How to prevent an Armageddon?

[Kozlov]

Matri: it's very good if so, I'll wait to get my own answer.

[Accounting Troll]

I don't find the ability to shoot down UFOs and defeat the Reticulans in a ground fight, even early on, to be that unrealistic.

 

History has shown that having more advanced technology does not ensure victory against an adaptable enemy who knows how to use the terrain intelligently - despite overwhelming advantages in artillery, air and sea power, the French and later the Americans could not defeat Vietnamese irregulars and although British and American forces recently routed the Iraqi army, hit and run attacks in Iraq are causing casualties on a daily basis.

 

If the Reticulans have fought very few wars over the millenia, then their soldiers and officers will be taking their knowledge of warfare from theoretical textbooks which makes them slow to adapt to a combat situation not covered in their textbooks. It may be that before the attack on Earth, their idea of conducting a war was to surround a planet and drop asteroids onto its surface. Humanity has plenty of practical experience of warfare and therefore human pilots and soldiers are likely to be far more adaptable in combat.

 

As for the alien motives - it would be a very dull game if there were no would-be galactic warlords to fight. Film-makers are fond of a good guys against bad guys theme and they never worry about realism or historical accuracy - Braveheart os a good example of this. It is not surprising that game programmers follow this lead.

[Kozlov]

Accounting troll: Nice points. I especially liked the alien warfare tactics books. However, the Vietnam example isn't so good if you remember what goals French and Americans were persuing. It was about about establishing pro-american (french), somewhat democratic regime in the country, rather than killing all Vietnameese. The same about Iraq. Much better example is german troops which almost eliminated guerilla resistance in Ukraine and Belorussia by preventing their support from villgers and town citizens (by simply killing everyone in some of them and killing 10 for 1 german soldier killed by guerilla fighters in others). Those aliens aren't much co-operative eather

 

And you right about galactic warlords. I'm not against them. But I'm rather tired of fighting PURE evil, i don't believe in that, that's a catch. It is just natural (probably) human trait to paint his foe in evil "colors" - it is just easier to fight them if you think so. Many people tired of this - you can see so many fiction and computer games dealing with anti-hero. Even on this forums people talk that playing for aliens would be fun, or invading their system and killing them all (yeah, where were our princips? :angel: ) However, as for my perception of this game - it is less the case of evil aliens, but more of little planetary war in galactic conflicts. So i'm not criticizing the game for that. There were some other issues, that this topic about.

[Alan]

accounting troll: have you every read any of the world war series by harry turtledove? what you described there almost matched exactly.

 

also, yes... t'is fun to be evil sometimes. and the whole good evil thing really does get tiring. This is why i like Thief, especially the earlier levels... just wandering into a place and stealing everything in sight.

[Accounting Troll]

I read one of the later books in the World War series, but I got fed up half way through. Some good ideas but the author seemed too fond of having his characters jumping into bed with each other in order to prevent the reader from getting fed up with the slow pace of the story.

 

The way I see it is that for thousands of years, the Reticulans have had the power to destroy their civilization in internal warfare, yet they have not done so. We have only had this power for a few decades and we have come close to a nuclear holocaust on more than one occasion. If the Reticulans had merely redirected their agressive instincts against other worlds, they would probably have picked a fight with a more advanced spacefaring civilization a long time ago, and simply been obliterated. I haven't got far enough into the game to figure out their exact plan, but it is clear from the beginning that they targeted Earth for specific and logical (if somewhat selfish) reasons rather than "they're aliens, so let's destroy them". Humanity is simply in their way rather than a hated enemy.

[Pete]

I can see you won't be disappointed by their general plans then Accounting troll. It gets a bit vague in places, but it's not a silly "Nice planet, we'll take it" plot which have become so boring of late.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

No it most certainly isn't. In fact, it is one of the more original alien attack stories I have heard in awhile...

[Kozlov]

Well, thats not that original, but at least it sounds convincing.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

I mean the grey's status...

Or why they are attacking us.

Sorry if I am being too vague, but I don't want to give out too many spoilers in one week...

[Matri]

Hehe, classic killer Hollywood story!

I predict hundreds of millions in box office sales! :alien2:

[incarnadine]

Just wanted to add my two cents:

 

Alien Agenda: As far as I understand it the Reticulans are a hive minded society. This means that they are inevitably xenophobic and like a race of ants will try to either kill or enslave any aliens. Now because they are intelligent they on an individual level might praise things like peace and love but as a race would be rather indifferent to aliens and would rely on the guidance of the queen to decide on things like eradicating some back water planet full of unwashed and violent monkeys.

 

Alien Combat: It's important to understand that what humans will be fighting are ALIENS. And as aliens they are use to fighting different wars. Examples include space combat and fighting other aliens of similar technological level.

Now because they are in space evolution has forced them to use energy weapons. Now because of that they rely on fighting creatures that have energy weapons. So first their BVR equipment would be tuned to home in on energy signatures and because humans don't know the first thing about force fields of fusion propulsion the Alien radars would not track human fighters as well as they track other UFOs, so there Humans and Aliens would end up fighting in dog fights or at least in close enough combat for humans to use missiles that have no problems with homing in on big blobs of metal and biomass. And as pathetic as explosive missiles might sound hyper accelerated metal an the force of an explosion beat energy shields 9 times out of ten.

Which brings me to Mêlée combat. Now energy weapons are nice but bullets go through energy shields like a hot chainsaw through really runny butter.

[Matri]

What? You never watched SG-1?

[incarnadine]

no I watch "not crap"

[incarnadine]

Got further in the game and I don't want to give any spoilers but the alien agenda kicks ass. It's got that whole NGE thing going for it.