Point.Counting on Koujirou to not screw something up means he's going to screw up screwing up.
Okay. I'm going to try saying it over.I think Traumatized Anna is probably the worst candidate to achieving that victory path. Honestly, Setsuna currently has a lock on it, though I can see future characters getting pulled into it and giving her a challenge, I don't think anyone in our current flight can compete with her.
THIS is one of the reasons I ship Yukari/Anna, and to a lesser extent, Anna/Setsuna.AND! Wait for it. And, as a bonus we get to awkwardly ask Koujirou for his blessing(not that such a thing is NEEDED of course)/advice for asking out his sister. Everyone wins.
Wait a sec.
Didn't we have a near threadbanning/closing discussion about shipping just an update or two ago?
Okay... I can get behind the idea of this, though I'm not sure Anna is capable of doing it...Okay. I'm going to try saying it over.
This isn't intended to lead to Koujirou and Anna hovering off into the sunset with their eyes shining with love. This is to get screentime out of the harem shenanigans before they become intense enough that even Anna can see that she wants to be on the other side of the world instead of trying to escalate. Ideally starting the subplot early will mean we get left behind and can be teased as the calmer option when the craziness rises. Setsuna is going to shove everyone else out of the Koujirou situation when her big arc starts. We can exploit the timing and Anna's character growth to hopefully earn some humanity and relevance without getting too messed up by the growing harem field.
'sides, it means more to the viewing audience if Anna dumps Koujirou for a girl as a twofer pairing management later on![]()
I mean, part of the goal of this quest is shipping. It's even one of the victory conditions and outside of that, one of the more powerful tools we can leverage for the quest.Wait a sec.
Didn't we have a near threadbanning/closing discussion about shipping just an update or two ago?
*Barely remembers Claire.*Tangentially...after thinking it over some more, I've been coming around to the appeal of Koujirou/Claire instead of Koujirou/Setsuna, to boot.
Um, if you swapped and the setting tone remains at - 1? Well The Ace doesn't change all that much, there's really only one true real difference between the Golden Ace and the Broken Ace, one single character defining moment that sets her path in stone where before she could go either way.
The Broken Ace has never been shot down by Antagonists. The Golden Ace has never been shot down.
Sandra... wouldn't exist. The Design Child is a left over, or rather, scion from a den of mad science, where ethics are banned, where only results matter. The ends justify all means. The products of the lab would be fed back into the production cycle, put to work to iterate and improve their successors. The design child displayed results in the most spectacular manner possible by bringing the whole venture down and destroying the ones who set it up and all involved to the 3rd degree. The entire UN was staggered, this would have been as significant as the annexation of Pakistan in Shuri's backstory, possibly even more momentous.
In this case the Ace and the Ojou would still know each other, because the Ace helped the Design child break down the facility, but their current relationships would be hollow and parasitic. The Design Child cares for the now only in the relationships of what can be achieved in the future.
I'd honestly be rather afraid for Anna in such a setting. Someone so powerful yet...
So uh yeah. Things.
"Does the Undersecretary really read everything? Like, everything?"
"Nah, not everything, just everything about the camps and other towns and stuff."
"So uh– everything then."
"…Yeah, far as I can tell, yeah. Once she got her hands on a Valk core, pretty much yep."
"Wow, the overuse penalties must be killer."
"Probably… but you know… wait, I shouldn't say, never mind."
"You always do this. Just freaking tell me."
"It's just rumours y'know… and you didn't hear it from me, but the Undersecretary, you've seen how she looks right?"
"If you're going to have a wank about how she looks again–"
"No! No, but you've seen the Secretary General, her dad, right? And here's a pic of her mom."
"Do I want to know why you have a pic of the wife of the big boss?"
"It's the bloody net, man! This is the last damn time I try to lead you through– look, the Undersecretary. She doesn't look much like them does she?"
"So she might be adopted, wouldn't be the first, and fits with what the big boss always says to do."
"No but… look, couple years, or ten or something back, something big went down in Public Order in, like, Copenhagen."
"Copenhagen is under thirty feet of AGs."
"Siberia then, somewhere north, whatever. The thing is… uh…"
"Yeah?"
"There's lotta of rumours around that, some disturbing shit, but they say that they were trying to make artificial Valkyries or something. Humans who are guaranteed to be able to use Valk cores. The Undersecretary is one of them."
"Oh really? That'd be pretty amazing. I hope there's a couple more where she came from then."
"Yeah. Would help us a ton, ay? Anyways, did you hear what Hischer been up to with the allocation system in the east? You won't bloody believe this…"
–Conversation overheard at a pub.
Well...
Basically, I can appreciate the girl who's direct in expressing interest as opposed to the tsuntsuntsuntsuntsunbarelydere mixed messages Setsuna keeps putting out. (And while Kou does kinda need applications of...discipline, I generally dislike the usual tsundere trope of hitting the dumbass MC repeatedly)Claire stared at his hand then squinted up at his face, making no motion to take his hand. Koujirou shuffled in place awkwardly for a bit, and was about to withdraw his hand when Claire clasped it firmly and pulled herself up.
"…Good match, but…" she trailed off and prodded him in the side, "Who's this badass and what have you done with my cute Koujirou?"
Koujirou coughed and stumbled a little, turning to stare at Claire in surprise.
She pouted up at him, having retracted her frame, hugging his hand to her side, "I liked it more when you were green and cuddly, but you being so dominant is pretty hot too."
While I agree with the sentiment, and to be fair to her, we are training her out of that habit.(And while Kou does kinda need applications of...discipline, I generally dislike the usual tsundere trope of hitting the dumbass MC repeatedly)
Easy enough to ask, I suppose.Didn't get word back on whether my write ins are acceptable or not, but I like them and they seem good to me, so I'm putting them in!
If we have to wait for Avalanche to tell us to vote, I can just vote again I suppose.
--[X] Beach Episode: Yukari is gathering the flight together to spend a day in the beach biome in Perth. Somehow this feels inevitable to you. (1 Day)
--[X] Movie Marathon: When Sandra was looking for things for the flight to bond over, Koujirou suggested something called a 'Movie Marathon'. Now your flight is going to spend two days watching several cinematic creations together. Errm, what are you supposed to pick? (2 Days)
These allocated times are both fine.Anyways, a couple of write in suggestions. Are these okay suggestions @Avalanche ?
-[] Beach Episode: Yukari is gathering the flight together to spend a day in the beach biome in Perth. Somehow this feels inevitable. (1 Day)
The Beach Episode must be done... We do have a beach biome right?
-[] Movie Marathon: When Sandra was looking for things for the flight to bond over, Koujirou suggested something called a 'Movie Marathon'. Now your flight is going to spend two days watching several cinematic creations together. Errm, what are you supposed to pick? (2 Days)
I feel this ticks off a few boxes. The two biggest things are that it helps Anna integrate into society more by experiencing culture, likely at least a little bit of popular culture, and lets the flight hang out together as a flight as opposed to just individuals. To be fair the beach episode does the latter, but they can still go off on their own, where as everyone will be in the same room watching movies here. It maybe should also just be one day?
If we can make suggestions as to what movies we watch, mine is.
--[] The Nanoha movies (You here this has to do with friendship?)
In all, I'm in favor of the smaller write ins for vacation. I am also very much in favor of getting Sandra to help Shuri and Anna start hanging out together. We've seen in this last update that Shuri is one of the few people that is genuinely willing to be competitive with Anna and they're in the same flight. I feel it would be a positive step in getting Anna out of her shell by getting her involved in healthy competition.
You actually already use something along these lines, but with spatial compression within the boundaries of your own Impeller, not teleportation. It's one of the many skills buried under the Target Rich Environment umbrella. It's also similar to a unique skill of one of the others Aces in the 20 called Gemini.Avalanche has said we could try and have Anna develop new skills and abilities since pretty much day one and I have a proposal for just that.
[ ]Develop a new skill: Flickering.
@Avalanche would this be something valid to develop? And if so what would the points cost be? Or would this be a throw points at it and see what you get sort of deal?Flickering is a new form of teleportation that discards traveling significant distances in order to significantly increase the efficiency and speed of individual jumps.
It does this by having both the entrance and exit points contained within the Valkyrie's impeller volume. This allows a jump path to be bored from both ends simultaneously; reducing both the time needed to complete the technique and the impeller strain due to both the extremely limited distance traversed and the increased efficiency of having a prepared exit point rather than having to bore one through from the other side.
As a side benefit, due to the technique being entirely contained within the impeller field it is less vulnerable to interdiction than traditional teleportation.
While Flickering does not offer the same benefits to mobility and interception that traditional Teleportation offers, it does grant greatly increased agility and dodging. This is due to a number of factors:
Firstly that Flickering, like Teleportation, does not require the valkyrie to exit the flicker the same direction as it was entered, allowing the valkyrie to near instantly re-orientate their vector of movement.
Secondly, even a Flicker of mere meters is frequently all that is needed to turn a hit into a miss and even in the event they are struck it can potentially be used to decrease the severity of the hit in some cases by flickering away before the full force of an energy or projectile stream can make contact, depending of course on the duration of the beam and how quickly the valkyrie can perform a Flicker.
Lastly, due to its lower energy costs Flickering can be performed far more frequently than Teleportation without putting undue strain on the impeller field allowing it to be used more freely and making it the more efficient choice for avoiding attacks in many circumstances.
Tldr version: tiny, rapid, spammable teleports with all that implies in terms of benefits.
As for why we'd want Anna to learn this instead of just dumping more points into Wave Force.
One, it increases Anna's personal survivability and combat endurance and while Anna already has loads of that compared to most other valkyries this is definitively a case of more is always better.
Two, that increased survivability synergises well Anna's already extent skills, mainly Target Rich Environment and and Wave Force. TRE by simply allowing her to evade mass fire better in situations where she is massively outnumbered allowing her to better exploit her increased combat efficiency. Wave Force by helping with actually surviving long enough to set up for Wave Force's all or nothing attack as using the technique in relative safety requires the battlefield to be cleared of all enemies other then the ones she targets with wave force as otherwise any survivors would gank her immediately after while her impeller is still depleted. Also having a better damage exchange rate with Type Zeroes would also mean less situations where she is forced to resort to Wave Force.
Three, it provides Anna with an unusual notable skill beyond just generic OPness that she can actually show off to her flight and thus also the meta-audience to increase relevancy while also potentially misleading the audience about just what sort of Ace Anna is; allowing the later revelation of Wave Force and #1 ranking to still hit with full or even increased potency.
Four, while far more niche in its likely adoption it is a skill that is far simpler in concept than Wave Force and thus could be potentially disseminated to the general valkyrie population with much more ease giving some minor large scale benefits.