As the third chapter opens, Ryusei is informed that Rai will be joining him as a new member of their team, bringing the squad total up to 3 so far. Ryusei gives him a casual greeting while introducing himself, prompting Rai to ask Ryusei what his rank is. Always a good idea to ask in these circumstances, before you pull a faux-pas against a superior. Ryusei claims he doesn't have one, but Aya informs him that, as a specially commissioned civilian, his rank is Master Sergeant.
As I had previously neglected to note the character ranks and command structure so far, a brief overview: Ingram (Major) is in charge of everything that the current team does, giving missions and handling things on a strategic level. He generally lets Aya (Captain) handle the details of stuff, coordinating immediate tactics in the field. As such, Rai (Lieutenant) and Ryusei (Master Sergeant) are pretty much supposed to do what she says.
These two immediately get off on the wrong foot as Rai scoffs at Ryusei, noting he pretty much looks like an inexperienced civilian. Aya concedes this point, but adds that Ryusei's got skill, which is pretty much why they recruited him. Not satisfied with this humiliation, Ryusei inadvertently adds some himself by boasting that he's the national champion at a mech game. Rai is unimpressed, and is now completely convinced Ryusei is a third wheel. They almost get in a fight, before Aya tells them to knock it off. They could at least act like adults about this, the way she sees it.
RYUSEI: Tch! My rival's a jerk, and the chick's a nag! This is kind of cliche, isn't it?
RAI: Jerk?
AYA: Chick?
Ryusei drops the point, and asks if he can finally get to piloting a PT. Aya says he'll first need to learn the basics of piloting; a PT is not a car, and the one he already piloted was a special model with simplified controls. Not to mention lots of regulations. Ha, as if they'd let just anyone hop in these expensive pieces of military hardware. Rai does get his own PT right away, called the Schutzwald. Ryusei voices his indignation, but Aya notes Rai is already a qualified pilot. In fact, he was a famous ace pilot in the UCC, and Mao Industries hired him as a test pilot. Aya wants to make an additional note about Rai's family, but Rai cuts her off asking her not to say anything; she complies and apologizes. That must really be a sore point, then. Ryusei's not done yet, however, and figures that must be why Rai is such a snob: because he's from the Space Colony. If we are to believe Ryusei, all people from space think they're better than Earthlings.
RAI: Because we ARE superior to primitive beings like YOU.
This almost sparks another fight, leading Aya to intervene once again. With the introductions out of the way, Ryusei is informed he'll be instructed on basic PT maneuvers, after which he can move on to simulator training.
Fortunately, we fast-forward to the simulator training, rather than receiving a majestic training montage of Ryusei learning how a PT works. I can control three units this time, and am facing tanks
. This is the first time we get to see the battle preparation screen, and Ingram gives a tutorial on how to equip weapons. As a demonstration, we're given a couple of weapons, and Ingram advises equipping the Plasma Cutter if I'm going for close combat, since the PTs currently only have long-range weapons equipped. That'll do just fine for me, though. Aside from equipping weapons, you can use the preparation screen to do just about anything you can do on the intermission screen, but I generally do not use it for anything other than selecting my team. The "1+-0" at the bottom means 1 of my currently-equippable units is already in the field on this mission, and I can deploy 0 more. I can equip Ryusei's Gespenst Mk II-TT, but Aya's similar mech and Rai's Schutzwald are not mine to modify yet.
Ingram gives us our fairly simple mission objective: stay in formation and destroy the targets. Ryusei is convinced tanks don't stand a chance against a mech, but Rai warns him he'll be dead if he gets hit by one of them. Well, then he just has to make sure he doesn't get hit. Ryusei adds that it doesn't matter anyway, since it's impossible to die in a simulation. Way to miss the entire point of realistic training simulators, chucklehead. The final nail in the coffin that marks Ryusei as completely delusional is his final statement that he can just hit reset. Rai, meanwhile, is completely lost as far as this conversation goes.
Predictably, Ryusei is either deaf to anything Ingram says, or he just heard "destroy the targets". Against Ingram's orders (and now, Aya's orders as well) he breaks formation and starts engaging the enemy on his own, leaving the other two pilots rushing in head-over-heels just to cover his ass.
Here's where the actual level starts. Not a very difficult battle, but the tanks definitely pack a punch if they hit. I have all my units use Focus, bringing down enemy hit rates to the 20-40% range on average. Rai attacks one of the tanks with his autocannon, supported by Aya firing a split missile right after.
What happens here deserves an explanation, I think. Since I've got more than one unit in the field now, I can perform support actions, which basically means units can perform actions in an adjacent unit's turn. The supporting unit's turn is not expended this way, and this is a valuable tactic if you wish to ensure victory. There's a minor drawback in the fact that unit clustering makes you more vulnerable to area attacks, but these are rare on the enemy side anyway. These action do require a unit to have the Support skill, however: every level in this skill gives a unit one extra support action per turn.
There's a second issue, but this is easy to avoid if you pay attention to the support actions your units intend to perform during each battle. Namely, support actions can be ill-advised in a lot of circumstances, but the CPU won't care about any of that. If a unit is providing offense support, they'll throw in an extra attack after the first unit's attack-and-counterattack phase. However, they may waste valuable superweapon ammo on a small target, in which case you'll have to tell them to use a lesser weapon. Any unit with a support ability can also provide defense support to an adjacent unit, which basically means getting hit themselves instead of the intended target. The problem is that this leads to fragile units getting shot down because they're trying to defend a unit that can take a hit.
Ryusei finishes off the first tank with his beam rifle, and I position him between the remaining three tanks. Their hit rates aren't that great since I used Focus, so I should survive at least. I move Aya forward, but she can't use another attack after moving. Now, it's the enemy's turn. One of them attacks Aya outside her attack range, which makes "Evade" the best option here. Forgot to note this in previous installments: when you're attacked, you have three general options: Counter, Defend and Evade. Counter does exactly what we've been seeing so far, Defend halves damage taken, and Evade halves enemy hit rate. Naturally, she dodges, but Ryusei is hit when a tank attacks him. Rai wasn't kidding: if you get hit by these things your mech might as well be made of cardboard. Ryusei loses about a third of his health, and a little extra cutscene plays. Aya orders him to retreat, but Ryusei flat-out disobeys and keeps fighting. Ingram is understandably irritated by this, as he orders all unit AIs to target Ryusei. Harsh, but well-deserved.
In gameplay terms, this may actually work in my favor: the enemies ignore my other units except for counterattacks, and so Rai and Aya can take potshots at them while they're chasing Ryusei's damaged mech. He still has enough health to pick off some weak enemies anyway, and the tanks are quickly eliminated. Now Ingram's got me fighting planes to show them how to deal with air units. These are a lot faster and unaffected by terrain, but fairly weak. Despite his health, I have Ryusei kill a few of them through counterattacks, then have him defend when he can't take another direct hit. The jets are defeated within a turn, and I get a final group of tanks advancing on my units Ryusei. Time to bust out the heavy guns: Rai instantly destroys a tank with his twin beam cannon, and Aya almost destroys one using her mech's T-Link Ripper. Plot-wise, this is a special weapon, but we'll hear more about that later. In the end, the tanks can barely even got a shot in before I've completely destroyed them, with an attack from Ryusei picking off the last one.
Yay, the mission is a success and I get a BM. Ryusei is not so lucky as Ingram wants to talk to him as soon as he gets out of the simulator. He still gets off fairly light with a lecture about his behavior: Ingram makes it clear he won't tolerate such grandstanding, and tells Ryusei he'll have to start the exercise over from the beginning. He makes a good point here: PTs are valuable machines, and if he can't properly work in a team he needs to get the hell out of his, since that would just be a huge waste of material. He's lucky Ingram is his instructor, I suppose. Kai would be shouting his lungs out.
Suddenly, a new trio of characters enters the scene. Garnet Sunday, Giado Beneldi and Latooni Suvota are about to have a simulator training session of their own, and Garnet asks Ryusei if the simulator's free. It's all fine, so she summons the other two...except Giado is listening to music and can't hear her, until she physically gets his attention and chastises him about listening to music on duty. She threatens to take away his music the next time he does it, and he reacts with a surprising amount of shock to the prospect of not being able to listen to "me ragga". As an aside, the phonetic dialect/slang Giado speaks remains consistent throughout the course of the game, and for some reason he's the only character that gets this. It's not like the game's got Elzam going "Ve must make ze alienmachinen kaput, ja?", for example. I guess it must be some kind of translation convention, but it's still pretty weird.
Meanwhile, Garnet had Latooni prepare the simulator for use. At this point Latooni speaks entirely in nonverbal, but Garnet can understand her just fine. Wow, she's almost like an NPC * version of a Heroic Mime. Ryusei goes over to talk to her, but somehow manages to scare her (meaning her text consists of "!!!" instead of "..."). I mean, he's a moron, but he's not that frightening. The three of them start their training, leaving Ryusei standing there speechless for the moment as well.
