Star Wars/Trek vs. "Independence Day" Aliens

[Ender]

But the ID aliens have lots of fighters. So I would imagine a few Fed ships would be destroyed or heavily damaged despite the poor quality of the alien fighters.

You really don't grasp the scale of difference here, do you?

What we see the city killers do it about the equivlent to a modern nuclear blast. That's the biggest, most impressive thing they do.

The photon torpedos that Fed shields shrug off are much more powerful. Fed shields are rated at 30 MT prior to the improvements brought about by the dominion war.

The sheer scale here boggles the mind.

[LongVin]

But the ID aliens have lots of fighters. So I would imagine a few Fed ships would be destroyed or heavily damaged despite the poor quality of the alien fighters.

You really don't grasp the scale of difference here, do you?

What we see the city killers do it about the equivlent to a modern nuclear blast. That's the biggest, most impressive thing they do.

The photon torpedos that Fed shields shrug off are much more powerful. Fed shields are rated at 30 MT prior to the improvements brought about by the dominion war.

The sheer scale here boggles the mind.

Doh. I thought the scale for Fed ships was less.

[Uraniun235]

I've got an amazing solution here - If the first shot didn't get through - *gasp* maybe they shot again!

Or, the first shot collapsed the tunnel and destroyed all the exterior equipment such that even if the people inside survived, NORAD was effectively disabled.

[Srynerson]

Occam's Razor prevails, they don't have bombs and their city-killing weapon only has a range of a few thousand feet so they have to hover over the cities like that. Sounds pretty stupid for planet locusts not to develop a way to exterminate from orbit but although life in the galaxy is probably common, beings with huge brain cases and no natural defenses may be an uncommon evolutionary path. Maybe the aliens just haven't fought anybody with any teeth yet. Their "fighters" or attack craft might not be dedicated attack craft at all but some sort of transport craft or shuttle pressed into the role (their performance certainly leaves something to be desired, with their technology base the aliens could certainly design a more potent fighter with air-to-air missiles).

Building off of this point, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Turtledove's "World War" series. The aliens there had only previously encountered static cultures, i.e., ones that remained virtually unchanged for centuries or millennia between the initial scouting mission and the arrival of the invasion fleet. While it is obviously outside the scope of the canon materials, it isn't too radical to guess that the ID4 aliens might have had similar past experiences.

[Gil Hamilton]

Western military doctrine, the hoplite, the legion, the Medieval Knight, massed fleets of bombers, the machine gun... how different would our history have been if just a few events didn't happen. It's possible that alien civilizations simply have no concept of war as mankind knows it, no combined arms, no tanks (remember the gathering of aliens on the platform no tanks IIRC), no aircraft designed for air superiority. Then, no anti-aircraft guns on their motherships, no combination of different weapons to deal with different threats like on a modern naval warship. No guided missiles, no artillery, no chemical or biological weapons (although these take time to develop the aliens had been scoping out humans for awhile), no concept of tactics. The alien fighters don't seem to launch until the Black Knights are in spitting range. The fucking aliens designed their weapon, if its particularly vulnerable they should wait until their attack craft establish air superiority before opening up the damn thing.

Hell, the aliens were so stupid that they didn't use their own satellites to co-ordinate their attack. It should be a ridiculously simple proposition for each alien ship to have a clock and time the attack perfectly, or to drop their own satellites rather than depend on the enemy's.

Brian

For aliens that rant about "no peace!" and extermination, not to mention appearantly spying on us since the Roswell incident, I find it very hard to believe they have no concept of war.

Frankly, the simpliest and most logical conclusion you can come to isn't a convoluted idea of war-like aliens (who have no concept of war, computer security or even time keeping), but rather that they are just really really stupid.

[Darth Wong]

It's possible that the aliens were once very advanced but are now like Pakleds, and use legacy technology which they do not really understand.

You see the same sort of thing with real computer users who are not technically proficient; I've seen people shut off their virus scanners and firewalls because the warnings and blocks annoyed them. I've seen people who recommend that you turn off encryption on your wireless network because it's easier to install that way. I've met people who use a blank password so they won't have to remember it. I've also seen people who write their passwords on a piece of paper which they stick to the computer monitor, and this is at the office where any janitor or visitor can see it. I saw this once with a front-desk receptionist.

In other words, the ID4 aliens are probably like modern secretaries; they have shiny computers but they don't understand jack shit so they reconfigure everything to be as easy as possible to use, and they don't realize that they just opened the front door of the house and hung out a Welcome sign for intruders.

PS. You want to know the dumbest thing about using the Earth satellites to co-ordinate the attack? Here it is: they could have simply synchronized their clocks and agreed to attack at a pre-arranged time instead of putting all their ships on a fucking remote control linkup. But noooo, that would require as much intelligence as a typical white-trash family has when they split up at the mall and agree to meet at 4:00pm at the food court.

[phongn]

Or, the first shot collapsed the tunnel and destroyed all the exterior equipment such that even if the people inside survived, NORAD was effectively disabled.

IIRC, the novelization noted that the ship just keep shooting the mountain until the facility was destroyed.

[jegs2]

It's possible that the aliens were once very advanced but are now like Pakleds, and use legacy technology which they do not really understand.

Azimov's Galactic Empire during the start-up stages of the Foundation was like that: The Empire still contained gigantic, deadly battleships capable of destroying planets, but technology has stagnated and was actually rolling backward by the time Harry Seldon met with the Emperor.

[Ghost Rider]

A wee bit old of a thread that has long since died.

Locking.