AVP2 rated at 25%

[FA Xerrik]

You're wrong there. Ash explicitly states in the first Alien film the company wanted them because they were the perfect weapon. Additionally, I don't necessarily see a problem with the Predalien being a proto-Queen of sorts. After all, mobility is an advantage before a true Hive can be established. There are presumably advantages to the stationary configuration, which we can only guess at. Protection of the Queen? Enhanced pheromone control of her brood? Also, was I the only one who saw the sewers full of rats and homeless people? I think that rats provide plenty of potential food for a small, <1 meter predator, who could move up to any refuse which made it's way into the sewer, and finally up to people. Plenty of food, and and indeterminate timescale for the whole infestation to develop. I don't think there was anything that was blatantly in defiance of the established developmental abilities of the Aliens.

[Zac Naloen]

Wouldn't it make sense that the first Alien made from a different base species to the egg that spawned the facehugger would be a "queen"?


If it survives long enough that ensures the spread of the species.

Does the Alien in the original survive long enough for us the find out if it was a queen or not?

[andrewgpaul]

<q>You're wrong there. Ash explicitly states in the first Alien film the company wanted them because they were the perfect weapon.</q>

Huh. I never took that line that way. It always seemed more like hyperbole, and fanciful talk than absolute truth. Still, the exact origin of the alien wasn't really important to the film. It came on board and ate the crew. That's the important bit.

Assuming the dead 'space jockey'* was of the species that developed the aliens as bioweapons, a weapon that's as deadly to its users as their enemies seems a long way from 'perfect'

[Aaron]

Huh. I never took that line that way. It always seemed more like hyperbole, and fanciful talk than absolute truth. Still, the exact origin of the alien wasn't really important to the film. It came on board and ate the crew. That's the important bit.

Assuming the dead 'space jockey'* was of the species that developed the aliens as bioweapons, a weapon that's as deadly to its users as their enemies seems a long way from 'perfect'

Burke states in Aliens that the xenomorph is worth billions to the bio-weapons division.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Assuming the dead 'space jockey'* was of the species that developed the aliens as bioweapons, a weapon that's as deadly to its users as their enemies seems a long way from 'perfect'

A xenomorph is the perfect denial weapon. Drop a queen onto an inhabited world, and in a few weeks the planet is overrun and inaccessible.

[FA Xerrik]

Why would you simply assume that Ash is lying or exaggerating in reference to the Aliens? That seems more complex than to trust that, as the robot representative of The Company, he is programmed with the full knowledge accumulated by Weyland and Yutani during the AvP films. If he was lying or exaggerating, he wouldn't be trying to kill the crew to preserve the Alien (I will grant that he went overboard in his zeal to protect the Company investment. Obviously, as Bishop states in the second film, these early units were unstable).
And I think it's safe to say any weapon can harm it's users as much as a foe.

[Junghalli]

In the AvP movies the Aliens cannot just be big mean crocodiles, or they do not pose any threat at all to the Predators, much less to armed humans.

No, they can't pose a threat to human militaries. A big, clever, pack-hunting predator is still plenty dangerous to human and Predator individuals, which is all you need (especially when you remember that Preds are hunters not soldiers; they're not going to be going in packing the most powerful equipment their civilization can produce, any more than a matador is going to blow away the bull with an RPG). The "OMG ub4r b10w3p0n!" idea is basically unnecessary to pretty much all the movies, and fundamentally stupid because bottom line no matter how much you wank something that's main weapons are teeth and claws it's still not going to be a credible threat to a competent modern military. If it's so vital to the movies that the xenomorphs be a serious threat to modern militaries why do all of the Alien films and AvP use some variant of the "people trapped with monsters" story? Hell, Aliens actually had xenomorphs vs. a group of soldiers and it managed to make them a serious threat without resorting to nonsensical wankery.

A central concept of the Alien mythos is that they are incredibly dangerous bioweapons. They need all the "wanking" they can get to actually be credible in this role.

Yeah sure, it was a central concept that Weyland-Yutani was interested in the xenomorphs for bioweapon research, but that just means they have the potential to be used to produce bioweapons, not that they're some kind of doomsday weapon the way they are now, which is frankly stupid because even in their present hideously wanked out state they'd still amount to nothing more than a nuisance weapon against a competent modern military.

As for Ash, his description was hardly what I'd call scientific or quantifiable, just a lot of vague "these things are awesome". And even then, notice what he actually says. He calls them a perfect organism, a perfect predator, and a perfect survivor, and he says that some guys stuck on a ship with handmade flamethrowers for weapons don't stand a chance against it. Nowhere does he say it's some uber threat to human civilization or anything like that. Being a perfect animal hardly implies the ability to defeat modern militaries; the closest thing we have to a perfect animal on Earth is probably the cockroach and I've squashed dozens of them.

[Anguirus]

The bioweapon shit is all from the EU.

E...U? Hmm, those aren't Ridley Scott's initials.

A big, clever, pack-hunting predator

Only one of those three adjective describes a crocodile.

The "OMG ub4r b10w3p0n!" idea is basically unnecessary to pretty much all the movies, and fundamentally stupid because bottom line no matter how much you wank something that's main weapons are teeth and claws it's still not going to be a credible threat to a competent modern military.

Agreed. So what use are Aliens as weapons? Answer: throw 'em behind the lines to cause chaos. But wait, their horribly inefficient reproductive system impedes them! Well, not unless you have a proto-Queen who can hork three babies down an enemy's throat.

Also, their ability to hide has secured them victories against small groups of heavily armed humans. They can't win a war on their own (or even come close), but they can certainly cause quite a bit of damage for relatively little investment.

not that they're some kind of doomsday weapon the way they are now

I'm not sure what recent change in the Alien mythos annoys you. When did they become significantly more threatening than the original creatures? What changed?

[The Grim Squeaker]

People ignore the basic fact of their use as bioweapons - it doesn't matter if they're shit against a large, modern military in open ground. (Every insurgent/guerilla force out there wouldn't exist if this was that big a problem ).
The problem is fucking up the planet's entire ecosystem, and that all of your civilians can't survive outside heavily populated areas. (Or even inside them, imagine a queen's lair inside the sewers of New York, or a futuristic megacity. Hey, sequel ).
Civilian casualties mate. (Although it's not that bad, if you're advanced, have strong control over your population, excellent recon, a strong, extremely well disciplined army [mass produced robots would be best] etc'. So, the Empire would treat them like womp rats in other words ) I'd prefer the Flood anyday though.

[Junghalli]

Only one of those three adjective describes a crocodile.

The crocodile think was my a reference to my theory that xenomorphs might be ectothermic (cold-blooded). The later movies cast more doubt on it and AvP blew it clean it out of the water, but if you watch Alien its sluggish movements are perfectly consistent with ectothermy.

Anyway, you're right, but what I meant was that I don't see any reason why a xeno needs to be presented as anything more than a nasty predator with believable strengths and weaknesses. This "we need to make them more uber" approach annoys me.

Agreed. So what use are Aliens as weapons?

Why do they have to be useful as weapons? Personally I've always liked the idea of them as a naturally evolved lifeform. An animal that's sort of the way August Derleth described the saber tooth in one of his stories: "an example of nature gone mad, evolution run riot to talons and destruction" (paraphrase - I'm quoting from memory). Though that's just me. To be perfectly honest I must admit my fondness for this idea is the source of a lot of my annoyance with the more outrageous xeno-wanking like them taking on the characteristics of their hosts. I like the idea of them as something that might actually have evolved somewhere.

Weyland-Yutani was probably planning on doing a lot of modification to them to produce any kind of actually useful weapon.

I'm not sure what recent change in the Alien mythos annoys you. When did they become significantly more threatening than the original creatures? What changed?

In Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, even A:R they were fairly reasonable big, clever predators. In the EU they're planet-sterilizing uber weapons.

I suppose AvP in and of itself isn't too bad, but it just has that slimy feel of EU xeno-wanking clinging to it to it to me.

[Anguirus]

Personally I've always liked the idea of them as a naturally evolved lifeform.

Well, that's your opinion, but as far as I'm concerned a parasite that can use a lifeform it has never encountered before, from a different planet, as a host has to have been created by magitech. And then it cannot be a coincidence that the mobile stage of the parasite is also an apex predator.

A predatory extraterrestrial (possible) ectotherm that has almost the same stature as a human being (with a human skull visible within its cranial structure), as the creature was presented in Alien, also makes no sense whatsoever unless the creature takes on characteristics of its host.

In the EU they're planet-sterilizing uber weapons.

Well I can't say I'm familiar with the EU, so I wouldn't know. I can see a relatively small investment of Alien eggs eventually raping a non-technological planet, though, and they would be pretty hard for an outside force to efficiently get rid of without using nukes and ruining the ecosystem anyway.

[Junghalli]

Well, that's your opinion, but as far as I'm concerned a parasite that can use a lifeform it has never encountered before, from a different planet, as a host has to have been created by magitech. And then it cannot be a coincidence that the mobile stage of the parasite is also an apex predator.

Well, for what it's worth there's evidence that panspermia is true in Alien universe. The aliens can be genetically crossed with humans (to produce the A:R Ripley-clone and other such mutants), which means they must use the same DNA base-pairs as us, which is unlikely if they evolved independently from humans right down to the first bacteria. The Predator in Predator II was able to obtain nourishment from beef, which means the Predators have to use many of the same amino acids as we do, ditto above. The xenomorphs can also presumably obtain nourishment from human foods, ditto above. So the xenomorphs may not be as far from us biochemically as a true alien would be.

As for the apex predator thing, I'm actually toying with the idea of typing up a (sort of) plausible possible natural history for the xenomorphs and posting it on SB and my own message board. Maybe I should post it here to, might be good for a couple of laughs if nothing else.

A predatory extraterrestrial (possible) ectotherm that has almost the same stature as a human being (with a human skull visible within its cranial structure), as the creature was presented in Alien, also makes no sense whatsoever unless the creature takes on characteristics of its host.

Meh, so it's bipedal and upright, so are the Predators.

I don't know about the skull thing, I never noticed it myself. Maybe it used to have eyes, and they atrophied for some reason.

[Anguirus]

The aliens can be genetically crossed with humans (to produce the A:R Ripley-clone and other such mutants), which means they must use the same DNA base-pairs as us, which is unlikely if they evolved independently from humans right down to the first bacteria.

Dude, the Aliens can genetically cross themselves with other lifeforms.

Extraterrestrial life forms that originated under similar local conditions as Earth-type lifeforms will likely have DNA. That does not mean they will be able to parasitize any old thing they come across.

The Predator in Predator II was able to obtain nourishment from beef, which means the Predators have to use many of the same amino acids as we do, ditto above. The xenomorphs can also presumably obtain nourishment from human foods, ditto above. So the xenomorphs may not be as far from us biochemically as a true alien would be.

Since you're the expert, how far from us biochemically should a "true alien" be?

Meh, so it's bipedal and upright, so are the Predators.

The Predators could easily be a case of parallel evolution. They have a super-advanced society that nevertheless seems to have tribal roots. They communicate verbally. They brachiate. Their rituals are easily comprehensible to humans, including hunting with the aid of tools for sporting purposes. Predators could have evolved on their own, far earlier than humanity (accounting for their wankatech) and, before their technology really took off, almost certainly filled an identical environmental niche.

Aliens, on the other hand, are parasitic organisms with similar social organization to that of ants. They require large organisms of different species for both reproduction and, presumably, feeding, so they must constantly be overpowering organisms of comparable size at an enormous rate in order to fuel their own expansion. They can acquire relatively high levels of intelligence but have not attained the ability to create their own tools, or even restrain themselves from attacking whatever isn't giving off the "no kill" pheromone cue. There is no reason WHATSOEVER for an organism with such a fundamentally different niche than humans should have the same posture as humans. They don't need to see for long distances (since they don't have eyes). They don't need to display signs of sexuality, since they don't have sex with each other. They don't need their hands free for tool use, since they don't make tools and thus probably do not make heavy use of them in the wild. They must sprint in their adult form to catch prey and hosts, but the human form is not well-equipped for sprinting. They probably would develop back problems like humans do, compounded by the fact that they are so top-heavy.

I don't know about the skull thing, I never noticed it myself. Maybe it used to have eyes, and they atrophied for some reason.

Which explains why an adult Alien that just happened to parasitize a human has a human skull embedded in its face?



Giger didn't design them to be realistic predators, he designed them to be as disturbing and fucked-up as possible to humans. In-universe, the best explanation for this is that they were designed to be versatile weapons of terror, hence Ridley Scott's comment that he thinks of the ship from the first movie as "an aircraft carrier for bioweapons."

Which isn't to say that your ideas for some kind of "natural" Alien species are entirely without merit. Perhaps you could come up with a plausible idea for the original organism before the Pilots or whoever fucked with it. But going by the movies, it seems to me that the only "pure" Alien is the facehugger (well, plus the egg).

[Darth Wong]

Man, I'm so sick of this "terror weapon" wanking. Oooh, they could drop eggs in behind enemy lines and try to infect people! As if it would be easier to drop eggs and make them land so gently that they don't squish on impact than it would be to simply lob biological or chemical shells. Not to mention the fact that even if this half-baked tactic actually works, now you can't take the planet yourself without spending a lot of time and effort to clear out the infestation.

[Kuja]

Man, I'm so sick of this "terror weapon" wanking. Oooh, they could drop eggs in behind enemy lines and try to infect people! As if it would be easier to drop eggs and make them land so gently that they don't squish on impact than it would be to simply lob biological or chemical shells. Not to mention the fact that even if this half-baked tactic actually works, now you can't take the planet yourself without spending a lot of time and effort to clear out the infestation.

Well, I suppose if you were in possession of some kind of MacGuffin that could render the xenos dead or otherwise harmless without harming the rest of the planet the tactic might be worth a shot, but still clunky and unnecessary.

[Molyneux]

Man, I'm so sick of this "terror weapon" wanking. Oooh, they could drop eggs in behind enemy lines and try to infect people! As if it would be easier to drop eggs and make them land so gently that they don't squish on impact than it would be to simply lob biological or chemical shells. Not to mention the fact that even if this half-baked tactic actually works, now you can't take the planet yourself without spending a lot of time and effort to clear out the infestation.

What if you have a ready supply of that 'no-kill' pheromone that supposedly keeps Aliens from attacking one another? And just how durable are facehugger eggs?

I was thinking of something like a headcrab artillery shell, likely because I just beat Half-Life 2. Not really effective against a military target, but drop a few dozen into a city, and you've got a nice distraction on your hands...

[Darth Wong]

Man, I'm so sick of this "terror weapon" wanking. Oooh, they could drop eggs in behind enemy lines and try to infect people! As if it would be easier to drop eggs and make them land so gently that they don't squish on impact than it would be to simply lob biological or chemical shells. Not to mention the fact that even if this half-baked tactic actually works, now you can't take the planet yourself without spending a lot of time and effort to clear out the infestation.

What if you have a ready supply of that 'no-kill' pheromone that supposedly keeps Aliens from attacking one another?

If there is such a simple countermeasure, the enemy would inevitably discover it, either through research or espionage. And it still would not solve the problem, unless your occupation forces and the entire citizenry intend to wear this pheremone perfume every day forever. Have you even tried to think this through? You would still have to go through the entire region and hunt down and destroy every single xenomorph and egg.

And just how durable are facehugger eggs?

If the facehuggers can be killed by bullets, I don't see why they wouldn't squish after being dropped from an airplane.

I was thinking of something like a headcrab artillery shell, likely because I just beat Half-Life 2. Not really effective against a military target, but drop a few dozen into a city, and you've got a nice distraction on your hands...

That is fucking retarded. Drop a few heavy conventional bombs into a city, and you have a huge humanitarian crisis on your hands, with no need to waste time hunting down an infestation after you take the city.

[Molyneux]

If the facehuggers can be killed by bullets, I don't see why they wouldn't squish after being dropped from an airplane.

I didn't know that people had shot facehugger eggs in the films. When did that happen?

I was thinking of something like a headcrab artillery shell, likely because I just beat Half-Life 2. Not really effective against a military target, but drop a few dozen into a city, and you've got a nice distraction on your hands...

That is fucking retarded. Drop a few heavy conventional bombs into a city, and you have a huge humanitarian crisis on your hands, with no need to waste time hunting down an infestation after you take the city.

So unless you can control the xenos, they're pretty useless as a terror weapon. Okay. What if you can control them through some handwavium mechanism?

[Aaron]

I didn't know that people had shot facehugger eggs in the films. When did that happen?

Aliens, when Ripley shoots up and burns the Queens nest.

[Anguirus]

Whether or not Aliens make good weapons is sort of secondary to the point that they probably are weapons, or at the very least heavily genetically engineered.

One reason to use Aliens might be that, though a more traditional form of attack might be easier or cause more casualties, stopping an Alien outbreak would actually requite combat units. Also, it's my guess that most species in-universe probably find a creature that violates their bodies and explodes from within them very disturbing on a psychological level, though on the other hand one could easily come up with a very disturbing biological or chemical weapon.

It also occurs to me that subterfuge would be much more likely to move Alien eggs into key positions than artillery.

[Darth Wong]

Oh yeah, that's totally realistic. Super-commandoes sneaking behind enemy lines while carrying huge alien eggs.

You watch too much sci-fi.

[Gunhead]

Oh yeah, that's totally realistic. Super-commandoes sneaking behind enemy lines while carrying huge alien eggs.

You watch too much sci-fi.

But hey just imagine uber toughguy commandoes carrying alien eggs in "hello kitty" belly harnesses women use to haul babies around. THE TERROR!!!!!! *snort*

I don't know which is scarier. The aliens or our egg carrying DEATH SQUADS OF DOOM and TERROR!!!!



-Gunhead

[FA Xerrik]

Has there ever been an effort to tag some numbers on the firepower of the Colonial Marine weaponry? All we really know is that the Pulse Rifle fires 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless rounds, for whatever that's worth. As it is, Aliens shows that the warriors are highly resistant to small-arms, as Vasquez had to fire pointblank to actually pierce the exoskeleton with a pistol. Additionally, if we assume the 1:1 ratio of host to warrior, there are 154 Aliens tops in the final assault, as Ripley accuses Burke of being responsible for the deaths of 154 colonists. Now, three of the autoguns are completely depleted and the fourth is left with 10 of 500 rounds. 1990 rounds are expending firing at the warriors "like fish in a barrel" according to Hudson.

After the first wave, just prior to the capture of Newt, the motion scanner shows an incoming wave of Aliens not noticeably diminished from the initial group. This suggests the Aliens are either incredibly durable, or able to function with significant damage. Since there are numerous shots of the Alien carapace exploding from M41A fire, I'd go with the latter option.

I sort of see two options here. Either there is support for the multiple hatchings as seen in AvP2, to explain the large remaining numbers of warriors after the autoguns shred their first wave, or the Aliens are actually somewhat capable of resisting even concentrated waves standard light armor piercing rounds.

As for dropping the Aliens like bombs, I thought that very tactic was observed in AvP2. After all, the facehuggers survived an orbital fall in whatever those tanks were. Similar precautions could be taken to drop facehuggers, not eggs, into enemy territory. The egg stage only becomes necessary once a nest has been established by a new Queen, and may simply be a holdover from whatever original organism the Aliens were bred from. At this point, you can take your pick. The "super facehugger" hinted at in Aliens 3, capable of multiple impregnations, or the New Queen ability to implant multiple chestbursters directly into a single host.

[Gunhead]

Well the sentryguns fired bursts of 5-10 rounds and were aiming at movement. So as long as an alien was able to even flop around on the ground the guns would shoot at it expending a minimum of 5 rounds of ammo per firing. This makes evaluating the total alien losses to the sentryguns a bit difficult. We do know the first two guns didn't stop all of the attacking aliens making it a fair assumption they got quite a few of them.

30 or 40 warriors is still enough for the events happening later, and to add that the queen had just 2 warriors guarding her.

I haven't found any hard numbers on the M41a1 pulse rifle the marines were using. But since it comes standard with AP rounds we can assume it's bullets have the velocity to match. The databook says 800m/s or something along those lines, but I'm not sure if that's official. At no point was it suggested the the weapon wasn't powerful enough to take out an alien. If assuming an alien warrior is resistant to trauma and shock then burst fire is the order of the day.
Also assuming that an alien is resistant to small arms fire, a valid assumption, it would make it very resistant to pistols as pistol bullets do not penetrate very well. In fact shooting an alien in the head with a pistol might not be the best idea.
Bones in the skull can be very thick and low powered pistol rounds could have great difficulties causing damage, specially to a creature already resistant to pain and shock.

At any rate. Pistols and a shotgun was used at point blank range to kill a full grown alien. Now the shotgun could have been loaded with slugs but as the primary weapon of a marine is already a large calibre assault rifle I'm leaning towards buckshot. And that was enough to blow out the back of the creatures head.



-Gunhead

[Terralthra]

I was thinking of something like a headcrab artillery shell, likely because I just beat Half-Life 2. Not really effective against a military target, but drop a few dozen into a city, and you've got a nice distraction on your hands...