Resisting an Invasion

[Simon_Jester]

Nukes are bloody useless in the face of civilizations at this level of advancement. I've already mentioned a few things with regards to the efficacy of nukes (not to mention the relative impotency of energy output) in my earlier post, and you can respond to that post anytime you'd like, too.

I'm still unsure about that. However, without the ability to duplicate the advanced propulsion systems they presumably have, we're not going to win with nuke-spam in any case: any missile built using strictly Earth technology will be nothing but a target drone compared to the enemy ships. If we do have the advanced propulsion system, nuclear-tipping the missiles is probably superfluous, because kinetic impact alone is going to make the things nuclear-equivalent.

The best use of a nuke would be as a bursting charge, detonated a very short time before impact to convert a high-velocity slug into a cloud of high-velocity plasma for intercepting agile targets. And that's not an antiship weapon unless for some arbitrary reason their shields are more vulnerable to being hit over a broad front than a narrow one. Or do they even have shields? I've lost track.

[Star Wars 888]

The OP doesn't specify how powerful the two alien races are. "Intersteller" and having super tough armor and weapons isn't enough information. Depending on how powerful the aliens are, nukes may with enough numbers and coordination take a dreadnought down, do no noticeable damage or somewhere in between.

[Simon_Jester]

It doesn't really matter if their armor is strong enough to handle point blank nuclear blasts or not.

What matters is that they must, just to be able to do what they have done, have mastered a certain basic level of point defense and engine technology. At that tech level, swatting any missile humans can build will be a trivial problem, and the larger alien ships are so large that they can easily mount enough point defense to do this, even if they cannot simply evade the missiles by outflying them (accelerating away faster than the missiles can chase them, for instance). Hell, you could take something the size of the alien motherships and cover it in 1980s vintage Phalanx mounts and you'd have a fairly effective defense against nuclear strikes close enough to threaten it. Let alone technologies that we ourselves will likely develop in the near future, such as laser weapons.

To be effective against the alien ships, even assuming they are vulnerable to nuclear-range firepower, we would need to mount the nuclear warhead in a missile body that used alien technology heavily... and if we could manufacture alien technology on that scale, we would have a lot of OTHER options that have absolutely nothing to do with nuke spam.

[Decimator]

I think we still need more information.

Can ships see what's on the other side of a wormhole before they traverse?
What anchors the wormholes? From your description, it appears that they follow the star, do the wormholes also orbit the star?
Do ships traveling through wormholes have any choice in what direction they emerge from the wormhole?
How easy is it to miniaturize the equipment to traverse wormholes?

[Star Wars 888]

It doesn't really matter if their armor is strong enough to handle point blank nuclear blasts or not.

What matters is that they must, just to be able to do what they have done, have mastered a certain basic level of point defense and engine technology. At that tech level, swatting any missile humans can build will be a trivial problem, and the larger alien ships are so large that they can easily mount enough point defense to do this, even if they cannot simply evade the missiles by outflying them (accelerating away faster than the missiles can chase them, for instance). Hell, you could take something the size of the alien motherships and cover it in 1980s vintage Phalanx mounts and you'd have a fairly effective defense against nuclear strikes close enough to threaten it. Let alone technologies that we ourselves will likely develop in the near future, such as laser weapons.

To be effective against the alien ships, even assuming they are vulnerable to nuclear-range firepower, we would need to mount the nuclear warhead in a missile body that used alien technology heavily... and if we could manufacture alien technology on that scale, we would have a lot of OTHER options that have absolutely nothing to do with nuke spam.

Yet the Benefactor ships could launch a huge frenzy of attacks that overload/occupy the dreadnought's point defense systems.

[Simon_Jester]

Yet the Benefactor ships could launch a huge frenzy of attacks that overload/occupy the dreadnought's point defense systems.

...Then why couldn't they just hit the dreadnought with a few of their own missiles, rather than relying on our retarded crappy slow-ass ones?

It sounds less like you're trying to come up with a plan, and more like you're trying to come up with a script in which humans actually contribute without bothering to upgrade our weapons first.

[LionElJonson]

Here's what I figure we should do.

Firstly, we use any sort of rocket technology we can get from them, and fit it to as many old rockets, space stations, submarines, and tankers as we can. Then we load said newly-created spacecraft with as much industrial equipment as we can. Then we send them off into space, and become what amount to Space Gypsies, using said industrial equipment to build new ships and whatnot as we go, along with gradually building up the industry to use Benefactor technologies.

Those left on Earth, meanwhile, negotiate a delayed form of suicide with the aliens. We act suitably chastised, destroy our rockets, rocket-based industries, and any information on how to build either, and implement the One Child Policy. After all, why waste resources destroying a people who pose no threat to you, when they'll have done the job themselves in a century or two? A race like this would possess patience; that fleet that outnumbered the Benefactors 10:1 didn't come out of nowhere; it was built up gradually, and it wasn't wasn't used before they possessed an overwhelming numerical advantage. Then we build up until we trigger the Singularity; they don't sound like they're post-Singularity, so it'd be the only real hope of those humans left behind on Earth.

[Imperial528]

Technological singularities aren't that much of a big deal, especially since they will come and go for every division of science and every method of achieving something as time passes.

The biggest hole in relying on it being that no change will be instant, and if the enemy even feels threatened by it they can simply throw a few rocks at us from orbit before we finish.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Those left on Earth, meanwhile, negotiate a delayed form of suicide with the aliens. We act suitably chastised, destroy our rockets, rocket-based industries, and any information on how to build either, and implement the One Child Policy. After all, why waste resources destroying a people who pose no threat to you, when they'll have done the job themselves in a century or two? A race like this would possess patience; that fleet that outnumbered the Benefactors 10:1 didn't come out of nowhere; it was built up gradually, and it wasn't wasn't used before they possessed an overwhelming numerical advantage. Then we build up until we trigger the Singularity; they don't sound like they're post-Singularity, so it'd be the only real hope of those humans left behind on Earth.

Again with the Singularity-wank, Lion-O-shitbird? Are you even aware what "Singularity" means in the context of socio-technological progress? Just in case you're a shitbird, which you are; all Singularity means is that technological progress attains such speed and magnitude that the future becomes unpredictable for us today. To a Bronze Age civilization, we are post-Singularity. To us, these alien Benefactors are post-Singularity. The Bad Guys are post-Singularity. They have fucking elf magic Clarke-tech; and they also control the resources of six percent of the fucking galaxy. If you assume habitable systems and you pick a nice round number out of your hat, say, twenty million, that's the resources of 1.2 million solar systems. If that's six percent of all the stars in the galaxy, that's at least six billion stars.

That means that even if these aliens were all pants-on-fire stupid and/or grossly impoverished and could only manage to build one starship per system every ten years for the express purpose of wiping Earth from the face of the galaxy; in a hundred years, they'd have at least twelve million ships for that purpose. If we magically attained their technology and industry and spent all of it building ships . . . we'd lose. Since we're not going out and conquering other species and garrisoning occupied territory, let's say the post Singularity solar system could build a hundred starships per year (compared to 0.1 ships per year for the Bad Guys, this is very likely a ludicrous assumption.) In that same 100 year timeframe, we'd have just 10,000 ships to stand against their twelve million. That's with our solar system achieving 1000x the production capacity of one of theirs.

Even if we had a million times the productivity, we'd still be two million ships short by the time 100 years rolls around.

[Star Wars 888]

My point in this scenario is that they can capture the dreadnought (probable since the Benefactor ship is already capable of going toe to toe with it) and force its commander to send a false message that Earth has been defeated. Then, make the engineers (and closely guard the prisoners) show us how to replicate alien technology. Maybe try and make them loyal to us by giving them rewards and incentives and such.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

My point in this scenario is that they can capture the dreadnought (probable since the Benefactor ship is already capable of going toe to toe with it) and force its commander to send a false message that Earth has been defeated. Then, make the engineers (and closely guard the prisoners) show us how to replicate alien technology. Maybe try and make them loyal to us by giving them rewards and incentives and such.

If you force an enemy dreadnought to surrender, why won't the enemy crew do the sensible thing and smash and destroy as much of the sensitive technology as possible? I mean, that's what they do in Real Life(tm). To send a believable transmission would presumably require sending it via encrypted channels. The equipment required to do that would probably be the first thing the Bad Guys would want to destroy aboard their ship.

And why would the enemy commander even send such a message if the industrial disparity between Earth and the Bad Guys is such that the Bad Guys can simply come in and steamroll Earth at their leisure? What rewards or incentives would possibly work on the Bad Guys when they enjoy such a unilaterally superior position? "Teach us how to do really cool thing X, and we'll stop waterboarding you so often"?

[Simon_Jester]

Then we build up until we trigger the Singularity; they don't sound like they're post-Singularity, so it'd be the only real hope of those humans left behind on Earth.

I've got basically the same question to ask you that Terwynn does, Jonson.

How, precisely, do you expect the Singularity to help? I mean, is this plan more sophisticated than, say:

1. Pile up computer hardware until it (somehow!) attains sentience
2. ???
3. VICTORY!

Do you have anything in particular in mind there, or is that all you've got?

And why would the enemy commander even send such a message if the industrial disparity between Earth and the Bad Guys is such that the Bad Guys can simply come in and steamroll Earth at their leisure? What rewards or incentives would possibly work on the Bad Guys when they enjoy such a unilaterally superior position? "Teach us how to do really cool thing X, and we'll stop waterboarding you so often"?

You just might be able to accomplish something along those lines under the right circumstances; it is not unprecedented for people from an advanced society to share some of their techniques with a primitive society that captures them. In this case, between the enemy's extreme xenophobia and their confidence of victory, though, it's not very likely.

Certainly not anything to bet on.

[bilateralrope]

After all, why waste resources destroying a people who pose no threat to you, when they'll have done the job themselves in a century or two?

Because they might be trying to implement your plan.

[Zaune]

Since we know they'd actually like to take custody of an inhabitable planet with resources they can exploit rather than just vitrify the planet's surface and put it on Pay Per View, why not focus our efforts on fighting them on the front where we do have a fighting chance, namely a guerilla campaign on the surface? We might not have the necessary Unobtanium reserves to replicate Benefactor energy weapons, but they may have access to more effective chemical explosives or mass-driver technology that would enhance our ability to engage Enemy ground armour and aircraft, and they certainly have a few personnel who can tell us where the weak spots on an Enemy vehicle are. There's also plenty of stuff we could do to give them a severely opposed landing, such as creating a massive debris belt in orbit and building up a large stock of missiles capable of taking out their landing craft (nuclear-tipped if necessary) and the high-altitude interceptors to carry them. We could also probably cobble together mass-driver emplacements that could create some pretty big dents in their big iron, even if nuclear warheads aren't satisfactory for whatever reason.
Alongside this there would have to be a mobilisation program on a scale beyond even John Ringo's fevered imagination. We'd have to relocate our key industrial infrastructure to deep shelters, conscript almost everyone not directly involved in agriculture and fishing, healthcare or defence production, and most likely every essential war industry would have to be nationalised. We'd have to -somehow- make civil defence provision for preliminary saturation-bombing that's as near to a nuclear attack as makes no difference and probably chemical weapons when they attempt to occupy the cities they've reduced to rubble. (Enemy nerve agents might be Benefactor-specific, but chlorine or blister agents like mustard gas are unlikely to be quite so choosy.)

There's nothing to say we have to put all our eggs in one basket, of course. The guerilla campaign could also act as cover for a mixed human-Benefactor colonisation effort somewhere a good distance from Enemy territory and unlikely to attract their attention any time soon. If it has abundant reserves of the necessary Unobtainium for Benefactor weapons tech and thus enables us to start getting ready to fight the Enemy on a technologically equal basis, so much the better. Spreading the word to anyone who hasn't met the Enemy yet and trying to convince them to gird their collective loins and start gearing up for a pre-emptive strike, or at least one hell of an ambush, also seems sensible.

We might not win in the generally accepted sense of the word, but we might raise enough hell for the Enemy to decide we're more trouble than we're worth and pull their troops out to look for easier prey. They might perform Exterminatus on their way out, of course, but then that was always a possibility whatever we did, and at least we would have gone down fighting.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Since we know they'd actually like to take custody of an inhabitable planet with resources they can exploit rather than just vitrify the planet's surface and put it on Pay Per View, why not focus our efforts on fighting them on the front where we do have a fighting chance, namely a guerilla campaign on the surface?

Because an interstellar empire can afford to be patient. All you need to wipe out humanity is a couple of dinosaur killing asteroids. You'll wipe out some 60-70% of Earth's species in the bargain, but humans were on their way to doing that themselves. And if you're an alien with alien biochemistry, you were probably planning on introducing your own ecosystem to the planet anyway.

So all you have to do is wait for the dust to settle. Then you have a perfectly habitable planet wiped clean of pesky terrestrial fauna of significant size and intelligence. The soils will be enriched by the ash from the massive firestorms the impacts will set off. All those yummy processed metals produced by the previous occupants would even be right there on the surface for you to pick up and use.

[Zaune]

I was working on the basis that if we weren't biochemically similar enough that they couldn't justify appropriating our existing crops and domesticated animal species, or even our existing infrastructure, they'd do that from the very beginning and any attempt at a military campaign would be largely pointless.
And if patience was this race's strong suit, they'd hold off until they fine-tuned the wormhole technology and could attack in overwhelming force. Which would be the sensible thing to do, really, but genocidal despotic nutjobs are fairly renowned for having more ego than wisdom.

Which reminds me. Exactly how much does the Enemy know about Earth at this point, other than the fact the Benefactors happened to pass through our solar system whilst making good their escape? Are they even aware that there's a habitable planet in the system, or that it supports a quite advanced civilisation? And perhaps more to the point, how much do they actually care about one barely combat-effective carrier battle group anyway?

[Simon_Jester]

After all, why waste resources destroying a people who pose no threat to you, when they'll have done the job themselves in a century or two?

Because they might be trying to implement your plan.

Also, because resources are cheap, bombing planets is fun, and waiting around for a century or two is boring.

Seriously, these guys probably hand the job of bombing planets to people who enjoy it. They don't need it to be the most efficient outcome. They just need an excuse.

[Darth Nostril]

And why would the enemy commander even send such a message if the industrial disparity between Earth and the Bad Guys is such that the Bad Guys can simply come in and steamroll Earth at their leisure? What rewards or incentives would possibly work on the Bad Guys when they enjoy such a unilaterally superior position? "Teach us how to do really cool thing X, and we'll stop waterboarding you so often"?

You just might be able to accomplish something along those lines under the right circumstances; it is not unprecedented for people from an advanced society to share some of their techniques with a primitive society that captures them. In this case, between the enemy's extreme xenophobia and their confidence of victory, though, it's not very likely.

Certainly not anything to bet on.

Why even bother? There's nothing they've got that we can't already get from the Benefactors, I find it highly unlikely that they haven't got detailed files on Enemy tech and weaponry from analysis of wrecked ships. If anything, with their shield tech and invention of the wormhole drive, the Benefactors are more advanced than the Enemy, it was sheer weight of numbers and political wrangling by their erstwhile allies that defeated them.

So we have access to a database of advanced technology and allies who can provide pretty much anything in there that we can't, using the manufactories onboard the mothership and the resources of the enitre solar system.
First thing is find suitable asteroids and hollow them out, slap in life support/biosphere, FTL & sublight fusion drives and shields, put onboard genebanks of frozen sperm and ova, databanks containing the digitised sum knowledge and cultural records of both human and Benefactor races, crew them with the best and brightest and get them away as fast as possible. Continue building and launching arks right up to the last minute.

For the next part I'm working on several assumptions 1) the OP implies that the wormhole is fixed, we can't close it but we do know exactly where the emergence point is and that it is in a fixed or stable position 2) the wormhole is of limited width determined by the aperture the Benefactors opened to allow their carrier group to transit and that it isn't wide enough to permit a large force to transit simultaneously, that the wormhole acts as a natural bottleneck 3) the Enemy realise this previous point and unlike the Benefactor deep strikes into their own territory they do not have the element of surprise and there most certainly will be a very unwelcoming reception waiting for them, so they will be sending a probing force of a pair of Dreadnaughts plus supporting vessels 4) only the largest classes of ships are capable of mounting a wormhole drive so smaller ships have to stick close to stay inside the protective field 5) although we can't enter the wormhole without the protection of the drives that we don't have the necessary resources to build we still can send inorganic objects into it.

If all of that does hold true then we may have a slim chance to buy some more time.
Benefactor tactics for defeating Dreadnaughts consists of finesse attacks, targeting an area til the armour breaches then firing into the breach to irradiate the crew or cause a chain reaction in the power cores. With only one mothership low on ammunition, unable to replicate Benefactor weapons technology and our own weapons aren't up to the job that's not possible, so instead we improvise.
First get the fighters out searching the belts for large stoney iron asteroids (after we've earmarked the ones most suitable for ark construction) then the cruisers tow them to the wormhole mouth. We push as many as we can into the wormhole itself plus smaller ones for the smaller ships, then put more in a swarm in front of and around the emergence point, no matter which way the Enemy vessels maneuvre they're going to faceplant into a nice big lump of metal and rock.
The Benefactor manufactories will be tasked to the limit, not only do we need the components for the arks but they're going to need to pump out mass launchers that will be emplaced around the emergence point to do even more impact damage to the Enemy armour, plus lots of fusion drives for kinetic missiles and more for nuke (or maybe even antimatter) tipped missiles.
If the Enemy transit the wormhole slowly to give them a good look round before entering this solar system then they'll be sitting ducks for whatever the Benefactors throw at them, now they may be arrogant but they're not stupid and they'll know that as well, so odds are they'll transit at best speed so as to punch through and past the Benefactor ships into the open where they can manuevre. Which means they'll hit the asteroids we cheerfully placed right in their path with considerable force, imparting lots of lovely kinetic energy into their armour, hopefully causing a breach or two. A follow up barrage from the mass drivers to make doubly sure, then the first wave of kinetic missiles hits them, targetting weapons emplacements not already crushed by asteroid impact to further degrade their point defense capabilities, the second wave of kinetic missiles targetting breaches in the armour to widen them and punch through the outer hull completely. Then a wave of nuke tipped fusion drive missiles targetted to go through the hull breaches and detonate inside the ship, toasting the crew. More mass driver barrages, more kinetic missile waves, more crew toastie nukes, rinse and repeat.
Remember we're not trying to destroy the ship, we're going for mission kill by irradiating the interior.
The mothership and cruisers are held in reserve due to their depleted munitions, only to be deployed if we're not causing enough damage fast enough.
Once the Enemy probing force is dead we re-choke the wormhole with more asteroids plus the mangled only slightly radioactive remains of their own ships.
The Enemy will abandon suicide runs through the chokepoint of the wormhole and resort to the old fashioned method of sending a fleet via standard FTL to kill us all.

If it works we bought ourselves another 100 years to get more people off planet, to found far flung colonies, to forge alliances with other races and to eventually build up military forces so we can defend our colonies long after Earth is dead.
If it doesn't then at least we went down fighting trying to take a few of the bastards with us. And we already ensured survival of our race with the arks.

[Rossum]

My thoughts:

1). Get all of Earths nations and leaders to stop attacking eachother so we can concentrate on the survival of our sepcies.

2). Have all religious people agree to pray to their all-powerful and benevolent dieties in the hope that God is actually real and will perform a miracle in order to save us all. I'm guessing this has about a 0.0% chance of working but with any luck it will keep the fundys busy while we work on handling things with science. If God does actually manifest in reality then we plan alter our other plans accordingly. At the very least, God might save the religious people which I suppose is better than nothing... or he tells ust that the afterlife exists and we plan accordingly.

3. Have everyone who believes in The Singularity work on that with proper supervision in the hope that an all-knowing and benevolent super AI will be created who can pull off the technomagic we need to survive this disaster. Worst comes to worst, we develop an interface that SuperAI can use to absorb all of our brains so that when it flees the Earth we all live on as beings of pure energy.

4. Figure out a way to repair the Benefactor ship and develop life support systems for humans. From a strictly utilitarian standpoint, the Benefactors are the space capable race who know how their technology works and what the heck is going on. If the Benefactors have the capacity to reproduce and/or colonize planets then we give them all the resources they need to repair their ships and colonize planets in the event they have to make a speedy getaway.

Worst case scenario, Earth is totally screwed but at least the Benefactors got enough of a refuel and a head start that they can potentially survive to colonize another planet.

Marginally better scenario, they escape but keep enough records of the human race, samples of terrestrial DNA, and human workers on hand so that the humans on board may eventually colonize another world and won't burden the Benefactors in their mission to survive extermination.

Best case scenario, The benefactors have magic replicators on hand that can help us make our own ships that are are almost as good as their own ships.

5. Figure out a way to shut down that wormhole or keep the Enemy from reaching our solar system. I'm not sure what kind of interstellar travel the Enemy had that let them wipe out a coalition of spacefaring races considering those races have wormhole technology that can get them to Earth so quickly (while apparently their normal travel time is in centuries).

I know I'm missing something here because I'm envisioning the Enemy ships as being slower than Benefactor ships but absurdly super powerfully strong somehow. IN which case I'm assuming the only way to survive is to outrun them... but if the Enemy ships reverse engineer the faster Benefactor drive then we have no advantage whatsoever and can only hope for several miracles in a row to save us.



The only real option I'm seeing here is to repair the Benefactor ships, put as many humans on them as we can (while preserving as much of our history and biodiversity as possible) and hoping to set up some kind of jamming device to keep the Enemy from entering the solar system while the Benefacor ships fly off with as much fuel/resources as they can carry.

Possibly have some system set up so that we can alert them if we haven't been exterminated in the mean time... I'm guessing the farther away the Benefactors are from Earth when the Enemy gets here the better their chances of survival are. But if we can build something in the meantime to help them then maybe have a way to give it to them.

Anyway, have the various religious people or Singularity wishers work on their super projects while the rest of humanity tries to get space ships off the ground. Maybe the Benefactors leave behind some data for us to use in making our own ships. If the Enemy shows up, we get ready to blow up all of our technology so that the Enemy won't reverse engineer what meger stuff we have that might give them an advantage later.

If the Enemy shows up and God or our Post-Singularity AI hasn't manifest to help us destroy them then we stall for time and/or party like there is no tomorrow.

Oh, maybe have some hidden bomb shelters scattered across our planet with a few secret survivors nobody knows about so that even if the Enemy exterminates everyone on the surface then there is the cance that the vault-dwellers will survive long enough to eventually emerge and recolonize our own planet. Assuming the Enemy doesn't colonize it first or blow it up that is.

[Star Wars 888]

How about, like I've mentioned:

1. Repair the benefactor ship and possibly build more of them.
2. The benefactor scientists, engineers and such can teach us how to replicate their tech.
3. Try to close the wormhole.
4. The enemy in this scenario being super arrogant sends a single dreadnought, which the benefactor ships overwhelm and disable.
5. Send a broadcast warnin the dreadnought's commander to not send a distress signal or risk a very painful death.
6. Force the commander of the dreadnought to send a false message that they succeeded.
7. Convince or if that's not possible force the dreadnought's scientists, engineers and such to explain how to replicate their tech.
8. With alien tech from both races, we can expand humanity and one day maybe have the power to strike back at the bad alien race.
9. Maybe using the benefactor warp tech we could find a way to travel to the Star Wars galaxy and get tech from there.
10. Encorporate both aliens into our society (but have a very careful eye on the hostile one).

[LionElJonson]

Then we build up until we trigger the Singularity; they don't sound like they're post-Singularity, so it'd be the only real hope of those humans left behind on Earth.

I've got basically the same question to ask you that Terwynn does, Jonson.

How, precisely, do you expect the Singularity to help? I mean, is this plan more sophisticated than, say:

1. Pile up computer hardware until it (somehow!) attains sentience
2. ???
3. VICTORY!

Do you have anything in particular in mind there, or is that all you've got?

Better than rolling over and dying for those people left on Earth, and who knows what it might do. It might mass-upload and fake the extinction of humanity, and then move on when the aliens are no longer paying attention. It might decipher the fundamental laws of physics and create some sort of FTL escape hatch for humanity, so we can start over somewhere else. It might create a swarm of Berserker robots to kill the hostile aliens. Simply put, those left behind by the exodus from Earth would have no hopes of military resistance, and even a small chance of survival is better than none.

[Rossum]

Then we build up until we trigger the Singularity; they don't sound like they're post-Singularity, so it'd be the only real hope of those humans left behind on Earth.

I've got basically the same question to ask you that Terwynn does, Jonson.

How, precisely, do you expect the Singularity to help? I mean, is this plan more sophisticated than, say:

1. Pile up computer hardware until it (somehow!) attains sentience
2. ???
3. VICTORY!

Do you have anything in particular in mind there, or is that all you've got?

Better than rolling over and dying for those people left on Earth, and who knows what it might do. It might mass-upload and fake the extinction of humanity, and then move on when the aliens are no longer paying attention. It might decipher the fundamental laws of physics and create some sort of FTL escape hatch for humanity, so we can start over somewhere else. It might create a swarm of Berserker robots to kill the hostile aliens. Simply put, those left behind by the exodus from Earth would have no hopes of military resistance, and even a small chance of survival is better than none.

First off:

The Enemy in this Scenario has apparently fought and demolished a massive space-capable civilization or more. Also, it seems that they will be able to reverse engineer wormhole technology from their conquered race in three years (which is pretty darn fast) while their standard means of intersteller travel would take them a century or so to get here.

From what I'm reading the Enemy was able to conquer a civilization that has wormhole technology which is apparently far superior to their own engines. The Benefactors had better engines than them but lost. That implies that the Enemy ships are crazy monsters in combat and that they don't mind going into combat with centuries-long travel time.

I'm going to propose that this Enemy is actually post-singularity already. They could be a race of sociopath killer robots who are exterminating all organic life, stealing the remaining tech, converting the rubble into massive fields of power plants and factories, and building more of themselves to repeat the process. They might not even have any concerns other than expansion and extermination.

Making out own post-singularity AI might help us even the playing field... in the same way a cow learning to walk on its hind legs lets it look the farmer in the eye right before getting shot and butchered.


Second:

The Enemy is taking time off to reverse engineer the wormhole technology the Benefactors had. That means the Enemy is willing to sift through the rubble of its conquests to find technology that lets them kill other civilizations faster. If they aren't post-singularity now then they might become post-singularity after they bomb our planet and sift through our computers to find what we were working on.

So, after they beat the Benefactors they got their wormhole tech, after they beat us then they get post-singularity AIs... with those under their wing they might be able to steamroll even stronger civilizations and steal their stuff unless our magic AI software doesn't just hand them all the secrets in the universe.

Enemy Commander: Why thank you humans. You just gathered all your greatest scientists together to use your advanced computing technology to create a genuine post-scarcity intelligence. We always wanted one of these. We'll put it to good use in our quest to exterminate all other life forms in the universe. Oh, and your reward will be having your planet utterly annihilated. We understand that the movie Star Wars featured a big battle station that could annialate an entire planet with a single shot. We'll just have your precious AI build such a "Death Star" for us. You'll be the first of many races who will be rendered extinct by it. ... Oh, and now your wonderful AI has already calculated the exact location of all of your Ark ships and fed it into our battle computers. We'll be sure to broadcast the destruction of Earth to them before we finish them off.


Plus, could you be so certain that a magical post-scarcity AI would be loyal to you? If the Enemy reaches Earth and wants the AI then we would have to destroy it to keep it out of their hands. Would the AI betray us and join them to save its own skin? The AI is pretty much worthless as a tool unless it can magic up the hardware to make either weapons or an escape route for us. That, and any detail we leave behind about its construction means the Enemy have another clue how to take the AI for themselves.

If the AI isn't able to build a superweapon capable of annihilating the Enemy ships before they reach Earth then the only chance we have is to flee... but if it leaves behind any evidence or trace of its preceding technology then the Enemy can reverse engineer it. Thus, the AI would probably absorb all the data it can, build a ship or more with all the resources it can carry, and destroy the Earth itself so that the Enemy would not have a chance of reverse engineering it.


Best post-scarcity AI scenario I can think of is that it invents a delorean that can travel through time and staffs it with self replicating nanobots with its own brain inside. Then it absorbs the memories of everyone on Earth, travels back in time as far as it can, goes all gray goo and eats prehistoric Earth and lets us spend a few thousand or million years as weird post-scarcity nanobot swarm monsters so we can build up our own forces into inhuman soulless killing machines to absorb numerous other solar systems and begin our fight against the Enemy before the Benefactors even arrive to warn us!

Of course, if we're going to add time travel and soulless post-singularity robots into the mix then it could very well be that it WE are the Enemy! We could be so afraid of a horrible remorseless alien army that we sacrifice everything including our own past in order to become a remorseless alien army to defend ourselves... only to find that we accidentally became the very monsters that the Benefacors are fleeing from! How dreadfully ironic that would be.

[PeZook]

It would also be awesome, since it would mean we're the ones doing the genociding, so we don't have to be afraid and sacrifice our own past to do it so ouch paradox ouch ouch my brain.

[Sarevok]

Can someone summarize what is going on here ? This thread has taken a turn into lunar bat county.

[Decimator]

It's starting to sound to me like these "benefactors" aren't telling us something. How, exactly, do you lose to an empire which has all the strategic mobility of a crippled slug compared to yourself?