Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

yup.

No, dropping a Nuke is genocide, preventing a species from multiplying to the point where it uses up all its resources is not.

Genocide does not mean killing a lot of people, it means destroying an ethnic/religious/cultural/.. group. The complete sterilization of said group does that.

And no, nuking a city is not genocide...

edited 10th Oct '15 8:57:29 AM by Aetol

Aetol has the long and short of it, I think.

Is this an original work you are writing?

Yeah forced sterilization is genocide since it means wiping out the species/culture/ethnicity.

Yes, it is.

I did not come here to discuss what is, or isn't, genocide. So could we all please move on? Besides, Zylottans are not human, and do not have the same terms as we do. And any atempt to find a direct homolog to any of their words is just foolish. :D

edited 10th Oct '15 1:31:09 PM by AustinHinton

Okay, here's something to chew over for you all - do things like planetary shielding make a war of manoeuvre impossible to prosecute (or at least encourage an attritional mindset)?

Hmm. We talking total planet coverage? What can it withstand or keep out? Is there any non-brute force solution to getting through?

That's the thing - this grew from a discussion me and a friend had, but since we don't know technical details (or at least haven't sat down to hammer any out), that makes answering such a question difficult. How about we split the difference and assume two scenarios:

1. Total coverage, can be brought down by a moderate amount of firepower.

AND

2. Total coverage, requires a lot of firepower.

I would comment on the last query, but to simplify things let's assume that although you could theoretically get double agents to bring down the shield that there aren't any already present.

If it doesn't take a mountain of fire power then hammering it down might be easier then waiting for a subtle solution. If it is a planet requiring regular supplies if your fleet has the time wait them out.

If you have the firepower and weapons for even a hard target it would depend on what is quicker and effective without expending too much in terms of supply.

How long can this shield be kept up? If we are talking only a few months at most it might be worth waiting out the power supply. If attacking it puts a strain on its power supply it might be worth it to hammer on it for a while to help run the power down. If this shield can run for as long as they want or years some other solution possibly even brute force might be preferable at some point.

What kind of energy does the shield put out? Is it exothermic? Is everything under the shield baking like a chuck roast in a slow cooker? Does it only emit energy outward? Is it preventing solar radiation from reaching the surface, causing a perpetual winter as long as the shield is up? Considerations like that might put a balance on whether or not the population of a planet can just go turtle indefinitely or not.

Re the Genocide thing: Governments rationalize all the time. The point isnt whether they are right or wrong- the point is what they do and why they say they do it make an interesting element in a story.

Again, genocide isn't the point, the point is that the Committee is so haughty that they believe they have a right to control another species' populations.

and by not killing their enemies they set themselves up tor a fall

Or said ennemies could be too demoralized to fight back. See the krogans in Mass Effect.

Please, the Delphians have barely mastered space flight, they pose no threat to Zylotta

We went from barely being able to fly to going to the moon in under 60 years. Given that they've got nothing left to live for they might go from barely into orbit to relativistic planet killers in three or four decades.

The Genophage did two things. First, it eased the Krogan's overpopulation problem so there wasn't a good reason to continue the war. Second, it made Krogan battle tactics entirely unviable.

The one thing the Genophage didn't do was make the krogans entirely sterile. They could still have children but not by the thousands like they used to. Urdnot Wrex actually was advocating spending a generation or two simply rebuilding their numbers.

Because the Krogans still had a hope of continuing on a suicidal offensive simply wasn't reasonable.

So the situations aren't entirely comparable.

edited 11th Oct '15 9:49:39 AM by Belisaurius

I'm writing a story that involves a conflict (a Cold War with border skirmishes and proxy wars-it goes hot towards the end of the story) between a Postcyberpunk society (Zion) which supplements its army with robots and Gothic-Horror Stalinists (The Enigma State) which supplements its army with the undead. The Postcyberpunk guys are the good guys of the setting.

The undead are humans infected and heavily mutated with a supernatural pathogen (cells taken from an elderitch abomination). In the darkness, they have a healing factor that makes them much deadlier. The infection is primarily spread through contact to the victim's blood. They are not perpetual motion monsters, and need food, water, and oxygen. They do not attack soldiers or civilians of the Enigma State.

The Enigma State uses tactics that are a cross between Soviet Union and Japan in WWII (a lot of We Have Reserves going on, and suicide attacks).

The Postcyberpunk society, Zion: They have human soldiers assisted by robot drones and robot-piloted vehicles. Power Armor exists, but it's very rare.

I'm trying to think of tactics that Zion might try to use against The Enigma State.

@Tuefel:

Right, I see.

@AFP:

Interesting ideas! If nothing else, they'd make an interesting way to balance things.

Unfortunately, as I said, it was just me and a friend trying to figure out whether your typical sci-fi planetary shield and other such shenanigans would make it all ogre for manoeuvre warfare. Therefore we never actually discussed the specifics of the technology. So I suppose the crux of the problem is whether such shielding and similar technologies renders manoeuvre irrelevant or not.

My own position is that it does not; even an impenetrable fortress cannot by itself prove decisive unless you transition to the offensive at some stage (at which point its garrison can be attrited), and if you can keep it bottled up tightly then the units stationed within are effectively non-factors. Failing that, the planet or star system can simply be leapfrogged and softer targets attacked, ala the "island hopping" of WWII.

EDIT:

@Protagonist:

The idea that comes to mind immediately is a sort of pseudo-AirLand Battle. Namely, rather than merely fighting the enemy on the immediate battlefield, your post-cyberpunk guys also attack the enemy reserves as they move up to the front line (this may be hundreds of kilometers distant) using missiles, drones, etc.

edited 11th Oct '15 11:43:21 AM by Flanker66

So I know that stealth in Space is pretty much impossible. But what about diversion tactics or hiding in the heat trail of who you are chasing? What are some ways to be momentarily not found while in Space, I'm not asking for Stealth tech here or anything, but what could you come up with on not being spotted.

In so called "hard" works Stealth in Space is impossible. In reality plenty of things are quite stealthy in space, the question isn't detection, it's noticing it. Are you looking in the right direction when someone/something flies by or starts up?

That's how the Chelyabinsk meteor caught us by surprise. Nobody was looking in its direction it came from (which was "up" aka solar north) when it came screaming into Russia.

Omnidirectional detection systems presently have extremely poor resolution and detection capabilities at long ranges in space. Sure it could catch something moving quite well at up to lunar orbit. But say catch somebody firing off a burn as they prepare to slingshot behind Mars or Jupiter? Not so much. Directional detection like that of a telescope gives you much better detection resolution and range but leaves you with a narrow band of vision.

That's how you attain Stealth in Space. Be where they aren't looking.

Okay but my setting has advanced systems being a few hundred years in the future. So poor resolution isn't a issue.

So diversions would work.

edited 13th Oct '15 5:28:03 AM by EchoingSilence

There's a couple tricks to make your ship seem smaller or larger than it actually is. Mostly, you use mylar sheets to obscure or reflect your infrared signal. You can also fire retros at the same time as your mains to seem like you need more thrust to get the same acceleration. Finally, you can create Q-ships, battle ships disguised as civilian transports.

Also bear in mind that lasers and other weapons will gain increased effectiveness over longer ranges in the future as well, partially offsetting improvements in detection capabilities.

Could any of these techniques be used for boarding action?

Because all I have for that is a singular fast but sturdy pod speeds at a designated area with a warhead to breach a enemy ship while dealing with gun fire.