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Old 2007-08-19, 21:10   Link #109
Avatar_notADV
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Join Date: Dec 2005
RF6's always had something of a weird force structure - three obscenely heavy hitters, a couple of pretty good fighters, and a few make-weights (better than what they're rated, but not even in the same league as the others.) This means that disposing of them according to traditional military convention is stupid - if there's a threat on the battlefield that requires a Nanoha or a Hayate to counter, then none of the forwards have any business being in the area at all. Conversely, sending Nanoha or Fate after something that Subaru or Teana can handle is a waste of resources - swatting flies with a sledgehammer.

Keep in mind there's four "fronts", as it were - stopping Numbers, attacking Scag, confronting Cradle, killing drones. They're not mutually-supporting in that anyone doing one of the tasks will be unavailable to help out on the others. (Not true for Jail's fronts - the Cradle will presumably Do Something Bad if it gets where it's going, whatever the Numbers are going after must be important, and ignoring the drones means they'll go shoot up your other teams - not so good, overall.)

Having Hayate bust up huge swarms of drones is absolutely a good use of her abilities. Even an S+ like Nanoha has to mix it up in dogfights with clouds of those things, whereas Hayate can point and pwn whole groups of 'em. In any other application, Hayate's damage output is limited by nearby collateral (especially friendlies!), but she can do this until she keels over or Scag runs out of drones... and if he really has that many drones, then a team of a dozen combatants weren't ever gonna stop him in the first place.

Fate is probably the best person to send after Scag - not just because of combat power, but because the Numbers that are there may hang back a little on her. (They want to befriend -Fate-, not the other way around!) Same with Scag - Fate's a person to him, even if it's an artificially-created-project-F person, not just another TSAB heavy.

That leaves Nanoha for Cradle-robbing. Can't send the forwards - if they WIN and it crashes, they croak. The only available personnel then are Nanoha, Vita, and Signum - and if you send Signum, then it's Vita versus Zest again, and that didn't go so well last time, no? (This ignores the difficulty of getting Vita off Nanoha's six, but there you go.)

So the only uncommitted personnel are the forwards, who aren't suitable for attacking the Cradle (and would be totally useless if they went anyway), who can't fight off swarms of flying drones 'cause they can't fly, and who you don't want to send at Jail's base because he's trying to snatch them as it is. They might as well engage the loose Numbers, no? It's either that or sit at home with a thumb up their butts.
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