Resisting an Invasion

[Simon_Jester]

They could just be way better in a fight. Being extremely mobile doesn't do you any good if you always lose to the local defense force wherever you go.

Or they could have an enormous starting numerical advantage, such that they could afford to devote hordes of troops to covering their logistics while defeating the allies with a tiny fraction of their forces.

Also, this wormhole drive has really serious limitations as a way of obtaining strategic mobility. It's strictly point-to-point, you can't close it behind you if someone else who knows how to use the system is chasing you, and it's strongly implied that generating a wormhole takes serious effort. It's useful for beachhead creation, not for hit-and-run attacks.

Even then it should have let them win the war unless, as you say, the Benefactors aren't telling us something. If nothing else, they could spawn wormholes between all their home systems and rush the full weight of the combined allied system defense force against invaders attacking any point on the network, which would make it almost impossible for the invaders to mass enough force at any one point to break the defenses. This doesn't add up.

[Decimator]

Also, this wormhole drive has really serious limitations as a way of obtaining strategic mobility. It's strictly point-to-point, you can't close it behind you if someone else who knows how to use the system is chasing you...

Not an issue, since, according to the Benefactors, their opponent cannot traverse wormholes yet.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

They could just be way better in a fight. Being extremely mobile doesn't do you any good if you always lose to the local defense force wherever you go.

Indeed. Having the ability to make wormholes may have given the Benefactors great strategic mobility without giving them any edge to the Bad Guys in tactical mobility. And the Bad Guys, being a highly effective homogenizing swarm, probably have had lots of experience in fighting determined, intractable foes with nothing to lose. So the Bad Guys likely know how to use both tactical and strategic mobility to the greatest effect; evidently quite unlike the Benefactors and their allies.

Or they could have an enormous starting numerical advantage, such that they could afford to devote hordes of troops to covering their logistics while defeating the allies with a tiny fraction of their forces.

This is a definite possibility. The scenario states that the Bad Guys control "six percent of the galaxy." Plus another six percent that's been cleared, is under development, and is denied to anyone else. The Benefactors and their allies used to control a further six percent, meaning each individual empire in their coalition was significantly weaker than the Bad Guys to start with.

Even then it should have let them win the war unless, as you say, the Benefactors aren't telling us something. If nothing else, they could spawn wormholes between all their home systems and rush the full weight of the combined allied system defense force against invaders attacking any point on the network, which would make it almost impossible for the invaders to mass enough force at any one point to break the defenses. This doesn't add up.

I'd suspect there's either a range issue . . . the Benefactors can't punch a wormhole far enough to reach anything of real strategic importance to the Bad Guys. And they may have worked out their wormhole generation technology only after the Bad Guys had conquered enough of their territory that any use of Benefactor wormhole technology would've been defensive actions and attempts to push the Bad Guys out of former coalition territory.

[Simon_Jester]

Re: Terwynn
I think the OP stipulates that wormhole technology was used to fend off the enemy (as a threat) for some time before they attacked, which contradicts the "too late to matter" theory... I think. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Range limitations are an interesting theory, though.

Re: Decimator:
As for "well, they haven't figured out how to follow us through wormholes so our inability to close them isn't a disadvantage," it doesn't work that way. Remember, any wormholes I create now will still be around when the enemy does figure out how to traverse wormholes, and will be just as efficient a marching route into my territory then as they are now. Unless wormholes guarantee me the ability to win quickly, I cannot risk using them at all without bearing in mind that the enemy will eventually be able to use them too.

Moreover, you can't count on the enemy taking a long time to figure something out.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

How about, like I've mentioned:

1. Repair the benefactor ship and possibly build more of them.

That gives you a single carrier group. And before you could build any more, you'd have to first build shipyards. Before you could build shipyards, you'd have to build orbital ore processing plants. Before you could have those, you'd have to start mining asteroids. Before you can do that, you have to be able to transport significant quantities of people into space and have them live there. Which means building orbital habitats, Moon bases, and the like. And in order to fuel the ships, you'd have to build antimatter factories. Which means building lots, and lots, of solar-powered particle accelerators.

In other words, you need to go from a single planet with no orbital infrastructure to industrializing a not-insignificant portion of the solar system before you could hope to start building starships. That's why if the Bad Guys turn up in the 1-3 year timeframe, we're not only fucked, we're sodomized with a chainsaw.

4. The enemy in this scenario being super arrogant sends a single dreadnought, which the benefactor ships overwhelm and disable.

Now you have a near-useless hulk that would take years for a properly equipped shipyard to fix. Not to mention addressing the world of hurt the Bad Guy ship may have inflicted on the Benefactors in return.

5. Send a broadcast warnin the dreadnought's commander to not send a distress signal or risk a very painful death.

And what would be the benefit to the Bad Guy commander to obey? After all, the Benefactors have a single carrier group in the system. Sending a distress signal would bring the cavalry riding to the rescue.

6. Force the commander of the dreadnought to send a false message that they succeeded.

Again, assuming you could coerce the commander into doing this, how will he do so when his crew have smashed and otherwise disabled all the comms and computer equipment aboard the ship prior to surrendering? Unless, of course, you're assuming the Bad Guys are pants-on-fire stupid.

7. Convince or if that's not possible force the dreadnought's scientists, engineers and such to explain how to replicate their tech.

Why the fuck would a military warship have fucking scientists aboard it? Do you know what an engineer aboard a military ship does? If something is broken, he fixes it by swapping out components from the ship's stores. Then, the next time the ship comes to port, or has an underway replenishment, they replace the broken parts in the ship's stores with new ones; and the broken parts are sent off to be fixed shoreside. Nobody aboard the ship is going to be able to tell you how to replicate their technology. No more than I could get you to teach me how to build an iPhone from scratch.

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.

They effectively control eighteen percent of the fucking galaxy. A third of their holdings are under their complete control. The most we can do in this scenario is figure out how to run away to the Andromeda Galaxy.

I think the OP stipulates that wormhole technology was used to fend off the enemy (as a threat) for some time before they attacked, which contradicts the "too late to matter" theory... I think. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Not quite. In the original poster's second post on the issue, he stated that:

Unfortunately, much like Germany's V2 programme, it became a viable weapon too late in the war to change the outcome. It did however lengthen the war by several years as the Enemy was forced to redeploy some of its forces towards self defence while the Benefactor fleets, what remained of them, managed to carve some deep wounds into the Enemy.

[Decimator]

Indeed. Having the ability to make wormholes may have given the Benefactors great strategic mobility without giving them any edge to the Bad Guys in tactical mobility. And the Bad Guys, being a highly effective homogenizing swarm, probably have had lots of experience in fighting determined, intractable foes with nothing to lose. So the Bad Guys likely know how to use both tactical and strategic mobility to the greatest effect; evidently quite unlike the Benefactors and their allies.

Enemy and Benefactor ships are able to go toe to toe with eachother, according to the OP. This doesn't take into account tactical mobility, but the strategic advantage is so great that the Benefactors could glass numerous worlds of their choosing with their main force and still be able to defend their own systems. We're talking about a difference of two orders of magnitude here. And that's a ridiculously conservative estimate which assumes that setting up and traversing a wormhole takes an entire year.

This is a definite possibility. The scenario states that the Bad Guys control "six percent of the galaxy." Plus another six percent that's been cleared, is under development, and is denied to anyone else. The Benefactors and their allies used to control a further six percent, meaning each individual empire in their coalition was significantly weaker than the Bad Guys to start with.

We have rough numbers here already, the OP states the Benefactors were outnumbered roughly ten to one. Since the Benefactors can use their main force to raid, this shouldn't be enough.

I'd suspect there's either a range issue . . . the Benefactors can't punch a wormhole far enough to reach anything of real strategic importance to the Bad Guys. And they may have worked out their wormhole generation technology only after the Bad Guys had conquered enough of their territory that any use of Benefactor wormhole technology would've been defensive actions and attempts to push the Bad Guys out of former coalition territory.

Why wouldn't they make a series of wormholes then? Drive a series of wormholes deep into enemy territory, then fan out from there.

As for "well, they haven't figured out how to follow us through wormholes so our inability to close them isn't a disadvantage," it doesn't work that way. Remember, any wormholes I create now will still be around when the enemy does figure out how to traverse wormholes, and will be just as efficient a marching route into my territory then as they are now. Unless wormholes guarantee me the ability to win quickly, I cannot risk using them at all without bearing in mind that the enemy will eventually be able to use them too.

If they refused to use their only advantage when they were being overwhelmed anyway... Well, that would be, as Terwynn puts it, "pants on fire stupid."

[Simon_Jester]

Indeed. Having the ability to make wormholes may have given the Benefactors great strategic mobility without giving them any edge to the Bad Guys in tactical mobility. And the Bad Guys, being a highly effective homogenizing swarm, probably have had lots of experience in fighting determined, intractable foes with nothing to lose. So the Bad Guys likely know how to use both tactical and strategic mobility to the greatest effect; evidently quite unlike the Benefactors and their allies.

Enemy and Benefactor ships are able to go toe to toe with eachother, according to the OP. This doesn't take into account tactical mobility, but the strategic advantage is so great that the Benefactors could glass numerous worlds of their choosing with their main force and still be able to defend their own systems. We're talking about a difference of two orders of magnitude here. And that's a ridiculously conservative estimate which assumes that setting up and traversing a wormhole takes an entire year.

Exactly. SO there is, indeed, something the Benefactors aren't telling us. Either they can't build ships capable of going toe to toe with their enemies (so that even with the wormholes they consistently lose when they send a battlegroup through to attack the enemy's rear area), or there's some enormous adverse consequence to using the wormhole generator, or... something.

But the scenario as written doesn't add up; with the level of mobility they have, the numbers they claim, and the level of firepower they claim, they shouldn't be losing even now, even with their alliance falling apart and outnumbered two or four or, hell, even ten to one.

Unless the enemy has conventional FTL drives fast enough that the mobility advantage of a wormhole is greatly reduced... if it takes one hour to open a wormhole to a location it would normally take three or four hours to reach, you don't get much advantage from the system. If it takes one hour to open a wormhole to a location it would normally take months to reach, that should be an unbeatable advantage given anything vaguely like parity between the two sides.

If they refused to use their only advantage when they were being overwhelmed anyway... Well, that would be, as Terwynn puts it, "pants on fire stupid."

Oh, they should have. But they should have because it would let them win quickly. Since they aren't winning quickly even using the wormholes, the disadvantage of the system is still relevant: against an opponent you can't finish off quickly with wormhole-mobile attacks, you must be cautious in using the wormholes at all.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Indeed. Having the ability to make wormholes may have given the Benefactors great strategic mobility without giving them any edge to the Bad Guys in tactical mobility. And the Bad Guys, being a highly effective homogenizing swarm, probably have had lots of experience in fighting determined, intractable foes with nothing to lose. So the Bad Guys likely know how to use both tactical and strategic mobility to the greatest effect; evidently quite unlike the Benefactors and their allies.

Enemy and Benefactor ships are able to go toe to toe with eachother, according to the OP. This doesn't take into account tactical mobility, but the strategic advantage is so great that the Benefactors could glass numerous worlds of their choosing with their main force and still be able to defend their own systems. We're talking about a difference of two orders of magnitude here. And that's a ridiculously conservative estimate which assumes that setting up and traversing a wormhole takes an entire year.

This assumes that wormhole generation is trivial. Given that the Benefactors have enough of a strategic mobility advantage that they can jump a century ahead of the Bad Guys' expansion front, we have to assume that wormhole generation is costly and slow enough that the Bad Guys can get into position to defend against wormhole-based incursions. That, or most wormhole openings end in spectacular failure.

Eighteen percent of the galaxy, by volume, works out to be an area of space 37,600 x 37,600 x 2000 light-years in size. If we assume that the Bad Guys have been at this for 100,000 years, that means they add a cube of space 537 light-years across to their territorial holdings every year. If we assume they've been at it for a million years, then they add a cube of space 250 light-years across every year to their holdings. So if the Bad Guys push straight for Earth, conquering everything in the way, that implies the maximum range for the Benefactor wormhole maker is 25,000 light-years . . . meaning that the Benefactors could've punched wormholes almost anywhere inside Bad Guy space (it also implies that the Benefactors and the Bad Guys have been at war for longer than the lifetime of the human species, but it's a somewhat better assumption than asserting that the Benefactor wormhole maker can punch 53,700 light-year long wormholes . . . meaning that they could've, with enough random point-picking, punched one all the way to the Bad Guys home systems and completely stalled out the war right there. It also implies the Bad Guys are willing and able to cross half the galaxy to smash a single Benefactor carrier battle group.)

I'd suspect there's either a range issue . . . the Benefactors can't punch a wormhole far enough to reach anything of real strategic importance to the Bad Guys. And they may have worked out their wormhole generation technology only after the Bad Guys had conquered enough of their territory that any use of Benefactor wormhole technology would've been defensive actions and attempts to push the Bad Guys out of former coalition territory.

Why wouldn't they make a series of wormholes then? Drive a series of wormholes deep into enemy territory, then fan out from there.

We could assume that wormhole generation takes time and is exceedingly obvious to all but the most myopic of observers, giving the Bad Guys ample time to erect defensive positions around it that the Benefactors and their allies have to first break through. This could limit the usefulness of the wormhole making technology, because all the Benefactors can do once they break out of the Bad Guy defensive positions is conduct glass-everything-that-looks-remotely-hostile raids before the Bad Guys bring up enough reinforcements to throw them out again. If they try to build another wormhole inside Bad Guy territory, they have to hold off repeated Bad Guy assaults during the process; and the Bad Guys can use their numerical superiority to bury the Benefactors under ships and overwhelm them before the Benefactors can complete a wormhole deeper into Bad Guy territory.

[Darth Nostril]

Enemy and Benefactor ships are able to go toe to toe with eachother, according to the OP.

Um wrong.

In terms of size, Benefactor Motherships range 10 Km long by 4 Km wide, with fighter bays, shielding, armour and big guns that have a limited amount of ammunition. Cruisers are of similar proportion and configuration, 1 Km long by 400 Meters wide. Cruisers can re-arm and re-fuel fighters but have no hangars or bays where they can be maintained properly.

Enemy Dreadnoughts average twice as large with corresponding firepower and crew. Most Enemy vessels range smaller, with Dreadnoughts tipping the top of the scale for size. Their thick armour and heavy armament make them slow moving juggernauts.

Benefactors utilised finesse and precision strikes to bring them down. The usual tactic is that, once a chink in Enemy armour appears, hit it with everything you have until you either irradiate the crew or cause a catastrophic chain reaction.

They cannot stand up in a toe-to-toe slugfest, but instead must use their superior speed and agility to snipe away at the target until an armour breach occurs.
Benefactor motherships are combination carrier, mobile repair depot and science expedition whereas the Enemy Dreadnaughts are pure warships.

[Simon_Jester]

Excuse me, I was using "toe to toe" in the operational sense, not the minute by minute blow by blow sense. From an operational perspective, it does not matter whether a Mothership beats a dreadnought by outdancing it and landing a few precision strikes, or by shrugging off its weapons fire and blasting it apart by brute force. What matters is that one Mothership is a match for one Dreadnought. This proves that the two races' weapons capabilities and tactical skill should be at least within shouting distance of each other. Otherwise, one side's big capital ships would beat the other.

If the Benefactors were just bad at fighting or had inferior weapons, they might lose even with wormholes. But it is hard to see how they could lose with wormholes and comparable weapons. Even at very adverse numerical odds.

Which is why I conclude that there's something the Benefactors aren't telling us about how they managed to lose in the first place.

[Decimator]

Excuse me, I was using "toe to toe" in the operational sense, not the minute by minute blow by blow sense. From an operational perspective, it does not matter whether a Mothership beats a dreadnought by outdancing it and landing a few precision strikes, or by shrugging off its weapons fire and blasting it apart by brute force. What matters is that one Mothership is a match for one Dreadnought. This proves that the two races' weapons capabilities and tactical skill should be at least within shouting distance of each other. Otherwise, one side's big capital ships would beat the other.

If anything, this indicates that the Benefactors have superior technology and tactics compared to their opponent, since the OP states that Benefactor motherships are half the size of the enemy dreadnoughts.

[Simon_Jester]

On the other hand, it would seem that they also have inferior production capabilities, or they would probably have built a capital ship class that could beat dreadnoughts reliably (or, for that matter, just optimized warships on the same hull plan as the Motherships).

I would argue that the details don't really matter. Something is fishy about this scenario, about the Benefactor claim to have started with something like parity and had the advantage of wormholes and yet still losing.

Although it really doesn't matter, especially now that the "Benefactors" have drawn this horribly powerful enemy down on our heads. Our only chance is to send out a refugee fleet and pray for the best.

[Darth Nostril]

I would argue that the details don't really matter. Something is fishy about this scenario, about the Benefactor claim to have started with something like parity and had the advantage of wormholes and yet still losing.
.

They started with technological parity but the Enemy had numerical superiority of ten to one, and they did not start out with wormhole tech, they were just bluffing to keep the Enemy at bay, the breakthrough for stable viable wormholes didn't come until late in the war.

Although it really doesn't matter, especially now that the "Benefactors" have drawn this horribly powerful enemy down on our heads. Our only chance is to send out a refugee fleet and pray for the best.

They could have jumped here, patched up their ships using the resources of the asteroid belts and jumped out again, leaving us to the tender mercies of the xenocidal Enemy when they finally got here.
Instead they decided to stick around, share their technology with us and attempt to defend this system against a wormhole based attack.

[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).

[Ghost Rider]

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).

You could start by refuting said response, dipwit instead just ignoring it because you're too fucking stupid.

[Darth Nostril]

Do you have the reading comprehension skills of a six year old girl? Your suggestions were all thoroughly eviscerated on the previous page, due to none of them having any merit whatsoever.
I suggest you get someone to read Razor Ones posts to you aloud, taking care to explain what any long words might mean.

To anyone else suggesting the Benefactors blast the Enemy task force, the OP states, and then clarifies in a later post, that we can repair and refuel the Benefactor ships but we cannot re-arm them due to the necessary elements not being present in significant quantities in this solar system, therefore they only have the munitions left when they fled through the wormhole and do not now have enough firepower to take down a Dreadnaught. Hence why they are asking us for a little help blockading the wormhole mouth.

*edit* GR beat me to it. Damn.

[Star Wars 888]

That gives you a single carrier group. And before you could build any more, you'd have to first build shipyards. Before you could build shipyards, you'd have to build orbital ore processing plants. Before you could have those, you'd have to start mining asteroids. Before you can do that, you have to be able to transport significant quantities of people into space and have them live there. Which means building orbital habitats, Moon bases, and the like. And in order to fuel the ships, you'd have to build antimatter factories. Which means building lots, and lots, of solar-powered particle accelerators.


In other words, you need to go from a single planet with no orbital infrastructure to industrializing a not-insignificant portion of the solar system before you could hope to start building starships. That's why if the Bad Guys turn up in the 1-3 year timeframe, we're not only fucked, we're sodomized with a chainsaw.

You merely need to repair the Benefactor ship and MAYBE build more. And since when would you have to mine asteroids and build orbital ore processing plants?

Now you have a near-useless hulk that would take years for a properly equipped shipyard to fix. Not to mention addressing the world of hurt the Bad Guy ship may have inflicted on the Benefactors in return.

Are you saying that the Benefactors have no way of repairing their ship? This is why I claim that this scenario is too vague.

And what would be the benefit to the Bad Guy commander to obey? After all, the Benefactors have a single carrier group in the system. Sending a distress signal would bring the cavalry riding to the rescue.

AFTER they disable the dreadnought and have it outmatched.

Again, assuming you could coerce the commander into doing this, how will he do so when his crew have smashed and otherwise disabled all the comms and computer equipment aboard the ship prior to surrendering? Unless, of course, you're assuming the Bad Guys are pants-on-fire stupid.

Because doing that in this scenario will make their lives rather miserable. If they comply they'll live and maybe get rewarded.

Why the fuck would a military warship have fucking scientists aboard it? Do you know what an engineer aboard a military ship does? If something is broken, he fixes it by swapping out components from the ship's stores. Then, the next time the ship comes to port, or has an underway replenishment, they replace the broken parts in the ship's stores with new ones; and the broken parts are sent off to be fixed shoreside. Nobody aboard the ship is going to be able to tell you how to replicate their technology. No more than I could get you to teach me how to build an iPhone from scratch.

This contradicts the common opinion in the "What if the Empire invaded Modern Day Earth" thread that the invasion force would have skilled engineers and scientists with them. Again, this scenario is too vague.

They effectively control eighteen percent of the fucking galaxy. A third of their holdings are under their complete control. The most we can do in this scenario is figure out how to run away to the Andromeda Galaxy.

What is it with you people in this forum being super pessimistic? If they can achieve that level of tech, we can too, especially if we have Benefactor AND that other alien tech.[/quote]



@Ghost Rider:

What is your fucking problem? You suddenly have this hatred and disrespect of me for absolutely no reason. Like, is this how you act around others? Calling other people "fucking stupid" to their face for some irrelevant reason a few minutes after you meet them?

[Darth Nostril]

*moronic bullshit and whinging*

Jesus titty fucking Christ on a pogostick in a minefield you really can't read can you.

Mothership Crew: ~38,000 (55,000 full complement, casualties sustained in battle).
Support Staff on Mothership: ~24,000 (Maintenance, repair crews, service staff, etc)
Soldiers, Pilots: ~11,500
Officers: ~1800
Science Personnel: ~700

The Support Staff figure contains its own organisational structures, department heads, foremen, overseers etc. that keep the maintenance and manufacturing capabilities of the Mothership in shape.

The science personnel are included on any typical Mothership. Motherships were built and designed to be largely autonomous, capable of sustaining long range patrol and deep strikes into enemy territory, as well as providing firepower and support for shorter ranged vessels such as Cruisers and Benefactor Dreadnought-Equivalents.

To this end, the Mothership contains manufacturing and production facilities necessary to reproduce most of their technology and spare parts. The primary problem facing this particular Benefactor Mothership is ammunition, which requires advanced planetary infrastructure and a decent respite. Prior to their entry into the Wormhole they were chased mercilessly by the Enemy, the Wormhole being their one safe point. For now.

Getting back on track, a science staff is usually included on any Mothership class vessel for obvious reasons and is generally well rounded enough to handle most anything they come across.

Just go and play with your plastic ponies little girl, the grownups are talking.

[Decimator]

Although it really doesn't matter, especially now that the "Benefactors" have drawn this horribly powerful enemy down on our heads. Our only chance is to send out a refugee fleet and pray for the best.

They could have jumped here, patched up their ships using the resources of the asteroid belts and jumped out again, leaving us to the tender mercies of the xenocidal Enemy when they finally got here.
Instead they decided to stick around, share their technology with us and attempt to defend this system against a wormhole based attack.

Plus we were already screwed, we just didn't know it. The enemy's expansion would have wiped us out within a century or two anyway. The only thing the Benefactors' actions have changed is to give us the opportunity to escape.

[Star Wars 888]

Jesus titty fucking Christ on a pogostick in a minefield you really can't read can you.

Mothership Crew: ~38,000 (55,000 full complement, casualties sustained in battle).
Support Staff on Mothership: ~24,000 (Maintenance, repair crews, service staff, etc)
Soldiers, Pilots: ~11,500
Officers: ~1800
Science Personnel: ~700

The Support Staff figure contains its own organisational structures, department heads, foremen, overseers etc. that keep the maintenance and manufacturing capabilities of the Mothership in shape.

The science personnel are included on any typical Mothership. Motherships were built and designed to be largely autonomous, capable of sustaining long range patrol and deep strikes into enemy territory, as well as providing firepower and support for shorter ranged vessels such as Cruisers and Benefactor Dreadnought-Equivalents.

To this end, the Mothership contains manufacturing and production facilities necessary to reproduce most of their technology and spare parts. The primary problem facing this particular Benefactor Mothership is ammunition, which requires advanced planetary infrastructure and a decent respite. Prior to their entry into the Wormhole they were chased mercilessly by the Enemy, the Wormhole being their one safe point. For now.

Getting back on track, a science staff is usually included on any Mothership class vessel for obvious reasons and is generally well rounded enough to handle most anything they come across.

Just go and play with your plastic ponies little girl, the grownups are talking.

What the fuck is your problem? This is like the first time we've ever chatted online, and you suddenly hate me.


"plastic ponies little, girl, the grownups are talking" - "grownups"? Let's me honest here; can you name ANY adult you have ever known and RESPECT that says that to a random guy the first time they meet?




Back on topic, the lack of ammunition for the Benefactor ship could be a problem. Maybe they could send one of their scout vessels to find a Benefactor planet and get ammunition and then come back.

[Darth Nostril]

Actually it's your problem, the special problem you have in that you are a ignorant little shit with no comprehension of how anything works, combined with your selective illiteracy when anyone contradicts you with actual facts.

Oh and respect isn't given, it's earned, and after 200+ useless shit posts you are deeply in the red and thus back on the ignore list, little girl.


Question for Razor One, how energy intensive is creating the wormhole protection field ? I'm figuring there's only enough power for the field and main drives if it's shoehorned into an existing hull rather than being built into a whole new spaceframe designed from scratch. In which case the attacking Dreadnaughts won't have main weapons active during wormhole transit leaving them more vulnerable to asteroid bombardment in the wormhole right up until they completely exit at which point they can power down the field and power up weapons. They may well have point defense up to deal with any minefield they expect the Benefactors to lay but in the face of a ten kilometre asteroid dead ahead that they can't maneuver around I can't see point defense doing much beyond surface damage, in the process creating a debris field that is not going to do any surface mounted weapons any good at all.

Basically we need a bit more spec on wormhole protection field generation, how much power does it take, how long can the field be sustained, how big can the field be ...

[Razor One]

Working on addressing points as they come. May skip a few so I can get some sleep.

1) Am I correct in taking this to mean 6% of the volume of the galaxy's disk (I calculate a circle somewhat over 10,000 light year radius)?

Yes.

2) Does the Enemy exploit all the solar systems in this volume or only a fraction of the total? If so, what fraction?

A fraction, depending various circumstances such as nearness to inhabited and developed systems, commercial opportunities, resource availability etc. Some regions have very high utilisations whilst other areas are simply left with basic monitoring stations and few if any inhabitants or attempts at exploitation.

If I had to give a number, I'd say a tenth on average, assuming they generally tend to ignore red and white dwarfs and go for main sequence stars above K.

3) How extensively does the Enemy exploit their solar systems? Are we talking a well-developed solar system being one filled with vast numbers of habitats supporting untold trillions here? Or is it more like soft SF where they mostly just live off the thin life scum and crust of habitable planets?

More soft SF.

Benefactors had similar levels of exploitation for their territories.

Assuming they have settled 6% of the volume of the galaxy's disk at 1000 trillion people (3 orders of magnitude above "trillions") I get an average of ~80,000 people per solar system. This suggests we're probably talking about typical space opera population densities (assuming most of their civilization is on habitable planets and those average 1 per 10,000 stars that's an average of 800 million per planet, which seems relatively reasonable). That's very good from our perspective, a civilization covering an appreciable fraction of the galaxy's disk could many orders of magnitude larger.

Sounds fairly good to me

Let me put it another way, how close are they to what one might call an effective postscarcity economy (one where machines do all the work and there's no need for human - err, alien - labor)?

Probably not at all, otherwise I see them putting the machines to do all the work of killing and settling back for a relaxing evening. They'd utilise machinery for the same reasons we currently do, cost-effectiveness and in regions too dangerous to use typical manual labour. They're fairly Space Opera'ish in this regard.

...Then, force the commander to relay to the higher ups in that alien race that they've succeeded in their mission. Oh, and tell them that the wormhole is extremely dangerous for some reason and that ships shouldn't go through it anymore. Then, force the surviving engineers on that enemy ship to teach us how to make dreadnoughts and other tech that may be useful. Maybe give them positive incentives to do that. Make sure that they are not inclined to warn the higher ups of the enemy forces.

They'd probably crash their ship into the planet screaming "DIE ALIEN SCUM!" all the way rather than surrender. They'll fight you to the death and even if you could capture one without killing them first, no incentive you could possibly offer them would work. It would be like a caveman offering a damp cave and lukewarm ashes as the finest motivations for joining his tribe to an abject technophile of the modern era.

I think we still need more information.

Can ships see what's on the other side of a wormhole before they traverse?

No. Communications however can make it through.

What anchors the wormholes? From your description, it appears that they follow the star, do the wormholes also orbit the star?

For the purposes of this scenario we'll entertain three possibilities in order of what I think to be best - worst case scenarios.

1. Heliopause
2. In the Jovian system at one of the Lagrangian points.
3. In the Earth / Moon system.

The third scenario works for and against us I think. It's proximity means that when the enemy comes through they're going to be in prime position to blow us out of the stars. On the other hand, it also means that vessels fleeing through the wormhole won't have too far to go and it puts the enemy Dreadnought in our (albeit pathetic) weapons range.

Do ships traveling through wormholes have any choice in what direction they emerge from the wormhole?

Yes. I'll explain how wormholes work in this setting below.

How easy is it to miniaturize the equipment to traverse wormholes?

It can be miniaturised down to one-man fighter level... in fact the first tests were conducted using them since sending a carrier through was viewed as a quick way to get a lot of people killed.

The main obstacle is range once you're on the other side. Small vessels may be fast but they have limited range and fuel.

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.

The problems with this plan are that submarines and tankers are generally water tight... not air tight.

With only industrial equipment, anyone we send up will likely starve or asphyxiate to death. Most all our industry is geared towards working in an open-air environment, not in a closed system where everything needs to be recycled.

To the rest... these aliens are patient, but their patience has limits. As does their credulity. The moment you say "Give us a century and a one child policy", provided that you get that far, they'll trace your signal, bombard you from orbit and then annihilate every one of us for DARING to attempt to impose terms on them.

The enemy built up a 10:1 advantage for several reasons. Being able to fight wars on multiple fronts as necessary, defending their homeworlds, occupation forces for worlds they've extirpated of all intelligent life, and a massive buildup as a response to the proclaimed military superiority of the benefactors that turned out to be a major bluff on their part.

Given that these aliens are significantly more advanced, I would assume that there are two possible outcomes in this scenario. Either Singularity style events are so precarious and dangerous for the species attempting to pull it off that it generally ends up with their extinction, or, the Enemy and the Benefactors are both post-singularity themselves and nothing we do towards that goal can change the outcome.

If we go by Vernor Vinge's definition of a technological singularity, in that Humans cannot predict the actions of more intelligent entities, then both the Benefactors and the Enemy are post-singularity from our perspective.

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?

The enemy knows about us due to some of our radio signals penetrating the wormhole and filtering through to the other side. Our signals have been penetrating ever since radio was invented in fact and it was only a matter of time before they discovered us.

For the Enemy, the main prize are the Benefactors themselves. It's a kind of personal vendetta at this point. The Benefactors effectively embarrassed the enemy by making the most epic bluff in history and kept it going for years before the enemy wised up and it's something they'd like to even the score for by ensuring their extinction.

We however are the icing on the cake. They're used to stomping civilisations at our technological level and have done so numerous times before in their history. In battle, they'll concern themselves primarily with the Benefactors and, once they're all confirmed as dead, they'll turn their attention to us before heading back through the Wormhole and heading home.

Further expeditionary forces to this area of space would take place at a later time once they've stabilised their home sectors and finished the job with the benefactors allies. Naturally they won't be pants on fire stupid and would leave probes to monitor the situation here.

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.

Emphasis is mine, and they really don't need an excuse since they need to justify themselves to no one. If they had to come up with an excuse, the following would probably be their Letterman List.

1. You were born.
2. You are filth.
3. Killing you will be doing you a favour.
4. All potential threats must be eliminated, no matter how insignificant.
5. Killing you is fun.
6. My children want your bones as flutes.
7. Your skull will make an excellent beverage container.
8. Your spine would make an exquisite back-scratcher.
9. You can barely escape your own gravity, you bury your dead in the ground you live on, you wallow in your own filth and bile and you think that there's nothing at all wrong with that.
10. Every time we kill one of you, it gives you a chance to be reborn as a worthy intelligent life form, it gives you a chance to be reborn as one of us. We are the pinnacle of life and you are the worm beneath our boot. Die.

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

Correct. Though we probably could close it, such plans will likely not be ready in time to prevent the first incursion through the wormhole. Closing it permanently would also cut us off from the benefactors allies.

Part of the instability of the alliance was due in part to the nature of the area the benefactors are native to. It's a densely packed region in the sense of species diversity. Many species have expanded outwards, claimed their territories, wrangled with each other and fought wars with each other. Most of the benefactors allies has, at some point, been at war with just about everyone else.

The coalition the benefactors managed to forge was the first time anyone had managed to unite the races of that sector into an alliance with a common cause. It was a case of Hanging Separately right up until the Benefactors started getting their planets and holdings glassed by the enemy.

From there the Alliance was more cohesive. The idea that it wasn't some massive ploy to catch them off guard and was in fact a genuine attempt to help everyone survive managed to sober even the most pants-on-fire stupid ally of theirs... and there probably were a few allies that were pants-on-fire stupid with regards to their paranoia if not their tactics and general intelligence.

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

Correct.

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

Negative. Traversing wormholes are less drive-like and more akin to, by way of analogy, trying to ride rapids down a river made of acid. Small vessels and large can make it through with the proper shielding to prevent crew liquification. Range and fuel limitations generally make it less practical to send them on more than a test run though.

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.

Correct.

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.

I love this plan. It's simple, it requires very little by way of phlebotinum and unobtainium and it might just be doable given the tech and industry level we and the Benefactors have and it involves actually resisting the invasion.

Running is good of course, it keeps us alive, but fighting keeps Earth in our hands... at least for another century.

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.

Given that intercessory prayer has been proven to be completely useless, all this does is keep the Fundy's busy. Realistically, they're going to go ape over how the end times are nigh and will probably do their best to make it happen for their imaginary friends.

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.

The problem with Singularity is that it is not a cure-all. In this setting, either our enemies are already well past the point of technological singularity making our efforts moot, or singularity is so dangerous to attain that no species has managed to survive it.

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.

Preferably with a few of our ships in tow, though it would make sense to not put all our eggs in one basket as mentioned in "Run like hell" scenarios in previous posts.

Their manufacturing capabilities... I wouldn't go so far as to say they're replicators but they can, with the necessary materials, build their own spare parts and build smaller support vessels and one-man fighters.

They could build some of their smaller vessels and teach us how to use them, perhaps even modify the designs for human use. They can build componentry such as thrusters piece by piece to give us an idea of how it works though only on the small support-vessel scale, not the larger Cruiser-Mothership scale engines.

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 explained it before but I'll reiterate more clearly.

Wormhole weapons began as a secret research project. Think DARPA. When the threat of war came, the Benefactors used "Wormhole Weapons" as a bluff. An almighty bluff. "Get back! Or the Wormhole weapons will get you!". The bluff worked and, from time to time, was reinforced by showing the enemy 'proof' of successful weapons tests.

It worked well enough to delay war for years while the real project was making headway. Eventually the enemy called the bluff and upon discovering just how far they'd been misled and how relatively impotent the Benefactor-Alliance powers were went into a war frenzy.

When the project finally came through as a delivery platform for ships it was too late to win the war but just in time to prolong it. Without wormhole tech, the Benefactors would have been extinct years ago with the remaining powers crumbling under the Enemy's onslaught. Earth would have been oblivious for a full century, at which point, we'd have been screwed.

The Alliance was denied access to wormhole tech by the benefactors for security purposes because they feared the technology being leaked to the Enemy.

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.

Pathetic human race. Arranging their knowledge by category just made it easier to absorb. Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands! Ha ha ha ha!

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.

**head asplodes**

With regards to how wormholes work...

In this setting Wormholes are both natural and artificial in variety. Most every wormhole is natural, the one leading to Earth's doorstep is a natural wormhole that is part of a vast network with end and entry points littered all over the galaxy. Other networks exist that could potentially take you further afield than merely our own galaxy but would require significant resources to track down... likely on par with the Benefactor wormhole project when it was in its prime.

Wormholes are tunnels not only though space but time as well. A degree of time dilation occurs when you travel through a wormhole. Jump in one end and you will probably emerge out the other a few days to a few months later, depending on how stable it is. Coming out after you jumped in is no problem, but finding yourself emerging before you entered can have some very nasty effects that nobody is currently willing to test.

It's possible to travel through wormholes unprotected and make it through safely, provided the wormhole is abnormally, unnaturally stable. Making it through one unscathed is about as likely as winning the lottery three times in a row... though given the size of the universe even dead set unlikely odds are bound to crop up sooner or later. It just can't be counted on reliably.

Some wormholes are known to be artificial but it is not known who made them, why they were made, nor how they are made. The ability to artificially manufacture wormholes is considered to be an order of magnitude or three beyond the technological capabilities of any known empire. It's quietly rumoured amongst the benefactors that the aliens capable of doing so are monitoring the situation and will only get involved if the enemy poses a threat to them. Given their lack of intervention at this point, it can be presumed that the full might of the enemy is no threat to these aliens.

The interesting thing about the time dilation to stability factor is that if you could force a wormhole to become unstable then you could conceivably delay the enemy, though not forever, without having to close the wormhole.

I will reiterate for clarity.

Wormhole tech was too late to make a difference to the outcome of the war. By the time it became operational the enemy had already smashed Benefactor colonies, home worlds and manufacturing capabilities. It only prolonged the war and inflicted billions upon billions of casualties upon the enemy that would otherwise never have eventuated, which in turn forced them to slow down and commit resources to defend areas otherwise secured against standard FTL incursions.

In turn, this bought their allies time. The remaining enemy vessels in Benefactor space continued to hunt down the remaining benefactors, grabbing at every last piece of wrecked junk they could find to try and reverse engineer the wormhole tech for themselves. The group of Benefactors that we're familiar with is the last of the Deep Strike fleets that managed to make it out of enemy territory. Knowing that their home territories were lost and not knowing of any wormhole end-points conveniently near their allies that weren't already crawling with enemy sentries, they tried to strike out into deep space to catch their breath and wound up on our doorstep.

Their choices upon encountering us were to leave us oblivious of the threat to our existence or to make us as dangerous as possible so that when our time comes, however ineffectual, we take a few of the bastards down with us.

{{Additional}}

After typing out all that, a few more for the new posts that came up.

Darth Nostril, I would say that the protective field that stops the crew from getting all gooey wouldn't be too power intensive but the energy demands would likely scale up with size. If we assume a square law with relation to "Surface Area" of a shield-like bubble... Larger vessels could end up being power hogs while smaller vessels would be far more efficient.

Even if they come out with weapons blazing, they're going to have to get their bearings first and foremost. The wormhole would act as an initial blind and if you throw in a few nukes around the wormhole and detonate them strategically the flash and hard radiation may be enough to keep their sensors blinded long enough to do some damage before they could retaliate.

I'm going to go and catch some shut eye. The sun is rising and that is never a good sign.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

That gives you a single carrier group. And before you could build any more, you'd have to first build shipyards. Before you could build shipyards, you'd have to build orbital ore processing plants. Before you could have those, you'd have to start mining asteroids. Before you can do that, you have to be able to transport significant quantities of people into space and have them live there. Which means building orbital habitats, Moon bases, and the like. And in order to fuel the ships, you'd have to build antimatter factories. Which means building lots, and lots, of solar-powered particle accelerators.


In other words, you need to go from a single planet with no orbital infrastructure to industrializing a not-insignificant portion of the solar system before you could hope to start building starships. That's why if the Bad Guys turn up in the 1-3 year timeframe, we're not only fucked, we're sodomized with a chainsaw.

You merely need to repair the Benefactor ship and MAYBE build more. And since when would you have to mine asteroids and build orbital ore processing plants?

And what, praytell, do you propose to build more ships with? Unicorn shit and fairy dust? And how do you propose to fuel said ships?

Now you have a near-useless hulk that would take years for a properly equipped shipyard to fix. Not to mention addressing the world of hurt the Bad Guy ship may have inflicted on the Benefactors in return.

Are you saying that the Benefactors have no way of repairing their ship? This is why I claim that this scenario is too vague.

Taking a fully armed and shielded ship from as grimly fanatical a foe as the Bad Guys seem to be in this scenario would involve shooting the damn thing to pieces so the commander can't scream "Space-Allahu akbar!" while turning his ship into an antimatter bomb/kinetic kill vehicle. Hell, even if the Bad Guys weren't grimly fanatical, the OP seems to state that the Benfactors really need to work at a Bad Guy ship to take it down . . . so, to capture it would involve rendering it unable to fight back . . . which would involve mostly shooting it to pieces. So yes, I'd anticipate repairing the ship afterwards would need the services of a shipyard.

And what would be the benefit to the Bad Guy commander to obey? After all, the Benefactors have a single carrier group in the system. Sending a distress signal would bring the cavalry riding to the rescue.

AFTER they disable the dreadnought and have it outmatched.

Again, what would be the benefit for the Bad Guy commander to obey? The cavalry would far outmatch the now-bloodied Benefactor carrier battle group. Assuming the Bad Guys didn't scream "Space-Allahu Akbar!" the Bad Guy crew would have reasonable expectation of rescue.

Again, assuming you could coerce the commander into doing this, how will he do so when his crew have smashed and otherwise disabled all the comms and computer equipment aboard the ship prior to surrendering? Unless, of course, you're assuming the Bad Guys are pants-on-fire stupid.

Because doing that in this scenario will make their lives rather miserable. If they comply they'll live and maybe get rewarded.

Because allowing your enemy to capture and study your technology and potentially make the war worse for your families would suck? Because if you were ever repatriated to your home nation . . . only to be put on trial for treason for allowing your enemy to capture your technology would suck even worse than life in a POW camp?

Why the fuck would a military warship have fucking scientists aboard it? Do you know what an engineer aboard a military ship does? If something is broken, he fixes it by swapping out components from the ship's stores. Then, the next time the ship comes to port, or has an underway replenishment, they replace the broken parts in the ship's stores with new ones; and the broken parts are sent off to be fixed shoreside. Nobody aboard the ship is going to be able to tell you how to replicate their technology. No more than I could get you to teach me how to build an iPhone from scratch.

This contradicts the common opinion in the "What if the Empire invaded Modern Day Earth" thread that the invasion force would have skilled engineers and scientists with them. Again, this scenario is too vague.

What the fuck are you smoking, shitbird? This is a completely different thread. A military ship is not going to have the sorts of scientists and engineers aboard that we would need. Any invasion planner that isn't a fucking idiot would send those over on the support ships that follow after you've turned your enemy's naval forces into expanding clouds of cooling gas.

They effectively control eighteen percent of the fucking galaxy. A third of their holdings are under their complete control. The most we can do in this scenario is figure out how to run away to the Andromeda Galaxy.

What is it with you people in this forum being super pessimistic? If they can achieve that level of tech, we can too, especially if we have Benefactor AND that other alien tech.

Because science doesn't work like it does on TV. If I dropped a fully operational nuclear submarine into the Thames in Roman-era Great Britain, is it going to allow the people there to enter the 21st century overnight? Fuck no. Even if I dropped that nuclear sub into the Thames in Victorian-era England, the British Empire isn't going to become a 21st century technological civilization overnight. At best, it'd shave a few decades off their development time, provided somebody doesn't inadvertently do something stupid, and kill every Victorian scientist aboard in a massive release of radioactive material.

@Ghost Rider:

What is your fucking problem? You suddenly have this hatred and disrespect of me for absolutely no reason. Like, is this how you act around others? Calling other people "fucking stupid" to their face for some irrelevant reason a few minutes after you meet them?

Did you bother to lurk more than five minutes before you showed up? Maybe, you know, browsed through some old threads before posting to see what the board culture is like? Do you see the board motto?

[Simon_Jester]

Although it really doesn't matter, especially now that the "Benefactors" have drawn this horribly powerful enemy down on our heads. Our only chance is to send out a refugee fleet and pray for the best.

They could have jumped here, patched up their ships using the resources of the asteroid belts and jumped out again, leaving us to the tender mercies of the xenocidal Enemy when they finally got here.
Instead they decided to stick around, share their technology with us and attempt to defend this system against a wormhole based attack.

All right, I suppose that's fair. Though the one question that rises to my mind is how long it would have taken the Benefactors to get here if they hadn't had their attention drawn to this solar system. The rate at which they expand under normal conditions may well be a lot slower than the rate at which they expand when they know their enemy has fled in a certain direction and is trying to build a new nucleus of resistance against them.

[Zaune]

Another avenue of approach occurs to me. I'm going to take a wild guess and suggest that the Benefactor Mothership has the ability to manufacture its own fighters, and presumably the ability to refine the necessary materials from whatever's handy. They could build rather a lot of fighters in one to three years, training human pilots to fly them and kitting them out to carry human nuclear warheads mated to Benefactor-designed penetrators. There is no vessel in any science fiction I've ever read or watched that could shrug off a 50-100kt nuclear warhead going off inside its armour plating, so we only have to get one or two through an enemy ship's defensive screen to render it combat-ineffective if not a complete loss.
The question then would be if we could force the Enemy to give up and go the long way around before we ran out of nukes.