Thanks for pointing out the special Haris! I completely missed it until @Space Ranger responded. I'm going to glance at JSA and theorize that it'll be linked similar to the Daiyokai - i.e. with the secotrial's central which for IA should be Zuyong. Heh, there's going to be a high demand for bog standard combi Zuyong for Tinbot spamming. And not for the HRMC. I do think NWI is a lot better than Shock Immunity (and a lot costlier), but from memory when I did low-grade research before buying into Infinity all those years ago, what seems to be missing on Zhencha is the built-in medical stuff (I forget details). In a theoretical bargaining situation, dropping NWI I'd also say requires removing hackable characteristic as well.
So CB tweeted about a podcast this morning where they talked about more 3rd Offensive stuff. I don't speak Spanish, so I have no idea what they're covering. Have any of our Spanish speakers listened to it?
One overview (posted on 4chan) says Gutier isn't happy with how the player base perceives YJ as cartoonish villains. IA is supposed to change that perception since it shows a different side from the brutal ISS.
They aren't, that's just the way the community has perceived them because ISS is the Malicious/malevolent side of YJ and it's the only side that has had a Sectorial. We're finally getting some in game representation of the bulk of YJ (the state). If Pan-O only had a Hexahedron Sectorial you'd think they were csrtoonish villians too.
Here's said overview (with spelling cleaned up a bit), as it's divided into several posts in a recently-archived thread: https://www.ivoox.com/m-a-m-4x01-la...w49YTKeMpq4ou14QKQO17LnANtfi6wKb1cOY6HY3WBpxM The other day some Spanish podcast interviewed Gutier and made him questions about the upcoming Third Offensive book there are some things that are mentioned about the book (the podcast is 4 hours long and it's in Spanish). They don’t do any major spoilers but they manage to say quite things that no one knew until now lore wise and game wise. First off, this book only focuses in the EI, PanO, and Yu Jing, the other factions are mentioned as well but they are only minor players in the overall story. The CA are brutal cunning and don’t give a damn about the Human Sphere, they care so little that all the armed actions and all the bloodshed is made just to cover its true objective, the retrieval of the T’zechi Digester. In Campaign Paradiso they were mentioned as alien artifacts that told the story of the universe and no one knew exactly what are they made for or who made them, the T’zechi Digester is hidden in the Human sphere but the EI does not know were exactly, but they know one thing, that a Teuton monastery fortress hides an alien relic which can be used to track the T’zechi Digesters, and the CA wants it. The book focuses on the ways of warfare of the combined army and how they planned their offensive months before the humans could even notice and the fact that the combined army does not give a damn about the humans and their territories for the EI, the retrieval of the Digester in the human sphere is just another mission in their military effort, like they could invade the human sphere in a day, but they just don’t care about us humans. All the past online campaigns (Wotan, Flamia) are explained and they were only diversions provoked by the hidden agents in the high commands of every faction that the combined army has so the humans believe that "the evil aliens are invading again" When in reality they were searching and making hidden ops to find information and sabotaging the Human Sphere as a whole. the Shock Army of Acontecimento plays a crucial role in the campaign, kinda like the French in Ariadna but they don’t end up almost extinct. The third offensive on Paradiso is so brutal that Yu Jing and PanO have to give almost everything they have, no faction gets rest in this conflict but some receive more and heavier hits that others, the offensive is so brutal by the PanO defenders hat they have to send reinforcements from Acontecimento and Varuna, and the Neo Christian church sends a "crusade" to fight off the alien menace, Yu Jing is there "helping" PanO, Haqqis and the Nomads stationed in Paradiso. By the end of the book the victories of the Humans feel bitter, they describe them as "Even when we win, we lose" kind of situation, the EI demonstrated to be a faction only focused in war and deception tactics and now the high commands of all the factions tasted what that really meant, they say that when you end reading the lore it gives you a sensation of paranoia, leaving you to think that even the most insignificant problem that the big factions encounter is made by the EI. Actually no mention about the new lore of the Montesa Knights. They talk about the way of being of the Helots, it seems that underwater they feel calm and reasonable but when they are on land the low pressure affects their blood and they start acting all nervous and frenzy, the masks that the PanO Helots have are a method to calm them down. With the rework of the Morat, they also "reworked" the roles of the males and females in the Morat army, the Morat females come from being "hunters and warband roles" the be equal to their male counterparts, in some parts of the story there are mentions of female Morat commanders. Gutier mentions his error in writing the Yu Jing faction He feels like the entire player base didn’t get what Yu Jing really is, he mentions how he talked with a lot of Infinity players and how they all thought of Yu Jing as the "Saturday morning cartoon villain" that only want to harm PanO and how the lore of the Imperial service and them being the only pure Yu Jing sectorial didn’t help clean the facade of Yu Jing, Invincible Army tries to clean that taint in the Yu Jing lore, something like "The Invincible Army is the pride of Yu Jing while the Imperial Service is the one who gets its hands dirty doing things no one with a clean moral code could normally do" The rework of the Military Orders and the new Invincible Army is a move made by Corvus Belli so the game sees more HI in its competitive play environments, something that they really wanted since the beginning but the order spam strategies didn’t let them until now. Gutier also knows how all the community is going to cry them rivers when they face off the Invincible Army paratrooper, their response? git gut and deploy better. He mentions how the CA uses Ko Dali as psychological warfare against Yu Jing, only deploying her in their territories and only against their troops, and it is working. The interviewer reads a passage of the book, where Bit is recovering in an EI hospital and how she sees the kind of society she always wanted, united, where everyone had its role and leaded by firm and strong leaders with a strong conviction on improving themselves, Gutier doesn’t want to give a lot but they mention how the sepsitor its only a temporary warfare measure, like, they don’t turn everybody in zombies but how it affects temporarily its objectives and how their affected objectives tend to betray their homeland and become part of the EI after it is used against them kinda like ""we use you in the battlefield but outside it you can """""choose"""""" what you want to be" They talk about how the Ariadnans want to defend themselves in all of this shit. Like how TAK and the Scots are the only ones who do something about the PanO, Yu Jing, Aleph and Combined army invasions and colonies. The guys in Corvus Belli are quite proud of how TAK are as an army. They are active in Paradiso, not to defend humanity but to gain relevance and power against the other factions. By the half of the podcast they talk about the new special characters that appear in TAK and in the other factions, and Gutier tells how those characters were the roleplaying characters that they all used in past roleplay sessions and he remembers how at the end of the day, Corvus Belli is a game made by 4 nerds who showed the invented lore they made for their roleplay sessions to the rest of the world and it seems they liked it and how in some things the worldwide relevance that the game is having is sometimes overwhelming by quality standards demanded by its playerbase and the competition; and how they hope that Third Offensive redeems failures of the past. They talk after that about how OSS is quite inspired by the robotic laws of Asimov and the fact that they are under O-12 directives and laws and they never act out of these laws, Gutier mentions how Aleph has this duality of "not to harm any human ever" but in the other hand "if we have to kill one for the greater good of mankind we will do it". The role of OSS in Paradiso is to preserve the Maya, Military and intel comms of all the factions against Combined Army and Nomad hackers. The interviewer reads a passage from Sr. Massacre where he comments how OSS tells you not only to surrender but how your "resistance is futile" telling you all the probabilities you have to defeat them and how useless is for you to engage them in combat kinda like" look at this loser trying to defeat us when we have math and probabilities with us". By the last quarter of the interview they start to ramble about the new merc character (the girl with the bike and the antipode), they say their lore is quite brutal.
They are now the space nazis, yes, but they helped in a very massive way to build the villain faction narrative when they were still in Yu Jing.
How so? They were a loyal YJ force with terrorist cells hiding within them? And the only intersction we really saw between them and the rest of YJ was with the ISS, which IS the villian of YJ. The problem isn't with the fluff of YJ, it's the underrepresentation of anything that involves the State as opposed to the Imperial Service.
The Japanese were literally stated to be second-rate citizens and were barely given comlogs while the loyal army was literally stated to be used as cannon fodder. I'm sorry, but you're lens is very nearsighted. Try to put Uprising aside.
PanO doesn't have brainwashed political dissidents with bombs strapped to them! These are not guys that get their "hands dirty" they are soaked in blood! Kuang Shi should be AVA 1 becuase by the sheer amount of them, if any media got ahold of evidence of them, there's your reason for an uprising alone!
Yu Jing soldiers are aware of them and completely desensitised to the point of getting a morale boost from them blowing up. They are, as they say, a very public secret.
If ISS was the loudest voice by dint of being the only voice...I could understand. But then Yu Jing was written as opening fire on their own forces in Strike Zone Wotan, at their own Consulate, (as a retcon to the player involved campaign). Then ISS apparently went full dumb instead of controlling the narrative. And then we got our noses really rubbed into it with the War Crimes Division.
