Cardinal's System Assist helps players use equipment to a degree, but in terms of fire control systems you already have Bunker Base computation modules. If people can figure out how to use them, they will absolutely be useful for fire direction. A better question would be "Does Cardinal help players build a fire direction system?"
I was thinking more the gun control systems on the guns themselves. Similar to how if a player manually went through the effort of making a rifle Mk.2 Cardinal might make it available.
As has been pointed out, mobile warfare training is likely better if we're going for flying artillery so here's a plan with that. I also want to start developing concrete instead of building more because it represents a 33% increase in bunks in addition to all the other advantages tier 3 provides. Our first base should be safe enough to upgrade even if it's on the front, since it's in a second line position rather than being the first line of defense.
[X] Plan Royal Horse Artillery
-[X] Retool to a Flying Artillery regiment (Bonus to mobility, malus to accuracy)
-[X] Begin developing Concrete (Clanshead Valley)
-[X] Commit training!
--[X] Mobile Warfare Training: You know how to fight out of a truck bed. Now it's time to get good at that.
-[X] Begin operational planning for Something Big
--[X] Begin planning a Small Regimental Advance (Will open Event Turns to plan in full) (Fulfils War Bureau Requirement)
-[X] Go out and get yourself a lieutenant! (You may have one per twenty Regiment members, minimum one)
--[X] Teach them the way of the organizer, so you have more time to put out more fires (Adds one action to Upgrades)
The Logi Union is one of the unfortunate casualties of the crossover, mostly because they're the warm community they are. This rather sadly makes them vulnerable to bad faith actors like alts, or worse, assholes like Kibaou. This is a crossover, and by its nature some parts of it have crossed over well and others poorly. While the ravages of the Laughing Coffin can be largely avoided or brushed under the rug thanks to respawn mechanics and the titanic paranoia of unsecured quarters, other dangers rear their heads much faster and more viscously.
Oof… yeah, I can imagine some really bad combinations of SAO culture and Foxhole culture.
…the people who made up the Alfheim Liberation Front are *absolutely* in charge of a sizable portion of the Colonial military, I don't know why, but I know my faction. We'd go all in for Cortez and his Spanish guitar.
[X] Plan Royal Horse Artillery
-[X] Retool to a Flying Artillery regiment (Bonus to mobility, malus to accuracy)
-[X] Begin developing Concrete (Clanshead Valley)
-[X] Commit training!
--[X] Mobile Warfare Training: You know how to fight out of a truck bed. Now it's time to get good at that.
-[X] Begin operational planning for Something Big
--[X] Begin planning a Small Regimental Advance (Will open Event Turns to plan in full) (Fulfils War Bureau Requirement)
-[X] Go out and get yourself a lieutenant! (You may have one per twenty Regiment members, minimum one)
--[X] Teach them the way of the organizer, so you have more time to put out more fires (Adds one action to Upgrades)
[X] Plan Royal Horse Artillery
-[X] Retool to a Flying Artillery regiment (Bonus to mobility, malus to accuracy)
-[X] Begin developing Concrete (Clanshead Valley)
-[X] Commit training!
--[X] Mobile Warfare Training: You know how to fight out of a truck bed. Now it's time to get good at that.
-[X] Begin operational planning for Something Big
--[X] Begin planning a Small Regimental Advance (Will open Event Turns to plan in full) (Fulfils War Bureau Requirement)
-[X] Go out and get yourself a lieutenant! (You may have one per twenty Regiment members, minimum one)
--[X] Teach them the way of the organizer, so you have more time to put out more fires (Adds one action to Upgrades)
…the people who made up the Alfheim Liberation Front are *absolutely* in charge of a sizable portion of the Colonial military, I don't know why, but I know my faction. We'd go all in for Cortez and his Spanish guitar
If I was writing this from Therizo instead of Kirknell, you better believe I'd have Cheesy Guitar be a regimental leadership feature. Unfortunately, I'm not, since I decided to center this quest around an OC instead of a cannon SAO character. Reproducing Asian's rise through the Knights of Blood would be dead easy considering she could pretty roundly tick off most of Thea Maro's Deeds List, but that swings me too close to SAO canon to make a good conclusion- the end of that story is the duel between Kirito and Heathcliff in the ruins of The Abandoned Ward for Asuna, then Yui's arc, then the great final showdown in the nuked-out ruins of Jade Cove as Asuna reveals Heathcliff's perfidy, visiting Warden high command and triggering a World Quest that wrongly doomed the front, before the final duel that ends the game.
Which would be a fun narrative quest, don't get me wrong. I just wanted to write a planquest.
I was thinking more the gun control systems on the guns themselves. Similar to how if a player manually went through the effort of making a rifle Mk.2 Cardinal might make it available.
Ah, you mean interpreting gun controls to cardinal output. Yeah, there's system assist for that- but once players get good, that's when they start to understand the truth of system assist, and do better.
You are allowed and encouraged to write omakes. The Big Spreadsheet has a list of all numbered regiments to date, and if you need Regimental Types other than those so listed, I do have a master list I can give descriptions off of.
I dissent from the idea that Flying Artillery is a particularly good idea. See, when it comes to big guns, you can fire all the rounds you want, but if you don't hit your target, it means sweet fuck all. Firing control and accuracy has always been a big consideration for any military weapon. Between that fact and that we badly need more trucks, I'm adjusting the Royal Horse plan to get more trucks and do Line Artillery instead.
[X] Plan We Need Trucks
-[X] Retool to a Line Artillery regiment (Bonus to terrain traversal)
-[X] Begin developing Concrete (Clanshead Valley)
-[X] Extra work shifts
--[X] More Mines: Get everyone to do more rounds on the component mines and oil wells. Components mean R-mats, R-mats mean flatbeds. God, you want a flatbed.
-[X] Begin operational planning for Something Big
--[X] Begin planning a Small Regimental Advance (Will open Event Turns to plan in full) (Fulfils War Bureau Requirement)
-[X] Go out and get yourself a lieutenant! (You may have one per twenty Regiment members, minimum one)
--[X] Teach them the way of the organizer, so you have more time to put out more fires (Adds one action to Upgrades)
It is Once Again Time for more Cross-Posting from Discord. This time, it's on weapon ranges!
So, to reference this, System Assist ranges are what ranges in which the Gun Skill effects auto-aim, and is the stated range on the Foxhole Wiki. The standard range is then the range to the ballistic limit, sometimes given with a noted 'effective range' due to control issues. Finally, the ballistic limit is the range at which damage dropoff occurs, before the round despawns.
So, weapon ranges. With the maximum range of 500m on the 40mm Field Gun, it was brought up of "how well does this scale to other weapons?", specifically the rather prolific 12.7mm weapons that populate the game. I'll be going through some of the vehicle and non-vehicle options below, even if not all of them are tech'd yet.
First up, the absolute best gun of the lot: the EMG. System assist range at 50m, ballistic limit at 450m, point fires well to 200m and area fires out to 350-400m. Biggest issue with the piece is shitty optics, a reoccurring trend through this. Pairs well with spotters to walk the gunner in. Comes with a standard 3x/6x bimodal prismatic optic
Next, tripod MGs. Both Lamentum and Ratcatcher share System Assist at 50m, but Lamentum beats out the Ratcatcher in terms of ballistic limit: 350m vs 325m. Point fires are tied out to 200m, area fires are good out to the ballistic limit. Ratcatcher has better anti-vehicle performance, Lamentum has less dispersion as range increases. Both are good.
Man portable MGs are the Gast and Malone, where the relationship reverses and the Warden gun gets better ranges. Malone has 50m system assist to the Gast's 45m, and cleans clocks at 200m ballistic limit versus 180m ballistic limit on Gast. This continues through point targets at 150m vs 125m, but the Gast makes up for this in having a very kind manual of arms versus the Malone's, ah, fun and engaging use. Malone does, however, get a 3x/6x optic, with the caveat that it may interfere with loading.
After that come Ye Olde Wheelchairs, the FMG, which are basically mirror units across factions. With only 40m System Assist, the theoretical 300m ballistic limit is damn near impossible to hit due to construction of the carts. Oversized pintle mounts in gun shields is not ergonomic or stable, and the gun pays for it with only 100m of point target engagement. On the plus side, though, they're very cheap.
Finally, at the "you tried" tier, the Colonial LMG: system assist to 35m, ballistic limit at 150m, barely useable past 50m. Packaging 12.7mm into a Storm Rifle platform wasn't, strictly, a mistake. Just a very specialized weapon.
And finally, for comparison, the good old No.2 Loughcaster: 40m System Assist, 100m battle sights, 150m ballistic limit.
I had an idea about Kirito halping the war effort.
No assurances about quality of tactics presented, but it's supposed to be cheesier than a four cheese pizza.
----
Five.
Kirito counted down as his shot connected. The Colonial soldier he had struck let out a sputtering cough. Two groups, a lone soldier and a squad of four, started moving. Kirito discarded his empty Loughcaster and pulled out a spare loaded rifle.
He tsked softly to himself. This was the Colonial variant. While he had figured out the quirks of system assist with a Loughcaster, this new weapon was, well, new. Furthermore, the five remaining shots wouldn't be enough when taking into account the damage falloff of long range shots.
Simple enough, though difficult. Ideally Kirito would pick off two of the four man squad, fix bayonet, and then just have to run down the other three without getting shot himself. It probably would have been easier if he had grabbed reloads instead of just rifles from the fallen Warden engineers, he thought to himself.
Kirito darted out from cover, branches swinging behind him. After a moment he darted back, then west towards an outcropping.
The squad of Colonials fanned out and walked towards the hiding spot. One of them shouted something in a language he didn't recognize. The meaning was fairly clear to him: for the single soldier to head around and flank his new hiding spot while the rest covered angles that would keep him from escaping the trap.
Which meant he had to target the new straw boss and time it carefully so the initiative drop messed up their flanking action.
Slow down to keep stamina from dropping too low, brace the rifle against the side of a rock for the quicker alignment, target a spot just above where the Colonial's head was going to be...
*CRACK*
New straw boss howled in pain and dropped prone. After a quick adjustment and a second and a half of stabilization another crack rang out.
Four.
One of the trio in front of Kirito started barking out commands. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Kirito bolted out of cover, spending the stamina he had left to circle around the outcropping. A stick grenade bounced over the outcropping, detonating far too close for comfort. He soon found the thrower, facing away from him with a pistol clutched in his left hand.
At this range aiming was a snap. Two shots rang out and the Colonial dropped lifelessly.
Three.
Kirito was checking his pockets before the downed soldier was finished collapsing.
Nothing useful. This soldier was carrying a hammer and materials instead of a rifle. Kirito eschewed taking the pistol. System assist was poor with it and the sights too short for his outranging tricks to work. He slotted it his bayonet and took a moment to breathe. There should be a little bit of time before the trio of soldiers facing him decided on withdrawing or storming his location. Which suited him fine, he was low on water and food statuses and could use the time to recover stamina.
The drone of engines started to overwhelm the ambient noise. Kirito peaked over to look North. Four Drummond LUVs were charging at the remaining Colonials. More worrying, the surviving Colonials were sprinting at his location in a way he would really prefer they didn't. Most especially because two of them were ready to lob stick grenades.
Dammit! This was not how this sort of group was supposed to behave. As long as you could keep track of the point leader, and remove them regularly, Colonial forces tended to stay pretty dumb and predictable. Unless they they're run off by an overwhelming Warden force, driving this group to uncharacteristically charge while disorganized, for example.
Kirito fired at center mass of the closest grenade-carrying Colonial right before system assist would kick in. His last bullet staggered the target, but didn't drop the Colonial. Kirito then started to dart at the edge of available cover, baiting the rifle-carrying straw boss to take shots at him. Those shots were meant to drive him into cover, spoil his aim, not really well aimed. It still felt very sloppy to hope everything missed.
Another grenade flew over. Kirito lunged away with the last of his stamina. Almost on cue, a rifle round bit into his leg. Kirito could see the Colonial straw boss snarling at him as she began reloading her rifle.
There was about 22 meters of distance. Without the leg wound Kirito would have been able to get a stab in before the reload. If he hadn't been drained of stamina there was a good chance to evade the injury. As it was...
*CRACK*
----
The darkening world burst back into full color.
"Welcome back to the land of the living." a Warden in a physician's jacket said with a grin, "And you're welcome for the rescue. All in a day's work for Alpha Squad."
Kirito groaned a bit as bits stopped being numb and started being painful, "I had that handled."
"What you had was no ammo and three goblins breathing down your neck. And I just read your vitals, you'll drop dead of thirst if we don't give you a ride back to base." the Warden shook his head for a moment, "Sorry, I meant to say you did well to pick up those dog tags. Why not join the Logistics Union? You won't find yourself in the middle of nowhere with no ammo again. And we could use the fighters to keep the radio posts safe."
Kirito sat up, "I'll pass on joining. I'd rather take the fight to the Colonials on my own instead of having someone boss me around at all times of the day."
Nah, it's fairly sound. I've med guys who can do that, but if it wasn't for the rock those Bomastones would have shredded the poor guy. Nice catch on leadership, by the way- Colonial units do have a Designated Leader the rest of the pod takes orders from. That said, kind of weird to find one without a rifle, unless Kiri's decided to try and jump a road crew or something. It could work- a few Bomastones or Green Ash and they'd be in trouble- but it's exactly the sort of dumb, risky shit Kirito would do alone.
You had to admit, your clothing and bearing were drawing some stares. It wasn't surprising, considering it was late spring and here you were in horizon blue with a black armband, a kepri on your head and empty frogs and hangers on your sides. It felt strange, not having the comforting weight of a pistol or knife on you, and for a minute you wished you were back home in America, land of the gun financiers and open-carry laws. Still, Sam had asked you to come here, and the rest of the survivors had been ecstatic when you'd shown up. Seeing Silica at the airport with her throat tied by white cravat and peaked cap set atop like a tanker had done you a cold shock, until she'd smiled at you to give you a hug. It was weird, having members of the 65 helping serve as porters of all things, but your luggage was both heavy enough to need four of them serving as practically pallbearers for the chests that came with you.
Still, you'd gotten settled into your hotel without undue difficulty- you would write off explaining the charging system and datacenter you had to bring with you as "due"- and spent the last few days wandering Tokyo before this. You'd seen the tourist traps, spent a night in Shibuya showing off your transparent bodyglove so everyone could see your metal, and now the piper was coming due.
The government was being mum about the exact particulars of The Incident in Japan, but America had painted a more lurid and somehow less detailed picture. It was enough to get the survivors together, to reach out to companions in other countries through DeepL translators and multilingual regiments, and start message boards and get their hooks into existing ones. Veterans, of a different sort, with the same guts-and-blood biases of the rest of the breed and the same tendency towards fumbling back towards society with an awkward half-step at a time. Still, each national branch had managed to organize a monument, even the ghostly Portugal branch. They'd been wiped to a man in the war, but Spain and France had come through to get them a stone.
Today was the day you'd be dedicating the Japanese marker. They'd only taken average casualties in the war, but that was still several hundred names that had to have been inscribed on the plinth. While Asuna had been the most notable regimental commander of Japan left alive after The Breaking, she'd deferred to you for this. You couldn't understand why, but she had.
The shrine was packed when you got there: not quite a thousand people had managed to make it, draped all about in black suits and horizon blue coats, a funerary display clashing against two different codes of uniform. At least there was a lack of helmets- that much, you'd made clear when you wrote and sent the dress code on the trans-pacific flight. A few other plain kepris or peaked caps dotted the audience, while the medical section wore their green-cross'd pillbox caps in one solitary blob. As your heels and cane clacked across the sidewalk, though, a path was opened. These people knew you. Colonel Orr Melanie, a fixture of the War from Morgen's to Origin, and a public figure of no small renown after the Sun's Haven Siege or the Breaching, who was there when the final nuke landed and the last of the dust settled.
You were never going to repeat your final words of the war. Ever. They'd been uttered enough, by other lips- and yet, you still heard them on the wind as you walked into the shrine. "May the next sun we see rise be our own."
Shaking your head to dispel the thoughts, you went up to the monument and looked it over prefunctuarily. It was installed, and as per your request it was left bare of flowers or other overt decoration. A plain marble obelisk, with four sub-posts at the base- a deliberate decision, as each resembled the all-too-familiar hook on the pillars of a bunker core where one could hang the dog tags of the dead. A half-remembered burst of unhappy memory came to you, staring down the statue of Callahan back on the Home Island and the piles of old Adrien helmets around it. This would be different. It had to be.
As the clock struck thirteen hundred, the rustling herd started regimenting itself, straightening out into blocks. Over in the distance, the priest and shrine tenders slowly wondered what they had signed up for as the group finished pouring in. People had grouped instinctively by regiment, and once again you let out a faint breath of relief- nobody had objected to your loose ordering of units. The 65 and 134 were front in center, the former for their role in communications and the latter in their capacity as Graves Registration. They were the ones who collected the corpses in-game and the memories of the dead who could return no more, and you refused to ever forget that.
Once the crowd settled down, you breathed in deeply. It was time for the speech.
"Wardens," you began, choosing the most universal descriptor possible. "Thank you for coming here today. We all know I'm not one for public speaking, so I'll attempt to keep this brief."
The wind died down.
"Over the course of the war, we lost many. Two hundred regiments we were going into the first real offensive, with count provided from the 65 Communications Regiment, and barely one hundred and twenty were still with us when we seized Sun's Haven. Today, here, we commemorate the fallen."
Moving around the monument, you gestured to each element. "The north and east faces are inscribed with those fallen of Japanese origin, or in cases where we are unsure, those who primarily spoke Japanese. The south face is inscribed with the regiments of players from Japan who served with us."
Left unmentioned, was the west face. Left blank, polished to a sheen, it faced the audience and your back.
"The top is left unadorned, while the bottom has the crest of every group that served with us in the Warden Army. Each prong here, we all know too well."
With a simple move, you dipped under your shirt to grab your dog tags. They were still shiny and new, made up at an American shop to help you have something small and familiar. Small and familiar was good. Removing your kepi and setting it on the handle of your cane, you dropped them down onto one of the prongs, where they slid to the base.
Naturally, you didn't respawn. This was reality, after all, even if you half-expected to feel the vertigo and see the sight of your body decomposing into polygons. Retrieving the tags, you put them back on and replaced your hat.
"Some of us will fall. It's inevitable. We're all familiar with death, and it's something coming for us. As it's a little unreasonable to ask the dead to prove it, though-" here, a small laugh, as a few remembered you chewing Asuna out back in the Fisherman's Isles campaign "-I'd like to request everyone a favor. If you know someone who passed on, take their dog tags. Bring them here, and leave them. You all- we all- deserve to be remembered, and we can't re-engrave it. The agreement with the shrine means they won't touch the monument, so this will serve."
One more time, you looked out over the crowd, and they looked back over you. The dark blue overcoat you wore, with the fur pauldron and empty space for the officer's dirk felt hollow at that moment. There should have been more- had been more in the game. It hurt to consider their absence, but you knew intellectually they weren't dead. Telling your heart that, when you had once stood to address a thousand players in their ranks from a podium that still circulated as a piece of recruiting material, didn't come easy.
A tear crept up to your eye, and you didn't brush it away. At least you could still cry.
"I would like to thank you all for coming here," you continued, the urge to cry trying and failing to close your throat. There was too much metal there, now. "This, this means a lot to me. Thank you for your service, for coming here, and for most of all remembering our dead."
There. That was the end of your speech. "Honor guard!" you called out. There, you saw the best-dressed of the lot come forward, all seven of them. "Present flags!"
Slowly, carefully, seven flags were unfurled. Japanese. French. American. Mexican. Canadian. Brazilian. Finally, the Warden battle flag.
"Place the colors!"
Each flag slotted into a well-concealed flag holder, left unflattered by the wind.
"Honor guard, return to post!"
Seamlessly, the group folded back into the ranks.
"Wardens, attention!"
Heels clicked, hands went down, backs straightened.
"Salute!"
Hundreds, then thousands, then ten thousand hands snapped to brows. You felt it, the ranks in front of you spanning wider: everyone was watching. Everyone knew you remembered.
"Wardens, dismissed!"
Then, it was just the crowd in the shrine, slowly and orderly filing out, rank by rank. Finally, it was your turn, as you got ready to leave- before Asuna and Kirito cornered you.
"What even is this," you groused. "I'm not a sick old woman."
Asuna stared at you, looking at your cane. "You told us they hadn't taken care of you very well, back in America."
"Come on, Melanie," Kirito said, earning a thwack in the leg for the informality. "The Yuukis want to take care of you for a while- and it'd be a favor to me if you'd accept."
"There's a reason I never went higher than Colonel," you groused as Asuna steered you towards the car. "No head for this political bullshit."
"It's only politics if it's your skin in the game," Asuna reminded you, before making very sure you were in the middle of the car. "Now come on, I have a pot of borscht waiting back home."
"Why must you bribe me with food?" you asked plaintively.
You have to admit, it's a raw deal for anyone who survived Sword Art Online. Here? It's so much worse. Veterans of a war only they understand, in a society that expects them to brush it off without even deigning to remember it happened. If there's any one thing I'm happy about, its that in this crossover the multinational nature of this incident will make it much harder to ever forget. Japanese ingenuity, American money, and that special je ne sais quoi that you only get by hiring the best of France's worst for the little details. This quest will eventually hit events after the SAO incident, I think, but at that point I'm not sure whether to make it a Quest or a straight narrative.
When we get there, we'll see. Just like Orr will, I suppose.
