RE: [sg] platoon stuff and combat engineers

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.
  
> Hell, no.  In fact, they'd be a prime target of
> bandits and raiders.

And they do have a bit of that... adds to the flavour... especially the
Narpo raiders, who would've thought that a coralloid lifeform could
taste so
good ;)

> The ones Basileus Alexander rode through?  I'll have
> to try that some time. . . 

Keep going back sunshine ;)

> 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 ;)
   
> Tangelo?  Isn't that a fruit?  Unless it's as nasty as
> Basque or Navajo to learn, we'll have some polyglot on
> it and figure it out in short time.  

Yes its nasty (and rather swear word laden) ;)

> 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 ;)

> It's not a militia, it's a verdammt feudal bleedin'
> levy!  This is getting more interesting all the time.
> 
> Someday you'll have to write up all this background so
> I get it in more than bits and pieces!

Its happening slowly... mainly around midnight, when washing is done,
children are finally asleep and I haven't yet died from exhaustion ;)

...mind you not helped by multiple disk failure which lost the majority
of
the original timeline and my transcriptions of ancient tablets (so I
could
fool myself in to thinking I knew dialects when I probably just asked
the
nearest red kidney bean who's camel he's playing hopscotch with)
  
> Small arms do need lubricated regularly.

Thanks.
 
> 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)?
  
> 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...
 
> Or maybe a vehicle coating that smells like the musk
> of the biggest, meanest predator on the planet.  That
> way we only have to deal with their amorous or
> territorial inclinations rather than everyone's silly
> ideas about trying to eat composite alloys.

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), 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
along the northern mountain ridges its packs of lemurellas (sort of like
flying foxes). The nansects are harmless...unless they get in and then
you're subject to the symbiotic plague; the dun sharks are you're
typical
"and you though megaldon had a nice set of teeth" kinda monsters; and
the
lemurellas are more just an annoying pest that hang round, make noise,
rip
bits off, steal things and generally land you in a whole bunch of
uncomfortable trouble... unless its breeding season, then they're just
berserk.

Cheers