Were the marines in Aliens competent?

[Darth Sephiroth]

Using nukes on such an uninhabited world is apparently not a serious issue in this time frame.

However, giving arming authorization for nuclear weapons to a squad led by a fucking Lieutenant is insane. If any old Lt can arm nuclear weapons at will, the risk of some truly terrible incident is staggering.

I'm thinking that it was more of a just in case precaution with them carrying nukes. Of course it could also be self destruct codes for the colony's reactor...

[Vympel]

As to the "not falling back to reload" is there any proof they even had any non-standard ammo to replace the standard explosives with.

Why not? They had all sorts of other shit. And if they didn't have such ammo, that's just another strike against them- going to rescue civvies with armor piercing ammo?

[Steven Snyder]

I think things would have gone much differently had Gorman not been in charge. Sending them into the coolant system of a nuclear reactor with armor-piercing rounds was a pretty stupid thing to do. Had Ripley not noted this glaring oversight, things would have probably been much much worse.

As for the dropship incident, I don't know how to feel about this one. It seems that the marines were not expecting anything as dangerous as the Xeno's and were lax on their precautions.

As for fighting outdoors, yes this seems a prudent thing. I can play Devil's Advocate though and point out that the environment of the planet was pretty nasty, and they had a long wait for reinforcements. They may not have had the capacity to sustain themselves outside the city for a week or two on such short notice.
Now the reality is that they weren't going to last that long due to the reactor problem, maybe the idea was to keep the xenos distracted and away from the area that Bishop was in until the dropship had been called. It would have been bad for them to abandon the colony for the wilds, leaving the xenos to scour the area for them and find Bishop before he could get the dropship down.

[Darth Wong]

Using nukes on such an uninhabited world is apparently not a serious issue in this time frame.

However, giving arming authorization for nuclear weapons to a squad led by a fucking Lieutenant is insane. If any old Lt can arm nuclear weapons at will, the risk of some truly terrible incident is staggering.

I'm thinking that it was more of a just in case precaution with them carrying nukes. Of course it could also be self destruct codes for the colony's reactor...

You're seriously suggesting that a civilian colony nuclear reactor has a self-destruct code which can be activated by remote computer link? And that doesn't strike you as being just as retarded as letting low-ranking military officers arm nuclear weapons autonomously?

As for fighting outdoors, yes this seems a prudent thing. I can play Devil's Advocate though and point out that the environment of the planet was pretty nasty, and they had a long wait for reinforcements. They may not have had the capacity to sustain themselves outside the city for a week or two on such short notice.

Hence the stupidity of them making no effort to transmit a call for help. IIRC, they never even inquired about the colony transmitter until they knew the reactor was going to blow. You'd think any reasonable person would have immediately made a beeline for the colony transmitter in order to send a distress call. They could have moved there in force, set up a defensive perimeter around the transmitter, and then called for help (at which point Bishop might have had the bright idea of remote-piloting a dropship down).

Seriously, there's only so much incompetence we can attribute to confusion or overconfidence. Does it really take a genius to say "oh shit, we're stranded, we should try calling for help"?

[brianeyci]

[quote]You'd think any reasonable person would have immediately made a beeline for the colony transmitter in order to send a distress call.[/qutoe]

They weren't being reasonable, they were listening to Ripley who listened to Newt tell them to get inside as quickly as possible to avoid the aliens who "come out at night mostly."

Brian

[Darth Lucifer]

...Especially the aliens trying to break through the turrets. Each turret had 200 rounds and they had 4 of them. How come the turrets didn't end up killing 150 aliens?

The mechanical turrets fired a ridiculous amount of ammo during the test. It didn't surprise me that the sentries blew away all their ammo in the span of a couple minutes.

[Steven Snyder]

Hence the stupidity of them making no effort to transmit a call for help.

They may not have real-time FTL communications, making a call for help futile. But why they couldn't contact their own ship with a cell-phone sized device???

I wonder about the logic of not having a stand-by pilot left on the ship. You have a second dropship, wouldn't it be prudent to have a pilot onboard to be able to use it? What if the first dropship crashes, how are the survivors supposed to get the second down to pick them up? Doesn't it seem odd to have an abandoned millitary warship in orbit, the piracy business must be booming.

Seriously, there's only so much incompetence we can attribute to confusion or overconfidence. Does it really take a genius to say "oh shit, we're stranded, we should try calling for help"?

Well these are the same guys that have warships with no crew...and what happend to the type of AI like "Mother" from the original? Couldn't the AI have piloted the shuttle down after a call from help from the surface?

Okay my head hurts...

[SylasGaunt]

They may not have real-time FTL communications, making a call for help futile. But why they couldn't contact their own ship with a cell-phone sized device???

IIRC the colony comms were down but I haven't managed to find any mention of FTL comms anywhere. It could be they just use courier ships or robot drones for interstellar communication.

I wonder about the logic of not having a stand-by pilot left on the ship. You have a second dropship, wouldn't it be prudent to have a pilot onboard to be able to use it?

There normally is when you have a full strength USCMC platoon which is pretty much the squad in Aliens x2. 2 dropships with a crew each, 2 APCs, twice as many men.

What if the first dropship crashes, how are the survivors supposed to get the second down to pick them up?

Remote piloting it down like Bishop did?

Doesn't it seem odd to have an abandoned millitary warship in orbit, the piracy business must be booming.

Not really. As was mentioned earlier, USCMC ships are automated out the wazoo. The Sulaco could easily waste any pirates trying to steal her while the marines were dirtside. In fact it's mentioned in it's entry in the Tech Manual that the Sulaco is capable of fighting a full fledged space battle with its entire crew incapacitated or in hyper-sleep.

That being said I wonder if there wasn't some reason other than Burke's manipulations that had Gorman in command of a platoon half the size of what he should have had.. maybe something in that last combat drop. Give him a rather old ship with a bad reputation, a half-strenght platoon, send him out to this assignment out in the boonies that's probably nothing more than a downed transmission tower..

(oh and one of the Company entries in the tech manual confirms it was Burke who got Gorman put in charge of the mission).

[Darth Wong]

IIRC the colony comms were down

They weren't down, but the terminal in HQ was down. That's why Bishop had to go to the transmitter outdoors in order to call for help. If the whole team had gone to the transmitter right away, they would have taken far fewer casualties, if any.

[Crazedwraith]

IIRC the colony comms were down

They weren't down, but the terminal in HQ was down. That's why Bishop had to go to the transmitter outdoors in order to call for help. If the whole team had gone to the transmitter right away, they would have taken far fewer casualties, if any.

I'm not sure I follow the logic. How are Aleins coming from Any direction better than Aliens coming through what the marines thought would be a choke point?

[brianeyci]

They came from the ceiling and the floor. That's how they killed Hudson. If they could come from only horizontal at the very least Hudson wouldn't have died so easily, and the marines could have easily held them off unless they ran out of ammunition. We know since Ripley encountered so little aliens going for the Queen that the aliens were nearly spent attacking the two machine gun turrets and assaulting the CC.

Brian

[Steven Snyder]

IIRC the colony comms were down but I haven't managed to find any mention of FTL comms anywhere. It could be they just use courier ships or robot drones for interstellar communication.

I wish I had a clue on this but I don't. There was some mechanism in place for the penal colony to contact WY, but how they did it isn't mentioned.

What if the first dropship crashes, how are the survivors supposed to get the second down to pick them up?

Remote piloting it down like Bishop did?

Hence the term 'crash'. The assumption that both a relay of the size they need and their Synthetic would both survive the incident and be functional enough to carry out that operation could be fatal to the survivors.

If the ships are as automated as you state, wouldn't it be more feasible for the ship's AI to pilot down a shuttle to a distress beacon? It seems like it would have been far easier for the marines to just pull out a handheld comm device and say, "Hey Ma! Some Xenos done broke our wheels, can ya git somethin' down here ta pick us up?"

...but I suppose if that were the case we wouldn't have a movie...

[TheBlackCat]

I wish I had a clue on this but I don't. There was some mechanism in place for the penal colony to contact WY, but how they did it isn't mentioned.

In the Aliens: Special Edition there is a sequence where the head of the colony mentioned that it takes 2 weeks to get a reply to a message sent to Earth so he didn't bother asking for details regarding his orders. That is indicitive of FTL but not instananeous communication (about 1 week each way from Acheron). We know that they aren't using communication drones because Burke mentioned that the reason they lost contact could have been a downed transmitter.

They weren't down, but the terminal in HQ was down. That's why Bishop had to go to the transmitter outdoors in order to call for help. If the whole team had gone to the transmitter right away, they would have taken far fewer casualties, if any.

That is assuming the aliens wouldn't have attacked them. According to the comics aliens are not particularly concerned with androids as long as the androids are not acting threatening (aliens are only concerned with living things). This is backed by the fact that the aliens focused all their attention on the humans and completely ignored Bishop, despite the fact that Bishop was out in the open with absolutely no defenses and the humans were heavily defended and in an enclosed area that was difficult for the aliens to gain access to.

[Plekhanov]

IIRC the colony comms were down

They weren't down, but the terminal in HQ was down. That's why Bishop had to go to the transmitter outdoors in order to call for help. If the whole team had gone to the transmitter right away, they would have taken far fewer casualties, if any.

I'm not sure I follow the logic. How are Aleins coming from Any direction better than Aliens coming through what the marines thought would be a choke point?

Because melee attackers moving over open ground, on a single plane, starting a considerable distance away are much easier to deal with than melee attackers in small enclosed spaces where they can also attack from above and below.

[Wicked Pilot]

I've been thinking about the whole going outside arguement, and am wondering if perhaps there were environmental reasons in which they couldn't. It's rainy, probably cold, technically day yet it's still dark, and who knows what kind of condiditons you're looking at when the sun actually goes down. You can argue that they knew before they left earth where they were going and what kind of weather to expect, you can agrue that on that big ass ship they must have had plenty of gortexes, and you can argue that you always bring a 'break bag' in case you can't return home as expected, but with all their other fuck ups why not just one more?

[Darth Wong]

They came from the ceiling and the floor.

Precisely. But even worse, keep in mind that at the point they decided to hold up in the HQ building, they hadn't even thoroughly examined the structure yet to see whether it could be fortified (and indeed, we eventually discovered that they never did do a thorough examination, since the xenomorphs found a way in). The only real information they had at that point was the fact that the colonists (who know the building far better than the Marines do) tried to seal it up and failed.

More to the point, if they had made a beeline straight for the transmitter, they could have gotten that dropship down a helluva lot sooner. Moreover, they got ambushed and took heavy losses inside the confined spaces of the reactor complex; surely they should have known that another confined space could be just as dangerous. It really does appear that they let the 8 year old girl decide their strategy.

[Alyeska]

Bullshit. All they had to do was find a reasonably flat area; the region around the transmitter would have been fine. Then they could just pick off the aliens as they approached. The aliens' numbers were only a hundred and fifty or so (anyone claiming much higher numbers from livestock or whatever would do well to explain why the fuck Ripley ran into so little resistance before breaching the Queen's space), and it's a helluva lot easier to pick off a melee opponent from 50 yards than from 3. Also, there are fewer avenues of attack on the ground than there inside a building, not more.

If they concentrate their sentry guns in any single angle, they become useless and the Aliens can easily attack from an alternate angle. This reduces sentry gun effectiveness. The Marines only have 4 rifles, all with just half a magazine each. Whats more, darkness was comming soon. Effective combat ranges would quickly drop. A rush by 100 aliens from a single direction would over run the marines.

That's bullshit too; it is far easier to retreat outside than inside. Inside, you've got to hope they haven't breached the rooms behind you as well as the ones in front of you. And in fact, the xenomorphs had breached the room behind them, which is how Burke died.

Outdoots there is no where to retreat too but space itself. No natural baricade to protect one self against a Xeno. Inside allows the Marines to force the Aliens to bunch up in such a way that the Xeno numbers are rendered less effective. Think of it as choke points.

[TheBlackCat]

Outdoots there is no where to retreat too but space itself. No natural baricade to protect one self against a Xeno. Inside allows the Marines to force the Aliens to bunch up in such a way that the Xeno numbers are rendered less effective. Think of it as choke points.

The other problem is that the outside wasn't flat terrain, it was rocky, with several meter tall rocks all over the place and a ground strewn with boulders several feet. Plus everything was similar in color the xenos and all curved and spikey. They had no clear line of site over any distance that would give their ranged weapons an edge, but due there being no walls the aliens could still attack from any direction and the marines, although being able to detect their presence with the motion detectors, wouldn't have much of a chance of targetting an alien until it got reall close because of the excellent camaflauge. Outside would have been a disaster.

[Darth Sephiroth]

However, giving arming authorization for nuclear weapons to a squad led by a fucking Lieutenant is insane. If any old Lt can arm nuclear weapons at will, the risk of some truly terrible incident is staggering.

I'm thinking that it was more of a just in case precaution with them carrying nukes. Of course it could also be self destruct codes for the colony's reactor...

You're seriously suggesting that a civilian colony nuclear reactor has a self-destruct code which can be activated by remote computer link? And that doesn't strike you as being just as retarded as letting low-ranking military officers arm nuclear weapons autonomously?

Or just to shoot the thing and set it off like they were worried about. I'm also thinking that it may also be other things (Like some people were worried and wanted to make sure the Xenos didn't get off if Ripley was right)

[SylasGaunt]

That is assuming the aliens wouldn't have attacked them. According to the comics aliens are not particularly concerned with androids as long as the androids are not acting threatening (aliens are only concerned with living things). This is backed by the fact that the aliens focused all their attention on the humans and completely ignored Bishop, despite the fact that Bishop was out in the open with absolutely no defenses and the humans were heavily defended and in an enclosed area that was difficult for the aliens to gain access to.

IIRC there's a deleted scene, or at least a scene in the novelization, where Bishop runs into an alien on his way to the transmitter and it pretty much ignores him.

[Darth Wong]

If they concentrate their sentry guns in any single angle, they become useless and the Aliens can easily attack from an alternate angle. This reduces sentry gun effectiveness. The Marines only have 4 rifles, all with just half a magazine each. Whats more, darkness was comming soon. Effective combat ranges would quickly drop. A rush by 100 aliens from a single direction would over run the marines.

You're forgetting a few key factors:

1. Sentry guns have angle coverage of at least 90 degrees. We saw this in the movie when guns were situated at an intersection between two right-angle corridors and were able to scan both corridors, and there's no real reason why it couldn't be much higher. Therefore, they can set up a four-corner perimeter with the guns.
2. Sentry guns can pick up the xenomorphs. The digital readout even indicates the range to the enemy. Nobody will be sneaking up on anybody out there. Even if the sentry guns run dry, they can still detect the enemy.
3. They have motion sensors. Once again, nobody will be sneaking up on them. Mind you, they're obviously magic-tech; the explanation given in the first Alien for their operating mechanism is utterly retarded and would never work.
4. There were some fairly flat areas of ground inside the compound, which was fucking huge. When you look at how enormous the fusion reactor building is (particularly in the scene where they fly into it near the end) and then look at Bishop showing the service access tunnel on the compound diagram, it's pretty clear there are some pretty large cleared-out areas inside that compound that could be easily used for this purpose.
5. If the Marines are supporting the sentry guns with grenades, they can cut down a massed rush much more quickly than the sentry guns alone.
6. Massed-rush tactics have a shitty record against machine-guns, and I don't see any reason why this situation would be any different. The xenomorphs aren't that tough.

Outdoots there is no where to retreat too but space itself. No natural baricade to protect one self against a Xeno. Inside allows the Marines to force the Aliens to bunch up in such a way that the Xeno numbers are rendered less effective. Think of it as choke points.

Yeah, "choke points" above you, behind you, below you ... choke points only work when you can cut down on the avenues of approach. Just the hope that you can keep them out with barricades; they literally repaired some of the same barricades that had failed the first time and expected this to keep the xenomorphs out.

[brianeyci]

Mind you, they're obviously magic-tech; the explanation given in the first Alien for their operating mechanism is utterly retarded and would never work.

IIRC from Alien, Ripley knew that the explanation given by the Science officer was bullshit. "Small variations in the air pressure my ass" or something like that.

Brian

[Alyeska]

1. Sentry guns have angle coverage of at least 90 degrees. We saw this in the movie when guns were situated at an intersection between two right-angle corridors and were able to scan both corridors, and there's no real reason why it couldn't be much higher. Therefore, they can set up a four-corner perimeter with the guns.
2. Sentry guns can pick up the xenomorphs. The digital readout even indicates the range to the enemy. Nobody will be sneaking up on anybody out there. Even if the sentry guns run dry, they can still detect the enemy.
3. They have motion sensors. Once again, nobody will be sneaking up on them. Mind you, they're obviously magic-tech; the explanation given in the first Alien for their operating mechanism is utterly retarded and would never work.
4. There were some fairly flat areas of ground inside the compound, which was fucking huge. When you look at how enormous the fusion reactor building is (particularly in the scene where they fly into it near the end) and then look at Bishop showing the service access tunnel on the compound diagram, it's pretty clear there are some pretty large cleared-out areas inside that compound that could be easily used for this purpose.
5. If the Marines are supporting the sentry guns with grenades, they can cut down a massed rush much more quickly than the sentry guns alone.
6. Massed-rush tactics have a shitty record against machine-guns, and I don't see any reason why this situation would be any different. The xenomorphs aren't that tough.

That would be 2 sentry guns at the worst angle. If the Xenos fucked up, 3 sentry guns at a vector. 2 sentry guns themselves per vector with 4 rifles and half a dozen grenades. I would call survival very marginal. Especialy with a night attack. The sentries could easily take the targets, but the Marines won't be spotting targets near so easily. They could take them down, but if the Xenos made a nice massed charge, things could get ugly fast.

Yeah, "choke points" above you, behind you, below you ... choke points only work when you can cut down on the avenues of approach. Just the hope that you can keep them out with barricades; they literally repaired some of the same barricades that had failed the first time and expected this to keep the xenomorphs out.

The tactic itself did work to a degree because the sentry guns mowed down what was likely a very large number of Xenos before being neutralized. By the time they made their final attack, I think they were down to maybe 2 dozen Xenos.

Actualy, at this point abandoning the station would have been better. The sentry guns already finished the majority of the Xenos. Pack the two surviving sentries (for the detectors) and wait outside on a nice flat area. 24 Xenos against 4 rifles with half a dozen grenades. The odds of survival at this point are far better.

[DPDarkPrimus]

It could be reasoned that the motion tracker explanation in Alien was bullshit because Ash was already in full Company Orders mode and didn't want them to actually know how to assemble any more.

[Plekhanov]

1. Sentry guns have angle coverage of at least 90 degrees. We saw this in the movie when guns were situated at an intersection between two right-angle corridors and were able to scan both corridors, and there's no real reason why it couldn't be much higher. Therefore, they can set up a four-corner perimeter with the guns.
2. Sentry guns can pick up the xenomorphs. The digital readout even indicates the range to the enemy. Nobody will be sneaking up on anybody out there. Even if the sentry guns run dry, they can still detect the enemy.
3. They have motion sensors. Once again, nobody will be sneaking up on them. Mind you, they're obviously magic-tech; the explanation given in the first Alien for their operating mechanism is utterly retarded and would never work.
4. There were some fairly flat areas of ground inside the compound, which was fucking huge. When you look at how enormous the fusion reactor building is (particularly in the scene where they fly into it near the end) and then look at Bishop showing the service access tunnel on the compound diagram, it's pretty clear there are some pretty large cleared-out areas inside that compound that could be easily used for this purpose.
5. If the Marines are supporting the sentry guns with grenades, they can cut down a massed rush much more quickly than the sentry guns alone.
6. Massed-rush tactics have a shitty record against machine-guns, and I don't see any reason why this situation would be any different. The xenomorphs aren't that tough.

That would be 2 sentry guns at the worst angle. If the Xenos fucked up, 3 sentry guns at a vector. 2 sentry guns themselves per vector with 4 rifles and half a dozen grenades. I would call survival very marginal. Especialy with a night attack. The sentries could easily take the targets, but the Marines won't be spotting targets near so easily. They could take them down, but if the Xenos made a nice massed charge, things could get ugly fast.

Yeah, "choke points" above you, behind you, below you ... choke points only work when you can cut down on the avenues of approach. Just the hope that you can keep them out with barricades; they literally repaired some of the same barricades that had failed the first time and expected this to keep the xenomorphs out.

The tactic itself did work to a degree because the sentry guns mowed down what was likely a very large number of Xenos before being neutralized. By the time they made their final attack, I think they were down to maybe 2 dozen Xenos.

Actualy, at this point abandoning the station would have been better. The sentry guns already finished the majority of the Xenos. Pack the two surviving sentries (for the detectors) and wait outside on a nice flat area. 24 Xenos against 4 rifles with half a dozen grenades. The odds of survival at this point are far better.

The sentry guns were able to take out most of the Xeno's inside the building at very close quarters why wouldn't have been able to do the same outside, when they'd have had far longer to engage the Xenos before they could get at the guns?