Nanoha FanFiction Discussion

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

To reiterate: I don't think that they actually come in and impose themselves on the world internally. What I do think they do is to impose TSAB regulations on any and all dimensional transit, under the overall aegis of their self-declared mission of preserving peace across the dimensions. You don't want to cross dimensional space? Fine; the TSAB won't mess with you. But once you start opening portals...you're going to have to deal with them. I can't see, for example, the TSAB allowing Orusias to start shipping mass weapons into other worlds just because Orusia doesn't have a world government that can negotiate with the TSAB.

Unless those worlds those goods are transported to are under TSAB jurisdiction, I find that doubtful. It would be like some country in our world tapping two countries on their shoulders for trading goods that are perfectly legal in those countries. Neither of the two countries is really going to listen. Why should they, after all?

[itanshi1]

Maybe trade between states is a better analogy for involvement in their trade.

[Keroko]

Not living in the USA, my knowledge of states may be limited, but states are still bound by the law of the country, right? These worlds aren't, they have their own borders and laws which the TSAB simply isn't a part of, which is why I think the country analogy to be more appropriate. For the TSAB to impose laws on interdimensional trade because they 'own' the trade routes (a concept which I very much doubt anyway, there are bound to be more organizations that roam the seas)... is a recipe for disaster waiting to happen.

[itanshi1]

Yeah, you have the right idea of what i was attempting. Do they control the trade routes? maybe not, but the concept of pirates and smugglers on the open sea dealing with illegal lost logia bartering etc and perhaps slavery (human weapons), are things the tsab would need to regulate.

They'd need their own drafted constitutions and treaties with these other nation worlds to make this efectivew.

[Keroko]

But the TSAB claiming the dimensional sea to be their territory is like a country claiming all the oceans to be their territory. At best people will raise an eyebrow at your claim and carry on with their business, at worst you're inviting people to start a war against tyranny.

Trade route monopoly looks good on paper, but in reality you're either circumvented or ignored. Enforce harsh measures to counter that, and people will push back, or even force you away entirely.

No, I don't see the TSAB being in control of the entire dimensional sea. They may have a sphere of influence, like water borders in our oceans, but I do think each dimensionally capable worlds have such borders of their own.

[Satashi]

I think the TSAB would leave a lot of decisions on trade up to the people who are making the trade. No matter how much technology you have, or how much force, you can't be everywhere at the same time. I think trade interactivity would be like "as long as you don't try and ship harmful material through my air space, you may do as you please." And have some patrol ships around to make sure nothing illegal is happening and such. Like Canada transporting things to America. "just do your own thing unless it hurts people. We'll kinda try and help everyone out by screening these things, checking those things, but by and large we're only here to make sure things are safe"

[Jimmy C]

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

To reiterate: I don't think that they actually come in and impose themselves on the world internally. What I do think they do is to impose TSAB regulations on any and all dimensional transit, under the overall aegis of their self-declared mission of preserving peace across the dimensions.

And to reiterate as well: Doing that sort of thing doesn't merit calling the world in question "Administered".
For the TSAB to do as you say would be like America calling up France and saying, "Since you have ships in the Atlantic, you're now a member state of the USA. But you don't full representation yet." How well do you think that will go over?

I can't see, for example, the TSAB allowing Orusias to start shipping mass weapons into other worlds just because Orusia doesn't have a world government that can negotiate with the TSAB.

As Keroko points out, the Bureau has no authority to stop Orussia from exporting mass weapons if such exports aren't illegal at Orussia or the buyer's world. If the Bureau wanted to step in, it can annex the planet on the grounds that it's a failed state. This would be possible for a world in a state of total collapse like Orussia. But pulling the same stunt on Jarentil wouldn't be possible because there is organised government on the planet.

But with dimensional travel, all arguments are derailed completely because we're never shown the mechanisms involved.

Several times, Tia and Hayate teleported to Main HQ in ep13 or 14; various people teleporting to and from the Arthra in Season 1.
You know, this teleport issue is nuts. Still, I think it would be best if you could come up with a sound tactical reason for everyone to be dispersed and occupied instead of waiting to teleport en-masse to the Nest. That would keep any readers from wondering, "Why don't they just teleport everyone there?"

When did that happen? (And are we sure that it's a firing range problem as opposed to a location of target problem?)

It's stated in the A's booklets. The AoE of the Arc is so large that the ship has to transfer out after firing.

But remember, it only has to have secondary effects if they want it to.

But if it has any secondary (read: physical) effects at all, those effects will cascade. Make all the matter within a volume disappear, then air outside that volume will rush in. Push it outwards, and it'll run into matter outside the volume and disrupt it.

For example, if a scryer punches in a spell to scan for "human beings," can they just see the spots where people are and where people aren't, or can they necessarily see spots if they can't tell one way or another?

That's too specific (like "find something" that I mentioned previously) and won't work. Instead, use the scrying to "paint a picture" of the area. So the scryer would "see" there are buildings, roads, people, vehicles, furniture, plants, etc... hold on, why's there a blank spot on the road where I can't see anything and why is it moving? It'd be like using Odin's Eye on a large scale and in greater detail and then ignoring everything except what you can't see. As I said, it'd be very difficult and it wouldn't be surprising if nobody had come up with the routines before.

[itanshi1]

So they can only act as customs agents in all ports and on planet locations they do control. I wonder how much in resource the tsab gives to lost logia issues.

[Raging Heart]

Originally Posted by Satashi

Spoiler for THIS CONTAINS A LEMON! NSFW!:

Liquid ran down Nanoha's fingers, pooling at her palm as she shifted. The sticky sweet substance continued to to her wrist before dripping off. Sweat clung to her body, leaving droplets to glide down her skin with each motion she made. Fate wasn't fairing much better, eyes almost glazed as she groaned out. Nanoha bent over move, getting closer to Fate as the blonde received what she had been begging for, for the past half hour. Their hands met and Nanoha gave Fate the delicious nector that had been craved. Fate drank it hungrily, not caring that it splashed down her neck and ran down between her breasts. The blue eyed girl smiled happily and cooed out how cute it was when Fate went so fast to get it all. After the red eyed girl finished drinking the glass of lemonade she sighed out pleasantly and thanked her friend for making it for her to fight off the summer heat after a training session.

*Fall Off*

Raging Heart saying something about payback Satashi.

Satashi are trying to give a heart attack or nosebleed or both?

oh dear i can't get enough of Satashi's stories. OMG.

[Liingo]

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

Stahlkönigin--chapter 21

Nice to see that this fic is still being written. I'm not sure if I've actually commented on one of the chapters before, mainly as I've been more a lurker than active poster in the past few months, but I've really enjoyed your work. (That and any comments that I may have had have usually been brought up by the other posters in the thread..)

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

And with that, you neatly kill the entire story, because your solution is eminently practical and if I let Vita get to the Nest the concluding sequences just don't happen. Which means that I now need a handwave that actually holds together. Particularly since one teleporter (Fate) is in the room, and another (Shamal) is presumably in the HQ.

Do we actually ever see any of the Numbers arrive or (especially) depart from Cranagan City by teleport? I recall them flying away on a couple of occasions, and Sein gets gone by Deep Diver repeatedly, but do any teleports happen?

If not, I can postulate that due to the high magical background "noise" of the city of Cranagan (or any city using magical tech, really), long-range teleportation is impossible without complex equipment on both ends of the transaction. Because of this, due to the start-up time for each "hop" and the cost in magic of the spell versus flying, teleporting could only achieve the same net speed as flying--possibly even slower than a fast-flying mage could achieve. In this way, deploying the S-ranks through the city would mean that they would be able to get there faster than a teleport unless the Nest proved to be within a certain radius of the HQ.

This would have the additional benefit of explaining why RF6 always insists on deploying by helicopter or flight, even in situations where the higher speed of a teleport would seem to be a better choice.

(Here's a StrikerS plot hole for you: when Jail sets the base to self-destruct, why doesn't Fate just teleport everyone out of there? She could even send them a few at a time if need be: Rossa and Schach first to secure any prisoners on the other end, then Megane and Cinque, then Jail, Tre, Sein, Uno, and Sette, and finally herself...)

I could even foreshadow some of this in the scene where Fate comes home in Chapter 6 or 7, whichever it is, by having Vivio or Nanoha mention that it's too bad that they have to wait for her to arrive at the teleport station instead of just having Fate beamed home from the Arista, and offer a few explanatory sentences of why that doesn't apply.

Expanding on this, is my own theory for teleporting, which I developed to use in my own fics.

1) That personal teleportation magic leaves the user in such a state that they couldn't do anything more than simple tasks for a time period after the teleport. This is due to the fact that, to my knowledge, teleports have always been used a) outside of combat or b) to escape from combat.

2) Machine teleoportation, is energy/magical efficient only with the proper hardware on both ends. Teleporting to other areas is possible, but very costly to do.
-One problem with this is in the first season, where Chrono gets ported into the middle of a battle. Than again, it could be explained that they thought it necessary to use the teleport due to the stakes involved.
- I only just thought of this now, but the density of stuff in the area may play a factor in this as well. As in how buildings, obstacles, etc are in the way. A more dense area could mean that more energy is needed to teleport people in safely. In the first season, the area where the telports occur is a fairly wide open area, thus, costs would be relatively low.

Re StrikerS plot hole. The AMF may have played a factor in that. Also is the fact that as far as I know, all personal teleporters have been a one person ticket. I don't recall any time in the continuity where one of them have teleported along with someone else.

Just some food for thought. Hope it helps.

Liingo

[DezoPenguin]

Wow, reading the discussion above, I never realized that so many people had such an optimistic view of the TSAB and how it viewed its mandate for existence. Usually I read these debates on the TSAB's nature and the argument is over whether it's a completely corrupt dictatorship that's genuinely a force of scheming, evil manipulation or whether it's only a partly corrupt imperial force that was begun with good intentions but had fallen by the wayside into the hands of people like Gaiz, the Council heads, and so on. This may be the first time I've ever seen an overwhelming majority of people state that the TSAB conducts itself towards independent worlds with a respect for their social and political rights.

Originally Posted by Liingo

Expanding on this, is my own theory for teleporting, which I developed to use in my own fics.

1) That personal teleportation magic leaves the user in such a state that they couldn't do anything more than simple tasks for a time period after the teleport. This is due to the fact that, to my knowledge, teleports have always been used a) outside of combat or b) to escape from combat.

2) Machine teleoportation, is energy/magical efficient only with the proper hardware on both ends. Teleporting to other areas is possible, but very costly to do.

One could state that fast, accurate teleportation in which no secondary effects happen to the user requires technology, but unfortunately that doesn't solve my problem. They'd absolutely have a teleporter at HQ if such technology was at all functional.

-One problem with this is in the first season, where Chrono gets ported into the middle of a battle. Than again, it could be explained that they thought it necessary to use the teleport due to the stakes involved.

Ditto there. The bad guys are attempting to trigger a weapon about which a concurrent debate is going on over whether it would only obliterate the millions of people it actually hits or whether the secondary effects would basically annhilate Life As We Know It on Mid. The emergency is justified.

- I only just thought of this now, but the density of stuff in the area may play a factor in this as well. As in how buildings, obstacles, etc are in the way. A more dense area could mean that more energy is needed to teleport people in safely. In the first season, the area where the telports occur is a fairly wide open area, thus, costs would be relatively low.

That functions pretty much the same theory as mine about the background tech level. Except it's more susceptible to Jimmy's "teleport them up into the air, then have them fly directly down" counterstrategy.

Re StrikerS plot hole. The AMF may have played a factor in that. Also is the fact that as far as I know, all personal teleporters have been a one person ticket. I don't recall any time in the continuity where one of them have teleported along with someone else.

In the first season, Yuuno grabs Arf and teleports both of them away from the fight; it's mentioned that Arf won't be able to get back in time to help Fate so that Nanoha and Fate can go one-on-one.

(Come to think of it, Arf is a teleporter, too, so why couldn't she just "bamf" back? Unless wherever Yuuno takes her to is immediately followed up with "raise barrier so that she can't zap out.")

@JimmyC concerning force dispersion:

The real problem here is that if the force is dispersed for any reason other than directly engaging an actual threat, if teleportation still works Fate can get to the relevant location instantly (and if someone's thinking ahead--which they will be--then they'll have her pick Vita up on the way). If whatever force dispersion happens in a way that immediately has the S-ranks forced to engage enemies on the site, preventing them from helping each other, then we have the StrikerS problem currently raging in the "Military Authority and Decisions" thread, where Hayate's command judgment is basically being excoriated for not focusing on the serious threat (the Cradle, and maybe Jail's own base) instead of wasting time and energy fighting the Gadgets and Numbers attacking the city. Who gives a frag if Sonoma gets away if the guys in the Nest are able to fire a Heimdall at the surface even once?

That's why I like the solution of making teleportation unworkable in the situation. If the enemy is located at an unknown location, and the forces have to travel through physical space to reach it, and a fraction of the forces available (i.e. one S-rank) is capable of destroying the enemy, then it makes sense to disperse the forces over a wide area so that no matter where the enemy is located, there will be friendly forces within a certain minimum distance, which is important because you don't know when the enemy will be found and how much available time there will be. The problem is making sure that whatever handwave is applied isn't immediately negated by Canon. After all, the point is that the story has to work; the fact that the StrikerS cast didn't properly use all the resources they had available on various locations isn't my problem.

[Jimmy C]

Originally Posted by Liingo

1) That personal teleportation magic leaves the user in such a state that they couldn't do anything more than simple tasks for a time period after the teleport. This is due to the fact that, to my knowledge, teleports have always been used a) outside of combat or b) to escape from combat.

2) Machine teleoportation, is energy/magical efficient only with the proper hardware on both ends. Teleporting to other areas is possible, but very costly to do.
-One problem with this is in the first season, where Chrono gets ported into the middle of a battle. Than again, it could be explained that they thought it necessary to use the teleport due to the stakes involved.

There's a second problem which sinks your idea, I'm afraid. In S1 Ep11, the Arthra teleports a whole squad of troops to arrest Precia, they were sent with the expectation of dealing with resistance. This implies that teleportation isn't draining and machine teleportation doesn't require friendly hardware at the other end. In fact, it shows what little is needed to make a safe teleportation to an unknown location. All they had before the teleport were just the coordinates.

Also is the fact that as far as I know, all personal teleporters have been a one person ticket. I don't recall any time in the continuity where one of them have teleported along with someone else.

I already mentioned that Lutecia teleported several of the Numbers back to Jail's base with her in ep11, and that's how she was going to deliver Vivio to Jail in ep17, once she got to a safer distance.

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

Usually I read these debates on the TSAB's nature and the argument is over whether it's a completely corrupt dictatorship that's genuinely a force of scheming, evil manipulation or whether it's only a partly corrupt imperial force that was begun with good intentions but had fallen by the wayside into the hands of people like Gaiz, the Council heads, and so on.

That's because, for the Bureau to act outright expansionist the way you envisioned would leave evidence in the characters' attitudes that simply aren't there. It's one thing for their attitudes to be leaning towards, "We may use any methods to secure our own worlds." (which is what we see in the series) It's another for their attitudes to be leaning towards, "We need to secure all worlds capable of dimensional travel to bring order to the dimensional sea" (this we don't see) The puts the Bureau in a conqueror mode. If it is like this, sooner or later it will face organised resistance from worlds capable of dimensional travel and are unwilling to be Administrated. The Bureau is not set up to deal with such organised resistance (on the level of armies and fleets being thrown at it) judging from how shitty their tactics are above the squad level.

This may be the first time I've ever seen an overwhelming majority of people state that the TSAB conducts itself towards independent worlds with a respect for their social and political rights.

It's called "respecting their sovereignty" Not doing so (like how you described Jarentil being made into an Administrated World without the planet's approval in the first place) usually leads to the thing known as "war." The Bureau doesn't act like the kind of organization that's prepared for planetwide war on a regular basis.

If whatever force dispersion happens in a way that immediately has the S-ranks forced to engage enemies on the site, preventing them from helping each other, then we have the StrikerS problem currently raging in the "Military Authority and Decisions" thread, where Hayate's command judgment is basically being excoriated for not focusing on the serious threat (the Cradle, and maybe Jail's own base) instead of wasting time and energy fighting the Gadgets and Numbers attacking the city. Who gives a frag if Sonoma gets away if the guys in the Nest are able to fire a Heimdall at the surface even once?

This one I can tackle easily enough. All the decoys appear to be the Nest. For whatever reason, they can tell which is the real one. So all of them have to be taken down, preferably right away and simultaneously. That would make a very good reason for dispersing the troops. Unfortunately, you didn't appear to have given the JLF any assets capable of tying down an S-rank for more than seconds. The only thing I can come up with is to lure them into a building then bring it down on top of them. HQ can't get a clear read on their location so it can't beam them out out of ruins. Trouble is, if they're fast enough, they can still teleport out before they're trapped. In addition, the JLF doesn't know how many such traps it needs to set.

BTW, you may have missed my question about it earlier, does the Nest have its own ground-to-space communication gear? This would really increase the difficulty for the Bureau forces.

[DezoPenguin]

Originally Posted by Jimmy C

This one I can tackle easily enough. All the decoys appear to be the Nest. For whatever reason, they can tell which is the real one. So all of them have to be taken down, preferably right away and simultaneously. That would make a very good reason for dispersing the troops. Unfortunately, you didn't appear to have given the JLF any assets capable of tying down an S-rank for more than seconds. The only thing I can come up with is to lure them into a building then bring it down on top of them. HQ can't get a clear read on their location so it can't beam them out out of ruins. Trouble is, if they're fast enough, they can still teleport out before they're trapped. In addition, the JLF doesn't know how many such traps it needs to set.

Unfortunately, they don't have such assets, which is one problem with an authorial decision not to create another Jail-grade adversary. Because as I noted earlier, not only would they need decoys capable of fooling the search teams, but also capable of tying up the S-ranks once they'd been deployed to the location. And even the "drop a building on them" problem wouldn't keep whomever was under the building from teleporting out again (at the very least, this means Fate and whomever was with her would be able to get where they need to go). Basically, free, fast use of teleportation means that any force can get anywhere with negligible time delays. It's an insurmountable problem unless facing an opposition capable of not only decoying the TSAB forces but also making them unable to then react to the fact that they have been decoyed.

BTW, you may have missed my question about it earlier, does the Nest have its own ground-to-space communication gear? This would really increase the difficulty for the Bureau forces.

As presently written, it doesn't, but also as presently written, it has what it needs to have to create the trouble for the Bureau that I think you're implying (i.e. it could connect directly to a Heimdall without having to hop through the Bureau's network at all, so that even if the Bureau achieved a complete system shutdown, all that would do is mean that the Bureau's computer team couldn't carry out any counter-hacking against the commands merrily being sent by the terrorists).

Actually, mentioning that it could do that would play well in a couple of the later chapters, and it would easily be supported by what the Nest is supposed to be able to do (surface-to-orbital communications, for example, would be extremely useful for a Ground Forces battalion in hostile territory to be able to employ).

And a comedic moment of Author-Wasn't-Paying-Attention. I was typing away at Chapter 22 this afternoon, and I suddenly realized that I actually had included the scrying magic discussion in the story after all. Mustang and Agito get into it while Signum is waiting around. I'll have to incorporate some notes from this go-round in it.

(If that made no sense to you; I write everything out on paper first; I find that a lot easier to do, plus I can take paper and clipboard everywhere with me, from room to room and building to building. Then I type it over onto the computer. For example, I've actually written the entire story except for the epilogue chapter at this point, but only typed it as far as it's appeared here.)

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by Jimmy C

That's because, for the Bureau to act outright expansionist the way you envisioned would leave evidence in the characters' attitudes that simply aren't there. It's one thing for their attitudes to be leaning towards, "We may use any methods to secure our own worlds." (which is what we see in the series)

I might add that the most drastic of methods are only employed when there really really is no other alternative. The bureau is fully willing to risk multiple worlds by accepting a plan hastily cobbled together by a bunch of nine year olds that may save everyone over something they know will work but will also surely kill thousands.

So far, every member of the TSAB who has been less than humanitarian has been an exception, and were quickly labeled as the bad guys and received due punishment.

Tempted to go into the whole tactics thing, but my opinion on that has always been 'standard anime warfare, nothing new here' so I'll keep it to that. *shrug*

[RadiantBeam]

Massive walls of text...

Always fun to read.

[DezoPenguin]

Originally Posted by Keroko

Tempted to go into the whole tactics thing, but my opinion on that has always been 'standard anime warfare, nothing new here' so I'll keep it to that. *shrug*

Plus, MGLN has always had a real genre problem. The actual execution of combat plans and battles has always been part magical-girl-superhero, part shonen-Super-Robot-actioner. Neither one of those genres are particularly "realistic" in how weapons, tactics, or the physics of battle work; frankly, they generally boil down to the "fighting spirit," "strength of will," and/or "purity of heart" of the participants rather than the correct employment of weapons and technology within a suitable tactical framework. However, the setting for the series, once the TSAB shows up, is basically a traditional sci-fi environment (backed up by the fact that the metaplots for first A's, and then rather dramatically so in StrikerS, involve political conspiracies and other elements of stuff that tends to be down at the other end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism).

If you get right down to it, the entire problem with figuring out how stuff is supposed to work in MGLN can be summed up in Season 1, Episode 11. The Jewel Seeds are supposed to be this deadly-dangerous technology that pose a cross-dimensional threat, and Fate and Nanoha agree to settle the whole thing between themselves in a one-on-one magical duel not even to the death. Both participants are fully willing to say, "oh, well, I lost, here you go, take all the Jewel Seeds I've found so far and ruin my mother's dreams/destroy the known multiverse. Have fun!" Indeed, the only thing that actually makes sense about that battle is that Precia isn't willing to take that for an answer.

[RadiantBeam]

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

The Jewel Seeds are supposed to be this deadly-dangerous technology that pose a cross-dimensional threat, and Fate and Nanoha agree to settle the whole thing between themselves in a one-on-one magical duel not even to the death. Both participants are fully willing to say, "oh, well, I lost, here you go, take all the Jewel Seeds I've found so far and ruin my mother's dreams/destroy the known multiverse. Have fun!"

Well, first off you have to consider they were only nine at the time... not that age counts much in the MGLN universe.

That and the whole law that overall a magical girl heroine never actually kills her opponent but just defeats him/her/it horribly in a way that seems like they've been killed but they haven't, or finds a way to redeem said opponent.

[DezoPenguin]

Originally Posted by RadiantBeam

Well, first off you have to consider they were only nine at the time... not that age counts much in the MGLN universe.

That and the whole law that overall a magical girl heroine never actually kills her opponent but just defeats him/her/it horribly in a way that seems like they've been killed but they haven't, or finds a way to redeem said opponent.

Precisely my point. The stakes are presented to us in the terms of a much "harder" or more serious genre, but are treated by the characters in a much "softer" way. Well, except by Jail, but even he does things like have billboard-sized communications screens pop up all over the city during the final battle so he can shoot himself in the foot.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Gotta love the teleportation arguments. 7arcs put that one so full of holes...

The way I think of the technique, is that as said before. If you do it yourself, it's personally draining. Especially if you're hauling a 'load' of other people in your jump. You remedy this by using things like the Athra with their huge power cores.

But it still brings up the question of why the transports aren't used in Cranagan from a home HQ?

One theory I could solicit is transport magic works like a laser beam to some extent. You have to have a 'line of sight' to your coordinets, and can only travel through so much interference before you lose coherency and can't procede. A surface facility would have problems transporting over an extended distance on the same planet because the LOS to the destination is blocked by a hundred kilometers of solid rock. (Thank you planetary curvature.)

A ship like the Athra, could have a Satellite's view of things, thus acting as a Relay for the transport magic 'beam'.

If you ask me, the transport magic on the Athra is a knock to Star Trek... as the 'pad' is strikingly similar. So my guess would be to treat Transport Magic like star trek transporters.

They're convenient, but just about EVERYTHING gets in the way.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Liingo

Nice to see that this fic is still being written. I'm not sure if I've actually commented on one of the chapters before, mainly as I've been more a lurker than active poster in the past few months, but I've really enjoyed your work. (That and any comments that I may have had have usually been brought up by the other posters in the thread..)

Expanding on this, is my own theory for teleporting, which I developed to use in my own fics.

1) That personal teleportation magic leaves the user in such a state that they couldn't do anything more than simple tasks for a time period after the teleport. This is due to the fact that, to my knowledge, teleports have always been used a) outside of combat or b) to escape from combat.

Well, Ep11 in the original series would seem to be a machine transport. However, then you have Ep7 A's. It is true that Vita was trying to disengage, but she was planning to enter another battle (Signum's) right after, so it is hard to imagine the teleport effectively neutralizes her as a combat unit.

I'll be blunt, there is no obvious technical reason for why they don't use teleport in StrikerS. Energy-consumption? Not apparent in canon. Preparation time? Maybe only 30 seconds or thereabouts. Multiple people limits ... well, we have Lutecia and even if you count her as a specialist, surely the guys that CAN individually teleport should have exploited their advantage. Interferences, well, Lutecia was teleporting things right next to the building.

Personally, if I really MUST have the characters not use transport in a Fic, I'll just:
1) Give no explanation, since a plausible one isn't really there, and so giving an explanation just exposes me to fire. I'll just DO it, and let you rationalize.
2) Say it is a legal problem. This actually works better than it does because it'll be backed by the whole Jail incident. It doesn't make sense to us, but if even in that kind of emergency they won't break any regs prohibiting transport (as observed), then it would seem reasonable by extension that they won't use it here either, despite the emergency.

Originally Posted by Jimmy C

That's because, for the Bureau to act outright expansionist the way you envisioned would leave evidence in the characters' attitudes that simply aren't there. It's one thing for their attitudes to be leaning towards, "We may use any methods to secure our own worlds." (which is what we see in the series) It's another for their attitudes to be leaning towards, "We need to secure all worlds capable of dimensional travel to bring order to the dimensional sea" (this we don't see) The puts the Bureau in a conqueror mode. If it is like this, sooner or later it will face organised resistance from worlds capable of dimensional travel and are unwilling to be Administrated. The Bureau is not set up to deal with such organised resistance (on the level of armies and fleets being thrown at it) judging from how shitty their tactics are above the squad level.

It's called "respecting their sovereignty" Not doing so (like how you described Jarentil being made into an Administrated World without the planet's approval in the first place) usually leads to the thing known as "war." The Bureau doesn't act like the kind of organization that's prepared for planetwide war on a regular basis.

Well, this will be historically valid. We were made an "Non-management" world without our approval, heck, without our knowledge.

From the viewpoint of respect of sovereignty, there is no difference between rating a civilized world "non-management" or "management", because it implies you can change the status on a whim. "Non-management" means that you are not "managing" it at your sufferance. In fact, a non-management world in many ways is the cruellest of all, because it is just rule without knowledge, let alone any counterbenefits. At least a full member world gets something in return - this Jarentil seems to be one step above our lowly status until recently.

The problem is not so much whether the TSAB "respects sovereignty", as whether it even has a concept that other people HAVE sovereignty. Certainly its actions so far show none of this. It doesn't feel "we need to secure all worlds" because they believe they already do, though the exact treatment of each world might differ (at their decision). If that Jarentil doesn't become some kind of dimensional threat, they might just let it go, and any real friction will only arise if something happens on Jarentil and the TSAB feels like it has to do some enforcement on a world that they figure they own.

This one I can tackle easily enough. All the decoys appear to be the Nest. For whatever reason, they can tell which is the real one.

That's highly likely. TSAB scanners and scryers really seem to cover only about two bands - visual and magical / similar to magic. It would seem likely those vehicles are not making themselves beacons on the latter band, so it is basically the former.

Not sure how this story handles normal scrying but canonically scrying would seem to be basically a TV-reconaissance system in Mid-magic, so a 10m range AMF simply is not going to affect anything. The little searching sphere would simply stand off 12m and start sending back TV pictures of the vehicle.

But no worries. The big limit on scrying (as a TV recce system) would, if anything, be the complicated terrain of the city and the search area itself - that's why they are hiding in the city in the first place. A low-altitude scan for those vehicles will have very limited LOS and thus low scan area. If one opts for a high scan area, visual LOS will still be restricted by all the buildings, and distance allows for camouflage to become effective.

An alternative would be to give those command vehicles Electronic Warfare capability. Basically, they shut down the uplinks between the searchers and the mage, and basically scrying is out over the whole city. That should expose them to counter detection by Home-on-Jam, but there are two possible solutions:
1) Simply say the TSAB has no useful intercept or directional finding ability against such emissions. This will be historically accurate.
2) If one is getting sick of TSABbie incompetence, hand over some brains to the JLF. Nobody said the jammer has to be on the vehicle itself. You can, for example, have our terrorists lay down manpack jammers all over the city and use techniques like blinking to give TSAB radio-reconaissance a tough task.

So all of them have to be taken down, preferably right away and simultaneously. That would make a very good reason for dispersing the troops. Unfortunately, you didn't appear to have given the JLF any assets capable of tying down an S-rank for more than seconds. The only thing I can come up with is to lure them into a building then bring it down on top of them. HQ can't get a clear read on their location so it can't beam them out out of ruins. Trouble is, if they're fast enough, they can still teleport out before they're trapped. In addition, the JLF doesn't know how many such traps it needs to set.

A solution here is to go for quantity. These command vehicles will have to be massed-produced to cover all the area the TSAB goes. Even the test production lots - surely it might be possible to acquire more than one. Why not forget the decoys and make them ALL real vehicles. Maybe only one has the code, but all of them have that ability.

Next, a very simple idea would be to give those damn Nests a powerful turret mounted AMF "searchlight" (let's call it a field modification, and thus an unexpected factor to our heroines). Basically, regardless of whether they teleport or not, they'll enter battle, but the detector on the Net sees them and shines directional AMF in addition to the standard, omnidirectional AMF. Doing that, you can literally "adjust" the combat power of the Aces downward so that they will take the appropriate amount of time to win.

Thanks to Dezo making JLF so weak, there's no need to think too much about the tactical problem of Concentration. Dispersal IS the correct move with such an ridiculous power superiority - as long as you are sure you have that superiority. That can be their mistake. They disperse to search, engage thinking they can win in 5 seconds anyway, so they might as well win in 5 seconds against all the cars at once, then get trapped by the AMF and it all becomes a painful struggle...