RE: [sg] platoon stuff and combat engineers

G'day,

> OK, I'll have to wait for the writeup to figure that
> statement out because it's not making much sense to
> me.

What I meant was you wouldn't want to use heavy weapons with wide area
of
effect (big bang) if you're going to be close to the spot yourself, and
that's why you'd have small "bang" ammo too. Thus it wasn't the size of
the
delivery system that matter just the end "bang" and whether it coincided
with what was in your best interests of the moment. For example, you're
not
going to want something with a 50m radius of effect if you're going to
be
within 20m when you use it etc.
    
> Back?  Medes and Persians overruning Babylon?

I was thinking of the general lay out of the towns and cities and their
nature rather than any particular historical event, but that is the
period
I'm thinking about.
  
> Actually, most nerve agents are non-persistant (6
> hours or less) and anyway, can be tailored to not
> really bother humans that much.

In our atmosphere, when there are floating clouds of algae that
concentrate
and sequester things from the atmosphere and then (potentially) excrete
it
later you may just have added something long term to the biome. You may
be
relieved to note not all the colonies in the Henti Federation are as
afflicted by biota as this one ;)
     
> I figure AIs are stupidly expensive...

Well given what I can already do with neural nets today the AIs of my
worlds
aren't expensive to start its just the training that can make their
costs
rise rapidly ;)

> OK, so I drop them from helicopters and use them as
> impromptu obstacle belts.  Drop them where I'm not.

That'd work, though if they're in lemurella territory you'd want your
helicopters to get moving pretty quickly. AN aerospace drop may be
better.
   
> 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.

Yes and no. There will be things that can keep them at bay (and these
are
known to the local human inhabitants), but as they're alien bugs who've
been
in contact with humans for 400 yrs now their resistant to any
insecticides
from the Terran sphere that ever worked on them in the first place.
However,
as the locals do know the solutions which kill them (and how quickly you
must cycle components due to the generation time of these critters) you
intel guys could probably get it sorted given a little time. Hopefully
they
won't bioaccumulate or sequester your nerve agents while you're waiting
to
find the one that works on them ;)
 
> 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.

Ambush preds can be hard to track (they don't move much if at all),
though
if they do have to move to get within attack range than automated PDS
etc
may have a chance on them as they hit surface layers for their final
homing
run. Think of Great Whites, they patrol at depth and watch for things of
interest then they rocket to the surface to take it. If you're
videotaping
the accent you'll get one image, maybe two before they hit, its why you
never see the shark that takes you ;)

Cheers