Which sci-fi nation could be beaten by modern military?

[Simon_Jester]

That would have involved being under siege in their own tower for twenty or thirty years, with the slight risk that the rebels could in fact demolish or assault the tower somehow. Not so smart, if you ask me.

[Ritterin Sophia]

The UNSC. Their ground forces tech is bit better in some ways. But not by much. They will be trading men and vehicles against a first world military at roughly equal parity.

I'm going to agree with the notion that the UNSC would be beaten by a modern military, but not that it's going to be difficult. The comparisons below paint a detailed picture of an Army incapable of hitting things not in their face.

According to the Halo Encyclopedia their MA5B Assault Rifle uses a 7.62x51mm round, I'm not aware of any sources that confirm it's 7.62 NATO but I would be surprised if it wasn't, has an effective range of only 300m. In contrast the M14 has an effective range of 460m.

Of course they did replace their MA5's with a new rifle, the BR55 which is effective out to an astounding 200m with a 9.5x40mm FMJ! Somehow there was a prototype BR55 in Contact Harvest with a range of 950m, but the standard model is only good for 200m, and then for Halo 3 they make a new version of the rifle, the BR55HB SR, which has an effective range of 950m.

The M41 Vulcan, a .50 cal gatling gun has a range of 100m, compared to the GAU-19's 1800m.

The SRS-99 Anti-Material Rifles are chambered for the 14.5x114mm sharing the same round and a striking resemblance to the NTW 14.5. The problem? Somehow the SRS-99 dropped to 1500m from the NTW 14.5's 2300m. They also have another gauss rifle called the Model 99 Stanchion with a 5.4mm/.21 caliber round and a 4.5km range. The odd thing about it is this rifle is only used in the time before the arrival of the Covenant against insurgents.

They have a 'heavy' machinegun called the AIE-486H which is another gatling gun chambered for the 7.62x51, it's range is 100m. For comparisons sake I give you the M134 Minigun with a 1km range.

This brings us to the M247 Machinegun, with a range of 30m. That's right. I said thirty... To give a comparison I'll use a similairly chambered M240 on a tripod, which has an effective range of 800m for a point target, area targets are 1100m.

The M6 is outranged by similairly chambered the Desert Eagle by 100m, but then after the first shot you're not going to hit anything with a pistol that heavilly overchambered.

The M7 submachinegun is one of the only weapons that has an effective and comparable range at 50m to some variants of the MP5.

Unless the material science industry has made some major advancement making intermediate and heavy rifle rounds ineffective at long range against personal body armor, I don't see how the UNSC could stand against the armies of Earth. However this is just their infantry weapons, their armor and air assets could be marvels of engineering to envy, but I was never really impressed with what I saw.

[Starglider]

This brings us to the M247 Machinegun, with a range of 30m. That's right. I said thirty...

That's literally impossible without using magic evaporating bullets. No plausible machine gun design could have that much spread. What is your source, and why shouldn't we consider it bullshit?

[Ritterin Sophia]

This brings us to the M247 Machinegun, with a range of 30m. That's right. I said thirty...

That's literally impossible without using magic evaporating bullets. No plausible machine gun design could have that much spread. What is your source, and why shouldn't we consider it bullshit?

As I said the Halo Encyclopedia from DK Publishing, there's a thread over at SB on it if you want to read it. I agree it's bullshit that these kinds of designs are part of the Halo series and make no sense, but it licensed by the powers that be and last I remember SDN's policy on canon is the owners words are the only words as to the canon.

[Sarevok]

Oh my god !

You sure the book was not riddled with typos or meant as a joke ?

[Zixinus]

The Combine from Half-Life 2.

No. The Combine came, saw and kicked Earth's ass in literally seven hours.

What you see in the game isn't their main force: merely a remote outpost.

As for Freeman, it is implied by the game that he is a, superhuman or something and b, he is under the protection of the G-man. How and why, I don't know but that's the story for you. It may not be the most logical but it works well enough.

Perhaps I should just phrase that to just "the transhuman Combine forces from Half-Life 2". Would that be a more fair comparison?

Not really. I would say partly because of Breen: during your Nova Prospect trip, he acknowledges that they could have wiped out the resistance earlier but Breen dismissed the idea for his own reasons.
It implies that transhuman arm is well-organised and still grasps advanced tactics and strategy, but were caught by surprise because they were employed stupidly. Breen is a paper-pushing bureaucrat that may or may not be partially insane to boot (and to be fair, who wouldn't be under his circumstances?).

Also, there is the "G-man" factor: what he does is a mystery but he clearly does not favour the Combine as he orchestrates sabotage and rebellion against them. He is not a human being, but rather a creature that decided to appear as one and has superior technology (he can teleport around on will or on demand).

I couldn't find the original screencap from the game, but there's a poster in game which shows it :

What's ironic about that is that it supposed to imply that the transhuman arm is a step backwards. I myself didn't quite get it until I looked it up.

[Starglider]

You sure the book was not riddled with typos or meant as a joke ?

Typos, unfortunately not, because the ranges are all listed in feet/meters and the values match. It was however clearly written by raving morons, and canon discontinuity is the only sane way to deal with it.

[Darth Wong]

The Halo Encyclopedia was probably written using game mechanics more than reality as a guide.

[Starglider]

The Halo Encyclopedia was probably written using game mechanics more than reality as a guide.

Even that is highly dubious. The machine guns on the hornet (very light attack VTOL) work fine at ranges of at least a kilometre, because you can shoot down enemy air vehicles when they're barely visible (if you're patient). That and the fact that some of the assault rifles are quoted as having ranges of hundreds of metres, yet a mounted machine gun is supposed to have less than a tenth of that? The in-game machine guns don't have noticeably less accuracy than the rifles.

No excuses, rampant idiocy and refusal to engage in even a semblance of rational thought is the only explanation.

[Ford Prefect]

The Halo Encyclopedia was probably written using game mechanics more than reality as a guide.

I think it's more safe to say that the Halo universe is largely broken simply from the get go. They, apparently, have teraton yield SMAC platforms (it's precisely given as 1.17 teratons, which is worthy of that stupid eye rolling smiley) and Titanium-A armour which can resist gigatons of energy, and yet the entirety of their ground forces are Vietnam War movie rejects? This is on top of stuff which indicates that the authors have no calculators, like the ludicrously low densities the spaceships have.

[Shroom Man 777]

Speaking of Vietnam War Movie rejects: I like how Haloids like to go on about how shmucks like the ODSTs are completely badass for kicking the ass out of Covenant forces in awesome special operations. Because Covenant ground forces composed of multicolored gremlins that go SQUAWK SQUAWK! are such challenging adversaries for special operators unlike any ever seen before on Earth. Man, it was so badass when that Brute tried to smash those ODSTs with its Space Hammer but died like a pussy after getting stabbed in the throat by a badass ODST badass.

Christ, the efficacy of special forces against a foe that uses melee weapons as standard doctrine and employs fucking Gremlins as basic infantry is... not really something impressive.

[open_sketchbook]

Part of the whole point is that the Covenant are retards that got their hands/claws/whateverthefucks on superior technology and figured it was an excuse to act all badass. In the books at least Humanity is slowly turning the tables on the Covenant by the virtue of technological advancement; though there is still a gap, humans are catching up quick.

The humans in the Halo universe are only really retards in the games thanks most to Rule of Cool and game mechanics. They tend to be measurably more competent in the novels.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Part of the whole point is that the Covenant are retards that got their hands/claws/whateverthefucks on superior technology and figured it was an excuse to act all badass. In the books at least Humanity is slowly turning the tables on the Covenant by the virtue of technological advancement; though there is still a gap, humans are catching up quick.

So how does that explain Battle Rifles with a 950... no 200... no 950m again, range? Or .50 caliber gatling guns with a range measured in a scant hundred meters?

By that I mean to say how is it you can say the Humans are catching up quickly when their weapons are only good for spitting distances?

[Sarevok]

Remember that website about turbolasers weaker than a flashlight ? It was a detailed encylopedia of various star wars warships except a lot of zeroes were missing. The death star superlaser was a 1500 watt weapon, isd guns were 50 watts and armor was rated against the impact of a paper airplane. In the authors defense he had pretty pictures and writeups. Maybe he later got a job writting for the Halo encyclopedia.

[lord Martiya]

While Wing gets a lot of shit for having fairly useless enemies, when I watched it I never got the impression they were tactically inert. We're not exactly looking at a Hannibal/Iskandar tag-team or anything, but within the bounds of the series do demonstrate that the understand stuff like maneuver warfare, ambushes, air support and so on. Ultimately, I think the modern world probably could score a win on the Alliance, though almost certainly not OZ. It was my mistake regarding the name of the Virgo, but the Taurus is pretty impressive as well (not that OZ uses it under gravity, but hey). Given the precision and speed of your average mobile doll, and given how OZ can absorb basically limitless MD casulaties - the modern world is not likely to destroy them as fast as can build them - it seems likely that their ability to strike basically anywhere in the world will allow them to take the win. Unfortunately, we don't have the Lightning Count patrolling the heavens.

I don't dispute this. What I dispute is that they completely forgot combined arms and what infantry can do.
In many battles, both of OZ and the Alliance, the outcome would have been different if some guy with an ATM was present, and one of those battles was the one between an Alliance MS unit and the Gundam Sandrock plus the Maganac. If the Alliance had some infantry in that battle, that time we would have seen a Gundam down as a soldier slipped into the Maganac ranks and shot it with ATMs in the weak points. We can say the same for most battles of the almost stationary Sandrock and Heavyarms (I recall their armors being the strongest of all Gundams, but an hit at a joint or those rocket propellers on the back can still do some damage). And the great battle at New Edwards... The Gundams (or at least Wing, Deathscythe, Heavyarms and Sandrock, as I don't remember the Shenlong in that battle before it popped out to interrupt the fight between the Gundam duos) were so concentrated on the fixed defences and the MS that missile-armed infantry would have had plenty of occasions to cripple/destroy them.
We can say the same for the artillery: if the Alliance tried to use its Tragos for long range fire, the Gundams would have fell.
And the pearl of idiocy: the Battle of Marseille. I may understand OZ's choice to engage the Leo with the flying Aries, but then the pilots went down and started a ground battle where the heavier armor and weapons of the Leo are an advantage, and then followed them into the sewers. I'm still wondering how the Alliance managed to lose the battle with this advantage and 4-1 numerical superiority...

[Simon_Jester]

The Halo Encyclopedia was probably written using game mechanics more than reality as a guide.

I think it's more safe to say that the Halo universe is largely broken simply from the get go. They, apparently, have teraton yield SMAC platforms (it's precisely given as 1.17 teratons, which is worthy of that stupid eye rolling smiley) and Titanium-A armour which can resist gigatons of energy, and yet the entirety of their ground forces are Vietnam War movie rejects? This is on top of stuff which indicates that the authors have no calculators, like the ludicrously low densities the spaceships have.

Fair enough, although somewhere out there in Internet-space, someone is watching stormtroopers flee a berserk Han Solo, thinking about us going on about teraton-range turbolasers, and laughing. Halo isn't the only place where a fictional military shows technical competence grossly out of line with their tactical competence.

Remember that website about turbolasers weaker than a flashlight ? It was a detailed encylopedia of various star wars warships except a lot of zeroes were missing. The death star superlaser was a 1500 watt weapon, isd guns were 50 watts and armor was rated against the impact of a paper airplane.

Wait... What? HOW!? WHY? WHERE?

My frontal lobes ache just thinking about it...

[open_sketchbook]

Part of the whole point is that the Covenant are retards that got their hands/claws/whateverthefucks on superior technology and figured it was an excuse to act all badass. In the books at least Humanity is slowly turning the tables on the Covenant by the virtue of technological advancement; though there is still a gap, humans are catching up quick.

So how does that explain Battle Rifles with a 950... no 200... no 950m again, range? Or .50 caliber gatling guns with a range measured in a scant hundred meters?

By that I mean to say how is it you can say the Humans are catching up quickly when their weapons are only good for spitting distances?

The same way we explain all the stupid shit in Star Wars; propaganda and bullshit. There are multiple instances in the books and even the games that show these ranges to be absolute bullshit, so the book is fucking wrong, end of story. If you refuse to accept that, then maybe the UNSC or the in-universe writers have an insane future meaning of effective range we don't; for example, the range necessary at which some standard body armour is penetrated at or something. The ranges they present are LITERATELY impossible, as noted above.

[saveyour]

well the aliens in Independence Day didn't fair too well against us primates.. not sure if this movie counts though haha

[Samuel]

We die. We don't have a crashed saucer and their ships hitting the planet would end the human species.

[cosmicalstorm]

Wouldn't it be enough for them to orbit that mother-ship around the planet like they did in the movie for our civilization to basically collapse?

[Sea Skimmer]

Unless the material science industry has made some major advancement making intermediate and heavy rifle rounds ineffective at long range against personal body armor, I don't see how the UNSC could stand against the armies of Earth. However this is just their infantry weapons, their armor and air assets could be marvels of engineering to envy, but I was never really impressed with what I saw.

Body armor wouldn't even matter. Effective ranges for small arms and machine guns aren’t computed in terms of armor penetration , its just about the inherent ballistic accuracy to let you place rounds on target. For NATO a point target is usually defined as a stationary truck or jeep, a standard area target (though not the only one) is a squad in a dispersed V-shaped formation. The guide was just written by idiots, and it isn’t consistent even by game mechanics standards, not that this even matters much given the lack of bullet drop.

[Connor MacLeod]

The Halo encyclopedia, from what I can gather, benefits from alot of the problems alot of SW "guides" and many Wikis do - they just slap together random bits of information because its stated or its there and the fact it does or doesn't match up relies entirely on serendipity. Alot of the figures came directly from Bungie circa Halo 3 (cf the Covenant weapons ranges) and Bungie has alot of absurd made up shit with regard to weapons, including USNC weapons (the .50 cal pistol, the full auto 7.62mm NATO ammo, etc. I swear they decided to one up the Colonial Marine weaponry from that Aliens Technical Manual)

I've noticed that for Halo, you can get very high or vrey low values depending on where you look (Covenant ships that can boil/vaporize ocean sand remove atmosphere also can be topped by a weapon that blast-melts a 3 km asteroid, MAC rounds vary from thousands/tens of thousands of km a sec to single/double digit KM/s depending on source, UNSC nukes varying from "planet cracking" nukes to 30 MT mines taking out Covvie ships) It's not neccesarily irreconcilable, the problem I notice is that you have the "pro-halo" side generally arguinng "Teraton or nothing" calcs while the critics argue "sub-gigaton or nothing"

[Shrykull]

The only one I can think of are the Martians as they appeared in the original War of the Worlds by Wells. It's difficult to define what equal numbers would mean, since they have no regular ground troops. Their overall tech is not that great, since they have no magic-tech shields and their armor could be defeated with massed fire by late 19th century artillery.

Um, is perhaps the book/radio play different from the original movie? Their ships certainly DID have shields in that movie, which no weapon on earth, not even an A-bomb could penetrate.

[Tsyroc]

The only one I can think of are the Martians as they appeared in the original War of the Worlds by Wells. It's difficult to define what equal numbers would mean, since they have no regular ground troops. Their overall tech is not that great, since they have no magic-tech shields and their armor could be defeated with massed fire by late 19th century artillery.

Um, is perhaps the book/radio play different from the original movie? Their ships certainly DID have shields in that movie, which no weapon on earth, not even an A-bomb could penetrate.

The book and radio play are a lot different from the 1950s movie. The movie Martians are quite a bit more powerful than those in the book.

In the book a human naval ship is able to take out at least one walker with its heavy guns.

[RedImperator]

The only one I can think of are the Martians as they appeared in the original War of the Worlds by Wells. It's difficult to define what equal numbers would mean, since they have no regular ground troops. Their overall tech is not that great, since they have no magic-tech shields and their armor could be defeated with massed fire by late 19th century artillery.

Um, is perhaps the book/radio play different from the original movie? Their ships certainly DID have shields in that movie, which no weapon on earth, not even an A-bomb could penetrate.

As Tysroc said, the book Martians were just barely better than the late 19th century British Army. In the radio play, if I recall correctly, the US army (circa 1939) did manage to kill one tripod, at the cost of a huge number of tanks and men, and were unable to stop the Martians from reaching New York City. So both those iterations of the Martians would be meat against a modern force.

Movie Martians, no way. Maybe multiple A-bombs or H-bombs could crack their shields, but a conventional force has no chance. Their heat rays probably can't track fast enough to hit modern jets, but there isn't much the jets can do to them.