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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rackhir" data-source="post: 1163096" data-attributes="member: 149">Well, I think rockets probably weren't effective for much the same reason as the aircraft weren't. Too big a thermal signature and probably got nailed by the God King's Saucer weapons. At least that's how I suspect he would rationalize it, but it is a weak point in his technological set up. He never really did explain why artillery rounds didn't suffer the same fate as missiles and such. Though artillery rounds do typically travel at much higher velocities than most missiles. Still, I think he mostly threw that sort of thing in there for the tactical complications. It was implied at least that their inability to stop artillery shells was one of those "Alien Blindspot" things, where they had simply never thought of such a thing and thus had no counter to it. Also the Powered armor suits did eventually switch into carrying much more of the artillery style weapons. Even modifying suits to be little else other than mobile artillery. Tactically the Posleen were much more difficult to fight than I think you give them credit for. Remember a substantial number of individual soldiers were equiped with weapons that would trash an M1 in one shot and this is out of hordes of hundreds of thousands. So a lot of our traditional methods of dealing with wave attacks don't work, since they involve things like armor and air power. The Posleen also move at much higher speeds than humans, especially over rough ground. Remember that the human forces in the first book were basically told nothing about the kind of enviroment and enemies they were going to be fighting in, hamstrung by many incompetent leaders and improperly trained (if they got any).Also, don't forget the lessons of Korea . The chinese units which had essentially no armor, artillery, air support or heavy weapons still managed to thrash and almost cut off a number of US units. Their lack of "baggage" meant that they could traverse the hills and mountains, where as the mechanized forces of the US were restricted to the roads that had to go around many of the hills and mountains and water barriers. So basically, if you are in sufficiently rough terrain, attack with total disregard for your life and have overwhelming numbers then you can beat nominally "Far superior" units. This is one of the things that cost germany the war on the eastern front. As one Panzer commander put it, "We had a 10 to 1 kill ratio vs the russian tanks, but there was always that dammed 11th tank."The other things you mentioned re: FAEs (more mines really) and engineers do in fact make up several MAJOR reasons that humanity was able to hold on to the earth, after the Posleen invasion. Though they were hardly in a position to drive them off the earth and most countries were wiped out.</blockquote>

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