How would you design a race of perfect soldiers

This guy has the right idea, an army isn´t much about quality as it is quantity.

No matter the enemy at some point if you have enough men, you can drown them in blood.

Self-repairing, self-evolving, self-replicating with a hive mind.

Isn't self evolving already a trait in living things though?

A hivemind race the size of an insect with republican forms of government and advanced technology. Building giant robots for their size that is about the size of an ordinary person

Every robot has an entire community of them in it who scatter once the robot is destroyed so it's hard to find them with some even able to use themselves as biological warfare even going as far as to modify the victim into a new "home"

First find a way to make one being perfect & then find a way to replicate said one being. It helps if said one being can replicate by itself. If you can't make one person perfect, you won't manage an entire race.

The human body is already geometrically and mechanically perfect.
The best things that could be done is finding ways to slow down aging, tumor development, and degradation of critical joints (knees, hips, etc).

WHITE
HUMAN
MALE

>Larger cost
>Higher maintenance
>Lower self-sufficiency
>Requires power source

In theory, yes, you could argue that a robot makes the best soldier, but it's difficult to apply them practically.

More than anything, the most important deciding factor of a war is how many goons you can throw at someone at any given time. The overall gooniness of robots is much lower than the gooniness of human troops.

something like the orks but much more refined would be a amazing ground to work on

Insectoid hivemind with sub-sects for different combat roles and the ability to use firearms.
There is literally no way to stand on equal footing in terms of tactics versus a hivemind if he is of sufficient processing power, but that should be a given when you're talking about a hivemind.

Depends on the robot.

If you've got something like automatons run on cogs and gears manufactured by the thousand and unloaded with not much more a program than a "kill in that direction" directive, they're not very goony.

If you've got something like a Geth trooper, you've got something on-par with any average human/humanoid combatant.

And if you have Terminators, you have something much higher on the gooniness scale than your average human.

underrated post

they know no fear since it wasn't in their program

Honestly? I'd just use something similar to soldiers from Old Man's War, though I would take a leaf from Eclipse Phase's books and have the copied minds of the best and brightest in every squad. Probably edit their personalities so that being a copy literally made for war wouldn't bother them as much. Beyond this, it's all in how they are equipped and utilized.

>Larger cost
humans take 6 months to create and 18-20 years to be able for battle
>Higher maintenance
with humans you have to make up for the cost of training, equipping, making sure they are free from pathogens some of which one is not able to
>Lower self-sufficiency
granted you have to program seal-sufficient AI but you also have to train a person to take charge for themselves as well (that is if you even want a soldier to be self-sufficient).
>Requires power source
Meatbags require a powersource too, it's called food. Likewise most of the technology they will use anyway requires a fuel source anyway.

>Somewhere out there is another me, who doesn't have to kill all the time and has never even held a firearm
>I pity him

If so perfect, why do you need an entire race?

Done.
>they literally live for war, laughing at idea of peace
>reproduce at crazy rates, steady supply of fodder
>brute strong and know how to fight since birth
>can make weapons and war machines from any scrap in any conditions

>literally imperfect because Old Ones died before they finished tweaking the psyker parts

>implying evolution doesn't exist

>replicate the DNA of a prime soldier

Isn't that kind of sub-optimal? I mean, you could just find and replicate the most optimal DNA sample in your pool, why restrict yourself to the ones from outstanding soldiers? After all they're the result of training and upbringing first and foremost, and you can train the clones of a civilian to be soldiers too.

Fill the army with individuals who can make smart decisions on the fly and back them up with top-tier logistical support.

-First give them telepathy that way they can just read the enemy general's minds so all their plans are laid bare
-Then give them the ability to understand every weapon and how to use them, even the weapons that were just created.
-Then give them clairvoyance to map out the terrain completely from every spec of sand to every drop of water.
-Have them breed uncontrollably maybe just take a short-cut by making them asexual/hermaproditic
-Give them no fear of death, once they plot a position they bash right into the enemy
-Give them standard bullshit attributes of super-strength, bullet-proof exoskeletons, high momentum, regenerative abilities, ability to adapt and learn quickly
-Have their bodies admit bio-chemical warfare so no one would get near them
-Make them a Hivemind poised specifically on tight defense formations that are so link you'd think it was one whole entity

and that's how you make your Mary- I mean soldier race

But what about meaty parts that aren't brains? Deemed obsolete by mechas?

oh and give them freakin' laser beams combine with their 3D clairvoyance skill for accurate sniping

some asshole wants to moralize the troops with the best military speech ever? BAM laser beam to the face

>evolution makes up for that
If Orks were anally raped for millennia, evolution might start to favor those who have no anuses & instead puke shit from their mouths.

not on them aparently

way more than 40000 years mucking around evolution-wise
if something they de-evolved

still a good species to base a supersoldier

evolution doesn't work like that

I'd make a dozen different races of perfect soldiers and have them fight for dominance

Be sure to put them on a planet you don't really care about.
Look at what the same thing did to Earth.

>No real weak points
>Pretty much immune to conventional damage
>No mind = no chance of rebellion, no fear, no need to boost moral - the promise of food is enough for them
>Cutting them into pieces or blowing them apart just makes more of the fuckers
>Easy to keep; just store them in a jar or something and chuck it at your enemies
>Easy to clean up: Freeze them solid, dehydrate them, and pack 'em up again

Planning: they're equipped with a massively parallel semi-hierarchical computer running both fuzzy genetic algorithms for long-range planning and cached reactions for tactical speed called the brain. It has highly amplified tendencies for 3d spatial plotting and pattern recognition.
Mind reading: it uses hundreds of thousands of years evolved experience at move-reading distilled into self-repairing biohardware called mirror neurons acting through redundant passive sensors on multiple wavelengths.
Weapons: through the augmentation called "technology" and supplementary redundantly-reinforced mods called "hands" and "vision" they are capable of everything from zero-collateral-damage stealth attacks with "knives" to obliterating cities through "nuclear fusion" delivered by robotic prostheses called "drones."
Camouflage: they look exactly like other humans through the technology of being humans.

Pic related denotes additional male-specific augmentations. The Caucasian models include boosted objectivity, planning, and civilizational organization upgrades.

Also, it's been proven that cloned specimens aren't actually perfect duplicates of the gene donor; the environment each clone is raised in causes different personalities and skill sets to arise.

Anyone got that page from the Requiem comic?

You know which one I mean.

Perfect soldiers aren't strong, independent, and powerful. They're smart, collaborative, and obedient. A perfect warrior race would simply be bred for those attributes. First breed obedience, then breed collaboration and selflessness, then gently breed for intelligence. The lowest level grunts don't need to be geniuses and there do need to be a lot of them, but if all your ditch diggers and watchpost guards are morons you'll undermine the whole operation.

The business of soldiering involves surprisingly little killing, especially in any technologically advanced civilization. What it takes a lot of is building structures, maintaining tools and machines of war, the acquisition and movement of supplies, and training. Lots and lots of training, because when shit hits the fan you as it tends to do in war you are only as good as your weakest day of training and your most faulty piece of equipment.

And presumably, raw potential. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume the hypothetical "Best Soldier Ever" is going to have a lot of the same basic athletic qualities and general health of an elite athlete at the Olympic level. (A generalist, obviously but all the same).

People like that definitely have measurable differences between the efficiency and capacity of their lungs, muscles, circulatory systems and other people.

Even if you just aim for a generally high level of fitness on a genetic level without dipping into "specialized, but not ideal for all purposes" that represents an outstanding genetic makeup and level of performance.

If you assume that the various factors of personality, intelligence, and disposition that would also make a good candidate for training and service in the military are also highly hereditary (they seem to be to a fair degree, people are often similar in terms of personality, temper, and intelligence to their relatives and parents) that would also be another thing to select for.

Of course, you might also just manage it in a kind of benign, hands off fashion simply by encouraging a large pool of people in their natural environment and gently pruning or nudging towards a high level of general fitness.

This might take generations. Your ideal pool of recruits would also then assume a need for such recruits some time in the future.

Then they can't understand self preservation and will walk off cliffs. They may not be able to blind panic, and they may remain in control of their fear, but if they have no fear at all then they will make terrible decisions.

Look at it another way, you want:
-Better reflexes
-Some form of better endurance
-Varying color profiles in terms of eye sight
-Generally good eyesight, unless becoming a solider involves getting a neural implant to replace the eyes
-Genetical traits that make them more resilient to harm and trauma
The key problem is that a "super solider" isn't that different from a normal human.
And a lot of the qualities to build a super solider comes from a person being raised in a specific life style, where things like Mental stress are dealt with in such a way the childs mind KNOWS how to deal with it.

A lot of core qualities like trust is also childhood stuff, but often it will be trust in layers: You might trust your superior, but you might stop doing it if the superior keeps shitting his own leg.

Skeletons with flesh protecting the bones

But user, how does any of that help the soldier-to-be learn how to work with other soldiers? That's one of the most important traits of a good soldier.

Calm down there, Dr Halsey

2 months later:

"Well sir, they're all dead."

"What? How?"

"Infection mostly. Turns out that sanitation is kind of important if you don't want dog-fighting wounds to become horribly septic. The rest died from dysentery, again, you need some way to get the poop out of the box."

Not the OP, but that's probably the dumbest argument against robots I've ever seen.

Just because it doesn't feel fear doesn't mean it makes stupid mistakes. They'll do exactly what they're programmed to do, and any half decent warbot would be programmed to not walk off cliffs or make illogical decisions.

And before anyone says one of their disadvantages is a lack of creativity, creativity is overrated in combat. Pretty much any tactic you can come up with on the fly has been done by someone else, so the only thing creativity does is allow you to do things you haven't trained to do or which you haven't personally seen. But once you get enough combat data, eventually you'll have enough to be able to program your warbots with the ability to respond to any combat situation, and if they have the ability to respond to any combat situation they'll counter any "creative" decisions an organic soldier might make, faster than the organic soldier can make them because it's a computer that isn't concerned with frivolous bullshit like dedicating the majority of it's thinking power to keeping it's organs running.

>retarded masochistic faggots.
So Veeky Forums is the ideal place to recruit?

>Your soldiers neither speak nor think in a way understandable to each other, or to their "conventionally" trained officers; they cannot care for, dress themselves, maintain or operate equipment or operate advanced machinery, congratulations, you have discovered how NOT to produce a functioning human being/soldier.

Kek
But also too true

Perfect is a very abstract concept.

My "perfect" warriors would be perfectly efficient. They would be able to synthesize energy from sunlight and nutrition from ambient elements. They would be able to absorb and synthesize materials to repair their equipment and regenerate damage to their bodies. They would also be able to communicate telepathically to a hive mind, so they always have optimal strategy, and most important, they would have absolutely no free will or concept of self.

Specifically, they would be organized like ants. When they attack, a giant wave of weak soldiers would wash over the enemy, with massive casualties to be expected. Next, a group of specialized retrofitters would gather all the materials lost from the battle, and gained from damaging the enemy, in order to resupply the off-site troops and analyze the composition of the enemy. The information gained from the initial conflict would be used to create "templates" that would create optimal soldiers perfectly suited to the environment. Enemy attacking in a detritus filled city? No problem, just analyze the structures, find their structural resonance frequency, and send out a bunch of "shriekers" to instantly destroy massive swaths of enemies. Enemy using energy weapons? Suddenly the troops would be able to absorb weaponized energy and transfer it to more specialized units in order to power "ultimate" weapons. You get the point.

The third group would be tall, thin, and delicate. Entirely non-combative. They would be specifically engineered to be both powerful in presence, and nonthreatening in demeanor relative to the enemy they're attacking. In order for them to function, they would need detailed knowledge of the enemies culture and organization. Their whole purpose will be to negotiate the absolute surrender of the opposition. Depending on the enemy, they could broadcast incredibly powerful telepathic messages to their grunt infantry to demoralize them.

The final group would be the ubermensch. They would specifically be programmed to be as psychologically intimidating as possible, assuming that's something the enemy is vulnerable to. They would also be able to manipulate time and space, and even their own atomic composition to avoid damage, or destroy their enemies. Not only would they be practically invincible based on the accumulated knowledge of all the worlds they destroyed, if the enemy had a strategy to defeat one they would set off a self-destruct sequence among their legions of subordinates, then reconstitute themselves with their aggregate resources in the geographical area. Assuming they've been destroyed a couple of times and their resources are low while the planet is still intact, they would bore themselves deep within the planet and engage a "hibernation sequence" where they slowly manipulate the planet's homeostatic conditions to something unlivable for their native inhabitants. The changes would be slow, years in the making, but almost imperceptible because they would disperse themselves atomically through whatever they've bored into.

Create a race of literal underdogs, canine people who live underground and have to adapt to the surface world, laws of fiction dictate the underdogs will win.

You, I like.

They also dictate the underdogs are morally superior. Underdog war crimes are transmuted into hard decisions and unfortunate consequences; while enemy mistakes and collateral damage become horrifying atrocities.

Yup, that's about as overpowered as you can get. Why not engineer a gene-virus or something and release it covertly? It would be simpler and more efficient.

This has literally never been true in human history. I mean, you absolutely do need numbers and having more men than the enemy is a big advantage but wasting lives has never been strategically viable. People who win wars typically know what they are doing.

Courage is not the lack of fear. It is knowing fear and overcoming it to do great things.

Are you cheesing a 3.5 build with a Large character wielding a spiked chain? Because this post has Great Reach.

More resources and greater tactics will always beat better equipment and less resources, particularly when you get to the point of human-wave tactics.

Your troops might be able to kill a wall of soldiers for a battle, a week, a month, but eventually they're going to break under the stress and at the realization that they're essentially monsters. That's the problem with humans, they're all relatively weak on an individual level.

Or those who like it

>More resources and greater tactics will always beat better equipment and less resources
It seems like you're basing your argument on a very large disparity in numbers/resources and a relatively small disparity in equipment. If any one trait of a combatant is so entirely disproportionate that it outclasses their opponent entirely then yes the former will win. That's true of technology, numbers, physical ability, anything.

If your army has 100,000 men for every one of theirs, then yes you're going to win. But if they each have a gun that can kill 100,000 men with each shot it's a different story.

I think it has a lot to do with how easy it is to quantify differences in numbers as opposed to differences in quality. "An army 100,000 times larger" is something you can say that has a discrete meaning. "Training 100,000 times better." isn't really a thing. You really can't have that level of disparity in something like training where you can in raw numbers. Quantity is the simplest axis to maximize, but it's not the only one.

It is exactly this weakness, this admission of our own mortality and imperfection, that enables people to survive and succeed.

>"Superior training and superior weaponry have, when taken together, a geometric effect on overall military strength. Well-trained, well-equipped troops can stand up to many more times their lesser brethren than linear arithmetic would seem to indicate."

>-- Col. Corazon Santiago, "Spartan Battle Manual"

> Quantity is the simplest axis to maximize, but it's not the only one.
Fair enough, I can't really argue with your assessment, but amassing a quantity of bodies is infinitely easier than amassing a quantity of soldiers. My point was more so you can use an excess quantity of extremely untrained resources very strategically to offset a very large difference in equipment capabilities. A determined native population is far tougher than a foreign army because they're fighting for their homes, but as you said, this is a psychological advantage that needs to be accounted for. I think there is a correlation between quantity and conviction with I don't necessarily think exists between technology and conviction.

Or leads us to utter ruin in the pursuit of self-preservation. Either or.

That's a nifty quote, though I'm almost certain it's Halo related. Fall of reach?

But user, that's the Marines

Alpha Centauri, which is a treasure trove of fun little quotes.

youtube.com/watch?v=24OXzIRIiMQ

Also, I think it's important to mention that any strategic value in an excess quantity of untrained resources decreases very quickly as the weapons and transport technology of your opponent increases. 20 men with sticks can hope to fight a man with a sword. 20 men with sticks have much lower utility against a man in an exosuit.

>The child will then have to avoid the dog for their entire life
What makes you so sure? What makes you so sure they wouldn't just tame the dog and feed it bits of the food to keep it satiated? You'd end up with a whole bunch of scrawny adults and scrawny dogs instead of perfect soldiers.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, great 4X TBS from '99. Civ: Beyond Earth wished (and failed) to replicate it.

I don't think Beyond Earth was ever intended to replicate Alpha Centauri. I'm pretty sure they were very cautious about avoiding that comparison. They just had a lot of obvious thematic similarities. BE had its own fundamental failures beyond failing to recreate a good game.

>have a copy download from /vr/ back in the day
>always want to play it
>every time I try my laptop shits up horribly

Mind raping brain-worms. I just want to make an army of mind raping brain-worms.

Anyways, that's a good point, but that example assumes a very large difference in technology. Yes, stone age technology has no hope against an exosuit without a disproportionate amount of resources. But I'd argue 20 men with swords could kill 5 guys armed with muskets, 20 guys with muskets could beat 5 guys armed with bolt-action rifles, and 30 men with swords could beat 2 guys armed with bolt action rifles.

>Col. Corazon Santiago
>halo related

I hope I'm being trolled...

Sorry, I durred a bit because alpha centari and didn't really type my point.

The whole point was supposed to be that a mixed army with a few powerful units and many weak units is easier to assemble than a medium amount of powerful units, while being arguably more strategically valuable.

Yeah, at those scales I probably agree with your assessments. But those aren't really the scales that determine engagements of any note. Even at 50 bolt-actions versus 200 muskets I give it to the bolt-actions almost every time, not to mention that a nation with bolt-action rifles also may have access to things like trucks and radios that give them an absolute edges beyond the tactical sphere.

Make them out of metal, make them powered by electricity, and control them with a super AI.

This, all they need to do is make it easier for them to recognize who is bigga at longer distances. This will prevent the civil wars from occuring with such frequency.

That's another good point. The scale rises exponentially when a group of well-equiped and well-trained people associate together.

But I think 50 people with bolt action rifles versus 75 people armed with nothing, 60 people armed with swords, 50 people armed with muskets and 15 people armed with bolt action rifles is an entirely different scenario. It would be reasonable to assume one bolt-action rifle guy could kill 4 assorted enemies, but the mixed composition gives greater strategic viability, and assuming reasonable command, I would expect the mixed army to win, even if the 50 bolt action rifles were in a fortified position.

Yeah, I agree with you there, although less so in a fortification scenario. That's also an example of a situation where the 75 unarmed soldiers actually probably matter, though you'd probably want to give them at least a sharpened stick or something.

But then, I never said that numbers don't matter. Just that they were one factor among many others that determines odds of success.Some you have less control of than others; in a heavy storm with 50 bolt action rifles defending a strong position against that army I think it's a solid win for the bolt actions again. Basically, any disparity in one category (numbers) can be canceled with disparity in other categories (technology, external factors).

I'd write a greentext about an Ork using Zogbook to keep up with the bigness of his peers but I've never been good at Ork speech.

You're an educated and reasonable fellow. Continue down the right path user.

In terms of philosophy, I'm not really the "warring" type. You need your population to consent to that, and external conquest takes a lot of time/resources to capture and to maintain. It's much easier to win through economic domination, or cultural assimilation. That being said, I'm all about psychological warfare. Your troops don't need to be unstoppable killing machines, the enemy just needs to believe they are. Particularly if you have the advantage of knowledge regarding terrain, people are superstitious in general, and that's easy to exploit. While it may be immoral to massacre your own troops, massacring a group of unarmed infantry that you have an excess of sends a pretty powerful message to the enemy.

Nah, if that was a Dwarf Fortress breeding program he would've put the children in cages with hungry dogs next to a lavafall to melt off their fat, making them effectively fireproof.

/pol/ is always right.

>humans take 6 months to create
>6 months to create
>SIX MONTHS

Won't work

Third law of robotics, faggot.

>The child will then have to avoid the dog for their entire life, fight over the food that drops down, etc. etc.

Wouldn't a number of Boys and Dogs become friends with one another? I mean, there's a lot of obvious problems with your idea, but the happiest one I can think of is the Dogs and Boys would most likely bond with one another.

Dogs and People are both extremely sociable animals; there'd be an awkward period for a bit, but after a while I think consistently you'd find the Dogs and Boys working out their differences and becoming good friends.

Maybe I'm just being optimistic.

Technically correct, when born prematurely in 6th month, with the best care currently available, the child has over 50% chance of survival. There would still be complication, though

I'd just have the society love war. Like REALLY love war. Recruit and train out of that.

>perfect soldiers
Well that depends on what the war is doesn't it?
In a nuclear war your race needs to be able to survive 1million degrees and many hundreds of pounds of air pressure. In this case your soldiers would be best at serving as energy beings with no physical form to disrupt, though I'm not certain they would survive the extreme temperatures... Perhaps dark matter based physiology but then they might not be able to interact with the enemy...

For a war against Veeky Forums posters I'd recommend a bunch of beautiful women who have been given the best roleplaying and wargaming training. They will be deployed to fa/tg/uy hangouts and will interact with each other and chads they bring into the stores etc but will never acknowledge the fa/tg/uys existence except to brutally show disgust and disdain for them. The moral damage will be complete and devastating.

There was a funny story about this in some 40k novel.
Magos with couple hundred servitors were deployed on the field, holding some objective, Magos ordered his unit to hold their ground and shoot as whatever hostiles approaching. This worked fine at first, they drove off enemy charge or three. But then artillery shells started falling. It was obvious that the objective will be lost and so will anybody near it. The problem was that the very first shell hit Magos. It didn't kill him outright, but it disabled his vox, so he wasn't able to issue commands and tell his unit to get away and take cover. So they stood there getting blown to pieces and impotently shooting at the incoming shells because that was the last order they were given.

Obviously 40k is over the top to the point of absurdity, but you might have similar problems even with normal reasoning. I'm not saying blind obedience inevitably a bad thing but the less autonomy grunt has the more responsibility it is for commanding officer.

Telepathy. The ability to broadcast orders and information directly into the heads of others would change everything in most technological eras before the modern one. Tactical response speed and co-ordinaton would improve by a lot.

Flying. It would be a nightmare to stop flying troops from reaching your battlefield HQ, not to mention their ability to scout. Their fortified positions would be a nightmare to attack as well. Even short flight periods would be a complete game changer.

Nah, they'd suck. You'd need to constantly be warring or else they'd just start shit whenever there was peace.

>For a war against Veeky Forums posters I'd recommend a bunch of beautiful women who have been given the best roleplaying and wargaming training. They will be deployed to fa/tg/uy hangouts and will interact with each other and chads they bring into the stores etc but will never acknowledge the fa/tg/uys existence except to brutally show disgust and disdain for them. The moral damage will be complete and devastating.

>implying there wont be a group of meta-competitive normie-Veeky Forums hybrids pillaging all the women from generally vanialla chads and generally awful fa/tg/uys
>also implying there wont be a grognard/neckbeard alliance and a new exclusionist hobby store established in secret in order to preserve their antiquated ideals

You're a devious fuck, but do you know what's more devious? Having the same beautiful women actually like the fa/tg/uys, but in order for them to reciprocate affection, the fa/tg/uys slowly have to compromise their beliefs. First it will be little things, like not double sleeving super valuable cards, or allowing slight magical realm bullshit in their games. As things progress, compromises will become easier until it gets to a point where the fa/tg/uy in the conventional sense is dead, and nu/tg/rabbers will look back on the ruins of their passion, shrug, and let their hobbies die.

>if something they de-evolved

they did. but rare circumstances can make them stronger and smarter. Gazgull is a prime example for this. Who knows what genetic memory is hidden in these greenskins. They might have potential to return as krorks.

>de-evolved
literally what