Pokes the funnel of a tiny ironclad.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

"Look, Mummy! Look! The Queen Elizabeth's had fighters! Can we keep them? Can we can we can we?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, sweetie, but they're F-35s. I'm afraid we're going to have to put them..." *cough* "... on a farm, where they can have plenty of room to run around and play. They'd be just miserable, cooped up in our apartment."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Not even a child would believe that an F-35 is capable of movement.

So THAT'S where abyssals come from! It makes so much sense.

In the case of 90-some percent of the Abyssals whose designs I've seen so far, it would make a certain grim sense that most of 'em are Sadly Unloved. As the great Brian Blessed is reputed to have said of Pam Anderson once, "I wouldn't with yours!" :)

--G.
Except maybe the Re-class battleship... but that's a mighty big maybe.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

You might have cause to regret my mentioning this, but there was a Chinese clone of kantai collection (because of course there's one) shown at e3 that's supposed to be released in the U.S. this year. The main difference seems to be that they're not shy about adding in allied ships rather than just axis ones.

Heh, yeah, that's not very surprising at all. I mean, there's a Chinese knockoff of the BMW X5. Seriously. Who even wanted that in China? But there is one. :)

I'm not dialed into the scene enough to know if there's any particular reason why the real game hasn't been localized outside Japan, apart from the obvious expense of doing so. Maybe they're worried about running up against hordes of dudes like that doof from Vice who called it "historically revisionist" because players can win the Battle of Midway, evidently having missed the part about the storyline being set in the present day and "are we doomed to repeat our history?" being a central plot point...

--G.
(glorifies war? maybe, but have you seen these people cry when they accidentally sink their favorite ships?)
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

From what I've been able to gather, part of the problem is DMM is still kinda in shock with how popular the game is. As in, the current player base is a couple orders of magnitude past what they originally expected, and they've been putting up servers as fast as they can to cope with the demand. I'd imagine they're not going to even touch anything as thorny as the US market until they've got that stabilized.

>(glorifies war? maybe, but have you seen these people cry when they
>accidentally sink their favorite ships?)

When compared to the fact that Call of Jingoism Duty games are still being published every other year, KanColle looks almost pacifistic.

Also more relatable characters and a more believable conflict, but what can you do?
"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Well, it appears the Vice dude is butthurt because the Imperial Japanese Navy are the heroes of the game, a cultural movement which he seems to be comparing with, e.g., neo-Nazism in modern-day central Europe. Personally, I think that's something of a stretch, particularly as the focus seems to be on the ships, not the catastrophically flawed foreign and domestic policy that guided their use.

Also, while I'll acknowledge that the current conservative/militant trend in Japanese politics is unsettling, I rather doubt that Kantai Collection has much of anything to do with it, any more than Pokémon was linked with the sudden demographic spike in zookeepers and circus animal trainers in the '90s.

--G.
n.b. as far as I know I made that last part up
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

That's about the right of it- and the reason DMM was so overwhelmed by the level interest, because they expected it to only appeal to the hardcore naval otakus, the kind of people who buy real teak decking for their model battleships.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Classic case of doing the job too well. :)

I've been thinking about this kind of thing off and on as I work on the design for a couple of related bits in UF, and I have to give the game's designers points for this much: they haven't completely shied away from some of the thornier issues in re the Japanese forces' conduct in the war. Yes, they've sort of conveniently elided I-8's less than inspiring record (my personal head canon is that she's too mortified by the behavior of her erstwhile crew to even talk about it), but several of the ships represented by characters in the game were involved in the deployment of various late-war suicide weapons, such as the Kaiten manned torpedoes and Ohka flying bombs, and they have acknowledged that in the game...

... by giving the characters lines that make it fairly plain that the ships themselves hated that shit, and they want nothing whatever to do with any such business this time around, now that they actually have something to say about it.

It's a small thing, but I like it a lot.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

See also: visits to the ship selection officer in Star Trek Online.

"This Vesta Class is a bit older than the other ships, but it has a lot of science to give to the right bridge crew."

Yup. They make the pitch for the disadvantaged classes, and Swede Andersson goes for it every single time. Like when she brought home that Ambassador. :)

--G.
"It's not even a science vessel!" "I know, but just look at it."
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Or playing World of Warships? Which is, essentially, what your port IS...well, destroyer/cruiser/battleship/carrier, I suppose, but still...

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!