So the whole 'different language'
thing is just brushed over due to what I'm going to politely call 'assumptions'.
If the soldiers created by a Lost Logia speak the TSAB's language the first time they are encountered, it is reasonable to assume that they will know the same language the second time.
1. One of the things you said when the vote was tallied was 'the only way it could be worse was if you chose to go lethal'. By this statement, it would have made no difference.
I was assigning positive and negative points to the plan provided based on how much it did and did not follow the IAE-puppet's previous methods. Using massive attack that has been shown to do massive damage and irradiate those who are too close? Check. Unleashing a familiar (which, admittedly, the TSAB did not know they could do) who goes on a rampage trying to kill everyone? Not seen before but definitely in character. Going lethal would have been a major third similarity since that's what the puppets did previously, hence the comment of "trifecta of unintentionally awful decisions".
2. The entire team is apparently incapable to telling a lethal from a non-lethal attack. You've already had it ruled that non-lethal blasts still blow buildings up. But that nobody thought to check for radiation. Not when the first barrage of Shooters hit. Not after one of their own got plowed through a field of Shooters. Not when the Solar Wrath was deployed so close to them.
They were busy trying to avoid the radiation they had every reason to believe was coming at them first. That was the more immediate priority since, you know, that would kill them. Afterwards they could have tried to examine the remains, at which point they could have discovered that "hey there is minimal radiation how strange", except Perfect Storm autocast Solar Wrath to destroy the dimensional barrier, which erased the battlefield they were in so they no longer had evidence to examine.
... rather than lay low and seek out the local contact during their month and change of being on-planet, they decide to research the planet and then go after a mage.
They
were looking for their contact. They just had to figure out which of
the fifteen worlds she was on first, which is the reason they were searching for mana usage. Only one mage means only one person using mana, so follow the one to find the other. It's taken them three weeks to completely search and rule out worlds #1-11, and they finally hit pay dirt on #12 only to run into what they thought was a brainwashed soldier of the Lost Logia they were searching for, at which point their reaction was "Well, shit, things just got ten times harder".
@Silently Watches, the whole thing of a clearly ptsd-stricken mage running after a target and not thinking clearly is a good but of character development and conflict, that's good. But
an entire team of mages making all of the mistakes here? It's nonsensical. The entire team shows itself to be unprepared for interact with the locals, and the lot of them are incapable of doing basic analysis in the middle of battle. Something essential for the math-heavy mage combat. Maybe Lanster would be too vengeance-focused to do that. But the entire team, when it's clear they are supposed to have their heads in the game? I am seeing no establishment.
1. The crew has been briefed on the capabilities of IAE by the one Enforcer who survived fighting it last time and more importantly was the one who shut it down. They were using the same strategies here that were necessary to defeat it the first time. How were they supposed to know that it contracted amnesia and is being used as a Device by their local contact? They saw someone who looks just like an IAE puppet and fights just like an IAE puppet, so they decided "Hey, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, probably a duck". I'm sorry, but I fail to see how that is a lack of analytical skills.
2. "Unprepared for interaction with the locals". They explicitly
aren't supposed to be interacting with the locals except for Taylor and Dragon. They are running a covert operation on a magic-naive world, which means keeping their heads down and not causing a disruption. That was already discussed in Arc 6.
What about the different language? If that was a slave then it's pointless to tell her to stand down but if it's not then no one knows what you're saying and they wouldn't stand down even if it wasn't in the middle of not dying.
They were giving her a chance to surrender. If she had done so, the fight would have stopped there. Did they expect an IAE puppet to take it? No, but they still wanted to offer the opportunity. As mentioned, the previous IAE puppets could speak in Midchildan/Modern Belkan/whatever language the TSAB uses, so they had no reason to believe this IAE puppet they just ran into couldn't.
Another thing I would like to point out is that, although you said bombardment was the worst choice, it was also the most in-character thing for Taylor to do. Especially considering her bad day so far. Not trying to sound harsh here, but it feels like you're punishing Taylor for what would be a completely understandable and natural reaction. Plus I kind of agree with
Always Late on some of their logic points about the TSAB team's actions. (Though I do feel they're a bit too aggressive in their vehemence)
That said, I'm still looking forward to whatever comes next.
Normally looking back it's easy to tell what the 'good' vote option was, this time I can't see it, not really. I think that's what bothered me about the orginal version.
Choosing to fight from range wasn't the problem. As I mentioned above, I was adding up positive and negative points, and the initial tactic gave a neutral 0. Plenty of mages fight from range, slaves to a Lost Logia or not. It was using Solar Wrath and calling in Samantha, who you know will go into a berserker rage if Taylor is hurt badly enough, that were the problems. (As far as initial approach goes, the only option that awarded points in either direction was melee, which was a point in favor of you
not being an IAE puppet because Flare Blade is not a skill standard Calamity Witches possess).
but decided to go ahead with the mission be cause "Crashed ship or not, there's still a device out there that is literally designed to turn entire planets into an army of enslaved super-soldiers programmed for multiversal conquest"
FTFY. Waiting until the ship is completely operational means that instead of fighting a hundred IAE puppets, you're facing half a million. In this case, the Patton quote "A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week" is very valid.
Without doing more than token recon, without contacting their best source for intel. They can't tell the difference between lethal and non-lethal (what kind of shit mage are they?).
See above.
Oh wow. The TSAB went lethal. The TSAB went lethal. What the fuck.
Jail and his Numbers were minutes away from wiping Mid-Childa's capital city from the map and the TSAB still didn't go lethal against them.
The Book Of Darkness was trying to eat an entire world and they still were ttrying to deal with the situation non-lethally.
Prescia was moment away from triggering a catastrophic Dimensional Quake and they didn't set their weaponry to lethal.
The Mariage, however, were all destroyed. That is the best comparison to make to IAE. Not the Book of Darkness. Not Precia. Not Jail and the Numbers. The disposable and easily replaceable soldiers that will kill you without blinking because that's all they're programmed to do.
- They've been on various Earths for weeks-months, and have not taken the 10-second action of contacting either Dragon or Taylor, literally their only on-world contacts (They aren't having *general* communication issues, just problems getting out of the barrier surrounding the world cluster)
It's almost like the end of the interlude didn't say specifically "Now that you've contacted command, I can finally forward you the Agharti's radio ID so you can find Taylor, but just so you know we can only talk when she initiates contact. We think it's a power issue on her end". Oh, wait, it did.
That should be everything.
Should have voted for lethal...
