMO.


There's nothing strange about the IV's being able to penetrate a barrier jacket, they're magitech weapons. I doubt their blades compare to Armed Devices, but if they can stealth I don't see what's odd about them having powered weapons.
When did a giant claw arm become a “magitech” 40k power weapon and not just chunk of pointy metal exactly?:eyebrow: Do you have a SHRED of evidence to support that it was anything besides a sharp piece of metal? I’m guessing the answer is no and the “logic” behind this entire idea is “a barrier jacket couldn’t be defeated by a simple knife so this knife wasn’t normal.” Circular logic at it’s finest.

[arkhangelsk]

It looked as if those barriers were scratching over the barrier, and would have hit both mages faces if they had continued. heck, there were sparks arching over the contact, which shows pressure being aplied, which means the weapons would have gone further had the barriers not been in the way.

Yes of course pressure is being applied, they are going through that barrier tangentially, like it is water! The blades are grazing the barrier, and moving very easily. Radially, can you see that movement and conclude it is going to stop the attack? not.

Does it need to be a magic attack? It's a magic weapon, which means its strength exceeds normal weapons. Signum certainly didn't need a 'magic attack' to break Fate's Defencer:

Signum clearly accelerated greatly in that scene before coming down, drastically upping the force in your scene. After she managed to fly Testarossa into another building, she had to dump a cartridge - it is obviously when it was expended.

By windblast? To the skin? :eyebrow:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab29691.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab29691.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab29693.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab29693.png)

I've got screenshots too. Your captures were too late:
http://arkhangelsk.987mb.com/analysis/ss07depress.html

I'm clearly seeing a wing hit the jacket and no tear to the skin, though.

Then why the heck is Rein grasping her side. If it is just a cut to fabric, she would hardly be clutching it while she escaped.

I never argued that Barrier Jackets are soft (the entire 'hardening on impact' sounded rather silly to me too) and I never said that it was the fabric that stopped or softened impacts. The Field and Barrier generated by the jacket do.

Yes, and we saw how much resistance even the whole complex together brings . Not a lot.

[tshouryuu]

I've got screenshots too. Your captures were too late:
http://arkhangelsk.987mb.com/analysis/ss07depress.html



Then why the heck is Rein grasping her side. If it is just a cut to fabric, she would hardly be clutching it while she escaped.
First, there isn't blood. Second, the inner layer of Rein's BJ or knight armour is shown and not bare skin. Third, just because it didn't cut through doesn't mean it didn't hurt her. If for example someone hits you hard enough in the stomach but not enough to bruise, would you not clutch your stomach in pain?

[arkhangelsk]

Nice explanation but incredibly idealistic imo. What's stopping criminals from using guns against mages? Have you considered this point? You won't abandon a type of weapon unless its proven to be ineffective against a common defense. Having BJs provide a defense against bullets would be a better explanation imo on why the ban is effective in the first place.

Even good old Scarlietti doesn't think of using guns or HV weapons.

For all we know, when criminals use guns against mages, the mages get clobbered and this is an unseen side of TSAB history. Also, for many decades, entire armies have fought each other without a good defense against guns.

Further, there are some real advantages to magic. At the very least, you won't have to risk a gun being found on your body. Even with a gun, after all, a criminal can hardly face down the entire government force. If they are going to send 10 guys to arrest say a murderer that uses magic, but 10000 on seeing a gun, a criminal will probably just think the gun isn't worth the trouble.

So here is the question, what is stopping the Knights (who have combat experience) from politely asking for something better? Something that provides more protection? In fact in A's ep6 12:30-12:58 Hayate, Signum and Shamal were talking about Knight armour. Hayate said that she won't have the knights fight for her asks if knight-like clothes is okay and Signum said yes and that she does not mind one bit. If the physical Knight armour itself was important, Signum at the very least would disagree with the clothes and ask for actual armour. Another thing, what's stopping Hayate from researching proper armour? She is in the library when this topic about knight armour was broached you know.

Even without research, Hayate should have known that knight's armor is supposed to be hard.

Their master has already said that she isn't going to have them fight, and that's why she won't give them real armor. Under this condition, Wolkenritter, who are technically in a Master-Slave relationship, can hardly object.

I want to dispute this. First, Fate was trained as a fighter. Why would she get away with her BJ in S1 and S2 if it wasn't effective? Unless you're telling me that her trainer (Linis) is incompetent at teaching.

When even the official government agency looks like what they do, competence might be much farther away than you are imagining. You will notice that she often gets hurt in that BJ.

For all we know, Precia might have designed that BJ. Fate will wear it because she loves her "mother". And since it is thin, it provides minimal protection from whips - perfect for Precia. If Fate had been wearing even something like Nanoha's relatively thick BJ, the whip won't cut quite as horribly.

While we are on Fate, you will notice that after she got hurt in A's, Bardiche redesigned the BJ. And what is one of the things he did? He added hard guards on the hands! Ahh, now reality starts to peer through - too bad he didn't go far enough :heh:

Because its stupid and dangerous not to change unless its effective?

The list of things they should have changed far exceeds the choice of BJ.

[arkhangelsk]

First, there isn't blood.

Anyway, not all wounds draw obvious amounts of blood. Do you really want to see poor Rein blow an artery and spill blood all over the scene? Is that scene not humiliating enough?

Second, the inner layer of Rein's BJ or knight armour is shown and not bare skin.

Are you sure it isn't because it is considered "in shadow?" We can see the innards of the barrier jacket under Rein's armpit, and the shades are different.

Third, just because it didn't cut through doesn't mean it didn't hurt her.

She got BRUISED by the windblast? Wow, the BJ sounds more and more protective all the time! :rolleyes:

[tshouryuu]

Even good old Scarlietti doesn't think of using guns or HV weapons.
Doesn't think of using or doesn't have access to? Also he does seem to have a policy of not killing whenever possible. If he didn't mind killing, the 9/12 event would have a lot of deaths.

For all we know, when criminals use guns against mages, the mages get clobbered and this is an unseen side of TSAB history. Also, for many decades, entire armies have fought each other without a good defense against guns.
If said mages get clobbered, why isn't there more criminals using guns? Also if the mages keep getting clobbered, how the heck did the TSAB survive up till now.

Further, there are some real advantages to magic. At the very least, you won't have to risk a gun being found on your body. Even with a gun, after all, a criminal can hardly face down the entire government force. If they are going to send 10 guys to arrest say a murderer that uses magic, but 10000 on seeing a gun, a criminal will probably just think the gun isn't worth the trouble.
10000 on a gun....That is pure exaggeration you know.

Even without research, Hayate should have known that knight's armor is supposed to be hard.

Their master has already said that she isn't going to have them fight, and that's why she won't give them real armor. Under this condition, Wolkenritter, who are technically in a Master-Slave relationship, can hardly object.

Since she isn't having them fight, then why did she not outright deny them their Knight armour in the first place? Since there's not need to fight, why bother even coming up with their present Knight armour at all?

When even the official government agency looks like what they do, competence might be much farther away than you are imagining. You will notice that she often gets hurt in that BJ.

What has the government agency has to do with Linis at all? What you're doing suggests to me that you are assuming everyone is incompetent

For all we know, Precia might have designed that BJ. Fate will wear it because she loves her "mother". And since it is thin, it provides minimal protection from whips - perfect for Precia. If Fate had been wearing even something like Nanoha's relatively thick BJ, the whip won't cut quite as horribly.

If that's the case why does Precia not tell Fate to disengage the barrier jacket in the first place? I would think its even easier to whip someone in normal clothes than in a barrier jacket in the first place.
Anyway, not all wounds draw obvious amounts of blood. Do you really want to see poor Rein blow an artery and spill blood all over the scene? Is that scene not humiliating enough?
What has humiliation got to do with anything? Vita and Nanoha both got stabbed and they bleed a lot. If she got cut, Rein spilling blood would be normal.

Are you sure it isn't because it is considered "in shadow?" We can see the innards of the barrier jacket under Rein's armpit, and the shades are different.
The shade although lighter, is still closer to the the inner jacket colour then actual flesh tones or even blood. And since that part of the barrier jacket you're talking about is under Rein's armpit, it would make sense if its in shadow and hence look darker.

She got BRUISED by the windblast? Wow, the BJ sounds more and more protective all the time! :rolleyes:
Ark, I never said the physical jacket itself provides the protection. I have said the field produced by the jacket provides the defense by bleeding off excess kinetic energy in proportion to the attack. I have also never said that you don't get bruises even if you're protected.

Also I did not say the windblast bruise her. From your third screenshot, the wing of the bug pass by that cut up jacket area. The wing of the bug might have bruised her at the point in time.

Edit: BTW, what exactly is wrong with my theory anyway? I'll restate it here "The field, produced by the barrier jacket, provides defences by bleeding off excess kinetic energy in proportion to that attack. The more kinetic energy behind the attack, the more energy is bled off and hence the mage gets less damaged" Please state the reason clearly if you don't mind. From what I have seen so far, you just disagree and not actually provided an actual reason.

[Mirificus]

Edit: BTW, what exactly is wrong with my theory anyway? I'll restate it here "The field, produced by the barrier jacket, provides defences by bleeding off excess kinetic energy in proportion to that attack. The more kinetic energy behind the attack, the more energy is bled off and hence the mage gets less damaged" Please state the reason clearly if you don't mind. From what I have since so far, you just disagree and not actually provided an actual reason.
What observations does the theory explain that couldn't otherwise be explained without it?

At a glance, the theory also seems to be unfalsifiable. If a theory isn't testable it is meaningless.

[arkhangelsk]

Doesn't think of using or doesn't have access to? Also he does seem to have a policy of not killing whenever possible. If he didn't mind killing, the 9/12 event would have a lot of deaths.

When even a big criminal like Scarlietti can't get any...

If said mages get clobbered, why isn't there more criminals using guns? Also if the mages keep getting clobbered, how the heck did the TSAB survive up till now.

Because, presumably, the number of people who can get their hands on guns is low.

10000 on a gun....That is pure exaggeration you know.

The point is that if getting guns draw enough attention, a criminal with other options will not using them. Ultimately, criminals survive by not calling too much attention onto themselves, not by killing cops left and right.

Since she isn't having them fight, then why did she not outright deny them their Knight armour in the first place? Since there's not need to fight, why bother even coming up with their present Knight armour at all?

Because she's a nice person and wants to grant them some of their little fun?

What has the government agency has to do with Linis at all? What you're doing suggests to me that you are assuming everyone is incompetent

I'm saying that the government agency implies that the society in general, has no context of tactics. This is the zeitgeist of Midchildran society. People trapped in their society (which includes Linis) , even if they are brilliant, "forward-thinking" and what not, can only be so different from the zeitgeist. For example, it is said that a person in the 16th century might be able to conceive a helicopter, but not a computer, because the concept of a computer is too different and requires too much that is not yet known.

For example, take Scarlietti. He's clearly different from most. At least he knows how to perform a radio intercept, which puts him heads and shoulders above the TSAB. But even he doesn't use, for example, HV ammunition. His cyborgs wind up using energy bombs that are ridiculously similar to magic anyway. That's a very visible example of how Zeitgeist limits all.

Which is why I don't blame the TSAB for poor tactics so much as I blame Hayate. Hayate came from Earth, Earth zeitgeist!

If that's the case why does Precia not tell Fate to disengage the barrier jacket in the first place? I would think its even easier to whip someone in normal clothes than in a barrier jacket in the first place.

Doesn't this tell you that the barrier jacket is so unprotective she doesn't even tell Fate to strip, because it'll be of no difference? (Of course, I suppose that TV broadcast censorship limits have something to do with it, but SoD, SoD, SoD)

What has humiliation got to do with anything? Vita and Nanoha both got stabbed and they bleed a lot. If she got cut, Rein spilling blood would be normal.

When did I say Rein was stabbed. Have you ever had an abrasion or paper cut? Does blood come out like a faucet?

The shade although lighter, is still closer to the the inner jacket colour then actual flesh tones or even blood. And since that part of the barrier jacket you're talking about is under Rein's armpit, it would make sense if its in shadow and hence look darker.

Actually get a color picker and look at the HSV values.

Inner jacket under Armpit = H230-250, S60-70%, V=20% = Very Dark Blue
Torn area = H=230-240, S30-40%, V=30-35% = Grayish.

It clearly isn't the inner layer, all right.

Ark, I never said the physical jacket itself provides the protection. I have said the field produced by the jacket provides the defense by bleeding off excess kinetic energy in proportion to the attack. I have also never said that you don't get bruises even if you're protected.

Also I did not say the windblast bruise her. From your third screenshot, the wing of the bug pass by that cut up jacket area. The wing of the bug might have bruised her at the point in time.

Let's see ... the windblast alone cut the outer layer even according to you. If the actual wing bumped her, what makes you think it won't have penetrated the inner layer if it wasn't penetrated already?

Face it, the bug's windblast penetrated the entire protective complex whatever you want its composition to be.

Edit: BTW, what exactly is wrong with my theory anyway? I'll restate it here "The field, produced by the barrier jacket, provides defences by bleeding off excess kinetic energy in proportion to that attack. The more kinetic energy behind the attack, the more energy is bled off and hence the mage gets less damaged" Please state the reason clearly if you don't mind. From what I have since so far, you just disagree and not actually provided an actual reason.

Problem #1: You've got it backwards. You propose the theory, it is your job to at least put up something to back it is at least a candidate. We only come to kick it apart when you can do that. Currently, it is mere counter induction, based on your dream that they must have a defense against bullets.

Right now, you hadn't even explained how you expect that "excess kinetic energy" to be "bled off", which is one of the reasons why it is hard to kick it right now - there's nothing to kick (which is different from your theory being strong enough to be resistant to kicking). And don't say "magic" - that's just an unfalsifiable black box. Magic does not mean you don't need to propose at least some mechanism, how you want the magic to help you bleed the energy away. And how are you planning to bleed away the force and pressure.

Problem #2: Except in restricted cases, it is difficult to envisage a physical mechanisms where the total force, pressure and energy transferred to the victim is reduced when the initial input is higher. In those restrictive cases, it involves the destructive deformation forces and energies being transferred to the penetrator because the blocking shield is tougher. Since a BJ is soft and fluffy, this does not apply, and in any case any such defense will be highly situational.

Problem #3: Why do we even need such an convoluted theory?

[Keroko]

Yes of course pressure is being applied, they are going through that barrier tangentially, like it is water! The blades are grazing the barrier, and moving very easily. Radially, can you see that movement and conclude it is going to stop the attack? not.

Did the definition of through change in the last few hours? Last I recall, if something does not get past the surface, it hardly quallifies as going through. The sparks also mean that pressure is being applied, meaning that the attacks would were very much intended to hit. As for 'moving easilly' it is quite clear that this was a slow motion scene. The shift in speed between the three scenes making up the attack is impossible.

Signum clearly accelerated greatly in that scene before coming down, drastically upping the force in your scene. After she managed to fly Testarossa into another building, she had to dump a cartridge - it is obviously when it was expended.

It would help if you watch the complete scene. The Cartridge discharged was for the following Shiden'Issen, not the initial attack that broke the Barrier. Cartridges are dumbed before the attack begins, not afterwards.

I've got screenshots too. Your captures were too late:
http://arkhangelsk.987mb.com/analysis/ss07depress.html

Hmm, you're right, my timing was off. But that means a mere blast of wind tore her Jacket. Even if it was merely fabric, tearing it from just a small puff of wind is impossible. This means that either A: a timing error in the animation, or B: the bugs are a lot stronger then they apear.

Even good old Scarlietti doesn't think of using guns or HV weapons.

Yes, why doesn't he? If guns are so effective against mages, why didn't he equip at least a few of his drones with guns? Acces is no problem, he has acces to dangerous Lost Logia, a few guns is no problem by comparison. The only sensible answer is that guns are of little use against mages, so it would be a waste of time and effort.

Even without research, Hayate should have known that knight's armor is supposed to be hard.

Their master has already said that she isn't going to have them fight, and that's why she won't give them real armor. Under this condition, Wolkenritter, who are technically in a Master-Slave relationship, can hardly object.

Again, why didn't they change them when they entered official service then? They were hardly in master-slave relation by then.

When even the official government agency looks like what they do, competence might be much farther away than you are imagining. You will notice that she often gets hurt in that BJ.

Oh, now all of a sudden the 'they are stupid' excuse is a valid one?

She gets tossed through buildings twice in the second episode of A's and shakes it off, and while the first one can be defended, the second one definetely can't.

While we are on Fate, you will notice that after she got hurt in A's, Bardiche redesigned the BJ. And what is one of the things he did? He added hard guards on the hands! Ahh, now reality starts to peer through - too bad he didn't go far enough :heh:

Hmm, yes, she was still wearing a glorified bathing suit, no protection to the upper arms, upper legs still had gaping holes... the only thing that was added was one hard guard to her off-hand.

Suuuuure, that's really effective. :rolleyes:

The list of things they should have changed far exceeds the choice of BJ.

And yet, they only start to become problems when you view them with your logic.

Strange, no?

The point is that if getting guns draw enough attention, a criminal with other options will not using them. Ultimately, criminals survive by not calling too much attention onto themselves, not by killing cops left and right.

Criminals in Nanoha seem to use Lost Logia on a general basis, which is far more extreme then guns. And yet, no criminal uses a gun, which is also far easier to get then a Lost Logia (just hop to earth, go to America and buy one). Obviously guns just aren't worth the small effort it takes to get them because they would be useless.

When did I say Rein was stabbed. Have you ever had an abrasion or paper cut? Does blood come out like a faucet?

Yes I had papercuts, multiple, and yes they do bleed. Not like a faucet, but blood does come out rather heavilly for such a small cut.

Stings too.

Actually get a color picker and look at the HSV values.

Inner jacket under Armpit = H230-250, S60-70%, V=20% = Very Dark Blue
Torn area = H=230-240, S30-40%, V=30-35% = Grayish.

It clearly isn't the inner layer, all right.

Skin generally isn't dark blue either.

[arkhangelsk]

Did the definition of through change in the last few hours? Last I recall, if something does not get past the surface, it hardly quallifies as going through. The sparks also mean that pressure is being applied, meaning that the attacks would were very much intended to hit. As for 'moving easilly' it is quite clear that this was a slow motion scene. The shift in speed between the three scenes making up the attack is impossible.

The two of them take swipes at each other, and both narrowly missed, slicing into the defensive complex and going through it tangentially like it was water. It tells you that had they been a few cm closer, both shots will have penetrated the respective barriers and sliced each other in two, as proved by various other scenes where this barrier doesn't even bother to show up.

If you want a slow motion scene, fine - there isn't enough noise in that particular scene to forbid it at least, but then the real speed of the blade going tangentially through the complex goes up, suggesting the defensive complex was even less effective than depicted. Maybe you wanted a fast scene :heh:

It would help if you watch the complete scene. The Cartridge discharged was for the following Shiden'Issen, not the initial attack that broke the Barrier. Cartridges are dumbed before the attack begins, not afterwards.

OK, OK, I'll go rewatch the darn scene ... OK, so the cartridge exploded afterwards, but it is clear that Signum was in accelerated motion propelled by magic.

You will also notice that the blocking was almost effective. Even though the quickly placed Defenser cracked under the high pressure of a hard, sharp object called Laevanteinn, the velocity was slowed enough it just hit relatively lightly. Can you imagine that jacket doing the same?

But Graf Eisen definitely discharged the cartridges after the Raketenhammer.

Hmm, you're right, my timing was off. But that means a mere blast of wind tore her Jacket. Even if it was merely fabric, tearing it from just a small puff of wind is impossible. This means that either A: a timing error in the animation, or B: the bugs are a lot stronger then they apear.

Why do you think it is so sad. This is a piece of tissue paper!

There are real limits to how strong the windblast could be, since the bug is just using enough force to keep itself level. It is not in some 10000G ascent. There's probably a vortex involved, but anyway you cut it, it is a most pathetic scene.

Yes, why doesn't he? If guns are so effective against mages, why didn't he equip at least a few of his drones with guns? Acces is no problem, he has acces to dangerous Lost Logia, a few guns is no problem by comparison. The only sensible answer is that guns are of little use against mages, so it would be a waste of time and effort.

Yet what we can see of their performance against physical weapons does not support that conclusion.

Again, why didn't they change them when they entered official service then? They were hardly in master-slave relation by then.

Never get it wrong. Hayate is a very nice master, but it was always a Master-Slave relationship. You shouldn't always think of a Slave as someone that's constantly whipped. Some masters are very nice to their slaves, but never get it wrong. Slaves are slaves. The slave is much more conscious of this than the Master because he knows that at any moment, his master can choose to be a butthole.


She gets tossed through buildings twice in the second episode of A's and shakes it off, and while the first one can be defended, the second one definetely can't.

Both involve a smoke cloud. It is perfectly possible to defend quickly, and Fate wasn't even thrown nearly as hard this time.

As for competence, see the answer to tsuushoryu. You'll notice "they are stupid" is not my main line. The main line is physical limitations of such thin and fluffy things as barrier jackets are shown to be. The "they are stupid" is just to knock off appeals to authority.

Hmm, yes, she was still wearing a glorified bathing suit, no protection to the upper arms, upper legs still had gaping holes... the only thing that was added was one hard guard to her off-hand.

Suuuuure, that's really effective. :rolleyes:

Why do you think I said that Bardiche didn't go far enough. But he did make progress that he won't have to make if hard objects are completely useless.

Criminals in Nanoha seem to use Lost Logia on a general basis, which is far more extreme then guns. And yet, no criminal uses a gun, which is also far easier to get then a Lost Logia (just hop to earth, go to America and buy one). Obviously guns just aren't worth the small effort it takes to get them because they would be useless.

Alternatively, the Lost Logia has a shot of helping them achieve a strategic goal, while a gun can only help them shoot cops. One's worth the risk of waking up the whole TSAB much more than the other.

Oh, as for "my" logic, how about the logic of reality.

Yes I had papercuts, multiple, and yes they do bleed. Not like a faucet, but blood does come out rather heavilly for such a small cut.

Stings too.

Strange, when I've papercutted myself, I had to squeeze the wound to force a drop out. But it certainly stings, like poor Rein. Anyway, it'll have to be a faucet to force it to appear.

Skin generally isn't dark blue either.

It is not Dark Blue. It is gray. Obviously, it is shadow.

[Tk3997]

I'm saying that the government agency implies that the society in general, has no context of tactics. This is the zeitgeist of Midchildran society. People trapped in their society (which includes Linis) , even if they are brilliant, "forward-thinking" and what not, can only be so different from the zeitgeist. For example, it is said that a person in the 16th century might be able to conceive a helicopter, but not a computer, because the concept of a computer is too different and requires too much that is not yet known.

For example, take Scarlietti. He's clearly different from most. At least he knows how to perform a radio intercept, which puts him heads and shoulders above the TSAB. But even he doesn't use, for example, HV ammunition. His cyborgs wind up using energy bombs that are ridiculously similar to magic anyway. That's a very visible example of how Zeitgeist limits all.

Which is why I don't blame the TSAB for poor tactics so much as I blame Hayate. Hayate came from Earth, Earth zeitgeist!
In her defense though a nine year old girl isn’t going to have much interest or knowledge in military affairs unless she was VERY unusual. Hayate showed no real intrest in such things bordering on pacfist really. So all her actual military training occurs under the TSAB so really she’s just as poisoned by their culture as any other officer as she never had any useful experience on earth to draw off and say “you know this is sort of stupid…” when she joined there army. She might well now just assume this is how all armies work.



Problem #1: You've got it backwards. You propose the theory, it is your job to at least put up something to back it is at least a candidate. We only come to kick it apart when you can do that. Currently, it is mere counter induction, based on your dream that they must have a defense against bullets.
Really they do have some defenses against bullets. Various sorts of active magic barriers clearly have the strength needed to defelct even heavy automatic gunfire, but barrier jacket sure as hell don't IMO.

[tshouryuu]

What observations does the theory explain that couldn't otherwise be explained without it?

At a glance, the theory also seems to be unfalsifiable. If a theory isn't testable it is meaningless.
Then this thread is almost meaningless. What tech and magic in this thread is actually testable? Even the arguments about speed of magical shots and range isn't exactly testable. Could you name me a few things that actually can be tested?

Anyway, what the theory could explain is

How mages survive great impacts
Why is the ban of conventional weapons sucessful

When even a big criminal like Scarlietti can't get any...
That's only half of it. What about the fact Jail does seem to have a policy of not killing whenever possible?

Because, presumably, the number of people who can get their hands on guns is low.
Why is it low then? If its effective against mages, then people will still use them despite the ban.

The point is that if getting guns draw enough attention, a criminal with other options will not using them. Ultimately, criminals survive by not calling too much attention onto themselves, not by killing cops left and right.
What about non mage criminals? Are you suggesting there are none? What options do they have? Also guns can be concealed so that they do not gather attention.

Because she's a nice person and wants to grant them some of their little fun?
Then why not actual armour? Signum and Shamal did not really care what their Knight armour will be like. All they wanted was for Hayate is to grant them their knight armour which suggest the physical material/outlook isn't important.

I'm saying that the government agency implies that the society in general, has no context of tactics. This is the zeitgeist of Midchildran society. People trapped in their society (which includes Linis) , even if they are brilliant, "forward-thinking" and what not, can only be so different from the zeitgeist. For example, it is said that a person in the 16th century might be able to conceive a helicopter, but not a computer, because the concept of a computer is too different and requires too much that is not yet known.

For example, take Scarlietti. He's clearly different from most. At least he knows how to perform a radio intercept, which puts him heads and shoulders above the TSAB. But even he doesn't use, for example, HV ammunition. His cyborgs wind up using energy bombs that are ridiculously similar to magic anyway. That's a very visible example of how Zeitgeist limits all.

Which is why I don't blame the TSAB for poor tactics so much as I blame Hayate. Hayate came from Earth, Earth zeitgeist!
You're making sweeping statements. And the example you provided is about technology not mindset. Also, if that's the case, the TSAB may not have survive the aftermath of the war which led to the banning of conventional weapons. At that point in time, there is sure to be conventional weapons left around. If physical weapons are effective against mages, then conventional weapons itself would survive to present day strikers.

As for Jail not using HV ammo, is it because of Zeitgeist limiting him or could it be that HV ammo simply not effective in the first place?

Also blaming Hayate is extremely unfair to her. She may have lived on Earth but the TSAB trains her.

Doesn't this tell you that the barrier jacket is so unprotective she doesn't even tell Fate to strip, because it'll be of no difference? (Of course, I suppose that TV broadcast censorship limits have something to do with it, but SoD, SoD, SoD)

No it doesn't. the fields and barriers of the jacket may be down for all we know. If those are down then the physical component of the BJ won't protect Fate at all.


When did I say Rein was stabbed. Have you ever had an abrasion or paper cut? Does blood come out like a faucet?
I never said you said Rein got stabbed. I mentioned that 2 character got stabbed and they bled. I specifically said that Rein got cut. Also the size of that damaged part of the BJ is large, about 20% the thickness of her wrist and its along almost the entire length of her side if I'm not mistaken. If she really got cut like that, she would be bleeding like a faucet if not worst.

Actually get a color picker and look at the HSV values.

Inner jacket under Armpit = H230-250, S60-70%, V=20% = Very Dark Blue
Torn area = H=230-240, S30-40%, V=30-35% = Grayish.

It clearly isn't the inner layer, all right.

It also neither blood nor skin tone. I said its still closer to the the inner jacket colour then actual flesh tones or even blood. If it wasn't the inner jacket then what is that grey patch?

Let's see ... the windblast alone cut the outer layer even according to you. If the actual wing bumped her, what makes you think it won't have penetrated the inner layer if it wasn't penetrated already?

Face it, the bug's windblast penetrated the entire protective complex whatever you want its composition to be.
Because Rein did not bleed nor was there any flesh exposed. Also I said bruise (blunt force) and not cut (cutting force)


Problem #1: You've got it backwards. You propose the theory, it is your job to at least put up something to back it is at least a candidate. We only come to kick it apart when you can do that. Currently, it is mere counter induction, based on your dream that they must have a defense against bullets.
How is it counter induction? If it is, what is the induction then. Also let me retract my statement. I hypothesize that the field does what I stated due to observations that mages can survive being slammed through concrete without significant injuries but yet can get injured on "slower" attacks such as sword strikes. Also NEVER did I say they must have a defense against bullets. I said BJs due to defense against kinetic impacts protect the mage. As bullets have a great deal of kinetic energy behind them, the BJs would be effective against bullets. Its have not MUST have. Please stop putting words in my mouth.

Right now, you hadn't even explained how you expect that "excess kinetic energy" to be "bled off", which is one of the reasons why it is hard to kick it right now - there's nothing to kick (which is different from your theory being strong enough to be resistant to kicking). And don't say "magic" - that's just an unfalsifiable black box. Magic does not mean you don't need to propose at least some mechanism, how you want the magic to help you bleed the energy away. And how are you planning to bleed away the force and pressure.
It would be similar to how heat is dissipated from hot objects. Its a hypothesis based on what I observed....

Problem #2: Except in restricted cases, it is difficult to envisage a physical mechanisms where the total force, pressure and energy transferred to the victim is reduced when the initial input is higher. In those restrictive cases, it involves the destructive deformation forces and energies being transferred to the penetrator because the blocking shield is tougher. Since a BJ is soft and fluffy, this does not apply, and in any case any such defense will be highly situational.
I'm talking about Fields of the barrier jackets. Not the physical, visible components of barrier jackets.

Problem #3: Why do we even need such an convoluted theory?Then how would you explain how Fate survive getting slammed through multiply layers of concrete with her barrier jacket completely undamaged but can get cut by Signum?

[arkhangelsk]

In her defense though a nine year old girl isn’t going to have much interest or knowledge in military affairs unless she was VERY unusual. Hayate showed no real intrest in such things bordering on pacfist really. So all her actual military training occurs under the TSAB so really she’s just as poisoned by their culture as any other officer as she never had any useful experience on earth to draw off and say “you know this is sort of stupid…” when she joined there army. She might well now just assume this is how all armies work.

Partial, but not a total excuse. She spends a lot of time on Earth until she's 15, so she still has that link to Terran culture and zeitgeist until at least then.

Quite frankly, if I'm an paramilitary officer, I'll be very interested in what other nations' militaries and police think about military and police matters. The Americans study Soviet military thought, and in fact incorporated some ideas when they scribbled up AirLand battle. The Soviets analyzed the West and still do as they attempt to solve the problem of professionalizing in a way acceptable to their very different military culture. And the idea of us being primitive societies thus unworthy of study doesn't work - we are still studying Sun Tzu ourselves. And so on.

Really they do have some defenses against bullets. Various sorts of active magic barriers clearly have the strength needed to defelct even heavy automatic gunfire, but barrier jacket sure as hell don't IMO.

My sentiments exactly, which is why tsuushoryu's theory is even less necessary.

Then this thread is almost meaningless. What tech and magic in this thread is actually testable? Even the arguments about speed of magical shots and range isn't exactly testable. Could you name me a few things that actually can be tested?

What he means is that there is a "failure condition", so to speak, for your theory. For example, if I say that the maximum speed of a beam is 16m/s. You can disprove this by using a clear beam example (not a random bunch of flashies) and measuring out a higher speed, for example SS12 is good. That's the failure condition. He's saying your theory has none.

Anyway, what the theory could explain is
[LIST]
How mages survive great impacts

Active defenses, inertial dampening if you like Tk3997. And it hardly leads to the most asinine conclusion that energy transferred to a mage goes down as energy input goes up.

Why is the ban of conventional weapons sucessful

What about intense indoctrination and an intense effort to stamp out any use? Further, even if I agree that BJs stop bullets despite the list of evidence to the contrary, it hardly leads to the most asinine conclusion that energy transferred to a mage goes down as energy input goes up.

That's only half of it. What about the fact Jail does seem to have a policy of not killing whenever possible?

He was willing to vape the helo and recover only Vivio who is supposed to survive this. If Dieci had HV, she'd have busted the helo before Nanoha could have rushed back to shield it.

Why is it low then? If its effective against mages, then people will still use them despite the ban.

Would they? Even if they don't really understand the advantages, except that the TSAB

And again, criminals survive by keeping a low profile. By the time they get into a gunfight with the police they've lost 3/4ths of the battle. Even if they did have to use violence against law-enforcement, smart thinking says to do it in a way that will not provoke the police into providing too many reinforcements. That's a criminal's way of survival outside a prison, not shooting cops left and right with your sleazy new Desert Eagle.

What about non mage criminals? Are you suggesting there are none? What options do they have? Also guns can be concealed so that they do not gather attention.

If you are a non-mage criminal, you'll just have to rely on stealth. It is now much more difficult for you to get into gunland (Earth) - you can't get there with personal transport and there's no public transport to Earth.

You might conceal a gun. Then comes the day you use it. Even with a silencer (which reduces the velocity of the bullets and thus its big advantage) guns are noisy with a distinct acoustic signature. The survivors of your ambush run back and report a mass weapon, the TSAB comes on you like a frantic set of bricks. When they get you, assuming you are alive, they charge you for violating State Security and give you a penalty ten times of what you might otherwise have taken. You can bet no prosecutor (from Fate's case, we learn that there is no such thing as a lawyer in TSAB, Chrono, technically her prosecutor, tells her how to answer instead of a lawyer!) will give you any mercy or push for anything but the Ultimate Penalty. Still interested?

Then why not actual armour? Signum and Shamal did not really care what their Knight armour will be like. All they wanted was for Hayate is to grant them their knight armour which suggest the physical material/outlook isn't important.

Because she doesn't really counternance them using violence?

You're making sweeping statements. And the example you provided is about technology not mindset. Also, if that's the case, the TSAB may not have survive the aftermath of the war which led to the banning of conventional weapons. At that point in time, there is sure to be conventional weapons left around. If physical weapons are effective against mages, then conventional weapons itself would survive to present day strikers.

Mindset affects the technology (which is but an application of known physical laws) that a society can produce. If you don't understand the value of high velocity, you won't work to create high velocity ammunition.

At the end of the war, They are obviously in a state of shock, so 99.99% of them are anti-gun. The 0.0001% that still like guns are crushed by sheer weight of numbers.

As for Jail not using HV ammo, is it because of Zeitgeist limiting him or could it be that HV ammo simply not effective in the first place?

Physics say it is much more likely to be 1 than 2.

Also blaming Hayate is extremely unfair to her. She may have lived on Earth but the TSAB trains her.

She spends plenty of time on Earth and has plenty of access to Terran material and culture. If I were Hayate, the first question I'll ask is why is TSAB officer training only 3 months long while training on Earth goes on for at least a year?

No it doesn't. the fields and barriers of the jacket may be down for all we know. If those are down then the physical component of the BJ won't protect Fate at all.

Why are they down. Does Fate have no survival instinct? Are you saying that they were battered down?

I never said you said Rein got stabbed. I mentioned that 2 character got stabbed and they bled. I specifically said that Rein got cut. Also the size of that damaged part of the BJ is large, about 20% the thickness of her wrist and its along almost the entire length of her side if I'm not mistaken. If she really got cut like that, she would be bleeding like a faucet if not worst.

Maybe blood is indeed seeping inside her, but as long as it is inside, we don't see it. Also, the width of the cut matters, not just its length. The wind hit the barrier jacket, went through and nicked her. What's so hard to understand?

It also neither blood nor skin tone. I said its still closer to the the inner jacket colour then actual flesh tones or even blood. If it wasn't the inner jacket then what is that grey patch?

Possibly the inside of the outer layer of the barrier jacket.

How is it counter induction? If it is, what is the induction then.

Never mind. You are finally doing it.

Induction goes like this: There are many examples where BJs are almost useless against impactors. Thus, I can conclude that they won't be stopping bullets.

Counter induction goes like this: Despite the fact that only under extremely restricted conditions can a higher KE input realistically result in less transfer to the victim, I insist that this is what happens.

Also let me retract my statement. I hypothesize that the field does what I stated due to observations that mages can survive being slammed through concrete without significant injuries but yet can get injured on "slower" attacks such as sword strikes.

1) Active defenses increasing available deceleration time to survivable levels.
2) Inertial dampening.
3) Even an anti-magic coating on the strikes allowing better penetration, while hardly my first choice due to increased complexity, is nothing compared to the problems of a theory in whcih higher KE and force inputs consistently result in less force and KE transmitted to the mage.

Also NEVER did I say they must have a defense against bullets.

Then what is that stuff above.

It would be similar to how heat is dissipated from hot objects. Its a hypothesis based on what I observed....

Tell me, how often is it that higher thermal inputs will result in less energy being input into a victim, all else being equal.

I'm talking about Fields of the barrier jackets. Not the physical, visible components of barrier jackets.

I always discuss the entire defensive complex.

Then how would you explain how Fate survive getting slammed through multiply layers of concrete with her barrier jacket completely undamaged but can get cut by Signum?

See answers to Keroko. Alternatively, you might prefer Tk3997's inertial dampening theory. Either way, it does not follow that higher KE inputs equal lower energy transferred to mage!

[Wild Goose]

Partial, but not a total excuse. She spends a lot of time on Earth until she's 15, so she still has that link to Terran culture and zeitgeist until at least then.

Quite frankly, if I'm an paramilitary officer, I'll be very interested in what other nations' militaries and police think about military and police matters. The Americans study Soviet military thought, and in fact incorporated some ideas when they scribbled up AirLand battle. The Soviets analyzed the West and still do as they attempt to solve the problem of professionalizing in a way acceptable to their very different military culture. And the idea of us being primitive societies thus unworthy of study doesn't work - we are still studying Sun Tzu ourselves. And so on.

I just want to adress this while posting on the run: Your point above indicates an expectation of a level of professionalism and competance at odds with your position of the TSAB being insular idiots. :D

Besides, remember that at their core the TSAB, sadly, are essentially magical riot cops and SWAT. It's very likey there is a school of thought that goes "Why bother study this military crap, it has no relevance to anything we do!" :D

I am aware that is a stupid paradigm, but it does jive with the whole "TSAB are idiots" school of thought which ark and TK subscribe to. Y'all don't know how many times I have been told by companies that Leadership Skills training is irrelevant and has nothing to do at all with their companies. *sighs*

Also, consider that she may well consider, "Eh, I'm in the TSAB, what does this have to do with me? I won't bother." There's precedent for this: Hayate has been shown in the manga refusing to work on taking care of herself in a close-range fight because as she puts it, she's artillery, why does she need to worry about close range? (Paraphrased. Nevermind that in real armies arty gun crews DO train for when the OMGWTF threat suddenly appears. Mulcahy v Ministry of Defence, British Army gun crew in Gulf War 1 blasted a T-72 at point-blank range (for arty, anyway.)) :D

Also, considering that the manga implies that her life in teh TSAB was really hectic, she may well have decided that Earth = Home = Don't Think About Work. And realistically... if she's going to school, regularly running missions, and juggling homework, it'd be hard to look up and research all these things. I can do it because I spent a year plus skipping classes and reading up on stuff. :D Ironically now that I'm taking a break from college and working, I don't have much time to read up on these things either. :D

Hayate's failings as a commanding officer are partly her, and also partly because of the institution which trained her. And since it's mentioned that she apprenticed under Genya, he shares some of the blame as well.

One more thing to consider: The US viewed the Soviets as their main threat when they wrote up AirLand Battle (which was later scrubbed for Network-Centric Warfare), and Gen. Petraus lead the school of thought that counterinsurgency is a main threat, forming the impetuous behind FM-23, the US Army counterinsurgency field manual. In both cases, there is a visible threat which US planners planned against.

We have no indications of the TSAB facing an outward threat that would require the sort of planning, wargaming and study that lead to AirLand Battle and FM-23. To be fair, it's possible that the TSAB may have done this, concluded that their main focus should be on constabulary and stabilisation operations, and thus they're geared to that, much as how the US Army has concluded that COIN ops should now be a focus of the Army, resulting in Army-wide dessimation of FM-23.

[Jimmy C]

from Fate's case, we learn that there is no such thing as a lawyer in TSAB, Chrono, technically her prosecutor, tells her how to answer instead of a lawyer!)

Unless the translation is off again, that's incorrect. Chrono never said he was the prosecutor in her case. In A's ep1, he even states he's a witness along with Yuuno.

[arkhangelsk]

OK, maybe he isn't the prosecutor. Nevertheless, he and Yunno are the guys who give Fate her lines. Where is her lawyer?

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

OK, maybe he isn't the prosecutor. Nevertheless, he and Yunno are the guys who give Fate her lines. Where is her lawyer?

What's the matter ark? Feeling left out of the job? Maybe the TSAB don't need them. *Evil Cackle.*

[Wild Goose]

OK, maybe he isn't the prosecutor. Nevertheless, he and Yunno are the guys who give Fate her lines. Where is her lawyer?

Mackenzie Friend. Legal principle where you can have someone assist you in the trial, despite them not being a qualified lawyer. Chrono is apparently acting as this. :D

Also, they say that the trial is taking place at TSAB HQ. That'd be where her public defender would show up. Most Navy ships don't deploy with a JAG, y'know; they gotta wait till they get back to base to get the JAG officers to show up. :D

[tshouryuu]

What he means is that there is a "failure condition", so to speak, for your theory. For example, if I say that the maximum speed of a beam is 16m/s. You can disprove this by using a clear beam example (not a random bunch of flashies) and measuring out a higher speed, for example SS12 is good. That's the failure condition. He's saying your theory has none.
Right now I only have a hypothesis. When I have an actual equation for calculating it, I'll let you know.

Active defenses, inertial dampening if you like Tk3997. And it hardly leads to the most asinine conclusion that energy transferred to a mage goes down as energy input goes up.
Ark, don't be rude. Just because you don't believe in it doesn't mean its asinine. Also inertial damping is fantasy science and not back by any hard science as well. Besides how does inertial damping even work against impacts? As far as I know, it only prevent people from feeling the effects of sudden acceleration and deceleration not protect against actual impacts. Also there is not a single piece of evidence, I believe, of any active defenses shown protecting their backs when mages actually get slammed into buildings.

What about intense indoctrination and an intense effort to stamp out any use? Further, even if I agree that BJs stop bullets despite the list of evidence to the contrary, it hardly leads to the most asinine conclusion that energy transferred to a mage goes down as energy input goes up.
Intense indoctrination will only work to a certain point. Also I said kinetic energy is bled off to the atmosphere and never did I say the energy is transferred to the mage. The bullets thing is just a side thing. The main point I'm suggesting is that the field of the Barrier jackets dissipate kinetic energy.


He was willing to vape the helo and recover only Vivio who is supposed to survive this. If Dieci had HV, she'd have busted the helo before Nanoha could have rushed back to shield it.
The thing is Quattro told Deici to fire not Jail. Jail only said cannon fire wouldn't kill Vivio if she really is the vessel of the saint. Jail did not tell Deici to shoot.

Would they? Even if they don't really understand the advantages, except that the TSAB
What are you trying to say here?

And again, criminals survive by keeping a low profile. By the time they get into a gunfight with the police they've lost 3/4ths of the battle. Even if they did have to use violence against law-enforcement, smart thinking says to do it in a way that will not provoke the police into providing too many reinforcements. That's a criminal's way of survival outside a prison, not shooting cops left and right with your sleazy new Desert Eagle.
Maybe true but they would still have a chance of escaping. If the gun is effective against mages then shooting is an option.



If you are a non-mage criminal, you'll just have to rely on stealth. It is now much more difficult for you to get into gunland (Earth) - you can't get there with personal transport and there's no public transport to Earth.

You might conceal a gun. Then comes the day you use it. Even with a silencer (which reduces the velocity of the bullets and thus its big advantage) guns are noisy with a distinct acoustic signature. The survivors of your ambush run back and report a mass weapon, the TSAB comes on you like a frantic set of bricks. When they get you, assuming you are alive, they charge you for violating State Security and give you a penalty ten times of what you might otherwise have taken. You can bet no prosecutor (from Fate's case, we learn that there is no such thing as a lawyer in TSAB, Chrono, technically her prosecutor, tells her how to answer instead of a lawyer!) will give you any mercy or push for anything but the Ultimate Penalty. Still interested?
Jail uses missiles on his type 2 drones. He threaten the whole of Midchilda, engaged in illegal research, attacked Ground HQ etc... and what did he get? He got imprisoned. Precia caused a dimensional incident due to her illegal experiments and she only got exiled. Now you're telling me a criminal with a gun will get even worse then that? Sorry, but that is not believable.

Because she doesn't really counternance them using violence?
This doesn't stop her knights from actually requesting for actual armour. Hayate can always refuse.

Mindset affects the technology (which is but an application of known physical laws) that a society can produce. If you don't understand the value of high velocity, you won't work to create high velocity ammunition.

At the end of the war, They are obviously in a state of shock, so 99.99% of them are anti-gun. The 0.0001% that still like guns are crushed by sheer weight of numbers.
This is way too idealistic. Is there even a real life equivalent to what you said?

Physics say it is much more likely to be 1 than 2.
That is your opinion only. You do not have hard facts to back it up as well.

She spends plenty of time on Earth and has plenty of access to Terran material and culture. If I were Hayate, the first question I'll ask is why is TSAB officer training only 3 months long while training on Earth goes on for at least a year?
Different places train their troops differently is all I will say.

Why are they down. Does Fate have no survival instinct? Are you saying that they were battered down?
Because she loves her "mother" and will do anything she says.

Maybe blood is indeed seeping inside her, but as long as it is inside, we don't see it. Also, the width of the cut matters, not just its length. The wind hit the barrier jacket, went through and nicked her. What's so hard to understand?
Is not hard at all. the 20% thing i mention is the width of the size of the cut on her BJ. I never disagree that the BJ is cut. I disagree that Rein got cut and bleeding.

Possibly the inside of the outer layer of the barrier jacket.
Not the inner layer itself?

Never mind. You are finally doing it.

Induction goes like this: There are many examples where BJs are almost useless against impactors. Thus, I can conclude that they won't be stopping bullets.
Evidence?

Counter induction goes like this: Despite the fact that only under extremely restricted conditions can a higher KE input realistically result in less transfer to the victim, I insist that this is what happens.
How is it restricted?

1) Active defenses increasing available deceleration time to survivable levels.
Again lack of evidence as mention somewhere above.

2) Inertial dampening.
Fantasy science as well.

3) Even an anti-magic coating on the strikes allowing better penetration, while hardly my first choice due to increased complexity, is nothing compared to the problems of a theory in whcih higher KE and force inputs consistently result in less force and KE transmitted to the mage.
If there was antimagic coating, then Signum's flame wouldn't surround her blade.

Then what is that stuff above.
Have = suggesting, must have is insisting. I never insisted. I only suggested.

Tell me, how often is it that higher thermal inputs will result in less energy being input into a victim, all else being equal.
Clarify for me what you're asking me here.

I always discuss the entire defensive complex.
You're talking only about the visible physical portion. I'm talking about the invisible fields.

See answers to Keroko. Alternatively, you might prefer Tk3997's inertial dampening theory. Either way, it does not follow that higher KE inputs equal lower energy transferred to mage!
Your response to Keroko are not exactly relevant to what we are discussing. I already pointed out what I think about TK's theory, its fantasy science as well, not the hard science you're so fond of.

[Kikaifan]

When did a giant claw arm become a “magitech” 40k power weapon and not just chunk of pointy metal exactly?:eyebrow: Do you have a SHRED of evidence to support that it was anything besides a sharp piece of metal? I’m guessing the answer is no and the “logic” behind this entire idea is “a barrier jacket couldn’t be defeated by a simple knife so this knife wasn’t normal.” Circular logic at it’s finest.

I don't really mind you not reading previous posts before responding, but if you're going to insult me you should do your due diligence.

In the Fate building-slam scene her barrier displaces the concrete in such a way that harm to her is averted. If her defenses can displace hundreds of kilos of concrete hitting her at fair speeds to protect her, they should be able to displace a simple knife. From there, the logic you offered takes over- it must not be a simple knife.

The idea shouldn't be very hard to accept when all the other drones have magic-based weapons and magic-enhanced 'sharp pieces of metal' are used by several characters.


Annnd expansion by editing:

Your diagram actually shows with fair accuracy roughly how they would have been moving had your theory been true. Your lines are actually the consequence of your theory.

Yes, they are. And it doesn't require them to run into each other's beams on purpose.

And BTW it's not like mages making crazy zigzags is something we've never seen in Nanoha.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/sneaks/zigzag.jpg

BTW they make like 5 contacts in under 2 seconds, more evidence than when the animators aren't doing closeups the combat actually progresses quickly (or that mages can fight quickly when they want to, as you like, though then you'd have to invent some really preposterous bullshit to explain why they take it so easy the rest of the time). And since the characters actually come onscreen during the same 'shot' I don't really think you can call that 'random emissions.'


Okay guys, what's all this crap about Scaglietti not using guns because he can't even imagine them? He uses missiles. He's obsessed with Old Belkan tech, and the Ancient Belkans didn't have the ban. The part about him not wanting to kill people I can accept (though he uses the missiles anyway), but it should certainly be within his mental capabilities to conceive of and engineer a firearm. Could it be that- gasp- firearms were considered antiquated and useless against magitech during the Belkan era?

Actually, the fact that the Knights were considered dangerous- or anything other than idiots, really- back in the day says more for the effectiveness of barrier jackets against modern weapons than anything else. Though I guess since you guys are stuck on this 'barrier jacket appearance matters' thing you're going to say they probably were all in plate or something and that makes the difference.

[arkhangelsk]

Right now I only have a hypothesis. When I have an actual equation for calculating it, I'll let you know.
Ark, don't be rude. Just because you don't believe in it doesn't mean its asinine. Also inertial damping is fantasy science and not back by any hard science as well. Besides how does inertial damping even work against impacts? As far as I know, it only prevent people from feeling the effects of sudden acceleration and deceleration not protect against actual impacts. Also there is not a single piece of evidence, I believe, of any active defenses shown protecting their backs when mages actually get slammed into buildings.

1) And something that results in reduced total quantity of force and pressure with increasing input isn't an act of pure ludicrious fantasy?
2a) It is Tk3997's theory, not mine. You can ask him for those details. Frankly, I don't like using inertial dampeners as a first choice myself due to fantasy factor, though as I said it is a unique weakness to his theory.
2b) Nevertheless, when you impact the ground, you decelerate. If you can somehow prevent that, then you can survive.
3) There's even less evidence of defenses that are vulnerable only to low speed attacks. All we are sure is that the mage somehow survived through a cloud of smoke, in which any of our three theories could have happened. I like my theory because it requires the least new fantasy elements. All it needs is a practical, real-world application of basic physics along with the already clearly established fantasy of barriers / shields.

Intense indoctrination will only work to a certain point.

Add the lack of alternative teachings.

Also I said kinetic energy is bled off to the atmosphere and never did I say the energy is transferred to the mage.

You have insisted that the mage is safer from higher KE situations than lower ones. The consequence of this is that the amount of energy and force that does not get absorbed by the defensive complex and gets through to the mage decreases as the inputs increase.

Now, good luck defining a mechanism where KE is not only bled off to the atmosphere (which by itself is not that hard, you can turn into into work heating by deformation and vent it to the atmosphere), but less energy and force has to reach the mage as energies and forcesget higher.

The thing is Quattro told Deici to fire not Jail. Jail only said cannon fire wouldn't kill Vivio if she really is the vessel of the saint. Jail did not tell Deici to shoot.

Well, if Scarlietti actually objected, he wouldn't have let them get away with the shot no? And why else will Dieci be there if not to ambush the helo.

What are you trying to say here?

I meant to say that the TSAB will come down on them like a sack of bricks.

Maybe true but they would still have a chance of escaping. If the gun is effective against mages then shooting is an option.

Your chances of ultimate escape go way down if the police suddenly decide to throw everything they have at you.

Jail uses missiles on his type 2 drones. He threaten the whole of Midchilda, engaged in illegal research, attacked Ground HQ etc... and what did he get? He got imprisoned. Precia caused a dimensional incident due to her illegal experiments and she only got exiled. Now you're telling me a criminal with a gun will get even worse then that? Sorry, but that is not believable.

The point is what the gun will do to the base of national security.

This doesn't stop her knights from actually requesting for actual armour. Hayate can always refuse.

The Master has made her Decision.

This is way too idealistic. Is there even a real life equivalent to what you said?

Something like the sakoku (sp) of Tokugawa eras. They actually did manage to get almost all the guns.

That is your opinion only. You do not have hard facts to back it up as well.

Neither do you. All you have is your fantasies of them having to have an anti-bullet capability with their barrier jackets, and you insist on doing it in the most scientifically implausible way.

Different places train their troops differently is all I will say.

We were willing to buy that at the end of A's. Not at the end of StrikerS. At least ask questions! Three months is a length more suitable for boot camp. Even the Soviets use 6 to train a NCO specialist (who is horribly overspecialized and perhaps just outright poorly trained by Western standards) and they are working with a 2 year conscription period forcing them to get training over with ASAP so they can get some use out of the conscript.

Because she loves her "mother" and will do anything she says.

Wouldn't it be quicker to say "Strip"?

Not the inner layer itself?

No one really knows what it is. It clearly isn't the inner layer, though. Personally, I vote to leave it a shadow.

Evidence?

Let's start with the bug we are discussing. Even if we can agree that only the outer layer is breached, it was breached by wind. To decide that those things are going to stand up to bullets anytime soon is asinine.

How is it restricted?

I've explained it at least three times in this thread. In short, it involves being tougher than the bullet so the KE goes to deform the bullet. However, a BJ that's cuttable by windblast simply does not qualify for this.

Again lack of evidence as mention somewhere above.

Not a problem unique to my theory. It does require the fewest fantasy elements.

Fantasy science as well.

Not a problem unique to his theory, though it is a fantasy element, it is no more of a pipe dream than yours. And the fact that even science fiction that will employ that fantasy device will not employ a shield that becomes more protective with increasing input should tell you something about what a fantasy your little contraption is.

If there was antimagic coating, then Signum's flame wouldn't surround her blade.

The flame is antimagic in the same sense of the anti-magic ammunition used, not a AMF. That's not difficult to understand, is it?

Clarify for me what you're asking me here.

Your theory basically says that high KE = mage safe. Low KE = mage not safe. Thus, no bullet, low KE blades instead. Thus, you are saying that there is less total energy absorbed by the mage (not just percentage, amount) as KE goes up. You try and relate it to thermal, so tell me, how often this inverse correlation b/w input and output happen?

You're talking only about the visible physical portion. I'm talking about the invisible fields.

I always discuss the entire defensive complex, of which the pseudomatter cloth is a vital part. The bug's blast cut through the entire defensive complex. Whatever fields or barriers you were fantasizing about, the bug cuts through them all.

Your response to Keroko are not exactly relevant to what we are discussing. I already pointed out what I think about TK's theory, its fantasy science as well, not the hard science you're so fond of.

I explain how to use active defense to increase decelerative times and reduce load to Keroko. Tk's theory is not my first choice, but it is no more of a fantasy than yours.

Mackenzie Friend. Legal principle where you can have someone assist you in the trial, despite them not being a qualified lawyer. Chrono is apparently acting as this. :D

Also, they say that the trial is taking place at TSAB HQ. That'd be where her public defender would show up. Most Navy ships don't deploy with a JAG, y'know; they gotta wait till they get back to base to get the JAG officers to show up. :D

Since it is the day before the trial, wouldn't most people want to discuss things with the lawyer who will represent them? And actually, Yunno and Chrono, if they are witnesses, shouldn't have too much contact with Fate, who's the defendant. For all you know, Fate, who after all is an AAA mage, will use this opportunity to threaten the two into giving more favorable testimony than warranted.

What's the matter ark? Feeling left out of the job? Maybe the TSAB don't need them. *Evil Cackle.*

Aah, there goes the protection of the client. This becomes effectively a summary trial. I feel very unsafe.

I just want to adress this while posting on the run: Your point above indicates an expectation of a level of professionalism and competance at odds with your position of the TSAB being insular idiots. :D[/i]

Actually, I'm expecting them to at least put in effort. I can almost forgive the TSAB for being incompetent, maybe they just don't even have a clue where to start, but Hayate has links to Earth.

Besides, remember that at their core the TSAB, sadly, are essentially magical riot cops and SWAT. It's very likey there is a school of thought that goes "Why bother study this military crap, it has no relevance to anything we do!" :D

Those guys don't even take cover ... SWAT people know how to take cover better than those pokeys...

Also, consider that she may well consider, "Eh, I'm in the TSAB, what does this have to do with me? I won't bother." There's precedent for this: Hayate has been shown in the manga refusing to work on taking care of herself in a close-range fight because as she puts it, she's artillery, why does she need to worry about close range? (Paraphrased. Nevermind that in real armies arty gun crews DO train for when the OMGWTF threat suddenly appears. Mulcahy v Ministry of Defence, British Army gun crew in Gulf War 1 blasted a T-72 at point-blank range (for arty, anyway.)) :D

You know that most of us consider that whole farce a character assassination of Hayate, or in the SoD perspective, an unforgivable character flaw.

Hayate's failings as a commanding officer are partly her, and also partly because of the institution which trained her. And since it's mentioned that she apprenticed under Genya, he shares some of the blame as well.

Yes, but Genya's pure Mid (he might have Japanese ancestors but he's all Mid now), and thus locked into their Zeitgeist. It is Hayate's job to bring some of Earth's Zeitgeist into TSAB to improve them.

We have no indications of the TSAB facing an outward threat that would require the sort of planning, wargaming and study that lead to AirLand Battle and FM-23. To be fair, it's possible that the TSAB may have done this, concluded that their main focus should be on constabulary and stabilisation operations, and thus they're geared to that, much as how the US Army has concluded that COIN ops should now be a focus of the Army, resulting in Army-wide dessimation of FM-23.

I'm not demanding they know AirLand battle. I do demand they at least know basic concentration of force (basic principles of War or even schoolyard fighting - are you telling me Mid has no schoolyard fights?)

And as a police force, they should know how to deploy quickly. But no. 3 hours just to prepare a platoon, and a 4th to deliver them (Nanoha A's)..

In the whole Scarlietti incident, even on raised readiness, only one battalion (Nakajima's 308th) even moved into position as a unit. If any other battalions managed to move into position, we never saw them. Definitely no regimental commander showed up, which says that no regiment has deployed as a unit throughout the whole battle. The situation in the sky is the same. Hayate has control, thus implying she's the senior officer. Which means no unit higher than Squadron level managed to deploy as a unit. The Navy managed to move in six ships. Six.

Sigh.... :heh:

[Kagerou]

See, this stuff is why I try to explain TSAB mishappenings in the series as the creators not knowing what they're talking about, and thus I make them semi-competent (to the best of my ability: I'm no tactical genius either :heh: ).

[Wild Goose]

Point. Many points.

I'm working on something that I'll post in here and OC as an idea on how the TSAB isn't exactly competant by military standards. It goes into OC because it references Erusia, which is an OC situation. :heh:

[arkhangelsk]

And BTW it's not like mages making crazy zigzags is something we've never seen in Nanoha.

Don't you dare compare the two. One has a clear purpose, Yunno and Vita bashing into each other. The other is a bunch of random streaks and flashes

BTW they make like 5 contacts in under 2 seconds, more evidence than when the animators aren't doing closeups the combat actually progresses quickly (or that mages can fight quickly when they want to, as you like, though then you'd have to invent some really preposterous bullshit to explain why they take it so easy the rest of the time). And since the characters actually come onscreen during the same 'shot' I don't really think you can call that 'random emissions.'

There are several possibilities that can be used in combination:
1) Actually analyzing the scene, their speed only comes out to be around 70-100m/s, which is very fast for them, but not impossible. You'll notice they tired of this let's bash each other game after a few seconds (probably because of all the accelerations as they zigged and clashed - the brain can take several hundred Gs transient, but that will make it several - really about time for them to get groggy, and their other organs probably aren't taking it too either).
2) The authors accelerated time for the shots. Time manipulation is never my first choice, but it is always these low detail, few if any sounds scenes that get derailed from the Realtime Throne. Scenes that are timemarked with voices must keep their positions in the timeline.
3) SoD's Standard Anti-Blooper Defense (Variant): The TSAB canonically has few if any recordings of this battle. Most of the time, we know they can observe magical battles in remarkable visual detail using their Technical Means of Reconnaissance, but this time, such observation means are known to be blocked by a barrier. Thus, the combat details have to be reconstructed or plain imagined without the benefit of raw data, and the recreators took some liberties. This will explain, for example, why in that zigzag sequence they kept freezing for several frames, destroying the time resolution.

Okay guys, what's all this crap about Scaglietti not using guns because he can't even imagine them? He uses missiles. He's obsessed with Old Belkan tech, and the Ancient Belkans didn't have the ban.

They had a kind of bushido, though.

Actually, the fact that the Knights were considered dangerous- or anything other than idiots, really- back in the day says more for the effectiveness of barrier jackets against modern weapons than anything else. Though I guess since you guys are stuck on this 'barrier jacket appearance matters' thing you're going to say they probably were all in plate or something and that makes the difference.

Or maybe they were most dangerous (and thus most noted) in places and times where they didn't have to face guns. I mean, how memorable will one of their reincarnations be, if the following happened:

They are reincarnated. They swear allegiance to their new master. Their new master tells them to get Linker Cores. They go and attack the local farmgirl who happens to have a big linker core. Fortunately, his daddy came to the rescue and shot the knight in the back with a rifle. The rest of them go down similarly in three days. Human casualties, zero. With all four knights gone, eventually the Book gets tired of waiting, devours its master completely and reincarnates.

Wow. How memorable. This might be in the local news, but it'll soon be lost in the noise of other more mundane murderers. It certainly is not likely to get into a Book that can be easily searched for in the library. Maybe somewhere, in the Infinity Library, there is a newspaper scrap with the story I just wrote ...

[Mirificus]

Right now I only have a hypothesis. When I have an actual equation for calculating it, I'll let you know.
You don't need an equation. Ark was using the numbers as an example. However, a useful hypothesis must be able to make testable predictions.

As an adjunct to that, in principle, what observation could show your theory to be false? The mechanics of the hypothesis as stated are such that I can't think of one.

We have no indications of the TSAB facing an outward threat that would require the sort of planning, wargaming and study that lead to AirLand Battle and FM-23. To be fair, it's possible that the TSAB may have done this, concluded that their main focus should be on constabulary and stabilisation operations, and thus they're geared to that, much as how the US Army has concluded that COIN ops should now be a focus of the Army, resulting in Army-wide dessimation of FM-23.
Do you mean FM 3-24 COUNTERINSURGENCY?

Point. Many points.

I'm working on something that I'll post in here and OC as an idea on how the TSAB isn't exactly competant by military standards. It goes into OC because it references Erusia, which is an OC situation. :heh:
I wonder by which standard the TSAB is competent.

[Keroko]

Right, I figure its time for concrete evidence on some parts of the discussion, so I asked the people over at the image thread whether they had the A's DVD booklets. Luckilly DmonHiro had them, so Ark, if you would take the honors of either confirming or otherwise crushing my beliefs on the Signum/Fate barrier clash from episode 7:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_barriers.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/barriers.png)

Oh, and there also was this one one Divine Buster Extension:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_DivineBusterExtension.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/DivineBusterExtension.png)

[stormturmoil]

OK, maybe he isn't the prosecutor. Nevertheless, he and Yunno are the guys who give Fate her lines. Where is her lawyer?

The standard Space Time Administration Bureau Arrest speech:

"You are under arrest for violating Administration Bureau Laws. If you cease your hostilities and surrender, you may be granted the opportunity to plead in your own defence."

Note the emphasis: IF you surrender, Tehn (and by implication, ONLY then), are you given the chance to plead in your own defence.

Fate didn't surrender, and, by extension according to this statement (used several times in A's and StrikerS) therefore does not have the right to a defence.

As a result, there is no lawyer because she has no right to one at this stage. Having not met the terms of the arrest statement, she isn't entitled to plead in her own defence, and therefore presumably doesn't have the right to have someone else plead in her defence either.

If this is the case, Chrono's coaching may be his way of bending the rules slightly and giving her the benefits of a defence counsel she isn't ,strictly speaking, legally entitled to.

[Kha]

The standard Space Time Administration Bureau Arrest speech:

"You are under arrest for violating Administration Bureau Laws. If you cease your hostilities and surrender, you may be granted the opportunity to plead in your own defence."

Note the emphasis: IF you surrender, Tehn (and by implication, ONLY then), are you given the chance to plead in your own defence.

Fate didn't surrender, and, by extension according to this statement (used several times in A's and StrikerS) therefore does not have the right to a defence.

As a result, there is no lawyer because she has no right to one at this stage. Having not met the terms of the arrest statement, she isn't entitled to plead in her own defence, and therefore presumably doesn't have the right to have someone else plead in her defence either.

If this is the case, Chrono's coaching may be his way of bending the rules slightly and giving her the benefits of a defence counsel she isn't ,strictly speaking, legally entitled to.It's hard to believe, and then again totally believable after looking at Singapore the functional dystopia, that the biggest rule of Ordered Space has such little respect for human rights...

[Tk3997]

It's hard to believe, and then again totally believable after looking at Singapore the functional dystopia, that the biggest rule of Ordered Space has such little respect for human rights...
I wouldn't put too much on stock on such a simple statement myself. The fact is that even today police don't acutally have to say anything about rights during or after an arrest "Reading of rights" is required to interrogate NOT arrest. It's also worth noting that despite the fact Hollywood has come up with a sort of "pop culture" standard version of Miranda the fact is the court specified no wording in it's ruling so the exact wording can vary from place to place so long as it expresses the core tenants of the warning. As for what you say to arrest someone really you can phrase your order to desist and submit to arrest however you please so long as it clearly implies your intent and will to detain the person. In fact stating any sorts of rights makes little sense in the context IMO and it’s rather more likely this is merely a standardized and somewhat elaborate take on “Cease and desist”, and bear in mind this is a magic girl show recall so something that sounds a bit more dramatic then “I’m placing you under arrest I'd advise you come quietly.” is just par for the coruse.

[arkhangelsk]

Right, I figure its time for concrete evidence on some parts of the discussion, so I asked the people over at the image thread whether they had the A's DVD booklets. Luckilly DmonHiro had them, so Ark, if you would take the honors of either confirming or otherwise crushing my beliefs on the Signum/Fate barrier clash from episode 7:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_barriers.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/barriers.png)

They are crushed. In fact, we were both wrong, and Tk3997 is right - that wasn't the glow of a barrier jacket's defensive complex. It was Panzer Geist and Defencer Plus activating, according to the text. The guys agree with you that was a deflection, but that's cold comfort.

Oh, and there also was this one one Divine Buster Extension:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_DivineBusterExtension.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/DivineBusterExtension.png)[/quote]

This one? Sorry. It just says that it has a longer range than previously, and that it is used to fire on enemies outside of "usual battle ranges" in "outranging sniping". It has "shocking speed" that can reach through the "outranging" distance in an "instant", precision and power that will support a "super long range" shoot and it has DB's shield drill through capability. All high level, showing the skill of Nanoha as a bombardment mage.

The problem is, the entire blurb is filled with iffy words without quantitative references. Thus, they are defined by what is shown on screen, and "outranging" became ~100m ... at least according to the episode. "Shocking Speed" became 16m/s, and so on.

[Wild Goose]

Do you mean FM 3-24 COUNTERINSURGENCY?
....yeah. Oops. :heh: hurried post -_- And I even have a .pdf copy of it on my hard drive...

I wonder by which standard the TSAB is competent.
By policing standards, perhaps; when Genya deployed his battalion, he deployed them in a formation used by countless forces of riot police through the ages. Heck, as another poster has said, all the drones needed were looting and breaking windows and some tear gas to make the scene complete...

She spends plenty of time on Earth and has plenty of access to Terran material and culture. If I were Hayate, the first question I'll ask is why is TSAB officer training only 3 months long while training on Earth goes on for at least a year?
Something to take note of, Ark - that three months is officer candidate school. And you're right, it's really short! Why, in the US, it's 3 months as well!

Since the writers don't know any better, Ark, they're following a typical OCS route, which is a 3-month officer course, for the US Army and JSDF. Not for nothing are OCS grads called "90 Wonders" (or Blunders in the more disparaging version.) By the wording used in the manga, we do know it's OCS.

Different places do have their OCS longer; Singapore's OCS is 38 weeks since they don't have an academy, but generally most OCS courses in the world are around 3 months, with 6 being the longest.

Also, if the training is only 3 months, then it's curious that Hayate goes for extra training before screening for LTC. But wait, there's only 3 months training? How is that possible?

Command and Staff College. You need this to qualify for COL and flag ranks, and since the TSAB apparently seems interested in bringing the ranks 1 down (Major in command of battalion instead of LTC, LTC commanding division instead of a full bird), this suggests that the extra training Hayate went in for to become a division commander IS Command and Staff College.

Also, note that there's mentions of Genya training her and she being under his command. Since they met for the first time at the airport fire, it's likely that she was trained under him as part of her practicals post C&SC.

Furthermore, Ark, a lot of officer training is on the job, taking place after they're comissioned. Even USMC OCS is 3 months, but then has several more months of The Basic School, aka turning Marine officers into infantrymen.

Maybe blood is indeed seeping inside her, but as long as it is inside, we don't see it. Also, the width of the cut matters, not just its length. The wind hit the barrier jacket, went through and nicked her. What's so hard to understand?
...

Okay, here's an experiment. Take a crisp dollar bill, or any crisp paper. Fold it three times, and run the sharp edge on your side, where Rein was grazed, while wearing a shirt. Even a scrath sends tingles up and down your side, doesn't it?

Even if it doesn't penetrate, even if the graze only cuts the outer layer and scratches her, without bruising or drawing blood, it'll still hurt. That area of the body is quite sensitive. :D But less sensitive than there, obviously. :D

On an aside: I personally don't mind BJs having less protection against guns. It makes my OCs more viable. :D

[Tk3997]

They are crushed. In fact, we were both wrong, and Tk3997 is right - that wasn't the glow of a barrier jacket's defensive complex. It was Panzer Geist and Defencer Plus activating, according to the text. The guys agree with you that was a deflection, but that's cold comfort.
I still find it absurd it acutally came to needing that it’s so blatantly frikkin obvious what happened in my opinion hence my disbelief when he submitted it as “evidence” for his threoy to begin with.

[arkhangelsk]

By policing standards, perhaps; when Genya deployed his battalion, he deployed them in a formation used by countless forces of riot police through the ages. Heck, as another poster has said, all the drones needed were looting and breaking windows and some tear gas to make the scene complete...

How many riot police don't adapt to the fact the enemy is not just rioting, but shooting at them?

The officer part deserves a nice long answer, so wait for it.

Okay, here's an experiment. Take a crisp dollar bill, or any crisp paper. Fold it three times, and run the sharp edge on your side, where Rein was grazed, while wearing a shirt. Even a scrath sends tingles up and down your side, doesn't it?

Even if it doesn't penetrate, even if the graze only cuts the outer layer and scratches her, without bruising or drawing blood, it'll still hurt. That area of the body is quite sensitive. :D But less sensitive than there, obviously. :D

On an aside: I personally don't mind BJs having less protection against guns. It makes my OCs more viable. :D

I've tried folded paper and I've tried cards. At worse they are uncomfortable, but I don't see myself clutching it for more than a second. And my shirt definitely was not damaged by that!

[tshouryuu]

You don't need an equation. Ark was using the numbers as an example. However, a useful hypothesis must be able to make testable predictions.

Since you put it that way, the hypothesis is useless and untestable since the only way to do test is if we have a mage wearing a barrier jacket and we either:

launch various projectiles of equal mass at different speeds at the mage and see what happens.
launch said mage into a wall at different speed (perferred method of testing since one less variable)

Then see how much damage the mage suffers with each impact.

* tshouryuu drools at the silly thought of launching Fate at a wall, in her barrier jacket then strip her to make a complete medical check to see how much damage she suffers. *

As an adjunct to that, in principle, what observation could show your theory to be false? The mechanics of the hypothesis as stated are such that I can't think of one.

To show my hypothesis is false, all I need is for one screen shot that shows a mage impacting against a wall or something with a visible barrier/field activated behind the mage, since mages slamming into buildings/walls at great speed without visible barriers/fields activated makes up half of my observations.

[Wild Goose]

Something that just occured to me on Hayate bringin in EArth's zeitgeist: She CAN'T.

Why?

Because when you join a military, you are expected to leave your past and your ways behind, and conform to your service's zeitgeist - the most graphic example being USMC Boot Camp, which unlike USA Basic, is primarily focused on imparting the Marine ethos into enlistees (along with the basics of killing things; further instruction is then handled at the School of Infantry).

Now, this isn't to say that it can't happen; there are historical examples of militaries adopting foreign concepts. Delta Force was heavily inspired by the SAS, and SEAL Team Six adopted the MP5 due to input from GSG-9. The British were the people who came up with the idea of snipers (though it was E.J. Land who refined the concept into today's Marine Scout Sniper). However, these examples are exceptions. In the casaes of beckwith and Marcinko, they got away with teh cross british contamination due to their backers - Chief of staff, and Planning Hean & CNO respectively.

Hayate's backers are all political. She has no backers within the GF chain of command.

If she is to introduce earth thinking, she can only do so once she gets stars.

[arkhangelsk]

Let me reorganize the paragraphs a bit to match my answering order.

Something to take note of, Ark - that three months is officer candidate school. And you're right, it's really short! Why, in the US, it's 3 months as well!

Since the writers don't know any better, Ark, they're following a typical OCS route, which is a 3-month officer course, for the US Army and JSDF. Not for nothing are OCS grads called "90 Wonders" (or Blunders in the more disparaging version.) By the wording used in the manga, we do know it's OCS.

Different places do have their OCS longer; Singapore's OCS is 38 weeks since they don't have an academy, but generally most OCS courses in the world are around 3 months, with 6 being the longest.

Furthermore, Ark, a lot of officer training is on the job, taking place after they're comissioned. Even USMC OCS is 3 months, but then has several more months of The Basic School, aka turning Marine officers into infantrymen.

The initial training period of an officer is part of a whole military system, which is why we were willing to give it the benefit of the doubt when they were still portraying them as reasonably capable. However, after StrikerS, one has to give it a closer scrutiny.

The United States OCS, in its modern incarnation, is AFAIK compensated by the fact that most of those who enter it are former enlisted and are taking it to codify a few things they had probably learnt for themselves on the field already. They might even be just getting the "Officer rubber stamp" more than learning much. They definitely are not 9-year old girls that hadn't even finished Primary Education...

The other compensation that allows Western officer education to be relatively short is the strong NCO corps. The officers are effectively and knowingly sent out half trained, even after IOBC or TBS, and a sergeant or chief covers for their weaknesses while trying to finish training them OTJ during their platoon leader's tour. Even more senior NCOs advise company or even battalion commanders and NCOs handle most of the detailed technical tasks. From what we've seen (data we didn't have back when they first announced that Fate and Nanoha graduated from 3-month OCS), however, the NCO corps in the TSAB is clearly not of the required caliber to perform that duty. I mean, Reinforce II as the senior NCO? (Griffiths is a "Preparatory Ground Captain", so he's really an officer) How STRONG the NCO corps is! So that model clearly does not apply.

When you've got a weak NCO corps, you need a strong officer corps to get the military moving. To get some idea of how long that takes, we might look at the Soviets, who have a weak NCO corps. They have over a hundred "Officers Higher Schools", all 4-5 years long. Any attempt to shorten this period ends miserably.

In the 50s, the Soviet Navy (officer's education wasn't always 5 years long!) used to have some 2-3 year (that still makes it 12 times longer than OCS) long "Intermediate Schools" that gave a specialized education officers (say for Mine and Torpedoes) back in the 50s. Then they had "Higher Schools" that gave a general officer's education. Neither were satisfactory. The Intermediate Schools wound up producing officers that were OK in their one field. The Higher Schools wound up producing generalists that basically struggled everywhere. The Soviets wound up marginalizing the Intermediate Schools and extending the Higher School by years to cover a specialization.

The Soviets did kind of have a ROTC program. Nobody liked what came out there either. They are forced to take more officers from civilian institutions these days for short service due to a shortage of Military Higher School cadre. The majority opinion is that almost all of them are useless - the officers that did come out of Higher Schools wind up doing their homework for them...

At least the Soviets have cadre that can do homework. One wonders whether the homework just doesn't get done in the TSAB...

They are now thinking about making some ten month OCS type courses (about the same length as say the Japanese officer program for civilian university grads), and are meeting resistance from "conservatives" who think adequate officers only come from 4-5 year Military Higher Schools. No doubt the "reformers" will try and use the Western examples like you do, but I think I'll side with the "conservatives" - in the current and near future Russian context, until they somehow build up a strong NCO corps (which arguably gets difficult with a strong officer corps), adequate officers will only come from long, specialized education. I suppose you can see my allegory to the TSAB. But back to those suckers.

Also, if the training is only 3 months, then it's curious that Hayate goes for extra training before screening for LTC. But wait, there's only 3 months training? How is that possible?

Command and Staff College. You need this to qualify for COL and flag ranks, and since the TSAB apparently seems interested in bringing the ranks 1 down (Major in command of battalion instead of LTC, LTC commanding division instead of a full bird), this suggests that the extra training Hayate went in for to become a division commander IS Command and Staff College.

Be careful when you use "division" and "battalion". They are entirely mappings of our imagination. In Midchildran, both are rated as "Forces", implying they are of a similar command level. In official Japanese translation, they are both butai (部隊,unit), and Hayate (in the Japanese translation), is not only a butaicho, but also a kacho, with ka (課) = Department.

Also, note that there's mentions of Genya training her and she being under his command. Since they met for the first time at the airport fire, it's likely that she was trained under him as part of her practicals post C&SC.

Hayate did receive additional training later on in her career. And there is another course for "Executive Officers" (not Enforcer BTW, we've already mistakenly created a whole TSAB culture around a Triad mapping which turned out to be inaccurate). So some PME does occur but its quality is clearly dubious. We already know that Commander's training failed Hayate entirely.

Fate's "Executive Officer" training certainly lacked in moral-psychological preparation and maybe investigative ability - seeing how fast Acous zoomed in on Scarlietti's cave in comparison.

Chrono (and Lindy) allowed the Book of Darkness situation to disintegrate to the point they nearly had to Arc millions of Terrans. Japan was saved because completely untrained Nanoha, Fate and Hayate managed to come up with a better plan than the trained Asura crew...

PME indeed... By the way, this "Executive Officer" thing explains why Hayate has no Assistant Commander. Fate, as an "Executive Officer" is the Assistant commander. At least this rids them of one massive crime.

[arkhangelsk]

Since you put it that way, the hypothesis is useless and untestable since the only way to do test is if we have a mage wearing a barrier jacket and we either:

Crappy understanding of the scientific method. It is certainly desirable to be able to perform actual experiments, but there are entire observational sciences like astronomy.

* tshouryuu drools at the silly thought of launching Fate at a wall, in her barrier jacket then strip her to make a complete medical check to see how much damage she suffers. *

You are sick.

To show my hypothesis is false, all I need is for one screen shot that shows a mage impacting against a wall or something with a visible barrier/field activated behind the mage, since mages slamming into buildings/walls at great speed without visible barriers/fields activated makes up half of my observations.

I'll tell you some good news. Technically speaking, it'll be nice support for my theory, but this wouldn't falsify your theory because it still indeed might have been what happened the other times.

The bad news is that you are still getting your procedure wrong. You need to show why your theory, which includes at least as much fantasy as Tk3997 and much more than mine, is a superior explanation.

Now, this isn't to say that it can't happen; there are historical examples of militaries adopting foreign concepts. Delta Force was heavily inspired by the SAS, and SEAL Team Six adopted the MP5 due to input from GSG-9. The British were the people who came up with the idea of snipers (though it was E.J. Land who refined the concept into today's Marine Scout Sniper). However, these examples are exceptions. In the casaes of beckwith and Marcinko, they got away with teh cross british contamination due to their backers - Chief of staff, and Planning Hean & CNO respectively.

I'll disagree, real life miltitaries have stolen a lot from each other over the years despite their ideological differences. There's almost always some years of lag, and generally each nation has its "slant" on an idea, but mutual flow does happen.

Remember the Dreadnought? It is not only a new ship, it also represents a new concept of battleship gunnery layout. Soon after it was built, everyone changed the heavy gun layouts on their battleships to look like Dreadnoughts "all-big" layout". The battlecruiser Invincible, similarily, inspired a lot of foreign followers.

Or how about the tank. First made demi-practical by the British, it spread around the world. To take just a small, well-known portion of the Tank concept exchange, the T-34 inspired the Panther. The Soviets went to APFSDS with the 115mm gun, and even though it wasn't a stunning success (fin stab wasn't stable enough back then), the West eventually did the same.

If we get away from technology, even conceptually, there was a lot of trading around. The pair replaced the trio Vic-formation as the usual smallest fighter unit worldwide. Modern armored warfare theory is a collaborative effort between at least British, German and Soviet thinkers, and probably there are others that I just don't remember at the moment (say the Americans, but I just can't remember a great American theorist's name - though certainly even if they didn't make up any theories, they did put the existing theories to great practical use in Desert Storm).

A lot of modern unit hierarchy came from the French, includes the corps and battalion.

What most militaries AFAIK try to do is educate you with their moral ethos. No one ever says they should be unwilling to learn from your allies and enemies.

[tshouryuu]

Crappy understanding of the scientific method. It is certainly desirable to be able to perform actual experiments, but there are entire observational sciences like astronomy.
Since I'm have crappy understanding of the scientific method, mind telling me how should I go about doing it. You reject my observations but now tell me to use observational methods... explain to me how to resolve this conflict if you will.

Iirc, astronomy seems to be proving Newton's law of gravity wrong since there seems to be a discrepancy between the Newtonian prediction and the observed precession of the orbit of Mercury.

You are sick.
Thank you. And you either can't read, don't understand or have no sense of humor at all since I included the word silly. Silly: Lacking seriousness or responsibleness; frivolous

I'll tell you some good news. Technically speaking, it'll be nice support for my theory, but this wouldn't falsify your theory because it still indeed might have been what happened the other times.

The bad news is that you are still getting your procedure wrong. You need to show why your theory, which includes at least as much fantasy as Tk3997 and much more than mine, is a superior explanation.
Humor me then. All you have been doing is saying its wrong. Show me that I'm wrong. Prove to me that its wrong. When I said field, you kept harping on the physical jacket. You have been absolutely unwilling to argue based on the parameters that I set. You have being arguing on something different on what I've been talking about. I have asked if the hypothesis could be correct and all you did was said no based on completely different parameters.

[Wild Goose]

@ark: Regards the militaries and learning from each other: for every example of such thinking and sharing, you then get cases like one DefenseTech staffer who recounted his experiences in the Army. He had a K-bar and found it useful and carried it everywhere... and was told by his Platoon Sergeant to get rid of it because it was a Marine knife, and Army doesn't use Marine things.

These are differing services, from the same planet, from the same nation, and they're arguing over a KNIFE.

[arkhangelsk]

Since I'm have crappy understanding of the scientific method, mind telling me how should I go about doing it. You reject my observations but now tell me to use observational methods... explain to me how to resolve this conflict if you will.

I reject your asinine interpretation of the observation. There's a difference.

Iirc, astronomy seems to be proving Newton's law of gravity wrong since there seems to be a discrepancy between the Newtonian prediction and the observed precession of the orbit of Mercury.

Yes, and the observation helped establish the superiority of relativistic physics.

Thank you. And you either can't read, don't understand or have no sense of humor at all since I included the word silly. Silly: Lacking seriousness or responsibleness; frivolous

You term the thought "silly", yet you drool at it. This tells the reader you enjoy the thought of what you describe, that you WANT to do it. Your described action is not categorized by normal humans as "silly" - it is "inhumane and immoral". A person who wants to do "inhumane and immoral" things can be described by many terms, one of which is sick.

Humor me then. All you have been doing is saying its wrong. Show me that I'm wrong. Prove to me that its wrong. When I said field, you kept harping on the physical jacket. You have been absolutely unwilling to argue based on the parameters that I set. You have being arguing on something different on what I've been talking about. I have asked if the hypothesis could be correct and all you did was said no based on completely different parameters.

Why don't you start proving yourself right?

@ark: Regards the militaries and learning from each other: for every example of such thinking and sharing, you then get cases like one DefenseTech staffer who recounted his experiences in the Army. He had a K-bar and found it useful and carried it everywhere... and was told by his Platoon Sergeant to get rid of it because it was a Marine knife, and Army doesn't use Marine things.

These are differing services, from the same planet, from the same nation, and they're arguing over a KNIFE.

I'm not saying interservice rivalry does not exist. But, somehow, I doubt the TSAB has an "interservice rivalry" with Earth.

[Kha]

Well I find non-chalantly running Fate through walls, even for most valid reasons, kinda sick...

I can see that they are hypothetical situations, but I still get unnerved by that. It's almost like trying to run Anita through walls. :p Why don't you guys use Hayate instead? :uhoh:

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

@ Ark: Requesting summary.

What stance are you taking in Barrier Jackets?
I just want to see straight up what your position is in something ressembling a one line answer, so we know whether or not this roundabouts arguing is actually... you know... getting somewhere.

[arkhangelsk]

Won't mind telling you, but I don't know what you believe is most important. Why don't you put yours down, and I'll write my summary based on what you wrote?

[Wild Goose]

I'm not saying interservice rivalry does not exist. But, somehow, I doubt the TSAB has an "interservice rivalry" with Earth.

My point is that if there can be resistance towards adopting a concept among different services of the same military of the same nation (look at all the fight the Marines put in before finally giving up and setting up MARSOC), the effect will be amplified when you consider TSAB/Earth relations.

Also, note something: whenever militaries have stolen/shared ideas, it's been between equals or people rushing to catch up to a sudden leader in the field (everybody else in the world who can afford to do so is working on creating their own answer to Land Warrior). Rarely has there been a military that has copied an idea from its inferior. :D

The TSAB would view Non-Administered Earth as its inferior.

Will make bigass post later in the day.

Won't mind telling you, but I don't know what you believe is most important. Why don't you put yours down, and I'll write my summary based on what you wrote?
Could it be that you don't have a stand at all, ark? :D

[tshouryuu]

I reject your asinine interpretation of the observation. There's a difference.
Which has the same effect of rejecting the observation


Yes, and the observation helped establish the superiority of relativistic physics.
And yet we call newton's law a law...

You term the thought "silly", yet you drool at it. This tells the reader you enjoy the thought of what you describe, that you WANT to do it. Your described action is not categorized by normal humans as "silly" - it is "inhumane and immoral". A person who wants to do "inhumane and immoral" things can be described by many terms, one of which is sick.
Humour is inadvertently cruel. Do you dare to say you never laugh at another person's misfortune? Either real life or fictional? Get off your moral high horse. If you laugh even once, you're also sick. Not as great a degree as I perhaps but still sick.

Why don't you start proving yourself right?

You keep rejecting it. I only asked if its possible if its correct. You seem pretty confident that you're correct so you have to have a good reason. So now I'm asking you to settle this issue so stop dodging. If you can prove me wrong, fine. If you can't, that's fine too.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Won't mind telling you, but I don't know what you believe is most important. Why don't you put yours down, and I'll write my summary based on what you wrote?



So in other words, you don't have a stance. If you had a position, you wouldn't need to wait for me to explain my position to formulate a summary of your position. My position and stance should be irrellevent to the request. You are simply waiting to compile the most effective contradictive, yet reinforcing breakdown as possible to feed into the argument, in order to simply win the argument.

This would be called TROLLING.

While effective in courtrooms for convincing the jurors, this does not pertain to debate here.

If you DO have a position, and my accusation of your trolling is wrong, put up your position, and stick by your position. This is called taking a RISK. And as anyone who's played BURNOUT 3 knows... RISK = REWARD.

In less elegant wording: "Either put up, or shut-up."

I've got no time for feeding trolls.


ZKlxyoPNaFI

[arkhangelsk]

Which has the same effect of rejecting the observation

Not really. The effect is very different. I agree with you Fate survives falls better than she takes cuts. I just disagree with why. If I reject the observation, then I'll say for example that Fate survives falls no better than she takes cuts.

Humour is inadvertently cruel. Do you dare to say you never laugh at another person's misfortune? Either real life or fictional? Get off your moral high horse. If you laugh even once, you're also sick. Not as great a degree as I perhaps but still sick.

In a moment of intellectual honesty, I'll confess that I recently bought a parody comic in which Fate and Nanoha lost to Scarlietti (which is frankly a more plausible result). I suppose I don't have to describe what happened in detail. So I'm a little sick as well, but at least I'm not "drooling" at the thought of doing it myself.

You keep rejecting it. I only asked if its possible if its correct. You seem pretty confident that you're correct so you have to have a good reason. So now I'm asking you to settle this issue so stop dodging. If you can prove me wrong, fine. If you can't, that's fine too.

It is a principle of science that it is impossible to disprove something. However, since you have no proof, your theory is roughly on par with Fate saved herself by farting.

[tshouryuu]

It is a principle of science that it is impossible to disprove something. However, since you have no proof, your theory is roughly on par with Fate saved herself by farting.
No, I'm asking you to prove your stance. since mine is so low on the scale, you must have something better. Prove it.

[Keroko]

No time for a full backlog answer. Shame about the defences in 7. Minor question: Did it say who activated them? The mages or their devices? Could be usefull for OC scenarios.

Why don't you start proving yourself right?

.... Haven't we been doing that all along? Oh well, I'll throw in another example.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab21365.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab21365.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab21445.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab21445.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab21454.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab21454.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab21561.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab21561.png)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/th_grab23312.png (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/Liinna/argument%20stuff/grab23312.png)

Fate gets launched away, thrown into a building, and comes out only a bit shaken, but otherwise unhurt. The fourth scene shows that she hit with enough force to displace the reinforced concrete and bend the windows bellow her point of impact. There was no defencer activating, the only think keeping Fate from becomming a red splat on the wall were the auto-defences of her Barrier Jacket: The standard Field and Barrier.

"But Keroko, there is a dust cloud, its impossible to say that defenses were not activated."

Uh, yes, of course there is a dust cloud, because the dust cloud means that impact has occured. Fate hit that building with nothing but her Barrier Jacket. Period. Result? She came out slightly shaken, but without apparant injury.

Conclusion: Barrier Jackets offer protection above the level of what you and Tk give them. If they can save a mage from getting blown through reinforced concrete, stopping bullets should not be that much of an issue.

[arkhangelsk]

No time for a full backlog answer. Shame about the defences in 7. Minor question: Did it say who activated them? The mages or their devices? Could be usefull for OC scenarios.

Sorry. Nothing on that. At least it shows how fast a defense could activate (and w/o the device saying "Defenser"!), which helps me down here.

Uh, yes, of course there is a dust cloud, because the dust cloud means that impact has occured. Fate hit that building with nothing but her Barrier Jacket. Period. Result? She came out slightly shaken, but without apparant injury.

The dust cloud, unfortunately for you, means that you don't know what impacted first, despite your attempt to win with the power of conviction, because everything is obscured in dust! We will never know whether it is like this:

|( . )(Cloud extent - the dot is Fate)

or like this:

|F )(Cloud extent)

Except that the top diagram is clearly a much more survivable experience, and will also better explain why so much wall is torn down, rather than a deeper penetration. The more likely path is clear.

And even if I accept it was the lower diagram, while it does follow the BJ is bulletproof, it does not follow that they have a bulletproof defence that somehow becomes more effective against high velocity!

[arkhangelsk]

No, I'm asking you to prove your stance. since mine is so low on the scale, you must have something better. Prove it.

Why don't you read all my previous posts first?

[Keroko]

Sorry. Nothing on that. At least it shows how fast a defense could activate (and w/o the device saying "Defenser"!), which helps me down here.

True, no arguments there. Oh, can I get a full tranlation of those two for OC purposes?

The dust cloud, unfortunately for you, means that you don't know what impacted first, despite your attempt to win with the power of conviction, because everything is obscured in dust! We will never know whether it is like this:

|( F )(Cloud extent)

or like this:

|F )(Cloud extent)

Except that the top diagram is clearly a much more survivable experience. The more likely path is clear.

The dust cloud means impact has occured. We did not see any defence. If the impact was guarded by a Defencer, then the Defencer would have been visible prior to impact (meaning, prior to dust cloud, because dust cloud means object has hit), it wasn't, meaning there is no Defencer present.

And even if I accept it was the lower diagram, while it does follow the BJ is bulletproof, it does not follow that they have a bulletproof defence that somehow becomes more effective against high velocity!

*shrug* I never claimed that anyway, so it doesn't bother me. In fact, I'd say that rounds that can pierce levels of concrete that Barrier Jackets can withstand (lets say one layer for convienience) are capable of piercing Barrier Jackets.

[tshouryuu]

Why don't you read all my previous posts first?
I did. I'm asking you to reiterate your stance in one post clearly.

[arkhangelsk]

So in other words, you don't have a stance.

You seem to think that this is necessarily a bad thing. You guys have stances. So what? They never make it past the hypothesis stage because they don't have enough evidence that cannot be explained in a more reasonable way. Or worse, they have fundamental flaws and are just cut to mincemeat (take that water stuff).

If you had a position, you wouldn't need to wait for me to explain my position to formulate a summary of your position. My position and stance should be irrellevent to the request. You are simply waiting to compile the most effective contradictive, yet reinforcing breakdown as possible to feed into the argument, in order to simply win the argument.

Even if that's true, if your own theory is strong enough, it will be able to resist such impacts. Now stop whining.

You do realize this is similar to what happens when a person submits his paper / article for scientific peer review, do you? The peer reviewer obviously did not do all the research or the thinking of the guy writing up the article - research on the professional level is so time consuming there's no way the peer reviewer can fully retest someone elses research and do their own work at the same time. Thus, he probably doesn't have a theory on the subject matter of his own - he might never even have thought seriously about the problem before. Instead, he goes through the hypothesis and the assembled evidence+analysis to ruthlessly locate and assault holes - flaws in methodology, clear absurdities with the conclusions, self contradictions, more plausible alternate interpretations ... more or less what I or Tk3997 do to your stuff when you bring it in. And if the flaws exceed a certain count, he simply recommends that it not be published.

If you are thinking that it is no fun to bring theories and I shoot them down, then stop pushing theories until you make them bulletproof!

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

**SNIP TROLLING**

You will post your stance, or you will take your leave.

[Tk3997]

So in other words, you don't have a stance. If you had a position, you wouldn't need to wait for me to explain my position to formulate a summary of your position. My position and stance should be irrellevent to the request. You are simply waiting to compile the most effective contradictive, yet reinforcing breakdown as possible to feed into the argument, in order to simply win the argument.

This would be called TROLLING.

While effective in courtrooms for convincing the jurors, this does not pertain to debate here.

If you DO have a position, and my accusation of your trolling is wrong, put up your position, and stick by your position. This is called taking a RISK. And as anyone who's played BURNOUT 3 knows... RISK = REWARD.

In less elegant wording: "Either put up, or shut-up."

I've got no time for feeding trolls.


ZKlxyoPNaFI

Oh stuff Tiger claw he’s absolutely allowed to destroy others theories without purposing his own it’s not his job to prove OTHER Peoples ideas nor dose he need to present his own. After all as he said when REAL scientist criticize an idea you don’t always hear them laying out there own elaborate counter theories do you? This isn’t a game of chicken for god sake you don’t need to take “risks” to prove your right. If your theory is so damn awesome what are YOU scared of if it really is airtight or viable then you should be eager to present it as he won’t be able to counter it. Unless it isn’t and you know that he’ll tear it to shreds like he has the other nonsense here.

If you won't present your supposedly awesome theory for review it's YOUR turn to quit whining and leave. So what's it gonna be give us your awesome theory or GTFO. You're not going to intimidate either of us twit I KNOW you ain't go crap from experience and Ark I'm sure just dosen't care.

IMPORTANT EDIT:

Tigerclaw has admitted in IRC that he has no theory and is merely baiting Ark to get him to "argue straight" apparently outright lies is required for this to be done.