Quote:
Originally Posted by AdmiralTigerclaw
Probably because I'm hell bent on stretching this 'superior' magic as far as our calcs can get it. I'd rather play Nanoha to the stronger end of measurements. At least then we could suspend the belief that the TSAB has the combat superiority over conventional arms to maintain its authority and policies. At least have her able to hit targets at a range equal to a typical grenade launcher in a similar amount of time. Since her average busters display around grenade level force. (Her top end busters kind of do their own thing as required by plot.)
Be kind of sucky if one day she was sent on assignment to round up some mass weapon users and thought she was going to have minimal problems, only to find THESE on guard... the hard way. Yeah, out-ranged, hit before she realizes she's under attack, and while Protection Powered may keep a hit or three off, that won't stand up against automatic fire delivering the same nasty explosive force to her over and over again several times in one second. Barrier jackets may allow you to slam through concrete, but you don't come out of that exactly smiling and shrugging it off. Rapid Fire Grenade spam gets messy.
If she can at least hit as far out, and as fast as those (Even with a handicap on her recycle rate.), I'd call her superior on acounts of being able to fly, and create a shield. |
Well, speaking personally, I've got two counteracting pressures inside. The first is similar to yours. The second is that I've established the first calc, and further I'm so disappointed in TSAB competence in general now I'm rather masochistically enjoying the thought of it being weak. Hopefully, the two pressures cancel each other out and allow me to keep a good overview.
On a strategic level, however, even proving Nanoha has some speed and range has little relevance. Because Nanoha is not the numbers. Nanoha is ONE person. Mages in her class or close to it are so ridiculously rare (according to canon events) that even if an entire city has to be sacrificed to kill one of them (say command guided nuclear air to air missiles), the TSAB will probably run out of elite mages faster than the defending civilization will run out of cities.
And once those elites are gone, we are back to the mages that make up the bulk of the TSAB army, and we all saw their "capabilities". Frankly, it isn't even a matter of capabilities anymore. If the defenders of the HQ run away at the relatively benign sight of Gadgets, how am I to believe those same folks won't run at the much more menacing sight of a tank, leaving aside whether they can engage such a target.
Those guys don't even know how to take cover. Note when Nakajima (and he's supposed to be one of the better commanders) deployed them exposed on the main road when they should be taking advantage of the building cover (since Gadget fire is relatively low powered, the buildings should provide some protection) so they don't have to split between raising shields (Not always successfully) and firing. At least they didn't break and run...
As for bolt velocity and range. Definitely not that great there either. After StrikerS One can easily why they hadn't tried to "administer" Earth yet. It'll either involve terror bombing (from orbit, or the precious elite mages risk being lost to nuclear or even conventional SAMs - they might streak in too fast to successfully defend) or a heavily disparate loss ratio in a direct fire fight between their Ground Force infantry (which is the bulk of what they have) and modern weaponry.