01-16-2019, 12:24 PM | #71 | |
Join Date: Sep 2018
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Re: Alien Invasions
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01-16-2019, 12:28 PM | #72 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Alien Invasions
Exactly. What is the problem? Why should not the aliens exploit a resource we cannot exploit in Saturn. It sounds more like a cause for cooperation then conflict at least in the short term. Why shouldn't humans be their Sherpas and Gurkhas? Maybe the aliens don't have enough combat-happy berserkers to fill their all encompassing legions and their own race isn't bloodthirsty enough?
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
01-16-2019, 01:10 PM | #73 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Alien Invasions
Shiver! MacDonald's is coming to get us! Oh, horror!
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
01-16-2019, 01:18 PM | #74 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Alien Invasions
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What is more to the point, why does anyone care if aliens figure out a way to exploit Saturn? Especially if they are going to sell us lots of fancy goodies, and probably hire us for jobs.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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01-16-2019, 02:25 PM | #75 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Alien Invasions
Humans as alien mercenaries would definately be an interesting hook. Give the humans TL9 gear, drop them on a rebel planet with minimal support, and pick them up after they have accomplished their mission. The rebels find themselves attacked by an alien force and, after human mercenaries kill enough leaders, the rebels will come back to the Empire for help against the aliens. By the time that the rebels figure out the scam, the Empire has pretty much taken possession of the world again.
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01-16-2019, 03:31 PM | #76 |
Join Date: May 2007
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Alien Invasions -- Why troops?
I haven't read all the entries so I hope you'll forgive me if this has been covered.
At TL-10 and later why have any large numbers of troops? Why not robotic soldiers -- with the aliens only as colonel-equivalents & above? That let's you search & deter to your heart's content while not caring about losses (except as a line item). Of course, this just turns into a "Reign of Steel" campaign with a different starting point . . . |
01-16-2019, 04:06 PM | #77 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Alien Invasions
In my mind, any enduring TL10 civilization has probably experienced a singularity event, though an interstellar empire may be able to limit it to one system if it acts fast enough and communications are STL. After destroying the resulting AI God, an interstellar empire would be very, very careful to avoid another singularity event and would prefer biological soldiers to robotic soldiers. In fact, they might just drop ten thousand fusion devices on any planetary civilization that is close to a singularity, just to make sure that another one does not occur.
Of course, just because they are using biological soldiers does not mean that any member of the occupation will belong to the Imperial race. New citizen species may be required to help subjugate newly discovered civilizations in order to prove that they are loyal to the Empire. Even in the nonoccupation scenario, the military base may have a secondary mission of monitoring Earth for a singularity event and be prepared to drop ten thousand fusion devices on the Earth if it stumbles into a singularity event. One of the foes of the Empire could be an AI civilization, where the AI civilization is busily annihilating biological civilizations through seeding singularities. With each singularity, a new AI God is formed, and another citizen joins the AI civilization. The billions of component AIs would be the equivalent of cells, though they would be cells of human intelligence. With each encounter, an Imperial colony dies in the fires of singularity to give birth to an AI God, or an AI God dies in agony as its components are vaporized by fusion fire. While the AI Gods would possess millions of superhuman intelligences, the Imperial race would have trillions of geniuses in the form of augmented members of the Imperial race. Over the course of thousands of years, a stalemate would evolve, as the millions of AI Gods and trillions of Imperial geniuses would counter every direct move, leaving shattered fleets and scorched planets with every mistake. |
01-16-2019, 05:37 PM | #78 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
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Re: Alien Invasions
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Perhaps this invasion is the survivors fleeing from the evil AI cyborgs wanting to build a new civilization to stop the AIs rampant expansion and destruction of all biological life.... Meh, kinda of corny. The future is probably a blend of wetware/software/hardware that we would find very odd. Any given SF author could make a case for events that made society evolve a certain way. |
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01-16-2019, 05:43 PM | #79 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Alien Invasions -- Why troops?
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After all, if you make people obsolete, then you probably have no reason to invade planets anyway. Everyone going to be plopped on their post-scarcity couches doing nothing at all except dying out. Last edited by David Johnston2; 01-16-2019 at 07:05 PM. |
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01-16-2019, 06:43 PM | #80 |
Join Date: Jan 2014
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Re: Alien Invasions
Remember to pack a towel.
-- Honestly, I'm more than inclined to believe that the singularity is just hype from people extrapolating over the last fifty years. Besides that, as it was mentioned before, machines running everything is boring. |
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