Last Chance by Gino

Tell us what you thought about the September/October 2010 issue!
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Lester Curtis
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Post by Lester Curtis »

Sorry, but I can't say a lot for this one . . . it's got some of the clumsiest lines I've seen in ages -- and back-to-back, at that:
Quote:
"How about another beer, Charlie?" Andrew Masters, a wiry graying Chief Warrant Officer asked.

"Comin' up, Andy," Chief Gunners Mate Charles Lucas, a slightly overweight dark haired man, said.
Which is sad, because the plot deserved better execution. And a more believable outcome . . . ah, hell, just decommission the whole thing and give the same name to its replacement.
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Lester Curtis
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Post by Lester Curtis »

Now, I don't know anything about the aliens' society and political system. In human history however, the death of a souvereign ruler, for one thing, ending a campaign is not unheard of.
Alien mindset doesn't explain it -- not to me, anyway. They were out for conquest, with a warfleet and ground troops, meaning they had to have previous experience at large-scale fighting -- meaning, in turn, that they should have known to expect losses. As well, they knew we had a certain level of technology, and although our modernized energy weapons were ineffective, they should also have expected less-advanced weaponry (projectiles) to be brought into play on our part. Having already blown up a great deal of our stuff, it would seem sensible to expect them to continue, modifying their tactics as needed -- after all, they also had colony ships with them.
Now, I don't know anything about the aliens' society and political system. In human history however, the death of a souvereign ruler, for one thing, ending a campaign is not unheard of.
It's also been known to piss off the defenders even more . . .

The stack of improbabilities here is just way too tall.
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Robert_Moriyama
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Any Stargate SG-1 fans?

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

Any Stargate SG-1 fans would recall that the highly-advanced Asgard (who had advanced hyperdrive, shield, teleportation, and energy weapons) had less success dealing with the Replicators than humans (with simple projectile weapons that physically broke up Replicator constructs).

So posit an alien race so advanced that its defensive technology was mainly devoted to blocking various energy weapons. Then throw a whole lot of metal at one of their ships at speeds ranging up to the supersonic. Even if the defenses deflect or otherwise block that barrage, they will expend a lot of energy to do so. A study of available television broadcasts would reveal that projectile weapons were extremely common even among non-military subsets of the indigenous sophonts -- so much so that any invasion would meet with a lot of fairly-effective resistance. That a single vessel was able to down the flagship of the fleet could shift the invade/don't-invade balance from Shock-and-Awe to ... Not-Right-Now. (Suppose that the alien ground forces had similar defenses, also vulnerable to whole-lot-of-metal-bits attacks. Guerrilla attacks with widely-available weapons could cause a lot of casualties...)

RM
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Lester Curtis
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Post by Lester Curtis »

So posit an alien race so advanced that its defensive technology was mainly devoted to blocking various energy weapons.
This alone stretches my imagination just a bit too far . . . but maybe that's just me.
A study of available television broadcasts would reveal that projectile weapons were extremely common even among non-military subsets of the indigenous sophonts -- so much so that any invasion would meet with a lot of fairly-effective resistance.
Good, Robert, but it seems likely that the invaders would have done their homework and known this ahead of time -- and gone elsewhere.

Like the reason the Japanese decided not to invade the mainland U.S. -- "There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." I don't recall whose quote that was.

One likely scenario I see as a slight change from the original is this: that, as the more advanced nations of Earth were replacing their outdated slug-throwers with the new super-death-ray goodies, they sell off their old weapons to friendly less-developed nations. Then, the aliens would be most threatened by third-world countries -- who, of course, would have kept their AK-47's anyway.
I was raised by humans. What's your excuse?
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