2008-01-16, 05:34 | Link #441 | |||||||||
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
|
Hmm, seems I misunderstood the meaning of ergonomics. Wonder how I managed to think that it was actually the reverse?
Quote:
Quote:
I did. I feel really stupid now. This discussion started when it was suggested that rifles are easier to aim with then staffs. Nanoha suggests otherwise. Quote:
English or Japanese? Because the English one is not exactly what you would call accurate. Can't read japanese though, could you quote the part? Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
|||||||||
2008-01-16, 07:53 | Link #442 | ||||||||||
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Nanoha shows that the distance is not very great ... OK, you've done it, Keroko, you've made me make a webpage... http://arkhangelsk.onlinewebshop.net/ Click on the only link in it. Notice me, in the center of the picture - a picture taken without any zoom. My house is horribly small so I'm less than 20m away. Notice that I'm only ~27 pixels wide. Note that small blob in the upper left. That's Nanoha. Note that she's a grand 5pixels wide. So Nanoha is ~5 times farther away. Count in the fact that Nanoha is a whole lot smaller than I am, and it is clear that the shooting distance is on the order of 100m. Which is frankly not bad considering she's shooting from the hip (albeit w/ a sight, which is not a usual combination), but that's about the limit. Spoiler for Private thoughts:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
[quote]Loading a guidance system? Loading compensation gyro data? Why in the world would the user do that when he/she has a device to do that for them? A device can calculate all that in an instant. 1) Human involvement seems to be very great when it comes to magical ammo. The guidance system should be doing the command guidance too, but it is clearly under human control. 2) Computer or human, the fact that such procedures are necessary do nothing to reduce the complexity and thus required setup times before launch. Quote:
|
||||||||||
2008-01-16, 09:30 | Link #443 |
***y translator
Scanlator
Join Date: Jan 2006
|
There could be a number of reasons why they don't use a rifle shaped system, with a number of real-world analogues. The best one I can think of is a matter of public image; we know that earlier mass-produced non-magical weapons were banned relatively recently (75 Midchildan years ago during StrikerS). If the Nanoha-verse is anything like our own world, I wouldn't be surprised if their personal weapons were also more ergonomic gun-shaped weapons, even if the accompanying images in that scene only showed large cannons and missiles. However, with the ban being put into place just 70 years ago, is it surprising at all that they don't make their current weapons similar in shape? Supposedly, the ban was put into place due to the horror and ease with which said weapons were used to wreak destruction; as a supposed police force, the TSAB would likely want to distance themselves from that image.
This is even similar to modern day USA, with the "assault" weapon ban, where some weapons are banned based in large part by their looks, or certain distinctive features. Can non-"assault" weapons still be used for crime easily? Yes. Does the typical citizen still feel safer with "assault" weapons off the street? Yes. Continuing with not using a rifle shape being an image issue, you see the same thing in modern day personal defense weapons. The recent Tasers marketed for citizens (not law enforcement models) go to great lengths to make the things look less lethal, with colorful bodies, and a a non-pistol shape. Nor do you see any other objects that are used to point that are anything like a pistol. You won't find a laser pointer or a loudspeaker shaped much like a pistol. Would both of these gain from being a bit easier to point? Probably, but it'd freak people out if it looked like you were drawing a bead on anything you pointed at. Another possible reason to stick with a simple stick/spear style is cost. Maybe the TSAB simply doesn't have the funds to give everyone a specialized sniper rifle; heaven knows they could spend a bit more money on all aspects of their organization other than creature comforts. Just look at their supposed elite A-rank mages, and they take hours to fly to an airport explosion? Just get them a JF704 like Riot 6. And how about tradition? Maybe they've traditionally used staves, and they don't want to change. I'm fairly certain everyone remembers how well they like to change their tactics; how about major changes to their equipment? Just look at the rarity of cartridge systems outside of the main cast, even though there don't seem to be many disadvantages, but as shown in A's, huge advantages to having one. Of course, this is just conjecture, but it's possible. As a real world example, we can look at music instruments. It takes about four or five hundred years before an instrument really dies out, like say the harpsichord, even when the technically better piano came out about 200 years after it. That's 300 years of overlap with a technical superior. Of course, this reason doesn't really match up very well with the image proposal I have above, but it's just another possibility. Of course, the easiest explanation? The staff didn't put an ounce of thought into it. Nanoha's a magical girl, so she uses a staff. The other characters use what they use because it looks cool, and no other reason. It fits in nicely with the staff's wonderful love for retcon anyway .
__________________
|
2008-01-16, 12:07 | Link #444 | |
Sleep beneath the flowers
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Lording above all of humanity >;3
Age: 34
|
Quote:
__________________
|
|
2008-01-16, 12:24 | Link #445 |
Once and Current Subber
Join Date: Dec 2005
|
You guys are all underestimating (or overestimating) the whole Intelligent Device type of system.
On the one hand, the devices are capable of autonomous action not necessarily initiated by the user. Best non-Nanoha example is Subaru's Mach Caliber at the end of Strikers, before it gave Subaru a swift kick in the butt (figuratively) to get her fighting again. But Nanoha from S1 is a great example of this; RH is saving her butt all the time. Sometimes it's on the order of Nanoha thinking "hey, go there" and RH goes there, and sometimes it's RH protecting her from attacks she hasn't really perceived yet. So, obviously, two things are going on there. First, RH is definitely carrying a lot of the processing load, and just using Nanoha as a big squishy battery, early in the season. Nanoha repeatedly does things that she has no idea about until after she's done them. She can't possibly have an understanding of those things, so obviously she's not the one really guiding RH through making them happen. Second, there's some level of nonverbal communication going on as well. This should be obvious - how else do you control a homing shot? Under those circumstances, a little thing like aiming a beam is easy... the staff itself can feed back the targeting corrections to the user (or, alternately, just aim itself by magic!) So you don't need the kind of ergonomics we require in weapons with no guidance whatsoever, because a device is capable of creating a stable platform in thin air and nudging its bore onto target before a shot. Additionally, the staves are expected to be used as melee weapons as well (even RH, which isn't really a melee-lookin' staff... but Nanoha still tries to whack Fate with it!) Adding gun-type ergonomic features would make this, well, kind of difficult. So RH does have a totally redundant sight in Buster mode. I still submit that this is more of a "looks like a gun" feature than it is a functional component, and the only reasonable way to explain that in context of the series (rather than "the designer thought it'd look cool") is to pin it on Nanoha wanting a gun-type feature on the Buster and RH sticking it on there. |
2008-01-16, 13:20 | Link #446 |
Blazing General
Join Date: May 2006
Location: CA
Age: 37
|
IMO though mages aren't just a battery- the mage's linker core isn't just the most efficient battery at their scale, it's also the best control.
Remember RH's 'control, please' in A's. It needed Nanoha to guide the shots, couldn't do it on its own. It follows that mage visualization/intent is pretty important for magical projectiles- for whatever reason the device can't just dump instructions to the shot. The fact that there is mageless magitech and in a few cases mage-launched projectiles that appear to be self-guiding (Vita's swallow flier against Fate in A's 2 looks like it's doing its own thing to me) suggests that there are some setups that circumvent this problem, they obviously can't be applied universally. Since this somewhat contradicts your examples I'd hypothesize that either there's some sort of loop going where RH can feed instructions to Nanoha, who then feeds them back... or that defensive applications of magic are just way easier for the devices to handle solo (fits with the autocasting of barriers by devices and the whole Barrier Jacket concept). Of course barrier jackets seem like they're handled by some sort of dedicated subsystem so maybe they're close to being one of those examples of 'mageless magitech'.
__________________
|
2008-01-16, 13:28 | Link #447 | |||
Loveable Jerk
|
Quote:
Quote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg0CsUlisBE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fGW-8KAbc4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxecp0UmQJU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FopvQTbOOxQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=285gN...eature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5dl3...eature=related Just a few examples basiclly once mounted with a Bayonet a rifle becomes a short pole arm for most intents and purposes, with the added bonus that if while parrying and grappling with the guy you manage to line up the muzzle right you can just shot him. Quote:
Last edited by Tk3997; 2008-01-16 at 14:05. |
|||
2008-01-16, 18:38 | Link #448 |
Once and Current Subber
Join Date: Dec 2005
|
TK, er, it's a sentient magical device. It's packed chock full of complicated systems that are never presented to the viewer, except insofar as they function. They regularly break important rules like the conservation of matter when they transform. And you're saying that it's impossible that they have some kind of stabilization system because we don't see it functioning? Wouldn't it be better to say that, obviously, there is some kind of non-visual aiming system functioning, because the vast majority of beams we see fired are from staves with no sighting mechanism and nobody ever misses, even totally untrained nine-year-olds?
Hell, Hayate has over-the-horizon targeting capability in StrikerS... Granted that she's more like an artillery piece to start with, though. Were the sighting mechanism really necessary, would it have been eliminated from the Excelion, Exceed, and Blaster modes? Fate doesn't have any sighting problems either, and Bardiche never had anything to sight with. Of course, Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate are not typical mages. It's entirely possible that doing things like auto-sighting in a beam takes a lot of power, and that they can get away with it because they've got power to burn; this would explain why Teana has a harder time with her aim and why Vice uses a mechanical sighting system, as neither of them can sacrifice much of their "juice" that way. Then again, that's just off-the-cuff speculation... |
2008-01-16, 21:29 | Link #449 | ||||||
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
Humans are sentient, but not all of them are good marksmen.
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
From the viewpoint of technical possibility, there are two methods for stabilization - electronic and mechanical. Neither has any evidence to back it up. The mechanical system has the further disadvantage that it'll be rather unergonomic. Mechanical stabilization is fine on a tank gun, but just imagine your stave literally jerking in your hand. Your hand will inevitably be fighting the stabilization. If it finally aligns, you'll find to your distress that you now can't move the stick. If the target moves, you have to start all over again or the stick will compensate by jerking. I don't even want to discuss mechanical stabilization using your clothing (BJ). Even if such a thing is possible, is that nightmare really better than having good ergonomics so everything is actually stable? Quote:
So there's the biggest part of it - Nanoverse combat ranges are pathetically small. As for missing - well, we saw the wonderful accuracy of regular mages about Ep24. Range maybe 10m, lots of mages, Gadgets fully in the open and barely mobile. Despite this, there are remarkably few hits. Even for our aces, more often than not the dogfighting rounds, homing or high speed, fail to hit. The beams tend to hit, but they have a good long time to aim with most of them, half the time the target is binded, and finally (again), the ranges are plain short. Quote:
Quote:
|
||||||
2008-01-16, 21:51 | Link #450 | ||||||||||
Loveable Jerk
|
Covered by Ark.
Quote:
Quote:
Idiots that talk about throwing out things like thermodynamics don't seem to realize that thermodynamics is basiclly the source code for the material universe... messing with it is NOT a good idea and if you break it EVERYTHING is screwed. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
||||||||||
2008-01-16, 23:24 | Link #451 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
Tk, considering your other positions, whatever you do you don't want "energy to mass" conversion. Given a reasonable mass for the device, it equates to a massive (tens of megaton class) levels of energy being handled - which leads to mages firing off high megatonnage bombs...
|
2008-01-17, 00:41 | Link #452 | |
Loveable Jerk
|
Quote:
|
|
2008-01-17, 00:43 | Link #453 |
Once and Current Subber
Join Date: Dec 2005
|
Well, let me put it this way - it's a magical device created specifically as a weapon. Possibly self-awareness is not necessary for auto-aiming, so to speak, but there's no reason to think that it's somehow beyond these devices' mental capabilities. If RH can calculate mass and trajectory for the Active Guard spell, it can do the same for a beam shot! (So in other words, I'm saying that it's no good to argue that RH/Bardiche are too stupid for the job.)
As far as "pseudomatter", I call BS. We see both RH and Bardiche (and Mach Caliber, for that matter) sustain significant structural damage. Force fields don't chip (and stay chipped)! I'm willing to admit that it's possibly "matter in subspace storage" or what have you, but you still have to realize that even that admission is pure technobabble. At the end of the day, actual matter is coming out from effectively "nowhere", possibly just "somewhere else far away", and forming itself into these staves. Scientific explanations? Please! Read the -title of the show-. This is not "Science Fiction Girl Nanoha" we're watching. The entire premise of the show is predicated on the existence of magic. Not "super technology", not even "Asimov can't-tell-technology-from-magic" technology, but actual magic. We have an entire civilization that has spaceships and other advanced-technology science-fictiony abilities, and they're calling this stuff magic too. At some point, we have to sit back and admit that we're dealing with a metaverse where you can pull a little glowy ball out of a girl's chest and that's her magic power, 'kay? That doesn't mean that ordinary science doesn't apply, but when magic is involved, something is cheating, or at least operating off of deeper principles than what our current scientific understanding covers. That is to say, "that's impossible" is an utterly stupid thing to say here. These girls are doing six impossible things before breakfast as it is. There's no reason to believe that everything that is not patently impossible (i.e. firing big-ass beams) must have no magic involved whatsoever. As far as the sighting system, I find it bizarre that you're willing to accept that these devices can make barriers out of nowhere that can stop all manner of incoming nastiness, and can wrap their users in some sort of protective barrier such that they can be blown through several floors of an office building with no apparent ill effect even though they're wearing no head protection whatsoever, but the thought that they can't tweak their own aim is anathema. Come on, guys, if you were engineering these things, wouldn't YOU add that feature? I'm willing to grant that something is badly, badly wrong with regular TSAB doctrine, of course. At the same time, I don't think making their staves more "gun-like" is the solution I'd concentrate on. Then again, we're dealing within the confines of a fictional universe where dramatic imperatives rule (and, to put it bluntly, the writers are not well-trained in military issues to begin with, and they're Japanese to boot!) If the red-shirts were competent and well-led, Nanoha wouldn't have to save the world, huh? Finally, do I believe that just because I can explain something, that means that it's obviously the canon explanation and the writers meant for that to be the correct answer? Pshaw! I learned better than that back on Eva. Fact is, it's 100% likely that the people who created Nanoha just weren't examining what they were doing with the eye of a fan of hard science fiction, where things need to be internally consistent and make sense. So in a very real sense, it's certain that -any- explanation for this or that is just something we're pulling out of our rear, and the real reason is "because it looked cool". So let's not get too heated - we're having fun trying to come up with reasonable explanations that fit the evidence, not promulgating holy writ or anything. Except, er, it's "Linith". That -is- holy writ. ;p |
2008-01-17, 00:54 | Link #454 | ||||||||||
Blazing General
Join Date: May 2006
Location: CA
Age: 37
|
...I like how TK agreed with this even though it's completely irrelevant. The point isn't that their sentience should make them good at aiming.
His point is that Devices (especially the advanced ones the main characters tote around) package a huge amount of functionality and complexity, based on technology totally beyond our understanding and presented to us only through its end output, into a form descriptive of none of those functions. Which makes saying, for example, that they can't possibly be stabilized because there's no visible stabilization gear, pretty stupid. I mean this whole thing is like if I had guessed that the Book could absorb someone in whole before that was actually revealed, and you came back with, 'The Book of Darkness can't possibly absorb someone, there's no room inside!' Hell, it's like saying 'there's no way that little gem can turn into a staff and shoot pink beams at stuff, it's just a little crystal!' The things have a lot of functions you would never guess from their external appearance. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
And that awkwardness Kyon experiences and you're suggesting would plague the system seem unlikely in a weapon that's plugged into your brain. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Nanoha's just uses 'magic' and 'mana' to fudge all sorts of crap at once instead of keeping things down to a few concept-critical rulebreakings... which is pretty much unavoidable in a show that is, after all, predicated on the existence of a form of... something (matter? who knows?) that can be controlled by human will. The best you can do is assume that while it follows its own rules, it behaves in such a way as to allow the rest of the universe to keep running like we expect. Quote:
Quote:
I mean, if you actually want to enjoy the show. If you just want to bash it, why not. Quote:
__________________
Last edited by Kikaifan; 2008-01-17 at 01:34. |
||||||||||
2008-01-17, 01:38 | Link #455 | |||||||||||||
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
1) The people doing those feats are not only main characters, but clearly characterized to be out-of-bounds good. 2) The feats are actually within human ability - as I understand it, 100m is far for a hip shot, but still valid. Quote:
Amazingly, I don't watch Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, so the reference blows completely by. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
The fact that melee (now we are getting into Nanoverse's base assumptions) is still a viable method of combat is only more evidence that LR abilities are either sorely limited or non-existent. Quote:
Quote:
|
|||||||||||||
2008-01-17, 02:36 | Link #456 | ||||||
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
Quote:
Back to humans. You might be the best mathematician in the world, but you still can't use that knowlege to estimate trajectories for your 3-point shoot. Quote:
Quote:
Speaking personally, I really hate "subspace" as in some kind of hidden pocket dimension unless it is the last option, which is why I prefer the pseudomatter. Quote:
Quote:
Second, The less you understand about something, the less an extrapolation is justified. Further, both of your propositions are really about the correct use of forcefields, a different branch from the problems of aiming. By the way, from the viewpoint of computational difficulty, the fact that a human can handle magic of various types without a device (computer) places some real upper limits as to the difficulty of the computations involved. Quote:
|
||||||
2008-01-17, 04:15 | Link #457 |
Once and Current Subber
Join Date: Dec 2005
|
Agreed about the Active Guard explanation. Or rather, we know other mages have "stop speeding objects safely" spells - Yuuno catches Nanoha with one, Chrono recovers from a Lieze-punt with one. Active Guard works very differently than those spells, so presumably either it has really unnecessary visual effects added, or it actually works very differently and the DVD jacket is bupkus.
(This sort of thing's all too common... if it's not in the dialogue of the show, it's probably not canon, even if it's in the extra materials...) All that said, we know the psychological aspect is there, to some degree - Yuuno says as much, so we can't argue it out of the show. Really, of course, the explanation is that the staff is a trope of the genre, so we can't just get rid of it - and a lot of Nanoha's "oh wow, she just did what now?" factor disappears if she starts off toting around Dieci's cannon or something similar. ;p As far as forcefields, we see some in the context of the show, and they don't act like what you're talking about. They hold or they break. If you're going so far as to invent an entirely new class of force field that has the same qualities as, y'know, matter, I don't want to hear it about inventing "magitech" at my convenience, right? Sights... we -know-, as a point of fact, that they're not necessary. We know it from the context of the show. We have one rogue sight to explain. We can come up with an explanation where Nanoha has a sudden moment of genius in weapon design, but then decides to abandon it and not tell anyone else... or we can come up with an explanation where not everybody is a frickin' idiot and they have a good reason not to put a reticle on Rein. ;p I think we're just going at this differently, to be honest. When you take something where the authors have played fast and loose with the technical background, it's best to start from the assumption that while the writers might be frickin' idiots, the people in the show aren't; thus, if I'm going to talk about Nanoha's abilities as a trainer, I can have "the writers don't know the military" in the back of my head, any explanation for her methods has to account for everybody thinking she's good at it, and frankly, for her good results compared to the (admittedly low) bar the rest of the TSAB sets. Just saying "Nanoha is a moron" isn't good enough - that sort of game isn't interesting. On the technical end, of course I'm going to extend the benefit of the doubt. The challenge isn't to find out reasons why what's done in the show can't work, but to come up with a convincing, plausible, and consistent explanation for how it could; the fact that we're well beyond the writers on the topic is besides the point of the game. ;p I mean, sure, if I was going to make a magical army, I'd have magical guns, but I'm not describing a show I made, I'm describing MGLN, and in MGLN, there's an army of guys with staves and all the Mid types in the show have a staff of some sort. (All this may be because I really do, at the end of the day, have to deal with the show as it is; I can't turn my brain off because I have to get the dialogue right. Most of that's pretty subtle stuff - like not using articles for devices' names, that sort of thing. I realize not everyone is as circumscribed in the opinion they can present on the show. ;p |
2008-01-17, 05:17 | Link #458 | ||||||||||||
Blazing General
Join Date: May 2006
Location: CA
Age: 37
|
Yeah, you showed him. I'm sure he'll never emphasize a word with you again.
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
__________________
|
||||||||||||
2008-01-17, 05:43 | Link #459 | |||||||
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
|
Inacurate comparison with devices. What you are saying is like saying 'just because its a gun, doesn't mean it can shoot' these devices are created for combat. Obviously they are good at what they do.
The true irony is in your next statement: Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
|||||||
2008-01-17, 09:01 | Link #460 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
As for the idea that we've never seen matter-like magic forcefields, what are Wolkenritter? What is that holosimulation Nanoha put up? What is Rein and Rein II? What are the Cradle's walls? Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Or maybe the scope you see does come standard. It is, after all, much better than just pointing even though the lack of a stock still restricts your shooting. (Not that I see any sign of the average TSAB trooper having it or knowing how to use it). Besides, since poor Hayate and Rein were real shafted in StrikerS ... how do you know that Rein does not have a sight, or even a better sight complete with stadia? Quote:
1) They fail catastrophically, such as Ep17 and Ep21. 2) An alternative that can be used for comparison appears (like real guns). In either of these cases, I'll start reanalysis. And as some have said, once people start going over things in detail, it is a rare show that survives the scrutiny, especially in the era of the discussion board and newsgroup - if someone doesn't catch something another will. The point, thus, for a show-maker is to make things flow so no one feels like actually investigating. In a way, thus, the most disastrous decision the show made in the weapons design area is arguably to introduce real guns. Quote:
Quote:
Let's put it this way. Suppose my pseudomatter theory is wrong. But the ability of a device to come out of what seems to be thin air would not change. So you'll have to use another theory, such as Tk's subspace "bag". However, it is not necessarily to abscribe auto-aiming abilities to the staffs, so insisting it has one is to create a new ability. Quote:
By the way, neither the subspace "bag" or the energy-matter theories do better about this. The weapons crack and get distorted often, but they do not really lose significant mass, so it is a matter of moving the matter around. If they could move real matter around enough to have created the weapon in the first place, surely they could easily paper over a little damage, but that's not what happens. And if one already spent countless joules forming a matter weapon out of pure energy, the effort required to smooth over a little damage when the matter is all present is negligible. Quote:
Quote:
[quote]Then why aren't the regular mages issued with 'something ergonomic?' (which I asume you mean rifles) The only reasonable explanation is because it is not needed. Quote:
By contrast, a forcefield theory only requires you to remember that matter is a forcefield, because matter is mostly empty. I think I was in primary school when I learned that, though admittedly it was later when I realized it was much more than 99% empty. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Of course, I won't refute that appropriately used magitech blackboxes make shots at over 100m (heck, 1000m) possible. However, first, they will have to design a weapon to take maximum advantage of the body and the blackboxes. So far, I see no sign of the first and no sign of the second either. Getting the bullet velocity up won't hurt this endeavor either. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Last edited by arkhangelsk; 2008-01-17 at 09:02. Reason: Consolidate into one post |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|