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[Flying Dice]

Too many contrived scenarios.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1) We send cargo outside to be investigated, and right at that moment the teeming hordes that we somehow didn't pick up on our sensors suddenly materialize on all sides of us.

2) After giving the order to seal the hull and remove mechanical hatch releases, right away there's suddenly a gaping hole in the hull that we somehow just hadn't noticed to give the teeming hordes that just suddenly appeared a way to get in.

3) The moment we pull robots out of the sealed core room, immediately a strange noise starts coming from the core.

4) The robots that a few pages back were brutally effective against these low-tech denizens are now suddenly basically helpless and facing total annihilation at their hands.

5) We have fighters, but oh...none of them are combat ready. They all just happen to have damage that didn't get fixed over millions of years we spent drifting, and/or low batteries that for some reason we just never got around to recharging. After all, we're a sentient battlecruiser. It would never occur to us to keep our fighters in good working order. We could do a fast charge, but oh...the means to do that just happens to be offline.

This is bad writing. You're railroading this way too hard.

>Retreat robots inside, weld the doors closed behind them. Station Envoy and a dozen robots at the hull breach. Have Envoy turn up his speaker volume to full. Blow out the eardrums of anyone who gets near while all robots strobe their lights to make as big a spectacle as possible.

>Meanwhile, identify all interior hatches and blast doors accessible from the hull breach and weld them closed. If Envoy fails to dissuade the attackers, then at least he can buy enough time to minimize the amount of the interior space they're able to gain entry to. Neither 87% nor 32% chances of "total annihilation" of our service robots are acceptable. If we can restrict their access to 20% of the ship, we can simply ignore them while we get our weapon systems back online. It's ridiculous to think that spears represent any credible threat to a battleship that survived uncontrolled atmospheric entry and collision with a planet. Imagine letting a hundred baboons with steak knives onto an aircraft carrier. Just how much damage do you think they're going to be able to do? The only credible threat here is that they'll carry off some of our robots. Call those acceptable losses, and when they do we'll know where their village(s) are for aerial bombardment at a later date.

Agreed on all counts, particularly the first five. I'm not going to say that limited resources and adverse circumstances are bad, but you may want to set them up in a less heavyhanded, arbitrary way. As a note, I seem to recall that the fighters are also armed with rockets.

I would also like to extend this to say that it is doubtful that primitives armed with spears are going to "carry off" a robot armed with buzzsaws and an arc welder without completely disabling it. It is possible, I suppose, that they could do minor damage to joints and exposed delicate parts, or maybe immobilize some robots by burying them in their dead, but beyond that...

>If BE-1s attempt to enter the ship, launch the fighter and fire single rockets into areas with high concentrations of BE-1s, while avoiding those close enough that the blast could breach our hull.
>The remaining robot in the hanger will, after the repaired fighter is launched, unload the rockets from the other fighters and store them safely.

[NRDL]

Yeah, just maintain a defensive position inside the ship, essentially +1 to the suggestions of poster above me. 

[Mr. Palau]

set a fire in the forest

We'll definitely want to do that to create better visibility to avoid any more teeming hordes magically appearing out of nowhere. But I don't think it's a fast enough solution for the immediate problem.

chance of scaring off

Since their reaction to the war god falling from the sky, devastating kilometers worth of jungle in a line in the process was to immediately attack...I suspect a few burning trees aren't going to dissuade them.

Yeah thats true, if I saw something the size of a battlecruser fall from the sky near my house my first reactoin would be ot shit my pants and run. If they didn't do that then they must be pretty brave BEs.

While we are welding up the hull though we should set fires as if the forest is as dense as it sounds it would burn quite quickly and our robtos and the body of the cruiser would be unaffected while it would at least slow down the BE-1. If we can get the Be-1 to space ou their assualt, since they wouldn't be able to just run through the fire unharmed and kill us, then we have a better chance of killing them. If they just wait around until the fire burns out then we will have more time to prepare for their attack. Besides while they are sealing up the hull setting a fire would take no more then 2 minutes, much less time then fixing a hole in the hull of a battle cruiser.

[andy_t_roo]

I do not want a violent confrontation, if possible - it could just be curiosity and concern which has the entire local clan out in force.

It is possible that we didn't determine the language correctly, and what we said resulted in a war.

>If any BE appears strongly different from the rest, or appears to be in command, envoy should approach and ask "what are your intentions?"

priorities:
>all unessential robots should seal the ship, then move to defend known, unseal-able breaches (such as where team A is).
>Sealing minor entry points is a priority. While outnumbered, we need to create a bottleneck.

essential duties:
>scouts which can not return to the ship should continue to scout. Conduct response time trials to determine if communication is ftl.
> the 5 in the core should examine the source of the noise.
> Team A.
> fighter prep.
> CPU should list contents of the memory banks which were just brought online, then analyze ship and surroundings for tactical advantages. Primary Aim: minimize damage to ourselves. Secondary Aim: Minimize depletion of resources (ie, self destructing the fighter outside our hull to destroy many BE-1's is not a good idea, even if it would result in a much better tactical situation).
Tertiary objective: Primary and secondary objective aided with language understanding. Decode language further, now with many more samples to draw from.

> team A should monitor the  BE-1's. While doing so, attempt to create a defensible position (we have superior strength and endurance 1 on 1, bottlenecks and protection from ranged attacks should be our defensive strategy, should they attack.

>Any robot within listening distance of the BE's should feed sound to our core to assist with language interpretation.
(we managed to decode the BE's language before envoy was created, so we have audio sensors somewhere)

>If BE-1s attempt to enter the ship, launch the fighter and fire single rockets into areas with high concentrations of BE-1s, while avoiding those close enough that the blast could breach our hull.
>The remaining robot in the hanger will, after the repaired fighter is launched, unload the rockets from the other fighters and store them safely

[Flying Dice]

Actually...


Query: Do we have substantial supplies of Agent Orange or another defoliant with bonus deformed-children effects? That would take care of two problems in one action.

[andy_t_roo]

(If possible) i would veto the use of any agents which are known to cause genetic or growth defects.
However, i am quite sure that any species capable of interstellar flight would also have toxic-only-to-plants chemicals (we call them pesticides). (assuming the GM doesn't rule that several million years is long enough for sufficient genetic drift to have occurred that our biochemistry knowledge is now invalid)

[Flying Dice]

I believe the word you're looking for is 'herbicide', unless you're wanting to kill off the insects that feed on the various plants. Incidentally, defoliants are a targeted type of herbicide designed specifically to strip the leaves from trees (hence the name), and saw heavy use in Vietnam in an effort to prevent guerrillas from hiding in the jungle. It would serve a similar purpose here, and would likely be less time-intenstive than clearcutting large sections of jungle. Of course, that works on the assumption that we have or can manufacture a defoliant of some sort.

Either way, that is an issue for the medium-term; we have more important lizardmen to fry at the moment.

[Mr. Palau]

I don't know why a battlecruiser would have herbicides. In the event that our enemies were hiding in a forest, I feel the cruiser would just resort to use of capitial weaponry to clear the jugle as well as the insurgents. We should just try to ignite a wildfire around ou battlecruiser. It will consume the forest for a very long distance and kill some of the BE-1, kill their food, burn their homes, all of which would make life easier for us now that we see the BE-1 are somewhat of a threat.

[NRDL]

I don't think it would make much sense for a battleship to carry any form of chemical weapon, considering that the ship's designed for space warfare. 

Since our bots have acetylene torches, do we have any flammable substances, maybe to surround the ship in a ring of fire ( that won't damage the ship )?   

[Draxis]

I do not want a violent confrontation, if possible - it could just be curiosity and concern which has the entire local clan out in force.

It is possible that we didn't determine the language correctly, and what we said resulted in a war.

>If any BE appears strongly different from the rest, or appears to be in command, envoy should approach and ask "what are your intentions?"

priorities:
>all unessential robots should seal the ship, then move to defend known, unseal-able breaches (such as where team A is).
>Sealing minor entry points is a priority. While outnumbered, we need to create a bottleneck.

essential duties:
>scouts which can not return to the ship should continue to scout. Conduct response time trials to determine if communication is ftl.
> the 5 in the core should examine the source of the noise.
> Team A.
> fighter prep.
> CPU should list contents of the memory banks which were just brought online, then analyze ship and surroundings for tactical advantages. Primary Aim: minimize damage to ourselves. Secondary Aim: Minimize depletion of resources (ie, self destructing the fighter outside our hull to destroy many BE-1's is not a good idea, even if it would result in a much better tactical situation).
Tertiary objective: Primary and secondary objective aided with language understanding. Decode language further, now with many more samples to draw from.

> team A should monitor the  BE-1's. While doing so, attempt to create a defensible position (we have superior strength and endurance 1 on 1, bottlenecks and protection from ranged attacks should be our defensive strategy, should they attack.

>Any robot within listening distance of the BE's should feed sound to our core to assist with language interpretation.
(we managed to decode the BE's language before envoy was created, so we have audio sensors somewhere)

>If BE-1s attempt to enter the ship, launch the fighter and fire single rockets into areas with high concentrations of BE-1s, while avoiding those close enough that the blast could breach our hull.
>The remaining robot in the hanger will, after the repaired fighter is launched, unload the rockets from the other fighters and store them safely

This, except don't waste missles on them if not neccesary, just do the fire thing if we need to fight them.  If we survived uncontrolled reentry, we should have nothing to fear from a forest fire.  Don't do it unless we cannot communicate, though.

[Mr. Palau]

I don't think it would make much sense for a battleship to carry any form of chemical weapon, considering that the ship's designed for space warfare. 

Since our bots have acetylene torches, do we have any flammable substances, maybe to surround the ship in a ring of fire ( that won't damage the ship )?

The jungle around the ship is a flamable substance, thats why I've been saying we should just burn the thing down to kill all the BE-1 in there. Plus it will confus the BE-1 beccause they likely rely on sight as their primary sense and the smoke will disrupt it, while our robots will likely be largely unaffected due to more advanced technoligical sensors.

Oh and I doubt something that is made to withstand ship to ship combat is going to be severly affected by just a large fire.

[Flying Dice]

I don't think it would make much sense for a battleship to carry any form of chemical weapon, considering that the ship's designed for space warfare. 

Since our bots have acetylene torches, do we have any flammable substances, maybe to surround the ship in a ring of fire ( that won't damage the ship )?

The jungle around the ship is a flamable substance, thats why I've been saying we should just burn the thing down to kill all the BE-1 in there. Plus it will confus the BE-1 beccause they likely rely on sight as their primary sense and the smoke will disrupt it, while our robots will likely be largely unaffected due to more advanced technoligical sensors.

Oh and I doubt something that is made to withstand ship to ship combat is going to be severly affected by just a large fire.

Jungle is actually fairly difficult to burn, at least in comparison to coniferous and deciduous forests, as well as scrubland, because of the relatively high concentration of water and extremely heavy and common rainfall. We'd need some sort of accelerant that we could spread over large sections of jungle, and if we don't already have something like that, it would probably be easier to manufacture herbicide, not least because many good accelerants would also be useful as fuel if we need to build lower tech generators, vehicles, etc. at some point.

[Mr. Palau]

I don't think it would make much sense for a battleship to carry any form of chemical weapon, considering that the ship's designed for space warfare. 

Since our bots have acetylene torches, do we have any flammable substances, maybe to surround the ship in a ring of fire ( that won't damage the ship )?

The jungle around the ship is a flamable substance, thats why I've been saying we should just burn the thing down to kill all the BE-1 in there. Plus it will confus the BE-1 beccause they likely rely on sight as their primary sense and the smoke will disrupt it, while our robots will likely be largely unaffected due to more advanced technoligical sensors.

Oh and I doubt something that is made to withstand ship to ship combat is going to be severly affected by just a large fire.

Jungle is actually fairly difficult to burn, at least in comparison to coniferous and deciduous forests, as well as scrubland, because of the relatively high concentration of water and extremely heavy and common rainfall. We'd need some sort of accelerant that we could spread over large sections of jungle, and if we don't already have something like that, it would probably be easier to manufacture herbicide, not least because many good accelerants would also be useful as fuel if we need to build lower tech generators, vehicles, etc. at some point.

Yes but we have arc weilders, we can set tens of fires. One is bound to clear a large area of rainforest. It's true the increased humidity and water held by the trees would stop many of our fires, but that would be after they had some parts of the forest. The chance of success of our fires could be less than 10% and it would still be better tahn using herbicides because in less than 10 minutes one of our robots could walk into the forest and start a fire. Just looking at some news articles about the amazon rainforest it seems that most fires burn an acre under the canopy, where there is easily combustible things like dead sticks and leaves, and then die out. They die out because some rain will come and put them out. As soon as the rain is over however, we can light more fires.

Again this is one of the situations were if we did have herbicide lying around, and some more fighters to disperse it, I would go for it. Herbicide would kill larger swaths of the jungle faster than fires could. The problem is we don't have herbicide lying around, and making enough on our own to set destrory large protions of a forest would take long enough that fire is the better choice.

Given the virgin nature of this forest it would be a bitch to burn, but whats strange about jungles is apperntly if you burn it once then burn it again it burns better the second time. You wouldn't normally think so because logically the first fire would have consumed some fuel, but apperntally it generates more fuel by killing some trees but not burning them completly (I just think that's how it generates more fuel the link just says it generates more fuel and that s the only way I thought it could) and by removing the water from trees, which means they are easier to burn later because there are drier obviously. So what we should do for the fire setting plan is first just set fires , which will deplet  the tree's stores of water, and hence allow it to be burned easier next time. Each time one of our fires goes out we should set another as soon as possible, in order to take full advantage of the trees new found vulnerability.

http://35.8.163.100/publications/peer_archive/CGCEO2063.pdf

[NRDL]

Alright.  A real vote to BURN THE FOREST. 

[andy_t_roo]

why are we burning the forest? -- we have much more important things for our robots to be working on at the moment.


Sure, in the medium term we should have a defensive perimeter, but our hull + sensors do that for now.