Ryan Thunder wrote:It won't be uniformly like that, however. Who do you think is going to give them the most trouble?
Anywhere they land. If they don't use their orbital advantage, the world will unite and move troops to their landing sites. We could beat back anything less than 10 million without increasing our existing troop strength.
Unless they set up a teleporter, in which case things get... fun Until we nuke it till it glows that is.
Might be hard if they have any way of moving the teleporter around. Now that would be interesting. You'd have to be constantly tracking the teleporters by whatever means you could because if they get away from you they can deliver X million martians into an undefended area.
Ryan Thunder: I see you've nerfed the Martians ability to pummel us into oblivion with rocks or bioweapons for the sake of argument, but does it follow that they have some ethical concerns about obliterating us? Do they want to bring us benighted primitives the benefits of Martian civilisation? Also, can they still destroy our satellites and knock our planes out of the air with lasers?
And of course if they are savvy to the ways of humans they will try to divide us into pro-Martians and anti-Martians, probably with America being on the Anti-Martian side in accordance with the theory that you should get rid of the ruling power when occupying an area and put your friends and vassals in its place.
Post Number 1066 achieved Sun Feb 22, 2009 3:19 pm(board time, 8:19GMT)
Batman: What do these guys want anyway?
Superman: Take over the world... Or rob banks, I'm not sure.
If we are going with Martian troop invasion scenario couldn`t Martians just use their orbiting Orion battleships which would probably be armed with gigawatt lasers and particle beams, to take out our military forces assaulting their landing sites? With precise powerful directed energy weaponry they could even take out individual cruise missiles threatening their troops. I`m also assuming first thing they do when arriving in Earth orbit is to blast all military installations they found. Their orbiting ships would be practically invulnerable since they can shoot down any missile we launch at them.
Only thing they need to worry is Iraq style insurgencies since any massed military assault is going to be crushed by their orbiting ships. Also how our insurgencies is going to get along when retaliation for any ambushed and killed Martian troop is few city blocks burned down after few seconds. At least in the western world I don`t think there will be many people who will try to ambush and kill Martian troops while knowing that they will be burned by fire from the sky few seconds later.
Sky Captain wrote:I see you've nerfed the Martians ability to pummel us into oblivion with rocks or bioweapons for the sake of argument, but does it follow that they have some ethical concerns about obliterating us? Do they want to bring us benighted primitives the benefits of Martian civilisation? Also, can they still destroy our satellites and knock our planes out of the air with lasers?
That sounds like a good explanation, and yes, they can destroy our satellites. They want to do this while killing as few of us as necessary, but they don't mind invading with force, either.
Seeing as they can communicate with us, they would most likely have to try and set up a proxy state on Earth by offering to share some of their more advanced technology or promises of high status in the greater martian hegemony or something.
This would give them the ability to gain resources from Earth and recruit troops without having to field their own people with their accompanying life support requirements.
Can they still drop an asteroid on an unpopulated area as a bluff?
If I had something interesting, profound or incredibly stupid to say, it would go here.
Darth Onasi wrote:Can they still drop an asteroid on an unpopulated area as a bluff?
Wouldn't that cause mass famine and widespread general suffering?
Not if it is a small one !
Darth Onasi wrote:Seeing as they can communicate with us, they would most likely have to try and set up a proxy state on Earth by offering to share some of their more advanced technology or promises of high status in the greater martian hegemony or something.
This would give them the ability to gain resources from Earth and recruit troops without having to field their own people with their accompanying life support requirements.
Can they still drop an asteroid on an unpopulated area as a bluff?
Don't forget they can promise power from their orbital satellites (stolen from Footfall). Or raw materials from the asteroids or the Moon. Or a shot at being in space.
Orion Schmorion. Between mass produced carbon nanotubes should fall under "plausible technologies"; that plus low martian gravity means a space elevator. That plus copious energy from nuclear fission or magnetic confinement fusion (also plausible) makes launching much easier. Maybe they don't have it now (we would see that from Earth), but it should significantly reduce the logistics problems of an invasion. Orion-type engines would still be ideal for space-based drives (not to mention elevator construction).
Our gravity is still a problem, though. It would probably be easier to economically dominate the world. Quantum computers, the aforementioned nanotubes and copious energy, and all the other "plausible" technologies that are still decades away would be more than enough to set themselves up as colonial overlords.
lordofFNORD wrote:Orion Schmorion. Between mass produced carbon nanotubes should fall under "plausible technologies"; that plus low martian gravity means a space elevator. That plus copious energy from nuclear fission or magnetic confinement fusion (also plausible) makes launching much easier. Maybe they don't have it now (we would see that from Earth), but it should significantly reduce the logistics problems of an invasion. Orion-type engines would still be ideal for space-based drives (not to mention elevator construction).
Our gravity is still a problem, though. It would probably be easier to economically dominate the world. Quantum computers, the aforementioned nanotubes and copious energy, and all the other "plausible" technologies that are still decades away would be more than enough to set themselves up as colonial overlords.
Until we back engineer them and make them cheaper on Earth. After all, it shouldn't be too hard if it is at our tech level.
Until we nuke it till it glows that is.
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