RE: [sg] platoon stuff and combat engineers

--- Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
> G'day,
> 
> > Same caliber??  That defeats the purpose of
> alleged
> > "heavy" weapons.
> 
> See to my warped mind heavy weapons has to do with
> the bang not the
> delivery, you only use heavy weapons when you're not
> going to be too close
> for it to be a painfully two-edged sword.

OK, I'll have to wait for the writeup to figure that
statement out because it's not making much sense to
me.
   
> > The ones Basileus Alexander rode through?  I'll
> have
> > to try that some time. . . 
> 
> Keep going back sunshine ;)

Back?  Medes and Persians overruning Babylon?
 
> > My inclination would be drop nerve gas all over
> the
> > place. 
> 
> Very helpful if you then need to get down and use
> the place yourself ;)

Actually, most nerve agents are non-persistant (6
hours or less) and anyway, can be tailored to not
really bother humans that much.
    
> > Plus we got plenty of those high-speed analysis
> AIs that you've
> > got running your TACFIRE nets running linguistic
> and
> > crypto analysis.  :)
> 
> Hoist on my own petard ;)
> Good point I'll have to think about that one ;)

I figure AIs are stupidly expensive so they are
reserved for tasks for which that sort of computer
power is preferable to human judgement.  For instance,
our finance detachments are primarily run by AIs since
they can handle 95% of the problems.  But there's a
human to appeal to since Joe doesn't really feel right
being told by a plastic box that he's wrong.
   
> > Grav tanks.  Definitely need grav tanks.  :)
> 
> They'd be nice... so long as they don't set-up
> sympathetic vibrations in the
> underlying substrata... a question I've been meaning
> to ask. Does anyone
> have any idea whether they'll be a noisy thing
> (especially in the
> infrasound, or whatever non-biologists call those
> really deep sounds that
> elephants etc use to communicate long distance)?

Shouldn't be that noisy.  I mean, most of the noise of
a modern AFV is the sound of the engine and the 'clank
clank clank' of the treads.  Fusion power plants
should be pretty quiet.
   
> > Gotta find some high-speed subsonic dohicky that
> > drives them all nuts and sends them fleeing.
> 
> Unfortunately that will just attract them worse...
> think about the frenzy
> you can send a shark into if you send a helicopter
> in low over the water...

OK, so I drop them from helicopters and use them as
impromptu obstacle belts.  Drop them where I'm not.
  
> Unfortunately like I said there are different
> sizes.... in the southern
> jungles (based on the hero's local geographical
> bias) there are swarms of
> minute "insects" (pushing the nanobit size range),

So vulnerable to really low concentrations of nerve
agent, rather like Earth bugs are bothered by DEET,
which isn't quite toxic enough to kill people.

> in the central desert its
> the dune sharks (which I have a vague feeling have
> probably turned up in
> heaps of scifi, but I haven't read enough to figure
> out which ones) and

Large individuals are trackable (by vibration or GPR
or any number of methods) and hence killable.  No one
feels froggy with 20mm API rounds stuck in them.

> along the northern mountain ridges its packs of
> lemurellas (sort of like
> flying foxes). The nansects are harmless...unless

Probably the hardest to deal with.  

John

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