From a lore prespective, why doesn't ARES do a bioscan BEFORE deployment?

[Gray]

I can understand the whole mechanic/RP reason as "marines shouldn't know what they're fighting" and "OOCly marines shouldn't know how many they're fighting" but what's the lore reason? why does it take an hour for ARES to do a scan?

[ThePiachu]

Maybe because ARES can only detect non-human life and is rather power-hungry? So the Marines don't turn those features on until they know they are dealing with a bug hunt? Remember, you're expecting something like a CLF or UPP at most here.

[Gray]

Yes, but when you're at a colony that has disconnected communications, wouldn't be logical to perform a scan first to detect how many of them are alive? The way I think about it is that ARES does a life scan to search for survivors but instead detects unknown lifeforms. My question is, why does this only happen an hour after?

[Omicega]

ARES is either working for the xenos, or is a really old and almost senile excuse for an AI. This also explains why he won't let us call distress with 90% of the marines dead (there are only 5 left, guys!) and why he spends most of the operation asleep, only waking up to give inaccurate bioscans or some other cryptic announcement.

Please don't be too hard on our resident shitty computer. He tries his best.

[CABAL]

Yes, but when you're at a colony that has disconnected communications, wouldn't be logical to perform a scan first to detect how many of them are alive? The way I think about it is that ARES does a life scan to search for survivors but instead detects unknown lifeforms. My question is, why does this only happen an hour after?

Maybe because ARES can only detect non-human life and is rather power-hungry? So the Marines don't turn those features on until they know they are dealing with a bug hunt? Remember, you're expecting something like a CLF or UPP at most here.

This part might be explanation. If bioscan works only on unidentified lifesigns then there is no reason to scan the colony, becouse nobody expects xenos.

[Heckenshutze]

The USS Almayer is actually a low-budget vessel manned mostly by the worst of the USCM: Drafted convicts, autists, retards, thugs and recluits that didn't or barely succeed at boot camp. This explain why their weapons and equipment are so bad compared to other USCM vessels.

[Maxim Inc]

My personal lore was that ARES was a SEAGSON AI and because the Almayer is such a small/low priority ship that it would cost to much to install a full WY AI onto it as well as maintain it.

[Tharinoma]

Scanning such a tiny area for human sized lifesigns takes time!

[NethIafins]

Because right now there is no better (and balanced) way to tell opposing teams about forces.

As for IC reason - most likely if is unable to scan those alien fuckers until you actually determine that they exist. Also it is a bad idea to do bioscan and find 50 yirens in the group of 4 xenos

[Lumdor]

Also from an RP perspective it does this. As you never know if the round is a xeno round, HvH, or hell even zombies.

So, if you knew right off the bat it would ruin the surprise.

[Gray]

I understand the balance implications I was asking what's the explanation from a lore prespective :L

[Heckenshutze]

I understand the balance implications I was asking what's the explanation from a lore prespective :L

The USS Almayer is actually a low-budget vessel manned mostly by the worst of the USCM: Drafted convicts, autists, retards, thugs and recluits that didn't or barely succeed at boot camp. This explain why their weapons and equipment are so bad compared to other USCM vessels.

[Simo94]

I can think of two reasons, one its because ARES simply doesn't have enough power at the start to perform a scan as everyone is sleeping and MTs need to setup the engine after waking up.
for the second reason, if ARES performs an accurate scan of all lifeforms in the planet it will be meaningless since the scan will also include all other animal lifeforms aside from xenos, the number will be so huge that it doesn't matter, most of it are just monkeys, rats or even ants.

[liltiptop]

The MTs and CE have to turn ARES on and off each scan, because it crashes after every scan.
The time to restart ARES is about 30 in game minutes.

[GenericUsername]

ARES starts doing bioscans as soon as the first xeno is spotted I guess

[adrenalinetooth]

The first bioscan occurs at exactly 1 hour (13:00) into the game. From there, the bioscans occur exactly every 30 minutes. (13:30, 14:00, etc.)

In my mind, the bioscan performs like a laser scanner that sweeps the colony from start to end, and it takes 30 minutes to get a full sweep.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind if the bioscan came at 12:30 but included animals and whatnot. It would calm down my RP irks. By the time it would reach 1 hour in, most of the animals would be captured or dead anyways.

Apart from what Heckenshutze is saying ( I think it's a little too extreme), let's say that the marines are awakened just as the ship crew finish piloting the Almayer into orbit, and it takes a while to setup the bioscan system before it can get to running regular scans. Someone has to connect it to the planet database, input the climate, terrain features, etc. and once that is done, it gets scans done on a regular interval.

[Royal Griffon]

I'd like to think that ARES doesn't do a scan cause it doesn't pick up anything wrong
Like it doesn't know what the unknown lifeforms are, or what they look like or whatever it needs to do a scan, and that it watches our squad cams and sees it and detects it's an enemy and THEN can scan for it, but it can't scan beforehand due to lack of knowledge.
We're a first encounter after all, so that means there isn't really any/much prior knowledge to the xenomorphs before us, and that if we encounter them the ship knows what to scan for but can't scan that well which is why when they're groundside they have a approximate scan while on the ship they have an exact scan as well

[Heckenshutze]

Apart from what Heckenshutze is saying ( I think it's a little too extreme), let's say that the marines are awakened just as the ship crew finish piloting the Almayer into orbit, and it takes a while to setup the bioscan system before it can get to running regular scans. Someone has to connect it to the planet database, input the climate, terrain features, etc. and once that is done, it gets scans done on a regular interval.

The source of that gimmick lore piece is a day we were discussing why Marines were so fucking retarded, bad and their equipment sucked balls compared with the actual USCM technology we see in the movie and the games, so we came up with this. The full lore of it starts like this:

Since the United Americas is desperated about what's happening in their colonies with the recent uprising of the rebel CLF and the communist forces of the UPP in the UA space borders the gob. decided to take actions and sent the USCM to guard and keep what's left from their colonies and stop the spread of CLF territory to the point their reach our borders and attack.

However, this was a delicate and dangerous mission, since the USCM would be in UPP space meaning that sending more than 1-2 ships would end in Total War with the communists and they couldn't afford the loss of that many men, still, every vessel was valuable and the process to pick the candidate was becoming more and more an issue. Nobody wanted to take the first step into such suicidal mission, but then, the Skymarshall of the USSF decided to assign the 2nd battalion of the 4th brigade, the Falling Falcons for this task since they were relatively a minor garrison stationed at Herculis. The battalion received this task with not so many friendly faces but they came up with an idea: From the vessels under their command they selected the USS Almayer, a vessel specially designed for space exploration and made an exhausting investigation over the dossiers and the roosters of the Herculis Space Station and picked, the worst of the worst: Those marines who barely completed their training for whatever reasons, mostly were bad behaviour marines, terrible learners, ex-convicts that were drafted and in a general terms, thugs that couldn't accomplish nothing important in life and ended up enlisted in the corps.

The idea behind this was grim yet smart: This mission was tecnically a suicide, if they wouldn't get attacked by the CLF a scouting UPP vessel would, but one isolated USS vessel wouldn't be enough reason to be considered a declaration of war and in the worst case scenario, the vessel was destroyed and all the men killed, it wouldn't be that much of a loss since the men were the most expendable between the expendables and the vessel was already stripped of any Top Quality technology and equipment, including the weapons. The USS Almayer was ready to deploy into suicide with the most budget cut garrison and technology of them all.

[Maxim Inc]

I can get behind this.

[CCRWasHere]

ARES secretly works for the true antagonists of the Colonial Marines:

The chimps.


Why do you think the monkeys are all escaped and roaming free?
Do you think a single Queen and a group of larva could overpower an entire colony? No. Monkeys.
Who do you think "Jack" is that the pirates on Fiorina Penitentiary are trying to break out? First Mate Barbossa's brother no doubt.

Linna-349 was a chimp inside job and the Bug Boys were their scapegoats.
ARES works for the enemy. Wake up sheeple.