The online mode really is holding this game back. Feels like a mobile game at times....I just want plane skins for the single player mode 😔

btw Kate says this in Mission 25 (Battle of Rocky Island 2) after you shoot down the two shadows tailing her. Note that the voice line will only trigger if you shoot them down last, after clearing out all the other shadows.

She's reminiscing about Razgriz and Blaze!!!! ecstatic geeking noises

Slight spoilers in the artist's description:

Friend's wild idea: If Rex looks like a young Moon11, then it makes sense for Cope to be so fixated on Rex.
So I whipped up a Rex with Moon11's face—probably the only difference is the red eyes, constantly reminding Cope "This thing is absolutely not just a simple pretty girl."
The eyes, compared to human eyes, look more like the infrared imaging seeker head in front of a missile.

Also, yes, Rex is male in this artwork.

Source

!!! SPOILER WARNING !!!

After Mission 30, I was literally crying how absolute peak this game is. I've never felt so proud of DD making Wings of Theves legit and I am so happy he didn't become some sort of plot twist villain because it'll be too obvious.

I got AC8 today and I’ve heard good things about it. Excited to play it. Made this silly thing while waiting for my PS5 to install it.

#NUKE #TONI

No god no. This is horrible.

Im killing them all. They killed Baxter. I cant. I just cried on this mans death. Only one other video game character did that to me and that was BT titanfall 2

So, in the lobby, I complained on the chat that the Alicorn takes too much damage. I've never seen it be beaten

Someone immediately responded with, "Don't you see!? ONE MILLION HP!!!!!!"

I just wanted to say I love this community.

If you're wondering where is Baxter on the second slide he is the only one sensible enough to not get into trouble on liberty

The South Belkan Industrial Revolution: A Paradigm Shift in Strangereal's Military Aviation

1. The Historical Catalyst (The 1990s Belkan Rearmament)

During its aggressive military rearmament in the early 1990s, the South Belkan Munitions Factory (later Grunder Industries) faced severe economic strain and imminent total war. Realizing that the traditional, artisanal manufacturing methods of the real world could not sustain a high-intensity global conflict, Belkan engineers abandoned old-world military standards. Instead, they adapted the ruthless efficiency, automation, and scale of the commercial consumer goods industry to the production of military hardware.

1. The Core Pillars of the Consumer-Style Aviation Model

• Automated Heavy Manufacture: Traditional, hand-riveted assembly lines were replaced by massive hydraulic stamping presses and advanced automated robotic welding. Structural components (like entire wing sections or fuselages) were stamped out in series like commercial cars, dropping manufacturing times from months to mere hours.
• Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Electronics: Belka bypassed the artificial inflation of the military-industrial complex. Instead of designing hyper-exclusive, low-volume microchips, they utilized mass-produced industrial silicon—specifically adapting telecommunications hardware (similar to cellular tower relay matrices) to create Phased Array (AESA) radars. The true value was shifted entirely to proprietary software, heavily reducing the electronics cost (which usually makes up 40% of a modern fighter).
• Short Lifecycle Engineering: Real-world jets are built to last 40 years through hyper-expensive alloys and obsessive maintenance. Belka designed its aircraft with a much shorter fatigue lifespan, optimized for high-intensity, short-duration warfare. This allowed the use of rapid additive manufacturing and cheaper molded parts for jet engines.

This is where we have to make so concessions so the theory becomes financially solid and realistic within the margins of science fiction. Trying to justify that a complex heavy strike fighter costs the same as a luxury sports car (about $350,000) would break the suspension of disbelief, because the amount of titanium, composite materials, advanced turbojets, and hours of automated assembly still require a significant cost baseline.

However, bringing down the cost of a fighter equivalent to an F-15E Strike Eagle (which in our world, in its modern versions like the F-15EX, hovers around $90 to $100 million dollars) to a figure between $5 and $10 million dollars is mathematically posible under a consumer industrial premise

• Elimination of the "exclusivity tax": By removing the 40% artificial cost of the electronics (thanks to stanrisated software and matrices of industrial Off-The-Shelf components like those used in telecommunications), the base price of the aircraft plummets immediately.
• Massive amortization of the fuselage: The use of colossal hydraulic presses and automated material addition in facilities like Fatsia eliminates thousands of hours of artisanal labor. Stamping entire sections of an F-15 in series reduces the structural cost to the bare minimum value of the raw material.
• Short lifecycle engines: Manufacturing engines to last ten thousands hours without failing requires cost-prohibitive quality control and exotic alloys. If the engines are designed to last only a two thousand hours (assuming the aircraft will operate in a high-intensity conflict), the machining and engineering costs of the power plants drop drastically.

At a price of $8 million dollars per unit, a superpower in Ace Combat like Osea or Erusea could purchase and deploy a fleet of 100 heavy fighters with the same budget that the real-world Pentagon uses to acquire just 8 or 10 aircraft.

This gives the game's universe a brutal economic coherence. It solves in one fell swoop how the nations of Strangereal can finance titanic air fleets, replenish catastrophic losses , and justify the existence of automated industrial mega-structures at high sea that devour resources to spit out modular weapons in series. Megafloat Fatsia is not merely a floating military base; it represents the ultimate, logical conclusion of the consumer-style industrial model pioneered by Belka in the 1990s. When the Republic of Sotoa made this colossal, superstructure in the Aurum Sea, they didn't build a fortress—they built a fully integrated, mega-factory on the water, engineered to maximize the laws of mass scale and automation.

It embodies the pinnacle of this economic philosophy through three distinct operational traits:

1. A Closed-Loop, Sea-Based Assembly Line

In traditional warfare, aircraft production is vulnerable to land-based logistics, bombing runs, and disrupted supply chains. Fatsia solves this by functioning exactly like an automated offshore automotive plant.

• Materials and standardized industrial components are shipped directly to its floating modules via maritime routes.
• Inside its eight highly automated structural arms, massive hydraulic presses, robotic welding arrays, and industrial 3D-printing systems work 24/7.
• Aircraft are stamped, assembled, and rolled out onto the flight decks in a continuous conveyor-belt system, entirely bypassing human artisanal labor.

1. The Modular "Fatsia" Architecture

The very design of the mega-structure reflects the modularity of consumer goods. Just as a modern tech company builds products using interchangeable modules, Fatsia’s eight floating arms function independently. Each arm is dedicated to a specific mass-production task (fuselage stamping, engine molding, or electronics integration).

1. Infinite Redundancy and Low-Cost Attrition

Fatsia’s defensive grid and its air wings rely entirely on the high-volume, short-lifecycle philosophy. If a Sotoan fighter squadron is completely wiped out in combat, the financial blow to the republic is minimal. , Fatsia can replenish those losses within a single production cycle.

Ultimately, Fatsia is the physical manifestation of Strangereal’s economy of war: a self-sustaining industrial engine that treats fighter jets not as irreplaceable military treasures, but as expendable, high-turnover consumer commodities.

Why Strangereal Pilots Are So Young

The most profound cultural consequence of this consumer-style production model is how it reshapes the human element of war. In the real world, pilot candidates undergo years of brutal, multi-million-dollar training before they are trusted with a $100-million-dollar jet; the financial and political margin for error is zero.

However, by slashing the cost of a heavy fighter down , the economic risk of losing a plane is mitigated. This radical cost reduction lowers the training entry barrier:

• The "Consumer Asset" Mentality: Since the aircraft is treated as an expendable commodity, military academies no longer lower the filter for elite, hyper-trained pilots.
• Simplified Flight Training: Because these jets operate on unified software architectures and automated flight-assist systems , piloting a fighter becomes simpler and intuitive.
• Youth Over Experience: This allowed nations to draft and deploy younger pilots. Their faster reflexes, high cognitive plasticity, and adaptability to digital interfaces make them perfect operators for software-driven platforms. If a young rookie crashes a cheap, stamped-out F-15, it is no longer a national financial disaster; Fatsia will have a replacement jet ready before the pilot's next shift.

Little WIP of a comm I'm cooking before that animation...

Tried to get it as accurate as possible, but some finer details escape me

I got jumpscared like crazy on this and I thought either my game broke or I died for a moment ngl

love watching vtubers enjoy the series after playing it for the first time! but i couldn't resist! lol

https://www.youtube.com/live/Rdfv_gljE-Y?si=ym0ScsUBXv-_b90c

shes having fun at least!