Quote from: SiL on Feb 28, 2014, 04:45:36 AM
Quote from: Kimarhi on Feb 28, 2014, 04:10:04 AM
Shotgun and pistols are non weapons in the military. Some guys don't even carry them because they never anticipate having to use them. You have to be within twenty yards for them to be accurate unless your a super highspeed ranger or delta type.
Considering the sub-level, they were definitely going to be within 20 yards of something
QuoteAgain, Apone should've been like wait a minute boss, think about what your doing, and if the LT still insisted just had everybody show up at the APC and claimed bad comms.
Apone also didn't strike me as the kind of person who'd walk away when he's just about to get where he needs to be.
That's the issue for me. If they realised halfway down the stairs that they weren't going to be able to use their weapons, sure. If they'd just stepped onto the sub-level, sure. But they were meters out and all they had to do was see a colonist.
I can't argue the point with you because you obviously know more than I do, but it seems really, really f**king dumb to do a full fall back when you're practically tripping over your target, you still have weapons suitable for close-combat, and especially when there might be a time element (Ripley's report was on disc, they knew about the gestation period, etc. Going back to resupply, for all they knew, could have been the difference between getting a colonist out of there, and them dying.)
Your not wrong, both ways that it went/could've went could've actually happened. But Apone didn't strike me as being a yes man one that follows orders without ever saying no.
Rescuing civilians would still be the priority, but what would the Marines have done if lets say there were fifty civilians in there that they had to dehive from the walls with no weapons to defend themselves with?
You are kind of looking at it in hindsight. You prepare for a situation out of whatever intel you have, but you ALWAYS prepare for the worst. A full combat load is 210 rounds for a rifleman, but how many soldiers do you think actually carry only the minimum rounds? They went in half cocked and got trounced. Had they went in half cocked where there were some civs to actually save they still would've got trounced and probably cost the lives of innocents. They actually hurt their ability to save civilians by going in the way they did.
By actually taking time to resupply to where they can all be properly armed then there is still the great possibility of being trounced. But they would've been better prepared.
Pistols and shotguns just aren't great weapons. They don't have the suppression capability or the stopping power of carbines or rifles. And at least with a flamethrower you can suppress areas even if you can't suppress individuals.
I think a more experienced LT would've probably better prepared his men for the situation. And an actual combat arms platoon sergeant would point out the error of a young lts ways.
BUT that's not what happened and its still believable. Most of the young lts I've seen in field artillery are just like Gorman. And there are plenty of people who just say yes to anything ordered to them. My own sergeant in Ethiopia was one of those guys.
I doubt it, but its possible that the APC/Dropship only came down to the planet with their issued weapons. But we are just a state funded fighting organization and we had a rack of extra m4s, extra saws, extra 240s, two ma deuces, and some shotguns just in case.
The Army always deals in double redundancy, I just don't see it changing in the future. But I've been wrong before.