Some RTD observations...

[Striker]

Ludey fell under the 'sidekick rule' due to close personal association with a major character. And the last words Cliff got where a classic heroic death scene...the 'hero' talking tough, the love interest crying, everything. Clich

[El SillY]

Hmmm, bayonets are out of fashion yes, but tasers aren't! Two big spikes and 250000V of 1Amp goodness, one problem would be power though, but this is the future! Everyone knows that problems concerning energy (especially for weapons) don't exists in the future.

[CPOK]

I think the Tanks are the best idea (apart from nuking the city) could you imagine the damage to a soft target by say a SABOT round? It would cut thru works like a hot knife thru butter AND they wouldn't be getting up after it...the biggest drawback is the low firing rate...but that is what you have a coaxial gun for...

[Striker]

Standard explosive would be better, I believe. Sure, the shockwave caused by a SABOT round going through a 'work would rip it apart, but it'd still be comparatively limited. Reworks apparently prefer to attack in a broad front. You'd be able to cut two or three lines through their ranks, and then you'd be swamped. Sufficient explosives, however...

[Andrick]

Tasers work in limited situations. Recovery time is fast and the pulse can be ignored by someone hyped up on adrenaline (or drugs but that's beside the point).

Now you're talking about a rework: a strong, fast zombie. Unless you got it cranked to incinerate flesh it will be ineffective to something which doesn't feel pain. You need to seriousky up the amperage for it to be effective (250kV is toward the high end of what a human carries on staticy days).

Let's look at the options again and start shoring up the plot holes. The enemy is a rework. A rework is reanimated dead people. They are capable of low cunning, have demonstrated an ability to use improvised tools and show an understanding for the cause/effect relatioship. The rework shows boundless strength and unyielding endurance coupled with the motor skills to run, jump, rend and pummel without requiring to rest. It will not flinch if it suddenly loses a limb or half of its body; once it is focused on a target it will keep going after it even into a situation which will negate it's existence. The only way known to end the animation of a rework is to cause significant trauma to the brain.

Let's look at the forces deployed against them and their handicaps.

Sci-Fi equipment is limited, possibly all designed and rushed into production when the threat was realized. Military construction bases were centralized in large cities; large cities were primary targets for the reworks and huge sources of zombie recruitment. Equipment, recruits, supplies, research, raw materials, resources - all were pooled from the productivity of cities. Specialized, cutting edge, equipment and weaponry requires much higher maintenance and specialized parts/consumables compared to low tech, ol' reliable gear. Let's face it, the military is scrounging and cannibalizing all they can get to keep things working without a majority of their factories supporting them. Ore processing, steel smelting, circuit board printing, ceramic backing, polymer weaving, precision molding, technician testing... these are all performed by factories in cities and the wage earning workers who make such marvels work. Those cities and their labor force were the first to fall.

Brings up point number two: population. Every person that dies becomes a rework unless there was critical damage to the brain pan. But there is also something which prevents new children being conceived. Reworks are continuously growimg stronger as the living population dwindles with each passing day; pretty grim stuff that. The problem is global, otherwise why would base, supply, recruitment and factory secors be vulnerable and subject to attack instead of being relocated to a country or continent not suffering from rework depredation? The dire straights are reflected by the contracting size of the defense forces and the rapid promotion of survivors to plug the gaps in the chain of command. The pitifully tiny force sent to deal a hammerblow to the Horde as a last hope to eventually triumph is an indication of how few of the living are left. Let's figure a hundred thousand world wide with 10K entrenched in North America. A couple hundred troops represents a considerable commitment for such a chancy plan, then.

Air support and air mobility is severely restricted. Performance aircraft (as all combat craft are) eat fuel at an alarming rate. I say alarming because how is a military base going to get enough to keep their planes flying if all the city refineries had thier employees turned into the undead? A base has only so much on hand before they run out. A single 10,000 gallon tanker truck may have enough fuel for ten combat fighters to each go up once. Each hour of 'up' time equates to multiple hours of 'down' time as maintenance needs to be preformed and these fickle machines to prevent catastrophic failure during the next flight (and any failure is a catastrophic failure when you're more than 20ft off the deck and going a minimum of 60MPH while riding a fuel tank strapped with high explosives!). Maintenance means parts, consumables, replacements and so on. For the showdown with the horde there were four aircraft assigned to the task, all transports.

Let us now take a look at ground forces in the Horde scenario.

Armor assets consisted of one squad of armored infantry and one light combat tank. Pitiful really, but the best that could be transported with the aerospace assets assigned. The last cough from a remaining industrial complex yielded all of this stuff. Armored vehicle are almost as bad as aircraft when it comes to supply requirements and are vulnerable in broken or urban terrain. Tank design was also geared towards a primary purpose of destroying opposing armor and fortifications with anti-infantry being a secondary consideration. As such, the main gun tends to be an unwieldly weapon against reworks. Ammunition for that gun will run out as well with little hope of maintaining a steady supply of replacements.

Infantry, the unarmored ground-pounders, use a lot of unsophisticated weaponry. In other words, their guns are known as being reliable fire arms and the ammunition can be scrounged from an abandoned sporting goods store, firing range or police station. Why no armor? Any armor which can be put on by hand can be taken off by hand and the reworks have hands. Maintaing a living soldier is easier than maintaining vehicles. It is also far easier to recruit replacements than to build more vehicles which still requires crews to operate and upkeep them. 'nuff said.

I was going to post something else but I've long since forgotten what it was.

[Striker]

I'd say they have more technological equipment than potential recruits. Anyone who can fight is already fighting.

[Gen.Talon]

Hee hee I sure do like the little messages placed below the comics. (My death scene being familer with the Aliens movie, I love it)
Now being in the military. I can understand how hard it is for most of the FI. Jumpin out of choppers and stuff like that..we call that Air Assault. But I can understand why if our enemy changed from a normal everyday person to some mad powerful zombie. We would most likely get wasted. Tactics would have to change. LOTS of stuff would have to change. I can go into more detail..but i'm too tired and its too early in the morning.

[Gen.Talon]

One more thing..does Dave even know his comics are posted up on there? o.O
Just wondering.

[Striker]

Well, we found out about that site through BC. It's quite likely he'd have told David Hopkins about it as well.

[-Penance-]

Some time back, someone mentioned that power suits would be a bad idea - like poorly controlled tanks that lugged around and didn't work too well in a close-combat situation.

Personally, I would reserve mech-armor for heavy assault squads and demolitions work - foot soldiers are much better suited to the light and medium assault stuff than any mechanized infantry. However, mechsuits don't have to be slow and unwieldly - as a development for the Objective Force Warrior program, USSCEN [Natick] is attempting to construct a rudimentary 'exoskeleton' with which to boost human capabilities - by their projections, such an exoskeleton (simply a framing that straps to the human body and enhances its functions) would allow people to jump 10 feet in the air, carry several hundred pounds of gear, and run at 20 miles per hour. This kind of thing would be great against Reworks - I was watching ALIENS the other day and the power loader made me think about how the mechanized infantry suits [HALO, STORMBRINGER, and HAVOK are the only particular models I have messed with] work...

Most of the suit is pretty self-explanatory -- a little quicker than the power loader in ALIENS, but basically the same thing; motion and momentum-tracking in the legs to coordinate walking movement in the frame, joystick-controlled arms... Now here's the thing - there are two options on hands. You can mount any cannon or weapons array on an arm to replace a hand and have it simply fire-by-trigger on a joystick which controls the direction of the arm, or the suit could have a pair of 'tracker' gloves similar to those that are used to control armatures in Hollywood - they have nodes which translate to joints in your hand and a computer feeds the input into whatever machine is supposed to duplicate your task. With the latter, not only are the suits more dextrous and able to handle more things in addition to fighting [i.e, lifting, operating doors, etc] but heavier arms [such as the Pathmaker Ground Soldier Anti-Armor System ('THUMPER,' basically a breech-loading, crew-served 85mm cannon)] can also be handled by individual machanized infantry whereas they must be crew-served by foot soldiers.

Just a thought.

[Striker]

That's what the powersuits in RTD are, and they're a rather good idea if the technology exists. It's the 40-foot-tall mecha that don't work.