...I never said it wasn't a danger to him, I said it wasn't necessarily on the same floor. And earlier, you said that he should have sensed anything on other floors. You can't have it both ways, syv!
I said he should be able to sense anything that was a danger to him. It being on another floor means it wasn't a danger to him.
The "sensing anything on other floors" thing wasn't stating that he should have- it was stating that from the enemy's perspective, sensing danger from floors away makes exactly as much sense as sensing it once he arrived at the correct floor (None).
You're really becoming a pain to debate with.
...Kind of odd that it was
that bit that makes you say that.
They're not expecting us to know about their ambush; we'd get a volley or two in before they started shooting. Besides, your alternative has us waiting for them to attack us.
Whether or not they're expecting us to shoot them back, they're expecting to shoot us. They can shoot us faster than we can shoot them, which means we won't be able to shoot them back very well, because we've been shot.
You say that like they can only do one at a time. They have lots of soldiers. And, really, taking advantage of our inaction can be done without shooting us.
They
can't do both at the same time, purely because a person has to stand in front of whatever he's smashing. If they had bullets that could phase through friendly soldiers they wouldn't need to smash holes in the elevator to begin with.
Assuming that your assumptions are right.
My assumptions:
1.The door is metal, and built to be decently tough. Makes sense on a military spacecraft, no?
2.They would need to be close to the door to manually smash it. I'm not really sure how else they'd do it.
3.A force of some kind is pushing us against the floor at 1g. Kind of unreasonable, considering we're in space, but everything PW has said is consistent with this.
And that they don't just pipe gas into us or get a grenade in.
We're in suits. Piping gas won't do a thing. If they toss a grenade, we open the door and go through with your plan. Or melt it, I guess. That'd work too.
Or, heck, spread out so they'll shoot us the moment we make a hole.
Why would they not have already done that?
Right now, we know more or less exactly where they are
What? We can't see anything. Now I'm sure you're trolling me.
what they're almost certainly going to do.
...Shoot us when we open the door.
If we dawdle, they'll do something, and we don't know what that is.
I'll take an "I don't know what will happen" over a "We will probably die or be greatly wounded".
You cannot lie if you are deceived.
More precisely, it's not a lie if you were misinformed. It's merely false.
Depends on your definition of "lie"
They don't need to heavily watch every corridor. Firstly, the number of corridors they would need to watch to catch us is pretty small
...Considering how my plan suggested running a short distance and then hunkering down and waiting to ambush patrols, this is incorrect.
given how few areas we can access.
...Almost all of them? How small do you think the ship is?
Secondly, all those corridors would be pretty close to the bridge, so they'd be watched anyways.
I also suggested going to a different floor, but it's fine if you ignore that bit. I don't mind
Thirdly, this isn't D&D. They probably have security cameras.
But it is written by a guy who values gameplay over realism. We've already seen their security cameras, when Milno disabled one. They're the painfully obvious, absurdly spread out type.
Also there's no cameras in D&D because it's a medieval fantasy setting.
If the UWM's military ships have less security than my elementary school, I'll eat my hat. Hell, they probably have one in the elevator we're in.
Lucky for you that dragons don't wear hats.
Why? Because that's what you've been suggesting this whole time!
Actually, no, I suggested the ceiling cutting so we could get right above this corridor, but you've a good point. We could just go to the floor above.
How much heat was that?
An amount that was generated by a microwave amp.
And what do you mean, "circle of heat"?
something that would look kinda like
this.On the other hand, it wouldn't take long for the squads to get there.
Which they would have to abandon their posts to do. These people already depleted the vast amount of their sod forces (which were minor to begin with) in the invasion. They only have a skeleton crew of guards left.
Also, how would they get up five floors faster than people who are already in the elevator?
And that's if the sods or whatever don't react. Are you willing to bet that they'll stand around while we melt a hole in the wall, wait for it to cool enough that we can go through without burning ourselves, and such? I'm not.
We're in suits that are completely resistant to heat. Ivan made a cast of molten metal in the first mission. You're bad at this.
If they're sods. And if they don't have a commander with them. And if the commander didn't give them a command for if things didn't go how they should. And if the commander is AWOL and hence doesn't notice that things are not right.
And yes, they'll have no idea what we're doing. They don't really need that, because they'll know where we're doing it.
Again, we'll die if we exit the elevator regardless of whether the sods have a commander with them. An action where half the possible situations will go badly for us is better than one where
all of them will.
The heat matters because heat is pretty easy to feel. Sure, it takes time to go through the walls and whatnot, but it's there.
Takes a long time though. It would have to transfer through several feet of wall, and then someone would have to touch the wall. And it would have a lot of time for convection to remove heat.
And since this is a military ship, with military people and hardware on the other side...IR-sensing things aren't out of the question. You're making yet another assumption--that they don't have IR-sensing equipment--and each assumption is making me have less and less faith in your analysis.
No, I'm not assuming that they don't have IR equipment. I'm assuming that since all the teams that didn't outright start shooting or destroying stuff have gone undetected, they must not have security cameras everywhere. And placing IR sensors everywhere when they don't even have visible light sensors seems stupid.
I love how you just keep assuming things that make your argument better. "In these circumstances I'm outlining, my plan will work perfectly!"
Honestly, there I just couldn't find anything else to argue. *shrug*
Sorry, syvaris
Grate, now you're misspelling my name!
the UWM probably didn't and won't continue to do things for your benefit. My plan doesn't have all those little flaws that would bring the whole thing crashing down when the UWM reacts.
...Except for the bit where you have to shoot the people who are specifically ambushing you before they shoot you, when you don't even know where they are relative to you, and they are entirely certain of your location relative to them. Also, they always roll fives, because they're sods.
Honestly? I see more winning situations where we take the initiative than when we loiter.
Then you're blind. Not that that's new information.
Tell me, why are you the only person who agrees with your argument?
No, it's endangered them other times. And overshots are always possible dangers. Exhibit A: Opening a door.
...into a vacuum. That's gonna be dangerous regardless of the overshot, it was just dangerous longer because of it. There was still 1 atm of pressure behind the door; the overshoot just pushed longer because there was more air to drain.
I'm still in college, actually.
Oh, so am I. I don't call myself a writer or programmer though.
Point is, I'm not a tactician, so you shouldn't ask me to think like someone who's been trained for years in this kind of crap any more than yuo should use me as a substitute for someone with a PhD in physics.
Then what are you arguing? "Your plan wouldn't work because you're not a professional tactician, therefore a real tactician would know better than you!"
...I'm completely confused as to both how this fits in with the metaphor, and why that would matter at all when he's just removing a foreign body.
It's a joke. You brought up the easter island people, I brought up the easter island statues. You're supposed to laugh. Well, actually
I'm supposed to laugh. I couldn't care less what you do.
...Seriously? "I could be here, doing my job, or I could be somewhere else! Given that my job is protecting the ship (by commanding these sods) and that the ship is being invaded...I have better things to do than sit around at the site of an ambush!" How stupid do you think they are?
Why would he possibly be needed? What kind of idiot would spontaneously decide that
this doorway should be circumvented to a paranoid degree, rather than waltzed through like every other doorway?
Maybe he could be setting up other ambushes on unprotected doorways instead of sitting there watching sods shoot people?
No, I'm really not. The UWM commander doesn't have to deal with enemies who know exactly what his orders are.
But every time I bring up a strategy against the sods, you say "oh come on, they wouldn't be stupid enough to not have a contingency order for that".
It's a minor issue compared to the others.
You are an interesting person.
Ah, but you damaged the ship, so they're going to be shooting at you.
I damaged the ship? No, a section of the wall oddly melted. Then something moved behind it. That's just weird, not intentional damage. If the sods interpreted that as damage, then they would at some point in the service life of the ship assume a completely natural failure of something was the fault of the nearest crewman, with lethal results.
Considering the only use for such criteria is defending against enemies who have space magic (which as I said before, the UWM hasn't fought), it wouldn't be something designed into the sods.
You're making assumptions again.
You keep using that word...
Why wouldn't the UWM have any tactics for dealing with combat use of amps? Are you honestly saying that no rogue agents would ever deign to use their amps for combat?
Because these are planetary defense troops, who don't even have space magic themselves? The only UWM units we've seen with space magic are spec ops, and it doesn't make sense to train grunts in anti-spec ops tactics. That seems like it would only cause more problems.
As demonstrated by their on-ship defense systems and maneuvers and such.
Well yeah, the UWM is a military, it designs it's stuff well, because engineers are smart.
However, the people who man the craft know that there has never been a successfull rebel operation against UWM craft since it became dominant.
And whether or not that's actually a true fact, it's what they would believe- we found that out by using a military database, so there's no reason grunts would have more heavily classified knowledge than us.
No, I'm saying that if under a set of assumptions we could hypothetically play Monopoly in the middle of the enemy forces, we should reconsider those assumptions.
Then you aren't really understanding what sods are. They are organic computers, who obey their commands
literally and to the letter. If they're told to eat each other while not moving anything beyond their toes, they will try their goddamn hardest to eat each other with nothing but their toes.
It's a possibility. Alternatively, they could have been keeping an eye out for attacks from other directions and only focused on the elevator when it showed up. Or keeping a constant dynamic bonus for minutes on end is exhausting so they dont do it.
Okay. So, at worst, they would have the same bonus as us because they would start charging a bonus as soon as the elevator arrived.
Actually, no, at worst they're sods and automatically get fives.
No, I was using poetically-phrased arguments to win. I often lapse into violet verse.
Which is often used to cover up the fact that there is no real substance.
Because of the plans that were following it.
Like running directly into a trap set for you, because it's safer than trying to avoid the trap?
One, elevators have plenty of room for three people, especially if one is a child. Two, we are aware of exactly when we're opening the doors; they aren't, and hence lose a fraction of a second as they process the information their eyes are sending them and decide that they need to shoot those people. If the door was opened for us, the fraction of a second would be on the other foot.
And it takes more than a fraction of a second to inspect a whole room for targets, and move your rifle the whole distance to engage that target. On the other hand, they barely have to move their rifle to target you. And don't need to swing their rifle a vast amount after they've shot the first target, because both targets are standing next to each other.
Do you think they decided to cluster up in a group together?
And I don't want to gamble mine on all the assumptions you're making.
Don't gamble then. Go strap yourself to the ground so that when gravity cuts out you don't fly away!
In the first case: No, but they have ways to get them open.
That don't involve occluding their line of sight or shifting their aim at all?
In the second: Again, we'd be buying a couple fractions of a second more than we'd have otherwise before they started shooting and grenading.
Do you seriously believe you have a faster reaction time than a sod, even if you do have forewarning?
When I'm not aiming? Yeah.
...I may have misread your statement.
Yes, yes you did.
That falls into the category of "not aiming" again. And yeah, when I don't aim between shots, I don't have good accuracy.
Okay, if "aiming quickly" qualifies as not aiming for you, then you are very bad with guns.
Assuming that my gun's aim is actually that close to the parts of the person I want to hit. Given that the people in the elevator aren't of standard height or anything...
Elevation is even easier to mess with, assuming you know anything about proper stance. The difference between shooting a man and a kid is just a few degrees.
...I mean, aside from all the emotional stuff. Yeah.
I'm pretty sure I have no idea what you're talking about now.
Oooof course not. If this is going completely over your head, perhaps you don't understand the situation well enough to really think about it reasonably.
Assuming the sods are prone. Assuming that the sods are not that much larger than people.
Why wouldn't they be prone? It's the smart thing to do. Are you saying a sod commander is so stupid he wouldn't even tell the sods to take the correct stance for the situation?
Assuming, above all, that the sods are prone, which is the only way your argument works.
They could be crouched too. Or standing, in which case the part about having to sweep more area still stands. But that went over your head, so I guess I can't use that.
It's not impossible,
Yes it is, you just refuse to believe that.
And arguably, we could charge right in and win, but that's only because PW realizes that us all dying with no roll is no fun, so he'll give us a
chance.
PW is the type that that chance might be appropriately small. 17% seems to be about where he'd put it.
and the "circumventions" aren't any better.
Yes they are, you just refuse to beleive that because that would involve admitting that you're
wrong.
Assuming we weren't hacking the system locally at each door. Which is what we did.
...When we weren't walking through all the doors carelessly left open.
What else could the overshoot be, hm? And logic is powerless before overshots, meaning that unless you come up with a better overshot, your entire argument (or sub-argument, or whatever) is invalid.
The door rapidly opening, then closing, then opening and closing again and again like some horrible insane deathtrap.
This actually happened at one point, you know.
If we don't open the elevator, they'll get us anyways, but at a time and in a way of their choosing. It's not worth the risk.
Because walking into their ambush isn't getting us killed at a place of their choosing. And like running away from the central area where all their forces are
will get us caught where they want us, when they want us. Yeah.
Seriously, dude, could you try and troll me in a slightly more believeable fashion? Even an idiot wouldn't argue that point.
Are you trying to be so annoying that I give up the argument?
...
Yes.
It's your argument, not mine,
It is not, and
and that particular point is really irrelevant to the current scenario.
Then why are you defending it so vehemently?
It could be the only entrance to the bridge.
ASSUMPTIONS.
Aside from that, the security cameras and the lovely markers above each elevator door which tells you what floor the elevator is on would help. Especially the security cameras.
What security cameras?
Would they know exactly where we would be, though? No. At that point, we're looking more like general sabotage people.
At that moment they knew, because it stands to reason the people who destroyed something were near that something when it was destroyed.
To remind you, this is me explaining how your idea of what's going on would work and why it still works.
Really? Wow, you must not be reading anything I'm typeing to have mangled it that badly.
You're poking holes in the points you brought up more than in my explanations for them.
I'm poking holes in the strawman you built of my argument, yeah. Christians can bash creationists, can't they?
Then let's have the other side.
Look up about seven quotes.
All the more effective for us to run through. You don't want to fire automatic weapons when your target is in the same direction as your teammates.
Why would they be standing within a few feet of the door? Why would we be able to run directly next to a guy
while he's firing an automatic weapon?I like how you're assuming minimal initiative, intuition, and tactical skill on the part of the UWM. And how you're assuming escape is assured.
Did you even read any of that? No, you didn't. I guess that's fair.
There aren't that many other rooms, and they're all pretty close to the bridge, so having at least some guard isn't exactly a waste of resources.
Okay. So you agree that there would be less sods in one of those rooms than sods directly outside the elevator, right? Then we would have better chances breaching into one of those rooms than out of the elevator, because we have to shoot less people, while less people are shooting at us.
It's still a lot more than we have in this situation. Knowing "something dangerous is on the other side"--which is, recall, all we know--is a hell of a lot less than all that information you have.
But they don't know for sure whether there's something very dangerous on the other side. There could be a pair of guards with assault rifles. Or it could be a few unarmed scientists.
They have lots of information that is invaluable in court, and very very little that is actually usefull when the person the info is about is shooting at you.
Being allowed to apply lethal force only helps if you have enough lethal force to apply.
Like a fully automatic rifle that can kill a tank in one shot, a semiautomatic anti-tank rifle (which is ineffective against tanks- funny how military designations go, 'innit?), and a space magic calculator which heats things up to an arbitrarily high temperature?
...No, because it means we have less people.
You don't know what my point was, because you never answered the question. Having less people helps my point.
Defining it pretty narrowly then, ain'cha? Preparation done more than in those last few minutes is pretty vital. We don't have it, the SWAT team would.
No, they really don't have much useful preperation except equipment and stuff, which is kinda already covered by the "lesser equipement" point. But hey, us being less effective strengthens my point.
Even without any evidence that something like that exists?
We have no evidence that amp specs have bits of their brain cut out.
And needing to explain why amp specialists need to have life-support equipment?
Maybe it's because amps need to use a processor, but computer processors don't work for amps, while brains do, so having a computer take over everything so the brain doesn't need to do anything aside from run amp calculations increases the amount of amp stuff that can be done?
All of which we know for sure, by the way. No guesses or assumptions.
...Not all that similar.
No, it was identical, just with different words. The words are just a mask for the intent.
Right. Pretty damn sure I'll be able to explain it as simply as the previous one.
No you won't.
That's because it was an analogy. Things important in reality diminish in important when reality is used as an analogy.
Not necessarily. Analogies are more effective the closer they are to reality, so you make your analogy weaker by distancing it from reality.
...What? How the hell does gravity affect taste?
There's my point!
The thing about the analogy I was using is, the exact numbers don't matter. Nor do the circumstances. What matters is, you train, you're better, and it takes less time than learning to command a squad of people.
Fact, fact, unrelated assumption.
Do you think I'm an idiot?
And my point was that they aren't terribly good militaries. Which you misinterpreted as...actually, I have no idea what you're trying to refute.
I'm trying to refute your point that no militaries use it. Which I did. And then you
moved the goalposts, because I overran their previous position.
Can't you win an argument without using fallacies?
Still, the general point remains, except that instead of being told which end the bullets come out of, you're told...um...one specific bit of information that's useful for aiming rifles but which still leaves a hell of a lot to learn. Or, if we apply it to war in general, it's like learning which enemy trenches matter enough to be captured, but not the tactics needed to capture them.
I already gave examples, which were decently accurate. Now you're replacing them with other examples which are innaccurate and therefore easy to disagree with.Not true, for some of the same reasons that it isn't true for normal officers, but magnified because sods don't adapt.
You're missing the point. Sods will do just as well when told to attack if they're told "ATTACK!" or if they're told a complex plan of action. Skill of the commander matters much less than when the commander is commanding normal humans.
It's someone who tells the sods what to do. Your point?
You said a sod commander was a sod.
Makes one of us. I'm always relieved that I'm done and can move onto something productive.
You are one of the most amazing people I have ever, EVER, talked to seriously. I didn't know it was possible for someone like you to even
exist. I mean... You're trolling
me. That's easier to believe than the alternative, that you really are that amazing.
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Topic: Einsteinian Roulette: OOC and NEW PLAYER INFO (Read 2529581 times)