In the words of the Dragonball Dub when a helicopter is completely obliterated in an explosion killing a news crew.. “Look, I can see their Parachutes, they are OK!”
And that concludes issue #8. What awaits her fate. Tune into issue #9 to find out. And now back to our regular schedule programming. Hope you had a fun, and enjoyable break.
GUNnibal
3 years ago
I guess you could say that our meeting with Janora was FLEETing
That went exactly as expected. Right in teh feelz.
At least the Dranglaex lost the element of surprise. They sure had balls, jumping into an asteroid field like that, I figure they wanted to avoid being detected, but this way, at least the loss of Cass and Janora won’t be in vain.
toughluck
3 years ago
This got me wondering, though.
Jumping into an asteroid field is obviously dangerous. I was hoping there would be at least some casualties among the Dranglaex due to a miscalculated jump or due to asteroids moving around.
I would hope that the capital ships would have maybe a couple of dents and fighters would explode against a couple of asteroids?
Or are they simply perfect astrogators that never make mistakes like that?
That depends if the in comic universe obeys movie astroid field rules or real world ones. In real world astroids are much more spread out than movies often depict them.
The art makes it look more movie rules, but that could just be artistic license.
Most such situations in actual space have a lot of ‘grit’ and not too many things to cause much concern (unless you whack them doing a very fast speed). In fact, a lot of such belts might have what you or I would consider very sparse density. I forget, but when a friend that worked on Hubble, Messenger, and another NASA vehicle told me the typical density, I realized Star Wars-ish dodging many large moving objects is entirely BS. The reality is that a system like that would have to be right after some bigger mass fragmenting but without powdering… Read more »
That’s why they send a few ships first to scan for coordinates. The first ones have a high chance to survive like Hobbes said, the others have a perfect chance due to that.
Off cause I assume subspace communication.
John Swift
3 years ago
Hmm keeping such a large fleet in one place seems risky with enemy starcasters in play, im guessing he thinks he can cancel/block a starcaster beam if needed.
The real question of course is, is this the sector the main cast is in? I would imagine the enemy has been trying to learn to sense starcasters both to find the missing one and to check if the feds suddenly aquired a third.
I doubt it’s the same sector. Speck was pretty confident they would be safe there.
Of course, it could turn out that it’s the same and that Janora is going to crash land on that remote piece of rock, but that would also mean the Dranglaex will know exactly where the Starcaster is.
I suspect that the fleet’s formation depends on what they are doing at any given time.
Judging by what we’ve seen so far, the fleet is currently travelling – doing so in groups usually makes more sense than sending isolated ships (or mini-groups of 2-3), because isolated ships can easily run into the exact kind of situation that happened to Janora (outnumbered and outgunned).
Once they engage in actual combat – I expect they will fan out and do their best to avoid becoming chunky salsa all together (no guarantee about individual portions, though).
Possibly but the main value of having some ships spread a fair distance from the main body is that, if their sensors work like real world ones, the larger the array (even a synthetic one that uses raw sensor data from a lot of far flung scout boats), the longer range and the greater resolution is available. You need to see things transiting or otherwise being noticeable and looking at the same areas of the sky from differing locations will help catch more of the profile of any hostile out there.
And the tactic that puts everyone together is the battle formation so you can concentrate firepower locally very effectively. If the enemy lets your main body (like in the photo) meat their dispersed elements, they risk defeat in detail, so other than scouts, the heavy hitters should be together. They can quickly tear apart any enemies not so concentrated (which will force both sides to be heavily concentrated) and thus tend to lead to the big fleet engagements sci-fi movies and age of sail fleets engaged in.
Look at the way her ship exploding with the cockpit intact. she will at worst be a POW that rescued by Cort or escapes and finds Cort with “vital information” and at best stranded on a dead rock of a planet housing a certain crew. While it’s not impossible to have her killed but she has not fulfilled the rule of Chekhov’s Gun yet. While Cass was literally a 3-4 slide side character Janora has been in multiple issues and has built up a bit of backstory. but beyond sending a distress call out to an unknown space station in… Read more »
Caveat: if the station she warned is the one speck is on she would have filled more of a role but that would need the foreshadowing of knowing what station speck is on which i don’t think we do (i did not see that ever mentioned)
That shady station that Speck is on didn’t have any Federation ships around it. If it was a Federation base, I would expect at least some fighters on patrol around it, maybe a capital ship. It also has a completely different color scheme from the Navy base/ship that Janora and Cass launched from. It makes sense. Speck wouldn’t just go to the Federation to resupply. While on topic of color schemes, the one around that shady station looks different from the one seen here, and also different from the one around that deserted planet. While the law of conservation of… Read more »
She has literally fulfilled the requirements of Chekov’s Gun. The ‘gun’ was shown on the shelf, and has ‘went off’. Chekov’s Gun is a literary tool to make sure everything has a purpose to the story; it’s not a contract with the reader. Everything that happened before – Cass and Janora’s relationship, the crush on the mechanic, exists to give the reader a bond with the character. Martin perfected the art of slowly building up that relationship, nurturing it, then using that relationship to turn an audience’s feeling of love and affection to anger and rage, by cruelly killing off… Read more »
Leon
3 years ago
*in Akbar voice* IT’S A TRAP
Benjamin Smith
3 years ago
Woudln’t it be interesting if this happened to be where Cort and co. were camped out?
Wouldn’t it also be interesting if that shot that Cort put out randomly hit the main ship in that fleet
Kenju
3 years ago
I so called this yesterday lol:
Ships that small have very limited range. Cass and her wingman were launched from a base, we saw that at the start of the issue. To have a squadron here means there must be a capital ship capable of deploying fighters, reinforced by the loss of communications.
That means there is a *very* large capital ship, or more likely (and far worse) a battlegroup. With a war having just started that means its a vanguard force…which is very bad.
Given that these fighters were in formation with capital ships suggests that they arrived along with them, so they are also equipped with superluminal drives.
If they didn’t, it would be impossible for a fighter to arrive before capital ships, it would need to be launched from one first.
As it’s a name coined by an alien species, it’s probably impossible to do a 100% accurate pronunciation without a double-jointed tongue and a shrill nasal whistle.
But in English, the ‘ae’ is usually a very soft, somewhat breathy ‘ayy’. Like aerobics, faerie, florae, maelstrom, daemon. it’s not ALWAYS that, but usually.
24
Cockpit is intact, maybe she’s not dead yet
Hopefully
She’s getting better.
She’s probably only mostly dead. I’m sure a visit to miracle max will fix her right up.
Yeah, but will she accept the chocolate coated miracle pills?
In the words of the Dragonball Dub when a helicopter is completely obliterated in an explosion killing a news crew.. “Look, I can see their Parachutes, they are OK!”
Hey not like that !
Ruh Roh!
Nice to meet you Janora
got GRRM’d lmao
Well, the Cockpit is still intact.
Yea, I was kinda hoping for new recurring character and a POW stoyline.
*sadface*
if there’s one species in Tim’s entire Starcaster universe that does NOT take prisoners, it’s the Dranglaex.
Hopefully the cockpit doubles as a lifepod.
And she crash-lands, and meets Cort
And that concludes issue #8. What awaits her fate. Tune into issue #9 to find out. And now back to our regular schedule programming. Hope you had a fun, and enjoyable break.
I guess you could say that our meeting with Janora was FLEETing
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH B|
That went exactly as expected. Right in teh feelz.
At least the Dranglaex lost the element of surprise. They sure had balls, jumping into an asteroid field like that, I figure they wanted to avoid being detected, but this way, at least the loss of Cass and Janora won’t be in vain.
This got me wondering, though.
Jumping into an asteroid field is obviously dangerous. I was hoping there would be at least some casualties among the Dranglaex due to a miscalculated jump or due to asteroids moving around.
I would hope that the capital ships would have maybe a couple of dents and fighters would explode against a couple of asteroids?
Or are they simply perfect astrogators that never make mistakes like that?
That depends if the in comic universe obeys movie astroid field rules or real world ones. In real world astroids are much more spread out than movies often depict them.
The art makes it look more movie rules, but that could just be artistic license.
Most such situations in actual space have a lot of ‘grit’ and not too many things to cause much concern (unless you whack them doing a very fast speed). In fact, a lot of such belts might have what you or I would consider very sparse density. I forget, but when a friend that worked on Hubble, Messenger, and another NASA vehicle told me the typical density, I realized Star Wars-ish dodging many large moving objects is entirely BS. The reality is that a system like that would have to be right after some bigger mass fragmenting but without powdering… Read more »
That’s why they send a few ships first to scan for coordinates. The first ones have a high chance to survive like Hobbes said, the others have a perfect chance due to that.
Off cause I assume subspace communication.
Hmm keeping such a large fleet in one place seems risky with enemy starcasters in play, im guessing he thinks he can cancel/block a starcaster beam if needed.
The real question of course is, is this the sector the main cast is in? I would imagine the enemy has been trying to learn to sense starcasters both to find the missing one and to check if the feds suddenly aquired a third.
I doubt it’s the same sector. Speck was pretty confident they would be safe there.
Of course, it could turn out that it’s the same and that Janora is going to crash land on that remote piece of rock, but that would also mean the Dranglaex will know exactly where the Starcaster is.
If their starcaster bearer detected Cort’s shot, then they know…
Which could explain the fleets appearance.
I suspect that the fleet’s formation depends on what they are doing at any given time.
Judging by what we’ve seen so far, the fleet is currently travelling – doing so in groups usually makes more sense than sending isolated ships (or mini-groups of 2-3), because isolated ships can easily run into the exact kind of situation that happened to Janora (outnumbered and outgunned).
Once they engage in actual combat – I expect they will fan out and do their best to avoid becoming chunky salsa all together (no guarantee about individual portions, though).
Possibly but the main value of having some ships spread a fair distance from the main body is that, if their sensors work like real world ones, the larger the array (even a synthetic one that uses raw sensor data from a lot of far flung scout boats), the longer range and the greater resolution is available. You need to see things transiting or otherwise being noticeable and looking at the same areas of the sky from differing locations will help catch more of the profile of any hostile out there.
And the tactic that puts everyone together is the battle formation so you can concentrate firepower locally very effectively. If the enemy lets your main body (like in the photo) meat their dispersed elements, they risk defeat in detail, so other than scouts, the heavy hitters should be together. They can quickly tear apart any enemies not so concentrated (which will force both sides to be heavily concentrated) and thus tend to lead to the big fleet engagements sci-fi movies and age of sail fleets engaged in.
Plot armor please… Just a little bit..
What happened to the awkward date?
Red herring?
Just a tiny bit of flavor to make us attached to the character, before Tim goes and GRR Martins her off.
Dang it.
Look at the way her ship exploding with the cockpit intact. she will at worst be a POW that rescued by Cort or escapes and finds Cort with “vital information” and at best stranded on a dead rock of a planet housing a certain crew. While it’s not impossible to have her killed but she has not fulfilled the rule of Chekhov’s Gun yet. While Cass was literally a 3-4 slide side character Janora has been in multiple issues and has built up a bit of backstory. but beyond sending a distress call out to an unknown space station in… Read more »
Caveat: if the station she warned is the one speck is on she would have filled more of a role but that would need the foreshadowing of knowing what station speck is on which i don’t think we do (i did not see that ever mentioned)
That shady station that Speck is on didn’t have any Federation ships around it. If it was a Federation base, I would expect at least some fighters on patrol around it, maybe a capital ship. It also has a completely different color scheme from the Navy base/ship that Janora and Cass launched from. It makes sense. Speck wouldn’t just go to the Federation to resupply. While on topic of color schemes, the one around that shady station looks different from the one seen here, and also different from the one around that deserted planet. While the law of conservation of… Read more »
She has literally fulfilled the requirements of Chekov’s Gun. The ‘gun’ was shown on the shelf, and has ‘went off’. Chekov’s Gun is a literary tool to make sure everything has a purpose to the story; it’s not a contract with the reader. Everything that happened before – Cass and Janora’s relationship, the crush on the mechanic, exists to give the reader a bond with the character. Martin perfected the art of slowly building up that relationship, nurturing it, then using that relationship to turn an audience’s feeling of love and affection to anger and rage, by cruelly killing off… Read more »
*in Akbar voice* IT’S A TRAP
Woudln’t it be interesting if this happened to be where Cort and co. were camped out?
Wouldn’t it also be interesting if that shot that Cort put out randomly hit the main ship in that fleet
I so called this yesterday lol:
Ships that small have very limited range. Cass and her wingman were launched from a base, we saw that at the start of the issue. To have a squadron here means there must be a capital ship capable of deploying fighters, reinforced by the loss of communications.
That means there is a *very* large capital ship, or more likely (and far worse) a battlegroup. With a war having just started that means its a vanguard force…which is very bad.
Given that these fighters were in formation with capital ships suggests that they arrived along with them, so they are also equipped with superluminal drives.
If they didn’t, it would be impossible for a fighter to arrive before capital ships, it would need to be launched from one first.
Impossible, yes, but much more dramatic.
Those ships remind me of the Armageddon battleships from Eve Online. Similar prow design.
Would anyone help me understand how Dranglaex is supposed to be pronounced? That last syllable-and-a-half feels weird.
I’m not 100% sure if I’m correct or not, but I’ve been pronouncing it as drang-lakes.
As it’s a name coined by an alien species, it’s probably impossible to do a 100% accurate pronunciation without a double-jointed tongue and a shrill nasal whistle.
But in English, the ‘ae’ is usually a very soft, somewhat breathy ‘ayy’. Like aerobics, faerie, florae, maelstrom, daemon. it’s not ALWAYS that, but usually.
Never underestimate the pronunciation-enhancing power of face tentacles.
This friendly reminder is brought to you by Quel’Oran.
I’d say Drang-la-eggs
Maybe they are Space-French. Like Bordeaux is pronounced “ooh” instead of “eaux”, here “aex” might turn into “ah” or something. 😉
This is how I lose all my scout ships
She never got to finish asking them to send nudes.