Which science fiction universe has the worst tactics?

[Samuel]

Since we are off science fiction, how about the battle in Narnia? Where the White Witches strategy is "move foward". That is it. She doesn't even bother organizing men into units or any thing remotely related to any intelligent form of warfare.

It gets egregious when you realize she is supposed to have been an evil and despotic ruler who regularly engaged in warfare with other states before being overun and then using magic to kill everyone in her home plane. Th

[adam_grif]

As adam_grif said, the ending cutscene does not reflect the actual tactics they are supposed to use in space.

What bothers me is that they did the same damn thing in the sequel. I just don't buy that the animators could've made the same mistake twice. We see GARDIAN batteries that are exactly like turbolasers, the Normandy's regular and upgraded main gun is also nowhere near c - I think the only weapon that has a near instantaneous travel time is the Collector cruiser, but I don't really remember. Its been a few months ...

Gameplay, cut-scenes and codex all disagree with each other on several things. "Visuals are king" is a more or less arbitrary decision, based on the bizarre idea that CGI staff are more authoritative about a fictional universe than the writers. The cut-scenes in ME2 are fucked up again, but they're fucked up in a different way to how they were fucked up in ME1. In ME1 we had slow moving fireballs as the weapon of choice for fleet engagements, beam weapons on Sovereign (retconned in ME2), dozens of Systems Alliance Dreadnoughts (retconned as being cruisers), the Citadel defense fleet being nowhere near the relay when characters say they're waiting right in front of the Relay, etc.

In ME2, we had silly dogfighting, the not-laser lasers and the bizarro weapon effects. The weapons that killed the cruiser are Thanix gun (wtf slow motion) and either a frigate gun (which looks nothing like the guns from the first game), or disruptor torps (which look nothing like the first game), but they DO look and sound like geth pulse weapons for some reason.

The visuals disagree with the other visuals between games, but the dialogue/codex seems to be fairly consistent within itself. Ergo, it makes more sense to take that as "cannon" where a contradiction occurs.

[Setzer]

What, you were expecting the Magniot Line from a bunch of cops? If the STARS were there, they might've had a chance of properly holding them off, but naturally after the disaster at the Arklay Research Facility there weren't a lot of STARS left.

The STARS were a glorified SWAT team. A squad of about a dozen or so wouldn't have made much difference. I've seen the opening FMV for Nemesis. The Maginot Line would be an improvement on their improvised barricade. They just sorta parked their cars in a tangled maze, then when the zombies were about to overrun them, they didn't so much as fall back. Then there's that Resident Evil 2 cutscene where the cop manages to miss the zombies that were 5 feet from him while spraying on full auto. And there was a memo that said their response to a possible terrorist threat was to disperse their arms and ammunition so it would be easier to guard.

Since we are off science fiction, how about the battle in Narnia? Where the White Witches strategy is "move foward". That is it. She doesn't even bother organizing men into units or any thing remotely related to any intelligent form of warfare.

It gets egregious when you realize she is supposed to have been an evil and despotic ruler who regularly engaged in warfare with other states before being overun and then using magic to kill everyone in her home plane. Th

Well, according to the Magician's Nephew, she lost the war she waged in Charn. And that's an example of tactics, not strategy. The movie does make some mention of it. I heard one of her generals proposing a battleplan, something about leading with their minotaurs and using the dwarves as a reserve.

[Swindle1984]

Since we are off science fiction, how about the battle in Narnia? Where the White Witches strategy is "move foward". That is it. She doesn't even bother organizing men into units or any thing remotely related to any intelligent form of warfare.

It gets egregious when you realize she is supposed to have been an evil and despotic ruler who regularly engaged in warfare with other states before being overun and then using magic to kill everyone in her home plane. Th

Well, according to the Magician's Nephew, she lost the war she waged in Charn. And that's an example of tactics, not strategy. The movie does make some mention of it. I heard one of her generals proposing a battleplan, something about leading with their minotaurs and using the dwarves as a reserve.

Since she lost the first war, genocided an entire planet on the basis that she was worth literally everyone dying for if she couldn't rule over them, and then had shitty tactics later in Narnia, I'm going to guess two things:

1) The witch/queen isn't all that bright, which is why she never manages more than a temporary victory and that only because of overwhelming magic.

2) She doesn't give a shit about casualties, so long as she gets what she wants. And if she can't have it, then nobody else can either.

[Marcus Aurelius]

It gets egregious when you realize she is supposed to have been an evil and despotic ruler Satan

Corrected that for you. I mean, the Christian allegory in Narnia is so obvious that I can't understand how you could discuss that stuff "in universe" if you're over 12 years old. No wonder Tolkien could not stand C.S. Lewis' fictional works.

[Samuel]

It gets egregious when you realize she is supposed to have been an evil and despotic ruler Satan

Corrected that for you. I mean, the Christian allegory in Narnia is so obvious that I can't understand how you could discuss that stuff "in universe" if you're over 12 years old. No wonder Tolkien could not stand C.S. Lewis' fictional works.

I was refering to the movie where they were slightly less blatant. The directors wanted to cram in a big battle scene and what we got was both sides charging at each other and then the heroes retreating. It was rather embaressing with exceptionally poor tactics on both sides.

[Setzer]

Well, that makes sense in the context of the book. The White Witch probably doesn't have a standing army, and Aslan only had time to give Peter a quickie course in military command before he went to his death by allegory.

[Lurks-no-More]

Hello, and greetings.

On the subject of Starship Troopers movie: yes, the tactics displayed there are stupid. However, taking the movie at a face value is a mistake for two reasons. First off, it's a satire and a send-off of the xenophobic, militaristic, even quasi-fascist attitudes Verhoeven saw, rightly or wrongly, in Heinlein's book. (Personally, I don't think that the society as shown in the book is fascist per se; it's definitely militaristic and authoritarian, however, and I suspect that it would inevitably turn into a full-fledged military dictatorship if implemented in reality.)

Secondly, I (and many others) feel that the movie that we see is an in-universe propaganda piece by a xenophobic, fascist military dictatorship; consider the rousing ending, the "Want to know more?" infobreaks, and such. Thus, everything is simplified and made dramatic, and the honest, brave, beautiful young soldiers win through their Superior Will to Fight, and Human Ingenuity and Toughness. It even makes sense that they're presenting the initial mess at Klendathu as a singular failure of the previous military leader, deflecting the blame away from the current Sky Marshall and upper military echelons!

[thegreatpl]

On the subject of Zombies, I think it is perfectly plausible to:
a) overrun all of human civilization,
b) be completely naturally occurring shambling undead. and for them to move around in a horde.

personally, i dont watch many Zombie films, nor have i seen WWZ, which is what you guys were arguing about.

Someone said they had to have had someone drop the idiot ball for Zombies to have spread all over the planet. Not really. You would just have to have a plague with 2 stages. One of the portrayals of this was the Zombie Hunters webcomic, which portrayed the infected as having 2 stages; an active stage and a dormant stage. Living humans could be infected by a dormant virus and live perfectly normal lives. If this was spread as an airborne virus, i can see it spreading far and wide very quickly, especially in todays environment. When one of these dormant infected dies, then he turns into the active stage, which is the shambling Zombie, and spread the active disease.

Individually, these could be taken care off relatively quickly, but if you have lots of people dropping dead, then you are going to have zombies popping up all over the city. The hospitals are overwhelmed relatively quickly, and then you end up with anyone in the city having a heart attack becoming a zombie. I dont see the authorities adapting fast enough everywhere to stop that.

As for the horde, some sort of herd instincts?

Now, i do not know about the battle in WWZ, but depending on where it was happening, I can totally see a lack of dependance on vehicles. Oil is produced in several places in the world, but noticeably i do not believe it is produced in the northern parts of north america. Which would mean you have whatever fuel is at hand at the time. If i leading was in that situation, i would conserve it only for vital efforts until a fuel source had been secured. So, foot troops.

As for supplying them, well, either use pack animals, or have them scavenge. Armies did it in the past, and it was only stopped as people realized how badly it was hurting the peasants.

On to another subject; Being good at Strategy does not mean you are good at Tactics. The White witch could be a genius at long term strategy, which allowed her to take over, but a complete dunce at tactics. When she has to actually lead the battle for tactical reasons, she loses. And since she seems to be the sort of self centered person she is to wipe out a world, she is not going to step aside like Stalin did.

As for the good guys, what do you expect from a bunch of teenagers with no training?

Most writers are more concerned with plot. We (and i have noticed this in some of the stuff i have written in the past) like to maneuver things into position so it looks cool, and fits with the plot. We also dont have knowledge about everything, no one does. So occasionally we violate physics and tactics for the sake of the plot.

Artists want things to look good, and dont care as much for the plot. Who wants a boring battle with both sides firing at long ranges when you can have their ships go and actually PUNCH through the enemy.

[Samuel]

As for the horde, some sort of herd instincts?

So perfume can protect us from zombies by convincing them we are part of the group?

Oil is produced in several places in the world, but noticeably i do not believe it is produced in the northern parts of north america.

That is from Los Angelos. Heck, I once sleep in a hotel in the city that had a drill right next to it. That isn't mentioning the offshore platforms either.

The US doesn't produce as much oil as it used to, but massive rationing/drop in the population will insure the military has enough.

Armies did it in the past, and it was only stopped as people realized how badly it was hurting the peasants.

Except zombies don't grow food. And you need to actively grow food in the US because our food producing regions are dependent upon pumped water from aquifers.

The White witch could be a genius at long term strategy, which allowed her to take over, but a complete dunce at tactics.

Actually her strategy appeared to be insane power through magic. Which I'm fine with, but knowing such tactics as "form soldiers into units" is... incredibly stupid. Especially when you enemies are centaurs so they can simply run away.

As for the good guys, what do you expect from a bunch of teenagers with no training?

They had the literal incarnation of God to give them advice before the battle and they did have other creaturs to advise them. That... probably explains what happened.

Artists want things to look good, and dont care as much for the plot.

Yes, but a wall of spears looks awesome and having units might make it easier to model everything. Dammit, I wanted 7 foot tall minotaurs armed like this:
http://charlesgomes.files.wordpress.com ... halanx.jpg

[thegreatpl]

So perfume can protect us from zombies by convincing them we are part of the group?

Maybe. I remember in Shaun of the dead they pretended to be zombies and got away with it. So why not? Problem is finding what makes them think that we are part a group.

That is from Los Angelos. Heck, I once sleep in a hotel in the city that had a drill right next to it. That isn't mentioning the offshore platforms either.

The US doesn't produce as much oil as it used to, but massive rationing/drop in the population will insure the military has enough.

that is why i specified the northern parts of america. I know that oil is produced in the southern states, hell, i have seen the oil pumps. But to my knowledge, which i freely admit is not that advanced being on the other side of the atlantic, there are none in the north.

Except zombies don't grow food. And you need to actively grow food in the US because our food producing regions are dependent upon pumped water from aquifers.

sure, the zombies are not producing food, but that is not what you need to be scavenging. There are hundreds of houses out there. A quick look in my food cupboards and i see plenty of packets of food with sell by dates for next year. And these are foods that are kept in cupboards, not fridges.

Actually her strategy appeared to be insane power through magic. Which I'm fine with, but knowing such tactics as "form soldiers into units" is... incredibly stupid. Especially when you enemies are centaurs so they can simply run away.

I assume you mean not knowing how to form them into units? Well, let us look at the history of Narnia; i cannot remember any mention of there being any past wars, and the oldest battles were pretty much line up and charge the enemy and hope your side killed more than them and won. Now, in Prince Caspian and other later books, they should have advanced more, since they have had wars in the past and should have learned from them, but here, do they actually know any better. Now the queen ought to have, since she practically murdered an entire war after she lost a war, but did she leave all that sort of thing to her generals who know nothing.

Yes, but a wall of spears looks awesome and having units might make it easier to model everything. Dammit, I wanted 7 foot tall minotaurs armed like this:
http://charlesgomes.files.wordpress.com ... halanx.jpg

Yes, but you also have to remember that i was also making the point that they dont know everything. To you and me that looks cool and makes sense, but to an artist who is a complete dunce at history, the military, and/or tactics it might not even occur to them.

There is a 3rd person who has a say in making movies; the director. He is, admittedly, an artist on steroids, but he has the final say. And his views is to work out what is good for the audience.

[lance]

What about DOOP from Futureama? Hand crank laser guns, "Wave, after wave, after wave" tactics. Zap Branigan having rank at all?

[lance]

that is why i specified the northern parts of america. I know that oil is produced in the southern states, hell, i have seen the oil pumps. But to my knowledge, which i freely admit is not that advanced being on the other side of the atlantic, there are none in the north.

We have oil pumps up hear in Northern Michigan, and I'm pretty sure we pump oil in Alaska

[Sea Skimmer]

Some is still found in PA too, and a lot of very small oil fields exist in the US and the rest of the world in places you might not expect. Even the UK had some small oil fields on land in the past, built interestingly enough by the US Army during WW2. More importantly the US also has one of the largest oil-refined fuel-natural gas pipeline systems on earth. Our economy could not function without it, but almost all the pipes are buried and thus safe from zombies and random gunfire. Only the pumping stations would need to be defended full time. But if in fact if the zombies are a kind that only seeks out live humans, I'm kind of confused whoes zombies are being talked about, then you could just leave the pumping stations unmanned most of the time and nothing would happen too them. Zombies would only swarm when a heavily armed maintenance team showed up.

[NecronLord]

What about DOOP from Futureama? Hand crank laser guns, "Wave, after wave, after wave" tactics. Zap Branigan having rank at all?

Sadly there's worse than him.

[Vendetta]

But if in fact if the zombies are a kind that only seeks out live humans, I'm kind of confused whoes zombies are being talked about, then you could just leave the pumping stations unmanned most of the time and nothing would happen too them. Zombies would only swarm when a heavily armed maintenance team showed up.

All the zombie discussion was about Brooks zombies, which as far as I recall yes, only seek out humans.

[bobnik]

But if in fact if the zombies are a kind that only seeks out live humans, I'm kind of confused whoes zombies are being talked about, then you could just leave the pumping stations unmanned most of the time and nothing would happen too them. Zombies would only swarm when a heavily armed maintenance team showed up.

All the zombie discussion was about Brooks zombies, which as far as I recall yes, only seek out humans.

Actually not true. The astronaut sees them going after burrowing animals, and they can be attracted by light at night, and by noise.

[MKSheppard]

Disclaimer: I'm not a WWZ fanboy. I was a technical adviser for it, and the survival guide.

So you're a complete fucking moron as well as Brooks?

No wonder the book sucked dick so hard.

Here's a hint -- cluster bombs are very efficient fragmentation weapons -- we're talking limbs mangled, chopped off; having your head opened up etc by very hot fragments that act as very efficient cutting implements.

Considering that Brooksverse zombies die from being hit in the head; does it matter if we hit them in the head with a 7.62 round or by having their skull opened up by a fragment from a cluster bomb?

Lets not even get into the whole artillery and tanks completely ineffective versus zombie hordes; since they offer completely protected fighting positions against a zombie threat -- if you're in danger of being overrun by zombies, place the Mk 1 Mod 0 locking bar on your hatches (to augment the already built in hatch locking systems); and keep driving towards the rendevous point.

If your tank breaks down from all the dead zombies getting stuck in your treads causing you to throw a track; no problem; you can just wait until rescue -- it's not like the zombies are going to get into your tank.

[Werrf]

Here's a hint -- cluster bombs are very efficient fragmentation weapons -- we're talking limbs mangled, chopped off; having your head opened up etc by very hot fragments that act as very efficient cutting implements.

Considering that Brooksverse zombies die from being hit in the head; does it matter if we hit them in the head with a 7.62 round or by having their skull opened up by a fragment from a cluster bomb?

"The opening bombardment took out three quarters of them."
...
"...it's not like Zack just skipped through the barrage unscathed. We saw bodies blown to shit, tossed into the air, ripped to pieces, even complete heads, live heads with eyes and jaws still moving, popping sky high like freakin' Cristal corks...we were taking them down, no doubt, but not as many or as fast as we needed to."

When you've read the book, you'll see the parts that say the artillery was killing the zombies, but not as quickly as expected, and then they ran out of ammo. So every single fucking point you've made is utterly irrelevant.

Lets not even get into the whole artillery and tanks completely ineffective versus zombie hordes; since they offer completely protected fighting positions against a zombie threat -- if you're in danger of being overrun by zombies, place the Mk 1 Mod 0 locking bar on your hatches (to augment the already built in hatch locking systems); and keep driving towards the rendevous point.

If your tank breaks down from all the dead zombies getting stuck in your treads causing you to throw a track; no problem; you can just wait until rescue -- it's not like the zombies are going to get into your tank.

Too bad the whole battle was told from the point of infantry, you idiot. We never heard about tanks being overrun by zombies, indeed we heard about the POV character being rescued because he was thrown into a Bradley. Tanks were only abandoned later because they needed too much fuel to do not enough damage.

[MKSheppard]

When you've read the book, you'll see the parts that say the artillery was killing the zombies, but not as quickly as expected, and then they ran out of ammo. So every single fucking point you've made is utterly irrelevant.

It's been so long since I read the book and it was absolutely retarded that I forgot a lot of it.

I love how the U.S. Army somehow manages to run out of ammunition, despite the current syllabus for simple training[/i] calls for 60,000 tons of ammunition to be consumed a year.

This LINK is a very interesting read on how out of reality the US Army's logistical planning system is with reality.

According to it; FM 101-10-1/2, Staff Officers’ Field Manual Organizational, Technical, and Logistical Data Planning Factors -- calls for a mere 99 MRLS rounds to be expended on the first day per launcher; and then 98 for each succeeding day.

Or how in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the US Army stockpiled/fired the following:

120mm Tank Gun: 206,075 stockpiled, 14,061 fired (7% consumed)
TOW Missiles: 18,564 stockpiled, 964~ fired (5% consumed)
MRLS: 17,145 stockpiled, 6,604 fired (39% consumed)
30mm Apache Rounds: 586,652 stockpiled, 28,621 fired (5% consumed)

Then fast forwarding a decade to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003:

120mm Tank Gun: 65,000 stockpiled, 1,576 fired (6% consumed)
TOW Missiles: 8,500 stockpiled, 375~ fired (4% consumed)
MRLS: 9,000 stockpiled, 548 fired (6% consumed)
30mm Apache Rounds: 750,000 stockpiled, 35,057 fired (5% consumed)

The author of the paper then went on to look at the discrepancies between the Army's Logistical Estimate Worksheet used to plan combat operations and came up with this for Operation Iraqi Freedom's 21 days:

16,107 x MRLS needed according to worksheet, against 548 fired.
9,303 x 120mm needed according to worksheet, against 1,576 fired.
179,340 x 25mm needed according to worksheet, against 16,026 fired.

Code: Select all

After analyzing tables 25-29, research shows that FM 101-10-1/2 grossly
overestimates the ammunition consumption. This could cause a great misuse of
transportation assets during combat operations.

Table 30 is a summary of rounds per system, per day. The significance of this
table is the ability to compare the planning figure from the Logistical Estimate Worksheet
to the actual usage in combat and training.

...

In summary, all calculation of ammunition usage is extremely high. The good aspect of the high calculation is that the military will not run out of ammunition. The bad aspect of being grossly overcalculated is that the transportation assets that are required to move such ammunition are more than likely needed to do something else.

[Werrf]

When you've read the book, you'll see the parts that say the artillery was killing the zombies, but not as quickly as expected, and then they ran out of ammo. So every single fucking point you've made is utterly irrelevant.

It's been so long since I read the book and it was absolutely retarded that I forgot a lot of it.

Then can I suggest not talking about it, since, by your own admission, you don't know what you're talking about?

[Ghost Rider]

When you've read the book, you'll see the parts that say the artillery was killing the zombies, but not as quickly as expected, and then they ran out of ammo. So every single fucking point you've made is utterly irrelevant.

It's been so long since I read the book and it was absolutely retarded that I forgot a lot of it.

Then can I suggest not talking about it, since, by your own admission, you don't know what you're talking about?

But that's Shep's point. He's referring to the absolute horrible mismanagement of the military, and commenting on it.

Now, if you want to correct him and demonstrate how the book actually doesn't do what he percieves, that would be a far better way of quieting him down rather then telling him something that will simply make him wonder how cowardly you really are on the subject matter.

[MKSheppard]

Then can I suggest not talking about it, since, by your own admission, you don't know what you're talking about?

By that logic, you should shut the fuck up, since you don't know how the US military plans and budgets out logistics and ammunition supply for it's campaigns.

[Werrf]

Then can I suggest not talking about it, since, by your own admission, you don't know what you're talking about?

By that logic, you should shut the fuck up, since you don't know how the US military plans and budgets out logistics and ammunition supply for it's campaigns.

I was referring specifically to your complaint that cluster bombs should have killed the zombies, and pointing out that they did. Very effectively. I cannot speak to the availability of ammunition, I have absolutely no knowledge of it - I will certainly concede that running out of ammunition is highly unlikely, if you say so. My objection was to you making specific complaints about the efficacy of the weapons which just aren't borne out by the text. Can you concede that point?

[MKSheppard]

I was referring specifically to your complaint that cluster bombs should have killed the zombies, and pointing out that they did. Very effectively.

25% survival rate for unarmored personnel exposed to cluster bombs? Please, COME. THE. FUCK. ON.

You just don't comprehend how lethal modern weaponry is -- for example, a single MRLS rocket dumps it's submunitions over an area 200m in diameter -- everything that's unprotected in that area is dead or going to die in a few minutes.

Let's not get into the entire tactical fuckwittery of the Battle of Yonkers. Let's fight zombies in the middle of a city!

We know they are attracted to sound, light, movement, humans -- so why not herd them into a kill zone outside of NYC; where your weapons can be used to full effect without buildings getting in the way and simply plaster grid square after grid square with B-52 strikes?