Avatar review thread

[starfury]

Jesus Christ, you might as well whine about how Blackwater doesn't have M1 Abrams and instead has its guys in modified SUVs or, at best, in MRAPs which are their most heavily armed vehicles. You could go on about how their body armor is relatively light, how they don't come packing .50 caliber machine guns or missile-TOWs or grenade launchers. You could go on about how the best Blackwater has are helicopters, and how even ex-South African Defense Force mercenaries in Executive Outcomes don't have A-10 Warthogs and have to stick with "VTOL" helicopters and Hind Ds.

So basicly they are saying that they wish the stupid RDA Was the Waffen SS, who even then didn't get the best german equipment, that went to Elite Army Divisions like Panzer Lehr, which was desperate attempt anyway to match allied and soviet tank numerial superiority.

[PeZook]

A more valid criticism might be that all RDA equipment was designed to be exploited by an enemy with arrows. There was no reason for that glass cockpit on the powered armor.

Yeah, let's elliminate the canopy and make operating our heavy lifters more difficult just in case we have to use them to fight the natives in a few decades. Brilliant plan!

The colonel would not have died if he ended up with a shattered glass canopy offering zero protection.

Because, of course, the RDA was gearing up for total war when they came to Pandora, hence why they brought along designs for heavy military gear to be built on site...oh, wait.

Similarly the VTOLs have convenient exposed gunners and side doors through which flying creatures can enter and massacre everyone.

Actually, they have helicopter gunships with no loading bays whatsoever, separete from their utility helicopters, so it's not like they're totally lacking in dedicated military gear.

See both variants here

Even the mighty Dragon type flying fortress has people sitting on the roof shooting guns. The sole reliance on super complex VTOLs for everything stinks of inefficiency. A pair of simple 1950s A-1 Skyraider type planes would have been perfect for both clearing the sky and bombing the ground with impunity. They are too fast for aerial creatures and have no fancy electronics to be affected by "flux vortexes".

Uh, no. They put some guys with guns on a mining shuttle turned bomber, because it was totally unsuited to the role and could've used some extra firepower to protect itself during the bombing run.

And yeah, I can totally see Selfridge assigning fabber time and requesting blueprints so that Quaritch can build himself a wing of jets just in case he needs to wage an aerial bombing campaign against the natives. Jets that would only be useful for bombing static, non camouflaged targets with iron bombs and only in case of war. It's not like they needed to make everything from mining equipment to furniture locally after they got there, right? They could totally afford to construct attack jets. And build runways for them. Just in case.

On the ground RDA soldiers wore clumsy body armor that did not stop arrows and left their muscular arms exposed so they can be stung by poisonous plants and insects.

Uh, no, it didn't. The standard gear had sleeves, it's just some testorene-posioned idiot who cut them off for show.

They carried futuristic automatic firearms yet no simple RPGs that could stop even those giant dinosaurs at the end.

You're absolutely right, they should've totally geared themselves up for fighting the native fauna en masse. After spending most of their stay there derisively mocking the scientists for their crazy tree-hugging ideas about planetary neural networks, they had every reason to expect armored animals to spontaneously attack their security people on the ground for no reason whatsoever!

RDA equipment was designed to get it's operators killed.

Or maybe it's the usual mix of high-grade personal gear and jury-rigged heavy weapons that you can expect a corporate security operation to carry?

[Shroom Man 777]

Their points might've been valid if the RDA and military assholes were some sort of conquest attack invasion force. But they weren't. The military force there was sent to provide security for a bunch of miners and scientists!

[Nephtys]

Before anyone mentions 'clumsy bodyarmor not deflecting arrows', remember the scale differences. Those aren't arrows. They're 5-meter long ballista bolts.

Likewise for the mechs, I don't recall them being penetrated except at the end, when the Colonel's own robot bayonet was stabbed into his cockpit multiple times by a giant. And even then, all it did was breach the seal mostly, and force him to get a breather on. For the Helicopters, they were penetrated by the bows being fired on high-speed dive maneuvers. That stuff didn't happen once the Na'vi were at the same elevation and surprise was gone.

[Highlord Laan]

Jesus Christ, you might as well whine about how Blackwater doesn't have M1 Abrams and instead has its guys in modified SUVs or, at best, in MRAPs which are their most heavily armed vehicles. You could go on about how their body armor is relatively light, how they don't come packing .50 caliber machine guns or missile-TOWs or grenade launchers. You could go on about how the best Blackwater has are helicopters, and how even ex-South African Defense Force mercenaries in Executive Outcomes don't have A-10 Warthogs and have to stick with "VTOL" helicopters and Hind Ds.

So basicly they are saying that they wish the stupid RDA Was the Waffen SS, who even then didn't get the best german equipment, that went to Elite Army Divisions like Panzer Lehr, which was desperate attempt anyway to match allied and soviet tank numerial superiority.

Uh, no. I wasn't. I was saying that I doubt RDA, no matter how much monetary pull it has, could get hold of hardware that was likely in the hands of standing forces, or even be allowed to get it for that matter.

I was responding to the post that said RDA stuff was designed to get people killed, and trying to come up with an idea on why they'd have to design/ad-hoc everything on site.

[PeZook]

Their points might've been valid if the RDA and military assholes were some sort of conquest attack invasion force. But they weren't. The military force there was sent to provide security for a bunch of miners and scientists!

It seems a lot of people think that way, as if they refuse to see the RDA went to great lenghts to avoid having to kill the Na'Vi off. It seems hard to miss, what with the entire plot hinging upon one such project, and Selfridge whining about PR problems, and side materials talking about government regulations tying their hands.

How would they even get their hands on designs for pure military gear, anyway? It's not like you can just look up blueprints for some 1950s fighter in some archive and whip one up on-site, the RDA would need to contract somebody to convert them into instructions for their rapid prototyping facility, or buy an existing design and tell the parent company to modify it to carry iron bombs.

This, of course, ignores all the other issues with operating a fixed-wing squadron: you need to build them a runway, maintain pilots with a whole different set of skills, use precious fabber time and materials to make spare parts. And what are the benefits of having them, outside of potentially being somewhat capable of maybe bombing some natives who may or may not eventually become hostile?

[Serafina]

You know, regarding the arrows - did anyone else find the security instruction at the beginning ridiculous, pariculary the "poison that will kill you within a minute on their arrows"?
LOOK at those arrows - if you are hit anywhere but at a limb, you are dead. At best, you loose a limb.
Besides, a minute is long for a neurotoxin - we have toxins on earth that will kill you in seconds. A minute is harmless combared to that.

That's like saying "oh, and napalm is toxic and may cause skin irritation, too"!

[SylasGaunt]

It was stated first by a jerkoff merc colonel who doesn't know anything about Na'Vi culture, and then (with somewhat less gravity) by a bunch of humans who only really got to know the Na'Vi for a grand total of three months.

Yeah, that's really good authority on what they would do.

It was stated by Norm who in case you didn't notice had trained extensively for his mission. I'm fairly certain he's got a pretty good handle on Na'vi culture. Nevermind the fact that when the tree was threatened what did they do? Protect the damn tree. I mean are you seriously suggesting we take your word on how things would work over what someone who in the movie has studied Na'vi culture and was in fact giving Jack fucking lessons on how to behave?

Yeah, and? If the warriors scattered, the "shock and awe attack" would've accomplished zilch. If the bomber was destroyed, there'd be no "shock and awe attack" at all, just a rehash of the Home Tree bombing, except this time the RDA would've taken losses.

Either way, shock and awe doesn't work. Especially against people with a highly martial culture like the Na'Vi.

Doesnt' work? Excuse me but the Na'vi are very much aweable. Or did you miss how they looked after Quaritch leveled Hometree? Before that they were all gung-ho and ready to fight, afterwards all they could do was limp to the tree of souls and pray for help.

And again, the tree was the primary target, the army was a secondary one, hence why the majority of air assets were dedicated to the protection of the shuttle and not to smashing the army on the ground.

Yeah, just like countless times in history when empires proved the gods wouldn't protect their people, right? Faith is irrational. While Eywa was tangible, the Na'Vi faith in it wasn't scientific or rational, so they'd just make up an explanation and proceed with their vengeance.

Say it with me again. The Na'vi are not humans, and their faith is perfectly rational given that they believe in something that can be proven to exist.

How could he possibly know that's what would happen? He didn't know jack about Na'Vi culture, since the RDA leadership refused to listen to their experts. He didn't ask Sully even once about how the enemy thinks, all he was interested in was information with an immediate military use.

Because Quaritch takes advantage of the scientists video logs to know his enemy better. In fact IIRC learning how they think was one of the things he asked Jake to do.

[SylasGaunt]

Before anyone mentions 'clumsy bodyarmor not deflecting arrows', remember the scale differences. Those aren't arrows. They're 5-meter long ballista bolts.

Indeed a Na'vi bow is basically firing an arrow about as big, if not bigger than the guys its being shot at.

http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u298 ... arrowk.gif

There's a gif showing a guy getting hit with one. It's not just penetrating his body armor, it's picking him up, throwing him back, and nailing him to the log behind him.

[LadyTevar]

Nephtys called it at 5m... but it's more like 2m-3m. Still a fuckin' ballista bolt compared to human biology.

I've been discussing this with some Scadian archers. One of them is plotting how to turn his combat archery bow into a SCA-melee-legal weapon ala Navi bows. But they all believe the Na'vi bows are about 150-250lb pulls. The average English Longbow is 80-100lb pull, for comparison. Like the English Longbow, the Na'vi bows seem to be carved of one solid piece, although the 'blades' on the ends might be added on. Sully is told he can "now make his bow" from the Hometree, which backs the idea.

[Sarevok]

It's not that RDA gear is not military level. The problem is it is over engineered, over complex and seemingly intentionally designed with exploits. If you are a company security guard on shoestring supply lines you would find 1950s aircraft lot more cheaper than vulnerable VTOLs that strain todays USA. Similarly you can't put uber halo like motion trackers capable of seeing through solid objects and claim no money left for cameras on that powered armor so better go with fragile glass canopy.

[The Grim Squeaker]

It's not that RDA gear is not military level. The problem is it is over engineered, over complex and seemingly intentionally designed with exploits. If you are a company security guard on shoestring supply lines you would find 1950s aircraft lot more cheaper than vulnerable VTOLs that strain todays USA. Similarly you can't put uber halo like motion trackers capable of seeing through solid objects and claim no money left for cameras on that powered armor so better go with fragile glass canopy.

50's gear would be valuable antiques .
Who's to say that anyone would even know how to use old gear, even today pilots are quite reliant on computert aided navigations, HUDs, fly by wire, gyroscopes, blah blah, and those haven't been around for that long especially for such a conservative industry - give it a century and how many pilots could you find with experience using WW1 planes? (Which would probably be less of a technological gap).

[Shroom Man 777]

What? Those VTOLs are glorified helicopters, they're just as vulnerable as helicopters, they're just helicopters with funny looking helicopter blades. In a friggin' jungle where you have to land in the middle of clearings to drop mercs or scientists in the middle of the bush, or where you have to extract them, I think there'd be more utility in a helicopter-like design.

Especially when relatively low speed helicopters/VTOL birds can allow you to fly in between the giant-ass trees and floating islands even when the sensors are screwing up and you have to rely on Mk. 1 eyeballs - can your 1950s aircraft do that?

Geeze, Nephyts was right too. NONE of the mech's glass canopy got penetrated except for the final fight, because the mechas were able to kill the enemies from afar (until they got overwhelmed by dinosaurs).

[Highlord Laan]

It's not that RDA gear is not military level. The problem is it is over engineered, over complex and seemingly intentionally designed with exploits. If you are a company security guard on shoestring supply lines you would find 1950s aircraft lot more cheaper than vulnerable VTOLs that strain todays USA. Similarly you can't put uber halo like motion trackers capable of seeing through solid objects and claim no money left for cameras on that powered armor so better go with fragile glass canopy.

Gear along the lines of 50's aircraft might make sense from a simplicity standpoint, but building, maintaining and protecting the runway is going to be an absolute motherfucker.

[PeZook]

And it's not about budget, it's about fabber time and resources. They need to run a mining operation there, and fixed-wing aircraft would only be useful for warring with the natives. And even then, without extensive training for the pilots and ground personnell, for bombing mostly static targets.

So they'd spend most of the RDA's stay on Pandora sitting in their hangar, giving them an additional kilometer of perimeter to patrol, eating up fabber time for spares, and manpower for maintenance and training.

[Shroom Man 777]

Static targets that would be hidden under a shitload of forest, and often in areas that'd fuck around with sensors too.

[Sarevok]

You guys sure about the aircraft ? VTOLs remain the holy grail of aviation. They are motherfucking complex to design, build, maintain and fly. The V-22 Osprey is decades in development and already killed dozens of people in crashes. It costs more than many state of the art fighter jets and might break US marine corps budget all by itself. How the hell can making such craft be easier than a simple plane ? And Let's not try to argue RDA did not arm for war. Their VTOLs were carrying rocket pods, door guns and two fixed nose guns. But ultimately RDA VTOLs sucked at war and they suck at transportation from cost perspective. RDA should have built normal helicopters for utility purpose and a few fixed wing planes for security related tasks.

Geeze, Nephyts was right too. NONE of the mech's glass canopy got penetrated except for the final fight, because the mechas were able to kill the enemies from afar (until they got overwhelmed by dinosaurs).

Cameras are very very cheap. Hoping that big gun would always shoot the natives before they get close enough to bash the cockpit open is foolish. Especially in a jungle. Without a canopy the AMP suits would be 100 % impervious to anything but giant dino creatures. I would rather have an invulnerable platform like that.

[Shroom Man 777]

You guys sure about the aircraft ? VTOLs remain the holy grail of aviation. They are motherfucking complex to design, build, maintain and fly. The V-22 Osprey is decades in development and already killed dozens of people in crashes. It costs more than many state of the art fighter jets and might break US marine corps budget all by itself. How the hell can making such craft be easier than a simple plane ?

Nobody said that it's simpler than a plane, well, at least I didn't. I said its role as a VTOL/helicopter gunship is more suited than a fixed-wing plane, because I sure don't see fixed-wing planes like the A-1 Skyraider operating under the Pandoran tree-level, whereas a VTOL/helicopter gunship could just vertically land and take off or hover in place or move very slow to carefully avoid the bigass trees. We saw the VTOL land Grace and Jake during their first field trip in the movie.

They had two VTOL variants, the utility transport one and the gunship one. Presumably that saved cost in the on-site manufacturing, since all they needed to do for the gunship was to "delete" the passenger area to make the thing smaller, and add wings for the additional weapons.

As for the complexity of VTOLs, the problems faced by us in the 20th century might not be an issue for those from the future where they can have futuristic weirdo-machines that can fabricate and assemble things "on site", however that works.

(Yeah, yeah, assembling a VTOL bird would be more complicated than assembling a non-VTOL bird. But can you really fault them for assembling VTOL birds when VTOL birds are apparently commonly used and relied on technologies in the Avatar-verse? They didn't seem to have reliability issues with VTOL birds in the movie, and Michelle Rodriguez was able to maintain her VTOL bird in flying condition even when she went AWOL with her friends and no longer had access to an airbase. Mang, why are you arguing about the silly-looking propulsion systems of those silly future planes anyway? Geeze, it's not like the movie will be better if they replaced the VTOL birds with friggin Zeroes or Stukas or Messerschmitts.)

And Let's not try to argue RDA did not arm for war. Their VTOLs were carrying rocket pods, door guns and two fixed nose guns. But ultimately RDA VTOLs sucked at war and they suck at transportation from cost perspective. RDA should have built normal helicopters for utility purpose and a few fixed wing planes for security related tasks.

They weren't armed for war. They were armed for security, for defense against bizarro animals (which door guns, nose guns and rocket pods would suffice at). That's why you're criticizing about how they're so relatively and inadequately lightly armed for the task of planetary subjugation.

Cameras are very very cheap. Hoping that big gun would always shoot the natives before they get close enough to bash the cockpit open is foolish. Especially in a jungle. Without a canopy the AMP suits would be 100 % impervious to anything but giant dino creatures. I would rather have an invulnerable platform like that.

You might as well have them use Humvees without windows, with camera-based navigation systems as well since mechs with legs are stupid and you can simply have Ewoks tripping them with some rope.

Would smaller windows be better, then? A smaller window would still be vulnerable to being bashed open.

Besides, Jake also based up the cheap cameras on that bigass remotely-controlled construction vehicle, which ended up blinding the remotely-controlled construction vehicle and mission-killing them. Canopies or cameras can be bashed. If there's a pilot, the pilot might dying. If there's no pilot, the UCAV might end up getting fucked by the Vortex whatevers. Legged vehicles, mecha are stupid. Wheeled vehicles, jungle forest terrain is difficult. Meh.

[PeZook]

You guys sure about the aircraft ? VTOLs remain the holy grail of aviation. They are motherfucking complex to design, build, maintain and fly. The V-22 Osprey is decades in development and already killed dozens of people in crashes. It costs more than many state of the art fighter jets and might break US marine corps budget all by itself. How the hell can making such craft be easier than a simple plane ? And Let's not try to argue RDA did not arm for war. Their VTOLs were carrying rocket pods, door guns and two fixed nose guns. But ultimately RDA VTOLs sucked at war and they suck at transportation from cost perspective. RDA should have built normal helicopters for utility purpose and a few fixed wing planes for security related tasks.

Again, it's not about cost! It's about fabber time and local resources. If they need helicopters to move their people around, they have to make helicopters anyway. The technology is obviously mature and reliable, and Shroom pointed out, so your argument about the Osprey doesn't stand: it was also pretty expensive to make first fighter jets (so much, in fact, that only superpowers could do it), yet know third-world shitholes can buy Su-27s without much problem.

So, think about the RDA's equipment cycle: they have a rapid-prototyping fabber on site after they get to Pandora. The thing about rapid-prototyping tech is that it can make a wide variety of products, but it's slow. The more complicated the machine, the slower it is: think about it like a difference between a home laser printer and a dedicated printing house. You can make long production runs really cheaply on a dedicated machine, but if you need to make a folder instead of a business card, you need to retool your shop.

A fabber like that literally needs to build every single machine part by part. So you have to plan your production runs: say you need two Gizmos, and one gizmo requires 10 parts of one kind and 5 of a different kind. So in order to get two gizmos built on site, you set your fabber to make 20 parts, retool it, then make 10 more. If somebody decides to chuck something in between these production runs, you're not getting your gizmos before the other work order is done!

So, the equipment cycle: RDA gets to Pandora after the initial survey ship. They bring with them some supplies, a fabber facility and 200 people. Their mission is to get started on mining unobtainium. So they need to start by providing some shelter and security: they make guns, furniture, computers, sensors etc.

Then they need transportation (to look for local materials, and scout out deposits). Holy crap, but the place is one huge jungle! So they plan to build a few helicopters (and the proper tools, facilities, etc. to maintain them), too.

Then they need to start developing a deposit, so they have to start making complicated mining machines - part by part! A simple car can have something like 15 thousand moving parts. That's a lot of fabber time, and it's absolutely crucial.

Think about this: you build your utility mech from standardized designs you brought with you from Earth. At the same time, several of your fabber lines are busy making cameras and parts for the mining gear. One of your engineers says "Hey, guys, we should totally make the mechs enclosed and put cameras on the outer armor!" to his overworked colleagues. So your department would need to redesign the damn thing, build a prototype, write some software, fab extra holo-screens, and then periodically take away cameras as spares - cameras necessary for other applications in the constantly growing base just in case you're worried you may have to kill natives some day. All that takes away fabber time and products and time. And you you may not even know the natives even exist yet, depending on the exact timeframe when all of this happens.

Alternatively, you can have RDA engineers do it all on Earth and wait six years for the plans to get shipped to you without building any mechs at all, so that your guys can have fun clearing bush and moving heavy pallets by hand.

Not to mention: handling mining explosives and walking around human workers with a limited field of vision? Have fun filing work accident reports.

It's the same with the helicopters: building a single additional aircraft type would become a constant drain on your fabbers, because you'd need to periodically build replacement parts and tools for the airplanes, which would in many cases be completely different from those you use on every other flying vehicle you operate. On the other hand, if you just build a gunship variant of your existing helis, you can just tell the fabber to make a dozen more standardized parts the next time they're scheduled.

And again, what would the A-1 Skyriders be useful for? They can't provide security, because they have to fly above the treeline. They can't transport work crews of scientists around. They can only bomb static targets in the open, which the RDA did just fine anyway, and need a runway (runway = longer perimeter = even more sensors, turrets and manpower to monitor and maintain them), maintenance crews, specialized pilots, etc.

Most of their equipment looks converted for war, rather than made for it, anyway: from the mechs which probably got their guns when it turned out they may need some ("Hey, these things have hands. Let's just make big-ass rifles for them instead of going through an entire design and systems integration cycle!") to helicopters armed with some door guns and removeable rocket pods. The only dedicated military vehicle they have are the gunship variants, which may have been made to provide security against wildlife, and are based on the standard utility helicopter anyway.

When you remember they only got 200 people and one fabber installation with each ship, it becomes rather obvious that any additional strain on their local production capacity would have to be really, really well thought out.

[Sarevok]

Nobody said that it's simpler than a plane, well, at least I didn't. I said its role as a VTOL/helicopter gunship is more suited than a fixed-wing plane, because I sure don't see fixed-wing planes like the A-1 Skyraider operating under the Pandoran tree-level, whereas a VTOL/helicopter gunship could just vertically land and take off or hover in place or move very slow to carefully avoid the bigass trees. We saw the VTOL land Grace and Jake during their first field trip in the movie.

Actually helicopters would be much better for moving people and cargo around the forest from cost perspective. In case of an attack a helicopter could also defend itself at least as well as the VTOLs given same armament.

(Yeah, yeah, assembling a VTOL bird would be more complicated than assembling a non-VTOL bird. But can you really fault them for assembling VTOL birds when VTOL birds are apparently commonly used and relied on technologies in the Avatar-verse? They didn't seem to have reliability issues with VTOL birds in the movie, and Michelle Rodriguez was able to maintain her VTOL bird in flying condition even when she went AWOL with her friends and no longer had access to an airbase. Mang, why are you arguing about the silly-looking propulsion systems of those silly future planes anyway? Geeze, it's not like the movie will be better if they replaced the VTOL birds with friggin Zeroes or Stukas or Messerschmitts.)

If their manufacturing so good they can make VTOLs onsite easily they can make many more robust airplanes and helicopters. Why build something so complex yet inferior in cost and performance with your limited resources ? Remember that Pandoras skies are filled with dangerous super predators. Their gunships can't protect them adequately.

They weren't armed for war. They were armed for security, for defense against bizarro animals (which door guns, nose guns and rocket pods would suffice at). That's why you're criticizing about how they're so relatively and inadequately lightly armed for the task of planetary subjugation.

Then what were mech suits and gunships for ? Even against wild animals they utterly sucked. They were designed to be killed by bunch of over grown dinosaurs. Why bother spending money on a private army that can't do it's job ? If I were a RDA shareholder I would demand they either change weapons or pull out immediately because they can't defend all that expensive mining gear.

You might as well have them use Humvees without windows, with camera-based navigation systems as well since mechs with legs are stupid and you can simply have Ewoks tripping them with some rope.

Pandoras forests did not look too impassable for vehicles. And given they have a huge dragon dropship they could have actually used proper vehicles. It's not like the AMP suit could climb trees and mountains like the Naavi could. It is just as much stuck by a barrier as a vehicle.

Besides, Jake also based up the cheap cameras on that bigass remotely-controlled construction vehicle, which ended up blinding the remotely-controlled construction vehicle and mission-killing them. Canopies or cameras can be bashed. If there's a pilot, the pilot might dying. If there's no pilot, the UCAV might end up getting fucked by the Vortex whatevers. Legged vehicles, mecha are stupid. Wheeled vehicles, jungle forest terrain is difficult. Meh.

A camera is much harder target to destroy than a huge glassy canopy. And there can be several cameras. Plus the pilot is not potentially asphyxiating to death unlike with a shattered canopy.

[Shroom Man 777]

If their manufacturing so good they can make VTOLs onsite easily they can make many more robust airplanes and helicopters. Why build something so complex yet inferior in cost and performance with your limited resources ? Remember that Pandoras skies are filled with dangerous super predators. Their gunships can't protect them adequately.

Maybe VTOLs are what's normally used in the Avatarverse? Prove that the VTOLs were less robust than airplanes and helicopters and that airplanes and helicopters would withstand getting eaten by monsters, prove that they were inferior in cost and performance. The fact that Avatar VTOL tech is advanced enough to give them bigass Dragon gunships means that their VTOL tech kicks ass. They were not facing any problems with the cost or reliability of the VTOLs, the VTOLs were sufficient for their needs.

Oh hey, you should remember that Earth's skies are filled with dangerous super predators. Not even America's mightiest fighter jets can protect us adequately from seagulls flying into the engines! Even the Nazzies were foiled when Sean Connery Jones Sr. summoned the forces of Mother Earth and sent birds flying into the face of that fighter plane in The Last Crusade. Blargh! The Wermacht should've focused on helicopters instead of Stukas or those wundernapkinwaffen!

Then what were mech suits and gunships for ? Even against wild animals they utterly sucked. They were designed to be killed by bunch of over grown dinosaurs. Why bother spending money on a private army that can't do it's job ? If I were a RDA shareholder I would demand they either change weapons or pull out immediately because they can't defend all that expensive mining gear.

Why bother spending money on Humvees or Land Rovers in Africa when an elephant or a rhino can just eat it?! Blackwater/Executive Outcomes is just spending money on a private army that can't do its job! If I were a Haliburton shareholder I would demand that they either get M1 Abrams or pull out immediately because they can't defend all those expensive blood diamond slave laborers!

I mean, geeze, those mercenaries were so poorly equipped that the first Na'vi offensive ended up not getting massacred ruthlessly by superior firepower, but actually ended up butchering the mercenaries to the point where intervention by the Pandoran ecosystem itself was unnecessary!

A camera is much harder target to destroy than a huge glassy canopy. And there can be several cameras. Plus the pilot is not potentially asphyxiating to death unlike with a shattered canopy.

Fine, whatever. Geeze. Meh.


Blah, next thing you know when the Illustrated Visual Dictionary is published, people will be going on about how the RDA was so stupid to issue 5.56mm ammunition to its troopers when clearly 6mm Grendeloid bullets have superior ballistic performances or something.

[AniThyng]

I don't know about you, but it makes very little difference to the story at all if the VTOLs were all replaced with vietnam era UH-1 Hueys and AH-1 Cobras (isn't the parallel absurdly obvious anyway? I mean, Door guns? People jumping off of a hovering vtol into a jungle? Rocket pods? If anything, the VTOLs are probably the best designed piece of sci-fi hardware i've seen lately. Dragging the V-22 and its problems into it reeks of miltary nerd posturing. It doesn't even make any sense because the VTOLs in Avatar *are* helicopters, not hybrid heli-planes.) and the Mecha with uparmoured humvees, so I don't know why this is an issue - they'd still get squished by the dinos, and the choppers would still when assaulted by the flyers, just with more gibbing (I doubt any helicopter would keep flying for long after it's rotor blades are done chopping up the wildlife.

[PeZook]

Actually helicopters would be much better for moving people and cargo around the forest from cost perspective. In case of an attack a helicopter could also defend itself at least as well as the VTOLs given same armament.

Why? They're almost the same thing, they just have one extra rotor assembly and thus need no tail rotor. Again, makes sense: you don't need to retool your production line or use two lines simultaneously, just make two sets of the exact same parts you're making anyway.

If their manufacturing so good they can make VTOLs onsite easily they can make many more robust airplanes and helicopters. Why build something so complex yet inferior in cost and performance with your limited resources ? Remember that Pandoras skies are filled with dangerous super predators. Their gunships can't protect them adequately.

Why? They protected them just fine throughout their stay, and slaughtered the banshees even without complicated weapons tracking.

Then what were mech suits and gunships for ? Even against wild animals they utterly sucked. They were designed to be killed by bunch of over grown dinosaurs. Why bother spending money on a private army that can't do it's job ? If I were a RDA shareholder I would demand they either change weapons or pull out immediately because they can't defend all that expensive mining gear.

The dinousaurs were an obvious surprise to the RDA, and if they charged a mining camp, orbiting gunships could've just shoved a missile down their throats. The suits were doing all sorts of menial labor in the camp: again, it's rather obvious they got their huge-ass guns as a hasty addon so that they could supplement security, too.

Pandoras forests did not look too impassable for vehicles. And given they have a huge dragon dropship they could have actually used proper vehicles. It's not like the AMP suit could climb trees and mountains like the Naavi could. It is just as much stuck by a barrier as a vehicle.

Except it has legs, so it can navigate broken terrain (that is, most of the fucking jungle!) to an extent.

A camera is much harder target to destroy than a huge glassy canopy. And there can be several cameras. Plus the pilot is not potentially asphyxiating to death unlike with a shattered canopy.

Why do you cling to that idea the suits were made for combat? They wouldn't have given them hands if they were, and we see them doing all sorts of utility jobs at the main base. It's obvious they're heavy lifters, and Broomstick suggested clearing bush would've been much more comfortable in a metal shell than by hand. And if you're doing utility work amongst tiny squishy humans, you need god peripheral vision in order to not step on any.

As for the pilot asphyxiating, just give him a spare rebreather. He can have the mask ready and put it on if the seal fails. You know, just like the pilot of the only suit that failed in this way did in the damn movie.

[AniThyng]

It's not just their ability to navigate broken terrain - it's the fact that they are AIRLIFTABLE. I don't think you could really get more combat firepower on a gun for gun and weight for weight basis if instead of the mecha the Dragon had to airlift airmobile tanks. It's not like they had to time to drive there either, or you could have used those oversized dump truck/bulldozer things.

And yeah, a conventional helicopter would get owned by giant wildlife gibbing up and jamming the rotors just as much as the avatar vtols. Frankly, any argument against the military utility of the vtols would apply just as well to any modern real life helicopter.

Mechanically complex? Check.
Relatively slow? Check.
Vulnerable at multiple points? Check.
Lightly armoured? Check.
Huge fucking windows? Check.
Open doors? Check. Actually, yeah, why don't the utility vtols have doors? then again, everytime I see a blackhawk in a combat zone it seems like they love to keep the doors open regardless, so, meh.

No way any conventional layout helicopter would be significantly more "robust" then the avatar Vtols - hell, they are designed in such a way that I bet you could just delete the side mounted rotors and place counter-rotating rotors Ka-52 style and viola, "helicopter."

[Shroom Man 777]

Replace the VTOL gunships with helicopters, and the mechs with Humvees, and nothing in the movie would've changed!

Dragging the V-22 and its problems into it reeks of miltary nerd posturing.

This.


PS. PeZook, I added you on facebooks mang!