Why bother using mecha to deliver the megatron units?

[dstar]

I'm part way through chapter nine, and something just occurred to me.

Why not just build the megatron units into something that can deliver _itself_, remotely piloted? Set it up so that it automatically safely disconnects the pilot just before it fires.

[kyli]

I'm part way through chapter nine, and something just occurred to me.

Why not just build the megatron units into something that can deliver _itself_, remotely piloted? Set it up so that it automatically safely disconnects the pilot just before it fires.

I could tell you, but maybe you should read Chapter 10 and 11 first. I don't think you will have to ask then, but if you do, I could still explain it, if I remember the explanation anyway.

[SYED]

Can the anti matter missile technology be co opted? That mass altering FTL that is catapult based, could they use that to give them a longer distance projectile weapon? If they can't intercept it, it could do untold damage.

[dstar]

I'm part way through chapter nine, and something just occurred to me.

Why not just build the megatron units into something that can deliver _itself_, remotely piloted? Set it up so that it automatically safely disconnects the pilot just before it fires.

I could tell you, but maybe you should read Chapter 10 and 11 first. I don't think you will have to ask then, but if you do, I could still explain it, if I remember the explanation anyway.

I assume you mean the fact that they have to defend the units long enough for them to power up?

See, if _I_ was 3D (and I am, at least in that I assume they're at least as smart as I am, because Fel is reading all our ideas ) I'd simply build in defenses to the boxes that can be merged to, (remember, you apparently don't have to have the same number of limbs etc) and have the operaters de-link just before the box was destroyed.

I'd also have a set of anti-matter weapons in the box, sandwiched inbetween hard shields that can barely not handle the weapons, so that you get a planar explosion that wipes out all the surface emplacements just past the horizon... and then twice that many anti-matter weapons mixed in with the hard shield generators, such that they lose containment when the generators fail, so that nothing within the boxes is left intact for the enemy to reverse-engineer.

This means that the decoys are _just as dangerous as the actual megatron units_, because they'll wipe out all the non-mobile defenses that can bear on them_ if you don't blow them up before they land.

And, being me, I'd have a number of the decoys that _don't act that way, but which just wait for the mobile defenses to congregate on them and _then_ wipe out everything past the horizon, so that they have to be cautious even if they think it might be the thing that's going do destroy the ship.

Assuming, of course, that the Megatron units are expensive to produce. If not, I'd just fit, say a fifth of the decoys with them, and another fifth with things which just produce a major energy signature.

But then, I'm sneaky like that.

I'd also, given what we know of the enemy, be sneaking in planet crackers onto _every single planet the enemy owns_, each seperately addressable, so that eventually I could tell them "I can blow up _every planet you have_. Surrender, or else. I'll prove it by destroying one percent of your planets. Also, I have a minimum of twenty seperate very well hidden devices on every planet, with up to a thousand on your important ones. The one percent will of course be the most important one percent."

But then, I'm a bastard like that.

[kyli]

Yes that is what i meant. The Gladiators, Juggernauts, and Titans would be way better then any disposable weapons. Disposable weapons are suppose to be cheap and easy to produce, and they probably won't last long against the syndicate and definately not as long as mecha. The mecha are already remotely piloted, but they are definately not disposable, though they do loose a lot anyway.

Also, the Megatron units are still new and were built literally last minute so they had to come up with a delivery system fast. And it worked well enough until the syndicate discovered the danger and started throwing everything they had at the Megatrons.

And i remind you that the boxes haven't even been used yet. They will no doubt have some disposable weaponry on them, and might have mecha inside to defend the Megatron. We don't yet know how effective they will be but i think they will work quite well.