Re: [Official!] Project Horizons Comment Crew Chat thread.

[Ironmonger]

[Stringtheory]

You know, my official statement about canon is the following :

I don't give a fuck


I just try to respect what I consider to be the spirit of the thing and its major plot points. And if I ask Hinds question about the alliance is to know how they could influence my own ideas for a story if I ever chose to include them.

At worst, consider that it's an "alternate future" with the point of divergence set around the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows and just roll with it.

I'm all for ignoring the epilogue of FO:E, it was like the epilogue of Harry Potter, why must authors think they have to tie up most of the plot lines, and generally make the epilogue seem stupid/boring?

[Harmony Ltd.]

I have to agree with the last statement, all Gardens did was remove taint, magical radiation, and make it so that crops could grow properly, IIRC. It's still the wasteland, like it or lump it, beasties and all.

The worst thing is that, with settlements growing even more food, the raiders have even more incentives to attack / racket the population centers ; and the most ambitious of them would have an even easier time setting themselves up as Warlords / Feudal Lords.

[Ironmonger]

I have to agree with the last statement, all Gardens did was remove taint, magical radiation, and make it so that crops could grow properly, IIRC. It's still the wasteland, like it or lump it, beasties and all.

The worst thing is that, with settlements growing even more food, the raiders have even more incentives to attack / racket the population centers ; and the most ambitious of them would have an even easier time setting themselves up as Warlords / Feudal Lords.

*mad giggling*

[Stringtheory]

and the most ambitious of them would have an even easier time setting themselves up as Warlords / Feudal Lords.

hey, at least it's SOME form of civilization, not the best perhaps, but probably (a little) better than no government at all

[Harmony Ltd.]

I have to agree with the last statement, all Gardens did was remove taint, magical radiation, and make it so that crops could grow properly, IIRC. It's still the wasteland, like it or lump it, beasties and all.

The worst thing is that, with settlements growing even more food, the raiders have even more incentives to attack / racket the population centers ; and the most ambitious of them would have an even easier time setting themselves up as Warlords / Feudal Lords.

*mad giggling*

The worst thing is that with a much larger food supply, the herbivore population could skyrocket, leading to carnivores having themselves a much larger food supply and having their own population skyrocket.


It some ways, Equestria post-Gardens could be even more hostile than before.

[Harmony Ltd.]

and the most ambitious of them would have an even easier time setting themselves up as Warlords / Feudal Lords.

hey, at least it's SOME form of civilization, not the best perhaps, but probably (a little) better than no government at all

You could argue that Feudal Europe was better in some ways than the Barbarian Era,

but it was still a pretty shitty era to live in.


I'm not quite sure warlords would be an improvement to the lifestyle of most of the Wasteland's settlements. In fact, I'm quite convinced they would come worse of it.

[Ironmonger]

So we've (I was thinking along the same lines...sorta.) established that populations of both prey (ponies/other cuddlies) and predators (hellhounds/dogs/beasties), but the part I find the most fun is that the lack of some previous environmental hazards would allow for some sort of industry to be set up, and since it's a high-tech setting, it could end up like a smaller-scale WW1 or something.

[Harmony Ltd.]

It just escaped me that due to the Gardens, Fillydelphia may not even have ghouls in 10 A.S, or if that if there is they would be really weakened. Total pushovers.

[Ironmonger]

The Zebrica still has quite a bit of radiation, and possibly taint (known unknown), so perhaps a lot of them got word of that from the NCR and started migrating.

[Harmony Ltd.]

So we've (I was thinking along the same lines...sorta.) established that populations of both prey (ponies/other cuddlies) and predators (hellhounds/dogs/beasties), but the part I find the most fun is that the lack of some previous environmental hazards would allow for some sort of industry to be set up, and since it's a high-tech setting, it could end up like a smaller-scale WW1 or something.

Well, one of my major plot idea was that the characters would be on a mission for the NCR to establish diplomatic relations with independent powers on the (expanding) frontiers of the Republic, with one of their goals to assess the potential threat they might pose to the Republic, and if possible to try to rally them.

The Zebrica still has quite a bit of radiation, and possibly taint (known unknown), so perhaps a lot of them got word of that from the NCR and started migrating.

I suppose a part of the ghould population didn't want to have to eternally rely on Aqua Cura being supplied to them in order to survive. Possible plot point...

Concerning Taint, Taint is Flux and was produced by the Flim-Flam brothers / Project Chimera, so unless they sold Discord Juice to the Zebras or Equestria dropped Flux Bombs on the zebras I have difficulties envisioning how the stuff would have ended there.

[Ironmonger]

Concerning Taint, Taint is Flux and was produced by the Flim-Flam brothers / Project Chimera, so unless they sold Discord Juice to the Zebras or Equestria dropped Flux Bombs on the zebras I have difficulties envisioning how the stuff would have ended there.

True, but it could have ended up there by someone in the present timeline, for whatever reason. However, explaining that in the story would probably be far too out of the way and may not be worth the trouble.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Especially considering I don't intend to deal with Zebrica.

[Ironmonger]

Especially considering I don't intend to deal with Zebrica.

And here we have another one of those moments where my brain latches onto an idea and rides it into oblivion.

Thanks, brain.

"Fuck you, Iron."

[O. Hinds]

@Harmony Ltd.:
From the SR+two weeks epilogue:

Fierce battles continue throughout the ruins of Fillydelphia, most notably between Talon mercenaries and the emerging Red Eye remnants’ warlords.  Unless your checklist of things you need t’ do by the end of the day includes violence an’ bloody dismemberment, I strongly advise you t’ avoid Fillydelphia for the foreseeable future.  If you are amongst those civilians still trapped inside the ruins, seek out the nearest Talon not engaged in active hostilities.  If at all possible, the griffin will do her or his best t’ get you out of the warzone.

That doesn't sound much like a siege to me (and with Celestia One being used against the city, I'm not sure how they'd be able to keep up a siege). I suppose that perhaps an argument could be made, though, for this becoming or being a siege; might I hear yours?

"In 30 A.S (Year Thirty After Sunshine, thirty years after the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows), it's the most important settlement in the Fillydelphia area, with around two to four thousand people working in shifts days and night to salvage from Fillydelphia anything they can, going as far as trying to slavage the blast furnaces themselves, in order to build the new Capital (and hopefully economic and manufacturing center) of the Republic."
Two interesting differences from my headcanon here. First, my current rough timeline (

Spoiler:

) just uses "SR" rather than "A.S.". Secondly, probably due to my headcanon having it retaken much earlier, I've got Fillydelphia as the NCR's industrial hub (and one of its three primary cities (maybe four, with Hoofington, but we'll see how PH ends) along with New Canterlot (including Junction Town) and the rebuilding Manehattan. I've even got the old Marelard being pulled out of its magical museum preservation, converted to run on alcohol from Stalliongrad, and set to pull an expressing running between Manehattan and Fillydelphia through New Canterlot (at the moment I'm thinking that the alcohol-burning steam locomotive service started before the Alliance got the NCR thoroughly hooked on oil and then continued as a fully domestic transport system).

"Can you give me a bit more details about the relations between the NCR and the Alliance ?"
(By the way, why do you sometimes put a space between the end of the last word and the end-of-sentence punctuation?)
I conceptualize it as economic warfare. The Alliance has a developed, albeit small by pre-apocalypse standards, and expanding industrial sector, active R&D (with Profectum itself as a member state), and a supply of petroleum and petroleum products that could sate the NCR's thirst for energy (which is actually even mentioned in the original story). The Alliance is also for the most part ranging from willing to eager to establish trade relations; it could be of tremendous help to the NCR in rebuilding the peninsula and caring for its people. The catch: everything that the Alliance offers comes with strings attached. Companies such as NETC and, most prominently, NEROC are headquartered in Elusive City and owned by the Elusive Company (though they may officially later move their headquarters to Manehattan; I'm not sure). A peninsular, primarily pony nation becoming dependent on foreign fossil fuels has some [i]significant[i] precedent. Every consumer or industrial good purchased from the Alliance is something that's not being made domestically.
To summarize: The Alliance, particularly the Elusive Company, wants to own as much of the NCR as possible, but, unless they use military means (which some in the Alliance are advocating), they're restricted to what the NCR lets them do. The NCR wants to remain as independent as possible, but the Alliance can supply them with useful and necessary resources. Between these two, a balance is struck.

"As such, the mortar of the Republic is its Military. Universal Conscription is still the rule, and the Republic tend to approach most of its problems. with the same question : "Can it hurt me, and if yes, how do I subvert or destroy it ?"."
Interesting idea. What do you think of my above hypothesis that the NCR military is based on small unit tactics?

"to be quite honest, even after the Sunshine and Rainbows AND the Gardens of Equestria, I still don't see the Wasteland as being even "mostly pacified" in ten years. There's just too much shit around for even half of it to be sorted out in that timespan."
Well, if the Remnant is still around and the NCR either lets the Alliance at them or isn't recognized as sovereign soon enough after the fall of the GPE, I imagine that the Miliozi would make some effort to clear them out (how much I'm not sure; it could be a cakewalk, or it could be a USSR-fighting-Afghanistan stalemate). Before that, though, the Miliozi will be racing to claim as much territory around Masozi as possible once the GPE loses Alliance recognition.

"The worst thing is that, with settlements growing even more food, the raiders have even more incentives to attack / racket the population centers ; and the most ambitious of them would have an even easier time setting themselves up as Warlords / Feudal Lords."
In my headcanon, one of the Fillydelphia children (who was just barely young enough to be considered eligible for such when the raider band she was born into was hit) rallied a group of Red Eye remnants and lead them south through the Moojave to found the town of Thornbush just past the old southern border of Equestria. The idea's not terribly complete at the moment, though. Just a semi-related thing.

Re warlords, though: You're forgetting something very important, I think: as long as the Twilight Society is amenable, a warlord's reign could end with nothing more than a sunny day.

So we've (I was thinking along the same lines...sorta.) established that populations of both prey (ponies/other cuddlies) and predators (hellhounds/dogs/beasties), but the part I find the most fun is that the lack of some previous environmental hazards would allow for some sort of industry to be set up, and since it's a high-tech setting, it could end up like a smaller-scale WW1 or something.

My headcanon, since people seem to be interested at the moment, has pretty much all of the hellhounds who don't decide to play nice with the NCR and settle in Ponyville and the like be offered a new homeland by the Alliance. The result was the independent nation of Hell, a country on the southeastern coast of the Marediterranean and the future home of Canine Petroleum (and, as a result, the future home of many smug hellhounds in nice suits who are thoroughly enjoying being NEROC's only competitor, and the preferred one, for supplying the NCR with oil).

The Zebrica still has quite a bit of radiation, and possibly taint (known unknown), so perhaps a lot of them got word of that from the NCR and started migrating.

Kkat quote spoilered for length:

I don't agree with everything in that, but it's influenced my headcanon. I have the old lands of the Pax Roamana being more or less stripped of the old civilization. There are certainly irradiated and such areas, but a lot of it just looks, unless you examine it closely, as if there wasn't much civilization there in the first place. Remember, while the Zebra strategic megaspell arsenal consisted of a limited number of missiles, the vast majority of which were armed with balefire warheads, the Equestrian counterpart used cast megaspells with a wide variety of effects.

Well, one of my major plot idea was that the characters would be on a mission for the NCR to establish diplomatic relations with independent powers on the (expanding) frontiers of the Republic, with one of their goals to assess the potential threat they might pose to the Republic, and if possible to try to rally them.

You might want to talk to Meleagridis, too; their Moojave ideas strike me as interesting, and they might be useful to you.

[Harmony Ltd.]

@ Ironmonger : Lol.


Anyway, one of the theme I want to convey in my story somehow, is optimism.

I mean, yeah, things are still shitty and it's still the Wasteland,

but just in a portion of the lifespan of a single pony things have become considerably better for most, and for the first time in centuries there is Hope for the future.

That basically, that the most important thing Littlepip did was to Bring the Light and inspire people to walk the path.

Something like that.


I've become quite fond of the idea of telling the story of a Post-Apocalyptic setting as it is rebuilding itself.




@ Hinds : give me a few minutes to get back at you and answer your questions.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Fillydelphia :

Well, the Gardens may have cleaned the Taint and Radiation, but the problem is that Filly' doesn't need that to be particularly inhospitable : the toxic smog (when the industry is functioning) and the mutated parasprites are the first two arguments which come to my mind of reasons why you wouldn't want to live in Fillydelphia. That's why I set up the scavengers' settlement out of the city's limit and have them move the industrial equipment to another city entirely (most probably New Canterlot), among with the fact that the whole city is crumbling and quite honestly unsafe.


Siege :

Well, make it "two months" instead of "two weeks" then. As for the notion of "siege" itself... well, maybe more Stalingrad / Berlin than anything else, but I think that with the menace of the Enclave the "besiegers" would have been pushed to withdraw their forces from the city. I dunno.

One way or the other, I think that the city wouldn't have been claimed back right away.



Punctuation :

In French we leave a space before : ; ? !
And I can't shake the habit.



Small Unit Tactics :

It would make sense for it to have started as such. And given most of the threats they have to face in the Wasteland are of a relatively small scale, it would be called for for most cases.

However, at least during the first five years of the Bitter War, the NCR Army faced an organized army with more "traditional" formations, which forced them to adapt their own formations in consequence.

I don't know enough about tactics to be able to say exactly how it would have looked, and it most likely would have depended on the nature of the battles being fought, but at least from an organizational standpoint the units would look something like this :

5 soldiers => 1 fire team [3 soldiers, 1 "corporal"/radio/second-in-command, 1 "sergeant" / unit leader] (5 people)
1 formation => 3 fire teams + 1 "master sergeant"/radio + 1 "sub-lieutenant" (17 people)
1 platoon => 3 three formations + 1 HQ unit [equivalent to 1 Fire Team] + 1 "lieutenant"/radio + 1 "captain" (58 people)
1 detachment => 5 platoons + 1 HQ unit [equivalent to 1 Fire Team] + 1 "master captain" + 1 "colonel" (297 people)
1 regiment => 4 detachments + 1 HQ unit [equivalent to 1 Formation] + 1 "Lieutenant-Colonel" + 1 "1-star General" (1207 people)

After that, well, it becomes murky...

But the idea is to be flexible. Which mean that even that "chart" above is subject to a number of variations, or could even be totally different in practice : the idea being that the NCR try to be as comfortable with urban combat / combat in confined spaces as with ranged battles.

One thing is certain, is that the NCR is mostly foot soldiers. There isn't quite the logistic yet to start having Motorized Infantry, or, god forbid, Armored Cavalry.

Though they have "discovered" artillery and they like it. At least against the random warlord encampments - pegasi are harder to shell given they, you know, fly.



Twilight Society :

Well, they have the capability, but even then, if they don't know about the warlord's existence, how are they supposed to target him / her / whatever ?

After all, the Wasteland is vast, and communication isn't that easy. Rumors come and go, but you don't unleash Celestia One because you've heard a rumor that this or that settlement did bad things. If anything, this would only serve to make the NCR quite irate against the Twilight Society.

So unless the Twilight Society has the capability to send agents here and there to collect intelligence from every corners of the Wasteland, I don't see them playing Wasteland Police. And if they did, I think the NCR would sooner or later come into direct conflict with them about that.

If anything, I think the NCR wouldn't allow the Twilight Society to use Celestia One as it wish, and would soon turn it into their own "Megaspell Deterrent".

Also, if there's Clouds Celestia One is useless. And someone who isn't either the Twilight Society or the NCR control that, so I think if they started using it too much you'd end up seeing a permanent cloud layer above Manehatten.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Re small unit tactics :

What you could imagine would be that the "Fire Team" is the fundamental brick of the NCR military, built as such that every settlement, even the smallest ones, could contribute in some way to "manning" the army.

That, at the smallest level, every fire team is before everything else specialist at, like you said, small unit tactics, and that it's only when those teams are integrated into a larger whole that they start being trained in larger operations.

[O. Hinds]

@Harmony Ltd:
re Fillydelphia:
Hm… those could be some good points, but I'm still leaning towards my previous ideas. Sure, the city has some problems, but I think that it would be more efficient to fix those than to relocate elsewhere; it's still the best industrial center the NCR has.

"In French we leave a space before : ; ? !
And I can't shake the habit."
Ah, thank you.

"However, at least during the first five years of the Bitter War, the NCR Army faced an organized army with more "traditional" formations, which forced them to adapt their own formations in consequence."
Ah, so they were already built up enough to use force matching instead of asymmetrical warfare?

"Well, they have the capability, but even then, if they don't know about the warlord's existence, how are they supposed to target him / her / whatever ?

After all, the Wasteland is vast, and communication isn't that easy. Rumors come and go, but you don't unleash Celestia One because you've heard a rumor that this or that settlement did bad things. If anything, this would only serve to make the NCR quite irate against the Twilight Society.

So unless the Twilight Society has the capability to send agents here and there to collect intelligence from every corners of the Wasteland, I don't see them playing Wasteland Police. And if they did, I think the NCR would sooner or later come into direct conflict with them about that.

If anything, I think the NCR wouldn't allow the Twilight Society to use Celestia One as it wish, and would soon turn it into their own "Megaspell Deterrent".

Also, if there's Clouds Celestia One is useless. And someone who isn't either the Twilight Society or the NCR control that, so I think if they started using it too much you'd end up seeing a permanent cloud layer above Manehatten."
Aye, but that someone also has the full surveillance capabilities of the SPP.

"Re small unit tactics :

What you could imagine would be that the "Fire Team" is the fundamental brick of the NCR military, built as such that every settlement, even the smallest ones, could contribute in some way to "manning" the army.

That, at the smallest level, every fire team is before everything else specialist at, like you said, small unit tactics, and that it's only when those teams are integrated into a larger whole that they start being trained in larger operations."
That's sort of what I was thinking of, I think (it's a friend of mine who's really enthusiastic about SMT).

[RoboRed]

don't go to sleep...:

[Frost]

don't go to sleep...:

A.) saw it coming a mile away.

B.) Thought that was Ravenholm at first

C.) Pink pony is not intimidating. Ever.

[RoboRed]

The annoying thing is, I saw it coming, and yet it still got me.

[RoboRed]

Dunno what Ravenholm is, but ditto on the other two.

http://sectorw.wikia.com/wiki/Ravenholm

Playing though that level at 3 in the morning with headphones on and the lights off was quite an experience.

[Frost]

don't go to sleep...:

A.) saw it coming a mile away.

B.) Thought that was Ravenholm at first

C.) Pink pony is not intimidating. Ever.

Dunno what Ravenholm is, but ditto on the other two.

Edit:
Actually, since when are ANY ponies intimidating?
They are ponies.

Answer: No ponies are ever intimidating. The giant, babyish eyes kill it.

Ravenholm is a town/level in Half-Life 2, a dark town full of deathtraps and alien head-munching crab-thingies and the zombies that result from head-munchings and a screaming Russian priest. It's way freakier than I make it sound.

[WovenTales]

A lot of that actually meshes amazingly well with what I had planned. Hadn't worked out the specifics yet, but I was already imagining the SPP tower was down. Still, I was thinking it would be the center for slavery in the area (not so much the destination like Fillydelphia, more management and records), slightly different from the wealth through petroleum and industry in your version of it.

Oh, nice! A note, though: that wealth of petroleum and industry doesn't really affect the Wasteland much until, well, it isn't the Wasteland anymore. The Wastelanders who succeed in trading with them can come away with relatively large quantities of fresh (or newly preserved) food, newly-manufactured consumer goods, medicine, or small arms, but there aren't that many traders who do that (in part due to those who've been able to do it not doing much to fight the rumors that the Miliozi, say, shoot ponies on sight). The major problem is finding things that the Miliozi/Alliance actually want; they don't take caps, and a lot of salvage that would ordinarily be very valuable in the Wasteland is worthless to them. Except for some rare or unique pieces of information or technology, they'll probably need to be paid in large quantities or high qualities of gems (Equestrian gems being something that the Alliance wants but is poor in; they've got secret trade agreements with the hellhounds, but they could still use more).

I can work with that. Sounds like it's not going to be a regular part of their route, but would definitely be quite profitable on those occasions they have good enough stock to make the trip. And with as important as Masozi is (even if they do little externally when we see them), making it stand out from every other town they go through is nice. Sounds like it could give some good backstory as well, both on why the caravan actually trusts those trigger-happy zebras not to shoot them in the back, and how they got visas through the land controlled by those even more trigger-happy pegasi. I imagine there's going to be quite the politics going on to get through the GPE groundspace even before they reach the city.

How far does the GPE groundspace extend? I doubt it would be hard to put a smaller city somewhere around there. And it sounds like traders do have an advantage getting to Masozi? My characters were already going to be essentially hired onto a caravan, so that could wind up working well. Not everything needs to be a Chekhov's Gun, but I prefer if most things I mention have some later appearance.

It definitely extends to the borders of the active SPP cells, but unfortunately I don't know where those are. It definitely extends no farther than the old city limits of San Frantello... but I'm not sure where those are, either.

Well, looking at your map, the difference in distance between Manehattan and the Appleoosa tower is roughly half that from Tenpony to Alcoltraz; I'd guess that there's another tower in or near the coastal mountains somewhere, likely between the latitudes of the energy plant and the Appleoosa tower. Assuming some slight overlap in intended coverage, the loss of the San Frantello tower probably opened the skies around Masozi for somewhere around the length of the bay, perhaps slightly farther toward the "a" in "Plant". Depending on where you place that halfway tower, though, up to about half of the non-desert land to the northwest could still be covered.

The nice thing about that spread is that Fillydelphia is almost exactly the right distance from Appleoosa and San Frantello to also have a tower (while I don't think anything's said that there's one there, it would make sense), and Canterlot's not much of a stretch either—Stable 24 is almost exactly just as far away from the Appleoosa tower as Tenpony. I haven't looked at optimal placements or anything, but it seems like most of the cities you have are actually spaced roughly as far from each other as the SPP seems to want, with extras covering the gaps.

Actually, give me a minute or thirty. I wanted to finish my response first (got interrupted by college), but I'm going to take a look at how the coverage could work out.

Don't have quite as much of an idea for the spread of San Frantello, though.

A smaller city somewhere around there... I hadn't thought of that, but it's an interesting idea. Being a "city" by Wasteland standards, perhaps it's an old suburb further up the bay? I'm not sure how the Miliozi would take that, though. I'm not entirely clear on what this city you want is meant to do.

Yeah, definitely using the Wasteland scale of city size. The one I'm planning would would probably be somewhere outside the GPE-controlled area—I doubt they'd be particularly likely to set up a slave trade on the scale I'm imagining for my story (which is what the city is for; I'd rather not have the headquarters be in the middle of nowhere). Still, I'd be a bit surprised if there wasn't a ground-based or -tethered pegasus settlement somewhere around the bay. Might be even more militarized than normal, depending on how active the groundspace is, but there'd probably be something.

Not so much "an advantage" as "a chance"; the Miliozi aren't even too keen on tourists from the rest of the Alliance, much less from the Equestrian Wasteland. The only people that they might let in are traders and diplomats, and they can't really deal with non-hellhound diplomats from any of the Wasteland powers due to the Alliance officially recognizing the GPE as the government of their (the GPE's) claimed territory (the hellhound thing is also technically a violation, but the GPE doesn't really know about it and would probably turn a blind eye if it did, at least until it starts trying to mindcontrol hellhounds).

This slightly relates to a question I have. How well will those zebra-pegasus treaties, formal or not, be followed after Littlepip takes the SPP? I'm guessing that the groundspace—as one of the few places the GPE knows will not disappear underneath them—is going to get quite a number of new immigrants, and with enough of a push (especially if tensions are already raw over the hellhounds or something else) might attack, or at the least lay siege to, Masozi, but it sounds like it's something you would have thought about. Or is that one of the things waiting on PH to finish?

[Moodyman90]

Made for a good custom level in L4D2 though.

"We Don't Go to Ravenholm" was fun to play through.

[Frost]

(Gravity Gun+ Sawblades)+Shotgun+(9mm+red barrels)=Easy win

[RoboRed]

Sooo...I finally took my car in today to see what was wrong with it, since myself and my family couldn't narrow down and fix the problem ourselves.

Diagnosis: Thrown rod.
Treatment: New engine.
Cost: My entire tax return.

...Pardon me while I scream into a pillow for an hour.

[Ironmonger]

Sooo...I finally took my car in today to see what was wrong with it, since myself and my family couldn't narrow down and fix the problem ourselves.

Diagnosis: Thrown rod.
Treatment: New engine.
Cost: My entire tax return.

...Pardon me while I scream into a pillow for an hour.

I gave a mental "Noooooo!", if it makes you feel even slightly better.

[WovenTales]

All right, here's what I got. Most of it's just rough, going for what works rather than what works best, but it could still be close enough. I wound up using a roughly 90km radius—any more and the San Frantello-Fillydelphia-Appleoosa-Manehattan arc was too crowded, any less and the large island wouldn't be reliably covered—but there are several intermediate towers (including the one north of Masozi, leaving more ground uncovered after the fall of Alcoltraz) that probably would have been lower-powered; even more if some thought was actually put into optimal placement and mixed diameters.

Spoiler:

This particular layout leaves us with several cities with associated SPP towers: San Frantello, Fillydelphia, Appleoosa, Manehattan, Fancee, Hoofington, and Canterlot. I'm not quite sure what that says, but the fact that Appleoosa is included while the closest one to New Oatleans is roughly 40km away probably means that population wasn't too much of a concern. Or that the different sizes are actually quite integral. I might test that sometime... Oh, and Shattered Hoof Ridge being left uncovered was deliberate.

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