Vorlonagent

No stress. As i say, we've been down that road and everybody has said what they were going to say. I would only be venting. Anybody who is interested and doesn't want to push through politics archives is welcome to IM me. I took a small action and that balanced the scales nicely.

This plus Arthur's "i am an American" line aren't sitting that well with me at the moment. My reasons why would be best taken up on the Politics thread, and we've been down that road once before with Ashley's pre-Goonmanji fanfic.

This may not be the sort f job offer Tedd can say "no" to...

Definite asterisk concerning some of the larger constrictors... And snakes on aircraft is a situation definitely not Samuel L Johnson approved.

...In search of enlightenment? Been done.

Cheetahs : Greyhounds who got the "Hello Kitty" skin.out of a lootbox...

I think you're both right. I think Vlad was such an absurd combination of species that shape-shifting to/from his nonhuman form was so very hard. Throwing Lespuko into Vlad's mix would have probably saved Vlad a lot of pain but as explained with Grace/Shade-Tail, the Lespuko ability to pick, choose and combine pieces of forms is very powerful and dangerous. Without the threat of Damian, the Shady corporation lab appears to have chosen to not to take the risk and Vlad paid the price..

I've been to the Wild Animal Park (since renamed "Zoo Safari"). They have Cheetahs trained to run 100 yards/meters at full tilt after a toy on a winch. They only run it a couple of times because the Cheetah can kill itself running at full speed for too long. They do a medical checkup before each run to figure out if the Cheetah is up for the run (or for another one). There's no stealth running at that speed. You can hear the thump of each paw as it flies by and while there's a fence between people and the Cheetah Run track, if you're in the front row along that fence, the Cheetah will be 5 feet or so from you for that brief moment when it goes by. Compared to other big cats Cheetahs look almost two-dimensional. They're very long, thin. Presumably that's to reduce air resistance.

I know what my vote would be...

None of the noble cats are much suited for it to be honest it's a heyenous business...

But horrible business instincts...see above.

You'd want a class in that. Some people's sexual history are terribly complicated... The re's a huge difference in response time between "Get to the locker and bring out the Old Weapons!" and "Fix Bayonets!"

...mostly inflicted by each other on each other before the attack. You don't cache the low-tech weapons. You make them standard-issue. At least in the case of commonsense weapons like knives and bayonets. That, plus decent hand-to-hand combat training should suffice nicely. Keeping a reserve cache by definition means they will be "specialty" weapons the troops are less familiar with. You want the bayonet in the soldier's kit from day 1. And it gives the pulse rifle a dash of steampunk flair to boot. Edit: The Evil Overlord list is nearly as addicting as TV Tropes but fortunately much shorter. #142: If I have children and subsequently grandchildren, I will keep my three-year-old granddaughter near me at all times. When the hero enters to kill me, I will ask him to first explain to her why it is necessary to kill her beloved grandpa. When the hero launches into an explanation of morality way over her head, that will be her cue to pull the lever and send him into the pit of crocodiles. After all, small children like crocodiles almost as much as Evil Overlords and it's important to spend quality time with the grandkids.

...so Magic essential said, "You want it public you get it REALLY public... Have a nice life."

Closer, I think to judging the intelligence and capabilities of the Human race exclusively from watching Barney the dinosaur. I took an adult-ed American history class and was very surprised to find that trench warfare was used in the American Civil War. It was one of Grant's go-to tactics against Lee. Going through school, I assumed Grant vs. Lee was all movement and maneuver and the North finally had someone competent running the Army of the Potomac Trhough most of the war, it had generals who commanded desks better than soldiers. It's a problem with the US and extended periods of peacetime and I expect it's not just with the US. The skills needed to advance in a wartime military vs the skills needed to advance during peacetime have very little to do with each other. I think it's at the heart of a saying I once heard "no unit ready for battle is ever ready for inspection." I thought the Gungans just said "why should we care? This is all surface-world stuff that doesn't concern us." But I could remember wrong. I saw Ep 1 once, when it was first run and never wanted anything to do with it again. That's why I suggested Ewoks as a "small change with big consequences". While Star Wars is as much fairy tale as science fiction there's only so far you can push suspension of disbelief... It's kind of weird to consider that the Empire lost following the same strategy that worked for Turtledove's humans. I think TIE fighters were pure swarm tactics. Quoting The Mighty Jingles, "Throw enough shit at the wall, some of it is bound to stick". They really don't maneuver well enough to keep from getting shot, their accuracy is terrible, they can't take a hit and survive...gods...TIE fighters are the Stormtroopers of space. ...and yet nobody in the Empire even considered a "Yamato Gun" for Star Destroyers. It's either high-volume plink-fire. or something so overblown as to destroy a planet, at least if you have the Lost Orb of Phantasmagoria handy. You are missing the real possibility that those WERE elite...for stormtroopers. It is easier to tell Hitler things are going well (Re Goering) than to actually make them go well. At least until Hitler finds out and force-chokes you or fries you with lightning...

There's always an exception to be made if drama requires it. I doubt the Rebellion could have shielded an entire planet or would have wanted to if they could. The technology is there. The Empire shielded the archive planet in Rogue 1. But I'm not sure the Rebels could ship in the tech to shield an entire planet. moreover, they're on a tight budget and a planetary shield has to cost some big bucks to ship in, set up and operate. And the Rebels don't have remotely enough resources to actually repel an attack by the Empire/First Order in any case. So why invest in shielding a planet when you plan to run at the first sign the Empire is coming, not fight them off and hold the planet against their attack? Shielding the base makes sense. So they don't drop a 100-ton rock on you and solve their problem that way. I imagine the base shield could be worn down by continuous weapons fire, but as you say, it's not fast and the Empire puts a premium on getting things done NOW rather than correctly. If the Empire were patient, they would need a more ships for a tighter orbital blockade that they could afford to leave in place over the span of a year or more. Then drop an asteroid someplace ecologically catastrophic like an ocean or a polar ice cap.with the idea of making it impossible to ship in food or supplies and making it impossible to the Rebels to farm what they need. And simply wait for the Rebels to starve to death or try a suicide breakout. Correcting for technology difference, it's the way sieges have been handled on Earth for thousands of years.

It also helped that Stormtrooper armor was purely decorative... We know from watching the Rebellion that they often have bases discovered and have to run away. (one wonders how the Rebel base on Dantooine [Ep 4] could ever have been abandoned without having been overrun by the Empire first). Immobile Rebel base defenses seem only there to hold off a siege long enough for personnel and portable resources to escape, not actually hold territory against a determined attack. At which point it's grab everything not nailed down and bug out. It's a design requirement for X-wings to jump to lightspeed on their own, while TIE fighters can rely on capital ships.

I feel a little happy. I called the part of Voltaire's plan where He wanted the Magic reset tostrip human magic users of their spells. I did not call how he set up Pandora: driving a wedge between her and Raven then getting Raven targeted by Vampires to trigger a Constitutional Convention, Immortal-style.

Completely agreed, about gungans > Ewoks. I never gave it much thought to be honest. Jar-Jar sort of overshadows the rest of his race. I'd suggest that the Trade Federation was more a late WW1 army. There's no air cover worth noting and what armored units they have aren't organized in units of their own but dispersed through the infantry, as was common for WW1 and pre-WW2 tank doctrine. The battle for Naboo never got bogged down to static battle lines, which is where the characteristic trench warfare of WW1 comes from. In the case of the Empire, the design of walkers of both the "elephant" and "chicken" varieties are very reminiscent in function (though not form) of WW1 tanks. Certainly their primary use in the movies was against enemy infantry. I can only conclude that the Empire never faced armored resistance so there has been no evolution toward units that work like "tanks" as we understand them. By having the First Order add air-cover to the big battle in Eps 7 and 8, Star Wars dips its toe into early WW2-style ground action, though I don't think their armor use has yet evolved as far as the blitzkrieg. Getting back to Naboo, If you're the Gungans, why fight on the surface at all? They couldn't repel the Trade Federation if they stayed underwater, but they could make Naboo nearly impossible (and expensive!) to occupy. Not that a Gungan asymmetric resistance would help Naboo's human population much. Conquering is much simpler than occupying. Movies often forget this. Star Wars as relatively light, fanciful fare can be forgiven, however. (the unforgivable sins committed by the prequels tend to be those they inflict on themselves and Star Wars as a whole, not genre conceits) As an aside, I found myself looking over Wikipedia's "History of the Tank" article and found a picture of the "Frot-Laffly Landship" (AKA the "Frot-Laffly Armoured Roller", which reminded me of the big Jawa thing from Ep 4.

Somehow, I don't see captured German pilots getting "Mirrors on the ceiling and pink champagne on ice." However they could."..call up the captain and say 'please bring me my wine.'" They would have that spirit there because it's before 1969...

Personally I'd have said Ewoks.

I agree that it's hard to see the Luftwaffe being "lured" in the sense of getting German planes to go anywhere they weren't planning on going. It's really more a ""roach motel" strategy, but that doesn't read as nice in history books.

Salisbury is closer....

I like a nice medium-rare...

here's a question: Suppose what magic thinks is a small change actually *is* catastrophic for human magic-users?