what if Cameron takes us all by surprise?

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

So despite weapons from orbit, what would they want to do - build a couple of more spaceship to transport an army there?

I don't think you'd need an army there just to defend a new base. Depending on precisely what weapons you have available, you might need as few as 5-10, if you play them strategically. (Whether or not the RDA can play them sanely is an open question. )

Look at the army they lost in the movie now

Unfortunately, Cameron broke my suspension disbelief fairly severely there. For instance, there is a moment where an ikran pulls a Sampson out of the air and smashes it into something. As good cinema as this is, I can't see any way it could physically work; the ikran should be far too light for it to be able to pull on the Sampson that significantly.

The moment they set foot on Pandora, they will get evicted. They would have to bring enough weaponry with them to win against basically all large animal life that could attack them on Pandora or at least against all NA'Vi warriors

Set up your base in the middle of an empty plain, and defend it with large-calibre, long-range weaponry. This would be the solution if you were planning a new base, but obviously some compromises must be made if you didn't plan that from the beginning. Although a question in the case of the big machines such as shuttles and buildings is, "Evicted by what?" Eywa does not have a mass driver handy.

Earth is not doing so well in that time either, so I am not sure just how many resources they have left to build more spaceships to bring weapons to Pandora - and how long that would take. IIRC the spaceships they have now were a huge investment and construction took a long time...

The economics of mining unobtanium with antimatter-fuelled rockets do not work out sensibly in any model of economics I can think of. If cost is an issue, I can't really see why you would go at all.

Originally Posted by Niri Te

As an American warrior, I know that if I were there, I would teach the Na'vi how to use ALL the weapons that were left behind.

That is a rather interesting catch-22: how much should you practice when ammo is limited?

Not to replace the bows and arrows, TRUST ME, a Bow in the Jungle at night is a FORMIDABLE WEAPON. There is no sound, or muzzle flash for your targets to identify WHERE the attack is coming from.

That really depends on what technology the enemy can throw at you. A bow and arrow is worse than useless against a tank, for instance. (And if the RDA fixed the glaring design flaws in the AMP's windshield, it would easily qualify as a walking tank.) Not only that, but if your enemy is particularly advanced (possibly more so than the RDA) they can just watch the arrow in flight, and find where it came from that way. In that particular case, the computer is incredibly powerful, and the Na'vi have no response to it.

When the field of battle dictated that stealth be used, the the "old ways" would be employed, but when much lead would be needed to be thrown into the sky, The Na,vi would know how to do that too.

This is another thing that depends on precisely what technology the RDA has available. It is impossible to both hide from infra-red cameras, and be able to fire back, for instance.

Originally Posted by Human No More

You're still not sticking to canon.

I was not aware you could read my mind.