Nanoha - StrikerS - Episode 21 Discussion / Poll

[Fabien]

Originally Posted by Nightengale

Don't they have teleporters at HQ?

They should. But for some reason, it seems that nobody use teleporters in these late episodes.

[An Hero in Disguise]

Originally Posted by Fabien

They should. But for some reason, it seems that nobody use teleporters in these late episodes.

And in previous seasons some mages could also teleport by themselves, but in StrikerS they seem to forget about this trick It's understandable with the Cradle and AMF but has no excuses for other locations.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Originally Posted by An Hero in Disguise

And in previous seasons some mages could also teleport by themselves, but in StrikerS they seem to forget about this trick It's understandable with the Cradle and AMF but has no excuses for other locations.

But aren't those usually high level mages only?

[Nightengale]

Originally Posted by Fabien

They should. But for some reason, it seems that nobody use teleporters in these late episodes.

Well, I'll just assume it can't be continually used, and since the backup consist of fleets, it's probably far more important than sending in several goons through teleporters, while the honchos like Chrono are needed for leading, and not going solo. On the other hand, Yuuno's busy with RL-updates on Cradle, and Arf doesn't seem all that worried, thus reducing the chances for the old team's involvement unless some shit turns up.

Well, Lutecia seems to be the only one using teleportation spells these days.

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

But aren't those usually high level mages only?

Lutecia. Yuuno.

And that's only if we consider the ones who can do plural teleportation.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Originally Posted by Nightengale

Well, I'll just assume it can't be continually used, and since the backup consist of fleets, it's probably far more important than sending in several goons through teleporters, while the honchos like Chrono are needed for leading, and not going solo. On the other hand, Yuuno's busy with RL-updates on Cradle, and Arf doesn't seem all that worried, thus reducing the chances for the old team's involvement unless some shit turns up.

It's still possible for Chrono to go solo somewhere. After all, he has his mom to cover for him

As for Yuuno... Well it's a long shot, but No. 2 is still around the HQ right?

Originally Posted by Nightengale

Lutecia. Yuuno.

And that's only if we consider the ones who can do plural teleportation.

Sorry, 'skilled' mages then.

After all, there's such thing as a AAA ranked not being able to fly...

[Jimmy C]

Originally Posted by Fabien

it seems that nobody use teleporters in these late episodes.

That's because any critical location under attack is covered by AMF-equipped drones. They probably render it impossible to make the pinpoint teleportation neccessary to make tactical teleportation useful.

[An Hero in Disguise]

Originally Posted by Nightengale

Well, Lutecia seems to be the only one using teleportation spells these days.

Ah, forgot about her. Though she's using flying drones as transport in many cases where teleportation would've been much better, like evacuation after assault on RF6 HQ.

[aroduc]

Ripped out the two Tea fight scenes if you're impatient.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEmA6FCDHiw

[Avatar_notADV]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Avatar_notADV]

As for teleportation, it's obvious that the writers haven't thought through the implications of being able to 'port around fighters on a massive scale - in other words, it's being used as a plot device. We know that it's not in widespread use, because nobody teleports anywhere casually, not even mages; even Fate and Hayate have cars and use them. It's possible that it's really magic-intensive, or alternately that it's just not allowed on Midchilda proper - if you were running a detection network to try to pinpoint people warping in, then five billion commuters would ruin your day. (But this is an emergency, man!)

The real question is, where in the hell is everyone else while this is going on? The Numbers bugged out from Ground HQ when a lot of S-type mages showed up, so presumably they'll pop in eventually... but is it just another case of "the writers keeping the reinforcements back until the last minute/until it's too late"? Theoretically anybody who can light up a candle ought to be out there downin' drones.

[Jimmy C]

They are there, but thanks to citywide AMF generated by the drones, anyone with less than B or C rank probably can't even cast magic right now. Even the higher ranking ones probably need time to adjust to fighting under AMF conditions. All thanks to Reguis for cancelling the funding for AMF combat training.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

RF6's always had something of a weird force structure - three obscenely heavy hitters, a couple of pretty good fighters, and a few make-weights (better than what they're rated, but not even in the same league as the others.)

You've got that part right.

This means that disposing of them according to traditional military convention is stupid - if there's a threat on the battlefield that requires a Nanoha or a Hayate to counter, then none of the forwards have any business being in the area at all. Conversely, sending Nanoha or Fate after something that Subaru or Teana can handle is a waste of resources - swatting flies with a sledgehammer.

The first part is correct. The 2nd part here is incorrect. If you insist on a "positional" defense, handling the problems in parallel, then yes that's the best possible positional defense (which is why it is less mind-numbingly stupid than Ep17, which is probably why we waited till Ep21 and saw them getting beat up before we started to really groan), but the correct solution is really a mobile strategy.

Sending Nanoha and Fate to help the Forwards is not a waste. Their presence tilts the deck so massively that the situation will be resolved in seconds with minimal expenditure by all our heroines (not just the aces) instead of dragging on in uncertainty. Overkill speeds up actions.

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

Handle it in sequence using fast teleportation redeployment, not parallel, then. Inadequate CoF means slow advance rates and heavy casualties on all fronts. Good CoF means quick, easy victories, leaving you nearly fresh for everything else. When you split up too much, you think you are handling everything but you are in fact handling nothing or at best handling it poorly.

If you insist on teleportation being power intensive despite absolutely no evidence of it, then use Shamal who's just about healed to do the transports - she transported the sodding mass that was the Book of Darkness - a few humans can't be that bad.

[Mirificus]

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

RF6's always had something of a weird force structure - three obscenely heavy hitters, a couple of pretty good fighters, and a few make-weights (better than what they're rated, but not even in the same league as the others.)

Yes, it is weird.

This means that disposing of them according to traditional military convention is stupid - if there's a threat on the battlefield that requires a Nanoha or a Hayate to counter, then none of the forwards have any business being in the area at all. Conversely, sending Nanoha or Fate after something that Subaru or Teana can handle is a waste of resources - swatting flies with a sledgehammer.

Overmatch is good. Really good. The greater the disparity in combat power, the faster you'll win. Superior combat power allows for greater force and mobility. The faster you deal with each threat, the more combat power you'll have to redeploy to face the threats. The bulk of their combat power already happens to be concentrated in their most mobile elements. As if the superiority of their mobile forces wasn't enough, they also have teleporters available.

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

Not all threats are equal or equally urgent. You can never have enough forces at the decisive point. By trying to secure everywhere they risk losing all of the objectives and automatically conceded the element of surprise. Each combat will also take longer giving the enemy even more time to respond. The slow, painful "progress" RF6 is making is a direct result of dispersing their forces.

Jail's forces were already committed and RF6 would have had the freedom of action to concentrate its forces at any of the decisive points it chose. Why risk being defeated in detail when you can take advantage of surprise and superior mobility to crush each enemy force in turn?

[Rava]

It's fine and dandy to tout teleportation, but as someone pointed out earlier, how would you teleport into or past AMFs? They haven't fleshed out details about teleportation allowing it to bypass them, have they?

[An Hero in Disguise]

Originally Posted by Rava

It's fine and dandy to tout teleportation, but as someone pointed out earlier, how would you teleport into or past AMFs? They haven't fleshed out details about teleportation allowing it to bypass them, have they?

I can only see AMF as a real problem around the Cradle. In the city and the vicinity of Scaglietti's Lab the drones weren't swarming in massive numbers.

[arkhangelsk]

You can always teleport close, say 500m-2km out to avoid all the AMFs while still committing to battle rapidly. You don't want to teleport right into the battle anyway - you want a little distance to orient yourself and fly into the assault.

[Mirificus]

Originally Posted by Rava

It's fine and dandy to tout teleportation, but as someone pointed out earlier, how would you teleport into or past AMFs? They haven't fleshed out details about teleportation allowing it to bypass them, have they?

The only major AMF seems to be inside the Cradle itself. The Aces have no problems flying around any of the other objectives.

You don't need to teleport directly to the objective. You only need to teleport close enough to the area that you'll be able to concentrate your forces and defeat the enemy there before the rest of their forces can respond effectively.

[Nightengale]

Lutecia can teleport drones, so it's not like under relatively so-so AMF, teleportation becomes completely improbable. Probably yes for thick concentrated AMF, but for a spread-out Drones, there should be probable locations that are more effective than using helicopters. It's not like they need to teleport into the center of all those Drones anyway.

Then again, we can probably assume that no one in RF6 is capable of that.

[An Hero in Disguise]

Heh, some rapid answering here

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Nightengale

Then again, we can probably assume that no one in RF6 is capable of that.

Of teleporting? Fate was capable in season 1 and the Wolkies in A's, they even hopped between different worlds all by themselves.

[Nightengale]

Originally Posted by An Hero in Disguise

Of teleporting? Fate was capable in season 1 and the Wolkies in A's, they even hopped between different worlds all by themselves.

Okay, actual field officers. Shamal's mainly just the doctor anyway.

And last I recall, Fate's teleportation was singular, unlike Transporter High or something like that which can teleport several.