How much time would we need to take on...

[Luke Skywalker]

Inspired by a spacebattles.com thread

So let's make a few assumptions:

1. Scientific research and advancement continues, and the fundies do not win some major political seat that halts this.
2. We do not suffer a major mass extinction event that sets us backwards a few centuries.
3. We survive for an undefined period of time and do not undergo a nuclear holocaust, biological destruction, global warming, etc.

Assuming this, and based on the laws of physics that we know, including theories that contain a decent amount of evidence supporting it, how many years of development will it probably take for us to be able to survive an invasion by:

1. Starship troopers movie force
2. WotW aliens
3. The Global Defense Initiative
4. The Systems Alliance
5. The Cyclons
6. The United Federation of Planets
7. The Reapers
8. The Borgs
9. The Imperium of Man
10. The Empire
11. The Culture

[Simon_Jester]

The aliens from the original War of the Worlds we could take on today- they'd be a lot less impressive to someone with antitank missiles and gas masks. Depending on the era, GDI has pretty much the same arsenal we do today, or a much more sophisticated one, so there's no way to say.

Going into the territory of "four and up," the question is silly- all those civilizations gain huge military advantages from technology we simply cannot predict ever existing. If those things exist, then we might be able to invent them, but there's no way to tell how long it would take any more than cavemen could predict how long it would take to invent nuclear fission. And if we stick to "theories that contain a decent amount of evidence supporting it," those things flat out are not possible... but without them, mounting an effective defense against many of the threats you list is similarly not possible, or at least not practical.

[Purple]

I will comment on those that I know.

1. Starship troopers movie force
They have FTL starships and infinite reinforcements and we don't. However, they are also stupid. Hence this is all I can say.

If they do not bomb us from orbit than we can hold them off in definitively using WW1 strategy and technology. Otherwise they win until we get something compatible to their space weapons. And considering the fact that there is no reason to develop such weapons as space wars are not going to happen ever and so it would be stupid for human kind to develop them.

2. WotW aliens
Specify iteration. What version of the movie? The old one or the new ones? Or the original radio drama?

3. The Global Defense Initiative
This is the GDI from Tiberian Sun right? Their weapons are barely above our own in terms of technology. Yes they have things like tank mounted railguns and some lasers but most of their tech is not that much more advanced than what we would have had if the cold war had not ended. So I would say 2050 just to be safe.

6. The United Federation of Planets
Again spaceship vs ground troops. The UFP can obliterate us from orbit in any era as space warfare just newer is going to happen without magic physics that they have and we don't. And since we don't have them we will newer develop weapons to counter a threat from someone whose primary way of getting to us relies on it.

If you take away the starships... Well we do have an episode showing Napoleonic infantry defeating Worf and the away team. And those are about as heavy as they get in terms of troop deployment and weapons so yeah.

8. The Borgs
Same as above. Although I would guess you need something closer to WW1 tech to kill them due to the personal shields/armor thing they have going.

[Imperial528]

Just nit-picking here....

2. WotW aliens
Specify iteration. What version of the movie? The old one or the new ones? Or the original radio drama?

What do you mean "original" radio drama? What ever happened to the book? You know, the one that takes place in 19th century Britain.

Although really the ones from the book, assuming they bring interstellar Advil or biohazard suites this time, could be wiped out with a WWII or maybe even WWI force. Against modern armies they would stand no chance.

With the UFP, if we take the low end-estimates, maybe if we manage to boost enough warheads into orbit and hope they don't shoot them down or fire back. But that's silly, they could easily launch torpedoes at us while hiding behind the moon and there'd be almost nothing we could do to fight back, except maybe get lucky with our missile defense, but that's unlikely. Even if we advance to the point where we can easily defend against their ship-based weapons, they could easily lob obscene amounts of antimatter at us, or even say just a warp core attached to nacelles, hurtling at us at .99c or above, and we'd be fucked.

The Borg should actually be pretty easy, assuming that the events of the episode I Borg are correct, we just need to create a "topological anomaly", as the episode put it, and send it to the Borg. Hopefully, it will kill them before they kill-fuck the entire planet. Oddly enough, if the collective thinks very slowly as a whole instead of very quickly, it will actually work to their advantage in this case. If we can't do that, we're fucked.

For the rest of the list, I don't know enough about them, or there's just no way to definitively say.

[Purple]

What do you mean "original" radio drama? What ever happened to the book? You know, the one that takes place in 19th century Britain.

I just have a soft spot for the radio drama. I even have it on my hard drive as an audio file.

With the UFP, if we take the low end-estimates, maybe if we manage to boost enough warheads into orbit and hope they don't shoot them down or fire back. But that's silly, they could easily launch torpedoes at us while hiding behind the moon and there'd be almost nothing we could do to fight back, except maybe get lucky with our missile defense, but that's unlikely. Even if we advance to the point where we can easily defend against their ship-based weapons, they could easily lob obscene amounts of antimatter at us, or even say just a warp core attached to nacelles, hurtling at us at .99c or above, and we'd be fucked.

This is silly. When has the UFP ever acted like this? Something like that would be severely out of character for them.

[Imperial528]

It would also be severely out of character for them to attack Earth, for that matter.

Now, we could say that they would try and dominate us economically, but... they don't do that either. Really, they'd probably just watch until we either kill ourselves, a warp culture intervenes, or we become "ready".

[Luke Skywalker]

Remember that this thread is not discussing whether or not we can take on those powers today, but how long it would take for us to be able to do so.

[bilateralrope]

What is the goal of the invading force ?
To conquer us or to destroy us ?

That will change the enemies tactics. For example, look at the IOM. To conquer us, they will land the guard. While that is going to be a serious problem, it's still much easier to fight them than it is to survive an exterminatus.

What counts as a win for Earth ?
Fighting them off is obvious, but what about negotiating for a favourable terms of surrender ?
What about causing enough problems for their conquering force that they decide to destroy us instead ?

[Srelex]

About fifty thousand years of non-stop development to encase the solar system in a protective Dyson Sphere? I mean really, this can't be answered properly as nobody can predict what sort of tech developments might occur in the next century, let alone if we had to prepare ourselves against a undefined attack by sci-fi factions.

[Purple]

Well one thing we can predict is that since by our laws of physics space war of the kind needed to stop SF starships is impossible. Ergo, no one would ever intentionally develop weapons and technology to fight such a war leaving any hypothetical earth defense with only ad hoc improvised means of doing it's job. And that would put us at a great disadvantage.

[Traveller]

1) We could defeat those guys easily with today weapons. The St\T guys (and gals) are fairly fanatical and not afraid to die, but they are basically stupid. They use massed WW1 style infantry attacks with little recon, manuver or fire support of any kind. One on one, they are no better than our soliders today, reasonably competent singly, but in mass, they fight like its 1799. Im going by the movie verion and not the book-fyi.

2) Im assuming you mean the WoWT aliens and there shields. We only ever see there shields defeat conventional weapons, artillery, missles etc. We have no idea if there shields also offer protection against directed energy weapons. Since kinetic weapons are totally useless vs them, I would say at least 100 years of non-stop refinement of ground and air-based laser weapons. And even then, simply have no way to know if even then that would be effective.

3) Been to long since I played that, but I dont recall there tech being all the wonderful. Just more efficent in terms of deployment I think. We could probably beat them. Unless they do the dreaded zerg-tank rush. We take way too long to make tanks and other weapons systems, and as time wears on, we get *worse* at cranking out weapons system in a efficent and timely manner-dont expect that to magically reverse itself anytime soon either

4) No idea

5) If the idea is there just sit back and nuke us from orbit, wed lose. At this moment in history we have no resources to spare for mass off world development and I dont expect that situation to change much even in a centurty from now. If they decide to invade. We have plenty of AP weapons and ammo that can be carried by individual soliders, so I would expect the clankers to be formidable but not unbeateable even with todays weapons. Depends on numbers, but we wouldnt need any radically new tech to take them on. There air-support is another matter but Im also going to assume our conventional jets could destroy raiders, but thats an unknown. There speed would be the real advantage vs our jets, if that would be critical or not I cant say.

6) Too much magi-tech. But one the ground, the UFP are even dumber and more useless than the Federal army of ST. We have ranged artillery, mortars, RPGs, body armor, long-range sniper rifles, ground attack aircraft and so. All the UFP has are there phasers and there pajamas and there feet. Our guys now can hump it for hours in a hot desert with 60pds. of gear and ammo on there backs, then drop it and fight for hours after that. Your typical UFP 'security dude' cant handle anything outside there climate controlled bubbles and then only for short periods of time. Yes, they could inflict some causaulties with there ray-guns, maybe even damage or disable some vehicles, but thats about it. From space, forget it. Too much fantasy tech that no amount of R+D in our universe could overcome. But we could stop them easily now on the ground. In fact, theyd probably regret trying in a real hurry. Without there magic starships to vaporize things from orbit, they'd be butt-stomped,fast.

7 No idea

8 Hard to say, killing a borg isnt that hard, what you really need to do is take a low-tech approach. Edged weapons, blunt objects, even our guns and bombs would probaly shred them easy. We dont use hokey energy guns so there shields would be useless. Again, no real tech advances need to defeat them in single combat. The borg are slow-moveing, use no ranged weapons of any kind, they just sorta shuffle along. And they rarely seem to exploit there instant comm ability in any real way. They just keep shuffling at you until they are destroyed or win-hardly tactical geniuses. Where it gets tuff if they start borging up say, communcations and other things wed need to co-ordinate a defense. That could be tricky, If we had truely de-centralized phones and data networks, that might help. But again, borg-nano tech is kinda magiky so...

Rest I have no idea..

[CBG]

The "based on the laws of physics we know" really screws us up above the GDI level - it pretty much means we cannot reach technological parity with the faction in question, usually in FTL travel, material science, energy weapons, and in case of IoM and Empire have absolutely no protection or capabilities in anything related to warp\force.

[avatarxprime]

OK, so assuming we're facing off against each force in turn (they magically appear when we can face them?) then do we get to harvest tech from each defeated force to better prepare for the next? Also, if that is allowed, do the physics breaking technologies they employ end up being a kind of black box tech that no one will ever figure out, or can we be expected to figure stuff out and go into production? If so, this would at least help in starting to give us some ability to deal with the forces with heavy space assets, since we can get starship tech.

[keen320]

If that was the case, we could probably get some ok space defense from GDI, IIRC their Ion Cannons can be used to defend against space targets... but I don't know how effective they were when they tried to use them on the scrin.

[NecronLord]

When has the UFP ever acted like this? Something like that would be severely out of character for them.

"Scotty! General Order Twenty Four! Two Hours"

[...]

"This is the commander of the U.S.S. Enterprise. All cities and installations on Eminiar 7 have been located, identified, and fed into our fire control system. In 1 hour and 45 minutes, the entire inhabited surface of your planet will be destroyed. You have that long to surrender your hostages."

From "A Taste of Armegeddon"

[Sarevok]

It is not fair to blame UFP in ground combat. Our own infantry would get slaughtered by Roman Legions if asked to fight on their terms. We fight at range using firearms and vehicle. The UFP does the same by staying orbit and only sending down shuttles and runabouts for air attacks.

[Metahive]

With the UFP, if we take the low end-estimates, maybe if we manage to boost enough warheads into orbit and hope they don't shoot them down or fire back. But that's silly, they could easily launch torpedoes at us while hiding behind the moon and there'd be almost nothing we could do to fight back, except maybe get lucky with our missile defense, but that's unlikely.

Yep, as seen in the episode Patterns of Force where faux-Nazi planet Eikos launches a nuclear missile at the Enterprise and they just shoot it down nonchalantly.

It would also be severely out of character for them to attack Earth, for that matter.

Unless there's a fountain of youth somewhere on Earth. That might compel them to abduct us in our sleep and put us on some other planet.

[Darth Tedious]

If that was the case, we could probably get some ok space defense from GDI, IIRC their Ion Cannons can be used to defend against space targets... but I don't know how effective they were when they tried to use them on the scrin.

The Ion Cannon was fired into space, that is correct (it was in C&C3). It didn't work terribly well, but that may have been more to do with the Scrin's funky ship being able to break into individually functional pieces.

[Luke Skywalker]

Well one thing we can predict is that since by our laws of physics space war of the kind needed to stop SF starships is impossible. Ergo, no one would ever intentionally develop weapons and technology to fight such a war leaving any hypothetical earth defense with only ad hoc improvised means of doing it's job. And that would put us at a great disadvantage.

By that logic, beating any magic fantasy setting is impossible because they have magic.

[Sriad]

1. Starship troopers movie force
2. WotW aliens
3. The Global Defense Initiative
4. The Systems Alliance
5. The Cyclons
6. The United Federation of Planets
7. The Reapers
8. The Borgs
9. The Imperium of Man
10. The Empire
11. The Culture

Do we get to have a benign technological singularity "on schedule" and indulge in post-humanism? Since it's "real Earth" I'm assuming 1: we have fairly comprehensive knowledge of our opponents and 2: we're paranoid enough to keep devoting a substantial % of our resources to military R&D.

If so we can take on Troopers (ground forces) and WotW now. Giving the GDI numerical parity and orbital weapons, about 40 years--not actually deep into singularity-ville, but . They've got combat viable railguns, high energy lasers, cyborgs, etc. No units individually impossible to defeat even with today's technology, "only" strategically and tactically superior.

4-8 are 100-200 years away, but never for Star Trek forces if they get to use time travel and we don't tag along. Saturating space near strategic assets with defense drones and early-warning systems should give us enough oomph to take out ships we see succumbing to megaton-low gigaton attacks from slower-than-light munitions, and weakly godlike AI can apply some pretty awesome point-defense to their attacks.

9 through 11: if we have to extrapolate FTL tech from currently known real science, never. Even extremely optimistically, Albuciarre drives would take many solar masses of matter:energy conversion to transport a single nanoscale Von Neumann device, and wormholes need exotic matter so even assuming they can be stable for more than a few squillionths of a second they'd require stuff we've never seen any evidence of.

If we can capture their shit and use it against them... quite a few centuries, let's say 700 years. Long enough to figure out and construct lots of the most advanced weapons imaginable under "real" physics and again saturate our space with combat drones. The Empire and IoM both use meat-brains to control their ships; use of AI that's incomparably faster and more tactically skilled should allow us to capture a few fighters intact (and they ALWAYS use fighters...) then bootstrap our way up the power scale. If we can discover their tech, about half that; 350 years post-singularity.

The Culture... still never unless we get to discover the tech they use. Their ships, and drones will suicide before letting themselves be captured, not that it would happen anyway; they're perfectly capable of killing anything we could field from lightyears away, without leaving hyperspace. If and only if we can someday discover their tech and have immediate forewarning of an attack in the far, far future from an insanely advanced foe... probably around 2500 or 3000 years post-singularity. They've been around a lot longer, but they don't expand aggressively and only a tiny percentage of their manufacturing power is used for SC, warships, and Mind improvement. Even utilizing "only" the mass of nearest few solar systems we'd be able to surpass the breadth of their production base.

[Whiskey144]

Assuming this, and based on the laws of physics that we know, including theories that contain a decent amount of evidence supporting it, how many years of development will it probably take for us to be able to survive an invasion by:

1. Starship troopers movie force
2. WotW aliens
3. The Global Defense Initiative
4. The Systems Alliance
5. The Cyclons
6. The United Federation of Planets
7. The Reapers
8. The Borgs
9. The Imperium of Man
10. The Empire
11. The Culture

The answer is that given a sufficiently advanced technological level, we could probably defeat any of these.....bar the Culture, as the Culture are the only ones who, AFAIK, are capable of deploying lightyear-ranged (FTL?) weapons.

Timescale, no clue.

[keen320]

Well one thing we can predict is that since by our laws of physics space war of the kind needed to stop SF starships is impossible. Ergo, no one would ever intentionally develop weapons and technology to fight such a war leaving any hypothetical earth defense with only ad hoc improvised means of doing it's job. And that would put us at a great disadvantage.

By that logic, beating any magic fantasy setting is impossible because they have magic.

Not really. Most fantasy settings have people who are vulnerable to guns. Usually Wizards don't fly around in space too far for any weapon of ours to touch them, either.

@Purple: Of course, we have to assume these laws of physics would work for us, otherwise all of their stuff stops working when they bring it over. Then we'd win by default.

[Darth Tedious]

@Purple: Of course, we have to assume these laws of physics would work for us, otherwise all of their stuff stops working when they bring it over. Then we'd win by default.

Stupid space wizards! There's no such thing as the Force!
Everybody knows hoverboards don't work on water.

[Purple]

@Purple: Of course, we have to assume these laws of physics would work for us, otherwise all of their stuff stops working when they bring it over. Then we'd win by default.

Not really. The op clearly contradicts that:

Assuming this, and based on the laws of physics that we know, including theories that contain a decent amount of evidence supporting it, how many years of development will it probably take for us to be able to survive an invasion by:

The only conclusion I can make from this is that the magical things from other universes (warp drive, phasers, hyperdrive etc) work for them and not for us. Otherwise the situation would be rendered: a) meaningless as we win by default or b) in violation of the OP.

[Luke Skywalker]

The purpose of this thread is to see if pure hard sci fi has enough potential to conceivably defeat soft sci fi heavyweights.