So I got mine today and apart from iss being referred to as schizoid paranoids I heartily look forward to the Japanese pulling full replacement cyborgs and the like out of their ass to one up yu jing (cos they stole all the Japanese tech anyway). The basic premise seems to be that everything is part of some vast Rube Goldberg machine designed by the kuge to wreck yu jings shit. That and mountain man always seems to be there to make sure any and all piss goes directly into the yu jing cornflakes.
Well that definitely sounds more 'codex'-y than we've seen so far in published setting material. Even putting all specifics of contents aside, that doesn't seem a great trend, looking at the core books for N3 or Human Sphere you have a great balance in each area, articles and voices that are positive and that are negative, a variety of perspectives to describe a faction (and more variety as a faction's voices appear when the same diverse sources are used to describe the other factions). I thought it was an excellent way to present the setting. I hope this relates more to the particular circumstances of Uprising and the secession than to a general change in how Corvus Belli produces books.
Uprising begging and ends in Uprising, there's no more info about the plans or movements the others or/and Yu Jing did, or what they will going to do. That's what I've understood. We should wait until the next campaign begin and read what will gonna do You Jing. And about the idea of "codex", if those codex only talks about a faction fluff, you will buy only the one you want to know. I think this idea is not what CB wants.
I managed to get a day with a warcor's copy of Uprising, and there is one quote that stands out to me around the whole "act of war" stuff that keeps coming up - Sun Tzu talking to High Command (who apparently still listen to him even if the ISS doesn't). "We are trapped in an internal war against a relentless adversary. Moreover, the power of the Yu Jing leadership has won us many enemies throughout the Sphere, enemies who are now seizing the opportunity to support the Japanese secessionists and thus bleed the StateEmpire. PanOceania, the Nomads, Haqqislam... This Uprising has turned formerly divided opponents into strange allies. It is natural to believe that we should deploy all our power and crush those opportunists. But we have entire territories that are in open revolt against our domain, and we will not be able to simultaneously bear the debt of two wars, one internal and the other external. We must confine the external confrontation to the dialectical and political aspect, and focus on regaining territorial control of the insurrectionist regions."
That seems a very Sun quote, and an effective analysis of a bad situation... but the 'act of war' issue is one of PanOceania directly intervening to stop Yu Jing forces deploying to resolve the internal war. Seems likely he was speaking before that occurred, since that situation is incompatible with his analysis and his whole thing is being great at that exact thing. If he was speaking after, and if we give benefit of doubt and hold that the material was well thought-out, I wonder what his plan was to resolve the blockade... either he saw a way to force PanO to end their action politically (which doesnt seem to have worked out for him), or a way to defeat the Japanese despite the blockade (which... also did not work out).
To be fair, it's also possible that he saw the Japanese Home Islands as a target too hard to be worth their cost and was advocating a focus on other areas.
I'll grant you that, he could even more generally be speaking of the 'long war'... the Japanese 'independence' we end with in Uprising a temporary concession until the other great powers of the Sphere can be neutralized politically, followed by Yu Jing invasion and re-annexation? I'm not sure, it seems he'd note the sacrifice of the Home Islands or of some territory more specifically if that were his point, but there is definitely room for interpretation.
It's hard to say - the yu jing side is very very patchily represented - pretty much everything is presented as articles, studies, lectures, intelligence reports etc being written or delivered by third parties, either as "current events" or looking back at it analytically, and when its about the StateEmpire its focused on what yu jing did wrong. Ever studied history? It reads a lot like the history textbooks I was plowing through in high school. All the focus is on the significant and important socio-political factors that lead to or were a consequence of Uprising, and everything else is glossed over and/or just not relevant to the discussion. The other thing im getting a lot is that a lot of blame is being given to yu jing hubris - constantly seeing japanese troops as poorly trained and ill-equipped dregs, so underestimating them. On the flip side, the jsa troops are all presented as fanatics and psychopaths who keep doing stupidly brazen things and winning despite massive losses, because conventional military wisdom says no sane commander would do that stuff so the YJ forces weren't expecting it.
Literally not one friend in the whole human sphere is too silly, even North Korea has friends. Even Tohaa are queued up to help the JSA. @Leviathan , do you remember from your read how ALEPH behaved during the uprising? They are supposed to loan the Imperial Service killbots but it seems like even they sided with Mary-Sue katana the hedgehog.
As well as noting that in the fanaticism it was nigh impossible to capture any JSA troops, much less officers, Kempeitai or Takenotai, leaving YJ with very little intelligence to work with.
I suspect that ALEPH would be conspicuously absent during events like the Uprising. Anything she does is only going to make things worse, one way or another.
It's important for me to know if she loaned killer robots with giant shotguns to smash through the paper walls of downtown Kuraimoi and massacre the fanatical women and children inside.
I doubt they were specifically withdrawn. 'though I suspect you'd find that they had a surprisingly low civilian kill ratio.
I'm fascinated by the assertion that striking people on the other side of a border would cause nuclear war. It has happened numerous times in history, nations have been subjected to serious pressures, people tend to have a real aversion to starting the actual end of the human race. See it as a bright side that YJ was sane enough to respond to Iron Wall with the restraint necessary to ensure the continuation of earth as a habitable world.
Earth isn’t that important except as the historical home of humanity. It isn’t the capital world of any faction except the Japanese traitors. “Restraint” here will cost YJ whole planets elsewhere. A bad trade in my opinion.
I was apparently making an ass of you and me, thinking that someone ranting "read the book, you will like it!" would smack me upside the head with a quote or two about ONE point I was asking about to shut me the fuck up already. Apparently I have not been annoying enough yet. Well, it's what I did for a living for 5 years. You'd better believe that it's a concern that *every* nation has to consider. Because that Iron Wall has NO modern counterparts. Like I've been saying, it'd be like the US shooting down Russian aircraft over Russian territory to 'protect' a province in rebellion. Or like the Russians shooting down American troops over New York City.
