The Praedian Records

J.G. Phoenix

Current Projects

Chapter 2 1st Draft 30%

Remnants of the Elders

Yamato 60%
Hermes 5%
Yorktown 80%
Victorious 30%
Maya 5%
Blücher 70%
Prinz Eugen 10%
Seydlitz 85%
Lützow 10%
Magdeburg 5%
Prinz Heinrich 5%
Konigsberg 5%
Type 34 Destroyer 90%
Type 36 Destroyer 80%

Favorites in Fiction

MS-14Jg Gelgoog Jäger

YF-29 Durandal (WIP)

Writing Updates: Remnants or Artorius?

by | Apr 7, 2022 | , , , ,

Whether to start Remnants proper or Artorius first. That’s a problem I’ve been mulling over for weeks now. I’m not sure why exactly, but after watching this very interesting video from FEE, I’ve made my decision.

After briefly touching on the war in Ukraine he gets to the areas I’m more personally interested in.

Deeper Truths

One of the most appealing things about storytelling is that the best stories put an irrefutable truth right there for all to see, if they want to see it. It’s not something you have to be told directly, it’s just there, woven throughout the setting and the story being told. Anyone who says that’s easy to pull off hasn’t tried it, or isn’t being honest.

There’s also something to be said for letting the meaning behind a story imbue itself to a degree. Deliberately injecting commentary and themes into every aspect of a story can backfire. It’s the difference between Hayao Miyazaki’s work and all of the didactic crap we’re starting to get numb to.

So Which One?

I’m going to pull the trigger on both of these. I wasn’t sure which one to focus on first because I assumed I wouldn’t have time to work on both concurrently, and that trying would lead to an unhelpful amount of cross pollination in the stories. I’m starting to think that worry is a bit overblown, though. Doesn’t cross pollination from a single author just amount to that author’s signature style of storytelling? Their core message? I can think of worse things to embrace, and I’ve got bigger problems to worry about besides.

Also, I’ve never really been able to work on single projects with complete and total focus for very long. Even with Lydia’s Golden Treasury, I was making a lot more progress on that when I had other things I could write when my inspiration wavered, usually Fleeing Victory.

Remnants and Artorius can serve each other in the same way, so I’m going to work on both.

Remnants of the Elders

Remnants, RotE for short, is about Gods, Angels, and Men. This is also the one that’s been subtly torturing me for the past six or so months, as it’s much easier to sort out the lore and why certain things are the way they are. That’s in contrast to Praedia or Aeon, where things are different enough from the real world that I have to do an absurd amount of research to make sure even minor details actually work.

Whatever you imagine when reading ‘Gods, Angels, and Men’ is probably somewhere on point. The Remnants story I’ve outlined isn’t about particulars in folklore, religion, or history. This is one of those cases where I’m leaning more heavily on my own lived experiences, and why FEE’s video on Miyazaki’s films convinced me to pull the trigger on the series.

Artorius

Artorius actually has two sets of protagonists, but the second set is kind of a spinoff that covers the ‘front lines’ of some major historical events in Aeon’s setting. In the long run, the second set might be more important, but I’d like to write the first set first since there is some story overlap and direct interaction in places.

Artorius is a (set of) stories about ‘Villains.’ It’s no less broad in meaning than Remnants and its stories about Gods, Angels, and Men, but since the inspiration for Artorius had a such a profound effect on me, the stories will be more about particulars and the psychological impact of what happens to these people.

This is one that might work well as a visual novel, with alternate routes and the like, but I don’t have the art skills (yet) to pull that off all by myself. The current plan is to just write everything down, and then see what new forms it can take on.

Lydia’s Golden Treasury

I’ll keep working on this story no matter what else is going on. It’s just going to take longer due to two chapters being merged and a new one being inserted near the beginning.

The way I work on Fleeing Victory these days means it’s not much of a ‘companion project’ for LGT anymore, so I’m going to try to roll this in with Remnants and Artorius. Like I’ve been trying to say for a while now, focusing too heavily on one thing rarely works out for me; I get stuck and can’t move forward for months. That’s actually happening with LGT right now. Having a project where I’m not currently stuck on something helps me work out problems by taking a step back while still being able to work on something. It’s not a perfect process but it beats stagnation.

The Man from Ceres

I haven’t forgotten about this one, but conceptually it’s going to need a little more time in the oven. I have the basic ideas in place, but the main story needs more meat on the bones before I can really start writing anything. I’ll probably save this one for after one of the aforementioned projects is finished.

The Man from Ceres is going to be a great story, so I want to make sure the foundation is strong and build up from there.

Closing

So that’s the update for my writing projects. Three projects, one for each setting: Zion (Remnants), Aeon (Artorius), and Praedia (Lydia’s Golden Treasury). That’s fitting, and I actually didn’t plan for that. I’ll have more information up once things have picked up.

Clan Battles: Zzz…

by | Apr 6, 2022 | ,

We were more than an hour into waiting before enough people showed, and by that point I was ready to try to take a nap. It didn’t work too well, but I missed CBs for today. I could use a break anyway. I haven’t missed a CB (showing up at least) for as long as I can remember.

That’s about it for now. I’ll try to get some updates for ongoing projects posted tomorrow.

Prinz Heinrich and Admiral Hipper

by | Apr 5, 2022 | ,

I only woke up a couple of hours ago, so I’m going to keep this one pretty brief.

Some of the experiments I ran on Prinz Heinrich have been fully implemented on the Admiral Hipper, chief among them being subgrids. Despite how many it’s using, the ship is still stable. There is some trouble I’m having, though, and not the kind of trouble I want to deal with this late in a build.

It’s not a problem with Hipper, but with Heinrich. As close as the ship is to being ‘finished’, compared to the Hipper, it’s just not holding up anymore. My skills are improving and it’s really starting to show between these two ships.

Heinrich casts only a meager shadow
Just wait until the rest of the Hipper class shows up

Even the bridge designs are worlds apart.

Heinrich’s bridge with a sloped lcds mod
Hipper’s bridge; no modded lcds needed

Now it has to be said here that as a part of the Heinrich’s lore, it’s one of the oldest hulls in the fleet that’s still in active service. I don’t mind the ship looking ‘worse’ than the newer designs. What’s bothering me more is the difference in overall style. I’m calling the current Hipper the ‘Admiral Hipper II‘ because it’s the second version. The older one was coming along well enough and it was more in line with the Heinrich, but along with only being able to carry its fighters externally, it had a few other flaws I just couldn’t tolerate in the end.

The Admiral Hipper II takes her design cues from Star Blazers ships, making her bulkier, more rounded, and a lot more modular. The Prinz Heinrich is a 10 times now modified D-37 Timberwolf. She’s also built around a specific mod that I no longer use.

All of this rambling to say that I’m not sure if I should try to finish the Heinrich as is or do another overhaul. The Cosmo Messer’s going up on the workshop as soon as I figure out how that works, but I can’t say I’d be thrilled to see the Heinrich on there in anything near the state she’s in now.

I have to give this some more thought, but right now I’m really hoping I can come up with some improvements to the exterior to give the ship a less ‘slapped together’ look.

Fleeing Victory Chapter Three Part Two

by | Apr 4, 2022 | , ,

Casey kept his head down as Alice raced around plumes of dirt and debris shooting up out of the ground. Whether it was a sudden turn or driving right over a mound, they were evading everything the Municans were throwing at them. It was times like this, when they were under fire and running for their lives, that Casey realized just how reckless the woman behind the wheel was.

“Ya didn’t have to jump that, did ya?” Casey pleaded as he bounced helplessly beneath his machinegun mount. If not for his helmet …

“We’re not taking hits, right? Feel free to complain when that happens.”

“Well that’s not fair-” Casey suddenly found his head firmly against the side of the scout car as Alice swerved to the right, narrowly avoiding another shell. Dust and smoke poured into the vehicle from the viewport and left Casey half blind. “That count?”

“No,” Alice called back, only sparing him a quick glance.

Casey tried to keep himself upright as the Municans threw more and more fire at them, but more than once he’d wound up on his back or dazed from smacking his head against something harder than his helmet. Wishing he had a seatbelt–and a proper seat for that matter–he put on his goggles and pulled his scarf up over his mouth before climbing back up to the gunner mount.

There wasn’t much for Casey to see outside at first, only the signs of battle behind them and the endless desert up ahead. Even so, he was relieved to not see any of their own nearby. That at least meant there were no casualties that he or Alice could confirm.

It wasn’t long before Casey noticed the lack of shells coming at them. Since Alice wasn’t driving like she wanted to flip the car anymore, he wasn’t getting thrown around like a ragdoll. The real question was what changed. “Why did they stop shooting us?”

There was no response. Casey smacked the roof with his palm a few times. “Alice, the shooting stopped. Think we broke through.”

Somehow.

“Time to call it in.”

“Wait.” Casey had to know what was happening, first. The Municans weren’t shooting at them anymore, but something was still coming in the distance. Like the first nasty surprise the 203rd received when they arrived, the next attack was coming from the air. He counted at least six drakes.

“I see them,” Alice called up to him. “We need to warn the Lieutenant.”

“Oh we’re gonna do more than just warn’em,” Casey said, grabbing onto his machinegun and doing a quick inspection. “Good, no damage.”

“We’re going to attack them?!”

“Just annoy’em a little. If even one breaks off and goes for us, then that’s one less for Rick to have to deal with.”

“Yes,” Alice half agreed, “but we don’t have a big enough gun to bring down a drake.” If one did decide to attack them, it would be all they could do just to stay alive. If they were doing this, Alice needed to find them some good ground. Her searching quickly went from hasty to desperate as Casey got the gun ready for ‘pester-fire.’

“There’s nothing out here,” she hissed. At least, she thought frantically, there was nothing she could see from such rough terrain. There could be an airport less than a mile from them and the only evidence would be the sounds of planes in the distance, along with the occasional low flier. They had to get higher anyway to get the drakes’ attention, so Alice brought them up onto another mound.

“Nice spot,” Casey called down, “Just be ready to move when one comes this way.”

Alice heard him, but said nothing, instead using their new vantage to search for something, anything that could help them.

“Heeeey!” Casey opened up on the formation of drakes as soon as they were close enough to see the bullets arcing toward them from the ground.

“Come on, come on.” Alice came up short in her search until, in a bit of desperation, she opened the driver side door and looked out behind them. Her eyes went wide by what they had missed on their way here. “Is that a village?” She wanted to take back those words immediately, noticing some of the buildings half collapsed, and others being little more than foundations. It might have been a village at one point. Now, it was a ruin. Even so, that ruin was just the sort of cover they needed, and it wasn’t too far away.

“Casey, there’s a ruin behind us. As soon we get their attention we’re going there.” She wondered if he could even hear her over his own manic shooting. She doubted it; she could barely hear herself.

Suddenly, the shooting stopped. Casey leaned over his gun and tried to gauge the enemy’s response, but the drakes were still flying in formation. When Alice shut the door and leaned forward to get a good look herself, she saw the whole formation enter a wide turn to the southeast. Toward them.

“Casey?”

“All six of them are coming?! What? It’s a 50cal, not a SAAM launcher! Alice get us out of here! The plan worked a little too well!”

“I noticed!” Alice got the car moving as fast as she could, and they nearly crashed driving off the edge of the mound. Six drakes, six armed drakes were coming straight at them with murderous intent. She didn’t like their odds with even one of those shrieking planes. “If we can just get out of the open we might have a chance,” she told herself.

All Casey could do for the moment was hang on as Alice evaded the drakes and tried to reach the ruins, the ruins neither of them could see anymore. There was one more thing he could do, Casey suddenly realized, something he should do while he still had the chance. He reached for the radio.

To be continued

Clan Battles: Pure Fun

by | Apr 3, 2022 | ,

Tonight

I got a lot of good material, and we were 9/5 on wins and losses. I finally scraped together enough xp to get the Daring, so that sidequest is finally finished. Not to mention, it was a fun night. 10/10, even with the lack of sleep today.

Here’s my best highlight:

(I have to stop recording at such a high resolution; these things are a pain to work with …)

Ships used:

  • Bourgogne
  • Shimakaze
  • Daring
  • Smolensk
  • Yoshino B

Smolensk

I only played this for one match, and I think I got away with more nonsense than I should have. The team was trying a hard B to A push on Crash Zone Alpha; the enemy team countered us hard positionally, but we still outfought them. I also swung around to grab C as things were winding down, just to make sure we were secure no matter what happened. C rightfully belonged to us anyhow.

Daring

I didn’t get to do actual testing on Daring. This was an all DD comp with another hard B to A push that didn’t leave much room for figuring out the boat’s quirks in a ‘normal’ situation. So far I’m liking the Daring. It’s a nice balance of guns and torpedoes, though I’m not used to single launched yet.

Yoshino

She’s definitely my favorite cruiser at the tier. Basically an Azuma with torpedoes. It’s also really nice when you can get those 9-10k HE salvos. Mean but justified with all the radar cruisers roaming around.

M.A.S.S. Builder: Overall Combat Adjustments

by | Apr 2, 2022 | ,

M.A.S.S. Builder – WIP: 0.9.0 Overall Combat Adjustments – Steam News
This may come as a surprise, despite us mentioning throwing balance out the window down the drain, there are still changes that were needed for M.A.S.S. Builder’s combat to bring everything to a certain level that’s nearly the same. As mentioned time and time again before, our goal is to make everyt…

Melee build lovers, rejoice!

I think. 0.9.0 is still quite a ways off, but like usual it’s good news for the game. Vermillion’s addressing some of the issues melee builds have when dealing with bosses.

  • Bosses will have a longer wind-up time before some attacks, such as the first boss’ ground stomp, the multi-headed runner boss jump attack.
  • Bosses will now “fall” for a longer period of time to create a window for combo attacks to chain until the end. These windows of attack should also benefit slow firing weapons such as detonator and single shot weapons more.
  • Bosses will recover their stamina from melee attacks less.
  • *There’s something else planned as a big update coming to boss fights that both close combat and ranged players can utilize, which these changes will compliment. We cannot reveal them yet until its ready.

Bosses in particular are one of the main reasons I’m a shooter main and don’t really even delve into hybrid setups. Most bosses can knock you out in just a few hits so it’s usually not worth trying to muscle your way through all the AOEs and mobs to reach them and get in a few hits before inevitably having to run away again. The trade off with shooter builds is that doing this, you trade ammunition woes for HP woes.

The Dash attack is also getting looked at, but it was said this was just to make it slightly less spammable. It will have slightly less damage, and a longer transition from one dash attack to the next.

Some other good ideas coming include:

  • As mentioned before, increase melee attacks’ animation speed in their combo attacks. The deeper the combo is, the faster the attack is.
  • Certain defense nodes now have a passive increment to armor in addition to triggered defense increase.
  • There are now nodes that allow faster shield recharges and quantum break activation. We just had some time to code them in so now there’s more choice of nodes to help with your playstyle. Glass cannons ranged players can now regen their shields much faster with a single shield regen investment node while others can have a much lower downtime.
  • Quantum Break can now utilize “trigger at end combo attacks” tech nodes on every of their ‘nth’ hit. We’re still unsure what ‘nth’ will be.

I especially like the idea quantum break triggering from combos. I never use this mechanic because I can’t remember it exists for more than two minutes. I play this game on very hard difficulty when I’m not testing a completely new build, too, and that leaves a few more holes in gameplay aside from just not using melee on anything but lone mobs.

‘Overall’ these are great changes coming in the next update, and hopefully by the time it comes out I’ll have a few things to showcase. I’m not just covering this game’s weekly updates; I want to get some content of my own going as soon as possible. (See my Space Engineers material as an example)

April: Begin

by | Apr 1, 2022 | , , , , ,

A couple of quick updates.

Space Engineers

I knew I would be too out of it to get much else done this afternoon, so before I went to sleep I spent a good chunk of the morning doing some series testing on that carousel style hangar on the Admiral Hipper. I also tried to enclose the entire thing in an airtight room.

I really really needed a modless solution to having an opening wide enough for the Cosmo Messer’s wingspan but I couldn’t get an airtight seal with hinged doors, rotor doors, or hinged fill ins + normal hangar doors like some of the ones I spied on the workshop. Some people like to use pistons for this kind of thing, but I won’t even consider using pistons on my ships anymore unless they’re part of a Clang drive, or a small grid fighter catapult.

They’re still too finicky for my taste.

I tried an extended hangar door mode for a quick and easy–and temporary solution, but as I was slipping into dreamland, something told me the only solution that will work for a combination of ship sizes like this are side entrances. This way, the Cosmo Messers can leverage their short height to get through the doors same way the do on the Prinz Heinrich. So I’ll be putting in side doors and making some tweaks to the hangar to accommodate, because with sloped LCDs being the one exception, I refuse to use any more mods on this ship than necessary.

Fleeing Victory

Part 2 is coming along, but I’m still putting together certain scenes relating to the one I’m on–the usual. It should be done Sunday, but that largely depends on when and how I wake up. Right now a couple of other things are higher priorities for me, including deciding between a Remnants story or an Artorius story.

Since Fleeing Victory is more of a long term experiment, the pace could pick up dramatically or the whole thing could go quiet depending on what else is going on. Either way trust in these words when you see them:

“To be continued”

Phoenix

As for me, it’s tougher now. I haven’t had much in the way of good and consistent sleep for pretty much the entirety of March. Too many things were lined up to push and pull me in every direction at once. Not to mention I was making a bunch of little changes in the way I do things, especially on P.R.

So I’m still adjusting, and while I don’t expect April to be much better than March was, it’s a phase I’ve got to get through.

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