Dig out the Space Marines

[Ford Prefect]

I would think that the Imperial Fists launching pre-fabricated structures from orbit would be going against the spirit of the OP.

[Cykeisme]

It's fairly obvious that there gun barrels are actually quite large and there is no visible way for them to fire subcaliber ammunition without violating Occam's Razor horribly. I think it might be because the toy had the ammo belts scaled differently or something, because I recall the APUs having quite large projectiles in the movie.

The gun barrels are quite large, the ammunition loading ports are large, but the actual muzzle opening is tiny: http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/a ... _02_01.jpg

As has been stated, they're they're 30mm cannons.

I agree they they're very intimidatingly bulky, and the precise contents of all that volume are anybody's guess. It's possible they might actually be something useful like a liquid-circulation cooling jacket, rather than an attempt to compensate as has been suggested.

The point is that the cannons are comparable with modern technology, with the distinct possibility that they may be worse due to the manner they manufacture their ammunition.

It's not surprising that they're able to kill Sentinels, though, since the drones are clearly designed to be mass-produced rather than effective individual units; they're not even hardened against EMP, even though the AIs know that such weapons are commonly deployed by the human resistance.

Frankly, Sentinel durability is about as much an issue as Sentinel stupidity. They'd get shredded by bolter fire.

[MJ12 Commando]

The entire point of the Matrix redpills and Zion is that they're there to give the illusion of choice to the 1% of people who can't accept the Matrix.

The entire reason they aren't hardened against EMP would likely be to give them the illusion of hope so they would actually keep doing the machines' bidding. I don't know about you, but Invincible Death Robots aren't something which would make me particularly inclined to go out and rescue people from the Matrix.

The AIs have given the Resistance everything they have-the Resistance has no apparent manufacturing base whatsoever. Most likely the ammunition was outright given to them, along with the APUs and the cannon themselves and the hovercraft, because they sure as hell aren't manufacturing any of them.

Matrix "EMP" systems on hovercraft are also exceedingly funky and may not have any relation to proper EMP whatsoever. As seen in TSR, nuclear weapons do not have enough electromagnetic disruption effect to kill the Machines' military units.

And a 30mm cannon shell of similar density and proportions has 3 times the mass of a similar 20mm round-ignoring hardness, the bolter shell has to have about 1.8 times the velocity to have similar kinetic energy (and still, repeated fire was necessary to down single Sentinels in most cases, even with penetrations, implying a fairly large amount of redundancy in the Sentinels themselves).

Again, none of this is saying they'll shrug off Bolterfire, but they'll have to work a bit.

[Gullible Jones]

It would be nice if that stuff were canon but I think they threw all that out with the sequels.

[MJ12 Commando]

It would be nice if that stuff were canon but I think they threw all that out with the sequels.

In the first movie it was at least partially implied that the rebels were building the EMP systems and whatnot.

In the second and third the Architect's revelation and the state of Zion pretty much throws any explanation besides "the machines were giving the humans everything so they'd have a place to stick the people who didn't like the Matrix".

[Ford Prefect]

It would be nice if that stuff were canon but I think they threw all that out with the sequels.

He's inferring much of that from the information we actually get in the sequels, such as the Architect's speech, where it is revealed that Zion is put together by the Machines in an attempt to keep humanity better under control. In all honesty, they probably were treating Zion itself with kid gloves, just so they didn't have to spend that much time rebuilding it.

Admittedly, he really shouldn't be giving TSR any credence at all, given that it is a highly suspect document.

[Balrog]

The entire point of the Matrix redpills and Zion is that they're there to give the illusion of choice to the 1% of people who can't accept the Matrix.

The entire reason they aren't hardened against EMP would likely be to give them the illusion of hope so they would actually keep doing the machines' bidding. I don't know about you, but Invincible Death Robots aren't something which would make me particularly inclined to go out and rescue people from the Matrix.

Which is all fine and dandy up until you actually have to go in and kill them all. By that point it doesn't matter if the humans believe themselves to have a fighting chance, because you've switched from guerrilla warfare to pest control, and it's not like any of them are going to survive to tell the next batch "Hey, you're all screwed, might as well grab a knife and end it quickly."

Were there a time to take the kids gloves off, it would've been at the Dock battle. Instead we get Sentinels lollygaging around and getting shot up, rather then something "exceedingly efficient" like poison gas.

[MJ12 Commando]

Which is all fine and dandy up until you actually have to go in and kill them all. By that point it doesn't matter if the humans believe themselves to have a fighting chance, because you've switched from guerrilla warfare to pest control, and it's not like any of them are going to survive to tell the next batch "Hey, you're all screwed, might as well grab a knife and end it quickly."

Were there a time to take the kids gloves off, it would've been at the Dock battle. Instead we get Sentinels lollygaging around and getting shot up, rather then something "exceedingly efficient" like poison gas.

Poison gas takes time and effort to produce and has its own problems, like hovercraft at the very least being NBC sealed-and if one of them runs off, manages to shrug off whatever tailing units there are, and comes back after the humans have resettled... they break the illusion.

Assuming that the machines have very efficient recycling they may, in the end, not actually use many consumables in the Dock Battle at all in most cases because they can just salvage everything save the consumables like explosives, and recycle most of it.

As we don't know the precise details of Matrixverse fabrication technology and production speed for the Machines, assuming poison gas would be more efficient than throwing around some general purpose units they probably have millions to billions of anyways just for maintenance and whatnot may not be the best course.

[Lone_Prodigy]

Poison gas takes time and effort to produce and has its own problems, like hovercraft at the very least being NBC sealed-and if one of them runs off, manages to shrug off whatever tailing units there are, and comes back after the humans have resettled... they break the illusion.

Assuming that the machines have very efficient recycling they may, in the end, not actually use many consumables in the Dock Battle at all in most cases because they can just salvage everything save the consumables like explosives, and recycle most of it.

As we don't know the precise details of Matrixverse fabrication technology and production speed for the Machines, assuming poison gas would be more efficient than throwing around some general purpose units they probably have millions to billions of anyways just for maintenance and whatnot may not be the best course.

Why, then, were their only ballistic weapons thrown bombs rather than guns, missiles, etc. Why did they fly around in huge swarms instead of making a beeline for the defenders? Why didn't the machines set a kill-switch for the human atmosphere machines (very exceedingly efficient)? There's no good reason why they couldn't just turn off the human water/air machines since the machines built them in the first place, yet they chose to lose thousands of sentinels instead.

[MJ12 Commando]

Why, then, were their only ballistic weapons thrown bombs rather than guns, missiles, etc. Why did they fly around in huge swarms instead of making a beeline for the defenders? Why didn't the machines set a kill-switch for the human atmosphere machines (very exceedingly efficient)? There's no good reason why they couldn't just turn off the human water/air machines since the machines built them in the first place, yet they chose to lose thousands of sentinels instead.

Those "thrown" bombs were fairly clearly self propelled to a high degree based on their performance-they definitely weren't unguided and weren't aerodynamic enough to maneuver the same way a modern glide bomb would. Furthermore, being thrown rather than fired from a gun is a fairly academic distinction when the weapon already has its own guidance and propulsion system.

A kill switch might have been discovered-a lack of actual manufacturing capacity does not mean one lacks the knowledge to build something.

And they likely have a lot of Sentinels, the things being fairly general purpose designs with clear multipurpose abilities, and again, depending on their recycling methods, the actual loss of efficiency may be very small.

Although they clearly aren't all *that* good at the planning thing, and the military thing either, assuming they're total incompetents when we know they managed to defeat the entire human world somehow, and that the humans were desperate enough to kill all plant and animal life on the world to deny it to the machines, implies that they have (had?) some degree of military capability to a great degree and they're choosing not to use it.

At this point I doubt they care either way and are probably throwing Sentinels at the humans for entertainment. They clearly aren't an actual threat. :p

[Balrog]

Poison gas takes time and effort to produce and has its own problems, like hovercraft at the very least being NBC sealed-and if one of them runs off, manages to shrug off whatever tailing units there are, and comes back after the humans have resettled... they break the illusion.

Poison gas' problems are minimal at best, especially since it's being employed in an enclosed space against an enemy with no apparent NBC gear with the added bonus that a heavier-then-air agent would simply sink down into the lower reaches and kill more humans.

And there were no more hovercraft at the Dock battle, they'd already been wiped out except for the two stragglers, and only an idiot would try poison against a sealed vehicle.

Assuming that the machines have very efficient recycling they may, in the end, not actually use many consumables in the Dock Battle at all in most cases because they can just salvage everything save the consumables like explosives, and recycle most of it.

As we don't know the precise details of Matrixverse fabrication technology and production speed for the Machines, assuming poison gas would be more efficient than throwing around some general purpose units they probably have millions to billions of anyways just for maintenance and whatnot may not be the best course.

Even if they do have great recycling tech, they're still expending more energy and material picking up the pieces and putting them back together, then they would have simply tossing down some bombs, or using their super-duper combat bots that are immune to human weaponry. Just because they have the Squiddies to waste doesn't make their behavior during the battle any less efficient or stupid.

[Cykeisme]

Funny how MJ12 Commando used the term "Occam's Razor" on the previous page of this thread.

The machines are just incompetent.