Muv-Luv thread

[Ford Prefect]

So they probably wont be a match for things like the nids or anyone willing to glass a few planets as long as they still win

Do you have any conception of how many zeroes you just wrote of as trivial.

It is a lot of zeroes.

[Xess]

So they probably wont be a match for things like the nids or anyone willing to glass a few planets as long as they still win, but I wonder how they`d do against modern military or other near future Sci fi`s

Spoiler

For a little perspective, 10^37 BETA is a million times more BETA than the sun has kilograms of mass, and that's the least amount of BETA you gave. The higher amount is 10^47 BETA which is 10 billion times more of BETA than the sun has kilograms of mass. The sheers mass of the BETA on Earth should have killed everyone on the planet just by increasing the surface gravity.

Assuming each BETA masses only 1 micro-gram each, the extra mass added to Earth is at least 10^28 kg.

The resulting new mass of the Earth is 10^28 kg, the old mass of the earth ~6x10^24 kg. The horde of 1 millionth of a gram BETA mass ~10000 times more than planet they inhabit.

Surface gravity is determined by g=(G*M)/r^2 so earth's new surface gravity is g=((6.67x10^-11Nm/kg^2)*(10^28kg))/(6.371x10^6m)^2 g=1.64x10^4 m/s^2 or 1671 gravities.

In short, Muv-Luv makes 40k look absolutely tame by comparison.

[Koolaidkirby]

Did you just say guys with unimaginably huge scope and numbers are beaten by anyone willing to 'glass a few planets'? Cause that sounds pretty interesting and I'd like to hear more about that scenario.

Spoiler

my impression of them is that they are made for purpose self maintaining mining and resource collection program, they have no known space born combat capabilities. They thrive on places like mars and the moon where they only seem to care about harvesting resources and firing them into space to their presumable homeworld. They are relatively easy to stop from establishing a foothold on a planet once you know what to look for. And once they ARE established, a sci-fi race like the Imperium who deems them too much trouble to expunge the old fashion way and has no problem glassing the planet to get rid of them (especially since they would only get to that point on uninhabited planets anyway) would be able to get rid of them fairly easily (at least from their local area)

[Stark]

Just like all those planets with tyranids infiltration that get glassed, right? They'd never send in big blokes with swords and jeeps or anything! The best part is they don't even apparently target inhabited worlds, so the poor imperium might end up routinely glassing a large number of planets they don't even know about or have a name for, just to stop the numberless tide of doom.

And seriously, it's a huge lol to me that the thread got hijacked into 'let's talk about 40k instead' and yet the actual discussion of the series in the OP is conducted in spoiler tags. Since they're apparently not really bothered by the series' super powerful robots, I'm not sure where the "modern military" idea comes from.

[Blayne]

Some people are operating under the impression that a "modern" military as it could be reasonably expected to conduct itself in real life would be better able to handle the BETA than a modern military as portrayed in the show that has happens to have mechs on the crux that a modern military would have much more reliable delievery methods for nuclear weapons than how the show portrays it.

This may or may not be true but I find that it doesn't really matter because no Scifi Military has ever conducted itself equally to modern militaries and its clear that all the nuclear warheads that have ever existed could be thrown at the BETA and it wouldn't do anything to thin their numbers.

[Stark]

In broad thematic terms for a space society, the beta would be like space weather. They're already all over your galaxy, on planets you don't care or even know about, and every now and again some will approach your inhabited planets, relative to the ratio of beta worlds to useful worlds. Eliminating them would be a serious undertaking and probably not worth it.

[Ford Prefect]

Some people are operating under the impression that a "modern" military as it could be reasonably expected to conduct itself in real life would be better able to handle the BETA than a modern military as portrayed in the show that has happens to have mechs on the crux that a modern military would have much more reliable delievery methods for nuclear weapons than how the show portrays it.

TSFs shit all over any war machine ever made in terms of raw performance. Alternative also about a billion times the space infrastructure that the real world does, which is presented as one of the core reasons why survival is even possible.

I mean blah blah blah the real world would just nuke them!!!! is irrelevant because it's a story about personal cost and frankly a bunch of people launching in a room launching ICBMs at invincible point defense is about as interesting as staring at a desk for hours.

[Blayne]

In broad thematic terms for a space society, the beta would be like space weather. They're already all over your galaxy, on planets you don't care or even know about, and every now and again some will approach your inhabited planets, relative to the ratio of beta worlds to useful worlds. Eliminating them would be a serious undertaking and probably not worth it.

Just to double check, your actually referring to the Tyranids right?

I mean blah blah blah the real world would just nuke them!!!! is irrelevant because it's a story about personal cost and frankly a bunch of people launching in a room launching ICBMs at invincible point defense is about as interesting as staring at a desk for hours.

Woah woah woah, lets not say anything we can't take back now, DEFCON is a pretty engaging game.

[Stark]

Defcon is about lying, and not about all missiles being shot down all the time. :v

[Darksider]

What kind of space assets do these BETA have? Is there a chance a space faring civilization could intercept their hives before they make planetfall?

[Ford Prefect]

They don't really have 'space assets' as such. They launch hives at what they want next and then go from there. The UN runs a program to deflect incoming hives with nuclear weapons, so yeah it's certainly possible.

[Darksider]

Then it's probable that for galaxy-spanning civilizations like the Imperium or the Galactic Empire, the BETA would be like "space weather" like Stark said. If a hive heads toward a populated system, they blow it up or turn on the planetary shield or whatever, but no one wants to spend the Time or money to fully eradicate them. If it was the SW galaxy, I could see palpatine letting a few hives through to justify imperial military spending, 'cause he's a sneaky bastard like that. In the 40k verse, Various cults or splinter factions might try to sneak a few BETA on to imperial worlds to stir up shit, but i suspect that they'd quickly become just another fact of life in an already shitty galaxy.

[Ford Prefect]

Neither the Imperium or the Galactic Empire or 99% of polities in science fiction are logistically capable of even considering wiping out the BETA in their entirety.

[Koolaidkirby]

Neither the Imperium or the Galactic Empire or 99% of polities in science fiction are logistically capable of even considering wiping out the BETA in their entirety.

No but they could most certainly eliminate them from their local areas, as they would most likely be able to shoot down incoming hives or destroy them before they get a chance to build up on their inhabited worlds.And would probably be more than willing to orbitally bombard any uninhabited planet they find an established cluster of hives on. Such an unopposed build-up of hives exist on in-universe Mars, where over the course of ~40 years the planet is covered in hives all of class 7-9 (while the largest hive on earth is only a class 6).

Of course this is all under the assumption that there are no radically different hive behaviours above class 6 (of which almost nothing is known besides how they look from above) and no new BETA classes begin spawning when dealing with something they consider an actual threat to them. (i.e. the laser class did not exist until the humans started using airborne attacks against them). Or they radically change behaviour when their overlords take direct control over them (which only happens, again when they consider something to be an actual threat, this only happened once during the games).

[Blayne]

Koolaid, spoilers damnit.

[Koolaidkirby]

shoot sorry, forgot the show hadn't gone into details on the hives yet, can someone fix?

[Xess]

No but they could most certainly eliminate them from their local areas, as they would most likely be able to shoot down incoming hives or destroy them before they get a chance to build up on their inhabited worlds.And would probably be more than willing to orbitally bombard any uninhabited planet they find an established cluster of hives on. Such an unopposed build-up of hives exist on in-universe Mars, where over the course of ~40 years the planet is covered in hives all of class 7-9 (while the largest hive on earth is only a class 6).

Of course this is all under the assumption that there are no radically different hive behaviours above class 6 (of which almost nothing is known besides how they look from above) and no new BETA classes begin spawning when dealing with something they consider an actual threat to them. (i.e. the laser class did not exist until the humans started using airborne attacks against them). Or they radically change behaviour when their overlords take direct control over them (which only happens, again when they consider something to be an actual threat, this only happened once during the games).

I grossly misinterpreted your post about total BETA numbers, sorry about that. Since we're talking space weather though,
Spoiler

10^37 totalBETA means between around 2.5x10^25 BETA per star in the Milky Way. If BETA is space weather it's a hurricane and it's everywhere.

[Darksider]

Do the BETA have some form of FTL travel? Without that, it must have taken them millions of years to become so widespread.

[Xess]

Do the BETA have some form of FTL travel? Without that, it must have taken them millions of years to become so widespread.

If they were some of the first life to evolve in the Galaxy it's entirely possible. Millions of years isn't so long on a 5+ billion year time scale.

[Stark]

Given their MO and probable growth curves, it's entirely possible much of their biomass is in space at any given time. Compare the time to devour a planet to the time required to reach another one at sublight.

Do their infested worlds spit out hives constantly or just evacuate at the end? Are they aimed in some way or just random?

[Koolaidkirby]

Given their MO and probable growth curves, it's entirely possible much of their biomass is in space at any given time. Compare the time to devour a planet to the time required to reach another one at sublight.

Do their infested worlds spit out hives constantly or just evacuate at the end? Are they aimed in some way or just random?

Spoiler

any hive once the amount of BETA reach a certain saturation will spread to nearby areas and build a new hive there. To combat this they human forces periodicly bombard all the hives they can to try and keep their populations under as much control as possible to slow their spread. Hives only start launching G materials and other stuff into orbit after they reach phase 5 (of the 26 hives on earth, only 12 are phase 5, and 1 phase 6) and while they launch at seemingly random intervals, the vectors of the G materials is usually the same IIRC (speculation: perhaps they shoot G materials to the same place every time, and new hives at other orbital bodies?)

It is never shown what they do when they're *done* with a planet so who knows whether they evacuate at the end or not

[Ire]

Bumping

Has anyone here read Schwarzesmarken?

[Ire]

The TE VN is going to be released next year

[Ire]

[gigabytelord]

Oh for god's sake, what is it with the Japanese putting what looks to be pre-pubescent children in giant mecha?

You'd think they have a thing for watching kids beat each other and everyone else over the head with wtflolsuperpwning tech.