Independance Day aliens vs Loki and Avengers

[Zor]

In this scenario the alien mother ship from Independence Day comes to the earth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe during the events of The Avengers (with the city destroyer arriving near New York when Loki opens up his portal) with the same intentions that they had in ID4.

What happens?

Zor

[Elheru Aran]

It basically comes down to two things:

--Whether the Chitauri will turn on the ID4 aliens or decide to just get out of Dodge. They *could* quite possibly defeat the ID4 aliens-- they have energy weapons of reasonable magnitude and some fairly large... I don't know what the hell to call them, the flying coelcanth-whale-critters, that could possibly make a mess of the city-destroyers, and there were straight-up starships on the other side of the portal. What condition Earth would be in afterwards is another story. Remember that there are city-destroyers all over the world, and only one Chitauri portal as far as we know. That means they would have to get from NYC to the rest of the world. They might decide they don't have the time to waste on that.

--Whether Tony Stark can hack the ID4 aliens' computer systems. This is possible... he *is* operating on a higher level than a 90s Mac, after all.

Zor, have the Avengers seen ID4?

[Crazedwraith]

Chitauri ships can be taken out be a nuke. Id4 aliens can't. Given that and the much greater scale of their forces, I wouldn't think the Chitauri would prevail if they picked a fight.

[Elheru Aran]

I was pretty sure the nuke only closed the portal, not taking out the Chitauri ships behind it. I could be wrong there, though. IIRC, there were at least three or four large ships behind the portal, I couldn't be sure of scale.

The primary things the ID4 aliens had going for them were the city-destroyer beam, a bunch of fighters, and shields (on the city-destroyer at least) capable of taking a nuke. I can't recall if the fighters had shields or not, but obviously we didn't see energy weapons being used *against* the fighters.

[Khaat]

It looked like the nuke actually exploded at the staging-area station/thing the Chitauri forces were assembled around. The portal was closed by Widow with the scepter.

The portal in Pacific Rim was destroyed by the explosion.

ID4 fighters also had shields: we saw a few missile-hits glow the shields, in the initial dog-fight scene. The fighters would get hit, their shields lit up, and they'd tumble, intact.

[Borgholio]

It's possible the Chitauri ships had shields but they may not have been active (or the explosion may have simply enveloped the ships and not destroyed them). This also opens a plot hole in ID4. If you look closely at the opening of the movie when the mothership enters orbit, it is struck by a Russian satellite. The mothership has no apparent shields. It could potentially have been nuked from the ground.

[NecronLord]

Couldn't the aliens just fly the nearest city destroyer to Stark Tower and level it, shutting the portal and destroying the Chitauri and killing as many of the avengers as happen to be in there at the time?

[Borgholio]

The portal was invincible. They needed to use Loki's staff to shut it. Anything else would bounce off the shield surrounding the portal generator.

[NecronLord]

Both the ID4 fighters and mothership had shields.

It's possible the Chitauri ships had shields but they may not have been active (or the explosion may have simply enveloped the ships and not destroyed them). This also opens a plot hole in ID4. If you look closely at the opening of the movie when the mothership enters orbit, it is struck by a Russian satellite. The mothership has no apparent shields. It could potentially have been nuked from the ground.

Nukes aren't that good the thing had tens of meters of armour even on its spacedoors. Cold War nuclear tests show that even comparatively feeble wet-navy ships could survive repeated proximity blasts with nuclear weapons.

The aliens have fighters with acceleration far exceeding earthly missiles, by orders of magnitude. That idea was pie in the sky, no attack with nuclear missiles against the mothership, apart from the trojan horse, could possibly have succeeded.

[NecronLord]

The portal was invincible.

No limits fallacy

They needed to use Loki's staff to shut it. Anything else would bounce off the shield surrounding the portal generator.

JARVIS
The barrier is pure energy. It's
unbreachable. [...]

You refer to this I assume?

The aliens have a metric shit-load more experience with energy shields than Jarvis, or the Asgardians (their shields are frankly, tactically shit by comparison) Chitauri or Kree in the MCU have demonstrated, deploying them tactically by the thousand. Likewise, they have an immensely greater amount of physical force available.

The fact that Fury doesn't even suggest to the World Security Council that a nuclear missile wouldn't accomplish anything suggests that he, and they, think nuclear level firepower is likely to do the job, and the city destroyers are effectively multi-megaton weapons, though possibly chain reaction ones.

Certainly we've never seen it take that level of firepower and sensible, informed people in the setting think that a nuke will do the trick.

[Solauren]

The ID4 aliens would annihilate everyone involved in the fighting in the MCUBattle of New York

Their ships shields can shrug off nuclear weapon blasts and worse (they'd have to in order to ride out their city-destroyer blasts), and have who knows how many escort fighters, also shielded.

Thor and Hulk MIGHT be able to do some damage, but they won't really change the outcome. Once the ID4 ships fire their primary weapon, New York is gone.

The only question is, would the ID4 aliens weapons collapse shield around the Portal generator, or what they would do with it.

And, what those weapons would do when they interact with the two infinity gems on Stark Tower.....

[NecronLord]

Both the ID4 fighters and mothership had shields.

It's possible the Chitauri ships had shields but they may not have been active (or the explosion may have simply enveloped the ships and not destroyed them). This also opens a plot hole in ID4. If you look closely at the opening of the movie when the mothership enters orbit, it is struck by a Russian satellite. The mothership has no apparent shields. It could potentially have been nuked from the ground.

Nukes aren't that good the thing had tens of meters of armour even on its spacedoors. Cold War nuclear tests show that even comparatively feeble wet-navy ships could survive repeated proximity blasts with nuclear weapons.

The aliens have fighters with acceleration far exceeding earthly missiles, by orders of magnitude. That idea was pie in the sky, no attack with nuclear missiles against the mothership, apart from the trojan horse, could possibly have succeeded.

Oh, a bit more on nuking the alien mothership:

This engineer's comments suggest that the mothership basically had to have some manner of degenerate matter on board, and that its 'shell' far exceeds any conceivable material we have in material properties; I'm pretty sure Nimziki's suggestion is meant to be stupid.

[biostem]

We never saw what kind of ground weapons the ID4 aliens could bring to bear. When their shields are up, the ID4 aliens' fighters did appear superior to the Chitauri hover chariot things, though those big space worm creatures may be able to simply brute-force individual fighters down. I also wonder if all ID4 aliens has that psychic scream attack that they used against the president and his staff when they were in Area 51.

[Cykeisme]

I think, much like in the ID4 film, the Avengers folks would be entirely reliant on someone being able to interface with the ID4 aliens' computer systems and switch off their shields, just like the characters in the ID4 film did. This may or may not also rely on infiltrating the alien mothership.

I don't think anyone would argue with the fact that, considering the way Stark's intelligence and technical aptitude in the MCU is portrayed, and then contrasted with the surprising ease with which David Levinson was able to understand the aliens' computers sufficiently to write a virus for it.. that Stark would be able to accomplish the same feat.
Stark might need to capture at least one alien fighter to study its systems first, but it's possible that the combined efforts of the Avengers would be sufficient to disable a fighter, perhaps in an event similar to Captain Hiller's parachute trick, or perhaps leveraging the Avengers powers and talents to accomplish the task in some other manner (Thor and Hulk seem particularly well suited to the task).

I'd say the real issue is how they'd get into the alien mothership to infect the aliens' central computer.

Failing that, I don't see how they'd be able to defeat the ID4 aliens. Those shields are pretty good.

[NecronLord]

And even if they did, there's no reason to think they could do enough damage in the minutes before the aliens restored their systems. The original film was resolved by every military on Earth uniting and attacking simultaneously in the minutes before the virus was fixed.

Even if we assume that all the avengers, including Black Widow and Hawkeye, could go off and solo-kill a city killer, they couldn't stop them before the aliens fixed the virus.

[Cykeisme]

Did ID4 make it a point that there was a limited window of time before the aliens were able to restore their shields?

Although now that you mention it, I suppose it's obvious they would, after some time. Even if we go with the idea that the aliens have no understanding of computer security due to being a psychic hive mind race, they'd work around it eventually (even if it meant bypassing their computers and somehow switching on the shield-generating mechanisms manually).

With that in mind, you're right, there's no way the Avengers would be able to destroy more than one city killer ship in any reasonable amount of time.

We should establish the timeline in the RAR though; do the aliens proceed to destroy all the major cities immediately after showing up, or do they hover over the cities for some time before firing their primary weapon, like in the ID4 movie?
Do the Avengers (and Chitaurii) know that the ID4 aliens are hostile, and what their plans are?

Otherwise the militaries of Earth may still be completely intact when (if) the shields go down.

[NecronLord]

Did ID4 make it a point that there was a limited window of time before the aliens were able to restore their shields?

Although now that you mention it, I suppose it's obvious they would, after some time. Even if we go with the idea that the aliens have no understanding of computer security due to being a psychic hive mind race, they'd work around it eventually (even if it meant bypassing their computers and somehow switching on the shield-generating mechanisms manually).

With that in mind, you're right, there's no way the Avengers would be able to destroy more than one city killer ship in any reasonable amount of time.

We should establish the timeline in the RAR though; do the aliens proceed to destroy all the major cities immediately after showing up, or do they hover over the cities for some time before firing their primary weapon, like in the ID4 movie?
Do the Avengers (and Chitaurii) know that the ID4 aliens are hostile, and what their plans are?

Otherwise the militaries of Earth may still be completely intact when (if) the shields go down.

Yeah.

GENERAL GREY
How long would their shields be down?

DAVID
Once they discover the virus it could be a matter of minutes.

NIMZIKI
You want us to co-ordinate a massive world wide counter strike with a window of only a few minutes?

GENERAL GREY
With their shields down it might be possible.

NIMZIKI
Please, you're not buying into any of this nonsense, are you? We don't have the manpower or the resources to launch that kind of a campaign.

They'd presumably take their time. Mind you, I'm not sure the Chitauri wouldn't run off, the Dark Aster is much smaller than the city killers, and people shit bricks when that thing turns up. I wouldn't imagine the Avengers would know they were hostile, but might assume they were associated with Loki in some way.

[Axton]

Couldn't the aliens just fly the nearest city destroyer to Stark Tower and level it, shutting the portal and destroying the Chitauri and killing as many of the avengers as happen to be in there at the time?

This assumes facts not in evidence:

1. The ID4 aliens would have to know that an object was holding the portal open.

2. The ID4 aliens would have to know that the object holding the portal open was located on Stark Tower.

3. The ID4 aliens' weapons would have to be capable of disabling an Infinity Stone.

[NecronLord]

Couldn't the aliens just fly the nearest city destroyer to Stark Tower and level it, shutting the portal and destroying the Chitauri and killing as many of the avengers as happen to be in there at the time?

This assumes facts not in evidence:

1. The ID4 aliens would have to know that an object was holding the portal open.

2. The ID4 aliens would have to know that the object holding the portal open was located on Stark Tower.

There's a bigass glowing line from the generator to the portal. They're aliens, not nitwits.

3. The ID4 aliens' weapons would have to be capable of disabling an Infinity Stone.

Just destroy the device around it.



Infinity stones don't confer invincibility to objects around them. Reasonable people including Nick Fury, thought that a nuke would do the job.

Or do you mean that you think the ID4 aliens would be bothered by the destruction of the inhabitants of Earth if the tesseract was unleashed - that seems contrary to their goal of kill all humans.

[Axton]

Therein actually lies an even greater problem with flying a city destroyer over Stark Tower -- the portal was over Stark Tower. That puts the ID4 aliens either over the portal or under it in order to reach position.

If they're over the portal, their beam could be intercepted by the portal and strike the Chitauri rather than the scepter. That starts a fun fight.

If they're under the portal, there's still no guarantee. Just because reasonable Nick Fury thought a nuke would do the job doesn't mean that it would; nukes failing to do the job reasonable people expect them to do is actually a pretty standard science-fiction trope. Examples abound, from War of the Worlds (both film adaptations) to Cloverfield. We do see Stark try to destroy the scepter only to get a No Sell, so we know it's shielded. It's a gamble at best.

[Axton]

One other thing to remember: Stark didn't use the nuke to close the portal. He used the portal to dispose of the nuke. Romanov closed the portal by using the scepter.

[Axton]

Final thought: the ID4 aliens' sensors suck balls. Two humans got a nuke deep inside the mothership before the ID4 aliens had any idea that they were anywhere near a vulnerable position.

Yes, they had a lay-zar that could nuke unshielded, undefended cities. That puts them on par with any NATO country. Big whoop.

What the ID4 aliens have in starship size and weapons technology, they lack in actual competence; from getting welcomed to Erf with a right cross to having their flagship taken out by a computer virus whipped up on a MacBook combined with a nuke they didn't even detect until it was too late, the ID4 aliens are the Keystone Kops of alien invasion scenarios.

[NecronLord]

Therein actually lies an even greater problem with flying a city destroyer over Stark Tower -- the portal was over Stark Tower. That puts the ID4 aliens either over the portal or under it in order to reach position.

Are you suggesting that they can't vary their altitude and are bound to hover at a certain height over the tallest building? They can move ten meters to the fucking side and fire and the tower will fall.

If they're over the portal, their beam could be intercepted by the portal and strike the Chitauri rather than the scepter. That starts a fun fight.

It goes without saying they'll slaughter the Chitauri; the chitauri are largely unprotected and the ID4 aliens are not; the chitauri use flying bike things the ID4 aliens use shielded fighter craft.

If they're under the portal, there's still no guarantee. Just because reasonable Nick Fury thought a nuke would do the job doesn't mean that it would; nukes failing to do the job reasonable people expect them to do is actually a pretty standard science-fiction trope. Examples abound, from War of the Worlds (both film adaptations) to Cloverfield. We do see Stark try to destroy the scepter only to get a No Sell, so we know it's shielded. It's a gamble at best.

You are arguing via narrative tropes? Right. This is fight #1 between the ID4s and the Avengers so obviously the bad guys take the field and inflict humbling injuries/casualties on the Avengers. Don't be so ridiculous.

One other thing to remember: Stark didn't use the nuke to close the portal. He used the portal to dispose of the nuke. Romanov closed the portal by using the scepter.

Quick question for you; what do you think happens if you obliterate stark tower and the portal generator lands face down? What happens if some tentacled guy puts it on a pallet and tows it into the sun?

Even if it can't be touched, they can just keep firing until the generator is flipped face-down and the portal emerges into solid rock.

Final thought: the ID4 aliens' sensors suck balls. Two humans got a nuke deep inside the mothership before the ID4 aliens had any idea that they were anywhere near a vulnerable position.

Compared to whom? The Chitauri sensors seem to be 'Mk 1 eyeball.'

The Chitauri didn't nothing to stop a guy in a freaking red suit plated with actual gold flying a nuke on his back into their base; they're not paragons of Culture-esque response speed themselves.

Yes, they had a lay-zar that could nuke unshielded, undefended cities. That puts them on par with any NATO country. Big whoop.

It is a big whoop, we've never seen the opponents survive such firepower. We've seen that nuclear grade firepower is a big deal in the literal movie we're talking about.

Jervis says that the shield is impenetrable; but he's talking about a suit with output on the order of 3 GW (Iron Man; this refers to an earlier model but we've no reason to believe the output of the arc generators has increased massively). A single kiloton directed energy weapon is equal to just under fourteen hundred iron man chest blasts by that standard; and that's seriously lowballing the power unleashed by the ID4 chain-reaction weapons.

Taking Jervis' words as meaning that people with a thousand times the firepower couldn't drop the shield is a reduction to the absurd.

What the ID4 aliens have in starship size and weapons technology, they lack in actual competence; from getting welcomed to Erf with a right cross to having their flagship taken out by a computer virus whipped up on a MacBook combined with a nuke they didn't even detect until it was too late, the ID4 aliens are the Keystone Kops of alien invasion scenarios.

Yes yes, the macbook. That'd be relevant if anyone involved had forty years to study their technology in advance and write an interface.

[Axton]

Some fair points, but they're still sprinkled atop a lot of supposition. We don't know that a directed energy weapon orders of magnitude stronger than the Iron Man armor couldn't penetrate the scepter's shield. On the other hand, we don't know that it could, either. An argument either way is an appeal to ignorance, but because the burden of proof rests with the positive claim -- that it could -- it's perfectly valid to assume by default that it could not.

[NecronLord]

No, it's not; because it invites reductio ad absurdam - because a character says X won't work from a position of obvious authority -

The barrier is pure energy. It's unbreachable.

Does not carry forward to mean 'something hundreds of times more powerful than anything available to that context couldn't do it. If you saw a wildling say 'nothing can breach the wall' in Game of Thrones, would you say that that means that Morgoth's mountain-pass melting dragons and dispelling siege equipment from Lord of the Rings couldn't do it? No, because that's obviously beyond the wildlings' context and resources.

For an infamous example:



When speaking of a primitive ship. Trekkies long argued that this meant that no laser even one of vastly greater energy could ever damage the Enterprise. If you take verbal statements like that out of context, you get people claiming that the USS Enterprise could resist a laser cannon powered by a dyson sphere and suchlike.

It's the exact same logic; now obviously the Infinity Gems are presented as having cosmological significance, but again, the tesseract's usable power output is unknown, but unless we have indications that it is on the level of a nuclear explosion, then we've no reason to think it can resist such firepower in turn.

Unless you can demonstrate evidence that it's operating in such energy ranges, you're basically a rabid trekkie saying that as the name 'laser' is in the Death Star's weapon, it'd bounce off the navigational deflector of the Enterprise because character quotes about imperviousness should extend to all universes regardless of context. (Yes, this used to be a thing.) In context Picard is obviously right, and everyone involved knows what he means, so he has no reason to say 'unless the laser had phenomenal power.'

Let's look at Loki's spear:



That thing is powered by an infinity stone, and it sure as fuck doesn't look like it produces power on a nuclear level.

---

For the sake of argument though, I'll give the counter-argument for why it should be considered equivalent to nuclear weapons in terms of power capacity.



Eson the Searcher (the Celestial) at 2m 30s is pretty clearly producing an effect far beyond any nuclear weapon on earth, and beyond the means of the ID4 aliens. The difference is firstly that he's using the Power Stone, which is evidently more useful as a weapon than the others - certainly one imagines that if the Ether was capable of such destruction Malekith would have used it as such. Ronon planned to use the power stone to destroy a planet.

But conversely, the mind stone is evidently not capable of producing kilotons of firepower - if it was, then Vision would be capable of releasing immensely more power than Iron Man; he is perhaps capable of producing more power, but not vastly more, nor has there been any implication that Vision can headbutt a planet and destroy it as Eson or Ronon did/planned to do with the Power Stone.

The Tesseract contains the space stone, and there's a strong indication it is a very mighty power source (obviously it is as it can generate shields which the Avengers cannot defeat).

In that context it's described as:

AGENT PHIL COULSON
Dr. Selvig read an energy surge from
the Tesseract four hours ago.

NICK FURY
NASA didn't authorize Selvig to test
phase.

AGENT PHIL COULSON
He wasn't testing it, he wasn't even in
the room. Spontaneous advancement.

AGENT MARIA HILL
It just turned itself on?

NICK FURY
What are the energy levels now?

AGENT PHIL COULSON
Climbing. When Selvig couldn't shut it
down, we ordered the evac.

NICK FURY
How long to get everyone out?

AGENT PHIL COULSON
Campus should be clear in the next half
hour.

NICK FURY
Do better.

CONTINUOUSLY HEADING DOWN TO RADIATION FACILITY FLOOR

AGENT MARIA HILL
Sir, evacuation may be futile.

NICK FURY
We should tell them to go back to
sleep?

AGENT MARIA HILL
If we can't control the Tesseract's
energy, there may not be a minimum safe
distance.

Additionally, Red Skull and Hydra made nuclear-grade weapons using the Tesseract; but making weapons is not the same as having the same instantaneous peak output.

---

My position is that it's not the power stone, the only one we've seen used as a weapon of indiscriminate mass destruction, and we've no reason to think it can (safely) operate in the same power levels as the weapons the ID4 ships use.

The business is to establish its actual power, not simply focus on the phrase 'unbreachable.'

But really, the ID4s can just destroy New York and keep shooting the Chitauri and Avengers until everyone gets bored; without invoking the idea that the avengers can instantly do what took forty years in the Independence Day setting and drop their shields, they basically can't be hurt.