»Sack the Zion weapon designers«

I was rather awed at the battle and felt it was a great spectacle indeed. Made me think how poor the spec effects budget of films like terminator three must have been. The war really felt warlike.

My only concern is with the bizzarre nature of Zion's defense systems. I mean, who made them, a six year old kid?

Why on earth, when you fight as your prime enemy nasty robots with lots of dextrous needle arms, do you make battle suits that have exposed human pilots? Armour, my lads, armour...they managed it in the animatrix and it took time and effort to crank those armoured suits open, which means a lot more shooting and a lot less casualties. Is the next generation going to be made of plywood with a luxury glass top for a panoramic view?

Any why, oh why, did they not install an EMP in strategic points of zion? Fair enough, it could only be used in last resort, but i`m sure they would see the advantage of being able to wipe out a big load of machines when they have only spit and rocks left in the weapons arsenal and no other alternative.

Hats off to the battle suit commander though, if anyone defends my zion, it`ll be him (in a proper suit of my own design).

Clever, Silvercat. Kudos to your observation. But then again, look at the people of Zion. Don't you kind of expect them to be coming at the squidies with big stones and sharpened sticks?

Matt

Couldn't agree more about the exposed human bodies on the APU's, WTF was that? Kudos on the EMP around zion! And also, when the hell did we lose our ability to think up and build guided misiles?

Maybe Zion was never meant to be a battle zone. It's just the last refugium of humans

knnknn wrote:

Maybe Zion was never meant to be a battle zone. It's just the last refugium of humans

Good point. (Though I did wonder why EMP couldn't have been deployed more strategically, more frequently, it being such an effective weapon. And why the machines haven't developed better shielding against it. I'm headed for the FAQ soon....)

Supposedly Zion does have a defense perimeter of some sort but the machines got around it. Among other things, this had always been a David versus Goliath epic with an uncertain ending (yeah, now we're really swallowing this with some bitterness). Locke was quite sane to think Morpheus was a peddler of miracle claims. The idea that humans would categorically triumph over a superior civilization was wishful thinking. Peace and reconciliation is the best they -- we -- can hope for. Even that is uncertain at this stage -- damn WB.

I was wondering why they didn't bother to explain that. The official word of the Matrix website is that they wanted us to be able to see the pilots. Then I got to thinking "why not use glass?" However, glass breaks easily, especially from attacking machines, so I can see why it's a bad idea. They probably just wanted the pilots to have the best visibility possible. Let's face it, if a sentinel gets close enough to you where you are wishing you had a face plate, it really doesn't matter anyway...you're going to die.

You're right Silvercat, and the mechs should been more like Gundams! With plasma melee weapons like Covanent Elites (from Halo) and shields (like the Protoss from StarCraft). The humans should have developed a greater variety of weapons to better address the range of situations. And finally they should have done a better job of intelligence gathering and exploitation.

Okay I'm no science expert....but let me get this when one EMP goes off....another can't because the trigger mechanism was disabled by the aforementioned EMP.

So what do EMPs need to intiate? Why not a simple machine, nothing mechanical or electric, that pushes against a flint....fuel in reserve....followed by the EMP can go again....Repeat....


I'm no science expert....maybe I missed something.

Also, couldn't they come up with a better way to reload their tranformer bots....than sending 16 year olds to their death?
Maybe?


It just seems to me Zion would be smarter....but it was still cool.

Thanks, cable, for shedding some light on things. I can understand why seeing the pilots of those things would be important for film reasons. I guess alternative would be to make the suits big, solid tin cans, with some sort of internal screen system to show the outside world in 3d, as we see with the ship gunnery screens.

This would also be good for morale, as its a lot easier to shoot big red shapes than it is to shoot scary looking spider beasts.

The EMP issue remains interesting. They have those lightning guns, but no equivalent of an EMP grenade with a limited range. It would make sense that if you can focus it into a stream, that you could make an equivalent spray, perhaps even a fixed mount lightning cannon turret that they could have pointed toward the hole in the roof. With all that geothermal power, there should be little limitation on how much energy they can guzzle for the duration of the fight.

I wonder why the machines didnt put a dirty great bomb in the drill...hehe, cinematic reasons methinks.

Eigenvalue, i sense that you could have taught those humans a thing or two if they had you as a weapon maker )

well i guess the defense systems may suck quite a lot cos Zion was only being repopulated recently? since the 5th reboot, don't know how long time has passed but my guess is not enough time to create very very powerful weapons?

1) my theory: The machines sent sentinels and not bombs because they needed Zion more or less intact, minus a hole here and there, for the next revolution of the Matrix. Plus, see 2

2) The machines - in the real world - modelled themselves after insects (see spiders in machine world, humans kept in incubators like pods etc) in other worlds, not human intelligence yet, just AI evolving. That's why their real world drones were squids with a hive mentality that swarmed on Zion

3) EMP inside Zion - would knock out all of the defense systems, and then more swarms of squids would arrive and finish the job - they needed to be taken out by pinpoint hence the machine guns. (that's the explanation offered by the movie, but it's still not a very good one)

4) Lack of armor for the APUs - from a movie design perspective you're right, but it's still pretty inexcusable...

APUs are mobile working suits... NOT military machines... they seem to be merely conversions of construction/heavy duty robots.

As shown with the Hovercraft, most of Zion's weaponry are secondhand antiques... c'mon... it's the machines that created Zion in the first place... think they'd leave them anything they couldn't beat?

EMPs cannot be mechanically activated... there's a lot of electronics involved in setting off micro-fusion weapons... One of the most common postulated methods of creating an EMP would be to cause fusion inside a high pressure hydrogen bottle using very high powered lasers... bam! tiny fusion event, massive EMP. It would take an insanely HEAVY amount of lead to stop radiation from an EMP blast... too heavy to be put on mobile robotic units... plus, the pulse from one EMP would fry the batteries on any other EMP in the area... rendering them useless until repaired.

Yes, thats a sensible statement. They do look a little like powerloaders from the aliens films. If this was the case, however, they could have given us a scene of them involved in building and loading, in the second film. It would have added to the sense of desperation as we see working gear hastily customised into a weapon of war.

Showing that commander twirling his guns about, however, lost this as a potentially good plot element. He had clearly been using that thing as a gun platform for years. They should have made him the head of the building crew, then his heroism would have been all the more powerful.

yeah... but I made a booboo. They show that power armor in the "Second Renaissance", too... so it could be just cinematic bullsh*t... on the other hand... considering it's been centuries, maybe the protective suits that the soldiers wore with the armor have also rotted away... you'll notice that there are some big gaps in Zion tech... it's a huge hodgepodge of tech from different centuries held together by gum and string.

They should've had armor over the bodies, with thick plastic over the faces. They're clearly not retrofitted loaders of some kind. They call them APU, which means "Armored Personnel Unit," a military term. It would have been cool if they did retrofitt loaders with guns, though.

Given that they had several days advance notice, I think they would have had a EMP ready to go in the dock. They must burn out occasionally, and it makes sense for Zion to have replacements ready.

Also, they would have the essential equipment of the dock shielded in case of accidental triggering or attack.

Also the machines would use EMPs.

Well, I think the fashion designer just want the APUs to match their normal clothings

Although given the speed of the sentinels, an enclosed suit may last like 3 seconds unless it's built of fully transparent metal/ceramic shell. The Zion people also didn't have lot's of resources (e.g. to have electronic tracking on every APU). So it's a design balance 8P

First off, the humans have no effective defense against the machines except EMP. Yeah, humans fire stuff at the machines and destroy some of them but are easily overwhelmed. EMP works, but it knocks out EVERYTHING! Remember why EMP works. It burns the memmory chips in computers which run everything.

It is essential to remember that each time Zion starts up with, they probably have less than the last Zion had before it was destroyed.
The Architect says its easier and easier to destroy Zion. Maybe the first time there was all kinds of military gear left over from the war. But next time maybe they scrapped up some military stuff, but had to ad lib with the rest, becasue the old gear got wasted last time... and so on and so on until you had the current Zion with ONLY non military equipment that they modified to form a feeble defense with. Kind of impressive actually.

If the ships were so pivotal to Zion's defence how come we didn't see any fighting in the city's defence? The only ship actually fighting the squiddies was the one all of the heroes were on.

Did I miss something?

Charcoal_Ninja wrote:

Did I miss something?

Ummmm....like the entire last 5 minutes of Reloaded. They explain that the operation to mass EMP the machines had failed because someone triggered one too soon (Bane)...then there was a massacre and only the Hammer, its crew, and Bane survived.

Barabbas

who taught that guy to do any war tactics. If one ship's EMP took out all those squiddies then I saw no need for panic. Just have one ship in the dock at a time. When a load of squidies come....EMP them. Just continues this for a while. THen agin pre EMP bomb them did seem like a good idea. I"m still curious who bane survived. If everything explodes i think he would die too or at least get lot's of damage. But he had enough stength in him to kill that lady with a nail cliper knife.

I can't trust a machine....They just want vengence

A.R.I.C

war tactics? all the EMPs were gone... The ships were his most powerful weapon against the Machines and they were carrying ALL the EMPs... the grand battle that never took place was offscreen, where the human fleet was incapacitated and got torn to pieces by the machines.

Still, kinda stupid not to have a few EMPs around, in either case.

A.R.I.C wrote:

Just have one ship in the dock at a time. When a load of squidies come....EMP them. Just continues this for a while.

But you can't. If you fire an EMP then it knocks out your ship, too. After 5 minutes the next squiddie swarm comes and destroys your ship and that's the end of it.

Bad idea.

i dont know why dont u get it? maybe i get it because i play so much starcraft ...

dont camp in your city thats a bad idea...make a defensive perimeter on a good point but dont place all ur ships there...

put some crappy apus forward (all apus are crappy) and kill em off until they amass then bang the emp...move back
again do 1st...back
again
again
and again... (form what i saw in revolutions that would work if its well planed)

i posted this before somewhere

It would have been cool if they had an EMP in Zion, but could only fire it every 10 minutes or so. Between firings, they have to protect the EMP emitter from the sentinels.