Err... Was that intended to be a major spoiler for a Wham Episode or something? That's the impression I get. If so, I think you told too much detail.

Yes, it's a major spoiler on the true motivations behind the Siege of Earth. It's extensively thought-out and planned to answer the question why the Besiegers don't just wipe out humanity in an instant.

But for now, the discussion haven't touched upon the human society in the setting.

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Setting - The Bastions of Humanity

In the 25 years after the Siege of Earth was commenced, the remnants of humanity are concentrated into a few Continental Bastions located in highly-secure locations. These are considered the last bastion for human existence and civilization, since everything beyond the perimeter of defense is a vast wasteland of environmental collapse, Hostile Terraforming and prowling alien species.

The following Continental Bastions are:

• Alpine Bastion: It is located at the Alps in France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. It is the headquarters for the International Provisional Government (IPG) and the High Command of the Terrestrial Armed Forces (TAF) activities.
• Amazon-Andes Bastion: Located at a location where the Amazon Rainforest meets the Andes Mountains in Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. It is an underground complex that functions as a prisoner-of-war camp for Besieger troopers and a deep storage unit for fully-functional Besieger vehicles. It is also a site for monitoring Besieger activity and wormholes across the world.
• Appalachian Bastion: Located at the Appalachian Mountains in the US states of West Virginia and Maryland. It is a major resource extraction site, providing coal, natural gas and other raw materials for the other bastions.
• Congo Basin Bastion: It is located at the Congo Basin region in the center of Congo-Kinshasa. It is a major site for research and development regarding environmental restoration and mitigating the effects of climate change caused by the Siege of Earth.
• East Sea Bastion: It is a floating bastion that periodically moves its location off the Pacific Coast of East Asia region to avoid being targeted by Besiegers, and to compensate its reduced firepower. It is the headquarters for the Naval Branch of TAF as it is a major shipyard for all combat watercraft.
• Irem Bastion: It is located at the Rub' al-Khali region in Saudi Arabia. It is the headquarters for the Aerial Branch of the TAF as it is major airfield for all conventional and experimental combat aircraft.
• Klemantan Bastion: It is located in Borneo, between Malaysian state of Sarawak and the Indonesian state of Kalimantan. It is a major site for research and development of new munitions technology by studying and reverse-engineering Besieger tech and materials. It also doubles as a global communication center, both civilian and military, following the collapse of satellite networks.
• Outback Bastion: It is located in the center of Australia. It is a massive storage site consisting of an extensive network of vaults and warehouses used to store scavenged and acquired debris from battles between the Besieger troops and the TAF troops.
• Rockies Bastion: Located at the Rocky Mountains in the US states of Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. It is a major agricultural center, providing a variety of staple crops, fruits and vegetables using resource-efficient ways of growing food, as well providing livestock for meat.
• Siberian Bastion: Is is located in the center of the Siberian Federal District, Russia. It is the major industrial center, mass-producing sufficient munitions and victuals for delivery to other Bastions via short-range teleporter networks and heavily escorted supply convoys.

"It's extensively thought-out and planned to answer the question why the Besiegers don't just wipe out humanity in an instant."

Look, when I said to address unanswered questions, I didn't mean outright spoil the plot. You could've at least presented some clever Hand Waves to give some context to the Besieger's motivations while keeping some major revelations like that in the dark. That's how I go about discussing my ideas. It keeps the concept interesting without potentially spoiling it for everyone else. Balance is key.

I'm still a little confused. Why don't the aliens simply explain the situation to the humans and request their assistance?

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Yeah, this amount of spoilers revealed is a problem.

The only way to salvage the story now, is to rewrite it from scratch again, scrap the old concept, and make the spoilers null.

Sorry.

Edited by TitanJump on Jan 25th 2022 at 3:12:48 PM

The conflict is weird, because "we're literally trying to save the last remaining species of a dozen dead universes" is an excellent argument to get humans on board. Why waste resources on fighting with humans when these humans could potentially be the push they need to get ahead?

The issue I have with this setting is that it doesn't seem to be intended to portray a dynamic universe so much as a status quo that allows characters to go on little adventures and/or establish the background for some kind of sci-fi RPG.

It doesn't feel like a living story. Too much setting, not enough plot, and this doesn't even touch on the plausibility of the setting.

"25 years ago, the Combine Collective Cabal Coexistence invaded and now we're just sort of stuck with it."

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 25th 2022 at 10:29:15 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

You do have a point. Looking at the Besiegers' roster, they're more akin to the alien classes from Warhammer 40,000. It feels more like a game mechanic than an actual alien empire structure.

I'm not convinced that revealing spoilers is all that big a problem. After all, what percentage of the target audience is likely to read this thread? I sincerely doubt that it's great enough to warrant concern.

Conversely, however, revealing these matters may aid the discussion of the setting and story.

My Games & Writing

To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong with this sort of thing. For example, Super Sentai shows seem to all exist within a universal status quo wherein every week a new robotic monster is sent to Earth and is defeated by the Power Of Teamwork.

If that is the idea, then great, but it is then a mistake to inquire about the plausibility of such a setting. They aren't meant to be plausible because their purpose is to be a background for weekly character dramas. All they have to offer is periodic and easily beatable threats that are linked to some sort of vaguely defined greater peril that the characters can't do anything meaningful about.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 25th 2022 at 11:00:28 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I love the explanation! And the point here is to help with world building, we’re never actually going to read the story most likely. So spoilers are okay. The explanation makes sense and clears up many questions. Is that also the reason why there seem to be many alien combatants armed only with primitive weapons? Because they literally just are sending fodder in a desperate attempt to clear the humans? It does sounds like more of a world building for a tabletop game, which is fine because tvtropes also deals with tabletop games.

“How can I possibly be able to handle school on a day like this?”

@devak:

It's because of a few reasons:

• Language barrier: The main method of communication between the Besieger forces is called Thought-Talk, a telepathic pseudo-language introduced by the Entity to bridge understanding between various species. However, it is completely incomprehensible and harmful to humans because the pseudo-language appears in the form of a hybrid between Starfish Language and Black Speech to baseline human sensory perceptions. Not only that, many troopers captured by the TAF lose their ability to communicate in that pseudo-language after learning human languages.
• Pressures from the Shadow Vortex: As said before, the Terminal Nexus is being slowly engulfed by the Shadow Vortex coupled with the window of time entering to a stable universe. This pressures the Besiegers to establish a beachhead on Earth and evacuate their entire populations rapidly, so there is no opportunity to instigate peaceful contact with humans.
• Resource depletion and overpopulation: In the Shadow Vortex, resources are limited and reaching total exhaustion. This is further complicated as an Overpopulation Crisis in the Terminal Nexus is causing endless conflict and starvation coupled with the above said pressures in the Shadow Vortex. As a population and resource control measure, the commanders of the Besiegers willingly send thousands of troopers from various species to their deaths in the Siege of Earth.

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@Fighteer:

How am I supposed to convert this setting into a dynamic universe?

I believe what is meant is that your setting should experience some large changes in the military situation. Say one breaking off the siege as useless or finally succeeding.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Well, you are starting your story 25 years into a siege that has somehow come to a stalemate despite humanity having lost 5 billion people and the aliens having an overwhelmingly dominant strategic position. None of this makes sense from the perspective of How to Invade an Alien Planet, so it seems like you are setting up a long-term status quo upon which to base your story.

If what you want is to write a bunch of character dramas and action set pieces so that your heroes can fight the aliens' diversity hires in close-range combat, that's fine, but what was stopping the aliens from killing all the humans in the first week (or year), other than the script saying so? That's the question you have to find a Hand Wave for. What has led to this long-term situation and why does it suddenly ramp up in urgency?

Put another way: if the aliens want to exterminate humans, they're doing a really bad job of it and I'd like to be hired as their genocide consultant. I swear on the smoking hole where my mother used to live that I won't pull a Heel–Face Turn at a critical moment.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 26th 2022 at 10:59:43 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

>Pressures from the Shadow Vortex

This is maybe an argument for an initial assault, but if the conquering of earth is going badly after maybe 2, 3 years, it would already be time to start trying communication. In fact, attempting to establish communication would still be a major priority because you could effectively completely stop any human resistance afterwards. Conquering territory and holding it are two different things.

For that matter, if they're so alien, can't they just settle... other worlds? wouldn't fire elementals be at home on venus?

>Resource depletion and overpopulation:

Ok, but it seems extremely counterproductive to sabotage your own war efforts. War fundamentally comes with losses, no need to shoot yourself in the foot to make it worse. Especially when captured territory is vastly more valuable in combating your resource and overpopulation problems.

>Language barrier:

Ok so having a different concept of speech is one thing, but losing that ability if you try to learn human makes the hand of the author very apparent. Secondly, there are alternate means of communication, not just something like writing but also just things like symbols and gestures. Humans can communicate even when neither speaks the same language. Point at a rock: what is it? the other replies. You now likely know what they call a rock.

So while you won't establish such alternate means of communication in an afternoon, 25 years is plenty of time to actually establish that.

And... wouldn't both sides have considerable incentives to try communicate?

>How am I supposed to convert this setting into a dynamic universe?

Essentially, it doesn't feel like a setting where people made choices but rather a setting where mechanisms were put in place to make the story happen. Which can be perfectly fine, but it's more like a set that the actual story takes place in.

But judging from your plot ideas, that's not what you want. You'd want it to be a back and forth, to be a dynamic tug-of-war.

Edited by devak on Jan 26th 2022 at 8:43:54 PM

Were it me, I would come up with a plausible reason for the aliens to believe that humanity is working on behalf of the shadow vortex.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."