History Headscratchers / AvatarRDA

* Every Na'vi fighting on the ground is a Na'vi ''not'' riding a banshee to try and attack the Dragon. Since Quaritch has more ground troops than he has flyers to carry them all at once, he's busy using his surplus ground troops to present a second threat so the enemy splits his own forces into two groups to meet both threats, instead of being free to concentrate all their force against the one group of his that's actually essential to his plan. Or in short, Quaritch is making a diversionary attack on the ground to help the air mission's odds. Also, the Na'vi being a tribal warrior society its reasonable to assume that that [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking the chiefs will lead their men from the front]], and so a ground battle of Na'vi vs. modern weapons might give him a chance to kill as many Na'vi tribal leaders as will charge at his guns, which if he pulls it off will improve the odds of his 'Break the Na'vi's will to resist' strategy that's his fundamental reason for bombing Hometree in the first place. Its not exactly Creator/SunTzu but neither is it the IdiotBall; his ground tactics are actually serving his overall strategy to at least some degree instead of being wasted effort.

* I just realised something. If you blow up the forests, [[WhatAnIdiot you risk blowing up the unobtanium under them]].

[[folder: So why do the RDA go through the GIANT FRICKING BLACKOUT FIELD that allows only [=LoS=] firing?]]

[[folder: Why isn't there an "Avatar Oversight Commitee"?]]

[[folder: The actions of the humans on the planet]]

[[folder: The humans leaving.]]

[[folder: What's going to happen wend the next ship full of humans shows up?]]

[[folder: The humans' failure to learn from history.]]

[[folder: How is preemptively destroying a core religious site a good idea?]]

[[folder: Why are there no representatives from other countries aboard this mission?]]

[[folder: Quaritch's unchecked power]]

[[folder: Why didn't the mercs MacrossMissileMassacre attack the Tree of Souls with loads and loads of dumb rockets?]]

[[folder: RDA in general. Warning: This is a big one.]]

[[folder: Why not strip mine one of the planets or moons closer to the star?]]

[[folder: Combat?]]

[[folder: Invisible Bad Press]]

** Many of you seem to be discounting one (or perhaps several) very important facts. The Valkyrie Shuttle is a space capable aircraft, ludicrously fast atmospheric flyer, and a stable VTOL with nigh infinite fuel. There is no reason why it couldn't have flown over the banshee's fight ceiling, used hardened GPS systems to fly directly over the tree, came to a hover, descended vertically, and then had the munitions tossed out of the back. If that failed, the scorpions could certainly launch a dumb-fire missile attack, and without a massive shuttle to wait for, they would be free to fly at top speed towards to objective and evade the banshees, which are shown to fly either as fast, or slightly slower than, the aircraft during the final battle. Ammo costs are irrelevant, as the RDA clearly has enough funding to procure a private army, massive mining equipment, AVATARs, space craft, and destroy Home Tree with a hilariously excessive amount of HE/incendiary Missiles.

** Stop being deliberately dense. He meant sympathetic humans, not Na'vi. As I said earlier, the ISVs are NOT faster than light, it would be trivial to send communications ahead, even at light speed, particularly with the existence of the [[AllThereInTheManual Na'vi sympathisers' movement on Earth]], where is is OBVIOUS that the scientists would have had connections to even BEFORE leaving for Pandora.

*** An atmospheric entry versus a low altitude dive? YouFailPhysicsForever. The transition from orbital flight to hover happens over ''SEVERAL MILES'' at low speed in a clear area. Indeed, the fact that the hover is only at low altitudes perfectly proves your own point, that VTOL is an inefficient mode of travel, being far more effective closer to the ground, and therefore you have completely disproved your own point.

* There's an [[YouFailEconomicsForever economic]] side to this also: as soon as word gets back home that RDA has been sent packing, the price of unobtanium and anything made with it will skyrocket faster than you can say "oil embargo". If this stuff is half as useful as we're led to believe, this will create a powerful incentive for someone to go back with a full-fledged invasion force to take the now-worth-a-lot-more-than-$20M-a-kilo unobtainium. It's also going to create a powerful incentive for humanity, fed up with high prices, to look the other way as this happens. Jake and the Na'Vi should really be negotiating while they have the upper hand. "You can stay if you follow our rules - low-impact underground mining only at sites we approve, and your security force has to lose the firearms and learn archery" could be a long-term sustainable arrangement. "Yankee go home" will likely cause everything to end in tears.

** Unobtanium is an element. YouFailPhysicsForever. And 'nuking' is just a paraphrase for 'blowing it all to hell.' Seriously, all it would take to wipe the biosphere of Pandora is for the RDA to "accidentally" eject a hunk of tungsten roughly the size of a fridge at precisely the right angle as they slow down their relativistically moving the ship. ''The size of a fridge''. And no more Na'vi.
*** YouFailPhsyicsForever. Structures, ESPECIALLY crystalline ones and some metals, can EASILY be damaged, altered or destroyed by extreme conditions. Superconductors even more so. Any chunk of tungsten would be captured by Polyphemus' gravity well.

*** Not to mention how it actually fell, to Max ripping the control room open with mining equipment and the avatars running in and securing it - all in all, a real CrowningMomentOfAwesome that should have been included in the full theatrical cut.

* Every Na'vi fighting on the ground is a Na'vi ''not'' riding a banshee to try and attack the Dragon. Since Quaritch has more ground troops than he has flyers to carry them all at once, he's busy using his surplus ground troops to present a second threat so the enemy splits his own forces into two groups to meet both threats, instead of being free to concentrate all their force against the one group of his that's actually essential to his plan. Or in short, Quaritch is making a diversionary attack on the ground to help the air mission's odds. Also, the Na'vi being a tribal warrior society its reasonable to assume that that [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking the chiefs will lead their men from the front]], and so a ground battle of Na'vi vs. modern weapons might give him a chance to kill as many Na'vi tribal leaders as will charge at his guns, which if he pulls it off will improve the odds of his 'Break the Na'vi's will to resist' strategy that's his fundamental reason for bombing Hometree in the first place. Its not exactly SunTzu but neither is it the IdiotBall; his ground tactics are actually serving his overall strategy to at least some degree instead of being wasted effort.

[[folder: Why didn't the mercs [[MacrossMissileMassacre attack the Tree of Souls with loads and loads of dumb rockets?]]]]

** Despite this, the RDA acts more illogically than congress. The avatar project was a terrible idea from the start because the participants will inevitably go native. By the year 2154, there will be so many movies, books and TV shows about this sort of thing that the RDA should be DangerouslyGenreSavvy. But they follow every cliche in the book. This is why Genre Blindness is becoming a discredited trope.

**** I like to think that the network of interconnected flora is somehow [[NausicaaOfTheValleyOfTheWind purifying the Pandoran soil]], with Unobtanium as the byproduct, along with whatever other poisons the plants exhale. If the same process could be duplicated on Earth, with some way to control the poisons the plants give off and a short enough turnaround time, there would be no need to mine for the ore, plus you get the added bonus of repairing the Earth's biosphere. A mining concern should have on-site geologists; why didn't they team up with the biologists to see if there was a connection between the giant trees and the ore beyond "stuff grows big?"

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* Every Na'vi fighting on the ground is a Na'vi ''not'' riding a banshee to try and attack the Dragon. Since Quaritch has more ground troops than he has flyers to carry them all at once, he's busy using his surplus ground troops to present a second threat so the enemy splits his own forces into two groups to meet both threats, instead of being free to concentrate all their force against the one group of his that's actually essential to his plan. Or in short, Quaritch is making a diversionary attack on the ground to help the air mission's odds. Also, the Na'vi being a tribal warrior society its reasonable to assume that that [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking the chiefs will lead their men from the front]], and so a ground battle of Na'vi vs. modern weapons might give him a chance to kill as many Na'vi tribal leaders as will charge at his guns, which if he pulls it off will improvef improving odds of his 'Break the Na'vi's will to resist' strategy that's his fundamental reason for bombing Hometree in the first place. Its not exactly SunTzu but neither is it the IdiotBall; his ground tactics are actually serving his overall strategy to at least some degree instead of being wasted effort.