Thread to discuss different types of fictional soldiers and militaries and how they could interact with each other.
What kinds of super soldiers, mass produced drones, etc. are your favorites and why? What's the best military you could have to conquer the galaxy?
I've been playing Stellaris recently and it got me thinking about this after seeing my gene warrior armies destroy all the A.I's clone armies.
Maybe not the best but the most interesting is regular drafted forces with some veteran lifers in between, powered not by some ultra gene therapy but by good gear and competent training.
Is this from something in particular? Because it kinda makes me think of the Empire from Star Wars, and our real life armies.
Empire is a good example but I was thinking more along the lines of "Frontline" book series. It's not Veeky Forums but really good page turner and solid military sci-fi. It's written by a vet so lot's of things is taken from real life armies like you said.
Oh hey. I have this book. I liked the idea that even in the special forces, you had people trained to use a rod and flail alongside what were essentially faith powered bazookas.
Shit was noice.
I've been toying with the idea of an interstellar empire maintaining its foothold over its dominion not through the use of an army, but by having sole control over a grey-goo-type of weapon. Picture, like, planets in a system, all surrounded by these massive pulsing rings of silver mist. An unsuspecting ship exits warp too close to one of the rings, upon which, without warning, a lance of liquid silver pierces the hull and slowly consumes the ship, crew and all.
Alternatively, there's I've been toying with a "slaver chip" of sorts. In any sufficiently-augmented society, the line between the individual and machine will likely blur some. The idea here being that by receiving some kind of implant (under the premise of being a valuable AR commodity/interface or something), the majority of the population is implanted with a device that would allow them to be placed under control of some military or governmental entity, turning the entirety of a planet's population into ready and expendable footsoldiers. The best part is that this is the sort of thing that could be easily spread between populations, pretty much guaranteeing its own expansion
The grey goo idea is great. You can literally send an ocean to defeat your enemies. It varies its denisty and forms various tools. A war between two forces who utilizies these kinds of weapon would like a battle between Gods with thunder and lightning.
You can also give them nifty names like The Sixth Wind of Chardin
Im a massive fan of the Grineer of Warframe. A gritty industrial armed force comprised of unisex clones, many of which have defects, the life expectancy of standard grunt grineer is quite short. They have a wide array of raw devestating technolgies with a real knack for mechanical augmentation. They may not be the strongest fictional empire but they got all the boxes ticked for things i love, and the aesthetics and characters that coincide.
Theres a nice quote that summarize them "The Grineer are better at fixing broken things then they are at making new ones."
That my friend, is my jam.
THAT, or Mars.
Cus who the fuck can really stand up against the Martian armed forces, i mean really. Capped robotocism is best technological based civilization system
Hm, off the cuff and the top of my head, my own thoughts tend to go like:
>In intergalactic scale armies, lives are shockingly more valuable than the resources spent. There's hundred of material rich planetoids to harvest for every 'empire', and thus, conquest is ultimately a game of ego and less about having and more about taking from someone else.
>Just about every armada and army is heralded with mechanical shocktroopers. Robotic armies sent in to strike fast and hard to cut a path as the first wave.
>sometimes the first wave will be prologued with basically an orbital 'shock bombardment' to create open space for the landing parties to touch down. Since war is more about just 'taking' than having, most don't care how much collateral they do.
>Following this wave almost immediately are fabricators which begin establishing secure, forward outposts, and most importantly: quantum relays and cyber-warfare networks. The former will bring in reinforcements and eventually living troopers, the latter will ultimately be meant to compromise planetary defenses.
>Eventually, a city-state-like forward base is built up and living soldiers and officers are brought in to provide direct support and oversight to the machines, as well as be there for accepting any requests for surrender or parley.
>Despite this, the organic soldiers are heavily augmented, alongside standard gene therapies to eliminate many standard potential birth defects and flaws, others are likely done to enhance various physical and some mental attributes. Furthering this is cybernetic augmentation and encasement in protective power armors, giving these soldiers incredible survival rates.
All in all, such warfare would end up fairly ritualized and easily glorified when, even though machines are the primary forces, the organic casualties can still be massively appalling as the primary doctrine being 'deprive the enemy of anything and everything' means civilians are often targeted in invasions.
Robot armies back by semi-autonomous, fully automated industry is the way to go.
I really like the idea of cybernetically-enhanced and controlled demons, like in the new DOOM. The whole aesthetic was awesome, and the idea was cool too.
Plus I want to fuck an imp
>unisex clones
>Grineer
Did you... miss all the females? Ballistas? Heavy Gunners?
...Kela?
Unisex means both, ya know that right?
Not in the context it was used.
mybad
Robots are the way to go.
I always like the idea of cyborg army men, so Skitarii and, to the greater extend, Strogg.
Although a also like the concept of Grineer, their helmet reminds me of machine creatures from Automata
It also very scary.
I gotta have my HUEG power armor.
Does stellaris finally have ground combat now?
I just like armies that don't forget scale and don't try to pass off a crusade of a billion soldier as exceptional from an empire of a trillion worlds or more.
It always did.
If you want more than what's in the game, go fuck yourself, this is a fucking space 4X, not Panzer General or Advance Wars.
You land your forces and they duke it out. That's it. Orbital bombardement can soften their defenses, but you can just throw so many bodys at them that you overwhelm every stationed force. 20 gene warrior troops can take pretty much any planet within 10 days and without preparation (beyond destroying the spaceport) or losses.
Calm your autism, I like the ground combat in DW so I asked
user, it's functionally the same in both games.
It's more about the fact that in DW you had infantry and armored forces, with special forces doing their own thing against structures and enemy special forces, and defence platforms shooting down drop pods.
Haven't played stellaris so I'm curious.
Riddle me this, user
How crazy can a Thallax can be? And how much can they retain their consciousness?
My answer.
This is probably the thread to ask in, so here goes.
I'm trying to remember this one faction from some sort of sci-fi IP. I can't even remember if it was an RPG or a wargame or a vidya. The faction itself was really weird; they were by and large basically post-human NEETs, heavily cyberized individuals that never left their rooms filled with nanoswarms, letting them shape it to whatever they want. The "military" is basically a bunch of bored armchair generals and hobbyists directing drones for shits and giggles, and the only actual people that served on the ground were spec ops weebs and /k/ommandos that want to live out their violent cyber-ninja/one-man artillery platform fantasies respectively. I think the only reason they fought as a whole was to keep up with the population's ever-growing energy demands for their nanoswarm shit. They lived in an artificial planet (or a bunch of artificial planets) which may or may not have been dyson spheres.
The art was something between Yoshitaka Amano (old-school FF artist) and Tsutomu Nihei (BLAME!) with creepy spindly proportions abound and lots and lots of black.
I have this old idea that was born out of a Command & Conquer mod I tried to make as a teen.
Basically, a culture/nation gets hit by a grey goo weapon. Their AI's manage to somewhat save the day by ensuring that the grey goo deconstructs and saves - instead of just deconstructing.
End result, a sort-of-hivemind AI/human consciousness floating in a continent sized cloud of nanomachines.
The machine-army is always so logical and machine-like. I just wanted to see a biomechanical army of living machines hellbent on revenge.
Honestly, I like the 40k approach the most.
>the bulk of the army is normal humans, only officers and veterans get some augmentations, their armor and equipment are pretty powerful but still simple enough to be mass produced and can be reliably used by less trained forces if need be
>their special forces receive superior training and equipment, pretty much every soldier is at least somewhat augmented and they are flexible enough to do a lot of roles, from just propping up the main forces or causing havoc behind enemy lines
>the most elite forces are bred for war and receive the very best possible equipment and training, are totally devoted to the cause and are heavily augmented and as such are pure shock troops that can do pretty much anything with little to no outside support if need be
I recognize the faction you're talking about. IIRC it was a tabletop wargame.
Found them. Therians from the game AT-43.
AT-43 also includes a Buddhist gorilla faction, a necromantic megacorp faction, an ayylmao faction, and a commie faction.
Therians from AT-43 yes.
Basically, the Therians were systematically deconstructing the entire universe to build a machine to burrow into a parallel universe to avoid the heat-death of the universe.
Of course, this was performed by sending hordes of von-neumann machines into space that deconstruct solar systems into raw materials for this cosmic machine.
But the von-neumann machines were not the vanguard. As you guys said, the vanguard were just random crazy people that wanted to experience endless infinite war with primitive colonists that weren't in on the plan of the Earthlings from Terra (hence Therians) to survive the heat-death of the universe.
Basically, the entire game of AT-43 was about a bunch of fucking dumb colonists fighting a useless war against some respawning goons that were just having fun until the von-neumann machines started breaking up planets into raw molecule chungs.
Wish I picked up the Therian pdf. I wanted to read their fluff.
Luckily, I did. Enjoy!
Thanks a bunch user.
large empires that conquered dozens of alien races incorporate them into the nations armies making these incredibly vaired forces where each alien fits into a nice little niche using their races abilities in combination with their personal skills
What advantages would a hard sci-fi facion(no ftl, no stealth in space and so forth have vs a soft sci-fi faction?
My ideal sci-fi army utilizes small teams of highly trained and augmented human infantry aided by massive amounts of autonomous drones made to suit various purposes.
If by soft sci-fi you mean that they have tech that makes the laws of physics as we know them their bitch? There probably aren't many disadvantages.
I guess if they replace conventional shit with their sci-fi bullshit they'll be at a disadvantage in situations where their tech doesn't work.
Not much more to be said unless you're more specific about what soft sci-fi shit they have
Nanotech (hard Drexlerian style MNT, not goobabble) and heavy industry scale very well.
The average space opera has lots of inhabited planets - but the population is always a thin rind on the surface. One Dyson sphere will have a bigger population than hundreds of thousands of planets from the whole spess empire.
Energy scales the same way. Take that Dyson sphere: now it's a phased array telescope and laser. You don't need RKKVs or FTL to fry planets lightyears away, just divert 1% of your economy's bandwidth to the target solar system for a few seconds.
There's also no soulbabble. Minds are infinitely copyable, so you can pick the top hundred of your soldiers, admirals, analysts, supply guys (don't want to use just one template for each and get predictable) and replicate them until the lowest conscript equivalent has as much xp as the enemies' top units.
They would be fighting a war vs a gaggle of blithering retards
>Minds are infinitely copyable
I'm sure I heard there was research that said that a mind cannot exist outside of its brain, thus rendering them uncopyable and cortical stacks impossible
why does hard sci-fi always sound softer than soft sci-fi
>How crazy can a Thallax can be?
Let me put it this way: They take a human being, rip out the brain and spinal chord, put it in a robot, then carve out just enough of the brain and spinal chord to allow it to interact with machinery and perceive the world through dozens of different spectral sensors and target uplinks, but not enough of it to remove its ability to have independent thought.
Oh, they also remove their ability to see and hear.
So you basically have a human brain that cannot see or hear the world around it in a sane manner in a metal shell that is designed and rebuilt solely for killing, but can still kinda sorta remember what it was like to be a person once.
>that spoiler
Because soft sci-fi actually has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't make sense.
And isn't the entire process of being converted into a Thallax indescribably horribly painful to experience, too? So they start off at a base level of being driven utterly insane by inhumane torture, and THEN have to deal with total sensory deprivation combined with an unstoppable deluge of machine-code and electronic signals forcing itself through their deconstructed brains.
So robots or biological warmachines?
Nothing beats solider's that believe in the Cause.
What book?
D R O P T R O O P S
Halo's ODST, Starship Troopers, even 40k space marines; i've always loved this type.
>Nothing beats solider's that believe in the Cause.
>Posts usurper
Never mind, I found it.
>Age of Ra
My nigga.
Riddick was never a true believer, plus it is fully within their ways to Keep what you Kill. So "usurping" means nothing in context. Where he loses points is outsourcing Riddick's demise to a bunch of people who ultimately fucked it up.
He's referring to Vaako. Who was never really a usurper, considering his wife did actually talk him into it using the dogma.
It was an awkward interpretation, but then there was once a time where we had three Popes running around. Kinda the same thing.
The fun part of fusing soldiers with their weapons is that you wind up calling up that which you can't put down.
Is this the only video game novelisation worth reading?
Depends on the situation. Biological units need less maintenance, and are able to regenerate some damages on their own, but the upkeep in biomatter (as food and such) puts more strain on supply lines ... at least it's more predicatble than when parts of robots break. The ideal solution is, in my opinion, to combine the best of both worlds. Machines can do things biological entities can't, especially concerning communications.
Already ahead of you here.
Reproduces like a living thing, durable like a machine, logical like a machine, HATES LIKE A HUMAN!
>kill kill kill kill kill
Did you just post a mother-fucking novel PDF, in-place where a picture should be?
Fuck, why don't people share PDF using this?
Check hownew.ru for more Veeky Forums .pdf my dude!
I don't get
How
New
R
U
New enough that I'm not interested in anthropology at the moment or "how how"
Because soft sci-fi is only intrested in making purple lasers shoot at the guys with green lasers while both sides do a dogfight while dodging space rocks.
Hard sci-fi deals in astrophysics and only goes up in complexity from there.
I really like the indoctrinated, brainwashed, and/or enslaved turbo expendable ones. Whether they're the Death Korps of Krieg, Thallax and other servitors, Strog, Cravers, Clone Troopers, Roy Batty, or selected from birth in 1996. Generally love character that were made to be what they are, rather than chose to be.
Had the idea of a human invasion fleet that just keeps invading planets with a mix of cryosleeping veterans from the last planetary invasion and recruits freshly grown from the material of their most decorated veterans en route to the next target, with a back up fleet of support vessels churning out new hardware. The twist is of course that the humanity that created them has long since burned out. Not that this idea is in anyway original.
Another idea was aliens coming along and forcefully drafting the majority of Earth's population, dumping them into machines that crudely processes them into cyborgs, seals them into powered armour and ships them off to war.
But what's stopping a robot from have a nanomachine based repair system internally? Not to mention far easier time of storage, building and logistics train. And there is the fact that bio warmachines can be vulnerable to diseases.
>not religiously studying how how
You fucking sleaze. I bet you're totally into skub, though.
Dropzone Commander fits pretty well into how I like my future militaries.
This, but it's even better if they don't bother with the pod and just drop from orbit wearing power armor.
You'd probably like the aliens in X-COM, then. Each is modified both genetically and cybernetically to whatever role the Ethereals need them to be.
Apparently, Floaters like this one are actually the same species as the Mutons, just manufactured differently.