2008-10-24, 12:53 | Link #301 |
Loveable Jerk
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*TK runs in and grabs the spotlight from Xena*
"Mine!" Spoiler for The Other Girls Chapter 2:
I couldn't find anyone to beta this so it might not be great mechanically I tried to be more careful this time though, but since once more I sat down and wrote like 90% of it in a marathon it hard to say if it'll really be any better.
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2008-10-24, 20:42 | Link #302 | |||||||||
~ I Do ~
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Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: In the XV-8A Spartan "00"
Age: 38
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Why am I answering this for you Anita... >.> No friends on Order... Quote:
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Make a 40K MMO and I will drop everything and run. Duly noted. Quote:
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That said, these 2 chaps turned out fine. I like the narration, and the way you handle dialogue is waaay beyond mine. So this is the famous Commander AKA harem leader Rommel? And more songs... Bleah I know none of the past. >< Quote:
...and Kha is really like O'Hare.
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2008-10-24, 21:19 | Link #303 | |||||||
Loveable Jerk
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I mean really, do we NEED over a paragraph of flowery prose about how the desert is very sandy and this is irritating? I was seriously at some points was having some trouble telling what exactly was going on amidst the storm of verbiage, pretty adjectives, and overblown metaphors… I don’t think we really need to see that you own a totally bitchin’ thesaurus in every paragraph. This is of course to some extent a style preference though, so take it or leave it, but I personally felt it was overdone in some areas. I also found quite a bit of the first conversation among the witches at the end of the second fic rather confusing as it was hard to tell who exactly was talking quite a bit of the time. These are mostly quibbles though and more content is never bad. Quote:
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2008-10-25, 06:34 | Link #304 | |
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Rank: Captain is an OF-3 in the US Army and Air Force an OF-2 would be a Lieutenant First Class. Romagna: From canon it seems Romagna never actually fell, but I could see them evacuating some of there most valued people to a safer area, particularly scientist to allow them to work unmolested. Still given that this would be small scale thing it seems HIGHLY unlikely that a child would simply be lost during this process. A better option would seem to simply have her killed (or assumed so perhaps) in one of the early Neuroi raids, same effect with allot less silliness. Arf: Arf talking… I have issues with that despite some signs of noticeable intelligence familiars still appear to be animals and wolves do not have vocal cords. I’d consider Making it some kind of mental link that perhaps unusually many normal people can hear, still a stretch in my view, but more palatable. The transforming thing seems both totally unneeded and totally against the setting. Again ADAPT, don’t copy and paste. Using Arf as a base for a familiar is fine, but just trying to port her wholesale with almost no changes is not going to work. Much as we bemoan the shafting of Zaf in StrikerS I’d use how he acts there as a model, aside from the talking thing at least, well that and the crazy magic spells. The Entire Neuroi Tech Nonsense: I’d ditch the jacket. It has no canon support, and is you ask me is too far outside what seems possible in my view. Maybe in some future setting it might be more allowable (since “future” in many animes seems to involve skin tight cat suits for battledress), but in the current WWII setting it looks extremely out of place. It also seems to be based of something you just invented wholesale in most sources the Neuroi are simply made of metal, not some mysterious crap that seems vaguely based around what Necrons are made of… The scythe is the same deal and totally unneeded to boot as using magic witches can already slice up Neuroi with normal steel weapons, so good work wasting a million dollars to produce a mono-molecular butter knife, never mind that the OLD butter knife worked just fine. They’re “Drive” also normally seems consists of propellers albeit rather too small to likely be able to support there weight, so some kind of mass lightening or such might be argued. Even so the humans just stealing and slapping this into a striker seems a big stretch to me. It also seems of questionable use as Witches are already faster and more maneuverable then most Neuroi indicating that there normal propulsion systems are of comparable or superior power. As such the logical avenue would be continue improving those not going off on a wild tangent trying to adapt an alien system that doesn’t produce noticeably superior results in most circumstances. The Gauss rifle is just right out, Neuroi have never used ANYTHING vaguely like an EM gun. They used fairly normal cannons and machine guns, and then later in something of a jarring disconnect suddenly spammed beams, but no where in there did they have rail or gauss weapons. I don’t like all this reverse engineering in general though for a simple reason: reverse engineering is fucking hard. WAY harder then most people seem to think, it’s one thing to build something when you have a guy sitting there telling you how it works, and what you’re doing wrong, but it’s another to just grab some alien shit you found in a ditch and suddenly produce a working copy in a matter of a few years AT MOST. Warlock was most jarring in that aspect and indeed quite a few people seem to wish it had never happened… I am to some extent one of them and would rather like to reduce the damage it did, not use it as an excuse to jam the knife in deeper and turn the tear in the universes tone and tech level into a gaping sucking chest wound, used to justify random crack that totally goes against the setting. I also find this entire theory this stuff is based on rather suspect as frankly the evidence that the power DOES come from the core is rather great. For one what was clearly the Warlocks power source was rather blatantly either a salvaged core or a copy, and the rest of it looked to be more or less human built. If the core was merely the brain you’d also rather expect that when destroyed Neuroi units would simply crash, not EXPLODE. So yeah I short I’m rather down on more or less everything to do with this reversed engineered shit. I have no problem with an experimental unit, but I’d rather that experimental unit being experimenting with stuff that would make sense liked advanced new model strikers and weapons. Not random alien shit, it’s not like there some shortage of things to test World War II is FULL of random experimental craft and systems that never quite got off the ground, and they’d almost all be much less objectionable then all this Neuroi tech. Or if you must make stuff up maybe consider some kinds of other slightly out there tech that at least somewhat fits the setting I'd be thinking steampunk more then sci-fi though. The Singing: The song thing I actually have no issues with I think you made it well balanced.
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Last edited by Tk3997; 2008-10-25 at 07:44. |
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2008-10-25, 07:33 | Link #305 |
Adeptus Animus
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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On the subject of familiars, first of, familiars do have the ability to communicate. In the first chapter of the novel, Tomoko's familiar talks to her telepathically, though we don't know if they can communicate verbally but considering they are spirits rather then normal animals, its not at all outside of the realm of possibility.
Also, familiars are contracted rather then created according to the manga, which shows Yoshika's familiar escaping from a shrine, drawn to her by her magic. Familiars transforming I've seen no support of whatsoever. On the subject of what makes a Striker fly, while selkirk has the booklets and can give a better answer on this, according to the older scans they 'use the ether in the atmosphere to power propeller style magic foci to produce thrust' which could explaining the size-to-weight issue (though it's really just another way of saying 'it's magic'), while it doesn't really step outside of regular aerodynamics either. On Warlock, there's a simple way to negate Warlock. Considering it went berserk, you could easily say it was 'taken over by the Neuroi' now, if your most powerful weaponry was already taken over by the Neuroi once, do you really want to risk mass-producing them just so the Neuroi can do it again? After all, the next time they might take it over before it destroys an entire hive, rather then after. |
2008-10-25, 08:05 | Link #306 | ||||
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Still I don't like the idea of a Familiar that can just wander around holding casual conversations, that seems against the setting in some way. Then we have some parts of the verse that just seem to ignore the entire thing, which is more or less what I've been doing. Messing with the familiars seems like allot of work for minimal pay off, which I suspect is why they seem to fade away with time even in the works that start off including them. Really allot of the point of them just seems to be to give the girls cutesy little pets... Quote:
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2008-10-25, 08:17 | Link #307 | |||
Adeptus Animus
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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Though I agree messing with the familiars is a lot of work, even the novels have only mentioned them as far as I've read, and don't really seem to do a lot of things with them. Quote:
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Pretty much anything would be risky using Neuroi technology. |
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2008-10-25, 09:18 | Link #308 | ||||
***y translator
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The magic engine amplifies magic mechanically, it doesn't do any work itself. A Striker unit consists of a magic engine, "spell activation machinery" (呪符発生機), some cooling equipment, and probably other things. The booklet for DVD2 has an article on the Striker Lift-off Unit, the thing the Strikers are stored on, and it mentions that the lift-off unit supplies the Striker with electricity and compressed air, which helps in starting up the magic engine, and reduces the magic expenditure of the witch as she takes off. Anyway, after amplification via the magic engine, the magic power is directed to the spell activators, which form and rotate (usually 3-4) propellers, which then push on ether in the atmosphere, providing lift and thrust. The magic arrays formed on a base or carrier also help during lift-off. (Underlined line is from DVD booklet 1, which is the newest canon info provided.) (Booklet 2 also has very important and informative articles on Sanya's Pillow, Lucchini's Blanket, Teacup, Teapot, and Miyafuji's Photo Stand, among others. Such as many pages-long articles on the geo-politics and logistics in Britannia and Gallia, but what's that compared to knowing all about the teacups the Witches use? Right? Right?)
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Last edited by selkirk; 2008-10-25 at 09:43. |
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2008-10-25, 09:26 | Link #309 | |||||||||
~ I Do ~
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Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: In the XV-8A Spartan "00"
Age: 38
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The core functions as the Neuroi's mid-brain. Like in humans. destruction is lethal even though it only has a control role. She also discovered that the core regulates the high energies flowing through the being like a heart, and destroying that removes all limits on energy flow. This energy escapes rapidly into the parallel dimension of magic (same one as where the Witches' leg go) and it rips the Neuroi to pieces. As the energy leaves, the neuroichondrosis depower and lose color, creating the illusion of flying shards of glass. With this, all they needed then was the replicate that stabilization system and insert it into the WARLOCK, then have the Witch as the brain, suddenly, it works without any possibility of control loss. And that's for a full WARLOCK suit. Smaller caliber weapons can use that Neuroi energy plus mana supplied by a Witch, making beam weaponry possible under a Witch's hands. Quote:
At least something passed on first try.
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Last edited by Kha; 2008-10-25 at 09:39. |
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2008-10-25, 11:17 | Link #310 | ||||||||||
Adeptus Animus
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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Do I let this guy live, or do I kill him? Do I pay for this man, or do I butcher the one demanding payment? Do I side with A or with B? Choices like that are too rare in MMO's. Quote:
Well, it looks like you have quite the battle-scarred OC there. Now I'm curious as to what has happened. Quote:
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... Okay, maybe that was a bit too much sarcasm. <_< Thanks for the translations, Selkirk. Quote:
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Doubtful. Assuming the hive-mind theory, it's still Neuroi in origin, so a Neuroi mind would override the human mind in the hierarchy, allowing the Neuroi to take control. |
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2008-10-25, 13:19 | Link #311 | ||||||||||
Loveable Jerk
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Most of the rest of this has been thoroughly trashed in IRC so I'm not going to repeat it all. Though on that note I would like to say sorry for maybe coming down a little hard some of the ideas purposed where pretty awful, but some of them might be able to work with some modification… some of them at least. Can talk about it later though... Quote:
There would also probably be a very large disconnect from the female population at large again due to culture. The witches would likely act very different then there more normal peers, due to there experience (even excluding combat). They would likely be noticeably more assertive, belligerent, and less willing to assent to men’s wishes then average girls of there age at that time. They might well be regarded by many as rather bitchy and impudent by there elders, and intimidating by male peers. This could likewise go along way to explaining why they chose mainly to associate with each other by the looks of it, and have minimal contact with outsiders for the most part. But this is just me showing off that I've taken sociology classes so ignore my ramblings. Quote:
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No seriously please don't stop if you do we'll all go emo and dress in dark wigs, put on lots of eye liner, and mope around all day composing bad poetry and trust me you don't want THAT. Quote:
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Last edited by Tk3997; 2008-10-25 at 15:55. |
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2008-10-25, 20:58 | Link #312 | |||||
~ I Do ~
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Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: In the XV-8A Spartan "00"
Age: 38
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- Remote control with HQ. - 5 Warlock to form a self-conscious network. All points to lost of control instead of being taken over. Also, if Miyafugi's words were to be taken seriously (we all know that it was wrong to not do so), "the Warlock was different from Neuroi." It had become something more sinister. That to me looks like the Lock itself turned on the world like a spoiled brat and threw one heck of a tantrum probably in revenge of the suffering it endured from birth. Retard that child, use it for power alone, and you're safe. Quote:
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All said though, I am working on a new theory, and it covers how a South Liberion ancient civilization dealt with Neuroi that also hints at the neuroi's origins. Less mental stretching, and... had a bit of WALL-E in it, so I'm not quite sure what is this new idea trying to tell me. Gimme some more time.
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Last edited by Kha; 2008-10-25 at 21:11. |
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2008-10-26, 04:26 | Link #313 | ||||
Adeptus Animus
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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You see, the Warlock is pictured as an advanced and highly mobile fighter platform, but did you see anyone in the control room behind a joystick controlling the thing? All we saw was some guys staring at a few computer screens. Where does this lead? Well, this means that the Warlock was flying on its own, with the control center only sending basic commands. This means that the Warlock would have had a very advanced AI that not only could target, aim and fire at enemy Neuroi, but also move and maneuver at the same time! The former 3 were far from available with technology of that era, and the later 2 are only beginning to be touched upon with todays AI technology. So the Neuroi has an AI that is decades ahead of itself? Hardly, considering Strike Witches follows that era's technology, that would be a forward assumption, especially when we have a second option: The Warlock's core. The Warlock's core was derived from a Neuroi, and by all accounts it looks as if that core was what was responsible for the Warlock's motions, rather then base control. The fact that the Warlock ditched base control and made choices of its prove that the base was hardly in control of this core. In other words: The Warlock was still Neuroi in origin. Then there is the final straw: The fact that when Warlock died, so did the hive. This blatantly shows that the Warlock was linked to the Neuroi when it went berserk. Amusing to note is that it went berserk after it turned into a Neuroi. Conclusion: Yes, the good General lost control of the Warlock, it lost control to the Neuroi. Now, if one were to 'dumb down' the core, so that any Neuroi probing it finds zero resistance from the cores own mind, what is stopping them from simply taking it over? It would be like having to enter a password, only to find that no matter what you'd enter, you'll always get in. What would stop them? The human mind controlling it? The Neuroi will be far more familiar with he workings of the core then the human is. Ah, but while Rakshata won't be telling yet, you will. Using Neuroi technology has already been shown to be a bad move by canon, if you want to use it, you need a very good explanation. You haven't even begun explaining just how they 'dumbed down' the core to begin with. |
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2008-10-26, 05:31 | Link #314 | |||
~ I Do ~
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Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: In the XV-8A Spartan "00"
Age: 38
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As for control of the body, the Warlock's body was man-made, only the core was Neuroi, and possibly, from Miyafuji's words, man made as well. It won't be too hard to wire all that into controls, and I would like to point out that the SU does support post-synaptic skin-to-machine control with regards to throttle. Quote:
The only way to take over the Warlock would be to directly grab the lock and interface on contact IS infiltrate the nuclear plant and screw the coolant pump controls. By then, the Lock or weapon is meant to be jettisoned and destroyed, or the pilot killed outright from the collision. Quote:
But given all this resistance, it's rather discouraging, since I am no match for Tk's analytical mind. Choosing to save the Warlock, I knew was going to run into a tremendous headwind, but with all my RL commitments, I can't afford to spend time to make it work flawlessly. You know how conspiracy theories all die in the face of a good cynic, so it's gonna take a lot of effort, but I have no time for that. Even my attempts to turn the Power Core trope around has only been met with non-plussed attitudes, jeers and taunts like in NanOC, frustrating myself without gain. I couldn't sleep last night trying to work an alternative, and today has been really dreadful trying to focus on revision while my brain is just buzzing with thoughts... As I said in the IRC, I do not share the same love for planes as everyone here. I'm here because everyone's here. My interest in SW only perked up later when I was beginning to see patterns, and the conspiracy theory enthusiast took over. But since the theory's so alienating, I might as well forget it. I give up; I cannot afford the time to make it work and it's just not what I'm here for.
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Last edited by Kha; 2008-10-26 at 05:41. |
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2008-10-26, 07:14 | Link #315 | ||||
Adeptus Animus
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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Second, the Akagi already showed that Neuroi can take over technollogy that isn't even Neuroi, what's to say the Neuroi can't just re-activate the dumbed down parts of the core? Quote:
It's like mecha's in Nanoha, it just doesn't fit into the setting. |
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2008-10-26, 07:32 | Link #316 |
~ I Do ~
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Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: In the XV-8A Spartan "00"
Age: 38
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But the Warlock exists, and is my favorite part of the universe! In fact, it was the only part that I found familiar; everything else, including the setting, was borderline alien!
*cries in the corner* Revamping the ATX's gear with lessons from Liberion Red Indians, the Aztecs and Inca, the so called "mysterious tech" when it's right under their noses. Liberion's Warlock is now just a defanged (core-removed, replaced with giant magic engines and a witch pilot) scientific curiosity pressed into service since SRX couldn't bear to let it go to waste after Brit's mishap with their's. All that's left is that I need to explain why Fran's SU has an unrecognizable paint job and form, and an unrecognizable CC weapon, which I have no fucking idea. ><
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2008-10-26, 07:43 | Link #317 |
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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Oh, that's simple, custom paint job solves the problem, you could go with a 'matches my uniform' explanation, and just pick an aircraft it resembles as its origin, and the close combat weapon is a Bardiche, and if Fuso witches can use their home weapons, why can't a half-romangan witch use a medieval European weapon?
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2008-10-26, 08:00 | Link #318 | |
***y translator
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Join Date: Jan 2006
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