Aliens with human weapons?

[DanielOR]

Not sure if it is a bug...playing on stasndard level, second time around.  Last two times I shot down the harvester the distinctly Ortnok crew was armed with two sniper rifles and two SMG's.  I later found a 7.62 mm pistol and several very human issue combat knives in my inventory (which weren't there before). 

personally, this makes my life somewhat harder as my style is based on advantage of sniping from afar.  Having bad guys with sniper rifles does not help.  Have to admit, I replayed the mission when the bad guy took out one of my gals with a head shot.

All in all, it is a fun challenge, though I am not sure it fits well with the narative of the game - plenty of space ships, but shortage of plasma guns leaves aliens raidning my own supply depots at night?

[Doctor J]

This is a known bug and [i believe] has been fixed in 2.3-dev.  Yes, when the monsters start turning our own guns on us it's more likely that things will go bad and i will end up reloading.  I once had my Rocket gunner take a direct hit from a Rocket launched out of a Harvester.  It's not clear to my why this is uniquely a problem with the crews of Harvesters, as i would think that starship crew would only carry Secondary type weapons anyway.

[Kildor]

I`ve had this bug in not-so-old revision of trunk.

[blondandy]

might be handy if you could specify the revision numbers.

[DanielOR]

my bad.  running 2.2.1 - latest "full" release

[Darkpriest667]

just for the record id like to say  i dont think that aliens carrying around human weapons is very plausible


seems our hands wouldnt be interchangable to the weapons which is something ive never brought up about alien weapons... you should build human weapons implementing alien technology not use alien weapons...

(what no trigger boss how am i supposed to fire this thing)

[DanielOR]

well, just to play devil's advocate - so long as the bad guys have opposable thumbs, i suppose we could manage to fire their weapons, and the bad guys appear in the balpark - all have two arms of generally the same structure.  If one uses fingers (and not, say, large flexible succers for example) opposable thumb (or two) is almost a must, no?

Any biologists out here?  thumbs or tentacles - what else can be used for tool grabbing?

[simulatoralive]

I'm a bit of a biologist.  Anatomy and physiology as they relate to fiction is kind of my specialty.

Unusual tool using body parts (off the top of my head):

Eyestalks.  Hehe.  That's how my snail aliens grab stuff.

Suckers on a not-so nimble tentacle.  (Think Octopus-like).  This would require very strange designs for any equipment used.

I've seen a tongue/mouth used by armless creatures in fiction.  Beaks could be an interesting variation.

Feet.  I'm thinking of birds here.  I've seen birds grab stuff with one foot, stand on the other and then put it in their mouth.  Granted, this isn't common behavior.

Seen a cat stick his claws into a piece of meat, pick it up off the floor and then hold it to his mouth to eat.  Tools designed for this would have a soft part that the claws could hook into easily.

[DanielOR]

kewl!  very, very neat. 

now, if an alien walks on two legs, has a torso, two arms, one elbow each, one head, two eyes - does that lock us into the opposable thumb scenario?  This design for the aliens makes a very interesting broader implication: that evolution for all air-breathers follows roughly the same lines - start as a lizard, a monkey, or whatever - and you end up with forward-facing eyes, dedicated pair of legs for running and arms for tools, with roughly the same proportion to the rest of the body.  Even if this was dictated by game mechanics, I think this can be easily worked into a story line.

[Darkpriest667]

Daniel thats not so..

These aliens dont breathe air remember?

[DanielOR]

well, not *exactly* air, but they breath something.  Otherwise they would have nailed those openings shut.  Still need to take stuff into lungs, then into the blood stream and deliver it to tissue...  replace O2 with whatever, but the mechanics are similar, I think

[EchizenR]

Yeah, I remember an instance where I had to secure a crash site when I was shot at by a MG/SMG from afar. Definitely not assault as there were too many shots.