May. 1st, 2008
Would procedures would you follow as UNIT (special alien hunting army task force) to avoid having people get nobbled? If you pretend you might at any moment meet a shape-changer, or a mind-dominating effect, what could you do to try to decrease the single-point-of-failure-ness[1]?
Eg. Passwords and things don't work against telepaths, but do against shape-changers. They have to simple enough to remember under fire, and complex enough that you can't find the right challenge simply by walking up to one guy, seeing what he says, eating his face, and saying that to everyone else.
Eg. You need to be especially careful of top brass with lots of authority.
Eg. If you can manage any surveillance, say guards carrying real-time video uplinks, that's probably good, so you can see when they go offline or meet something dangerous and die without reporting. But you must be careful not to rely on this so much you're in trouble when it's subverted.
[1] Of course, an organised opponent could probably still do something, it might even be a plan for interesting watching, if they first must find a weak spot where people are sloppy, lure someone away to create a single point of failure, and then take over the remainer quickly.
Eg. Passwords and things don't work against telepaths, but do against shape-changers. They have to simple enough to remember under fire, and complex enough that you can't find the right challenge simply by walking up to one guy, seeing what he says, eating his face, and saying that to everyone else.
Eg. You need to be especially careful of top brass with lots of authority.
Eg. If you can manage any surveillance, say guards carrying real-time video uplinks, that's probably good, so you can see when they go offline or meet something dangerous and die without reporting. But you must be careful not to rely on this so much you're in trouble when it's subverted.
[1] Of course, an organised opponent could probably still do something, it might even be a plan for interesting watching, if they first must find a weak spot where people are sloppy, lure someone away to create a single point of failure, and then take over the remainer quickly.