The Race Vs. Earth in 2010

[spartasman]

but the Races equipment was designed to almost never fail. Very low maintenance components that hardly ever needed replacement. In fact, this was described in the book, when one of the Races pilots, Teerts, was having his aircraft repaired, he mentioned how the equipment of the Race almost never failed.

[Batman]

Quantify 'hardly ever' and 'almost never' please. Also, 'a character said' doesn't mean what that character said is actually true.

[spartasman]

Race technology was as close to perfect as a 100,000 year old power could manage. Breakdowns are of course an unavoidable fact of life, but each component of Race tech almost never broke, in the sense than unless you didn't drive your landcruiser over a landmine, it would never throw a track. As for the characters reason for having repairs on his plane, I believe it was because he had had shrapnel sucked into his engine block, or because of faulty rounds that had been sabotaged by human workers.

[Batman]

I'll take that as an 'I can't' then. I don't care how perfect your technology is, the rules of physics still apply, which means matter still decays in various ways meaning The Race's ancient war machines WOULD decay unless regularly maintained and with the timeframes involved effectively replaced.

[spartasman]

'Hardly ever' and 'almost never' mean this; unless something deliberate is done to a piece of Race technology, say a radio, it will not break. Unless you have said radio on the back of a horse for 3 weeks, drop it 208 times, and then shoot it, it will not break. They design and perfect their technology over periods of time longer than the entire recorded history of man. Their circuits do not fry unless there is an EMP wave that hits it, nothing unexpectedly breaks or busts.

Most of their home planet is arid scrub land, all that would be needed to keep a 100,00 year old tank operable for them would be to make sure it did not rust, or to occasionally replace old parts, they could simply seal the tank in a moisture-less plastic bag and check it out every hundred years if they wanted to, and it would probably never need work.

[Simon_Jester]

In Homeward Bound it is stated that the Emperors palace along with several other buildings and cities had existed since before the Race became unified. The Race are meticulous when it comes to upkeep, and they design things to suffer few, if any, faults. I don't see how they wouldn't be able to preserve tanks in a storage building when they can preserve a palace which is subject to the elements.

Stone lasts longer than microchips.

Also, the Emperor's Palace could be continuously under renovation, with old parts of the building being repaired; real buildings that have been around for centuries are like this. If a wall starts looking shaky, you move everything out of the room and patch up the wall.

To do that with military hardware, you'd need to keep manufacturing a steady stream of replacement parts for tens of thousands of years, replacing pieces regularly. It wouldn't be even slightly worth the effort, not when millenia can pass without the weapons ever being needed.

but the Races equipment was designed to almost never fail. Very low maintenance components that hardly ever needed replacement. In fact, this was described in the book, when one of the Races pilots, Teerts, was having his aircraft repaired, he mentioned how the equipment of the Race almost never failed.

That just means that it has extremely high mechanical reliability. That doesn't mean it can last for centuries without things failing from sheer old age. For example, a very well made car might run for hundreds of thousands of miles before you have to start replacing major systems. That doesn't mean you won't have to change the tires and the brake pads, or that the car will last for a hundred years without rusting.

The Race builds its equipment to very high standards of precision, and does extensive debugging. That does not make their equipment immortal, not even when it's kept in storage.

'Hardly ever' and 'almost never' mean this; unless something deliberate is done to a piece of Race technology, say a radio, it will not break. Unless you have said radio on the back of a horse for 3 weeks, drop it 208 times, and then shoot it, it will not break. They design and perfect their technology over periods of time longer than the entire recorded history of man. Their circuits do not fry unless there is an EMP wave that hits it, nothing unexpectedly breaks or busts.

Resistance to EMP, resistance to being dropped, and so on, do not confer immunity to aging. The fact that the systems are well shielded against EMP, that they are durable, that they are well designed (and they are), does not mean that they can be left alone for a thousand years and still work. Maintenance doesn't work like video game healing, where a machine has a fixed number of "hit points" that maintenance restores, and where "tough" machines can go longer without it.

To maintain all this ancient equipment, the Lizards would need to make a steady trickle of spare parts, even when there is no reason to even have the weapons at all. I find it ridiculous that they would keep things in storage for millenia when it would make more sense to make new ones when (if!) they are ever needed, while preserving only the old weapon designs. And, of course, the designs for the tooling to make the weapons...

I cannot recall Turtledove ever saying that the Lizards kept weapons in storage for such long periods of time.

Most of their home planet is arid scrub land, all that would be needed to keep a 100,00 year old tank operable for them would be to make sure it did not rust, or to occasionally replace old parts, they could simply seal the tank in a moisture-less plastic bag and check it out every hundred years if they wanted to, and it would probably never need work.

Spartasman, how much experience do you have working with cars and such? Because your claims defy everything I know about heavy machinery. That means that you know either less or much, much more about them than I do.

[Batman]

'Hardly ever' and 'almost never' mean this; unless something deliberate is done to a piece of Race technology, say a radio, it will not break. Unless you have said radio on the back of a horse for 3 weeks, drop it 208 times, and then shoot it, it will not break.

During its designed service lifetime. NOW put it on a shelf for a couple thousand years without maintenace and see how well it functions THEN.

They design and perfect their technology over periods of time longer than the entire recorded history of man.

Which has exactly NO impact on that oh so advance technology PHYSICALLY AGING.
[/quote]

their circuits do not fry unless there is an EMP wave that hits it, nothing unexpectedly breaks or busts.

For everybody SANE, Old Age is an EXPECTED reason for something to break or bust.

Most of their home planet is arid scrub land, all that would be needed to keep a 100,000 year old tank operable for them would be to make sure it did not rust

The term 'No' comes to mind.

, or to occasionally replace old parts,

You will now show they actually DID that.

they could simply seal the tank in a moisture-less plastic bag and check it out every hundred years if they wanted to, and it would probably never need work.

You just contradicted yourself. If it DOES need replacement parts AT ALL that means it needs work right there.

[spartasman]

Fine, they do not keep things in storage, they build them only when they need them. And I understand, "old age".

[Batman]

No offense spartasman but how much do you actually know about the setup? I at least went in knowing AND admitting I didn't have a clue on the Race side of it.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Fine, they do not keep things in storage, they build them only when they need them. And I understand, "old age".

Wow, that was childish. It litterally sounds like something a ten year old would say.

[PeZook]

Even if you arbitrarily say they don't have strike from space capability (though even if anyone in their crew has basic physics knowledge, "drop stuff" is strike from space capability)

Oh, come on! People keep repeating this as if it's so very easy to jury-rig kinetic kill vehicles when you didn't bring any with you.

A KKV needs several capabilities which are mot decisively not present in any random rock or piece of trash you grab from orbit: it needs to be able to survive re-entry, it needs a guidance system of some sort to strike the target you want it to, it needs an aerodynamic shell so that the guidance system can actually control its trajectory with somewhat more precision than "wherever the fuck it decides to go". Ballistic missile warheads are some of the finest pieces of precision engineering on Earth: because when you use a weapon, you probably want it to hit a target of some sort, unless it's a huge fucking asteroid and your goal is to sterilize an entire planet.

Now it'd probably be possible to build some KKVs with the gear and brains available to an interstellar spacefleet, but we know the Race is extremely conservative when it comes to R&D, and building KKVs from scratch would require a tremendous amount of design work and debugging in the initial phases. Also, the materials needed to make them are probably in short (or at least not infinite) supply throughout the fleet, and getting more would require an industrial base they don't have with them.

[hongi]

The Race do not have the means to dominate a planet from space (besides from nuclear weapons, which they are reluctant to use because they are planning on colonizing the planet). They MUST land troops to secure ground sites for colonies.

When we have the means to make an occupation extremely bloody for them, why do you think they'll even continue on with their plans for colonisation? I'd skip Earth, or if they're worried about competition later on, nuke all of it. If they must settle down, surely they can just reduce most of the planet to ash from orbit and colonise Australia, Africa and their favourite regions. I don't understand why they have to invade. It's suicide.

[folti78]

Even if you arbitrarily say they don't have strike from space capability (though even if anyone in their crew has basic physics knowledge, "drop stuff" is strike from space capability)

Oh, come on! People keep repeating this as if it's so very easy to jury-rig kinetic kill vehicles when you didn't bring any with you.

A KKV needs several capabilities which are mot decisively not present in any random rock or piece of trash you grab from orbit: it needs to be able to survive re-entry, it needs a guidance system of some sort to strike the target you want it to, it needs an aerodynamic shell so that the guidance system can actually control its trajectory with somewhat more precision than "wherever the fuck it decides to go". Ballistic missile warheads are some of the finest pieces of precision engineering on Earth: because when you use a weapon, you probably want it to hit a target of some sort, unless it's a huge fucking asteroid and your goal is to sterilize an entire planet.

Now it'd probably be possible to build some KKVs with the gear and brains available to an interstellar spacefleet, but we know the Race is extremely conservative when it comes to R&D, and building KKVs from scratch would require a tremendous amount of design work and debugging in the initial phases. Also, the materials needed to make them are probably in short (or at least not infinite) supply throughout the fleet, and getting more would require an industrial base they don't have with them.

IIRC the only weapon they jury rigged to their ships, was a Phalanx like defense system against nuclear missiles, after the humans came up with them, before the Colonization books took place. Of course, by time they had to made them, they had half of the planet to build some industrial base even before the Colonization Fleet arrived and they are way simpler to make than KKVs.

As for other shipborne weapons, they have their interstellar communications lasers, but considering it's use as a weapon is so outside of their context they'll never reach it without a starship and copious amount of drugs. Not to mention that how it effects the planet are not known, which is a big no-no for the Lizards.

[folti78]

Regarding weapons storage vs building new from scratch: Why it took the them centuries to assemble the Conquest Fleet when they were able to assemble the Colonization Fleet within 20 years. <guess>OK, they were received the probe's trasmission somewhere at the end of the 12th century, probably pondered a few centuries, then set out to build up the fleet.</guess> Meanwhile assembling of the Colonization Fleet only started around the time the Conquest Fleet departed(mid-1910's).

[Andehtron]

Regarding weapons storage vs building new from scratch: Why it took the them centuries to assemble the Conquest Fleet when they were able to assemble the Colonization Fleet within 20 years. <guess>OK, they were received the probe's trasmission somewhere at the end of the 12th century, probably pondered a few centuries, then set out to build up the fleet.</guess> Meanwhile assembling of the Colonization Fleet only started around the time the Conquest Fleet departed(mid-1910's).

Consider, they were preparing both at the same time, but allowed the Conquest fleet 20 years to get things nice and cozy for the colonists.

[Samuel]

I wonder how good the fuel for a tank would be after 100,000 years. Heck, if the origionals used oil or other fossil fuels, they would have to come up with a new design for conquest.

The reason they hadn't modified their tanks was because they did not NEED them to be any better. Both the races that the Race conquered were very similar to them in biology and sociology. As soon as the Race took out their Emperor and instated their own, the Hallesi and Robatevs simply laid down and accepted it, as was their nature to people who they saw as above them. Thus, they did not need crowd suppression tanks, or tanks capable of withstanding rock attacks, they were not being attacked at all.

Aren't the aliens they conquer in the bronze age? How do you get a planetary empire with such slow communication and transportation speeds?

[folti78]

Regarding weapons storage vs building new from scratch: Why it took the them centuries to assemble the Conquest Fleet when they were able to assemble the Colonization Fleet within 20 years. <guess>OK, they were received the probe's trasmission somewhere at the end of the 12th century, probably pondered a few centuries, then set out to build up the fleet.</guess> Meanwhile assembling of the Colonization Fleet only started around the time the Conquest Fleet departed(mid-1910's).

Consider, they were preparing both at the same time, but allowed the Conquest fleet 20 years to get things nice and cozy for the colonists.

Nope, in the WorldWar books, one of the Lizard characters said, that they began assembling the Colonization Fleet around the time the Conquest Fleet departed. Of course the Col. Fleet carried only civilians and civilian equipment already in mass production, so they only had to raise production levels of already known equipment, instead of figuring out how to build the production lines for unknown hardware from old manuals and after that, build the things and train the troops to use them before putting everything onto the ships.

[spartasman]

The Race was VERY slow developing. Their tanks ran on Hydrogen, mostly because their home planet did not have much free water, which precluded the existence of abundant fossil fuels.

In Homeward Bound, Atvar receives a message from one of the Race sociologists from Earth. The sociologist tells Atvar that the Tosevites (humans) have been doing weird experiments, and sends a description of said experiment. Atvar takes the description to one of the Races' physicists to have them re-create the experiment. It took the Race scientists nearly a year to recreate the experiment, and a few days after they did, the human FTL ship showed up. Iirc the Race scientists said that it would take them 75 years to introduce the technology, which was a time period that they considered completely reckless. If that gives you any inkling of how they operated, well, there you have it.

[folti78]

I wonder how good the fuel for a tank would be after 100,000 years. Heck, if the origionals used oil or other fossil fuels, they would have to come up with a new design for conquest.

Lizard ground vehicles use hydrogen as fuel. It's never stated whether they used it before their unification or developed the technology later. IIRC it's one of the plot points for the need to land a number of ships early in the war, to use them as hydrogen production and storage facilities. Spoiler

Which leads to some spectacular fireworks, the loss of two starships with the majority of the fleet's nuclear warheads, when the German Dora gun lands a lucky shot in the fuel tanks of one of the ship. Before you ask, it was their their (retarded) regulation which said to store the majority of the fleets nuke's on the ship of the most trusted shiplord. Then they made matters worse, by sending said ship to act as a hydrogen storage in a forward base. Although up until that point, they never encountered any human weapon capable of harming their ships.

The reason they hadn't modified their tanks was because they did not NEED them to be any better. Both the races that the Race conquered were very similar to them in biology and sociology. As soon as the Race took out their Emperor and instated their own, the Hallesi and Robatevs simply laid down and accepted it, as was their nature to people who they saw as above them. Thus, they did not need crowd suppression tanks, or tanks capable of withstanding rock attacks, they were not being attacked at all.

Aren't the aliens they conquer in the bronze age? How do you get a planetary empire with such slow communication and transportation speeds?

More likely: Usurp the local chieftains/kings or make them vassals of the Lizard emperor, then begin assimilation process through generations. Continue with the next tribe/kingdom.
Although they lost a few hundred soldiers during the first conquest, until they learned how to do it without getting themselves killed. The second conquest had only a few dozens of heroic casualities.

[Samuel]

Although they lost a few hundred soldiers during the first conquest, until they learned how to do it without getting themselves killed. The second conquest had only a few dozens of heroic casualities.

Wow. They ARE retarded. Seriously, did they not consider making superior armor to keep their men from dying?

[Junghalli]

Wow. They ARE retarded. Seriously, did they not consider making superior armor to keep their men from dying?

A few hundred casualties taking over an entire planet is hardly embarassing. Having higher technology doesn't automatically make you completely invulnerable; you're bound to lose a few guys to ambushes, booby traps, somebody slipping poison into somebody's tea or stabbing one of your soldiers with a knife on a crowded street etc. It's pretty easy to imagine them just accepting that rather than expending resources trying to make every individual soldier completely invulnerable. And then there's accidents to consider, and exotic diseases (it seems to be a panspermia universe given humans can eat foods of the Race and visa versa, so bacterial infections are a possibility). In a campaign the size you'd need to pacify an entire planet I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up with a couple of hundred deaths just from accidents.

If anything given the technology they displayed in the books being able to take over an entire planet while losing only dozens of people strains my suspension of disbelief the other way.

[Samuel]

You can simply use native auxilaries to do police work and have helicopters and armored vehicles if you need a show of force. Or you can improve the agricultural technology, pack people into cities and use cameras and crowd control techniques to rule.

Of course you seem to be talking about what they displayed, in which case I have no doubt that the first campaign involved them making these mistakes and the second fixing them.

exotic diseases (it seems to be a panspermia universe given humans can eat foods of the Race and visa versa, so bacterial infections are a possibility).

Yeah, but the bacteria there have never had to face anti-biotics.

[Simon_Jester]

I wonder how good the fuel for a tank would be after 100,000 years. Heck, if the origionals used oil or other fossil fuels, they would have to come up with a new design for conquest.

Happily for the Lizards, the originals burned hydrogen, which they can still make easily enough. Otherwise it would probably have taken them a few centuries to redesign the engine... by which point we would have come to them.

But yeah, the Lizards are retarded by human standards, which Samuel is applying quite rigorously. The only reason they were relatively successful as of 1940 is that they'd had an enormous amount of lead time in which to slowly and retardedly grow their way to power, and that they only competition they'd ever faced was at least as retarded as they were.

[Junghalli]

Actually I'm kind of wondering about the mechanics of preserving equipment into deep time.

What if you kept it in a climate-controlled dehumidified room filled with some sort of unreactive gas, like argon? Or a vacuum chamber?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Climate-controlled with an inert gas, mechanical equipment will last a very long time. It may need some lubrication and maintenance when you take it out, but that's about it.