[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by Keroko

Yes, we need more Lindy. <3

Indeed...

You use green slime for cloning? You have the weirdest fantasies.

Dude it’s a mad science lab it’s gotta have green slime! Its right next to the Tesla coil and brain jars.

And people wonder why we enjoy being traps.

I don't wonder why at all I merely hate them for being as they are.

Which is what I've been saying for a loooong time now. There's a reason the show stays away from numbers.

Staying away from too many hard numbers is just a good policy in general trust me when a thousand or even jut a dozen people start running those numbers they WILL start finding holes in them.

Originally Posted by Evangelion Xgouki

...you're planning on using the funding to make your massive Destroid army, aren't you?

No acutally I got a grant from the Institute of Unnecessary Overkill this is more a test run for the army of clones I'm going to use to pilot them.

Skittles: Taste the rainbow

The Wild Berry types are my favorite.

Originally Posted by Keroko

Though you'd run the risk of facing a fic with so much real-life military it'll make your eyes spin. One of the reasons ATC's fics are so hard to digest is the amount of militaryism that makes them.

I’ve discussed this before acutally, but suffice to say that good tactics and strategy can be written without overly relying on jargon and indeed such a thing is bad for those that are writing fic meant for the masses. The effort has to be kept reasonable and in universe though and all factors considered politics has throughout the ages many times stunted good strategy or tactics. In the case of the TSAB this mainly takes the form of conceding that for political reason they aren’t going to start building tanks, artillery, and jet fighters etc anytime soon so you need to try and make the most of what you have.

You can also in many fics ignore the larger scale issues and simply endeavor not you make you characters tactical ignoramuses. Writing good tactics and strategy acutally isn’t that hard for a writer mainly because he has probably hours or even days to consider minor points IRL you might have minutes or even seconds. Allot of strategy is pretty common sense stuff, but you have to be able to apply sense while bullets are flying and the situation is rather fluid.

Originally Posted by krisslanza

Why does everyone think of the TSAB as a military anyway? They're more of a big police force then a military... At least I think so...

Police don't gave Lt.Col's and Space Battleships that can blow up cities as noted.

Originally Posted by ghazghkull

True, however, there are those who will just put enough common sense into it that it looks organized, but not way too military, like you and a few others I've seen around here.

Kha doesn't count since his are all just outrageously amusing :]

It's not really about it not being military it's about it being a different sort of Military.

Originally Posted by krisslanza

More like planets I mean if you fired the Arc-en-Ciel on Earth you'd probably make a crater so big you'd throw the planet off its axis

Not even close… the Arc would have needed to be have blast radius the size of a continent to even possibly destabilize an orbit. Planetary Sterilization maybe possible, but it would take time and a fleet of ships and the planet would be intact just burned to a crisp. The energy needed to take out a planet borders on the unfathomable we're talking the output of a star applied in fractions of a second. For instance the Arc has a stated blast radius of 100km the earth has a surface area of 500,000,000 square kilometers. "But we only need to blow up the land!" You argue fine you only need to zap 150,000,000 square kilometers then, keep in mind the Arc dose not appear to be direct energy transfer so you can't automatically count on atmospheric heating and such to do the job for you.

Even using the smaller number, assuming the ship fires a single blast every 45 seconds never needing to stop or refuel it would take something on the order of two years to destroy the land area of earth. The Arc is a WMD to be sure, but it's not a planet killer or at least not a practical one.

This just goes back to the fact people often see some visually impressive effect and then assign it some arbitrary insane number too it. I recall some guys used to toss around Teraton for the Macross main gun, but when someone acutally bothered to clac it out it became clear that megatons easily covered what we see it do. Which made sense after all nuclear weapons we're considered extremely powerful in setting and a megaton range particle beam would be as powerful as the biggest of nukes.

Still... It seems odd to think of it as a military even with that in mind. The military isn't usually used to arrest people and stuff And thats kind of what the TSAB does. Arrest criminals and capture Lost Logia. Sounds more police-ish then military-ish.

That’s merely a lack of knowledge on your part the military arrest people all the time acutally often with allot less due cause then civilians. Where do you think all those guys in Iraqi prisons came from? Hordes of them were arrested by the US army, marines, etc.

Originally Posted by krisslanza

Well that was taking into account that they say the Arc-en-Ciel's effective killzone is actually larger then the firing range - hence why the ships always have to Transfer after they fire or they'd blow themselves up >.>

But this is offtopic sorry

That nonsense again? Did you guys bloody WATCH A's you know the scene where the ship fires the Arc directly at a target and watches the entire impact and detonation from it's original position OUTSIDE the blast zone?

Originally Posted by Kha

7Arcs hasn't really planned it out properly, but from all the nitty gritty we can say that the TSAB is actually some form of "Big Government" (Democrat Bad Word IIRC), as it has elements of defence, enforcement, and administration. As for type of government, it does look like a Benevolent Utilitarian government, though I wonder how effective that form of government is IRL, considering all that benign anti-government sentiment I sense in youths from my home country.

Then again, we can also say that the Great Apocalypse 300 years ago scarred living memory so much that they'd give anything for peace.

Which brings me to the next point: One thing that always made me give up "TSAB sux", is the most important thing: It works to the point that it has unified Humanity in ways never before seen on Earth since the days of Eden. Write fics that justify it, not kill it. That was the lesson I learnt while trying to rediscover the spark in Rebuilt.

Just my $0.02.

Alright you got your two cents now it's time for mine.

Calling it either a military or police force is overly simplistic it’s not a simple police forces as don’t have Lt. Colonels and Spaceships with WMDs, but it’s not purely military either. In some ways it’s sort of like a permanent and institutionalized army of occupation the army of the TSAB often seems to be executing a continuous and ongoing police action against itself. Note that word though it’s often used as euphemism for war in theory at least it’s something different.

Also look at UN peacekeepers acutally UN peacekeepers might an extremely good example in general. (right down the leadership and political bullshit) Also it’s been a trend in general that the difference between police and military actions has been blurring for years. The fact is that the knockdown drag out slugfests in the vein of WWII are probably dead and modern “wars” often have as much to do with instating law and order and humanitarian standards as defeating the enemy in battle.

Just compared the average day of a solider in Iraq and a cop:
Solider: Get in a Humvee with some of his buddies then head out and drive around for a few hours being on the lookout for anything odd, answering any urgent calls for help, and trying to build community relations.
Cop: Get in his patrol car with his partner head out and drive around for a few hours being on lookout for anything odd, answering any urgent calls for help, and trying to build community relations.

The major difference is that while criminals in a functioning state tend to be weakly armed and work alone or in very small groups the guys in Iraq can have rocket launchers and attack by the dozens. Hence the heavier weapons of the soldiers, but even so it’s entirely possible to go to Iraq and never do anything besides patrol the streets or hell I knew a guy who went to Iraq and spent his entire tour building roads and such (combat engineer) and never even had a shot fired at his unit.

Now let’s consider the TSAB the TSAB is basiclly a hyperpower it has no known peers and no known outside threats. “So why dose it need an army you ask?” Well it needs one because a country without an army is really only a nation in name only. After all without a standing army what’s to stop planets that don’t like the latest law or tax hike giving Mid the finger and succeeding? The army is an instrument of social control acutally it’s the original instrument of social control the police as we know them today a recent invention.

I recall a quote roughly to the effect of “Force of Arms is the source from which all other authority derives” and it’s basiclly true. A nation without a military of some kind can’t really be consider a viable state think about it ever country on earth has some kind of military that’s not some kind of coincidence. That said this military doesn’t have to be an army as we know it today. As noted above the TSAB is a hyperpower with no peers as such it has no real need for a military geared for a large scale field combat. Given this it makes sense the military it dose have would be organized less as an expeditionary force for conquest or battling built up military powers then to maintain order and perhaps occasionally punish a dissident planet.

Another aspect to consider is that spacecraft greatly change the equations in terms of conventional warfare basiclly if you control orbit and can fire down from it organized large scale resistance on the ground becomes nearly impossible. So really you either force a surrender or break the enemy army with orbital attacks and then you’re back to needing an occupation force to police the world afterwards more then combat army. Hence IMO this is why we see the navy getting so much funding and priority the Navy is the arm that’s meant to crush conventional resistance against the TSAB while the ground forces are basiclly occupation troops.

This is why I’ve always maintained the TSAB could easily defeat say Earth in a realistic engagement. If it was some hypothetical battle with JUST mages deployed on the ground unsupported then Earth could inflict heavy losses and maybe even break a large army of them, but in a realistic battle this will never happen because every major army and air base on the planet will be smoking craters via orbital strike within hours of the start of the war. Just look at Stargate for an example yeah when it was just some Jaffa on the ground it was a fucking turkey shot for earth and that was without stuff like tanks or artillery, but the minute the Gou’ald brought in warships the Earth was clearly fucked without act of plot. (A sustained guerrilla campaign could still possibly cause considerable losses, but the fact is guerrilla don’t win militarily they win politically and if the invader has the political will to stay guerrillas won’t get rid of them)

Hence the TSAB works for what it needs to do in universe the problem comes when people start throwing stuff from OTHER universes against it and introducing alien elements. Of course if you bring in outside context problems the TSAB is going to have problems! Just consider the above example a modern first world military is a highly effective on the ground arguably more so then the TSAB mage based army and yet it would do nothing to help win a war against the TSAB since it lacks anyway to effectively attack space based opposition, but that’s hardly a fair comparison it was never meant to fight that kind of enemy nor dose it need too. Same thing with the TSAB the TSAB military wasn’t and isn’t meant to fight huge open field battles; because those just don’t happen in the TSAB anymore.

Really even the Cradle was basiclly just a large skirmish and look how it ended… the Navy turned up and blasted the thing into oblivion.