[Wild Goose]

Reposting after some edits. Seriously...

Watched the ep this morning, unable to reply to any posts until now thanks to my iPad being derp - for some reason it can't post on Asuki, but it can read. And it used to be able to do both before upgrading to iOS 6.

Generally speaking, I have no major issues with the ep. All in all, I think it was well done, and served to highlight the drama, and the central theme of Muv-Luv, which is that the god of that universe is the Demon Murphy.

I rather liked Yui's defrosting and embarrassed deredere.

While some may wish to compare the relative skill levels of Takeru and Yuuya, without going into details I'll note that it's explicitly stated that Yuuya is seeing combat for the first time. All things considered, Yuuya is IMO doing quite well, for someone whose primary forte is not combat. And I was rather impressed with how he went for mobility kills on those Destroyers - sure, the head and body are protected by the shell, but not the legs, and if you can take the legs down, the Destroyer's stuck. I'm facepalming at not thinking of this earlier.

Also, he deserves points for not giving up, even though 94 Second is getting beaten to scrap and practically everything is going wrong for him.

Originally Posted by Kmos

It was a very good epi, but few things bothered me. He didn't destroy the core, makes Yui repeat herself when they just mentioned use of exterior mic, fort class went down fast (more screen time!), and where are the freakin' laser class? It's like they're incredibly shy. If Yuuya dies it would be closer to excellent, but yea, have feeling Zhar battalion will swoop in and... Also agree on posts of how slow this rescue is, someone should drop out, weakeast link, goodbye.

He didn't destroy the core because it's a critical part of the railgun - he wants to salvage something from this debacle, and if he can't save the railgun, the core is the next best thing.

As for making Yui repeat herself simplest explanation is either 1) he can't believe she's being deredere; or two, as the cockpit block is open, the external mic is disabled.

Originally Posted by SoldierOfDarkness

No Stella simply stated that she didn't want to waste fuel and ammo which brings to my first point in that Yuuya wasted a lot of time having the heart to heart chat with Yui. In a scenario like that you need to GET OUT OF THERE ASAP. The second he destroyed the gun, he should've grabbed the module and ran the hell out of there rather than acting cool in front of Yui which gave the BETA time to close in on him.

Plus it didn't sound like they were critical on fuel. She simply stated "yo, let's use this taxiway so we can save some fuel." It wasn't, "We're low on fuel, if we use the taxiway we'll be able to get out"

This is an inference of mine, but as I recall the Harrier burns more fuel in a hovering takeoff, compared to STOVL, hence why Brit carriers had the ski jump, which Americans didn't use (though they do practice STOVL when launching from Wasp and Tarawa-class amphibs, and will do so on the new America-class). My guess is that a gradual veryical takeoff would end up using up more of his limited fuel then a jump thrust, which is why he went for that option... And in addition to that, Yui experienced Gravity-induced Loss of Consciousness (G-LOC) (which further suggests excess of 9Gs was experienced in that brief hop - the human body is not rated to take high Gs for prolonged periods), so he realised that jump thrusting was not going to be ideal. It then became moot once his engines got damaged.

Notice that in Stella's unit, Yui maintains consciousness, and doesn't black out, as the conventional takeoff has less g-forces acting on her body.

As for why they don't do a gradual vertical takeoff like a helo, I have a feeling they probably can't do that; on the Harrier and the F-35B, the engine's thrust is diverted downwards at the center of the fuselage (Harrier) and from the centerish and aft (F-35B). Contrast this to the thruster placement on TSFs, which are angled more for STOVL takeoff, moving forward and above -hence jump thrust.

Furthermore, helicopters achieve lift in a different manner: the rotor blades are wings and generate lift and downforce, which is spread over a wider area and can thus be more easily adjusted, compared to the two jet engines on a TSF. Haven't done this for real, but I've played Wings Over Europe and tried to massage an F-15's engines to do a gradual vertical climb; not possible unless I hit afterburner, at which point it shoots up into the sky, accelerating in vertical climb. In Take on Helicopters, vertical climb is a lot easier to do, since my climb rate can be adjusted by the collective, since there's constant lift being generated over a larger area.

tl;dr, TSFs appear optimised for STOVL and less so at VTOL, though it certainly seems possible to VTOL. (If you can STOVL you can VTOL, but you may not necessarily be as good at the latter as you are the former.)

Originally Posted by SoldierOfDarkness

I was pointing out that because Yuuya was trying to act cool in front of Yui he put both him, his teammate, and her's life in danger by making it much harder to escape.

He's a freaking soldier for crying out loud, not some hot-shot rookie, he should know better.

He's a hotshot pilot with an attitude problem, thanks to being an expy of Maverick. Just sayin'. Doesn't excuse the fact that Jesus H. Christ the two of them were idiots again.

Then again, it is a conclusively proven fact that the higher brain functions of young male humans tend to receive a variable degree of impairment in the presence of an attractive female of the species.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Yuuya was indeed very badass in this episode... but I also agree with SoldierOfDarkness.

This might be the slowest-moving rescue operation I have ever watched in all of fiction.

You are surrounded on virtually all sides by hordes of BETA, one of you is badly injured, you have only one nearby ally, and you have time to argue and blush over how you address each other? Seriously, Yuuya and Yui?

Look, I get that the anime wants Yui to be a cute tsundere and everything, but can you please save this for after you make your getaway?

This. So much. Talking while bandaging her wound was one thing, but this? Then again, I guess they were feeling they had a larger margin of safety than they really had, and probably forgot that Yui rigged the core module to attract BETA.

Then again, I kinda have a feeling they're both balls at this whole interpersonal relationship thing. They're made for each other.

Originally Posted by rafael1932

The blonde chick killed the fort class so easily that makes me wonder why are they special again. Someone said that they were apc ( troops transporters) but I didn’t see any come from there or inside them.

Well, to be fair, it appears that Stella salvoed all her 120mm guns at that Fort-class, and relied on wound trauma to kill it. I have to say, she's a lot more successful in that, compared to Price and Zhakaev.

Fort-class are transports, and usually they're carrying them in their guts. My guess is that part of that horde of BETA we saw escorting the Fort in the last episode are the Fort's dismounts.

The problem with Forts are that they are fuckton huge, and can swat you outta the sky with their stingers, whereupon their dismount Tank-class will then swarm you and eat you alive. If their stinger doesn't kill you first. If they catch you off-guard, they can kill you in a single strike, which almost happened to Yuuya. If you can attack from outside the range of their stinger, and actually see them coming, it's not too bad.

There was some other battle, somewhere, at the same time. Don’t know why they don’t go back to the base to live and fight another day. The mentality of modern wars says that withdraw is not a coward action. The funniest thing is that it seems that the fort class is not so difficult to kill and there isn’t a laser class around. So they gave up their life’s and expensive mecha for nothing. Even if that place is very important, you can’t do anything if you are overrun. Probably I am thinking too much about this since no one was over watching them but the squadron’s leaders should know more…

Assuming that you're referring to Kyoko-sama and Hydra Flight getting killed, it's called YAMATO DAMASHII. Chalk it down to that weird Honor Before Reason the Japanese mentality manifests, which sometimes results in really stupid things for the sake of their honor. IRL has a great many examples of this, without getting into the whole minefield that is this Alternative world. (Yes, that pun was deliberate. ) Note what Yui says in Episode 11.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I'd speculate that perhaps Kyoko-sama was worried that relocating, even to dodge the Fort-classes, would leave a hole in their defensive line, which the BETA would exploit by swarming in and overwhelming everyone - from what I see, Hydra 1 is trying to keep things as an orderly tactical withdrawl, instead of degenerating into a rout (aka SQUAD BROKEN for all Warhammer 40K/Dawn of War/Company of Heroes players out there).

Originally Posted by Eclipze

Stella was supposed to look out for Yuuya and take out possible threats for him, which is why she took on high grounds to snipe down enemies rather than following behind him on the grounds. It feels rather dumb to wait till AFTER he gets hit by the Fort Class to engage it, leaving him with a seriously damaged suit that resulted in the situation we see this episode...

Giving her the benefit of the doubt, it's possible she didn't have an angle on a guaranteed killshot until after the Fort hit Yuuya and then moved in for the coup de grace.