Anime Summer 2022

by on October 2, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

Well, it’s been three months, and a new season of anime is about to start. There’s been more distractions and problems here than normal, so it has been more like only two months of watching.

Yamato 2202 — Now that the entire series is out, we’ve circled around to start over from the beginning to get the entire story fresh. We’re still in the part we’d seen before the long delays between episodes stopped us, but as ever is being excellent.

Ascendance of a Bookworm — We’re now into the second season of rewatching with the guys, and maybe midway through that. Everyone is definitely enjoying it, especially with the head priest’s growing exasperation of Myne’s nearly instinctual rocking of the boat with ideas that seem to come from… nowhere.

Lower Decks — I picked up the blue-ray of second season a bit after it came out, and we’re all of four episodes into it. So far, they’ve been solid episodes; the arc getting Boimler back to the Cerritos is an odd thing to juggle, and tended to occasionally disrupt episodes, but overall was well handled.

Komi Can’t Communicate — We’ve only seen the first few episodes (suggested by Baron). It’s been very good; one of those well-written anime that has a point far beyond its story. It got accidentally dropped thanks to our break in viewing, but we’ll certainly come back to watch the rest.

Devil is a Part Timer — We were all very happy to see another season of this finally come out. We’ve shifted gears on the plot, so I assume we’re about half way through and entering the second novel adaptation of the season. It has been continuing to be very funny and hitting a lot of the right notes with all of us.

Jobless Reincarnation — Okay, this has been far better than I thought it possible to be. Smudge and I are well into… third? season now. The main painful point is just how much of a pervert the main character can be, but much of the time there is way too much adventure and other things going on for that to impinge to hard. Better yet, there’s a lot of well-done characters, and Mr Pervert is truly growing as a character.

Orbital Children — Finished this off shortly after the last post. It got a lot more head-trippy at the end than I would have expected, though plot-structure-wise it carried out all its promises. Not excellent, but well worth a watch, especially if you need more SF.

A Lull by the Sea — So, we’re in the second half, which has a five-year transition break in the plot. Of course some of the characters have been in hibernation for this period, so…. It was a bit jarring to find out that this is supposed to be happening in modern-day Japan, instead of a place that just happens to look a bit like it and also has people who live underwater. The second half is really showing that this is developed from a visual novel; I’m a bit happier with the first half in retrospect for not making it so obvious.

Utawarerumono: The Mask of Truth — Smudge and I just recently picked up the latest series after the last one was a bit of a letdown at the conclusion. Again, it’s been long enough for us to have to spend some effort remembering who everyone is, but it is continuing along the route of well done-politics and strategy.

Kingdom — My comments last time are still true. A series that doesn’t even begin to live up to its own strengths. A lot of it is being aimed very squarely at a male junior high audience, and the lowest common denominator version at that.

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Doomsday World

by on September 28, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Writing is generally seen as a solo affair, though some team ups can be really useful. (Larry Niven was almost always far better with a co-author.) That said, seeing four authors on a book really makes one wonder just what was going on. Thankfully, there’s a good introduction talking about how this particular collaboration came to pass, which boils down to some group luncheons with the NY-area Star Trek novel writers..

The list of authors isn’t bad either: Carmen Carter wrote Dreams of the Raven, one of my all-time top recommendations for TOS Star Trek novels. Michael Jan Friedman has written several TNG novels, of which I’ve only read Crossover, which wasn’t stellar, but was a lot of fun. Peter David is a very prolific and consistently good Star Trek author, in several media, including the novel Q-in-Law, one of the few TNG novels I highly recommend. Robert Greenberger is the only author that I haven’t read something else by, but it turns out he’s the one to get this project properly organized.

Having just read Gulliver’s Fugitives (TNG #11), it was quite nice to find that this novel had more characterization in the first ten pages than the previous had throughout its length. In fact, it’s obvious the team deliberately set up little character moments for the entire regular cast throughout the first couple of chapters. The emphasis on on this continues throughout the novel, though extraneous characters are dropped as the plot tightens up and starts moving. The real problem here is more over-characterization. Most notably, Data has far too many moments where he trips over an idom and Geordi has to explain. This is something that he has trouble with, but obviously, once he’s had one explained, he wouldn’t need it explained again, so he wouldn’t need them all explained, and the frequency here feels well off from the series.

The plot itself is a mixed bag. We get a new small insterstellar government, the K’Vin, a planet they hold jointly with the Federation, and a large archaeological dig uncovering secrets of an earlier, vanished race. The setup is nicely done, we get to meet a mentor figure for Geordi, the Federation and K’Vin ambassadors, and then we get an attack on a settlement in another system to get the plot moving.

The initial effect of this is to force the Enterprise elsewhere while leaving Data, Geordi and Worf are on-planet as tensions start ratcheting up with a string of terrorist attacks. The plot does keep the promise that this will all tie up in the end. In fact, structure-wise, there’s no real problems. However, we do get problems with the main characters not being quite as competent as they should be, and missing things that the reader picks up on.

Some of that is the reader getting to know more than the characters, and some of it is some really ham-fisted stage direction early on. As we go on, we do get to see more and more what’s going on with the ‘primary villains’, which if that had been done a bit earlier and better would help shore things up a bit. But even then, the ending kind of dissolves into a mess where what should be important elements sideline themselves, and it feels more like an early decision ‘and this is what the final scene should look like’ without it being allowed to flow naturally out of the rest.

All that said, this still makes for a better early TNG novel than what I’ve seen so far (I’ve read about seven of #1-11). It falls short in places, but is a good effort, and certainly not to be avoided.

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Two Rounds of Scirthaea

by on September 24, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

After finishing up Bertoldo the Brave, Patch and I went to our between-games round of Commands & Colors: Ancients. Up this time was the Battle of Scirthaea from Expansion #2. The Romans have a compact force with a lot of Mediums, while the slave revolt has a more strung-out line with a lot of Warrior units.

I had Salvius’ slave army first, and had a decent hand despite being down two cards (4 to 6). I Out Flanked to send the MC into flank of the Roman army, trading one block each with a Light. Patch used Line Command to move up, driving off the MC and doing another hit to the weak one. I used my own Line Command to get closer and come into contact on my left, driving off a Light. Patch Counter Attacked to destroy an Aux, while taking to blocks on one of his. Order Mediums let me destroy a Medium, and do two blocks to a Light, but two of my Warriors took hits and retreated.

With both of our lines now fractured, Patch played Order Mediums to pick on the center, picking off a Warrior, forcing another to retreat to the baseline after taking two hits, and destroying a Medium, killing Salvius. However, he lost two blocks each on three mediums and lost one of his leaders. I Ordered Three Center, bringing up the retreated Warrior to destroy two weakened Mediums, and then trading one hit each on our intact Mediums. Patch Ordered Two Center to do one block to a Medium, and I Ordered Three Right, destroying an Aux while taking one block, and forcing a one-block Light back to the baseline. Inspired Center Leadership got about half of Patch’s army moving, and finished off a Warrior and Medium. 5-6

Patch started the second game with Order One (Heavies, and there aren’t any in this scenario) to trade two hits to a Light to one on his MC. I Ordered Three Left to get at his MC but merely lost my MC for my trouble. Patch advanced with Order Four Left, and I Coordinated Attack to take a hit on an Aux after again failing to affect his MC. He advanced some more with Order Two Left, and I issued a Line Command to force an Aux to retreat and finally knocked out his MC.

Patch Counter Attacked, coming into contact on both flanks, forcing back an Aux while doing three hits to another, but took two hits on each of a Warrior and Aux. I Counter Attacked in turn, finishing off the Aux, forcing the Warrior to retreat after another hit, but taking a hit on a Medium in turn, while on the other flank, I reduced an Aux to one block, killing Athenion, taking two blocks on a Medium in turn. Leadership Any Section let Patch get his center into action, finishing off a weak Aux, and doing a block each to four Mediums, but taking two blocks each on three units in turn. Losing the Aux broke my line, but Line Command still covered the majority of my units, closing the gap and finishing off two weak units. 6-2

Afterword

With only four cards, the performance of the slave army is going to depend a lot on what they draw. They’re also a bit more fragile with the reliance on Warriors, which can quickly see them at a dice disadvantage. However, the two-hex move into combat, and especially, momentum combat helps a lot here and helped me make the first game very close.

Both of these were surprisingly fast fights, with three leaders going down, two of them to two-die rolls when a unit merely took a loss. The biggest delay is that both armies set up fairly far back, so coming to grips would have been a lot slower without the multiple Line Commands.

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Trafalgar: Countdown to Battle

by on September 20, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Alan Schom’s book is supposedly as much on the campaigns leading up to the famous battle as on the battle itself (thus the subtitle). And it generally succeeds at that. Better, it presents a lot of the French side of what was happening, and takes a real look at Napoleon’s plans to invade England.

Since that never got attempted, there have been doubts about how serious Napoleon was about the attempt, starting with some of his own propaganda. However, Schom lays out his reasons for treating it as very much a real and pressing project of his, and traces it through way too many changes and contradictory orders. More interesting to me, is his descriptions of the naval flotilla built to support the invasion.

This is Schom’s main reason for discounting any claims that the invasion was in the end a feint. Way too much effort, materials, and manpower were spent on all the little craft that were to protect and support the transports for a mere distraction. And they were, in a word, useless. Even the largest of the three classes was not really rated for service in the rough seas of the Atlantic, the cannons they mounted were too small to be any use against regular military ships, and those same cannons dangerously overloaded the vessels.

The British efforts to blockade the French fleet in ports gets more attention elsewhere, but the presentation here is good, and concentrates a bit more on William Cornwallis’ (brother of the more famous Charles Cornwallis of Yorktown fame) command of the Channel Fleet. I do think this side could have been presented a bit better, with more of a look at the administration of the naval effort, and how the various demands for ships in different posts were met over time. A true detailed look would be too much for a more popular book such as this, but keeping an eye on policy development would have been a good addition.

Overall, the book does it’s job quite well, and my main actual complaint is that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of all the changes in French plans over time despite Schom paying attention to that aspect. Of course, those changes were numerous and frequent enough that I doubt anyone at the time could really keep track of it all.

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UR1 Y77 Planets of Tripoli Region 8

by on September 16, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: SFB

In mid-July, Mark and I returned to our SFB campaign, dealing with one of the small open-space fights we had generated.

But first, we took care of other business. Mark was not really wanting to fight out the last base battle, but didn’t want to let it go without a fight, either. So, we skipped it. We assumed there would be a fight, and it would go much like the last two had: I win, destroying the base, Mark lost all the armor on his large ship (WCC), and I would take a dozen internals on one random ship selected from the two CLs and two FFs present (this would either cause unreparable damage to a frigate, or knock out the armor on a light cruiser).

The roll selected WAL USS Ferocity (SF-84), which took six armor hits, and then would have no trouble repairing the other six. So, another ship that’s perfectly serviceable next round, but less protected, which will be a continuing theme in the campaign.

After that, I also conceded Region 6, putting my two ships into Reserve next time, rather than risk them being crippled and destroyed against a superior Carnivon force. (A light cruiser, given previous experience, may not be that big a deal. But then, neither are my frigates.)

After that, it was time to set up, starting with the terrain rules for the campaign. All bases are automatically far from any kind of terrain, so this is the first time it’s come up. The general idea is like the advanced ‘local conditions’ rule in (S5.4), but without monsters, pirates, and the like, and an initial 2d6 roll with empty space (no terrain) being a 6-8. Both players choose what terrain they’d like to see, with the defender having a better chance of actually getting it. Mark declared for asteroids, I declared for a gas giant, and then the roll went to the actual asteroid field entry. (Getting it on your choice—instead of the normal entry—can give you a greater say in setting it up, though that doesn’t happen with asteroids.) A secondary roll made it a ‘heavy’ field with more asteroid markers than normal.

Set up areas on the large campaign maps are also random (when not at a base), and while I set up fairly forward in one of my central zones, Mark set up close to one edge of one of his rear zones. This put us about 50 hexes away from each other. Longish closing distance for normal ships on a clear map. A bit more of a challenge with asteroids and these more primitive ships.

Weapon status came up as I for both of us, so we had the added challenge of charging everything up too. I wasn’t going to skip the initial volley of photons, but most of these ships can only do speed 0 if you try charging all the phasers while loading photons. I settled for partial charges and going speed 6 (which takes no damage from asteroids), while the Carnivon ships went 8. I sideslipped to go around the cluster directly ahead of me anyway (I’d just be stuck inside it during a turn break anyway, forcing decisions during EA that I didn’t want forced.)

The Carnivons boosted to speed 10 on turn 2, and near the end turned down to avoid a cluster and a direct path to me. Turn 3 saw Mark stay at the same speed, while I went to speeds 8 (WAC) and 9 and some EW as most of the phasers were charged and the photons were all being held. I turned to thread my way nearer, and midway through the turn Carnivon WDD Vainglory (277) turned away, separating from WCA Wolfclaw (106).

On turn 4, Wolfclaw boosted to speed 13, and Vainglory to 16, while I scattered from speeds 12 to 9. On Impulse 3, WAD USS Demolisher (SF-71) and WVL USS Stalwart (SF-65) had fairly clear shots at Wolfclaw (two asteroid hexes, negated by ECCM), but three phasers at range 22-23 only did 2 damage, which did not register on shields.

Turn 5 saw Wolfclaw go down to speed 10, while Vainglory went 17 (with minimal shields and fire control off), and I tightened up my speeds to 12 and 11. Vainglory had continued turning, and now was headed up, far away from the larger ship, while my slower speeds meant my main advantage was the center position I had taken, but now I was slightly faster than Wolfclaw (if 20 hexes away, with lots of asteroids in between). Vainglory started a turn towards the middle of the map, and right afterwards, I turned in that direction too. Mark assumed I was switching to paying more attention to Vainglory, but it was actually just meant to clear the double-mass of asteroids between me and Wolfclaw. Better yet for me, Wolfclaw then turned to parallel me, instead of turning the other way and ducking behind the asteroids I was maneuvering around.

Turn 6 had Vainglory turn everything back on while going 15, and Wolfclaw got back to speed 12, while I continued at 11 and 12. Wolfclaw turned back down, towards the corner instead of heading towards Vainglory. I finally split up during this turn, with Stalwart going one way around an asteroid cluster, while the other two turned to go on the other side of it. As I did so, Wolfclaw launched two death bolts.


Turns 1-6, showing the full map. Normally, asteroids are in every hex within two hexes of an asteroid counter, here we show them directly.

On turn 7, Wolfbite slowed down to speed 8, while putting up 4 ECM, while Vainglory kept at speed 15. I increased speeds slightly to 12 and 13. The death bolts were forced to move into an asteroid hex on impulse 4, but took no damage. On impulse 8, they were able to slip clear of them, confirming they were targeted on WAC USS Norica (SF-73). Norica kept its distance while the other two moved to chase Wolfbite, which now turned around in the narrow confines between asteroids. On impulse 28, it ended up in the corner cluster, taking 6 damage, none of which registered on the shield (I don’t know if that was all a brick on the #1, or if he blew his four batteries to make up any difference). On 32, Stalwart fired the bearing ph-1 at range 8, but missed Wolfbite.

Wolfbite accelerated to speed 14 on turn 8, while everyone else stayed the same. On impulse 4, the death bolts got to range 1 of Norica, which started downfiring ph-3s at them, finishing the second one off the following impulse. On impulse 10, Wolfbite reached the edge of the map, and launched another pair of death bolts on 11, presumably targeted on Stalwart, along with the bearing ph-2s to do one box to the #1 at range 5. I was waiting for her to turn, and the range to get a bit lower, but instead Wolfbite disengaged, eliminating tracking on the death bolts.


Start of Turn 8, showing movement from 7-24 through 8-11.

Afterword

With a WDD alone, it was obvious I’d force it into a corner and disengage, or it’d get destroyed, and probably do nothing in return.

So, we exchanged a few shots, a few shield boxes were hurt, and nothing else. In a campaign, this is going to be a more common result. Full-on committing to an engagement can lose ships fast, and you’re going to want them later. I would have loved to kill a heavy cruiser, which of course was why Wolfbite was my primary target. I think Mark’s idea on splitting up was to try and get on my rear with one while the other held my attention. Or to get me to split up. I refused to that, and Mark’s split would have worked a lot better if his ships had stayed in supporting range of each other. Instead, the range between them grew too great, and Vainglory couldn’t get close to the action when I finally cornered Wolfbite.

With this little action, there’s no “MVP” for the fight, though the WVL is a nice ship. With 12 warp on move cost 2/3, it is capable of speed 18, which puts in between W- and Y-ships, and with the usual 4 impulse on a Vulcan ship, it is close in power to a 2/3 MC YCL (which would typically have 18 total to the WVL’s 16). It had at least some EW up the entire time

There is now one fight left for the first year of the campaign, and it is something of a repeat of this one in that I have three ships to Mark’s two. Just put in CLs for CAs, DDs for CLs, and FFs for DDs. This was also my fifth win, so it is now certain that I’ll get to defense line 2.

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