Javeria Malik.
I'm not saying she's a stupid plot device, but she is a confusing one. Mayer called her a "cadet" inside quotes, yet she is still punished as a one. Then again, she is not stopped from attempting to try something again, even after the dramatic confrontation with the instructors earlier, but it's perfectly alright for Shuri to then stop her on her own initiative? (or was that the plan, to rouse her protectiveness again and turn that into motivation? Is it being paranoid or how deep does this go?)
She doesn't end up looking as either some professional Heel infiltrator working for the higher ups, or as some bully who does that on her own initiative and is just, mostly, looked at through fingers by authority, because of perceived benefit for generating motivation. She looks like some weird hybrid between.
And that would only make sense if they wait for people like her to surface naturally during training and then co-opt them. Which is pretty horrible way of doing things, because people who naturally like to settle into this role should never be allowed to do it, because of how easily they could "overachieve" in it and do more harm than anything that could maybe be perceived as "good" from at least some angle.
As the nasty drill sergeant stereotype shows, negative psychological motivation has it's precedent for working, but they are at least professionals playing a role. If the Valkyrie Instructors are unable to perform it and someone like Malik is actually necessary, then they better be professionals too. But that wasn't really the impression I got, so unless it goes even deeper and there are more things we don't know yet, it just makes the Academy higher ups look incompetent.
Holy shit. You meant this New Years?A/N: Bugger. Technically, I said "update on New Year's or KMS" every time I was asked. Thankfully(?) I accomplished neither
Big thanks to; Guessmyname, Alfa290, Octol, Alphaleph, Tayta Malikai and AlphaDelta.
How do you confuse Copenhagen and Siberia?"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…"
Something bothering you?Anna squirmed in place, wringing her hands anxiously and looking back and forth between the two pairs before gingerly sitting down on a rock, hugging her knees to her chest.
We are the picture of professionalism."Shuri, it may be my imagination, but I feel like the commentary has been growing rather… awkward."
"Don't look at the caster's box, Sandra."
"Must you always arouse my curiosity so, Shuri? Well this time, I shall not look over."
"Gotcha."
"Shuri!"
But think of the extra credit.Sandra however cuts you and Shuri off as she locks editing permissions with the note that the reply is meant to be only two thousand words with a five percent margin of error. It was not supposed to be two hundred thousand words and rapidly increasing.
Show and tell.probably most Valkyries cadets wouldn't have an easy time either.
You look on sheepishly as Setsuna sits hunched, her hands bunched in her twintails as she blankly watches her datapad auto-scroll through the pages upon pages of text and diagrams you and Shuri had created.
:l Was this meant to be actuall words?The Higgs impulse wave wouldn't degrade into imaginary force fast enough in such cases.
I can understand as well, but I don't like it. I feel that such things are, well, artificial and don't make a lot of sense. I presume this is current set-up is supposed to represent us going to class each morning, spending the lunch period socialising and we're voting on what we do in the afternoon, but honestly I feel that since we were visiting 5 clubs per day at the start, we should get the next 27 clubs done over 6 days, then have 30* days/slots to spend on clubs.So over a seven day week we have 21 training slots of which only 0.33 is used upon attending clubs. That leaves 20.67 slots for training or other activities. So each week should really give 206.67XP that can be dropped on things instead of the 70XP it currently does.
I do understand why Avalanche isn't doing this since all told we only need 4,729XP to max out all our Weapon and Impeller Skills with Blue Wave Level 1 and Red Wave Level 1 (both of which are game changers) each adding another 1,050XP for a total of 6,829XP. We the initial 3 week timeskip and 7 week one here we'd have earned 2,066XP which is enough to buy up 30% of all skills available.
There are certainly ways around this like limiting how much XP we can spend on Unique abilities at any given time since stuff like spending all day every day for seven weeks blowing up limbs is almost certainly going to be viewed as unacceptable behavior. The activities introduced with this post also help since if you make them whole day events (IE: keeping their current day count but upping the XP count) they become:
UNHCR reconstruction activities - 618XP
HPP prototype - 3,248XP
Attend Instructor training sessions - 207XP
Attend general Flight training sessions - 207XPwhich makes them very effective XP sinks while still leaving enough XP over to make what noteworthy gains in our various skills.
Emphasis mine. Since normal schools usually have a break between semesters, I think it can be safely assumed that the 14 day holiday period will:The timeskip will be for a duration of 7 weeks for a total of 50 actionable days, ending at the start of week 14, the start of the second semester.
Just throwing my two cents in, but I don't think that the holidays are part of the 50 day total. Why? Here:
Emphasis mine. Since normal schools usually have a break between semesters, I think it can be safely assumed that the 14 day holiday period will:
a. occur before the 50 days available of the second semester, and;
b. not be included in the mentioned 50 day total.
EDIT: This is, of course, assuming that the most recent update occurred close to or at the end of the first semester.
Just throwing my two cents in, but I don't think that the holidays are part of the 50 day total. Why? Here:
Emphasis mine. Since normal schools usually have a break between semesters, I think it can be safely assumed that the 14 day holiday period will:
a. occur before the 50 days available of the second semester, and;
b. not be included in the mentioned 50 day total.
EDIT: This is, of course, assuming that the most recent update occurred close to or at the end of the first semester.
We'll just have to wait until Avalanche clarifies on the subject....But that says the timeskip ends as the second semester begins, meaning the break was part of the seven weeks.
Anna: "Kojirou would be better off as Koujirouko"You hem and haw, it felt a little mean to talk about Koujirou like this, but well, you had to dismiss any mistaken impressions the Instructor had.
"He's well, not really manly," you respond haltingly, "He's too… pretty, really. And short. And thin. Also he's not interested in me, I don't think."
"So you like your men big, hairy and lusty? That's something we have in common," Instructor Meyer grins at you.
"No!?" you squeak, flapping your hands to bat the suggestion away, "I– I– I'm only here to cast the competitions! No more talking about boyfriends!"
Been there, if not so...extreme as a transhuman write-off can manage.You look on sheepishly as Setsuna sits hunched, her hands bunched in her twintails as she blankly watches her datapad auto-scroll through the pages upon pages of text and diagrams you and Shuri had created. You'd written around one hundred and thirty thousand words and Shuri ninety thousand in the fifteen or so seconds you two had had. You're not at all sure when the two of you would have stopped if all five minutes had been allowed.
Despite their best efforts, Sandra and Setsuna are only able to cut the word count to ninety thousand before the deadline arrives. Shuri and you both wrote in a laconic style that's basically impossible to compress, so Sandra had resorted to outright deleting the speculative scenarios and much of the for and against arguments you and Shuri had written.
My sides.Koujirou doing something stupid is a state that achieves peak probability at either seven or thirteen seconds from now.
>There's a pretty high chance Cadet Rokusabe will do something silly around three seconds from now, right? We did a little pattern analysis and we think that's around when anything will probably happen.
The instant in time you mentally labeled 'Peak Koujirou #1' passes without incident.
You jump up and down a little, pumping your fist in silent celebration, before slamming yourself back down into your seat and politely folding your hands across your knees as Meyer throws an inquisitive glance your way. Inside however, you are still brimming with excitement.
Koujirou is being sensible. Koujirou is being sensible.
Melee Starlight Breaker?Koujirou again displays that strange sudden burst of skill that sometimes comes over him and instantly rights himself from his wild tumble. He almost delicately shifts to the side and stabs his sword into the massive wave of plasma as it roars harmlessly by. With his thrusters bright with stolen energy, he essentially rides down Emily's attack in an absurdly showy spiral, cutting the attack into a helix behind him.
To your side, Meyer slaps both hands over her face and groans loudly. Leonhart broadcasts a second of completely blank audio. You tilt your head in considerable confusion as you try to justify what that stunt gained Koujirou.
Emily halts her plasma attack and ignites her melee halberd, swinging upwards to meet Koujirou. However, his sword is still in its unusual absorb energy mode and the blade simply cuts through Emily's own melee halberd, siphoning away its plasma as it does so. Gracefully, Koujirou swings his sword, depositing the collected plasma in front of Emily. For a brief moment, it remains stable in the air, a trail of plasma following along the path of Koujirou's cut.
Koujirou sheaths his sword and turns around.
The trail of plasma explodes.
We're going to see a lot of idiocy happen. A lot."Oh for goodness sakes, spare me," Meyer sighs, rubbing her eyes.
"What is it?" you query.
"There's a lot of analysis from other flights which can be summarised as 'Koujirou is so cool, I want to do that thing he did at the end!' and drivel along those lines. My red pen is going to see some work today," groused Meyer, before she perks up and shoots you a sly grin, "Actually, it's all Cereza's responsibility to use the red pen, I got to play good cop this year."
Kojirou: "What Would Anna Do?"For a silent moment, he watches the streaks of light flash across the chambers and shambolic collapse of much of the central chamber, before coming to an abrupt decision. He braces himself and fires a long stream of hyper velocity cannon rounds into the central reactor, then flees.
The entire complex seems to lurch– and the central reactor explodes, with Emily nearly directly above it.
>>Victor: Rokusabe Koujirou
>>Fifth set, victory by Cadet Rokusabe Koujirou three rounds to zero
You raise an eyebrow. What a practical and direct way to finish the match, this is one of the shortest rounds so far.
I dunno, a lot of evidence points to it being hollow..."Well hey, still, that second round was a spectacle," muses Koujirou as he and Emily retract their frames and shake hands again, "Do you think Setsuna would be impressed with that?"
Emily hangs onto Koujirou's hand, sharp incredulity etched across her face. She raises her left hand up in front of Koujirou and smartly raps him on the forehead twice.
"Ow! Hey! What's that for?"
"Hm, strange, it doesn't sound hollow."
Setsuna ascends firing her XHEAP missiles, at the same time contorting her Impeller into a tunnel of some kind- wait, this is an absorption technique? You perk up in interest, it looks like Setsuna is trying to copy what Koujirou's sword did.
Syifa fires a full powered particle cannon beam at Setsuna as her missiles clear and at close range, the beam hits Setsuna head on almost immediately.
"Yes!"
You cheer out loud, jumping in your seat slightly as Setsuna manages to completely absorb the attack with her Impeller.
Ouch, his Impeller's on fire there from the sick burn."So Emily, what did you think of Koujirou? Claire said he was really cool." "Curb your thirst, we meet him in class everyday. Also, I wouldn't. He's denser than an Ace's Impeller." "Oooooh…" "Poor Setsuna."
Well, fuck my reading comprehension then....But that says the timeskip ends as the second semester begins, meaning the break was part of the seven weeks.
Rather than this:[c] Timeskip Activities
-[c] Train skills
-[c] Activities
[c] Holiday Activities
-[c] Stuffttivities
[c] Timeskip Activities
-[c] Train skills
-[c] Activities
-[c] Holiday Activities
--[c] Stufftivities
We should definitely do the Yukari and Setsuna social. I think it'll help Anna's social ability.
I just really want to spend almost all the holidays activities with interaction with everyone.
Not sure what to do on normal activities though, getting our transcendant wave progress is important but so is the activity to help the world.
That's nice. Having to choose between skill grinding and Anna awkwardly socializing would have broken my heart.Furthermore, the selection of activities under the Holiday Activities voting header do not have any point allocations, which means they do not fall under the Timeskip Activities vote, whereas the subvotes for Activities and Train skills, which clearly fall under Timeskip Activities, all require or provide point allocations!
Double-checked, and it's actually 4,817 Skill Points. Add in 2,100 from Red and Blue Wave, then there's the 260+ for Target Rich Environment, which we should get before levelling up our weapon skills directly, as it might provide a reduction in cost.I do understand why Avalanche isn't doing this since all told we only need 4,729XP to max out all our Weapon and Impeller Skills with Blue Wave Level 1 and Red Wave Level 1 (both of which are game changers) each adding another 1,050XP for a total of 6,829XP. We the initial 3 week timeskip and 7 week one here we'd have earned 2,066XP which is enough to buy up 30% of all skills available.
That's at least 2,050 Skill Points, right there.Impeller Field:
Derived Skils: Plasma Shaping
Derived Skills: Explosive Redirection
Weaponry:
Extreme Range Combat:
Missile MLSI
Missile Minefield
Group Skills;
#Group skills are restricted to the average between the highest and lowest skilled of the Synchronised Impeller Field:
Group Teleport:
Group Gate:
Group Interdiction:
Group Waveforce Manipulation:
Wait. I already said that. Am I not trustworthy?Furthermore, the selection of activities under the Holiday Activities voting header do not have any point allocations, which means they do not fall under the Timeskip Activities vote, whereas the subvotes for Activities and Train skills, which clearly fall under Timeskip Activities, all require or provide point allocations!
wait. Aw crud. I forgot to include Anna's weapons skills in my earlier calculations. I'll be back.Double-checked, and it's actually 4,817 Skill Points. Add in 2,100 from Red and Blue Wave, then there's the 260+ for Target Rich Environment, which we should get before levelling up our weapon skills directly, as it might provide a reduction in cost.
But that's the skill we have. We then have the skills that we don't have but can develop:
That's at least 2,050 Skill Points, right there.
Then there's the Electives. If we assume that 7 of the remaining 27 unvisited clubs have maxed-out skills, and all the untrained club skills max-out at 50, that means there's 33*50 = 1,650 skill points until we max them all out.
Now, I previously calculated that if Target Rich Environment level 2 raised the minimum skill with weapons to 100, that would save 1,222 skill points, so lets subtract that from the total.
Altogether, that's 9,655 skill points, or 966 action slots, as the bare minimum. And while Anna could get all that if she spent all three training actions each day on improving them for about 11 months, that's not all Anna is doing. We want Anna to spend time with her friends, doing stuff like the reconstruction efforts, spending non-training time with clubs she likes...
*looks back through thread*
Whoops, seems I missed that. I sincerely apologize.How do you spend your time during the holidays?
14 days total.
These 14 days are in addition to the other fifty, yes?
Actually, if it doesn't then it combines with our time skip options to be a total of 49 days.
Sorry. Realized that there aren't point costs so these won't count.
Thinking back to this vote near the beginning of the quest, would anyone be opposed to spending some time on introspection? Don't know if we'd need to spend a full day on it or not, but giving Anna some time to herself to just relax and think on things can't hurt.Notes: Looking at the votes, maybe I made it a bit too obvious which choice lead to what. In case anyone was wondering, exploring the Perth Arcology exploration deck would have lead to a very introspective post, with you thinking about your past and all that and then followed onto the next day.