Well, the previous thread got locked. I guess that I choose a poor topic. Sorry. I'm not sure if it violates the rules though- although I might get covered by "passive aggressive flaming" and inappropriate topics... if it is, tell me. Well, that and what the limits are- the requirements are rather vague.
Anyway, we had a topic that can be nonpolitical the Posleen Universe. If some one wants to start arguing over Star Wars, simply say the word and I will start a new thread.
Talking about nukes will probably get this thread locked (after all, the reason we don't use nukes is politics. Heck, you could stretch the word politics to mean ALOT of stuff).
In stead, I'll hit the plot holes in the Posleen Universe. I have only read the first 5 books, so information may be missing (A Hymn Before Battle to Watch on the Rhine).
Major Plot Holes:
1) The locations of the last stands are completely off. The "Alliance of the Book" stages its last at Jeursalem. The city itself has no military significance and it is likely that any allience between the state of Isreal and its neighbors is... impossible. Isreal alone would do a last stand at Tel Aviv and its neighbors would do a last stand in the Arabian Peninsula- after all, there is no water or supplies for the Posleen!
- The same goes for the last stand at Angor Wat, which has no military significance what so ever.
2) Sabotage by the Darhel... why? Yes, they want humanity mallable... but they could have simply not provided any warning, or advanced tech. The justification is that the Darhel wanted human troops or were unfamilar with human capabilites but...
3) They have been manipulating humanity for milenia (established in Watch on the Rhine with the dead Indowy remains in the German Castle). Given that they would know how humans can adapt- WW2 is a good example. More to the point, why didn't they assimilate humanity earlier? If they absorbed mankind in the Dark Ages, they could have set themselves up as Gods, stymied developement and had humans as ruthless enforcers of their will. More to the point, humanity would not have been united the way it is know. The language gaps and alienness between differant human groups would make it easy for them to play each group against each other.
4) As for wanting human troops... this relies on the Posleen getting to the ground. The method they use to do this is to "tunnel" in space, a method slower than normal jumping, but allows them to arrive undetected. Un;ess the Darhel can garrison all their planets, they won't be able to stop them. Unfortunately this comes apart in several ways- which will be yet another point later on. Unfortunately the whole "not being able to predict arrival" comes apart when you realize that they ARE able to do this. What do I mean? The entire first two books are spent preparing for an invasion that will occur in five years- the Darhel know they are coming!
5) The Darhel have the industrial might of several hundred systems. The Posleen have the industrial might of ZERO systems- all the worlds they capture eventually get put to the torch of nuclear fire (how this happens is not explaine another point.). Even though they usage a cottage industrial system, they should be able to convert it to warfare very easily. It is implied that most of the production is self sufficient, so any increase in productivity would be pure gain for the war effort. At its simplest they could refit merchant ships. The only reason this couldn't happen is if their economy is entirely static, which is impossible- after all, they did colonize a large number of worlds.
6) The Posleen destroy their own planets. Given that they have been only shown to fight with personal weapons, there is no way they could do this. They could eat everything... except that when they die there is more food. The planet would become marginal, but not uninhabitable.
7) The Posleen are immune to all toxins, poisons and disease. This is impossible. There are various methods to aim for this and none give immunity.
8) Humans are special. All the none human groups are incapable of war, except the Posleen. For the Darhel this is reasonable- they were engineered. For everyone else it makes no sense- or did they not have to deal with natural selection? Any intelligent specie that evolved must have the cpacity for violence, if only to kill predators.
9) The Darhel have never heard of the tactic of "scorched Earth". They could have simply let the Posleen take a world and have the cities mined. Or glass it from orbit. Or fill the orbital ring with debris, stranding them on the planet. Or drop an astroid on it. Or... any other tactic really. This is surprising given that they are business men and should be familiar withat least basic strategy.
10) The Posleen, despite having no engineers, technicians, scientists, etc manage to maintain a technological society. All machines require maintanance, need to be adapted to differant environments, etc.
11) AI war machines don't work... except that the Darhel are shown to defend their homeword with them. It could be they made them latter, but I don't see how they could make a robotic war machine that would immediately revolt.
12) Europe and Russia fall. Europe is covered with mountians (which the Posleen can't climb), water (which the Posleen can't cross- they don't know how to make bridges! They have to use captured Indowy to that.) In addtion, Europe has more wealth than the US AND a large supply of expendable labor (known to the rest of the world as North Africa). They probably would take in hordes of refugees to fill their ranks- the French Foreign Legion would swell for starters. They can use off- shore artillary to hold the coast, which is where the Posleen land.
As for the Russians... yes, the Posleen attack in the Summer. So did Charles, Napolean and Hitler. They simply pull away from the Coast and hole up with the Urals providing their Western most border and a Siberian river proving their Eastern Border. To the South they have the Stans- mountanous countries that would more than willing work with the to crush their dissidents and avoid being over run. Given they are supposed to have 5 years to prepare this isn't an unreasonable scenario.
I can't comment on China due to my lack of knowledge.
13) The US, despite being in a war for its very survival, is not totally mobilized yet is still winning! They have prisons AND communes that still exist. They are NOT fighting a total war. If they were, they would conscript the guards to the Army, put the prisoners in Penal legions and dissolve the communes into the primary labor pool.
14) The Posleen number 12 billion... despite having no agriculture. Come to think of it, this only requires humanity to kill 2 Posleen for every one human- and if they levy up 1 out of 4 (which is not complete mobiliztion, but close) they only need a kill ration os 8 Posleen for each Terran.
16) The military tech. Yes, the military makes occasional bad choices. However, the fact that a million mortars could have won the war and they didn't do that is... let me put it this way- the military is made up of people whose job and lively hood is based on warfare. They may not be perfect, but they tend to be good enough. More to the point, the world has multiple militaries- count as five to be on the low side- China, US, EU, Russia, everyone else. All of them making the same mistake similtaneously? Not believable.
17)"Things started to go wonky before then. Gust Front is the last readable book in the series IMHO and it still had weird s like ludicrous numbers of Bushmasters added to the Abrams among a suite of other problems.
When the Devil Dances and on, it just got wacky. It also undercut the logic of using power armor over tanks when we hear that an upgraded Abrams can shrug off the majority of Posleen fire."
-http://server.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic_raw.php?t=125453&start=25
Almost forgot- the purpose of this thread is to find plot holes AND refute them. I like world building after all. So if you have a refutation, simply post it.
If you don't like the official way that the books work you can provide alternate explanations that ignore parts of the books.
You can bring up the books I haven't read, but I won't be able to comment.
Also, NO POLITICS. How long till some one breaks that rule...?
Ack, good grief Sam! When I said I enjoyed a lively debate, I didn't expect to have a list of grievances tacked to the door! Alright, let's see what I can set straight. Worse case scenario is I cheat tomorrow. I know the author is going to be running around Dragon Con, and more specifically I might be able to corner him somewhere and ask these questions. But for now I'll try to answer them on my own.
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1) The locations of the last stands are completely off. The "Alliance of the Book" stages its last at Jeursalem. The city itself has no military significance and it is likely that any allience between the state of Isreal and its neighbors is... impossible. Isreal alone would do a last stand at Tel Aviv and its neighbors would do a last stand in the Arabian Peninsula- after all, there is no water or supplies for the Posleen!
- The same goes for the last stand at Angor Wat, which has no military significance what so ever.
The last stands were meant to be more symbolic than strategic. If we're going to go down fighting, let it be where our heart is and so on. By the point they fell, all Noncombatants had either been evacuated or eaten. It didn't matter to them where they lost, so they chose to fight for something significant. Similar to the last stand in Gust Front. The Washington Memorial didn't have any strategic value either - it was just a rallying point for morale.
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2) Sabotage by the Darhel... why? Yes, they want humanity mallable... but they could have simply not provided any warning, or advanced tech. The justification is that the Darhel wanted human troops or were unfamilar with human capabilites but...
3) They have been manipulating humanity for milenia (established in Watch on the Rhine with the dead Indowy remains in the German Castle). Given that they would know how humans can adapt- WW2 is a good example. More to the point, why didn't they assimilate humanity earlier? If they absorbed mankind in the Dark Ages, they could have set themselves up as Gods, stymied developement and had humans as ruthless enforcers of their will. More to the point, humanity would not have been united the way it is know. The language gaps and alienness between differant human groups would make it easy for them to play each group against each other.
Two questions, one answer. The Darhel are natural predators. Thus they recognize that humans are just as violent as the Darhel wish they could be. That's a problem, because given the chance that means that the humans would also eventually take over running the shop, because unlike the Darhel they can also be nice to the little folk like the Indowy. When you've been bullying someone for millions of years, you don't want that person to suddenly meet someone bigger and tougher than you are. The Bane Sidhe has proven it can make materials disappear; given a large enough head start, they could arm the humans for an insurrection.
The Darhel plan is dealt with a little more in depth in Cally's War. The idea was to take a small genetic pool and split it up amongst the Indowy, to create a basic pacifist population, that if needs be could be called up to fight, having not been monkeyed with by the Aldenaata. (I believe everyone but the Crabs was tinkered with at some point or another.) In order to make sure that population was controllable, they wanted Earth destroyed, so that humanity wouldn't have a focused base of operations. As of right now, Earth is the only planet not controlled by the Darhel, and its already proven troublesome. Fleet jumped back to save it, rather than take back other Darhel owned worlds, the Bane Sidhe now has a base of operations that can't be attacked, and so forth. So humanity can rebuild its population, has resources with which to do so that aren't Darhel controlled, and has a brain trust of Galactics who bear a grudge against the Darhel. Also, the Indowy bodies in Germany weren't there at Darhel bidding; they were a Bane Sidhe operation that went south.
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4) As for wanting human troops... this relies on the Posleen getting to the ground. The method they use to do this is to "tunnel" in space, a method slower than normal jumping, but allows them to arrive undetected. Un;ess the Darhel can garrison all their planets, they won't be able to stop them. Unfortunately this comes apart in several ways- which will be yet another point later on. Unfortunately the whole "not being able to predict arrival" comes apart when you realize that they ARE able to do this. What do I mean? The entire first two books are spent preparing for an invasion that will occur in five years- the Darhel know they are coming!
The problem is that no one is willing to fight for the Galactics at all. The Indowy are inborn pacifists. (Think an entire species of really devout buhddist monks. The kind who sweep flagstones to make sure they don't accidentally step on an ant when they walk.) The Darhel can't pull a trigger without suiciding. The Crabs are cowards, and the Tc'pth can't actually be controlled, and have their own agenda. When the humans finally become involved they do try to fight the Possleen in space. Mike's wife was on one of the frigates remember? Gust Front had an entire space battle scene. But again, they were poorly equipped and outnumbered. It isn't until Hell's Faire that Fleet has enough strength to take back the skies, and when they do they do. Hell's Faire ended with Fleet coming back and kicking the horses off planet in job lots. Until then, the ground forces were all that was available to hold off the Possleen.
Yellow Eyes covers the information aspect; both sides are using Aldenaata technology, and so can communicate with each other. The Darhel actually feed the Possleen data on some Earth units so that the Possleen will attack them. Basically, the good guys got set up by a mole in their own ranks.
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5) The Darhel have the industrial might of several hundred systems. The Posleen have the industrial might of ZERO systems- all the worlds they capture eventually get put to the torch of nuclear fire (how this happens is not explaine another point.). Even though they usage a cottage industrial system, they should be able to convert it to warfare very easily. It is implied that most of the production is self sufficient, so any increase in productivity would be pure gain for the war effort. At its simplest they could refit merchant ships. The only reason this couldn't happen is if their economy is entirely static, which is impossible- after all, they did colonize a large number of worlds.
Actually, the Darhel have zero industry. Everything they have is made by Indowy craftsmen, in building units similar to early guilds more than factories. Ships take years to build, and are meant to last for centuries as a result. There's no spare parts, no interchangeable parts...nothing we associate with modern manufacturing techniques.This was done sepcifically to keep the Indowy indentured to them. In that case, the Possleen are actually ahead of them; skills are genetically coded into normals, so they all do things in the exact same way. Only the God Kings have the ability to vary their techniques and skills. And they do refit merchant ships; the ship Sharon was on was a converted freighter. But a freighter isn';t going to do much against a heavily armed and armored warship. It would be like pitting a Greek tirime against a modern cruiser. And they only colonize worlds to get rid of excess Indowy populations.
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6) The Posleen destroy their own planets. Given that they have been only shown to fight with personal weapons, there is no way they could do this. They could eat everything... except that when they die there is more food. The planet would become marginal, but not uninhabitable.
They end up using their ships and nukes against each other, and the reason can be for the slightest reason. In Yellow Eyes one ex-God King admits he touched one off over a treasured normal that blundered into another God King's turf. They don't use these kinds of techniques when invading because they want the world to be habitable when they're done.
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7) The Posleen are immune to all toxins, poisons and disease. This is impossible. There are various methods to aim for this and none give immunity.
No, they're immune to Terran and Galactic poisons. Their biology was set up so that they'd have extreme resistances to these things. There probably are things out there that would kill them; no one knows what they are though because they don't understand how the Possleen work. It wasn't until Daltren that they actually managed to get some biological samples to seriously study. By that point it was a little late to help Earth though.
9) The Darhel have never heard of the tactic of "scorched Earth". They could business men and should be familiar withat least basic strategy.have simply let the Posleen take a world and have the cities mined. Or glass it from orbit. Or fill the orbital ring with debris, stranding them on the planet. Or drop an astroid on it. Or... any other tactic really. This is surprising given that they are businessmen. [/quote]
Again, every one of them has a prohibition against violence for one reason or another. They can't get anyone to actually do anything, so they turned to the humans.
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12) Europe and Russia fall. Europe is covered with mountians (which the Posleen can't climb), water (which the Posleen can't cross- they don't know how to make bridges! They have to use captured Indowy to that.) In addtion, Europe has more wealth than the US AND a large supply of expendable labor (known to the rest of the world as North Africa). They probably would take in hordes of refugees to fill their ranks- the French Foreign Legion would swell for starters. They can use off- shore artillary to hold the coast, which is where the Posleen land.
Again, most of those are internal features of the continent. There are survivors there, but they're too badly outclassed to do anything other than survive. From a defensive point of view, its the equivalent of building your city around your walls instead of the other way around. They use what they have, for as long as they can, but in the end they simply get overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Remember, this takes place over several years. Some places fell more quickly than others, especially depending on how each nation reacted. Britain holds out pretty much indefinitely, France and Germany manage to evacuate most of their populations to the mountains. Russia and China went full on nuclear holocaust, scorched Earth policies. But just because people survived doesn't mean countries survived.
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As for the Russians... yes, the Posleen attack in the Summer. So did Charles, Napolean and Hitler. They simply pull away from the Coast and hole up with the Urals providing their Western most border and a Siberian river proving their Eastern Border. To the South they have the Stans- mountanous countries that would more than willing work with the to crush their dissidents and avoid being over run. Given they are supposed to have 5 years to prepare this isn't an unreasonable scenario.
Well, the human leaders didn't manage to wrap it up by winter, now did they? They had to wait for supplies. If the Posleen got hungry, they charged a little faster into battle.
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10) The Posleen, despite having no engineers, technicians, scientists, etc manage to maintain a technological society. All machines require maintanance, need to be adapted to differant environments, etc.
The Possleen were granted genetic memories by the Aldenaata. Not all have the same memories mind, but by careful breeding by the God Kings different skills can be applied to different normals.
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11) AI war machines don't work... except that the Darhel are shown to defend their homeword with them. It could be they made them latter, but I don't see how they could make a robotic war machine that would immediately revolt.
Actually, the Darhel worlds are defended by being at the end of known space. When the humans are attacking at the end of Watch on the Rhine, all the Darhel can do is try to flee; they are then promptly attacked by the Fleet.
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13) The US, despite being in a war for its very survival, is not totally mobilized yet is still winning! They have prisons AND communes that still exist. They are NOT fighting a total war. If they were, they would conscript the guards to the Army, put the prisoners in Penal legions and dissolve the communes into the primary labor pool.
But the US isn't winning. They're fighting defensive actions from the get-go. The only reason they're holding on is because of the use of artillery to defend the mountain passes into the interior. If either the 555th or the Ten Thousand had lost in When the Devil Dances or Hell's Faire, there;s wouldn't have been an America left. If the Posleen had made it into the interior, there was nothing left to stop them from spreading out and taking over. Doesn't sound like any definition of winning to me.
Phew! Almost done! Congrats to anyone still reading! One last bit to go, and then its on to round 2!
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16) The military tech. Yes, the military makes occasional bad choices. However, the fact that a million mortars could have won the war and they didn't do that is... let me put it this way- the military is made up of people whose job and lively hood is based on warfare. They may not be perfect, but they tend to be good enough. More to the point, the world has multiple militaries- count as five to be on the low side- China, US, EU, Russia, everyone else. All of them making the same mistake similtaneously? Not believable.
17)"Things started to go wonky before then. Gust Front is the last readable book in the series IMHO and it still had weird s like ludicrous numbers of Bushmasters added to the Abrams among a suite of other problems.
When the Devil Dances and on, it just got wacky. It also undercut the logic of using power armor over tanks when we hear that an upgraded Abrams can shrug off the majority of Posleen fire."
-http://server.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic_raw.php?t=125453&start=25
The big problem with mortars is range; most need to be within 1-2 kilometers, which is also generally inside the engagement range of the Posleen on flat terrain. They were using plenty of artillery to hold the passes however; the fort described was basically thick walls built around artillery tubes. As far as not using a more mobile platform, I can only assume they didn't want to risk tubes and men in 1000:1 odd battles. Because yes, while there is 6-7 billion people on the planet, how many are kids? seniors? women? disabled? Not everyone on the planet is capable of being trained to fight in an army.
Also, the problem with tanks by When the Devil isn't tech; admittedly at that point they can be armored to take a few hits and keep going. The problem is that they don't do too well in the mountains, and on the open plains they were too easily surrounded and cut to pieces. Heck, the only reason Bun-Bun did so well was because no one knew what the heck they were doing.
__________________
Basilisk 6
Pilot of the Thing
I'm not evil. My morals just aren't the same as society's.
On a one man quest to beat the Star Wars Universe, using nothing but simple, plain, ordinary logic. Score so far: Me 593 SWU 450
Cheating is fine- I am a world builder. It is the answers that are important, not their source.
1) What it is isn't last stand, but last transmission. Which means that this is the last military unit in the field with radios. Or it could be the last military HQ (which makes less sense). In looking at these, politics and religion are unavoidable. However, to avoid talking about them, I will simply state my analysis without giving certain factors. This is to keep with GitP policy and is totally NOT a dodge.
For geographic factors, all that matter are rivers and mountains, which can't be crossed easily, and deserts and places that freeze, which the Posleen can't hold. In addition, the Posleen favor coasts heavily.
They are
2005
Australian Defense Command, Alice Springs
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/980...rovince.lg.jpg
Up in the mountains. Why they didn't fall back to Tibet, which is better defended is beyond me. As for losing... it is a stretch. They have 1.2 billion people.
Turkic Alliance, Jalalabad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalalabad
The "Turkic Alliance" does not contain Turkey, but is instead the nations of central Asia. Okay... The most likely "last stand" would be in Kazachistan, not Jalalabad. Given the countries are entirely mountains, hills and rivers, I don't get how the Posleen invaded.
Combined Indochina Command, Agnor Wat
Cambodia. Unfortunately Indochina includes Vietnam, Burma, Loas, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Indonesia and New Guinea. Any last stand would occur in Indonesia due to the fact they have the majority of the troops AND the most defensible location. Fighting in a ruin surrounded by jungle is suicide. Not to mention the only people who care about the temple are the Cambodians- none of the other countries care one iota.
Allies of the Book, Jeursalem
Isreal, Palestine and Lebenon. Not much to say, except they are easily dead- they are entirely coastal, have little land formation or defense in depth and are heavily reliant on foreign trade.
2007
Islamic Defense force, Khartoum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khartoum
I'm not seeing it. The Atlas mountains could hold out forever, as could the empty wastes, Iran or the Cascus. Why would they do a last stand in a place along a river?
Indian Defense Force, Gujarrat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat
India stages a last stand... in Western India. Not in the Mountains, not in the hilly South, but on a peninsula. There is ZERO sense whatsoever.
Forces Of Bolivar, Paraguay
Despite the fact that the Andes are one of the most defensible places on Earth, the forces of South America fight and die on the open plains... You seeing a pattern?
2008
European Union Forces, Innsbruck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innsbruck
The EU does its last stand in Austria... which is contradicted by the book "Watch on the Rhine" where the last stand is Germany. I can think of no way to reconciele the two.
Remember- the people planning to fight wars are much, much more competant than me.
2 and 3
So the Darhel have created an entire group of people fanatically bent on their destruction... that takes the cake for sheer incompetance. As for "loyalty on the Indowy"... I'm pretty sure that individuals from far enough past backround would be worse than the Darhel- after all, they could have intervened during the exit from the middle ages and picked up the mercs from that era.
The best way to do it would to deal with Earth like... 40K. The world is a protectorate that has to follow certain protocols, has a preistly caste to run the tech, a planetary governer and provides tribute in the form of troops.
Or they could have exterminated the human race and saved themselves all this trouble.
Note that their plan to create a pecifistic population could have worked in the past even easier- land in a few hundred million colonist and the human population would be outnumbered. Or use a targeted plague that affects only adults. Or simply drop in after the Black plague and take advantage of the social distruption.
The simple fact is they waited until humans had the power to threaten them. It smacks of author meddling, given that humans are supposed to be unique and they have been watching for a long time.
4) Except I'm pretty sure they have a fleet before they come into contact with humans. I also find the idea that they can't use pacifists or cowards to crew a warship pretty odd- after all, they are only pressing buttons.
There is no danger if you are in a fleet an not defending. If holding a position in orbit is too dangerous for the cowards, hide out in the kupiner belt and them bomb the planet to dust when the xenos land. Or surround the planet with mines- it shouldn't be too hard.
And, yes, the Darhel are sabotaging in the first, second, third and forth books also. Given that the Darhel know where their enemies are, planting mines in their path is ridiculously easy. Heck, they could simply fill the area around the planet with orbitals and junk and take them down! After all, when an object materializes inside another, the two objects (the areas that overlap) will explode and you get e=mc2.
Given that they need to sabotage their allies to give their enemies a chance, see my previous objection- why intervene at all? Why not come after the invasion as the people who save the human race and save the possibility of people discovering their betrayl?
5 What is the differance between a space warship and a space merchant ship? In most sci fi setting it is simply guns and the size of the power plant. You simply remodel the ship, dump unneccessary things like cargo bays, put in large reactors and link them to guns. They will need targetting computers and a whole host of other systems, but in space series where you have FTL, relativistic drives and shields, the differances between warships and merchant ships are smaller. It isn't a trieme vs a battle ship- it is an oil tanker vs a battleship. After all, merchant vessels can be bigger. And what do you do? Strip out the massive fuel tanks, strap some turbolasers or whatever energy weapon they use and put in a shield generator. In space opera, size DOES matter. Of course, if they don't have shields, than simply armor plating it would do the trick.
As for lacking industry... so they only do things cottage level. Human society did that until... 1800s. We still managed to fight wars and complete large tasks. As for getting more out of their workers, it is simple- longer hours and no more vacations for the duration of the emergency!
Remember, as long as the population is productive enough to make enough for themselves AND something extra, they can dump that extra into the warmachine. More to the point, the fact they can build mile high sky scrapers says alot about their industrial capacity.
Or they could simply attach reactionless drives to the bottom of the skyscrapers and use them as spaceships... that would be interesting.
Anyway, can you confirm they have reactionless drives, shields, laser weapons and high yield generators? I don't have the books on me and all I am certain about is high yield generators (antimatter powered).
6 Unfortunately they show no way of delieving nuclear weapons- they don't have artillary, bombers OR missles. It is also rather unbelievable- after all, in Hell's Faire, the main Posleen commander believes humans are a threat to his species... yet he doesn't use nukes which would utterly rout the human forces!
As for using ships... there is no way they can render a planet uninhabitable. The use energy weapons that are supposed to "slag mountains" (I put it down to Purple Prose). Even if true, there is no reason such weapons would devestate a planet given they'd be used on enemy leaders.
7 They were designed to be immune to species they had never meet? Remember, they were genetically engineered BEFORE mankind started kinkering with more effective ways to kill things.
As for getting samples... I'm putting that down as stupidity on the characters part not to think of it before hand. After all, if they aren't weak to something that poisons us, than their poison probably won't affect us.
However, not all poisons are species specific. Mustard Gas is a good example if the Posleen have DNA (a good bet- they can eat our food), than it WILL kill them. There are probably more examples or toxins that would work.
9) Shorched Earth is a tactic they WOULD be familiar with. Given that they are supposed to be an aggressive species that had their instincts... subsumed, planting mines everyone and rigging cities to explode in atomic fire should come naturally. After all, if they can't have it, no one can.
The objection is an inability to do violence... which would require specific neural circuitry. It is worth noting that there have been pasifistic groups that have had had members fight in wars and return. Which leads to point 18 I guess.
12 will be covered under one- they will be subsumed. However, "supplies" doesn't cover food in either invasion- they had enough.
10) Genes don't work that way. It is quite simply- you cannot be granted specific memory by genes. Why? Because it would require the genes specifying specific connections and patterns in the brain. Genes don't have enough room to do so for the amount of information you'd need to do anything more than extremely simple tasks. The closest we have is instinct. However, having differant Posleen with differant hardwired coding makes it worse- or do the Posleen not suffer from mutations?
11) The leader of the panzer groppen specifically states the glee he will be having going toe to toe in his tigers versus the Darhel robotic war machines.
13) The US is lozing... and isn't totally mobilized? I think you missed the point of the argument. They still have prisons and hippie communies during the war- the officer who attacks Cally is sent to prison and Mike's father mentions how his ex-wife is on a commune and wouldn't understand, how she would try to live along side the Posleen before being eaten. The US is not using ALL its resources. That is completely unbelievable, given US action in WW2 or (better analogy) the Soviet Union in the war. I'll avoid politics, but I'd like to point out they used brigades made of prisoners and forced EVERYONE to work. Admittadly, it was a brutal police state, but given a big enough threat most decency goes out the window. The US will draft everyone between the ages of 18 and 45, repeal the retirement age, etc.
16) Than make bigger tubes. And make thicker walls of dirt. The best plan would be thick berms put in place by bulldozers, periscopes and ALOT of mortars ond grenade launchers.
As for population... http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbagg
The worlds population in 2005, when the invasion began was 6.47 billion. Given the fact that the Posleen breed at the rate of 1.5-2 years doubling time, their invasion force was between 3 and 6 billion to get the 12 billion in 2008.
The Terran population had about 45% of the population between the ages of 15 and 45. Given rejuv drugs, they could potentially gain 25% more. Assuming that only half of the military age population is pressed into service, that give you a military of about 1.5 billion. Throughout history, the requirement to over run positions has been 10 to 1 odds, and in such cases, it requires preperation, such as artillary strikes.
Even against the mega horde of 12 billion, humanity STILL would win. Although the Posleen have mega ships, they can be brought down by mass concentrated fire.
18) This goes under "genetics and empathy DON'T work that way". I'll work on it latter.
One thing that always bugged me about Watch on the Rhine, and it was the Tiger IIIB. As seen with the Brunnhilde, it single handily managed to almost keep German airspace cleared of Posleen craft, and after the evacuation of Germany, the plans were uploaded to the net.
Yet...
The US builds the Sheva instead, which while awesome, doesn't seem as efficient as the Tiger IIIB.
Eh, just something that bugged me.
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"Screw the spells... gimme a rocket launcher and I'll show you some magic!"
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you ever tried.
We really need to break this up some. These posts are killer-long.
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Originally Posted by Daraken
One thing that always bugged me about Watch on the Rhine, and it was the Tiger IIIB. As seen with the Brunnhilde, it single handily managed to almost keep German airspace cleared of Posleen craft, and after the evacuation of Germany, the plans were uploaded to the net.
Yet...
The US builds the Sheva instead, which while awesome, doesn't seem as efficient as the Tiger IIIB.
Eh, just something that bugged me.
The evacuation of Germany happened pretty late in the war. By that point, the Americans had already been working up their SheVa program. While the Tiger IIIB is probably a better weapon in the antilander role, retooling to build them could be a lot more trouble than it's worth.
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Originally Posted by Sam
1) What it is isn't last stand, but last transmission. Which means that this is the last military unit in the field with radios. Or it could be the last military HQ (which makes less sense). In looking at these, politics and religion are unavoidable. However, to avoid talking about them, I will simply state my analysis without giving certain factors. This is to keep with GitP policy and is totally NOT a dodge.
Perhaps the locations of some of those command facilities was passed over to the Posleen by the Darhel? I interpret those as indicating the fall of centralized resistance, not resistance in general.
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For geographic factors, all that matter are rivers and mountains, which can't be crossed easily, and deserts and places that freeze, which the Posleen can't hold. In addition, the Posleen favor coasts heavily.
The Posleen can fight in mountains, just not in arctic conditions in the mountains. If they invade a mountainous region in local winter they're in trouble (as when they attacked Chile through the Andes in "Yellow Eyes"). They can get across rivers, too, unless the defense of those river lines is very well organized. The Posleen can, at least in theory, suppress the direct fire aimed at them from across the river. Indirect fire from artillery and mortars can stop them, but any gap in the barrage will allow the Posleen to force a crossing. To make matters worse, the only
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2008
European Union Forces, Innsbruck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innsbruck
The EU does its last stand in Austria... which is contradicted by the book "Watch on the Rhine" where the last stand is Germany. I can think of no way to reconciele the two.
I'm guessing a retcon, which I'd concede. Also, I'm not sure if the Posleen took down Austria before the fall of Germany. If they did, then you're right, it's irreconciliable. But it's quite possible for the forces that could not be withdrawn north across the Baltic along with the civilian population to end up herded south into Austria. Remember the "southern redoubt" strategy the Allies were so worried about during World War II?
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Or they could have exterminated the human race and saved themselves all this trouble.
No, they really couldn't. They're hardcoded. If you're a Darhel, just getting angry can risk sending you into catatonic shutdown and death. Actually killing anyone is suicide. They're physically hardcoded about this; it's a product of genetic modifications they still haven't figured out a way to get rid of.
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Note that their plan to create a pecifistic population could have worked in the past even easier- land in a few hundred million colonist and the human population would be outnumbered. Or use a targeted plague that affects only adults. Or simply drop in after the Black plague and take advantage of the social distruption.
I suspect that they thought humans would not be a long term problem until they realized how fast we were industrializing. If the Posleen hadn't shown up, we might well have been a real threat to Galactic culture within a few more centuries in any event.
In which case their trigger for action was precisely the realization that the humans had the power to threaten them. Also, after the mid-1800s they were worried about the Posleen. They needed to stop the Posleen somewhere, and bleed them very heavily. Earth was one of their targets of choice. They needed humans, but they also needed Earth as a citadel that would suck in large numbers of Posleen, damage them badly, and ultimately fall. Which meant they couldn't completely sabotage our defense or wreck our civliization before we developed the technology to make trouble for Posleen on our own world using native military technology.
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4) Except I'm pretty sure they have a fleet before they come into contact with humans. I also find the idea that they can't use pacifists or cowards to crew a warship pretty odd- after all, they are only pressing buttons.
There is no danger if you are in a fleet an not defending. If holding a position in orbit is too dangerous for the cowards, hide out in the kupiner belt and them bomb the planet to dust when the xenos land. Or surround the planet with mines- it shouldn't be too hard.
The problem is that they're genetically hardcoded. The only species that can pull triggers without killing themselves are the Himmit. And even they seem to have real trouble with active violence, because they are intimately aware of the fact that if the enemy is in range, so are you.
They can't kill Posleen hordes, except using suicidal volunteers to push the buttons on robotic war machines. And they don't know how to design an effective robot war machine, because they haven't fought a war in millenia.
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Given that they need to sabotage their allies to give their enemies a chance, see my previous objection- why intervene at all? Why not come after the invasion as the people who save the human race and save the possibility of people discovering their betrayl?
Because they couldn't save humanity, or even themselves, without an organized military that would fight the Posleen effectively. They needed the nations of Earth to organize such a force. Scattered bands of refugees on a hundred Galactic worlds would not be able to do that.
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As for lacking industry... so they only do things cottage level. Human society did that until... 1800s. We still managed to fight wars and complete large tasks. As for getting more out of their workers, it is simple- longer hours and no more vacations for the duration of the emergency!
They already worked on this basis. The nerfing of Galactic industry was deliberate on the part of the Darhel because they wanted to keep the system under control. It backfired when they had to gear up war production and found that they didn't have anyone they could retask to it. Yes, they can build mile high skyscrapers, but it takes them a stunningly long time. The resulting structure is designed to last for millenia. Same goes for starships. They couldn't retool their shipyards to dramatically faster production because they didn't have building slips capable of turning out a starship fast enough to matter. So they lost their initial wave of refits due to tactical blunders and attrition, and then could only replace them at a trickle.
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6 Unfortunately they show no way of delieving nuclear weapons- they don't have artillary, bombers OR missles. It is also rather unbelievable- after all, in Hell's Faire, the main Posleen commander believes humans are a threat to his species... yet he doesn't use nukes which would utterly rout the human forces!
The Posleen have kinetic strike capability from orbit, for starters. They could assuredly drop bombs from orbiting (or hovering) starships. It's just that they normally never do so except during intra-Posleen civil wars. They think they're winning on Earth until the last few months... at which point it's too late.
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The objection is an inability to do violence... which would require specific neural circuitry. It is worth noting that there have been pasifistic groups that have had had members fight in wars and return. Which leads to point 18 I guess.
In the Tch'pth and Indowy cases, it's a mix of genetics (they evolved from species that seldom, if ever, kills anything) and indoctrination (the Darhel don't want rebellious Indowy, so they encourage them to be as pacifist as inhumanly possible).
In the Darhel case, someone actually monkeyed with their genes and converted their 'adrenaline rush' response into a 'lethal system shutdown' response. Since they're predators, it takes them great mental discipline to do anything remotely associated with violence without getting an adrenaline rush. Which makes them nearly useless as soldiers.
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The Terran population had about 45% of the population between the ages of 15 and 45. Given rejuv drugs, they could potentially gain 25% more. Assuming that only half of the military age population is pressed into service, that give you a military of about 1.5 billion. Throughout history, the requirement to over run positions has been 10 to 1 odds, and in such cases, it requires preperation, such as artillary strikes.
Who would work in the factories to arm such a force? One soldier requires more than one or two factory workers, even in the best of cases.
To make matters worse, a lot of the world's population lives in countries that suffered from plain bad leadership, combined with Darhel sabotage. Look at what happened to Tenth Corps in "Gust Front." That was in a military which has lots of combat experience and (more importantly) lots of efficient general staff experience.
In much of the rest of the world, a lot of the generals commanding a national army are useless idiots who will do more harm than good to their own defense efforts. Even if they know they're in for a battle for their lives, they don't even know what an effective, well organized military looks like, let alone how to run one.
If the entire world had the level of organization that characterizes European or American armies, the invasion might well have been pushed back in fairly short order.
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Even against the mega horde of 12 billion, humanity STILL would win. Although the Posleen have mega ships, they can be brought down by mass concentrated fire.
Only if the fire in question comes from very heavy weapons, like 200mm rail guns and naval artillery. Rifles aren't going to cut it, and neither are most of the SAMs the US is familiar with.
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My favorite rejoinder:
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by Betty
If your idea of fun is to give the players whatever they want, then I suggest you take out a board game called: CANDY LAND and use that for your gaming sessions.
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Originally Posted by Dervag
Obviously, you have never known the frustration of being stranded in the Molasses Swamp.
1) What it is isn't last stand, but last transmission. Which means that this is the last military unit in the field with radios. Or it could be the last military HQ (which makes less sense). In looking at these, politics and religion are unavoidable. However, to avoid talking about them, I will simply state my analysis without giving certain factors. This is to keep with GitP policy and is totally NOT a dodge.
Again, as I pointed out: these weren't meant to be taken as military losses, but as emotional losses. "Look folks, these are the wonderful parts and places of human heritage! And now they're alien chow!"
Ok, I admit I'm gonna cut quotes down here. Anyone who wants to read the original should reference Sam's posts.
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...The simple fact is they waited until humans had the power to threaten them. It smacks of author meddling, given that humans are supposed to be unique and they have been watching for a long time.
How could they have done otherwise? The Darhel can't fight without dying. The Indowy won't fight, especially if there's no reason to. Earth was a back water. It'd be the equivalent of us hunting down every last chimpanzee and exterminating them because they might evolve into a threat to is in the next millenia or so.
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4) Except I'm pretty sure they have a fleet before they come into contact with humans. I also find the idea that they can't use pacifists or cowards to crew a warship pretty odd- after all, they are only pressing buttons.
The Darhel can't even press that button without suiciding. The Indowy are so introverted, that sing a human smile is enough to cause most of them to have an anxiety attack. The T'Cpth have better things to do. And the other species has a general philosophy of, "He who runs away lives to run away another day." Do you really think they're going to be able to handle a C-Dec shooting at them as the posleen invade a system?
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5 What is the differance between a space warship and a space merchant ship?
Armor and size, mostly. Posleen craft are designed to be involved in combat, and can take a couple hits and keep fighting. The average merchant ship? Debris and vented atmosphere on the first shot to hit. It's like pitting George Forman against a guy with a glass jaw. The guy can punch at George all he wants, but George just needs to land one blow and its done.
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Anyway, can you confirm they have reactionless drives, shields, laser weapons and high yield generators? I don't have the books on me and all I am certain about is high yield generators (antimatter powered).
Fleet is using reactionless drives as far as I can tell, and one of the reasons Sharon's ship died so quickly is because its shields weren't working, at least if memory serves. They do have laser weapons, but won't use them on the ground: there was a bug in stabilizing field that caused them to explode without a second field in place. Fighters and warships could mount them, as they could take the extra weight of the increased power supply and field generator.
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As for using ships... there is no way they can render a planet uninhabitable. The use energy weapons that are supposed to "slag mountains" (I put it down to Purple Prose).
Nope. A lot of the terran defense centers were built under mountains for shielding purposes. They still got slagged by kinetics from orbit. Kratman references a mountain in the Pyrenees being turned into a crater.
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7 They were designed to be immune to species they had never meet? Remember, they were genetically engineered BEFORE mankind started kinkering with more effective ways to kill things.
No, they were designed to be able to live off of just about anything short of heavy metals. The Posleen can literally eat just about anything, and not worry about being poisoned by it. It wasn't intended as a defense mechanism, but a survival trait. That's actually how the T'Cpth explain it in the book: he couldn't eat human food, and humans couldn't eat his, but the Posleen could eat both styles and then the T'cpth and humans as well.
A
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s for getting samples... I'm putting that down as stupidity on the characters part not to think of it before hand. After all, if they aren't weak to something that poisons us, than their poison probably won't affect us.
Actually, one of the first things the humans did was send in a small recon team to a Posleen held planet, and part of their mission was to acquire biological samples. They brought back several live hatchlings for study. Of course, by that time Daltran had already happened...
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Genes don't work that way. It is quite simply- you cannot be granted specific memory by genes. Why? Because it would require the genes specifying specific connections and patterns in the brain.
Careful; we're not talking about specific memories here, but skills. Its more akin to birds building a nest. They don't need to be taught how to do it; they just do it. In the same way Posleen normals "just farm" and "just build". They don't do it well, they don't understand what they're doing and can't be taught new abilities. Its just instinct to them.
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11) The leader of the panzer groppen specifically states the glee he will be having going toe to toe in his tigers versus the Darhel robotic war machines.
Then all I can guess is that they got desperate enough to pull the plans out of the mothballs when the humans came a knockin'.
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13) The US is lozing... and isn't totally mobilized? I think you missed the point of the argument. They still have prisons and hippie communies during the war- the officer who attacks Cally is sent to prison and Mike's father mentions how his ex-wife is on a commune and wouldn't understand, how she would try to live along side the Posleen before being eaten.
Those communes are producing food. Those prisoners are working in factories. Current estimates put it at 10 people working for every one soldier in the field. Anyone who was able to be drafted and fixed up before the medical/rejjuv nanites ran out, was. That requires a lot of infrastructure.
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16) Than make bigger tubes. And make thicker walls of dirt. The best plan would be thick berms put in place by bulldozers, periscopes and ALOT of mortars ond grenade launchers.
Yes and no. As I said, they basically sealed every mountain pass with forts stocking heavy artillery. But you can't use normal grenade launchers and mortars; they don't have the range. Basic premise being if the Posleen make it to withing 3 kilometers, you've probably already lost. It works for a team like the ACS, but only because they're generally wearing enough armor to take slugs and flechettes. But remember: the entire situation in Hell's Faire came about because one of the forts fell in When the Devil Dances.
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Basilisk 6
Pilot of the Thing
I'm not evil. My morals just aren't the same as society's.
On a one man quest to beat the Star Wars Universe, using nothing but simple, plain, ordinary logic. Score so far: Me 593 SWU 450
Indirect fire weapons always depend on direct fire weapons to keep the enemy from attacking the gunners. They should never see the enemy.
Anything that attacks the Posleen from inside the range of their own weapons (some of which can reach out to the horizon) is not good enough. You need heavy artillery if you want to kill Posleen for long periods without losing your own troops in the process. That even applies to stuff like armored combat suits that are nigh-invulnerable to the standard Posleen shoulder weapons.
Heavy artillery is expensive. Shells, likewise. You cannot just make enough heavy cannons to turn every tenth, or even every twentieth, person on Earth into an artilleryman. And if you try to equip them with man-portable "artillery" (light mortars or, God help us, grenade launchers), they are likely to get chewed up by the Posleen without inflicting the necessary kill ratio.
Which, come to think of it, is more or less what happened.
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My favorite rejoinder:
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by Betty
If your idea of fun is to give the players whatever they want, then I suggest you take out a board game called: CANDY LAND and use that for your gaming sessions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dervag
Obviously, you have never known the frustration of being stranded in the Molasses Swamp.
Then all I can guess is that they got desperate enough to pull the plans out of the mothballs when the humans came a knockin'.
..Actually, this makes some sense. As I recall, they don't Die when the rage is triggered, they just try to kill everything around them (then die). So....you put a Darhel in a "Mech" or something similar, and get them to rage. They should do a hell of a lot of damage before they die. I think Sister Time has a description of what happens during the rage.
Well, the only problem is that the Darhel can't control themselves in a rage. When I compared them to a shark, it was for a reason. A Darhel in a rage is like a shark in a feeding frenzy. You wouldn't have a hard time getting them to attack, you'd have a hard time not getting them to attack each other.
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Basilisk 6
Pilot of the Thing
I'm not evil. My morals just aren't the same as society's.
On a one man quest to beat the Star Wars Universe, using nothing but simple, plain, ordinary logic. Score so far: Me 593 SWU 450
Well, the only problem is that the Darhel can't control themselves in a rage. When I compared them to a shark, it was for a reason. A Darhel in a rage is like a shark in a feeding frenzy. You wouldn't have a hard time getting them to attack, you'd have a hard time not getting them to attack each other.
..I'm not sure. The description of the attack on Cally seems to indicate that the Darhel attack whatever triggered the rage (at least to my reading). Although if the worry was they would attack one another, just send them in one at a time. I believe the rage only lasts a few moments (as in less than a minute) before catatonia and death set in.
When the Darhel attacked Cally in Sister Time, she was alone in the room with it. When the Darhel went nuts at the prison camp in Yellow Eyes, it was rather blatantly just gnawing on what was ever closest. In this case, I take Yellow Eyes as the main example, as it was the one with multiple targets present.
__________________
Basilisk 6
Pilot of the Thing
I'm not evil. My morals just aren't the same as society's.
On a one man quest to beat the Star Wars Universe, using nothing but simple, plain, ordinary logic. Score so far: Me 593 SWU 450
When the Darhel attacked Cally in Sister Time, she was alone in the room with it. When the Darhel went nuts at the prison camp in Yellow Eyes, it was rather blatantly just gnawing on what was ever closest. In this case, I take Yellow Eyes as the main example, as it was the one with multiple targets present.
I'll have to take your work for that one, as I haven't read that book yet. It's next on my list though.
It does occur to me that there could be other ways for the "robotic death machines" to be used. If biological pilots were needed, could the computer system simply not show "friendly" troops? If the insane Darhel didn't know there were others there, they would go after whatever they did see, namely the Posleen. The other way would to just use computers to run the things. They might consider that "Cheating" though.
Let me step in on this because this has been covered over in another board that I post to, there's one massive issue with the "Last Transmission" Bit. Specifically the Russians.
How the hell did the Russians go down?
We know Posleen don't like cold, can't stand it(Which is odd since they are a space-faring race, you'd assume they have some sort of space-suit for outside repairs), but never the less, they don't handle could, they don't cross rivers well and they can't handle mountains.
You can tell the author never visited Russia or talked to any person who's been to Russia, if there's one thing Russia has, it's Cold, Rivers, and Mountains. Moscow has a good solid six months of cold, and a dozen rivers the Posleen would have to ford. If you go further than Moscow, north to places like St Petersburg, you have frozen marshes and the like.
And what about places like Norway? All they have are mountains, more mountains and cold, yet somehow they died off to?
The great die off made sense in places like Africa or Australia, Poland and other such big mostly empty places. What about South America, not first rate military sure but they have some big damn mountains.
The great "die off" makes no sense per the author's own logic, it only works if you want to handwave that American number 1, when we have some of those same issues.
Based on what the authors say in the books, from a close reading:
There were a lot of human survivors in inhospitable parts of the world. Human remnant groups survived in places like Siberia and, yes, Norway (heck, all of Scandinavia). For example, at the end of "Wacht am Rhein," the survivors from the last stand of European forces in Germany (and Austria?) were being evacuated north into Sweden, where the Posleen wouldn't follow.
There were other regions humans held, such as the highlands of Ethiopia, Turkey, and Iran, the Atlas Mountains, the Andes, the Tibetan plateau, and so on.
This was part of the Darhel plan. They did not actually want humanity on Earth to be exterminated to the last person.
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The problem, from a human military standpoint, was that most of the people living in those areas were scattered, disorganized refugees. Most of the world's industrial areas and transportation infrastructure had been destroyed. Therefore, the survivors didn't have very much to fight with, especially in terms of the kind of mass-produced artillery and huge defensive fortifications required to stop major Posleen attacks.
Many national governments did not manage to retreat in good order. Some governments would have dissolved without a constant military presence to guard the rulers (military dictatorships). Others might have been destroyed entirely when Posleen landings attacked them before they had a chance to withdraw to safer quarters. Unless I am sorely mistaken, exactly this happened to the president of the United States in Gust Front. The entire US government would have suffered from the dislocation caused by the battle in and around Washington- several major government buildings were destroyed.
Countries that were less prepared than the US would have suffered even worse damage if a Posleen attack should strike near their capital.
So while there were hundreds of millions of human survivors in regions that the Posleen simply could not operate in effectively, those survivors did not have well organized governments to organize their efforts. This may be what happened in Russia- while many Russians escaped to Siberia, and much of their industry was preserved intact, the government broke up under stress. The splinters would have been able to fend off the Posleen given their terrain advantages.
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Look at the maps here, and you'll see what I mean. There are plenty of areas marked "Human" and "Remnants" where humans continued to survive. But most of those areas are not in regions with lots of natural resources and industry. In the long run, humans would not be able to defend those areas against the Posleen on their own.
That fits into the Darhel plan. The only thing that did not go according to plan is that a few of the world's most capable, organized political units (the US among them) actually managed to weather the entire Posleen invasion until the human-crewed Galactic Fleet units mutinied and came to the rescue.
__________________
My favorite rejoinder:
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by Betty
If your idea of fun is to give the players whatever they want, then I suggest you take out a board game called: CANDY LAND and use that for your gaming sessions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dervag
Obviously, you have never known the frustration of being stranded in the Molasses Swamp.
One thing that always bugged me about Watch on the Rhine, and it was the Tiger IIIB. As seen with the Brunnhilde, it single handily managed to almost keep German airspace cleared of Posleen craft, and after the evacuation of Germany, the plans were uploaded to the net.
Yet...
The US builds the Sheva instead, which while awesome, doesn't seem as efficient as the Tiger IIIB.
Eh, just something that bugged me.
Out of universe? Waffen Wanking. A new author wanted to show his pet creation was MORE powerful, so he gave them a bigger gun.
In Universe? Darned if I know. It couldbe based of the US vs German WW2 methods of production (the US mass produced, while the Germans did alot more individualized equipment and experimented with a bunch of differant systems). Course, the Germans LOST because of it, so they wouldn't do it again.
Of course, there is the problem that the Nazis discovered. For those who don't know Those Wacky Nazis had Supersoldier programs (They didn't use The Spatan Way- that produces pschos) and some interesting superweapons. One of them was a superheavy tank. However, it didn't work. It was so heavy that it would simply sink into the ground! The SheVa and German neo Tiger probably weigh more than it did!
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Originally Posted by Dervag
The evacuation of Germany happened pretty late in the war. By that point, the Americans had already been working up their SheVa program. While the Tiger IIIB is probably a better weapon in the antilander role, retooling to build them could be a lot more trouble than it's worth.
The Germans had the Tiger in development after Friedricksburg. That was 2004. Given that it is superior and fills a needed role (anti-space), the Americans should have picked it up- after all, they mention the American space defense network being slagged by the Posleen first wave. Of course, given that one of the members of the design team was Isreali army, the US WOULD have known about it. The most likely explanation is that the tank simply cost too much- it was designed by army men, not engineers. It had alot of capabilities, but was probably too expansive to mass produce. Apparently they didn't learn from the LAST war!
The Shiva itself is a waste of resources. A rocket could accomplish what it does. Sure, the God Kings can shoot down rockets- but only if they are guided. Simply make a dumb missle (no electronic) and they are as weak against them as artillary shells.
Perhaps the locations of some of those command facilities was passed over to the Posleen by the Darhel? I interpret those as indicating the fall of centralized resistance, not resistance in general.
This is contradicted by the book "Watch on the Rhine". The German Army HQ is not in Innsbruck. In fact, the nations of Europe are not all in an alliance- England fights its own war, Scandanavia sits out and Switzerland bunkers down. A little absurd it its own right, but there it is.
As for handing over C&C... the God Kings can detect electronic noise with their sensors. It isn't hard to imagine they could triangulate HQ.
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The Posleen can fight in mountains, just not in arctic conditions in the mountains. If they invade a mountainous region in local winter they're in trouble (as when they attacked Chile through the Andes in "Yellow Eyes"). They can get across rivers, too, unless the defense of those river lines is very well organized. The Posleen can, at least in theory, suppress the direct fire aimed at them from across the river. Indirect fire from artillery and mortars can stop them, but any gap in the barrage will allow the Posleen to force a crossing. To make matters worse, the only
Except the entire US defense system was based in mountains with forts holding the passes. They CAN'T climb mountains! I don't know how they do it in Yellow Eyes, so I can't comment on it. They also can't cross rivers- this was established in "Hell's Gates" where their advance was held up when they had to have the Indowy build a bridge across a river.
As for gaps in fire... the armies of WW1 could do a continuous barrage. I'm sure we could manage as well. Unlike them, we have five years to prepare.
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I'm guessing a retcon, which I'd concede. Also, I'm not sure if the Posleen took down Austria before the fall of Germany. If they did, then you're right, it's irreconciliable. But it's quite possible for the forces that could not be withdrawn north across the Baltic along with the civilian population to end up herded south into Austria. Remember the "southern redoubt" strategy the Allies were so worried about during World War II?
Except the HQ was in Germany. It doesn't require a retcon- as this map shows http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...phy_map_en.png
Innsburck is in the mountains (Innsbruck isn't on that map- here is it is for referance) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innsbruck
So it probably was held in "Watch on the Rhine". However, it was NOT a HQ and the fighting force was NOT European Union Forces.
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No, they really couldn't. They're hardcoded. If you're a Darhel, just getting angry can risk sending you into catatonic shutdown and death. Actually killing anyone is suicide. They're physically hardcoded about this; it's a product of genetic modifications they still haven't figured out a way to get rid of.
I'd go into it in number 18, but basically that is BS. For starters, the Darhel could simply do lobotomies and remove the death trigger. They have had thousands of years to do so. Also, you don't need to be angry to kill- war is simply business alot of the time- particullarly space warfare where you fight at ranges where you can't see your opponents.
As for killing anyone... the Darhel show a callus disregard for others lives and create situations to create the most death. The "no killing" has an obsene amount of leeway. Not to mention that this means that a single individual of ANY species could exterminate them... even a race of cowards would find them an easy target. Or a single sociopthic Darhel- apparently their species suffers zero mutations. Come to think of it, how to they deal with disease? You have to kill it to live yourself. SO the command must be for sentient... except as human history has shown you just declare your enemies nonsentient!
I'll go into more detail exactly how much this ignores actually brain wiring latter.
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I suspect that they thought humans would not be a long term problem until they realized how fast we were industrializing. If the Posleen hadn't shown up, we might well have been a real threat to Galactic culture within a few more centuries in any event.
In which case their trigger for action was precisely the realization that the humans had the power to threaten them. Also, after the mid-1800s they were worried about the Posleen. They needed to stop the Posleen somewhere, and bleed them very heavily. Earth was one of their targets of choice. They needed humans, but they also needed Earth as a citadel that would suck in large numbers of Posleen, damage them badly, and ultimately fall. Which meant they couldn't completely sabotage our defense or wreck our civliization before we developed the technology to make trouble for Posleen on our own world using native military technology.
Ah yes, the "humans are the only species capable of innovation and everyone is surprised at how fast we grow". Presumably they didn't bother to actually look at human history and learn that we went from hunter gatherers to empire builders in less than 6000 years? As for Earth being a threat...
As for stopping the Posleen... did you read the part about Scorthed Earth? The Posleen decide where to fight based on the net. The net awards resources based on who captures them. If nothing is captured, there is no reward. As such, the simplest way to deal with this is simply wire the cities to explode using sensors. Posleen come, cities go up in a mushroom cloud and there is nothing for the Posleen to claim. Scatter enough across the planet and the world becomes a dead world. At which point the Posleen slowly starve because they have no food source, their equipment falls apart as they have no industrial base... the Darhel only have to stall for time. And the Posleen drive is EXTREMELY slow.
As for sucking in Posleen or only just sabotaging... the Posleen work by the Net. Why would they swarm to Earth? It is POORER than the rest of the Darhel's possessions! Most Darhel worlds contain cities made entirely of built up sky scrapers that are self contained cities in their own right. Earth, by contrast doesn't have that level of industrialization. Not to mention our machinary needs workers, unlike alot of the Indowy systems, some of which is probably automated, and the rest which is run of the Indowy, who make better slaves than humans.
As for sabotage... they could simply not have provided any gear, waited to warn, done no warning, etc. The only reason they would sabotage is if they didn't understand humans and were trying to get it just right... except sabotage is part of their opening plans.
Why didn't they recruit human troops in the 1800s? "Work for us and you live forever" would work, as well as the fact that much of the world's population lived in heavily stratified societies- I'm sure much of the Nobility would approve of the Darhel system. No labor unions, strikes, disorder, etc...
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The problem is that they're genetically hardcoded. The only species that can pull triggers without killing themselves are the Himmit. And even they seem to have real trouble with active violence, because they are intimately aware of the fact that if the enemy is in range, so are you.
They can't kill Posleen hordes, except using suicidal volunteers to push the buttons on robotic war machines. And they don't know how to design an effective robot war machine, because they haven't fought a war in millenia.
Well, that makes no sense- I'm going to have to assume all the Darhel subject species were ALSO genetically engineered. As for if the enemy is in range, so are you... that is false. An enemy that doesn't use artillary? You are only in range is you are in their LOS. Otherwise you can fire away!
As for war machines... copy the Posleen! Really, if they have no clue, than you simply do what your enemy is doing, but MORE SO. Build a tracked bot with a gun. Don't do AI except for basic manuevering and the ability to recognize their surroundings- have them remote controlled and linked so that one person can give the "fire" command. You'd need them smart enough so that they wouldn't shoot if another bot is in front of them, but that is IT.
A Posleen takes 2 years to mature. A robot rools of the line in 20 seconds if you make it simple enough.
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Because they couldn't save humanity, or even themselves, without an organized military that would fight the Posleen effectively. They needed the nations of Earth to organize such a force. Scattered bands of refugees on a hundred Galactic worlds would not be able to do that.
They already worked on this basis. The nerfing of Galactic industry was deliberate on the part of the Darhel because they wanted to keep the system under control. It backfired when they had to gear up war production and found that they didn't have anyone they could retask to it. Yes, they can build mile high skyscrapers, but it takes them a stunningly long time. The resulting structure is designed to last for millenia. Same goes for starships. They couldn't retool their shipyards to dramatically faster production because they didn't have building slips capable of turning out a starship fast enough to matter. So they lost their initial wave of refits due to tactical blunders and attrition, and then could only replace them at a trickle.
The Posleen don't need a military to beat- you only need that if you wish to face them on the ground. If you don't bother with planets you can simply fight entirely from space.
As for their pathetic industrial production... they had 200 years. They can't retrofit their economy in 200 years? Given that they can simply starve people to death if they fail, I'm thinking they could easily motivate the Indowy to work faster or better.
Remember, they DON'T have to build spaceships, they only need to create shields, guns, computers and powerplants. For the ships themselves they can carve out asteroids or use skyscrapers. Heck, if they are ruthless enough, they can dump out the population of an entire city and recycle the buildings- that would provide enough materials for a fleet.
The fact that they don't screams less "incompetance" and more "writters fiat". Although ruling groups may ossify, given they are fighting for their lives, you'd expect to see some change and innovation. You see zero!
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The Posleen have kinetic strike capability from orbit, for starters. They could assuredly drop bombs from orbiting (or hovering) starships. It's just that they normally never do so except during intra-Posleen civil wars. They think they're winning on Earth until the last few months... at which point it's too late.
Except the Posleen starships aren't capable of doing that- every single time they are mentioned they are using laser weapons. Given the fact their engineers are encoded, they would not be able to switch out their equipment. As to "thinking they are winning"... the first landing in the US was utterly decimated and subsequant landings took horrific casulties, considering previously they had fought against enemies who fleed at their sight.
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In the Tch'pth and Indowy cases, it's a mix of genetics (they evolved from species that seldom, if ever, kills anything) and indoctrination (the Darhel don't want rebellious Indowy, so they encourage them to be as pacifist as inhumanly possible).
In the Darhel case, someone actually monkeyed with their genes and converted their 'adrenaline rush' response into a 'lethal system shutdown' response. Since they're predators, it takes them great mental discipline to do anything remotely associated with violence without getting an adrenaline rush. Which makes them nearly useless as soldiers.
That is quite simply impossible. For that to occur would imply that they never inovated, had wars, developed societies... you can't do any of those things without war. If there were individuals willing to kill, they would have had an advantage over others (that is why humanity has socipaths- it is occasionaly an advantage).
It means that the Darhel found them and decided to switch out their own workers for Indowy... instead of say, using robots. This boogles the mind- they mean a deliberately complex and unstable system because... well, that is a ginat plot hole.
As for dying when they get an adreniline rush... you simply remove the adrenal gland. Simple.
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Who would work in the factories to arm such a force? One soldier requires more than one or two factory workers, even in the best of cases.
To make matters worse, a lot of the world's population lives in countries that suffered from plain bad leadership, combined with Darhel sabotage. Look at what happened to Tenth Corps in "Gust Front." That was in a military which has lots of combat experience and (more importantly) lots of efficient general staff experience.
In much of the rest of the world, a lot of the generals commanding a national army are useless idiots who will do more harm than good to their own defense efforts. Even if they know they're in for a battle for their lives, they don't even know what an effective, well organized military looks like, let alone how to run one.
If the entire world had the level of organization that characterizes European or American armies, the invasion might well have been pushed back in fairly short order.
Only if the fire in question comes from very heavy weapons, like 200mm rail guns and naval artillery. Rifles aren't going to cut it, and neither are most of the SAMs the US is familiar with.
You are aware that the world has ive years to prepare for an invasion? We could simply stockpile ammo, weapons, medicine, food, etc.
As for running the military... you do realize that you are drastically undersestimating the intelligence of the commanders. We are talking about people, who, if they fail, everyone dies. Lets look at the Soviet Union, which sacked all its commmanders in the purges, was extremely conformist, had secret police and political officers, suppressed news and questioning, etc. Guess what? They managed to innovate more than the Germans- their military was not incompetant. Remember that a large number of their commanders were previously peasants.
You don't need "American" style armies to face enemies like the Posleen. You need Soviet style armies. The troops can be some farmer who never went more than 10 miles from home his entire life. It doesn't matter. All he needs to know is obey orders and how to do his job, a task that is repeated again and again until he dreams about it. Oh, and how to use a shovel.
To fight the Posleen waves, all you need IS rifles or mortars. The Posleen don't use landers in a combat role for the first 3 years.
Remeber, the world has 5 years to prepare. You stock up for the first 4 and spend the next one and change training your men. Propagandize them till their ears bleed, get them to work, eat and sleep together so they will stand and die for each other, do excercise till they are strong enough and training until they are a machine.
For comparison, it takes the US only three months to train basic infantry.
As for dealing with landers... missles. LOTS of missles.
Again, as I pointed out: these weren't meant to be taken as military losses, but as emotional losses. "Look folks, these are the wonderful parts and places of human heritage! And now they're alien chow!"
That is probably the only possible explanation.
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How could they have done otherwise? The Darhel can't fight without dying. The Indowy won't fight, especially if there's no reason to. Earth was a back water. It'd be the equivalent of us hunting down every last chimpanzee and exterminating them because they might evolve into a threat to is in the next millenia or so.
"There are alternatives to fighting"- Obi Wan Kenobi.
It is important to remember that you don't have to go into the trenches and whack the other guy with a serrated shovel. You can simply batter worlds from orbit, bobby trap everything, nanite bomb planets, make the atmosphere unbreathable, etc.
As for killing the chimps... if tomorrow they discovered fire, the day after they set up a society and the day after they replicate philosophy? Yes, I would be worried and hunt 'em down. Apparently the Darhel have no books, fiction or stories whatsoever, because the "threat that is tiny now, but that our brave heroes must stop before it rages out of control" appears OFTEN. Or the fact that it is the equivalent of having a sociopath in their midst- sure, he is in a cage and will get out, but lets take our time... all the Darhel needed to do was nudge an asteroid and no more humans. Asteroids are free.
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The Darhel can't even press that button without suiciding. The Indowy are so introverted, that sing a human smile is enough to cause most of them to have an anxiety attack. The T'Cpth have better things to do. And the other species has a general philosophy of, "He who runs away lives to run away another day." Do you really think they're going to be able to handle a C-Dec shooting at them as the posleen invade a system?
None of these species could have evolved naturally. As for fighting without dying... punjab sticks, mines... okay, I will stop repeating myself.
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Armor and size, mostly. Posleen craft are designed to be involved in combat, and can take a couple hits and keep fighting. The average merchant ship? Debris and vented atmosphere on the first shot to hit. It's like pitting George Forman against a guy with a glass jaw. The guy can punch at George all he wants, but George just needs to land one blow and its done.
Which is why you replate merchant ships. This is space opera, where bigger IS better. You could probably do well linking a bunch of merchant ships rogether and making a horrifically tough hull and pumping up the shields.
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Fleet is using reactionless drives as far as I can tell, and one of the reasons Sharon's ship died so quickly is because its shields weren't working, at least if memory serves. They do have laser weapons, but won't use them on the ground: there was a bug in stabilizing field that caused them to explode without a second field in place. Fighters and warships could mount them, as they could take the extra weight of the increased power supply and field generator.
Reactionless drives are broken. Once the enemy is in a given position, you can hit them with projectiles going a large fraction of c... and then they die.
Lasers aren't useful on the ground- to cumbersome. Of course, having lasers for planetary defense cannons would work... come to think of it, why don't they project shields over planets? The Star Wars solution IS the best one.
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Nope. A lot of the terran defense centers were built under mountains for shielding purposes. They still got slagged by kinetics from orbit. Kratman references a mountain in the Pyrenees being turned into a crater.
How do they do that? All their weapons are energy based for their space ships!... The energy required to do that is huge... you do realize that the amount of energy needed to VAPORIZE ROCK is? Here is an example: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/.../Asteroid.html
So, for 40 meter asteroids, to vaporize them requires... 22,500 TW. The t stands for Tera, or a trillion watts.
And this isn't considering that it is a mountain! Of course they could have simply blown it apart... except that if you are going that fast, you would bore into the mountain. Can some display the relevant page? I'm probably wrong. Or is this a case of Did Not Do the Research on their part? And before someone asks about asteroids, they displace the material.
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No, they were designed to be able to live off of just about anything short of heavy metals. The Posleen can literally eat just about anything, and not worry about being poisoned by it. It wasn't intended as a defense mechanism, but a survival trait. That's actually how the T'Cpth explain it in the book: he couldn't eat human food, and humans couldn't eat his, but the Posleen could eat both styles and then the T'cpth and humans as well.
Except this is quite simply impossible. To be able to eat anything you would need an incredibly complex and energy intensive digestive system. As for being immune to poison... that is ridiculous. Poisons can be diggested- when they are absorded is when they kill you.
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Actually, one of the first things the humans did was send in a small recon team to a Posleen held planet, and part of their mission was to acquire biological samples. They brought back several live hatchlings for study. Of course, by that time Daltran had already happened...
That actually makes sense for "getting humans to do it". "They aren't so dangerous- just go up to them and steal their young... no, we just want to see if you are a worthy member..." :)
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Careful; we're not talking about specific memories here, but skills. Its more akin to birds building a nest. They don't need to be taught how to do it; they just do it. In the same way Posleen normals "just farm" and "just build". They don't do it well, they don't understand what they're doing and can't be taught new abilities. Its just instinct to them.
You do realize that we required skilled individuals to repair things, to build, to farm, etc? Some of the individuals may be brute labor, but actually building a building requires individuals with years of training and collaboration with others with synergistic skills. It isn't a "simple" set of skills- it is extremely complicated. You can't encode it! It also requires the people who engineered them to be obsenely dumb.
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Then all I can guess is that they got desperate enough to pull the plans out of the mothballs when the humans came a knockin'.
Except they previously used war machines, remember? They went beserk... okay. As for desperateness.. they are about to be exterminated in the war with the Posleen.
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Those communes are producing food. Those prisoners are working in factories. Current estimates put it at 10 people working for every one soldier in the field. Anyone who was able to be drafted and fixed up before the medical/rejjuv nanites ran out, was. That requires a lot of infrastructure.
They had 5 years to prepare for this and stockpile necesities... not to mention the Posleen were magically freed from this requirement, which implies you can get very efficient automated factories. Why not used them?
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Yes and no. As I said, they basically sealed every mountain pass with forts stocking heavy artillery. But you can't use normal grenade launchers and mortars; they don't have the range. Basic premise being if the Posleen make it to withing 3 kilometers, you've probably already lost. It works for a team like the ACS, but only because they're generally wearing enough armor to take slugs and flechettes. But remember: the entire situation in Hell's Faire came about because one of the forts fell in When the Devil Dances.
Why? If they are in 3 km, but can't hit you AND they don't get closer than a certain distance (where they still can't hit you) what is the problem? You seem to think they can "run through- but I'm not talking about a few mortars, but thousands upon thousands.
To keep them from closing you could also use automatic machine guns... like the kind they show in Hell's Faire.
Can someone design a better system?
As for "the fort falling"... this occurs 3 years into the war, and only occured after the smartest and most adaptable God King formulated a plan. If you kill them all in every battle, this wouldn't happen.
Indirect fire weapons always depend on direct fire weapons to keep the enemy from attacking the gunners. They should never see the enemy.
Historically militaries have not had time to stockpile and mobilize for war a full five years before it happened. They have not had the opportunity to face an opponent who only uses mass charges and would make constant bombardment worthwile. They have not faced an opponet who does not have any artillary of their own.
As for direct fire, auto machine guns would work. You wouldn't have them on auto unless you were afraid the enemy would break through. Individual troopers could probably gun down individual Posleen- it depends on how through the bombardment is.
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Anything that attacks the Posleen from inside the range of their own weapons (some of which can reach out to the horizon) is not good enough. You need heavy artillery if you want to kill Posleen for long periods without losing your own troops in the process. That even applies to stuff like armored combat suits that are nigh-invulnerable to the standard Posleen shoulder weapons.
Nope. The majority of the Posleen forces are the basic centaur. They don't use their vehicles for combat! It is only after years of warfare that they learn to have the two operate together. You don't need heavy artillary. You seem to think that artillary that is within range is threatened by the enemies... which isn't true if they can't hit you! If they bombarment is thick enough they can't get through. Period. Note this was only the idea that came to me off the top of my head- there are BETTER ways to fight. I'm not a military stategist though.
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Heavy artillery is expensive. Shells, likewise. You cannot just make enough heavy cannons to turn every tenth, or even every twentieth, person on Earth into an artilleryman. And if you try to equip them with man-portable "artillery" (light mortars or, God help us, grenade launchers), they are likely to get chewed up by the Posleen without inflicting the necessary kill ratio.
Which, come to think of it, is more or less what happened.
Except you don't need heavy arty for everyone. Each shot from them will kill more than one Posleen. Gernade launchers are probably a bad idea... unless you can get really high powered ones. I looked and they can only go 400 meter- I believe that is probably to close.
As for what happened... it appears that the politicians simply rolled over world wide and let the Posleen win, even though it would get them killed, while thier militaries fought a war like we would fight, ignoring 5 years of preparation.
Wait... the Darhel go beserk and then die? That is... odd. How could that be designed, much less work?
I can't think up a way to summarize the author's intent that doesn't include politics or the repeated us of the f word.
Anyway, back to why Russia fell
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Originally Posted by Dervag
The problem, from a human military standpoint, was that most of the people living in those areas were scattered, disorganized refugees. Most of the world's industrial areas and transportation infrastructure had been destroyed. Therefore, the survivors didn't have very much to fight with, especially in terms of the kind of mass-produced artillery and huge defensive fortifications required to stop major Posleen attacks.
Soviet union. Second World War. Shipment of heavy industry accross the Urals.
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Many national governments did not manage to retreat in good order. Some governments would have dissolved without a constant military presence to guard the rulers (military dictatorships). Others might have been destroyed entirely when Posleen landings attacked them before they had a chance to withdraw to safer quarters. Unless I am sorely mistaken, exactly this happened to the president of the United States in Gust Front. The entire US government would have suffered from the dislocation caused by the battle in and around Washington- several major government buildings were destroyed.
A military dictatorship would have easily survived- "support us or the aliens will all kill you!" makes an easy rallying point. As for decapitated government... you do realize that even know that is impossible? The president and VP are NEVER in the same location. Once the invasion begun, leaders would have relocated to fortress centers.
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Countries that were less prepared than the US would have suffered even worse damage if a Posleen attack should strike near their capital.
Unless the relocated their capital.
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So while there were hundreds of millions of human survivors in regions that the Posleen simply could not operate in effectively, those survivors did not have well organized governments to organize their efforts. This may be what happened in Russia- while many Russians escaped to Siberia, and much of their industry was preserved intact, the government broke up under stress. The splinters would have been able to fend off the Posleen given their terrain advantages.
Except that the government would probably have relocated to Siberia. They aren't idiots- they are able to read the maps just as well as we are.
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Look at the maps here, and you'll see what I mean. There are plenty of areas marked "Human" and "Remnants" where humans continued to survive. But most of those areas are not in regions with lots of natural resources and industry. In the long run, humans would not be able to defend those areas against the Posleen on their own.
That fits into the Darhel plan. The only thing that did not go according to plan is that a few of the world's most capable, organized political units (the US among them) actually managed to weather the entire Posleen invasion until the human-crewed Galactic Fleet units mutinied and came to the rescue.
What it comes down to is the fact that all the humans in the book are too stupid to take basic defensive preparations? The fact that both the US, Russia, China, Britian and a few others HAD to make these during the Cold War apparently doesn't enter the authors minds. We do have an emergency shadow government for a reason.
The Germans had the Tiger in development after Friedricksburg. That was 2004. Given that it is superior and fills a needed role (anti-space), the Americans should have picked it up- after all, they mention the American space defense network being slagged by the Posleen first wave. A rocket could accomplish what it does. Sure, the God Kings can shoot down rockets- but only if they are guided. Simply make a dumb missle (no electronic) and they are as weak against them as artillary shells.
No, the Tiger I rolled out after Fredricksburg, and was equivalent to the Abrams being used. The Tiger III didn't roll out until a few moments before the Posleen made their final push on German forces. As for rockets, anything other than already ballistic weapons gets shot down. Its not a matter of control systems; missiles were getting shot down almost after launch. Only warheads coming back down were spared.
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Except the entire US defense system was based in mountains with forts holding the passes. They CAN'T climb mountains! I don't know how they do it in Yellow Eyes, so I can't comment on it. They also can't cross rivers- this was established in "Hell's Gates" where their advance was held up when they had to have the Indowy build a bridge across a river.
They fight in mountains the same way everyone but the Kurds and Ghurkas fight in mountains; by going up trails and through passes. The US strategy was simply to seal the passes, and keep all trails under shelling range. Think horses: horses go up and down suitable mountain trails all the time. When they got caught in Yellow Eyes, it was a matter of cold and being forced into a kill zone that caught them.
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I'd go into it in number 18, but basically that is BS. For starters, the Darhel could simply do lobotomies and remove the death trigger.
No, they really can't. We're not talking about a bomb going off in their heads, we're talking about a hormonal imbalance. If they produce X adrenaline, continue without stopping. And yes, that is how genetics works. The DNA that builds glands and organs also tells it how to work. They can cure disease because no, they dont consider it alive. Hell, I don't consider them to be alive, and I know the science behind it.
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As for stopping the Posleen... did you read the part about Scorthed Earth? The Posleen decide where to fight based on the net. The net awards resources based on who captures them. If nothing is captured, there is no reward. As such, the simplest way to deal with this is simply wire the cities to explode using sensors. Posleen come, cities go up in a mushroom cloud and there is nothing for the Posleen to claim. Scatter enough across the planet and the world becomes a dead world. At which point the Posleen slowly starve because they have no food source, their equipment falls apart as they have no industrial base... the Darhel only have to stall for time. And the Posleen drive is EXTREMELY slow.
And the Darhel are manipulating the net, partly to specifically steer the posleen in a certain way. Think the Terrans and the Zerg in starcraft. They thought they could control the Posleen, and to a certain extent the posleen cooperated. And in other ways, they just ate what was put in front of them. And as for scorched earth, why is it so hard to accept that some won't and some can't?
And the Posleen ships can't be that slow; one of the God Kings from Hymn was running the last fight in Hell's Faire and When the Devil Dances. He'd already been there by the time of Yellow Eyes by about a year or so, if memory serves.
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As for sucking in Posleen or only just sabotaging... the Posleen work by the Net. Why would they swarm to Earth? It is POORER than the rest of the Darhel's possessions! Most Darhel worlds contain cities made entirely of built up sky scrapers that are self contained cities in their own right. Earth, by contrast doesn't have that level of industrialization. Not to mention our machinary needs workers, unlike alot of the Indowy systems, some of which is probably automated, and the rest which is run of the Indowy, who make better slaves than humans.
As for sabotage... they could simply not have provided any gear, waited to warn, done no warning, etc. The only reason they would sabotage is if they didn't understand humans and were trying to get it just right... except sabotage is part of their opening plans.
Again, the Darhel deliberately guided the Posleen to Earth. They probably made it look richer than it was. As for sabotage, the Darhel wanted a zero-sum game. They wanted to break the Posleen by making them actually fight for a planet (sort of worked) and to break the humans by getting our home planet wrecked in the fighting (would have worked if Fleet hand't told them where to shove it)
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As for war machines... copy the Posleen! Really, if they have no clue, than you simply do what your enemy is doing, but MORE SO. Build a tracked bot with a gun. Don't do AI except for basic manuevering and the ability to recognize their surroundings- have them remote controlled and linked so that one person can give the "fire" command. You'd need them smart enough so that they wouldn't shoot if another bot is in front of them, but that is IT.
A Posleen takes 2 years to mature. A robot rools of the line in 20 seconds if you make it simple enough.
So, manjacks basically? And you still haven't overcome the problem of having all of the galaxy's manufacturing in the hands of the Indowy, who grow things much more slowly than the Posleen breed.
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Except the Posleen starships aren't capable of doing that- every single time they are mentioned they are using laser weapons. Given the fact their engineers are encoded, they would not be able to switch out their equipment. As to "thinking they are winning"... the first landing in the US was utterly decimated and subsequant landings took horrific casulties, considering previously they had fought against enemies who fleed at their sight.
No. Ships in the atmosphere use energy weapons. Ships in orbit are clearly described as nailing positions and orbital defense centers with kinetic energy weapons multiple times by both authors. And as for thinking they were winning, well, they were. Basically by the time fleet got there, America was the last nation that was giving much fight. The others were either just barely holding, or had already retreated as far as they could go and survive.
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That is quite simply impossible. For that to occur would imply that they never inovated, had wars, developed societies... you can't do any of those things without war. If there were individuals willing to kill, they would have had an advantage over others (that is why humanity has socipaths- it is occasionaly an advantage).
Actually, the Cally books show the Indowy coming at it from being pacifists. They've managed to uncover enough universal secrets through meditationa and what have you that they can do things like manipulate matter on atomic levels with their minds. Its a mind boggingly slow process, but they can. Or, as the books like to quote, "The problem with understanding alien cultures and motivations is that, well, they're alien. If they weren't they'd be human/indowy/darhel/posleen."
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To fight the Posleen waves, all you need IS rifles or mortars. The Posleen don't use landers in a combat role for the first 3 years.
Ok, I hate to do this, as most of your points are actual intelligent questions, but sticking to this point is silly. So I shall try to get the point across as well as I can: RIFLES AND MORTARS DO NOT HAVE A LARGE ENOUGH COMBAT ENGAGEMENT RANGE TO FIGHT THE POSLEEN. You will be lunch if you try to use those tactics against the Posleen. They cannot be fought using traditional field tactics. They are the ultimate Zerg* rush, and will eat your puny marines for dinner.
*Rumor has it that John actually used Starcraft to mock up some of the battles; hence the references in Hell's Faire.
__________________
Basilisk 6
Pilot of the Thing
I'm not evil. My morals just aren't the same as society's.
On a one man quest to beat the Star Wars Universe, using nothing but simple, plain, ordinary logic. Score so far: Me 593 SWU 450
Sorry for the info dump. Anyway, alot of the explanations don't work for the same reason they don't work for Star Trek http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewfor...s=0&start=2950
They end up making the people in charge look like total idiots.
The series was designed with the goal of having ground warfare even though a competant opponent would flatten you from orbit. Hence the Posleen.
It got worse. Power Armor was added. Why is this bad? Because, power armor makes about as much sense as a weapon of war as space fighters. For example, a tank with its front using the same armor as the PA would use less of the material AND could field heavier guns AND would be cheaper.
Then there is the fact there is so little orbital bombardment. Why don't the good guys do it? They can eliminate the Posleen by simply using asteroids to pulverize their positions.
Or, preparing for the war they could simply have used space to provide an endless stream of material.
The Darhel were added so that you could have villians and to explain the idiocy, but they don't. The fact of the matter is they could have simply done nothing AND they would have gotten the results they wanted. After all, if they wanted a weak humanity in their debt ready to be molded how this wish, they could have gotten it that way! Unless they were so worried about their losses that they couldn't waited five years...
Their commerical empire is also ridiculous. They seem to be concerned with profits... even though they are meaningless given the fact they have zero competition. As long as the economy grows faster than they have kids, they win! And they are too stupid to figure this out!
Not to mention there is no way they could gain control of their subject races- what do they have to offer? The exception is if they used force... in which case, why aren't they doing so now?
Seriously, the Darhel capitalist state makes no sense. You have the Darhel worrying about profits... even though they live in a static society and hence the idea is meaningless! So, which is it? Are the Darhel the masters of a static and totalitarian system that they only run for kicks and giggles?
Or are they capitalists, which their actions appear to be in several cases, in which case their previous actions make no sense whatsoever!
Having them oppress the Indowy doesn't make sense either. They get no real benefit out of it- or do they not make anything and have all their citizens on the dole? In which case, how does it run?
Sorry for the rant- I had to edit my previous reply because it got so overwhelmingly sarcastic.
Was the link supposed to go to anything directly? Because I wouldn't necessarily consider a trek board on a Wars fansite to be a good breeding ground for good debate.
And that was kinda the point. A lot of people screwed up because they didn't know what they were doing, couldn't adapt to reality, and caused problems in general.
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It got worse. Power Armor was added. Why is this bad? Because, power armor makes about as much sense as a weapon of war as space fighters. For example, a tank with its front using the same armor as the PA would use less of the material AND could field heavier guns AND would be cheaper.
And wouldn't be able to bunker down the way the PA can, wouldn't necessarily have the ability to adapt to terrain, and would probably have to be as big as a late model Bolo. At which point just like the Tiger III and any SheVa that fired into space it would become a target for orbital fire. Not to mention bloody difficult to field, expensive to build, and time consuming to maintain. Each one would need a depot bigger than it was. The PA can be stored in the back of a trailer truck and flown in on stealth shuttles.
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Then there is the fact there is so little orbital bombardment. Why don't the good guys do it? They can eliminate the Posleen by simply using asteroids to pulverize their positions.
Because at first they didn't have the ships, and asteroids aren't exactly accurate when you want your real estate back? And you're forgetting: The Posleen lost on Earth because they did just what you've been asking about the entire time!
[SPOILER[Hell's Faire ends with Fleet returning and kicking the Posleen out of Earth space and nailing their bases from space![/spoiler]
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Their commerical empire is also ridiculous. They seem to be concerned with profits... even though they are meaningless given the fact they have zero competition. As long as the economy grows faster than they have kids, they win! And they are too stupid to figure this out!
They monopolize the Indowy, but they still compete with each other at the Clan/Company level. Its the only way for them to exercise even some of their urges. So yeah, as you said. Giggles.
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Basilisk 6
Pilot of the Thing
I'm not evil. My morals just aren't the same as society's.
On a one man quest to beat the Star Wars Universe, using nothing but simple, plain, ordinary logic. Score so far: Me 593 SWU 450
Final reply for the day- I'll be logging off after this.
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Originally Posted by Foeofthelance
No, the Tiger I rolled out after Fredricksburg, and was equivalent to the Abrams being used. The Tiger III didn't roll out until a few moments before the Posleen made their final push on German forces. As for rockets, anything other than already ballistic weapons gets shot down. Its not a matter of control systems; missiles were getting shot down almost after launch. Only warheads coming back down were spared.
So they can target missles being launched... but not after a certain arbitrary point. Okay... that is... well, I was going to say impossible, but I'm sure that you could think of a system that could have that happen... although given that Texas instruments makes more competant computers I'm going to have to say "Author's Fiat". Or are they incapable of calculating d=d0+vt+at^2?
By the way I was refering not to ballistic missles, but short range ones that could be carried on mobile launchers. Should have been more specific.
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They fight in mountains the same way everyone but the Kurds and Ghurkas fight in mountains; by going up trails and through passes. The US strategy was simply to seal the passes, and keep all trails under shelling range. Think horses: horses go up and down suitable mountain trails all the time. When they got caught in Yellow Eyes, it was a matter of cold and being forced into a kill zone that caught them.
So the Posleen didn't bother flattening a portion of the mountain and pouring through? Or simply doing a mass wave attack along the whole thing? Are their leaders, who follow "human wave" like it is a way of life, incapable of doing an actual human wave?
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No, they really can't. We're not talking about a bomb going off in their heads, we're talking about a hormonal imbalance. If they produce X adrenaline, continue without stopping. And yes, that is how genetics works. The DNA that builds glands and organs also tells it how to work. They can cure disease because no, they dont consider it alive. Hell, I don't consider them to be alive, and I know the science behind it.
So they can't remove the gland that produces the imbalance to prevent it from killing them... because they are idiots? And even if they need the gland, they can't produce a mechanical substitute?
I was refering to the Posleen, but it also applies to the Darhel and the gland. This is like Huntington's disease, but for toddlers!
As for diseases not being alive, there are 4 kinds.
1) Cancer and other forms where the body rebels and medicine brutally crushes those who would dare raise arms agains the bodies right full owner. These are alive- unless you wish to declare your own cells are not alive.
2) Deficiencey diseases- not alive.
3) Viruses. Currently in the "not alive" category. Used to be in the "maybe" category.
4) Bacteria. Alive. In fact the majority of life on Earth is bacteria. Unlike 1 and 3 bacteria isn't parasitic- often the diseases are caused by toxins made from the bacteria. In fact bacteria are essential for life on Earth- blue green algea flooded the atmosphere with oxygen, bacteria gives us bread, beer, cheese and other fermented items.
And the Darhel are manipulating the net, partly to specifically steer the posleen in a certain way. Think the Terrans and the Zerg in starcraft. They thought they could control the Posleen, and to a certain extent the posleen cooperated. And in other ways, they just ate what was put in front of them. And as for scorched earth, why is it so hard to accept that some won't and some can't?
The Posleen war machine runs entirely upon the net. It decides who gets what.
As for not doing Scorched Earth... are you telling me that the Darhel are... dang, retarded doesn't work. It means slow, not brain dead. Honestly, they are painted as callus penny pinchers- manipulating the net and using scorched Earth should be their Motious Operandi.
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And the Posleen ships can't be that slow; one of the God Kings from Hymn was running the last fight in Hell's Faire and When the Devil Dances. He'd already been there by the time of Yellow Eyes by about a year or so, if memory serves.
The Darhel give 5 years for Earth before the invasion hit. Unless they are capable of predicting Posleen tactics 4 years into the future, it left at that time. It is worth noting this was their tunneler drive- you can't see them coming, but they go much slower. The God-King probably took a faster ship after the orbitals had been cleared...
Actually, this leads to a conflict. The Posleen have no need to use the slower tunnel drive if the Darhel don't have a navy.
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Again, the Darhel deliberately guided the Posleen to Earth. They probably made it look richer than it was. As for sabotage, the Darhel wanted a zero-sum game. They wanted to break the Posleen by making them actually fight for a planet (sort of worked) and to break the humans by getting our home planet wrecked in the fighting (would have worked if Fleet hand't told them where to shove it)
So the Darhel were incapable of doing orbital bombardment upon the massed Posleen positions. It isn't like the five years of prep showed alot of differance. Heck, the easist way to do it would be- guess what- work behind the scenes. Tell some individuals there will be a massive alien invasion, but give them no proof, so that they can't change anything except by what they do.
Nice and controllable. And if you have them die in the invasion, no loose ends!
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So, manjacks basically? And you still haven't overcome the problem of having all of the galaxy's manufacturing in the hands of the Indowy, who grow things much more slowly than the Posleen breed.
You are telling me that in 200 years the Indowy are incapable of developing the assembly line?
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No. Ships in the atmosphere use energy weapons. Ships in orbit are clearly described as nailing positions and orbital defense centers with kinetic energy weapons multiple times by both authors. And as for thinking they were winning, well, they were. Basically by the time fleet got there, America was the last nation that was giving much fight. The others were either just barely holding, or had already retreated as far as they could go and survive.
Oh. That doesn't make sense though- the landers are the only ship they use and they don't have bomb ports... not to mention they don't have launchers.
As for "going well"... in the opening part of Hell's Faire they were skirmishing over the ruins of Rochester New York, which had been leveled in the fighting. The Posleen get rewarded based on the infrastructure they take... and alot of the fighting has leveled said infrastructure. In addition, the fact that it has been four years and they still have no passified the planet, compared to the ease they over ran other worlds gives lie to their declaration of winning... not to mention their are pockets they CAN'T wipe out.
Honestly, it sounds like the villian who saves his best weapon for last... because it would be wrong to simply shot the hereos.
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Actually, the Cally books show the Indowy coming at it from being pacifists. They've managed to uncover enough universal secrets through meditationa and what have you that they can do things like manipulate matter on atomic levels with their minds. Its a mind boggingly slow process, but they can.
And the book get even softer with telepathy. First off, science requires experiments. Otherwise you have no data. Secondly the process they used assumes that the laws of physics are solid things that are always true- unfortunately it turns out that they are statistical in nature.
This wouldn't be a problem... except that the books occur in our universe, with the branch off point being some time after Vietnam.
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Or, as the books like to quote, "The problem with understanding alien cultures and motivations is that, well, they're alien. If they weren't they'd be human/indowy/darhel/posleen."
That is rather stupid of them. The fact of the matter is that aliens live in the same universe as us and have to deal with the same laws of physics. It isn't like Galactic Civilizations where each culture magically has access to certain specialties that others do.
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Ok, I hate to do this, as most of your points are actual intelligent questions, but sticking to this point is silly. So I shall try to get the point across as well as I can: RIFLES AND MORTARS DO NOT HAVE A LARGE ENOUGH COMBAT ENGAGEMENT RANGE TO FIGHT THE POSLEEN. You will be lunch if you try to use those tactics against the Posleen. They cannot be fought using traditional field tactics. They are the ultimate Zerg* rush, and will eat your puny marines for dinner.
*Rumor has it that John actually used Starcraft to mock up some of the battles; hence the references in Hell's Faire.
Mike O'Neal looked down at the smoke shrouded valley where Rochester, New York, used to be. The embattled city was now flatter than any hurricane could have made it; the humans were adept at fighting in rubble whereas the horselike Posleen found it nearly impossible. But that didn't mean it was a human city anymore. Just that two different species of vermin battled over it. http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/1...vil_Dances.htm
Human infantry are fighting the Posleen in the ruins of a city. They will be using rifles unless otherwise stated as it is the default weapon. They have the 10,000 and Army unit that uses rifles. The regular army in their sorties uses rifles. The fact is that rifles kill the Posleen. Therefore this statment "RIFLES AND MORTARS DO NOT HAVE A LARGE ENOUGH COMBAT ENGAGEMENT RANGE TO FIGHT THE POSLEEN." is false. They may not be effective, but they work well enough for them to use it.
You keep stating "they don't have a long enough engagement range". That is entirely irrelevant, if all your enemies are dead before they get into a positon where they can fire. The Posleen CANNOT fire through a thick enough wall- and dirt is cheap. As long as you keep them from scaling the wall, you will live and they will die. It is that simple.
I'll put it in language you will understand. You find out how fast a Posleen can run in a given amount of time. Use a horse for an example. Then you bombard an area larger than that so that the area is entirely saturated with a rate of fire equal to that amount of time.
You also have to deal with the spheres. Simple. You hit them with antimatter tipped artillary rounds- that should crack them. Or simply use alot of artillary. Or use short range missle launchers
As for Starcraft... that is as pathetic a source of tactics as Halo. If the game was more accurate the Zerg would be no threat... after all, metal ships beat organic ones every day of the week. They'd also win on the ground except that I can throw rocks further than the marines can shoot!
In case my tone seems to have gotten more hostile... that is because I started realizing the depth of the groups incompetance.
Wait... the Darhel go beserk and then die? That is... odd. How could that be designed, much less work?
OK. A lot of species have some kind of 'fight or flight' response. The Darhel were originally a species of carnivores, which can be deduced from the fact that they have characteristic cutting and tearing carnivore teeth, and from a number of other facts in the series. As predators, it should not be surprising that their biochemistry acts in some useful way when they get into a fight or are about to make a kill. A lot of carnivores react strongly to the scent of blood or other such cues. Thus, the Darhel have an "I am about to kill something" response coded into their genes. Just as do humans.
As far as I can tell, what the Aldenata did was take the Darhel genetic code for their "I am about to kill something" response and monkeyed with it in a big way. Now, whenver they get the "I'm going into a fight" emotion, whenever they feel like they're about to 'score a kill,' their brain freaks out. To speculate:
It releases too much of whatever adrenaline-like hormones the Darhel have when they are about to go into a fight. The effect is sort of like that of a massive overdose of PCP on humans. They go berserk, lash out more or less randomly, and then they go catatonic and die. Therefore, if the Darhel want to do anything even vaguely related to killing, they have to firmly control themselves using biofeedback techniques. Or they go crazy and die.
There's no way for them to avoid this when they are about to knowingly commit an act of physical violence, even of the pushbutton kind.
See the book "Hero," by Ringo and Williamson, for more informaiton on this. The main series doesn't talk much about Darhel physiology.
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Soviet union. Second World War. Shipment of heavy industry accross the Urals.
I could point out that the Soviets in 1941 were a much better position to move industry in a hurry, because they were already in the position of building lots of factories. For example, the entire steel-mill city of Magnitogorsk was built practically from scratch in the 1930s as part of Stalin's five year plans. Other cities were going through massive industrial booms.
Today, Soviet has much less of that booming construction going on. It would be harder for the current Russian government to organize it, because they lack the large staff of central economic planners and construction experts needed to do the work.
Thus, the Russians might well move some industry behind the Urals, but not enough to make a counterattack against the Posleen. In the maps I already linked to, it is made extremely clear that the Russians do survive east of the Urals. The "last transmission" can either be retconned away in response to this very unsurprising fact, or it can be explained as the destruction of a major HQ by Posleen landers or a kinetic strike from orbit.
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A military dictatorship would have easily survived- "support us or the aliens will all kill you!" makes an easy rallying point. As for decapitated government... you do realize that even know that is impossible? The president and VP are NEVER in the same location. Once the invasion begun, leaders would have relocated to fortress centers.
Yes. The US, which is well organized, and has a well defined chain of command in case of national emergency, has such a plan. That was exactly what happened in the book Gust Front. Unfortunately for the president, but not for the rest of the government, a Posleen lander dropped an entire battalion of combat troops on the location he was temporarily at while being moved to a (more) secure location. It was an accident. I used it as an example, because it could have happened anywhere else in the world, and would indeed have been more likely to happen in many other countries.
Many countries do not have a well defined chain of command, or one as rigorously enforced and prepared for as ours. The US is one of a very few nations that has known for decades that a large fraction of its senior leadership might be destroyed in a ball of fire at any moment, with no more than half an hour's warning. If that much. We've been planning for that quite rigorously.
Military dictatorships will tend to suffer because the same generals in charge of the country are in charge of the defense effort. If a general commanding from the field is overrun and killed with his troops, it weakens the civilian government. This is quite likely to happen, even given the best available equipment, let alone in Third World countries which can't get that gear from rich countries because every last bullet rich countries can make is being used to arm their own forces. Generals who are defeated in battle fall out of favor, leading to political intrigue against them, which weakens the government in national emergencies.
Also, Many of the senior officers in most military dictatorships are chosen for reasons of political favoritism and nepotism. They may not go through the many years of training and screening required to make a good general.
For all these reasons, the government of a military dictatorship tends to tear itself apart under the stress of a truly difficult war, especially a war against a superior capability.
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What it comes down to is the fact that all the humans in the book are too stupid to take basic defensive preparations? The fact that both the US, Russia, China, Britian and a few others HAD to make these during the Cold War apparently doesn't enter the authors minds. We do have an emergency shadow government for a reason.
Yes, and the US used it. The Chinese? They were attacked by huge numbers of Posleen who overran much of the country, and used lots of nukes. It may well have disrupted civil society to the point where the government could no longer maintain effective control. Britain holds out. Russia? We know effectively nothing about what happened except the "last transmission" entry (which may have been retconned away already) and that there were large groups of humans holding out east of the Urals.
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Originally Posted by Sam
It got worse. Power Armor was added. Why is this bad? Because, power armor makes about as much sense as a weapon of war as space fighters. For example, a tank with its front using the same armor as the PA would use less of the material AND could field heavier guns AND would be cheaper.
On the other hand, the tank is a larger target and cannot be split up to cover multiple positions. It's a tradeoff, which is why infantry are still in use in real life. One Abrams isn't actually more expensive than an infantry company, and it carries more firepower, but it just cannot do all the things in infantry company can.
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Then there is the fact there is so little orbital bombardment. Why don't the good guys do it? They can eliminate the Posleen by simply using asteroids to pulverize their positions.
Because the Posleen have space supremacy and only Himmit stealth ships can even reach Earth's surface, let alone hang around and drop rocks?
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Or, preparing for the war they could simply have used space to provide an endless stream of material.
Tried. Failed. They couldn't build enough space factories to make a decisive difference in five years- building a factory takes a year or two even when you know exactly how to design it.
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The Darhel were added so that you could have villians and to explain the idiocy, but they don't. The fact of the matter is they could have simply done nothing AND they would have gotten the results they wanted. After all, if they wanted a weak humanity in their debt ready to be molded how this wish, they could have gotten it that way! Unless they were so worried about their losses that they couldn't waited five years...
I don't think you understand their goals. They want human recruits in their debt, but they also want something to thin out the Posleen horde. For that, they need the existing nations and armies of Earth to fight hard... and lose. It was a delicate balance, and they lost it in the end in large part through bad luck.
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Their commerical empire is also ridiculous. They seem to be concerned with profits... even though they are meaningless given the fact they have zero competition. As long as the economy grows faster than they have kids, they win! And they are too stupid to figure this out!
They're a species of conquerors who have been robbed of the ability to kill. Economic predation is what they live for.
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Originally Posted by Sam
Out of universe? Waffen Wanking. A new author wanted to show his pet creation was MORE powerful, so he gave them a bigger gun.
I'm not sure it actually had a bigger gun as such.
Here's my take on what happened. We see the initial phases of the US effort to plan a defense against the Posleen in "A Hymn Before Battle." Mike O'Neal and others looked at Posleen weapon technology and decided against trying to build a tank effective against the Posleen. Such a tank would be huge and expensive, and with so many Posleen armed with plasma guns and hypervelocity missile launchers, they deemed that the system would not be cost effective. War walkers were right out, for the same reason.
So they started designing the powered armor suits (used by militaries around the globe). Those suits are pretty much pure Galactic tech, which means there were never nearly enough of them to equip both the expeditionary forces and the Earth defenders.
One of the biggest questions of the war was how to stop Posleen landers, which were invulnerable to almost anything short of a nuclear blast. The same design teams worked out several GalTech solutions to the problem, including the Planetary Defense Centers and a suit-portable terawatt laser weapon. Most of these solutions work (they kill landers), but don't work well. There were also some purely terrestrial tech solutions (MetalStorm systems mounted on Abrams chassis).
However, the US had a weapons mix it felt fairly happy about. The hope was that the space fleet could keep the landers in check long enough that landers attacking ground forces would not be a major problem, and that the ground-based GalTech weapons (like the PDCs) would stop the leakers.
Meanwhile, the Germans were thinking a bit differently. They had access to the same GalTech weapons the US team was designing, and probably cooperated in that design effort. There were a number of PDCs in Europe, too. But unlike the Americans, who focused on a pure infantry/artillery mix, the Germans decided to design a tank. One that could actually fight the Posleen's heavies- the HVM and plasma-armed God Kings and even the landers. This was ambitious, and possibly not very smart, but they tried anyway.
Their initial effort was a complete failure. They could not build a conventional artillery piece powerful enough to take out a Posleen lander into the biggest turrets they could build (on what was already a really big tank). The gun's recoil was so great it either smashed into the back of the turret or exploded its own shock absorbers. You can look this problem up in "Wacht am Rhein," chapter 3.
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Then, the lead wave of five Posleen globes hit Earth ("Gust Front"). They were defeated in fairly short order. One of them hit the US. None hit Germany. The Posleen landing in the eastern US caused an enormous amount of slaughter. It also demonstrated that the PDCs and space fleet were not going to be able to account for many Posleen landers. The few Fleet units in position to defend Earth were lost with all hands. Every PDC that tried to engage the landers got destroyed after taking out only a few attacking ships. However, it was believed (falsely) that a US Navy battleship had managed to bring down a lander with armor piercing rounds from its main guns. Actually, a PDC actually scored the kill, but the battleship could have done it.
The fact that Posleen landers had roamed largely at will on Earth and that the GalTech defenses hadn't done much to stop them was a big wake-up call. If the Posleen used their landers as air support more often, those Posleen attacks might have proved impossible to stop.
The US started drafting plans for what would later become known as the SheVa gun- a very large self-propelled artillery piece that could fire nuclear munitions, penetrate the armor of Posleen landers, and generally act as a mobile AA defense for human troops. This was not designed for direct combat against the Posleen, because it lacked the armor and ammo loadout for extended combat. It was more like a sniper or a WWII tank destroyer, designed to 'shoot and scoot' against limited numbers of landers.
This system was designed to operate completely without GalTech, but it had major limitations. It was expensive as all hell (they only built a few dozen), it was an absolute logistics nightmare, and it was really quite fragile. Being such a big target, and lacking the armor to stop Posleen heavy weapons for long, a SheVa could not hope to fight large numbers of landers and win.
Meanwhile, the Germans redoubled their efforts to build something similar into that heavy tank they were working on. In early 2005, the German tank design was still stopped cold by the gun problem. They could not build an armored fighting vehicle large enough to carry a conventional gun capable of killing a Posleen lander. They would need GalTech to make it work, and GalTech for this project was not forthcoming.
So, for all intents and purposes, they were trying to build something like a SheVa, only as a tank rather than as a self-propelled artillery piece, and failing.
Then they got their hands on GalTech gravity generators, courtesy of renegade Indowy who had nothing to do with the main Darhel programs for equipping Earth with GalTech. These generators could brake the recoil of the gun without getting smashed to pieces or having the gun blow itself out the back of the turret. The GalTech saved the day. Now they could build a tank that could break Posleen lander armor. It did not have as much firepower as SheVa. On the other hand, it had thick enough armor to be more survivable than a SheVa in close combat with the Posleen.
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Then, in 2007, as the Posleen are already overrunning Germany, the designers manage to build one prototype of the Tiger III-B. This is the tank they wanted to build all along, but couldn't because they had no access to GalTech. They wanted to use a railgun and a nuclear power plant for the tank, but were not allowed to. After much technical support from the aforesaid renegade Indowy, they managed to build a tank that killed dozens of Posleen landers. It effectively cleared the skies over Germany during the final phases of the Posleen invasion of that country, but was finally swarmed under.
However, this tank was built with a LOT of GalTech, so much so that they needed an Indowy on board constantly to keep it running. It was more capable than a SheVa (as the original Tiger III was not), but that was mostly because of the Indowy technical support. Since the US didn't have any renegade Indowy teams going to ground in their territory and helping them build supertanks, it's not a surprise that their final product was not quite so devastating. Although the upgraded SheVa Nine ("Bun-Bun") did cut quite a swath through Posleen forces, mainly by use of nuclear shells. It was arguably about as effective as the Tiger III-B was despite being designed with no GalTech.
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Of course, there is the problem that the Nazis discovered. For those who don't know Those Wacky Nazis had Supersoldier programs (They didn't use The Spatan Way- that produces pschos) and some interesting superweapons. One of them was a superheavy tank. However, it didn't work. It was so heavy that it would simply sink into the ground! The SheVa and German neo Tiger probably weigh more than it did!
It did; they had to distribute the weight on really big treads. This is not as impossible as it sounds. Consider the crawler-transporter used to carry the Space Shuttle from its assembly bay to its launch pad. Or the German-built Bagger 288 mine crawler, which is actually heavier than a SheVa. And yet it can crawl around in the dirt without leaving huge tracks, because its ground pressure is only about twice atmospheric pressure.
Both these vehicles are extremely slow, but they demonstrate that, at least in principle, it is possible to build tracked vehicles weighing thousands of tons that will not sink into the ground.
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The Germans had the Tiger in development after Friedricksburg. That was 2004. Given that it is superior and fills a needed role (anti-space), the Americans should have picked it up- after all, they mention the American space defense network being slagged by the Posleen first wave. Of course, given that one of the members of the design team was Isreali army, the US WOULD have known about it. The most likely explanation is that the tank simply cost too much- it was designed by army men, not engineers. It had alot of capabilities, but was probably too expansive to mass produce. Apparently they didn't learn from the LAST war!
By the time the Germans get their Tigers running and in production, circa mid-2005, the SheVa program must have been well underway. Retooling to build Tiger IIIs would have been an even bigger waste of effort than building the (as yet unproven in combat) Tiger IIIs. Especially if the US had to find a supplier for gravity generator recoil brakes.
Remember, the US weapons mix in this war focused on infantry and artillery, including (eventually) the self-propelled SheVa gun platform. They'd already given up on designing a heavy tank to fight Posleen landers in gun-to-gun combat. They adapted their existing armor force as an antipersonnel platform for fighting hordes of (relatively) lightly armed Posleen infantry.
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The Shiva itself is a waste of resources. A rocket could accomplish what it does. Sure, the God Kings can shoot down rockets- but only if they are guided. Simply make a dumb missle (no electronic) and they are as weak against them as artillary shells.
I do not agree. Based on my reading, my impression is that Posleen autotargeting systems will attack any flying object in line of sight that is visibly accelerating, including a dumb missile. To use MLRS and similar rocket systems against the Posleen, the boost phase of the rocket has to be out of the Posleen line of sight.
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Originally Posted by Sam
This is contradicted by the book "Watch on the Rhine". The German Army HQ is not in Innsbruck. In fact, the nations of Europe are not all in an alliance- England fights its own war, Scandanavia sits out and Switzerland bunkers down. A little absurd it its own right, but there it is.
OK. Then we have a blatant retcon. Possibly because Ringo decided his timeline was a bit unrealistic (or just unsatisfying as a story) and wanted to modify it. Either way, it's still worth recognizing that the change to the official timeline has been made.
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Except the entire US defense system was based in mountains with forts holding the passes. They CAN'T climb mountains! I don't know how they do it in Yellow Eyes, so I can't comment on it. They also can't cross rivers- this was established in "Hell's Gates" where their advance was held up when they had to have the Indowy build a bridge across a river.
Ah. I misunderstood. The Posleen can fight in mountainous terrain, but only by capturing passes and other territory that vehicles could negotiate. They cannot climb cliffs or steep slopes. They aren't mountain goats, and humans can climb better than mountain goats, being descended from tree-dwelling monkeys. But they can capture cities in mountains, attack a fortified pass and (theoretically) break through, and so on. Thus, they can in fact fight in mountainous terrain. They're just at a big disadvantage, because they can't scale the mountain peaks themselves, so they have to fight in the valleys.
As for rivers, the Posleen managed to ford a number of rivers during the books. Fording a river under fire is damn near impossible, so rivers make good defense lines against the Posleen. But the Posleen move fairly fast and (sometimes) airdrop troops behind your lines or use close air support systems that can take anything short of naval-caliber artillery. Sometimes they will capture a bridge, or suppress enough of the defensive fire to prevent
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As for gaps in fire... the armies of WW1 could do a continuous barrage. I'm sure we could manage as well. Unlike them, we have five years to prepare.
Even after years of artillery production, the Allies could never have kept up a perpetual barrage on a river or other zone. The bombardment might last days; it could not last weeks, and it would not strike every point on a line hundreds of miles long. Sooner or later, there has to be a gap in the fire somewhere.
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So it probably was held in "Watch on the Rhine". However, it was NOT a HQ and the fighting force was NOT European Union Forces.
You're right. I'm calling it a retcon.
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I'd go into it in number 18, but basically that is BS. For starters, the Darhel could simply do lobotomies and remove the death trigger. They have had thousands of years to do so. Also, you don't need to be angry to kill- war is simply business alot of the time- particullarly space warfare where you fight at ranges where you can't see your opponents.
We're not talking about organs in the brain here; we're talking about the "I'm about to kill something" predator response triggering adrenaline poisoning. Lobotomies might have worked or might not, depending on physiological details I can't know, but it's not an obvious 100% surefire thing. A lobotomy that stops you from feeling fear will probably leave you completely incapacitated. And this fatal "lintatai" thing seems to be as deeply coded into Darhel genes as the fear response is to humans- only the Aldenata made very sure to put it in everyone.
Presumably, the Aldenata in their infinite wisdom decided they didn't want the Darhel restoring their genes. I suspect the lethal modifications were mixed into the Darhel genome so thoroughly that trying to reverse it would produce fatal birth defects.
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As for killing anyone... the Darhel show a callus disregard for others lives and create situations to create the most death. The "no killing" has an obsene amount of leeway. Not to mention that this means that a single individual of ANY species could exterminate them... even a race of cowards would find them an easy target. Or a single sociopthic Darhel- apparently their species suffers zero mutations. Come to think of it, how to they deal with disease? You have to kill it to live yourself. SO the command must be for sentient... except as human history has shown you just declare your enemies nonsentient!
Resisting a disease doesn't trigger the "I'm about to kill something" predator response. This isn't a physical implant or a program of brainwashing. It's biochemical, designed to take something the Darhel inherited from their carnivore ancestors and turn it against them. The Darhel can even go into this response when trying to kill an animal, but not a plant or a bacterium.
As for a race of cowards being able to kill them... that's almost exactly it. Remember, this modification was not made by people who wanted the Darhel to be able to defend themselves. It is intentionally crippling. Of course, some few Darhel may well be willing to take the risk and accept their own death to trigger a powerful war machine (which is how they fought the Posleen before they enlisted humans). It worked... sort of. The war machines weren't very well designed, and the lack of Darhel guidance in battle probably didn't help. But they could do it. Therefore, it took a race fierce and capable enough to overcome their (admittedly weak) robot defenses. None of the species the Darhel knew were up to the task, being either even more nonviolent or so cowardly they wouldn't risk ticking off the Darhel robots.
Also, the Darhel built themselves into the heart of the Galactic economy, which made it a lot harder for a rebellion to succeed... until the Posleen came.
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Ah yes, the "humans are the only species capable of innovation and everyone is surprised at how fast we grow". Presumably they didn't bother to actually look at human history and learn that we went from hunter gatherers to empire builders in less than 6000 years? As for Earth being a threat...
I think they did look, and decided "Yeah, we're going to have to do something about Earth pretty soon." But total genocide was out, and the Bane Sidhe were blocking many of their attempts to sabotage Earth's advancement through covert operations. What were they supposed to do?
And I'm not saying that humans are the only ones who innovate. My suspicion is that the Indowy, Darhel, and such have actually run out of new science to discover. Their technology isn't advancing because they don't have any way to make it better. All they can do is adapt it to new purposes (like building weapons they didn't have any use for until just recently).
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As for stopping the Posleen... did you read the part about Scorthed Earth? The Posleen decide where to fight based on the net. The net awards resources based on who captures them. If nothing is captured, there is no reward. As such, the simplest way to deal with this is simply wire the cities to explode using sensors. Posleen come, cities go up in a mushroom cloud and there is nothing for the Posleen to claim. Scatter enough across the planet and the world becomes a dead world. At which point the Posleen slowly starve because they have no food source, their equipment falls apart as they have no industrial base... the Darhel only have to stall for time. And the Posleen drive is EXTREMELY slow.
Humans tried that, with moderate success. The Darhel were very foolish by human standards not to try this tactic. However, I do not expect that all aliens will think of all the things we think of, especially if their social and genetic makeup has been deliberately crippled to make them unwarlike.
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As for sucking in Posleen or only just sabotaging... the Posleen work by the Net. Why would they swarm to Earth? It is POORER than the rest of the Darhel's possessions! Most Darhel worlds contain cities made entirely of built up sky scrapers that are self contained cities in their own right. Earth, by contrast doesn't have that level of industrialization. Not to mention our machinary needs workers, unlike alot of the Indowy systems, some of which is probably automated, and the rest which is run of the Indowy, who make better slaves than humans.
Possibly the Net identified it as a world of technologically primitive defenders and a pretty nice biosphere? Compared to planets like Barwhon and Diess, Earth sounds fairly hospitable, and they don't have to worry about some Darhel robot tank slaughtering tens of thousands of them. At least, that would explain them targeting Earth before they started fighting humans.
Afterwards, I suspect the Net started vectoring in Posleen battlegroups to get rid of those damn monkeys before it was too late.
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As for sabotage... they could simply not have provided any gear, waited to warn, done no warning, etc. The only reason they would sabotage is if they didn't understand humans and were trying to get it just right... except sabotage is part of their opening plans.
Again, they wanted us to kill lots of Posleen, but not all the Posleen. They had to warn us and support us to get our help against them, and they needed the organized national militaries of Earth to provide the core of the force they wanted to use against the Posleen. Remember that the expeditionary forces are Earth military units, like US infantry divisions, shipped to other planets. If they had just recruited random human individuals, they would not have had that organization.
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Why didn't they recruit human troops in the 1800s? "Work for us and you live forever" would work, as well as the fact that much of the world's population lived in heavily stratified societies- I'm sure much of the Nobility would approve of the Darhel system. No labor unions, strikes, disorder, etc...
They needed humans with a high enough technological background to understand the capabilities of GalTech and to create the specifications for the weapons they needed.
If they'd landed in 1860 and tried to explain the problem, human military experts would have ended up creating a force armed with 1mm rail guns or something that marched in formation, like Napoleonic infantry. No power armor, no heavy indirect fire artillery, no concept of the role of air power on the battlefield. It would have been a massacre.
The Darhel didn't know what they needed in a fighting force, but they did know they needed humans who were capable of using GalTech weapons effectively.
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Well, that makes no sense- I'm going to have to assume all the Darhel subject species were ALSO genetically engineered.
You assume correctly.
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As for war machines... copy the Posleen! Really, if they have no clue, than you simply do what your enemy is doing, but MORE SO. Build a tracked bot with a gun. Don't do AI except for basic manuevering and the ability to recognize their surroundings- have them remote controlled and linked so that one person can give the "fire" command. You'd need them smart enough so that they wouldn't shoot if another bot is in front of them, but that is IT.
They did that. It worked, but not well enough to stop the Posleen advance.
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Remember, they DON'T have to build spaceships, they only need to create shields, guns, computers and powerplants. For the ships themselves they can carve out asteroids or use skyscrapers. Heck, if they are ruthless enough, they can dump out the population of an entire city and recycle the buildings- that would provide enough materials for a fleet.
Materials were not the problem. Technicians competent to assemble the materials were.
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The fact that they don't screams less "incompetance" and more "writters fiat". Although ruling groups may ossify, given they are fighting for their lives, you'd expect to see some change and innovation. You see zero!
You see some. They are trying. But they have very large psychological handicaps, and their society has been screwed up for millenia.
Look at what happened to natives in parts of the world dominated by Europeans on Earth in, say, India. The Indians are not even the least bit stupid, nor are they crippled by author fiat, because this is real life. And yet they did not manage to catch up with Europeans in terms of technology, social organization, or anything else in a century. From the first contacts with Europeans (1500s-1600s) that demonstrated that Europeans could be a threat to Indian society, the Indians were unable to stop European powers from conquering and dividing up India until the mid-1900s, a period of about three hundred years.
Societies do not always adapt to a crisis, even when they have decades to do so.
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That is quite simply impossible. For that to occur would imply that they never inovated, had wars, developed societies... you can't do any of those things without war. If there were individuals willing to kill, they would have had an advantage over others (that is why humanity has socipaths- it is occasionaly an advantage).
The Darhel got screwed with by the Aldenata after inventing a star-travelling culture. This was a deliberate act to neuter them as a threat to the Aldenata hegemony.
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As for dying when they get an adreniline rush... you simply remove the adrenal gland. Simple.
Which is, I believe, fatal for humans. And quite possibly fatal for Darhel, too.
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You are aware that the world has ive years to prepare for an invasion? We could simply stockpile ammo, weapons, medicine, food, etc.
Yes, and with the stockpiles you can keep sporadic Posleen attacks out. You can't go on the offensive. During the entire Posleen War, humans were almost never able to go on the counterattack against the Posleen without taking massive losses unless Posleen forces had first been greatly thinned out by being drawn into an assault on strong human defenses. Certainly, they wouldn't be defeated by an attack launched using stockpiles alone.
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As for running the military... you do realize that you are drastically undersestimating the intelligence of the commanders. We are talking about people, who, if they fail, everyone dies. Lets look at the Soviet Union, which sacked all its commmanders in the purges, was extremely conformist, had secret police and political officers, suppressed news and questioning, etc. Guess what? They managed to innovate more than the Germans- their military was not incompetant. Remember that a large number of their commanders were previously peasants.
Yes, but they were getting beaten like a drum for the first several months of the war. When fighting the Posleen, that can mean the end of your country.
Look at the French, who did not have mass purges of their officer corps, did not suppress news and questioning, etc. They still lost to the Germans, because their high command panicked for a few weeks after an unexpected German attack. It happens. And if it happens against the Posleen, you won't be bouncing back from your defeat.
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You don't need "American" style armies to face enemies like the Posleen. You need Soviet style armies. The troops can be some farmer who never went more than 10 miles from home his entire life. It doesn't matter. All he needs to know is obey orders and how to do his job, a task that is repeated again and again until he dreams about it. Oh, and how to use a shovel.
To fight the Posleen waves, all you need IS rifles or mortars. The Posleen don't use landers in a combat role for the first 3 years.
They used at least one in "Gust Front." They used one on Diess in "A Hymn Before Battle."
With enough rifles and mortars, you can hold a static position against the Posleen. Artillery is way better, but mortars could do it. The problem is that unless you have a really narrow chokepoint to hold, or a river, you can't put enough boots on each linear mile of your defenses to stop a concentrated Posleen wave assault.
If you do have such terrain obstacles you're probably fine, unless the next wave of landings drops two million or more Posleen behind your terrain obstacle.
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As for dealing with landers... missles. LOTS of missles.
See above.
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Originally Posted by Sam
It is important to remember that you don't have to go into the trenches and whack the other guy with a serrated shovel. You can simply batter worlds from orbit, bobby trap everything, nanite bomb planets, make the atmosphere unbreathable, etc.
We have confirmation that doing that kind of thing does send Darhel into lintatai. They know they're about to kill, and that sets off their instincts. Which, in turn, causes poisoning.
And knowing they might very well need the humans later, they'd be reluctant to destroy us. After all, if they could figure out a way to co-opt us safely, we'd be an invaluable asset to them because we are killers.
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None of these species could have evolved naturally.
They didn't. They were the result of genetic tinkering by a pacifist alien empire in the distant past. Before the tinkering, those species were probably a lot better balanced... and considerably more warlike.
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Why? If they are in 3 km, but can't hit you AND they don't get closer than a certain distance (where they still can't hit you) what is the problem? You seem to think they can "run through- but I'm not talking about a few mortars, but thousands upon thousands.
Thousands upon thousands of mortars and thousands upon thousands of riflemen to defend them add up to a big army. It will work, but only if you can concentrate those troops. Defending open terrain, or even a river line, that's a risky proposition. The need to put men on every mile of the line means you can't put enough men on every mile to stop the Posleen from breaking through at a critical point.
Defending mountain passes it does work, which is probably why there are still humans left alive after the war anywhere but North America and in the permafrost.
But you're talking about the exact sort of massive military buildup the humans did make in the novels. It didn't work perfectly because they couldn't predict where the Posleen would land and because the Posleen could land on their flanks or rear even after they'd managed to contain a large Posleen pocket.
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To keep them from closing you could also use automatic machine guns... like the kind they show in Hell's Faire.
They built a lot of those. You assume they could have built a lot more, and I can't prove you wrong, but I'm not sure how you can prove yourself right, either. You're objecting to author fiat without being able to present an obvious reason why the authors are wrong. Unlike the reasons you present on some other issues.
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My favorite rejoinder:
Spoiler
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Originally Posted by Betty
If your idea of fun is to give the players whatever they want, then I suggest you take out a board game called: CANDY LAND and use that for your gaming sessions.
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Originally Posted by Dervag
Obviously, you have never known the frustration of being stranded in the Molasses Swamp.
OK. A lot of species have some kind of 'fight or flight' response. The Darhel were originally a species of carnivores, which can be deduced from the fact that they have characteristic cutting and tearing carnivore teeth, and from a number of other facts in the series. As predators, it should not be surprising that their biochemistry acts in some useful way when they get into a fight or are about to make a kill. A lot of carnivores react strongly to the scent of blood or other such cues. Thus, the Darhel have an "I am about to kill something" response coded into their genes. Just as do humans.
As far as I can tell, what the Aldenata did was take the Darhel genetic code for their "I am about to kill something" response and monkeyed with it in a big way. Now, whenver they get the "I'm going into a fight" emotion, whenever they feel like they're about to 'score a kill,' their brain freaks out. To speculate:
It releases too much of whatever adrenaline-like hormones the Darhel have when they are about to go into a fight. The effect is sort of like that of a massive overdose of PCP on humans. They go berserk, lash out more or less randomly, and then they go catatonic and die. Therefore, if the Darhel want to do anything even vaguely related to killing, they have to firmly control themselves using biofeedback techniques. Or they go crazy and die.
There's no way for them to avoid this when they are about to knowingly commit an act of physical violence, even of the pushbutton kind.
See the book "Hero," by Ringo and Williamson, for more informaiton on this. The main series doesn't talk much about Darhel physiology.
That is rather silly. Why didn't the people who designed them simply remove the desire for dominance, aggression, etc? It would have been simpler.
As for pushbutton violence... they "imply" they want certain individuals killed. I'm pretty sure they could make computers that would accept such "implications" as dircet orders.
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I could point out that the Soviets in 1941 were a much better position to move industry in a hurry, because they were already in the position of building lots of factories. For example, the entire steel-mill city of Magnitogorsk was built practically from scratch in the 1930s as part of Stalin's five year plans. Other cities were going through massive industrial booms.
Today, Soviet has much less of that booming construction going on. It would be harder for the current Russian government to organize it, because they lack the large staff of central economic planners and construction experts needed to do the work.
Thus, the Russians might well move some industry behind the Urals, but not enough to make a counterattack against the Posleen. In the maps I already linked to, it is made extremely clear that the Russians do survive east of the Urals. The "last transmission" can either be retconned away in response to this very unsurprising fact, or it can be explained as the destruction of a major HQ by Posleen landers or a kinetic strike from orbit.
They have 5 years. In addition, they aren't building things- they are relocating them. You don't need much of a construction industry- using Soviet methods, all you need are the machinary.
As for economic planning... you do know that the Russian government has nationalized many of the countries industries? They aren't running the whole economy... but they are controlling a good portion of it.
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Yes. The US, which is well organized, and has a well defined chain of command in case of national emergency, has such a plan. That was exactly what happened in the book Gust Front. Unfortunately for the president, but not for the rest of the government, a Posleen lander dropped an entire battalion of combat troops on the location he was temporarily at while being moved to a (more) secure location. It was an accident. I used it as an example, because it could have happened anywhere else in the world, and would indeed have been more likely to happen in many other countries.
Many countries do not have a well defined chain of command, or one as rigorously enforced and prepared for as ours. The US is one of a very few nations that has known for decades that a large fraction of its senior leadership might be destroyed in a ball of fire at any moment, with no more than half an hour's warning. If that much. We've been planning for that quite rigorously.[/quote]
In a parlimentary deomacracy, another member of the ruling party takes over. In a military dictatorship, the man below in the chain of command takes over. Given the fact that after the first landings, they know the Posleen are coming and have killed a head of state, other government leaders will be looking for bunkers.
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Military dictatorships will tend to suffer because the same generals in charge of the country are in charge of the defense effort. If a general commanding from the field is overrun and killed with his troops, it weakens the civilian government. This is quite likely to happen, even given the best available equipment, let alone in Third World countries which can't get that gear from rich countries because every last bullet rich countries can make is being used to arm their own forces. Generals who are defeated in battle fall out of favor, leading to political intrigue against them, which weakens the government in national emergencies.
Also, Many of the senior officers in most military dictatorships are chosen for reasons of political favoritism and nepotism. They may not go through the many years of training and screening required to make a good general.
For all these reasons, the government of a military dictatorship tends to tear itself apart under the stress of a truly difficult war, especially a war against a superior capability.
When is the last time a general has been anywhere near the front in times of war? The command staff is generally far away and under no danger of being over run.
Most military dictators do not personally lead their troops. For example, the leader of Pakistan was a military dictator who despite his title did not personally run military operations. A military dictator does not always lead- the generally delegate the responsibility to a subordinate.
In addition, the government will NOT tear itself apart. The leaders know that if the front lines fall, they get eaten. Although not all countries will be marked by complete and total unity, most will.
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Yes, and the US used it. The Chinese? They were attacked by huge numbers of Posleen who overran much of the country, and used lots of nukes. It may well have disrupted civil society to the point where the government could no longer maintain effective control. Britain holds out. Russia? We know effectively nothing about what happened except the "last transmission" entry (which may have been retconned away already) and that there were large groups of humans holding out east of the Urals.
On the other hand, the tank is a larger target and cannot be split up to cover multiple positions. It's a tradeoff, which is why infantry are still in use in real life. One Abrams isn't actually more expensive than an infantry company, and it carries more firepower, but it just cannot do all the things in infantry company can.
Except most of the things infantry are needed for are things like urban combat, fighting in forests, etc. On open ground tanks are the best. And guess what? That is where the Posleen are! A tank is about the same height as power armor it is only 8 feet tall while a person in power armor is somewhere between 6 to 10 feet. The have a width of about 20 feet compared to 1 or 2 for power armor though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams
On the other hand they can be mass produced, are cheaper, don't have to rely on antimatter power, can hold more ammo, move faster, do more damage etc. If they use the same material that power armor uses to cover their front, than they are equally survivable.
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Because the Posleen have space supremacy and only Himmit stealth ships can even reach Earth's surface, let alone hang around and drop rocks?
You don't understand- I'm not talking about orbital bombardment. I'm talking about going to the asteroid or Kupiner belt and flinging them at Earth. You can do the calculations and get it so they hit specific areas. If the rock is small enough, it won't kill everyone on the planet.
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Tried. Failed. They couldn't build enough space factories to make a decisive difference in five years- building a factory takes a year or two even when you know exactly how to design it.
Why would they build factories? Why not simply take the material down to Earth? I don't want asteroids to build ships- although a hollowed out Ceres would be awesome- I want the metal.
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I don't think you understand their goals. They want human recruits in their debt, but they also want something to thin out the Posleen horde. For that, they need the existing nations and armies of Earth to fight hard... and lose. It was a delicate balance, and they lost it in the end in large part through bad luck.
Or they could simply wait for humans to fight and lose, than mass drive the planet and move the survivors off in stealth ships. Or clone humans and brainwash them. Or kidnap individuals and serviotize them. Or provide humans with weapons secretly... and then reveal themselves afterwords and call in their debts. Or not help at all, evacuate some of the populance before the invasion and hit the world with a planet killer asteroid.
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They're a species of conquerors who have been robbed of the ability to kill. Economic predation is what they live for.
That is incredibly stupid. For starters, the thrill of the hunt and "economic prederation" are so totally differant it is hard for he to imagine a connection. Hunting is based on working in a group, bringing down prey, the adrenaline rush, etc. Hunters don't get off on pain and fear. They are more likely to get off on red meat, blood and a full belly. Of course, full belly is the only option available to the Darhel.
Essentially, they are an entire race of choatic evil individuals. The same problems with choatic evil apply to them.
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I'm not sure it actually had a bigger gun as such.
Here's my take on what happened. We see the initial phases of the US effort to plan a defense against the Posleen in "A Hymn Before Battle." Mike O'Neal and others looked at Posleen weapon technology and decided against trying to build a tank effective against the Posleen. Such a tank would be huge and expensive, and with so many Posleen armed with plasma guns and hypervelocity missile launchers, they deemed that the system would not be cost effective. War walkers were right out, for the same reason.
So they started designing the powered armor suits (used by militaries around the globe). Those suits are pretty much pure Galactic tech, which means there were never nearly enough of them to equip both the expeditionary forces and the Earth defenders.
One of the biggest questions of the war was how to stop Posleen landers, which were invulnerable to almost anything short of a nuclear blast. The same design teams worked out several GalTech solutions to the problem, including the Planetary Defense Centers and a suit-portable terawatt laser weapon. Most of these solutions work (they kill landers), but don't work well. There were also some purely terrestrial tech solutions (MetalStorm systems mounted on Abrams chassis).
However, the US had a weapons mix it felt fairly happy about. The hope was that the space fleet could keep the landers in check long enough that landers attacking ground forces would not be a major problem, and that the ground-based GalTech weapons (like the PDCs) would stop the leakers.
Meanwhile, the Germans were thinking a bit differently. They had access to the same GalTech weapons the US team was designing, and probably cooperated in that design effort. There were a number of PDCs in Europe, too. But unlike the Americans, who focused on a pure infantry/artillery mix, the Germans decided to design a tank. One that could actually fight the Posleen's heavies- the HVM and plasma-armed God Kings and even the landers. This was ambitious, and possibly not very smart, but they tried anyway.
Their initial effort was a complete failure. They could not build a conventional artillery piece powerful enough to take out a Posleen lander into the biggest turrets they could build (on what was already a really big tank). The gun's recoil was so great it either smashed into the back of the turret or exploded its own shock absorbers. You can look this problem up in "Wacht am Rhein," chapter 3.
Then, the lead wave of five Posleen globes hit Earth ("Gust Front"). They were defeated in fairly short order. One of them hit the US. None hit Germany. The Posleen landing in the eastern US caused an enormous amount of slaughter. It also demonstrated that the PDCs and space fleet were not going to be able to account for many Posleen landers. The few Fleet units in position to defend Earth were lost with all hands. Every PDC that tried to engage the landers got destroyed after taking out only a few attacking ships. However, it was believed (falsely) that a US Navy battleship had managed to bring down a lander with armor piercing rounds from its main guns. Actually, a PDC actually scored the kill, but the battleship could have done it.
The fact that Posleen landers had roamed largely at will on Earth and that the GalTech defenses hadn't done much to stop them was a big wake-up call. If the Posleen used their landers as air support more often, those Posleen attacks might have proved impossible to stop.
The US started drafting plans for what would later become known as the SheVa gun- a very large self-propelled artillery piece that could fire nuclear munitions, penetrate the armor of Posleen landers, and generally act as a mobile AA defense for human troops. This was not designed for direct combat against the Posleen, because it lacked the armor and ammo loadout for extended combat. It was more like a sniper or a WWII tank destroyer, designed to 'shoot and scoot' against limited numbers of landers.
This system was designed to operate completely without GalTech, but it had major limitations. It was expensive as all hell (they only built a few dozen), it was an absolute logistics nightmare, and it was really quite fragile. Being such a big target, and lacking the armor to stop Posleen heavy weapons for long, a SheVa could not hope to fight large numbers of landers and win.
Meanwhile, the Germans redoubled their efforts to build something similar into that heavy tank they were working on. In early 2005, the German tank design was still stopped cold by the gun problem. They could not build an armored fighting vehicle large enough to carry a conventional gun capable of killing a Posleen lander. They would need GalTech to make it work, and GalTech for this project was not forthcoming.
So, for all intents and purposes, they were trying to build something like a SheVa, only as a tank rather than as a self-propelled artillery piece, and failing.
Then they got their hands on GalTech gravity generators, courtesy of renegade Indowy who had nothing to do with the main Darhel programs for equipping Earth with GalTech. These generators could brake the recoil of the gun without getting smashed to pieces or having the gun blow itself out the back of the turret. The GalTech saved the day. Now they could build a tank that could break Posleen lander armor. It did not have as much firepower as SheVa. On the other hand, it had thick enough armor to be more survivable than a SheVa in close combat with the Posleen.
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Then, in 2007, as the Posleen are already overrunning Germany, the designers manage to build one prototype of the Tiger III-B. This is the tank they wanted to build all along, but couldn't because they had no access to GalTech. They wanted to use a railgun and a nuclear power plant for the tank, but were not allowed to. After much technical support from the aforesaid renegade Indowy, they managed to build a tank that killed dozens of Posleen landers. It effectively cleared the skies over Germany during the final phases of the Posleen invasion of that country, but was finally swarmed under.
However, this tank was built with a LOT of GalTech, so much so that they needed an Indowy on board constantly to keep it running. It was more capable than a SheVa (as the original Tiger III was not), but that was mostly because of the Indowy technical support. Since the US didn't have any renegade Indowy teams going to ground in their territory and helping them build supertanks, it's not a surprise that their final product was not quite so devastating. Although the upgraded SheVa Nine ("Bun-Bun") did cut quite a swath through Posleen forces, mainly by use of nuclear shells. It was arguably about as effective as the Tiger III-B was despite being designed with no GalTech.
You do realize we already have nuclear artillary. Why do we need something like that?
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It did; they had to distribute the weight on really big treads. This is not as impossible as it sounds. Consider the crawler-transporter used to carry the Space Shuttle from its assembly bay to its launch pad. Or the German-built Bagger 288 mine crawler, which is actually heavier than a SheVa. And yet it can crawl around in the dirt without leaving huge tracks, because its ground pressure is only about twice atmospheric pressure.
Both these vehicles are extremely slow, but they demonstrate that, at least in principle, it is possible to build tracked vehicles weighing thousands of tons that will not sink into the ground.
And in each case the machines do NOT have recoil. By contrast the SheVa and tiger have entremely high recoil. They also go on roads only. Both these war machines follow differant rules.
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By the time the Germans get their Tigers running and in production, circa mid-2005, the SheVa program must have been well underway. Retooling to build Tiger IIIs would have been an even bigger waste of effort than building the (as yet unproven in combat) Tiger IIIs. Especially if the US had to find a supplier for gravity generator recoil brakes.
Remember, the US weapons mix in this war focused on infantry and artillery, including (eventually) the self-propelled SheVa gun platform. They'd already given up on designing a heavy tank to fight Posleen landers in gun-to-gun combat. They adapted their existing armor force as an antipersonnel platform for fighting hordes of (relatively) lightly armed Posleen infantry.
Reasonalbe explanation.
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I do not agree. Based on my reading, my impression is that Posleen autotargeting systems will attack any flying object in line of sight that is visibly accelerating, including a dumb missile. To use MLRS and similar rocket systems against the Posleen, the boost phase of the rocket has to be out of the Posleen line of sight.
That is impossible. Objects dropping from the sky towards Earth are visibly excellerating, yet the Posleen do not target them.
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OK. Then we have a blatant retcon. Possibly because Ringo decided his timeline was a bit unrealistic (or just unsatisfying as a story) and wanted to modify it. Either way, it's still worth recognizing that the change to the official timeline has been made.
I accept it. Of course, there was no unified European command in Watch on the Rhine, which is the bigger problem.
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Ah. I misunderstood. The Posleen can fight in mountainous terrain, but only by capturing passes and other territory that vehicles could negotiate. They cannot climb cliffs or steep slopes. They aren't mountain goats, and humans can climb better than mountain goats, being descended from tree-dwelling monkeys. But they can capture cities in mountains, attack a fortified pass and (theoretically) break through, and so on. Thus, they can in fact fight in mountainous terrain. They're just at a big disadvantage, because they can't scale the mountain peaks themselves, so they have to fight in the valleys.
Which means they can only use certain paths. And, if you have people with explosives, the number of possible paths drops tremendously. They make excellent choke points.
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As for rivers, the Posleen managed to ford a number of rivers during the books. Fording a river under fire is damn near impossible, so rivers make good defense lines against the Posleen. But the Posleen move fairly fast and (sometimes) airdrop troops behind your lines or use close air support systems that can take anything short of naval-caliber artillery. Sometimes they will capture a bridge, or suppress enough of the defensive fire to prevent
Only the smart God Kings used airdrops, and only after years of war. They can only cross on fords or with bridges- they don't have bridging equipment! The only example I remember is them using rafts (which don't always work) and slaves to make crossings.
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Even after years of artillery production, the Allies could never have kept up a perpetual barrage on a river or other zone. The bombardment might last days; it could not last weeks, and it would not strike every point on a line hundreds of miles long. Sooner or later, there has to be a gap in the fire somewhere.
Except you have five years to stockpile artillary shells AND the wave isn't constant- after enough time they all die. A bigger problem that ammo is burning out the tubes. You'd need back up artillary and a competant fire control system or overlap.
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You're right. I'm calling it a retcon.
This is what happens when you have people who do fan fiction write books.
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We're not talking about organs in the brain here; we're talking about the "I'm about to kill something" predator response triggering adrenaline poisoning. Lobotomies might have worked or might not, depending on physiological details I can't know, but it's not an obvious 100% surefire thing. A lobotomy that stops you from feeling fear will probably leave you completely incapacitated. And this fatal "lintatai" thing seems to be as deeply coded into Darhel genes as the fear response is to humans- only the Aldenata made very sure to put it in everyone.
Presumably, the Aldenata in their infinite wisdom decided they didn't want the Darhel restoring their genes. I suspect the lethal modifications were mixed into the Darhel genome so thoroughly that trying to reverse it would produce fatal birth defects.
Adrenaline is produced by a specific gland in your brain, named, appropirately enough, the adrenaline gland. Remove it and no more adrenaline porblems.
The alternative is that they were modified so their brain functions were decentralized... in which case inhibitors would work. If you get a drug that blocks the receptors, than you don't have the problem.
As for making it impossible to counter... if you try eventually you'd get around whatever counter measures exist.
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Resisting a disease doesn't trigger the "I'm about to kill something" predator response. This isn't a physical implant or a program of brainwashing. It's biochemical, designed to take something the Darhel inherited from their carnivore ancestors and turn it against them. The Darhel can even go into this response when trying to kill an animal, but not a plant or a bacterium.
"Than they should tell themselves the Posleen are plants. Mobile plants, but plants none the less. After all, the biologists say so, who are we to argue with them?" The problem with such explanations is that they mean that it is perfectly fine to kill something at a distance them. After all, it doesn't trigger the "I'm about to kill something responce" in humans. Make it nice and mechanical, and people won't even think about it.
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As for a race of cowards being able to kill them... that's almost exactly it. Remember, this modification was not made by people who wanted the Darhel to be able to defend themselves. It is intentionally crippling. Of course, some few Darhel may well be willing to take the risk and accept their own death to trigger a powerful war machine (which is how they fought the Posleen before they enlisted humans). It worked... sort of. The war machines weren't very well designed, and the lack of Darhel guidance in battle probably didn't help. But they could do it. Therefore, it took a race fierce and capable enough to overcome their (admittedly weak) robot defenses. None of the species the Darhel knew were up to the task, being either even more nonviolent or so cowardly they wouldn't risk ticking off the Darhel robots.
How is that possible? Is Earth somehow considered unique? And why would a person volunteer to accept such a death for purely the point of conquest... more to the point, that is an easy tactic to counter. Wait a minute, and they are dead. Similar tactics were used against elephant charges- just get out of the way!
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Also, the Darhel built themselves into the heart of the Galactic economy, which made it a lot harder for a rebellion to succeed... until the Posleen came.
Except it is established that the Indowy are self sufficient in their cities. Not to mention the Darhel don't make anything AND a static economy doesn't require management.
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I think they did look, and decided "Yeah, we're going to have to do something about Earth pretty soon." But total genocide was out, and the Bane Sidhe were blocking many of their attempts to sabotage Earth's advancement through covert operations. What were they supposed to do?
And I'm not saying that humans are the only ones who innovate. My suspicion is that the Indowy, Darhel, and such have actually run out of new science to discover. Their technology isn't advancing because they don't have any way to make it better. All they can do is adapt it to new purposes (like building weapons they didn't have any use for until just recently).
Nudge an asteroid into a collision course. Figure out the requirements, and have vessels accidently nudge it. Do this though layers of bruacracy and you are good to go.
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Humans tried that, with moderate success. The Darhel were very foolish by human standards not to try this tactic. However, I do not expect that all aliens will think of all the things we think of, especially if their social and genetic makeup has been deliberately crippled to make them unwarlike.
Except that Scortched Earth is the most obvious tactic to a race of businessmen- or are you telling me that the Darhel have never heard of "merger"? Not to mention that aliens may think differantly, logic operates the same all over the universe.
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Possibly the Net identified it as a world of technologically primitive defenders and a pretty nice biosphere? Compared to planets like Barwhon and Diess, Earth sounds fairly hospitable, and they don't have to worry about some Darhel robot tank slaughtering tens of thousands of them. At least, that would explain them targeting Earth before they started fighting humans.
Afterwards, I suspect the Net started vectoring in Posleen battlegroups to get rid of those damn monkeys before it was too late.
You are assuming the net is sentient. It isn't. It is simply a very effective calculator. And the biosphere is irrelevant- the Posleen are coming for loot. Earth is POOR compared to a Galactic world.
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Again, they wanted us to kill lots of Posleen, but not all the Posleen. They had to warn us and support us to get our help against them, and they needed the organized national militaries of Earth to provide the core of the force they wanted to use against the Posleen. Remember that the expeditionary forces are Earth military units, like US infantry divisions, shipped to other planets. If they had just recruited random human individuals, they would not have had that organization.
Or they could have waited for the invasion and then sprung into action. They would get more gratitude, avoided awkward questions ("we didn't think they would invade here-we can't follow their fleets"), been simpler, etc. There were a bunch of alternatives they could have done. Many of them had better results.
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They needed humans with a high enough technological background to understand the capabilities of GalTech and to create the specifications for the weapons they needed.
If they'd landed in 1860 and tried to explain the problem, human military experts would have ended up creating a force armed with 1mm rail guns or something that marched in formation, like Napoleonic infantry. No power armor, no heavy indirect fire artillery, no concept of the role of air power on the battlefield. It would have been a massacre.
The Darhel didn't know what they needed in a fighting force, but they did know they needed humans who were capable of using GalTech weapons effectively.
First off, you are assuming the humans of the Napolionic war era are idiots. When they see that there are weapons capable of putting out thousands of rounds a second, they are going to change their view of warfare. Additionally, they DID use skirmishers, but they were limited by the inability to command and control such units.
In addition air power is useless against the Posleen, power armor is a waste of resources, they already know the power of artillary, etc. They aren't idiots.
The Darhel could always sim the situation to show them what happens with a given plan- they have the capability to do that.
Not to mention that the early 1800s were a revolution in war fighting. That was why Napoleon did so well- he understood new ways of combat.
Of course, the biggest thing for them will be canned food and tracked vehicles, but they will get over that soon enough.
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You assume correctly.
So all the species in the galaxy except humans were engineered? Why am I not surprised?
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They did that. It worked, but not well enough to stop the Posleen advance.
The word "author's fiat" comes to mind. The defender will have more units, can replace their losses faster and can ignore supply problems by simply scraping the old units. The Posleen can't.
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Materials were not the problem. Technicians competent to assemble the materials were.
They were unable to train enough people in 200 years? Are they that stupid?
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You see some. They are trying. But they have very large psychological handicaps, and their society has been screwed up for millenia.
Look at what happened to natives in parts of the world dominated by Europeans on Earth in, say, India. The Indians are not even the least bit stupid, nor are they crippled by author fiat, because this is real life. And yet they did not manage to catch up with Europeans in terms of technology, social organization, or anything else in a century. From the first contacts with Europeans (1500s-1600s) that demonstrated that Europeans could be a threat to Indian society, the Indians were unable to stop European powers from conquering and dividing up India until the mid-1900s, a period of about three hundred years.
Societies do not always adapt to a crisis, even when they have decades to do so.
The Darhel got screwed with by the Aldenata after inventing a star-travelling culture. This was a deliberate act to neuter them as a threat to the Aldenata hegemony.
Words fail me to describe how moronic the Aldenata are.
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Which is, I believe, fatal for humans. And quite possibly fatal for Darhel, too.
Nope. http://www.endocrineweb.com/adrenal.html
I know, I thought it was a typo to. It turns out the glands are located just above the Kidney. They are perfectly safe to remove.
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Yes, and with the stockpiles you can keep sporadic Posleen attacks out. You can't go on the offensive. During the entire Posleen War, humans were almost never able to go on the counterattack against the Posleen without taking massive losses unless Posleen forces had first been greatly thinned out by being drawn into an assault on strong human defenses. Certainly, they wouldn't be defeated by an attack launched using stockpiles alone.
What does stockpile's have to do with offensives? And for attacking, why not simply use rocket artillary or nuke artillary? It would burn through their numbers like crazy.
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Yes, but they were getting beaten like a drum for the first several months of the war. When fighting the Posleen, that can mean the end of your country.
Look at the French, who did not have mass purges of their officer corps, did not suppress news and questioning, etc. They still lost to the Germans, because their high command panicked for a few weeks after an unexpected German attack. It happens. And if it happens against the Posleen, you won't be bouncing back from your defeat.
Because they weren't expecting what the Germans did, they didn't have a well designed military, they had no political will to fight (facism was born in France), etc. None of these apply worldwide in the case of invasion that has been on the radar for 5 years.
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They used at least one in "Gust Front." They used one on Diess in "A Hymn Before Battle."
With enough rifles and mortars, you can hold a static position against the Posleen. Artillery is way better, but mortars could do it. The problem is that unless you have a really narrow chokepoint to hold, or a river, you can't put enough boots on each linear mile of your defenses to stop a concentrated Posleen wave assault.
If you do have such terrain obstacles you're probably fine, unless the next wave of landings drops two million or more Posleen behind your terrain obstacle.
If you have enough guns you can hold larger and larger areas. As for Posleen landing behind your lines... simply hit is with artillary until it cracks.
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We have confirmation that doing that kind of thing does send Darhel into lintatai. They know they're about to kill, and that sets off their instincts. Which, in turn, causes poisoning.
And knowing they might very well need the humans later, they'd be reluctant to destroy us. After all, if they could figure out a way to co-opt us safely, we'd be an invaluable asset to them because we are killers.
This isn't D&D we are talking about- the Darhel cannot forsee the results of their actions. Releasing nanites wouldn't kill anyone... until they stepped in them. Mines won't kill anyone... until they are set of.
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They didn't. They were the result of genetic tinkering by a pacifist alien empire in the distant past. Before the tinkering, those species were probably a lot better balanced... and considerably more warlike.
A pacifistic empire? That is quite literally impossible- empires are born by conquest.
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Thousands upon thousands of mortars and thousands upon thousands of riflemen to defend them add up to a big army. It will work, but only if you can concentrate those troops. Defending open terrain, or even a river line, that's a risky proposition. The need to put men on every mile of the line means you can't put enough men on every mile to stop the Posleen from breaking through at a critical point.
Defending mountain passes it does work, which is probably why there are still humans left alive after the war anywhere but North America and in the permafrost.
But you're talking about the exact sort of massive military buildup the humans did make in the novels. It didn't work perfectly because they couldn't predict where the Posleen would land and because the Posleen could land on their flanks or rear even after they'd managed to contain a large Posleen pocket.
Nope- don't need rifle men. Don't need a lot of soldiers either- this is capitol intensive warfare. I haven't worked out the details, but working out the dispersal pattern of mortars... you don't need to pack them so thick. Of course, in case of emergency defenses would raise the required density.
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They built a lot of those. You assume they could have built a lot more, and I can't prove you wrong, but I'm not sure how you can prove yourself right, either. You're objecting to author fiat without being able to present an obvious reason why the authors are wrong. Unlike the reasons you present on some other issues.
The machine guns are back up, not reuired for my plan. Mostly I object tot the backround stupidity, not the military screw ups because I don't have military experience and hence don't get offended.
That is rather silly. Why didn't the people who designed them simply remove the desire for dominance, aggression, etc? It would have been simpler.
If it were practical to do that, then it would be more effective. I'm not sure it would be simpler.
You see, the Aldenata didn't have to radically change the psychological makeup of the Darhel to neutralize their violent tendencies the way they did. All they had to do was modify some Darhel organ comparable to the adrenal gland. Altering the "desire" for something in a brain would require precisely the kind of exceptional knowledge of brain structure that I seem to recall you thinking is impossible.
Now, that's not a perfect explanation. Given that there is no objective, non-author factual data on the Darhel, you can certainly disagree with my reasoning. But it isn't a gaping plot hole, either. Genetic tinkering that affects an organism's glands to cause fatal chemical imbalances under stress isn't all that farfetched.
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That is incredibly stupid. For starters, the thrill of the hunt and "economic prederation" are so totally differant it is hard for he to imagine a connection. Hunting is based on working in a group, bringing down prey, the adrenaline rush, etc. Hunters don't get off on pain and fear. They are more likely to get off on red meat, blood and a full belly.
The phrase "cat and mouse" comes to mind.
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As for pushbutton violence... they "imply" they want certain individuals killed. I'm pretty sure they could make computers that would accept such "implications" as dircet orders.
I think they're worried about the risks involved in giving a computer that much autonomy. I seem to recall it backfiring on them. They definitely take steps to keep their normal AIs from getting that clever.
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Adrenaline is produced by a specific gland in your brain, named, appropirately enough, the adrenaline gland. Remove it and no more adrenaline porblems.
Nope. http://www.endocrineweb.com/adrenal.html
I know, I thought it was a typo to. It turns out the glands are located just above the Kidney. They are perfectly safe to remove.
Humans cannot live without their adrenal glands. Those glands produce chemicals your body needs to live. They are easy to remove, but removing them will kill you, because they have functions you can't readily replace. You can look this up.
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As for making it impossible to counter... if you try eventually you'd get around whatever counter measures exist.
Yeah. The Darhel have actually been working on that for quite a while. They're making some progress, even... just not enough.
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"Than they should tell themselves the Posleen are plants. Mobile plants, but plants none the less. After all, the biologists say so, who are we to argue with them?" The problem with such explanations is that they mean that it is perfectly fine to kill something at a distance them. After all, it doesn't trigger the "I'm about to kill something responce" in humans. Make it nice and mechanical, and people won't even think about it.
Humans were not predators before we evolved conscious thought.
Is the plant thing a subtle joke? I get the feeling you are pulling my leg.
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Re: Darhel strategy
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How is that possible? Is Earth somehow considered unique?
Yes, in that it is the only planet in known space with an intelligent species that was not the victim of Aldenata gene tampering aimed at "pacifying" us.
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So all the species in the galaxy except humans were engineered? Why am I not surprised?
The local empire that did the engineering collapsed before we had a prominent role on the scene.
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Words fail me to describe how moronic the Aldenata are.
Seconded. I agree absolutely, and without qualification.
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A pacifistic empire? That is quite literally impossible- empires are born by conquest.
How about a pacifistic federation? Or an empire that evolves into pacifism over time in response to a lack of external threats?
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First off, you are assuming the humans of the Napolionic war era are idiots. When they see that there are weapons capable of putting out thousands of rounds a second, they are going to change their view of warfare.
There are twenty thousand ghosts who died on the Somme who might want to have a word with you about that.
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In addition air power is useless against the Posleen, power armor is a waste of resources, they already know the power of artillary, etc. They aren't idiots.
They need to know what the Posleen can do to them with air power, not the other way around.
Look at all the military mistakes made from then till now that revolved around generals not knowing the best way to use a new military technology. Look at how the Russians got pounded in World War One because they were sending radio messages between armies in the clear. Or how the French and British underestimated the effect of close air support in World War Two. Or all those poor men who died charging repeating rifles and machine guns from about 1850-1917.
If you just handed a bunch of 1860-vintage soldiers modern or postmodern weapons and told them to fight, they would make those mistakes all at once.
And yet, they lost the conflict. The Galactics were in the process of being conquered in much the same way. They were fighting back. They were inflicting at least some damage on the conquerors. But they weren't going to win.
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Or they could simply wait for humans to fight and lose, than mass drive the planet and move the survivors off in stealth ships.
Mass drivering is out, for the zillionth time. Also, to repeat myself, the Darhel need Earth to damage the Posleen badly before it falls. Without advance warning and at least some military aid, the human nations would have fallen apart quickly. Imagine if, instead of humans getting years of warning in advance that the Posleen were coming, history had proceeded exactly the way it did in real life.
The first Posleen wave would have dropped two million ravening aliens in Fredericksburg, Virginia... when most of the US's active duty military was over in Iraq. The invasion would have ripped the guts out of the Eastern Seaboard before any possible defense could have been mounted. The other globes would have done vastly more damage, too. The first main wave of globes would have probably mopped up all effective resistance on the planet.
We needed the warning to mount an effective defense against such a fierce, numerous, and powerfully armed enemy. The Darhel were smart enough to know that they had to support us. They were playing us off against the Posleen, trying to make sure that we were still around afterwards, but in an extremely weakened state.
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Re: Human weapons, tactics, and governments
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They have 5 years. In addition, they aren't building things- they are relocating them. You don't need much of a construction industry- using Soviet methods, all you need are the machinary.
Yes, but you do need the machinery. A lot of the war production machinery the Soviets built was obsolescent or rusting by the time the Posleen would have hit. The Russian military-industrial complex lost a lot of funding after the breakup of the USSR.
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As for economic planning... you do know that the Russian government has nationalized many of the countries industries? They aren't running the whole economy... but they are controlling a good portion of it.
There's a large difference between nationalizing an industry and running it efficiently enough to get really effective war production out of it. At the point where the Posleen War timeline diverged from ours (around 2000), Russia was definitely in bad economic shape. Even under desperate national stress, it would have taken them time to get really effective planners into office and kick out the oil tycoons.
And, you will note, the humans do hold out in Siberia according to the map I give. Their government may have gotten busted up, and European Russia may have been overrun, but the Russians probably managed to save a large fraction of their population and a relatively good chunk of their industry.
So they didn't obviously fail to do any planning, or to survive, or to defend themselves. They just didn't defend themselves perfectly and survive the war unharmed.
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Because they weren't expecting what the Germans did, they [France] didn't have a well designed military, they had no political will to fight (facism was born in France), etc. None of these apply worldwide in the case of invasion that has been on the radar for 5 years.
The French began taking steps to counter the German military buildup under Hitler as early as 1935, when he reintroduced conscription.
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In a parlimentary deomacracy, another member of the ruling party takes over. In a military dictatorship, the man below in the chain of command takes over. Given the fact that after the first landings, they know the Posleen are coming and have killed a head of state, other government leaders will be looking for bunkers.
Yes, but a lot of the bunkers can fall if the Posleen get too close. And while in a parliamentary democracy you're right, military dictatorships aren't so neat about things. When the generalissimo dies, there is almost always some disagreement about who rules next. Even if there is a designated successor (and there often is), the other generals will harbor reservations. They may be reluctant to sacrifice their command (and possibly their life) on the orders of a man who was their peer until last week.
You don't get civil war. I didn't mean to imply you do. What you do get is confusion in the ranks of the command structure. It's even worse in dictatorships where the leaders try to suppress initiative and independence on the part of the regime's generals (as in Saddam Hussein's Iraq). In that case the military disintegrates when the high command is neutralized- as the first Gulf War demonstrated.
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When is the last time a general has been anywhere near the front in times of war? The command staff is generally far away and under no danger of being over run.
With the Posleen, that's sometimes questionable. General Headquarters probably won't be overrun unless a Posleen globe lands on top of them. But the divisional and corps HQ may well be overrun or forced to abandon a lot of equipment (making them much less effective) in the event that the Posleen break the line.
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Most military dictators do not personally lead their troops. For example, the leader of Pakistan was a military dictator who despite his title did not personally run military operations. A military dictator does not always lead- the generally delegate the responsibility to a subordinate.
I didn't say they did. My point is that a military dictatorship revolves around a powerful cadre of senior military officers. The generalissimo is important, but without his loyal subordinates no one will obey him.
When some of those subordinates die in battle, when he may die because a Posleen force landed on his head, when his troops are on the verge of being routed by the horde of alien cannibals with plasma guns charging their lines... things get messy. A government dominated by the military tends to get weaker, not stronger, when the military suddenly has to fight a powerful external enemy.
A civilian government, even a dictatorship, doesn't have this problem to the same degree. But a civilian dictatorship usually holds power by discouraging initiative in the military to prevent a coup- which makes fighting the Posleen harder.
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Except most of the things infantry are needed for are things like urban combat, fighting in forests, etc. On open ground tanks are the best. And guess what? That is where the Posleen are! A tank is about the same height as power armor it is only 8 feet tall while a person in power armor is somewhere between 6 to 10 feet. The have a width of about 20 feet compared to 1 or 2 for power armor though.
Also, the guy in power armor can lie down and fire prone, you know.
Tanks can't get cover from terrain except by using a ridge line, and there isn't always a ridge where you need one. Infantry, including power-armored infantry, can dig in very quickly. This was one of the big advantages ACS had over Posleen- the Posleen had to advance in the open, where the ACS could hose them down with really powerful grav guns. Unless they were totally overwhelmed in terms of numbers, an ACS unit could hold a well entrenched position against a Posleen charge as long as their ammunition held out.
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On the other hand they [tanks] can be mass produced, are cheaper, don't have to rely on antimatter power, can hold more ammo, move faster, do more damage etc. If they use the same material that power armor uses to cover their front, than they are equally survivable.
An ACS was more effective than an Abrams in the Posleen War because they used GalTech weapons. You are correct that an Abrams-type tank armored with the same kind of material used to make ACS would be tougher to kill. It would also use about fifty or sixty more tons of very rare GalTech metals, precisely the stuff that cannot be mass produced. The humans were not making their own power armor.
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You don't understand- I'm not talking about orbital bombardment. I'm talking about going to the asteroid or Kupiner belt and flinging them at Earth. You can do the calculations and get it so they hit specific areas. If the rock is small enough, it won't kill everyone on the planet.
Do you mean using this as a tactic for the defense of Earth?
I would be highly reluctant to do it that way, myself, because small errors in placement could result in my causing massive damage to my own forces.
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Why would they build factories? Why not simply take the material down to Earth? I don't want asteroids to build ships- although a hollowed out Ceres would be awesome- I want the metal.
Because you still have to build the factories somewhere. The Earth has a lot of materials like iron. As a practical matter, our basic ability to produce iron would not be as big a handicap as our ability to make it into the weapons and tools we need to prosecute the war. Opening up a space mining industry would not magically allow us to manufacture tanks and guns several times faster.
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You do realize we already have nuclear artillary. Why do we need something like that?
Because our existing nuclear artillery is not designed to defend against flying battleships with plasma cannon, but rather to bombard the ground?
What was needed was not just a nuclear cannon, but a nuclear AA gun. And since nuclear artillery shells are extremely large, you needed a gun much bigger than anything previously used as an AA weapon... which, in turn required a much bigger chassis to carry it. Something like a mine crawler.
That explains the SheVa. The Tiger was intended as an armored fighting vehicle that could withstand the heaviest Posleen weapons and kill landers, and they'd never have been able to do it without GalTech or without making it as big as a SheVa. Which, you may note, they never considered doing.
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And in each case the machines do NOT have recoil. By contrast the SheVa and tiger have entremely high recoil. They also go on roads only. Both these war machines follow differant rules.
I do not agree. The German mine crawler I mentioned can cross grass. As for recoil, the recoil of a gun, even a gun that big, is not large compared to the mass of a multithousand tonne vehicle. If it's strong enough to carry all that weight in the first place, it can carry the gun. If you can fit a suitable recoil absorption system into the gun mount itself (the problem with the Tiger III).
In essence, both the Tiger III and the SheVa were attempts to take a really big industrial crawler and mount a naval warship turret on it- the equivalent of something from a WWII battleship or cruiser.
From an engineering standpoint, that is not the ludicrous impossibility you make it out to be. Vehicles that heavy do exist, and the forces they'd have to withstand in firing are not impossibly large for platforms that heavy.
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That is impossible. Objects dropping from the sky towards Earth are visibly excellerating, yet the Posleen do not target them.
Correction. I spoke imprecisely. Posleen autotargeting software homes in on objects that are visibly transmitting or maneuverng under power. A rocket engine is under power. A falling anvil (or kinetic kill weapon) is not.
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Which means they can only use certain paths. And, if you have people with explosives, the number of possible paths drops tremendously. They make excellent choke points.
Yup. Which is why most human survivors were on the far side of a mountain range from the Posleen. The book actively takes this into account. It is not ignored.
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Only the smart God Kings used airdrops, and only after years of war.
God Kings used their lander craft against ground troops in both a Hymn Before Battle and Gust Front. It was only the smart ones who did it, but if the smart ones did it they could pave the way for a lot of the dumb ones.
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What does stockpile's have to do with offensives? And for attacking, why not simply use rocket artillary or nuke artillary? It would burn through their numbers like crazy.
Rockets were used where possible (where the boost phase would be out of Posleen view). The catch is that you have to get the Posleen to bunch up before you can really hammer them with artillery, and they only bunch up when they're going after a strong, cohesive defense that small Posleen groups cannot penetrate.
Nukes were used too, but with a bit more caution because most human nations either didn't have any or didn't want to irradiate too much of their own soil.
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Nope- don't need rifle men. Don't need a lot of soldiers either- this is capitol intensive warfare. I haven't worked out the details, but working out the dispersal pattern of mortars... you don't need to pack them so thick. Of course, in case of emergency defenses would raise the required density.
Without a substantial force armed with direct fire weapons, mortars really are not going to cut it, in my opinion.
I do not have a military background. Could you cite authorities on this proposal? I have never heard of anyone trying to stop human wave attacks using mortars or artillery alone. As a rule, no matter how thick the bombardment is, at least a few leakers can get through it. The problem is that random bombardment of an area will kill a fixed percentage of the Posleen in the area per unit time. As the numbers dwindle, so do the number of casualties you inflict.
This is why you need a solid line of direct fire weapons (rifles and machine guns) to target the leakers individually. Without that, sooner or later too many leakers get through the bombardment zone, and they can mass and attack your guns directly. You can look at real life human wave attacks for examples.
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My favorite rejoinder:
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by Betty
If your idea of fun is to give the players whatever they want, then I suggest you take out a board game called: CANDY LAND and use that for your gaming sessions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dervag
Obviously, you have never known the frustration of being stranded in the Molasses Swamp.
Sam; for the sake of convenience I'm going to skip quoting in this post and summarize arguments on both sides. We can pick up quoting after this.
Tactics: Basically the problem we have splits on strategy. Both sides have already agreed that the best way to fight the posleen is from heavily defended fixed positions. Mortars and artillery are basically the same thing, just larger caliber guns. Poured concrete is slightly better than high dirt berms, etc. The biggest problem with this is that if you have to hold a defended position to survive, then you aren't going on the attack. If you aren't going on the attack, you can't get rid of the invaders. If the invaders are contstantly being reinforced, you can't attack. This is further complicated by the matter of logistics. Humans need to have a support base to fight. We can only eat certain things, and we need the tools to fix and replace the tools we use to fight. If I recall correctly, its at a 10:1 ratio of support workers to combat units. The Posleen simply eat anything they over run or each other, and just loot the dead as they go. Your points about attacking Posleen units from space are entirely valid; they're just not available until the end of Hell's Faire.
Infantry is used primarily because its easier to move them from one hot spot to another, its cheaper and easier to replace casulties, and that they're better at holding mountains and fortifications. A tank holding a pass and nothing else is but a metal bunker, and the whole incident with the 10th showed that it was too easy for a mechanized unit to get cut off and surrounded in the field. The SheVas weren't meant for combat; they were intended more as a mobile variation on the Planet Defense Centers. Bun Bun only got upgraded because, well, it was Bun Bun and vastly amusing. In the end humans really can't face Posleen in the open field, because they simply get overwhelmed by rate of fire. They need to be operating from easily defendable positions, or outside of range, or preferably both.
Resources: Humanity is told that in five years a superior force of aliens is going to invade. In that five years they need to design, develop, and construct not only the weapons that will help them fight the war, but the infrastructure necessary to do that. Then the aliens show up ahead of schedule by about a year. They did what they could. Saying they should have done what they were already trying to do is like saying a certain horse should have come in first instead of third. The horse tried, it just wasn't enough.
The Darhel, Aldenata, et al.: The Darhel were basically land sharks. To pacify them, the Aldenata took they're feeding frenzy instinct, ramped it up about ten notches, and then got rid of the bit that said, "Ok, I'm fed, time to stop now." They don't just keel over and die from an adrenaline rush. They go absolutely berserk until either something kills them or they die from a combination of dehydration/hunger/exhaustion. Also, they own the galactic economy as a species; but amongst themselves they have seperate companies and organizations, much like clans, and compete amongst themselves for contracts, bonds, etc.
The Indowy are a bunch of natural pacifists, who managed to somehow unlock some major secrets of the universe, to the point where they can manipulate probability on a molecular level. This isn't inherent to their species; they teach several human children how to do this when first handed a bunch of colonists. Interestingly this doesn't remove the ability of a human to fight, they just come to deplore it. (Cally and her sister, a mentat, get into a spat at the end of Sister Time. It ends when their grandfather dumps a bucket of water on them.) Their favorite saying is, "Alien minds are incomprehenisble because they are alien." Each species brings its own particular motiviations and instincts to the table, having come from different environments.
The Aldenata are a bunch of self serving jerks who messed with just about everyone but humans. They drove the darhel insane by making them pacifists. They made the Posleen into the perfect guard dogs and then told them not to bite anyone. Then they picked up and left.
The T'cpth and Himmit haven't really had enough screen time to be developed. All we know is that no one really controls the T'cpth, and that the Himmit are here really more as casual observers who will get involved if they think its interesting enough.
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Basilisk 6
Pilot of the Thing
I'm not evil. My morals just aren't the same as society's.
On a one man quest to beat the Star Wars Universe, using nothing but simple, plain, ordinary logic. Score so far: Me 593 SWU 450
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