A Different Kind of Sequel

Those who follow me online have probably observed that I almost never refer to my son by name. Online, he is usually referred to as the Gremlin (formerly the Peanut, which went right out when he started growling), as it’s generally good Internet practice to minimize identifying information. Further, parents often have nicknames or code names for their kids (especially before they’re born – I chatted with a friend who had a daughter this last year, and he mentioned the baby code name was Monkey Ruckus). Such names usually have something to do with a kid’s traits or behaviors (hence the Gremlin’s nickname).

But after three months of development, there’s not much for identifying traits yet. For brevity and wit, the wife and I decided that our number two is best described as the Sequel. Hopefully, Sequel will be more along the lines of The Empire Strikes Back than, say, Spider-Man 3. We announced at Christmas; I’m curious as to see how many people will click through from Facebook or Twitter to read this, and how many will tell me in a couple months, “I didn’t know you and your wife were expecting!”

Coming soon – hopefully after I have a couple more books out. Yes, I’m hard at work on those sequels too, but my side business has really picked up and I need to build a new bedroom in the house, too.

Review: Star Wars Rebels Season 2, Episode 4

“Brothers of the Broken Horn” was last week’s episode of Rebels, so this review should be out just hours before the newest episode, “Wings of the Master”, airs and is made available for streaming.

The episode begins with Ezra training under Rex, using a Clone Wars-era rifle for target practice. Cue the arrival of Kanan, who is irritated that Ezra is missing Jedi training, leading to Ezra’s off-hand comment that perhaps he shouldn’t be a soldier or a Jedi and sets up Ezra’s conflict for the episode.

With the rest of the crew off on a mission, Ezra and Chopper are left behind to perform maintenance on the Ghost. While complaining about how life was simpler on his own, Ezra receives a distress call from criminal Vizago, a recurring Season 1 character to whom Ezra owes a debt. Deciding to ditch his responsibilities for the moment, Ezra takes off in the Phantom with Chopper in tow.

Vizago is nowhere to be found, but his ship, the Broken Horn, is now apparently under the captainship of Clone Wars fan-favorite pirate Honda Ohnaka. Poor Hondo has gone through tough times since the Clone Wars – he has no crew, just one ship he won in a card game, and is apparently broke. The Empire has been hard on business.

Enter a game of scheming not seen since Lando Calrissian’s Season 1 appearance in “Idiot’s Array” as Ezra and Chopper scheme both with and against Hondo, face-off with Season 1 villain Azmorigan (also from “Idiot’s Array”), and spring Vizago from his own brig, turning the climax into a three-way match which ultimately ends with no one completely happy with the conclusion. (Best line goes to Vizago – “I hate children.”)

Ultimately, Ezra tells Kanan that he used to be like Hondo, scheming and out for himself, but he’s on a different path now – the Jedi path.

Ultimately, though, the episode falls flat and leaves a few head-scratchers. Ezra can’t carry an episode by himself the way Kanan can (though I’m very interested to see if Hera can manage it tonight in “Wings of the Master”), which means Hondo steals the spotlight. We never do find out how Hondo managed to both lock Vizago up and how he stole Vizago’s droid controller. Also, why did Hondo leave Vizago alive? During Clone Wars he was clearly capable of and had no compunctions about killing.

Further, Ezra’s conflict isn’t really explored. He begins the episode as “I’m not sure I want to be a Jedi or rebel”, and partway through he questions whether he wants to join Hondo as a pirate, but at the end he tells Kanan, “I’m on a different path.” Those are all great mile markers on a road, but they’re just markers; what’s missing is the road between them. At no point does Ezra express discomfort with what he, Hondo, and Vizago are doing – he never, for example, takes a moral stand. On the contrary, when Vizago demands Ezra spring him from the brig, Ezra tells him that he has other problems to deal with, and only relents when Vizago brings up the favor Ezra owes him. Overall, the arc in the episode is too much tell, not enough show.

It doesn’t mean there aren’t some great moments in the episode, particularly involving Hondo. “One of my best friends was a Jedi! At least, I think we were friends.” And, as expected, Chopper is the one who schemed furthest, ensuring the Rebels ultimately acquired the cargo they needed – again, not unlike “Idiot’s Array” when Chopper played a long-con game to steal Lando Calrissian’s fuel. (Though in “Idiot’s Array”, Lando was ultimately the long-term winner.) Hondo explaining to the Rebels crew at the end how he and Ezra worked together against Vizago is laugh-out-loud worthy; the Weequay can lie like a politician.

In totality, though, the episode comes off mediocre. It’s certainly not terrible, but as a character-centric episode for Ezra it’s no match for Season 1’s “Empire Day” and “Gathering Forces” two-parter.

 

Review: Star Wars Rebels Season 2, Episode 3

Remember how I complained the opening two episodes of Season 2 were a bit weak? Episode 3, entitled “Always Two There Are”, is a return to form.

The episode opens aboard the Ghost and quickly devolves into an argument between Jedi Kanan Jarrus and clone captain Rex. The undertone is clear – they’ve been arguing like that since Rex arrived, and there’s definitely still tension between the two. Kanan may have forgiven the clones, but it’s a work in progress, not an instant fix.

Ezra, tired of being in the crossfire, slips away to join Chopper, Zeb, and Sabine on a mission to retrieve some medical supplies from an abandoned Old Republic medical station. (Side note – I saw some viewers complaining it was ridiculous for the Old Republic/Empire to abandon a perfectly good facility. I live in North Dakota, which is home to plenty of abandoned military installations.)

The facility is mostly shut down, with a near-perfect creepy vibe not out of place in any number of horror movies. And horror is coming – the Rebels crew soon find themselves hunted by not one, but two Inquisitors.

And they thought the Inquisitor from last season was the only one of his kind.

Full marks for mood and setting in this episode – the darkness of the station is a perfect compliment to the new Inquisitors. And as is fitting dark side adepts trained by the Sith, there’s clearly tension between them, with hints that all of the members of their order are jockeying for power in the vacuum left when Kanan offed the Grand Inquisitor in the Season 2 finale.

The limitations of a children’s show did restrain the actions of the Inquisitors. Rebels is pitched at a younger audience than Clone Wars was, and it showed. The “torture” inflicted by the Seventh Sister on hero Ezra was literally an invisible use of the Force, and neither of the Inquisitors actually did anything to Sabine when attempting to use her to get Ezra to talk. (In a more adult setting, I would have fully expected something like limb loss or, at the very least, lightsaber burns.)

The Fifth Brother also picked up the dummy ball at one point in a completely nonsensical way; after besting both Sabine and Zeb, he picked up Sabine and told the Sister’s droids to do whatever they wished with Zeb…minutes after he’d been angry with the Sister for denying him the killing of Ezra. I have a hard time believing he wouldn’t have run Zeb through with a lightsaber just for the fun of it.

Nonsensical survival aside, it gave Zeb a shining moment of character development. For once, the big guy isn’t just the big guy – he expresses doubt and a feeling of inadequacy when he’s measured against the Jedi and the Inquisitors…but ultimately decides to take a chance, set aside his doubts and brawn, and uses his brain to attempt a rescue via deception. Ultimately, I hope they’re sewing the seeds for some real character development for Zeb later in the season, because he’s been very undeveloped thus far.

Ultimately, Zeb’s rescue mission and the escape from the Inquisitors was fairly well-handled, with the Inquisitors showing more raw strength than I would have expected. But the best scene of the show happened upon their return to the Rebel fleet.

Rex and Kanan are still feuding, with Kanan triumphant in a game of dejarik. Rex’s comment, “Looks like you can be disciplined when you set your mind to it,” sparks Kanan’s irritation again, with him observing, “I’m not sure if I like you more or less now.” Clearly, some tension is going to remain for now.

But when the crew tells Kanan that they just escaped a pair of Inquisitors, he can only gape at them. And when they ask him why he didn’t tell them there were more Inquisitors, he has no answer – just stunned silence.

Kanan continues to be the most interesting character on the show (and this coming from someone who, as a rule, isn’t a fan of Jedi), and the episodes ahead look to be more interesting than ever. Killing the Grand Inquisitor in the Season 1 finale wasn’t really a victory, it turns out – it was just kicking over a bees’ hive.

I suspect Season 2 is going to get much, much darker. This was definitely an episode worth watching.

Review: Star Wars Rebels Season 2, Episodes 1 & 2

Star Wars Rebels is back and coming out with new episodes regularly. I’ve been a bit behind, so I hadn’t gotten a chance to review as I’d intended. However, it appears the fifth episode is going to be B-wing-centric, and I figured I’d better catch up on my review duties before it came out.

The first two episodes of Season 2 are a back-to-back story arc, and really deserve to be reviewed together.

The Ghost crew head out to an uninhabited world, looking for an unnamed military officer recommended by Ahsoka Tano. Ahsoka herself is present only at the very beginning and end of the arc; otherwise, she is presumably investigating the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader, who was once her master, Anakin Skywalker.

The leader in question was unnamed for a good reason – it’s Captain Rex of Clone Wars fame, and a clone to boot. Order 66 survivor Kanan Jarrus understandably distrusts a member of the army that slaughtered Jedi from Coruscant to the Rim, leaving his own apprentice, Ezra Bridger, to handle the three Clone Wars veterans, all dysfunctional in their own ways, while he deals with his own anger and hatred.

There’s a danger to Star Wars Rebels in this arc. It spent the first season carefully building its own identity and feel, returning to the more adventuresome spirit of A New Hope that is a distinct contrast to the darker, war-is-hell approach of Clone Wars. With the return of Clone Wars characters, it could quickly revert back to the spirit of its predecessor.

The writers seem aware of that, and took things a bit too far in the light-hearted direction. While the fishing-for-sand-worms bit was hilarious and clever, it also made too light of the fact that the clones had risked Zeb’s life as bait – and were well-aware that their own equipment wasn’t in great repair, as evidenced by Rex’s warning to Sabine that she had to keep it going or Zeb would die. And at the end of the sequence, the only person that seemed angry – and legitimately so – about the near-loss of Zeb is Kanan. Everyone else, including Zeb, just brushed it off like, “Oh, those wacky clones.”

The no-consequences feeling continued with Wolfe, who contacted the Empire to turn Kanan and Ezra over as Jedi. At the end of the first episode, it’s brushed off as a no-harm, no-foul affair, even after he was exposed as intercepting messages from Ahsoka to Rex to ensure Rex never saw them. This isn’t a live-and-let-live situation; his poor judgement almost got them all killed, and he was interfering with a friendship where he had no right to be.

The Empire responds as expected in the beginning of the second episode, arriving at the planet in response to Wolfe’s message and deploying AT-AT walkers to hunt down the Rebels and the clones on their Clone Wars-era AT-TE.

In one of the best sequences in the series thus far, the good guys realize they’re outmatched and flee into a dust storm, blinding both friendly and enemy sensors alike and allowing the Jedi to gain an upper hand. With Kanan guiding the clone crew, Ezra mans the AT-TE’s weapons as the only other one capable of hitting a target in the storm.

Agent Kallus, the Imperial Security Bureau agent who has been pursuing the Rebels since the beginning of the series, proves a competent commander. He underestimates the Jedi in the dust storm, losing one of his walkers, but still has the situation fully under control until his air support is pulled without his knowledge, allowing the Rebels crew to escape aboard the Phantom while the clones cover their escape.

In a sequence reminiscent of “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, the clones take on the two remaining Imperial AT-ATs in a head-on confrontation. The new Imperial armor is more than a match for the clones and their twenty-year-old equipment, however, and the battle quickly turns against them. Only Kanan’s change of heart and the return of the Phantom and its crew turn the battle back in time to save the clones from dying.

While the first episode of the two-parter came off too light-hearted for my taste (save Kanan’s well-deserved dislike of the clones), the second part was a great take on both characters and warfare as we’ve seen it in Star Wars. There’s no fanservice done here; although the clones, particularly Rex, were favorites from Clone Wars, they clearly lost the fight. The final reunion between Rex and Ahsoka aboard a Rebel blockade runner was touching as well: “You grew up,” the clone observes.

Overall, though, the stakes seem small for the season opener. It made sense for Season 1 to start small; it was introducing us to new characters and a small crew, and the stakes grew throughout, culminating in the rescue at Mustafar that brought a Rebel fleet out of hiding. Season 2’s movie kept the tension high with Darth Vader’s appearance, the Imperials crushing the spirit of the Lothal Rebels, and the final space combat between Imperial and Rebel forces that saw most of Phoenix Squadron wiped out and their command ship destroyed.

And suddenly, we’re back to a desert with three characters, aside from the Ghost crew. I understand very well that the stakes can’t always continue to escalate, and breather episodes are necessary, but this would’ve made a great episode 3 and 4 for the season. As the premiere? A bit weak.

Broken Game Mechanics

In some ways, sports fans have great advantages over those of us who are computer gaming nerds. In general, most popular sports were established decades ago at the minimum. The vast majority of the flaws and loopholes in the rules have been corrected and closed, so sports are, in a sense, predictable. (As predictable as anything run by humans, of course.)

Video games, on the other hand, generally don’t last long enough to work out all the problems. Developers may patch the biggest problems, but very few games have a lifespan of a decade plus with active development to improve the game and remove options for play that are game-breaking.

And make no mistake – sometimes code, implemented as designed, is game-breaking. Developers are not gods; they make mistakes, miss implications of their own ideas, and generally screw things up.

As you may have guessed, I’ve been pondering some elements of Star Wars Galaxies.

Before talking about the particular game-breaking issue I have in mind, I suppose I should define “game-breaking”. And to do that, I need to point out that what’s game-breaking in a multiplayer game is not necessarily game-breaking in a single-player game.

Take, for example, KOTOR 2. KOTOR was, first and foremost, a lightsaber game. There is no doubt the devs intended it to be played as a Jedi, swinging a lightsaber to cut down Sith Lords. KOTOR 2, on the other hand, introduced feats and specials to make ranged combat viable – even against lightsaber-wielding enemies. On the balance, the game still favored lightsaber combat over Force combat over ranged combat; however, the game was playable and beatable with any sort of build. Some were certainly more optimized than others, but players had options.

If you carry that paradigm into multiplayer, it fails, especially if it’s player-vs-player multiplayer. As a rule of thumb, you have three types of players: min-max players, who do everything to minimize weaknesses and maximize strengths to make their characters as powerful as possible; casual players, who generally choose skills and options they perceive of as “cool” without worrying about overall effectiveness; and players looking for a challenge, who either gimp their characters deliberately or try to pull off feats that the developers intended to be impossible.

When player-vs-player is introduced, you’ve now put your casual players at a great disadvantage. The min-maxers are going to stomp on them, and the challenge players are probably going to be min-maxing too.

With that in mind, in an MMO, I’d define game-breaking as “Skills, items, or game mechanics that render entire player classes moot.”

In Star Wars Galaxies, particularly pre-CU, that mechanic was Armor Piercing.

SWG had some amazingly in-depth systems. The crafting system was insane (and is still something I struggle to completely grasp) in its depth. Space and starship outfitting was almost an art in mass and power management to maximize fighter performance. Entire cities were built and managed by players. Even decorating was almost a profession in itself, due to the options available to players.

But parts of combat were very wrong.

Raph Koster wrote a series of posts on SWG this year, and they’re well worth reading from a game design perspective, so I understand why they got it wrong and things didn’t work. But there are still fans of the old pre-Combat Upgrade SWG that don’t seem to understand how broken several aspects are.

I’m now six hundred words in, and I’ll finally get to the topic I wanted to talk about!

SWG’s damage reduction worked in several ways. If you had the appropriate skill to examine a creature, or if you picked up a piece of armor, there were several sets of stats to look at. Damage reduction from armor was handled by two separate, yet equally important stats: Resistances and Armor Level.

Resistances offered a flat reduction to incoming damage based on the percentage. If the armor had 80% resists to energy, and you attacked with an energy weapon, only 20% of your damage got through on a successful hit. Not rocket science. The proliferation of the best armor in the game, composite, due to overpowered doctor buffs led to many people using stun weapons, since composite’s lowest resistance was always to stun.

Armor Levels for a target could range from 0 to 3. Think of it is unarmed, light armor, medium armor, and heavy armor. (That’s how it was described in game.) Player armor maxed at 1, but creature and NPC armor went all the way up to 3. Armor Piercing on weapons could also range from 0 to 3 (none, light, medium, heavy); player weapons were acquirable at all four levels.

The interaction of those two numbers was catastrophically game-breaking.

When AP was compared to AL, damage penalties and bonuses applied, starting at 25%. AP2 attacks against AL1 meant 25% bonus damage; AP3 attacks against AL1 meant 50% damage bonus.

Flipping that, an AP0 attack against an AL3 creature meant 75% damage reduction…before the flat damage reduction from resists. Attacking a creature with AL3 with your AP0 weapon, and said creature has 80% resists against your damage type? You’re doing 5% of your weapon’s rated damage.

“Get yourself a weapon with higher AP rating!” seems like the obvious answer, right? The problem is that many classes couldn’t get an AP3 weapon. Particularly gimped were Pistols-based builds; no pistol had a ranking higher than AP1. Period.

Entire classes built around weapon types were utterly useless at high-end PvE or PvP. (Yes, some PvPers could pull off pistols at various points, mostly due to bounty hunter’s eyeshot and a Geonosian sonic blaster for stun damage, while maximizing dodge by taking points in fencer. I’m talking casual play here, not min-max. Also, no one could PvE at high end with pistols.)

At the time, the implications weren’t well-understood. It took time for players to understand the mechanics in-depth, and quite often those at the top of the food chain weren’t in a hurry to share that information with others. But years have passed since then; now days, log into a SWG emulator for pre-CU, and what classes are almost everyone playing?

Rifleman: Armor Piercing 3 T-21 blaster rifle.

Swordsman: Armor Piercing 3 blast hammer.

Could something have been done to fix it?

I would argue, from Raph Koster’s posts, that no, nothing could be done about it. Giving all classes an AP3 weapon would be a very stopgap “fix” – it means everyone needs to use their high-end weapon. The way weapon refire rates were calculated meant speeding up lighter weapons wasn’t an option; pistols were already at the 1 attack per second cap, and combat speeds even faster than that simply weren’t an option at the time. (See Raph Koster’s post on the server hardware limitations.) Slowing down the heavy AP weapons would’ve been virtually impossible, again due to how weapon speeds were calculated. (With a full set of skills in a weapon, everyone attacks at or very near speed cap.)

I have no doubt the idea of Armor Piercing/Armor Levels was designed to allow more diversity in weapon choice. Instead, it killed off all but a few viable options for combat.

When designing a mechanic, think long and hard about all the repercussions of it. Also, bring in a min-maxer or three and see if they can figure out a way to exploit it that you haven’t thought of. I guarantee they’ll find something new.

Who is your god?

Two general rules of thumb for polite conversation are to never discuss politics or religion. With a title like the one for this post, you’re probably assuming I’m going to be breaking the second part. Further, most authors are reluctant to discuss politics or religion for fear of alienating readers.

I’m going to break the rule. It’s for a good cause.

Anyone who knows me and has read this site knows I’m a Christian. It might not be the focus of most of my posts here, but it’s readily apparent in large and small ways.

Matthew 6:24 has been on my mind recently: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (NIV translation) Most sermons and lessons I’ve heard couple the verse with 1 Timothy 6:10: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

The problem with this pairing is that Matthew 6:24 isn’t just about money – it’s about serving two masters. Money is incidental and common, but hardly singular.

My social media feed is filled with all types: political activists of most stripes, hunters, vegans, weightlifters, video gamers, blue-collar workers on food stamps to middle management, wage slaves and contractors, government employees and private business owners, and authors both independent and signed with a major publishing house. In short, I see a lot of diverse opinions on virtually any subject that comes up.

Many of them, perhaps most of them, don’t realize what god they worship. (Lowercase god is intentional.)

It’s important to me that I note here that I’m not criticizing anyone here – this understanding only surfaced after some long reflection on myself and my own priorities.

I see self-proclaimed Christians who seem to focus solely on their jobs. All of their energy and concentration seem to be bound up in their employment. Self-employed people tend to have this the worst: a focus so intent on a business succeeding that there is no time for spiritual affairs or the business of the church.

Those who work for others spend their off-hours energy elsewhere. Many worship at the altar of fitness – their Facebook and Twitter posts are about Crossfit, about marathon running, about triathlons or powerlifting. Often related to this are the latest diet fads, be they paleo or vegan or Atkins. These people are focused on the body and absolute physical health, believing it necessary or perhaps even the key to finding spiritual health and happiness.

Others revel in leisure activities, ranging from the intensely indoors (video games – MMORPGs tend to be the worst) to the intensely outdoors (hunting, fishing, boating, hiking, camping). They worship creation, not the Creator, with their actions betraying the lies of their words.

The idol of human knowledge is the target of much worship. Even among those who line the pews on Sunday morning are quick to ignore the Word for the next six days while seeking only the secular.

I’m as ugly a sinner as any. This is not a holier-than-thou post. But if you’re a believer in any faith, and you read this, I ask you: by your actions, by your money, by your time and energy, what do you worship?

Star Wars Rebels: A Season 1 Review

Warning: this post contains spoilers for Season 1 of Star Wars Rebels.

Anyone who knows me, or has spent any time perusing this website, probably knows I’m a big Star Wars fan. I have been since I first watched the trilogy on VHS (a late-nighter with a cousin, and I fell asleep during the last half hour of Return of the Jedi). I’m not old enough to have seen the original trilogy in theaters, and I was in high school when The Phantom Menace came out in 1999. I actually made the premiere showing of Revenge of the Sith and wound up sitting in the front row. I spent the first twenty minutes of the movie (the opening starfighter sequence, plus a little recovery time) motion sick from watching it at a weird angle.

The Star Wars media marched on, most notably in the TV show Star Wars: The Clone Wars. This isn’t a post for getting deep into that show, but suffice to say, I didn’t like some of the choices they made. Mostly, I found it lacked the sense of adventure that the original trilogy had evoked. It felt more like the reimagined Battlestar Galactica with a Star Wars skin, and the themes and level of violence felt a bit inappropriate for a kids’ show. (Don’t get me wrong, I liked BSG; but it should be and is a different beast from Star Wars.)

The great Disney buyout happened, The Clone Wars ended, and a new show was announced: Star Wars Rebels. (Look at that! I got to my subject by the third paragraph!)

I was rather skeptical at the start, mostly because of The Clone Wars. Setting it in the original trilogy period seemed like a great idea, but as more details started trickling my skepticism grew. A Jedi character central to the cast in a show set after the Jedi had been wiped out? A pink Mandalorian graffiti artist? An alien from a species we haven’t even seen before (sort of – it was based on concept art for the Wookiees)? A random street kid thief? Okay, I bought the pilot character and the astromech droid, but that’s two out of six.

I didn’t watch the shorts before the Season 1 premiere (which was a good thing, or I might not have watched the one-hour opener). My wonderful wife and I settled in to watch, though, and we were both prepared to dislike it. (Incidentally, my wife liked The Clone Wars even less than I did, though she’s a Star Wars fan as well.)

An hour and several bowls of popcorn later, and we were both stunned. We actually liked it.

Even more stunning, I liked the Jedi character, Kanan.

Side note: as I’ve grown older, I have found I dislike Jedi more and more. I don’t have some Karen Traviss-level hatred; I’m certainly not going to call fans of Jedi characters Nazis. Rather, I’ve disliked how, more and more throughout the Star Wars Expanded Universe (now Legends; we’ll see if the new canon does this any better) nothing happens without a Jedi being involved. It wasn’t always that bad – for example, the Rebel Alliance in the original trilogy and the old EU was composed of common people and political firebrands who chose to fight the Empire.

Then The Force Unleashed video game and novel happened. Suddenly, no one was willing to act unless a Jedi was involved. The common people never act in their own interest, but rely on the Jedi for, well, everything.

Star Wars Rebels flipped that on its head. The Jedi character, Kanan, is nominally the leader of the resistance group in question, but even in the premiere (and later confirmed in the story) the true leader is actually the pilot, Hera. She’s allowed Kanan to take the public face as leader because he’s a more capable combatant, but she’s the one who actually has all the knowledge.

As the series progressed, we find not only are people capable of acting without the Jedi, they have. Bail Organa is building cells of resistance, using another Jedi as his agent. While the Jedi are certainly important in the grand plan, they are also not necessary – even without Fulcrum or Kanan, the resistance effort would certainly be built.

Early episodes were on the childish side (and hey, this is a kids’ show!) like “Fighter Flight”. Surprisingly, though, the series maintains an extremely strong sense of continuity. Even the seemingly stand-alone and kid-friendly episodes tie into the later plot, and mistakes the crew makes along the way – even those that seem inconsequential, like breaking protocol to use a name instead of a callsign – come back to haunt them.

Surprisingly, the character (as explored thus far) have more depth than would be expected from a kids’ show, particularly on Disney. The aforementioned Kanan is uncertain of his own powers, having hid them away to survive the Jedi purge and only recently begun using them again. While he initially projects an aura of invincibility, the first time he crosses lightsabers with an Imperial Inquisitor shows just how outclassed and out of his depth he is when it comes to actually acting as a Jedi.

Ezra, the boy and the viewers’ hook into the group, has emotional issues ranging from uncertainty to rage to a fear of vulnerability. If Ezra had stood before the old Jedi Council and asked for training, they would’ve tossed him out so fast he would’ve suffered whiplash. And it shows – he’s unintentionally tapped into the dark side of the Force, and his future is very uncertain.

The Twi’lek pilot, Hera Syndulla, has an unexplored past but a delicately approached present. She has a strong sense of duty, to the point she was willing to let Kanan die to prevent her mission and the larger rebellion-in-progress from failing. It wasn’t until her own crew disobeyed her to pursue Kanan that she was willing to take a chance on saving him.

Zeb (Garazeb Orrelios, but only to his mother and to Hera when she’s chewing him out) is one of the few survivors of the genocide of his people. He burns with hatred toward the Imperial agent responsible for the deaths of his people, and pursuing vengeance nearly kills him in the first regular episode of the series. He’s a bit of a loose cannon, but he can generally be talked down by his own allies.

Chopper, the token astromech droid on the crew, is a bit of a controversial character. While he does the usual R2-D2 type work by fixing the ship and generally going places only droids can go, he’s acted in ways that endanger the crew. He was indirectly responsible for the near-death of Hera and Sabine in “Out of Darkness” and Ezra’s fall off the Ghost in “Rise of the Old Masters”, and was nearly as much harm as help. Perhaps the writing team understood the character was over the line, giving him heroic moments later in Season 1 like summoning a Rebel fleet in “Fire Across the Galaxy” to save his crew.

Sabine is the final major protagonist, and the least explored. There are hints she was at one point an Imperial and had been betrayed, but only hints – hopefully hints that are followed up on in Season 2. She’s the team’s demolitions expert and very good with blaster pistols, though the latter actually nearly gets  her killed in the Season 2 premiere, “Siege of Lothal”.

The show isn’t perfect by any means; the Empire seems extraordinarily incompetent, though the arrival of actually dangerous characters makes the incompetence rather blatant. And while the show was very light-hearted in early episodes in spite of subject matter (arms trafficking, for example), it becomes far more serious when the Inquisitor arrives and is shown to be a danger to the crew. A later episode turns even more serious when Tarkin shows up and summarily has two Imperial officers executed (off-screen but heard) for incompetence, and Kanan is captured and tortured.

The show started out very light, but by the end of Season 1 there were complaints that the show was violating the spirit if not the letter of its TV-Y7 rating.

Do I recommend it? Absolutely. It brings back the spirit of the original trilogy – the sense of adventure, the mystery of the Force, the danger of an Empire unchecked, and the heroic spirit of those who oppose it.

If you’re concerned about your young children watching it, I’d recommend screening episodes in advance. There are certain sequences and scenes that could be disturbing for young children.

Nothing can do everything, or Commentary from a Gamer on the JSF

I’m currently sitting in my office, waiting for the washing machine to kick out so I can move laundry over to the dryer. As is the norm for me, I’ve been reading current event threads and stories to see what’s going on in the world.

Lo and behold, I ran across yet another article about the Joint Strike Fighter.

For those who don’t know, the JSF (also known as the F-35) is an ongoing money pit project to build an aircraft that can fulfill multiple roles. In essence, it’s designed for air superiority, light bombing, and close ground support roles.

It’s one of the most expensive projects in history, with some $200 billion already sunk into it (last I checked), and an estimated total cost of $1 trillion.

In the last year, reports keep surfacing of problems with the JSF project. Aside from the almost-expected delays and cost overruns, there have been reports of simulated dogfights with the JSF not able to keep up with last-generation fighters in a scrap. Detractors of the project point to the JSF as a failure that we should pull funding from (and usually add things like redirect the money to refurbishing or building new A-10s and F-22s); supporters tend to point out the limitations of the fighter v fighter tests or discuss the F-35s ability to fight beyond visual range (BVR) with standoff missiles.

What some of the naysayers seem to understand, and supporters don’t, is that a Swiss army knife approach to building an aircraft is a poor philosophy.

Why do I say that? Gaming experience.

Star Wars Galaxies was, depending on your perspective, one of the finest games or worst failures ever pushed out onto the market. And lost in the discussion of the various revamps the game went through is arguably the finest expansion ever released for an MMO: Jump to Lightspeed.

JtL, as I’ll abbreviate, allowed players to build and equip starfighters and engage in combat. The various ships were given stats based on their “canon” roles as fighter, bomber, or interceptor. Essentially, all ships were on a sliding scale with high speed and maneuverability worked opposite equipment hardpoints and total ship “mass”. In essence, the more firepower you could put on a ship, the slower and less maneuverable it was.

In fiction, the “balanced” fighters are usually the best, most noticeably with the X-wing, the supposed perfect blend of speed, maneuverability, and firepower. In stories that works out well, but players are competitive, and they tend to look for the advantage rather than the story. Competitive players in anything, be it a video game or a sport, will work to maximize their chances of winning, both offensively and defensively.

And gamers are competitive.

Early in JtL, as people were beginning to understand the system, players flocked to those “balanced” craft – not unlike a JSF, they could do everything a player needed. They could fight in a turn, carry plenty of firepower, were reasonably fast, etc.

As the metagame aged, players began moving away from the “balanced” craft in favor of the interceptors. Faster, smaller (and thus harder to hit), and lighter-armed, players found the additional speed and maneuverability were more important than the additional firepower of the “balanced” craft. They went from jack-of-all-trade ships to dedicated dogfighters, and the “balanced’ craft couldn’t keep up.

The metagame truly hit maturity when an enterprising group of players found a weakness in the high-speed, high-maneuverability dogfight and instead switched to slow but missile-heavy bombers. The interceptors initially had plenty of trouble trying to save themselves from multiple missile hits – hits the light interceptors generally couldn’t absorb.

Initial response to the metagame shift was to slip back into the “balanced” multirole craft. However, the slow missile-dedicated craft were still fast enough and plenty powerful enough to kill the multirole craft nearly as well as the interceptors. Players slid back away from multirole craft into either more missile-heavy craft, or back into interceptors with different approach tactics and loadouts to kill the missile-spammers.

“How in the world does this apply to the JSF program?” you’re asking.

It’s pretty simple: the best aircraft (or spacecraft, if you were playing Jump to Lightspeed) is one that maximizes its advantages and minimizes its disadvantages.

Interceptors maximized their speed and agility and minimized their fragileness through superior maneuvering and their firepower by loading that single offensive hardpoint with the biggest gun they could manage.

Missile craft maximized their straightline speed with high-performance engines and large boosters to minimize their maneuvering disadvantage, and loaded up the biggest missiles possible to maximize their firepower.

Those “balanced” craft? To stay in the game, they wound up doing much of the same, but were never as effective as either the interceptors or the missile craft. While they could actually keep up with many interceptors in straight-line flight with dedicated speed engines, they were massacred in the turn. Their heavy firepower took the form of lasers instead of missiles, which were harder to aim and hit, which meant the bombers could more reliably land blows. They fell into a middle ground where they weren’t the best at anything.

That’s the road we’re walking down with the JSF. By putting everything into a single platform, it can’t do everything well, because there are always trade-offs. By trying to do everything, it will be outperformed by platforms that are committed solely to their task.

Too long, didn’t read? “Specialization is a good thing.”

With that thought, the laundry is done.

Also, I’m working on another fiction-writing column that started with a short story I read about a B-wing squadron. Working title: “Keeping the small details consistent.”