Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

The sphincters open when the systolic pressure wave comes up behind them. Think of it as a green wave with blood inctead of cars and sphincters instead of traffic lights. This way you can take advantage of the fact that the bloodflow in humans is not continuous to increase the augmented person's chances of surviving if something, say, rips both of his legs off and he can lose a lot of blood in a split second, which would be a problem if his sphincters normally stayed open, since he can die of shock before they manage to close - but since his sphincters normally stay closed, he'll be significantly more likely to retain enough of his blood to remain alive and maybe even conscious.

edited 22nd Apr '17 1:51:28 PM by KnitTie

It's not like we're going to clamp down on all arteries simultaneously. It's only for isolating parts of the body already damaged.

That being said, partially constricting the bloodflow can allow some blood through. This can keep the limb from going septic.

Ha! Sphincter...

But seriously, if you're going with pure pressure before and after the valve, it sounds like that would work fine for limbs, but you're going to run into some real calibration issues around the internal organs (the liver, kidneys, large intestine and even the lungs can have a significant impact on local blood pressure which quickly evens out due to circulation, but which would likely trigger the valves) and even in limbs you'd risk a harmful 'misfire' if some one sleeps or sits in the wrong position and one of their limbs 'goes to sleep'.

Personally if I had to make it 'organ' proof, I'd have it default to 'always open' and have it contract partially when local pain receptors are triggered, then either contract fully or reopen based on what happens to the pressure on the 'down stream' side. (If the pressure drops, it means that either the next valve down didn't contract because it's missing and there's a hole or else there's a hole between this valve and the next and either way it's time to close up).

But this also sounds more like a technology question than a military strategy/tactics question.

edited 22nd Apr '17 3:13:05 PM by Robrecht

Angry gets shit done.

Yeah more technology oriented though if you could find a way to do that it could be handy in at least slowing blood loss especially on the big arteries in the limbs which are notorious for bleeding profusely when damaged. The Femoral Artery is the worst.

Speaking of which one shooting technique is to shoot into the pelvic cradle preferably several times. This stands a good chance of fracturing the pelvis or hip as well as tearing some dense blood bearing tissue.

edited 22nd Apr '17 3:19:25 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Goodpoint. Tis just people. People who have become a little too used to telepathy, but people with habitual and religious reasons to act as one superorganism in certain circumstances. There's a recognizable chain of command. They don't have one single will, they're just able to respond to each other near instantaneously (well at C) and with the perfect clarity one can only get from reading minds^note Albeit they don't actually read thoughts as much as intent and emotion. Actual thoughts are reserved for people who know each other well or trained together.. Instead of Alice telling Bob to go cover that spot, Bob will pick up Alice's intention and respond accordingly. This in addition to being able to borrow each other's skill memory.^note Even paralyzed and infirm people are kept busy training others this way, or sending a strong desire to drop flat when they sense danger that a newbie doesn't.. Albeit, after being use to living like this, they do get disoriented when separated from others.
As for how they transmit/receive, they "naturally" can only do that within a couple meters of each other. ^note Like a circuit. If carol is out of range of Alice but Bob is in range of Carol and Alice, Alice can communicate with Carol, just with the caveat that Bob'll get the message too. (This never goes off). Longer distances require special augmentation (which can go off).

Not a full hive mind, I'm sure, but it seemed the closest. I figured their advantage would be being able to share information at future warrior +++ speed, being able to respond to situations most rapidly, and learning extremely quickly. I'm just unsure about the pitfalls or whether what I just listed is quite accurate.

edited 22nd Apr '17 7:57:27 PM by CenturyEye

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives

Any weapon potential for the genepaste? Other than a gun that shoots tumors.

If you took damage in such a way that both lungs are hit, yeah you're pretty much fucked. Time to live with two collapsed lungs is a matter of minutes at most.

It also begs the question, what kind of hit(s) did you take that punctured both lungs but left your heart, aorta and various other bits relatively undamaged?

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

A pitchfork?

Angry gets shit done.

Fragmentation, side to side penetrating hits, fragmenting bullets, and shitty luck.

Who watches the watchmen?

Eye - The big caveat is that everyone seems to be psychologically reliant on this constant mental communication and individual soldiers or even small units may find themselves borderline helpless when cut off from the telepathic network simply because they've never really learned how to exist without their buddies mentally standing behind their backs. I'd also say that when a large chunk of your forces are being routed and their feelings of fear and despair are being transmitted to the rest of your guys, it seems likely that panic can literally spread like a wildfire. And if this communication is based on emotions and intent much more than on actual thoughts, then communicating precise orders will be rather difficult - I can imagine it'll be something like a "go in that direction and end up on an elevation" at most - and relaying data back to the HQ will be more difficult still. I guess the way that this hive mind-lite would be used for combat is by combining it with the ordinary war room practices, such as maps, orders, reports and so on, to achieve a greater degree of real-time awareness of the military situation than is usually possible with modern or sci-fi tech alone, and there probably would be some highly-trained emotion interpreters on hand whose entire job is to translate the telepathic input into something that's more easily understandable by the ordinary person.

edited 23rd Apr '17 2:10:36 AM by KnitTie

Thanks! And I have logical weaknesses to work with now.

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives

So, I'm trying to experiment with ways for each individual Space Fighter in my setting can "resupply" when they run out of ammo either for their mini guns or internal weapons bays.

First thought was to have a crew on standby after fighters are launched, and when they run out, the fighters would call out their issue over the radio towards the tower of the carrier, and they'd hightail it back towards the carrier as fast as they can with their wingmen giving them ample "cover" so they won't be pursued by the enemy. They land on a specialized flight deck, where the crews are standing by, and once they land, the crew acts like a NASCAR pit crew and load missiles and guns as fast as humanly possible (>less than 3 minutes) and then the fighter is launched immediately back into the fight.

Second thought was the carrier having disposable or semi-disposable supply drones. Either the carrier would launch them when contact was made and the drones are covered in stealth coating throughout the entire battlespace in numerous areas (I'd say in about a 30,000 km radius) in a standby mode. whenever a fighter runs out, the pilot presses an icon to send out a heavily encrypted signal to "wake up" the drone so He/She and ONLY he/she knows it's location and they make their way to the drone which resupplies the fighter (sort of similar to in-flight refueling, but not with fuel, and nowhere even close to as long.)

Thoughts? What could you improve on each scenario? Is there another way?

New Survey coming this weekend!

Drones work, have them also with sentry turrets to ward off any attackers.

Modular hardpoint weapons and ammo canisters. A US Marine Corps AH-1W/Z Super Cobra and Army AH-64 Apache Longbow can reload in the field through similar means within but a few minutes after touching down. They can reload and fly off again for another sortie while still idling the rotors!

They keep doing that when on hunter killer anti-tank missions until either bingo fuel, mission complete, and/or a predetermined time.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

You could also have supply pods that are interchangeable. Simply remove the spent pod and put in a new one. Refuel it while the fighter is fighting is out and have it ready when it comes back.

There's a new sheriff in town >tips fedora

, That sounds like a perfect way to get a lot of your pilots recklessly killed, especially if they're idle even for a few minutes.

They'd be better off under the protection of a carrier. At least then, they'd only have to worry about the carrier surviving the battle period in tact rather than hoping you don't get splashed while reloading all of your ammo.

It's been done on carriers, forward air bases and more for decades in reality. In WW 2, planes would launch, land, and rearm in the middle of an air attack. As long as a bomb didn't hit the deck, what was the problem? If your space carrier is taking damage whilst trying to recover and rearm Space Fighters, perhaps either the space carrier needs better cover from its escorts or needs to be more built like a space battleship.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

They system Tom is describing is meant to minimize time on ground for re-arm which also minimizes exposure in that kind of consideration. It also allows you to possibly put easier to build low end reload/rearm points in the forward areas.

Who watches the watchmen?

So it sounds like the carrier option would be more viable?

New Survey coming this weekend!

with supply pods you would only need to stand still for seconds, and a carrier usually is positioned out side the major battle.

There's a new sheriff in town >tips fedora

@To M; You never said the the fighters would return to the carrier, only implied that they would be rearmed in middle of the battle.

-Face Palm-

That's kinda a given thing ya know?

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Considering we have TWO scenarios where one doesn't involve the carrier at all, then, obviously not.

He mentioned landing on a flight deck in his original post, so assuming that flight deck is attached to a ship, there's your carrier.

Other options I've seen in video games include specialized shuttles that standby to offload ammo and such to fighters that dock with them. Presumably they'd orbit in some standby location between the carrier and the battlefield just like tankers do in Real Life. Presumably if baddies got too close to the refuel/rearm orbit, the shuttle would bug out if it could.

IIRC Project Sylpheed had support craft that sat between the carrier and the battle field as a sort of mid way point to rearm, repair, and refuel.

edited 27th Apr '17 10:14:32 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?