Moderator: NecronLord
There's really nothing I can say which is more perfect than when you burn yourself in such an awesome, unflinching fashion.avianmosquito wrote:Because I'm not an omniscient, third-person narrator. It's first person, and although I know everything my narrating characters know, I know little beyond that.
Too funny, I'm using that as my signature.CaptainChewbacca wrote:There's really nothing I can say which is more perfect than when you burn yourself in such an awesome, unflinching fashion.avianmosquito wrote:Because I'm not an omniscient, third-person narrator. It's first person, and although I know everything my narrating characters know, I know little beyond that.
They say the first step in wisdom is to admit you know nothing. Let us know when you're ready for step two, which is listening to advice.
If your character uses the wrong words for the job, it'll be as distracting to your readers as it was in your posts. There is no excuse for this one.avianmosquito wrote:Yeah, I get it. My grammar isn't so good when I'm stuck in-character. (Which happens a lot after I write. It used to frustrate my mother. Still does, far as I know.)
As far as that, it's a military evacuation but their really is that much fire, so the simini are fucked either way.Simon_Jester wrote:If energy and resources are cheap enough in simini society that bands of survivalist refugees can build their own interstellar spacecraft, yeah. The only problem... if resources and energy are that cheap, then a civil war on the Simini homeworld is liable to wipe out the entire species, because of the sheer volume of fire being thrown around.
No, but it isn't neccesary that all reptiles regenerate so long as these ones do.Do reptiles regenerate burn scars, empirically?
Humans survive napalm more often than not. I see no reason why reptiles can't do the same.People can die from burn trauma long before their skin (or whatever's left of it) scars over to the point where they can hope to survive. I see no reason why lizards can't do the same.
They aren't really giant, the males are 60-80kg and 120-160cm with 80-120cm tails, the females are 75-90kg and 150-180cm with 60-80cm tails. (The reason tail length is important is because their tails are large, powerful and muscular, capable of smashing any bone in the human body in a single strike.) However, while it may seem like this is enough to allow them to quickly destroy a simini aircraft, it isn't. They would have to take a large melee weapon that negates any possibility of stealth and bash it repeatedly, where a single ballistae bolt or mangonel-thrown rock could put the aircraft out of commission. While it is true that ferroningen could simply place bombs, this would limit the number of aircraft they could take out to one each.The point is that the weapon honestly doesn't do much damage compared to what the same giant lizards could accomplish with their bare hands by sneaking through a perimeter. It's a big heavy thing that they're carrying for no reason.Or hitting grounded aircraft, their favourite target, then collapsing the weapon, picking it up, and running back into the tunnel, where only infantry may follow.
Of course, but this was an H2 hummer, and it was penetrated lengthwise. I imagine the bolt had to go through 4-5cm of steel to do that, and it was a smaller one than you would see ferroningen using.You do realize that cars are much, much more vulnerable to penetration than even the lightest tanks? I mean, were these armored vehicles designed to survive artillery shrapnel? Tripod-mounted machine guns build using simini tech? Just how thin is this armor?
The flechette rifles? Semi-automatic fire, 300rpm cyclic rate and zero stopping power. They don't compare to a light machine gun, although since simini are too weak to use a light machine gun (even one their size) with any accuracy at all unless using a bipod and a solid surface, the flechette rifle actually performs better.How does this not amount to the same thing for practical purposes at close quarters.
The frontal aspect will sneer at anything less than shaped charge weapons (which the lizards don't know how to build) So will the back, being four inches of plate steel. That's the same armor as graced the bow of the infamous Tiger tank of World War Two, you know. The only way an arrow is cracking that is if it's made of depleted uranium and you shot it out of a cannon at about Mach 4.[/quote]Frontal aspect: 10cm steel, 5cm carbon fibre, 10cm alumina. (Aluminium oxide, a ceramic.)
The rear aspect lacks the ceramic and carbon fibre, and has a vent to air for, and the rockeys were incendiaries.
Yes, but at that altitude the helicopter won't be manueverable enough to avoid the rockets, which are fairly fast, fired in numbers and can destroy them if they hit the right place. In fact, at 500m, they have a hard time accelerating at all due to a lack of ground effect. I know this is a fairly low flight ceiling, but we're dealing with a helicopter with a rotor diameter of 6.4m, half that of a modern attack helicopter.Why even fly as low as bow range? Why not just have a couple of guys with rifles in the doors and fly a hundred meters up? Archers aren't going to be able to reach that high without firing more or less straight up.
As far as nukes, why bother when you can just keep the war rolling along with no threat to youself? The war is there for its own sake, why end it?So what's the problem? They lack the capacity to make their own, or they stupidly obey an unenforceable law telling them not to do so?
Yes, at the expense of the functionality of part of their fleet. Besides, nuclear weapons weren't much of an option against ferroningen fortresses, and using weapons of mass destruction would likely be counter-productive anyway....See, you just took your good explanation and made it bad again. If they already have plenty of uranium processing ability, they can totally spare some to make bombs.Simini spacecraft are nuclear- powered. They need that uranium more than anyone else does.
But where the hell did they get human genes from, anyway?[/quote]Yes, but the human body was the best choice available to them at the time. A friend of mine had an idea on how to make it work, something about them having all the genes and activator genes on the sex chromosones...
Aside from taking three years of college biology? No, not at all. (If only he wasn't so damn busy all the time, I could use his help.)Does your friend have genetics credentials?
Actually, that's a little low, human metabolisms go up to more than 4 times normal during an adrenalin rush, more should be desireable in a species that has so much reserve strength.For the metabolic rate? Beats me.How about 8 during an adrenalin rush and 4 when healing from significant injury?
*AvianIDiot*Oh, really?Humans survive napalm more often than not. I see no reason why reptiles can't do the same.
Wait...WHAT?They aren't really giant, the males are 60-80kg and 120-160cm with 80-120cm tails, the females are 75-90kg and 150-180cm with 60-80cm tails. (The reason tail length is important is because their tails are large, powerful and muscular, capable of smashing any bone in the human body in a single strike.) However, while it may seem like this is enough to allow them to quickly destroy a simini aircraft, it isn't. They would have to take a large melee weapon that negates any possibility of stealth and bash it repeatedly, where a single ballistae bolt or mangonel-thrown rock could put the aircraft out of commission. While it is true that ferroningen could simply place bombs, this would limit the number of aircraft they could take out to one each.
Just because it's steel it doesn't mean it's anything like the steel used in armored vehicles.Of course, but this was an H2 hummer, and it was penetrated lengthwise. I imagine the bolt had to go through 4-5cm of steel to do that, and it was a smaller one than you would see ferroningen using.
If it kills the target dead, i would say it has quite some stopping power.The flechette rifles? Semi-automatic fire, 300rpm cyclic rate and zero stopping power. They don't compare to a light machine gun, although since simini are too weak to use a light machine gun (even one their size) with any accuracy at all unless using a bipod and a solid surface, the flechette rifle actually performs better.
Again - too dumb to live.Yes, but there's two issues with that theory:
1. That's an MBT. The light tanks only have half that armour.
2. Simini tanks have a weak spot on every side. That's not too much worse than human tanks, which have a weakspot on every side but the front.
Front: hatch (driver&bow gunner) and bow turret
Sides: tracks
Rear: two vents (one vents the gases from the cannon and cycles air for the turret, the other vents gases from the engine and cycles air for the chassis)
Top: hatch (main&anti-aircraft gunners)
Bottom: no armour, just 1.25-2.5cm of 316L stainless steel. (The same material as the rest of the tank)
So they are faster than their opponents, are difficult to hit with their artillery weapons (who are simply not accurate enough to hit small, moving targets).
Never the less, these are excellent tanks. They're fast for their size, although still slower overall than a human tank, have a low profile, extremely thick sloped armour for their size, and the outer layer is ceramic, making it so kinetic penetrators and shaped charge jets (which almost always hit at an oblique angle) ricochet off the hard surface, and are also amphibious, capable of moving nearly half as fast on water and doing so indefinitely. By modern standards, they're excellent tanks, but they have huge issues including a lack of onboard oxygen tanks, crappy plastic air filters that fail when their temperature exceeds 100c, a tendency to throw tracks and a tendency for the ceramic plates to fall off, the tracks fail, and the metal rust when the tank is set on fire.
- that's just hillariousand the metal rust when the tank is set on fire.
Rocket? What rockets?Yes, but at that altitude the helicopter won't be manueverable enough to avoid the rockets, which are fairly fast, fired in numbers and can destroy them if they hit the right place. In fact, at 500m, they have a hard time accelerating at all due to a lack of ground effect. I know this is a fairly low flight ceiling, but we're dealing with a helicopter with a rotor diameter of 6.4m, half that of a modern attack helicopter.
*yawn* Leaving the impossibility to build such a fortress with their technology in the first place, you can easily crack that open nukes.As far as nukes, why bother when you can just keep the war rolling along with no threat to youself? The war is there for its own sake, why end it?
Besides, I'd like to see a nuclear missile that could crack a brick on a ferroningen fortress. (Each brick being nearly six metres thick of concrete and weighing 130 tons for the largest fortress, 3 metres and 16 tons for the medium-sized ones, 1.5m and 2 tons for outposts.)
How'S that counter-productive?Yes, at the expense of the functionality of part of their fleet. Besides, nuclear weapons weren't much of an option against ferroningen fortresses, and using weapons of mass destruction would likely be counter-productive anyway.
So you're going to insult me then make the same arguement I did? How does that make sense?Serafina wrote:Wait...WHAT?avianmosquito wrote:They aren't really giant, the males are 60-80kg and 120-160cm with 80-120cm tails, the females are 75-90kg and 150-180cm with 60-80cm tails. (The reason tail length is important is because their tails are large, powerful and muscular, capable of smashing any bone in the human body in a single strike.) However, while it may seem like this is enough to allow them to quickly destroy a simini aircraft, it isn't. They would have to take a large melee weapon that negates any possibility of stealth and bash it repeatedly, where a single ballistae bolt or mangonel-thrown rock could put the aircraft out of commission. While it is true that ferroningen could simply place bombs, this would limit the number of aircraft they could take out to one each.
Look, a bomb is simply much better than a bat for destroying stuff.
Really? I did it just a few weeks ago to some asshole that parked in my spot.Humans are also easily that tall - yet we do not use bats to bash in vehicles.
Hence why I was arguing against it, you fucking idiot. Besides, we're talking about a larger, more potent melee weapon, like a battleaxe.Besides, if your species is too dumb to protect their airfields from a bunch of bat-armed thugs - how did they get aircraft in the first placec?
Again, the old issue - your species is simply too dumb to live.
True, but that point is moot because the steel is of the same quality.Just because it's steel it doesn't mean it's anything like the steel used in armored vehicles.
Problem is, it doesn't. A ferroningen or human can survive a hole that small through their heart, and even with a second hole they'll keep moving long enough to kill you, especially since you'll be dealing with somebody you couldn't tell from a log in the water a second ago who attacked you from 2 metres away and from behind.If it kills the target dead, i would say it has quite some stopping power.
You're making a fool out of yourself. Those weakspots are all neccesary components, and can be found on many human tanks completely unprotected.Again - too dumb to live.Yes, but there's two issues with that theory:
1. That's an MBT. The light tanks only have half that armour.
2. Simini tanks have a weak spot on every side. That's not too much worse than human tanks, which have a weakspot on every side but the front.
Front: hatch (driver&bow gunner) and bow turret
Sides: tracks
Rear: two vents (one vents the gases from the cannon and cycles air for the turret, the other vents gases from the engine and cycles air for the chassis)
Top: hatch (main&anti-aircraft gunners)
Bottom: no armour, just 1.25-2.5cm of 316L stainless steel. (The same material as the rest of the tank)
You don't get it, do you? There is no oxygen tank, so a lack of oxygen (like you'd find when your fucking tank is on fire) will make the tank inoperable, and if the air filter fails at 100c, that means if somebody sets fire to the tank, even the outside of it, you'll be dead to rights in a matter of minutes by asphixiation because the plastic filtration system will melt and the tank will fill with smoke.So they are faster than their opponents, are difficult to hit with their artillery weapons (who are simply not accurate enough to hit small, moving targets).Never the less, these are excellent tanks. They're fast for their size, although still slower overall than a human tank, have a low profile, extremely thick sloped armour for their size, and the outer layer is ceramic, making it so kinetic penetrators and shaped charge jets (which almost always hit at an oblique angle) ricochet off the hard surface, and are also amphibious, capable of moving nearly half as fast on water and doing so indefinitely. By modern standards, they're excellent tanks, but they have huge issues including a lack of onboard oxygen tanks, crappy plastic air filters that fail when their temperature exceeds 100c, a tendency to throw tracks and a tendency for the ceramic plates to fall off, the tracks fail, and the metal rust when the tank is set on fire.
Oxygen tanks and air filters are easy to replace. The rest just indicates idiotic enginering.
Oh, and- that's just hillariousand the metal rust when the tank is set on fire.
Seriously - when your tank is burning, rust should be the least of your concerns
No, I mean the primitive rockets the ferroningen have had for about a hundred years by the time the simini showed up and have used as a form of light artillery in dozens of their little wargames.Rocket? What rockets?Yes, but at that altitude the helicopter won't be manueverable enough to avoid the rockets, which are fairly fast, fired in numbers and can destroy them if they hit the right place. In fact, at 500m, they have a hard time accelerating at all due to a lack of ground effect. I know this is a fairly low flight ceiling, but we're dealing with a helicopter with a rotor diameter of 6.4m, half that of a modern attack helicopter.
Ooh, you mean the rockets you convienently brough to a place where you have absolutely no need for them, so that your UBER-guerilla opponents can steal them in such big numbers that they can trash your air force.
*overexaggerated sigh* Here we go again.*yawn* Leaving the impossibility to build such a fortress with their technology in the first place, you can easily crack that open nukes.As far as nukes, why bother when you can just keep the war rolling along with no threat to youself? The war is there for its own sake, why end it?
Besides, I'd like to see a nuclear missile that could crack a brick on a ferroningen fortress. (Each brick being nearly six metres thick of concrete and weighing 130 tons for the largest fortress, 3 metres and 16 tons for the medium-sized ones, 1.5m and 2 tons for outposts.)
Ending a war that you started to occupy your plebian masses blows the entire point of starting it in the first place. If you want an end to the war, you should of just had a peaceful relationship with the natives to begin with.How's that counter-productive?Yes, at the expense of the functionality of part of their fleet. Besides, nuclear weapons weren't much of an option against ferroningen fortresses, and using weapons of mass destruction would likely be counter-productive anyway.
You irraditate the place where your enemy lives and which you do not want, you terrify the shit out of thim, you kill lot's of him, wreck his infrastructure - where the drawback?
So why are the simini an effective power, and (more importantly) why aren't the survivors more ruthless? It's one thing when you're a colony under political control of a bunch of asshole ideologues from the homeworld; in that case I can almost understand their squeamishness about things like orbital bombardment. If they're the remnant of refugees from a destroyed homeworld, though, they have no other place to go. They're going to pull out all the stops.avianmosquito wrote:As far as that, it's a military evacuation but their really is that much fire, so the simini are fucked either way.Simon_Jester wrote:If energy and resources are cheap enough in simini society that bands of survivalist refugees can build their own interstellar spacecraft, yeah. The only problem... if resources and energy are that cheap, then a civil war on the Simini homeworld is liable to wipe out the entire species, because of the sheer volume of fire being thrown around.
This is the rhetorical equivalent of "I know you are, but what am I?" You have not responded with any comment of substance- no examples of organisms easily recovering from massive burns, which is exactly what you've granted your lizard-monsters the ability to do.No, but it isn't neccesary that all reptiles regenerate so long as these ones do.Do reptiles regenerate burn scars, empirically?Humans survive napalm more often than not. I see no reason why reptiles can't do the same.People can die from burn trauma long before their skin (or whatever's left of it) scars over to the point where they can hope to survive. I see no reason why lizards can't do the same.
If they're trying to shoot and scoot with a damn catapult, destroying one expensive aircraft per lizard on the raid is much better performance than they're liable to get. Lizards are cheap. Aircraft are not. And if the simini were competent (which, admittedly, they're not, being dumber than cavemen), they would simply keep a perimeter around their aircraft well outside catapult range, as all human militaries do.They aren't really giant, the males are 60-80kg and 120-160cm with 80-120cm tails, the females are 75-90kg and 150-180cm with 60-80cm tails. (The reason tail length is important is because their tails are large, powerful and muscular, capable of smashing any bone in the human body in a single strike.) However, while it may seem like this is enough to allow them to quickly destroy a simini aircraft, it isn't. They would have to take a large melee weapon that negates any possibility of stealth and bash it repeatedly, where a single ballistae bolt or mangonel-thrown rock could put the aircraft out of commission. While it is true that ferroningen could simply place bombs, this would limit the number of aircraft they could take out to one each.
Where, exactly, did the bolt enter and exit the vehicle? Did it penetrate the engine block? The relatively thin skin of the cabin? Remember, a Humvee, especially a civilian model, is not an armored car, much less a tank.Of course, but this was an H2 hummer, and it was penetrated lengthwise. I imagine the bolt had to go through 4-5cm of steel to do that, and it was a smaller one than you would see ferroningen using.
A flechette rifle ought to have excellent stopping power, since it flays whatever you shoot with it into hamburger at close range. If the simini were competent at small unit tactics (which, admittedly, they probably aren't, being dumber than cavemen), they would perform quite well against hulking lizards even at close range.The flechette rifles? Semi-automatic fire, 300rpm cyclic rate and zero stopping power. They don't compare to a light machine gun, although since simini are too weak to use a light machine gun (even one their size) with any accuracy at all unless using a bipod and a solid surface, the flechette rifle actually performs better.How does this not amount to the same thing for practical purposes at close quarters.
Therefore, instead of having armor immune to any practical mechanical artillery... they have armor immune to any practical mechanical artillery. Do not take my word for it. Ask anyone who actually knows shit about tanks.Yes, but there's two issues with that theory:The frontal aspect will sneer at anything less than shaped charge weapons (which the lizards don't know how to build) So will the back, being four inches of plate steel. That's the same armor as graced the bow of the infamous Tiger tank of World War Two, you know. The only way an arrow is cracking that is if it's made of depleted uranium and you shot it out of a cannon at about Mach 4.Frontal aspect: 10cm steel, 5cm carbon fibre, 10cm alumina. (Aluminium oxide, a ceramic.)
The rear aspect lacks the ceramic and carbon fibre, and has a vent to air for, and the rockeys were incendiaries.
1. That's an MBT. The light tanks only have half that armour.
And these weaknesses, which are roughly a foot across, make viable targets for mechanical artillery that must stand in the open and fire on the tank while it is spraying machine gun fire back at the artillerists? Are you out of your mind?2. Simini tanks have a weak spot on every side. That's not too much worse than human tanks, which have a weakspot on every side but the front...
This list of weaknesses is painfully contrived and largely irrelevant; none of those issues are "huge," except the tendency to throw tracks, which all tanks possess.Never the less, these are excellent tanks. They're fast for their size, although still slower overall than a human tank, have a low profile, extremely thick sloped armour for their size, and the outer layer is ceramic, making it so kinetic penetrators and shaped charge jets (which almost always hit at an oblique angle) ricochet off the hard surface, and are also amphibious, capable of moving nearly half as fast on water and doing so indefinitely. By modern standards, they're excellent tanks, but they have huge issues including a lack of onboard oxygen tanks, crappy plastic air filters that fail when their temperature exceeds 100c, a tendency to throw tracks and a tendency for the ceramic plates to fall off, the tracks fail, and the metal rust when the tank is set on fire.
Ground effect would restrict them to below treetop level. Do you even think these things through, or do you just throw out words in hopes that they will make the problem go away?Yes, but at that altitude the helicopter won't be manueverable enough to avoid the rockets, which are fairly fast, fired in numbers and can destroy them if they hit the right place. In fact, at 500m, they have a hard time accelerating at all due to a lack of ground effect. I know this is a fairly low flight ceiling, but we're dealing with a helicopter with a rotor diameter of 6.4m, half that of a modern attack helicopter.
Because it costs lives and money, because the damn lizards with their damn Iron Age weapons are a major threat to the idiot simini with their spaceships and machine guns?As far as nukes, why bother when you can just keep the war rolling along with no threat to youself? The war is there for its own sake, why end it?So what's the problem? They lack the capacity to make their own, or they stupidly obey an unenforceable law telling them not to do so?
This statement is so profoundly idiotic, based on such pitiful ignorance of the effects of nuclear weapons, and such breathtaking refusal to do even the slightest research, that I have now lost the last glimmer of hope that you are capable of independent thought, or of solving any of the problems in your own work except by sheer chance.Besides, I'd like to see a nuclear missile that could crack a brick on a ferroningen fortress. (Each brick being nearly six metres thick of concrete and weighing 130 tons for the largest fortress, 3 metres and 16 tons for the medium-sized ones, 1.5m and 2 tons for outposts.)
Why would they need to be? Seriously, there isn't a threat, the bit of their government that went with them started the war and milked the hell out of it to keep the plebes occupied so the civil war doesn't happen again, "pulling out the stops" would be counter-productive.Simon_Jester wrote:So why are the simini an effective power, and (more importantly) why aren't the survivors more ruthless? It's one thing when you're a colony under political control of a bunch of asshole ideologues from the homeworld; in that case I can almost understand their squeamishness about things like orbital bombardment. If they're the remnant of refugees from a destroyed homeworld, though, they have no other place to go. They're going to pull out all the stops.avianmosquito wrote:As far as that, it's a military evacuation but their really is that much fire, so the simini are fucked either way.Simon_Jester wrote:If energy and resources are cheap enough in simini society that bands of survivalist refugees can build their own interstellar spacecraft, yeah. The only problem... if resources and energy are that cheap, then a civil war on the Simini homeworld is liable to wipe out the entire species, because of the sheer volume of fire being thrown around.
Recovering is different from surviving, and since HUMANS, the stupid, ugly, flabby, disgusting creatures present on our planet in entirely too great of numbers, can survive these weapons logic follows that reptiles, which are covered with disposable scutes, should be able to as well.This is the rhetorical equivalent of "I know you are, but what am I?" You have not responded with any comment of substance- no examples of organisms easily recovering from massive burns, which is exactly what you've granted your lizard-monsters the ability to do.No, but it isn't neccesary that all reptiles regenerate so long as these ones do.Do reptiles regenerate burn scars, empirically?Humans survive napalm more often than not. I see no reason why reptiles can't do the same.People can die from burn trauma long before their skin (or whatever's left of it) scars over to the point where they can hope to survive. I see no reason why lizards can't do the same.
It's actually a couple hundred metres, but nevertheless you're right. How about rockets, then? Ferroningen infantry rockets have shorter (effective) range than catapults, true, but they can be carried by a single soldier and fired from the shoulder, so the only issue is getting out of there intact, which shouldn't be an issue when you can't be tracked by infrared and are naturally camouflaged, in fact I imagine you could just use a disposable launcher so you can drop it and get back in the water after firing, since in murky water ferroningen might as well be invisible. (In the same way a crocodile is)If they're trying to shoot and scoot with a damn catapult, destroying one expensive aircraft per lizard on the raid is much better performance than they're liable to get. Lizards are cheap. Aircraft are not. And if the simini were competent (which, admittedly, they're not, being dumber than cavemen), they would simply keep a perimeter around their aircraft well outside catapult range, as all human militaries do.They aren't really giant, the males are 60-80kg and 120-160cm with 80-120cm tails, the females are 75-90kg and 150-180cm with 60-80cm tails. (The reason tail length is important is because their tails are large, powerful and muscular, capable of smashing any bone in the human body in a single strike.) However, while it may seem like this is enough to allow them to quickly destroy a simini aircraft, it isn't. They would have to take a large melee weapon that negates any possibility of stealth and bash it repeatedly, where a single ballistae bolt or mangonel-thrown rock could put the aircraft out of commission. While it is true that ferroningen could simply place bombs, this would limit the number of aircraft they could take out to one each.
Therefore, the lizards will have to attack from inside a perimeter anyway. At which point they're more likely to sneak up to the aircraft and sabotage them than they are to sneak to within a hundred meters or so and hit the damn thing with a catapult before being riddled with bullets.
It entered through the rear windscreen, went through the front seat, the dashboard, and although it didn't hit the engine, it took out everything on the passenger side of it and exited through the grill. The thing was completely inoperable, which really made my day. Also, the steel of a hummer is quite a bit thicker than the steel of a normal civilian vehicle.Where, exactly, did the bolt enter and exit the vehicle? Did it penetrate the engine block? The relatively thin skin of the cabin? Remember, a Humvee, especially a civilian model, is not an armored car, much less a tank.Of course, but this was an H2 hummer, and it was penetrated lengthwise. I imagine the bolt had to go through 4-5cm of steel to do that, and it was a smaller one than you would see ferroningen using.
No, they don't. They leave a smaller hole than regular bullets and don't transfer much energy.A flechette rifle ought to have excellent stopping power, since it flays whatever you shoot with it into hamburger at close range.The flechette rifles? Semi-automatic fire, 300rpm cyclic rate and zero stopping power. They don't compare to a light machine gun, although since simini are too weak to use a light machine gun (even one their size) with any accuracy at all unless using a bipod and a solid surface, the flechette rifle actually performs better.How does this not amount to the same thing for practical purposes at close quarters.
Ferroningen are tougher than humans, especially since they carried treated wooden shields, wore hardened leather armour over their chests and their backs are covered in 2-3cm thick beta-keratin scutes. That's thicker than the scutes on the back of a crocodile, and since you have to press the muzzle against their backs to penetrate them, you shouldn't be able to penetrate ferroningen at all. Their fronts, the armour over them and the shields over that should consistently stop human pistol and shotgun ammunition, so what chance do simini weapons have? Further, their backs are immune to most simini small arms, even human small arms have issues with them. Simini rifles can do it, if only when using flechettes at close range with a good angle, and most human rifles, even the spectacularly hopeless M16, can penetrate, even if the 5.56mm doesn't do much better than the 4mm flechette rifles (the flechettes themselves are only 2.5mm once they leave the sabot) the simini use.If the simini were competent at small unit tactics (which, admittedly, they probably aren't, being dumber than cavemen), they would perform quite well against hulking lizards even at close range.
No, they themselves are only 10kg, and can only hold a weapon weighing about 1-2kg and not shake so bad they can't hit a hummer-sized target at ten metres. Their light machine guns are all either 2.5*25mm, 3*20mm, or 4*17mm, firing 900, 750 and 600rpm, respectively. The weapons weigh 2, 2.5 and 3kg, meaning only the lightest one can be used to any effect without being mounted, and the addition of one of their gigantic 100-round magazines seriously fucks up that idea. As a result, they keep it on their back and use a submachine gun most of the time, firing armour-peircing 5mm rounds that still can only penetrate the stomach of a ferroningen.Bear in mind that a simini's idea of an LMG would look to us like an M4 carbine with a cute little bipod attached to the bottom, or some such. The point of the exercise is to design the largest automatic weapon one of them can carry, and at the very least they should be able to manage a few kilograms.
The hatches are 50cm in diametre, small targets but not untouchable, the tracks are 50cm high but 3 metres long, very easy targets, and the vents, which are the most common targets of ferroningen anti-tank ambushes, are the ENTIRE rear side of the turret and half the rear of the chassis. After a single shot to the vent on the chassis, expect a disabled tank due to damage to the engine and then expect the gunner on the top machinegun to be shot from a concealed position before ferroningen throw firebombs onto the tank and watch it burn. (If the tank is alone, as they usually were for the first few months of the war, they'll pour oil on it and set it on fire from a good, safe distance afterwards. This is usually much more damaging, as it frequently causes rusting, plate loss and track failure.And these weaknesses, which are roughly a foot across, make viable targets for mechanical artillery that must stand in the open and fire on the tank while it is spraying machine gun fire back at the artillerists? Are you out of your mind?2. Simini tanks have a weak spot on every side. That's not too much worse than human tanks, which have a weakspot on every side but the front...
Yes, but due to their high speed (for their size) and tendency to lay on the gas pedal when attacked, (Not to flee, but to keep enough distance that you can safely shoot them without damaging your own tank) this problem is particularly large for them. As such, the tank's lowest-bidder nature shows itself at the worst possible moment, as ferroningen will likely come at you from multiple directions, hurling firebombs and shooting the machine gunner, should a track fail in their presence.This list of weaknesses is painfully contrived and largely irrelevant; none of those issues are "huge," except the tendency to throw tracks, which all tanks possess.Never the less, these are excellent tanks. They're fast for their size, although still slower overall than a human tank, have a low profile, extremely thick sloped armour for their size, and the outer layer is ceramic, making it so kinetic penetrators and shaped charge jets (which almost always hit at an oblique angle) ricochet off the hard surface, and are also amphibious, capable of moving nearly half as fast on water and doing so indefinitely. By modern standards, they're excellent tanks, but they have huge issues including a lack of onboard oxygen tanks, crappy plastic air filters that fail when their temperature exceeds 100c, a tendency to throw tracks and a tendency for the ceramic plates to fall off, the tracks fail, and the metal rust when the tank is set on fire.
In a helicopter that size, maybe.Ground effect would restrict them to below treetop level. Do you even think these things through, or do you just throw out words in hopes that they will make the problem go away?Yes, but at that altitude the helicopter won't be manueverable enough to avoid the rockets, which are fairly fast, fired in numbers and can destroy them if they hit the right place. In fact, at 500m, they have a hard time accelerating at all due to a lack of ground effect. I know this is a fairly low flight ceiling, but we're dealing with a helicopter with a rotor diameter of 6.4m, half that of a modern attack helicopter.
Let me get this straight... You're asking me why an attack helicopter needs to be nearly as heavy as an attack helicopter? You do realize that question is retarded, right? Same for the rest of your questions.For that matter, given that they are crewed by tiny little monkeys and armed with tiny little M4-sized weapons, why do they need to be nearly as heavy as an attack helicopter?
For the fifth and final time, the ferroningen are not actually a serious threat, (at least not by themselves) but the war still must go on. This way the nobles can keep the plebes occupied so that they can keep going to the bank.Because it costs lives and money, because the damn lizards with their damn Iron Age weapons are a major threat to the idiot simini with their spaceships and machine guns?As far as nukes, why bother when you can just keep the war rolling along with no threat to youself? The war is there for its own sake, why end it?So what's the problem? They lack the capacity to make their own, or they stupidly obey an unenforceable law telling them not to do so?
1. 6 metres is several times as thick as the walls of bomb shelters and might as well be invulnerable.This statement is so profoundly idiotic, based on such pitiful ignorance of the effects of nuclear weapons...Besides, I'd like to see a nuclear missile that could crack a brick on a ferroningen fortress. (Each brick being nearly six metres thick of concrete and weighing 130 tons for the largest fortress, 3 metres and 16 tons for the medium-sized ones, 1.5m and 2 tons for outposts.)
In other words they are still pathetically easy to destroy with current ATGMs, never mind futuristic ones. The tank is 3 metres long. I don't care how much you slope the armour (note; you can't slope the armour that much if you want any kind of internal volume), it won't be thick enough to defeat even a contemporary RPG-7. There is no reason to build these tiny tankettes; vehicle size is driven by physics and battlefield threats, not some bizarre fixed ratio of crew size to tank size. If a smaller number of full-size tanks would be more effective (which they would), that is what a starfaring civilisation would build.Never the less, these are excellent tanks. They're fast for their size, although still slower overall than a human tank, have a low profile, extremely thick sloped armour for their size
ARMOUR DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT. What, you don't think people tried building tanks like this in real life?and the outer layer is ceramic, making it so kinetic penetrators and shaped charge jets (which almost always hit at an oblique angle) ricochet off the hard surface
You've already said that they're the size of a Humvee, but slower than a modern tank. So in fact they are half the speed of a Humvee, and probably easier to hit even with a lower profile.Yes, but due to their high speed (for their size)
So no, of course you didn't think it through, why should you when you don't think anything else through? A helicopter that doesn't work out of ground effect would be a spectacularly useless waste of money, which is why no one has bothered to build one in real life.In a helicopter that size, maybe.Ground effect would restrict them to below treetop level. Do you even think these things through, or do you just throw out words in hopes that they will make the problem go away?
You do realise that you are incapable of basic reading comprehension or for that matter sentient thought, right?Let me get this straight... You're asking me why an attack helicopter needs to be nearly as heavy as an attack helicopter? You do realize that question is retarded, right?For that matter, given that they are crewed by tiny little monkeys and armed with tiny little M4-sized weapons, why do they need to be nearly as heavy as an attack helicopter?
So? The CEP on a contemporary intercontinental missile RV is less than 100 meters. The CEP on freefall bombs is under 10 meters. This is a futuristic sci-fi power capable of building starships. They will be able to deliver nuclear warheads with pinpoint accuracy. It's not as if you can hide these massive concrete fortresses from sensors.A one megaton bomb a kilometre away presents a blastwave no more pressure than a one kilogram bomb a metre away, and that sure as hell isn't breaking a 130 ton concrete brick.
You're missing the point here, the point is that the entire idea is top to bottom retarded. Not to mention, based on your short story, you can't write for shit anyway so you try to make up for it with pointless details that only prove how little thought went into your ideas.avianmosquito wrote:Why would they need to be? Seriously, there isn't a threat, the bit of their government that went with them started the war and milked the hell out of it to keep the plebes occupied so the civil war doesn't happen again, "pulling out the stops" would be counter-productive.
Funny, because unlike your retarded races us 'flabby, disgusting creatures' can at least think and develop methods to protect ourselves from weapons and also unlike you our methods work. You also to fail to state what percentage of people hit by napalm survive? You have thus far failed to say anything besides vague calls of many and some.Recovering is different from surviving, and since HUMANS, the stupid, ugly, flabby, disgusting creatures present on our planet in entirely too great of numbers, can survive these weapons logic follows that reptiles, which are covered with disposable scutes, should be able to as well.
Then build a wide enough perimeter to force them to burrow and lay mines along likely entrance points. They burrow up into mines and die, or get killed trying to climb or cut through a strong fence. If you really want overkill place sentry guns designed to only target creatures above x size, give them rounds able to kill the lizard people but not harm your tanks. That is if your tanks can survive anything...It's actually a couple hundred metres, but nevertheless you're right. How about rockets, then? Ferroningen infantry rockets have shorter (effective) range than catapults, true, but they can be carried by a single soldier and fired from the shoulder, so the only issue is getting out of there intact, which shouldn't be an issue when you can't be tracked by infrared and are naturally camouflaged, in fact I imagine you could just use a disposable launcher so you can drop it and get back in the water after firing, since in murky water ferroningen might as well be invisible. (In the same way a crocodile is)
So in other words it hit thin weak metal, glass, and plastic... Not very impressive for an anti-tank weapon.It entered through the rear windscreen, went through the front seat, the dashboard, and although it didn't hit the engine, it took out everything on the passenger side of it and exited through the grill. The thing was completely inoperable, which really made my day. Also, the steel of a hummer is quite a bit thicker than the steel of a normal civilian vehicle.
No reason to not fire incendiary rounds into the target then, burn them from the inside. Then you're merely having to get enough into them to drive them back from the pain or you burn their organs until they die.No, they don't. They leave a smaller hole than regular bullets and don't transfer much energy.
Then don't fight them on foot? Or develop a better anti-lizard round? or do anything other than what they're doing?Ferroningen are tougher than humans, especially since they carried treated wooden shields, wore hardened leather armour over their chests and their backs are covered in 2-3cm thick beta-keratin scutes. That's thicker than the scutes on the back of a crocodile, and since you have to press the muzzle against their backs to penetrate them, you shouldn't be able to penetrate ferroningen at all. Their fronts, the armour over them and the shields over that should consistently stop human pistol and shotgun ammunition, so what chance do simini weapons have? Further, their backs are immune to most simini small arms, even human small arms have issues with them. Simini rifles can do it, if only when using flechettes at close range with a good angle, and most human rifles, even the spectacularly hopeless M16, can penetrate, even if the 5.56mm doesn't do much better than the 4mm flechette rifles (the flechettes themselves are only 2.5mm once they leave the sabot) the simini use.
Doesn't stop them from using small rocket weapons of their own, or simple building better ammo as I have said.No, they themselves are only 10kg, and can only hold a weapon weighing about 1-2kg and not shake so bad they can't hit a hummer-sized target at ten metres. Their light machine guns are all either 2.5*25mm, 3*20mm, or 4*17mm, firing 900, 750 and 600rpm, respectively. The weapons weigh 2, 2.5 and 3kg, meaning only the lightest one can be used to any effect without being mounted, and the addition of one of their gigantic 100-round magazines seriously fucks up that idea. As a result, they keep it on their back and use a submachine gun most of the time, firing armour-peircing 5mm rounds that still can only penetrate the stomach of a ferroningen.
So these tanks can be defeated by Molotovs? If they are that bad then that why waste mass on even taking them along?The hatches are 50cm in diametre, small targets but not untouchable, the tracks are 50cm high but 3 metres long, very easy targets, and the vents, which are the most common targets of ferroningen anti-tank ambushes, are the ENTIRE rear side of the turret and half the rear of the chassis. After a single shot to the vent on the chassis, expect a disabled tank due to damage to the engine and then expect the gunner on the top machinegun to be shot from a concealed position before ferroningen throw firebombs onto the tank and watch it burn. (If the tank is alone, as they usually were for the first few months of the war, they'll pour oil on it and set it on fire from a good, safe distance afterwards. This is usually much more damaging, as it frequently causes rusting, plate loss and track failure.
Burn down the forests, collapse the caves, and force them to fight in the open. That or drop nukes that release radioactive salts over the parts the lizards normally live in and watch them shit their intestines out and die. They shouldn't have much cover.Finally, ferroningen are more likely to attack from a concealed position, don't expect the simini to know they're there until they fire.
You mean to say your retard monkeys can build space ships, but can't fireproof a tank? Really?They also might just hit the vents with firebombs and call it a day, although this isn't a guaranteed kill and won't damage the vehicle enough to cost the simini much money, so the simini will just bring in a new crew and call it even.
Why wouldn't they use a remotely operated turret? Or hell even a remote controlled tank? They lizards can't knock down your satellites so you can fight them from orbit using drones.Yes, but due to their high speed (for their size) and tendency to lay on the gas pedal when attacked, (Not to flee, but to keep enough distance that you can safely shoot them without damaging your own tank) this problem is particularly large for them. As such, the tank's lowest-bidder nature shows itself at the worst possible moment, as ferroningen will likely come at you from multiple directions, hurling firebombs and shooting the machine gunner, should a track fail in their presence.
Did no retard monkey ever think to add large rotors and make a vehicle that is larger and able to carry more weapons? Even in a lowest bidder scenario they one that can actually gain altitude will kill enough to justify the cost. That is how these things work when you're not retarded monkey people.In a helicopter that size, maybe.
Let me get this straight, you really don't understand why a smaller vehicle would be lighter?Let me get this straight... You're asking me why an attack helicopter needs to be nearly as heavy as an attack helicopter? You do realize that question is retarded, right? Same for the rest of your questions.
I prefer retard monkeys.1. Monkey-dogs. I know this doesn't seem important to you, but there's a difference.
Then why not stand off at range and frag lizards while backing away faster than they can run? It takes time to setup a catapult and guns have more range so either they have guns with less range than a mechanical catapult or they are retarded?2. Do you really think that just because their light machineguns are carbine-sized that the various cannonry on their helicopters will be as well? That's retarded.
Again, why don't they use larger rotors so they can actually have useful vehicles?3. Their typical attack helicopter weighs in at 2-3 tons. They range from choppers the size and shape of 1/2 scale hinds all the way to pave low sized aircraft.
Anything is a serious threat when I guy with a molotov, a heavy crossbow, and a large stick can threaten your tanks.For the fifth and final time, the ferroningen are not actually a serious threat, (at least not by themselves) but the war still must go on. This way the nobles can keep the plebes occupied so that they can keep going to the bank.
6m wall meet my friend 100 megaton nuke, you know the weapon build in months with 1960's tech... Imagine what making it GPS guided and earth penetrating would do.1. 6 metres is several times as thick as the walls of bomb shelters and might as well be invulnerable.
No you're being a retard again, a nuke hitting a stone wall head on will break those bricks. A well aimed hit will cave your wall in. This is with a small nuke, think of what a real H-bomb could do.2. You're vastly overrating the power of nuclear weapons. They do not automatically destroy everything, they aren't some magical superweapon, they're just another way of causing an explosion, if a big one, and therefore must follow the laws of physics. A one megaton bomb a kilometre away presents a blastwave no more pressure than a one kilogram bomb a metre away, and that sure as hell isn't breaking a 130 ton concrete brick.
Is that anything like a Mandrill?1. Monkey-dogs. I know this doesn't seem important to you, but there's a difference.
It's worse than that, the GBU-28 conventional bomb is rated to penetrate 6 meters of reinforced concrete before exploding and was in service by 1990, yet another fact avianmosquito seems to be in total ignorance of. A nuke would only be required if you want to take out a huge concrete fortress with one hit.Norade wrote:No you're being a retard again, a nuke hitting a stone wall head on will break those bricks.1. 6 metres is several times as thick as the walls of bomb shelters and might as well be invulnerable.
The sole exception is that he can come up with broadly plausible firearms.CaptainChewbacca wrote:I'm out. I know I was really good at refuting all of skeeter's bullshit, but he's just too stupid in too many different areas for me to properly articulate the magnitude of fail.
Its like he's failing on a quantum level; in all possible ways, in every possible location, in every subject, he fails simultaneously.
Of course, I was simply going after the nuke example as pointing out one example of stupidity per point should be enough with this idiot.Starglider wrote:It's worse than that, the GBU-28 conventional bomb is rated to penetrate 6 meters of reinforced concrete before exploding and was in service by 1990, yet another fact avianmosquito seems to be in total ignorance of. A nuke would only be required if you want to take out a huge concrete fortress with one hit.Norade wrote:No you're being a retard again, a nuke hitting a stone wall head on will break those bricks.1. 6 metres is several times as thick as the walls of bomb shelters and might as well be invulnerable.
As previously noted interstellar civilisations wouldn't even have to bother with nukes, they could just tow a nickel-iron asteroid into orbit of the planet, and shave bits off to use as kinetic impactors. For an ongoing conflict bringing a mass driver and projectile cutter (for stable aerodynamics) will get orders of magnitude more ground bombardment kilotonnage per weight than a hold full of tacnukes.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing either as long as you realize the implications and set up the scenario in such a way that such a thing can actually make sense. For starters, the system must have emerged in a time when the society had no roughly equal or superior external enemies who did not share their restrictions (or different restrictions but similarly constraining restrictions), and you need to realize that either the system or the society probably won't survive very long if such a force does present itself. I proposed a set-up by which the funny hair colored wank supersoldiers might actually make sense in context a while back, but predictably avianmosquito rejected it because he seems allergic to admitting his ideas are bad and need serious change.Coyote wrote:Handwaving things away with political, social or religious beliefs only goes so far because eventually you have a society that has ideologically limited its own ability to defend itself so much that they are easy targets for a society that would do these things.
Agreed, and I was thinking of that while watching Doctor Who recently... but such nuance would have been beyond avianskeeter.Junghalli wrote:Which isn't necessarily a bad thing either as long as you realize the implications and set up the scenario in such a way that such a thing can actually make sense. For starters, the system must have emerged in a time when the society had no roughly equal or superior external enemies who did not share their restrictions...Coyote wrote:Handwaving things away with political, social or religious beliefs only goes so far because eventually you have a society that has ideologically limited its own ability to defend itself so much that they are easy targets for a society that would do these things.
A story about a society with lots of self-imposed restrictions on its own potential running into an enemy willing to use every ability available to it and being forced to adapt or die could be pretty interesting.
I think his fundamental problem was pride. He could actually have gotten a lot out of this thread if he wasn't so unwilling to consider the possibility that his ideas might be bad and need heavy revision. A lot of his ideas were terrible and his writing had problems, sure, but that could be improved. Writing and worldbuilding are learned skills. The problem is that he seems resistant to acknowledge that he is unskilled, and it's difficult to acquire competence if you refuse to admit your own incompetence.Coyote wrote:[EDIT]: A tragic waste; the guy had technical competency at writing but just no discipline, and wielded plot device/deux ex machina like a blunt instrument.
The OP posted some ideas for his personal universe. Everybody thought they were bad and told him so. He didn't react very well. He has since been banned for bad behavior in a SLAM thread and generally having a pattern of bad debating practice.Commander Xillian wrote:I'm a bit lost...
What's going gong?
