Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Woolie Wool on January 08, 2010, 11:53:58 am
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Question is, of course, what could an Orion do against the Terrorists? Orbit them threateningly? Seeing as it doesn't have weapons that have the range to engage targets on a planetary surface....
The question is of course, what could Terrorists do against an Orion? Crash a plane into it? "Oh noes, something collided with our hull captain, hull strength down to 99%!"
How the hell can a kamikaze plane crash even do 1000 damage? 500 FreeSpace damage is probably equal to the blast force of an atom bomb!
The kamikaze fighters in Tenderizer are essentially flying bombs ("they're loaded with warheads!"). Even Command notices this. That's why they explode differently. A kamikaze attack from modern aircraft would be beneath the notice of an Orion.
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Though, amusingly, the Orion would also be pretty much worthless against terrorists.
Oh, asymmetric warfare.
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Though, amusingly, the Orion would also be pretty much worthless against terrorists.
Oh, asymmetric warfare.
Deploy it to Pandora.
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Though, amusingly, the Orion would also be pretty much worthless against terrorists.
Oh, asymmetric warfare.
Well, if you're ruthless enough you can just blow up the terrorists and everything for miles around with weapons of mass destruction.
Oh, FreeSpace armaments. :drevil:
Also don't underestimate the Orion's value as a flying, invincible airbase.
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Yes, but it doesn't help you with the tricky part, which is telling them apart from the innocent civilians they live amongst and frequently mutate from.
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The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I swear, people are so lucky i'm not in charge of national defense. Nukes would have flown by now. . . . The Falklands. Northern Ireland. . . . I mean Southern.
Ummm the Arctic where Nukes satanic Penguins are massing. ;)
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Maybe a way of resolving this problem would be sending a fleet of airplanes in there, telling people that if they want to survive, they have to get onboard, ferry them away to some temporary settelment, then search the place for anything that might have belonged to terrorists (killing everyone in sight, as anybody who would stay would most likely be a terrorist, as they won't like to cooperate with americans) and then send people back. No Orion needed, just be carefull to bring enough planes and inform everyone (though better state that an area will be saturated with chemical weaponary or something that will kill everyone who stays, this doesn't have to be true, but people have to be convinced that stay=die. Terrorists would die or get hunted in a settelment, which would be monitored and everyone would inspected carefully, not to mention that in case of potential terrorist passing the procedure, he will find himself with no equipment, as everything would be carefully searched and secured, later monitored.). This would ensure that everybody who dies suffered this fate at his own fault.
Colonel is riget, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, so a few ignorant civilians would get killed in process, but the benefits would be far greater (and it would be their own fault anyway).
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Could we please get a split?
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Split and unstickied.
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Substitue the district 9 mothership for an Orion. That'd be nice.
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Maybe a way of resolving this problem would be sending a fleet of airplanes in there, telling people that if they want to survive, they have to get onboard, ferry them away to some temporary settelment, then search the place for anything that might have belonged to terrorists (killing everyone in sight, as anybody who would stay would most likely be a terrorist, as they won't like to cooperate with americans) and then send people back. No Orion needed, just be carefull to bring enough planes and inform everyone (though better state that an area will be saturated with chemical weaponary or something that will kill everyone who stays, this doesn't have to be true, but people have to be convinced that stay=die. Terrorists would die or get hunted in a settelment, which would be monitored and everyone would inspected carefully, not to mention that in case of potential terrorist passing the procedure, he will find himself with no equipment, as everything would be carefully searched and secured, later monitored.). This would ensure that everybody who dies suffered this fate at his own fault.
Colonel is riget, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, so a few ignorant civilians would get killed in process, but the benefits would be far greater (and it would be their own fault anyway).
Negative. They'd simply masquerade as civvies until the mass destruction was over. Then they'd recruit more operatives from the now-traumatized civilians.
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Yeah.
Basically, anything you do that makes people unhappy creates more terrorists.
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Maybe a way of resolving this problem would be sending a fleet of airplanes in there, telling people that if they want to survive, they have to get onboard, ferry them away to some temporary settelment, then search the place for anything that might have belonged to terrorists (killing everyone in sight, as anybody who would stay would most likely be a terrorist, as they won't like to cooperate with americans) and then send people back. No Orion needed, just be carefull to bring enough planes and inform everyone (though better state that an area will be saturated with chemical weaponary or something that will kill everyone who stays, this doesn't have to be true, but people have to be convinced that stay=die. Terrorists would die or get hunted in a settelment, which would be monitored and everyone would inspected carefully, not to mention that in case of potential terrorist passing the procedure, he will find himself with no equipment, as everything would be carefully searched and secured, later monitored.). This would ensure that everybody who dies suffered this fate at his own fault.
Colonel is riget, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, so a few ignorant civilians would get killed in process, but the benefits would be far greater (and it would be their own fault anyway).
Yikes. So you're saying that we should relocate whole cities and countries full of innocent civilians, completely disrupting their lives, on the off chance that we could catch a terrorist or two in the process? And expect that anyone who doesn't meekly comply is a terrorist deserving to die? I hope that you simply didn't think through the ramifications of what you're saying.
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Yeah, seriously. When you have a population that, while not actively hostile against you, is at best indifferent to your needs, the very last thing you would want to do is to antagonize them further by acting like that.
Shooting at innocent bystanders is one sure way to turn those people into active combatants. And the assumption that "anyone left behind must be a terrorist" just doesn't fly. I certainly wouldn't leave my home just because the British Army (the nearest occupation force to where I live) told me to.
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Nukes would fly
Remove the whole city. ;7
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Yikes. So you're saying that we should relocate whole cities and countries full of innocent civilians, completely disrupting their lives, on the off chance that we could catch a terrorist or two in the process? And expect that anyone who doesn't meekly comply is a terrorist deserving to die? I hope that you simply didn't think through the ramifications of what you're saying.
It worked for Stalin, unfortunately. The plan's not so much effectiveness impossible as it is politically impossible.
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not to mention in order to do it would require the kind of army numbers only seen in North Korea or the red arm at its prime
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Colonel is riget, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, so a few ignorant civilians would get killed in process, but the benefits would be far greater (and it would be their own fault anyway).
How about the needs of the many, many innocent people whose lives you just disrupted and treated like animals?
Why bother look for a needle in the haystack when we can just burn down the whole barn huh?
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Deploy it to Pandora.
"Sir, the smurfycats are revolting! We've lost contact with one of our platoons!"
"Order all of our troops to fall back....and warm up the beam cannons."
"Sir?"
"EXTERMINATUS!!!!"
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This, oddly enough, has been a recurring daydream of mine. An Orion drops out of subspace and proceeds to blow the top off of a couple of mountains as a means to provide defeat to the enemy and victory for whoever deployed the Orion.
I fully expect to be silenced by deletion or at least heavily edited since my speech isn't free because it is in opposition to the opinion of the ones with the power.
The problem with asymmetric warfare is that it's usually not asymmetric enough. In order to have victory in a conflict, you either have to have a set of well defined rules that are universally agreed upon and enforceable on all parties or the enemy, whether it's true or not, has to believe that you will do whatever it takes to gain victory. You can't fight a war against an enemy that won't fight you himself but instead manipulates others(usually the ones that will suffer if they win) to fight for him and have a hope of victory.
The problem with "The War" is that the people running it on both sides don't want victory, they want political capital they can use to gain power. This is worsened by the fact that we, by and large, don't live in a society that understands the concept of victory or individual exceptionalism. We live in a society that seems to think that everyone can "win". This flies in the face of the reality that for any party to gain victory that has to be someone on the other side who doesn't.
This is true in every facet of life including work, play and relationships. If you get a raise at work, let's say it's mandatory in your union contract, then someone somewhere is a little closer to losing they're job. If you are having a go at some footie or chess or whatever, when the game is over someone will have lost. When and if you get married or what have you, you and your spouse can be said to have gained victory in your relationship, however, someone else, possibly close to either or both of you who was secretly carrying a torch for you or your spouse can be considered to have lost.
I'm babbling a little bit I know, but conflict MUST end in victory for one side or the other, otherwise there's no point to it.
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Very true.
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Alright Lib, I had a long-winded angry ranting post to answer yours, but because I'm getting so tired of responding to your inane repetition of right-wing pundits, I'm just going to sum it up:
Total war is wrong. Total war punishes innocent people under the guise of punishing the perpetrators of the war.
You're right, you don't find a conventional war against a hidden enemy. You get the population on your side and against the hidden enemy. This is best accomplished by not using "any means necessary"--carpetbombing entire neighborhoods or dislocating entire populations to find some terrorists.
**** you and your attacks on political correctness. We live in one of the most self-centered societies on Earth, where people are murderously competitive over careers and relationships, and where people making money look to keep making it, even if it screws millions of people. Welfare and government programs exist to keep your losers from falling into poverty and disenfranchisement--key causes of crime and terrorism.
Good God, man...
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War is hell. Ever heard that one?
Survival is all that matters.
Besides, who cares about the smurfycats?
PURGE THE XENOS!!!
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b348/SpaceVoyager/Smiley/poorsmiley.gif)
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So, uh, Lib, let's say you want to use the Orion to kill the terrorists.
Let's say the terrorists have infiltrated major US cities (as they like to do.)
Are you seriously going to take out Chicago, Washington, New York, Boston, whatever in order to nail them?
And if your answer is 'no', why the hell can you do the same to Kabul, Islamabad, whatever?
These guys don't always (or even usually) live in the middle of nowhere. They live in cities and towns with jobs, girlfriends, and families. They're indistinguishable from normal citizens to the casual inspection.
This is what you don't understand about terrorism:
Terrorists are criminals. They are not warriors. They are not soldiers. They are honorless, disreputable criminals. They deserve to be hunted down and brought to justice by police, using police tactics. Fighting a 'war' against them gives them legitimacy that allows them to recruit new followers.
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Agreed. Dignifying them by sending an Army to hunt them gives them more credit than they deserve.
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This is one of the big advantages to SpecOps teams. Quiet, dirty, and inglorious.
It's hard to recruit new sods for your Glorious Jihad when there's no war going on - when all you've got to look forward to is the prospect of being snatched by some tech ninjas or suffering random unpredictable death by drone.
In any case, Liberator's 'nuke 'em all' approach is strongly disliked by our soldiers in the field. Instead, our soldiers - who have been weaning themselves off airstrikes and artillery - try to earn the trust and respect of the locals, so that they, in turn, will point out weapon caches and turn in suspects. In short, our troops are learning to work like detectives.
Even if you had an Orion in orbit right now, it would do no good in the 'global action against terrorism' or whatever they're calling it these days, except presumably as a surveillance platform. Better to use it for something awesome.
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Another measure would be to replace the word "Terrorist" with "Idiot" in the news.
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Hahah, yes. 'Criminal', anything like that. They feed on glorification.
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Assuming 75% of an orions crew are fit for urban combat. I can't see a reason why it couldn't just park up and drop some ramps and open the airlocks.
See how they fare against man-portable ML-16s.
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It'd just be Fallujah all over again. They leave, they come back when you're gone (if you can even tell them from the innocent citizens in the first place.) Worse yet, all the disruption causes resentment, and the civilians start helping the bad guys out.
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Why can't we all be friends?
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Because it would make for poor video games.
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War is hell. Ever heard that one?
Survival is all that matters.
That's funny, I'd love to hear about your military background Trash!
Oh wait, none? That's what I thought. You speak exactly like someone who has no idea how to run a war, and whose closest experience with war comes from a video game.
Well here's a ****ing news flash for you, buddy--people who die in war aren't just graphics on a screen, they have friends, a family, pets, people who care about them and will be devastated by their death. Houses aren't square boxes with hitpoints--they're somebody's home, where people grew up, fell in love, married, and watched their children take their first steps. And the landscape isn't just a wonderfully-rendered warzone--it's a place that can be hurt and can bleed just like a human being when war is brought to it; fields will never grow flowers again, forests will never recover, and swamplands will remain dry.
The world has already realized "war is hell"--that's why people who aren't bloody morons oppose it at every turn, and if it must be undertaken as a last resort, abide by the rules and laws of war that make us civilized. But since you have zero military background, I'm betting you have no idea how it feels to know you're actually taking a life, that no matter what that person has done in their life to warrant an airstrike or a platoon of Marines kicking down their door, there'll still be someone to cry over them and whose life will never be the same.
"War is hell"...what an ignorant asshole.
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I wasn't talking about the war particularly, I mentioned it, but I was talking about Victory in general.
If you are going to apply a "Shock and Awe" type strategy, the shock needs to be so suitably awe inspiring as to make your foes believe that you cannot be defeated. The last time that I recall that happening on this planet was World War 2, with the dropping of the atom bomb.
On topic with the whole Orion vs. Terrorist thing, beams are terribly precise(unless it's the horrific LTSlash), so if you locate a building or buildings where the terrorists are firing on friendlies that building doesn't exist any more, period.
And the thing where you can't sanitize an area because there are innocents in the area is a bogus standard to hold any military up to, if they're heinous enough to use civvies as shields, well it's just too bad for the civvies. But the objective of the propaganda department should be to direct the disgust over a village or a city block being leveled toward the reason it was leveled, not the people who did the leveling.
I'm gonna be honest, I'm a cold hearted bastard about this stuff, because it's a cold, harsh thing and you can't let sentimentality get in the way or you are going to lose.
Lastly, I'm all for letting them rot in their rotted little country, except we can't, we saw what happened on 9/11/2001 when we let things stand a little too long. You want innocents to stop dying for doing something like going to school or the mall or a night club? You bury these bastards as deep as you can for as long as it takes for them to realize that blowing up children or other innocent people is wrong no matter why you do it.
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Okay, again, you realize that what you're saying here directly contraindicates the strategies our soldiers in the field have been switching to?
'Shock and awe' is obsolete and ineffective. Our own troops gave up on it.
This kind of armchair general behavior is doubly odd, since if you'd taken the time to speak to any of our soldiers, or to listen to our commanders and generals, you would know that things have changed.
All your ideas are nice in an ideal theoretical kind of way but the fact is that they don't work and we've moved past them. We don't even use air support and artillery most of the time any more.
In order to win, we need to be The Good Guys. We need the Pakistanis and Afghans and Iraqis to think we're The Good Guys. And the only way we manage that is by not blowing up their homes and families. Otherwise, we just create more terrorists with every action.
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Liberator has a good point. If it was in a scenario similar to WW2
It just doesn't apply at all to the current warfare in the middle east, afghanistan, iraq etc etc.
Also I chuckled a little at the idea of using a LTSlash in a big city. "Oops, we just accidently a whole city block"
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For the record, just to cover myself. . . .
The British Army use both the laws of armed conflict (those which terrorists fail to follow earning them the title in the first place) and specialised values and standards.
My views above do not reflect the Army and are voiced in relation to a hypothetical situation in which a make-believe 2K spaceship is brought to bear on an unspecified terrorist group and are purely for entertainment purposes.
:P
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Liberator has a good point. If it was in a scenario similar to WW2
It just doesn't apply at all to the current warfare in the middle east, afghanistan, iraq etc etc.
Also I chuckled a little at the idea of using a LTSlash in a big city. "Oops, we just accidently a whole city block"
Right. War today is vastly different from war between nation-states in the 1940s. Which is why I keep trying to explain to Liberator that it's not a war, it's a police action. I don't understand why he wants to give the terrorists what they want by legitimizing them as soldiers. They're just common criminals. Even their most devastating attacks were hardly significant; taking down a few buildings is nothing compared to what happens in real war.
Plus, given their yield beams would take out whole cities. Thus why the Lucifer uses them for planetary bombardment.
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Shut the **** up, Lib.
We don't sanitize areas with innocent people in them because the concept of proportionality is a key element of the Law of Armed Conflict, which members of the military are bound to uphold under penalty of court martial. Not to mention the simple moral side that blowing up innocent people because there happens to be some of the true bad guys in there makes us no better than the terrorists.
And the thing where you can't sanitize an area because there are innocents in the area is a bogus standard to hold any military up to, if they're heinous enough to use civvies as shields, well it's just too bad for the civvies.
Congratulations. How long have you been a member of al-Qaeda?
Lastly, I'm all for letting them rot in their rotted little country, except we can't, we saw what happened on 9/11/2001 when we let things stand a little too long.
No, 9/11/2001 was the result of us dicking around in their countries and being dangerously shortsighted with our decisions overseas and allowing poverty and conditions ideal for terrorism to fester. Strangely enough, bombing entire neighborhoods tends to make things worse, not better.
You want to stop terrorism? Go to its source. Stop upholding dictatorships overseas and do everything humanly possible to improve the economic conditions for people in those countries. Leadership doesn't like the US? Too ****ing bad. Nelson Mandela was no friend of America, but you're not going to see South African terrorists attack us. The Saudi government on the other hand, loves us, but the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. Part of being the world's sole superpower means more than being a cop and being there in a time of war, it means making the world a place worth living in during peace.
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The best thing we ever did in the War on Terror was helping out tsunami victims. That was a tremendous, tremendous coup for the US, because it made us the good guys again in the eyes of lots of people.
Did more damage to Al-Qaeda than any number of assassinations or arrests.
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Exactly. One Navy helicopter unloading food and medicine does more good for us in the long-term than an entire aerial bombing campaign over Baghdad.
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This is entering the realm of non-freespace discussion.
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I'm gonna just boot this wholesale to GD, as it's been along those lines almost since the beginning. I'm not even sure where it was split from to begin with. :p
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It came from "A Celebration of FreeSpace" when someone posted a picture of an Orion next to the WTC.
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Well, now Liberator can't post in it, but so be it. He didn't seem to know what was going on.
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And the thing where you can't sanitize an area because there are innocents in the area is a bogus standard to hold any military up to, if they're heinous enough to use civvies as shields, well it's just too bad for the civvies.
John is a terrorist.
John is hiding in New York City.
Is it ok to blow up New York City?
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Well, now Liberator can't post in it, but so be it. He didn't seem to know what was going on.
I thought about that, but it still deserved the boot over here regardless. I don't need this sort of thing cluttering up my folder. :p
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And the thing where you can't sanitize an area because there are innocents in the area is a bogus standard to hold any military up to, if they're heinous enough to use civvies as shields, well it's just too bad for the civvies.
John is a terrorist.
John is hiding in New York City.
Is it ok to blow up New York City?
HAMMERDOWN IS IN EFFECT--TOP 15 MINUTES. IF YOU CAN HEAR THE SIRENS YOU ARE IN THE BLAST ZONE.
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I like that bit.
But the brunette exploding made me sad.
I could have scored where cameraman failed.
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*ignores most of the thread*
Do we know that beam cannons are only capable of firing quarter football field wide energy columns that crack a planet's crust? Couldn't they siphon the juice down to a point so its a split second burst less the a needle's thickness? Plus I have to assume the look down imaging systems on it make Google Earth look pants. Park her in orbit over your suspects house, wait for Terrorist Tommy to leave his pad and just shoot a trickle charge. It'll look like he just spontaneously combusted :P
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That's what AAA's are for.
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The shivans had super lasers, i would hope that a Terran Beam would have a similar effect to the ION Cannon from CNC. Otherwise why would the EA need to build the Icanus? They could just use a normal beam to crack the mantle according to speculations here?
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The shivans had super lasers, i would hope that a Terran Beam would have a similar effect to the ION Cannon from CNC. Otherwise why would the EA need to build the Icanus? They could just use a normal beam to crack the mantle according to speculations here?
My comment was meant in jest, I haven't the foggiest what the firepower output of the BFGreen is. I was just making a crack at the assumption it was only capable of massive collateral damage :P
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Otherwise why would the EA need to build the Icanus?
Because the Inferno team was more concerned with ship porn than a coherent explanation? :p
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I have no problem with that philosophy.
As long as it's done well.
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Oh sure, go back on-topic after I move it. :p
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That was the plan the whole time :p
I have no problem with that philosophy.
As long as it's done well.
Except that it wasn't. INF ships ended up being turned into glass cannons, warships with big beams and 15 HP. They never lasted more than a single volley from another warship, so the cool ships would always get blasted before they could be cool.
NOTE: Not meaning to INF bash, just being critical of the way the new ships were implemented.
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Somebody has not played the mission involving the Nemesis enough.
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Oh I have, and I'll admit that definitely is an exception, but it shouldn't be an exception--it should've been the norm.