I'll Take "Things That Confuse/Annoy/Frustrate Me" for $500, Alex

Since today is Martin Luther King Jr Day and a day to reflect, consider, and understand the world around us all...I'm going to reflect on some things that are annoying, confusing, and frustrating me lately. Be warned, highly geeky and probably NSFW at some point...

1) Mass Effect 3, the third game in one of the better action/adventure RPG series out there, is going to have online DRM via EA's Origin platform. Well, bugger that idea of finishing off the Mass Effect series until they have a DRM-free/Steam-only version. Why? It's intrusive, automatically assumes that I'm going to be involved/dealing with a pirated version of the game, and the moment they don't want to support the game anymore, boom goodbye. And, they probably will NOT release any way to patch the game to avoid DRM issues (Alpha Protocol did this when the game series was canceled-the company released a patch that disabled the server check).

Ubisoft does this with their games, with the addition of "you must have a all-the-time, fully on Internet connection or else!" DRM scheme that the moment you have packet drop or any other issues dealing with the Internet...goodbye game. It's almost like they're allergic to making money or whatever. And, as far as I can tell, it's because EA is a bunch of anal-retentives whom like being in control of everything with their games, to the detriment of the game itself. When you have Sony (notoriously anal-retentive on the whole piracy thing) that has a problem with Ubisoft and EA's copy protection schemes-admittedly for legal reasons-maybe you should be reconsidering the whole idea.

It's like watching Star Wars and the whole scene of "the more you squeeze, the more control you'll lose". Which, of course leads us to...
2) George Lucas and his increasing madness. Okay, sometimes it's a good thing (Red Tails probably would not have been released/produced if he wasn't involved-it doesn't fit the current Hollywood paradigm), but I Did Not Ask for a 3D version of the Phantom Menace. It has almost reached the whole insanity thing of "Lucas will not keep remaking A New Hope until he dies" in the madness involved. It's not as bad as Force Unleashed II, or the Clone Wars animated movie...but that's sort of damning with faint praise, isn't it?

Hell, I'm not asking for 3D movies at all-it's another attempt at copy protection (it's hard to record a 3D movie in the theaters, I think...), an effort to create a "premium" experience to drive up ticket costs (which are already at the "obscene" levels for even a casual movie experience), and it's an effort to create a "oooh, shiny!" thing for audiences. I did not ask for any of this. I very much DO NOT WANT this. If you spent more on making good movies, taking chances on new Intellectual Properties, that sort of thing...I wouldn't mind so much. Except, well, now, I do. Very little appeals in terms of films and I've pretty much given up on watching network TV-so far, my "big three" network schedule pretty much consists of House after Law and Order: SVU became Law and Order: Lifetime Movie Of The Week. I probably watch more BBC America and Comcast's Music Choice TV than any actual TV programming...which is exceptionally sad. Let's not even talk about "popular" music-I can't even understand it, let alone the appeal. I don't feel old...and there's no urge to yell at the kids to get off my lawn, so it can't be that.
3)Yes, I know-anime exists to cater to young people to buy licensed items and love pillows in Japan and the US market exists at best as a "nice bonus" bit, but still... There were some great series in the past that hit the US market like a lemon wrapped in a gold brick and I don't just mean Naruto or Dragon Ball Z or Evangelion-Ergo Proxy, Serial Experiments Lain, Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Cowboy Bebop, Witch Hunter Robin, FLCL...the list can go on and on and I'm just in the official licensed stuff, not even counting fansubs.

But, this year? I'm mildly more optimistic than Steven Den Beste, but not by much... So far, my total list of series this year that look even remotely interesting is very, very short- Boacious Space Pirates, Aquarion Evol, and Lagrange. And, all appear to have US licensees already (which means it's either FUNimation, FUNimation, or...FUNimation, with the closure of Bandai Animation in the US), so no "legal" fansubs for any of them. Which means we can be waiting for up to two years for any of this to come out on DVD...after everybody and their cousin have been watching the horribly timed illegal fansubs out there. And, quite frankly, I want to give Aquarion Evol a test run for free before even thinking of buying it.

The rest of the shows out this Winter season? High School DxD looks like a plate of sick trying to fake being an "edgy" drama/fighting harem show that insulted my intelligence (the main character is a jerk asshole that is a massive violation of rule #1-when dying, he just wants to grope his killer's breasts). Listen To What Papa Says!, yay for vague incest loli erotic fun, not. Dog x Me SS, another supernatural "odd couple" romantic drama that looks like it'll be stalked by cherry trees (with all those blossoms everywhere...). Kill Me Baby! looks to be a very stupid show that will make most of it's "humor" from the whole "fish/soldier out of water" thing that Full Metal Panic! did so much better. And with giant robots.

Damn. It's probably the cold out there (it was below freezing last night here), but it's probably making me more cranky than usual. Still...not happy. The Secret Masters who run the world should clearly be fired and replaced with new people in charge. Immediately, please.

The Movie That Will Never Be Made, But Should Be...

The first movie that so should be made, but will never be is a simple one-

Ghost In The Shell by Michael Mann.

Why? Because...when I first saw Heat, I realized that this film could so easily be adapted to the vision of a post-cyberpunk world that I saw Mamoru Oshii pull off in his production. Mann is an artist with color...all the scenes that are of a character in the film are shot in a particular color type (the character of Neil McCauley, played beautifully by Robert DeNiro, tends to be stark, simple, and blue while Vincent Hanna-played superbly by Al Pachino-is colorful and complicated. We never see Vincent in anything other than complexity, all the angles filled). All the shots are stylized-night is the "normal," all the daylight shots are flat and bleached out.

Ignore the gunfights-which are beautiful, by the way. Ignore the crime drama. Ignore everything else...at the heart of it is two stories of two lonely, alienated men-Neil due to the discipline he maintains ("Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner") and Vincent whom is working on pretty much failed marriage #3 and personal relationships that he's willing to toss aside for anything that gets in the way of catching guys like Neil. Two guys that admit that they respect each and like each other, but one day will probably have to kill the other because that's the discipline they're both under.

Ghost In The Shell is about alienation as well. For Major Kusanagi, does she really exist? Is there a brain in her skull, a ghost in her soul? Or is she just all software that mimics human existence? There's an iconic scene in the movie where Kusanagi is on a boat, and she sees a woman that might as well be her twin sister-or somebody using the same cybernetic body (the video is here on YouTube, 0:39 to 0:52). There's the last chase, as Section 9 hunts down the team that stole the Puppetmaster body from them for Section 6, using this iconic music as a part of the chase scene.

I can damn well see, in my mind, the film-shot for shot-with Michael Mann directing it. I can see the Major and Batou in their boat, talking about their circumstances. Or the chase scene through the market...not a shot for shot adaptation but one where Batou grabs items to make himself seem a bit more like the crowd as he hunts for an invisible man. And, the final, climatic gun fight...man vs. machine vs. man.

Of course, a US version is being made by Steven Speilberg, but I think that he'll miss the point, which is awful. Still, one can dream.

UPDATE: A great blog posting on the real life locations that inspired the movie. Worth looking at, and the rest of the blog, too.

Anime Here And Not...

Well, Steve DenBeste has hit about the same problem that I've had with the difference between getting stuff bit-torrented vs. waiting for the legal, official download. To rehash the issue from my perspective...

1. There are some series that will probably never make to the US. Legend of the Galactic Heroes will probably never see a US release-it's nearly 25 years old (and the animation was good for the era-but, still, 25 years old), nobody could afford to handle the dubbing track for the series (it would probably run to about 60 hours worth of dialog), etc, etc, etc...
2. There are some series that nobody could afford to bring to the US. Macross Frontier probably has a license cost that runs in seven+ digits, you would probably have to provide a high-level dub track that would include redoing all the songs in English (okay, some of Sheryl Nome's songs done in Very Good English would be very cool), -even ignoring the whole "who exactly owns it for handling overseas release" (I've heard everything from Harmony Gold to Big West to nobody having a clue).
3. There is some stuff that is so...esoteric that the fan base is very, very small. No question about it, there are some very rare things...
4. Time is not on your side in some ways. Fans can get fansubs of a show (usually of good quality) in less than 48 hours. Assuming your show does get picked up by a US distributor, we're talking anywhere between a year to two years before you get four episodes on a DVD at a time.

So, how would I solve this? If I had a great deal of money, I'd go into the anime distribution business myself (as a labor of love, not for profit...), and one of the things I'd insist upon as a part of my contract with the anime studio that we would get HD masters of the show in enough time to produce, subtitle, and distribute in HD the show on iTunes within 48 hours of the episode being shown in Japan.

However, I don't think I could get away with it...the US market is still viewed as a niche one in Japan for anime, and I don't think there's any way to get away with it...

Review: The World Of Darkness and Mage:The Awakening

First things first, I want to say that I fucking loved Mage:The Ascension with quiet sort of desperation that is best described as "courtly love from afar". During the early '90s, people kept telling me, "you have to check out White Wolf games, they're the shit and awesome and cool and all that." But, the games they had so far seemed to have either been a case of playing angsty, blood-sucking ambiguously gay porn stars or every variation of Wolverine that Marvel Comics thinks it could have gotten away with. Then, Mage came out, and like somebody slipping me the red pill, I fell into this world of wonders, joys, amazement, and magic. And, this was a universe of urban post-modern magic that I could get behind, unlike Unknown Armies which seemed to always be a case of "everybody's smarter than you are, and the only way to get ahead is to go mad." The game had magic, worlds of possibilities, enemies ranging from "we're good guys, only different" to "shoot them in the head, now" bastards. The magic system was free-flowing and it let players get away with one of the most important talents (I think) a player at a game table should have-using bullshit and amazement to succeed by entertaining other people. Yea, it had some mechanical issues and some other problems, but I liked it.

Even better, you could have played as the theoretical "bad guys", aka the Technocracy, with zero irony. And, from a personal perspective, you could easily see how the Technocracy was a much better bunch of people (making the world a better place and kicking the ass of any supernatural monster that would eat people) than the Traditions (whom were stuck in the "only the right people" can find the way to enlightenment). They weren't evil, just somebody on the other side of a long war that kept seeing monsters being allowed to roam free when the Traditions were in charge, and doing something about it.

Most importantly, if you knew the right powers, you could turn vampires in to lawn chairs and margaritas. I wish I was making that up. You could, with the right Spheres of magic, turn vampires into lawn chairs and margaritas and sit on them in the sunlight. That's awesome, almost as cool as a gun that shoots shuriken and lightning.

When I was down to a game budget of about two game lines, Mage:The Ascension and Champions was it-Champions because The Best Gaming Group In The World was playing it and I was a part of it, and Mage because I loved the game. And, life was as good as it was going to get for me, game-wise.

So, around '02, White Wolf Games came to the realization that the game mechanics for the World of Darkness was breaking down, they were running out of ideas to throw at players, and quite frankly the market for the books was over-saturated. In that, they decided to reset the whole game line, blow the universe up, and rebuild it. Part of this rebuilding was to totally revise all the game lines, and to separate out the game rules from the setting book. And, this actually worked pretty well, as the World of Darkness rule set is pretty good with a few flaws in it. My big issues with it is that there's a lack of the snarky commentary in some of the sections, you have to buy martial arts as "powers" and not skills, and some of the damage mechanics seem funky. Oh, and the morality system seems to be built in to involve a nagging mum effect. But, unlike most "generic" rules, you can pretty much run a low-level supernatural campaign with just the core rulebook and be done with it. This counts, in my mind, as a Very Good Thing. And, by doing this, you can turn over the page count in the setting rulebooks to more neat stuff, and in the case of the newest Mage game, Mage:The Awakening, more ways to turn vampires into lawn chairs and party drinks.

Except...well, it's harder. The new Mage background is one of "only one path to enlightenment" in the form of Atlantis (which they're very clear is a. not just the place that Plato described during the era of Ancient Greece and b. was done in as much by hubris as people being mean to each other). Sometime in the really, really far past, a bunch of powerful mages climbed up to power, there was treachery, betrayal, and two major factions tore the universe apart. This condemned most of the human race to becoming Sleepers, and creating an Abyss that wants to devour everything. But, five of the mages created the Watchtowers and some humans can awaken again from Sleep. Bra-fucking-vo, you stupid bastards.

First of all, I want to talk to whomever set up and laid out the book-unless you wanted to make the point of "magic is hard to understand and read, and requires dedication", the book layout sucks. Odd uses of text fonts and font colors, breaking the text up with mystical symbols...ugh. Irritating. Next, the magic system has been changed-you can debate better or worse, but the changes have broken the nine Spheres into ten Arcana, with one that you're weak in and two that you're strong in. The magic changes also mean you have to learn Rotes-basically spell "short hand" for certain effects to make it easier to cast and handle. And...all the magic is that of Atlantis-they "won" the magical decisions war, and that means that everybody uses their language and terms and concepts.

Oh, and Paradox is no longer "reality biting back", and more "you failed to negotiate well with the Abyss that straddles the Real World and magical power". The enemies no longer range from "kind of like you, but playing with different rules" to "bug-fucking nuts", they're now "the world will run by the rules of the guys that caused the Abyss" to "various categories of bloody lunatics". And, unlike the "we're making the world a better place-once we figure out what 'better' is" of the first Mage, the new Mage is a Gnosticistic romp through "becoming something more and greater than God". Yay. And, the new morality system that permeates the game system has it's expression as "Wisdom"-messing around with the powers of the universe unwisely is a Very Bad Thing and is like doing cocaine. And, as just about anybody that has done cocaine can tell you, you start out doing well and it all goes downhill fast and very mess.

Except most people that do cocaine won't start developing extra limbs or an evil twin. Usually.

I really, really wanted to love this game. And, I do like it-I just don't have the same absolute lust for buying books and such that I had for the previous version of the game. I get the feeling that if I wanted to pull off the same game effect that I had in Ascension, I'd have to drag out my copy of Genius:The Transgression, and it's not even an "official" game (but it is so awesome, it should be). It feels like you're trying to play a game where you can be John Constantine without irony or "messing around with mechanics" that a lot of other games have. That Neil Gainman (who is one of the authors that I like when he's "on" and despise when he's "off") is one of the big game-world influences disturbs me as well.

So, in a nutshell-the new World of Darkness is pretty cool. Mage:The Awakening is neat, you won't feel like you lost money buying it, but it doesn't have the same flavor as Mage: The Ascension and that is a bit disappointing. Now, it's going to be sunset soon, and I've got these great lawn chairs and margaritas to share...

More On The Bushido Blade Wii Idea

Anyways, I've been coming up with more ideas for the Bushido Blade Wii idea...

• I've decided that there will be about eight playable characters, four hidden ones (since it's a Square/Enix game, Cloud Strife, Squall Leonheart, Sora, and a unnamed Jedi). Twelve weapons for the players, and about four bosses.
• The weapons are all going to be "classical" weapons-rapier, long sword, katana, naginta, scimitar, broadsword, pike, and saber. By going through the training games, you can get upgraded versions of the weapons. The "perfect" weapons are hard to find, but very much worth it. The eight players have an "optimal" weapon choice, of course. The hidden characters have improved versions of their weapons to find.
• The basic game story-eight characters that are members of a secret society of assassins. They think that they're trying to make the world a better place, but actually are serving a cause of making things worse. The player is the one trying to escape, the remaining seven are trying to kill them (yes, I'm using the original plot. So sue me.)
• Realistic weather. Using the Wii Weather Channel to find the weather close to the player, or the "original" dojo, or somewhere else in the world.
• Lots of little visual bonuses. Good stuff.

More ideas as they come up...

Sudden Explosion Of Imagination!

I just had a great thought, and a superb game idea.

It'll either be awesome-or I'll get killed by insane fans. Your mileage may vary.

The idea-remember Bushido Blade? (If you haven't, you missed a great game that every fighting gamer player should have owned.) Solo player game where there was no health bar, no "blow up the scenery" super moves-just guys (and gals) with swords and making the most of a massive dojo area to fight in.

The concept-Bushido Blade Wii. (Wait for it...)

Single player game, with the Wii Motion Plus to control the sword, and the Wii Balance Board to control the player (move the player's balance to move where the player goes, to dodge, etc, etc...). The game is played either from first-person or third person (with a "ghost" player), with multiplayer being done by the WiiConnect.

All sorts of gameplay options, including a "Highlander" option (fight your way to beat the enemy, then take their head), 10,000 Ninjas (survive waves of ninja attackers), and with the amount of accuracy that the Wii Motion Plus offers...you'll be seeing a lot of geeks that can suddenly go pretty good with a sword (I'd find that awesomely cool, as well).

Somebody's going to have to say "it's a great idea" or "it sucks"-and if you think it's great...how does one get a Wii Dev kit?

Horrible Mis-Matches In The World

We've seen them all. Sonny and Cher. Little tiny women with huge dogs. Brittney Spears and K-Fed. A bacon Gardenburger. Things that should not go together, and when they fall apart, people that honestly took a look at it was not surprised. The only people that aren't surprised are the people involved and their hanger-ons.

A new, horrible mis-match that we're going to see end badly-President Obama and the United States of America.

So far, nobody has really been able to prove to me that the United States-on a political axis-is more or less a center-right country. There's a fundamental distrust of the concentration of power outside of certain activites-military, some kinds of regulation and law enforcement. A belief in what the Little Red Hen said-she did all the work to make the bread, so why should people that did nothing but sit around and watch get anything? It may also be more of a modern thing, but the mores of the United States have changed in the belief in the melting pot-we got no problems with the Pakistani bistro down the street, but your kids have to learn how to speak English as their main language. And, they're here to stay-you're here to make a small bit of this country your home and bitch about the fact that your daughter is seeing that Irish kid down the street with his pants around his knees (but, if you kill her for the "dishonor", you'll be staring at a needle yourself).

Militarily, there is a belief in that a single source of leadership-however occasionally poor it is-is better than military control by committee. Better a George W. Bush than a Senate Armed Services Committee. We like having somebody that we can wave a finger at and say "he's to blame", and force changes by indirect (protests, letters, writing) and direct (voting out his allies, voting out the one who's the problem) means.

Like all generalities, there are exceptions-Johnson's Great Society is a big one (I suspect a lot of people thought it was a "fair" deal, and not what it turned out to be-bread and circuses). So was the massive demobilization after both World War II and the end of the Cold War, when the world kept showing that there were major threats on the horizon. But, both sides agreed that there had to be an end to the tools of war, if not for why there had to be an end.

And then, we get to President Obama. As it seems to be from how he's been treated in Europe, he'd make for a great head of a major leftist party. His politics are very much "we need to centralize power so the decisions can all be made once, here". And, many of the policies are ones that have been used over the decades in other places and failed horribly. You keep getting the feeling that it's like Charlie Brown and the Kite Eating Tree...instead of being careful, he just buys a bigger, more expensive, and much more tasty kite.

A few of the less brilliant ideas he's had...

• "Cash For Clunkers"-not does it mean that there are fewer cars on the used/secondary sales market (which a lot of lower-middle class and poor people get their cars) and the related parts market, most of the cars bought to replace the junked cars tended to be from Japan and Europe, not the United States.
• Bailing out GM. For years, the bitter joke has been that GM is pretty much a company that provides health care and benefits, and as a byproduct makes cars. Bankruptcy and restructuring would have been awful for the people that depended upon GM and people that depended upon GM people for their lives, but restructuring would have done something to make GM profitable. Now, all that's going to happen is that the crash is going to be higher and harder to avert. And the mess much larger.
• Dithering about his support in Afghanistan. Especially doubling-up with the Pakistani government that has been shown in the past to either look the other way or help Al Quedia. You can almost suspect that he's waiting for a Tet-like event that looks horrible on TV to pull American troops out.
  
• By words and deeds, pretty much putting Eastern Europe out in the cold. There's a steadily growing sense of Russian nationalism, an effort to go back to the "good old days" when Eastern Europe was where Russians went for cheap hookers and cheap goods. Not as free nations that have had enough-centuries enough-of being a part of a Russian Empire in all but name.
• Failing to provide political support in dealing with Iran. Had the election fight gone more against the mullahs, they would have issues supporting their nuclear program. When they start screaming that they'll soon be ready to nuke Israel-and Israel makes quiet plans to destroy their nuclear program-Obama dithers. An Israeli strike-no matter how justified-will set of a war in the Middle East that makes the Yom Kippur War look like a wet firecracker. A nuclear attack on Israel would probably result in massive strikes across the Middle East, as the Israeli military engages in retaliatory strikes.
• And, on that note...rather than develop heavy power industries such as nuclear power, improved coal, and such; there is the push for windmills and solar power. Nice if you want to run a few lightbulbs and maybe a laptop, but horrible if you want to run a machine shop. Especially if you want to work at your own pace, and not during the day or when the wind is blowing.

People kept warning us that Obama was a hollow man without anything to really get an idea of what he was. I've told people that I kept viewing Obama as a bittersweet chocolate Easter bunny in a three piece suit-bite the head off, and there's nothing there. And, nothing since has shown me that I've been wrong in this opinion.

How did it happen? A golden window between the time of the perceived and actual failures of the Bush administration and a Democrat Party looking to try and reconnect with the glory days it had and lost with the 1994 Republican revolution. A Republican Party that has serious internal issues between the moderate and harder-right member of it's own party, especially as many of the members that were the ones that had been a part of what got Regan elected (by kicking out the worst of the conspiracy theorists, Birchers and such) died or left politics. And, a Republican Party where the conspiracy theorists-the Nirthers, the Birthers, the Truthers and such-began to take on a much more predominant role.

This golden window is why you see such pressure to pass health care reform, and a horde of other bills to try and "fix" things-soon enough, the 2010 elections are coming and you get the feeling from polling data that somebody is going to be left holding the bag. And, if they can't get enough things to show that they're making things "better", the Democrats are going to be the ones with the bag. A shift of votes to a more contested House and Senate, especially of Republicans that are going to try and show they are not "business as usual" types is a disaster for the cozy relationships that Obama has been trying to use to get his bills passed.

And, he's still there, still smiling and accepting the Nobel Peace Prize for being somebody other than Bush. Even more so than Jimmy Carter (whom I keep seeing as the nearest contemporary politician to Obama), you get the sense that if he stops smiling he might have to think.

And, that would be a disaster. More so than what's going on now, but definitely a disaster.

Solving Starship Computer Battles For Dummies...

...or, why you shouldn't let me be stuck watching Banner Of The Stars and the "Day Of Sagittarius" episode of Haruhi Suzumiya, and having lots and lots and lots of time to think about things...

(Special Thanks To Steven DenBeste, who worked out a lot of the stuff I'm starting from.)

In the episode of "The Day of Sagittarius", the Computer Society has created a new game called "The Day Of Sagittarius III"(with the inevetable deadpan snark from Kyon of where No 1 and 2 are...), and the SOS Club are now challenged into a duel between the two groups.

One of the key inspirations for the game's (hereafter called Day III) combat system seems to be the way Plane Space is handled in Crest Of The Stars-ships move on a two-dimensional space, and are dependent upon long-range scouting to fully use their weapons. Literally, the side that knows where the other side is-and can engage them first without being detected in turn will win or at least hold their own.

A factor involved is the use of recon drones to extend a fleet's ability to see. While the Computer Society cheats throughout most of the game with the Fog of War option disengaged, Yuki counters with an option built into the game. This option is a micro-management option of splitting up fleets and (presumably) drones to spread out and perform multiple scouting options. This, combined with the understanding of how the Computer Society is cheating and disabling it at the right time, gives the SOS Club the win against the Computer Society.

Now, there are a few Java/Visual Basic games out there that cover this game, but I'm thinking...how could it be done better? And, in a way-more fun.

Peel it down to the basics-flat space, "fog of war" and the need for scouting, and "fleets of thousands" that some people and games like. From that, we can perhaps assume some things-

• The smaller the fleet, and the smaller the ships in the fleet, the faster they can go. This allows for "hit and run" attacks by smaller warships, scouting fleets, and such.
• Bigger ships are more deadly-they can carry torpedoes and the truly huge batteries of energy weapons needed to smash the largest enemy warships around.
• Resupply in the Day III's combat system is assumed-Asahina is put in charge of the SOS-dan's supply ships. This may mean that it's possible for a fast reloading of torpedoes and such-but both the supply and resuppling ships are vulnerable to attack.
• The light novel indicates that there are at least three customization options and a number of points you can use. Expand it a bit further...perhaps you can buy your ships by type and fittings, then expand them to form a fleet of ships.

The game starts to coalesce-we have about four major hull types that will show up (with some variations on size, and overlapping concept hulls)-

• Scout Ships are small. Not tiny, but small (the smallest "ship" is the drones used for recon by ships). Their major job is to find enemy fleet, and hit and run if a fleet operates in smaller components. Or, to engage supply ships. They don't carry torpedoes, but do have defenses against them.
  
• Patrol Ships are faster than battleships and supply ships, and slower than scout ships. Think of them as "flankers" for the most part-scout ships can't take out a patrol ship without swarming them with huge numbers, and patrol ships can't chase down scout ships-but they can deny a scout ship the ability to do recon. Patrol ships carry torpedoes, but mostly use them to stop scout ships.
• Battleships are the huge bruisers. Slower than everything else, but they carry enough armor and defenses that trying to swarm them under with anything other than hordes of patrol ships is suicide. They carry huge numbers of torpedoes, to serve as an opening attack against other battleships. They're the "anvil" in a "hammer and anvil" combat strategy.
• Supply ships are there to do field repairs to warships, reload torpedo and recon drones, and a few hulls might be of a "Carrier"-type platform, carrying huge numbers of torpedoes, but slow and very vulnerable. This would dictate that torpedoes have a long range but are fairly "dumb"-they need to know where to engage a target to enter their sensor range and engage it.

A few "odd ball" ship types might exist (a "heavy scout" that would be pretty much a "light patrol ship"-armed enough that a fleet of them would be a threat to an equivalent sized fleet of scouts, but not "true" patrol ships or a heavy patrol ship hull that could be considered a small battleship), but those are the four major types. Then, we get into weapons-

• Torpedoes are the very long ranged weapon of the fleets. Presumably, they are fairly "dumb" in the sense that they need somebody to "spot" for their launching ship, to be able to provide directions in where they should be. A large torpedo salvo is a dangerous threat-presumably they would carry powerful warheads and ships would be in serious danger from them.
• Energy weapons are the other major weapon. It seems that there are two types-weapons mounted along a ship's long axis (as a part of or along the ship's spine), and "side" cannons similar to the weapon arrays of Exelion-class. Presumably, the main spinal weapons are the main ship-killers, while the side weapons are their for anti-scoutship, anti-torpedo, and "we need to fire something at them!" role.

Suddenly, the concept starts to make sense, and we now have a much more...dynamic game to play in.

There's more options available "under the hood", if we want-do we build our battleships with a few huge guns, or a lot of guns (and the damage model may have to reflect this-huge guns will punch deep into a ship, while lots of guns will "peel" the surface of a ship)? Do we emphasize with our scout ships speed and sensors, or do we sacrifice for the ability of scout ships to be able to hold their own in a fight? Do we allow modifiers to each side-in the sense that one side might be strong in armor, but weak in speed across the board for their ships?

The new version of Day III starts looking like this-

• Dynamic ship design and ship operations concept. Combine that with the micro-management option of splitting fleets (presumably around a "command ship"), and rather than having to command each fleet, assign sub-fleets a formation (of them and their drones), based upon control groups.
  
• Fog of War becomes important. Recon drones either have to be fairly "close" to their ships, or become a "use or lose" when they run out of fuel.
  
• Teamwork becomes a key. Fleet vs. fleet can quickly become fratricide. But, two fleets versus one? Much more dangerous for the one fleet...especially if they are vulnerable to attacks on the sides or aft.
• Play options for everyone. Maybe when fleet-vs-fleet combat starts, a setup like Dynasty Warriors happens-players command a single ship and issue commands to the rest of their fleet, while they get to blow away their enemies.

The Battle of the SOS-Dan

But, what does this have to do with the price of Tea in China?

With our new, dynamic combat system under the hood, we can see a much more...interesting fight between the Computer Society and the SOS.

Both sides have five players, and five fleets. Since the Computer Society is cheating with a disabled fog of war effect, their fleets are pretty much all battleships, with a single supply fleet to reload their torpedoes. On the other hand, the SOS has to be a bit more "balanced", and that leads us to how the fleets are set up.

• Haruhi, without a doubt, is entirely packed to the gills with battleships. She wants to get close and blow them up with lasers and torpedos and such. She has the weakest scouting ability of all the fleets, and is probably entirely dependent upon drones.
• Kyon, on the other hand, seems to be a bit more "balanced". Personally, I suspect his fleet is mostly patrol craft, with enough scouts to spot for him and a few battleships to "put the boot in" as needed. Kyon wants to flank the enemy, know where they are, and engage them on the sides-he doesn't want a battleship-to-battleship duel head on.
• Itsuki is probably the other battleship fleet, but less maniacal about it than Haruhi. He probably has enough scouts to fill out his flanks and serve as early warning for torpedo attack. His strategy is going to probably be as much misdirection and being where people don't expect him to be.
• Yuki is the commander of the fleet's scout forces. She uses her abilities to multi-task to command multiple small squadrons of scout ships and drones. Like Kyon, her fleet has a small battleship "core" to keep things interesting, but most of her elements are scout ships. Mid-way through the game, she probably has all the Computer Society fleets bracketed with scout ships and drones.
• Mikuru commands the support fleet the ship has. Since Haruhi hasn't thought of it, her fleet probably is just supply ships and enough patrol ships to keep scouts off with maybe a few battleships. Unlike the Computer Society, she probably has no torpedo bombardment ships/carriers to use.

Without the high weirdness that Haruhi can generate, the battle works out like this-

1. The SOS fleet tries to find the Computer Society fleet-but because of the disabled Fog of War effect, the Computer Society begins to use flanking attacks to wear down the SOS forces.
   
2. Yuki splits up her forces to scout for the Computer Society. Meanwhile, she is also analyzing the code and setups used by the game.
3. As her scout fleets have most of the Computer Society fleets bracketed, she discovers that the Fog of War effect is disabled and informs Kyon. By this time, Mikuru's fleet has bee badly damaged if not destroyed.
4. Kyon tells Yuki to re-enable the Fog of War. Since the Computer Society is now dependent upon their own (non-existent) scouting, the SOS fleet has the advantage since Yuki's scouts have the Computer Society under observation.
5. The battle now changes. The Computer Society is trying to find the enemy, meanwhile the SOS knows where they are and the three main fleets attack. The strategy is probably one of one fleet (Kyon or Itsuki) engages the Computer Society on a flank. As the Computer Society fleet turns, the other and Haruhi attack from the other side. Caught between three fleets, the enemy ships are rapidly destroyed for little damage on both sides.
6. The last fleet is destroyed, and Yuki fires the shot that kills the last command ship.

Now, that would be good entertainment. And, I'd love to play that game. It's exciting, to say the very least.

The End Of R1 Anime?

Serious question to be asked. Between Bandai's...unique choices in distributors (after the scandal involving their reproduction of defective DVDs), the whole Endless Eight debacle (it looks like there will be at least six repeats of the exact same episode, just with different animation-it takes talent to pull off a Groundhog Day plot, and this isn't talented), and the fact that there just isn't a lot of anime coming to the States-most of what the studios are releasing are repeats and compliation packages.

From the outside, this is what I see as the problems (anybody wants to tell me wrong, I'm interesting in hearing why)-

1. Fansubs. As somebody that loves fansubs, I hate the idea that I'm hurting the industry. I grew up on the anime industry, and I have a place of pride for all of my Animeego VHS tapes-with the cultural hint and music lyric liners attached. But...
   
   I just picked up the first two DVDs of Gundam 00 here in the US. Nine episodes, total. The series came out in October 2007 in Japan. So...call it about 18 months from the first episode to having a legal copy here. I was able to get some very good fansubs avalable of the first episode, within two weeks of it coming out on Japanese TV. Anime has benefitted from the Army of Davids-a good setup for doing high definition anime subtitling has easily fallen within reach of a well-off person in the United States. The only issue is a lack of good translators and time.
   
   The response of anime companies? Go after the fansubbers as pirates. Piracy flourishes when there is a market for a product that there is no legal avenew for. When cigarette taxes are high, people will go to smugglers that will give them more value for their money, legality be damned. Especially in a free market society.
2. Shifting demographics. Most anime fans came in during the first "big wave" of anime (mid '90s), the next wave that started in the late '90s, and the current generation that grew up on Naruto and Death Note are starting to get out of college and are trying to find jobs in this crazy market. I don't see a major new "wave" of anime fans coming up. Or manga fans. Hell...I'm not even sure what the new demographic of the 18-25 year old is...
   
   Fandom has less money to spend on greebles. And, they have to have value for their dollars.
3. Shifting anime companies. From what I can gather, most Japanese production and distrubtion companies regard the American market as either a "nice to have" or a "direct competition". Geneon's big problem was that American anime DVDs were cheaper than the Japanese releases, even with reimporation costs. Add a region-free DVD player and it's easy to watch our DVDs of their anime. American studios also have the problem that they were running on fiscal shoe-strings. This probably was what killed ADV-they didn't have enough money in the bank when the bubble burst.
   
   This may be what Bandai is up to with their exclusive deal-they want a justification to cut their losses. They tried a "Japanese" model with Bandai Visual, and that failed. Now what?

I'm looking at the whole market, and I've got a few ideas for both Japanese and American studios-all as an ousider that wants the anime market to succeed.

• Go to a model that makes it easy for anime owners to use their products. Digtial downloading to media devices like the iPod and similar mobile devices.
• More rapid/integrated options for fans to get their products. There is no practical reason why anime cannot be released in the United States within a few weeks of it appearing on Japanese TV. Make DVD releases important because they have items like dubbing, high definition (and on BluRay with new releases...1080i formatting), and items like interviews and toys.

Of course...I can't see it happening. The studios are not going to take chances...and they won't be around much longer.

Which is a pity. One day, I want whatever legal snarls that are keeping Macross Frontier (and the rest of the franchise) from coming to the United States. I got a chance to see a few episodes on BluRay and they are stunning.

A Sudden Pontification Upon A Theory

So, what does the single, intellectual Republican do on a Saturday night in San Francisco, somewhat broke?

He reads blogs and webcomics and starts trying to figure out things. Usually on bottle of two of good beer. During this running, I came across one of the latest articles by PJ O'Rourke on how America is seeing the end of the love affair with cars. Worse yet, you have the simple fact that now that GM is going to be Government Motors, they will be producing cars for a market that does not exist, for people that cannot afford them. And, there is the love affair that Obama is trying to sell to us, one of the most loved ones of Socalists since Mussolini, the high-speed rail line.

After all, the logic is, we don't need cars. Why, the Europeans get along without cars, very often-usually, if they need one, they rent it. Why own a car that will be a threat to the enviroment and Al Gore's peace of mind? We can all take the bus! And public transit! And the train! Why live out in the suburbs when the cities are the place to be!

And, in that instant, the idea hits me like a lemon wrapped in a gold brick. Between sips of a good oatmeal stout, the realization reaches me.

What is the ulitmate form of protest against the policies of a government, short of explosions? Voting with your feet. And, with the automobile, it's so very easy to vote with your feet.

Why live in San Francisco or New York, where it's crowded, full of people that annoy you, high crime rates (when the police department is being run for sensativity and not arresting people), high costs (you can pretty much tack on about $1-2 for anything that isn't already pre-priced in SF like coffee, worse for New York or Chicago), living in apartments that are so small you have to go outside to change your mind, long commutes on crowed buses and subways, the public school system sucks multicultural donkey dicks, etc, etc...

...when, you can live in Berkeley. Or Petaluma. Or outside of Washginton DC in Virginia, where you can own a gun. And, you can drive to the supermarket to pick up a gallon of milk and not pay twice as much at the corner store. And, you can send your kids to a school where they have a chance to learn. And, live somehwere that there's enough space for a hobby.

And, live somewhere that you can have a chance of effecting the political process. Let's be honest-politics in the big cities tends to be restricted to the very young (who have energy to burn and brains full of bat guano), career politicians (whom being employed in politics is a job), and the various courtiers of the big city political process (union leaders, newspaper editors, law firms, etc, etc).

The automobile gives a large amount of polticial autonomy that makes it much harder to enforce larger, massive top-down solutions on people. When it's possible for people to live in a city that has minimal taxes, then come to work in a larger city that has more taxes that can be avoided by not being there and make more money, you see a phenomina similar to what's going on in Mexico-people crossing the border from cheaper places to live, to find work in places that pay more because they have to pay more for talent to even come close to those cities.

And, oddly enough, this kind of border reform is something the Obama administration and it's followers like. They want people to move into the cities, where it's possible to regulate and control them. To poke into their lives and meddle, and be meddlesome.

When people are living in a crackerbox apartment, they can't afford to buy stuff to fill it, unless they get help with the rent and rent control (which benefits the upper middle class and beyond-Berkeley is a diaster in the making when the old hippies and such have to go into nursing homes and managed care). Mom can't buy huge amouts of food at Costco, but smaller amounts at the local corner store that charges a premium. So, if they want to eat more, they have to qualify for food stamps. The cost of paying for union jobs on public transit systems means that the cost of taking public transit goes up, and there goes your pocket money for Starbucks for that month-but, after all, you don't need to drink all that coffee, do you? Bad for your heart, have some tea, instead.

And, how can you fight City Hall, when it takes you two hours to ride the bus to and from work, add nine hours for work and you have maybe three hours to eat, shop, and maybe have some fun? Of course, your political donations go to people that will cheerfully help your cause...even if you don't know that you need that kind of help yet.

I remain uncertian as if this were planned for (in the sense of an overarching scheme), or it is a part of the circumstances (like flying shrapnel from a chemical plant explosion). I don't like thinking the first, it speaks of paranoia, consipriacy, and the French. The second, on the other hand...where is the explosion and what is it coming from?

The American car industry, in a lot of ways, did bring this on itself. They need to dig themselves out...and soon. Because, Americans may be driving cars made in Japan, China, and Europe.

If they can drive, at all.

Obama, And Democrat Nobility

I've been reading another superb column by Victor David Hanson (been reading a lot of his books lately, and I like his logic) this weekend.

One point that he's been making about Obama is that he's been making use of one of the greatest tools of demagogy politician, the "evil other". He's been drumming up a lot of hatred of the usual socialist class warfare targets-evil banks, "fat cat" capitalists, "greedy" people that aren't paying their "fair share"...

Worse, nobody can make fun of Obama. How soon in the Bush administration-either of them-did the jokes start? How early in the Clinton era did the really bad jokes begin? But...I haven't heard any good Obama jokes. Are the court jesters of our era all suddenly struck down with laryngitis?

Or, are they scared that any jokes of Obama would be called racists? That criticizing Obama in a way that a white politician would get screams of "racism", "going after our first-ever Black President"?

Worse...I can see a new kind of political nobility showing up in DC. Look at how Nancy Pelosi is denying that she was briefed on "enhanced interrogation techniques". When other people there aren't saying "oh, she didn't know what she was saying" but "she's lying out of her very blouse." That eight major banks were told that they had to sign and accept agreements to accept TARP money and government controls, "or else". When did the Treasury Department turn into Vito Corleone?

Or, the various departments in Washington DC turn into courtiers for the "elected" politicians?

It's going to be a crazy, crazy four years-because, short of several miracles (man-made or otherwise), I can't see Obama being President for more than four years.

Me For NASA Administrator

They're still looking for an administrator to run NASA. (Special thanks to Instapundit.) The Obama administration has a lot of things on their mind, namely they can't find people without tax trouble. However, I think that if there is somebody with a good shot at the job out there, they should apply for it.

Like, for example, me.

Admittedly, I don't have enough of a management/space industry background to really be in serious competition. But, I do have some things going for me-

• I'm a huge space nut. Whatever else happens, there will be Buck Rogers at some point, men will be back in space, and on the Moon, ASAP.
• The day I get in, I'll demand a 60 day, non-partisan review of the Aries/Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle and the Jupiter/DIRECT launcher system. Whichever one passes the review, will be the one built. I personally am a fan of the DIRECT, but I want the best launcher deployed, and soonest.
• We'll be funding a 10,000 lbs NERVA engine system, to maximize the options for missions going to the Moon and Mars.
• I hate Washington DC with a passion, with the exception of the museums. I promise that I'll spend the absolute minimum of time in DC, the maximum possible time on my work desk.
  
• I promise, my CSPAN experiences will be memorable. I promise lots of props, lots of visual greebles, all sorts of fun things.
• Quite a bit of NASA budget will be in getting Science In The Classroom. Easy to handle and read packets that give kids from K-12 the ability to understand science as a real thing. Even easy-to-do experiments of all sorts.
• There will be men on the Moon in by 2014, 2012 if I have to get out an push. Permanant base at least two years later.
• Mars mission ASAP, based upon Mars Direct. With the development of the NERVA engine, that gives us a lot more mission options.

I'm pretty much ready to go to work, day one, for the job. My only issues is that I think dueling may still be legal in Washington DC, so I might have to challenge a few people for the job...

Waming Up...

If you've come from my LJ posting, I'm starting to bring this blog back up to speed.

Even if Live Journal doesn't die...I'll be posting more often here.

This Is Not Going To Be A Good Anime Season

Just was looking at the preview of the fall season in anime (special thanks to THAT Animeblog) and the term "drought" can easily be applied to this season.

Eight sequels.

Two remakes.

And the rest isn't too good, either.

Gundam 00 is going to have finally the Titans Oz FAITH Arrows, a "army independent from the formal Federation Army dedicated to defending the peace" and of course they get corrupt. And, of course, our Gundam pilots become heroes rather than the quasi-terrorists that they were in the first season. I actually liked the moral ambiguity...it made the heros actually ask questions about what they were doing, why they were doing it, and the actual reason behind Celestial Being.

Of course, if this turned out to have been all as planned by Aeolis Schenberg, I'm not sure how annoyed I'm going to be. Worse...since 00 was purchased by Bandai for pro release in the United States...I'm going to have to buy the series to see what happens.

Ugh.

Other than that...Tytania looks reasonably tempting, but will have to see what the quality is.

Kemeko-DX has a kind of "silly zany" that might actually make for some neat story fodder...and, mmm, sexy rice cookers...

Kurogame no Linebarrel looks kind of amusing, as long as the mecha aren't done as CGI. With very few exceptions, CGI mecha in anime have kind of sucked... The question is-since they have a not bad English page, are they trolling for distrubtors or do they already have one?

I'm going to keep an open mind, mind you...and see what happens next. But, it might not be that good a season for anime fans.

At The Gym

As a part of my "making myself better" project, I recently got a gym membership and I've been going on a regular basis. Okay, for the last two weeks, but hang with me for the next few bits.

Anyways, I'm in the gym locker room, having exercised tonight, and I'm listening to the conversation across the other side of the row. And, it's scary scary to hear...grown men, talking about Obama in the same manner that girls talking about their first crush on a boy band. Oh, and how BushCheney is the root of all evil in the political system and he should be impeached immediately. Yes, I know it's Oakland, but still.

Just to be clear...

I'm supporting John McCain. I view that an Obama presidency would make us fond for the days of Jimmy Carter (yes, and I'm serious-Obama has all the wrong vibes to me, from people that he supports as a part of his friends, various issues that have come up that make me wonder what he believes, and there just seems to be nothing there...). The same Presidency that gave us the term "stagflation" and gas lines. Obama would nominate Supreme Court nominees that-if Congress does not change much-would be a court so far to the left that it would pretty much be outright socalist/communist.

And, this is not a time for somebody to be learning on the job how to handle foreign affairs. The next three to five years will see changes on the scale of the mid-1930s and if it is handled wrong, we could easily be seeing World War III. It would probably be in the Middle East, and it will be messy...

I mean, you hear the howls of outrage when the eight "yutes" that were caught dealing crack and were shielded by San Francisco's sanctuary law escape...but they view it as how we are Abusing Our Brown Brothers and If We Would All Sing Kumbaya...

It's like the inmates are running the loony bin. And they've gone off of their Haldol...

Worse, I keep seeing a definite "two Americas" starting to show up-the rich and the poor that they protect to assuage their consciences, and the rest of us.

I'm getting really pissed off by this. And annoyed. And frustrated. And angry...

There has to be a change. And Obama is not it.

MMORPG Ideas

I'm having some really random MMO thoughts, despite the fact that I hate the genre...

-One of the things I want to try with it is that the entire game is class-less. Which is to mean you don't build a fighter, cleric, wizard, etc, etc. Instead, it's all about stats, skills, and perks.

The base game engine is D100 based-stats plus skills, minus modifiers. PVP and PVC (Player Vs. Character) will include modifiers based upon how well the other guy rolled to resist. You can level stats up as high as you want, but they cost XP. Skills as well, but only up to 25%, then you have to find a tutor for your next qualification (journeyman), then at 50% you have to find a mentor (expert), then at 75% a sponsor (master), and finally at 100% and beyond a God (heh, Elite). Otherwise, no restrictions at all.

Then, we have perks and disadvantages. Perks and disadvantages "round out" a character, and are first purchased, then can be gained through gameplay. There's a reasonable number of "perk points" you can buy at the start of the game, but if you want more, you have to buy disadvantages.

Here are two good disadvantage examples-
*Nemesis. At the level you buy it, every "real" hour in the game means that your nemesis shows up, on an increasing chance. Depending upon how powerful your nemesis is, he could be weaker, stronger, or equal. If he's stronger, it's good to have friends. And, sometimes, nemesis drop interesting stuff. If you want to get more points, buy a PC as a Nemesis. And, wait as he comes to kill you, steal your stuff, and skullfuck your corpse.
*Incompetent. This is a skill penalty (in the form of more XP to buy the skill), and can cover any one skill, set of skills (magery, for example, is a skill set. You buy a particular "branch" of spells, and if you have the skill for it, you can cast the spells you buy), and how much XP more you need to raise the skill.

This allows for some pretty interesting characters-and a wider variety of them.

-Most games control weapons and armor on the basis of levels, a sort of "you must be this tall to destroy the city" control. But, the game I'm thinking about has no levels-so, how do you prevent some total new guy from doing the whole "I paid a Chinese guy $3,000 and he gave me all the most awesome stuff!" aspect.

First of all, to use some items you have to have minimum stats and skills. Buying Divine Blizzard when your Ice Magic skill is only 30% is a waste of money and could get you killed if you tried to use it. Literally, as in "it rips your character's soul apart, generate a new character" thing. Second, some weapons and items require you to get Certified. This is a quest (or you can buy the basic certifications during character creation) and each certification gives bonuses besides the ability to use certian kinds of weapons and/or advanced weapons of each class and type.

And, let's not forget-if you want to use some of the really unique weapons, you have to go on some pretty hellacious quests...

-Having a reputation is very important. All the more so, in this game.

Reputation is something you can track, between the six major and twelve or so minor factions. Having a good reputation means that you can get deals at the various stores, buy cheaper drinks at the bars, and the City Guards will take your side-with a vengeance-in towns that your faction is in control of. If you're in a town that you have a bad reputation with...vendors won't sell to you, bar fights become more common, and the City Guard will beat you up, steal your stuff, and do other horrible things to you.

And, if the reputation of you in a town is really bad...best come with a whole bunch of friends, to conquer the town...

-One of the things I hate in MMORPGs is the power gamers that play huge numbers of hours per day, and build hugely buffed characters. And then take them to stomp on everybody else...

So, you have to include some way to fix this problem. Worlds of Warcraft has the answer in the form of multipliers to XP for the time you stay off of the game-and it has to be a real amount of time. It's a neat idea...but, I think it can be done better.

My idea? Your character, in-game, has a job. Doesn't matter what the job is-tho certain skill, reputation, and perk sets will mean that you can take certain jobs over others. What do these jobs do? You earn money, and some XP. Certain jobs let you work on player character-based will create an eidiolon, which interacts with thing as a NPC bot. The catch? You have to be off-line at least eight hours in a 24 hour period. Spend too much time on-line, and your character becomes a freelancer...which means you have to pay rent, bills, etc, etc...and you don't get the nice and nifty XP bit for doing nothing.

-One of the "fun" things in many MMORPGs is creating objects. Then, selling them. Then, repeating the process.

From my perspective, if I want to do that, I'll get a job making widgets. But, some people find this exciting, so....

Manufacturing items is a tricky thing-and, to produce more than the most basic thing, you need a workshop. Of course, some workshops come in a Portable format (with the cute graphics of you opening up a box...and a whole workshop appears right there...), so you can take them anywhere. This lets you make new stuff, if you have the materials. But, if you want to enchant something...you need nothing more than the materials, the right spells, and time.

Of course, if you goof, you bust what you're trying to enchant, so be very careful....

In game terms, each non-expendable items has a number of "slots" in which you can insert enchantments and enhancements. Some enhancements are pretty simple-new gun sights, careful weights on swords to make recovery time easier, that sort of thing. Some are complicated...carefully shaving off enough metal to increase the rate of fire, adding enchantments so that your blade does elemental damages, adding a status-effect to a mace.

And, we haven't even gotten into Artifact Weapons yet...

More From Idea #2

I feel an urge to talk about our first giant robot, and how "he" fits into the game.

Unit One (they never quite came up with a better name/designation for it) comes in at about 30 ft (9 meters) and nearly forty tons. This puts it in the range of most Type A and Type B Beasts. Fully humanoid, it is covered in layered RHA armor (with later upgrades to a Chobham composite armor on the torso, head, upper arms and upper legs area), with a central cockpit in the rear chest area, mated to a zero/zero ejection seat. The cockpit and design gives the Unit One a distinct "humpback" look.

Unit One uses a combination of hydraulics and linear motors for control and movement. The A/O generator is located just below the cockpit and must be activated for Unit One to even stand up, let along move. Nuclear power was rejected for obvious reasons (Unit One engages enemies in close combat), but the battery power system has a limit of six minutes at full combat power, ten minutes at "standby" walking speed.

All versions of Unit One were built by Tojo Heavy Industries in Japan, and were shipped to various locations along the Ring of Fire to defend against attacks, with the exception of (then) Soviet territory. Twenty-two Unit Ones were built, the first on March 11, 1968 and the last on June 19, 1968.

The Mod One version of Unit One added upgrades to the computers and added newer linear motor arrays to the hands in the mid-70s. The Mod Two version replaced the torso, head, upper arm, and upper leg armor with lighter but equivalent Chobham armor plates, and revamped the control and monitor system in the late-80s. No further modifications were to be made, and there was serious talk about retiring Unit One until the Second Great Monster War.

Unit One, initially, relies upon a 30mm "rifle" and it's reinforced fists for combat. To use the rifle or to engage in combat with Beasts, Unit One needs to "erode" the A/O field of an enemy Beast, enough to engage it in combat.

While old and somewhat decrepit...it would form the first line of defense when the Beasts came back. And, it can be upgraded and the basis of the design is one of future giant robots...

It's Not Quite The End Of My Anime World...

...but, you can definitely see it from here.

Steve DenBeste has commented that he is nearly hitting the end of anime, and I'm starting to see the edge of the universe, myself. In my case, I'm not fitting in the demographic that seems to appeal these days to buying agents for American anime studios.

The only things coming out on DVD so far that appeal-

• Gao-Gai-Gar Box Set One-After the last decade or so of high-angst Eva-derivative giant robot shows, a modern series of GUTS! and BRAVERY! just appeals in ways that make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
• Gurren Lagann-After a long, torturous road, we have the latest from Gainax. What's really happy-making is that Bandai has their first release of 9 episodes in one pack. This is a Good Thing, to me-more episodes to a pack means I can have the whole series faster.
  

And...that's it. Macross Frontier may never make it to the United States due to licensing issues. There is no news on when/if Gundam 00 will come out. Reideen won't come out, either. No news on when Real Drive will come, either...

Mind you, this is a Good Thing (TM)-it saves me more money for sci-fi and computer stuff. But, I feel a touch sad. It's almost like the end of an era...

Back To Idea #1...

I'm working again on Idea #1 (which, for future reference, will be graced with the title of-until further notice-of Our Worlds At War). There are three big concepts that I'm working on with it. These three concepts are tactical behaviors, experience control, and deformable battlefields.

Let's start with the first. Each unit has a type of tactical behavior, which is engaged by changing three sets of settings (or selecting a pre-defined "default" setting/macro). The first setting is Aggression-which can be set to one of three levels-aggressive (the unit will close to engage a target, getting as close as possible to use it's weapons), neutral (the unit will try to balance attack distance vs. range-trying to choose a range where it does as much damage as possible while at about half the unit's combat range), and cautious (the unit will try to keep a target at the maximum possible engagement range).

A second setting is vigor-how quickly a unit will engage a target. A unit can be hungry (where it will leap right off the bit and start following anything that it detects or targets), neutral (units will attack a target, or try to find a target within pre-determined norms-if it loses contact, it will try a short search, then stop), and full (units must be controlled to choose a target, and if they lose contact, they will stop and respond according to other rules).

The third and final rule is formation. We have a wide variety of formations, from lines to echelons to a circular formation. With these three choices, you have a wide variety of possible attack options. For example, a unit that is set for a neutral aggression, hungry vigor, and a circle formation will try to find a target, encircle it, and shoot it from every direction-with indirect fire units at various ranges with artillery and direct fire weapons trying to engage a target in a hull-down formation. Another set of units set for aggressive aggression, neutral vigor, and a echelon left formation will try to keep it's target on the left side, engaging them as close as humanly possible.

This set of rules will dictate a wide, wide range of reactions in units. And, it takes away a lot of the micro-management that quite a few games tend to indulge in.

A second factor, which relates to the first, is experience control. Call it "tactical intelligence" in games-if a unit encounters a unit that it has never seen before, it will engage in a sort of "poking" behavior, trying to make it do things such as attack, maneuver, escape, etc, etc. As it builds up a database of experience, it gets easier to engage and kill to hostile unit. Let's take an example-a group of human Strikers (tier 2 infantry) encounters a newly made Venusian Whisper (light, tier 1 recon vehicle). They will try to close with it, fire their weapons, and see how it responds. In game terms, the Strikers will not do as much damage, and will get closer than might be safe (Whispers have a secondary anti-infantry attack that only works at close range), etc, etc. However, as long as the fight continues, human units will learn how to engage the Whisper better-they won't get as close if they're infantry, armor will engage very well indeed...

And, this gets to our third factor-deformable battlefields. One thing that armor and infantry will do (our terrain is 3D), if they have defensive behaviors set, is to try and find a "hull down" position-where as little of their vehicle is showing to a potential target. But, if a weapon is powerful enough...it can shoot through dirt. Or sandbags. And, if you hit the ground with a powerful enough weapon, you can create a crater. Or your engineering unit can dig trenches and revetments for your equipment. There is a absolute "floor", but you can pretty much carve yourself all the way down to the bottom with enough explosives. Oh, and water flows into holes, too.

More ideas as my brain works on them.

What Are You Going To Do With 20 Pounds Of Flour?

Or twenty pounds of rice?

Let's face it, the latest "craze" in the form of the current popular mania is hording of rice and flour and other stuff, because "there's a shortage and if we don't collect and get our stuff now, we'll be all out!".

I remember the Cabbage Patch Kids riots, my friends. And, I knew a friend that paid her rent for about two months just on Furbies alone. Human frenzies are nothing new. Still, that leads to the whole issue of "what the frell am I going to do with twenty pounds of rice and flour? Oh, and twenty pounds of beans, too."

Well, eat it, of course.

Besides, you should be doing it anyways-the usual recommended storage time for bulk foods is about six to eight months, tho with some techniques you might be able to extend it out to sixteen to eighteen months. A rotation plan should be a part of any bulk storage plan-older stuff on the top, newer stuff on the bottom.

And, until the disaster hits, you really need to pick up some very useful items.

• Food storage containers smaller than 20 pound sizes. It's easier to get to flour and rice when you don't have to heft and carry and toss twenty pound bags. And, the containers are air and vermin tight, so you can store them and use them for a good, long time.
• Rice cookers and bread makers. A really good rice cooker also includes a steaming tray for things like vegetables and potatoes, so it's a multi-purpose item. And, let us not forget that in some ways, it's better to have homemade bread. And, I defy any family of four to go through a two pound loaf of bread in less than two days, three at the most.
• Cookbooks. Let's face it, you'll have a lot of stuff...and learning how to do new things with it is never a bad idea. And, it never hurts to have a copy of Apocalypse Chow on your bookshelf-it has a lot of very good recipes that might come in handy one day.

And, at worse...you have plenty of stuff to make use of, one day.