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Kerbfleet: A Jool Odyssey-CHAPTER 21 pg 18--He's a docking wizard! (there had to be a twist?)


Mister Dilsby

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Why are they flying to Pol's Poles from orbit? Going there via a suborbital trajectory from the landing site might have saved quite some dV, since they need to cancel almost all orbital velocity to get to the Polish Poles erm Pollen Poles? Whatever, you know what I mean.

 

As for Wonder Woman and Superman vs Batman: I always assumed, I was the only person to survive a screening of that film, @Torgo

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9 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

Not against Nimzo, no, but then again there are very few Kerbals who would. After a couple of years of lessons (in between his shipboard duties and writing about murdery murderers) Kenlie is probably playing at a Class B amateur level: strong enough to mop up the board against any 'social' player and maybe sneak a win at a local tournament, but still nowhere near Master rank.

I wonder, do the Kerbulians have their own version of the game?  Instead of rescuing somehow-opposing-but-not-enemy pieces, you'd enslave definitely enemy pieces.  Which actually leads itself to shogi, where you can, instead of moving one of your pieces, add a previously taken enemy piece to the board as one of your own.  To facilitate this, Shogi playing pieces are flat, uniformly colored, arrowhead-shaped tiles instead of statuettes of different colors.  Ownership is thus determined by which way the arrow is pointing.  But because of this rule, once things start going bad for you, it tends to snowball.  Thus, shogi rarely results in the battles of mutual annihilation and Pyrrhic victories common in Western chess, but pretty much always in crushing, overwhelming victory for one side.  As is only right and proper for a warrior society :)

So, I'm envisioning things somehow coming down to a standoff between Our Heroes and Our Antihereos, with mutual destruction as the only possible result.  The Kerbulians offer the traditional warrior society solution to a standoff.  That is, a duel of champions, winner take all, and challenge Kerbfleet Kenlie as the seemingly weakest enemy leader.  But Kerbfleet Kenlie gets to choose the weapon, so he picks cheks.  And unfortunately, the Kerbfleet cheks set went by the boards a bit earlier, so he has to play the Kerbulian version of shogi (khogi?).  Can Kerbfleet Kenlie's cheks skills, honed by years of apprenticeship to THE cheks master,overcome his unfamiliarity with the game and whatever experience his oppenent has amassed in his native game?  Tune in several chapters hence for the answer :)

 

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1 hour ago, something said:

Why are they flying to Pol's Poles from orbit? Going there via a suborbital trajectory from the landing site might have saved quite some dV, since they need to cancel almost all orbital velocity to get to the Polish Poles erm Pollen Poles? Whatever, you know what I mean.

I did think about that, but I didn't want to try flying a Gumdrop out of the hangar on the surface unless I had to, much less a surface dock. But, I admit I probably under-thought it, there were several more efficient options; I probably could have got the boat out safely, flown to the pole, and then docked in orbit. Or I could have simply flown the Intrepid north for a polar orbit rather than due east. Or there are probably a dozen other ways I could have gotten to Pol's Poles...I should have taken a poll. :cool:

15 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

I wonder, do the Kerbulians have their own version of the game?  Instead of rescuing somehow-opposing-but-not-enemy pieces, you'd enslave definitely enemy pieces.  [snip]

So, I'm envisioning things somehow coming down to a standoff between Our Heroes and Our Antihereos, with mutual destruction as the only possible result.  The Kerbulians offer the traditional warrior society solution to a standoff.  That is, a duel of champions, winner take all, and challenge Kerbfleet Kenlie as the seemingly weakest enemy leader.  

I still haven't figured out to quote the same correspondent twice, so I'll address each of @Geschosskopf's points in turn.

As to the first--I think it entirely probable that the Kerbulans have a version very similar to Cheks, except that one captures the opposing pieces instead of rescuing them. Perhaps the names of the pieces are even based on some kind of archaic, class-stratified warrior feudal system, who knows?

As to the second, thanks to (the late) Sub-Commander Dilsby Kermulan, we do have some idea how duels and challenges work (or don't work) in Kerbulan society. I suppose if any Kerbal is ready for such an eventuality it would be Kenlie. As with all things--we'll see!  

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1 hour ago, Kuzzter said:

As to the first--I think it entirely probable that the Kerbulans have a version very similar to Cheks, except that one captures the opposing pieces instead of rescuing them. Perhaps the names of the pieces are even based on some kind of archaic, class-stratified warrior feudal system, who knows?

Hmmm.. you may hate me for asking, but considering what Kerbfleet and the Kerbulans are based on, is there a possibility of seeing a 3-dimensional version of Cheks someday???

 

Edited by Just Jim
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40 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

I still haven't figured out to quote the same correspondent twice, so I'll address each of @Geschosskopf's points in turn.

Press the enter key twice inside the quote box, and it'll split in two.

Alternatively, you can highlight what you want to quote and click the Quote This bubble that pops up, and repeat.

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4 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

I still haven't figured out to quote the same correspondent twice, so I'll address each of @Geschosskopf's points in turn.

What @Mjp1050 said, but with a caveat.  You need to pause a bit between the 2 hits of ENT you do between quoted paragraphs or you just make 2 blank lines between them and the quote remains a single piece.  What I normally do instead is hit ENT twice, then use the arrow key to move up 1 line and hit ENT a 3rd time, which always does the job.  Then I just have to delete the blank line now residing at the top of the 2nd part of the quote.

 

4 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

As to the first--I think it entirely probable that the Kerbulans have a version very similar to Cheks, except that one captures the opposing pieces instead of rescuing them. Perhaps the names of the pieces are even based on some kind of archaic, class-stratified warrior feudal system, who knows?

Well, in shogi, most of the pieces are generals and grunts :).

 

4 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

As to the second, thanks to (the late) Sub-Commander Dilsby Kermulan, we do have some idea how duels and challenges work (or don't work) in Kerbulan society. I suppose if any Kerbal is ready for such an eventuality it would be Kenlie. As with all things--we'll see!  

I was just thinking that back in the day, you frequently had 2 opposing lines of grunts about 15 yards apart all yelling taunts and insults from behind their shields   This might go on for quite a while, everybody not wanting to back down but still afraid to bring things to their bloody conclusion, so frequently champions would step forward and duel between the lines.  Sometimes there'd be a number of such duels and at sundown the armies would both march back to their camps and do it again tomorrow, until one side or the other finally crossed those last 15 yards.

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I have been following Kerbfleet for a couple of months now (while I was catching up by reading DOB EO0 as well as the beginning of A Jool Odyssey, that was the only thing I did in my spare time). I love the plot, the pictures, the dialogue, basically everything. Especially recently, when the story has taken a most interesting turn, this has been my favourite mission report / comic that I have read (along with Just Jim's Emiko Station). I just wanted to say thank you for writing this and keep going. :)

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On ‎8‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 2:49 AM, Drone_Kerbal said:

I have been following Kerbfleet for a couple of months now (while I was catching up by reading DOB EO0 as well as the beginning of A Jool Odyssey, that was the only thing I did in my spare time). I love the plot, the pictures, the dialogue, basically everything. Especially recently, when the story has taken a most interesting turn, this has been my favourite mission report / comic that I have read (along with Just Jim's Emiko Station). I just wanted to say thank you for writing this and keep going. :)

Oh wow, thank you!  It's a real honor being mentioned alongside @Kuzzter.  He was the first I started reading as well, except I started sort of in the middle with Eve: Order Zero, then I went back and read all three of his in order. 

Edited by Just Jim
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11 hours ago, Emperor of the Titan Squid said:

what about the kss enterprise ?

I'm afraid I don't know; never measured it, sorry. I'm sure someone could come up with a good estimate by counting deck plates.

And gentlekerbs, hate to tell you this but there won't be another update for about 10 days. This week our internet connection went down in a storm, and for all of next week I'll be exploring the 'Saranac Lake' biome with the family. So, hang in there, fly your missions well, and read good stuff. For science!

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52 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

I'm afraid I don't know; never measured it, sorry. I'm sure someone could come up with a good estimate by counting deck plates.

And gentlekerbs, hate to tell you this but there won't be another update for about 10 days. This week our internet connection went down in a storm, and for all of next week I'll be exploring the 'Saranac Lake' biome with the family. So, hang in there, fly your missions well, and read good stuff. For science!

Have a nice vacation! I hope you get to collect all the cheese from that biome! 

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1 hour ago, Kuzzter said:

And gentlekerbs, hate to tell you this but there won't be another update for about 10 days. This week our internet connection went down in a storm, and for all of next week I'll be exploring the 'Saranac Lake' biome with the family. So, hang in there, fly your missions well, and read good stuff. For science!

So that's where you've been. Have a great vacation and stay safe! And watch out for lake krakens!  :sticktongue:

 

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2 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

I'm afraid I don't know; never measured it, sorry. I'm sure someone could come up with a good estimate by counting deck plates.

And gentlekerbs, hate to tell you this but there won't be another update for about 10 days. This week our internet connection went down in a storm, and for all of next week I'll be exploring the 'Saranac Lake' biome with the family. So, hang in there, fly your missions well, and read good stuff. For science!

Why would you "hate to tell us"? I'm very ssure everyone is totally chill about you taking a break to spend time with your family. Go on and have fun w/ them! :cool:

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12 hours ago, something said:

More than a week without updates? How am I supposed to survive that?

I'm going to assume that you're stating this tongue-in-cheek; that, or you're being extremely ungrateful. I'm not about to go off on a rant on entitledness and all that, because it's pretty early here and I still haven't had my morning brew.

Edited by TotallyNotHuman_
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9 minutes ago, something said:

Your telephone lines are not hidden in the ground? I knew about electricity being distributed by overland lines but telephone is new to me....

My neighborhood has overhead fiber, telephone, and coaxial television cable. Why? Probably something to do with the fact that all the houses are from the late '50s.

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