Resisting an Invasion

[Star Wars 888]

And what, praytell, do you propose to build more ships with? Unicorn shit and fairy dust? And how do you propose to fuel said ships?

Since when is the ship low on fuel? In space the ship would simply need to accelerate to full speed and then cruise for however long they need due to the lack of friction in space. Fuel wouldn't be an issue. I'll admit that building more ships may not be plausible in this scenario in the time limit.

Taking a fully armed and shielded ship from as grimly fanatical a foe as the Bad Guys seem to be in this scenario would involve shooting the damn thing to pieces so the commander can't scream "Space-Allahu akbar!" while turning his ship into an antimatter bomb/kinetic kill vehicle. Hell, even if the Bad Guys weren't grimly fanatical, the OP seems to state that the Benfactors really need to work at a Bad Guy ship to take it down . . . so, to capture it would involve rendering it unable to fight back . . . which would involve mostly shooting it to pieces. So yes, I'd anticipate repairing the ship afterwards would need the services of a shipyard.

What? Since when are the bad guys suddenly suicidal? Are they like the borg or something? The OP doesn't imply or state that; are you simply making stuff up to support your side?

Again, what would be the benefit for the Bad Guy commander to obey? The cavalry would far outmatch the now-bloodied Benefactor carrier battle group. Assuming the Bad Guys didn't scream "Space-Allahu Akbar!" the Bad Guy crew would have reasonable expectation of rescue.

Did you read my post? AFTER the ship was DISABLED, which is highly probable if the Benefactors have a mini fleet with them and a year or two to prepare.

Because allowing your enemy to capture and study your technology and potentially make the war worse for your families would suck?

Better to be captured by a relatively humane force than to die.

Because if you were ever repatriated to your home nation . . . only to be put on trial for treason for allowing your enemy to capture your technology would suck even worse than life in a POW camp?

Do you seriously think that humanity would release them back to their civilization? The entire point of my plan for this scenario is for humanity to make the bad guys think that they're gone while humanity builds up its power.

What the fuck are you smoking, shitbird? This is a completely different thread. A military ship is not going to have the sorts of scientists and engineers aboard that we would need. Any invasion planner that isn't a fucking idiot would send those over on the support ships that follow after you've turned your enemy's naval forces into expanding clouds of cooling gas.

What if they want to colonize Earth? They'd need engineers to build stuff. They'd also need engineers to maintain the ship and handle mechanical breakdowns and emergencies. Some knowledge of Science is required for an engineer, and scientists maybe needed to study new life forms and such.

Because science doesn't work like it does on TV. If I dropped a fully operational nuclear submarine into the Thames in Roman-era Great Britain, is it going to allow the people there to enter the 21st century overnight? Fuck no. Even if I dropped that nuclear sub into the Thames in Victorian-era England, the British Empire isn't going to become a 21st century technological civilization overnight. At best, it'd shave a few decades off their development time, provided somebody doesn't inadvertently do something stupid, and kill every Victorian scientist aboard in a massive release of radioactive material.

Problems with your analogy:

1. The Roman Empire had little to no concept of the idea that technology develops over time.
2. In your analogy the Roman Empire didn't get a bunch of 21st century scientists and engineers to help them.
3. I didn't claim that humanity would reach such a level of tech "overnight".

Did you bother to lurk more than five minutes before you showed up? Maybe, you know, browsed through some old threads before posting to see what the board culture is like? Do you see the board motto?

There's a difference between mocking someone for being genuinely stupid for a non-trivial reason and actually backing up your mocking and mocking someone who you haven't even debated with for a completely trivial reason.

Another avenue of approach occurs to me. I'm going to take a wild guess and suggest that the Benefactor Mothership has the ability to manufacture its own fighters, and presumably the ability to refine the necessary materials from whatever's handy. They could build rather a lot of fighters in one to three years, training human pilots to fly them and kitting them out to carry human nuclear warheads mated to Benefactor-designed penetrators. There is no vessel in any science fiction I've ever read or watched that could shrug off a 50-100kt nuclear warhead going off inside its armour plating, so we only have to get one or two through an enemy ship's defensive screen to render it combat-ineffective if not a complete loss.
The question then would be if we could force the Enemy to give up and go the long way around before we ran out of nukes.

For some reason, this post felt sort of like deja vu (no offense).

[Zaune]

Same here, actually. I've been kind of skim-reading the posts where one debater has been telling the other that he's an idiot and may have missed something relevant in the process.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

And what, praytell, do you propose to build more ships with? Unicorn shit and fairy dust? And how do you propose to fuel said ships?

Since when is the ship low on fuel? In space the ship would simply need to accelerate to full speed and then cruise for however long they need due to the lack of friction in space. Fuel wouldn't be an issue. I'll admit that building more ships may not be plausible in this scenario in the time limit.

And then, when it comes time to reach your destination . . . . whoops, you need to slow down and match velocities with it, so it you don't go shooting off into deep space. That burns fuel. Setting up patrols and shuttling the primitive cavemen around takes fuel. At some point in the one to one-hundred years before the Bad Guys turn up, the Benefactor ships are either going to run out of fuel, or wear out something that will require a shipyard to fix.

Taking a fully armed and shielded ship from as grimly fanatical a foe as the Bad Guys seem to be in this scenario would involve shooting the damn thing to pieces so the commander can't scream "Space-Allahu akbar!" while turning his ship into an antimatter bomb/kinetic kill vehicle. Hell, even if the Bad Guys weren't grimly fanatical, the OP seems to state that the Benfactors really need to work at a Bad Guy ship to take it down . . . so, to capture it would involve rendering it unable to fight back . . . which would involve mostly shooting it to pieces. So yes, I'd anticipate repairing the ship afterwards would need the services of a shipyard.

What? Since when are the bad guys suddenly suicidal? Are they like the borg or something? The OP doesn't imply or state that; are you simply making stuff up to support your side?

Someone here has failed to read through all the replies in the thread since they last put beak to keyboard. The original poster keeps adding more detail as time goes on. Next time, try reading before posting.

To whit:

They'd probably crash their ship into the planet screaming "DIE ALIEN SCUM!" all the way rather than surrender. They'll fight you to the death and even if you could capture one without killing them first, no incentive you could possibly offer them would work. It would be like a caveman offering a damp cave and lukewarm ashes as the finest motivations for joining his tribe to an abject technophile of the modern era.

Again, what would be the benefit for the Bad Guy commander to obey? The cavalry would far outmatch the now-bloodied Benefactor carrier battle group. Assuming the Bad Guys didn't scream "Space-Allahu Akbar!" the Bad Guy crew would have reasonable expectation of rescue.

Did you read my post? AFTER the ship was DISABLED, which is highly probable if the Benefactors have a mini fleet with them and a year or two to prepare.

Once again, fuckwit, so what if the ship is disabled? What benefit is there for the Bad Guy not to send distress signals until it's time to smash the comms equipment to keep it out of the Benefactor's grasping appendages? What's the worst you could do? Blow him up?

Because allowing your enemy to capture and study your technology and potentially make the war worse for your families would suck?

Better to be captured by a relatively humane force than to die.

Unless you belong to a bunch of xenophobic fanatics. And even if that weren't the case if you were being threatened with torture, you'll either die under interrogation, or die by firing squad for being a traitor. Either way you're dead, so you'd might as well pick the way to die that won't get your family back home killed.

Because if you were ever repatriated to your home nation . . . only to be put on trial for treason for allowing your enemy to capture your technology would suck even worse than life in a POW camp?

Do you seriously think that humanity would release them back to their civilization? The entire point of my plan for this scenario is for humanity to make the bad guys think that they're gone while humanity builds up its power.

One big, glaring flaw with your plan . . . the Bad Guys are going to want their ship back. If it goes missing, or declines to come home, anyone who isn't a fucking idiot is going to take that as a sign that, perhaps, a whole battle-wall of dreadnoughts ought to go over and see what's up.

What the fuck are you smoking, shitbird? This is a completely different thread. A military ship is not going to have the sorts of scientists and engineers aboard that we would need. Any invasion planner that isn't a fucking idiot would send those over on the support ships that follow after you've turned your enemy's naval forces into expanding clouds of cooling gas.

What if they want to colonize Earth? They'd need engineers to build stuff. They'd also need engineers to maintain the ship and handle mechanical breakdowns and emergencies. Some knowledge of Science is required for an engineer, and scientists maybe needed to study new life forms and such.

I will merely bold, italicize, and underline the part of my statement that you are clearly too fucking illiterate to read.

Because science doesn't work like it does on TV. If I dropped a fully operational nuclear submarine into the Thames in Roman-era Great Britain, is it going to allow the people there to enter the 21st century overnight? Fuck no. Even if I dropped that nuclear sub into the Thames in Victorian-era England, the British Empire isn't going to become a 21st century technological civilization overnight. At best, it'd shave a few decades off their development time, provided somebody doesn't inadvertently do something stupid, and kill every Victorian scientist aboard in a massive release of radioactive material.

Problems with your analogy:

1. The Roman Empire had little to no concept of the idea that technology develops over time.

Pick somebody more innovative from that timeframe, then. Same huge yawning gap in technology. Same huge, yawning gap in scientific understanding. That nuclear submarine might as well be elf magic to them.

2. In your analogy the Roman Empire didn't get a bunch of 21st century scientists and engineers to help them.

Fine, you get the ship's nuclear power techs. Will this help? Fuck no. Think of how many years of schooling it takes just to work a nuclear reactor, let alone design one and understand the physics behind it. Now think of how much of that schooling was derived from prior scientific art, and how much time it took to develop that; and so on down the line until you get to the level of understanding possessed by the Romans. The scientists and engineers won't help them nearly as much as a fifth grade teacher would. In other words, the Romans are going to have to be taught from basic principles. It will take them years just to gain enough knowledge for you to let them look at the submarine and operate it. Replicating it will require generations.

3. I didn't claim that humanity would reach such a level of tech "overnight".

They're almost certain not to reach it in one to three years. They may not reach it in a hundred. They certainly won't be able to build all the infrastructure needed to maintain the carrier battle group, let alone build enough local ships to provide more than token resistance when the Bad Guys turn up in force.

[Junghalli]

Razor One, let me see if I understand your answers correctly (I'm going to do it like this instead of going through it point by point because it's easier).

The Enemy has a zone of relatively extensive colonization over 6% of the volume of the galaxy's disk, with a presence over another 12%. Their colonization dynamics are roughly space opera-like, focusing mostly on habitable planets. Their population is around the range of 10^15 people. They do not have Von Neumann machines or other "effective postscarcity enabling" technologies; their economy fundamentally works like ours, although they may be able to implement such technology if they feel they have to. The wealth of their civilization per capita may be in something vaguely like the ballpark of our First World (space opera usually seems to be), so effectively they may have something like a million times our resources (10^15 people / ~1 billion Americans and Europeans - probably a lowball but at least it gives us something to work with).

This is relatively encouraging with respect to running away, as they can't simply tear up an asteroid belt and turn it into many trillions of tons telescopes or hunter probes.

[declan]

The aliens are friendly and open up communications when they learn our language, beseeching us for aid. Their species have been driven almost to extinction by a predatory species that views all intelligent life, save its own, as filth and pestilence.

Can you give us a little more intel on the biology of the enemy forces, have the bennies used bio weapons, nerve gas, etc.

Because the enemy are busy occupying former Benefactor territory and fighting off their surviving allies (to say nothing of stretched supply lines) the short term retaliation is likely to be relatively light with one of the Dreadnought class vessels coming through to deliver the beatdown.

Will the dreadnaught be coming in close enough to earth that a boarding action might be feasible , if suicidal. You have said that they are heavily armored and makes direct assault by any of our current weapons impossible at present. But a lot of space marines making a direct assault through access hatches and what not seems doable.

Most Benefactor weaponry can be understood but not replicated due to lack of specialised materials available only on the other side of the Wormhole.

Thats their current generation weaponry, do they have anything in their past history that we can recreate and adapt.

Suffice to say that a stray shot striking the surface of a planet in a slugfest between a Mothership and a Dreadnought would level whatever unfortunate city happened to be in the line of fire at the time and raise up a significant amount of dust.

Not an issue, worst comes to worse, we seed all the cities with nuclear demolition charges and leave party favors for our new alien overlords.

Earth has between one and three years to prepare for their arrival and, failing a willingness to take the initiative and launch strikes against the enemy through the wormhole, a century before they're on our doorstep. Is Earth capable of resisting and, importantly, striking back?

Capture or destroying that dread is the only thing we should be counting on. Make that happen and we can adapt benny tech or previous designs to do commerce raiding and dust enemy planets. None of the posts downstream have stated exactly how good the enemy is , militarily.

While obviously they have conquered the known galaxy, but is simply brute force, or do they have their military genius, as well, how good are the bennies. They are at least on the losing side do to a lopsided order of battle, but given parity of fleets, would they be the ones on the enemys doorstep.

Declan