I should have gotten on this a couple of years ago but better late than never. It’s time to start collecting all my old favorites, especially the Timothy Zahn books.
Heir to the Empire is a little over 30 chapters so if I stick to my usual 2-3 chapters a day I should be finished within a couple of weeks.
(Huh, I haven’t needed to even think about using the star wars category in ages.)
I only have a few videos up right now, but it’s better to have a separate area for them.
This page is going to take some work but for now, it exists: Videos
Sundays are always a bit tricky during Clan Battles seasons, but today turned out alright.
To start, we made it into Gale League, though it took some tactical adjustments to pull it off. For my part, I’m pretty much maining Preussen for the time being. Yamato and Bourgogne are still options if things start trending in their favor, but I’ve had better games in the Preussen so far.
I got a few decent clips and I’m probably going to record one or two of my replays in the Preussen for video material. No word on when I’ll be making the actual videos, though.
I was hoping to get the Cosmo Messer E out the door today, so to speak, but my last round of testing did two things: One, revealed a design flaw I think is worth holding off for a few more days to try and address, and two, made me want to tweak the thruster systems one more time.
On the topic of thrusters, the Cosmo Messer E can get off the ground, but because it can’t hover in 1G environments, landing’s aren’t optional. The Type-99 it’s based on was an aerospace fighter, so I’m going to put the Messer’s hydrogen thrusters back in so it can land anywhere. It’ll change the stats from the notes I’ve been taking, but it’s worth it to have a good ‘first design.’
I’ve settled on a few events for Chapter Two so I’m going to be cranking those out in parts over the next few days. I wanted something up today so I made the first scene part one and left it at that.
I also went back and did another round of editing on Chapter One. It’s a little better now.
If the tankers of the 203rd were hoping to escape their inexplicable headaches and the natural unease they felt around the corrupted crystals, those hopes were dashed when they learned that the scouts had barely managed to clear the way for them.
As above, so below.
There were corrupted crystals everywhere. While the tunnels themselves may have been more than a hundred feet across, the armored battalion could only traverse the bottom, a narrow stretch of rock and gravel lined by red crystal mounds. Ricard noted a few wider areas where two tanks could travel side by side, but they were few and far between. More importantly, they had to travel single file to ensure every vehicle had enough room to turn around in an emergency.
More and more became amenable to the idea of turning back as the ground and the walls began to stir. No one needed the sensor vehicle’s operator to tell them that there was seismic activity in the region. It hadn’t yet been confirmed whether the small tremor was one of the worms, or aftershocks from some other event.
“This is the van. We have two paths we can take up ahead.”
Ricard touched his ear piece, curious about the report.
“Another tunnel opens up just behind us. They look fresh.”
“You found a fresh intersection? That’s unfortunate.” Ordinarily, Lieutenant Rog would be the first to explore a new avenue of attack, but a fresh tunnel meant unexplored territory. In truth, its only appeal would be the complete and utter lack of corrupted crystals along the path.
“No scout detachments?”
“Yeah. We have no idea where it leads and we don’t have time to chart it.”
The paths were marked for another team, and the 203rd pressed on. By the time Chaser came up to the intersection, Ricard was compelled to utter the lieutenant’s own words. “That’s unfortunate indeed.” The path was clear–and dark, lacking the eerie red glow cast by the corrupted crystals. Still, it was a much more attractive option than the path they were on. Looking back, Ricard could see where the fresh tunnel created a second branch going roughly back in the direction the came.
“I wonder if that worm is in the area.”
Let’s face it, everyone wants more nyoom for their vroom. Thankfully we’ll be getting more of that in 0.9.0. Not just in terms of travel time, but also in melee combos.
M.A.S.S. Builder: Speed Adjustments
This boosting speed curve seems a bit nuts on the face of it, almost like the mechs are going to get ramjets bolted onto them in the next major update. That’s not to say something like this wouldn’t be welcome, and it’s clearly going to top out at what looks like x4 the original starting acceleration?
Speed Curve (Before and After)
When you have to backtrack or get to the next area, the normal boosting feels oddly stale; it’s actually kind of immersion breaking and I’m not even sure why that is.
There’s also the matter of melee combos, which are also going to pick up speed toward the end. I normally play shooting builds, but I’ve had my fair share of episodes where I’ve put down the guns, rushed in with a beam sword, and started killing mobs left and right.
Here’s hoping the combo speed curve comes out well.
In the prelude chapters of Fleeing Victory, I used terms more strictly than I’m going to for the main chapters. I’m not making terminology changes going backwards though. I’d rather leave this as a distinct difference between the prelude and main right along with the narrative style.
The differences are about the names of the vehicles/units in the story.
Tanks and arma are the same thing in Praedia, however the Munica’s language is based on Spanish and they named this class of vehicles arma. A bit simplistic, but ‘tank’ isn’t really any different. They were referred to this way exclusively throughout the prelude chapters, but going forward the Cordaeans and those with a more easterly origin will be calling them what you or I would call them. Tanks.
It’s the same situation as above. The drakes are flying robotic dragons rigged with scouting and combat aviation equipment. The Municans call them draques while the Cordaeans and others from that part of the world call them drakes.
I just wanted to put that out there seeing as I’m aiming to finish at least part of Chapter 2 over the weekend and get the balling rolling.
This weekend is my plan for tossing that one up on the workshop. I just have to get a presentation format down and resist–for as long as I can–the urge to make any more changes or do any more upgrades. It’s time to call this one and put it out there for scrutiny.
I don’t know when this one became so difficult to write. I think Remnants and Artorius are finally starting to take over in my mind. It might not be a bad idea to start getting some content written for those so I can relieve some of the ‘creative pressure’ they’re exerting. Barring that, I may just have to rehash some of my older story ideas and tweak them to fit FV. It’s a pantser series so it’s flexible enough for that.
In short: this is hard.
I hate it when I take the initiative, don’t get myself blown out of the water early game, secure map control in mid, and we still lose. I did eventually sink, as German battleships are wont to do in the end, but look at these!
We would have won if we either killed the Gneisenau in A cap and taken it back, or taken C cap since the enemy Colorado sailed off to another game and only came back to give the Gneisenau fire support. Our Mahan and Belfast went after the Gneisenau right after I got sunk by the Colorado, the Mahan exchanged torpedoes with the former, both of them exploded, then Belfast secured A and went to B to try and fight the Colorado. The Belfast also promptly exploded.
We should have split to take A and C simultaneously, and kudos to the Belfast and Mahan for playing so well up to that point, but I got beached torpedoing the Fiji and gunning out the Myoko (if you’ve seen my Graf Spee video you know I’m prone to beaching during sudden torpedo rushes), which left me open to the Colorado as I was backing out to get moving again.
I guess what I’m saying is both approaches could have worked but we banked too much on ‘Plan A.’ The Colorado not coming back to contest B cap in time, and expecting the Mahan to take out the Gneisenau and survive, neither of those panned out, so they had us beat on points and time. There was nothing left to do but have a one on one.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Today hasn’t been very productive. Mostly just putting the finishing touches on the Cosmo Messer, doing some reading, and some brainstorming. Things have to get rolling this weekend, though.
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