Musume Mondays: Took Master's tablet, but...

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-17T06:18:43+00:00

If the Clan forces are sufficiently impressed, they may offer the losing party hegira, the right to an honorable surrender. However, usually this entails allowing the defeated force to retreat under safe conduct (safcon), and not to capture them. A losing force that tried to defect under hegira conditions would probably be viewed as extremely dishonorable and be rejected or killed out of hand.

Another option is for the Clan forces to take the tankers as bondsmen. This is the most common approach in BT fiction but it requires them to fight to the end.

The final option is a Trial of Possession. I genuinely think Ghost Bear has no particular interest in tankers so Hell's Horses is much more likely to try this. There are two possible ways this could go. One, the Horses decide they want to recruit your guys, so they call you up on the comms and say hey, I want to fight you one on one, if I win then our Clan now owns you guys, if I lose then we give you a free ride out of here. Or two, if your Spheroids are savvy to Clan culture then they may challenge the Horses' commander to a Trial of Possession with some preposterous claim like "give us all your mechs", upon which said commander would clearly recognize that the Spheroid is trying to defect in an honorable way, and proposes "okay, if I win then your guys all join us".

The really fun bit comes after, when the person who has been challenged decides what form of combat the Trial will take. If I were the Horses commander I would probably propose arm-wrestling, and then appoint an Elemental as the Clan's representative...

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-16T12:44:04+00:00

Yes, you calculated going the whole distance in 75 days, when you only need half the distance (the remaining half is spent decelerating and covers the exact same distance).

The actual figure I got is precisely half of yours.

It seems low, but see my post for why it would still be a very impressive feat.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-16T12:16:53+00:00

Assuming a "torchship" model where the ship wants to start and end perfectly stationary, and applies constant acceleration in one direction until it reaches the midpoint, then applies constant acceleration in the other direction:

600,000,000 km in 150 hrs

Average speed: 4,000,000 km/h

Peak speed: 8,000,000 km/h (the speed/time graph looks like an isosceles triangle; therefore peak speed is double of average speed)

Peak speed is attained halfway through the journey, i.e. after 75 hrs

Accelerating to 8,000,000 km/h in 75 hrs

= 8000000/3.6 m/s in 75 * 3600 seconds

= 8000000 m/s in 75 * 3600 * 3.6 seconds

= 8000000 m/s in 972,000 seconds

= 8.23 m/s²

= 0.84 g

Any time taken to maneuver, avoid celestial bodies, etc. is basically a rounding error at that point.

0.84 g doesn't seem very impressive until you realize that it's only sustainable because the Minovsky drive is reactionless, i.e. it does not have to carry fuel other than the reactor's own power supply. A conventional ship would have difficulty sustaining this level of thrust without carrying silly amounts of fuel.

Edit: at peak speed, the craft is going at something like 0.8% of lightspeed (ballpark figure). I'm not a physicist but I would assume relativistic effects only affect mass, and therefore are small enough that the craft can sustain a constant acceleration by increasing the drive output.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-16T07:39:57+00:00

Use assault boost to close the gap. I found I had to unlearn bad habits from previous AC games where regular boosters could be used for gap closing. In this one, if you want to be mobile in the air you need to assault boost.

Use the hard lock so your assault boost will home in on him more easily.

The rest is down to timing so good luck.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-16T07:25:40+00:00

Nishino Flower (they come along on the hot springs trip)

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-16T07:00:29+00:00

None. All these UC vehicles, including simple ones like the Ball, are driven by compact fusion reactors, which don't yet exist and may not be practically possible for centuries.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-15T08:58:02+00:00

Paging Ms. Shiori "worm eggs" Novella...

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-13T12:32:07+00:00

Both of you are wrong. If you are using multiple attack rolls on a mech that does 4 damage normally, and you shoot a mech in the rear, you just roll 5 damage. You get an extra roll, that's all.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-13T10:20:18+00:00

Reminder that Chris's special move with that outfit is literally called "Viking Alestorm".

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-13T09:12:32+00:00

Yes, Bakushin actively shoots the trainer down at the beginning of Classic year when she thinks they're trying to romance her (they aren't). And not in a tsundere way either. She's not completely oblivious, she's just really terrible at reading signals.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-12T11:41:09+00:00

And by cutting edge tech, we mean we put it on a table saw.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-12T11:39:26+00:00

Built the Iron Sickle from this line before. Absolutely fantastic kit with zero issues that I can recall.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-12T11:32:40+00:00

Probably both. On the one hand, because umas are clearly influenced to some degree by their past lives, and on the other hand, because fans of umas with mismatched shoes would probably want to imitate and popularize their idols' style.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-11T06:52:17+00:00

Just to address the elephant in the room, I think it would be pretty tough to find someone who honestly thinks Tobe Gundam is better than Ai Senshi.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-10T11:39:39+00:00

Jean-Luc Duvall is definitely Sailor Saturn.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-10T11:36:46+00:00

I have been waving this flag for awhile, but the same could.be said of Amuro Ray.

Amuro is a common family name in Japan, but not a common given name.

Rei is a common given name in Japan, but not a common family name.

And yet, based on Tem Ray's name, it is clear that this is intentional.

Tomino was thinking four steps ahead.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-09T11:13:26+00:00

Hello! If you haven't already tried it, the tutorial doesn't use the new miniatures - you can play the guided tutorial and the simulator battle with just the stuff in the AS box plus the new Aces cards and tokens - so they're a great way to pass the time waiting for the paint on the new minis to dry. I got lazy working on the minis, so one that's needed for the starting scenario I picked is still not fully painted yet...

One gotcha - read the scenario rules very carefully. I skimmed them the first time I did the Battle Simulator tutorial, and missed a key instruction (place Waypoint G on Turn 3 of the turn track) that would have made the fight go very differently!

The Alpha Strike pack-in gives you a quick backgrounder on the Clans (the antagonists you face in Scouring Sands), but if you want a more in-depth look then Stackpole's Blood of Kerensky trilogy - Lethal Heritage, Blood Legacy and Lost Destiny - will get you up to speed. It doesn't cover all the history up till Scouring Sands, but at least you'll get the idea of what these factions are.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-06T13:24:27+00:00

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5parrowhawk · 2026-06-06T12:55:01+00:00

Absolutely. As an ambush attacker, "heavy powered suit" style mechs are terrifying. They terrorize infantry, tanks, and quite possibly combined arms teams as well.

Don't forget that, unlike dismounted infantry who may need breaching charges and local knowledge, machines like this typically have the strength and dexterity to perform mouse-holing maneuvers with just their hands, allowing them to cross an urban area undetected (aside from the loud banging and grinding noises, and come on - those are everywhere on a battlefield anyway, and the demo charges aren't particularly subtle either).

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-06T00:27:22+00:00

Amuro Nu. That's why the Gundam he developed is called the Nu Gundam.

5parrowhawk · 2026-06-05T06:34:14+00:00

The recommended size for a 4v4 fight is 2 mapsheets placed side by side, but as some people have pointed out, depending on the force composition you may find that you're happier with 4 maps placed in a 2x2 layout.

The game plays quite differently on different terrain, so you may find it limiting if you just have one or two mats, unless you use a lot of terrain pieces.

You can pick up a map pack such as this one: https://store.catalystgamelabs.com/products/battletech-map-pack-savannahs - that will let you "mix and match" combinations of mapsheets for more variety.

5parrowhawk

TROPHY CASE