Quote:Ah, no. Whupsie!
Is that a deliberate repetition?
Quote:You've called the three captured suits right, but either you're confused or we just disagree about what their specialties are meant to be. Aegis' mobile suit mode might be well-suited to close combat, but no machine that's built around a weapon the size of its Scylla beam cannon is going to be meant for anything less than its best application... in short, I think the thing's a shipkiller which happens to be good at melee. The Striker packs are about as 'generalist' a concept as you can get, but the Duel's only integrated weapons are a pair of swords and the head vulcans... in short, it's the melee monster of the group.
Not sure about how the first sentence should start, but this part confuses me. The Brown, Pink and Black suits are pretty evidently the Buster, Aegis and Blitz suits respectively (unless the canon designs have changed?). This would leave Kira and Cagalli in the Strike and the Duel, which are the generalist designs (the pre-upgraded Duel is kitted almost the exact same way as the later Strike Daggers suits). The close combat suit is the Aegis, which Cagalli is fighting... but it sounds like she thinks she's piloting a close combat machine. Is she in the Strike and making do with those bitty lil' knives or something?
So, for the record:
Buster: Natalie Badgiruel
Blitz: Maria Ramius
Aegis: Mu la Flaga
Strike: Kira Yamato
Duel: Cagalli Yula Attha
Quote:*snicker*
Oh goody! It's always nice to know who's shooting at who and why.
DKnight:
The 'seed' change is not that Cagalli's a coordinator - like I was saying earlier, if Doctor Hibiki was any kind of scientist she'd almost have to be - but that a childhood accident caused her to recieve a gene test that revealed that fact... which never happened in canon. Since she has a genetic disorder that keeps her Coordinator traits from manifesting without supplemental medication (fairly common in the early first generation Coordinators, BTW), it never mattered in canon, but here that information got out into the wide world almost as soon as it was discovered.
The 'almost all Coordinator' nature of the PLANTS population was a fact that took generations to establish, mostly caused by Coordinators and their families fleeding Blue Cosmos and other persecution on Earth, and the last and largest wave of it would have happened in the period after this revelation. Any Coordinator who was still on the planet by that point genuinely didn't want to leave Earth, so the existence of a planetside haven friendly enough to make a Coordinator part of their royal family - even by adoption - seemed like a godsend, and they moved to ORB en masse... along with a suprising number of people who'd gone to PLANTS earlier but had preferred the planetside life.
ETA: Whups! Hit the wrong button.
Anyway, that gave ORB a far larger population than in canon, along with a higher proportion of Coordinators, which in turn gave them a larger economic base and a larger area to protect. Accordingly, the ORB military held a competition to decide on a mobile suit design. The two companies that would matter to history were Morganroete GmbH and the Electric Boat Company (yes, the same one you're thinking); EBC's design was submersible, sea-rated, and had a mobile-armor mode capable of supercavitating speeds, and was cheaper besides, so it won and Morganroete, which had gambled big developing their own entries, looked for a way to make up their losses - and the law be damned.
Which leads to a critical difference - in canon, with the ORB government on board to help hide things, Heliopolis was the most secret location available; here, though, with only their own resources, Morganroete's best option for security purposes was their main development facility off of Aube.
BTW, Aube is an island chain that doesn't exist in the real world - similar to Hawaii, basically, but smaller and one, two hundred miles to the southwest - which is, in turn, the capital and founding state of the larger ORB Coalition.
The recently ended war with the Equatorial Union that's been mentioned started when the EU was looking for a short victorious war, for the usual reasons, and, as mentioned, it backfired badly, with the East Asian Republic joining in later in a land grab. So the EU doesn't exist anymore, ORB owns everything from Java east, and the EAR owns pretty much the entire mainland.
And now, on with the show!
"Well, that was a disaster," Ezalia Joule said dryly into the echoing silence that had followed the report on the 'incident' at Aube. "Four promising pilots lost, along with their equipment, a full shooting war with the Atlantic Federation - and probably the Eurasian Union and East Asian Republic by the end of the day - and not to forget that all three of them will shortly have mobile suit technology at least equal to our own..."
"The war was inevitable," one of the other councilmembers pointed out. "And, as long as we can shut down their industry with the neutron jammers, the-"
"Absolutely not," Patrick Zala interrupted. "However much strength it might cost them, that would also make our enemies desperate - especially the Republic, but the Federation also; both of them are highly dependant on fusion reactors for civil power. Forcing those off would kill thousands directly and do unimaginable things to the Republic's standard of living... along with most of our Earthside allies!"
"ORB has the same concerns we do," a fourth spoke up. "And the African Community needs our technological support desperately."
"Oceania doesn't," Joule said. "The USSA doesn't. Herman?"
Herman Gould, Ph.D., was the council representative from October City, and a highly regarded political scientist in his own right. "If we did it unilaterally they'd almost certainly declare war. But it's worth laying on the table; I can't say I disagree with Patrick's evaluation, but our duty is to PLANTS first, then our allies, and only third to the rest of the world... and it would be a great advantage in this war."
Zala was shaking his head. "Our best option at this point is a negotiated peace; at the very least it would buy time to improve our own industrial and population base, and for ORB to finish assimilating its accquisitions in the former Equatorial Union. A military victory would have worse options - status quo, and the same damn war next year, or a bloodbath that will start a vendetta to last decades. How willing do you think the three powers will be to do that if their cities are dark and cold, if their people are starving? Will they be inclined to talk peace... or drive it to a war to the knife?
"The neutron jammers will be invaluable, tactically, but deploying them as a strategic weapon would be a disaster."
"Be that as it may," Chairman Clyne noted, "they may be a neccessary last resort, and our allies should be aware they exist."
"I'm not saying they shouldn't be; but those things should be a very last resort."
"Noted. The motion is to complete the global neutron jammer array and place it in storage, and to provide basic information on it to the governments of the African Community, Oceania Union, Oceanic Resource Base Coalition, and United States of South America, but to defer deployment for the present time until an indefinite future date. Shall we vote? Very well. All in favor? Opposed?" he checked his console. "The motion carries."
No Bloody Valentine, remember? Mrs. Zala is alive and well.
Ja, -n
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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"