The Let's Play Archive

Assassin's Creed

by Geop

Part 25: Episode 25: Robert de Sable

About an hour and fifteen minutes. About 30-35 minutes of history segment material. I hope I don't have to do that much in one episode again for quite a while



Episode 25: Robert de Sable

Blip (HD) -
Polsy (Part One / Part Two) | Download (Part One / Part Two) | Blip page (Part One / Part Two)
Blip (SD) -
Polsy (Part One / Part Two) | Download (Part One / Part Two) | Blip page (Part One / Part Two)
Youtube -
Part One / Part Two

Notes -
- Regardless of whether folks love/hate a segment, I'm almost always pretty disappointed with what I get in the end. That's just how my mind works. ON THAT NOTE, let me make mountains out of mole-hills I'm not too nuts about how the Philadelphia/Tunguska segment came out in the end (was a whim away from just junking it and leaving a note in the post), but I'll try not to dwell on that too much, since it's barely relevant to the game. I spent way too much time on trying to get the Philadelphia Project's supposed physics/faults in to a more basic/Layman's form, but usually ended up dead-ending at formulas/derivations (which I wasn't about to dump in to this). Anyhow, I wish I could construct a better way to disprove the physics approach aside from the usual "MAXWELL PROVES IT'S IMPOSSIBLE SHUT UP <>" answer, but none such luck. I haven't wrassled with EM in general, let alone this level of math, in over four years (even then, it wasn't my cup of tea). Long story short, I bit off more than I could chew on that part. Maybe a physics goon who's more on-the-ball could step in for me here.

- I ended up skipping to Tunguska after I noticed how long I stuck on the Philadelphia Experiment, and wrapped up the topic prematurely, skipping over a few things. While I was checking out the final MP4 while uploading, it also seems that I misspoke on something nearing the end. In order to correct that, let's flesh out the de-Gaussing process a bit more: the Germans had several weapons on the open seas. The main issues were magnetic mines and torpedoes. The primary goal of De-Gaussing was to handle the mines Germans had deployed. These were magnetic, and once they sensed a magnetic field change (from a metallic vessel's hull passing overhead), it'd detonate. This was of chief concern for the Brits. If the magnetic field of the hull was dampened to a significant degree, the mines wouldn't be able to spot it.

This was also utilized to handle a type of torpedo. There were two main detonating configurations for them: contact pistols and magnetic pistols. A pistol is what detonated the warhead, and a contact pistol does just as it sounds; Mister Torpedo hits something he doesn't like, and boom. A torpedo packed with a magnetic pistol would ideally pass to just under the belly of a vessel, sense the magnetic field change as it passed under it, and detonate. This would one-shot any of the big armored vessels that could take multiple torpedos to the sides, typically. They were prone to failure, of course, given how sensitive they were to the regional magnetic field (ie: distance from magnetic north, declination relative to it, etc). If you've ever mucked around with surveying gear or used a Brunton compass (GEOGOONS ), I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

Basically, the torpedo would glide under the de-Gaussed vessel and wouldn't react to the hull's presence. British vessels made use de-Gaussing (mines were a huge problem for them), whereas US vessels went with a kinda similar process called wiping that wasn't as successful (de-Gaussing hardware was very expensive to set up and maintain). I also misspoke when I mentioned the magnetics altering the steering of the torpedo itself. Would've back-tracked to fix this in the commentary, but it took until the final MP4s before the ol' noodle said "whoa, wait a sec".

- I don't know diddly about pronouncing Russian. Can't you tell? Also, a few of the zoomed-in map pictures on the history segments don't look to hot on SD (although the text has been cleaned up). In the final segment, I'll just make the maps myself, like I did for the battle ones.

- Here's the music I used for the segments, in the order they're played: