Human-Alien War

I've been thinking about this idea for a while, but never thought about posting it until now. Basically this:

It's 2113, humans have become advanced enough to where their are colonies on Mars and its surrounding moons. However, an extraterrestrial civilization that has been examining Earths solar system for the past 3 centuries finally notices that they're is another space faring civilization in the galaxy. The aliens have built a colonial empire, and are seeking to expand into Earth (maybe due to Earth having the same resources that the Aliens want?).

The aliens begin attacking Mars, and thus the war begins.

The humans are a tier 1 civilization, while the Aliens are a Tier II civilization slowly advancing to Tier III.

What happens next?

What do you mean tiers? As in the Kardashev scale tiers?

If you do mean the Kardashev scale...there's not going to be a war.

To a Kardashev II, borderline III civ, a mere I isn't an opponent. At worst, it's a pest. Humanity loses decisively within 5 seconds of the opening of hostilities, and the rest of the alien campaign is going to be effectively pest control.

It would be like the modern US military vs ancient carthage. Post first punic war carthage. Spear wielding infantry, unstirruped cavalry, and elephants against automatic fire arms, high explosives, and air support.

...huh, reminds me of a Civ 5 game.

edited 14th Oct '13 7:04:05 AM by Belisaurius

^^ Not in 5 seconds. You gotta factor in attack travel time, preparing to fire, BDA, etc.

Nobody in the Universe will win a war in 5 seconds.

They will if they have near-c kinetics :P.

What are they firing from? 500 meters away? Counting prep time and BDA alone, even near-c kinetics would be a longer than 5 seconds war/barrage.

It will take at least a week to formally declare war and maybe several months to get a task force together. Ofcourse, the actual fighting may take five seconds if only because that's how long it takes for the surrender message to cross the distance to the fleet.

Ah, sorry about the duplicate thread!

Anyhow, I've gotten 2 theories as to how the humans avoid completely losing in this conflict:

• 1- Another race of aliens helps the humans

• The Aliens only have a few forces stationed there.

The aliens are humanoid, but have mechanically refined themselves to the point where most of the aliens are just hulking clusters of metal and wires with some organs underneath. They are vulnerable to high powered explosions, biological warfare, and having their armor pierced to the point of infection.

So basically imagine a hostile version of the Quarians from Mass Effect mixed with the Borg from Star Trek.

edited 14th Oct '13 7:32:19 PM by Bagrick

The first could be an interesting parallel to the proxy wars of past 'cold' conflicts. Kinda like the US arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan. Not exactly because they had any particular sympathies, but simply to tie up soviet resources in a military quagmire and prevent further expansion.

It wouldn't exactly be in the interest of such a power to provide enough help to humanity that they could actually win...they'd want to give just enough to make it expensive for their opponents. Of course, that can backfire rather spectacularly...again, see Afghanistan.

edited 14th Oct '13 7:51:03 PM by MattStriker

So, the Alien race that supports the humans has been actively at war with the cyborg aliens.

The humans being helped and/or protected by another Tier II society maybe having them trying to uplift the humans to a higher tech level in exchange for fighting the other aliens ie the Humans Are Warriors trope in full effect.

Or you could make the other race a more advanced Tier I and just starting out heading into Tier II.

edited 14th Oct '13 8:20:46 PM by TuefelHundenIV

^ Or you can make the whole Tier business as nonsense. They may be more advanced but can they blitzkrieg? Or ambush? Or fire and maneuver at the same time?

You could always make the technology advanced but the tactics and way to wage war less so. It's not without historical precedent...

Even simple tactics using the tech available to a Tier II civ going Tier III, would mean humanity still very likely getting curb stomped.

Even if they just decided to long range bombard or charge in blindly the potential power of their weapons would be notably above the poor buggers in the Tier I level.

edited 14th Oct '13 8:39:34 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I don't know about that. A bullet to the brainpan is a bullet to the brainpan. Doesn't matter if you have 1000 years more advanced Powered Armor or whatever. Either way you're dead.

Basically, stealth would be more important.

In order to leverage enough tactical advantage to win against a kardachev II civ you'd need to make the aliens absolute morons by comparison. This is utterly unrealistic for a hostile race that even considers conquest an option.

Not necessarily, I think, if human-like tactical thinking and combat theory are unusual developments; if most alien species are very, very bad at warfare then the group that desires conquest can get away with not being good at it — until they encounter a species (here humanity) that is.

The problem is that it's pretty hard to imagine a species that'd get to such a point without a basic understanding of strategy and tactics.

The thing is is some science is independent of military tactics. The steam engine for example wasn't originally built with military endeavors in mind. Early military steamships tactically behaved no different than their still sail-driven counterparts. (Mostly a limitation of the creativity of the commanders not fully utilizing the tech.)

The same could happen with spacefaring empires. They could still tactically behave like in WW 2 or during the Cold War or the 21st century militaries while still having more advanced tech. (Of course from a military standpoint it could be argued we've hit a plateau tactically where we can do nothing different than we've been doing unless we have a massive new breakthrough in technology on the level of the introduction of the tank and plane to warfare.)

Depending on how FTL travel works, you could have a highly advanced (but small) scout force vastly underestimate humanity, and they're defeated before reinforcements arrive. That could also be used to explain why they don't use their superweapons; they're trying to preserve the infrastructure and environment so they can use it later.

You could have the commander of the alien scout force act independently from the rest of the civ. However, taking on a class 2, borderline class 3 civilization with humanity which is not quite a class 1 is insanity. Not because of the tech it implies but the infrastructure such level of technology implies. We would be buried under waves of weapons and armor, all far superior than anything we can produce. A small force has limited resources and members. With time, persistence, and some clever tactics it is plausible to drive off scouts of a highly advance alien race.

Just to give you a scale, Kardachev class 1 consumes all the energy the sun provides to the earth. So about 4x10^12 watts. Kardachev class 2 consumes all the energy provided by the sun. So about 4x10^26 watts. Class 3 Kardachev civs consume 4x10^44 watts. Roughly all the energy produced by the milky way. Saying they are a class 2, borderline class 3 is to say they make all of humanity look like a family group of 4-8 stone age humans.

So you might want to define what you mean by tiers a little clearer.

edited 15th Oct '13 11:21:18 AM by Belisaurius

Don't forget that you can make the aliens really alien. They could be so different from us that they don't even comprehend that there is such a thing as death(or war). They could come to Mars, just start building stuff and accidentally crush some humans in the process.

Then we put some hot lead in a few of them and the 'Immortal' Time Abyss aliens dies of lead poisoning. Or maybe Something Completely Different happens...

edited 15th Oct '13 11:39:02 PM by m8e

Tom: You are not grasping the huge gap in tech we are talking about. Not just infrastructure and practice in warfare but shear amount of technological differences.

As others have pointed out the disparity between the two is amazingly large and quite very severe.

We are talking about Earth puttering around its home solar system tinkering with planets vs a galaxy traveling civ that uses multiple solar systems for resources and tinkering with stars.

To make it worse the aliens are going from from Tier II Tinkering with Stars and solar systems and starting to tinkering with galaxies and utilizing star clusters for resources.

Even being militarily clumsy they would swat earth with signifcant ease. They could literally flood the earth's space with ships that are advanced beyond earths reach meaning there would be no chance.

They would have mastery over materials and energies the Tier 1 could only imagine and theorize about possibly just starting to tinker with. And along with that would be weapons whose even clumsy use would be incredibly effective and devastating.

No manner of tactical/strategic trickery or mastery would save the earth. Even a blind Zerg rush would end the Earth. The idiot ball would have to be amazingly massive and epic for the aliens to not just casually wipe away earth.

This is why there are multiple suggestions to adjust for the severe disparity in tech advancement.

edited 15th Oct '13 4:43:51 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Perhaps to make this more plausible the humans are upped to a nearly class 2 civilization that has plasma weapons or such?