10-18-2012, 09:43 PM
So, due to an unfortunate accident my Armored Core Fanalogues were removed.
However, this was just a little pet project, and while I wait for Twin-Skies to give me the go or no-go on going ahead with making Armored Core Fanalogues, I'm going to do something else that I kind of wanted to do as another pet project. Call this Dr. Damage: discussing the unloved weapons and technology all throughout the Armored Core series and giving it its due, prescribing how to make them better if they were to ever appear again.
Our first patient is a sad case of wasted potential, thanks to the insistence of From Software that it not be treated like what it is: a booster. These are the Extension Boosters.
The Diagnosis
Pity the poor Extension Booster.
Perhaps my perceptions are clouded by my experiences with struggling with the inconvenient PSP control scheme and how it makes aiming at any targets that can jump and aim downwards infuriating, but I don't use the extension slot for things I actually have to manually trigger. I always just threw the switch on the AMS or the interlocking missiles and waded into combat, or just slapped on solid shields and called it a day.
On the other hand, there's the Extension Boosters. In theory they're sort of the Quick Boost, Quick Turn or Boost Glide before any of those was ever invented: bolt them on and off you go wherever the boosters appear to point.
Except, of course, especially on the PSP versions of Armored Core, you have to do a few things to do this. First you have to get into position, then you have to take your hand off the stick to actually activate the boosters, and finally hope that you're still in an advantageous position before your energy runs out.
![[Image: Me163(1).jpg]](http://maquetland.com/v2/images_articles/Me163(1).jpg)
At least the Me 163 had four minutes of fuel to work with.
The Extension Boosters, as I think everyone here knows, came in some distinct flavors: More Trouble Than It's Worth, More Trouble Than It's Worth Backwards, You Should Probably Play Armored Core 4 If You Like Quick Turns, and You Will Pay For Being Too Lazy To Hover Manually.
![[Image: armored_core_v_1.jpg]](http://download.gamezone.com/assets/old/screenshots/armored_core_v_1.jpg)
The alternative is the multi-parachute pack, I guess.
The best analogy I can give for this system is this: imagine that you're in a car, like a compact hatchback or something, and you've ripped out the back seats to put a motorcycle back there. This motorcycle is grafted on the back with its rear wheel to the ground to help power the car and, for some reason, the guy who's manning it since you can't run the car up front and the motorcycle out back by yourself decided to power it by siphoning gas from your tank to the assembly sticking out the back. When you drive, you tell the guy to gun the engine. He floors the throttle, there's a lot of smoke and noise, and you go a little faster for a little while. Then you do this a few more times and both car and bike sputter out, their juice spent. That's the extension booster: a very brief boost that isn't very worth it.
The Prescription
You know why I wanted to start Dr. Damage with this one? The extension boosters are infuriating. Not just because they're useless, not just because they're too complicated for their own good and not because they appear to be the anti-boosters when just throwing on more powerful normal boosters would suffice for Ravens who actually like to, you know, win fights, but because the answer to all this was dangled mockingly in our faces when Nexus came around (and later in Last Raven): the back boosters.
The Pegasus back boosters work just like the normal boosters. You turn them on and off by, gasp, boosting. It drains energy faster but you get more mobility as a result. If you have lots of ammo in your arm weapons and you've got a tubby Core, these are an interesting answer. Yes, Pegasus is still heavy and energy-inefficient, but they're boosters that act like boosters.
Perhaps the same could've been done with the extension boosters: they're boosters that act in sync with your normal ones, but still give you extra boost speed in at least one direction. Hell, the quick turn boosters could've been the only extension booster model since it would allow you to go forward, backward and turn faster when boosting. So could the "hover" boosters since they would be more optimized to aerial combat than ground combat. They would have been more natural to use.
Well that and it'd make all the vernier thruster-looking boosters in Armored Core 4 and For Answer seem like more natural evolution instead of the guys who made the first NEXTs going "You know, let's take this really useless optional feature and put it on our super-Armored Core! Yeah, it'll be great!"
However, this was just a little pet project, and while I wait for Twin-Skies to give me the go or no-go on going ahead with making Armored Core Fanalogues, I'm going to do something else that I kind of wanted to do as another pet project. Call this Dr. Damage: discussing the unloved weapons and technology all throughout the Armored Core series and giving it its due, prescribing how to make them better if they were to ever appear again.
Our first patient is a sad case of wasted potential, thanks to the insistence of From Software that it not be treated like what it is: a booster. These are the Extension Boosters.
The Diagnosis
Pity the poor Extension Booster.
Perhaps my perceptions are clouded by my experiences with struggling with the inconvenient PSP control scheme and how it makes aiming at any targets that can jump and aim downwards infuriating, but I don't use the extension slot for things I actually have to manually trigger. I always just threw the switch on the AMS or the interlocking missiles and waded into combat, or just slapped on solid shields and called it a day.
On the other hand, there's the Extension Boosters. In theory they're sort of the Quick Boost, Quick Turn or Boost Glide before any of those was ever invented: bolt them on and off you go wherever the boosters appear to point.
Except, of course, especially on the PSP versions of Armored Core, you have to do a few things to do this. First you have to get into position, then you have to take your hand off the stick to actually activate the boosters, and finally hope that you're still in an advantageous position before your energy runs out.
At least the Me 163 had four minutes of fuel to work with.
The Extension Boosters, as I think everyone here knows, came in some distinct flavors: More Trouble Than It's Worth, More Trouble Than It's Worth Backwards, You Should Probably Play Armored Core 4 If You Like Quick Turns, and You Will Pay For Being Too Lazy To Hover Manually.
The alternative is the multi-parachute pack, I guess.
The best analogy I can give for this system is this: imagine that you're in a car, like a compact hatchback or something, and you've ripped out the back seats to put a motorcycle back there. This motorcycle is grafted on the back with its rear wheel to the ground to help power the car and, for some reason, the guy who's manning it since you can't run the car up front and the motorcycle out back by yourself decided to power it by siphoning gas from your tank to the assembly sticking out the back. When you drive, you tell the guy to gun the engine. He floors the throttle, there's a lot of smoke and noise, and you go a little faster for a little while. Then you do this a few more times and both car and bike sputter out, their juice spent. That's the extension booster: a very brief boost that isn't very worth it.
The Prescription
You know why I wanted to start Dr. Damage with this one? The extension boosters are infuriating. Not just because they're useless, not just because they're too complicated for their own good and not because they appear to be the anti-boosters when just throwing on more powerful normal boosters would suffice for Ravens who actually like to, you know, win fights, but because the answer to all this was dangled mockingly in our faces when Nexus came around (and later in Last Raven): the back boosters.
The Pegasus back boosters work just like the normal boosters. You turn them on and off by, gasp, boosting. It drains energy faster but you get more mobility as a result. If you have lots of ammo in your arm weapons and you've got a tubby Core, these are an interesting answer. Yes, Pegasus is still heavy and energy-inefficient, but they're boosters that act like boosters.
Perhaps the same could've been done with the extension boosters: they're boosters that act in sync with your normal ones, but still give you extra boost speed in at least one direction. Hell, the quick turn boosters could've been the only extension booster model since it would allow you to go forward, backward and turn faster when boosting. So could the "hover" boosters since they would be more optimized to aerial combat than ground combat. They would have been more natural to use.
Well that and it'd make all the vernier thruster-looking boosters in Armored Core 4 and For Answer seem like more natural evolution instead of the guys who made the first NEXTs going "You know, let's take this really useless optional feature and put it on our super-Armored Core! Yeah, it'll be great!"
"The SDR-5V Spider introduces the Inner Sphere to the future of battlefield fleeing. Blasts, barrages, or bombardments; when running isn't good enough, be good enough to Run Big."
~Zack Parsons of SomethingAwful, Dorkiest Mechs of 3025
~Zack Parsons of SomethingAwful, Dorkiest Mechs of 3025
