Star Wars/Trek vs. "Independence Day" Aliens

[LongVin]

That doesn't seem like a weapon at all. Perhaps the "weapon" is actually a drive of some sort, which happens to detrimentally affect everything behind it? I can see the ships maneuvering over the cities with secondary drives, and then igniting primary interstellar drives for an instant to wipe out the city.

Prophet of Regret style, interesting idea.

That aside, does anyone recall how deep Area 66 was supposed to be? The alien superweapon was apparently capable of penetrating through that much ground, most of which I assume to be solid rock.

The movie had two conflicting points when it comes to the crater size. There is never a shot of a crater after the use of superlaser the shot is always taken on a horizon showing the remains of the city.

The conflicting points are:

1. The president receives a message that NORAD was taken out by a superlaser blast. Now Norad is bult deeply into a mountain range and was designed to withstand hits from all but the most determined nuclear attacks.

2. BUT later on when the ship is over Area 51 the General tells everyone that they should be safe from the blast because they are deep enough underground but the people on the surface would all be killed.

[LongVin]

There's something that has been forgotten here.

The ID aliens got their asses handed to them (after the shields went down) by the combined military power of all the nations of modern Earth.

Does the 24th century ST Earth have thousands of combat shuttles ready to launch (even just atmosphere-capable ones)? If we go by canon evidence, no.

What are they going to do, have redshirts with phaser rifles fire at the saucer ships from the ground?

Transporters do provide an advantage, so (again, once the shields are down) they can beam troops in and try to take over. Can't really say how they'd do, since we have no idea how good the ID aliens are at ground combat, or what kind of weapons they have.[/i]

We do see the captured alien totally pwning the scientists with its tentacles during the autospy scene. It also appears they possess some sort of psychic power. However the creature was easilly taken down by bullets.

Also we can't forget that Will Smith punches the one that crashes in the face and knocks it out.

The ship is huge THOUGH. How many redshirts is it going to take to raid something that large?

[Noble Ire]

2. BUT later on when the ship is over Area 51 the General tells everyone that they should be safe from the blast because they are deep enough underground but the people on the surface would all be killed.

Are you sure? I don't recall him saying that, and it seems like the fighters killed everyone on the surface anyways. Besides, the intial targeting or focusing beam of the werapon was enough to shake the bunker quite badly; I'd think the main beam would be able to punch through.

[LongVin]

Well all we have to go on his the Generals boasting. He may of attempted to calm the people in the bunker or he may of just been woefully wrong about the power of the weapon.

They did attempt to evac everyone on the surface into the bunker.

[Noble Ire]

The ship is huge THOUGH. How many redshirts is it going to take to raid something that large?

Too many. Even if the aliens are incredibly incompetant fighters, to which there is little evidence, the alien vessels are incredibly large, and doubtlessly have control and internal systems that would be difficult to quickly analyze and take over.

[brianeyci]

Does the 24th century ST Earth have thousands of combat shuttles ready to launch (even just atmosphere-capable ones)? If we go by canon evidence, no.

What? They don't need shuttles, they just need their capital ships to pick off the fighters, fighters whose aim is so piss poor that they have to move at the speed of 20th Century Fighters and still can't track properly (the aim is so bad I'm thinking they don't have any kind of sensors or ironsights at all, just fire on axis with visual targeting). And if you're forgetting this,



and this,


(apologies for the magic cards they're the only images I have at hand right now)

There's a sticky in the ST forum about Federation construction rates too.

Redshirts won't take the ship, boarding isn't common in large fleet battles for obvious reasons. They'll blow through one of those space doors, fly in and shoot up the place a bit and if they hit the sweet spot Will Smith hit then it's game over. Well, for them too, but if the piece of shit alien fighter can survive the explosion then a shielded starship should be able too.

Brian

[LongVin]

But the ID aliens have lots of fighters. So I would imagine a few Fed ships would be destroyed or heavily damaged despite the poor quality of the alien fighters.

[Surlethe]

The lack of encryption could be overconfidence though. "This pathetic civilization can't hope to match our power"

Occam's Razor rules this out.

[Nephtys]

Well all we have to go on his the Generals boasting. He may of attempted to calm the people in the bunker or he may of just been woefully wrong about the power of the weapon.

They did attempt to evac everyone on the surface into the bunker.

That was likely to save them from a much faster death at the hands of alien fighter strafing, which destroyed an airbase earlier in the movie. I think it's reasonable that the bunker was safe from such an attack, but not from the superweapon, assuming it destroyed Norad.

[Ghost Rider]

But the ID aliens have lots of fighters. So I would imagine a few Fed ships would be destroyed or heavily damaged despite the poor quality of the alien fighters.

Unless their firepower is up to producing the needed damage in the appropriate amount of time, this is as ridiculous a statement as going "The Federation could hurt an ISD."

You need to provide proof it has with it's firepower to dole out multi MT damage withing a small timeframe it needs to actually hurt the Federation ships.

[LordShaithis]

The ID aliens got their asses handed to them (after the shields went down) by the combined military power of all the nations of modern Earth.

To be more specific, the ID4 aliens (san shields) were whipped by the world's air forces, which were depleted by the one-sided drubbing they had taken up to that point. Remember, when Will Smith wanted to return to his base, he was told it had been destroyed. Thus it seems that after the first batch of cities was destroyed, a second wave of attacks was launched against signifigant military bases.

Despite this, the forces that remained were apparently able to destroy every last alien city-killer. If I recall, we saw African tribesmen looking out over the site of one's destruction. Evidently even Third World air forces were able to defeat these things.

[Nephtys]

Honestly, the only two parts of the alien technology that seem at all impressive are the shields (for obvious reasons) and their materials (even if applied poorly: See armor). Their mindboggling stupidity in design however (no secondary weapons on motherships, easilly destroyed long-charging superweapon that takes down huge ship with it, extremely vulnerable orbital supership docking bay, easilly infiltrated computer system, remote control shield generators) make up for that.

They make Federation Engineers look like gods by comparison. At least the Ent-D doesn't warp core breach whenever someone fires a phaser the same time it does.

[18-Till-I-Die]

On the Area 51/Norad thing.

If i recal, the guy said that the mountain "might offer some resistance". And again, they did take out Norad, which is burried under a lot of rock and steel.

Another argument could be made that Area 51 was simply buried deeper, or hardened stronger, since it was a last ditch secret military redoubt.

But this doesnt really change the fact of the vs, however it bears mentioning.

[Surlethe]

Honestly, the only two parts of the alien technology that seem at all impressive are the shields (for obvious reasons) and their materials (even if applied poorly: See armor). Their mindboggling stupidity in design however (no secondary weapons on motherships, easilly destroyed long-charging superweapon that takes down huge ship with it, extremely vulnerable orbital supership docking bay, easilly infiltrated computer system, remote control shield generators) make up for that.

They seem more like a farming or mining expedition than an actual military task force; perhaps, upon arriving at Earth, they realized the planet was inhabited, and had to improvise to clean the earth for strip-mining.

[Nephtys]

Honestly, the only two parts of the alien technology that seem at all impressive are the shields (for obvious reasons) and their materials (even if applied poorly: See armor). Their mindboggling stupidity in design however (no secondary weapons on motherships, easilly destroyed long-charging superweapon that takes down huge ship with it, extremely vulnerable orbital supership docking bay, easilly infiltrated computer system, remote control shield generators) make up for that.

They seem more like a farming or mining expedition than an actual military task force; perhaps, upon arriving at Earth, they realized the planet was inhabited, and had to improvise to clean the earth for strip-mining.

It makes sense that 99.9 percent of planets they find that are of use are either uninhabited, or inhabited by such primatives that only a deus ex machina could defeat them.

Er. That aside. They certainly took care to plan their attack. Weren't some ships buried under the moon? There was a scout that crashed from the 60's. They had to take time to plan the satellite hack, and so on.

[LongVin]

But the ID aliens have lots of fighters. So I would imagine a few Fed ships would be destroyed or heavily damaged despite the poor quality of the alien fighters.

Unless their firepower is up to producing the needed damage in the appropriate amount of time, this is as ridiculous a statement as going "The Federation could hurt an ISD."

You need to provide proof it has with it's firepower to dole out multi MT damage withing a small timeframe it needs to actually hurt the Federation ships.

Well we don't see proof of that the weapons are dialed down. So going by just documented evidence damage to the Federation would probably be minimal.

[18-Till-I-Die]

People forget that Jeff Goldblum only stumbled upon the alien signal purely by accident. It was a mistake, everyone else in the world even the government failed to even notice there was a signal. Its clear that had it not bene for this tiny mistake, there would have been no hack, the president would have been killed ("They knew right where to hit us" the general said) and the government decapitated. More so, they never would have been able to figure out how to hack the computer without Goldblum, he knew how to break the alien signal and was the only one who figured it out, even the people at Area 51 had no idea.

Really...as sad as it is...the Invaders were not defeated by Earth but by Jeff Goldblum. Seriously, how sad is that?

[Noble Ire]

no secondary weapons on motherships,

They did have secondary weapons though, of indeterminant number and firepower (the thing that toasted the helicopter greeting party.) Of course, unless they are a great deal more powerful than fighter weapons, it doesn't matter, but one must give credit where credit is due, even if it is minimal.

[Vendetta]

That doesn't seem like a weapon at all. Perhaps the "weapon" is actually a drive of some sort, which happens to detrimentally affect everything behind it? I can see the ships maneuvering over the cities with secondary drives, and then igniting primary interstellar drives for an instant to wipe out the city.

Except that the city-destroyers are clearly carried through interstellar space on the mothership, which suggests that they may not have independent interstellar drives.

Also, if that's a drive system designed to actually move the ship through interstellar space, why are the ships perfectly motionless when it fires? If their manoeuvering thrusters can match the thrust of the main drive, why have an exposed and vulnerable main drive?

The city-destroyng cannon is clearly a weapon designed expressly for the purpose of knocking over low tech (from the aliens' perspective) cities.

They seem more like a farming or mining expedition than an actual military task force; perhaps, upon arriving at Earth, they realized the planet was inhabited, and had to improvise to clean the earth for strip-mining.

They are a raiding party.

From the design of their primary weapon, and the way they execute a choreographed plan to expunge major population centres on their target, I'd say that their usual M/O is to find any planet that has resources they need but which is technologically backwards enough to be a) a pushover militarily, and b) not have used up the resources they are after (the fossil resources we have used much of would simply not be high enough energy density for the purposes of an interstellar civilisation, so they can be disregarded.)

I say these aliens float around looking for little weak kids to steal lunch money from.

[brianeyci]

Evidently even Third World air forces were able to defeat these things.

I was thinking about this and it didn't make any sense at all. Looking at the SAAF, they only have 28 Cheetah C (F-15E equivalent) fighters). These would definitely have been taken out in the first attack, and 28 would not be enough against the hundreds of fighters of a mothership. Although I do remember the African tribesmen dancing around. Maybe the SAAF evacuated to a secret base somewhere being paranoid, and attacked the mothership while all of its fighters were somewhere else.

Brian

[LordShaithis]

Or maybe numerous African countries combined their crappy MiGs to attack one alien ship. Africa would probably have fewer ships to destroy than a more developed continent.

[Surlethe]

It makes sense that 99.9 percent of planets they find that are of use are either uninhabited, or inhabited by such primatives that only a deus ex machina could defeat them.

Er. That aside. They certainly took care to plan their attack. Weren't some ships buried under the moon? There was a scout that crashed from the 60's. They had to take time to plan the satellite hack, and so on.

Except that the city-destroyers are clearly carried through interstellar space on the mothership, which suggests that they may not have independent interstellar drives.

Also, if that's a drive system designed to actually move the ship through interstellar space, why are the ships perfectly motionless when it fires? If their manoeuvering thrusters can match the thrust of the main drive, why have an exposed and vulnerable main drive?

The city-destroyng cannon is clearly a weapon designed expressly for the purpose of knocking over low tech (from the aliens' perspective) cities.

...

They are a raiding party.

From the design of their primary weapon, and the way they execute a choreographed plan to expunge major population centres on their target, I'd say that their usual M/O is to find any planet that has resources they need but which is technologically backwards enough to be a) a pushover militarily, and b) not have used up the resources they are after (the fossil resources we have used much of would simply not be high enough energy density for the purposes of an interstellar civilisation, so they can be disregarded.)

I say these aliens float around looking for little weak kids to steal lunch money from.

I concede the points.

[brianeyci]

Sub-Saharan the only country I can think of that has the economy to support an airforce is South Africa. Above I would think that they all fly French planes, Mirages.

You're right, maybe there was just one city-killer for all of Africa and they all combined for about 100-200 planes.

Brian

[Nephtys]

Evidently even Third World air forces were able to defeat these things.

I was thinking about this and it didn't make any sense at all. Looking at the SAAF, they only have 28 Cheetah C (F-15E equivalent) fighters). These would definitely have been taken out in the first attack, and 28 would not be enough against the hundreds of fighters of a mothership. Although I do remember the African tribesmen dancing around. Maybe the SAAF evacuated to a secret base somewhere being paranoid, and attacked the mothership while all of its fighters were somewhere else.

Brian

Maybe there was one guy on the ground with like, a shoulder-mounted Stinger launcher from their destroyed military Junta, who fired into the 'Eye O-Vulnerability'.

[LordShaithis]

IIRC, there are a number of African countries that have a squadron or two of MiG-21s and the like lying around. Hard to find up to date numbers.