How many aliens to conquer the world?


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As a thought exercise (well, okay, as campaign prep) I'm trying to consider semi-realistically how many alien forces it would take to conquer Earth, to the level of say Falling Skies (IE not total conquest, but certainly down and out).

Assume the alien combat technology is superior but not invincible, and conventional war only (i.e. neither side uses mega weapons). Assume Earth has time to scramble resources. Assume most major countries are attacked.

For air combat, I figure roughly 24 battles of 500 fighters each on Earth's side would finish the fighters (this is based on some very loose internet searching suggesting the US has approximately 4000 fighter planes, then multiplying that by 6 for the rest of the world; rough guess)

So I figure 24 motherships with 200 fighter support to combat Earth's air defenses.

For the ground, I'm not sure. I'm assuming 175 million soldiers and police worldwide (roughly 25 in 1000). BUT, my thinking is invading aliens would not willingly enter a ground war until they'd pacified the skies in a given area. So, assuming large scale wins for the aliens in the air battles, how many of Earth's troops would still be alive to need "pacification", so to speak?

Suggestions on any aspect of the battle are welcome. Note this is to be a precursor to the campaign itself, so I don't need to go into great detail.


Depends on how "realistic" you want to be.

"Realistically" the invaders would use biological weapons to cull the planet of the vast majority of defenders and population. Unless that counts as Mega weapons for you.

It also depends on how fatastical you want to go. On the near end, they would probably only need one. Any species technologically advanced enough to get here would paste us in a day, altho one could easily imagine circumstances that would greatly mitigate that.

On the far end, anything goes. Reanimate the dead? check. Kaijun? check. Terminators? check. It just depends on what type of game you want.


Realistically I don't know why they would bother with fighters and such. They can just park themselves in orbit and take out all the airfields and air craft carriers from orbit. Probably do the same for cities and such

Ground tactics wise...our Biosphere is probably the most precious and unique product of our planet. Depending on what they want that for, they may focus on using biological weapons, or rely on drones to harvest whatever it is they want and not have to deal with guerrilla fighters

Shadow Lodge

It would take a lot more Vulcans than Star-Spawn. "Alien" leaves a pretty wide margin for interpretation.


If they are using their air superiority right, about 1% of Earth's ground forces would still be alive after the initial bombing run. The idea is to hit the entire planet at once so that no one has any time to react.

About... I would say that a little over five hundred million fighters would do it.

For ground troops? You're going to want to think bigger. North America alone, to quickly secure it, requires a ground attack force of around 5.6 billion (assuming the aliens are humanoids), including armor and air support. Note: "Quickly" in this case means "in less than a full year." "Secure," in this case, means "no heavily armed military units with tanks, aircraft, and a couple of nukes waiting to catch the aliens off guard." And keep in mind that's for one continent.

It would actually be far easier if an invading alien force just hit every human community with a neutron bomb or two and waited while humanity died out.

I would also add a couple zeroes after the number of motherships you have involved. 24 is not near enough to win a war if they are weak against humanity's weapons, and you can bet humans will be launching nukes rather than sitting back and just accepting defeat. So you really can't keep weapons of mass destruction out of it. I'm assuming your motherships are small enough to not have natural gravity fields, of course.

MMCJawa wrote:
Realistically I don't know why they would bother with fighters and such.

Fighters would still serve multiple roles. Missile countermeasures that cannot be jammed, strategic attacks on small targets, air support for ground troops, transport and boarding craft countermeasures, and precision strikes against enemy defensive weaponry.

Group and I got together and modeled this, using AIs to control defenses and drones, ships armed with plasma weapons that could shoot through planets, etc. Increasingly, the longer we played, the more obvious it became that both sides had a hole in both their offenses and defenses that none of the frigates, drones, or ship-mounted weapons could fill. When we added in fighters to fill that hole, we began to notice other holes. It became increasingly obvious, as we looked at it, that fighter craft are necessary for multiple support roles.

To put it in perspective, even in real life most fighter types are not intended to see dogfights and be primary combat craft, but are actually designed as support roles for infantry and naval forces or as precision bombers. Even the famous F-16 is more valued for its capacity in multiple support roles than the air superiority combat it was originally designed for.

So, the idea they won't use fighters in space is, by our test, a fallacy.


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Why are the aliens attacking/what do they want? That's the key. Mineral resources? Then there's no reason not to "nuke from orbit" (taking out the major population centers, leaving the majority of the planet exploitable to mining, removing the top layers of irradiated soil). Water? Avoid the nukes (radiation contamination), but wide spread chemical weapons might not be a problem, depending on the specific chemicals and how they react to/with water (also, good enough water filtration could remove radiation contamination). So really, only if they want slave labor in the form of humanity (like for only things humans are able to do and not robots, cattle, etc.) or a habitable planet to colonize, then that's the only reason they'd fight a conventional (i.e. non-mega-weapons) war and even then, with the energy and resource consumption needed for interstellar travel the aliens would have to be really desperate (or lost-in-space) to attack.

If any nuclear weapon nation has time to react to an attack, then there's little to restrain them from using nuke's in space as there's little to no radiation danger planet side from a nuke detonated over 100 miles up.

Logical alien plan of attack: Observe earth from a distance, maybe set up a staging base on the moon (high end estimate, ICBM's top speed of 20,000 mph, 238,900 miles to the moon, takes an ICBM ~12 hours to nuke the moon, large amount of time to take out the ICBM with energy weapons). Destroy all satellites, especially comsats, with small fighters (or even just a shotgun deployment of gathered moon-gravel) as Earth response is severely limited and planet-side missiles would be easily avoidable for agile space-fighters. Target undersea cable-hubs to sever continental-based communication/internet and attack major command centers. Move in larger ships for close bombardment of large urban centers. Only then, touchdown in secure areas (clearly decimated-from-the-bombardment) major urban centers and tactically sound staging areas (Grand Canyon might work). Then start in on the ground invasion.

Biological weapons, realistically, are out of the question primarily because the chance of an alien species developing a biological agent that would affect humans would be like using an apple computer to upload a virus to the alien mothership's computer. Unless of course they had been secretly watching us for a while, taking samples, developing the biological weapons needed to take us out ("so that's the reason for all the cattle mutilations, crop circles, and human abductions").

So the next option...to try and even things out a bit, is to have an alien military armada "lost in space" or suffering the effects of their first (failed) "hyperspace jump" or "wormhole" use (because any aliens capable to intentionally get here would have a far superior understanding of the way the universe works). This allows you to dumb down the aliens so that they'd think a straight forward invasion for a habitable planet is a good idea. Then just assume a conventional force three to six times greater than that of Earth so that they have advantage but would cause a prolonged siege/invasion. Still, hard to rationalize why the aliens wouldn't take out our comsats from the safety of space given our poor ability to swiftly deal with any space-based threats and then just mine large moon rocks to drop on us from the safety of space. And again, while in space there's no reason Earth wouldn't use nukes against the threat (or at least until the aliens re-directed one to an Earth urban population) but how effective they'd be would depend on the technology and intelligence of the aliens.


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Best first step would be to set off EMP over all major industrialized nations, frying the technology then attack the people fighting back with boomsticks rocks and spears at will?


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Push large asteroid into collision course.

It worked pretty well against the mighty dinsoaur empire on that small terrestrial world. It destroyed their civilisation so thoroughly that their descendants became mere animals.

Back to the topic of alien invasion RPG campaigns:

I had one game where the goal of the aliens required them to oppress but not destroy humanity. They didn't need the planet's resources. Instead, they wanted to harness the psychic potential of a whole planet's worth of sophonts to power a big psychic ritual. Materials are common and cheap. Intelligent planetary populations are not.


Kthulhu wrote:
It would take a lot more Vulcans than Star-Spawn. "Alien" leaves a pretty wide margin for interpretation.

Sorry, assume "PC Race" aliens if that helps. Roughly equal to humans.


Umbral Reaver wrote:

Back to the topic of alien invasion RPG campaigns:

I had one game where the goal of the aliens required them to oppress but not destroy humanity. They didn't need the planet's resources. Instead, they wanted to harness the psychic potential of a whole planet's worth of sophonts to power a big psychic ritual. Materials are common and cheap. Intelligent planetary populations are not.

This is quite helpful. I'll mull this over, it's not a bad hook, considering I'm having psionics available in the campaign that follows.

The Exchange

Im suggesting that presented with a superior threat even the US goverment would evacuate from 'fallujah' leaving the city to fall to alquaeda. Cynical,yes. Human technology is purely for keeping humans in line and therefor unlikely to be used for defending the planet by anyone other than a ragtag army of human rebels.
Existing plans regarding how to deal with an extraterrestrial invasion would likely involve a Hitler's bunker moment leaving no leadership structure. The plan for human perpetuation involves the suspension of female rights.

Showering the atmosphere with iron particulates will create electrical storms setting off an EMP period cooking electronics.

Catapults throwing rocks from the lunar surface to bombard the earth. Disarm the nukes secreted on the moon that are to be used to conceal the earth in a dust cloud should an alien space probe aproach earth.


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What.

Sovereign Court

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Are we talking SF or Fantasy?

I had a campaign where a race of alien creatures (modeled after the wraith from Stargate Atlantis) invaded worlds. They would use teleportation circles to teleport large quantities of troups armed with merciful repeating crossbows during nighttime, then drag all the unconscious creatures back to their ships. Discussed it with a friend who is in the army and he helped me make a plausible strategy.


I'm pretty sure nonlethal bolts are far cheaper on a large scale than magic crossbows.


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MagusJanus wrote:


MMCJawa wrote:
Realistically I don't know why they would bother with fighters and such.

Fighters would still serve multiple roles. Missile countermeasures that cannot be jammed, strategic attacks on small targets, air support for ground troops, transport and boarding craft countermeasures, and precision strikes against enemy defensive weaponry.

Group and I got together and modeled this, using AIs to control defenses and drones, ships armed with plasma weapons that could shoot through planets, etc. Increasingly, the longer we played, the more obvious it became that both sides had a hole in both their offenses and defenses that none of the frigates,...

I think you are locked into thinking that the aliens would launch a conventional war by modern standards. Ask the Native Americans how an invasion would be launched on the North American continent from across the sea in Pre-Columbian times. They probably would never have considered things like cavalry, armor, or firearms. A civil war veteran probably wouldn't consider the possibility of rockets, air craft carriers, or airplanes.

Any species with interstellar travel capabilities is conservatively hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years ahead of us. They are probably going to be better at just about everything we can do, like jamming missiles or targeting small objects from orbit. And really...orbit is the safest place for them. Most of our weapons other than some nukes and maybe a few satellites can't reach them. They can however look down upon the planet and probably have missiles, kinetic weapons, and energy weapons capable of vaporizing things as small as houses. Why give up that advantage? Wipe out all the major population centers and military stations/infrastructure. Take out roads, harbors, and airfields. If they are patient and do this over the course of a few years, odds are the governments themselves will break down soon enough when they lose legitimacy from the people.

What they do next will be entirely dependent on why they are invading. Resources? Send drones and robots down to key areas for harvesting, with some sort automated defense systems. Hate life? don't bother with targeting single targets, just drop some nukes or mini-blackholes on the planet and leave. Missionary work, slaves or colonization are pretty much the only thing you would need to even bother with a ground invasion for, and if played right any sort of organized resistance will be long crushed before you start dropping colonists on the planet. And again...there is always the tailored virus method, which could quickly depopulate regions without wasting a single alien life.


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Fizzygoo wrote:

Why are the aliens attacking/what do they want? That's the key. Mineral resources? Then there's no reason not to "nuke from orbit" (taking out the major population centers, leaving the majority of the planet exploitable to mining, removing the top layers of irradiated soil). Water? Avoid the nukes (radiation contamination), but wide spread chemical weapons might not be a problem, depending on the specific chemicals and how they react to/with water (also, good enough water filtration could remove radiation contamination). So really, only if they want slave labor in the form of humanity (like for only things humans are able to do and not robots, cattle, etc.) or a habitable planet to colonize, then that's the only reason they'd fight a conventional (i.e. non-mega-weapons) war and even then, with the energy and resource consumption needed for interstellar travel the aliens would have to be really desperate (or lost-in-space) to attack.

If any nuclear weapon nation has time to react to an attack, then there's little to restrain them from using nuke's in space as there's little to no radiation danger planet side from a nuke detonated over 100 miles up.

To be fair...if they want resources, they might just ignore Earth to begin with. Our only resource is our biosphere and it's products, like us or the complex hydrocarbons produced. Pretty much everything else is present in the solar system, often in higher concentrations and harvestable without are pesky gravity well.


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MMCJawa wrote:
MagusJanus wrote:


MMCJawa wrote:
Realistically I don't know why they would bother with fighters and such.

Fighters would still serve multiple roles. Missile countermeasures that cannot be jammed, strategic attacks on small targets, air support for ground troops, transport and boarding craft countermeasures, and precision strikes against enemy defensive weaponry.

Group and I got together and modeled this, using AIs to control defenses and drones, ships armed with plasma weapons that could shoot through planets, etc. Increasingly, the longer we played, the more obvious it became that both sides had a hole in both their offenses and defenses that none of the frigates,...

I think you are locked into thinking that the aliens would launch a conventional war by modern standards. Ask the Native Americans how an invasion would be launched on the North American continent from across the sea in Pre-Columbian times. They probably would never have considered things like cavalry, armor, or firearms. A civil war veteran probably wouldn't consider the possibility of rockets, air craft carriers, or airplanes.

Any species with interstellar travel capabilities is conservatively hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years ahead of us. They are probably going to be better at just about everything we can do, like jamming missiles or targeting small objects from orbit. And really...orbit is the safest place for them. Most of our weapons other than some nukes and maybe a few satellites can't reach them. They can however look down upon the planet and probably have missiles, kinetic weapons, and energy weapons capable of vaporizing things as small as houses. Why give up that advantage? Wipe out all the major population centers and military stations/infrastructure. Take out roads, harbors, and airfields. If they are patient and do this over the course of a few years, odds are the governments themselves will break down soon enough when they lose legitimacy from the people.

What they do next will be...

Yes, I am having them use conventional warfare. Because the person who started this topic was asking about an alien invasion using conventional warfare tactics. If it wasn't for that, then I would simply suggest using an artificial virus.

Just grab a sampling of all life on the planet, isolate what makes the human genome unique, make an airborne virus that targets only that, release it in major population centers. Then you just wait for the entire species to die.

It's a lot easier, requires massively less resources, and leaves the entire planet a lot more intact. It also guarantees you didn't risk destroying whatever you were after.

As for aliens: Any alien race capable of interstellar travel would be pretty much immune to anything we could toss at them just due to the requirements of interstellar travel. Space dust and other minor bits of debris alone require enough kinetic protection to render anything short of a railgun or large-mass impact worthless, and protections against interstellar winds and radiation and similar aspects would leave them quite capable of shrugging off direct hits from nuclear weapons and most missiles in use. So the entire scenario relies on a premise that isn't even remotely realistic. But that is the premise in play, so I'm simply abiding by it.

However, my bit about fighters was assuming they would be fighting each other and pointing out that fighter craft are not actually unnecessary. Despite how much we may like to believe otherwise, space really does lend itself more to conventional warfare. Especially since you need star charts to see where the people you're fighting actually live... which means, nine times out of ten, you're going to have to take them from enemy vessels.

Shadow Lodge

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One thing to keep in mind:

They are alien. Just because we value something, that doesn't mean they would. "Our only resource is our biosphere and it's products" ? Not necessarily. Hell, our biosphere maybe utterly toxic to them.

Likewise, simply because in humans advanced technology would automatically equal advanced weapons, that doesn't necessarily track with a completely alien life form.

Maybe they traveled thousands of light years to attack us with....pointy sticks.

Sovereign Court

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Ktulhu wrote:
Maybe they traveled thousands of light years to attack us with....pointy sticks.

That makes no sense. Whatsoever. Being alien does not mean stupid or impractical.

OTOH, what I don't get is why do the aliens always have to attack us. Wouldn't it make more sense to simply trade? And not waste valuable resources to acquire more resources? Also the ultimatum of "mine/gather [something we need here] or we blow all your major population centres to kingdom come. And if you do as we say, we leave when we no longer need [resource] any more".

Liberty's Edge

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

The latter of Kthulhu's points sounds rather like "The Road Not Taken," a Harry Turtledove short story from about thirty years ago. Although in that one the invaders had gunpowder and could smelt a decent grade of steel, which put them head and shoulders above most of the other interstellar powers out there.


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A friend posted on Facebook the other day...

"Hoping that aliens from outer space come to Earth to save us from ourselves is the atheist version of the Rapture."

That is all.

Sovereign Court

Your friend knows nothing about atheism doesn't he?


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Hama wrote:
Ktulhu wrote:
Maybe they traveled thousands of light years to attack us with....pointy sticks.

That makes no sense. Whatsoever. Being alien does not mean stupid or impractical.

OTOH, what I don't get is why do the aliens always have to attack us. Wouldn't it make more sense to simply trade? And not waste valuable resources to acquire more resources? Also the ultimatum of "mine/gather [something we need here] or we blow all your major population centres to kingdom come. And if you do as we say, we leave when we no longer need [resource] any more".

We don't have anything of value.

Water is incredibly common; just mine comets for it. Most of the metals and minerals found on Earth are more easily found outside of Earth, and space itself has some materials that are not found on our planet unless you're mining a meteor strike. And, well, let's face it: Our technology would be nothing compared to what they would have.

Realistically, the only reasons they would be interested in Earth would be life on the planet, a potential colony area, or they just want to eliminate a potential competitor before that competitor gains interstellar travel. The latter two reasons pretty much require exterminating humanity, while the first is one where securing a steady supply would be easier if they exterminated humanity (if humanity wasn't the life form they're interested in).

Sovereign Court

Of course. And there is no chance that they might be peaceful, or willing to trade perhaps? Plus, water is rarely in it's liquid state, anywhere else we've seen.


If they're peaceful, I doubt they would bother us at all until we achieved interstellar travel. What would be the point? All it would do is cause some pretty severe societal damage. And trade itself wouldn't be a good enough reason; as I said, we have nothing of value, and what little we have that they might be interested in we do not actually have the infrastructure to get into space and wouldn't be the worth the cost of them giving us the technology.

Also, you don't actually want water in its liquid state for long-term interstellar storage. Keeping it frozen helps prevent contamination and allows for it to be stored for far longer. It also prevents water from causing damage to its storage container during the period it's being stored.


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Some SF stories have played with the idea the most important things to trade are new ideas and new ways of thinking. Culture and art, if nothing else.

If they're sufficiently advanced, our technology isn't likely to be useful to them and any raw materials or finished goods are far too expensive to ship interstellar distances, but if they really are alien, then we will think in ways that can surprise them. There may be useful ideas that seem obvious to us that they could never conceive of. And vice versa, of course.
Or applications of their technology, once we learn some of it, that they hadn't thought of.
Cross-pollination of cultures has been tremendously fertile on earth. How much more so when not just different cultures, but entirely different mentalities and psychologies come into contact.

Of course, even friendly contact between more and less technologically advanced cultures has usually been devastating to the less advanced one.

Sovereign Court

What you say is that you think we have nothing of value. Who knows what they need.

Frozen water means less water in the same space as liquid water. I would transport it in it's liquid state at 4 degrees celsius. Then it is the thickest.

Also, yeah, culture and art.

That is why I love the Mass Effect universe. It is believable.


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The essential assumption for the thread is humanoid aliens, like one of the Pathfinder player races. But even if they're not, the laws of physics don't change; they would need carbon for construction for the same reasons we need it, for example.

So, the idea that they would things for reasons we don't understand is pretty much out.

The problem with liquid water is a matter of practicality. Over time it's going to erode the storage container. Mainly, it's going to be a hindrance for travel due to the way water reacts to momentum; when you're trying to stop, it won't be, and that can wreak havoc or cause a pretty serious problem for a ship that needs to drop speed rapidly for an emergency. This could even be enough to cause your ship to crash. Ice doesn't suffer that problem. The lesser density of it is just a cost of not having water react you trying to stop before you hit something by slamming you into the very thing you were trying not to hit.

As for culture and art: Thejeff highlighted why that wouldn't be a reason before we obtained interstellar travel when he said that bit about how less advanced races don't fare well even in peaceful contact with more advanced races. Any peaceful race would probably be aware of that and leaving us alone for precisely that reason.

Of course, all of this is moot, since the person who started the thread started it with the premise Earth is being attacked :P

Edit: And I was just reminded that an alien race doesn't even need to contact us to get our culture. They can just part a satellite in orbit and have it connect to the internet. Wouldn't take much to work up a set of translation protocols.


MagusJanus wrote:

The essential assumption for the thread is humanoid aliens, like one of the Pathfinder player races. But even if they're not, the laws of physics don't change; they would need carbon for construction for the same reasons we need it, for example.

So, the idea that they would things for reasons we don't understand is pretty much out.

The problem with liquid water is a matter of practicality. Over time it's going to erode the storage container. Mainly, it's going to be a hindrance for travel due to the way water reacts to momentum; when you're trying to stop, it won't be, and that can wreak havoc or cause a pretty serious problem for a ship that needs to drop speed rapidly for an emergency. This could even be enough to cause your ship to crash. Ice doesn't suffer that problem. The lesser density of it is just a cost of not having water react you trying to stop before you hit something by slamming you into the very thing you were trying not to hit.

As for culture and art: Thejeff highlighted why that wouldn't be a reason before we obtained interstellar travel when he said that bit about how less advanced races don't fare well even in peaceful contact with more advanced races. Any peaceful race would probably be aware of that and leaving us alone for precisely that reason.

Of course, all of this is moot, since the person who started the thread started it with the premise Earth is being attacked :P

Edit: And I was just reminded that an alien race doesn't even need to contact us to get our culture. They can just part a satellite in orbit and have it connect to the internet. Wouldn't take much to work up a set of translation protocols.

The things they want might not be physical/raw materials. Sure they'll need construction materials and the like, but that doesn't mean there aren't other things we wouldn't even think of.

Or just more psychological needs. You can't put aside "reasons we don't understand" on the grounds that you can't think of any.


There are plenty of things they could want. But for most of those, direct contact with humanity is really not in their best bet until humanity becomes a true spacefaring species.

Just think about how negatively humans tend to react react to other human cultures that they don't understand. That's why "reasons we don't understand" can't ever be in the "peaceful contact" column.


The other problem with liquid water is that it in our solar system you only get it on Earth (which sits in a steep gravity well), and transporting it out is energetically expensive. It's probably cheaper just to mine it from comets and melt it (if you don't need it frozen, which really would be easier to transport).

Although liquid water surrounding your command hub and sleeping quarters would be useful, as that would act as a shield against radiation...which would be a major cause of concern in space travel.


Hama wrote:
Your friend knows nothing about atheism doesn't he?

Actually, she is an atheist. But she intended it as a joke.

Unrelated to topic of thread:
I happen to be a Christian (specifically a Presbyterian) myself, and I think that the whole notion of the Rapture is extra-Biblical hogwash. It's also not a very old concept: it dates back only to Great Awakening religious movement from the mid-19th century United States. But if people want to talk about that, we should probably take it to the "Off Topic Discussions" board.


Hama wrote:
OTOH, what I don't get is why do the aliens always have to attack us. Wouldn't it make more sense to simply trade? And not waste valuable resources to acquire more resources? Also the ultimatum of "mine/gather [something we need here] or we blow all your major population centres to kingdom come. And if you do as we say, we leave when we no longer need [resource] any more".

Or they find us incredibly gross. Like monstrous cockroaches - disease-carrying monstrosities that will likely murder and eat them if left unchecked.

Or we offend their equivalent of moral, intellectual, political, social, ethical, religious, or other sensibilities.

Or they fear us. Or hate us. Or both.

Or they just happen to be monstrous (to our way of thinking) sociopathic and genocidal sophonts who either delight in or have a compulsive need to eliminate all rivals.

Or they're just super competitive, have no concept of permanent death, or religiously believe all those who die go on to a better existence and thus killing is not only okay but a mercy, or any other myriad number of reasons.

I cannot fathom a single thing most all comprehensibly-likely (to-human-sensibilities) alien species who have the ability to travel solar systems would gain from "trading" with the human species other than a sense of moral high ground or other sense of superiority. Which, truth be told, is something I desperately hope visitors from other worlds have if/when they find us. But the fact is there are far, far more reasons for them to kill us than not - both comprehensible to us and non-comprehensible to us.

On the other hand, if they happen to be able to travel purely due to some sort of weird exotic localized phenomena they more or less accidentally managed to harness to travel somehow, it might be very likely for them to come in actual peace. But that is exceedingly unlikely.

On the other hand, they may be, like Kthulu (and the short story mentioned by John) suggested somehow (comparatively to humanity) retarded in their technological weaponry growth for some reason (be it political, social, moral, religious, or other unknown) - an unlikely scenario, given all we know about survival of the fittest, but not completely impossible. Then we could trade: weaponry. Thus humanity just became the galaxy's Arms Dealers. :/

Presuming, of course, that humanity doesn't do what humanity is wont do to do and kill the freaky little monstrosities and steal their stuff to make it work for us (or otherwise defraud them somehow).

Shadow Lodge

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Take a look at the Buggers from Ender's Game...they actually didn't understand the concept of why humanity would care about a few hundred individuals. At first contact, they killed humans as a way of saying "Hello".


I have to disagree with the idea that we can dismiss resources, even such a common one as water, as a reason for a full scale invasion. While we assume that interstellar travel comes after interplanetary travel, our belief does not make it so.

It may be that traveling extremely long distance (between stars) is very easy, while traveling shorter distances (between planets) is very hard.

When dealing with the concept of aliens and future tech, we must be careful not to assume too much. And that's before taking cultural concerns into consideration. While an extraterrestrial culture might be capable of mining asteroids or comets, who's to say that they would? Maybe they only value that which is taken, not found.

Dark Archive

It's Mega weapon type, but kinetic asteroid strikes would clear out a lot of the population much like nukes, but without all the radiation. If they were interstellar travelers, using spaceships and technology as opposed to magic or psionics, they could hit the earth from say Pluto, and we'd mostly be dead before we knew it.
That being said, it would waste the biosphere of earth and change it, so maybe not the best plan if you like it and are moving in.
There are many different angles you could take with this...

In Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle's 'Hammerfall' ( I think that's the name)
They only hit the distribution/ travel centers, Highway intersections, rail lines airports and all military sites. They were on a oneway colony ship and needed earth intact. ( really interesting book, they were elephant types with split prehensile trunks for arms, with herd mentality.)

Also for some awesome aliens check out A Mote in Gods Eye and its sequel The Gripping Hand. Great look at how alien societies might develop in different special climates.

Alan Dean Foster had a trilogy that had a great interstellar war happening, and the losing aliens came to us for help because we are so warlike. ( that's why they had no contact with us until they were attacked and started losing.)
I could go on but this is already more than I ever say...
sounds fun tho and good luck.

Dark Archive

Bah couldn't leave without giving the original Ringworld series and the Known space stuff, a push as well. A race of tiger people (the Kzinti) attack earth space, causing a great war. come to find out a race of puppeteers ( a cowardly race) engineered the war, and have been meddling with both Kzinti and Human genetics for centuries...

Dark Archive

hey.. Maybe they need human brains to act as intuitive computers to run their machines, or like in the matrix we're batteries of some kind, psionic or otherwise.
but anyway I missed the intent of the thread, sorry , it just kinda got my mind boiling on the possibilities.

how many troops really depends on the reinforcement issue. If it's a colony type ship, it would have limited resources and probably be VERY efficient and use drones or some such. If it is a portal it could be unlimited, until the heroes close it or block it somehow.... And FTL would fall somewhere in between...
If they had superior tech and training, it wouldn't take as many, and they would possibly underestimate our chances. But at some point they would have to consider the non-military population. They would fight as well if threatened, or if they thought they were threatened.
If they wanted a reduced land war, diplomacy can be an effective weapon too. With the right promises there could be entire nations on their side as well.
" Your only gonna strip America of its people for your Psionic engine.. Ok we're in..."


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Thanks for all the great ideas, guys. A lot of this thread is not exactly what I was looking for, but you've sparked some good ideas and I have at least a somewhat better idea of the numbers I'm talking about.


There was a game called Hunter Planet. It was an Australian RPG. The idea was that any alien would come to the planet 'Dirt' and have fun. The problem was that the people of this planet were not stupid because they had their own weapons.

So the Aliens could come down with their own fancy weapons and hunt humans. Meanwhile the humans would have their Bazookas.....

There was no GM there was a CM (Certified Maniac)

As far as Aliens VS Humans? I would look at the TV show Stargate: SG1.
One of the Alien ships came to (an alternate) Earth and attacked and destroyed a battle group from space before they even landed any ground forces. It would be like WWII. If you control the air you can control the War. (Well that worked for most modern wars)


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

The earth is roughly 70% water.
Fire lasers from space and bombard the oceans. Convert 10% of it to steam quickly. Our atmosphere would cook most exposed people, most of our stuff wouldn't work and in a while the water would return to normal, thanks to how our atmosphere works.
Then, send crews to clean up the mess or harvest what you want, leave.


Really sorry to be "that guy," but the earth is not 70% water. 70% of the surface of the Earth is covered by water. The strategy is sound, tho.


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rando1000 wrote:
Umbral Reaver wrote:

Back to the topic of alien invasion RPG campaigns:

I had one game where the goal of the aliens required them to oppress but not destroy humanity. They didn't need the planet's resources. Instead, they wanted to harness the psychic potential of a whole planet's worth of sophonts to power a big psychic ritual. Materials are common and cheap. Intelligent planetary populations are not.

This is quite helpful. I'll mull this over, it's not a bad hook, considering I'm having psionics available in the campaign that follows.

Non-mammalian invaders. Earth eventually develops the Supreme Gestalt of the Mammal - *every* mammal on the planet whether it crawls, flies, swims or walks gestalts...

;)


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Mynameisjake wrote:
Really sorry to be "that guy," but the earth is not 70% water. 70% of the surface of the Earth is covered by water. The strategy is sound, tho.

Oh, true, that. Oops :(


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How can you answer this question without having huge assumptions about the aliens?

On one hand, one alien like Galactus could conquer Earth, and if you had weaker aliens that didn't want to use weapon of mass destruction, it could take millions of aliens to do it.

If you want to see how many tanks, planes, and infantry each country has, it's pretty easy to Google. Then take whatever alien assumption you have and divide.

Shadow Lodge

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Yeah, it's gonna depend on:

What are the actual physical properties of the alien race?
What level of technology do the aliens have?
What level of weaponry do the aliens have?
Does the alien culture have any effect upon their war-making ability, tactics, etc?

And probably at least a dozen other questions I could think of with a bit of effort.


1 Sobornost war-mind

OR

One 5 man group of Zoku raiders with 1337 gear.

Jean le Flambeur wouldn't conquer it, he'd just steal what ever was most precious from it.


Also what their intentions are. Do they intend to rule open with an iron fist (or tentacle, as the case may be)? Are they willing to work through human proxies and exploit existing conflicts and tensions?


I don't know if this has been brought up, but I favor the Xenomorph. adaptable, formidable, and exponential casualty possibilities. For the most part environmentally compatible, and minimal asset destruction.

I've extrapolated ideas about the intent and possible functions the xenomorph can serve (my own theory/imagination and details drawn from the prometheus/aliens movies/novels) and see not only a foot soldier but a bio-terraforming potential.

The xenomorph can reduce/eradicate a population ( I favor reduce, because part of reproduction will require hosts) and their genetic code could likely alter for specific tasks, say, upping or lowering the carbon dioxide content by some type of 'respirator' alien to make the environment satisfactory for my own race. Also they're known to make 'hives' which might also serve as temporary shelters for the 'master' race while they build more permanent structures for themselves.


The most efficient way to invade would be to bring just a few "people" and adapt the local flora and fauna to be the "soldiers."

Cloning would work pretty well, as well.

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