Alien Invasions

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

In the scenario envisioned, the humans are TL8 while the aliens are TL10^, with the technology being locked to specific types of biological signals and thought patterns unique to each species. The aliens would not be looking to occupy the Earth beyond a token force, they discovered radio signals from the Earth a couple of years ago and just wanted to absorb a neighbor before it became a threat. If the humans resisted too much, the aliens would cut their loses and redirect Eros 433 and Ganymed 1036 to collide with the Earth to eliminate the problem permanently.

This doesn't really make their objectives clear to me. Are we showing any signs of ever becoming a threat? And if that is their concern, why absorb us instead of just dropping an asteroid on us to send us back to the stone age? The nature and imperatives of the aliens are the very essence of this setting and they are not really addressed.

[Culture20]

Even TL 9^ humans with starships shooting nuclear missiles can get toasted by a TL 10^ alien species with an obession to pacify potential threats. (Ur-Quan)

[Johnny1A.2]

To me the interesting scenario is 'some time after the conquest'. At TL8 level, the answer to the question of 'how do we stop the TL10 invasion?' is 'You don't.'

There might be edge-case exceptions. For ex, suppose the 'invasion' is a few ships under the command of a pirate or the equivalent. He/it doesn't represent anything larger, and might even be a renegade with limited resources. Under those conditions, repelling him might just be possible, just as an island full of TL0 or TL1 natives could conceivably repel one 18th century ship full of armed pirates, at high cost, but not the Royal Navy.

But an Earth 75-100 years after the conquest? It could have all sorts of interesting situations. Are the conquerors oppressive, aloof, bureaucratic, or some combination. Of course they might have been one thing during the conquest and changed later. The humans will have had time to learn some of the alien tech, some humans might even be quite expert with it. Of course, many of the expert humans will be employees of the aliens.

But what kind of employees? Treasonous collaborators, or respected administrators working for the alien colonial government? Might depend on who you ask, even among the ruled. Does the conquering power have rivals? Are they better or worse than the conquerors? Are the ruling aliens annoying, but better than their rivals? If so, a successful rebellion might risk replacing bad with worse. But can the pragmatists convince the zealots of this? The zealots might be taking aid and help from the Worse Rivals, and the PCs might want to stop that before it turns catastrophic...OTOH, the zealots make useful foils to play against the colonial governor, too. So you don't want to put them out of business, just knock some sense into them. Etc.

The PCs might have a relationship with the local colonial governor ranging from blood-hatred to friendship, or anything in between. Maybe Governor Bl'xe4c!## is actually a decent sort, even if he has to enforce harsh laws, in that case the PCs might work against him most of the time but also work to keep him place because they can at least do business with him, while his predecessor was brute.

You can look to the various colonial empires of the 19C and the conquered states for every combination of good and bad relations.

[Bengt]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

This doesn't really make their objectives clear to me. Are we showing any signs of ever becoming a threat? And if that is their concern, why absorb us instead of just dropping an asteroid on us to send us back to the stone age? The nature and imperatives of the aliens are the very essence of this setting and they are not really addressed.

Yeah you really need a reason for the aliens to want to keep humans around and/or really don't want to severely damage the planet even in the short term. E.g. in Dread Empire's Fall (Walter Jon Williams) the Shaa want's to "civilise" any sapient species by bringing them into their empire and enforcing their "perfect" set of laws, the praxis. Now it's been a while since I read them and they are set a long time after the conquest but I think they glassed a couple of cities right of the bat to show that resistance was futile, but otherwise wanted to humans intact.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

At TL8 level, the answer to the question of 'how do we stop the TL10 invasion?' is 'You don't.'

Jeff Goldblum did in Independence Day. Not that it made a lot of sense, but it shows that things can get cinematic.

[Flyndaran]

Independence Day rested on the aliens having TL 8 computer tech compatible with Earth's.

[Boomerang]

An alternative idea.

The major world powers surrender to the aliens but the subsequent alien occupation becomes intolerable to some human factions which rebel against the occupying force. Eventually the aliens grow weary of the conflict, withdraw and bombard the Earth with a massive asteroid. Luckily for humanity the interior of the asteroid was more fragile than it appeared from the outside and it broke apart high in the atmosphere. The resulting impact was substantially less than it could have been and small pockets of humanity survived the chaos that followed.
The PCs are survivors who discover a cache of alien technology that was left behind.

[Gnaskar]

I've run basically this scenario, with a race that was basically the wh40k Tau taking over modern day Earth.

The players were part of an initially American resistance movement, but as the campaign progressed the scale grew to a global fight. The campaign was unabashedly "Humanity, F*** Yeah!" with a hefty dose of ironic "'Murica!" (with other global stereotypes added later). In our case, humanity's edge over the technologically superior enemies was their ability to tinker with captured hardware (as well as with their own).

By the end of the campaign, a Typhoon class submarine had been retrofitted as a boarding ship in order to capture the alien's occupation ship in orbit above the planet, and the boarding parties equipped with power armor made from components looted from Battlesuits. The party heavy was also dual wielding mini-guns at this point (it wasn't the most realistic of campaigns).

The campaign started with a resistance cell armed with various mostly civilian concealable small arms (handguns, a uzi, and a sawn-off shotgun) up against light infantry (in armors optimized to handle energy weapons, and thus somewhat vulnerable to kinetic weapons) and surveillance drones. They're first mission was simply "jump a two person patrol and escape with their weapons before reinforcement show up". The group techie managed to find and disable the tracking devices on the weapons. Their early missions were generally about gathering equipment, assassinating collaborators, and sabotage; while they gathered up character points and repurposed alien gear in order to be able to take on larger threats.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

What could the Earth do against a SM 14 scout (the smallest hyperdrive capable spacecraft in this scenario)?

Build targets, hide targets, and repair targets. Which may be more frustrating than than it sounds. One ship can't monitor the whole planet all at once, and the effective coverage is probably limited to a 60 degree spherical cap, which is 1/4 of the globe. If you want to get an idea of these limitations, zoom out on google maps.



Additionally, the build of the scout ship will determine how useful it is at actually attacking the ground. Certain beam weapons won't attack through atmosphere at all, and clouds will both obscure targets and block lasers. Ballistic attacks will work fine, but you'll be dealing with a target-rich environment, and they may be able to build faster than you can shoot. That may actually be a problem even with beam weapons. Scout ships may feature guns too large (overkill) or too small (atmospheric interference) for efficient ground bombardment



Target identification may also be tricky. When you first show up, you won't know exactly what on the ground is what. You'll quickly find out what air strips look like, but it may be more difficult to distinguish between civilian and military strips. And wrecking every airstrip in a nation sounds tedious at best. War vehicles can be hid inside of warehouses, and you don't have a good way to identify them until after the fighting starts.



A landing party in the low thousands has a good chance of being overwhelmed, TL 10 or no TL10. Modern equipment is good, but I'm not going to try and take Verdun in WWI with 20 abrams tanks, a couple of F15's and a battalion of infantry.



Simply moving dropping rocks onto targets isn't as effective as you might think it could be. You've got to find a big enough rock, then you've got to tow it into a collision path. The size of the rock matters, and you want a minimum diameter. Its about at 70 meters (SM+9) that these things get effective, so its not as simple as dropping boulders on tanks.



This is not to say that the ship can't hover above a nation and inflict damage and all sorts of infrastructure while knocking all of the satellites out of the sky. Its to say that its ability to say, kill 50% of a first-rate nation's tank inventory or hold a city is extremely limited.


Now, if the "scout" is built explicitly for punishing disobedient and mostly defenseless planets, its going to be a lot more effective, but that's not what I think of when I hear "Scout".

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

This doesn't really make their objectives clear to me. Are we showing any signs of ever becoming a threat? And if that is their concern, why absorb us instead of just dropping an asteroid on us to send us back to the stone age? The nature and imperatives of the aliens are the very essence of this setting and they are not really addressed.

What if they have a limited supply of whatever unobtanium powers their ship and don't what to wreck our planet?

And are you assuming stone age people are not a threat? They have less to lose then people with palaces and thus can be more of a pain in the neck.