Magic and Technology of MGLN

[Keroko]

Hmm, seems I misunderstood the meaning of ergonomics. Wonder how I managed to think that it was actually the reverse?

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

There we go. When push comes to shove, you need sights and stocks. Ergo, ergonomics are important, even in the Nanoverse. Man, it is amazing how hard people fight for the concept that ergonomics are unimportant!

Like I said not even one line further, using a mental scope like what Nanoha did can be done too. You don't need a rifle construction.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

The electronic scope is a way to compensate for a proper sight.

Which, once more, shows that you don't need a normal sight. Nanoha's shot was dead-on, despite the long distance. Did she use a rifle? No.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Do you mean "automation"?

I did. I feel really stupid now.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

What?

This discussion started when it was suggested that rifles are easier to aim with then staffs. Nanoha suggests otherwise.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Probably the fact it is hard to aim them is a contributor to this.

It still renders your point invalid.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Check NanohaWiki.

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?

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

You must be reading a completely different paragraph from what I typed. Arc Saber is a homing attack. Sturm Felle has to be set straight down. The point is if you don't aim, you are forced to load correction or homing data, and as you clearly agree, there is a delay out there. There is a clear need, and a clear delay to accomodate it.

Arc saber doesn't exactly look homing to me, when did Fate ever control the course of the arc?

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Compare with, for example, how Teana did it in Ep1 of StrikerS. Note how fast she shifted b/w different targets, despite being a B rank. That's because she was using sights and aiming instead of fooling around with a "Torpedo Setter" trying to load gyro offsets into her weapons.

Well, of course when you have a gun you use it to aim. Do note, however, that when she uses Cross Shift, she no longer uses the gun to aim, instead using control to guide the shots towards the target.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Long Range capability. With proper ergonomics, you can aim further and hit further, while retaining your ability to point or even spray and pray at close range.

Not always, automation can increase the accuracy as well.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

The point here is to refute the Never Miss claim made by someone other than you. You did notice I'm shooting at about 3 people.

Right, sorry.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Actually, the fact that sights are projected for long range shots (which you agree to) kinds of takes away from "auto aiming" theories. So what really happens is that the wielder struggles to aim, wastes time loading a guidance system into his shots and/or blows time loading compensating gyro data. How this is supposed to help his concentration is unclear.

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.

Originally Posted by Wild Goose

JAs for Keroko's statement that you don't need to aim with a device, it begs asking what Nanoha was doing pointing Raging Heart at Vita when the latter was advancing on her in Episode 1 of A's.

Furthermore, the idea that you don't need to aim at close range is quite ridiculous, considering all the red dot sights being used for close quaters battle.

I'm not arguing that you don't need to aim, I'm arguing that looking down the scope of a magic rifle is more efficient at aiming then staffs and letting the device handle stabilazations. With all the A.I. help, the difference is neglectible, really.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Keroko

Like I said not even one line further, using a mental scope like what Nanoha did can be done too. You don't need a rifle construction.

The fact that pros use actual rifle shaped things, real sights attached onto the barrel, and real stocks suggest otherwise. If you see a regular infantryman use iron sights for his aiming, and then you see a sniper with his made-in-Germany scope, will you conclude the iron sight is a "matter of taste" and that the scope is un-necessary for true long-range work?

Which, once more, shows that you don't need a normal sight. Nanoha's shot was dead-on, despite the long distance. Did she use a rifle? No.

Please review the quotation on the Type II phaser. The fact that Federation crewmen can obtain hits using the Type II phaser, from a SoD point of view, does not nearly equate that the Type II phaser has good ergonomics. Same here.

This discussion started when it was suggested that rifles are easier to aim with then staffs. Nanoha suggests otherwise.

It is self-evident that rifles are easier to aim than staffs, which is why you are fantasizing about all kinds of fancy assists to compensate for a self-inflicted difficulty.

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:

Frankly, it is nice to see that my subjective memories were quite accurate upon objective examination.

It still renders your point invalid.

The point is that the homing rounds are slow enough that despite their homing nature, they are evaded.

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?

Japanese, of course. I'm not even aware of a English NanohaWiki beyond what's on the Wikipedia itself, which is frankly not great.

Originally Posted by NanohaWiki

高速直射弾 † Edit

誘導はできないが、非常に高速の魔力弾を放つ魔法。その速度のため、回避は至難。
ただし、一部の魔法は容易に回避が可能な模様(小説版のフォトンランサーなど)

http://nanoha.julynet.jp/?%A5%DF%A5%...E2%29#n41f417d

Arc saber doesn't exactly look homing to me, when did Fate ever control the course of the arc?

On the other hand, it could be used to engage projectiles, which strongly suggests homing ability. Anyway, that seems to be what's official, so...

Well, of course when you have a gun you use it to aim. Do note, however, that when she uses Cross Shift, she no longer uses the gun to aim, instead using control to guide the shots towards the target.

The point is the speed of response, which is rather important in a dogfight, no?

Not always, automation can increase the accuracy as well.

Granted, automation used in conjunction w/ good ergonomics can increase accuracy. Otherwise, all it is doing is making up for the lousy ergonomics.

[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.

I'm not arguing that you don't need to aim, I'm arguing that looking down the scope of a magic rifle is more efficient at aiming then staffs and letting the device handle stabilazations. With all the A.I. help, the difference is neglectible, really.

See professional sniper.

[selkirk]

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 .

[krisslanza]

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

I have a vague idea what is going on, but I felt like pointing out this is likely the real answer. How many magical girl animes have them using normal modern weapons? :P Magic conjures up the idea of staves usually, not girls wielding sniper rifles

[Avatar_notADV]

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.

[Kikaifan]

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'.

[Tk3997]

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.

Unless you want to argue that the device is acutally taking control of the person arms this is bull. We never see off axis beam shots for instance so the user MUST point the weapon at the target if he intends to hit it, even with the aid of some sort of "mental" sight it's still down to the user to line up the shot, and the big unwieldy staff WILL make that harder. The devices have also never showed any kind of stabilization and indeed such is probably largely impossible they're just being carried around and stblazation normally requires a huge amount of effort and integration to the system the weapon is mounted on.

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.

A study long gun is a perfectly adequate backup melee weapon, more so if fitted with a bayonet in which case it can be used a short spear and is MUCH better then say a knife and arguably even superior to a short sword. Acutally the invention of the bayonet pretty much rendered spear men obsolete in battle as riflemen armed with long guns fitted with them could do most of the same jobs.

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.

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.

I love this a device has a sighting system and rather then say "hmm that might be an important clue as to how devices are aimed" it's "redundant" and just "for looks".

[Avatar_notADV]

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...

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

TK, er, it's a sentient magical device.

Humans are sentient, but not all of them are good marksmen.

It's packed chock full of complicated systems that are never presented to the viewer, except insofar as they function.

So you feel you can invent abilities on a whim?

They regularly break important rules like the conservation of matter when they transform.

It is pretty darn clear that the staff that you see is made of pseudomatter, as in a forcefield. Thus, no matter is created. Next.

And you're saying that it's impossible that they have some kind of stabilization system because we don't see it functioning?

No, but I'm not going to just grant one w/o overwhelming evidence. Kind of like auto-homing phasers.

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?

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?

That idea went away the day we saw a sight. For training, Fate has trained for ~2 years under Rinus the Familiar. Nanoha is plain talented - Vita is a real veteran through her incarnations, and she can't believe Nanoha was going to shoot her from a grand 100m (stadia ranged using my chubby body), so even that short range is at least outside the normal "trainable" standards.

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.

Hell, Hayate has over-the-horizon targeting capability in StrikerS... Granted that she's more like an artillery piece to start with, though.

What OTH? Ep12 is an extreme range shot by Midchildran standards, but it wasn't really OTH given their altitudes. And it is an area bombardment where the requirements of accuracy were lower. And the processing is hardly what you'll want to call fast. And it required GCI control.

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...

Even if I grant this as a possibility, you've just conceded that the current setup is an ergonomic nightmare that has to be compensated by massive inefficiencies. Is that really better than proper ergonomics and correct aiming? Further, the majority of the TSAB mages are weaklings without that power to burn, so even if we grant that the aces have the power to fool around with impractical weapons, the same is not true of the regular mage, who thus should be issued with something ... ergonomic.

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

TK, er, it's a sentient magical device.

Covered by Ark.

It's packed chock full of complicated systems that are never presented to the viewer, except insofar as they function

Also covered.

. They regularly break important rules like the conservation of matter when they transform

I disagree with his idea and feel it's more easily explainable while maintaining important physical laws as a “sub-space storage” system or at WORST energy to mass conversion (though that has it’s own problems) either way it’s materialization dose not requiring throwing out laws REQUIRED FOR THE UNIVERSE TO FUNCTION.

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.

. And you're saying that it's impossible that they have some kind of stabilization system because we don't see it functioning?

I'm not saying it's totally impossible I'm saying it probably dosen't exist because we don't see it.

Wouldn't it be better to say that, obviously, there is some kind of non-visual aiming system functioning,

No that would be inventing stuff we have no evidence for because it happens to be convient to your position.

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?

Expect you know when they DO or do you think Nanoha was aiming for Vita's hat on purpose?

Hell, Hayate has over-the-horizon targeting capability in StrikerS... Granted that she's more like an artillery piece to start with, though.

Along with an entire staff basiclly acting an fire control and piping her coordinates and when she dosen't have them is needs a strong AI to handle that, significantly stronger then what we see on ID and she's not acutally firing it out of the staff and the bolts don't appear to be going in straight lines and so are probably guided in any case.

Were the sighting mechanism really necessary, would it have been eliminated from the Excelion, Exceed, and Blaster modes

Who knows, but I can just as easily ask if it's so utterly useless was it included on one to begin with?

? Fate doesn't have any sighting problems either, and Bardiche never had anything to sight with.

See also tends to fight at insanely close range normally a few dozen meters at most with allot of melee and homing spells and only a few unguided beams that she normally only uses again at very close range, or when the target can't really get out of the way/is disabled.

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;

More like it simply dosen't happen at all and the only reason beams tend to hit is that no one seems to think to get the hell out of the way (I was yelling at the morons to move when the pair of numbers basiclly just sat still for upward of 10 seconds while Nanoha and Fate charged up for instance) or can't (moving around, at least flight, while casting spells seems somewhat difficult, notice how people always seem to stand still when casting anything big) and in at least one case Nanoha bound her opponent before even attempting her knock out blow.

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...

With no evidence to support I find it rather more likely this is just another instance of Teana appearing to have significantly more sense then her "teacher" dose when it comes to combat and accepting a slightly tougher aiming system that yields better results when mastered. IMO Nanoha gets by largely because of her absurd power in spite of a lack of good tactics or effective fighting style, she could learn a few things from her student IMO.

[arkhangelsk]

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...

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

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...

I didn't say I really thought it WAS that, but even this rather bad option would still be better then "lol no conservation of mass fuck thermodynamics!"

[Avatar_notADV]

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

[Kikaifan]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Humans are sentient, but not all of them are good marksmen.

...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.

So you feel you can invent abilities on a whim?

As per the above, we find it easy enough to believe that an advanced AI-controlled black-box weapon that utilizes an energy/matter/something else that appears to behave like nothing else in the universe has obviously useful and technically feasible functions never explicitly outlined that we prefer to ascribe the accuracy of shooting in Nanoha to such functions rather than just 'main characters being main characters'.

No, but I'm not going to just grant one w/o overwhelming evidence. Kind of like auto-homing phasers.

I don't see overwhelming evidence for much of anything in Nanoha besides 'TSA spaceships go places, mages fly and shoot brightly-colored death'. These arguments are always going to be either truisms or rampant speculation, I don't think there's much chance of that changing.

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.

Yeah, I'm talking small adjustments while the user is moving it themselves, just smoothing out their motions so it ends up on-target. Think Yuki's miracle bat in MoSH. It's awkward for Kyon, probably because he's too busy worrying about what it's going to do, but not anyone who actually takes a swing at the ball- they don't even notice.

And that awkwardness Kyon experiences and you're suggesting would plague the system seem unlikely in a weapon that's plugged into your brain.

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?

Well, yes, it would be, since for all their complexity individual functions on devices never seem to just break down. Though they do get a lot of maintenance. But it and good ergonomics together would probably be better. Did you catch my last post on the previous page?

So there's the biggest part of it - Nanoverse combat ranges are pathetically small.

Yeah, and there are people who measure Star Wars ships to prove they're actually a kajillion times bigger or smaller than the official stats say. People using massive budgets and real models have a hard enough time with scale; this is animation and far from the best. And even without saying 'it was just a mistake', from the director's point of view there's value in being able to depict characters on the same screen so you can show relative positions when you want to. I can't remember that well, but I'm guessing that in Macross Zero they mixed everything up in dogfights instead of just dumping AMRAAMs on each other from 30 miles off too.

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.

Gadgets vs TSA grunts is like the Federation redshirts vs Stormtroopers argument. They're both unreasonably pathetic on-screen. Remember when those big gadets were all shooting at Vita while she moved at a constant walking speed and they still all missed?

Originally Posted by Tk3997

I disagree with his idea and feel it's more easily explainable while maintaining important physical laws as a “sub-space storage” system or at WORST energy to mass conversion (though that has it’s own problems) either way it’s materialization dose not requiring throwing out laws REQUIRED FOR THE UNIVERSE TO FUNCTION.

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.

Complaining about breaking scientific laws is kind of stupid though. Even most hard science fiction that involves space travel will give itself a loophole for FTL.

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.

More like it simply dosen't happen at all and the only reason beams tend to hit is that no one seems to think to get the hell out of the way

I'm back to 'Nanoha fights are usually slow-motion' line for this one. I'm serious about it though. Look at Signum- her sword swings always take forever. I can swing faster than that. Also generic anime rules that time your opponent uses to talk during an attack can't be used to dodge... I blame this all on manga and 'you can say as much as fits in a word bubble in an instant.'

IMO Nanoha gets by largely because of her absurd power in spite of a lack of good tactics or effective fighting style, she could learn a few things from her student IMO.

Look, canonly Nanoha is an excellent tactician. Almost any show involving 'skilled experts' looks like crap to people with any ability in that field... and yes sometimes to anyone with common sense; the rule is always 'accept what we say, not what we do.'

I mean, if you actually want to enjoy the show. If you just want to bash it, why not.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

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...

I tend to think devices have an unreasonable mass and compensate through the Barrier Jacket strength boosts, so probably worse. You're already past 100 megatons at 5 kilos.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Kikaifan

...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.

The way he emphasizes sentience deserves this comeback.

His point is that Devices, especially the ones we know to have cores and AIs, 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, so saying, for example, that they can't possibly be stabilized because there's no visible stabilization gear is retarded.

Note that we did not say it is impossible. We merely note that there is no evidence, and point out theoretical constructs of such a stabilizer and the problems they have to solve.

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!'

The scientific method means precisely that.

As per the above, we find it easy enough to believe that an advanced AI-controlled black-box weapon that utilizes an energy/matter/something else that appears to behave like nothing else in the universe has functions never explicitly outlined that we prefer to ascribe the accuracy of shooting in Nanoha to such functions rather than just 'main characters being main characters'.

Abscribing it to human factors is generally preferable to abscribing it to never before seen tech, especially when:
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.

Yeah, I'm talking small adjustments while the user is moving it themselves, just smoothing out their motions so it ends up on-target. Think Yuki's miracle bat in MoSH. It's awkward for Kyon, probably because he's too busy worrying about what it's going to do, but not anyone who actually takes a swing at the ball- they don't even notice.

And that awkwardness Kyon experiences and you're suggesting would plague the system seem unlikely in a weapon that's plugged into your brain.

It is telepathing with you, like on a phone. It is not controlling your arms, rewriting your nervous system, or anything similar.

Amazingly, I don't watch Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, so the reference blows completely by.

Well, yes, it would be, since for all their complexity individual functions on devices never seem to just break down. Though they do get a lot of maintenance. But it and good ergonomics together would probably be better. Did you catch my last post on the previous page?

Yeah, did you think I managed to come up with the frankly moronic concept of using the barrier jacket to stabilize the arms by myself?

Yeah, and there are people who measure Star Wars ships to prove they're actually a kajillion times bigger or smaller than the official stats say. People using real models have a hard enough time with scale; this is animation and far from the best.

Look, there's two ways I can do this. The ideal way is to use what evidence is available, and as we've seen concludes that even an extreme range shot is only 100m. Or I can ignore detailed visual cues and just go on the general principle that with such ergonomics, shots over 100m are really unlikely to hit. Either way, I come to the conclusion that ranges are real short, short enough magitech blackboxes are un-necessary.

Gadgets vs TSA grunts is like the Federation redshirts vs Stormtroopers argument.

True, but from a SoD point of view, that's the observation that is extracted. Since it is completely consistent to what will likely happen to your aim with such ergonomics, there's little reason to reject the fix.

Complaining about breaking scientific laws is kind of stupid though. Even most hard science fiction that involves space travel will give itself a loophole for FTL.

Nevertheless, the base thermodynamic laws are kept.

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.

Precisely ... things like ergonomics.

I'm back to 'Nanoha fights are usually slow-motion' line for this one. I'm serious about it though. Look at Signum- her sword swings always take forever. I can swing faster than that. Also generic anime rules that time your opponent uses to talk during an attack can't be used to dodge... which is seriously all manga's fault because you can say as much as fits in a word bubble during one panel.

I can buy slow motion - lots of HK action films have this. But are you going to tell me they are screwing our range perspective as well? Even when common sense tells us that this is the likely ranges they are getting from their ill-designed weapons?

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.

Look, canonly Nanoha is an excellent tactician. Almost any show involving 'skilled experts' looks like crap to people with any ability in that field... and yes sometimes to anyone with common sense; the rule is always 'accept what we say, not what we do.'

I mean, if you actually want to enjoy the show. If you just want to bash it, why not.

We could suspend our disbelief ... until someone does better. For example, if sights were never shown, we might have been able to suspend disbelief. But the second sights show up for long range shots, theories that they are "not really necessary" are rather untenable.

At 3 kilos you're around a hundred and thirty megatons, so probably more... the weight-up when they improved Mach Caliber bent me to the view that devices are probably have heavy rather than lightweight construction.

Precisely why I suggest he avoid any mention of Mass-Energy conversions.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

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.)

Frankly, that whole Active Guard explanation is so ill-thought out I can puke. Further, considering the precision of the result (the Stars' landing postures), what measurement there was was probably a guestimate.

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.

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)!

Apparently, the news that real matter is mostly empty space with the occasional particle all being held together by forcefields has completely failed to reach you. Ergo, according to real matter, it is possible for a forcefield to chip and stay chipped! It can also shatter, warp ... etc.

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.

Except one violates the Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy, and one scrapes by.

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.

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.

From an objective analysis viewpoint, it is all evaluated the same way. Lower limit, upper limit, observations, work w/ black boxes, no extra abilities until proven ...etc

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?

If I'm engineering these things, I'll make them gun shaped unless ergonomics in general have become completely unimportant, which the very existence of sights and scopes strongly disproves. Or if I think combat outside of 100m is completely unimportant and melee is uber important, I'll make Armed Devices like swords or pikes. Anyway, staffs are pretty much outta the question except as ceremonial weapons.

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.

we're having fun trying to come up with reasonable explanations that fit the evidence, not promulgating holy writ or anything.

In fact, I mostly turned my brain off for MGLN. However, when someone asks what might be the advantages of using a gun-shape, I provide some practical, close-to-real-life answers (not appealing to tradition or anything soft), and then 3 people jump me by appealing to undemonstrated magitech, I'm forced to move... but trust me, I'm having my own fun...

[Avatar_notADV]

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

[Kikaifan]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

The way he emphasizes sentience deserves this comeback.

Yeah, you showed him. I'm sure he'll never emphasize a word with you again.

Note that we did not say it is impossible. We merely note that there is no evidence, and point out theoretical constructs of such a stabilizer and the problems they have to solve.

That's not exactly what TK said. But fine, close enough.

The scientific method means precisely that.

No it doesn't.

Abscribing it to human factors is generally preferable to abscribing it to never before seen tech, especially when:
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.

Genius-instant-experts strain my suspension of disbelief more than 'invisible stabilization system' in a show where I've already accepted 'invisible apparently-reactionless propulsion system'.

It is telepathing with you, like on a phone. It is not controlling your arms, rewriting your nervous system, or anything similar.

I'm pretty sure if you can take part in a VR simulation it runs in your head the weapon can tell whether you're trying to line up a specific target or not and not force itself into alignment with something you don't want to be shooting at. You could probably do that just based off user movements without the mental crap anyway.

Amazingly, I don't watch Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, so the reference blows completely by.

Well, the idea is simple enough. As long as you're trying to aim at the target to begin with it doesn't need to be jerking you around; it just needs to correct for small errors. And as per the above there's no reason to expect the system can't be smart about it.

Yeah, did you think I managed to come up with the frankly moronic concept of using the barrier jacket to stabilize the arms by myself?

I thought maybe you read Starship Troopers. Or anything else that used the power armor concept since. Which for me is what comes to mind when we talk about people with heavy armor that also boosts their mobility and strength and gives them a HUD to aim with.

Look, there's two ways I can do this. The ideal way is to use what evidence is available, and as we've seen concludes that even an extreme range shot is only 100m. Or I can ignore detailed visual cues and just go on the general principle that with such ergonomics, shots over 100m are really unlikely to hit. Either way, I come to the conclusion that ranges are real short, short enough magitech blackboxes are un-necessary.

I, meanwhile, prefer to ignore visual cues and assume that magitech blackboxes make shots at over 100m possible. The idea that Signum's bow is one of the longest-range personal weapons in Nanoha depresses me. I'm guessing Dieci and maybe Vice would outrange her, and that'd be it.

True, but from a SoD point of view, that's the observation that is extracted. Since it is completely consistent to what will likely happen to your aim with such ergonomics, there's little reason to reject the fix.

That's why I don't like SoD. Drawing the conclusion that everyone in the setting is incredibly, and worse, inconsistently stupid just because you aren't willing to blame the author for events gets annoying. If Midchildans can't hit it's because TSA technology and design are terrible even though they can put together interdimensional spacecraft. If drones can't hit Scaglietti must not know how to calibrate a rangefinder (or even have someone else do it) even though he can develop magitech cyborgs.

Precisely ... things like ergonomics.

Never claimed they didn't.

I can buy slow motion - lots of HK action films have this. But are you going to tell me they are screwing our range perspective as well? Even when common sense tells us that this is the likely ranges they are getting from their ill-designed weapons?

I don't think it's intentional like the slow motion is. But I don't think they sat down and defined the entire style of combat either, they just showed us whatever they came up with for a scene, and what they came up with put the characters close enough to be recognizable on one screen and to shout at each other.

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.

Yeah. But because their closing speed is much greater I'd think 'long range' could still be further out than 100m without threatening that balance.

Precisely why I suggest he avoid any mention of Mass-Energy conversions.

*cough* I doubled energy by working off antimatter mass with matter free. Corrected in the original post.

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Humans are sentient, but not all of them are good marksmen.

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.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

So you feel you can invent abilities on a whim?

The true irony is in your next statement:

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

It is pretty darn clear that the staff that you see is made of pseudomatter, as in a forcefield. Thus, no matter is created. Next.

Now there's the pot calling the kettle black. Didn't you just say that you can't just invent abillities on a whim? Not to mention wholefully inacturate, concidering these devices sustain long-term physical damage, which means they do, in fact, exist out of matter.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

No, but I'm not going to just grant one w/o overwhelming evidence. Kind of like auto-homing phasers.

Real life weaponry has auto adjustment, I fail to see why technologically more advanced devices can't.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

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?

If you know your device will allign itself for optimum acuracy, why would you fight it at all? Just aim in the general direction, let the device handle corrections and fire.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Even if I grant this as a possibility, you've just conceded that the current setup is an ergonomic nightmare that has to be compensated by massive inefficiencies. Is that really better than proper ergonomics and correct aiming? Further, the majority of the TSAB mages are weaklings without that power to burn, so even if we grant that the aces have the power to fool around with impractical weapons, the same is not true of the regular mage, who thus should be issued with something ... ergonomic.

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.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Apparently, the news that real matter is mostly empty space with the occasional particle all being held together by forcefields has completely failed to reach you. Ergo, according to real matter, it is possible for a forcefield to chip and stay chipped! It can also shatter, warp ... etc.

... so why complicate things milions of times more? Matter to energy/energy to matter works just as well. Hell, many science fiction shows use it, most well known being things like teleporters or the Star Trek replicators.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

If I'm engineering these things, I'll make them gun shaped unless ergonomics in general have become completely unimportant, which the very existence of sights and scopes strongly disproves. Or if I think combat outside of 100m is completely unimportant and melee is uber important, I'll make Armed Devices like swords or pikes. Anyway, staffs are pretty much outta the question except as ceremonial weapons.

You would, the TSAB obviously didn't, which brings me back to my initial viewpoint of why we don't see the entire TSAB with guns and rifles: The difference in most combat situations is neglectable, its a matter of preference.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

In fact, I mostly turned my brain off for MGLN. However, when someone asks what might be the advantages of using a gun-shape, I provide some practical, close-to-real-life answers (not appealing to tradition or anything soft), and then 3 people jump me by appealing to undemonstrated magitech, I'm forced to move... but trust me, I'm having my own fun...

As am I.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

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...)

To be fair, the idea of Active Guard being some kind of low pressure shockwave is not too bad. It is the part about the measurement of mass that irks me.

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.

Yes. That does not mean you take clearly practical features and try and dismiss them as psychological.

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?

What makes you think I was talking about magical forcefields (yet)? I was talking about one of the most underappreciated real life forcefields - the ones that allows "matter" to have shape, since matter is mostly empty. You contended that forcefields cannot break into chunks. I point out matter is a forcefield, and we all know matter can be broken into chunks, thus while it may be counterintuitive, the simple fact is that forcefields (as a general category class) can be broken into chunks!

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?

Sights... we -know-, as a point of fact, that they're not necessary. We know it from the context of the show.

Since we watched the same show and I don't get this feeling, the "context" is not a self-obvious fact!

We have one rogue sight to explain.

Wrong. We have at least 3, which are all employed in situations when such a tool would be useful.

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

Maybe RH came up with it? In that case, it is entirely possible that Nanoha just used it without really grasping its significance - she's 9 after all.

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?

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.

I use these rules: Even where the decisions seem questionable (example: Ep7 and Ep12 of StrikerS), I'll give characters the benefit of the doubt until:
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.

Originally Posted by Keroko

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.

Actually, devices (in fact any military equipment) are created to accord to a certain combat doctrine. If that doctrine is wrong, the device will not be very good in combat.

Now there's the pot calling the kettle black. Didn't you just say that you can't just invent abillities on a whim?

Your inability to comprehend the difference b/w a theory to rationalize an ability that is clearly there and creating a new ability itself is quite frankly out of my expectations.

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.

Not to mention wholefully inacturate, concidering these devices sustain long-term physical damage, which means they do, in fact, exist out of matter.

As I've already explained, matter is basically a forcefield. Obviously, matter does not self-repair. Why will you expect pseudomatter to necessarily have this property? It is supposed to mimic matter, after all!

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.

Real life weaponry has auto adjustment, I fail to see why technologically more advanced devices can't.

It isn't so much of whether they can or can't. It is more a matter of whether they show clear signs of doing so or not. Go back to the UFP. By the way, I don't think modern handheld weapons have evolved to jerk themselves in your hand to refine your aim. Even the American OICW was designed to assist as a fuse setter for those 20mm grenades.

If you know your device will allign itself for optimum acuracy, why would you fight it at all? Just aim in the general direction, let the device handle corrections and fire.

Yes, and the thing will jerk rather uncomfortably in your hand as it begins to refine your aim. Your best chance to make such mechanical aim-refiner comfortable is to aim really well to begin with, so you don't feel it adjusting because the adjustment is so small.

[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.

... so why complicate things milions of times more? Matter to energy/energy to matter works just as well. Hell, many science fiction shows use it, most well known being things like teleporters or the Star Trek replicators.

IIRC, transporters and replicators use pools of existing matter for their efforts. Matter-energy conversion theories are extremely problematic. The first is the huge amount of energy involved in creating a weapon of any real mass from energy. We see no sign of mages being able to play around with high megaton class energy. Second, even if they found enough energy to feed into the weapon, there's the problem of when they have to de-transform. Where does all that energy go? You are forced to create a subspace "bag" just to try and hide that energy. This is not a simple theory.

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.

You would, the TSAB obviously didn't, which brings me back to my initial viewpoint of why we don't see the entire TSAB with guns and rifles: The difference in most combat situations is neglectable, its a matter of preference.

The fact that when someone really wants fast response or long range shooting, the sights come out, and when real precision is required, the stocks come out, suggests that it is not a matter of preference. One can only surmise that chances for the flaws of the decision to come out does not often come to the TSAB. The TSAB's obvious lack of preparation for combat in general supports this view, and quite frankly, trying to appeal to the TSAB's authority when it comes to anything remotely military or tactical is laughable.

Originally Posted by Kikaifan

Yeah, you showed him. I'm sure he'll never emphasize a word with you again.

LOL.

No it doesn't.

Yes. Occam's Razor. Talent within reason = simple, no new factors. Magitech arm-jerker = complicated+new factors

Genius-instant-experts strain my suspension of disbelief more than 'invisible stabilization system' in a show where I've already accepted 'invisible apparently-reactionless propulsion system'.

You might also note that Nanoha had ~8 months of training by the time of Nanoha A's when she did that shot. Further, she's stated to be a genius, so that's definitely in-universe.

I'm pretty sure if you can take part in a VR simulation it runs in your head the weapon can tell whether you're trying to line up a specific target or not and not force itself into alignment with something you don't want to be shooting at. You could probably do that just based off user movements without the mental crap anyway.

Well, the idea is simple enough. As long as you're trying to aim at the target to begin with it doesn't need to be jerking you around; it just needs to correct for small errors. And as per the above there's no reason to expect the system can't be smart about it.

But since you are not aiming really well, when you think you've aimed you really hadn't, and the thing starts to fight your hand.

I thought maybe you read Starship Troopers. Or anything else that used the power armor concept since. Which for me is what comes to mind when we talk about people with heavy armor that also boosts their mobility and strength and gives them a HUD to aim with.

Frankly, I always wonder about the whole mobility issue. I think the whole Synchro thing is the best idea Eva came up with.

I, meanwhile, prefer to ignore visual cues and assume that magitech blackboxes make shots at over 100m possible. The idea that Signum's bow is one of the longest-range personal weapons in Nanoha depresses me. I'm guessing Dieci and maybe Vice would outrange her, and that'd be it.

But for your "assumption" to be more than a "fantasy", you need at least some basis for it. You can use visuals, you can use principles, you can use the base setup of the Nanoverse.

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.

That's why I don't like SoD. Drawing the conclusion that everyone in the setting is incredibly, and worse, inconsistently stupid just because you aren't willing to blame the author for events gets annoying. If Midchildans can't hit it's because TSA technology and design are terrible even though they can put together interdimensional spacecraft. If drones can't hit Scaglietti must not know how to calibrate a rangefinder (or even have someone else do it) even though he can develop magitech cyborgs.

I always say it. See UFP and the Type II phaser. Or maybe the Klingons and their ba'leth (however that Klingon melee weapon is called). As someone suggested it might be a cultural thing.

I don't think it's intentional like the slow motion is. But I don't think they sat down and defined the entire style of combat either, they just showed us whatever they came up with for a scene, and what they came up with put the characters close enough to be recognizable on one screen and to shout at each other.

Well, in Ep7 Nanoha A's, Vita was most certainly not trying to shout at Nanoha. She wants distance so she can escape, and we realize her conception of a safe distance is 100m (according to what they decided to draw). Only if I ignore every available cue can I possibly fool myself into believing that Nanoha shot her at say 1000m.

Yeah. But because their closing speed is much greater I'd think 'long range' could still be further out than 100m without threatening that balance.

I'm willing to grant that some slow motion might be going on. However, any time when anything is talking, there are real limits to how high the time compression is set. Unless you think in real time, all the weapons are screeching.

*cough* I doubled energy by working off antimatter mass with matter free. Corrected in the original post.

Frankly I hadn't checked it seriously 'cept for order of magnitude, but...