The Race Vs. 1980's G.I. Joe

[TheMuffinKing]

Straight up fight! The race arrives at Earth in 1986 during the many conflicts between GI Joe and Cobra. Both side unite to fight the Race. How bad of a curbstomp (if any) do you think this will be?

[Atlan]

Straight up fight! The race arrives at Earth in 1986 during the many conflicts between GI Joe and Cobra. Both side unite to fight the Race. How bad of a curbstomp (if any) do you think this will be?

A race of Aliens who actually kill people and aren't afraid to nuke stuff vs. GI Joe and Cobra?!
You know, the guys who couldn't shoot straight even when the world depended on it? If that is mankinds best hope, we're screwed.

[Deathstalker]

If you use the Joes from the comic books, where people died left and right, we'd be getting somewhere. The thing is that GI Joe is still part of the US, and the US posses nukes in addition to conventional forces. The Joe team is essentially a well funded anti-terrorist unit. If for some reason nukes weren't available, the Joes and Cobra would school the Race small unit engagements . They wouldn't have much impact beyond that, as the world's remaining conventional and nuclear forces would be causing the Race much bigger headaches.

[phongn]

The Race starts dropping nukes from high orbit to remove the risk of humanity.

[Patrick Degan]

If you use the Joes from the comic books, where people died left and right, we'd be getting somewhere. The thing is that GI Joe is still part of the US, and the US posses nukes in addition to conventional forces. The Joe team is essentially a well funded anti-terrorist unit. If for some reason nukes weren't available, the Joes and Cobra would school the Race small unit engagements . They wouldn't have much impact beyond that, as the world's remaining conventional and nuclear forces would be causing the Race much bigger headaches.

Sorry, but aliens who can conveniently cross interstellar distances are not going to be much threatened by a people who can't even make it to the next planet in their own star system. The easiest way to deal with any potential ground opposition is to resort to orbital bombardment. You land after you've wiped out most of the indigenous population.

[Vendetta]

Sorry, but aliens who can conveniently cross interstellar distances are not going to be much threatened by a people who can't even make it to the next planet in their own star system. The easiest way to deal with any potential ground opposition is to resort to orbital bombardment. You land after you've wiped out most of the indigenous population.

The Race aren't too smart. They just wade in to try and subjugate the locals. Their actual warfighting technology is roughly 1990s stuff.

[Zor]

Sorry, but aliens who can conveniently cross interstellar distances are not going to be much threatened by a people who can't even make it to the next planet in their own star system. The easiest way to deal with any potential ground opposition is to resort to orbital bombardment. You land after you've wiped out most of the indigenous population.

The Race aren't too smart. They just wade in to try and subjugate the locals. Their actual warfighting technology is roughly 1990s stuff.

It was a whole diferent Kettle of fish when the Race Invaded earth in worldwar to this scenario. Atvar did use nukes, considered simply nuking Tosev III into ash to save the Empire, there were plenty of shiplords who advocated a more liberal use of nuclear weapons and the Humans did not have nukes at the time. Beleive me the race would do things diferently if they arrived in the eighties or today then in worldwar and in all likelyhood would have nuked earth back to the stone-age.

Zor

[TithonusSyndrome]

Sorry, but aliens who can conveniently cross interstellar distances are not going to be much threatened by a people who can't even make it to the next planet in their own star system. The easiest way to deal with any potential ground opposition is to resort to orbital bombardment. You land after you've wiped out most of the indigenous population.

The Race aren't too smart. They just wade in to try and subjugate the locals. Their actual warfighting technology is roughly 1990s stuff.

IIRC, the very first thing the Race did was to airburst nukes without warning to knock out electronics all over the world. It had no effect on WWII era-Earth, but unless the Joes and Cobras have widespread EMP shielding, they'd suffer substantially.

[Patrick Degan]

Sorry, but aliens who can conveniently cross interstellar distances are not going to be much threatened by a people who can't even make it to the next planet in their own star system. The easiest way to deal with any potential ground opposition is to resort to orbital bombardment. You land after you've wiped out most of the indigenous population.

The Race aren't too smart. They just wade in to try and subjugate the locals. Their actual warfighting technology is roughly 1990s stuff.

OK, that leads to the inevitable question: who writes this shit?

[phongn]

OK, that leads to the inevitable question: who writes this shit?

Harry Turtledove, who churns out a whole lot of books. The Race's doctrine is essentially to crush relatively primitive races (as they'd done twice before) or nuke anyone advanced enough to pose a threat. Fleetlord Atvar was presented with something in the middle, and decided to try and conquer the planet without making it too radioactive.

Unfortunately for them, the Krauts snuck Schwerer Gustav into range and got a few shots off before it was destroyed - one shell hitting their main nuclear armory ship, destroying it.

[Patrick Degan]

OK, that leads to the inevitable question: who writes this shit?

Harry Turtledove, who churns out a whole lot of books. The Race's doctrine is essentially to crush relatively primitive races (as they'd done twice before) or nuke anyone advanced enough to pose a threat. Fleetlord Atvar was presented with something in the middle, and decided to try and conquer the planet without making it too radioactive.

Yes, the old "artificial stupidity" syndrome of hack writing. Makes the typical hack blind to, or dismissive of, logical alternatives to nukes —such as simply impelling asteroids into planetary collisions or using railguns or R-bombs to give you all the benefits of nukes without all that nasty radiation to clean up afterward. Just so he can have his silly plotline to fill a 300-page waste of trees.

[TheMuffinKing]

Well as far as I can remember the race had no railguns, no super FTL travel, and no economical way of moving an asteroid into position in a timely manner.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

The Race made sense for how they were written without much noticeable artificial stupidity. Keep in mind that the Race had not fought a war in thousands of years, had fought against no industrialized enemies for at least 10,000 years, and had no living veterans or even an existing military until they decided to expand to Tosev 3. They fully expected to face an iron age humanity and to integrate us into their Empire peaceably after a few demonstrations of their might. They even tried to limit the amount of casualties they inflicted on humanity despite the threat they represented. In fact, they seemed to feel worse about nuking human cities than the humans did. The lizards felt so strongly about making humanity into a part of their empire that they even brought along psychologists to find out how to ease the transition.

And if you read the Colonization series, the Lizards eventually do benefit from their contact with Tosev 3, mostly by having friendly ties with the US.

[Stark]

Yes, the old "artificial stupidity" syndrome of hack writing. Makes the typical hack blind to, or dismissive of, logical alternatives to nukes —such as simply impelling asteroids into planetary collisions or using railguns or R-bombs to give you all the benefits of nukes without all that nasty radiation to clean up afterward. Just so he can have his silly plotline to fill a 300-page waste of trees.

Ironically, many years ago some Nerd Friends tried to get me to read these books, and I raised pretty much every objection everyone else had. Things like 'oh yeah all our nukes are over here whoops you blew them up lol' do not inspire confidence, even beyond the contrived setting. I believe Turtledove also writes lots of alt-fic, which is almost the definition of 'contrived writing', so this isn't surprising.

[Patrick Degan]

Well as far as I can remember the race had no railguns, no super FTL travel, and no economical way of moving an asteroid into position in a timely manner.

They can cross interstellar distances but can't strap boost rockets onto an asteroid and send it onto collision course and simply bide their time until impact? They can solve all the attendant engineering problems involved in constructing fleets of even sublight transports but haven't discovered the railgun?

And as for not having super-fast FTL, even one which would get you 10-15c would shave centuries off any interstellar transit (assuming the laws of physics would ever permit it, naturally). But a culture which could solve that problem couldn't solve the other two?

[phongn]

The Race doesn't have FTL. They travel the slow way.

[Zor]

And as for not having super-fast FTL, even one which would get you 10-15c would shave centuries off any interstellar transit (assuming the laws of physics would ever permit it, naturally). But a culture which could solve that problem couldn't solve the other two?

The Race does not have FTL drive or communications period. There starships move at 0.5c. Several factors were also big problems for the race that people are ignoring

1-Numbers, the Race was badly outnumbered from day one. There were dozens of human tanks for each one of the Race's Landcruisers and infantry, while clad in ceramic BPVs and armed with assault rifles were also badly outnumbered.
2-Logistics. The race had only what they brought along with them across the stars and did not have any manufacturing copacity and while captured human factories could produce basic things like ammunition, small arms and spare parts, they could not make things like laser guided missiles.

Zor

[Patrick Degan]

And as for not having super-fast FTL, even one which would get you 10-15c would shave centuries off any interstellar transit (assuming the laws of physics would ever permit it, naturally). But a culture which could solve that problem couldn't solve the other two?

The Race does not have FTL drive or communications period. There starships move at 0.5c. Several factors were also big problems for the race that people are ignoring

1-Numbers, the Race was badly outnumbered from day one. There were dozens of human tanks for each one of the Race's Landcruisers and infantry, while clad in ceramic BPVs and armed with assault rifles were also badly outnumbered.

2-Logistics. The race had only what they brought along with them across the stars and did not have any manufacturing copacity and while captured human factories could produce basic things like ammunition, small arms and spare parts, they could not make things like laser guided missiles.

So... all this is how Turtledove rationalised his illogical hack writing to make it possible for humanity to win.

This is sort the same thing as how the Gilligan's Island writers had the Professor able to build everything up to a nuclear reactor using coconuts and bamboo but for some reason he couldn't build a fucking boat.

[That NOS Guy]

So... all this is how Turtledove rationalised his illogical hack writing to make it possible for humanity to win.

IIRC Humanity didn't win. Then again, neither did the Race. It eventually ended in a stalemate with the US, Nazi Germany, the USSR, the Japanese Empire, and the UK standing while everyone else was taken over.

[frogcurry]

The Race doesn't seem to be inclined to research things for any reason unless the policy makers in that area can see a definite benefit to do so, and even then they will take decades or more to do so and insist on slow analysis of every potential affect before introducing it.

The Race are the exact opposite of an entrepeneurial society that encourages and rewards innovation. If you have a new idea, then you'll never live to see it implemented; either it won't happen, or it'll take longer than you're lifespan to be implemented.

Since their weaponry had advanced well beyond the level required to conquer primitives of the sort they expected to face, there was no benefit seem in their eyes in improving any of it or developing completely new weapons.

Its probably the same rigid mentality of "our ancestors ways are best, why change?" that makes their military pretty piss poor. The concept of ignoring doctrine and doing something original/ unusual is an alien idea for most. Which means that you need only to fight the Lizards once, and you know how they'll react in every subsequent similar situation.

[Patrick Degan]

The Race doesn't seem to be inclined to research things for any reason unless the policy makers in that area can see a definite benefit to do so, and even then they will take decades or more to do so and insist on slow analysis of every potential affect before introducing it.

The Race are the exact opposite of an entrepeneurial society that encourages and rewards innovation. If you have a new idea, then you'll never live to see it implemented; either it won't happen, or it'll take longer than you're lifespan to be implemented.

Since their weaponry had advanced well beyond the level required to conquer primitives of the sort they expected to face, there was no benefit seem in their eyes in improving any of it or developing completely new weapons.

Its probably the same rigid mentality of "our ancestors ways are best, why change?" that makes their military pretty piss poor. The concept of ignoring doctrine and doing something original/ unusual is an alien idea for most. Which means that you need only to fight the Lizards once, and you know how they'll react in every subsequent similar situation.

With that sort of mentality, they shouldn't even have managed to hit space in the first place.

[frogcurry]

Well, the fact that they had nuclear weapons and tanks invented well before encountering alien lifeforms may have implied that for a period of their history they had internal conflicts. Even the most recaltitrant greybeard could probably see the advantage in a newfangled weapon if you are bordering on hostile states.

However I agree with your point in principle; they seem to have just enough innovation to get them to earth, just not enough to actually squish us on arrival, and the balance is a little forced.

[J]

I believe Turtledove also writes lots of alt-fic, which is almost the definition of 'contrived writing', so this isn't surprising.

Let's put it this way, if you've read a couple Turtledove books, you've read them all for the most part.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

I believe Turtledove also writes lots of alt-fic, which is almost the definition of 'contrived writing', so this isn't surprising.

Let's put it this way, if you've read a couple Turtledove books, you've read them all for the most part.

While that's mostly true, the man does have his occasional moments of glory. Between the Rivers is a very different story than his usual work, and The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump is pretty funny. Also, he tends to have a lot of interesting short stories.

Besides, sometimes the same old thing can still be a lot of fun.