Avatar.

Sorry about that.

They let the grunts land! Why would you do that? Get them while they're in the air, that way you wipe out the entire group! It's not really that hard you know.

Okay so the big one is supposed to deploy ground troops, that explains the design. Still, turrets are a must for something that size. Even then, if you're on a bombing run, the proper plan would just be to leave the ground troops at home and shoot them from the sky. Hell, that's how you took out the big damn tree!

So there's some kind of firing nests up on top of the shuttle and/or big gunship. Throw a steel plate of them geniuses! They're wide open for getting arrows and hostiles in there.

Fight smart, not fair.

Okay, dropping the troops four kilometers away from the target? What the hell. Hollywood Tactics ahoy!

They just flew under a god damn flying mountain! WTF? They're just begging to have rocks thrown into the damn blades.

oic the ground troops were deployed to give the horse riders someone to fight. Come on humans! Air supperiority! And why the hell did they fly the shuttle in so low? Just dive bomb them from up high, no need to play fair.

Firing Line! And they all just stand there and pose ready to shoot with only a handful of people taking cover at all. You're supposed to know better than to hope they do nothing but miss.

So there are some carbine versions of the rifles. But See the Whites of Their Eyes is in effect, so close to success.

And the giant red bird grabs a chopper and throws it into a mountain! Whoever would have guessed that fighting in the middle of flying mountains would be dangerous?

And the fliers attack with arrows that punch straight through the canopies! You know, current aircraft canopies could probably stop those since they're quite a bit tougher than regular bullet proof glass. Since it's, you know, military equipment.

Weapons free? You didn't send them in with weapons free? What kind of genocidal maniac are you not letting your troops shoot at whatever catches their fancy?

So the Mini-Mecha just opened up, and they just make a slight chuk chuk chuk sound. What's the point of a belt feed if they're only going to fire a hundred rounds a minute? The M2HB fires 450 rounds per minute, you can do better than that with your futuristic space guns! Even then, a minigun or whatever could still do the job.

And now the humans are fighting back in earnest now. Na'vi start dropping like flies cause bullets>arrows. But Sully is here with his mighty protagonist powers and a quick burst from is SAW just goes straight through the canopy of a chopper! If a quick burst can take one out, how did whatsher name chopper pilot survive Commander Badass opening up on her cockpit? I saw fucking bullet holes in that shit.

Oh yeah, missile barrages mother fucker, that's the good stuff. This was an instance where incendiaries would be better replaced by fragmentation or HE warheads. Incendiaries are for setting shit on fire, not blowing holes in the locals. Must have gotten the targeting systems working again, or the pilots are fantastic dummy firers.

And the big gun ship comes around and spots Sully just as the ground forces start running away from the superiority of the terran metal! General Badass immediately recognizes that the red bird must be the leader and brings his entire big ass gun ship after Sully. Gotta take out the protagonist, or he'll use that pesky super protagonist power to pull a win out of no where.

edited 26th Aug '10 11:25:51 PM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

The choppers are chasing down the fliers and the door gunners are having to lean out to shoot and can't shoot straight. Great job ditching the nose guns chuckleheads.

And a blue striped gunship swoops in and rakes the BD gunship with MG fire! The hell, did they just strap the guns to the front or what? There weren't any guns on hers, just twelve missiles. Consistency Cameron!

Yep, fixed guns to the side of the chopper. Each one apparently has a duel belt feed but only one muzzle, where does the other bullet go? No one will ever know.

Playing chicken with the BD gunship was a stroke of genius I must say, distracting the Big Bad from finishing off The Hero, what every good Red Blue Shirt does.

The gatling guns rake the blue chopper with fire and it slowly starts sinking down. Oh noes, what ever will the only human fan service on the planet do now? Protip: never get in a fight with a ship that has guns that outweigh your chopper. But she survives the burst, how does that happen? Must be that whole protagonist power coming into effect.

And chiefs daughter tries to take the fight to the ground where her brethren have sure conquered the sky people and their pathetic metal men. Wait, what's this, the terran metal is victorious! And what's her name goes down from a suddenly high RPM burst from a Mini-Mecha. And she feels the pain as her bird dragon monster gets shot, stealing from Neon Genesis Evangelion now Cameron? Shame on you.

A slow shot of the Na'vi being forced into retreat and explosions going on as the terran metal and gunships lay into the retreating horsemen! This is why you don't want to pick fights with gunships, they tend to really enjoy dishing out the Death from Above.

Young chief guy dives into the open shuttle bay. First, why the hell would you leave the shuttle bay open? Even if you get more guns, it's big enough for the enemies to jump into, close that sumbitch up and only open it when you're ready to drop the bomb dealie. Second you guys suck, chief is just chucking people out the door and beating them with his bow. Let's see if it holds up or somebody remembers that they can shoot his ass.

Pfffffft, he just swung at some dude and they mistimed the impact, dude fell over before he even took the hit.

And a hero marine steps forth! A quick burst to the chest and chief goes down and out of the bay! Another Na'vi comes to land and he takes her out too! This guy will be maxed ranked any minute and he'll start doing double damage!

"Rogue one is hit" and blue chopper is down and burning. The scientist kid knows more about proper fire discipline than you Sully, take notes. Down on a knee, gun comes up, quick burst, up and running again, shoot and scoot mother fucker. But once again, the might of the terran dominion asserts itself! A few rounds to the chest, and he's down. Why do the guys who actually know how to fight always seem to be Red Shirts?

This is going excellent. In this match of technology vs nature, technology is clearly kicking epic amounts of ass and will declare victory over natures desecrated corpse soon enough. Nothing can stop it now!

Fight smart, not fair.

Slow mo "fire" from General Badass there. Missile in the face for blue chopper. Your contributions to the "titties in tight shirts" record has been noted and you will not be forgotten. *salutes*

Good news everyone, horses are flammable! We can now live our dream of looking exactly like our World Of Warcraft warlocks. But what's that Back Ground Music, is that sadness I'm supposed to be feeling? Cameron, you need to learn to avoid Narm Charm if you're shooting for drama.

Flamethrowers! I love it when they deploy flame throwers. And it doesn't even need a big honkin' fuel tank. The future will be a wondrous place. Scientist guy gets kicked out of the machine presumably for getting his avatar killed. Only shows signs of breathing problems. Not dying instantly because your avatar got killed is definitely an improvement over the normal standard of "die in the machine, die in the real world" that seems to be going around. Excellent improvement.

Chiefs daughter is taking cover behind a tree. Blast it, that's what those big damn guns are for. Just shoot through the damn tree. But Sully just found out all his team is dead. Will he lose the Love Interest as well?

Fall back, fall back Nablahblah! She gets ready for a final stand.

Wait, were those guns displaying two magazines? There's definitely something magazine like between the foregrip and the trigger. Is it an undermounted grenade launcher? If Cameron actually did some research, I'm impressed that he recognized that it's got two firing modes. Still, it doesn't make up for those big ass barrels.

Hold your ground something big is coming, oh noes the cavalry is here, we will just have to shoot them full of holes too... Dammit, it's the damn rhinos, what the hell? And they're immune to the heavy weapons fire? WTF? Come on! You should easily be able to carry some decent anti-material weaponry around! You've got friggin' 50cals. Just need some rocket launchers or something, blow a few holes in them and go to town.

And they use their heads like hammers apparently to smash the Mini-Mecha aside, dammit. You guys should easily be able to catch and hold one of the things so the infantry can pump their heads full of holes!

Squish, dude gets smashed by a rhino stepping on his cockpit. Remember what I said about the damn cockpits? Motherfuckers, that's obvious. Hell, the front of the thing should be nothing but armor plating and structural support. Vision is what cameras are for. Cameron, you're not allowed to design military equipment anymore. It might work as a design for a glorified forklift, but it just isn't a good enough design for a weapons platform.

And the supercomputer pulls a flying Zerg Rush! Fliers mister Rico, millions of them! This is exactly the situation where gatling guns are for, throw as much lead into the air as possible before you get overwhelmed.

A cat critter comes up to Nana and offers a ride so she can do an impression of an orc from Lord Of The Rings. Mr scientist comes running out of his shack with a mask and a gun, because you should never stay home and defend the base. That certainly won't come back and bite him in the ass. The scientist loses his cred as the only person not employing Hollywood Tactics. Or he'll be eaten. Either one is good.

General Badass decides to press on without air cover cause he knows the puny Na'vi cannot stand against the mighty terran metal. So far it seems it's taken about twenty minutes to move four kilometers, hell of an aircraft guys.

Sully comes in for an attack run on the shuttle! He hops off his red bird and starts gunning down marines in their little bunker. I'm curious as to how that thing is staying on there, possibly duct tape. In which case I salute the future and their fantastical duct tape.

Makes it past the MG nest and heads for an engine. Insert Grenade Here motherfuckers! And it's a GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL! The shuttle lists to one side as it's engine goes down. Sully is off the shuttle and on to his Char custom bird by this point.

The "daisy cutter" Cluster Bomb (learn your bombs Cameron!) slides forward and squishes a marine. I hope it wasn't our hero marine sergeant Killsda Navichief. And the shuttle smacks into a goddamn flying mountain moving six times its normal speed at at least ten feet per second. A wing comes off and the thing falls over and explodes on the ground. See, this is why you should have come in high and fast, drop the bomb and run like hell.

Fight smart, not fair.

Sully lands on the BD gunship and tries a repeat in super slow mo. But it's not enough, General Badass there can clearly smell slow motion dramatic scenes in action and yanks the stick over, saving the precious engine. Sully almost falls off the ship but manages to catch a missile. Are we going to get to see him fired off in a humorous fashion? Since Cameron's directing, I'm gonna guess no.

A grenade doesn't fall off and blows a small hole in the side of the BD gunship. Hull breach and shitty air starts pouring in, clearly a sign that all those trees are producing incredibly toxic air. Yet another reason to simply burn down the forest.

Sully tries to climb up, but the missile won't support his weight and breaks off the launch mechanism. What the hell, I thought all the missiles had been fired by now? Considering it's all jungley and shit, you'd think all the missiles would be internal to keep vines and crap from getting caught on them.

Sully realizes that missiles explode and decides to try and throw it into the nearby rotor to see if science will occur! General Badass climbs out of a hatch and decides to put a few pistol rounds into Sully for daring to scratch his big damn gunship. But the missile goes in.

What the hell is the point of having two cockpits on the BD gunsip like that? I assume one is the guns and the other is the pilot, but it's generally the two in the same area so they can talk to each other without having to use radios, you know?

General Badass realizing he gave up the power to breath nothing but smoke from burning machinery to give his opponents a fighting chance, runs over to his Mini-Mecha and hops in while on fire. Beating out the fire for daring to touch him, the cockpit closes and fills with air. I must say at least this is properly designed. Never send your armor out without it's own air supply.

The BD gunship continues to fall and explode. Dammit, something that big should have the engines overkilled so that it can fly on just one on each side if necessary, losing one engine shouldn't take out your big damn gunship. But General Badass out runs the fireballs and leaps down the drop section to go kill the damn tree huggers with his own awesomeness fueled terran metal.

Nana and General Badass are shown in alternating sequences, this definitely signifies a coming battle. Can terran metal prevail against the orc wannabe and her bow? Oh, but General Badass spots the Sully hut. Take it out man, don't fight fair, that's loser talk!

Dammit, Nana comes up behind General Badass and the little cat bugger starts scratching up the mighty terran metal.

Blast she keeps closing the distance preventing him from opening up with the cannon. See, remember those arm knives I talked about? This is where they'd be useful. And the gun gets smashed. Bet you wish you had shoulder mounted weapons on your Mini-Mecha huh? Blasted poor design quality.

And it turns into a fist fight for the ages! Catlike strength is no match for servo driven armored plate work. Out comes the knife, is he going to tear out their guts and use them to grease his joints, to make Patton proud? We can only hope that his badassery can overcome such shoddy machine design.

LEAP and... fucking owned. One hand holds up the kitty as it takes knife blow after knife blow to the gut. You know, a chainsaw edge could just be turned on and dragged through making it a one shot kill. Once again, I should definitely be on the design team for any futuristic Mini-Mecha, it's the only way to be sure.

edited 26th Aug '10 11:26:31 PM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

Nana is pinned! General Badass walks up and finishes the kitty and turns his site on Nana. Sully shows up just in the Nick Of Time! Protagonist powers activate! Now that the hero is here, we can truly see all the flaws in the terran metal.

"Nothing's over while I'm breatin'" yes, General Badass declares he will go on a one man, one Mini-Mecha rampage to singlehandedly annihilate the entire forest. Your commitment to the triumph of technology over nature is noted and appreciated good sir!

The fight goes far too well for Sully. The terran metal effortlessly keeps going and the only weapon Sully can find to stand against General Badass is the fallen bayonet from the rifle. But with proper handling Sully manages to destroy the Mini-Mecha knife. Once again, a proper chainsaw blade would have cut through that blade effortlessly.

Sully does an over head leap and manages to get through the canopy with the terran metal. It very nearly touches General Badass, but he orders it not to and the terran metal obeys it's master. Deep breath and out comes the blade. So the canopy isn't bullet or arrow proofed but it's self sealing? I mean it's a good back up, but you tend to want to make it hard to break in the first place. Blast it Cameron, if you want them to be too cheap, make them cheap, don't mix and match.

Canopy is too wrecked to see through, so off it goes. You know, this is one of those things that cameras would be good for. So giant bulldozers can get a couple but the Mini-Mecha can't?

Blah racial garbage for General Badass. Goes in and smashes the the control chamber but it's scientist dudes empty one. Sully climbs up the back and starts getting stabbity with it. Misses and only pins the shirt to the back of the Mini-Mecha.

Blah, General Badass goes down. Sully's chamber starts leaking air. Seeing as it's in one of the remote ones, it have it's own integrated breathing apparatus for just such an occasion. If not, at least hang a breather on the side of the chamber. Poor safety standards are dangerous you know.

Okay, Nana gets it on him as soon as she spots him and he's passed out. It automatically detects a human on the other end and starts the air flow. Good design right there.

So after this, the humans are chased off the planet. So there are no stationary defenses. Dammit, base building is a basic skill! You've even got the concrete walls and shit. Hell call in the bulldozers to go flatten the rhinos or whatever.

Fight smart, not fair.

So, lessons learned from this little fight.

1. ) Initial orbital strikes should be made on population centers to wipe out the pests.

2. ) Land in the planes, not the jungles. This will facilitate the deployment of tanks with actual armor on them to flatten any hostiles. Artillery as well. Keep the aircraft away from the floating mountains, that way you can use the guidance on the weapons and you don't run the risk of either a surprise Zerg Rush or smashing into them.

3. ) Armor motherfucker, buy it. Arrows shouldn't even slow your terran metal down.

4. ) If going into the forest is necessary, just burn the motherfucker down. There's so few water sources you'll torch the whole thing.

5. ) Heavier weapons for the larger local fauna.

6. ) Fire James Cameron and don't let the twit design any of your equipment.

Fight smart, not fair.

I somehow doubt any sort of Earth government, no matter how shitty it is, would sanction direct attacks (let alone orbital strikes) on sapient alien life population centers. If I recall the movie correctly, prior to when the natives fought back, the humans were just trying to scare them away from the mining zones.

Otherwise, interesting liveblog. At times a little confusing, as I couldn't tell exactly at which part you were at at all times, but funny nevertheless. It's interesting to listen to the fridgelogic discovered by someone more knowledgeable in an area that more casual viewers probably wouldn't pick up on.

I, personally, was wondering exactly what purpose the luminescence found in pretty much every bit of plantlife served. It's rather costly from an energy standpoint, and one wonders how much benefit it would grant in a world where practically everything is bio-luminescent.

I'm impressed. You managed to liveblog Avatar without doing what everybody else would've done (including me) and bitching about the derivative plot.

Tips for the future:

I would recommend not making micro posts. Seriously. But I like the stream-of-consciousness style. Maybe say "ok, I'll watch thirty minutes today, thirty tomorrow," so that there's spacing between posts.

Whatcha gonna do, little buckaroo? | i be pimpin' madoka fics

This was bloody hilarious.

I salute your endeavor, Deboss, and encourage you to make more liveblogs in this manner.

So the big block posts like the last three were easier? Okay, so I'll try to do that if I ever do one again. The "lessons learned" thing was something I read in some military scifi. After a battle or whatever, you're supposed to highlight poor decisions to prevent them from making them again. The orbital bombardment was based on the idea that if you're going to go into "genocide" mode and try to wipe them out, do it right.

Fight smart, not fair.

"Good news everyone, horses are flammable!" made me laugh.

It was good to see this from another perspective; my experience of Avatar was hindered by raging at all the Noble Savage crap and other assorted racisms. But I'll spare you the tirade and just say that your liveblog was really entertaining. And the "many mini posts" thing worked for me, though I do think the slightly longer posts were a bit more readable—but a lot of liveblogs tend to have posts that are a bit too long, at least IMO, so experimenting with that format (which I don't think I've seen anyone else really do) seems worthwhile.

Productivity is for people without internet connections. -Count Dorku

Edmond Dantes seems to be doing the same thing in his Batman Begins live blog.

Fight smart, not fair.

I don't think the RDA wanted to wipe the Na'vi out, just to send them a message that they have to obey the humans. And giant robots stomping through your beloved forests burning everything down is a far more effective psychological attack than "BAM! DEATH FROM THE SKY, YOU'RE DEAD."

Formerly known as Crow T. Robot.

Not for the Japanese. "Flash of light, you're dead!" is far more disheartening to the survivors than "we have actual material forms that you might have some chance of beating!"

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

Yes, but think of all the bad publicity that the RDA would get if people realized that they nuked a primitive race from orbit. It's said somewhere in the movie that RDA cares a lot about it's quarterly statement, and "taking action to relocate the Na'vi" sounds a lot nicer than "wiping out hostile indigenous from orbit."

Formerly known as Crow T. Robot.

But nuking one tribe from orbit is taking action to relocate the other Na'vi...

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

Would they even have orbital strike ammunition? They're a military-escorted mining operation, not a tactical strike force.

Plus, one would imagine that a city-destroying bomb could damage the vein of Unobtainium. Every little bit of that stuff is incredibly valuable, remember.

screw bad PR, they could just lie if they wanted to, no one would know. This is the reason they didn't do it. There's no Casual Interstellar Travel in this verse, transporting stuff to Pandora takes epic amounts of time and cash. All they had on hand were infantry, small arms, planes, and heavy duty lifting mechs which they re-outfitted for combat. Which, by the way, is why the mechs had such wide open canopies. If they wanted a nuke, they woulda had to wait however long it takes to transport stuff from Earth, probably somewhere on the scale of at least 20ish years, probably more.

Heck, I don't even know why they had a big ass gunship.

XP granted for befriending a giant magical spider!

The idea would be to dive the shuttle downward and toss the Cluster Bomb (it was a bunch of little bombs strapped together, not a thermobaric weapon) out the back while it's on course. Or just a chunk of rock, whatever. It's not like you couldn't just make a KEW with a shuttle that is apparently efficient enough to go up and down the gravity well on it's own and then pull VTOL off.

Fight smart, not fair.

^ Due to the (alleged) physics of Unobtanium  ^*

, the Hallelujah Mountains are essentially Made of Explodium.

edited 29th Aug '10 4:54:04 AM by Yej

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

Wait, so there was Unobtainium in the mountains? I thought Cameron was just ignoring logic in order to facilitate his plot again.

Fight smart, not fair.

No, it's there, but impossible to mine due to also being the thing keeping the mountain up. What Cameron is ignoring is the physics of a flying mountain.

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

Pfft, there's nothing like that. Just mine it out slowly and it will slowly fall to the ground.

Fight smart, not fair.