Yu Jing Fluff - Perception, Reality, Desire

I don't care how many posters you make, until CB does something to address how they've screwed over vanilla players I'm not participating in the campaign.

 

To be fair, my experience with PanOceania is that this kind of effort has a limited impact at best.

But it's not complicated, and it is enjoyable in and of it'self.

 

Holy crap, this thread exploded in the last 24 hours!

At least not without an O12 Security Council resolution backing you up BEFORE the blockade starts...

Your media blackout isn't happening, based on that comment from the psychoCrane, who was accompanied by a WarCor.

"Look at what you made us do" is not particularly effective in convincing the civilian noncombatants to support your side and tell you where the terrorists are. Actually, it's particularly effective in convincing the civilian noncombatants that they need to support the terrorists to have a chance of surviving the fight. So it's counter-productive.

I get that the Imperial Service stomps organized crime with extreme prejudice. Go look up the start of the FBI, with their battles against the Gangs of Chicago.

You cannot confuse 'how to destroy organized crime' with 'how to destroy organized insurgencies'

You lose against the insurgency as soon as you consider the civilians expendable. Mao Tse Tung's writings are the foundation of that belief, and the Party in charge of Yu Jing is quite literally the Chinese Communist Party (albeit with a name change).

It's not that hard to understand. The Party wants to remain in charge of a strong, united Yu Jing. The job of the Imperial Service is, in part, to keep Yu Jing strong and united.

I'd love to be able to read the book. It's still 3+ weeks away from delivery for me, and I pre-ordered it almost literally as soon as I could.

Now, what has been driving me up the wall is that the people who have the book (like the folks who went to Adepticon) haven't answered any of my concerns about the fluff.

Yes, it is credible and logical that PanO's military would have plans on-hand for this. Planning for nearly-unthinkable events is basically what every military on Earth does. I mean, back before WW2, the US had plans for going to war with the UK (and honestly, I'd be surprised if we didn't still have those, though we tend to change country names these days, so it's the country of ORANGE fighting against the Country of PURPLE).

This does not change the fact that entering within ~25km of the Japanese islands on the Pacific side without an O12SC Resolution would be an act of war. Getting around to the Sea of Japan or the East China Sea (which, btw are YJ national waters) without an O12SC Resolution would be an act of war. Even for a submarine. And max speed for anything underwater traveling at anything resembling 'stealthily' is about 15 knots. You can get up to 80 knots if you're emitting active sonar signals, but that tells everyone in the ocean where you are. It's faster to be on the surface, and it's still a couple days to get from just outside Japanese territorial waters to the Sea of Japan.

The most direct comparison with real-world events today would be the Sea of Okhotsk. The Russians consider it to be national waters, as their charts show it to be completely surrounded by islands (and their surrounding ~25km waters) that are Russian Territory. The US Navy's charts show there are a couple very narrow gaps (I'm talking less than 500m wide!) that aren't within ~25km of Russian Territory, which makes the entire Sea of O (that isn't within said 25km of Russian land) international waters.

As you might guess, this has led to some ... interesting discussions going back and forth. US sub sneaks in, places signal taps on the undersea phone/telegraph lines going from the Russian Navy base in Petropavlosk to Moscow. Russians complain about a submarine in their waters (if they actually detected it in the first place...), US says with a straight face "There was no US submarine in Russian waters of the Sea of Okhostk." Read the book Blind Man's Bluff for lots more details.

Anyway, to get back to my point:

• The entire Sea of Japan and East China Sea would be Yu Jing national waters. For PanO to enter them without an O12 Security Council Resolution would be an act of war.
  
• For PanO to start shooting down YJ troops/military aircraft (or spacecraft) without an O12 Security Council Resolution would be an act of war.

Therefor, there must have been an O12 Security Council Resolution BEFORE PanO did anything. Which means that the Kuge had a LOT of backing in place, that somehow both the Imperial Service (internally-focused) and the Yanjing (externally focused) missed all of it.

That's a fail so big I cannot even begin to describe it. A fail so big that "not putting the pieces together for the 9/11 attacks" looks like a blink.

I fully expect that the post-Uprising fluff has the sitting YJ Emperor suffering "a terrible fall down the stairs 3-4 times while drunk" or "shooting himself in the Cube 3-5 times" and the new Emperor doing some massive house-cleaning, probably starting with psychoCrane.

Like I said, the only way this isn't a plot-hole is if PanO didn't physically start the Steel Wall until they got an O12 Security Council Resolution in hand. Sure, they might have been sitting on the edge of YJ territorial waters with a dozen carrier groups waiting for the last signature to go on the resolution, but PanO was just short of an Act of War in doing so. Enough to get nasty words thrown around, maybe some bumper boats (both of which are actual historical events). But very publicly short of that line. I'm talking 'miss your turn by 30 seconds and it's WAR' short, but still just short of the line. (I'm sure you can chase down times and places the USN has done that kind of thing in the past. I'd probably be in trouble if *I* mentioned all the times I know about)

It takes about half an hour to prep for a strategic launch, maybe less. Depends on how long it takes to load the targeting data once that order is given. Once that targeting data is loaded, the missiles are ready to fly (and orbital strikes are ready to drop). You CANNOT call the missiles (or orbital strikes) back once launched (this is why bombers are still a good thing, you can park that rattling sabre right on someone's doorstep and then send the bombers home when the other guy blinks).

So we are quite literally talking about being 30 minutes or less from Ragnarok, if PanO started the Steel Wall without O12 approval.

Though I will point out that people would be very suspicious of launch orders that did have a whole lot of "tensions increasing between us and [nation]" messages beforehand. And those sets of messages usually take a day or two to cycle through, barring some [expletive deleted] flying planes into the World Trade Center. Yes, I was in the Navy when that went down. I was on my way back from morning PT when some dude I didn't know shouted out the window to his friend that a plane had just crashed into the WTC. I shrugged, because planes crash, and got dressed to go to work. I was at work when the second plane hit. I heard the command to Set DefCon 3 get passed over our building's PA system, immediately followed by a heartfelt "Oh, f***!" from the comms office, and the Chief Radioman never swore.

I'm a bit confused by this, considering all the fun and games the Spanish media gets with Gibraltar's territorial waters. While I accept that a lot of people don't understand territorial waters as a concept, it seems to make Spanish news every couple years with depressing regularity (suspiciously, about the same time bad news about corruption hits the Spanish media).

Again, while I don't expect everyone to understand just how critical crossing the National Waters borders is, I would expect it of a Spaniard due to the frequent mentioning of Gibraltar territorial waters in Spanish media.

It's out of character for Gutier's established worldbuilding.

Once the O12SC resolution is in, either YJ allows the armada in or kicks off a real war.

Yeah, OK, that works fine based on what we know of the setting and current International Relations (funny thing about being an International Business major/minor, you kinda need to understand International Relations)

:facepalm:

PS, you should go read about the Banana Wars in the early 1900s, or the colonization of Africa. That's pretty normal behavior, particularly when different nations are colonizing adjacent or the same areas.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
(the more things change, the more they stay the same. for those that don't speak French)

That's kinda what I've been trying to get at. You don't actively give propaganda ammunition to the 'bad guys' (insurgents) by letting psychoCrane determine operations. If you do shell civilian areas, you blame the deaths on the insurgents directly ("An attack by insurgents killed 5,000 civilians today...").

YJ external security, the Yanjing, which was so competent that it forced the creation of the Hexahedron, now being so blind that it misses all the meetings necessary to provide the support at the O12 level for an independent Japan.
YJ internal security, the Imperial Service, which was dedicated to a strong and united YJ (therefore by definition at least competent at counter-insurgency), now being so untrained in counter-insurgency operations that it's actions actively drove the Japanese noncombatants into the arms of the insurgency.

Those are simply the two biggest points, I'm sure some other folks will happily pile on more.

:quadruple facepalm:

What made the Infinity setting great was that the Great Powers were behaving in believable ways, based on modern international relations. And "modern" international relations date to 1648, and the Peace of Westphalia. 470 years.

With two Hyperpowers and several other lesser powers, the functioning of the Human Sphere is broadly comparable to the Cold War. Not a perfect analogy, of course, since Haqq and Nomads are significantly more powerful than any of the 'minor' powers during the Cold War. A better analogy would probably be a bit farther back in time, 1800s and the Great Game between the British Empire and the Russian Empire. You still have several lesser powers in play, like France and Germany, but what France and Germany can do to either the British Empire or Russian Empire is minimal but significant.

There are what, 11 star systems in the Human Sphere? Open warfare in one of them (that isn't a national capital) is about like there being open warfare in Africa while the economy of Earth spins around as normal. Or maybe like open warfare in the Middle East, to give it a larger effect on the global economy. Everyone hates life for a bit until various nations increase the production of petroleum to make up for the bottleneck. We are at the point of being past the bottleneck in petroleum production now.

At least for me, that's a bridge too far, in terms of suspension of disbelief. While there is some truth to the saying, "Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by human stupidity", there's just too many points of failure involved in the Uprising for three of them to not break in YJ's favor.

Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

More like being a Cubs fan, since the Cubbies didn't win a World Series for 108 consecutive years.

You could just add more people to your ignore list. (assuming that you aren't already ignoring me, that is)

If you like the models and the fluff, play YJ (or JSA).

I really like the models, particularly the new JSA models. But I'm really not happy about the fluff, from either side. Civil Wars are terrible things (my great-great grandfather fought in the American Civil War, the only thing he'd say about it was that it was too terrible to talk about). This does not excuse apparent war crimes on the YJ side (mass graves of civilians), nor does it excuse the Japanese from apparently going straight back to the worst excesses of the Imperial Japanese Army.

I find it deeply ironic that it's the same families that sold Japan to YJ in the first place that pushed for the secession.

Yeah, that'd be a better treatment of the Steel Wall, assuming that said steel wall didn't have O12 approval before it went into effect.

Again, until the Steel Wall has O12 approval, that would be like the US sending the Air Force to shoot down Russian planes flying from Moscow to StPetersburg (or Kaliningrad) while StPete was in rebellion.

There would be nukes flying inside the hour, particularly considering that the Russians could veto any UN Security Council resolution today. It's why I say that it's obvious that the O12 Security Council doesn't have permanent member vetoes.

I dunno about "before", but I would have been a lot happier with "at the same time".

Supposedly, Modiphius has had to do a massive re-write of the YJ book due to the Uprising.

 

I'm sure it won't be to replace the JSA content with Yu Jing content.

 

I don't, because the fluff is clearly written in such a way as to make it seem like what psychoCrane was doing was standard Yu Jing behavior. Hence the complaints about "Flanderization' and so on.

 

True enough, though I'm withholding final judgment until I (finally) get my copy of the book.

I will be massively disappointed if the post-Uprising fluff doesn't have the Party replacing the Emperor for failing to do his job. Assuming that I'm still playing this game.

 

"At the same time" is not a great idea from the sales point of view, since you force the customers to choose and the hype gets broken in two for most people. Releasing IA, and six months later releasing the JSA would have been the right move IF JSA were not CB's flagship of 2018, which looks like considering how it's the second army pack, Uprising is going to probably be the only fluff book released this year (Sectorials Wave 2 can't be ready without Tohaa and Shasvastii), and Tunguska was announced with a simple starter (and a "suck it up, you will buy a box for the Kriza"), plus we are probably waiting for a 2 player box.

In a way, new data won't be added, but they have a golden opportunity of placing there YJ's point of view on the conflict, and even a campaign option to play the events that lead to it, the uprising itself, and the closing moves and consequences.

I was thinking more Ground-to-air missiles launched from behind the horizon to intercept the landing shuttles, while orbit cruiser moved to checkmate YJ's orbital assets and whatever water forces moved between the Japanese Islands and the rest of YJ, effectively saturating approach vectors from orbit, water and air.

As far as I understood the posts, the "Wall" never launched attacks over deployed YJ troops, "just" over filled transports, and I don't need to consider if those were warning shots or "to hit" shots, nor if any of those transports was taken down, since the actions have the same consequences: O-12 backing, or war is on.

Then again, PanO can have the Idiot Ball (there is always enough of those for everybody, and a reserve of spares...), having attacked BEFORE having O-12 official sanction... and get sued to their underwear in the aftermath of the Uprising, with YJ recouping a lot of resources from reparations coming from PanO and having shown incredible restraint in the face of obvious provocation for war.
The problem I see with that solution is that keeps the status quo by diminishing the setting because of several factions behaving like schoolyard idiots, no matter the explanations (the Speculo Infiltration works until a certain threshold, after which the answer becomes "a mage did it" again).

Apparently, the Uprising Book has no "post-Uprising" data...

 

So hey. Enthusiasm, recruiting drive, go big in the next campaign...

I'm sorry but that is an incredibly bad idea.

If Yu Jing does see an actual successful recruiting drive, associated boosts in sales, and all that comes with it...

Then this event becomes an objective commercial success and the... brains... behind it's execution will consider themselves fully vindicated and then they will do it again only more so.

Of course they also might interpret massive drops in Yu Jing player population/business as vindication as well, because the problem here is terrible decision making at the top.

But that's the thing, grass root participation in a campaign system that effectively (and by design, and possible not without some reason) ignores the actual grass roots contribution to instead get the outcomes the management wants, cannot cure bad decision making by that management.

A surge in Yu Jing participation/wins in the next campaign will only result in one of 2 things. Uprising being seen as fully vindicated and the correct path for the future, OR those results simply being ignored as a seemingly irrational leadership structure continues to make the same sorts of decisions regardless. No we will not be rewarded with a backtrack for uprising by measurable mass enthusiasm for participating in it's results.

A collapse in Yu Jing participation (and ideally a dip in total faction independent sales) might well be ignored or used as an excuse for further bad decisions, because that's the kind of thing bad decision makers do. But it is the only way there is at least a chance of any sort of grass roots action causing a change in policy direction from the company.

Handing Corvus Belli a positive commercial and community outcome would be beyond the wildest hopes held by the people that conceived of and executed the uprising mess, "Hey see I TOLD you guys that we could TROLL Yu Jing players into playing/buying more!"... and at that point they would be right. I'm not in a position to influence this because I'm already insufficiently engaged in the wider player community. But if I was I would NOT be working hard (and unpaid) to make that sentence true.

 

That's how I see it. Vote with your wallet and your participation. Unless CB is willing to admit they fucked up and come to the table with some kind of offer I'm not playing ball.

 

I wouldn't even say I'm calling for a hard boycott or rage quitting the game.

That's not what I'm doing. I'm just not buying more stuff until I feel better about it for whatever reason that might turn up related to a company policy change or not... IF I ever feel better about it. And without some actual action from the publisher of the product as much as my feelings are relatively mild I might not feel better about it, it has worked out that way with me in similar situations in the past.

And I already didn't participate in what already looked to me like completely pointless and player input independent "campaigns". And nothing about this is doing anything other than vindicating my decision to not be involved in them.

Turning that on it's head and trying to reward CB with extra money and community participants hoping that they will eventually love my bribes enough to stop with what I see as at least mildly abusive behavior that has reduced my enjoyment of their game?

No, I'm not doing that, no one should do that, that's a bad decision for the well being of the community, the faction, and your own personal mental health.

Never go the full battered spouse syndrome for a miniatures war game company.

 

As a more general comment, it seems from second hand notes that Corvus Belli is starting to do what Games Workshop did wrong: they have a protagonist (faction).
In a wargame, unlike in a more traditional story (such as an RPG campaign), your audience isn't vested in a single protagonist but there are several protagonists and not each protagonist is relevant to each customer.
It seems Yu Jing has now been relegated to be antagonist which is perhaps not the best way to handle things. This is, I'd say, more damning than being a villain.

 

You know, I was going to play YJ in the campaign, but you make a good point on the kind of message massive YJ prticipation would send.

 

True enough.

I've said it before, I actually would have been happy-ish with a statement that "this year is going to suck for YJ. I'm sorry, we just don't have the production capacity to get all the models for NA2 out before this time next year. But you are going to LOVE what happens then." and then show a previously-unreleased Invincible Army dossier.

My statement was about YJ's response to PanO's shooting at them, not to mention deploying forces into YJ territory, and how little time there is between provocation and no-take-backs-Global-Thermonuclear-War.

Again, using my example of the Sea of Okhotsk: US forces never crossed into no-argument Russian territorial waters, within 3-12 nautical miles of the shore, but were in an area the US considered to be International Waters (and could convince other people was international waters!). IIRC, the Russians have played that one back against the US a few times, getting into the Straits of Juan de Fuca coming into Seattle (which is also where my missile subs had to travel, so a very critical place for a Russian sub to be if they were going to trail a US missile sub!). There's an international shipping channel through there, since the Ports of Victoria and Vancouver BC as well as Seattle and Tacoma are reached via the Strait.

Also, until the O12SC Resolution recognizing Japan as a sovereign nation goes into play, not only is the Steel Wall shooting at YJ warcraft (which is an act of war all by itself), it's shooting at YJ warcraft while inside YJ territory.

You might get "shooting at YJ warcraft" hand-waved away (it's happened several times between US and Soviet forces, usually submarines someplace they shouldn't have been and getting chased out by depth charges), but for PanO forces to be shooting at YJ forces while the YJ forces are inside YJ territory is beyond the pale.It would be like troops in Poland shooting across the border into Russia and killing Russian troops. That's not "call their ambassador to the Kremlin and send a testy letter," that's "expel their diplomats and tell the troops on the border to mount up and move to their attack positions."

 

Yeah, precisely. Because that's when the O-12 has a major hiccup, rushes to recognise JSA, gives PanO a major shout-down and forces them to make repairment to YJ while PanO will later force JSA to repay THOSE repairements with interest (give us all those nice Yu Jing tech you stole - oh and congratulations on being the new glorious deniable PanO shock troops)

 

But that would take actual effort to write, just deus ex machina it and say the Kuge did it. That's all you need, the JSA will sell by the thousands and who cares what Yu Jing players think, they would have complained anyway.

Can I... Can I hear their thoughts?

 

I'm not sure anything individuals are going to do will have much impact... I agree with @Eldritch that increased participation and community engagement will be seen as vindication by CB, while non-participation will be seen the same way, particularly if you match the downturn with the increase in JSA participation you get numbers that you can spin to say 'hey, no one plays YJ anyway, they all jumped to Secessionists as soon as we gave them the chance for cybersamurai and Unit 731!' But scattered, with a few people leaving, a few people enthusiastic, a few people not paying much attention either way, it isn't going have that much impact in aggregate.

It always comes down to a matter of community cohesion, action has political character. Uprising is done, we can hope for supplementary material, but either way any action isn't about reversing so much as influencing the future. One can see two paths here:

Boycott - In order for non-participation, voting with one's wallet, to be effective a passive approach of waiting for Corvus Belli to do something you like before buying/rejoining is pretty straightforward. But it is also easily ignored, for reasons discussed above, because that lost sale can easily be fit into the narrative supporting the very decision which caused its loss. I figure, by default, this is where things end up, a lot of players just playing less games in CB's events, buying less models, and eventually Invincible Army is delivered and this reverses.

A boycott, however, takes this and gives it needed political character. Through organizing, it increases scale, making its existence clearly evident, while it also carries a unified message: it isn't just buyers who are tired or generally hateful, a faction that can't sell well, THIS specific reason is why these sales have dropped, THIS specific change is what is required to restore them.

Engagement - Participating, pushing ahead playing the Yu Jing you want despite any issues with the split/Uprising/what have you, is in a sense acceptance of Corvus Belli's views and actions. In relations between a consumer and a corporation, this tends to be an act of tacit support. At the very least, if one objects to something, one must thus qualify engagement. This thread is full of people doing just that... laying out their issues and engaging with the community in hopes things they don't like won't continue happening in a game they are engaged in enough to spend their time reading and typing on a forum.

Boycotts are relatively straightforward to organize, to give political character, because they draw a simple 'party line' and with it a clear set of instructions about what each organized person must do as an individual. Organizing engagement is more difficult, but the same general principles apply: it needs to leverage scale, and it needs to have a clear message. It has a number of approaches it can then use to push that message and make it effective: simplest being a 'boycott in waiting', the threat of withdrawal by those actively engaged, but that is hardly the only tool available. Being organized engagement, it can also leverage being engaged: voices on forums or polls showing support of the message, organized members popping up at Interplanetario and tournaments, at GenCon, on podcasts, amongst the Warcors, where other Infinity players can be convinced and where on occasion Corvus Belli can be encountered to hear it directly, to see it isn't isolated or people being-mad-online but something felt by people who really do care.

We've seen the principle in action, sort-of... community agitation for the fat YuanYuan, didn't force Corvus Belli to release that box, but it made it into a point of engagement they found inspiring, and they ran with it.

If the Yu Jing fanbase was organized properly along Party lines, the principle of democratic centralism would apply. We would discuss, debate, and decide, and then pursue the Party line regardless of which side of that debate we'd been on. Commissars would show up at your house when you were about to add that new support box to your online shopping cart, to remind you not to give in, comrade, no matter how fantastic it is, or to make sure that even if bright lime green clashes with your complexion you still need to wear the t-shirt to Adepticon so our numbers are known.

Alas, we are not a party. Organizing is hard stuff even when people's own survival is at issue, so even moreso in a case like this where we are playing with little painted army men and dollhouses... and my experience in previous global campaigns was that of all the player bases Yu Jing's seemed the most difficult to corral. and without organization, we aren't likely to see much response from CB. Some people will drop off, some will persist, some will tread water. Even if they frustrate us it is CB's actions which seem to bring us together, and barring some surprise hype for this global campaign I don't see much on the horizon until the Invincibles appear. I know I'm with @Section9 wanting to just get a single dossier, which looked at objectively is such a minor little thing but in context of recent events would have way more impact than it ought. The fact that hasn't happened in the wake of the controversy is probably the best proof that even having several voices agreeing is too little to influence CB without some sort of stronger underlying organization.

As much as history gives us the perfect reference for a boycott here (the May Fourth Movement, if organizers are on the ball they could even get the date right for an announcement!), I seem to have accidentally started leaning the other way, since while no one in my local group found JSA appealing, our MO player's response to Uprising and my grumbling has been to want to defect from corrupt PanO and play honourable Imperial Service. Buying a bunch of ISS will give CB the entirely wrong impression, but how can I fault it?

----

tl;dr whether you stop buying Yu Jing models or start making propaganda posters, there won't be much impact unless it can be organized to use scale and convey message. Organizing is hard.

 

I absolutely love the last page of this thread, and I like seeing people express a critical view without resorting to name-calling or even snide remarks, as many of us have failed to do in the not-too-distant past.

It makes it even more glaringly worrying that CB hasn't even acknowledged that there is a part of the playerbase that is unhappy with this. It bothers me more the more I think about it, the more I read you guys making perfectly sensible points in a civil way... only to get ignored and swept under the metaphorical rug of the forum. I think we deserve better. Apparently, CB does not.

 

So, we need Yu Jing International affairs department!

 

It’s worse than that. The people who have commented on the fluff (usually to defend it) have confirmed that it is just as bad for Yu Jing as pessimistically predicted.

 

Seriously...would you guys calm down a bit?
Just cause someone has the book doesn't mean he's somehow forced to become everyone's intel monkey and answer each and every question there is, especially when some people here want to go into details like numbers of troops deployed or the exact timeline of events in single combat areas.

By now I finally managed to read the whole Uprising Part, and frankly there's not much more to add to what I have been saying before. The Uprising part is 95% pro JSA, and the only 5% that aren't are the areas that tell you how evil JSA's Kuge are in the background, but that in the end, they are no more evil than Yu Jing was before anyways...

Yes there's mention of JSA's financial and development capabilties having taken big hits, but there's also mention of rapid growth after the uprising and very promising new technology, so in the end Japan will benefit greatly from the uprising for sure.

There is basically nothing that talks about Yu Jing after the Uprising, other than Kuraimori now being a police state under ISS Martial law where people get executed on a daily basis and Yu Jing still somehow can't seem to keep things from leaking outside... and as mentioned before 95% of all "news articles" presented are from PanO, JSA or some other sources, with almost none being from Yu Jing, it's as if they deliberately left out what's going on in Yu Jing....maybe because they plan to release another book that deals with that once the IA is released or whatnot....

I am not going to answer specific questions about why faction X managed to support JSA in Area Y without a global war breaking out, as I'd have to reread big chunks of the story to get everything right, and I don't have the time for that, nor does it really make a difference, these things aren't exactly explained, they are just stated as matters of fact mostly. Like "Day XX, O-12 sanctioned JSA independance, PanO sent troops" or whatever...

As I mentioned before...if you want to play JSA, this book is a fun read and you'll love JSA afterwards most likely. If you are Yu Jing searching for answers, you will be 100% disappointed.