Idari Size

[Peg'giz]

Xenocrat wrote:

...

This is called oppresion and history showed that no oppression could last forever.

Also consider if the oppressors get more cruel (like nukeing innnocent civilians), the resistance will only grow stronger.
Sure you can simply nule the complete planet, but then what? You have a destroyed planet, with no population, no infrastructure, so what's the benefit?

Also what Ixal said:
When the target is on a similar technological step like you, it will become hard to do the "surrender or we nuke you" tactic.

[Ashbourne]

Aikton has no central government, which makes defending the planet much harder, and the Idari plan was referred to as an invasion doesn't mean they were trying to conquer the entire planet, having lost their home planet even having a base on a planet would be helpful. As it turned out it was a bad plan and not even need to be able to settle on Aikton. I think its origins started as a desperate plan by desperate people needding someplace to live so may not have been realistic to start.

what's the use of a destroyed planet, with no population, no infrastructure, about the same as an uninhabitable planet with no population, no infrastructure mining. But I don't think mining was the reason for the planned Idari invasion.

[Xenocrat]

Peg'giz wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

...

This is called oppresion and history showed that no oppression could last forever.

It's called genocide and replacement, and it's the foundation of every historical people.

Peg'giz wrote:

Also consider if the oppressors get more cruel (like nukeing innnocent civilians), the resistance will only grow stronger.

Yes, every August 6th and 8th I remember the millions of Americans lost in the Japanese insurgency.

Peg'giz wrote:

Sure you can simply nule the complete planet, but then what? You have a destroyed planet, with no population, no infrastructure, so what's the benefit?

You don't need to nuke an entire planet, just key population/industrial centers.

In any case, the benefit is having a planet that you can found a new colony on with your own people. There are Starfinder examples of terraforming projects in uninhabitable hell hole planets expected to not pay off for decades. If you can terraform those, you can more easily clean up a planet with some light nuclear winter but a functioning atmosphere and ecosystem.

[Ixal]

Xenocrat wrote:

You don't need to nuke an entire planet, just key population/industrial centers.

In any case, the benefit is having a planet that you can found a new colony on with your own people. There are Starfinder examples of terraforming projects in uninhabitable hell hole planets expected to not pay off for decades. If you can terraform those, you can more easily clean up a planet with some light nuclear winter but a functioning atmosphere and ecosystem.

I don't think "light nuclear winter" would be enough. How many key population/industrial centers does earth have which you need to nuke? In addition to any defensive weapons/missile silos which threatens your fleet?

[Peg'giz]

Xenocrat wrote:

... planet with some light nuclear winter but a functioning atmosphere and ecosystem.

I doubt that after a global nuclear attack the planet will still have a functioning atmosphere & ecosystem.

Regarding your WW2 comparison, america never occupied Japan. If you want to get a WW2 analogy, take Poland or France. Both were occupied by a MUCH larger army, which commit attrocities to keep the population "in line", both grew a very successfull resistance movement.

I think the best way of conquering a planet in a scifi setting (given roughly the same technology level etc.) would be not by force but by diplomacy. This way they join you willingly and you don't have to deal with things like genocide, large resistance movements or large scale wars.

[Xenocrat]

Ixal wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

You don't need to nuke an entire planet, just key population/industrial centers.

In any case, the benefit is having a planet that you can found a new colony on with your own people. There are Starfinder examples of terraforming projects in uninhabitable hell hole planets expected to not pay off for decades. If you can terraform those, you can more easily clean up a planet with some light nuclear winter but a functioning atmosphere and ecosystem.

I don't think "light nuclear winter" would be enough. How many key population/industrial centers does earth have which you need to nuke? In addition to any defensive weapons/missile silos which threatens your fleet?

Not very many, you just obliterate one smallish state at a time until the others start surrendering. With Belgium and Denmark gone, do France, Germany, and the UK offer up their cities to be next? Why?

Defensive weapons in a gravity well may be able to defend against some incoming weapons, but they have a huge disadvantage in trying to hit anything in orbit that can see them and run away with a huge delta v head start.

In any case, technological superiority is a thing in Starfinder, the Vesk and Azlanti have it over the planets they've conquered, a single ship in an AP had it over the entire Pact Worlds.

[Garretmander]

And notably, the one time the vesk tried to invade a technological peer, it turned into a colossal failure. Probably from them believing their own propaganda.

And other similar powers have only ever skirmished over colonies, never well developed worlds.

Only the swarm ever try, and they're the only ones that actually have the numbers, lack of morals, and little concern for a planet's ecology to put into practice all the ways to conquer a developed space faring world in less than multiple generations.

[Ixal]

Xenocrat wrote:

Not very many, you just obliterate one smallish state at a time until the others start surrendering. With Belgium and Denmark gone, do France, Germany, and the UK offer up their cities to be next? Why?

Defensive weapons in a gravity well may be able to defend against some incoming weapons, but they have a huge disadvantage in trying to hit anything in orbit that can see them and run away with a huge delta v head start.

In any case, technological superiority is a thing in Starfinder, the Vesk and Azlanti have it over the planets they've conquered, a single ship in an AP had it over the entire Pact Worlds.

For the same reason WW2 terrorbombing did not cause people to surrender. Not to mention that China, Russia or the USA would not care much about Belgium.

And defensive weapons do not have much of a disadvantage as they do not even need to reach orbit but just have to cross the flight path of the ships. They are also as good as undetectable until they are launched unlike the ships which can be seen all the time. Especially a low orbit would be very deadly for the attacker while a high orbit gives plenty of time to intercept incoming nukes. Running away from incoming missiles is also very hard when you are in an orbit.
And when you apply it to Starfinder it is even less of a disadvantage. Anti Gravity exist, so gravity wells mean nothing. And when you have a energy weapons which can shoot down you can install the same energy weapon on the planet and shoot up. And then make it 5 times larger and add a couple of dozen more.

[Metaphysician]

Ixal wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

Planetary invasions are easy as long as you have enough nukes. Offer the natives the opportunity to willingly follow and enforce your laws, scrub them and repopulate if they decline. The Idari wanted the planet, not the inhabitants, after all. Their existence was an unfortunate and unforseen complication that could have been resolved from orbit, theoretically.

It surely has to be cheaper to bombard the population away and then fix any environmental effects than to invade with an army and take every city with house to house fighting. I gather the Azlanti run a mixed strategy, some of each. It's also probably cheaper than terraforming a lot of marginal planets, just do pest control on one that is already good enough.

Massed nuclear bombardment has the problem of heavily damaging the ecosphere. At one point you have to ask yourself what your goal actually is.

Also, the orbit is far less safe for the attacker than how it is usually portrayed in SciFi. The attack of Klendathu in Starship Troopers is a good guideline how just getting into orbit and landing troops on the ground will turn out when the enemy is equally advanced as you are.

Worse, actually, since Starfinder isn't restricted to conventional space opera technology, even. They would have access to things like industrial scale magic on top of the force fields and anti-gravity and their own fleet of ships.

Or, I use invading army size with the Idari as a proxy for "Has enough military resources for this to be even vaguely plausible". Because as written the Idari *can't* rely on orbital bombardment as some I-Win card, because they are facing an equivalent-tech opponent. Shooting down the gravity well is only unstoppable if the opponent can't shoot up, and Akiton is/was a fully developed industrial planet with contemporary technology. They could entirely shoot back up.

( I suppose its possible that the Witchwyrds gave them bad intel about Akiton, so they *thought* they were invading a weak and primitive planet? If so, the Witchwyrds were kind of being dicks, because they should definitely have known that Akiton at the time was one of the industrial powerhouses of the system. )

[Metaphysician]

Also, just to note, the Idari departed very shortly after the Gap, IIRC. Which is to say, the latest intel about Akiton would *not* say "Planet Mad Max", it would say "A heavily industrialized planet primarily focused on the space industry".

( Assuming the Witchwyrds weren't lying, natch. )

Anyway, I would agree that the Vesk have a much better demonstrated structure for conquering and controlling planets. . . and even then, their conquests were long term efforts even against worlds with lower tech than them, and lower social organization than them. It still took them a huge length of time to fully bring their own system under control. . . and said control depends as much on carrots as sticks. Being a subject people of the Vesk isn't great, but its also not guaranteed torment and death either. Because, ultimately, their rule depends on achieving at least some degree of cooperation from their subjects.

[leithsamora]

The Japanese were forced ro surrender because they had no way to fight back. They were defeated abroad and had no air force. They were waiting for a land invasion which would never come. I dont think any Pact World has been in such a situation.