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How Can We Lose?
Posted By: William SpencerDate: 8/9/01 6:49 p.m.

In Response To: Accept it (Alfred Mordeir)

: Lets face it, 77.77% of marathon's desighn was based on making the game fun,
: challenging and playable. I mean riddle me this: How can a 2 Kilometer
: space ship with a full crew, weapons and ammunition piled all over the
: place, sheild rechargers, pattern buffers and three of the universe's most
: powerful AI's fall under the control of a bunch of three eyed pencil-neck
: geeks running around in there underware with pointy sticks in less than
: thirty seconds???

The same way that the entire French Army, equipped with tanks, airplanes, well trained infantry, and a series of state-of-the-art bunkers couldn't stop Germany from taking over their country.* The Pfhor used different tactics then the Humans were prepared for.

The Marathon was not equipped, evidently, to handle a full-scale electromagnetic pulse - the weapon the Pfhor used during the initial attack. Makes sense - it was a civilian transport, intended to handle the deeps of space, not nuclear warfare. All the high-tech equipment in the world won't help you if the circuits have been blown to slag.

Humanity was unaware of the fact that teleporters could be used without a pad - hence, their defenses were geared toward an external attack, not an internal one. The Pfhor simply teleported past the remaining defenses.

And, as Muller points out in the Lost Packets, the Marathon's defense personnel had become soft. Three centuries without fighting a war is a long time, and even food riots down on deck 87 and chockisens harassing outskirts work crews aren't enough to train the security personnel for a full-on battle.

And most of the crew was panicky civilians, not trained military personnel. The Bobs probably got in their own way just as much as they get in yours. :) In fact, judging from the attitude of the UESC towards its people, the Marathon was probably designed to be DIFFICULT to move around in - limit civilian movement by having tight corridors and lots of slow bulkhead doors so the proles can't rise up and hit the government centers...and narrow corridors help contain concussion grenade blasts and sprays of tear gas so beautifully...

And who says the ship's AIs were THAT powerful? They were only controlling a planetoid-sized colony ship...now, a PLANET-control AI. THAT'S trouble. :)

This still doesn't explain the really silly stuff, so your earlier comment applies: the game was supposed to be fun, not realistic.

*(And, incidentally, the same way that a single obsolete-but-heavily-modified FTL scout ship equipped with a rampant AI, a number of maintenance-and-infiltration alien cyborgs, a number of poorly-trained humans with only handguns, and a single rampant battleroid could decimate an entire Pfhor battle group.)

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

About G4 SunbathingTynskel 8/8/01 12:50 p.m.
     Re: About G4 SunbathingSoapstone 8/8/01 8:37 p.m.
           Re: About G4 SunbathingMark Levin 8/9/01 9:30 a.m.
                 Re: About G4 SunbathingOctavio XVIII 8/9/01 3:05 p.m.
                       gravity and level designSoapstone 8/9/01 3:31 p.m.
                             Re: gravity and level designMark Levin 8/9/01 5:38 p.m.
                                   Re: gravity and level designSoapstone 8/9/01 10:27 p.m.
                             Accept itAlfred Mordeir 8/9/01 5:42 p.m.
                                   How Can We Lose?William Spencer 8/9/01 6:49 p.m.
                                         Re: How Can We Lose?Speaker-To-Animals 8/10/01 6:32 a.m.
                 Major important thoughtSpeaker-To-Animals 8/10/01 6:26 a.m.
                       Re: Major important thoughtAndrew Nagy 8/11/01 2:34 p.m.



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