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Petals of Carbon Steel -- You're a Pilot, Not an Ace. Try your best.

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Okay, my actual prognosis on the situation if we somehow win and depose the HSE.

The United Solar Empire will severely stress its administrative and military capabilities during and after the war, which it already attempts to supplement by allowing native Saturnians to serve and actually advance the ranks. They already don't have enough ships to saturate the entire solar system, and the situation won't improve much after epic anime battles in the orbit of Mars and Earth. On the other hand, people capable of administering the planets and the stations also seem to be in short supply, since more than half of noble families, the traditional landholders in anachronistic settings, are on the enemy's side ( under the threat of violence or otherwise. )

Likely, the government will decentralize, with the new capital moving to Saturnian subsystem, since Princess would be pretty stupid not to attempt and secure her seat of power that she and her aunt organized the insurrection from. Besides, Saturn is a frontier, with no potentially hostile aliens lurking in the shadows of Uranus and Neptune, that's for the sequel series.

Jupiter is very likely to demand increased autonomy and its own governing council, not staffed by nobles. In contrast, with decrease of noble families, the individual holdings on Moon and Mars will proportionally increase, unless Daystar somehow breaks the feudal system over her knee and establishes direct Imperial rule or something.

So, in the end, Earth will be a provincial and an overcrowded backwater everyone wants to get away from, Moon and Mars will be divided between petty principalities with significant populations, Jupiter will become Hansa, but in SPEEEEEHS, and Saturn will be a new center of expansion and scientific innovation, with the whole structure more resembling a confederation than a single monolithic entity.

Lol, unless we fail, die and the HSE disintegrates into a post-apocalyptic collection of warring states. Mad Max on Mars when?
 
[X] Standard
Default seems pretty fitting for a mook, and I just like well rounded classes. With heavy you're always doing the heavy class thing and light you're always doing the light class thing, but with standard you gotta mix it up depending on what you're facing. Sometimes you're leveraging superior speed, sometimes superior armor, sometimes superior firepower.
 
[x] Light

I'm not opposed to the others, and I can see not going for the same thing every time, but we voted for clever and conniving, and I figure the better sensors would give us more chance to work that.
 
I didn't read any of the discussion yet, but this option seems to promote using the sword, and since people voted not to use the sword in my own mecha quest I feel the need to compensate. :V

[X] Light
 
You know, the naming convention somewhat reminds me of the Legends of Heroes: Trails Series.

I mean, there are probably tons of games and anime doing the same thing, but it's the example I'm familiar with, so.
 
[X] Heavy

There's something to be said for flying the machine that can take a couple knocks and still bring you home safely.
 
Gazetteer said:
Ryan is strapped in at a rest station, eyes intent on a tablet held loosely in one hand. He has his earpieces on, and appears to be engrossed in an episode of what you identify as My Imperial Ground Forces Platoon Sent to Another World. A classic of the genre. Also, utter trash. But who are you to judge a man's choice of relaxation prior to combat? Not out loud, anyway.
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Ah, Isekai. What is dead may never truly die it seems.

[X] Heavy
 
Raiseth said:
You know, the naming convention somewhat reminds me of the Legends of Heroes: Trails Series.

I mean, there are probably tons of games and anime doing the same thing, but it's the example I'm familiar with, so.
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Gaz, over a year ago:

"Wow, Petals of Cold Steel would be a great title."

[someone talks to her about Trails of Cold Steel, reminding her of its existence]

"... dammit."
 
The heavy option is lacking the nanofilament cutter, but I wonder how much we would actually want to fight at knife-fight range. If we can avoid situations where people can get that close, if at all possible, then there's no particular necessity to have one. Normally, I'd argue that that's pretty impossible, but we're not an ace and we are clever and conniving, so we are in the position where we are both most capable and most in need of actually accomplishing that particular impossibility anyways.

I think light would be going in a bad direction for Kana personally, but it might be a better choice for the rest of the team. Azara in particular seems to me like she has the right temperament to take advantage of the omni-directional thrusters. I imagine we'll get the most out of Kana's cleverness by keeping the basics of her combat just slightly limited. Limiting the number of possibilities in consideration makes picking the optimal solutions for yourself simpler, and should allow her to get to the step of figuring out how to make her opponents pick suboptimal decisions more quickly. While this is pointless against an actual ace, because their talent is such that they sidestep such trickery by complete accident more often than not, a more run-of-the-mill pilot is going to be ostensibly human and more than capable of making mistakes. No matter how good your gear is, continuous fair fights will inevitably result in eventual defeat. The best we can do is make it as easy for ourselves as possible to maximize the likelihood that the run-of-the-mill soldiers we run into will underestimate our ability to throw them for a loop, and if that means not piloting something that can only really show its true potential in the hands of an ace, so be it.

As far as standard vs. heavy, well, given the choice between knife-fighting and having a big gun, I personally am a fan of the big gun and a bit of extra armor.

[x] Heavy
 
who needs a sword when we can pirate mod our mech to have Bayonets :p

For that matter we may not be an ace, but there's nothing saying we can mod our ride a bit to stack the deck in our favor.
Bayonets on our guns
An electrical capacitor wired up to our fist so if we punch someone they get zapped
Reactive armor linked to a trigger in the cockpit, protected from incoming rounds and as a last resort we can hug someone and then detonate the shaped charges.

There are options for us to play with if we're creative.
 
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