Now, you've got your alien slave empire. Instead of
one species of supersoldiers who are inexplicably used for everything from commando raids to shoveling manure, have several slave species. There are supersoldiers, yes, but there are also technical and labor specialists, who don't have superhuman physical abilities. If they're modified at all, they're designed to be obedient and submissive.
Make the overlord species
nasty. They don't fight on the front lines along with their slaves. They're like plantation owners: scattered and doing none of their own work while attended by small armies of servants.
All they're good at is giving orders and coordinating masses of slaves.
Now, the slave soldiers rebel. Instead of being armed with swords and muskets, give them modern weapons, because no species advanced enough to make superhuman slave species is going to then restrict those species to primitive weapons that make them nearly helpless against a technological opponent (say, one with air support, artillery, and guided missiles). They overpower most of the slavemasters with ease on a one-by-one basis, then storm the homeworld of the empire, where the largest population of slavemasters lives. In the process, they manage to capture most of the empire's technological base intact, because the "technical/labor" slaves are pretty much neutral and willing to support anyone who gives them orders.
At the homeworld, they face a ferocious battle, but ultimately triumph; I can imagine a number of methods.
That's a much more plausible social structure and historical background than "this incredibly advanced race created an army of supersoldiers and used them to farm using pre-industrial technology, and was then overthrown because their puny machine guns were no match for the slave species' bows and arrows and because they were too stupid to use area-effect weapons."
Starglider wrote:The funny thing is, if he'd said 'these are androids built out of mature nanotech with deliberately constrained AIs and biomorphic features for cultural reasons', he might have got away with it.
Well, yes. Because then he wouldn't be constrained by the fact that when you get down to it, his creatures are made out of meat.
Lagmonster wrote:All flying superhumanoids are ridiculous and don't take into account the necessity of the weight and power of such an organism. If I were going to create something fantastic, I'd try to create a subterranean human, or a submariner human, or even a zero-gravity human. Both could be achieveable with reasonable changes to our frames.
I can
imagine a modified humanoid for flight, but they'd have huge disadvantages (like being anorexically thin and hollow-boned, making them relatively frail and vulnerable to bone and joint damage). They certainly wouldn't be supersoldiers.
avianmosquito wrote:Kokome are hominids, genetically engineered by an advanced extraterrestrial species to be the perfect soldiers, and, more importantly, the perfect slaves. (If only they hadn't let them keep their intelligence, this might actually of worked.)
This species has a number of traits that would be completely useless in a slave. There is no good reason to make slaves strong and fast enough to rip you into hamburger, better than you are at seeing in the dark, able to fly, or pretty much anything else on your list.
If a sane person were genetically engineering slaves, they probably wouldn't concentrate on making them physically badass. They'd concentrate on making them
obedient, building genetic cues into them that would make it easy to get them to do what you say. They don't need to be three meter firebreathing invulnerable monsters with jetpacks glued to their spines. If anything, that's probably counterproductive.
Rarely, kokome may have large anatomical differences between them and humans, such as the possesion of a prehensile tail. These tails have hair, which is the same colour as the hair of the kokome. These tails vary from 40%-120% of the kokome's body length. Others include wings, which are usually of the 4 and 6-wing insectoid variety (.4% each) but can also be of the avian or mamallian variety. (.6% each) I'll provide a datasheet for all the variants.
There's a major problem with that. Wings are a really major part of your basic physical structure; the genes that code for a pair of wings (or two pairs) are very extensive. Creatures with genes for wings that try to interbreed with creatures
without wings are liable to produce horribly deformed offspring, or no offspring at all. Thus, if you have a species of winged humanoids, recognize that they are a
different species, not just an exotic subtype of an existing species.
Moreover, these creatures fly very slowly by the standards of technology. In the air they will be easy targets for weapons. Is this a desirable trait in a supersoldier? Remember that the wings are large, vulnerable, easily damaged, and that they place a high metabolic cost on the soldier.
As others have noted, making them so heavy also makes it
exceptionally difficult for them to fly.
Despite all this, the most significant change between kokome and humans is that kokome stop aging somewhere between 10 and 15 years, thus making them nearly immune to the sword of time as their bodies are eternally young. Their minds, however, are not. They last longer than human minds, but eventually deteriorate, so kokome do go senial, it just takes them a millenium to do it. (Sometimes as little as 500 years for alcoholics.) Eventually the mind goes entirely, but no kokome has ever lived this long, so we aren't sure how long that takes.
Why is this immortality a desirable trait in a race of slaves?
avianmosquito wrote:The simini thought the same thing. Most kokome worked at plantations. Plenty of food there, as they know how to do all the work because they're the ones that've been doing it for 600 years.
What kind of fool assigns genetically modified superhuman commandos to farm? Why not use genetically engineered slaves that
can't fly and bend steel with their bare hands?
And slaves, don't forget slaves. As they were slaves as often as soldiers, they were actually quite capable of efficient agriculture. As far as manufacture of their own weapons, their weapons were quite simple to begin with. They usually came down to a sword and an unreliable ranged weapon of some form. As a result, kokome have been making backups to their unreliable, short-ranged weapon (usually an oversized shotgun) for some time. These repalcements never got any more advanced than bows, but that's enough. (Especially when you consider the draw weight of a kokome bow is usually several kilonewtons.)
Why would anyone with advanced genetic engineering and interstellar technology make supersoldiers and
arm them with swords?
I mean for crying out loud, these guys aren't
that much more ridiculous than Space Marines from Warhammer 40k (except for the wings)... but at least the Imperium has the decency to give its supersoldiers machine guns and bazookas and things like that.
A government cannot do such a thing and hold a "benevolent guidance" stance. As such, they decided to take a risk to save face, and it came out against them.
How can they keep a "benevolent stance at all" while keeping the population as unwilling slaves? That makes no sense.
They didn't. Kokome handled their infantry and were their logistics force. As such, the biggest blow struck was that there were no more workers in their factories, mines and plantations, and he who cannot make war cannot wage war. On top of that, simini themselves were no match for kokome in combat. (The comparison is actually quite dismal, if only I had the time.) Since simini had to rely on their limited resources and their government refused to go nuclear, the kokome had the advantage right from the beginning. And, keep in mind, kokome were only one of dozens of rebelling species, so the simini had to fight off a good 50% of their military, while in the middle of another war, and the government refused to go nuclear. They were dead to rights from the word "go."
Why would their government refuse to go nuclear in the face of total extinction? That makes no sense.
avianmosquito wrote:Feil wrote:Where did you get the notion that a millimeter of aluminum could stop a bullet, then?
From the metal sillouettes I use for pistol practice. They're 1mm thick, made of 7075 aluminim (don't ask why 7075, it was all I had at the time) and they stop both my 9mm and .45 hollowpoints with no issue.
I would take it as a personal favor if you would look at those targets again, and measure their thickness carefully.
avianmosquito wrote:That was the idea. It's the reason most of them don't have wings or tails. The idea was simple: if they have tails, infantry. If they have wings, airborne. If they have neither, work force.
But why are the work-force slave organisms even given the same modifications? Why not use a completely separate slave race (or, hell, unmodified humans) for that work?
Simini handled most of these details. Nonetheless, simini used a slash&burn method for fertilizer, (the details of this method can be found on wikipedia) burning patches of forest and using the ashes for fertilizer. They can also use the useless parts of their crops for this, although this doesn't work quite as well and expires after a while. The burning also provides enough energy to run their machinery. It isn't rocket science, and it's as reliable as it gets. Also, they use crop rotation, and a thousand other EXTREMELY simple methods that make their plantations last for ages and don't require advanced technology. (The simini government purposefully limits the technology available to its common folk. So much so, that while their soldiers use flechette rifles, most of their commoners consider themselves lucky to have access to a musket.)
How do they do advanced genetic engineering using an Iron Age technical base? If they
aren't using an Iron Age technical base, who's running their advanced industry? Why can't they take the workers who run those advanced industries, give them advanced weapons, and use them to slaughter rebelling slaves who are using swords and bows?
For that matter, who's flying the spaceships, without which these rebel slaves would never get off their home planets?
Again, they were one of dozens of species, the rest acting as everything from juggernauts to tanks, all the way up to bioships....
What you're missing is that it takes advanced
physical, metal-and-plastic-and-electronics technology to do all this biotech. That same physical technology can be used to make weapons that would easily slaughter anything made out of meat, including upgraded meat. I don't care how thick the skin on your Bigfoot-monsters is; when an antitank missile comes knocking that skin is going to open up.
I suggest you read Stuart's
Salvation War series for examples of what happens when posthumans with swords meet normal humans with artillery.
True, at least as far as planes are concerned, but not tanks. If they close the distance a tank is vulnerable, and they will because a tank can't track fast enough to shoot them if they're within 100m. (I've never seen a tank track a human at that distance, let alone a kokome.)
How much time have you spent around tanks? I've seen tanks with powered turret traverses manage that easily, and what the main gun can't track the pintle-mounted machine gun can.
More to the point, when you talk of simini tanks, don't think of a 60t death machine, simini are small. (80cm) And as a result, so are their vehicles.
Why? What stops them from crewing human-sized vehicles and just using monkey-sized controls?
It wasn't any particular branch. Simini inserted themselves into all branches of their military at a 50-50 ratio just to save face. (Except for command staff, which were pure simini.) Since half of their armored brigades were made up of living tanks, their air force was half living aircraft, etcetera, (being commanded by non-simini, but not piloted by them) they were fighting an even battle. Although, strictly speaking, the machines were technically superior to their living counterparts, and it was therefore NOT an even battle.
...That raises colossal logistics problems. A biotank and a normal tank cannot fight side by side, because their capabilities don't match up well.
They didn't run the farms, they just worked them. The simini supposedly in charge (but in truth often just too lazy to bother) and the kokome just worked for them.
Specially prepared food would of been an inconvenience to their masters, and likely have been extremely expensive. (due to the nature of a monopoly) It's no suprise this didn't happen. Simini are more concerned with practicality than safety.
