A Catachan Battalion vs Na'vi at Avatar 1

Agent23

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Catachan have good collection of accolades (Even if I think most is PIS/Plot armor) tbh but my debating standard is preferably on the "How" aspect of the debate.

And I just don't see how a small force of them get it done realistically under these exact conditions without utterly downplaying the Navi's capabilities.
For starters, even if the weaponry the Catachan use might look primitive, it is of the same scale as anything else in 40k, which means that one IG "flashlight" can do the damage of a modern-day anti-material rifle.

Second, the Deathworlders have had to deal with a far worse environmnet than Pandora for many generations, and that makes them perfectly conditioned to wage war in such a situation.

The technological disparity alone is greater than other situations where there is a large disparity of tech level, like at Rourke's drift, where the British racked something like a 20 to one k/c ratio.

And I would say that the Catachans are even better trained for this campaign than the British were.

If I was them I'd thoroughly research the wildlife while doing probing raids against the enemy, then bait them into hitting my stronghold.
 

Blasterbot

Well-known member
40k tech is kinda all over the place in terms of just how strong it is in terms of feats. consequence of being a big IP for a long time with many writers nerfing and wanking based on their personal tastes.

the lack of dedicated anti air and open canopy design of the sentinels are exploitable weak points. on the other hand the Chimeras armor is much more solid than anything the Navi have been shown to break through since they are made of some strong future alloy I forget.

the go to Navi tactics involving stealth and guerrilla warfare are the catachans bread and butter. the ending battle where they go full leroy jenkins would go more poorly. it took the planet giving them a miracle to save them from RD and they didn't seem to have that many more guys than the catachans would here. the catachans tech advantage would mean that the Rhino swarm would be ineffective. the air swarm might be harder to deal with but still doable.
 

Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
Given that this is a battalion deployment, not exactly small, surely the Catachans would get Valkyrie support? A squadron or two of those being present would put the Na'vi up shit creek without a paddle.
 

Agent23

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Given that this is a battalion deployment, not exactly small, surely the Catachans would get Valkyrie support? A squadron or two of those being present would put the Na'vi up shit creek without a paddle.
Even without that we are talking highly skilled and trained deathworlders with very advanced military tech against hunter-gatherers flinging spears.
The population density of hunter-gatherers was 1% of even that of pre-industrial farming civilizations and the density of even advanced hunter-gatherers was .2 to 10 people per square mile.
Now, Pandoran magical ecology might help them some, but still we have a very small real population and not all of those people will be capable warriors, there will be children, the old, the sick, the otherwise handicapped.

So let us assume that we have 15 Na'vi capable of combat per sq. m. this is on the extremely high end, IMHO.

A battalion is between 300 and 1500 people, traditionally.


So, they will need to mobilize everything within 100 square miles to just match the enemy NUMERICALLY.

Frankly, the Catachans can rack up tens, maybe hundreds of kills for every single casualty so unless the Na'vi can mobilize every capable warrior in 2000 square miles I don't think they will even be able to make the Imperium notice them once they are dug in, then they can just slowly expand their area of control and/or move their fortified encampments closer to richer Unobtanium veins or the weird Brainwashing Tree.




Easy win.
 

Crom's Black Blade

Well-known member
Given that this is a battalion deployment, not exactly small, surely the Catachans would get Valkyrie support? A squadron or two of those being present would put the Na'vi up shit creek without a paddle.
Do the Catachans have organic Valkyrie support at the battalion level? From what I've seen not even every Regiment has access to Valkyries even relatively well-supplied ones like Cain's Valhallan 597th.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Given that this is a battalion deployment, not exactly small, surely the Catachans would get Valkyrie support? A squadron or two of those being present would put the Na'vi up shit creek without a paddle.

I don't see any reason to if the conclusion would then be foreordained. Might as well delete the thread then. I think the discussion in this thread is going great specifically because there is a great deal of disagreement over who might prevail in this scenario.
 

Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
Do the Catachans have organic Valkyrie support at the battalion level? From what I've seen not even every Regiment has access to Valkyries even relatively well-supplied ones like Cain's Valhallan 597th.

Catachans are well regarded as elite in the Imperium so they might well get Valkyries. Besides, something got them from orbit to planet side.
 

Agent23

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Catachans are well regarded as elite in the Imperium so they might well get Valkyries. Besides, something got them from orbit to planet side.
Valkyries or no, they still stomp.

the Na'vi and even the nastier fauna controlled by the Parasitic Tree will run out before the Catachans run out of wood for fires in which to recharge their lasweapons. 😂 :ROFLMAO:
 

Crom's Black Blade

Well-known member
Catachans are well regarded as elite in the Imperium so they might well get Valkyries. Besides, something got them from orbit to planet side.
Well what got them to the planet would, if the Cain series is any indication, be a troop transport that would land Cain and his regiment into a secured landing zone and then leave.

The wiki seems to suggest Valkyries typically are typically assigned to Stormtrooper squads or drop troop regiments like Elysian. It does include the 22nd Catachan jungle fighters as a famed Valkyrie squadron but following the link makes it sound more like a adhoc battlegroup form with two other "orbital assault groups" regiments than an actual Catachan regiment raised with Valkyries from conception.

Edit:

Yes assume they have air support.
I would then have to ask for clarification on what air support they have, precisely.
 
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Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Even without that we are talking highly skilled and trained deathworlders with very advanced military tech against hunter-gatherers flinging spears.
The population density of hunter-gatherers was 1% of even that of pre-industrial farming civilizations and the density of even advanced hunter-gatherers was .2 to 10 people per square mile.
Now, Pandoran magical ecology might help them some, but still we have a very small real population and not all of those people will be capable warriors, there will be children, the old, the sick, the otherwise handicapped.

So let us assume that we have 15 Na'vi capable of combat per sq. m. this is on the extremely high end, IMHO.

A battalion is between 300 and 1500 people, traditionally.

So, they will need to mobilize everything within 100 square miles to just match the enemy NUMERICALLY.

Frankly, the Catachans can rack up tens, maybe hundreds of kills for every single casualty so unless the Na'vi can mobilize every capable warrior in 2000 square miles I don't think they will even be able to make the Imperium notice them once they are dug in, then they can just slowly expand their area of control and/or move their fortified encampments closer to richer Unobtanium veins or the weird Brainwashing Tree.

We have numbers from the actual movie. Quaritch's briefing before the final battle stated quite clearly that Jake Sully had rallied two thousand warriors (and that's what they could estimate from the satellites) and that in a weeks time it would be ten times that number which is twenty thousand. Also I honestly can't remember seeing any old, sick or otherwise handicapped Navi either. Well except the ones they bury in the first Avatar movie montage for whatever reason.

In Avatar 2 the RDA specifically does their hunts in Deep Ocean because the tribes that inhabit the coasts which I guess are adjacent to wherever the first movie took place, consisting of something like a hundred villages of at least a hundred or few hundred inhabitants each stretched out across an entire archipelago of indeterminate size.

And you skimmed over the rest. We have the general numbers of the Catachans. They appear to have twenty vehicles that might more or less be impervious to the Navi Weapons and then a few hundred troops. Any slow expansion of their area of control would mean stretching out their defenses and personnel across a larger swath of land and the goal is to destroy the Hometree to open it up for Unobtainium mining.

We have as of yet no idea the distances involved beyond the RDA having to fly there to destroy it themselves. They could try and do a fortified encampment and just laager their way to the Hometree day by day but that's what's basically been argued since the first page. Unless they are literally going to be digging trenches underneath their armored vehicles which are slowly burning through the forest while being resupplied with Promethium all the way to Hometree over the coming days/weeks/months they're going to be exposed to the giant armor piercing arrows dipped in Neurotoxin that the Navi can plink at them at their leisure from anywhere within or above the jungles surrounding them.

Unless of course the Catachans, who we all admit are formidable meme worthy Jungle Warriors want to set up perimeters and sentries and patrols... in which case... they could be more proactive and reactive... but also more exposed to getting casualties inflicted on them as well. And depending on the numerical estimates... based on the actual dialogue from the movies, the Navi (within a week at best) would outnumber a force of a thousand troops between two and ten to one.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
Given that this is a battalion deployment, not exactly small, surely the Catachans would get Valkyrie support? A squadron or two of those being present would put the Na'vi up shit creek without a paddle.

Well, a battalion is an extremely small deployment. Especially for the area in question. Lets get an idea of the territory in question: lots of the Catatans having trouble is based on this being a large area: lets say the target is one hour helicopter flight: about 200 km. That's 10 days on foot if making reasonably good time. About 1 km a day road building like the trip to the home tree gives you roughly the three months that it took mining operations to reach.

So, it might be reasonable to guess a lot of the Navi stuff is at least 50-100 km out, and the magic tree may be 200-300 km out, about a full 1-2 hour flight.

But, for gorilla war terms, lets look at how much territory were talking about. A semi circle 200 km out from a base on the ocean gives you about 60,000 square km. This is about 30% of the land area of South Vietnam, which had closer to a million men involved. So, to reach South Vietnam troop densities, your talking about 300,000 men for an area this large, not 800.

But, as @Agent23 hunter gathers have lower population densities than peasant farmers. 1 per km was my quick research number. This suggests though over the distances being discussed that there may be roughly 60,000 Navi in the area discussed, especially since a lot of it is fertile area, not marginal wasteland no one else wants as in modern hunter gatherers.

Now, some of evidence from the film suggest there may be a good gap of few Navi living in very close proximity to the base. This however is a disadvantage to the Humans because it puts more of the Navi at further distances from base, pushing for longer logistical tail.

Still, 50,000 Navi in the area makes sense, suggesting roughly 2,500 prime warrior aged (roughly if 50 year lifespan, equal spread between ages, so 20% are in the 20-30 range, or 5,000 and assuming mostly male half of that for roughly 2,500).

This lines up with the force Jake's able to mobilize quickly: light horse forces can do 30-50 km in a day burst, or 20-30 sustained. Mongols could allegedly manage 100-200 km in a day, though I don't know if that was a burst or sustained, regular or a particularly notable campaign. Flight is also going to make the Navi way more mobility than standard natives too: flight might make a 200-300 km day journey quite doable, especially with friendly bases on the other side. RDA meanwhile would be very limited by the need to keep operations within round trip flight distance, else it requires setting up forward bases which they don't really have the manpower for. Catachans would have a similar need, and be similarly lacking in manpower.

So, this lines up roughly with the movie, which honestly suprises me a bit: those in the immediate area might be roughly 50,000 Navi, who can mobilize 2-3k Warriors, and within the close reachable, say 400 km as the, whaterver those flying things fly, your talking about 500,000 km, and thus maybe half a million Navi. Now, were talking about an area roughly the size of Ukraine, but, well, hunter gathers are fairly mobile people, traveling light, able to live on the land, etcetera. That's still only 25,000 Navi warriors, with maybe a manpower pool of 100,000. Which would definitely eventually overwelm the RDA/

If they can draw from a Europe wide area, with maybe a population of 4 million, you have roughly 200,000, though drawing on that wide is reaching logistical limits, especailly at once: a distant tribe might be able to migrate a warrior band of 30 flyingers who spend a couple days in transit, fight, and leave, as long as local food sources held out.

You still have the problem though of a divisional (5-10 thousand) at least task being carried out by a battalion.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Still, 50,000 Navi in the area makes sense, suggesting roughly 2,500 prime warrior aged (roughly if 50 year lifespan, equal spread between ages, so 20% are in the 20-30 range, or 5,000 and assuming mostly male half of that for roughly 2,500).

I think the Navi in general have far more combatants per ratio of population than any related Hunter-Gatherers in Human history. I'm not going to discuss possible demographics because I have no idea where to start when it seems like Pandora has a perfect networked equilibrium going on. But I think in both movies, it looked like a lot of the adult Navi were warriors or warrior capable and that included both sexes. In the second movie, the visibly pregnant Chieftain's Wife even waddled off to Battle (upon her Skimwing).
 

Scooby Doo

Well-known member
I think the Navi in general have far more combatants per ratio of population than any related Hunter-Gatherers in Human history. I'm not going to discuss possible demographics because I have no idea where to start when it seems like Pandora has a perfect networked equilibrium going on. But I think in both movies, it looked like a lot of the adult Navi were warriors or warrior capable and that included both sexes. In the second movie, the visibly pregnant Chieftain's Wife even waddled off to Battle (upon her Skimwing).
Irc James Cameron said the Navi females even pregnant ones are just as capable of the male Navi fighters so all Navi are pretty much capable fighters there's no civilians aside from actual children.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
For me, its less whether or not they "need it" but whether if they typically have access to it. If they do then they should have it in this scenario but if they don't it seems unfair to just hand it to them.

I don't think battalions traditionally have any organic air support. Certainly not an armored battalion as we seem to have here. Access would be more trickly, because I think you do sometimes get organic air at the brigade level, and some more at divisional. Which gives a battalion access. But, we have a lonely battalion. US Navy Nimitz has about 2,500 men for 90 aircraft, so about 1 aircraft per 30 ground crew.

So, if the Imperium had a similar ratio, enough aircraft to make a battalion air mobile would be roughly 50 Valkyries, so about 1,500 troops. So, you need 1,500 support troops to get a very mobile 800. have some guards for the air crew, your talking about 3-5k, not 800. Brigade scale, not Battalion scale.

The human force is just extremely small for what is being asked of it. Especially against active resistance with human traitors who can figure out solutions: the Na'vi on their own might not be able to figure out what a Chimera is and how to counter it, but Jack with one look will know approximately what it is, and a human soldiers general knowedge of how armored vehicles are countered, and the scientists can science up the best available tools and Jake with his close integration the best way to adopt Navi to the problem.

Honestly, the best strategy for victory may be for them to attempt the plan the RDA failed to carry out in the second movie: hunt down Jake and the human scientists. You remove them, the Navi lose their unifying figure, and an important brain trust of people who can understand human logic and tactics.

That might be a mission the Catachans would be well suited to achieve, as high risk as a jungle infiltration may be. Target the real critical point of Navi restistance: Jake. Killing the tree, its not super clear what that necessary accomplishes, materially. Might just mobilize all of Pandora to be even more aggressive. Kill Jake, and the Navi resistance seems likely to fracture and loses its main ability to counter humans through logic and foreknowledge, and not through super expensive trial and error.

Edit:

Getting rid of the human traitor also makes it more likely the humans can achieve what they really need to win here: bluff: a reason Japan's decisive battle doctrine was never going to really work against the US was because the US was aware of the material disparity: the US knew it could recover from whatever damage the Japanese did, while the Japanese couldn't really recover from any damage the US did to them.

Likewise, the Navi winning being so likely is partially from the assumption of them understanding this: they have 2,500 warriors, in ten weeks 25,000, and maybe 500,000, depending on assumptions, as you say @Husky_Khan . My estimate up there is about 5% mobilization, equivalent to the entire male population of 20 year olds. You might push that up to 10-30% reasonably. US for example mobilized 10% of its pop in WWII, and hunter gathers can generally mobilize a lot of their men.

Meanwhile, the humans are capped at 800 ish. Every lost (in the short term at least) irreplaceable. And human combined armies tend to degrade in combat effectively at a more than linearly rate: the first 200 casualties for example might represent a 50% decline in practical firepower: the scouts are dead, frontage is narrower, equipment has less maintaince time, longer shifts.

Without the Humans though, the Na'vi on their own might not correctly understand the situation, and can be bluffed that the casualties were irrelevant, so continued attacks are pointless. they might not fully understand also the time concerns. Every year ish a new human ship should be arriving, with maybe 100-200 soldiers, if still relying on Venture stars? If they only inflict 50 casualties a year, and the humans can bring in a 100 new soldiers, then the attacks really are worthless: attrition is lower than the rate of ressuply.
 
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