Quote:If I recall my Bolo lore right Hellrails are meant for shooting down starships, and by the time Hellrail equiped Bolo's show up their infinite repeaters are Hellbores. However I had a background reason for keeping railguns around, magical shield seem to be weak against physical impacts in Nanoha cannon. Railguns work by physical impact.
I was not sure what you knew about Bolo generations, which was why I linked the material
I'd checked in my confusion. Basically, the weapons mix seems odd, and is as you mention a bit anachronistic. I'm wondering if there might be a better mix for the purposes of the story. IIRC, Hellbores essentially fire fusion explosions, and would have a significant physical impact component. I don't have a cite for this, but I'd also thought Hellrails were more projectile based, launching a penetrator, which does not seem to match the description in the story. Given that there are AP batteries, I'm
thinking that if magical strengths justify keeping a less generally efficient weapons
system on hand, then they might also justify a mixed battery of infinite repeaters, some
combination of rail, ion and/or Hellbore in various sizes. This serves as insurance
against different enemies (like pure tech users), and might serve the narrative just as
well.
Quote:I vaguely recall one story where the Bolo ejected their survival center.
If the survival center is as badly damaged as mental function (and its effect on voice)
indicates, it is not clear that there is enough integrity to it to survive ejection.
Quote:I have not found the computer architecture in the Bolo stories all that consistent, so I made something up that seemed reasonable.
If nothing else, the given description somewhat implies that the machine can mess around
freely with files controlling its safeguards. Having at least some of it in WORM (which
is more or less what a Bolo's Holographic is), ROM, or something of that nature would be
a better design choice.
Quote:Not surprising since the physics behind an AMF field are not explored in great
detail. We know that having a spell around a spell will let the inner spell penetrate
deeper into the AMF, I reasoned that a mage with a barrier jacket while casting a spell
would have a similar area behind them, like an antenna casting a shadow in the radio
waves passing by it. I saw no way to integrate it without it being an infodump
though.
I reasoned that out more or less, but I felt that the description in text was confusing
enough that I ought to raise the issue.
Quote:Well Signum was nomed by the book of darkness and her memories of that time are a
little garbled.Keep in mind that Signum didn't so much survive as respawn, or even
restored from backup. Who knows how or why Outpost #723 fell, maybe Midchilda nuked it,
maybe the Book of Darkness killed the planet as it supposedly went around doing for
centuries.
Okay, I admit to a blind spot here. I've always assumed that if the Wolkenritter
entities predated their integration with the Book, that they had become part of it
consensually, when it was in a more functional, less destructive state. It not having
to have been that way is interesting, and raises some other possibilities. Like, if it
was gathering people, there may have once been more Wolkenritter than survived to the
current day, and that the Wolkenritter may have changed over time.
Ideas from this thought that could be jammed into the story include a) Signum has
significantly increased in power since being eaten b) Laevateinn was originally the
previously ejected core of Ifrit and c) Signum took Laevateinn from the body of Surt.
Quote:They accepted Rein, who granted is a bit smaller and lighter and doesn't have the
whole mass weapon thing... but still, you could justify it. It's probably easier to do
post Strikers though since Mid moves back a bit on mass weaponry then.
The general reason is the tightly integrated dubious technology. The specific reason is
that this Bolo is 1) very badly damaged 2) Clearly insane and also 3) seems corrupted the way SHV was. I have trouble thinking that the TSAB would choose to spare something dangerous that they can't repair if it is insane enough that the Concordiat would likely have also killed it. Not to mention that the remains should be pretty hot. If it were saner, more intact, able to form a command link with Signum, and file VSR (sp?) with her, much more likely. I think saving the Bolo is a better choice if one has plans for later on with it, and a worse choice if not.
Quote:before the barrel melts over my glacis plate
I remember wondering back when I first read this if the level of damage which could do
this wasn't also enough to blow out the turret.
Quote:hydrogen fire
I'm also wondering if this should be all that quickly dangerous to the insides of a
Bolo. After all, combustion versus fusion, and that the inside of a flaming Bolo might
be a low oxygen environment. Various bits of information make my emotional evaluation
'it isn't exploding, so a hydrogen fire seems less dangerous than what I expect a Bolo
to be built to handle, or to other options I can think of for internal hazards'.
I woke up in the middle of the night (after my post of the tenth) thinking I had
a handle on what was bugging me. There are several things which make a Bolo a Bolo.
These include a) Nomenclature (Bolo, Dinochrome, etc...), b) voice, c)
attitude/personality, d) role in battle, e) safeties relating to danger to user, f)
durability, and g) cost. One doesn't have to get them all correct, but if some are
weak, others need to be strengthened.
The issue is that Nanoha is in a similar 'weight class' to Signum, a fighter considered
by Belkia suitable to command a Bolo, and is not greatly overpowered by a Bolo made by
Belkia which still has one of its main weapons functioning. (IIRC, a Bolo's main weapon
is capable of defeating its own armor. Or is it the other way around?) Presuming that Signum has not greatly increased her power, what was her level of combat ability and survival compared to the Bolo? Why bother making a Bolo the size of a Mark XXXIII if its power does not greatly surpass that of a humanoid fighter, unless the humanoid fighter is so expensive that deploying it as a Bolo commander does not make sense. (Given that a Bolo uses AMF, pairing it with a Knight may also have some issues.) The use of commander without 'latest' implies also that the thing was of recent manufacture at the time of conflict. So, it bothers me a little that the Bolo has so little success with so much left to it, although a 'weak Signum gets nommed by the BoD and grows to her current level' might be a good story in of itself. So the cost/safety issues make me want to look more critically at the voice and other issues. (Having all the main weapons inoperable, and doing the fight with a mix of secondary rail and hellbore might improve things.)
There also seems to be an issue with the pacing, in that the story moves a little faster
then some of the emotions can develop. I think the story has the potential to hit
harder emotionally than it does. Bolos can think really quickly at times, so a rant
expressing its despair at how long it must have been since the slaguhter, and its rage
at having been unable to prevent it, might be appropriate at some point. I don't know.
I do know that I had a flight of fancy where I imagined this ending with Signum shedding
a single tear, unaware of it or of why, followed by the start of a heavy rainfall, the
body of her lost friend glimmering with cherenkov radiation as the water flows over it.
I felt weepy, the feeling I get from some Bolo stories and some of the harder bits of
history. (Of course now that I try to describe it I realize that there would have been
lots of steam at first. Still, the image of the Knight Signum standing vigil over the
corpse of a lost brother-in-arms is powerful for me, and it also makes a bit of sense.
One would want to keep an eye on it after Nanoha is evacuated, and it might start up
again for someone else.) Of course, maybe the problem is that I read the story the
first time in too analytical a frame of mind, and I needed to remember it without that
for the impact to hit.
I think I'm also having some issues with the timing and causality of the death. I have
a few notions that combined would either fix them, or at least hopefully explain them
well enough for someone else to see, because I am just a little short on sense right on.
We know that Nanoha learned many things from Raging Heart, and that Raging Heart is a
Mid type device that might well have been active and gathering data after the Bolo's
time. It may be plausible that Raging Heart knows a counter for some of the Bolo's
tech, and that Nanoha learned it as part of her basic technique. (I imagine that this
could have fried a lot of the vulnerable mechanisms, meaning that the surviving stuff is
immune.) Anyway, Nanoha includes this without thinking, and when it hits, it starts to
poison/'burn'/corrode the Bolo's nervous system. However, it destroys the Bolo's
nervous system /slowy/, because while it is enough of an improvement to be lethal, the
Bolo can hold it off for a time, as long as it supplies enough power to the appropriate
settings.
Next, suppose the Bolo ID'd Nanoha as an enemy purely because of her using an Enemy
device and style. Suppose that instead of entertaining the notion that Signum is a
traitor, the Bolo's loyalty to Signum is so strong that the notion of Signum being
disloyal is unthinkable. Signum is loyal, Signum is protecting the youngster like a
subordinate, and so it must be so. So, it reasons, essentially correct but wrongfully
on the surface, that Signum as a loyal Imperial officer continued on after the Bolo's
death, recruited and trained more fighters, equipping some with captured enemy
equipment. It concludes that Signum had buried it, as Ifrit had only enough function
left to come out of the Barrow and shoot down an innocent Imperial soldier in a fit of
insanity. Knowing its dishonor, and that its madness is incurable and might cause a
change of mind at any moment, the Bolo shuts down the systems preventing the effect from
Nanoha's shot being lethal, along with everything else.
With the AMF off, Nanoha is evaced quickly, and the Bolo, paralyzed, dies quickly. On
watch against further action, Signum sheds a tear, noticing it on her hand, she looks up
and the rain kicked up by the dust and disturbance starts hitting the ground.
Thus the last Belkan Bolo passes from the world, loyal to the end, to its commander and friend. Rain falls on the inert mass.
Anyway, I'll see if I can line the rest of things up analytically later.
Later:
Damage and overuse of weapons doesn't quite work for me for causing the death right just then. I also feel that the Bolo should have a more active choice in its own death once it realizes the truth, or an approximation of the truth. Also, if it can communicate with Laevateinn at the end, and the drones earlier, why not Laevateinn earlier? I may be reading your design intent wrong, but I have the impression that the story is ultimately about the relationship between Bolo and Commander, across the long years of separation. Ifreet's initial reaction seemed underwhelming in terms of devotion considering that it is a Nanoha cross. I also felt that we don't see Signum's reaction, and that it would be appropriate for the genre for her to have one, even without intact memories. (It is also common enough for the Bolo stories to end with the people they've saved reflecting on the valorous death of the Bolo.)
Two other perhaps silly ideas. 1) I wonder if a magitech Bolo can become a familiar 2) Could Ifreet be renamed Surt?