With all due respect, the fallacy is yours. The example given doesn't say anything about a sniper having an enemy in his sights an letting him go unharmed. You're making wild assumptions and are trying to pass them off as facts, assuming a story told by a third party could be construed as fact that is.
Security Officers on the Enterprise
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With all due respect, the fallacy is yours. The example given doesn't say anything about a sniper having an enemy in his sights an letting him go unharmed. You're making wild assumptions and are trying to pass them off as facts, assuming a story told by a third party could be construed as fact that is.
And that is why they shouldn't be affected by the explosions of neighboring mines.
If it makes you feel better; a know it all wouldn't call it "a no it all".
(It's all in good fun)
D'Oh!
A sniper will allow a target to move freely around a base. They do this to learn patterns and to find out who has what authority over whom. Also to learn patrol patterns. A sniper has to learn who it is he needs to kill for maximum effect. The question then becomes, what is the maximum effect to be achieved?
In a building to building urban battle, the sniper is there to kill any enemy soldier that pops his head out as that helps your own side in the ongoing battle.
In a siege, the sniper would mostly be used to take out commanders in an effort to demoralize the enemy. This works both ways.
In a ambush setup, the sniper is there to strike at random, Not only does this cause fear, but also takes out enemy numbers.
Attacking an enemy base (basically alone) from a nice roost is usually a matter of recon and keeping your enemy off balance until such time as you have the means to attack that base directly. Or if you do not have the means to do that, make it so the enemy thinks you do and hope they leave. In this situtation, the sniper goes for fear over body count. The more bodies you make the more likely they will eventually find you. However if you cause fear instead of body count, they might not figure out where you even are and thus allow you to continue causing them fear until you decide you want a body count, at which point you pick the highest ranking or most valuable person on their base to kill. You've been watching for days, so you should know who needs killing.
A good sniper knows when and when not to take the shot. A mine usuaully does not know anything. The Houdini mines are not as good as a sniper for picking a target, but they are excellent in instilling fear into the enemey. Fear that can be used against them. A normal mine field would be worthless to the Jem'Hadar as their mindset is just keep sending troops until you clean it with bodies, we will just make more later. The Houdini mine fits Dominion thinking. Let the grunts pass. Allow time for the officers (Vorta) to come and work with things, then blow up at random. Not only have you possibly killed a vastly more important officer, the remaining officers and now in fear. The next mine explodes an hour later, killing a random grunt. Because you can't just clear this minefield with bodies like any trained army of breed combat clones would be used for if they value victory over life. Because of that the army officers are in fear.
The Dominion would translate this to being even worse for the likes of the Federation that doesn't use grunts to take hits with ease. You avoid taking out the security officers and crewmen and instead hit the science officers and commanders. Thus you need a smart mine or a random mine that won't just blow up whenever someone is near. A smart mine would have had some sort of uniform color sensor that would blow up when near a red or blue uniformed officer while ignoring the yellow uniforms. The trouble with this is that engineering and security use gold, and thus messed up the simple color code mines, as it is usually the engineers that are needed to be killed in Starfleet.
So the Dominion instead comes up with a mine that instills fear into the enemy. This fear can be used. It was breaking the local officers before Sisko's team arrived. Had they not had a team capable of finding a way to bring the mines out of subspace, they Houdini would have taken out a few more officers before the Jem'Hadar attacked. As to why the Dominion didn't just overwhelm them? Not enough troops it seems. They manage to take out two-thirds of the Federation force in five months. The Houdini mines seems to help with taking out random people behind the lines while not damaging the Dominion array, nor wasting resources.
In a building to building urban battle, the sniper is there to kill any enemy soldier that pops his head out as that helps your own side in the ongoing battle.
In a siege, the sniper would mostly be used to take out commanders in an effort to demoralize the enemy. This works both ways.
In a ambush setup, the sniper is there to strike at random, Not only does this cause fear, but also takes out enemy numbers.
Attacking an enemy base (basically alone) from a nice roost is usually a matter of recon and keeping your enemy off balance until such time as you have the means to attack that base directly. Or if you do not have the means to do that, make it so the enemy thinks you do and hope they leave. In this situtation, the sniper goes for fear over body count. The more bodies you make the more likely they will eventually find you. However if you cause fear instead of body count, they might not figure out where you even are and thus allow you to continue causing them fear until you decide you want a body count, at which point you pick the highest ranking or most valuable person on their base to kill. You've been watching for days, so you should know who needs killing.
A good sniper knows when and when not to take the shot. A mine usuaully does not know anything. The Houdini mines are not as good as a sniper for picking a target, but they are excellent in instilling fear into the enemey. Fear that can be used against them. A normal mine field would be worthless to the Jem'Hadar as their mindset is just keep sending troops until you clean it with bodies, we will just make more later. The Houdini mine fits Dominion thinking. Let the grunts pass. Allow time for the officers (Vorta) to come and work with things, then blow up at random. Not only have you possibly killed a vastly more important officer, the remaining officers and now in fear. The next mine explodes an hour later, killing a random grunt. Because you can't just clear this minefield with bodies like any trained army of breed combat clones would be used for if they value victory over life. Because of that the army officers are in fear.
The Dominion would translate this to being even worse for the likes of the Federation that doesn't use grunts to take hits with ease. You avoid taking out the security officers and crewmen and instead hit the science officers and commanders. Thus you need a smart mine or a random mine that won't just blow up whenever someone is near. A smart mine would have had some sort of uniform color sensor that would blow up when near a red or blue uniformed officer while ignoring the yellow uniforms. The trouble with this is that engineering and security use gold, and thus messed up the simple color code mines, as it is usually the engineers that are needed to be killed in Starfleet.
So the Dominion instead comes up with a mine that instills fear into the enemy. This fear can be used. It was breaking the local officers before Sisko's team arrived. Had they not had a team capable of finding a way to bring the mines out of subspace, they Houdini would have taken out a few more officers before the Jem'Hadar attacked. As to why the Dominion didn't just overwhelm them? Not enough troops it seems. They manage to take out two-thirds of the Federation force in five months. The Houdini mines seems to help with taking out random people behind the lines while not damaging the Dominion array, nor wasting resources.
Snipers are rewarded according to how many people they shoot. It's unlikely that they would waste time scaring people, not if they can help it. They only shoot the kind of shot you talk about when they are hoping to flush out the enemy of their hiding places so to speak.
That depends on their orders. If numbers is not the mission, you don't shoot for body count. You shoot whatever gets your mission done. If your mission is recon as a sniper, you recon, label targets, possibly take a shot of opportunity, but you get the intel to your superiors over body count. If you are sent to locate the commanding officer of a base, and you can't locate him, you create a situation were he shows himself, by messing with them. If your orders say to cause problems, then you cause problems. Problems could be dead soldier or stressed out soldiers.
In Vietnam, there were instances were one was not in a position to kill the other side due to pilitical situations. Such as the mentioned shots across the border into Cambodia. The US was not at war or even in conflict with Cambodia until the middle of 1970. They could not legally go in there and kill North Vietnamese (or other allied Communist forces). So instead of kill shots, the idea was to scare them as much as possible. Psychological warfare was used heavily and that included snipers. Maybe it was more a Navy thing than a Army thing.
The Dominion (Vorta and Founders as well as the Cardassians at times) liked using psychological warfare as well as direct combat. The Houdini fits their methods properly.
Regardless, this has basically nothing to do with security officers on the Enterprise...any Enterprise.
In Vietnam, there were instances were one was not in a position to kill the other side due to pilitical situations. Such as the mentioned shots across the border into Cambodia. The US was not at war or even in conflict with Cambodia until the middle of 1970. They could not legally go in there and kill North Vietnamese (or other allied Communist forces). So instead of kill shots, the idea was to scare them as much as possible. Psychological warfare was used heavily and that included snipers. Maybe it was more a Navy thing than a Army thing.
The Dominion (Vorta and Founders as well as the Cardassians at times) liked using psychological warfare as well as direct combat. The Houdini fits their methods properly.
Regardless, this has basically nothing to do with security officers on the Enterprise...any Enterprise.
The girl sniper we see in Full Metal Jacket, was very typical of the kind you could expect to find as an American soldier in Vietnam. Any shot enemy, was virtually, a dead enemy, she only let him live long enough to lure a comrade of his into futile rescue attempt, after which she would add one more dead to her list, and another and another. If she had any reason to believe that the first one was alone, he would probably die immediately.
A sniper's primary function is to kill people. If they do anything else, it's when they can't kill people, IE when targets are hidden, or out of reach.
The primary function of a soldier in the field is to get the mission done, regardless of what that entails. The same is true for snipers. The mission is usually to kill people, but not always. The mission comes first. Body count is second, at best. If a sniper is sent on recon, they do recon. If they are sent to mess with the enemy, they mess with the enemy. Sometimes it is a matter of the only type of soldier that can get close enough to fire into a location without crossing into a specific area is a sniper due to their skill with a scope. The mission may be just to mess with them. Keep them on their toes and paranoid. A sniper is very good for such things, as only costs at most two soldiers to cause havok (the sniper and his spotter).
(Actually the primary mission to a soldier is usually to survive to get home, but that's personal preference).
(Actually the primary mission to a soldier is usually to survive to get home, but that's personal preference).
I think you're confusing a sniper with other types of soldiers. Snipers are chosen specifically because of their high shooting skills. Using them for anything less would be a waste of resources. If you need someone to scare people off or to spy on them, you don't use someone who can shoot them in the eye at a few hundred meters of distance.
Sometimes when forming these ideas, it doesn't hurt to use common sense.
Just a suggestion.
This thread went off the road about two pages ago. Next time, take your off-topic arguments somewhere else.
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