FTL Civilization Meets STL Civilization

[Corvus 501]

Ok, here's a new story idea. So where around 100,000 years ago, a highly adaptable, extremely pragmatic race started expanding.
Having achieved FTL travel to leave their solar system, they found themselves
facing a small problem: No one else had figured out the same trick.
Consequently, they faced an extinction level threat, and consequently also had a unique opportunity. They, in short, had the opportunity to conquer the Galaxy. Before they (and their tech) arrived, interstellar warfare was nearly non-existent. As Bussard Ramscoops and antimatter drives where the only way to move around, interstellar travel was too slow to allow mass warfare, though the few stable traversable wormholes just barely allowed civilizations to know each other. Warfare, however, only happened in two ways. First, systems where sometimes contested, for colonization rights, and borders. Secondly, there was all out, xenocidial war, carried out by ramming planets with starships moving at appreciable fractions of light speed.
This, obviously stunted the development of warfare, paving the way for the race in question. They then then took the rather obvious rout, and began conquering anything and everything in their path, occasional joining with other cultures, with one goal in mind: remove the most dangerous weapon in existence, c fractional drives, and prevent them from ever being used again.
To do this, they used their insurmountable speed (and mobility) advantage ruthlessly, They destroyed shipyards, cyber attacked ships in boost phase to guide them off course, stranding them, or crashing them into planets, and dusting planets, dropping bio weapons on them to depopulate them.
Within two centuries, every major, non aligned species had fallen to them, either through direct attack, economic collapse, or the desperate, last minute fighting that characterized the death knell of those falling civilizations. Afterwords, they showed up, and gave the civilizations two choices: accept the FTL systems, and more importantly destroy all near light STL drives, or become an extinct species.
Afterwords, they and their allies set aside territories of their own, with well defined and guarded borders, and for the most part, withdrew, trading mostly only immune themselves, and tacking any raw materials that they needed, or wanted. They where the new super powers of the galaxy, and they sat back to enjoy it, for the most part.
The race in question, (later known as the Pathmakers) knew that they now had two choices. Be the galaxy's policemen, keeping near c STL drives out of the hands of every other species, or stop it at the source.
Knowing that, they decided to search out, and find species capable of interstellar flight, and gifted them FTL travel, knowing that they would in then travel, and discover other species, and either destroy them, conquer them, or in tern pass on the drive, preventing another civilization from using STL travel, and becoming a genuine threat to them.
This behavior gained them their common name, and so they began their project, protecting themselves by uplifting other species past the point where they would be any serous danger to Pathmaker interest (like staying alive).
Pragmatic as they where, the still had an acute sense of humor, and enjoyed the irony of the situation tremendously. However, that sense of hurmour was heavily tested, as around 104,000 years after leaving their system, they missed a species, who soon left their system, carried by their independently developed FTLs.

[Corvus 501]

The newcomers, had the extremely good fortune to find themselves in the middle of a spiral arm they was hit almost heavily by bio weapons during the Great War clearing it for settlement, and depopulating it to the point where the Pathmakers rarely visited, and had never found a species to uplift in that section of the galaxy, and so they rarely swept the area. Even better for the species in question, the Pathmakers had performed a patrol of the area mere centuries before the species achieved FTL travel, and where not scheduled to return for a good dozen centuries.
The newcomers, upon leaving their system on warp drive ships of their own design, where greeted with a strange sight. Whenever they found planets, they found one of a few things: They found a planet swept clean of all life, despite being in the middle of a planets life zone, having the necessary chemicals for life to form, and fossil records and ruins indicating advanced, complex life, and planets lying fallow, with ruins over 100,000 thousand years old, and archeological evidence suggesting that their entire population had just fallen asleep, and never woken up.
They also found planets covered with the scars and ruins of warfare, empty, scoured clean of life, Finally, and most disturbingly, they found planets with massive impact craters, craters consistent with c fractional impact of a starship on its surface.
This worried them, as did the partial records found in abandoned stations, empty of atmosphere, preserving their records. This, combined with archeological evidence unearthed on hundreds of planets, panted a grim picture.
It seemed, that around 100,000 thousand years ago, over the course of perhaps 500 years, the dozen or so interstellar powers in the region simply started killing each other. No one was sure who launched the first attack, only that ships started crashing into planets, and planets started getting dusted.
War soon broke out, and immediately escalated to whole scale planetary destruction, in a massive interstellar free for all. Here war burned the hottest, here on the other side of the galaxy from Pathmaker space, where the war grew and spread, before burning itself out, as nations grabbed resources, and brought other nations into the conflict.
The newcomers, having pieced together the clues, realized that the whole war had been engineered from the start, by a species at the time unknown.
This, obviously, was cause for worry. Expanding quickly, they settled in waves, settling, taming, and generally colonizing planet after planet, choosing several widely spaced hub planets to start colonizing waves of their own, and demanding only that they keep a large navy to protect the colonies, and that every military organization keep a minimum standard that was rather high, and enforce the law.
On October 23, 2572, these precautions proved their to be worth their weight in gold, as this day proved to be the beginning of the Durian/Human First Contact war.

[Corvus 501]

The basic idea behind these posts is that first, any newly emerged FTL civilization would feel an extinction levle threat from any surrounding STL civilizations and would respond approapitaply. The second part, focuses on history repeating itself, this time with a species in an similar situation, facing a very different galexcy.

[Simon_Jester]

The ability of high-relativistic impactors to wipe out planetary civilizations is in my opinion somewhat exaggerated, especially if you have the ability to do things like jump around faster than light to light-cone an incoming missile and nail down its exact vector for a targeting solution.

Another issue is practical range; a relativistic rocket launched from a thousand light years away is very unlikely to physically reach its target. without somehow being diverted off course. Even if it stays on course, the correct response to a disaster scheduled to happen a thousand years in the future is dispersal, not deterrence.

Another point I would like to make is that 'fleets' really aren't a good defense against relativistic impactors, except insofar as they can toss stuff into its path. The defense against a relativistic impactor is very different from the defense against almost any other probable threat.

[LaCroix]

Sounds like the average game of "Master of Orion" to me...

[Borgholio]

Interesting idea overall but I'm not sure how an FTL civilization could find an STL civilization to be a threat. As Simon said, even a relativistic kill vehicle can take thousands of years reach it's target. A civilization with FTL drives must reasonably have FTL sensors and could detect such a thing, warp out to it, and do any number of things to blow it up or divert it off course when it's still centuries from the target. If we developed FTL drives for instance, we'd be foolish to give it to anyone else. It would be such a major advantage to us that we'd be better off letting everyone else stick with STL travel while we run circles around them.

[Corvus 501]

Good point, but the idea is that between the (comparatively) few transversable wormholes, (which, in this setting translates to a holy f__kton spread over a big galaxy) and Bussard Ramscoop ships, and STL Abicury drive ships (the ship isn't in the warp bubble, but in front of it, and is moving at near light speed (let's say 75%, for the sake of the argument) so there's a genuine threat, if the others can respond quickly enough. The point behind this, is that the FTL capable civilization is under a potential extinction level threat, and is very ambitious. To quote the most profound quote I've found in Red vs Blue, "When faced with extinction, all other options are preferable." However, The prePathmaker civilization found itself with a unique oppertunity to creat the sort of border that allows them to detect and deflect incoming RKVs and make significant territorial gains, as well as make a few (well chosen) allies, after gifting them warp drive.

[Corvus 501]

Furthurmore, while before Pathmakers showed up, FTL travel was restricted to wormhole travel (not instantiates, comparative to Orion's Arm wormholes) FTL commutation is somewhat common, from quantum entanglement, to comm wormholes. In short, other species can respond quickly in individual systems, and whole nations know about attacks, but it still takes months or years to get anywhere. However, that doesn't stop people from sending a few ore freighters into your planet, does it?
That's the whole point behind all the attacks. Sow confusion, cripple a warfighting capability in a few places, and start a massive, all consuming war, than move in and pick up the pieces, rebuilding tha galaxy the way you want.

[Simon_Jester]

Corvus, I think you may have detailed this out to such an extent that there's no room to comment on it...

I mean, it's not like you're really brainstorming for new ideas, you have all this exposition already worked out and it's hard to see how we could meaningfully suggest changes that would be of interest to you.

[Borgholio]

the FTL capable civilization is under a potential extinction level threat

Forgive me if you explained this already and I missed it, but how are under they under threat again? Did any of the STL civilizations actually launch RKVs at them? Is there an imminent attack? Or are they just horribly paranoid and willing to wage war and commit genocide based on an unrealistic delusion?

[Simon_Jester]

There's something about the threat of interstellar relativistic missile attacks that just brings out the existential-paranoiac side in science fiction fandom. I blame Atomic Rocket's publicization of The Killing Star... a story whose plot, in my opinion, represents a severe failure of imagination and basic sanity on the part of the humans and the aliens.

We had a treatment of this, including panicky silly SF fans and my own views on the subject written down, here:

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=158707

[NoXion]

If a civilisation is building high-C fractional drives at a rate enough to invest in building interstellar missiles, then there needs to be a compelling reason to justify that cost. I reckon that in order to be able to find compelling reasons, they will have to have at least scouted out the local volumes of interstellar space in order to find something that could at least be vaguely interpreted as a threat. If the groupthink of this civilisation (or in the case of a class society, the groupthink of whichever segment of this civilisation that controls civilisation-wide offensive-defensive functions) is of a paranoid bent, it makes sense to me that other civilisations in interstellar space with similar drive capabilities would be highly likely to be considered potential if not actual threats.

Such civilisations would certainly have the ability to fairly easily colonise other planets within their home system, and perhaps have even made a start of exploring neighbouring stars. I think this fact alters the dynamic somewhat, making interstellar missiles with high C-fractional drives more akin to strategic-level weaponry on the relative order of nuclear weapons during the height of the Cold War, rather than instant-win civilisation-wiper-outers. Unless a civilisation can afford to saturate a target system with HCFD missiles (and even then there might be enough left to initiate a lethal retaliation with some hidden weapons system that was missed), there could be enough survivors for the possibility of a response. That possibility increases considerably if the targeted civilisation has already made a good head start on colonising nearby habitable systems. If the paranoia runs deep enough for it to be acted on to the degree of actually building and launching such weapons at targets deemed to be hostile and/or potentially hostile, than truly assuaging this paranoia will not come cheap and thus I do not predict a rosy future for such a civilisation: it will either exhaust itself in its madness or it will tread on toes whose owners will deliver a mortal response.

If a civilisation makes any significant use of FTL drives, then HCFD missiles are laughably slow and easily intercepted. But this might not matter to the truly paranoid.

[Corvus 501]

Great point! However, it isn't really a matter of small rockets, but self guided freighters (realy such idle drones is a better description than missile) sometimes purpose built, hitting planets with more force than the Dinosaur Killer impact.

[Corvus 501]

More importantly, the FTL drive that Pathmakers use is a warp drive, but the warp bubble is impossible to open fro the inside. Instead, it gets poped by hitting a large gravity well, one of least super Jovian density.

[Corvus 501]

As a side effect, with these drives, it's now impossible to directly attack planets directly with the drive, and large gravity wells serve as choke points, turning the defensive nightmare of system defense int something manageable. This is, of course, why they do the uplift program that gives them the make Pathmaker.

[fgalkin]

Great point! However, it isn't really a matter of small rockets, but self guided freighters (realy such idle drones is a better description than missile) sometimes purpose built, hitting planets with more force than the Dinosaur Killer impact.

But take centuries or millenia to reach their target. They are basically a non-threat to an FTL civilization that can colonize and disperse beyond their solar system, certainly not an existential threat.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[fgalkin]

If they are truly paranoid about them, the proper solution is not to genocide everything in sight, it's to construct large movable space habitats, and move from system to system every decade or so. Just hitting something that can move under its own power would be a tremendous challenge for a relativistic missiles, and completely impossible if their target is now sitting in a star system they passed three centuries ago. They would be completely immune to any threat from any STL civilization, and don't have to waste resources on constant war with everybody (what is this, 40k?).

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Corvus 501]

When faced with the choices of run, hide, or fight, what do you think a species that thinks and behaves in a very human like way would do?

[Corvus 501]

Furthermore, between the wormholes, and densely populated star clusters, it "only" takes a few years to reach anywhere.

[fgalkin]

When faced with the choices of run, hide, or fight, what do you think a species that thinks and behaves in a very human like way would do?

First fight, then hide as war weariness begins to set in. Eventually, they will realize there are better ways than fighting everybody. If anything, they would try to control the wormholes, to completely monopolize FTL travel.

If the missiles need the wormhole to reach their target, simply controlling access to it would neutralize that threat, and force them to take the long way around. Which, given the relatively fast pace of interstellar politics, means you might be launching missiles at your future allies, or even your own planets.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Corvus 501]

When faced with the choices of run, hide, or fight, what do you think a species that thinks and behaves in a very human like way would do?

First fight, then hide as war weariness begins to set in. Eventually, they will realize there are better ways than fighting everybody. If anything, they would try to control the wormholes, to completely monopolize FTL travel.

If the missiles need the wormhole to reach their target, simply controlling access to it would neutralize that threat, and force them to take the long way around. Which, given the fairly fast pace of interstellar politics, means you might be launching missiles at your future allies, or even your own planets.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Good point, but other species are well aware of the whole "seize the wormholes" trick, and gaurs the hell out of them. Also, there's a lot of inhabited systems, and many robotic ships in transit, many which can be redirected to other targets. Ore freghter+no deceleration+planet= smaller planet with impressive asteroid belt. Pluse, once you follow up with other mining ships, you get to mine out the planet!

[Corvus 501]

As to your second point, Interstellar Stratigic Bombardment Missles (ISBMs) are more along the lines of a sucide drone, capable of being redirected at need. Non Pathmaker species don't have FTL travel, (beyond transversable wormholes) but they do have FTL comm, in several forms. First, there's having a ship carry messages through wormholes, than there's using comm wormholes, and finally, there's quantum entanglement commutators, (QECs) shorter ranged than comm wormholes, but compact enough to fit in any vehicle, though size increases as bandwidth does.

[NoXion]

Great point! However, it isn't really a matter of small rockets, but self guided freighters (realy such idle drones is a better description than missile) sometimes purpose built, hitting planets with more force than the Dinosaur Killer impact.

It doesn't matter what size the missiles are. What matters is that the missiles can only hit one target each. If humans have colonised the Solar system in a big way, then wiping out the population of the Earth with such a missile won't kill all the humans, as there'll be major colonies on Mars and around the outer planets, and who knows what kind of isolated facilities could have been built far out in the outer reaches beyond the gas giants.

[Corvus 501]

Than take the MIRV course when developing your ISBMs, and drop a few thousand c fractional kinetic impactors on multiple planetary surfaces, and you will have wiped out most of the inhabatents of the system.

[Simon_Jester]

Except that the enemy's really threatening industrial infrastructure may not even be ON the planets, it may be in space stations, which may well be mobile enough to efficiently dodge and which cannot be targeted effectively by an incoming relativistic missile (or fire-ship). In which case all you've done is make them angry.

You are probably familiar with the analogy to a bunch of guys with guns and flashlights wandering around Central Park in the dark; it probably gave you half the idea for this in the first place. The idea being that everyone has a killing weapon, and you can't afford to take risks about the friendliness of a random stranger who can kill you as soon as look at you. You certainly can't turn on your flashlight and shout "HERE I AM!"

But this overlooks something. To repeat part of my earlier discussion of the issue, here:

To extend the Central Park analogy:

You hear a noise about twenty meters to your west. You panic and blaze away in a westerly direction with your revolver.

You had better HOPE you killed whoever you were shooting at, or at least wounded them too badly for them to think about coming for revenge.

And little did you know that standing twenty meters to your north were eight men from a street gang, who may be thugs but have a loose sense of their gang as 'family' that keeps them from trying to kill each other... and they know where you are, what you did, and have TEC-9s to match your revolver.

Oops.

Basically, the problem of launching a meaningful attack with weapons of mass destruction in the absence of timely reconnaissance is serious (you might only wound your enemy, or even fail to hurt him at all). And even if you succeed, you have drawn attention to yourself by establishing that you are the interstellar equivalent of a psychotic ax murderer. People will target and seek to destroy you in self-defense... and they'll know who did it because it's fairly easy to spot such energetic events over interstellar distances.

Wormhole networks don't change this, because you can't use them to launch relativistic missiles or fireships through, because it's so easy to 'mine' the wormholes and make it functionally impossible for any high speed object to come screaming through to hit your planets. Sure, that makes them less useful commercially, but your whole point is that aliens are supposedly very paranoid and aggressive and unwilling to take risks. Why risk using a wormhole for travel if that invites enemy attacks with relativistic missiles?

So honestly, while it's certainly possible to launch genocidal attacks with interstellar relativistic missiles, there are many practical problems with it and it's a risky strategy to pursue.