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Stun Bombs


The Veteran

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Everyone loves stun launchers right? They're great at capturing aliens or taking hostage entire rooms of hand to hand nasties. But why did the aliens bring it with them from Mars? Why would they want to knock out humans? The bizarre experiments we always here about? Scientific analysis? Interrogation? It seems strange to me that the aliens want want them for any of these things... Surely they're just invading a planet, 'take no prisoners' style?
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Surely they're just invading a planet, 'take no prisoners' style?

 

No, they seeded all life on the planet and believe that they own it and therefore can do whatever the hell they want with it.

 

Food, new genetic material for improving their designs, whatever other insidious plans they have in store. Plant life on a planet, wake up a few million years later to reap the crops and turn earth in to "a Colony world in part of some vast unknown alien empire"

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There's no need to use them on cows, since they chop them up anyway... hmm.

 

The bad ending for UFO shows that the aliens want to use the population of the earth as raw material for their horrible experiments. They would need some non-violent weapons to obtain live specimens to work on. Killing everyone would only cause them to lose their specimens.

 

Besides, look at it this way. If they wanted all-out war, they'd have reduced the earth to a charred crisp the moment they set up their cydonian outpost if they wanted to. No, they wanted to capture the earth mostly intact (through infiltration and diplomacy). They attack humans, yes, but their attacks are only to inspire terror (hence 'terror'-mission) rather than to wipe out the population. Once they gain control of the earth, they turn on the earth authorities and pretty much use the earth as one giant lab. (organic-life-form bank would probably describe it better)

 

Just like you, they need to capture live alien specimens to interrogate and or obtain information (pretend they obtain the coordinates for your base from a traitorous informant, or spies, etc).

 

- NKF

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The way I see it, the aliens seem to have the inorganic side of things pretty much fixed. I mean, their equipment, weapons and spaceships are all pretty good, but the organic side....aren't some of the aliens are a bit....crap?

For starters, most, if not all, are clones, right? Now a clone is just a copy, and any weaknesses the original has, the clone is going to have. So most aliens are going to become predictable in their behaviour. As pointed out in another thread somewhere, each clone would react in the same way to another clone when placed in a similar situation. This makes them predictable and....crap.

Some of the aliens are just weak (Sectoids for example). Now imagine you're a massive alien brain. Your forces, made up of vacant-eyed clones, comes across a planet covered in several billion organisms that are highly aggressive and reproduce like rabbits.

Wouldn't you want to mix the two, so you don't have to rely on cloning any more? So that you're forces, although still highly disciplined, are now slightly unpredictable? All you'd have to do would be throw a few hundred human/alien hybrids into a base somewhere, feed them and order them to reproduce. You'd have an army pretty quickly, and one that would only grow in size and is relatively inexpensive, materials-wise, which I doubt cloning is.

Plus if that doesn't work you can melt them down for food.

Just a thought. :alien2:

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No I'm pretty sure a clone would behave the same. It was me that said it in the other thread that FA is talking about. Clone means exact copy therefore every single genee and nerve ending would be identical to the original. The aliens would all therefore learn something at exactly the same time or percieve soemthing in the same way etc.
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I suppose the individual development and experiences of the clones will be different from clone to clone. See, some of them made it to different ranks beyond 'soldier'. :D

 

Or perhaps higher ranked aliens are really just clones that have lasted longer than others or have received additional 'programming' to undertake slightly different tasks than their other clone bretheren. Their behaviour, however, is still the same.

 

The hive-mind thingy is perhaps attributed to their psionic link (like sectoid among sectoid, ethereals with mutons, and the rest via the Hyperwave band). Though the psionic link isn't all that great, as in general practice, the aliens on one side of the map don't know what the aliens on the other side are doing (or even the ones right next to them, for that matter).

 

- NKF

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I'm sure they all get the same basic programing in the begining, but you have to consider that they have different life experiences after that programing which will make them different individuals. They would technically be individuals, albiet only perhaps slightly.
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The impression I get from the game is that the aliens are just blank slates, tabula rasa. They become different ranks or do different jobs depending upon what info gets downloaded into their blank minds. They don't seem to actually be able to learn, so life experiences would have very little effect on them, no matter how traumatic, because it wouldn't change what had been downloaded into their heads. In a way, they don't even have "experience" because whatever's put into their heads is either information from a third party or the experiences of another alien.

I'm assuming these would be imprinted very deep, at the level of instinct, so that the alien's combat efficiency would remain constant, rather than shat their pants every time they see an X-Com trooper.

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The different ranks would as said several times already just be implanted with different knowledge after cloning.

The hive mind I would think is nothing like we associate with say the Borg for those familiar with Star trek (and be honest everyone is!) It's just the psionic link that NKF said about. They don't know everything that everyone else knows, they don't have a clue. It's simply a link from the controlling brain that keeps the other aliens sane and in the case of Ethereals, alive!

I think that any experiences the aliens have such as panic or enemy control would have their effects removed after battle. Otherwise the aliens would be going into battles with disorganised and basically shit-scared aliens :D

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I work with identical twins, it's fun :D But they aren'#t clone-like by any means. There are very few differences (what with being identical and all) but they do have differences... And FA is right. They will be taught the same way. The knowledge is simply implanted into their brains. They have no social behaviour... only what is implanted into them at the very beginning of their life...
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I imagine different ranks might behave differently, but only because they've had more info put into their heads. It's hard to include an element of chaos into military training. People act differently in similar situations because they are different people, but clones would look, think and act exactly the same.
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<<I was of course offline this whole weekend,and my "F"'s stuck>>

Exactly.

What you call "Mental" difference is of course physical as well-

it's all "Liquids" and "Cells".

The Clones think the same.Period.

Now that that's settled,lets go back to Stun Bombs.

 

The Aliens made them because they're too weak Physically\Mentally (Sectoid\Muton) to arrest people "manually",and they love themselves too

much so they won't make their own Hybrids.

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I think they carry it because it is a kick ass weapon. Sometimes when my raider teams storm the larger UFOs a medic would pop out and bloop one off, stunning multiple soldiers. A blaster bomb is too slow to fire and they don't always have time to toss a grenade.

 

Outside of battle use, they could stun people with it before abducting them.

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