STGOD: A Dead Art?

[Spyder]

The galaxy at large know of the existence of the Starborn Open Corps and this is purely from the one of the Polish Minister of State's old buddies showing up at announcing as much. Tracing the path of Patrick's yaught, your network's probably figured out by now that he his ship came from the Western rim.

Nations can star reffering to that region as 'Starborn space'.
Right now it's apparent that the Starborn Open Corps, or at least populations that they represent are major Nova clients.

The Energy Syndacyte should be either unknown or not known to be important/passing under the radar at this stage, I'm going to establish their role as the main thread progresses.

If spy networks were really curious, they'd want to know more about Patrick and others like him, but that's only if they were curious. At this stage the Starborn would seem pretty benign. Just a few paranoid colonial jerks out in the rim lording over a pretty uninteresting part of space, not very threatening, pretty unsubstantial military assets, nothing overly exciting or enticing. No one knows what they look like, no one cares.

Nova on the other hand are much more visible, they've got posters everywhere, recruitment offices, even their own line of caps, t-shirts and travel mugs. They can even be commissioned by other empires assuming a suitable contract can be agreed upon. (They prefer protection and anti-piracy work) that doesn't mean they won't get involved in open war but it certain conditions would need to be met.
As soon as Nitram boards the frigate I'll reveal a bit more about them.

[Hotfoot]

A brief treatise on ground combat, particularly planetary invasion.

Invading a planet is by no means a simple task. It's a long, drawn out affair that will cost many lives on both sides of the conflict. The benefits, of course, is a mostly intact center of industry or mining that you can add to your own empire's total industry. It also gives you a foothold in enemy territory where you can easily resupply and push forward. Even better if the system has shipyards, allowing for quick and easy repairs.

Now then, how to go about taking a planet? Well, the first answer is to be direct. In order to control the planet, you need to control spaceports, major cities, orbitals of note, and of course, maintain orbital superiority. If the enemy has any military bases far from cities, they should be your first targets. While having intact bases of operation might seem nice, it's better to destroy airfields and tank depots from orbit before they can bring their full power to bear against your own forces.

Your first wave will take significant casualities from enemy point defense networks, some of which may even be built into civilian buildings. While these need to be taken out as quickly as possible, it is not wise to bombard the cities, as you will need them (and their citizens) later. Use smaller scale directed attacks by means of aerospace fighters that accompany the dropships to their landing zones. While it might be tempting to land your troops in the middle of bumfuck nowhere to avoid massive losses, this only invites the defenders to nuke your landing sites, which naturally will result in even greater losses than if you had landed near a city.

Obviously, then, the ideal landing sites are near cities (note: not IN cities). Preferably sites with major roadways leading into the cities nearby so you can move in APCs and heavy armor. You will face stiff resistance from the defenders, who will be taking up defensive positions inside the buildings. You will need to clear these defenders out the old fashioned way if you want to keep the planet's infrastructure intact. Remember, the enemy does not have orbital support, they are cut off and will eventually run out of supplies. In particularly bad cases, gain control over the planet's food production and cut off the city completely. With no power, food, water, or other basics of survival, they will either surrender or die. Starvation is an old tool, but still useful.

Most of the fighting, thus, will be inside of a city or other heavily populated area. Ranges will be short, overpenetration will result in widespread destruction (a bad thing), and overuse of artillery, well, it's a bad thing. Heavy armor is still useful, but massive tank battles are unlikely, as are conflicts in open fields and rolling hills.

After the battle is over, the war begins. Insurgents will be your primary problem. Finding and eliminating them will be difficult, as they will blend into the civilian population as best they can. Remember that pacification of your new territory is necessary, so whatever means you can achieve this are up to you. Remember to keep strict control of what comes into the system. Overeager re-opening of trade lanes is inviting disaster as anti-matter bombs and infantry weapons get smuggled in to insurgents.

Now, for the defenders.

You've lost the space battle. At this point, your job is to make it as hard for the enemy to hold the planet as possible so that when reinforcements arrive, you can kick them off in style. You can't win unless they massively underestimated your cunning and overall strength, so don't try to win. Try to make them win in the worst possible way. Make them take losses at every opprotunity, and when they bring their full force to bear, disappear. Strike when they least expect it, and when you do it, strike hard. Remember, conserve your own. They have plenty of reinforcements, but you don't. At least not until reinforcements come from the homeworld. Your objective is to last that long and do whatever damage you can in the meantime.

Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.

[rhoenix]

Bless you, Hotfoot. I'm framing that.

[Crossroads Inc.]

All I know is I hope no one ever invades my planets. I have six different races on five planets and each one of them will have a different army and way of defending themselves as wel las how the populace would react to an invasion.

[Noble Ire]

Considering the power of some faction's ground forces, I'm glad I invested some points in warships designed specifically for invasion support.

Speaking of which, how will the respective point-levels (if any) of armies fighting over a world come into play?

[consequences]

Yeah, there's reasons I sank the cost of a battleship squadron into ground issues. And I still fully intend to take my lumps in the matter.

Does anyone have comment on stage one of the first blatant landgrab of the STGOD?

[rhoenix]

Does anyone have comment on stage one of the first blatant landgrab of the STGOD?

Since in character my faction hasn't had time to notice yet, I'm out-of-character laughing my ass off. Well played.

EDIT: Fixed spelling/grammar

[Crossroads Inc.]

Yay, Conseq, you are so far away from the major powers, you'll be able to spread out by quite a lot before anyone notices... How evil.

[Crossroads Inc.]

EDIT:

In unclaimed space a few sectors between the Nephilim and the Heralds of Xylyx a few small outpost stations hung in a small cluster near a low power navigation beacon. They promised to be easy prey indeed for the five Blackblades which rocketed towards them from the depths of space. The two heavy gun turrets on the top and bottom of each ship swung towards the first outpost and slugged baleful red packets of energy at the defenseless target. The turrets then tracked towards the next as the five ships prepared to swing wide of burning station, allowing broadsides from their light cannons to finish it off.

THIS will not end well...

[Adrian Laguna]

A brief treatise on ground combat, particularly planetary invasion.

Damn you Hotfoot, damn you to Hell. Don't you know that some of us are counting on taking advantage of the ignorance of others? [insert smilie of some sort here]

[Spyder]

I imagine ground combat is going to require pretty extensive RP.

[Hotfoot]

I imagine ground combat is going to require pretty extensive RP.

A fair amount, but let's face it, we don't need 50 pages on the assault of a given city of a given planet before you move on to how the assault is going on any of the other twenty major cities on the world, plus the orbitals, etc.

The thing is, like I said, the war starts after you take the planet. The invasion is a minor blip on the radar, what happens after that matters much more. Look at the occupation of Ix'igal from STGOD4. The bulk of the play happened after the invasion.

[Spyder]

Yeah, gotta leave room for people to be creative though, break the box and all that.

[Covenant]

Yeah, gotta leave room for people to be creative though, break the box and all that.

Think about it this way--the invasion in War of the Worlds happened fast. A civilian population greatly outmatched by an invading alien force, rapid conquest of key areas, but a great deal of outlying areas mostly unmolested due to the Alien's relatively few numbers. A planetary invasion might be over in a blink of an eye due to complete orbital control leading to a vast disparity in 'artillery' combined with air support and the ability to drop troops where you please, but occupying that planet will be long and involved and happen after you crack the planet's defenses in the areas you care most about. You could essentially 'control' the planet by blockading it, taking out any ground-to-space defenses, and locking down it's spaceports. But like any siege, a lot of the other areas might be in contention for an extremely long time. Looking at the Iraq war recently is not an unfair comparison in terms of the difference between a military victory in the taking of ground and the sociopolitical job of needing to actually make that ground worthwhile.

This is somewhat easier for people who aren't interested in winning hearts and minds, but if you eat or kill or deport everyone to labor camps you'll get a lot less use out of the planet. Hotfoot never said you couldn't just bombard the planet back into the stone age, just that if you want it to be productive, it's going to be a bit longer term.

[Hotfoot]

Yeah, gotta leave room for people to be creative though, break the box and all that.

Naturally. I mean, what I've done is given people a good idea of what to expect from ground combat, but there are legions of dirty tricks and nifty little twists they can put into the mix.

Plus, I'll be honest, writing planetary invasions and defenses are just plain fun.

[Dark Hellion]

Would someone mind explaining to me just what the fuck is going on in the game thread with my probe going down, or whatever. Given that I might be in the middle of a political clusterfuck, i'd like to know what info on this I would have that would be relevant. I don't know who is organizing it, but if they could PM the details it would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Redleader34]

So we can use powerful orbit to ground weapons to devistate cities, the send down troops to ...assmilate.... I mean convert the people to our way of thinking, a la the invasion of the cybermen?

[Hotfoot]

So we can use powerful orbit to ground weapons to devistate cities, the send down troops to ...assmilate.... I mean convert the people to our way of thinking, a la the invasion of the cybermen?

Well, if you devestate the cities, you lose valuable centers of production, commerce, etc. Not to mention killing millions (or billions) or people.

The idea is to leave the cities mostly intact. Otherwise, you might as well just bombard the entire planet from orbit and wipe it clean of life and start from scratch.

[Spyder]

So we can use powerful orbit to ground weapons to devistate cities, the send down troops to ...assmilate.... I mean convert the people to our way of thinking, a la the invasion of the cybermen?

Well, if you devestate the cities, you lose valuable centers of production, commerce, etc. Not to mention killing millions (or billions) or people.

The idea is to leave the cities mostly intact. Otherwise, you might as well just bombard the entire planet from orbit and wipe it clean of life and start from scratch.

Not an entirely silly idea if you're just looking to blitz through the game, probably not going to enamour you with your neighbours though.

[Hotfoot]

Yeah, but at that point you're not grabbing territory for the purpose of boosting your own industry, you're just denying it to the enemy. Not to mention that you're committing an act of genocide. I mean, it's not like it isn't a viable strategy, but it does have other drawbacks, like political ramifications that you've mentioned.

[Adrian Laguna]

Yeah, but at that point you're not grabbing territory for the purpose of boosting your own industry, you're just denying it to the enemy. Not to mention that you're committing an act of genocide. I mean, it's not like it isn't a viable strategy, but it does have other drawbacks, like political ramifications that you've mentioned.

I don't see how it would be genocide. Unless you want to accuse both the United States and the Soviet Union of planning genocide against each other during the Cold War. So long as you only target things of military importance (basically everything but subsistence farming), it's not genocide. Oh, and you need to stop the bombardment if they surrender.

[rhoenix]

I don't see how it would be genocide. Unless you want to accuse both the United States and the Soviet Union of planning genocide against each other during the Cold War. So long as you only target things of military importance (basically everything but subsistence farming), it's not genocide. Oh, and you need to stop the bombardment if they surrender.

It's genocide if you carpet bomb the planet, and then "sanitize" the planet of all life. However, not only is this counterproductive production-wise, it is also counterproductive politics-wise.

With that said though, sometimes it really is easier to blow up a planet and re-assemble it from scratch. Of course, this tactic won't work in-game (mod call on that one for Planet Construction tech), but is a thought.

[Adrian Laguna]

It's genocide if you carpet bomb the planet, and then "sanitize" the planet of all life. However, not only is this counterproductive production-wise, it is also counterproductive politics-wise.

Oh, I thought they meant simply levelling every population centre and military base, as well as destroying all infrastructure. Like the bombing of Germany and Japan in the Second World War, or the nuclear bombardment plans established during the Cold War. It would kill billions of people, but still be perfectly legal. Unless they manage to get a surrender through all the jamming, then the bombarding fleet is required to stand down.

[rhoenix]

Oh, I thought they meant simply levelling every population centre and military base, as well as destroying all infrastructure. Like the bombing of Germany and Japan in the Second World War, or the nuclear bombardment plans established during the Cold War. It would kill billions of people, but still be perfectly legal.

Nah, that's not genocide - that's just being short-sighted and petty.

Unless the manage to get a surrender through all the jamming, then the bombarding fleet is required to stand down.

Of course, that's just wartime courtesy. However, not all factions will be blessed with such.

[White Haven]

There's also the consideration that even at the relatively low tech-level in this STGOD, a planetary-scale devastation of population centers and military infrastructure of a heavily-inhabitted world is going to involve a rather incredible amount of energy, possibly with some nasty long-term climate effects and other secondary issues. When one is dealing with mass planetary bombardment, 'genocide' becomes a somewhat fuzzy concept.