What Hard SF Universe Could Beat the Federation?

[NetKnight]

What the title says: who could beat Star Trek's Federation without violating the laws of physics?

Let's define this as a total war senerio, with victory for the Federation being to conquor/destroy the hard SF 'verse, and victory for the hard 'verse being to survive and stop being attacked/nutralize the Federation threat.

Should the hard 'verse capture Federation equipment, they can use it for as long as it works, or can be recharged/refueled/maintained using technological knowlege that follows the laws of physics. However, they cannot reverse engineer Federation tech, produce it, etc.

So who could take it?

[Ender]

Most of them. Seriously, if you want to find the most godawful superstrong civilizations and entities, you actually find them in the hard sci-fi space operas. And the harder the setting, the stronger they usually are.

Seriously, consider your standard light hugger from a hard scifi series. It has to be able to rapidly accelerate to just under the speed of light, which entails an asston of power. It needs to be able to survive the radiation from impacting stray protons, which is an insane amount of shielding. It needs to be able to deflect or destroy micrometeorites which is a level of point defense beyond anything you see in soft sci-fi. The civilization that sent it may not be able to coordinate sending a huge number of them due to the lightspeed lag, but each one will go through the starfleet like a knife through butter.

And if that society can violate casualty and use paradoxs for their benifit, holy crap. Just using the ability to violate casualty for computing would let them curbstomp the Federation.

Seriously, go look through the old threads about who is the biggest swinging dick out there. The nastiest motherfuckers all tend to come from hard space opera.

[Eris]

For an example of what Ender's talking about, look at a book like The Mote In God's Eye. (Not the hardest of hard, but only two blatant bits of handwavium, so it's a decent starting point.)

Star Trek ships are seriously inconvenienced by getting near a sun for a short amount of time. The ships in Mote dive into suns without any serious problems. These people are scary scary folks.

And the harder the scifi, the more scary the workarounds are that they developed to counter problems that Star Trek and its ilk avoid with things such as inertial compensation, and subspace.

[Shinova]

I think the Xeelee books are hard sci-fi, for instance, although that's taking many many leaps.

[The Grim Squeaker]

I think the Xeelee books are hard sci-fi, for instance, although that's taking many many leaps.

Well, it is hard sci fi...Just very, very, Very uber-advanced sci-fi god tech .

Anyway, More than one post and Valdemar hasn't popped in to mention Revelation space or The Inhibitors mind-raping the federation with stellar flamethrowers, neutron star collisions or other nasty shit? For shame admiral you have grown old, weak and sentient

[Ender]

And the harder the scifi, the more scary the workarounds are that they developed to counter problems that Star Trek and its ilk avoid with things such as inertial compensation, and subspace.

That is really the crux of it. It's not random wank to create uberguys to trounce the more popular stuff either, like I have heard some people cry. Hard Sci-fi is generally written by people with a higher degree of education in relevent topics, so they

1) Have a better understanding of the problems to overcome
2) Have an idea of what overcoming those problems entail
3) Readily extrapolate what those solutions mean on a larger scale.

So rather then putting something down to the demons of the warp, the Force, or subspace and ignoring it, they come up with something that works. And then they figure out the consequences of it.

Revelation Space is a good example of that. "I want to have a chase through space between two starships. Only way to do that is the have increasing accelerations. Only way to do that is compensate for inertia somehow. Well now that I can manipulate inertia at will, doesn't that mean I've created a FTL drive? Well doesn't that mean I can violate casualty? Guess I'll resolve that by having people able to violate casualty and get help from the future then." And it works really well.

Xelee, the Inhibitors, the Escathon, the Blight, R-bombs, Swarm bombs, CVWs, the Kzinti lesson... Hard Sci-fi has some of the single scariest guys and tech in it. It's not wank, it is just what they need.

Yeah, some of the stuff in Space fantasy could cream a lot of hard space opera. But for the most part, the harder the science, the harder the foes. And the more thought provoking the book.

[SirNitram]

So rather then putting something down to the demons of the warp, the Force, or subspace and ignoring it, they come up with something that works. And then they figure out the consequences of it.

As a brief note on this tangent: It's worth exploring what the consequences are in soft sci-fi as well. Even if it's the softest of the soft, where steam powers spaceships that exceed lightspeed because relatively is wrong and you just have to speed up. Make rules, understand what happens as a result, apply consistantly. Consistancy not only makes for a more beleivable 'verse, but it introduces interesting twists.

[Zor]

Assuming wormholes are OK.

The Devourers started out as a Doomsday Weapon designed by a long extinct alien Race in a cold war, deployed when said cold war turned hot and they faced extinction. They grew, spread and whiped out entire civilizations.

Devourers are self replicating machines in a myriad of diferent forms, the primary space one is the system assault form a five kilometer spacecraft propelled by pulse antimatter drives and powered by several fusion and antimatter reactors and is armed with numerous laser cannons and very large numbers of missiles that can be fitted with either kinetic, nuclear or laser pumped bomb warheads, each commanded by an AI billions of times smarter than the average alpha quadrent sapient. They lack shields, but they make up for that in multi meter thick armor. Inside them is a vast automated factories capable of processing asteriods and producing various other forms and replication. Devourers are programmed at all costs to expand, consume and reproduce. Allready they have eaten a mangellanic cloud and billions of them now have hit the milky way.

The standard Devourer way of operating is to deploy a fleet of thousands of PAFs to a target system and clear out any resistance from planets with largescale kinetic bombardment with massive salvos of missiles. If resistance is at a praticularly high level, an SAF will collide into the planet at a decent faction of the speed of light. After securing the system, they comence landing, deploying prefab factories, mining drones and hunters, robots representing the full combined armed spectrum to irradicate any beings that might have held up in bunkers armed with railguns and missiles, and proceed with the establishment of ore processing facillities on a massive scale and begin strip mining the planet bare. Meanwhile the SAFs create solar farms for antimatter production and help in the establishment of space evelvators and massive shipyards. Within months, the entire starsystem has been converted into a collossal factory turning out SAFs ready for the next assault. So far, no system defense has been able to resist such an assault. However, fortunatly the devistating hordes of System Assault Forms described are only capable of STL movement, for the most part beyond a network of wormhole gates at fixed locations. Despite this, the Devourers have managed to capture several warp capable ships and despite an inability to replicate the system have managed to equip a fleet of miniturized SAFs for this purpose. These fleets will move onto systems that are either unihabbited or populated by primitives and set up factory stations and a wormhole gate to build and bring in an invasion force to assault nearby systems. Starfleet's only real ability to stop them is by widdling away their fleets in transit, and even then there is a pratically endless supply of new PAFs rolling off the assembly line being thrown at our worlds. Dozens of our worlds have so far fallen and dozens more will fall. The Klingons and Romulans have also suffered colossally at the hands of the Devourers.

Zor

[Lord of the Abyss]

Most of them.

I don't think so. An awful lot of hard sci-fi worlds are near future. With technology not much better than ours, and often no more than Earth for resources

Now if you say most of the advanced hard sci fi ones, then yes. They tend to play with huge energies, often work on a bigger scale, etc. One of the things that make them so dangerous is that you'll find quite few genuine superior beings. Not "guys with funky powers", but creatures vastly more intelligent than mere humans.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The Conjoiners would have a field day even with only STL travel.

[Ace Pace]

The Conjoiners would have a field day even with only STL travel.

I think the Ultras more, they're more used to this sort of raids, Conjoiners, even if we use them at their peak during Redemption Ark, still didn't muster such a large fleet and their engagments were on light second range.

[NecronLord]

The Conjoiners would have a field day even with only STL travel.

Oh, I don't know. If the blither in TNG is to be believed, in the eight thousand years it might take to cross the UFP with STL, they'll have turned into cliche intangible energy squids or something.

[speaker-to-trolls]

Does Known Space count as hard sci fi?
If it does then I think an encounter between either the pre-hyperdrive Kzinti or the Pak migration fleet would be interesting. What would be especially interesting is if Vulcans, Klingons and all the other humanoids each have a Protector inside them, just waiting to be unleashed.

[Imperial Overlord]

Does Known Space count as hard sci fi?

I count it as soft sci fi which pays attention to the realistic consequences of its handwavium. Psionics and FTL in the same universe just seems a bit much to call hard sci fi.

[Darth Wong]

The OP specifies that they must do it without violating the laws of physics. Note that this would include power generation. That pretty much excludes all of the advanced sci-fi races, so the answer would be "none of them".

You don't get to call something "hard sci-fi" just because it occasionally makes reference to a real scientific principle. Creationists do that too.

[Darth Smiley]

I don't think the Orion's Arm Universe ever explicitly violates the laws of physics. On the other hand, I have some issues with some of the crap that gets put up there, mostly dealing with the absurd nano/pico/fempto/god-tech-wanking, and almost as much bull crap dealing with the 'higher' lifeforms and 'memetics'. Still, I think it fits the OP's qualifications, and a few writers have actually come up with some decent stories and thought provoking articles.

[Ariphaos]

Anyone on the path to being a type II civilization could defend against the Federation, and attack systems close enough. The Federation has no concept of gravity tugs or harnessing the power of a star.

[Ariphaos]

I don't think the Orion's Arm Universe ever explicitly violates the laws of physics. On the other hand, I have some issues with some of the crap that gets put up there, mostly dealing with the absurd nano/pico/fempto/god-tech-wanking, and almost as much bull crap dealing with the 'higher' lifeforms and 'memetics'. Still, I think it fits the OP's qualifications, and a few writers have actually come up with some decent stories and thought provoking articles.

Subplanktech, wormholes...

I'll just leave this alone...

[Teleros]

Granted the Orion's Arm universe isn't exactly hard sci-fi, but could any of the powers in it qualify for this thread?

[SirNitram]

Granted the Orion's Arm universe isn't exactly hard sci-fi, but could any of the powers in it qualify for this thread?

They could beat Star Trek, but Orion's Arm is pathetically soft. I can create a thread and give some examples if pressed.

Then again, most civilizations who've built sizable nukes can make a nice big dent in Star Trek.

[Junghalli]

Then again, most civilizations who've built sizable nukes can make a nice big dent in Star Trek.

Aren't Federation starships capable of something like 1000 G accelerations, according to DW's own website?

Anybody limited to realistic engines and power generation and without some kind of ubertech would probably be totally fucked in space. Good luck accelerating something the size of the E-D to 10 G with halfway realistic power generation, let alone 100 times that. A Fed starship would have good odds of being able to outrun the missiles of a relatively hard SF civilization, let alone being able to absolutely fly rings around the spaceships.

[SirNitram]

Then again, most civilizations who've built sizable nukes can make a nice big dent in Star Trek.

Aren't Federation starships capable of something like 1000 G accelerations, according to DW's own website?

Anybody limited to realistic engines and power generation and without some kind of ubertech would probably be totally fucked in space. Good luck accelerating something the size of the E-D to 10 G with halfway realistic power generation, let alone 100 times that. A Fed starship would have good odds of being able to outrun the missiles of a relatively hard SF civilization, let alone being able to absolutely fly rings around the spaceships.

If I recall correctly, the 1000g's section relies on the idea that the top speed for a UFP ship is .75c, which only comes from the Tech Manual.

[Ariphaos]

If I recall correctly, the 1000g's section relies on the idea that the top speed for a UFP ship is .75c, which only comes from the Tech Manual.

Having a top speed of some fraction of c that isn't imposed by the ISM is a bit meaningless, and that only occurs at .9+ of c for tissue paper through a gas cloud.

[SirNitram]

If I recall correctly, the 1000g's section relies on the idea that the top speed for a UFP ship is .75c, which only comes from the Tech Manual.

Having a top speed of some fraction of c that isn't imposed by the ISM is a bit meaningless, and that only occurs at .9+ of c for tissue paper through a gas cloud.

This is Trek. They can come to full spot in open space.

[Jawawithagun]

Thing is, cheap relativistic flight alone is all that's needed. With only that already the hard-SF can hide out in the black and just outlive the Federation and its short-lived political agendas while traveling the vast gulf between the stars.