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forasecondtherewedwon · 10 days

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seven degrees east - chapter four

Fandom: Masters of the Air Pairings: multiple Rating: T (may change) Chapter: 4 / ? Word Count: 4645

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For most who were permitted entry, the Thorpe Abbotts grad pub was a useful spot to continue any promising discussions begun in class, bitch about grading undergraduate essays, and—thanks to the student discount offered by this campus establishment—get pre-trivia night tipsy on a higher quality of beer than they normally drank. The pub was called the Barracks because of the airfield that had stood on the spot decades before. Though the chairs were hard and the laminated page ambitiously headed “signature cocktails” likely hadn’t changed since the ’80s, the university’s graduate students considered it a nice place to hang out. The Barracks’ quirks made it all the homier. And nobody ordered the cocktails anyway.

It was larger than most of the pubs the boys would have packed themselves into on a Friday night, and continued to feel spacious even when a popular local band played the low stage situated at one end or the once-a-month karaoke event packed the place with unusual customers. (These were mostly fearless female students from departments that scared the boys shitless, like medical biophysics and actuarial science. Curt had once gleefully disappeared into the thick hedge ringing the pub’s patio with one such woman after discovering his shot-in-the-dark conversation topic of the possibility of animal cloning had legs.)

On an average, unspecial day, the Barracks had its particular draw for each of the boys. Gale liked it as a place to sit and nod, resting while others spoke. Rosie liked to do the speaking. For Bubbles, its pub fare was an oasis on Crosby’s nights to cook—for Crosby, it was the simple pleasure of an actual place where an actual bartender knew his name (after he summoned the nerve to inform the man that his name was Harry, not Henry). At the Barracks, Nash did what Nash did anywhere: trawled for a date to the movies. John—kinetic creature that he was—would throw darts with his eyes closed and dig out ancient board games whose missing pieces (“Yes, you can use that rook as a Battleship peg, Buck! Go! Your turn!”) were no impediment to his will to play anything and everything.

Curt loved the Barracks for another reason. Below the dusty TV usually tuned to show music videos, the news, or a match of whatever sport the academics got overly invested in that week as an excuse to put off writing an essay or studying for an exam, there was a PlayStation. Due to its locale, it had suffered some abuse, but it was reliable enough to get Curt through several levels of Air Combat. This left him feeling triumphant and allowed him to pat himself on the back for tearing his eyes away from the smaller screen of the Game Boy he had in his dorm.

“C’mon, Lieutenant,” he coached himself, leaning his whole body as he steered his fighter jet away from enemy fire. “Fly like an angel, don’t die like one.”

The pep talk didn’t work, and when his plane was destroyed, Curt sighed and set the controller on his knee in defeat. It slid off and clattered to the floor. He stared at it for several seconds before scooping it up and putting it back on the battered cabinet upon which the TV rested.

“Rough day to be a pilot,” he said, sagging into a different seat as he joined Jack Kidd at the bar.

“Yeah,” Kidd commiserated. Then, “Huh?”

“Aw, never mind. How’s the dissertation goin’?”

Predictably, Kidd groaned. Curt winced sympathetically.

“Next one’s on me, bud,” he promised, giving Kidd’s shoulder a quick squeeze.

“It’s actually going…” Kidd tried again as his face attempted a more hopeful expression. “…fine.”

“That good, huh?”

“I’m not behind. Well, I am, but not catastrophically. Well… You know what? You’ll see. Enjoy your innocence, Curt.”

Curt didn’t know exactly what to do with this troubling speech—or with being called innocent, which he wasn’t sure he’d ever been called. He decided he would give Kidd the gift of silent companionship. In between sips of his beer, he held the edge of the bar and twisted back and forth on his stool. This didn’t appear to bother Kidd, who seemed to be lost in his own mind for a while.

Eventually, he said, “I think I need a hobby.”

“A hobby,” Curt repeated. “Ok, that sounds like a good idea. Whaddya like?”

Very seriously, Kidd replied, “Reading.”

Curt kneaded his forehead and tried not to make the noise Kidd made when anyone brought up his dissertation.

“No. You gotta do something that’s nothing like the thing you’re working on,” he counselled with an emphatic slashing gesture. “Like, me? For instance? Last summer, I drove out to Rhode Island, right?”

“I don’t know, did you?”

Curt sighed.

“Guy, wait. I’m tellin’ you a story. I drove out to Rhode Island because I heard about this big skateboarding competition—the X Games. So, I’m watchin’ Tony Hawk, in person, doin’ all these flips and shit—”

“Yeah?”

“—and I’m like…” Curt spread his hands, a grin splitting his face. “…I could fuckin’ do that.”

Kidd’s expression went flat.

“Right. And now you’ve given up academia to pursue your dream of being a professional skateboarder,” he said sarcastically. “Mega inspirational. Thanks, Biddick.”

Curt leaned his elbows on the bar and shrugged.

“Well, no. But I bought a board, and I’m tryin’ to learn. Gets me outta my head, you know?”

“Hey, you know another way you can get what’s in your head out? Skateboarding accident. I hope you wear a helmet.”

“Hot tip. Thanks, Dad. I’m just tryin’ to help you overcome that fuckin’ fight-or-flight response you get whenever somebody says the D-word.”

“Dad?”

“Dissertation.”

Kidd’s nose scrunched in aversion. Curt was surprised he didn’t shrink back more dramatically, a vampire confronted with a cross, but maybe the fact that he’d already said the word once had desensitized Kidd a little.

“I guess I feel a bit better,” Kidd said. “Being annoyed at you is kinda cleansing.”

Curt raised his glass to toast that sentiment.

“You’re welcome.” He had a swallow. “You comin’ to trivia later? New hobby?”

“My being smarter than you isn’t a hobby, just a fact. But, yeah; I’ll come.”

“Awesome. We’ve been lookin’ for a new teammate who’s an expert on havin’ a stick up their ass.”

Kidd glared at Curt, but the remark provided him with the impetus he needed to hop off his stool and storm out of the Barracks, curtailing his afternoon of procrastination. Curt chuckled into his glass until he realized he’d been left to pay the bill.

—

Trivia night at the Barracks was a joyful confusion of noise that only clarified on the chorus of “Sweet Caroline,” the handful of patrons close enough to a speaker conducting the room with air-punches timed to each “BUP BUP BUH!” Though less busy than it was in fall and winter, the bar was still close to bursting. Windows and doors had been propped open to allow the sound to spill out into the warm summer evening. Free chairs were scarce, so all around the bar, friends crammed into booths and sat on each other’s laps.

The atmosphere was both competitive and full of low expectations; there were never enough questions in the category someone knew a lot about to enable them to perform well overall. This meant any feelings of despondency were, at least, short-lived. By nature of their discipline, the literature boys had a small chip on their collective scholastic shoulder. They were mainly let down by always going into trivia night expecting to do better than they inevitably did, trusting the novels they’d read to provide a sufficient foundation on topics like religion and politics and geology. Sometimes they lucked out, and sometimes they absorbed a stray grad student from another discipline into their team. Often, they cursed the very authors they had venerated only hours before. And they cursed Bubbles, who would give away literature answers to anyone who asked. (“That’s the one thing we know!” Crosby lamented, head in hands.)

Mostly, the night was about pooling information the way they would pool change for a cab, picking through the pocket lint and the gum wrappers to find the coins. Gale knew all the parts of a radio. Rosie could confidently name five Janet Jackson hits. Nash surprised the entire table with his knowledge of African rivers, inspiring John to take spontaneous hold of his head with both hands and plant a benedictory kiss on his forehead, not seeing the shockwave of hurt that momentarily dislodged Gale’s careful public mask. When Curt slung an arm around the back of Gale’s neck the next time they were all bent over their answer paper, Gale found it was easy to settle into the contact. He laughed when Curt told him he smelled good.

When they had lost, and they were trashed, and it was not yet 10pm, they considered how they might extend their evening. They had handed in their short essays for Professor Harding’s class that morning, which increased their sense that they should be celebrating; another paper down, only the final essay to go, and then the summer class was over and they would have some time to dick around before fall semester began. Everything seemed good and big and possible as they tumbled from the Barracks’ interior onto the patio.

It began as a whisper, and then they were all looking at and teasing Rosie as he blushed about the girl he’d met at the video store.

“You should call her,” Nash suggested, grinning. “You got her number, right?”

Rosie nodded.

“Well, go back to your room and get it!” Bubbles urged. “We’ll wait right here!”

There was a short bank of payphones against the brick wall, just beyond the bounds of the patio, and Rosie glanced at them before looking again to Bubbles.

“Call from here? You wanna hear me crash and burn?”

“Not at all, Rosie,” Gale assured him, eyes sparkling with playfulness and intoxication. “We wanna learn how it’s done.”

As they cheered him on, Crosby shoved Rosie gently in the direction of their dorms, but Rosie rolled out of the push. He held up his hands, smirking.

“I don’t need to go get her number.” He tapped his temple. “Right here, boys.”

“You memorized it?” Curt interpreted with a laugh.

“That is adorable,” John pronounced. He trailed Rosie to a payphone—they all did—and massaged his shoulders like a prize fighter’s while Rosie dug change from his pocket. When Rosie shook him off, smiling, John stepped back and crossed his arms as he joined the semi-circle the boys had made around the payphones.

Rosie dropped the coins through the slot, then took a deep breath and lifted the plastic receiver to his ear. He turned to the boys.

“It’s ringing,” he hissed.

And they all saw the moment she answered: Rosie’s hand clutched tighter around the receiver, his eyebrows shot up, and his gaze darted up towards the lately-appeared stars in relief, then down to the patio stones between his shoes as he focused in on her voice.

“Hi, Liss. It’s Robert Rosenthal calling.” He swatted his hand at Curt, who was pretending to look impressed as he mouthed “Robert” at Gale. They couldn’t remember him ever going by his first name; he was always Rosie to them. “From— You do? Ok, good.”

They took the side of the conversation they were hearing to mean that this was the girl from the store, that she hadn’t given Rosie a fake number, and that she’d known who he was right away. A very good sign. The boys monkey-barred between Rosie’s “uh huh” and “mhmm”s, his noises of agreement as he listened to Liss, and they watched him smile and smile into the receiver’s mouthpiece. Eventually, Rosie and Liss had talked so long that he had to feed more change into the payphone. They peeled off to sit at a nearby table. Gale watched Rosie, and he watched John—shoulder-to-shoulder with Nash. When Curt rose to go back inside and find a bathroom, Gale went too.

“Well, yeah,” Rosie was saying to Liss, running a fingernail down the metal ridges of the payphone cord. “I was hoping you’d call too. I mean, that I’d call you. You gave me your number.”

On the other end of the line, Liss laughed.

“I did,” she said. “Are you a little bit drunk right now, Robert?”

Rosie felt the flush in his cheeks deepen.

“A little. You don’t have to call me ‘Robert.’”

“That’s what you told me your name was,” Liss reminded him, amused. “What do you go by? Rob? Robbie? Please don’t say Bert. I probably could learn to separate that name from Sesame Street, but I don’t want to.”

“Most people call me ‘Rosie.’ I introduced myself as Robert because I… you…” he stammered, then laughed at himself. Because the second we locked eyes, I didn’t know if I was coming or going, he was trying to say.

“I get it.”

“Yeah?” he breathed, relieved.

“Yeah.”

Her straightforwardness terrified and reassured him—and not much could do either. It didn’t make his heart beat any slower though. That Poesque organ was pounding in his chest, making itself known. He felt like he’d been seen when he hadn’t even realized he’d made himself visible. In this way, it seemed to Rosie that love was a terrifying game of laser tag. He hadn’t used the word “love” out loud—not to the boys, certainly not over the phone to Liss—but Rosie was possessed of a quiet certainty that love was happening to him, completely unexpected.

“It was trivia night here,” he told Liss, when someone used the rear exit of the Barracks and a swell of sound escaped as the door was pushed wider. “You should come sometime.”

“That sounds like fun,” she said.

He wished she were there already. Had he not been drunk, he knew he would’ve been driving to meet up with her. He recalled Curt’s early attempts on his skateboard, how Curt had said that what you had to do before anything else was find your center of gravity so you could keep your balance. Rosie believed that was what he was experiencing: he’d found his center of gravity. It felt to him as though he was suddenly aligned with a force of considerable magnitude. A powerful feeling—and yet he grinned into the phone like a kid.

Meanwhile, the boys had decided it was worth getting another round, since Rosie was taking an unexpectedly long time on the phone. Bubbles offered to go back into the bar. John accompanied him. They wove between tables and joined the end of the line. Bubbles didn’t seem to mind waiting, but after John had stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tapped his foot for about thirty seconds, scanning the busy bar, he felt too antsy to keep standing there.

“I’m gonna go look for Curt and Buck,” he informed Bubbles, raising his voice to be heard though they were beside each other. “That alright?”

“Ok! You know where I’ll be!”

John nodded and twitched his mouth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. He slipped away through the Barracks’ front doors. This didn’t put him outside. The Barracks, though a pub, was a university establishment, connected to campus via more than its patrons; it was located in the back of the Philosophy building. The front door exit dumped John into a distinctly institutional corridor, from the sickly pastel paint on the walls to the rectangular lights littered with the shadows of trapped flies overhead. He strolled down the hall, letting the sound of the bar lessen and blur. The bathrooms were way at the end, past the water fountains.

He didn’t see Curt and Gale standing by the bathrooms, and he hadn’t really expected to. There was nothing to do in this hallway. John’s plan was to walk to the end then turn and continue on to the entrance hall. He figured the boys were probably outside, smoking on the front steps. Maybe getting a little high. That would have explained why they’d taken so long to come back to the group. They’d probably lost track of time.

John was smiling as he pictured this, coming upon the two of them with their brows furrowed, spliffs pinched between the fingers they pointed emphatically at one another as they said the dumbest shit they’d ever said in their lives. Yeah, he’d take a hit too, then wrangle them, shoo ’em back to the patio. Casting his eyes into classrooms each time he passed a door with a window, John idly decided he would walk the boys around the outside of the building instead of backtracking. This hallway, he thought, killed the lively atmosphere of the Barracks. It was just too—

He stopped like someone had stopped him. Physically. He forgot how to walk or blink or breathe. It wasn’t until his jaw clenched that John remembered he had a body at all—it had all gone numb.

The ache of his teeth startled him back into himself. Reanimating, he hurried down the hall. He didn’t know if the bathroom was empty, only that the closest stall was. He slammed the door wide. It hit the wall with a bang, and, like a pair of dice, John threw himself to his knees on the cold tile floor. He hadn’t had that much to drink, but he braced his forearms on the toilet seat and retched into the bowl until he shook, until snot ran from his nose and tears from his eyes. When it was over—taking the immeasurable as-long-as-it-takes that time was unfairly doled out in when one was in the throes of being painfully ill in the liminal space of a (probably) empty men’s room at the end of a quiet hallway in a darkened Philosophy building on an interminable June night—John felt as hollow and contorted as a bendy straw. He wiped roughly at his mouth with the back of his hand before collapsing against the wall.

Finally, he reached up to shut the stall door, fumbling limply with the lock. It was too late and not the kind of protection he needed, but he wanted the illusion.

—

As in many places, the thing to do for fun in Casper, Wyoming as Gale had grown up had been to ride bikes all day long. The summers had been wide, Casper Mountain crumpled like a bedsheet on the southern horizon. Gale’s routine had involved picking up his bike from where he’d dumped it at the side door on his way in to dinner the previous evening and roaming in lazy loops—not the kind of reliable routes the mailman did, but Gale would’ve inevitably run into a friend who’d been doing the same thing. When there had been a few of them, they’d ridden towards the train station. His friends had always liked crisscrossing the tracks on the way, ducking under the lowering gate and laughing at the flashing red warning lights. Gale had done this too, his face marked with a cold determination the other kids didn’t really understand, the rest of them whooping and bumping their wheels across the tracks.

In the parking lot, they had chattered and loitered, leaning their bikes against the train station. Gale had stayed astride his, paying little attention to the others. With his shoes planted on the asphalt and his chin atop the arms he’d folded over his handlebars, he’d watched people arrive from Laramie and Denver and Salt Lake City. But before that, before the cars had disgorged their passengers, there had been the sound of the train pulling into the station. The screech. The low huffs, so alluring to Gale that that had been the sound to call him towards the tracks, rather than the jangling alarm at a crossing. He hadn’t given in—he’d known better—but he’d closed his eyes to better hear it breathe.

The huffs of Curt’s breathing took Gale back, but this time, the warm push of air was right there on his cheek. Their mouths moved together. Except for the breathing, Gale didn’t think Curt had ever been so quiet for so long.

It had been a lot of little things that week. Or not so little, only seeming small because it was as if Gale had viewed them through a telescope. Breaking up with Marge was one. Because she was so far away, that hadn’t made a big change to his life, but it felt like a long-attached tether was suddenly gone and he’d discovered a fuller range of motion. He hoped she would too. On top of that had been the in-class discussion of the woodchopper, and Curt’s mystery hickey last weekend, and Curt’s unembarrassed insistence that Gale read Giovanni’s Room, and Curt still by Gale’s side when John’s lips met Nash’s forehead. Gale didn’t want to date Curt, but he wanted to take a page from his metaphorical book and make out with somebody outside a bar without thinking too hard about it. In some half-examined corner of his self, he’d needed it, and Curt had been amenable, and then there they’d been.

Gale had been private with Marge too, so it hadn’t felt so different—after Gale had found himself looking at Curt with half-lidded eyes, Curt with his heated stare on Gale’s mouth—to step into a vacant classroom and close the door. That much was the same. And it was a surprise to Gale that kissing a man didn’t feel like Kissing a Man; it just felt like he was kissing Curt, as he had once kissed Marge. There was a zing of giddy lust without any deeper sense of romantic devotion, but Gale didn’t think that had anything to do with Curt not being a woman. They were friends—a little drunk, a little horny—who happened to be comfortable with each other. Which made it so easy for Gale to fist Curt’s t-shirt at the base of his neck as his pulse thundered through him like a departing train, and for Curt to go along with it.

Curt smiled at the parts of Gale now being revealed. This knowledge wouldn’t go anywhere, wouldn’t mean anything, and so it was fine to enjoy Gale’s uncompromising aggression. He had taken control so quickly and so thoroughly that it could almost have been his idea. Except Curt knew better. He knew every small opening he’d given Gale, a million ways to come close if he wanted that, never really believing that he did until their eyes had met in the bathroom mirror and Curt had watched Gale’s cheeks bloom a dark, velvety pink.

I thought there was Bucky, Curt thought, but Gale wasn’t hesitating, kissing him roughly over and over, so Curt didn’t ask.

In a while, they went outside and found the boys where they had left them. Only John was absent. Curt slid into one of the benches and Gale sat on the edge of the table. It didn’t seem like anybody’d missed them; there were drinks on the table and some idiot had brought up the essays they’d submitted to Professor Harding, so everyone was talking about what they’d written, liberally badmouthing Thoreau as the font of all their grief. Gale didn’t want to think about schoolwork, but he didn’t want to attract everyone’s notice by demanding a new topic, so he sat quietly.

When John appeared, Gale straightened as though called to attention. John didn’t look well, somehow.

“What the hell, man?” Bubbles said to him, more confused than angry. “You never came back! I had to wave my arms until Croz saw me through the window and came to help me carry drinks!”

John just muttered, “Sorry,” and stood apart from their table.

“Everything ok?” Rosie asked.

John could tell he didn’t want to, that he was still enjoying the high of his phone call to Liss, and that John was bringing down the mood. But he couldn’t help it. He let his mouth stretch into an insincere, close-lipped smile and let out a quick, “Yep.”

Rosie watched him uneasily. The entire tableau had frozen: the perfect picture of a group of friends on a night at the bar. John stared at Rosie until he nodded slightly, understanding that something was definitely not ok, but that they weren’t going to talk about it. Talking about it was not a strong suit for either of them.

“We’re invited to a party,” Rosie said, now that everyone was there.

The news thawed the boys just enough; Rosie answered their questions. Next weekend. Yes, Nash, Helen would be there. Yes, she and Liss were roommates. Yes, all the boys were invited, but nobody had better make Rosie look bad or he would give them shit like they had never been given shit before. He was already looking forward to it, seeing the inside of a place that wasn’t just one of their regular haunts, though he intended no offence to the familiar. Rosie liked having something to come back to, but he liked having someplace to go.

They left the Barracks that night still talking about it, the dark sky twinkling far above Nash and Rosie’s excitement, and Crosby’s guilty yearning, and Curt’s contented libido. In the dorms, he tapped Gale’s elbow with his own before bounding down the hall towards his room. It wasn’t an invitation, just a farewell; he didn’t expect Gale to go from never having kissed a guy (he hadn’t said, but Curt assumed) to the whole enchilada in one night. There was no pressure. Curt didn’t think either of them wanted to turn a few minutes of messing around into anything more than that.

And Gale was aware that he should’ve felt relieved by how Curt left it, but he didn’t. He trailed John into their suite, full of unspoken dread.

“John,” he finally said, when the door was shut.

“What?”

But John was moving towards his bedroom, not even looking in Gale’s direction. Gale knew, he knew already, but it wasn’t enough. For some reason, he had to feel this too: what he knew he would feel when he looked John in the eye.

But John was a baby, and he wouldn’t allow it.

Gale sat tensely on the couch, waiting in case John emerged from his bedroom. He turned on the TV, tried to read. He chewed his lip until he couldn’t stand it and whipped The Portrait of a Lady across the room, angry at himself, angry at the soft crush of pages hitting the opposite wall. God fucking dammit, John! he wanted to yell. Gale was furious because it wasn’t right that he had done this thing—this rare, uninhibited thing, the huff, huff of Curt’s panted breath—that he told himself wasn’t about John at all and now John was punishing him by refusing eye contact. He wanted to make John look at him.

Gale had never intended for him, for anyone, to see. Part of what frustrated him was his own discomfort. He was trying not to let that sour what he and Curt had done. John wouldn’t care, Gale was certain, that he’d spied Gale kissing a man; he’d never known John to exhibit that kind of prejudice. But something was eating John, and if John had seen—and Gale harboured no doubts—then Gale wanted to read it in his eyes.

They read books, mostly. They found meaning. Gale wasn’t sure he could decide what this had meant for him until he learned from John’s eyes what it meant for them.

He waited another fifteen minutes, then he went to bed.

#seven degrees east #my writing #MotA #Masters of the Air #Curtis Biddick #Jack Kidd #Joseph 'Bubbles' Payne #Harry Crosby #Gale 'Buck' Cleven #Robert 'Rosie' Rosenthal #Herbert Nash #John 'Bucky' Egan #Bucky x Buck #MotA fic

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cursedalthoughts · 2 months

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Priority Research 7 Predictions - Northern Parliament

Hoo boy, let's get this one over with. This one is going to be a long, long post.

As established in the Dragon Empery post, I will attempt to predict their possible skills as well based on their World of Warships gimmicks. The thing is, the Soviet navy has a lot of made-up warships in World of Warships.

Let's begin with cruisers, since they're gonna take the longest to get through. There is a chance some of these ships end up being gacha units in the future, though; although with different names.

Pyotr Bagration

Pyotr Bagration is a Tier 8... cruiser. With 180mm guns, she classifies as a light cruiser; however, her 180mm guns have insane ballistics that make them hit harder than a lot of other heavy cruisers, even Tallinn.

Bagration is based off of Project 65, specifically one of the largest draft for Project 65, which is equipped with 3 triple 180mm gun turrets and a 15k ton displacement.

Unlike basically every Soviet cruiser from Tier 8 and above, she does not have access to radar. Her speed is high, but her general maneuverability isn't that good. I genuinely can't figure out a skill for her, but she's an option for a PR.

Ochakov

I like comparing Ochakov to Mainz in terms of performance. Ochakov is a light cruiser equipped with fast-firing 152mm guns in dual turrets. Compared to Mainz, she has worse armor, worse alpha damage, and worse DPM; but has an overall better AA and access to radar. Also, in WoWs, I think Ochakov is prettier. Not applicable in Azur Lane of course.

Her skills could involve something related to her fire rate, allowing her to fire faster; or a skill that allows her to detect all enemies and make them more susceptible to damage. Or something.

Dmitri Donskoi

Alright, I don't have much to say about Donskoi. She's literally a bigger Pyotr Bagration; she gets access to radar and a fourth triple 180mm turret with slightly worse reload (12.5s for Donskoi and 11s for Bagration). As a Tier 9 ship, she naturally has more health than her predecessors.

Both Donskoi and Bagration are equally as likely, and both are PR material.

Riga

Not only does she have a cool name (Riga seems like a very pretty city), she's also an interesting ship. Her alpha damage ('alpha damage' being the damage she can dish out in one salvo) is brutal with nine 220mm guns, although her turret traverse time resembles more a battleship than a cruiser (32.7 seconds to turn 180º. Soyuz's gigantic 406mm turrets are faster at 30s for 180º).

Riga is not very stealthy, nor very maneuvrable. However, she is a bit of a grandmother to the Stalingrad, which we'll see below in a second. Riga's gimmick in AL could make her do vastly improved damage with AP guns, or make her outright ignore stuff like medium armor. If that's too broken for AL or not is above me. Both Riga and Donskoi could be PRs, tho.

Alexander Nevsky

Now onto the three possible DR cruisers.

Nevsky is a unique HE spammer. HE spamming is, as the name implies, spamming High Explosive; a tactic many kinds of ship can perform very effectively (Harbin, for example, is a dedicated HE spammer in WoWs). However, Nevsky trades damage per minute for alpha damage. Her reload of 6 seconds is not bad at all, however, much better ships exist for the task - Jinan's reload is 3.5 seconds, and she has 4 more guns. However, Jinan has weak, pathetic, American 127mm guns; while Nevsky has glorious, patriotic Soviet 180mm guns. These eight 180mm guns are considerably better than those found on Tallinn, Bagration or Donskoi.

To top it all off, she has access to the usual convo of radar + hydroacoustic search, meaning she can find you no matter what. Her skills could involve a much improved damage output or fire chance for HE guns, and a skill that allows her to instantly detect submarines the moment they appear, or similar. DR material.

Petropavlovsk

There was some controversy the moment Petropavlovsk was introduced as a replacement for the previous Tier 10 heavy cruiser (Moskva), as both ships share the same gun calliber of 220mm, but Petropavlovsk's shells do almost as much damage and have almost the same penetration values as Bismarck. Bismarck is not the best Tier 8 battleship, of course. But Bismarck is a battleship, Petropavlovsk is a cruiser. And her reload of 14 seconds means this cruiser that has 1 more gun than Bismarck and almost the same values as Bismarck could have almost twice the damage per minute of poor old Bismarck (Bismarck's reload is 26 seconds). That should tell you a lot already.

Petropavlovsk is a "heavy cruiser", the same way Ägir or Alaska are "heavy cruisers". Her guns are insane, and the ship has a very good armor scheme as well. Since she sits so low above the water, it's harder to hit her from a distance - your shells will hit the waves before they touch her hull, losing momentum. She's fast too, although her concealment is... well, she can be seen from 16.3km away (base values). Kremlin (remember that name) can be seen from 16.5km, and she's considerably bigger than Petropavlovsk.

Stalingrad

Known as 'Battlecruiser Stalingrad' by the WoWs community, Stalingrad is a Tier 10 Soviet heavy cruiser armed with nine 305mm guns. They're legitimately one of the best 305mm guns in the whole game. Mecklenburg, a German Tier 10 battleship with sixteen 305mm guns, deals considerably less damage per gun than Stalingrad.

Typical of Soviet heavy cruisers, Stalingrad's high explosive is pathetic while her armor piercing is beyond excellent. Stalin himself guides each projectile with an unnatural accuracy, his hand reaching from beyond the grave to ensure Stalingrad's shells land on the target.

Stalingrad could be a large cruiser meant to spam AP, dealing raw damage to anyone that crosses her path. All her skills could be self-buffs, as the ship is very egocentric in WoWs.

Borodino

Now onto the battleships. There's only 3 so this should be quick.

Borodino is a weird design. Vodka was involved. She takes the Richelieu approach of only having front-facing turrets. Borodino is equipped with two triple 406mm gun turrets, the same one found on the Sovetsky-Soyuz class. They are above average in terms of accuracy, earning her the nickname of "tier 8 Stalingrad". In my own personal experience, they're very (literally) hit or miss.

Borodino has a radar, though. That's unique among battleships, with only 2 other ones having radar to the best of my knowledge (Missouri and Constellation).

Borodino is a tank. She is best played around islands, bow-in. Her small superstructure and large, well protected bow, as well as front-facing turrets; means Borodino is perfect for bow tanking at Tier 8.

She's PR material for sure, but she could be an interesting PR.

Navarin

I'm torn about Navarin. On the one hand, Navarin could easily be DR material. She's unique among all Soviet warships in WoWs, no other ship in the entire nation sharing her gimmick even remotely. There are two Italian battleships and two Italian cruisers that excell at secondary gun warfare; France has at least 2 ships, the US Navy has West Virginia '44, Massachussetts, Georgia and Ohio. Japan has Iwami, Shikishima and Kii. But the Soviet Union? Their only ship that's good at secondary guns is Navarin.

Besides, look at her design. She's old! Her design began in 1914; the Soviet Union wasn't even a thing back then. This monstrosity has three quadruple 406mm guns with rifles that aren't bad at all, as well as a wall of 130mm secondary guns on each side. She even has casemate guns, at Tier 9! She fights against modern warships such as Iowa, Swedish post-war destroyers, and aircraft carriers with jet planes. Granny needs DR status.

But yes, her gimmick in WoWs is that - just like Friedrich der Grosse, Prinz Rupprecht or Odin; she's a secondary gun brawler. She's meant to get close to the enemy and blast her 17 130mm guns per side, and 12 406mm guns, at 10km or less. And yes, this girl is covered in guns.

Kremlin

I don't lose anything by mentioning her.

With the introduction of gacha UR Sovetsky Soyuz, DR Kremlin is unlikely. Well, so was Hindenburg.

Kremlin is the epitome of Soviet battleships. Extremely tanky when bow-in, vulnerable when broadside, big guns that do big damage but have unreliable accuracy. I love her. Kremlin is a big, slow, slumbering warship that still somehow manages to have a 29 second reload on her monstrous 457mm guns.

Her skills would represent this sheer damage potential, maybe allowing a skill that redirects the damage the vanguard takes into a shield she generates - like a much, much better Illustrious.

Admiral Nakhimov

Finally, we have another aircraft carrier.

Nakhimov is different enough from Chkalov, as well as being a Tier 10 while Chkalov is Tier 8.

Nakhimov shares the same gameplay as the other Soviet CVs - big number of planes in a single squadron. Her torpedo bombers consist of a flight of 7 planes, each one dropping a torpedo, all at the same time. She fires a total of 32 rockets from her 8 attack aircraft, all at the same time. She drops 7 powerful bombs with her skip bombers. That's right, Nakhimov doesn't have dive bombers. She is equipped with skip bombers, which are bombers that drop their payload in such a way that it bounces on the water like a rock until it hits the enemy. Yes, those things existed in real life.

Nakhimov could be an extremely versatile and hyper-aggressive DR CV, capable of taking on all sorts of enemies.

#azur lane #gacha #gacha game #priority research #world of warships #northern parliament #long post

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canmom · 1 year

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Animation Night 146: Leiji Matsumoto

Tragically there is a death in the news this week: Leiji Matsumoto, renowned creator of Space Battleship Yamato, Captain Harlock, and Galaxy Express 999. I’d like to commemorate him with an Animation Night...

It would be hard to think of a scifi mangaka or anime director more influential than Matsumoto beyond, well, Osamu Tezuka himself. Sure, Tomino, Anno, Rintaro - but who were they influenced by? Space Battleship Yamato is the bridge from goofy monster-of-the-week super robots to the dramatic anime that would eventually develop in the 80s onwards. So let’s start there.

As recounted in some detail here, Leiji Matsumoto grew up during the second world war; he struggled to find much of an audience for many years until his Senjō WWII manga started to become popular in 1971. This led, in turn, to Matsumoto joining the Space Battleship Yamato project in 1973 alongside producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki, and Eiichi Yamamoto of (no seriously) the ‘Animerama’ trilogy of erotic films, notably Belladonna of Sadness.

When Matsumoto joined the project, the plan was for it to be a dark ‘Lord of the Flies in space’ space drama. Matsumoto was at this time a WWII mangaka, so with WWII on the brain, it’s not entirely surprising that he drew most of his ideas from the war. It was his idea to design the spaceship after the actual battleship Yamato, a major symbol of Imperial Japan that in fact did very little before she was sunk in 1945.

Space Battleship Yamato shows a spaceship built in the ruined shell of the battleship, sailing around in space to fight against an alien invasion. It is armed with a superweapon called the ‘Wave Motion Cannon’ (波動砲 hadōhō), which became a standard term for a huge scifi laser weapon. Matsumoto planned to pattern events in the series after real battles in the world war. But the production was cut down, from 52 episodes to 26, and the story simplified, losing a lot of the antagonist’s motivation. Even so, it was a lot more complex than TV anime at the time was used to, a first step on the path to the complex, dark sci-fi anime and manga of the 80s and 90s.

The TV series struggled for ratings until the release of a compilation film in 1977, which kicked off a surge of ‘Yamato fever’. Its character archetypes, like the gruff paternal bridge captain, became stock characters. And while for most part the animation in the series was limited, it was an opportunity for Kazuhide Tomonoga to create some landmark mechanical animation of the sinking of the original Yamato.

Yamato was among the earliest wave of anime to be released outside of Japan. It gaining a following in Europe, and in America it was retitled and edited as Star Blazers. Contemporary critics dismissed it as a poorly animated knockoff of Star Wars, yet it continued to snowball in popularity. You might spot nods to it in various places; Miyazaki put a wrecked Yamato in Nausicaa as a gesture against its militaristic themes.

And it’s hard not to see something almost ludicrously nationalistic in a story about a resurrected Japanese battleship defending the Earth against invaders in a way it couldn’t defend Japan during its actual operation. We might think of the scene in Grave of the Fireflies where Seita imagines his father sailing away on a mighty warship. Matsumoto’s later works would generally veer away from such themes towards more personal stories in the same wide, imaginative scifi setting.

Captain Harlock is a kind of ‘eternal warrior’ type figure; the above cited article compares him to the characters of Michael Moorcock. He’s based on a character created by Matsumoto in highschool, and indeed he is kind of chuuni as a character: he’s a badass space pirate with a skull and crossbones and a cool scar and a swishy cloak. But Matsumoto was way ahead of the game with these motifs, and before long he got the opportunity to give Harlock his own show... at Toei.

But Matsumoto was finished in the director’s chair. He’d write the manga, and Rintaro (c.f. Animation Night 134) would get to direct it, drawing on his time under the wing of Dezaki. Harlock was an enormous success, one of the defining anime of the 70s, wildly popular in Europe as well as Albator.

Harlock spawned numerous TV series - for our purpose the notable one is Arcadia of my Youth (1982), which serves as a kind of prequel to the series with the origin story of Captain Harlock. What better place to begin than the beginning? Its director, Tomoharu Katsumata, is otherwise known for adapting many of Go Nagai’s works to film. The story sets up Harlock as belonging to a lineage that belongs on Earth with pilots called Phantom F. Harlock I/II, setting up the unsettling characterisation of Harlock II as fighting for the Nazis out of a sense of feudal obligation despite his misgivings towards the war.

This highlights the sort of strange tension that seems to exist in Matsumoto’s works. Many of his WWII-set stories are tragedies about pointless and futile deaths in war, featuring reluctant soldiers for the Axis who are not fascist ideologues but nevertheless fight for the cause. But he also likes to imagine that these figures could be redeemed and resurrected fight against the space imperialists. I imagine growing up in Imperial Japan during the war really does something to a person! Anyway I don’t know if I’m reading this right - I need to experience more of Matsumoto’s work to fully see if I think I understand what he’s going for, I think.

In any case, the enormous success of Harlock led to many further adaptations of Matsumoto’s manga such as Starzinger (Journey to the West in space), Danguard Ace (super robots), and ultimately of course Galaxy Express 999, a long bildungsroman about a boy who leaves Earth on a spacebound train - first as a TV anime and then the pair of movies directed by Rintaro in 1980 and 1981.

Compared to the somewhat formulaic TV series, the films were tight and compelling. By this time the renowned ‘charisma animator’ Yoshinori Kanada had really hit his stride, and was ready to essentially duel Tomonaga over who could create a more impressive depiction of a planet exploding into liquid fire, making Galaxy Express 999 not just an influential classic film but a real landmark of animation.

All of these scifi projects are closely tied in together; if you start digging with Matsumoto you start finding all sorts of intricate connections, characters recurring in different series, altogether comprising a ‘Leijiverse’. And of course in such a big body of work there are many recurring themes - conquering empires and mysterious women who are probably queen of somewhere. His most popular works, meanwhile, spawned remakes and sequels in abundance. Matsumoto became less central after these major successes, but continued to inspire anime productions - often at Toei and Madhouse - throughout the 90s. Read about them here if you’re curious!

One of the most surprising twists is the Daft Punk film Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem. The French duo had grown up watching adaptations of Matsumoto’s works on French TV, and when they decided to make a film to support their album, his style was a natural fit. So Matsumoto was called back up to Toei to supervise the film. We’ll talk more about this soon - I’m planning a music themed Animation Night, which was going to be tonight but I realised there’s more than enough Matsumoto here in its own right to fill out one of these so, hold on tight!!

The other note is The Cockpit (1993), a compilation OVA collecting three of Matsumoto’s WWII stories from the beginning of his career as envisioned by Madhouse star Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Takashi Imanishi and VOTOMS creator Ryōsuke Takashi. Although the animation style is much more 90s, it does serve as an illustration of the sort of stories that Matsumoto was telling with the WWII material.

All the stories focus on Axis soldiers; the first one sees a Luftwaffe pilot who deliberately allows Germany’s prototype atomic bomb to be destroyed by the enemy, the second on a kamikaze pilot fighting on the day of the atomic bombing; the third on a pair of Japanese soldiers in a futile race to reach an air base.

Tonight, then! We’ll be looking at the early parts of Leiji Matsumoto’s long career, in anticipation of visiting his later works down the line. That means starting with The Cockpit to see where Matsumoto himself started, then heading into Arcadia of My Youth to see the origins of Harlock. Which means yeah, we’re gonna be looking at a lot of Nazis and their planes tonight; if that’s a no-go I totally understand.

Animation Night 146 will be going live in about 10 minutes at 8pm UK time at twitch.tv/canmom - hope to see you there!

And rest in peace, Leiji Matsumoto.

#animation night #leiji matsumoto

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brightatmidnight · 1 year

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The Performance Update for The Chaser’s Voyage (Version 0.4.0) is live!

It’s been a bit since our last update, but The Chaser’s Voyage’s Performance Update is finally live! We made a lot of smaller changes in addition to the performance upgrades, so here’s our rundown for Version 0.4.0!

Hello everyone! I know it’s been a few months since our last game update, but for good reason! We’ve been busy going through almost EVERY part of The Chaser’s Voyage in order to improve performance and make your voyage as smooth as can be! This update contains quite a few miscellaneous changes, so let’s get started with the main one!

We have improved performance for when things spawn, despawn, or interact with other things! This might not sound like much, but it required going through all of the game’s code and optimizing interactions, adding object pools (reusing objects after you’re done with them instead of destroying them), and making sure that everything still worked the way it should. (I happened to break quite a few things with my changes, so HUGE shout out to Eos for testing the game so much while I was busy trying to fix more things, especially since she was in the middle of a move!) This was the main focus these past few months and it was quite the journey to go through all the code and try to optimize it! Along the way, I noticed several other things that we wanted to change (or fix in the bugs’ cases), and those changes make up the rest of this update!

Some of the bigger remaining changes we made with this update have to do with obstacles. Not only did we fix some bugs regarding obstacle interactions and background obstacle spawn rates, but we decided to implement 2 new options regarding background obstacles. We added a slider that lets the player set the rate at which the background obstacles spawn and a slider that changes how bright the background obstacles are! In the earlier stages of creating The Chaser’s Voyage, we really wanted to fill out the screen space with fake background obstacles that the player couldn’t interact with, to add a bit more depth to the experience. We were cautious to not make those obstacles too bright though, lest they be confused for objects that the player actually needs to dodge. They were a little darker than we’d like, but we didn’t want to brighten them until we made an option for the player to customize the object brightness. We felt that this update was the right time to do that, and both added the option, and increased the default brightness of the background obstacles to better match what we wanted. Also, in fixing the spawn rates of the background obstacles, we were easily able to make a system to let the player control the spawn rate themselves, and decided to add that in as well.

Besides the general changes, sentries also got some tune ups. Sentries have enemies based on their affiliation (UGS dislike bounty hunters and the Empire dislikes pirates), but this was not being expressed the way we wanted it to be. The sentries would become hostile to these enemies, but usually after being attacked, not by default. The sentries now work how we want, and will target their enemies right from the get go! (Also, they will no longer target their army’s own fighters. Sorry about that fighter pilots!) Space battles also got a change, with exploding battleships no longer slowing down. This change was made to make sure that the battleships didn’t get too clogged up at slower speeds.

The next batch of changes are visual ones. We wanted to add some slight improvements to various visuals, to go with our performance improvements. First, we now have subtitles on as the default. Since our game starts immediately with the tutorial and more specifically with Argi talking to you, we wanted to make sure anyone who needs subtitles would have them from the get go. Second, we slightly darkened Nila’s subtitle color to better match the rest of the crew’s subtitle colors. Third, we added some subtle shadows to Battleships, Bounty Hunters, Buildings, Fighters, Merchant Ships, Obstacles, and Pirates. These help the sprites “pop” a little better (and in the case of buildings on planets, a LOT better). Finally we made it so that the insignia on the Loading Screen will now cycle through all of the insignias, not just the 3 Chaser insignias.

And, as always, there are the bug fixes. Since we were going through all of the game to make performance improvements we found a lot of bugs (and a couple of typos) that had slipped under our radar! They have all been squashed, but if you happen to find more, please be sure to tell us!

Here’s a link to the full patch notes, and for more news you can follow us on Twitter and join our Discord. (Where you can also give feedback! (Or bug reports!)) If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam.

-Cameron

#The Chaser's Voyage #roguelike #patch notes #Steam #early access #indie #indie games #indie dev #game dev #game development #video games #game #Bright at Midnight

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mr-camhed · 8 months

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The Spangler Heavy Industries Model 65 Super Heavy Breakthrough Tank, also known as the Persuader Tank, is a prototype Super Heavy Breakthrough Tank designed and manufactured by Spangler Heavy Industries for the Brabazonian Federal Army in the later years of the Second Atlantide War.

It was made as both side of war slows down and fortifies against each other's attack instead of the more assault and counterassault focused battles with lighter, faster strategies and equipments before the grueling siege of Mayne where the Brabazonian Industrial center beaten back several waves of Atlantide raids with heavy fortification and firepower, and even though the Federal Army's newer heavy artillery, tanks, bomber aircrafts and warships are sufficient for the Federal military's counteroffence against Atlantide fortifications, the army believed that their current main tank, the Stepper Hunter Type 6 medium tank(a design combination between US T14 Heavy tank, Canadian Ram tank and Argentinian DL-43 Nahuel tank) and National Machinery model 33 Union heavy tanks(a combination between Hungarian 44M Tas, soviet T-43 and German Tiger tanks), is insufficient in the fear factor against atlantide forces in comparison to the Navy's new Federation class super Battleships(based on Montana-Class, HMS Devastation in WOWS and Japanese A150 Class Battleships), Homeland class fast battleship(based on Iowa-class, Bismarck-class and Vanguard-class battleship) and Blizton class Aircraft Carriers(supercarrier/battlecarriers based on Federation class Battleship hulls) and the Air Force's Federation avionics Retaliatior 400 six propeller heavy bomber(based on Boeing B-54 And Junker Ju 390 Amerikabomber), and Collins Model 44 Bulwark quad jet fast Bombers(based on Arado Ar 234 Blitz and North American B-45 Tornado), while the high casualty rate of the Army's soldiers and equipment due to Atlantide forces' zealous and resilience despite their inferiority in ranged weaponry that also tipped the public opinion against their favor.

And with the Persuader tank, they're looking to build a rolling bunker with an extremely powerful 203 milimetre howitzer as the main gun to punch through enemy fortifications, and multiple smaller but still rather effective auxiliary Guns, including a 88mm anti tank gun mounted in the front of the hull to the right of the driver's seat, two 90mm infantry support gun in the sponsons in both sides of the tanks, and dual 20mm autocannons that serves as the coaxial and hatch mounted gun that can provide cover fire for accompanying units and deterrent against aerial enemies. Its heavy weight and armor which would reach the thickness of 250 milimetres would allow it to plow through enemy defensive measures and laugh at enemy fire. It was also powered by an upscaled version of their 16 Litre diesel V16 engine used in regular tanks, which is now at the displacement level of 36 Litres and supercharged, making 1800 kilowatts of power, which was transmitted to the sprocket wheels via a novel electric drive system to power a pair of 1.5m width twin tracks to dissipate the weight and increase grip on loose surfaces such as gravel and mud, allowing it to achieve a considerably high top speed. The 20 meter long, 8 meter wide(10 meter counting the sponsons that housed the 90mm guns) and 4.5 meter tall 200 ton metal behemoth was manned by a crew of twelve, including a commander, four gunners and loaders for the four guns each, a driver, an observer who also serves as a mechanic, and a radio operator that also serves as an observer.

However, the prototype of the tank was found to be rather unsatisfactory. It was still rather slow, the massive size makes it an easy target, the massive weight means that it can't go over many bridges, be transported by rail or roll on paved surfaces without completely tilling it, and the tank would shake extremely violently when going over uneven surface which makes the crew almost impossible to operate the vehicle, and the 88mm gun would be easily damaged when breaking through enemy defense due to a lot of its barrel sticking out and often taking the brunt of whatever it hit. Thus, the Persuader tank was rejected by the Federal Army, its role was replaced by Maynesburg Heavy Machinery's famous and perennial Minister series heavy main battle tanks(based on IS Series and T29/T30/T32/T34/M26 Pershing heavy tanks), And with the war also prematurely ended after the sinking of the floating city of Atlantide, the development on Persuader Tank and a "tank destroyer" variant (based on T28 Super Heavy tank destroyer and is basically a large armored dome on tracks) were both halted and the Persuader tank was left in a museum's storage space while the "tank destroyer"'s unfinished chassis was dismantled and scrapped.

However, some 40 years later, while Talon Corporation is pitching sales of the Federation's surplus military equipments to the nations of the New Land, one of the most frantically willing customers, a fascist Monarchy in possession of vast frozen arctic and subarctic tundra, finds many of their heavy and superheavy tanks, while effective and deadly in combat against most of other forces of the new land, was somewhat lacking in the factor of intimidation due to their "compact" size in comparison to the difference of light and heavy equipment of other services such as the Navy and the Air force(where Talon Corporation assisted them in construction of massive rigid airships with the firepower, defense capability and the aircraft carrying capacity of of Two Federation class battleships and a Blizton class SuperCarrier combined), as most super heavy tanks were barely one and half times the size of the more advanced Centaur(Similar to the EE-T1 Osorio main battle tank and French AMX-30/40 MainBattle tank) and TBT-3(based on the Vickers Main Battle Tank series, Italian Ariete Main battle tank and South African Olifant Main Battle Tank) Main Battle Tanks and barely larger than the Ferma-Chandler Heavy Main Battle tank(a combination between the Conqueror Heavy tank, M103 Heavy tank, T-95 Main battle tank and M1 abrams series Main Battle tank) used by Talon Corporation Mercenaries. And without missing a beat, the sales representative of Talon Corporation produced a picture of the Persuader tank in comparison of a Minister-9 heavy MBT(the final model of the Minister series, based on the T-10/IS-8, M103 And M46 Patton, and was in active service as late as early black tide crisis), which almost immediately caught the eye of the Imperial Nobilitys' eye, and they immediately ordered one to be sent to the Imperial territory for evaluation. And to better sell the tank, the company that had acquired Spangler, Utility Automotive Commercial(UAC, commercial subsidiary of the Brabazonian automotive Juggernaut Utility Automotive/UA) set out to vastly improve and modernize the Persuader Tank. They reinforced the structure and armour of the tank with stronger materials and internals, the supercharged V16 diesel Engine was replaced with a pair of 18 liter twincharger 8 cylinder engines driving the sprockets together, making over twice the power, and that can even potentially be replaced with a miniature Magnussen Reactor to make it even more powerful, the suspension were improved to make the cabin more stable, and the 88mm anti tank gun is now capable of retracting back into the hull when the vehicle is rolling through obstacles, and the equipments were also all upgraded and thus better suits the needs. The improved Persuader tank was almost immediately loved by the Imperial Nobility and the Tsar, and they ordered it without hesitation. It's yet unknown if any more Persuader tank were being manufactured or where they were manufacturing them, though there had been many claims of these super heavy vehicle spotted in different places.

#fictional worldbuilding #Fictional vehicles #Super heavy tank #Breakthrough tank #Talon Corporation

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over-the-time-flow · 10 months

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Back to gameplay!

The Jenices and Daughtress Commands from this second wave are just more of the same, but Daughtress Weapons have larger range than the other ones (you can tell from the big-ass cannon on its back!). That said, i wasn't sure exactly how much larger, so i put Ruri's Scan (偵察) Command to good use.

So the range is 6! Perfect, that's exactly one tile shorter than the Fairies.

I go ahead and place the Excellence exactly at the edge of its range, as if to goad it into attacking it (and getting wrecked by the Fairies in the counterhit).

if you're paying close attention you'll notice my mistake here instead of when i point it out much later

I then move the Nadesico and the Super Aesti up, keeping Saburouta within the southmost Daughtress Weapon's range, so as to have him counter it just like the Excellence will counter the north one. For right now though, it's out of his range, so we'll settle for bullying this Jenice.

Meanwhile, on the Ra Cailum's side of things, i have Kayra attack the Daughtress Command with her Jegan's missiles.

The results are aptly underwhelming.

As i move Amuro up for his own offensive, placing him adjacent to Kayra triggers this little fire animation. This means he and Kayra have a Friendship!

Friendships can range from level 1 to level 3, and you can tell what level it's at from the size of the little graphic. Judging by the size, i'd say Amuro and Kayra are still level 1. At level 1, you get a 5% bonus to damage dealt and reduction for damage taken just for having them adjacent, which doubles and triples for levels 2 and 3 respectively. There are also Love bonuses, but they function identically, so the difference is merely cosmetical.

The protagonist can create Friendships with anyone, but these don't affect anything story-wise, so don't get too excited.

In any case, placing him here will place the southernmost Daughtress Weapon perfectly within range of Amuro's Mega Beam Cannon, much like with Saburouta's Aesti. For now, Amuro will also just poke at a Jenice with missiles.

A better showing, but not by a lot.

On top of the relationship bonus, placing Amuro here will let Kayra enjoy his Command (指揮官) bonus as well, giving her 10% to both hit and evasion.

I then move the Ra Cailum up, but not by too much, so as to not have the enemies get too close and out of the powerful Mega Particle Cannon's finnicky 4-8 Range.

I also try to be mindful so as to not overlap Bright and Amuro's Command auras on Kayra; see, the way this game handles Command auras is kind of annoying, though it's a bit weird to explain.

Amuro, at level 1 of his Command ability, gives allied units 1 tile away from him 10% hit/evade and units 2 tiles away from him 5%. Bright, with Command level 3, has a larger area of influence, but at its very edges, the bonus is still 5%. Now, if these overlapped on Kayra in any other regular ol' SRW game, the game would simply apply the Command aura with the best effect, prioritizing Amuro's.

But SRW R, perhaps in an attempt to balance the fact that you end up with a LOT of people with Command, decides to always prioritize the Command aura with the highest level of the Command skill. As a result, if I moved Bright one tile up or to the left, Kayra would only be receiving 5% to her Hit/Evasion rates, despite having Amuro right next to her. As a result, once you're far enough into the game, when both your battleship captains have enormous Command auras, there's really no point in even bothering to worry about Command auras besides theirs.

In any case, enemy phase rolls around and the Daughtress Weapon bites the bait.

Hook, line, and sinker.

This is when i realize i've made a mistake; the Excellence is sitting on 28 EN, just under enough to fire the Fairies again, and i didn't realize i had placed it within the southern Daughtress Weapon's range as well. Had i placed it exactly one tile up and one tile left, this guy would have aimed for Saburouta instead.

As if to taunt me, it proceeds to hit Raul head on despite only having a 20% hitrate.

Amuro: "There's no point even aiming for the Re-GZ!"

Amuro: "If i use the Re-GZ's Mega Beam Cannon...!"

Amuro's gigantic Skill stat brings forth a crit, and he falls just short of one-shotting this grunt in a single hit.

Amuro: "As long as i make full use of the Re-GZ's specs, you won't hit me!"

He then repeats the exact same feat.

that thing's not supposed to fire a beam, by the way. it's not even classified as a Beam weapon, even though it has the exact same animation as the Re-GZ's Mega Beam Cannon ingame

Over on his side of the pond, Saburouta finishes off the weakened Jenice from earlier with his Railgun.

Amuro continues to fall just short of finishing grunts, though in this specific case the Jenice probably only survived due to the special crater terrain it happened to be in.

He does manage to finish off both of the weakened ones, though.

#srw r #super robot wars r #lets-play

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crazy56u · 1 year

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Somehow I have lucked out and got Monday off twice in a row, and seemingly to compensate for that, I have the sniffles. Battleship time.

And we open up on the S.S. Bad CGI.

"Holy ship!" #LetBenSayFuck2023

What the fuck is a "Phalanx"?

Oh fuck, Ben is going to go fucking deaf before the episode's out at this rate.

"What war is this?" The Cold War. Specifically, the tail end of it.

"It was a drill." So far.

Do you think Brandon Routh laughed when he found out how Legends of Tomorrow (abuptly) ended?

"Especially with the Chinese watching." Annnnd the episode is now banned in China.

"Our ship is about to be the centerpiece of an exercise, slash the plot of a Quantum Leap. I will continue speechifying while someone slinks off to talk to ghosts."

How is Ben having deja-vu of something he never experienced?

"You're on a battleship, so hopefully, it's not like that movie."

"We are the tip of the spear. That means the ship is sharp."

Let me guess: The USS Montana originally went down in a freak accident, killing Addison's dad.

"My head hurts." Get some Excendrin then, you're on the clock.

Oh fuck, they remembered they had to do the Congresswoman plot.

So, calling it: Ben doing this leap with Addison's dad somehow fixes the Congresswoman's life.

"You're in the Navy." And cue the Village People-

"May 2, 1989." Once again, why doesn't this show say the dates more often. That's literally my only substantial complaint about this show.

Oh, so, the Montana accidentally let the Tampa die.

Honestly, Brandon Routh was fucking lucky to dodge prison time.

"Who's to say it's not like Back to the Future?" Well, in one episode, Al immediately vanished after Ziggy said he was 100% likely to die in the gas chamber due to Sam fucking up, so, technically the show already is.

"Look, I know Sam Beckett once set up a rule about not changing history for personal gain, but Ben, I need you to fucking ignore that, we need to save my dad."

Okay, I half expected that sentence to end on "Light her up", and for the cannons to start up.

[I will never not be pissed that Legends of Tomorrow got rid of Brandon Routh; I quit watching the show after his last episode, the show needed him.]

The most upset Brandon Routh can be: A neutral glare.

"We're here, sir." That's fucking mean of the show to assume more than 5% of the audience can understand that map.

Wait, so the ship did acknowledge the distress signal origina- annnnnnnd the captain is the bad guy, he's the reason they ignored it.

"Look, I do not care what you say, we are not answering a so-called 'distress' signal, and if it turns out that ship is real and everyone dies because of me, I am throwing you under the fucking bus."

"It wasn't him..." Gee. YA THINK?

[Okay, is it me, or is the cameraman extra fidgety tonight? That was a random zoom-in on top of the shakeyness.]

"We really need to know what happened in 1989." Might as well. If you really think about it, in the grand scheme of things, 1989 was the point things started going down hill.

[Only, like, three people who follow me will understand/appreciate that line.]

Wow, I expected the episode to take longer for it to be revealed to the captain that the distress signal was real. Why is this episode going smooth?

"Thank you, Master Chief." Out of context, that line in a Quantum Leap episode sounds like a fucking shitpost.

Ah. So that's why the Tampa went down. The captain is fucking insane.

"Ben, say 'Yes sir,' and apologize." There's an alternate cut where Ben instead punched the guy.

The second the torpedo exploded, you can fucking tell the captain choked down the urge to laugh.

Meanwhile, at the docks, Magic and Friend are hanging out.

...does Magic saying "our ship" mean he's speaking generally, or does it mean he's actually on the Montana in 1989 as well?

That is a sad looking birthday cake.

"Do you wanna get kicked out of the Navy?" It's shaping up like how the episode ends, so...

"Ben, my dad never talked about his family." Boy, there's a lot of unanswered questions here...

Young Brandon Routh beat the shit out of a shitty dad, that is how you know he is the fucking GOAT.

"Why was he so cold growing up?" He got thrown under the bus, Addison...

Great, now the Montana's fucked!

[Unrelated to all of this, but I just pounded an entire roll of Creme Savers, during the first half of the episode, so my night's going alright.]

[Okay, I was searching for the name in my head all episode, but it now just hit me: The Captain looks like Robert Forrester.]

Welcome to Quantum Leap, what you thought was Battleship was actually Minesweeper, get fucked.

Just like everything in life, the real bad guy is the Weather Channel dropping the fucking ball.

"Wait, Ben's in a minefield, hot fucking damn, that's sick!"

Holy shit. This is Minesweeper...

They actually count by Mississippis in the Navy?

Okay, the Captain wants them to kill people, someone needs to lock him in a broom closet.

Brandon Routh, once again, the motherfucking GOAT.

At this point, I am actively willing someone to punch the Captain out, he is about to fucking cause World War III in 1989.

"Heeeeey Magic, how's your day going? We might be causing World War III..."

Captain, The William D. Porter refused to break radio silence during war games. It almost blew up FDR in the process.

Addison, just let Ben punch him.

BOOOOY of all the ways for Addison to learn her parents' marriage was shit...

"I won't pass on the darkness that I carry." Tooooooo fucking late, Brandon Routh.

Brandon Routh, fucking do a mutiny, you've earned it. Do a little mutiny?

"I'm going to ask you a really stupid question, would that distract you?"

[I literally only have this one tab opened on Firefox, why is it fucking lagging out now?]

SOMEONE FUCKING PUNCH OUT THE CAPTAIN ALREADY, FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

The captain's about to fire those torpedoes himself...

"Look, captain, you're a legend. Trust me, I know."

Why dopes it seem like Drake's about to commit suicide?

[Can you tell I have been pointedly deciding to not say the Captain's name until this moment?]

[Also, just got done with a second Creme Savers roll.]

[This fucking AirBNB commercial...]

Did I hear Ben right? Is he about to fucking give the ship an anti-mine shield?

I am honestly shocked that worked...

It is a dick move to have Brandon Routh pretend to be ignoring this speech right now, episode...

"Everything's going to be okay. I think my Ghost Future Daughter just assured me of that..."

OH FUCK, THEY REMEMBERED THE COWBOY EXISTED!

"You helped me save the Tampa. Eat shit, Ben. (leaps)"

And Ben winds up in People's Court.

Honestly, I still can't get over how that shit with the anti-mine shield worked, but that might just be me being a dumbass.

#quantum leap #spoilers #s.o.s.#legends of tomorrow #brandon routh #battleship #back to the future #minesweeper

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artdecosupernova-writing · 1 year

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Fictober '19 Prompt No. 15 — "That's what I'm talking about!"

Category: Original WIP: WASTE Rating: T Timeline: after Guetry's supposedly failed mission, after he's implanted with Scotty, and before the main events of the book CW: minor blood mention Word Count: 733 Additional Notes: there's an oh moment in here I promise

***

PART II ➳ PART I

"What legally questionable task are you having me perform this time?"

Guetry swiftly disappeared into the unattended office and with a flourish, swiped the door locked behind him. "You think I'd let you take the fall for this one, Scotty?" He spared a vague glance around the room before settling on the terminal at the desk sat in the center. "No, no, this is a 'me' problem as of right now."

He strode over to the desk and to his pleasant surprise, the terminal reacted to his movements, though his pleasure was short-lived as it immediately switched over to a security program asking for identification.

Guetry sighed. "Well, five seconds in and I'm already fucked. Not in a way I can fondly look back on during later dry spells, either."

"I may be able to bypass this," Scotty said directly into his head. "You will have to give me permission to act."

"Right, do it. Just know this is gonna benefit everyone in the long run. I want you to know I'd never use you to harm anyone."

"…Noted," Scotty said curiously.

"Any cameras we need to worry about?" Guetry asked as the terminal logged itself into the system in tandem with a gentle pulse of violet haze at the edges of his vision. "Think you can work that out too?"

"There are none in this particular office, though there is one in that hallway. You will need to connect me via your port in order to access the building-wide security, and that course of action will have its risks."

Guetry took a steadying breath as he watched Scotty working through a wireless connection to bypass every failsafe this terminal had put in place. "Yeah, I kinda mentally prepped myself for that before I even left DeCosta's office."

"Is temporary anonymity worth the pain of activating your port and the consequences of going through with your plan?"

Guetry already had a hand near his right temple, pressing a finger into the triangular disc embedded in his skull. "Yep. I'll get over it." The port shoved itself through his skin, a small spurt of blood landing on the floor with a splat. "Shit," he grunted, a headache already rippling through his brain. "Remind me to clean that up before I leave…"

He swiped an appropriate cord from the back of the terminal and carefully aligned it with the port, wincing as he connected his head to the tech.

"I have reached the camera."

"Excellent," Guetry muttered. "You know what to do."

"Would you like me to access the Ursthsis as well?"

Eyes widening, Guetry ignored the throbbing in the entire right side of his face. "Wait…wait. That's the single most important allegiant battleship out there. Are you—do you know where it is?"

"It is unlikely I will determine its location without alerting all of the individuals on board, however, I should be able to get into its information database fairly undetected."

"Oh, do it, baby," Guetry grinned. He leaned over the terminal's keyboard and summoned a capture program with a few taps. "This is what we're here for."

He watched with growing mirth as thousands of lines of code began to filter into the window, scrolling up at impressive speeds, chunks of translated bits backed in highlighter yellow. The more text that flew by, the more difficult it became to contain his excitement.

"Scotty," he breathed. "That's what I'm talking about!"

"Never underestimate my processing power, Guetry."

"Wow, okay. Am I aroused by that? Probably. It's fine, no need to figure that out later."

Mere minutes later, the last of the code emptied into the capture program, and Guetry began the manual process of downloading the data into Scotty's memory banks.

"We ready to go?" he asked, poised to disconnect his port.

"Yes," Scotty said. "Clean your blood from the floor before you leave."

Guetry paused with his fingers around the plug against his head. He looked at the minor splatter of crimson on the shiny white floor and his heart began to pound hard within his chest. "Uh…right…yeah, I'm on it."

He disconnected and took a napkin from the trash can beside the desk to mop up the mishap, wiping down the cord to be extra safe.

"Here we go," he murmured, swiping the door unlocked before leaping to make a dramatic exit into the vent in the top corner of the room.

#fp1 #WASTE #pair: Permanent Geometry #repost

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lonestarbattleship · 1 day

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USS TEXAS (1892) stationed in a bay.

Date: 1895-97

source

#USS TEXAS (1892)#USS TEXAS #Second Rate Battleship #Battleship #Warship #Ship #United States Navy #U.S. Navy #US Navy #USN #Navy #1895 #1896 #1897 #undated #my post

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fzzr · 1 year

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I Can't Quit Gurren Lagann

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is my favorite anime franchise of all time. The second movie, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Lagann-hen is not coincidentally the anime which I have rated 10/10 longer than any other†. So, why is Gurren Lagann great, and Lagann-hen Perfect In Every Way That Matters?

Gurren Lagann starts with only a few minutes to introduce us to the protagonist, Simon, and his slow life digging new tunnels for the underground village he calls home. The first domino of the series falls immediately, with his discovery of a tiny, glowing drill perfect for use as a necklace. From there we move on directly to Simon's "big bro" Kamina trying to break through the roof of the village using a tower of screaming livestock. Next, Simon discovers the lock to which the drill he found is the key - a miniature mecha (later named Lagann), glowing with that same pulsing green. Soon the ceiling cracks open, and in falls a mecha at full scale. It is pursued by a woman with a railgun sniper rifle wearing nothing but a bikini, tights, and ammunition. After some shenanigans and encouragement from Kamina, Simon pilots his miniature mecha to victory and in the same motion launches himself, Kamina, and the lady sharpshooter Yoko into an open sky nigh unimaginable to residents of an underground village.

I could summarize the series blow-by-blow from memory, but I'll cut myself off here. The plot consists of the trio and others they meet along the way building up the titular mecha Gurren Lagann from the parts of the mecha they defeat. They then declare a revolution against the "beastmen" who pilot the hostile mecha, as well as their commander, the Spiral King Lordgenome. The key theme is advancement, with each turn of the drill of your soul moving you forward a bit more. The story is actually four repetitions of the same pattern: Our protagonists seize something small by their own effort and build it up until they can take on and capture something orders of magnitude larger, both literally and emotionally. Lagann is shorter than an adult man. By the end of the first arc, they are up against a battleship. After that, it escalates to them facing a mecha the size of a city, and things get exponential from there as each revolution is succeeded by another.

Around and around and around

What else should I gush about? Speed round!

The music is awesome. From the OP to the eyecatch stings to the hiphop-and-Latin-prayer banger Libera Me From Hell, it's hits all the time. Sorairo Days is so beloved it makes cameos in other anime. It's not just the epic moments, either. Gurren Lagann gets dark sometimes and it takes the music there, but it always has its signature sound. I have a lot of anime songs on my playlist rotations, but Gurren Lagann might have songs on the most diverse playlists.

Animation! When at the top of its game (and especially in the movies), Gurren Lagann's action animation can stand up to anything from Akira to Demon Slayer. Even in regular scenes, there's always something to look at. Still, Gurren Lagann is a show that lives on spectacle, but it doesn't die on it. Fights are always dynamic, and character action both informs and is informed by their unique personality and goals.

And those characters are iconic. Kamina, Yoko, Simon, Nia, Kittan, Viral, all of them except Rossiu. I appreciate how each of them grows in the story and grows on you at the same time. For a series about advancement and moving ever forward, it was critical that the characters progress in their own ways, and so they do. For such a bombastic show, it's crazy how subtly some of them get where they're going.

How to Watch Gurren Lagann

The correct answer is "as soon as possible and as much as is necessary" but that's probably not what you're looking for. Gurren Lagann the series is 27 episodes long. It is broadly split in half by a timeskip. The two movies each summarize and adapt one side of the timeskip give or take an episode. Unfortunately, Gurren-hen, the first movie, does too much summarizing and not enough adapting. As a result it yadda yaddas over a bunch of character introduction and development you need to know for later. Thus the best way to watch the pre-timeskip is the TV series. Lagann-hen on the other hand is Perfect In Every Way That Matters. It pretty much completely obsoletes the post-timeskip part of the series. There is still good stuff to be had, but Lagann-hen is proof that it's not necessary. Unfortunately, the continuity of Lagann-hen is set up to match Gurren-hen, so transitioning from the series into Lagann-hen is not seamless. I think it's worth watching the whole series and then the movies, but if you only want to make one run through the story, go with the TV series for episodes 1-15, then Lagann-hen. Lagann-hen changes some dialogue from episode 15, but don't worry about it - just go with the Lagann-hen version.

Conclusion

Scores: TV series and Gurren-hen: 9/10. Lagann-hen: 10/10.

Recommendation: In my opinion Gurren Lagann is just as suitable to be a first mecha anime as a fiftieth, but the necessary watch order for the best results can lead to either some confusion or some repetition, knocking off points for those not willing to put in that much time. Nonetheless, in my opinion everyone who cares about anime action owes it to themselves to watch Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

Gurren Lagann does require a somewhat elevated power level. In their time, excessive use of bouncy breast physics was known as "Gainaxing" and that is certainly present in some parts of Gurren Lagann. The movies, free of the requirements of broadcast television, don't bother with even token censorship in this matter.

Comparisons

At the time they made Gurren Lagann, Gainax was arguably the studio with the most impact on the Super Robot genre. Eleven years earlier, they had shattered the scene with Neon Genesis Evangelion, the influence of which is inescapable to this day (and not just because Hideaki Anno spent fifteen years cashing in on the IP with the Rebuild movies). Gurren Lagann was their first full-length return to the genre after Evangelion, and they brought their A game.

I do not like Evangelion. I have never managed to sit through the whole TV series, and I found the third and fourth Rebuild movies so exasperatingly boring and obtuse that they made me actually mad for how much money was spent on them. Rebuild's baffling storytelling aside, the main reason I don't like Evangelion is the characters are just not fun to be around. Gurren Lagann is the anti-Evangelion in this (and many other) ways. The characters are bright, generally having a good time, take action, and of course kick ass. Even when characters are down in the dumps and act in self-destructive ways, you have had enough time making friends with them to want to stick it out until they're through it. When they do make it through, it's glorious and earned and inspiring.

Final Thoughts

I couldn't fit anywhere near everything I wanted to say in here. I'll leave you with one more thing: It's not notable by general otaku standards, but I am not someone who buys much merch. Gurren Lagann is the only anime franchise for which I have bought third party merch. Specifically I bought a physical printing of the sadly defunct fan webcomic Double K, a buddy cop comedy starring Kamina and Kittan (spoiler, they're BOTH the loose cannon).

† By the way, any time I talk about top rated anime movies, you can assume I excluded Ghibli movies from contention. They are excellent in a way almost completely orthogonal to how I think about most anime, and putting them on the same list would water down the significance of a 10/10 rating through sheer numbers.

#gurren lagann #tengen toppa gurren lagann #anime #ttgl #anime review #original post

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sungbeam · 1 year

Note

39, 40 and 50 for the ask game!

(you would not believe the amount of card and board games my bf and his friends have shown me recently lol)

eris !! long time no see/talk! thank u sm for sending in some numbers (ﾉ´∀｀*) omg no fr i swear that dudes just somehow know so many card/board games for some reason??

send me some numbers!

39. know any card games?

ik a couple? like go fish ofc, but my family plays this game called "killer" and apparently it's like viet poker?? somebody said it was but i don't really believe them LMFAO i also played this game called mau/mao at some point in freshman year but it was a lot of fun and i haven't met anyone who knew how to play it ever again 😔✨ i've also played slap jack as well 🤡

40. favorite board game

HANDS DOWN IT IS CLUE. I AM THE CLUE MASTER IN MY HOUSEHOLD, 100% WIN RATE !! honorary mentions go to cards against humanity and battleship tho lol

50. recommend a fic or author

omg ,, if i could recommend the entirety of tumblrs i know, i would. hmm i haven't read a lot recently but looking thru some of the stuff i *have* read, i'd totally recommend @hvae kidult two-shot !! made me bust a couple uwus and the second part bro (´Д⊂ヽ the changmin brianrot has been too strong lately and kidult is just so well written , highly recommend!!

#sungbeam strikes again #moot ❧#eris 🩰#ask games !!

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ryqoshay · 2 years

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Unstable World: A New Encounter

Flagship: N/A Starring: Umi, Honoka, Rin, Nozomi, Eli Rating: G? T? Words: 646 AU: A war-torn dimension other than our own Time Frame: Sometime before the main story Event: Promptober 2022 Event Source: Idol Fanfic Heaven channel on Discord Prompt: Bridge Content Warning: Mild depictions of war and battle

---------

Author’s Note: Bonus 2nd entry for Oct 11th

Summary: The Pandæmonium Riders encounter something new

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“I’ll make this quick.” Honoka said from in front of her flight. “The Jardin de Verre has been sent to investigate a strange hurricane-like phenomenon. We are to support them, if Paragon activity is discovered.”

“Paragon vessel detected!” Nozomi’s voice came over the comm.

That was quick. Umi thought to herself.

“It’s trying to cloak itself in the eye of the storm.” The ship’s second officer continued.

“We’re going to try approaching from above.” Eli, the captain, added.

“I’m sensing weapons powering up. They know we’re coming.”

“Here we go.” Honoka grinned. “For some of you, this is your first assignment. Just follow my lead. Or Umi-chan’s, whoever is closer. Remember to trust your dragon. And most importantly, come back here safely.”

“Kotori is cooking for us tonight.” Umi added. “She’s expecting all of us to be there.”

That earned an enthusiastic reaction from those gathered.

“Pandæmonium Riders!” Honoka shouted. “To the skies!”

With that, dozens of dragons and their riders flew out of the hold of the airship Jardin de Verre. Immediately, they found themselves enshrouded in thick clouds and buffeted by shifting winds.

“Keep descending!” Honoka called. “Nozomi-chan said there’s an eye somewhere down there.”

Eventually, the flight burst through the belly of the clouds, into the eye of the storm.

“What is that, nya?” One of the flight’s newest members, Rin, asked. “Looks like a jellyfish.”

Sure enough, as the riders continued past the upper dome, large tentacles could be spotted hanging below. And just as many ocean-dwelling species of this world, much of the foreign sky creature was translucent, allowing the Paragon moving within to be seen.

However, this was no ordinary sky giant, corrupted by the Paragon and repurposed for war. There were weapons, yes, that were starting to fire on the flight. But Umi could see what looked like the research equipment used by the URS, a nation that was known for reverse engineering salvaged Paragon technology.

“This is not a battleship.” Umi thought aloud. “This is a reconnaissance vessel, sent to try to spy on us.”

“Well we’re not gonna let them do that.” Honoka declared. “Everyone, attack! Send it to the depths! Don’t let them gain anything important!”

The dragons began to swarm, launching a myriad of breath attacks ranging from fire to ice, acid to explosive compounds, and wind to sand. And of course, Tempest’s lighting.

However, Umi frowned as her dragon sent another bolt, only for it to skitter, seemingly harmlessly, across the surface. Not good.

“Umi-chan!” Honoka cried as she guided Pandemain near her second in command. “Our attacks aren’t working! What do we do?”

Umi watched acid slide off the side, and explosions and winds just cause ripples. Solids like ice, sand, and the projectiles from the riders’ weapons seemed to scratch the surface, but at least had a lasting effect. Perhaps…

“Umi-chan?”

“One moment.” Umi said.

Where? She studied the layout of the vessel. Where…? There? Maybe?

Umi drew her bow, gathering as much magic as she could muster and concentrating it in the arrowhead.

Breathe.

Aim.

Release.

The arrow flew true. And punched through the jellied armor.

“Tempest, follow my arrow!”

The dragon loosed a bolt with absolute precision through the hole and into a bank of equipment. Immediately, explosions ripped through the room, spreading to others. And out through the armor, leaving massive tears.

“There are our openings.” Umi ordered. “Attack through those!”

The dragons swarmed again. This time however, they were able to make short work of the enemy, sending it, as ordered, to the sea below.

“They used to be invaders like the rest.” Rin said. “Until they took an arrow to the bridge.”

Honoka burst out laughing. “Good one, Rin-chan!”

Wait… was that a joke? Umi didn’t get it. Well, no matter. She decided as the storm subsided and the flight made their way back to the airship.

---------

Author’s Note Continued: While I’m having fun writing about the dragon riders, I really should get around to writing at least some Queen Nico and Grand Star Maki at some point.

#Sonoda Umi #Hoshizora Rin #Kousaka Honoka #Unstable World #Love Live #Promptober 2022 #fanfic

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cursedalthoughts · 1 year

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PR6 PREDICTIONS - Eagle Union

This time around the burgerboats have plenty of choices for at least 1 PR, maybe even a DR! and I am here to tell you all about them.

Like always: Just like last post: Do not treat any of the following choices as guaranteed. I would not bet money on any of these specific ones getting added as part of PR6 this year, it's just the ships I see as Very LikelyTM.

Let's start with the DRs. There are 2 main candidates and both are effectively the same thing.

USS Delaware

USS Kearsarge

Both are hybrid battleships. We only got 4 BBVs in Azur Lane and they all suck (even if waifu>meta) and are from Sakura. These 2 different hybrid battleships would be, well, different.

Delaware would have access to a squadron of 5 dive bombers that drop 10 bombs (2 per bomber), fast and tanky planes. Her upgraded ones are AD-1 Skyriders, which is a plane that exsisted I guess (I'm not an aviation nerd). Kearsarge, however, has access to attack aircraft; her only option being a squadron of 5 F8F Bearcat.

This means both ships would be able to equip any planes whatsoever (well, dive bombers or fighters, but any of those), unlike the existing BBVs.

Delaware is literally an Iowa with a runway strapped on top.

In terms of gunplay, Kearsarge is an absolute monster - her 12 406mm guns hit like trucks but are delivered in 3-5 shipping days (as in, they're slow). Delaware is ok, her shells are a bit faster because they have longer barrels.

Any of them could be the DR of the Eagle Union.

USS Vallejo

A preliminary design of the Worcester-class light cruisers, she would undoubtedly be a PR. She's mediocre at best - Seattle is better in a lot of regards, but she has a high rate of fire and very good AA. She's an option but honestly, I don't think we'll get her.

USS Tulsa

I can't find info on her existence IRL, so I assume she's a made-up Wargaming ship, meaning she counts for PR6.

Tulsa is a half-sister of the Oregon City-class, meaning she'd be a half-sister of Northampton II in AL (same way Ägir and Brünhilde or Monarch and the KGV-class can be considered half-sisters if you squint).

She fires incredibly, incredibly fast. Her reload rate is 5.8 seconds, which, even if she only has 6 guns, is scary because those are Des Moines guns. Des Moines is a famously great heavy cruiser in WoWs, having a faster-firing variant one tier lower is intimidating.

She would be PR and honestly, I see her addition far more likely than Vallejo. Besides, Tulsa is a cool name.

USS Congress

A preliminary design of the Alaska-class.

Yes. A large cruiser.

I see Congress being the Georgia of USN vanguard ships. She would act as a herald of what's to come for when we inevitable get Alaska (and possibly Guam as well); same way Georgia acted as a tease for the Iowa-class (of whom we have only gotten NJ. PLEASE ADD MORE IOWAS. I DARE YOU). In terms of gameplay she's extremely fragile and weak in the wrong hands, but can be a useful asset. She has good AA, radar, hydroacoustic search, and only 7 305mm guns. But those are 7 very hard hitting 305mm guns, which can devastate anything that's a lower tier.

USS Constellation

The capital ships don't stop coming.

Constellation is a what-if: "what if Lexington and Saratoga never underwent aircraft carrier conversions?"

The answer is a funny little battlecruiser. Well, "little". This shit has more free board than [insert hilarous comparison].

However, despite her obvious weakness of having a lot of flat armor on her sides, she's somewhat fast and has 8 406mm guns. That hit like trucks. Like all American 406mm guns (except you, Colorado. You suck.) And radar. And one of the best AAs of all battleships. And if you thought those were all her gimmicks, she also has a spotter plane, meaning she can fire at a ludicrous range.

Oh.

And torpedoes.

This bitch has torpedoes.

USS Minnesota

She's a fat, slow, slumbering, ugly, hideous battleship. A Tillman design, ever wonder why the Colorados were the last Tillman design? yeah, because they suck.

Minnesota is an enlarged Colorado in the most literal sense. She has 40 seconds of reload. You can genuinely prepare coffee from scratch while you wait for her guns to reload. And her guns are disappointingly innacurate at times.

But when they hit.

Oh god. They hit.

USS Nebraska.

If we get neither Kearsarge nor Delaware, there's always Nebraska.

She would be PR. She's a North Carolina that can launch Helldivers.

USS Annapolis

The hail mary.

She's a super-super Des Moines. She's the heavy cruiser to end all heavy cruisers. If we get her, she would be a DR for sure, and would outdamage some of the already top-tier battleships in Azur Lane. It's impossible that we get her, but it would be incredibly funny.

#azur lane #priority research #eagle union #world of warships

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usafphantom2 · 2 years

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flickr

British torpedo bomber Fairey Albacore at Luqa Malta 1942.

The Fairey Albacore was a British single-engine carrier-borne biplane torpedo bomber built by Fairey Aviation between 1939 and 1943 for the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm and used during the Second World War. It had a three-man crew and was designed for spotting and reconnaissance as well as level bombing, dive bombing and as a torpedo bomber. The Albacore, popularly known as the "Applecore", was conceived as a replacement for the aging Fairey Swordfish, which had entered service in 1936. However, the Albacore served with the Swordfish and was retired before it, being replaced by the Fairey Barracuda and Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers, The Albacore prototypes were built to meet Specification S.41/36 for a three-seat TSR (torpedo/spotter/reconnaissance) for the FAA to replace the Swordfish. The Albacore was designated TBR (torpedo/bomber/reconnaissance) and unlike the Swordfish, was fully capable of dive bombing: "The Albacore was designed for diving at speeds up to 215 knots(400 km/h) lAS with flaps either up or down, and it was certainly steady in a dive, recovery being easy and smooth. and the maximum under wing bomb load was 4 x 500 lb bombs. The Albacore had a more powerful engine than the Swordfish and was more aerodynamically refined. It offered the crew an enclosed and heated cockpit. The Albacore also had features such as an automatic liferaft ejection system which triggered in the event of the aircraft ditching.

The first of two prototypes flew on 12 December 1938 and production of the first batch of 98 aircraft began in 1939. Early Albacores were fitted with the Bristol Taurus II engine and those built later received the more powerful Taurus XII. Boscombe Down testing of the Albacore and Taurus II engine, in February 1940, showed a maximum speed of 160 mph (258 km/h), at an altitude of 4,800 ft (1,463 m), at 11,570 lb (5,259 kg), which was achieved with four under-wing depth charges, while maximum speed without the depth charges was 172 mph (277 km/h). An Albacore fitted with the Taurus II engine and carrying a torpedo weighed 11,100 lb (5,045 kg).

A total of 800 Albacores were built

No. 826 Naval Air Squadron was specially formed to operate the first Albacores in March 1940, being used for attacks against harbours and shipping in the English Channel, operating from shore bases, and for convoy escort for the rest of 1940. Formidable's 826 and 829 Squadrons were the first to operate the Albacore from a carrier, with operations starting in November 1940. Initially, the Albacore suffered from reliability problems with the Taurus engine, although these were later solved, so that the failure rate was no worse than the Pegasus that equipped the Swordfish. It remained less popular than the Swordfish, however, as it was less agile, with the controls being too heavy for a pilot to take effective evasive action after dropping a torpedo.

Eventually, there were 15 first-line FAA squadrons equipped with the Albacore which operated widely in the Mediterranean. Albacores played a prominent role in the ill-fated raid on Kirkenes and Petsamo in July 1941. More successfully they participated in the Battle of Cape Matapan and the fighting at El Alamein as well as supporting the landings at Sicily and Salerno. During the period September 1941 to end of June 1943, No. 828 Squadron, based at RAF Hal Far, Malta, operated a squadron of Albacores under some of the most severe blitz conditions imaginable during the siege of Malta, mainly against Italian shipping and shore targets in Sicily.

Albacore in flight. The markings place it around 1940.On 9 March 1942, 12 Albacores from HMS Victorious were launched to attack the German Bismarck class battleship Tirpitz at sea near Narvik. Based on information from one of six radar equipped aircraft already launched, Albacores from 817 and 832 Squadrons launched torpedoes and some also attacked with their machine guns. A courageous attack came within 30 ft of success at the bow but ultimately the FAA's only torpedo attack on the Tirpitz at sea failed with the loss of two aircraft and damage to many of the others.

In 1943, the Albacore was progressively replaced in Fleet Air Arm service by the Barracuda. The last FAA Albacore squadron, No. 841 Squadron, (which had been used for shore based attacks against shipping in the Channel for the whole of its career with the Albacore),disbanded in late 1943.

The Royal Air Force deployed some Albacores; No. 36 Squadron based at Singapore acquired five to supplement its Vickers Vildebeests at RAF Seletar in December 1941.The remnants of the squadron was captured by the Japanese in March 1942. In 1943, No. 415 Squadron RCAF was equipped with Albacores (presumably ex-FAA) before the Flight operating them was transferred and reformed as 119 Squadron at RAF Manston in July 1944. The squadron deployed later to Belgian airfields. Their Albacores were disposed of in early 1945 in favour of ASV-radar equipped Swordfish Mk.IIIs that the squadron kept until the end of the war in May. The Aden Communication Flight used 17 Albacores between the middle of 1944 and August 1946. Some of these were delivered by sea on the SS Empire Arun in December 1945 (all from Royal Navy stock).

The Royal Canadian Air Force took over the Albacores and used them during the Normandy invasion, for a similar role until July 1944.

Via Flickr

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