An SC strike team on Aliens

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

Ok since there was the clonetrooper force sub of Aliens this came to my mind.

A strike team of
22 Terran marines
4 Firebats
2 Ghosts
And 1 Goliath

get to LV426. How would they fare up angainst the aliens?

[Mr Bean]

They tear those Aliens a new one

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

I thought as much Since the Aliens MIGHT have slight problems getting thru the Terran Marines armour.

[Moonstone Spider]

The ghosts fire explosive cannister rounds at long range, which will be useful, and there's no doubt cloaking will be very handy as well. Lockdown, of course, is useless in that situation. The cutscenes suggest Ghosts have vision enhancing goggles but we have no idea what they are really good for.

A goliath mounts two 20mm chainguns but I'm not sure if it's missile launchers will be able to fire on ground targets. It's also going to have trouble moving around, although in interior maps Goliaths were capable of using stairs for people easily enough so maybe not.

The firebats are not all the useful here, although their flame is much hotter than molten Lava an Alien was able to surive immersion in molten lead so thermal weapons are likely to be hard to use efefctively, particularly given a Firebat's crappy range. I'd personally trade the two firebats in for 2 medics if I had the choice.

In a cutscene (Amerigo) the Marines were shown to have underslung grenade launchers on their rifles, and a decent rate of fire on their rifles as well, which will make life even harder for the aliens. The fluff describes them as firing DU spikes at speeds beyond mach 5. I suspect that will give anybody a bad day.

All in all I'd say this force will walk away with some casualties, but they'll be walking away and the aliens won't.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

Pretty much how i would excpect it to go too. The Ghosts canister rifles can propably blow Aliens to pieces in single shot when the Gauss rifles the Marines carry will rip them to shreds as well. I doubt that the Aliens have much chances angainst the Marines unless they attack at the head area.

[Kuja]

A Goliath?!?!?! 22 marines?!

These aliens are SO dead....

[Ghost Rider]

For 26 of them One stim pack charge and we have a whole lotta dead in the final battle.

Hell even without that it's over...though why not take out the Goliath and add a Nurse...oh yeah the carnage that would ensue.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

Hmm..quess i should have been a bit more fair to the aliens side

[neoolong]

Uh, how canon are the Alien novels? If they can be considered as such, then Aliens detect people through a sort of telepathy. I don't know if Terran cloaks would work. But it is irrelevant, the aliens still all die.

[Cpt_Frank]

The key to victory over the aliens is armor.
Terran Marines have plenty of armor.

[Sea Skimmer]

Not to mention a damn lot of flame throwing power to clear out the power stati9on with minimal to no risk of disabling the cooling system.

[Mr Bean]

Indeed

[Vendetta]

Terran Marines are hardly a disciplined bunch at the best of times, and even Zerglings do tear them to bits if they get the numerical advantage (and Aliens do tend to be numerous, and to throw things at the enemy until there's no enemy).

If the Terran Marines were placed in exactly the same situation as the Colonial Marines, they would still lose. They are vulnerable to surprise attack at close range, and the Aliens don't show up on any scanner when not moving (no IR signals, they are near perfectly camoflaged against the walls)

They could overwhelm the marines by dropping in on top of them, kill the ghosts easily (if you go by the Aliens novelisation, they sense movement, they can't 'see' anyway), and bleed on the Marines until their armour's fucked. (or rip their faces off, as marines have a tendency to keep their visors open).

The goliath would be vulnerable to being climbed on and it's joints seizing from acid damage.

In open battle, the Terran Marine's natural habitat, they'd have a lot better chance, as the Aliens could be taken out at range, and the Goliath could be brought into play effectively.

[Sea Skimmer]

Terran Marines are hardly a disciplined bunch at the best of times, and even Zerglings do tear them to bits if they get the numerical advantage (and Aliens do tend to be numerous, and to throw things at the enemy until there's no enemy).

If the Terran Marines were placed in exactly the same situation as the Colonial Marines, they would still lose. They are vulnerable to surprise attack at close range, and the Aliens don't show up on any scanner when not moving (no IR signals, they are near perfectly camoflaged against the walls)

They could overwhelm the marines by dropping in on top of them, kill the ghosts easily (if you go by the Aliens novelisation, they sense movement, they can't 'see' anyway), and bleed on the Marines until their armour's fucked. (or rip their faces off, as marines have a tendency to keep their visors open).

The goliath would be vulnerable to being climbed on and it's joints seizing from acid damage.

In open battle, the Terran Marine's natural habitat, they'd have a lot better chance, as the Aliens could be taken out at range, and the Goliath could be brought into play effectively.

Zerglings don't die from short bursts of rifle fire. Alien warriors do. The Marines would do much better against them.

[neoolong]

At most there are only 154 adult warriors. I went through this calculation over on the Clonetrooper sub thread.

[Hotfoot]

The ghosts fire explosive cannister rounds at long range, which will be useful, and there's no doubt cloaking will be very handy as well. Lockdown, of course, is useless in that situation. The cutscenes suggest Ghosts have vision enhancing goggles but we have no idea what they are really good for.

Don't know how well Ghost Cloaking would mask them from the Aliens though. For all we know, Xenomorphs all have observer abilities.

The firebats are not all the useful here, although their flame is much hotter than molten Lava an Alien was able to surive immersion in molten lead so thermal weapons are likely to be hard to use efefctively, particularly given a Firebat's crappy range. I'd personally trade the two firebats in for 2 medics if I had the choice.

Um, say what? That was one Xenomorph, from Alien 3. NONE of the Aliens on LV426 were of that specific variety. Watch Alien and Aliens again, flamethrowers are one of the most effective weapons against Xenomorphs according to the movies, and at the very least they're not as pathetic as you make them out to seem. Any Dog-Xenomorphs like the one from Alien 3 can easily be blown to pieces by the rest of the Marines anyway.

They are called Xenomorphs for a reason, you know.

All in all I'd say this force will walk away with some casualties, but they'll be walking away and the aliens won't.

Depends. In the firefight in the Reactor, they would have been potentially screwed, since they wouldn't be able to use their rifles or grenade launchers. At that point, the Firebats would have become your very bestest friends in the whole wide world.

[Sea Skimmer]

The ghosts fire explosive cannister rounds at long range, which will be useful, and there's no doubt cloaking will be very handy as well. Lockdown, of course, is useless in that situation. The cutscenes suggest Ghosts have vision enhancing goggles but we have no idea what they are really good for.

Don't know how well Ghost Cloaking would mask them from the Aliens though. For all we know, Xenomorphs all have observer abilities.

The firebats are not all the useful here, although their flame is much hotter than molten Lava an Alien was able to surive immersion in molten lead so thermal weapons are likely to be hard to use efefctively, particularly given a Firebat's crappy range. I'd personally trade the two firebats in for 2 medics if I had the choice.

Um, say what? That was one Xenomorph, from Alien 3. NONE of the Aliens on LV426 were of that specific variety. Watch Alien and Aliens again, flamethrowers are one of the most effective weapons against Xenomorphs according to the movies, and at the very least they're not as pathetic as you make them out to seem. Any Dog-Xenomorphs like the one from Alien 3 can easily be blown to pieces by the rest of the Marines anyway.

They are called Xenomorphs for a reason, you know.

All in all I'd say this force will walk away with some casualties, but they'll be walking away and the aliens won't.

Depends. In the firefight in the Reactor, they would have been potentially screwed, since they wouldn't be able to use their rifles or grenade launchers. At that point, the Firebats would have become your very bestest friends in the whole wide world.

The power armor might let them fight hand to hand effectively.

[neoolong]

Xenomorphs are telepathic. I'm pretty sure they don't even have eyes. Unless a ghost has some other abilities, the cloak ain't going help.

[Hotfoot]

The power armor might let them fight hand to hand effectively.

Eh, I'd say that's a bit of a stretch. In the case of Xenomorphs, "What're you gonna do, bleed on me?" takes on a rather different meaning, after all.

It would probably increase their odds of survival, but it would result in a lot more losses on the side of the Marines regardless.

[Neko_Oni]

Xenomorphs are telepathic. I'm pretty sure they don't even have eyes. Unless a ghost has some other abilities, the cloak ain't going help.

Nope xenomorphs don't have eyes. If we take the CM Tech Manual as canon, it says that aliens possibly use ultra-accurate hearing (long head for depth perception), and vibration sensing (people walking etc). I think it mentions something about thermal sensing as well, but I'm not sure. So I don't think Ghost cloaks are going to help.[/code]

[Sea Skimmer]

The power armor might let them fight hand to hand effectively.

Eh, I'd say that's a bit of a stretch. In the case of Xenomorphs, "What're you gonna do, bleed on me?" takes on a rather different meaning, after all.

It would probably increase their odds of survival, but it would result in a lot more losses on the side of the Marines regardless.

Blunt trauma is still going to hurt em, and you can do a lot of damage without breaking skin.

[Hotfoot]

Blunt trauma is still going to hurt em, and you can do a lot of damage without breaking skin.

Eh, not so sure about that. The Xenomorphs we see most often seem to have a very tough exterior. Not quite an exoskeleton, but certainly tough. We know it's tough enough to survive the vacuum of space with little to no ill effects, among other things. Besides, some Aliens can spit acid. I don't remember if there were any on LV426, but you can bet that acid will be a very large factor in any melee encounter with Xenomorphs.

Heck, just pop open a few eggs and let the face huggers eat through the helmets to share the love.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

The Ghosts might be pretty mean angainst small groups of Aliens, according to SC:G they can run at insane speeds and have those neat psi blades.

I doubt that the Aliens could penetrate the armour of the Marines by just with their claws. If the Marines were carefull and kept their visors lovered they could fare just fine.

In this scenario i think that the marines would find out about the reactor cooling system before going there, since it was a stupid fuck up from Gorman to send the Marines to there without knowing that the shots would break the cooling system.

[Moonstone Spider]

Ghosts are powerful psychics, if the Aliens are also psychic that leads to two possible scenarios:
1) Ghosts Mindrape Aliens.
2) Aliens Mindrape Ghosts.

Unfortunately I can't think of any way to tell which is which. After her Zerg Transformation and gathering the data on her power-supression training Kerrigan was able to use Psi-Storm, a spell that rips the very fabric of reality apart and happens to look a heck of a lot like force-lighting. However Kerrigan was vastly beyond your average Ghost at that point so she can't really be taken as an example of normal ghosts.

[Hotfoot]

Ghosts are powerful psychics, if the Aliens are also psychic that leads to two possible scenarios:
1) Ghosts Mindrape Aliens.
2) Aliens Mindrape Ghosts.

Actually, there's more than just those two.
3) Aliens and Ghosts are roughly equal in "power" and "ability", and are at an impasse.
4) Drones are less powerful, but the more "advanced" the Alien, the more powerful. Queens > Ghosts > Drones
5) The "powerful" psychic powers of the Ghost make each Ghost in existance the world's biggest, brightest walking "all you can eat" buffet sign for the Xenomorphs.
6) The "powerful" psychic powers of the Ghost not only negate any benefit of their cloaking device, but in fact act as an early warning system for the Xenomorphs. Ghosts become as subtle as a Mac truck in a formula one race.

Unfortunately I can't think of any way to tell which is which. After her Zerg Transformation and gathering the data on her power-supression training Kerrigan was able to use Psi-Storm, a spell that rips the very fabric of reality apart and happens to look a heck of a lot like force-lighting. However Kerrigan was vastly beyond your average Ghost at that point so she can't really be taken as an example of normal ghosts.

We can also bet that no Ghosts would willingly do what Kerrigan did to unleash that power, so there would be no spontaneous castings of Psi-Storm any time soon in this force sub. However, what would be interesting would be if one of the Ghosts got impregnated by a face hugger. The resulting Xenomorph would be most fascinating.