The OFFICIAL Avali Nexus #2

Push to discussion thread pls. ;P

 

so i'm a few pages late but hello new thread i hope you last

 

I'm not too late am I?

 

That's half the problem, everything gets shunted over there automatically, so this thread gets starved of stuff that is even remotely cereal.

 

dem kinetic rods, that right there is some WMDporn

 

As enthralling of a question as that is, it probably is best asked in the discussion thread. But because just about anything beats role-playing about aerogel viruses (?), I'm gonna try to change the topic to be about warfare in science fiction.

This is the only redeeming scene from a otherwise pretty bad movie called Skyline. Don't let the optimistic music fool you. The alien ship is fully repaired again by the end of the movie.

For context, these particular aliens have been making use of hypnosis-inducing, glowing blue weapons to harvest humans for biomass and processing power, which is why this last-ditch Air Force strike is composed only of drone fighters.

Now, obviously, there's some problems, starting with the fact that the dude looking into a nuclear blast with a telescope should be permanently blinded and the shockwave hit far too early. But one thing that I did appreciate about this movie was that it didn't pull any punches when it came to depicting the aliens as unfathomably powerful. By the time a civilization can travel interstellar distances, our strongest weapons will only inconvenience them, suggests Skyline, and that's a brave decision for the writers to have made. Even though the rest of the movie was pretty dull.

Here's a scene completely full of shaky-cam from a love-it-or-hate-it movie that I personally loved, Battle: Los Angeles. Fair warning, there's some violence, but nothing particularly bloody or gore-filled.

Also a prime demonstration of Maxim 2: "a sergeant in motion outranks a lieutenant who doesn't know what's going on."

Now, this movie was fascinating to me. The alien invaders are actually portrayed as shockingly low-tech and grimy (their design seems to have gone out of its way to look industrial), and it's almost implied that they might very well be the interstellar equivalent of a third-world nation aggressively expanding into a defenseless tribal colony to try to scavenge more supplies. Which as far as motivations for alien invasion go, ranks well above "evil alien locust" in my book.

Despite its flaws, what I appreciate about Battle: Los Angeles is that it watches less like a science-fiction or special-effects exposition and instead creates a compelling narrative based on the characters and their confusion within the story. It doesn't portray its aliens as being anywhere nearly as unstoppable as Skyline's, but they still steamroll the defensive forces for quite awhile. While it ends on an implausibly optimistic and pro-military macho note (though it still doesn't hold a candle to Independence Day in that regard), it remains one of my favorite movies for showing the confusion that would result from fighting a mysterious enemy with unknown capabilities.

Yes, reference! I do make references, sometimes.

 

that's a really interesting approach in B:LA, personally I've always liked the idea that some alien species feel entitled to "uplift" technologically inferior species that they make contact with, and we can typically tell from human history that just introducing a bunch of modern tech to a primitive culture does not fix anything, which is probably where such a "Third world" race as the ones in B:LA came from, another trope in the alien invasion area we should mention is the one where FTL is NOT a thing, these aliens have traveled for countless generations to reach our planet, regardless of what they left behind, they can't go back, they are just as desperate as we are, all of their equipment is older than most of their family lines, it may even be falling apart, and here we are blasting away at them, expecting them to quietly die out in deep space.

 

Well, they are confirmed to be using FTL in Battle: Los Angeles, because the television broadcasts early in the movie are mentioning that they appeared basically out of nowhere as a bunch of bright telescope contacts.

Honestly, my favorite scene is when they're briefed that for sure there's something inside these "meteors" because they're not hitting at terminal velocity, but slowing down. I did a completely unreasonable physics squee at that line, because that did strike me as a very plausible way to figure that detail out.

But yeah, I sort've remember a story (Worldwar by Harry Turtledove I think; never read it, but read about it) where alien invaders launch with very slow near-FTL drives while Earth is in the medieval age, only to land in the middle of World War II where all the warring nations kind-of put aside their differences to start beating the crap out of the rather surprised alien invaders, who weren't expecting such rapid advancement.

 

well I didn't say it was in B:LA, I was just saying that while you compared two very different approaches to the alien invasion theme, there are still more very interesting approaches worth noting

 

Interestingly enough the ambush scene in Battle:LA is the kind've situation an opposing force would find themselves in fighting an Avali team, who thanks to superior field awareness and mobility would be able to easily spread out and ambush them from multiple vectors, leading to immense confusion and an absence of reliable cover.

It's probably worth bearing in mind that the HUD system used by the Avali means they wouldn't have to shoulder their guns like a human in order to "sight" them, but could fire them around corners, only exposing the weapon above cover (Though the recoil would be terrible so shouldering would be preferable if the risk is not too great)

Same, sadly battle LA goes downhill quickly after that. My eyes almost roleld out their sockets when they announced they were there for the water... seriously? - Water?

Go cut up Europa, it has less guns
Still, it was less offensive than independance day... ever consider how the british feel about America's victory in the war of independance?

 

Actually, there was a fairly decent explanation for that. If you're willing to ignore the second problem it brings up.

They're burning water for fuel (wait, what? - this is the second problem, and frankly, the larger one) but assuming that's the case, then melting the ice with your water-powered machinery so that you can get more water to melt more ice would probably be an energy-negative proposition.

 

I'm not terribly well versed in teh realm of fictional alien invasions, but I don't think they typically show the aliens as having that kind of superior situational awareness do they? what's up with that anyways, a sufficiently advanced race can instantly create the maps and gather the data needed to comfortably operate in unfamiliar territory, and effortless outmaneuver the locals at every turn.

 

I'll just leave this here~

 

Way I see it, both us American's and you Britain's were idiots for getting into such a situation, there were probably several opportunities were either side could have avoided war. Although you have to admit, sending soldiers in bright red coats to fight a guerilla warfare scenario was a bad idea on your part

 

I think in Battle LA they simply had a grunt on every rooftop - later of course, they bring in drone swarms however, which are certainly a quick and effective way to map your environment.

The Avali do it via a mixture of cheap spotter drones, and the soldier's warfare suite. Data from both is fed back to the forward operating base and used to generate a 3d map of the environment, along with latest intel to create a relatively up to date map of the environment, units, sightings etc. basiclly a GIS system

You really should go research the subject properly and not rely on American textbooks before throwing out statements like that. The war of independence was declared unilaterally by the colonists in response to issues that were never raised (the then ambassador simply glossed over that there was any hostile sentiment at all leaving government blind that an issue even existed to address) seemingly, rooted in a response to the government asking them to pay taxes (Which prior to then, they had not) as reparations for creating a conflict with France that resulted in a number of costly engagements.

Suddenly they're told the colonies are rebelling, a peacekeeping force (Akin to the UN with their bright white APCs and armour) only to find itself on the receiving end of a militia army they had not be expecting. Had this same scenario played out today the colonists would've been declared terrorists of the highest order. Given the sheer distance and cost invovled in a protected battle, little more than an exploratory force was deployed and they foolishly ceded to the colonists wishes.

...and look at the mess that followed. They damn near slaughtered the indigenous population (one of the issues they had taken issue with, the British government had typically sought peaceful arrangements, notably in colonisation of new territories, the colonists wanted to just grab native lands)

 

It was a silly war. Both sides had valid arguments. Honestly, I sympathize more with the colonials, who felt overtaxed (untrue, they'd been undertaxed and gotten used to it) but more importantly felt that their problems were being completely ignored by Parliament. Which they were, to a certain extent. Parliament's reaction to colonial unrest was to put its foot down, as it were, and show that it was still the boss.

But that was the fundamental misunderstanding. Most colonials didn't doubt that Parliament was a proper authority (in fact, if you looked at the revolutionaries, the loyalists, and the undecided, the undecided outnumbered both sides). But they were starting to become convinced that Parliament could not be trusted to use its authority correctly. The rhetoric about government being illegitimate without representation was the view of the outspoken minority. Most colonists didn't care for democracy or independence or any of that, they just wanted a government that would listen to their concerns, and Parliament botched that by trying to assert its authority instead of working to make sure it met colonial worries. And of course the more radical revolutionaries were willing to jump on that opportunity to help see their vision for government carried out.

At least, that's the understanding I got of it, between reading an American textbook and my own accumulated knowledge of the timeframe.

 

receiving, compiling, cross referencing, transmitting, etc. all that data isn't exactly something you can do on a laptop or two, it takes some hardware, so where at the forward operating base does that go? considering the avali's tech level I'd imagine it's still relatively compact and they can stuff it in a corner of the command tent, but I've been wrong before

 

Don't you just hate it when the thing you're watching just up and disappears, and you have to go hunting for it?

Well, at least I found this one.

 

That sums it up better than most of our historians do, at least from the American standpoint. I don't know what the British standpoint is, and frankly I don't think I need to know. It's history. At this point, we've put that behind us and are now close allies. But again, on the warfare side of things, the British kinda derped hard there. If they'd absolutely wanted to, they probably could have decimated the colonists. They underestimated us though, and we made them pay for it. If I remember correct, we managed to make the war so costly they just gave up.

 

Their "forward operating base" is usually a small transport ship capable of sub-orbittal flight and surface landing. So yeah they have a full ship's computer and sync crystal uplink available to them for cloud data handling and real-time comms with command.