Stage 03: The Launch Ceremony (進水式)
| Previous Stage | Next Stage | |
|---|---|---|
| The Antilus Squad Takes Shape (アンティラス隊発足) | Scenario Chart | The Banquet (晩餐会) |
Mission Objectives
- Mission Objective: Protect the Hringhorni
- Victory Conditions: Destroy Ongared and Drep
- Loss Conditions: All allies are eliminated, or the Hringhorni is damaged.
Player Units
| Unit | Pilot |
|---|---|
| Psybuster | Masaki |
| Zamseed | Mio |
| Gadess | Tytti |
| Jaohm | Gennadii |
| La Wenter | Becky |
| Players choice | x2 |
Enemy Units
| Unit | Pilot/Quantity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Svend | Ongared | |
| Svend | Drep | |
| Nagrod | x4 | Retreat when Ongared and Drep are defeated. |
Translation/Strategy
Hey, the pre-mission starts off on Becky being back! She’s “sad” that she arrived too late to help deal with the Demon Golems, though Senia quickly points out she actually wasn’t. Luckily, Mio is here too, who outright states they just decided to hide when they heard about the Demon Golem party. Mio, queen of exposition.
Anyway, Tsrain introduces himself to the two ladies, and as ever gets told to cut down on the formalities. Being 15, he’s one of the youngest members of the team, and Mio’s glad that bumps her up the age list a bit (with only him and Precia being younger than her 16) – a status she quickly abuses by getting him to style his hair in odd ways for her purely to facilitate some inexplicable reference. Thanks, video game.
Oh, Gennadii’s here too – not that anyone would notice of course. Nobody ever notices Gennadii, alas, but he came back with Mio and Becky too. Tsrain is very upset for not noticing another of his idols was here, but as Mio points out, the guy has an inbuilt perception filter. Mio asks if Tsrain’s the only new recruit, to which Ryuune points out that there were more to join up along with the new battleship, as it said in the documents she was provided with.
Mio, however, says that just asking is a much quicker and lazier way to find out than actually reading anything, god. But she does wonder what this battleship is going to be like, and immediately starts listing off World War II battleships in the hopes of finding a point of comparison, much to Ryuune’s annoyance. But as Senia says, if they’re gonna be flying around in it, it’s perfectly natural to want to know more. Come tomorrow, however, they’ll find out whether they like it or not.
And so, tomorrow cometh, and find out they shall.
Point one: It’s huge! But as it has to carry around 16 Masoukis at once, that’s hardly surprising. Sorry, what’s that you say, mysterious moustachio’d man? It can hold 30 units?! Just as the stranger is about to introduce himself, his daughter runs up and tells him to get his ass back where he should be and stop loitering around. The daughter, it is revealed, is called Shirley – at least for short – but before he can explain who everyone is to her, she’s dragging him off into the distance.
Your team speculates they must be military based on their uniforms, but are distracted by the arrival of Mio with delicious fishy snacks. The ceremony’s about to start, and Masaki wishes he could dodge it because it’s boring as fuck – this is the dude who slept through most of his own titling ceremony – but everyone’s turned out to watch the ceremony and its figurehead must be sure not to disappoint.
Except attention is not on us, but the most anime guy ever with a tiny little moustache chanting like a crazy man. Masaki wonders who the everloving dickchrist the crazy man is, but he has an idea that he runs past Senia: It’s not her bizarrely never mentioned before cousin, and the new (289th!) King of Langran, Quintilus, is it?
Seriously. What the fuck happened to Terius?
Anyway luckily I’m not the only one who thinks his moustache is odd – Senia does too. She thinks it might be an attempt to make himself look older and more wise, seeing as he’s only 21.
So half an hour later, the ceremony finally draws to a close. Masaki is very annoyed at how this supposedly very short ceremony drags on, but Senia says it’s not her fault the guy hosting it likes blabbing so goddamn much. Then again, seeing as the guy considers us warmongering assholes, belonging as he does to the Doves, that might have been deliberate. After all, now we’re a squad with our own ship, it’s a bit late to try and stomp us out. Tsrain immediately leaps in to point out not everyone in Langran is against your existence (like Tsrain! Tsrain loves you, and Tsrain wants to make damn sure you know it!) and once again, like the overaffectionate puppy he is, is told to calm the fuck down.
Anyway, Tytti gets back – having handled as much of the awful red tape as she can – and has some people to introduce to us, the crew of our new battleship! We’re introduced to the captain, Bradroy xan Velifite, and his sub-captain, Sharian xenia Velifite. And who should they be but the man and his daughter from earlier! You pay your compliments to the ship, which quickly gets you into Bradroy’s good books, to the extent he asks you to name it. Masaki finds it weird it doesn’t have a name already, but Senia points out that naming ships is generally left to the crew.
Tytti suggests naming it the Togo, after Admiral Togo Heihachirou, but Masaki quickly goes “Who?” after pointing out history was never his strong point, so that one gets shot down – especially as Mio points out that it’s simply not good practice to name ships after specific real-life individuals in Japan, and that extends to Langran too. Generally, mythological figures are the bank from which such names are drawn, and Tytti immediately thus suggests they name it Hringhorni, after Baldr’s ship from Norse mythology.
While pronounciation is an issue (Masaki having issues with the ‘h’ sound in Hring not existing in Japanese), the group finds it kinda fitting and catchy and decides to roll with it. Bradroy seems fairly okay with the whole issue, but Sharian gives him a pinch to get him to be a bit more lucid with his agreement. Who wants to bet this will be a running character tic!
Anyway, cue the standard SRW procedure of “alarms interrupting people talking.” We’re under attack! But we’re not at war anymore, so who on Earth…?
Kuro confirms that the readings they’re getting are Masouki, which means it’s likely a terrorist attack. Fine by Masaki, whoever’s gonna attack him is gonna get exactly what they asked for!
So events take to the battle map, and the situation is one of Maximum Annoyance. The Hringhorni is still in no fit state to do battle, seeing as it can’t move, attack, and will likely respond to any form of damage with the due response of exploding into a million pieces, seeing as the mechanics by which to put up its prana barriers aren’t in place yet. Which means this is a protect the battleship mission!
Yaaaaaaaay.
Our terrorists show up, led by mysterious bespectacled hawt guy Ongared Krishna, and his burly square-headed sidekick Drep. They weren’t expecting the Masoukishin to be here, but with these sweet-ass Svends they’re using, they should have no problem breaking through their defensive line and bringing down the battleship. Comrade Drep compliments Comrade Ongared on his excellent plan, and Comrade Ongared points out that they can allow their Unnamed But Clearly Meant To Be Implied As Just As Important Comrades to cause the distraction they need to slip through.
Now, I’d like to point out that the word they’re using isn’t the traditional one you’d use for “Comrade” in the Russian-evoking sense of the word, but it is defined, in a Japanese dictionary no less, as “someone to whom you are close enough to hold hands”. Let that mental image be your guide.
Anyway, these new Masouki baffle the techhead team of Senia and Wendy. They don’t think them to be a Shutedonias or Vagonia design, and they’re certainly not Langran. Wendy has her suspicions, but isn’t certain enough to give them voice. Might this have anything to do with the Kingdom of Arial, the mysterious fourth superpower in La Gias that was never mentioned before this game? Naaaah.
Anyway, Ongared goes to the trouble of introducing himself to your guys, which is, you know, nice of him. He’s a member of Rushing Cell, a terrorist group (though he doesn’t himself call it as such) dedicated to toppling the monarchial systems in La Gias and establishing a fair and equal system of absolute democracy. As such, he points out that you brought this on yourselves – the only way to free the people is to ensure that the tools of oppression like the Antilus Squad and their new battleship must not be granted free reign!
Help, help, I’m being oppressed. Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
His words fall on rather deaf ears, however, seeing as his chosen method for making his point is “coming to blow stuff up with a load of giant killer death robots.” He takes the high ground, however, in pointing out that your team was perfectly happy to take the fight to them the moment they showed up, but then, well, they did show up in giant killer death robots? One fears his point may be one hard to rally support for.
So begins the mission. The logical thing to do here is split up your forces, sending 2 Masouki to each of the flanks and letting the Masoukishin deal with Ongared and Drep, who’ll stay back for the first turn, but begin their charge on turn 2. The father-and-daughter pair on the battleship find this entire thing strange – aren’t these guys a bit too tactically organized for terrorists? And the two commanders seem to be a bit too skilled in piloting their Masoukis… which begs further investigation. They’ll get on that.
Anyway, you can set up chokepoints using the impassable forests to keep the enemies at bay on the flanks. The Nagrods they’re using are fairly inaccurate, and as long as you don’t let them exploit hitting you from the side, shouldn’t pose too much of a threat – a good strategy is to have Ryuune tanking down south, able to fully heal once with her seishin, and using Becky as support to snipe. Up north, Gennadii can dodge most attacks, with Senia as a healer just in case.
On the middle flank, our two named guys are a bit of a threat. Masaki compliments Ongared on his smooth moves when they fight, and Ongared seems to be a guy who takes his fighting seriously – sniping him from outside his attack range (a range-5 High Familiar worked fine for me) has him compliment you on doing your homework. One thing to note is that defeating both Ongared and Drep will make all other enemies retreat.
On turn 4, Sharian figures out what the player already knew – the enemies are planning to break through our formation! As such, the game chooses to give us a tutorial on Zone of Control, which you can find on the |Gameplay Concepts page.
With the Zone of Control issues in mind, the stage shouldn’t be too hard – especially as Ongared and Drep will happily just… uh, sit there and trade blows with you rather than actually go for the battleship like they said they would? They don’t seem too smart, considering all their talk of BREAKTHROUGH DIVERSION TACTICS.
Anyway, once they’re all dealt with, things get calmed down a bit, with Bradroy and Sharian annoyed at what happened to the ceremony, but very grateful for your assistance. Masaki however points out that, well, why wouldn’t they protect their new home? Bradroy seems slightly annoyed by this description of his ship, but another pinch from Sharian soon sets him right.
The only one who notices though is Mio, who questions why exactly she’s doing it. However, they get sidetracked explaining the relationship between the two, with Mio wondering if they’re married – seemingly she wasn’t paying attention earlier – but no, they clarify once more that they’re father and daughter. She then gets asked exactly how old she is – 22, it turns out. This surprises Mio, who figured she was more Wendy’s age, but as she points out, does she look like she’s in her thirties?
At this point, Wendy turns out to have been there. Uh-oh. Cue immense backtracking, not least because as Wendy points out, she’s not even 30 yet, but Masaki’s quick with the save saying that she does look very young for her age anyway. Sharian’s idea of saving the situation is to quickly invite the team on a tour of the ship, so off everyone is taken.
We have a mostly-automated bridge, normally staffed by a team of six but capable of being flown solo in a pinch. A briefing room – three, in fact, but one designated “main” briefing room – capable of holding the entire crew if everyone squeezes in. Becky asks how large the crew actually is, and as some people have families they’re toting along, the number turns out to be around 60. Seeing as the Antilus Squad isn’t tied to a particular nation, it’s best for people who have family to bring them along, as the ability to take leave in one’s home nation – yet alone home city – may not be that frequent.
There are no less than four lounges to relax in – with plenty of space and lots of fluffy chairs and, oooh, is that a holo-TV? Becky, meanwhile, is eyeing up the sheer varieties of booze they have available, as Becky is wont to do. And how many quarters are there? Get this: there’s room for about 2000 people on here. That’s of course to be able to transport refugees, or deal with evacuations if necessary, but it doesn’t make the ship any less impressive.
And that concludes the main tour. Senia wants to go look at where her beloved darling computer Ducacis is set up – seeing as how it’s been loaded onto the ship because, man, gotta have that crazy-clever computer to work out numerical odds for us all the time. Or, in this case, check over the data from earlier – and it looks like their unaired (but obvious) hunch was right – those units were almost certainly Arialian in origin.
It’s okay though, Masaki can be oblivious on the player’s behalf – “Where the heck is this Arial place, anyway?” – it’s an island nation, flanked by Shutedonias and Vagonia – i.e. not our fucking problem. Until now? Or not – apparently the Jinous and Daions the Shutedonias army were using last game were designed there and merely manufactured in Shutedonias. This actually explains a lot – Shutedonias’ mook Masouki were actually very bulky, compared to the units we’re now told are actually Arialian, so as retcons go it’s a fairly sensible seeming one.
Seems that Arial is famous for its military production, leading Masaki to immediately dub them merchants of death. But for the mechaheads in the group, they have a great respect for the sheer quality and craftsmanship of the mechs that Arial are turning out, after all, from a technical perspective they’re just works of art.
And this conversation, Masaki realizes, is what makes him really glad he’s not a mech-head.