Militia and troops.

[Kana]

Baal said:
A good quick solution to troop invasions is make it so that All weapon types can attack troops as well as fighters/ships/etc. Troops only ever appear in ground combat so then the weapons platforms would serve as ground defense as well. Or you could make ground defense specific WPs that only carry anti troop weapons. In any case. It is more realistic to think that an enemy homeworld will have defensive emplacements against invasion.

Ground Defense WP are the way to go in my opinon. Forcing empires to choose between Space and Ground Defense options.

Also Barnacle Bill, it isnt 10 tons of ground troops, its 10k tons, which is 10000 tons...

[Ragnarok-X]

Barnacle Bill said:
Did the entire population of every country invaded by Germany in WWII turn out in mass to face the German army in open battle with whatever they could scrape up? What's the difference in getting invaded by aliens and getting invaded by Germans. Unless the aliens are bent on extermination rather than conquest, not much. People will do what they did then - whatever the occupation forces tell them, at least as long as the occupation troops are looking. And, no, there won't be enough militarily useful weaponry if there isn't any around - like in just about any European country today. Early in WWII, there was a major program to get American civilians to donate hunting weapons to be shipped to the UK to arm the Home Guard - and if Sea Lion had come out of the blue in 1940 there wouldn't have been time for that.

Uh-oh, you miss something very important here. HUMANDS did fight HUMANS. Because humans have emotions, they believe and know each other.
However, should your country be invaded by giant bugs, or giant lizards, or giant-something with no reference to earth at all, i dont think your 25 % would work quite well.

Heck, even human principles, or ethics like morale, life/death and culture could potentially have a totally different, or no meaning at all to something which is not human. No one will adopt to that.
What about those Xing Hive Insects from SEIV. Do you believe you, or anyone else could adopt to thier lifestyle ?

Unfortunally i cant bring a good example, because their has never been a situation of comparable value in history.

[tmcc]

Ragnarok-X said:

Unfortunally i cant bring a good example, because their has never been a situation of comparable value in history.

Sure you can. What about War of the Worlds, Independence Day, Mars Attacks, and even Terminator. In all cases humans rise to fight and eliminate the alien invaders. Except maybe War of the Worlds were the microbes did it.

Seriously though it brings up an idea. So far we only talk about defense by the dominant intelligent race. Maybe there should be some risk that the invader doesn't get along so well with something living on the planet that they didn't know about ala WotW. Medical technology could reduce this risk.

[Fyron]

If you are going to do that, you also need to add a chance for some pathogen carried by the aliens to mutate and wipe out much of the conquered population, as happened in the new world here on earth.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

tmcc said:

Sure you can. What about War of the Worlds, Independence Day, Mars Attacks, and even Terminator. In all cases humans rise to fight and eliminate the alien invaders. Except maybe War of the Worlds were the microbes did it.

Ayep, all extremely convincing real-life historical examples.....

[Barnacle Bill]

Kana said:
Also Barnacle Bill, it isnt 10 tons of ground troops, its 10k tons, which is 10000 tons...

Right - my bad.

However, here is more about my point...

The maximum population of a large world (i.e. default player homeworld) is 4000M. Given that the Earth currently holds roughly 6 billion, 1000M can't represent less than 1 billion people (or whatever). In other words, it is safe to assume that "M" stands for "Million" so 1M of population = 1,000,000 people (or whatever). 1M population takes up 5kt cargo, and a small troop takes up 10 (at starting technology). In other words, a small troop takes up as much cargo space as 2 million people. So, if a troop is a single vehicle it's a mighty big one.

[Barnacle Bill]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:

Ayep, all extremely convincing real-life historical examples.....

More to the point, they are examples in which the alien intent is to exterminate the human race, not simply rule them. What is going on in SE is typically conquer & rule - if you want to exterminate you glass the colony from space. I don't believe that humans are going to fight to the death man, woman & child with bare hands if necessary to avoid paying taxes to Lord Amon-Kurath of the Amonkrie instead of General Takei of the Terran Confederation.

[wrongshui]

Real world example? Japan got pretty extreme in World War 2, due to some misconceptions of Americans and there own culture.

[Barnacle Bill]

wrongshui said:
Real world example? Japan got pretty extreme in World War 2, due to some misconceptions of Americans and there own culture.

Although the Japanese talked about doing that and even made some preparations for it (women training with improvised spears & such), they did not not actually do it when crunch time came. Neither did the Germans do it, and the Volksturm was better armed that spears (a lot of with guns that would have been obsolete in WWI, but guns at least). The general population just doesn't behave that way given an alternative involving a reasonable chance for personal survival.