Suggestion: Invading Atomic age primitives

[Talanic]

The idea of the completely unprepared alien invasion reminds me of David Weber's Out of the Dark.

The invaders have a tech advantage, but their FTL sucks and humanity has been advancing faster than they expected. They thought they were going to be going up against knights, maybe crossbow troops, and lose several of their supply transports to a pair of F-16s right off the bat.

Spoiler

It turns out most of the other aliens they've ever encountered have a submission response when confronted with a superior foe. Stomp them hard enough right away and they'll surrender unconditionally. So they didn't bother building a human psych profile until months after the invasion was in progress.

Once they finish the psych profile, they realize they've failed. Humanity could be exterminated, but never brought in line the way they wanted, so they decide to snag some test subjects, whip up a bioweapon, cleanse the planet and pretend there was never anyone else there.

Yes, double spoiler button. If you think you'll read the book still, stop here unless you really don't mind spoilers.

Spoiler

They grab an entire village worth of test subjects from Eastern Europe. Suddenly, the lackluster invasion turns catastrophic, with entire bases wiped out in the night by things that didn't show up on video.

Turns out Dracula had retired to a small mountain village...

Yep. Freakin' VAMPIRES save the planet.

 

[Marinaliteyears]

Another Salient point, I think, is the fact you need to invade planets, and win the resulting invasion. Sure, its usually pretty easy, but you still have to invade, rather then space age super science them into oblivion, by using targeted lasers on their armies, or whatever. This implies to me there is -some- level of resistance, and -some- level of inability to zap away said resistance without an effort, even if the resistance is an army of bronze wielding primitives. Seeing as how this is the case, That level of resistance understandably increases as you encounter more advanced primitives, I think dismissing atomic and early spaceflight primitives ability to use (or hide, or defend -to- use.) their planet ruining super weapons is a bit goofy. I mean, if destroying an army of theirs is not instant, then why couldn't they use that not vaporized army to defend their last resort? Its all abstracted anyway, so I think this would be a neat way to add some more flavor to invasions.

Personally, Im interested in adding more mechanics and flavor to primitives anyway, such as different buildings depending on era, and being able to watch the spread of a species over time, though thats really hard to do currently, since planets can only be owned by one 'nation' and primitives from all eras dont actually collect and use resources, or engage in even limited forms of diplomacy.

 

[Cagliostro]

One thing which is already in game and I feel should be mentioned is that you can, while observing, find a scientist who is 'being wasted' on the primitives and abduct him. One would think if it is possible for a 'primitive' scientist to be useful to your civilization that it is also conceivable for a 'primitive' to outwit your civilization somehow (including finding a way to hide their-own-world-destroying power from you).

I read a story some time ago about a dolphin who had been trained to clean garbage from its tank. Each time it brought garbage to the trainer, it would be rewarded with a fish. After a while, though, the trainers discovered that the dolphin had been ripping the garbage into smaller pieces, so that it could get more frequent rewards. (Searching the internet, I find that her name is Kelly, and that she has done further astonishing things).

We have hunter-gatherers here on Earth. The fact that our technology dwarfs theirs does not mean that they are totally incapable of fooling us occasionally.

Obviously such a thing is not exceptionally likely, but it could be a rare possible outcome of an invasion.

 

[Dr. B]

There should be a small chance that a fighter ace, a physicist, and a president from the native world manage to secure their independence and destroy your invading force with a brave plan. And much patriotism.

 

[The Founder]

One thing which is already in game and I feel should be mentioned is that you can, while observing, find a scientist who is 'being wasted' on the primitives and abduct him. One would think if it is possible for a 'primitive' scientist to be useful to your civilization that it is also conceivable for a 'primitive' to outwit your civilization somehow (including finding a way to hide their-own-world-destroying power from you).

There are only N ways to hide a Nuclear Age Weaponsystem. All of those have been used and overcome by the Invading force in thier past.

They can deep scan a planet within a week. Without tripping of the locals.
Nuclear weapons are used by any Missiles wielding space nation. So it is not like they forgot those things exist.
The attackers know the peoples name for thier System and Planet, the position of every nation state, the average Ethos shared by the population. The strenght and composition of every army.
Yet SOMEHOW they managed to not find those nuclear weapons? Despite KNOWING it is a nuclear age civilicsaiton?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

There are only N ways to hide a Nuclear Age Weaponsystem. All of those have been used and overcome by the Invading force in thier past.

They can deep scan a planet within a week. Without tripping of the locals.
Nuclear weapons are used by any Missiles wielding space nation. So it is not like they forgot those things exist.
The attackers know the peoples name for thier System and Planet, the position of every nation state, the average Ethos shared by the population. The strenght and composition of every army.
Yet SOMEHOW they managed to not find those nuclear weapons? Despite KNOWING it is a nuclear age civilicsaiton?

If they knew where they were and had the capacity to intercept or destroy them, then Nuclear Age civilizations under observation should never be able to annihilate themselves.

 

[Caspoi]

There should be a small chance that a fighter ace, a physicist, and a president from the native world manage to secure their independence and destroy your invading force with a brave plan. And much patriotism.

And because your virus protection program is awful.

 

[Jon Severinsson]

The idea of the completely unprepared alien invasion reminds me of David Weber's Out of the Dark.

Or the Worldwar series by Harry Turtledove. Though in the defense of the Race, it should be pointed out that they did build a pretty detailed profile of humanity and prepared accordingly. Unfortunately they didn't revise their plan once the invasion fleet arrived, but stuck with the one based on their probe data, because how much can a civilization really change in a mere 800 years...

In other words: They had prepared to kick ass playing CK, only to find themselves playing HoI...

 

[Kat Tsun]

The aliens in HOI will still kick your ass though.

The game already provides alerts regarding the Atomic Age and how it makes a civilization incredibly volatile and liable to potentially explode- it'd just take a few tweaks to turn that into "invading can sometimes nuke the planet and/or blow up your invasion force".

I'm not arguing for a full-on long event chain that mirrors Footfall- I just think the possibility to have Atomic Age civilizations nuke an invasion force would be interesting. It could even add a tile blocker to the planet with one of those "Bomb Craters" or some such.

There isn't any sort of mechanic that lets you check per tick in ground combat whether to fire an event or not.

It's hardly "a few tweaks". The mechanics behind the atomic age civ blowing itself apart are a % chance per n ticks to fire an event. It's probably not that literal though. However, it's a standard trigger like the one that fires the Horizon Signal event chain. You're asking for an entirely new way of firing events, which is a fairly hefty amount of code work. So is the rest of the thread, for the most part. For a part of the game that is not very well appreciated.

There is one way it could possibly work that I see immediately, without actually checking to see if it's possible or not to implement:

1) You win the ground combat. Control of atomic age civilization planet goes to you.
2) % chance of triggering an event that involves changing the planet class to pc_nuked and a blurb about taking you with them or something

I'm not sure this could work or not though because I'm not sure the types of triggers (is_primitive?) would work to exclude solely atomic age civs and not have it happen with every FTL civ. While the observation post/X-COM event chain is triggered by primitives, I'm not sure that really counts since you can't observe non-primitives to begin with. However you already trip the Stellar Culture Shock event when you invade a primitive planet, so it may be possible to simply set that event to have a chance of turning the planet into a Tomb World instead.

So either you have an approximate of the Swarm infestation trigger or you tack on a small chance of turning a Atomic Age or Early Space Age planet into pc_nuked when invading it.

It won't be anything as dramatic as proposed in this thread.

 

[The Founder]

If they knew where they were and had the capacity to intercept or destroy them, then Nuclear Age civilizations under observation should never be able to annihilate themselves.

The fleet doing an invasion can and will kill strategic Nuclear Launchsites beforehand. Or just land on top of them, having absolute initiative and information.
Whatever tactical nuclear weapons are left, is already rolled into the Army Strenght.

That the observartion post will not warn you is an oversight. Propably was originally intended to only trigger on Passive, where this would make sense.

The nuclear war from your Infiltration Atempt can be avoided, via a project.

 

[Rationalsanity]

Well, one of the reasons I invade atomic age primitives is to prevent them from turning their worlds into nuclear wastelands, but I see the OP's point.

There's all kinds of nasty tricks an atomic age race could use to turn their world into a tomb world even if they are losing the war quickly. If they have SSBNs, I don't see how the invading forces hope to get all the nukes. And if they screw up the first twelve hours of the attack, enough of the world's arsenals can be in transit to targets to glass most of the planet.

This, of course, assumes the defenders even bother to hold back. The defending primitives might be insane enough to use their nukes on each other, hoping to settle centuries-old grudges under the chaos of an alien invasion. (Stranger things have happened in Earth history.)

This. Remember, nuclear arsenals are specifically designed to survive a first strike (for major nations). And even if you are using orbital bombardment, there is no room for error. You miss one submarine, one airbase with the right strategic bombers, one silo.....kaboom. And if you are relying on orbital bombardment to knock out the nukes (because ground forces will not be able to cover every landbase fast enough, even on Ocean worlds)...you've probably done almost as much damage as the nukes would have done.

 

[Secret Master]

And even if you are using orbital bombardment, there is no room for error.

I was also thinking that there could be consequences beyond "tomb world or not tomb world."

Maybe the defenders get a few SLBMs off before you neutralize the submarines, causing some tile blockers and the loss of some POPs.

 

[The Founder]

This. Remember, nuclear arsenals are specifically designed to survive a first strike (for major nations). And even if you are using orbital bombardment, there is no room for error. You miss one submarine, one airbase with the right strategic bombers, one silo.....kaboom. And if you are relying on orbital bombardment to knock out the nukes (because ground forces will not be able to cover every landbase fast enough, even on Ocean worlds)...you've probably done almost as much damage as the nukes would have done.

They are designed to survive a first strike by a nuclear attack. Not a orbital kill strike by a space age civilisation. They got better penetrators then anything a Nuclear Age Civilisation could think off.

If you miss one submarine, they might be able to kill a 1 or 2 of your armies. Not the entire planet. The ranges are simply not high enough on the submarine missiles. If they even get the launch command off, before you kill thier military command structure.

You have enough Forces to control a entire planet. Easily enough to control a few hundred missiles silos. Especially with 1.5 where you need army to counter unrest, you now got an actuall figure on how many armies you need to control a riotous planet.

About "doing as much damage": Again, better penetrators means less secondary effects.

Also consider that Interstellar Civilisation might have anti-missile weapons as part of thier Armies. Because the enemy (regardless if Nuclear or FTL age) might throw nuclear weapons at them.

 

[Crissa]

I'd like the mechanic so that invading is a likely method for avoiding a tomb world, too, even if it would be a possible triggering event.

So that xenophiles and militarist spacefarers would have a reason to invade 'for their own safety'.

Also, there should be a chance they steal your ships and propagate to the next level ala (well, insert nearly any anime here)

Some very interesting possibilities here.

...since planets can only be owned by one 'nation' and primitives from all eras dont actually collect and use resources, or engage in even limited forms of diplomacy.

Ooo, tile blockers which are 'unfriendly cult' or somesuch. Anything could be a tile blocker, really.

Also consider that...

...Winning on the battlefield is not winning the planet or the populace. It takes a pretty advanced amount of tech to prevent a scorched-terrain outcome... And really, invading a planet should do more damage than it does now.

The point is to make narratively interesting possibilities happen.

 

[Sarius1997]

They are designed to survive a first strike by a nuclear attack. Not a orbital kill strike by a space age civilisation. They got better penetrators then anything a Nuclear Age Civilisation could think off.

You overestimate our early game weapons. The missiles of the early game for example are still nukes, not even H-bombs (which we get on tier 2), so orbital bombardment shouldn´t be able take our more than the nuke-ages primitives could themselves.

If you miss one submarine, they might be able to kill a 1 or 2 of your armies. Not the entire planet. The ranges are simply not high enough on the submarine missiles. If they even get the launch command off, before you kill thier military command structure.

Ok, then lets make the event more interesting. Have a very small chance for the nuclear armageddon, a higher chance for doing serious damage to your troops and loosing pops meanwhile, and maybe some other options too.

You have enough Forces to control a entire planet. Easily enough to control a few hundred missiles silos. Especially with 1.5 where you need army to counter unrest, you now got an actuall figure on how many armies you need to control a riotous planet.

It should be a tradeoff (if we ever get better groundinvasions). You could have three possible scenarios. Drop your units on their popcenters to shred their morale from the start, on the troop concentrations to shred their health, or on the nuke silos to prevent nukes getting used.

 

[The Founder]

You overestimate our early game weapons. The missiles of the early game for example are still nukes, not even H-bombs (which we get on tier 2), so orbital bombardment shouldn´t be able take our more than the nuke-ages primitives could themselves.

I do not overestimate them. We are in the early space age. The UNS is 200 Years ahead of that.
Those missiles are small, space capable and able to track targets at space combat speeds. And can be mass produced.
Nothing like those sluggish ICBM's we use nowadays.

 

[Cagliostro]

Not sure where people got the impression that Stellaris civs have such godlike technology. You have to send a science ship to explore your home system at the start of the game.

What Stellaris technology gives people the idea that you can utterly suppress every nuclear weapon on a planet with such ease? I mean, imagine a world more fractured than our own Earth, where rogue nuclear weapons were not a constant fear, but absolute and global reality. Is it impossible that in such a world enough weapons would be 'loose' that when aliens started corralling them that people would start setting them off? Renegade resistance sneaking them into major cities and unleashing them?

In the Doctor Who universe, Torchwood has the technology to destroy the planet as a failsafe for alien invasion - having traded for it with visiting aliens, I believe. Why is that so impossible in *this* sci-fi setting?

Or are people arguing against it just because they don't want it to happen to them...

 

[The Founder]

Not sure where people got the impression that Stellaris civs have such godlike technology. You have to send a science ship to explore your home system at the start of the game.

What Stellaris technology gives people the idea that you can utterly suppress every nuclear weapon on a planet with such ease? I mean, imagine a world more fractured than our own Earth, where rogue nuclear weapons were not a constant fear, but absolute and global reality. Is it impossible that in such a world enough weapons would be 'loose' that when aliens started corralling them that people would start setting them off? Renegade resistance sneaking them into major cities and unleashing them?

In the Doctor Who universe, Torchwood has the technology to destroy the planet as a failsafe for alien invasion - having traded for it with visiting aliens, I believe. Why is that so impossible in *this* sci-fi setting?

Or are people arguing against it just because they don't want it to happen to them...

You need like 100 nuclear explosions to even get a 25 year food production debuff*. Tomb World? Not even close.
http://www.globalzero.org/blog/how-many-nukes-would-it-take-render-earth-uninhabitable

Prior to the food rework that might have caused an issue. Now it might only cause one if you planned ot make that a food planet.

*In our pre-FTL age that is still enough to kill about 2 Billion.

 

[Cagliostro]

You need like 100 nuclear explosions to even get a 25 year food production debuff*. Tomb World? Not even close.
http://www.globalzero.org/blog/how-many-nukes-would-it-take-render-earth-uninhabitable

Prior to the food rework that might have caused an issue. Now it might only cause one if you planned ot make that a food planet.

*In our pre-FTL age that is still enough to kill about 2 Billion.

Interesting, but again, imagine a world in which there were, say, a hundred different civilizations with more than 100 nuclear weapons each. On Earth people have signed numerous treaties to keep nuclear proliferation from getting out of hand. In a world where that wasn't possible, it wouldn't be crazy if every industrialized nation had a large nuclear arsenal. Imagine if you gave every nation on Earth 100 nuclear weapons right now. Tracking them all down would be nearly impossible. It would not be crazy in such a world if someone found out there were actual aliens trying to take over the planet that a lot of those weapons would blow. Some of them might even be rigged to go off under certain circumstances.

I am not trying to say that this is the likely outcome of a Stellaris race trying to take over an Atomic Age world, but I definitely believe it is possible.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

What Stellaris technology gives people the idea that you can utterly suppress every nuclear weapon on a planet with such ease?

You can scan a planet's composition within a week and have deep space sensors that can detect the movement of objects that are lightyears away. You also have tracking systems capable of hitting objects that are moving at sub-lightspeed.

Tracking them all down would be nearly impossible.

You can scan a planet for desired mineral deposits. I assume that you can scan for quantities of plutonium and/or uranium and cross-reference that with known military installations on the planet to come up with estimations as to where the primitives store their nuclear weapons.

Also, it's not an issue of "Can the invaders destroy every nuclear weapon?" The OP asks for the possibility of Atomic Age or Early Space Age civilizations to counter the invasion with such ferocity that their own planet becomes a Tomb World.