Which begs the question of why we should pay good money for something we could get for free from many other media.
Yeah, there were some things that I liked that were incidental, and not particularly outstanding but better than nothing - for instance there was an LGB character, which was the first time I've seen in a war game. Not that this is relevant to everyone. And, in today's political climate, a series of catastrophic miscalculations isn't quite so unbelievable...
Show of hands: who wants to play as the most retarded individuals of the recent political scene? Or their followers? No, the option to "make the situation better/sane/bearable" is not allowed. ...anyone?
And that's really my problem with it. It's really pretty damn simple to write a country's reactions to events, a country always acts in it's own best interests. Except here, they weren't. Not only were they not, but certain parts were not even following the reason that the nation as a whole was behaving. i shouldn't be laughing, but it's really funny! Dude, I was in the Navy. I have a pretty high tolerance for catastrophic stupid. (I really wish I could show some of the maintenance procedures... Step 1. referring to bolt pattern, turn bolt #1 33 turns counter-clockwise. Step 2. referring to bolt pattern, turn bolt #2 33 turns counter-clockwise. Step. 3 referring to bolt pattern, turn bolt #3 33 turns counter-clockwise. etc... If I could show you that maintenance procedure, you'd believe me, because nobody wants to believe that there is a 20+ step process just for removing an access panel! For better or worse, that's actually a classified procedure, I can't even tell you what system it was for. Someone who has been in the field can probably guess, though.) But Uprising had everyone holding all the idiot balls, and THAT broke my suspension of disbelief. One organization have a bad case of epidemic stupid, sure, happens to everyone. But multiple organizations in multiple different nations, all having such an outbreak of stupid? Nope, bridge too far.
See, that's probably where I don't quite understand the opprobrium for Uprising - I've never been one to identify that personally with some fictional third party, to the point that their flaws become mine. Or, that I have that kind of reaction. I think there's going to be more of this in the next book - humanity doesn't respond that well to hidden external threat (look at how effective the political response to something as impersonal as climate change), and EI seems pitched as something even more existential. I do expect the arc to become more heroic in subsequent books, but we've not hit the nadir yet. Hah! That I can believe ;)
From the small amount of behavioural science I know, that sounds like a very good way to teach people to ignore the instructions in the manual. From personal experience working with that stuff, even "1. There are 12 screws holding the chassi in place, refer to picture on next page. 2. Remove the screws. 3. Open the chassi" is perhaps a bit too detailed (and at the same time not detailed enough because there's nothing about the cable that tends to get caught in the chassi lid). Now, I don't know about what it says in the maintenance manuals for the Swedish Gripen, renowned to have been built with the criteria that inexperienced drafted soldiers should be able to perform basic service with little training, but I'm sure that'd be an interesting read.
This is not even in the neighbourhood of correct. (Not commenting on following Uprising issue). There's numerous reasons why nations actually really rarely act in their own best interests. Here's a few more important ones: humans are not at all good at estimating effects of their actions, much less actions of complex systems to which other complex systems react, information humans have can be incomplete or misleading, nations don't really exist, there's leadership and then there is people implementing policies. Both of these may deviate for whatever reason from what is "best" for the nation as a whole.
Uprising did a good job of highlighting the shortsighted opportunism of self-interested elites, if nothing else. From a European perspective (and Spanish, not just British), that is perfectly aposite.
Country's don't or even always act in their actual self interest. I find it ridiculous that people find it ridiculous that YJ High Command would not make numerous errors. That happens all the time right now in real life, it has happened regularly throughout history. There has never been a time this hasn't happened!
Yes, those are reasons that a nation's leader might not act in the nation's best interests. But for 'believable fiction writing' purposes, it's much better to have the nations acting in their own best interests. The entire Uprising was all about the kuge getting their status as nobles back, and the rest of the country can burn as long as the kuge are nobility again. In the minds of the kuge, they are Japan (l'etat c'est moi). I don't have a problem with that piece of writing. I do have problems with how the other nations are acting, and how the total brainwashing of the Japanese somehow didn't get applied to the minor ninja clans (the ones who remained loyal to YJ). In the Human Sphere, Aleph (as the computer network) should be able to provide all sides with the same information, and you'd think that all sides would come to the same conclusion. But in the Uprising, they didn't. PanO is going to oppose Yu Jing on general principles, but in the Uprising PanO was acting as if the loss of the Japanese would cripple YJ. Nomads and Haqq almost always align with Yu Jing against PanO, the strategic calculus is that PanO<=YJ+Haqq+Nomads. By supporting the Japanese secession, Nomads and Haqq are acting as if the loss of Japan is no big deal to YJ as a whole, which is the exact opposite of how PanO reads the situation. Either Aleph is cooking the books to deliberately mislead either PanO or Haqq+Nomads, or there is a major problem in the writing. Anyway, this is the Invincible Army thread, not the "what the hell is wrong with the Uprising" thread. Pretty much. It leads to problems like this. Major league bad juju, someone had to wake up the President for that one.
I strongly disagree on that. Realistic behaviour is always more interesting. However, it should be well-reasoned and explained, not just randomness in void. I agree with you that Uprising was badly written. Almost the same effects could be had as this, but written/explained much better. However, I do disagree with some of your complaints, I place the blame and improvements elsewhere. But too lazy to put it all here, since it's for naught anyway :D
I will totally agree with those points. Guess I have a different standard for how often people act in their nations best interests instead of their own.
One of the main problems is that people like to think they're behaving in their nations best interests - but this doesn't mean that's what the effect of their actions will be. For a huge number of reasons.
Wtf? I'm gone for the weekend and when I return this thread becomes ANOTHER "Uprising dicked us over" thread? And there I thought we were past this shameful display and were deep in the new "IA Preview didn't look as cool as we wanted to" salt mine until the profiles finally get released..
Well, the alternative would be "PanO gets all new cool revamp and stuff" or "Nomad gets all the optimized stuff" I dedicated myself to waiting until the release of the new book, until then i will prepare my honorable forces to fight alongside the glorious invincible army
Its simple - people get nice things, they are happy. People loose thins/dont get nice things - they are salty. Works with PanO, Tohaa, YJ.
I still maintain Uprising fluff written from the perspective of the Japanese supporters (mostly) was good fluff, but regardless of that and your subjective opinion on the fluff, we are talking about an army list, the subjectivity on stat-lines is less debatable and far more mechanical than fluff.
