The Race (World War) invade Pandora (Avatar)

[Cosmic Average]

800 years have passed since the Race sent a probe to Pandora. Now their invasion force has arrived. Assume they can breath the air.

Scenario 1: No humans. Earth's gone.

Scenario 2: Jake, Colonel Miles Quaritch, and the rest of the humans are on Pandora. Time frame is at the start of the film.

Scenario 3: The humans have left and Jake's banging blue bits with Neytiri when the race arrive in orbit.

What happens?

[Ahriman238]

Well, the Race are really inflexible, so they're probably going to take incredible casualties from the wildlife, win lose or draw. They'll probably bring roughly 21st century technology with them, and while most of future combat just doesn't seem that much more advanced, the Race are again used to curbstomping primitives with no hope of meaningful resistance and so their tactics and doctrine kind of suck. A lot also hinges on the fate of their ONE SHIP carrying all their nukes. In WorldWar, it was an early, lucky casualty of war.

Assuming they aren't just killed off by the atmosphere, and yes I believe they'd just charge out like lemmings and die.

1.) is probably a Race victory. They'll lose lots more people than they expected but they have the technology and unlike (forget the corporations name) they have the numbers. With the caveat that they absolutely cannot survive Eywa's Wrath/the whole planet turning on them. But I'm not sure the planet can take a mass nuking. There is a chance they'll work out some kind of equitable peace built on mutually assured destruction. If not, it's not like the Race actually has the ability to realistically hunt down the Na'vi everywhere they might go to ground/guerilla.

2.) Is also probably a Race victory (numbers make such a difference) but things could get interesting if they actually drive the various Na'vi tribes and the human mercenaries into an alliance against them, like how they united the Earth in the first book.

3.) Probably the Race (quantity has a quality all it's own) but in this case the Na'vi will swiftly unite and rally to Turok'Matou and Jake is canny enough, and knows eough about the sort of limitations of the Race's hardware, to make life exceptionally difficult for the Race. Unless they start carpet-bombing or nuking areas, or just threaten to in order to bring the locals to heel. The Na'vi can't really hold any specific sites against a determined assault, the Sacred Tree is probably history. But unlike Quartch, I think outsiders shitting on and then leveling their holy site is only going to make the Na'vi pissed off.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, the Race are really inflexible, so they're probably going to take incredible casualties from the wildlife, win lose or draw. They'll probably bring roughly 21st century technology with them, and while most of future combat just doesn't seem that much more advanced, the Race are again used to curbstomping primitives with no hope of meaningful resistance and so their tactics and doctrine kind of suck. A lot also hinges on the fate of their ONE SHIP carrying all their nukes. In WorldWar, it was an early, lucky casualty of war.

Assuming they aren't just killed off by the atmosphere, and yes I believe they'd just charge out like lemmings and die.

They did send space probes to various other planets before sending in conquest/colonization fleets. So they'd know about the atmospheric conditions on a breathable/not breathable level before going out and taking a whiff.

Granted that they can easily underestimate local weather conditions. Like just how nasty winter weather is for them, since the only place snow ever falls on their planet is at the poles, and not much falls even then. But still, that doesn't equate to total ignorance of whether or not they can even survive on the surface for a few minutes.

[Enigma]

The point is moot as the OP states that they can breathe the air.

[Simon_Jester]

True, I was just responding to Ahriman.

The Race is inflexible, but not actually stupid. Given sufficient time to think about a problem, they will foresee most of the obvious failure modes and plan for them- this is probably why their engine technology is very reliable, for instance.

The problem is that when faced with a situation where they lack the experience to foresee problems, they just... fail to respond effectively. They do keep trying to innovate and adapt (e.g. building chemical detectors that can spot humans trying to sneak across their perimeter). They just don't adapt fast.

So in general, the Race won't knowingly waltz into a lethal hazard, and they'll take at least basic steps to ensure that they do know what lethal hazards they face.

[SpottedKitty]

The problem is that when faced with a situation where they lack the experience to foresee problems, they just... fail to respond effectively. They do keep trying to innovate and adapt (e.g. building chemical detectors that can spot humans trying to sneak across their perimeter). They just don't adapt fast.

<nod> Been a while since I last read the books, but from what I remember, one of the main reasons their expected easy victory "somehow" didn't happen right away was that all their previous experience was with intelligent life similar to themselves. Very slow societal and technological changes, so when they arrived at the planet of hairless monkeys they honestly expected the height of weapons technology would still be in the Middle Ages.

As for the original scenario, I think it all depends on who can learn to innovate faster. In scenario 1, the Na'vi are on their own, but in the other two they'll have at least limited access to Earth's history of an impressive ability to shoot back.

<tosses coin> Hmm, it landed on its edge...

[Simon_Jester]

The Na'vi on their own won't innovate very fast, and have to rely on the sheer ferocity of the moon's wildlife to win.

With access to the human panoply of war, they have a rather good chance against anything other than "I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit, Fleetlord; it's the only way to be sure."

[Rekkon]

The Race's problem with Earth was that their intel was a couple hundred years out of date. They probed us, found a Middle Ages society and expected that still to be the case when they finally got here, as had been the case with their other two conquests. Instead the Tosevites had enough technology to make a fight of it with greater population and industrial capacity. Even then the Race could have won by leaning on one government at a time to defeat humanity in detail, but they united it by attacking everyone at once.

I think the Race wins here in all three scenarios, simply through numbers and hardware. Plus they are not averse to nuking things when need be. With pretty meager manpower and equipment, Quaritch was able to defeat the combined Na'vi tribes Jake was able to assemble in terrain advantageous to the natives. Race tech is not as advanced, but they could suffer the losses seen in the film without breaking a sweat. The Avatar humans, not being a full military, also lacked quite a few capabilities the Race does not. Quaritch was forced to attack the Tree of Souls with a low and slow shuttle pushing mining explosives out the back door because he could not drop things from orbit or hit it with a supersonic bomber. If destruction of the ToS is an auto-win against the Na'vi and the Race learn of it, nothing native to Pandora can intercept a pair of fighter bombers, much less missiles from starships.

Fighting the entire macro biome would be more difficult, but the Race prefers arid open areas where they would have a lot of warning of approaching wildlife. Nuke/airstrike concentrations and line up tanks closer to home.