More Thracia + Avengers
Jun. 16th, 2012 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodelChapter 2X has met my expectations. By which I means, things were going great and then they went horribly and I had to restart and OMG if I weren't trying so hard to capture mooks instead of slaughtering them this would never have happened--
*SOB*
Lemme explain capture. It's like rescue... on enemy units... with a catch. See, if your character has more Build (similar to CON) than the enemy unit, the enemy can be beaten senseless and hauled away instead of killed. But capturing halves the stats of your character, and the stats stay halved until you've freed the mook.
And since all your initial enemies are brigands and such, only a few of your starting party has the build to catch 'em. Leaf, for instance, has a Bld of 5 and is SOL at present. You do have Dagda, your big tough pre-promote Warrior, and his buddy Marty the Mountain Thief. They have 15 build and can carry away a lot of enemies (all stats cap at 20), but Dadga misses often and Marty has ZERO skill and misses A LOT. The two husky village youths you get in place of Red Cav/Green Cav can't capture until they level up and Bld increases a point or two (yes, Bld increases, thank goodness). But both of them have skills that are almost certain to kill a wounded enemy on counterattack-- Halvan always attacks first, and Othin gets criticals almost every turn. This means that failed attempts to capture mooks generally result in dead mooks on the enemy phase.
And then there's Finn, who has a Bld of 9 (that's one point above Evayle -_-) and theoretically can't capture much of anything, except he has a horse, which magically gives him an advantage over the current set of enemies. So he's really my best choice for capturing things, except that his best weapon for capturing is the Brave Lance... so if he botches a capture thanks to weapon triangle and the mook is just left with low HP, it probably ALSO dies on a counterattack on the enemy phase. Or it runs away (enemy AI prioritizes not being countered), heals up using the vulnerary I was planning to steal, and comes back under cover of fog when I'm not expecting it. Grrr.
When the capture chain works, it's pretty cool. Finn knocks out a mook and throws said mook on the back of his horse, then passes it off to Dagda. Dagda goes through its personal possessions and drops the mook in a river, and then the kids all acquire free bows and axes and vulneraries from Dadga. And the mook theoretically lives, so everyone's happy. When it doesn't work, things have a way of turning into a total fiasco.
My favorite text-based Let's Play of Thracia 776 just wrapped up, so you can experience its joy and pain vicariously at your leisure. Cake Attack goes through everything-- optional routes, worse-case scenarios, and all of the dialogue. This LP convinced me to use Marty. It also won my heart thanks to the "tribute" to Dorias and Rinehart Betrayal Contigency Plan sequence, starring Salem. <3
[I will say that the "poo-poo" and "gentle caress" brand of forum bowdlerization really gets on my nerves. Just use @#$%! if you must, people.]
There's also a poster on here who sounds frighteningly like I do when discussing Thracian political meta and the essential jerk nature of Cuan and his subordinates. @_@
-x-
Saw The Avengers last night. On the one hand, I loved it-- good script, brilliant casting, well-done characters. By comparison, The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer had good actors miscast, a cheesy script, and half-baked characterization. But I think that Avengers, like F4, has a certain moral cowardice under its surface-- watch as Manhattan is totally trashed, but all we'll show you is people being rescued and not the horrific civilian casualties that undoubtedly resulted from this super-powered street brawl. Don't even think about that part of it. That did bother me, more than a little. But in terms of sheer enjoyment, The Avengers was A++ and Hawkeye is totally hot.
And I think I finally "get" the appeal of Bruce Banner now. And how.
*SOB*
Lemme explain capture. It's like rescue... on enemy units... with a catch. See, if your character has more Build (similar to CON) than the enemy unit, the enemy can be beaten senseless and hauled away instead of killed. But capturing halves the stats of your character, and the stats stay halved until you've freed the mook.
And since all your initial enemies are brigands and such, only a few of your starting party has the build to catch 'em. Leaf, for instance, has a Bld of 5 and is SOL at present. You do have Dagda, your big tough pre-promote Warrior, and his buddy Marty the Mountain Thief. They have 15 build and can carry away a lot of enemies (all stats cap at 20), but Dadga misses often and Marty has ZERO skill and misses A LOT. The two husky village youths you get in place of Red Cav/Green Cav can't capture until they level up and Bld increases a point or two (yes, Bld increases, thank goodness). But both of them have skills that are almost certain to kill a wounded enemy on counterattack-- Halvan always attacks first, and Othin gets criticals almost every turn. This means that failed attempts to capture mooks generally result in dead mooks on the enemy phase.
And then there's Finn, who has a Bld of 9 (that's one point above Evayle -_-) and theoretically can't capture much of anything, except he has a horse, which magically gives him an advantage over the current set of enemies. So he's really my best choice for capturing things, except that his best weapon for capturing is the Brave Lance... so if he botches a capture thanks to weapon triangle and the mook is just left with low HP, it probably ALSO dies on a counterattack on the enemy phase. Or it runs away (enemy AI prioritizes not being countered), heals up using the vulnerary I was planning to steal, and comes back under cover of fog when I'm not expecting it. Grrr.
When the capture chain works, it's pretty cool. Finn knocks out a mook and throws said mook on the back of his horse, then passes it off to Dagda. Dagda goes through its personal possessions and drops the mook in a river, and then the kids all acquire free bows and axes and vulneraries from Dadga. And the mook theoretically lives, so everyone's happy. When it doesn't work, things have a way of turning into a total fiasco.
My favorite text-based Let's Play of Thracia 776 just wrapped up, so you can experience its joy and pain vicariously at your leisure. Cake Attack goes through everything-- optional routes, worse-case scenarios, and all of the dialogue. This LP convinced me to use Marty. It also won my heart thanks to the "tribute" to Dorias and Rinehart Betrayal Contigency Plan sequence, starring Salem. <3
[I will say that the "poo-poo" and "gentle caress" brand of forum bowdlerization really gets on my nerves. Just use @#$%! if you must, people.]
There's also a poster on here who sounds frighteningly like I do when discussing Thracian political meta and the essential jerk nature of Cuan and his subordinates. @_@
-x-
Saw The Avengers last night. On the one hand, I loved it-- good script, brilliant casting, well-done characters. By comparison, The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer had good actors miscast, a cheesy script, and half-baked characterization. But I think that Avengers, like F4, has a certain moral cowardice under its surface-- watch as Manhattan is totally trashed, but all we'll show you is people being rescued and not the horrific civilian casualties that undoubtedly resulted from this super-powered street brawl. Don't even think about that part of it. That did bother me, more than a little. But in terms of sheer enjoyment, The Avengers was A++ and Hawkeye is totally hot.
And I think I finally "get" the appeal of Bruce Banner now. And how.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-16 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-16 05:33 pm (UTC)Precisely. And with New York City as the setting... I remember how just about 10 years back, the idea of trashing office buildings filled with people in NYC was oh-so-briefly culturally abhorrent, and now we're totally comfortable watching the landscape and Grand Central Station being devastated for lulz but apparently not comfortable dealing with the concept of the officeworkers tumbling to their deaths and bodies covered in dust sprawled out in the street. And that, to me, is a serious moral deficiency in the work. In that sense, Avengers is no more respectable than a Michael Bay shoot-'em-up.
If you can't deal with the full implications of devastating a civilian center, how about not doing that? How about confining the carnage to your fantasy flying fortresses and sekrit underground bases? Otherwise, take a page from Watchmen and actually deal with consequences.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-16 06:34 pm (UTC)Got to love that PG-13 rating. It requires so many ... disingenuous changes. (Watchmen? R rating, and all the better for it.) Other than that, though, yes, wonderful movie.
I'm kinda glad FE5 isn't like SRW GC. In that, you have to blow the arms and legs off a unit before you can capture it. o_O Good thing they're robots and not people.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-16 07:17 pm (UTC)Even better, you can have your message edit status say "fucked around with" but apparently can't say that in the body of the message itself. No sense making.
Watchmen? R rating, and all the better for it.
I didn't see the film and didn't want to, but I hold the novel in highest regard.
Good thing they're robots and not people.
Hah. Sounds pretty grotesque, yeah.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-17 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-16 08:55 pm (UTC)But I couldn't turn off that "wait hey piles of people are dying, why is this being painted as a miracle victory?" Of course, it could have been a lot worse, but the way it was handled did seem to be a general "shrug" in that direction. And where Banner's angst comes from all the unintentional destruction he caused, and Cap's all WAR ZONE TRAUMA, it was a really big thing to avoid, I think.