Check the compass on the map, up isn't north aligned.
Oh, right.
Alright, fair enough.
They'd drop leaflets on front-line positions in WWII, I think as long as you could get them to the enemy when they're not currently in a fight it could work. And of course the audio one, if it's possible, doesn't need them to stop and read leaflets.
I said WWII, not I, though it looks like they may have dropped on the front lines in that one as well. But this mind controlled cult has been very susceptible to defection so far.
Let me put it this way: While I don't think it's actively counterproductive, is it a good use of our very limited remaining preparation time?
Yeah, under the assumption that they're going to be used as a harassing force to peel off parts of the enemy force, not as an actual in reserve trump card. And the role of the final line is specifically a single charge, not the broader engagement, so that's specifically the remit of Strike still.
I'm not saying we shouldn't fall back if it comes down to it, but rather that planning to fight them on the beaches might be a good idea because it means they can't link up immediately if they come over in multiple waves or on different areas, which they likely will.
I don't know where you're getting single-use from to be perfectly honest.
And? We want a slugfest. A slugfest favors us as the defenders. It allows us to make use of our prepared positions, means they're not slipping the noose so easily and reliably, and we probably have more and more consistent healing capabilities among our forces than they do based on what we've seen so far. I'd be far more concerned about the possibility that they somehow avoid a slugfest.
Yeah but if we give ground to Rin's screen that drops, potentially drastically, the distance she has to cover in her end run.
Without a doubt, which is why I want that final climactic showdown to happen as far away from the Seed as possible. Insurance, you see.
I worry that you're overestimating the amount of ground we have to give in the first place. The distance between the closest bit of shore and the Seed is, what, less than 2000 meters? Looks like to me at least. Ordinary human beings have run that distance in under five minutes, let alone (as you yourself point out) highly mobile meguca. We just can't fall back that much, is my personal concern. So falling back the moment we're in trouble will leave us all too rapidly with nowhere to fall back to.
Probably. It's not the sort of preparations where nearly everyone is doing something at all times. They're magi defending a town, not a modern military preparing for mobilization. There's no equipment to prepare, no supply lines to establish. I'd expect a decent amount of idle hands from the people who aren't doing the planning or helping manage the evacuation.
I feel like that's too close. It means we've accepted that not only Rin but the bulk of her troops will get within almost literal spitting distance of the Seed, which is inevitable to some degree but I'd rather we have it happen at the end of the fight and not at the start.
Wasn't Minako only involved in flipping one or two of them? As I recall, the rest were all just talked down normally or convinced to stand down after being incapacitated. Outright getting them to defect took time yeah, but just getting them to surrender or accept that we're not their enemy did not take long, even with the group on the boat that had a loyal adult trying to drive them to attack. Like, I'm not expecting mass defections from some pamphlets and broadcasts during a platoon-scale attack, or for the same success rate that talking face-to-face in smaller scale engagements was able to get. But the mind control is shown time and again to be about subtler lying and manipulation rather than an iron grip on their will, and they're able to question their orders when just presented with a competing argument.
But all of those were still with extensive face to face contact? Like, the boat team is a good example, in that they were willing to throw down for a bit and had to be comprehensively outmatched before they really were willing to stand down. Your arguments would make sense if you were talking about more trying to encourage surrenders at the point of contact, but nobody's arguing against such an idea. Just strewing some hastily made leaflets about in the hopes that someone may pick them up, if they realize they're not just scattered scraps of paper, or blaring generic warnings over a hastily rigged PA system isn't gonna cut it. If any are really itching to defect they're likely to do so by themselves at the point they meet our forces.
Oriko is a bizarre outlier and probably shouldn't be used as a baseline for anything.
