You are in an elevator, and you are reasonably sure that when the door opens you will have to deal with something bad. Given the option to attempt a roundabout solution to exiting, and the option of coming under laser/projectile/explosive fire while being cramped together inside a metal box with zero cover suspended over however many dozen meters of empty shaft, will you naturally choose the latter?
Considering that they aren't idiots and that any methods to "attempt a roundabout solution to exiting" with be time-consuming and either noisy or dangerous even if they ignore us...and that we don't have anywhere to roundaboutly exit
to...yeah, we don't have any good options, and just dealing with whatever's there seems like the least bad from what little we know about the situation.
I'm trying not to get involved in this but:
How can someone expect something he doesn't expect? That's illogical GWG. Hence, the sod commanders can't account for something they don't expect.
There is a difference between "expect some specific thing he doesn't suspect"--what you assumed I meant--and "expect that the enemy will not do precisely what you expect him to do"--what I actually meant.
Amp specialists are in a coma not because of their type of amp but because they can sense through them and react fast enough to negate lasers and other amps. They have immense power and immense willpower and immense control and that requires complete focus.
As demonstrated by the AM using more power and such with less assisted focusing?
And to play the devil's advocate and cause some paranoia, what if Lars rolled a 1? (don't remember his stats right now, he can roll a 1, right?)
That would mean that they actually have to get away from the elevator as fast as possible.
Or, Heaven forbid, if we tried to amp our way out and he got a 6.
Yeah..."the people inside caught on or never intended to exit normally" doesn't seem so improbable.
Then why did they come down to this floor rather than the one above or below? That would have made it easier to come in from the room/floor/anywhere else, and would have made them less obvious.
Because we can sense things through walls now?
And who says they didn't put some on those floors, in case we did? We don't know.
Since space magic was used to do noisy things. And since space magic was used to do things that would set off alarms.
Noisy things like melt a wall. Yeah.
Molten metal isn't silent, genius. Especially when it's in close contact with colder things...or living things...or when it heats air...or sets off alarms...
And since for the love of the HMRC Pantheon, don't kill us all with space magic!
Ehehehe, you haven't read my action for this turn, have you? >:-)
I have, but I don't really remember it.
No...I really wasn't. We don't have anywhere to run to.
Except... elsewhere on the ship. Someplace that doesn't have an ambush on the other side of a door would be good.
Alright. How do we get "elsewhere on the ship"? Go through the elevator, the elevator wall, where does that put us, exactly? "Somewhere else," perhaps, but it's likelier that we'll end up somewhere dangerous (another elevator shaft, reactor core, outside, somewhere they can shoot at us from a slightly different angle, etc) as somewhere where we can get an advantage over them...especially when you factor in the "they'll have time to mess with our plans" factor.
Really though, clearing a defensible area of cameras and turrets wouldn't be difficult, at which point we could station some guards there, and probably take out anyone who approached. It would probably require guerilla tactics, and frequent repositioning, but we are stronger than the enemy on a individual level. That's all guerillas need to win a war of attrition.
IF--big if--we had time to survey and prepare before they blew us to smithereens and/or called reinforcements onto our position.
No, just that you shouldn't be left in command of sods. And probably not normal soldiers, to be honest.
'Kay. Could you please give me your orders for the sods in that situation?
Assuming they want to shoot people coming out of the elevators:
"Until I say otherwise, shoot anyone that comes out of the elevators. Also shoot anyone that attacks you or approaches the bridge until I say otherwise."
Simple. And, of course, you're assuming that the guy ordering the sods around isn't within order-giving distance. Again, a dangerous assumption.
And sods should have standing orders of "kill anyone who tries to kill you".
They do. But a sod does not interpret "guy jumped out of hole in ceiling" as meaning "attacker", unless he was told to. Further, he doesn't consider just the hole being cut as anything odd.
Assumptions. Dangerous assumptions.
That means ARM operatives might be able to get the first strike in if they attack from the ceiling. Which could easily shift the mission from "everyone permakilled" to "comandeered bridge and used it against other ships".
1. Assuming that the first strike from three not-notably-good-at-combat folks is enough to turn the whole battle. And that the battle was that close to begin with. You might as well say that if the hadn't won Truk Island, the Japanese would have won WWII.
...And "worse" means "easier to deal with"?
What? That's your argument, not mine! No, it means it justifies taking more measures than you would against turrets. I.E. attacking from unexpected angles.
No, it's really yours. You're arguing that something we can deal with by shooting at it from an unexpected angle is worse than something that reacts equally well from all angles.
It's as likely to kill us either way. Might as well go with the option that doesn't limit our movement and keep us where the enemy knows where we are while we wait for a hole to be cut/melted in a wall.
...By opening the door that all their guns are already aimed and positioned to target. Yes, you are truly a great tactician.
So now they can aim through walls, but they can't figure out what we're doing through said walls.
By breaking it.
Sods are basically just large and very athletic humans. Strong, but not stronger than a really really fit human.
Here's a picture of a metal elevator door.
You're saying a really strong man can break through that? And if he can, it could possibly go better for him and his allies than if they just waited for the doors to open?
Can you picture a really strong man bending metal bars strong enough to impede an Avatar of War? Because that's what some did to Miya.
Assume for a moment that an Avatar of War and some metal bars exist around such strong men. You're misrepresenting the sods' capabilities.
They're the UWM, and more specifically the UWM military. And their ship presumably has a central computer, capable of handling little things like screwing with doors to screw invaders.
True, they probably would have something like that. Except that none of our boarding teams, even the really obvious ones, have run into any obstacles that would really point towards that.
There weren't ambushes waiting for any of them, now were there?
It would probably also be capable of preventing stunts like opening every door in the ship from a single door's control pad.
Depends on how the control pad works. And, again, reality-warping overshots. No matter what you assume, that really didn't make sense.
"They might do something we don't expect" is something anyone commanding more than their own two hands needs to understand. Hell, most basic soldiers understand it! Why are you assuming the UWM is so suicidally incompetent?
Because it lets m- Because they very well might have had a fairly incompetent person command those sods. It's not likely, but it's an example of a situation which would work the vast majority of the time, and which we would survive better if we didn't open the door.
Don't assume the enemy is incompetent you tactical moron! That's the exact opposite of what you should do! (Well, close enough to the exact opposite.)
Also, I think you're kind of misunderstanding the situation. Why wouldn't they have already deployed whatever method they have of disposing of us? Why would we be able to "slip past" people who are guarding the elevator?
One: Because, in-game, there hasn't been days of arguing between us getting to the right floor and the current moment.
And as to the second, it all depends on speed and finding an opening. Unless they've packed the room with sods, there's something.
Does "The Most-Crap Rule" mean anything to you?
No. Are you possibly referring to Sturgeon's Law?
No. Sturgeon's Law is the "90% of everything is crap" one. I think you mean Finagle's Law, and while that's closer, it's slightly off.
The "Most-Crap Rule" is basically that you should assume whichever option puts you in the most crap. It works with regard to law, it works with regard to tactics, it's a decent rule of thumb overall.
Exactly. Which is why you need to screw around with the brain to add more amps. Which is why amp specialists have important chunks of brain disabled or missing. Which is why amp specialists need life support.
Quick check says that there's five different amps in the armory, assuming you ignore the fact gravity and vector amps are more expensive than mass manipulation amps. That would require a 66% increase in brain surface area. 133% increase if an amp specialist truly has a "universal" equivalent. I think at that point the person wouldn't really look human anymore; why leave him in his real body if you have to completely rebuild his skull to accomodate an enormous brain?
...
You can also cut out space inside the brain. Which would require disabling vital functions. Which is what I've been saying this whole time! So naturally, you assume that I meant that they'd be increasing the size of the skull. Because that makes it easier for you to argue against.
If that's how you're going to roll, don't bother replying. I hate strawmanners.
Second, does a rifle not "require training, knowledge and insight to get the most out of [it]"? I'm not saying that sods are a particularly effective tool without training (although they're better than a rifle without training), but I could easily see a commader delegating a sod squad to an unqualified person so that they could do something more important than set up sods at choke points.
The greater the complexity, the greater the training, knowledge, and insight required to use it. It takes a week to learn how to use a rifle well, but it takes years of training to learn how to use a squad of soldiers (sods or no). That's why officers command the new meat, and not the other way around.
