Ace Combat

Ace Combat (エースコンバット; Ēsu Konbatto) is a hybrid flight simulation action video game series featuring 18 games published by the Japanese company Namco Bandai Games and produced by Project Aces, an internal development team. The series emphasizes fast-paced action and dramatic plots, and has established itself as one of the most successful arcade flight action franchises.

Most games of the series take place in the same fictionalized world populated with fictional countries with details loosely based on real-life location, events, and wars. One of the main selling points of the series is the ability to pilot a range of aircraft that include accurate or slightly modified representations of present-day military aircraft, prototypes that never saw actual battle, and completely fictional boss-type superweapons. Longtime fans of the series are rewarded with small hints of the continuity between the games, as some characters and events are referenced from one game to another.

Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere

Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere (エースコンバット３ エレクトロスフィア, Ēsu Conbatto San Erekutorosufia) is a flight simulation game made by Namco for the PlayStation game console. The third installment in the Ace Combat series of console flight simulation games, Electrosphere takes off the contemporary setting of the first two games into a story set in the mid-21st century, involving a war between multinational corporations.

Plot

The plot, which takes place on the Usean continent sometime in the first half of 2040, involves two megacorporations - Neucom Inc and General Resources Ltd. These two companies fight over territorial disputes and eventually a prototype fighter known as the X-49 Night Raven, with the Universal Peace Enforcement Organization trying to placate both sides.

Gameplay

The game features a single-player mode, where the player can open a new campaign under a specific username. Depending on actions made at some points in the campaign, the plot shifts towards one of five endings. Some walkthroughs can be finished on disc one, but longer campaigns will continue in disc two. The game introduced a third-person 360-degree camera that could be rotated on all three axes with the right thumbstick, and a camera that can focus on the player's current target by holding the Triangle button. While the five endings concern the final fates of certain characters, a sixth ending suggests that the game itself is a simulation program, and the success of which forces the program creator to delete all files.

Ace

An ace is a playing card. In the standard French deck, an ace has a single suit symbol (a heart, diamond, spade, or club) located in the middle of the card, sometimes large and decorated, especially in the case of the Ace of Spades. This embellishment on the Ace of Spades started when King James VI of Scotland and I of England required an insignia of the printing house to be printed on the Ace of Spades. This insignia was necessary for identifying the printing house and stamping it as having paid the new stamp tax. Although this requirement was abolished in 1960, the tradition has been kept by many card makers. In other countries the stamp and embellishments are usually found on ace cards; clubs in France, diamonds in Russia, and hearts in Genoa because they have the most blank space.

The word "ace" comes from the Old French word as (from Latin 'as') meaning 'a unit', from the name of a small Roman coin. It originally meant the side of a die with only one mark, before it was a term for a playing card. Since this was the lowest roll of the die, it traditionally meant 'bad luck' in Middle English, but as the ace is often the highest playing card, its meaning has since changed to mean 'high-quality, excellence'. This connotation has seen the word applied to an unreachable tennis serve, a successful fighter pilot and more generally as a person proficient in his or her field, especially a sporting field.

Combat

Combat or fighting is a purposeful violent conflict meant to weaken, establish dominance over, or kill the opposition, or to drive the opposition away from a location where it is not wanted or needed.

The term combat (French for fight) typically refers to armed conflict between opposing military forces in warfare, whereas the more general term "fighting" can refer to any physical or verbal conflict between individuals or nations. Combat violence can be unilateral, whereas fighting implies at least a defensive reaction. A large-scale fight is known as a battle. A verbal fight is commonly known as an argument.

Background

Combat may take place under a specific set of rules or be unregulated. Examples of rules include the Geneva Conventions (covering the treatment of people in war), medieval chivalry, the Marquess of Queensberry rules (covering boxing) and several forms of combat sports.

Combat in warfare involves two or more opposing military organizations, usually fighting for nations at war (although guerrilla warfare and suppression of insurgencies can fall outside this definition). Warfare falls under the laws of war, which govern its purposes and conduct, and protect the rights of combatants and non-combatants.

Data

Data (/ˈdeɪtə/ DAY-tə, /ˈdætə/ DA-tə, or /ˈdɑːtə/ DAH-tə) is a set of values of qualitative or quantitative variables; restated, pieces of data are individual pieces of information. Data is measured, collected and reported, and analyzed, whereupon it can be visualized using graphs or images. Data as a general concept refers to the fact that some existing information or knowledge is represented or coded in some form suitable for better usage or processing.

Raw data, i.e. unprocessed data, is a collection of numbers, characters; data processing commonly occurs by stages, and the "processed data" from one stage may be considered the "raw data" of the next. Field data is raw data that is collected in an uncontrolled in situ environment. Experimental data is data that is generated within the context of a scientific investigation by observation and recording.

The Latin word "data" is the plural of "datum", and still may be used as a plural noun in this sense. Nowadays, though, "data" is most commonly used in the singular, as a mass noun (like "information", "sand" or "rain").