Killing Kaiju?

[Simon_Jester]

Couldn't you program a wheeled or tracked vehicle to do that?

[Sea Skimmer]

Walking mechs would have some advantages in lots of terrain situations though, so I could see a use for something the size of a tank bringing heavy weaponry into such enviroments. In an urban enviroment a mech might not be able to go into a normal building, but it could climb over a pile of rubble for instance that would halt a tank in its tracks.

Assuming it can climb using its arms, sure. If its limited to its legs, this is a far less certain advantage. Think about how big a step you can climb just using your legs, and without jumping. It isn't much really, a greater proportion of your height then a tank yes, but this is only true of shear vertical obstructions.

If you want the mech to jump and climb debris, you've got a far more demanding requirement, and it becomes highly dependent on the nature of the rubble. If it isn't stable this isn't going to work. You weigh more then a person, friction becomes an issue in terms of what you can jump onto and not slide off of it; ROBOT CLEATS GO!)

Tanks meanwhile can climb 60-70 percent grades, meaning that a bulldozer blade becomes a really powerful tool to create such a thing.

It isn't the rubble after all that is the real problem, its the rubble masking lines of sight and lines of fire. Heavy vehicles have the firepower to shoot through non trival amounts of debris and buildings , and the armor to withstand some level of ambush, and bulldozer blades solve a lot of problems. The mech is going to be inferior on all of this.

Though it is worth considering what a mech might be able to do given an assault ladder. That could be interesting in some situations.

They would still have to be relatively small though, because the other issue with giant mechs is that they basically become giant targets sillouetted against the sky. It doesn't matter how much mobility you have if every turret within a mile can easily see and target you. Basically you would still need to be scaled to make use of the cover provided by normal sized one story buildings and terrain features.

Even that standard is pretty high up, to make a horrible pun. A human being can gain useful cover from an eight inch deep hole. A building is way bigger. I certainly do think legged robots have a place, and power armor would be nice if you can actually make it work without excessive bulk, but its gotta be real small.

Another arguement for human or near human sized mechs is the intuitivness of the machine when paired with human perception. If you are wearing the thing and it can move and respond to commands at something approaching normal human movements and responses (a big if) it takes a lot of thinking out of the equation. When we want to walk all of us just walk. When we want to reverse a tank we need a dedicated driver who is trained to understand the controls, movement characteristics and limitations of the vehicle in question. I think this can somewhat be negated by the abilities of computers to replicate this type of "natural" understanding of a machines capabilities similar to what we have for our own bodies, which may also free us from using human forms for these machines to achieve the same effect.

I think this is completely false. We only walk because we spent years refining our ability to do so in our own body, that won't directly carry over into a much larger mass. Walking in a mech of any serious size will either require advanced computer controls for stability and foot placement, which will take some training to deal with, or else just a vast amount of training and experience. Driving a vehicle meanwhile is just not that hard at all. For one thing you can't fall on your ass! An entire axis of motion is removed from consideration.

Also vehicles ave a big advantage in that driving is less work then walking. This is a problem with any 'walking' based mecha control system. Even if you are only moving your own weight, you still have to do that, and thus will still get tired. Not a crippling problem, but annoying, and very annoying if the mecha is too big to be easily transported by vehicle. Even just two power armored guys might not fit in a reasonable armored personal carrier.

[Metahive]

They did totally say that. They said that the portal was getting larger with each object sent through.

I just watched the movie again and I must have missed where they said that. Can you tell me where it crops up?

[Metahive]

Crap, missed the editing window,

there's a scene where it's said that the Kaiju are coming through in shorter and shorter intervals and that soon the breach will be permanently opened. But that isn't the same as saying that they had to start with the small fry and gradually increase the threat. The movie implies that it was the human resistance that made the invaders improve their monsters, but considering it's also said that the aliens have already done this before to other worlds that's a bit thin.

[Gaidin]

Well, that was also a scene where they were literally working the math on how long it'd be before it'd be permanently open. Or at least two would come out at once, if I recall correctly.

[jollyreaper]

The problem with movies like Pacific Rim is that they require the bad guys to act like video game villains for basically no established reason at all. They don't need to send their monsters piecemeal or start with the weakest first and gradually up the ante other than to give the good guys a sporting chance.

What if that bug was a feature?

So imagine the aliens attack in an Independence Day scenario. How about that, they're using weapons we can counter with what's already in our inventory. Plucky humans win! Yay, us. We research their tech and rearm for the next invasion which, sure enough, happens after we've recovered. They're bigger, better, badder, and yet we can just barely kick their asses again. Yay, us! Rearm, we are invaded again. Wash, rinse, repeat. We're generations into this now, we're using weapons now inconceivable to pre-invasion humanity. We're having to change ourselves to use these weapons. It's a selection pressure and we are evolving. And some of the scientists are starting to wonder at just how convenient this is. The invasion is always bad enough to knock us on our dicks but never knock us out. We fight hard and we just barely win. Bug-eyed invaders are just the means, what sort of entity is actually manipulating the ends? The darkest explanation I can think of us violence seems to be the teaching method we best respond to and some alien intelligence is helping us stimulate our development until we reach the point where we become interesting enough to be worth talking to.

[jollyreaper]

That being said, there is one movie, at least, that sort of managed to pull off that premise effectively. Although, even there I still don't remember why they didn't just use guns.

The powerloader is an improvised weapon. She can't really a-team a gun onto it in the five minutes she had.

I think the comics had them using modified powerloaders for dealing with aliens. I can imagine why in-universe humans weren't weaponizing them before. The rules for why mecha and power armor don't really make sense would hold true. Against human opponents, a tank beats a mech for cost, lowered complexity and survivability. Aliens would be a unique opponent where the mobility and flexibility of an armored powerloader could trump the utility of a tank or apc, at least in certain environments.

[jollyreaper]

Another arguement for human or near human sized mechs is the intuitivness of the machine when paired with human perception. If you are wearing the thing and it can move and respond to commands at something approaching normal human movements and responses (a big if) it takes a lot of thinking out of the equation. When we want to walk all of us just walk. When we want to reverse a tank we need a dedicated driver who is trained to understand the controls, movement characteristics and limitations of the vehicle in question. I think this can somewhat be negated by the abilities of computers to replicate this type of "natural" understanding of a machines capabilities similar to what we have for our own bodies, which may also free us from using human forms for these machines to achieve the same effect.

There's also the question of what purpose the human serves in the first place. As a story, we need human protagonists because it's much harder to become emotionally invested in a machine. As a technology, things are less sentimental, more practical. A torpedo plane is a hell of a dramatic thing, like a damn knight charging with lance lowered. It was the limitation of the technology, of course. The torpedoes could run straight but couldn't get to the target any other way, couldn't track, were dumb as bricks. So you had to have a human in a plane ride that sucker into range, braving the flak and fighters and then pickle that fish and then watch that wake streak home. Torpedo planes proved less survivable than dive bombers but the principle still remained, a human had to get that weapon into position and baby it until the last possible second. Stand-off missiles take all the romance out of it and hopefully lets the pilot avoid the dying for his country part. The weapon is fired far from the target and the aircraft is spared being exposed to enemy fire.

With any technology, there's going to be limiting factors where we really can't do without a human in the loop. We used to need to fire hellfire missiles from manned aircraft. Now we can do it from thousands of miles away with a drone. If the enemy had any kind of real technical capability, could we count on controlling that drone in hostile airspace? If not, you need a manned aircraft. What if the drone is smart enough to be trusted to select and engage targets autonomously? Any guided weapon is essentially a robot but we tend to think of a pilot pulling a trigger and a missile hitting a target seconds later as different from a general pressing a button and setting the killbot off on patrol to possibly kill someone a week later. This feels indiscriminate. Of course, landmines are morally about the same but some forgotten mine blowing your leg off a decade after the war ends somehow feels less creepy than a terminator walking out of the jungle and shooting random people. The weapon that chases you down is always more terrifying.

My sneaking suspicion is that by the time we're able to perfect the tech to make a starship trooper armor, there would also be no need to have it manned or even look humanoid. A flying drone with a big gun is probably more useful than a starship trooper, assuming the command and control issues are worked out. And given the history of friendly fire incidents, humans aren't too good at avoiding blue-on-blue in the first place.

[Darkevilme]

The problem with movies like Pacific Rim is that they require the bad guys to act like video game villains for basically no established reason at all. They don't need to send their monsters piecemeal or start with the weakest first and gradually up the ante other than to give the good guys a sporting chance.

What if that bug was a feature?

So imagine the aliens attack in an Independence Day scenario. How about that, they're using weapons we can counter with what's already in our inventory. Plucky humans win! Yay, us. We research their tech and rearm for the next invasion which, sure enough, happens after we've recovered. They're bigger, better, badder, and yet we can just barely kick their asses again. Yay, us! Rearm, we are invaded again. Wash, rinse, repeat. We're generations into this now, we're using weapons now inconceivable to pre-invasion humanity. We're having to change ourselves to use these weapons. It's a selection pressure and we are evolving. And some of the scientists are starting to wonder at just how convenient this is. The invasion is always bad enough to knock us on our dicks but never knock us out. We fight hard and we just barely win. Bug-eyed invaders are just the means, what sort of entity is actually manipulating the ends? The darkest explanation I can think of us violence seems to be the teaching method we best respond to and some alien intelligence is helping us stimulate our development until we reach the point where we become interesting enough to be worth talking to.

You know. Just my 2 cents, but I'm not sure anyone who only wants to talk to someone who has been shaped by centuries upon centuries of tragedy and warfare is someone we should want to talk to. And it paints a very 'the dog was eaten by cthulhu' picture of galactic society if that's the expected norm.

[Simon_Jester]

They might have other ambitions.

I remember a story by David Drake where aliens came to Earth and helped us with all sorts of technologies, including war. They routinely traveled among humans and socialized with them.

The story revolved around one particular alien, going on a hunting trip with a human. As I recall it, the alien kept talking about how humans had come far enough to be impressive, and making bemused and cryptic references to some upcoming fleet exercises between the new human space-forces and some alien space-forces. The last exchange of dialogue went something like:

Human, lowering shotgun: "No, we don't shoot sitting ducks."

Alien: "Oh, I understand perfectly. Neither do we."

[Metahive]

What if that bug was a feature?

So imagine the aliens attack in an Independence Day scenario. How about that, they're using weapons we can counter with what's already in our inventory. Plucky humans win! Yay, us. We research their tech and rearm for the next invasion which, sure enough, happens after we've recovered. They're bigger, better, badder, and yet we can just barely kick their asses again. Yay, us! Rearm, we are invaded again. Wash, rinse, repeat. We're generations into this now, we're using weapons now inconceivable to pre-invasion humanity. We're having to change ourselves to use these weapons. It's a selection pressure and we are evolving. And some of the scientists are starting to wonder at just how convenient this is. The invasion is always bad enough to knock us on our dicks but never knock us out. We fight hard and we just barely win. Bug-eyed invaders are just the means, what sort of entity is actually manipulating the ends? The darkest explanation I can think of us violence seems to be the teaching method we best respond to and some alien intelligence is helping us stimulate our development until we reach the point where we become interesting enough to be worth talking to.

There was once a german general by the name of Heinz Guderian, he coined a very important maxime, "Klotzen, nicht kleckern!", which freely translated means "Don't half-ass shit, guys!" (literally translated it means "bringt it, don't spill!"). If you want to win a war, you better fully commit to it and press your advantage to the fullest.
If there're warlike aliens out there, it would be very, VERY contrived if none of them ever considered this because that's really quite basic strategic thought.

It's just like the Xindi tipping their hat early in Enterprise, there was really no reason for it other than to give the heroes a sporting chance. The aliens in Pacific Rim could have send pebbles of differing sizes through the rift until it was big enough to allow an all out attack with dozens of Kaiju at once. Or as I said, just leak their contagion through the rift until human civilisation collapses due to fucked up oceans. That they acted as they did felt very scripted and gamey.

[HMS Sophia]

So imagine the aliens attack in an Independence Day scenario. How about that, they're using weapons we can counter with what's already in our inventory. Plucky humans win! Yay, us. We research their tech and rearm for the next invasion which, sure enough, happens after we've recovered. They're bigger, better, badder, and yet we can just barely kick their asses again. Yay, us! Rearm, we are invaded again. Wash, rinse, repeat. We're generations into this now, we're using weapons now inconceivable to pre-invasion humanity. We're having to change ourselves to use these weapons. It's a selection pressure and we are evolving. And some of the scientists are starting to wonder at just how convenient this is. The invasion is always bad enough to knock us on our dicks but never knock us out. We fight hard and we just barely win. Bug-eyed invaders are just the means, what sort of entity is actually manipulating the ends? The darkest explanation I can think of us violence seems to be the teaching method we best respond to and some alien intelligence is helping us stimulate our development until we reach the point where we become interesting enough to be worth talking to.

X-Com. What you just described is X-Com, the new one at least.
By the end of it, the human forces have advanced spectacularly. While they start with what amount to modern day equipment (Assault rifles and body armour), they eventually have flying power armour and plasma weapons... Oh, and gene modified super soldiers, quadriplegics strapped into massive cyborg fighting suits and Psychics with the power to ruin anyone's day. Changing humanity? Just a little bit...

[Metahive]

I always thought this was a rather dumb plan. Yeah, your wards might become strong enough for whatever purpose you have for them in mind, but since this was achieved through committing atrocities against them, it might turn out they now hate you with a vengeance and will aim for your destruction.

[HMS Sophia]

I always thought this was a rather dumb plan. Yeah, your wards might become strong enough for whatever purpose you have for them in mind, but since this was achieved through committing atrocities against them, it might turn out they now hate you with a vengeance and will aim for your destruction.

We're still talking about X-Com, aren't we
I get the idea behind it, but yes, you do end up with the problem of all humanity being pissed. All of humanity who now has spaceships an incredibly experience soldiers. Is there anything given by this scenario that can't be done by aliens turning up and going "We'll give you all this tech if you join our alliance against -insert big bad of choice-"?

[Darkevilme]

There was once a german general by the name of Heinz Guderian, he coined a very important maxime, "Klotzen, nicht kleckern!", which freely translated means "Don't half-ass shit, guys!" (literally translated it means "bringt it, don't spill!"). If you want to win a war, you better fully commit to it and press your advantage to the fullest.
If there're warlike aliens out there, it would be very, VERY contrived if none of them ever considered this because that's really quite basic strategic thought.

It's just like the Xindi tipping their hat early in Enterprise, there was really no reason for it other than to give the heroes a sporting chance. The aliens in Pacific Rim could have send pebbles of differing sizes through the rift until it was big enough to allow an all out attack with dozens of Kaiju at once. Or as I said, just leak their contagion through the rift until human civilisation collapses due to fucked up oceans. That they acted as they did felt very scripted and gamey.

Well. They did say something about how the smaller earlier kaiju were scouts, a way of learning our capabilities and where all the population centers were. Though I can't help feeling they could of used less noticeable scouts, like (if assuming biotechnology is their entire shtick for the aliens and a radio scanner isn't an option) chucking hive minded alien pidgeons in a giant spacecoral beachball(to handle the coming through an undersea rift) or something. Wouldn't of learned the capabilities but would of maybe led to more coordinated set of initial strikes...for that matter. You don't NEED the portal large for an all out attack, you can just have kaiju come through the rift one at a time and SIT there around it and hibernate until you have a dozen of them unless the critters have an unusually short lifespan. (granted, this'd give you only the smaller category 1 scout kaiju, but if combined with the beachball of alien pidgeons it'd give you a solid first strike).

[jollyreaper]

I always thought this was a rather dumb plan. Yeah, your wards might become strong enough for whatever purpose you have for them in mind, but since this was achieved through committing atrocities against them, it might turn out they now hate you with a vengeance and will aim for your destruction.

If these aliens are sufficiently powerful, then having the entire human race pissed off at them might warrant as much concern as angering a lethargic hamster.

Just for the sake of argument, if the alien entity is a machine mind, maybe fleshy beings are considered a precursor to another machine intelligence the way that oxygen-producing algae are a prerequisite to life as we know it. The machine intelligence can already build minds it knows how to make but fostering new minds from new planets has the potential for creating novel minds. And by stressing the fleshy species and seeding them with technology, the impetus to build a SKYNET grows.

That's just explaining the twist. The twist itself is we aren't defeating the plans of an alien intelligence but playing right into it. The only true way to win would be suicide as a species. We will not play your game.

I like the Drake example. That's kind of like the Unbreakable twist.

Never played the remake but yeah, the original x-com did have that classic invasion thing going on, just hit humans hard enough to let them best you. It really is terrible strategy if the goal is actually winning.

[Metahive]

The Shadows in Babylon5 tried this approach. Problem is they eventually forgot what point they wanted to make and mistook the means for the end, violent evolution for violent evolution's sake, not to actually get anywhere specific. That's one of the ways to get this scenario right.

If you bring in cosmic superbeings with immeasurable power into it then the danger is always that you make the story pointless, because humanity has little believable chance to get any sort of happy ending either way. Unless you want to write a bleak and depressing story of course.

Never played the remake but yeah, the original x-com did have that classic invasion thing going on, just hit humans hard enough to let them best you. It really is terrible strategy if the goal is actually winning.

The remake has the aliens gradually up the ante because the Ethereals, who run the whole show in this version, are on the lookout for new host bodies who combine physical toughness and psychic prowess just right. Their plan could have worked if the Über-Ethereal, the final boss of the campaign, hadn't been such a pushover, since X-Com was really the only thing that stood between the aliens and a full-on domination of Earth.

[jollyreaper]

Yeah. The shadow argument didn't hold together logically but that wasn't a problem for the show; the shadows were true believers and followed through. Delusional characters aren't a problem so long as the author isn't also sharing in the delusion!

I did love how the shadow gameplay was bigger than the conventional dark lord conquers all trope.

The xcom remake, wow. There are no new ideas, just ones you haven't heard of yet.

[LadyTevar]

The Shadows and the Vorlons were both True Believers, unfortunately.

So, now that the new Godzilla is out, how do you kill a beastie that survived a 21ton underwater nuke back in 1954 with no sign of damage.

[Borgholio]

I haven't seen the movie yet, but there have been more than one Godzilla before. What if it DID kill him and this was another one?

[jwl]

The Shadows and the Vorlons were both True Believers, unfortunately.

So, now that the new Godzilla is out, how do you kill a beastie that survived a 21ton underwater nuke back in 1954 with no sign of damage.

Beyond that, how do you kill one that survived a direct hit from the Permian extinction asteroid?
Although that was 200 million years ago, so...

[Black Admiral]

That isn't proof he took a direct hit from the thing; it's a guy speculating as to the origins of '14 Godzilla.

[Majin Gojira]

According to the film and the back story, many of the nuclear tests (1954's Castle tests) were to try and kill Godzilla. So, we can assume that the disaster that was one of the ones that inspired the original film (Castle Bravo and the Lucky Dragon No. 5) is a culprit for "What can Godzilla (US) take and survive".

The Castle Bravo (the Lucky Dragon related test) was a 6 Megatons bomb. The most powerful Castle nuke was 8 Megatons.

So, it seems like 4 to 8 Megatons is the range of Godzilla's survivability. Average around 6.

I guess that means that Godzilla could most likely take a Category 5 Kaiju like Slantern.

[LadyTevar]

Why are there sailing ships in the first panel with the Shinomura? Why are there trees falling off Godzilla's hide?

[Skywalker_T-65]

I didn't notice that at first, but yeah...what's with the ships 250 million years ago?