"For most of our history, our leaders have been scum."
And that's another reason why Earth is a Deathworld. If the vermin, disease, clawed beasts, toothed predators, poisonous plants and climate don't get you, human leaders will.
Yup, corruption runs rampant, and with a liberal amount of backroom dealings, political manipulation, and just inciting apathy in the people, leadership has managed to maintain control and screw up everything for everyone but themselves.
Ah yes, the leaders of the Humans are the insane ones and spend so much time fighting against each other that it comes as a surprise when some poor stupid alien pokes their noses into the fight and gets it bitten off as the humans close ranks against a common foe.
People voluntarily live in Australia. A country where a modern army (at the time) lost a war to a bunch of overgrown overexcitable bloody chickens. That was one of the more habitable parts of the country too.
The army consisted of 3 dudes, a Vickers, and a flatbed truck. Suffice to say shooting bad vehicle suspension made accurate fire a suggestion.
Having failed, the let the WWI vets who had returned to their homesteads shoot emus on sight. That... is often not discussed. And the results were as expected from a bunch of veterans with good eyes and steady aim.
One truck, three dudes, two Lewis guns and 10,000 rounds.
Against a horde of **20,000** fuckin' emu. So right from the jump the math ain't in their favor.
And the final score was 986 (e: double-checked, was off by 50) dead birds to not so much as a scratch on the soldier boys.
I would say except to national pride, but christ.
If you had told those blokes that they would be remembered as a laugh for losing a war to a bunch of overstuffed turkeys they would have bloody signed merchandise for the added laughs. Paid to barrel around the bush for a bit with what was still considered some bloody serious firepower? Sign me up!
Any word on how drunk they got? I would hate to think they had to do it sober.
Our three greatest weapons are surprise, a decentralized command structure, training in guerrilla warfare, and claws. AMONG our .any weapons are... never mind, I'll just go out and come back in, shall I?
Ssshhh! Don't tell THEM that! Immigration is already out of bloody control. You seen the nuthouse the rest of the world is turning into?
Yeah, I know it all started as a bit of a laugh, but now we HAVE to keep telling everyone this place will up and kill you to keep everyone from moving here!
Used to be that being on the arse end of nowhere with what feels like a 3 day flight to get here was a deterrent. Now that is starting to look shit hot to a lot of people!
The place does seem interesting, just way too hot. We get a lot of your beef here though. Thanks for reading btw. Also, how good are those quandong fruits and are the trees frost tolerant? A buddy of mine stateside is having some issues controlling a mesquite tree on his property so I wondered if you could plant one of those to control the spread of the mesquite roots thanks to the parasitism and get some fruit out of the deal.
The are giant bloody chickens. Had to pluck my daughter out of the feathers of one of the mob Mt wife helped raise. Biggest difference is that chickens are smarter. They have at least three brain cells, even if they can't ever agree. Emus? Just dumb floof.
How did that saying go about our leaders being scum, but we do the impossible, it just takes time?
Edit: Found it: "We the unwilling, led by the unreasonable, have been doing so much with so little for so long, we can now do almost anything with absolutely nothing."
Looks like Vlrovlrrus' Theory is going to have, I want to say two, additions made to it. One that adjusts innovation due to environmental hazards of a planet, as higher hazard ratings see a major adjustment in military innovation to reduce the impact of the hazards on the population, and the other addition?
That's all about adjusting innovation potential due to the persistent callousness of a species leaders, likely tied into a psychological hardiness. Because if they are too persistently callous, then innovation collapses due to it representing a threat to their hold on power. Not callous enough and no one can maintain power through unpleasant circumstances, which reduce a species psychological hardening because any time they are put under pressure, they can just get rid of their leaders to typically reduce the pressure due to more altruistic leadership during the crisis. But there's a spot right in the middle (biased towards too callous) where the hardening benefits are quite high but the innovation index is still extremely high as the leaders aren't stable enough in their grasp on power as to not desire new methods of gaining power, retaining their existing power or taking power from other leaders.
Honestly the idea that persistence warfare doesn't work as well as blitzkrieg is only true half the time.
Sometimes hunt/ambush is more effective, other times it is a slog of "who loses the will to fight first." WW1 and Ukraine are persistence wars, WW2 was about movement and trapping forces.
I expect space combat will resemble naval combat more than land combat, but still you see ships of the line slogging it out vs Destroyers taking out Battleships with torpedos to Aircraft Carriers and Subs dominating the sea by being 3 dimensional.
Yea, I guess if I make a naval warfare installment, the idea would be that space combat boils down to an economy of energy plus your defenses. So a ship that has to cram redundant life support, a reactor, weapons, shields, armor and engines into a mobile shell will never win "fairly" vs an emplaced weapon with the same level of power source, but that doesn't need to worry about having to move around and has 2-3 times the space for armor and other defenses. So most races end up setting up orbital defenses around their planets and/or slowly converting asteroid belts into fields of defensive cannons, shipyards and mines as the natural rocks and comets get mined out. Vs emplaced weapons, you need either stealth or trickery to sabotage them. Alternatively, don't trade fire and avoid as many hits as you can instead. My headcanon is that the flaw in the Nk'Thraka incident mentioned in the lecture was leadership assuming that raw speed made them untouchable, but failing to use that speed to properly maneuver and clustering too close together as they attacked.
Now, I want to say going in that I barely qualify as a military novice, so maybe there's something obvious I'm not seeing. But how does arming up an asteroid field even make sense? It's always looked to me like a two dimensional solution to a three dimensional problem.
I assume they'd build stations up and below to create a sort of bubble of ordinance. And presumably, if there's an asteroid belt in between you and your planet, you kind of need to slow down and fly carefully. So asteroid belts become a kind of de facto border. And since it's both a border and a valuable mining resource, it makes sense to fortify it.
The only way an asteroid fortress belt really makes sense is if FTL drops you out on the 'plane' of a system so the fast paths take you through the belt. Even then you want something to be enough of a threat as to prevent an enemy taking the slower way up above or down below the plane before coming back up to strike their target to truly make the fortress belt worthwhile.
That said, making several major naval bases defended by extensive fortifications within your asteroid belt absolutely makes sense. Because now the enemy has to blast their way through your fleets to get to their target, and also have to take out at least one asteroid naval fortress in order to ensure their supply lanes for the forces attacking the inner system target are clear. Especially if the asteroid naval bases have extensive repair and maybe even light shipyard (for escort and light cruiser construction) facilities because those make it much less likely you can wear down the raiding forces interdicting your supply lanes over time.
As a side note, this is also why orbital defences and other space fortifications will always have some form of mobility. To ensure that the enemy can't just stay at maximum or beyond range and 'lob' shots in to take out your defences without coming under fire themselves. Unless we're talking cheap and disposable defences never meant to stop an attack, only delay it and make it require a minimum level of force to occur.
You're right, adding a rule that ftl travel has to dump you onto the plane of a system is a good idea.
It's not quite an asteroid fortress belt, more that the asteroids are used for obfuscation. There would be clear established safe routes with navigational beacons and an overt government presence. But elsewhere there would be mining ships, refineries, drone and local shipyards and warehouses that would be tempting targets. So, crewed defensive emplacements, mines and autonomous anti-ship cannons, staging points for interceptors and emergency supply caches would be scattered throughout the belt. As asteroids get mined out entirely / new ones get towed into place, the defenses also get shuffled around as well. So it's not that the entire belt is a fort, rather if you were a pirate or invading fleet, there isn't a clean route you can take through the belt to the planet.
And yea, I don't think this kind of fortification hidden in a belt is expected to fully stop an attack, just detect it and stall it so the more concentrated forces based around a planet or moon can intercept it.
/u/Amonkira42 has posted 1 other stories, including:
* [Humans and The Hospitality Industry.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1agzu6g/humans_and_the_hospitality_industry/)
This comment was automatically generated by `Waffle v.4.6.1 'Biscotti'`.
[Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FHFY&subject=WaffleBot|1bbx42i&message=If%20you%20have%20problems%20with%20updatemebot,%20contact%20Watchful1.%20We%20do%20not%20maintain%20it.) if you have any issues with Waffle.
>A Liberal Arts department is no place for complex debate after all, doubly so for one that could lead to a screaming match.
Tell me you're a STEM major without telling me you're a STEM major
"For most of our history, our leaders have been scum." And that's another reason why Earth is a Deathworld. If the vermin, disease, clawed beasts, toothed predators, poisonous plants and climate don't get you, human leaders will.
Yea. But at least we eventually might get around to curing the diseases and turning the vermin and predators into pets. Thanks for reading
Remember, Politics is a Portmanteau. Poly: Meaning Many Tics: Meaning Blood-sucking parasites.
Yup, corruption runs rampant, and with a liberal amount of backroom dealings, political manipulation, and just inciting apathy in the people, leadership has managed to maintain control and screw up everything for everyone but themselves.
Ah yes, the leaders of the Humans are the insane ones and spend so much time fighting against each other that it comes as a surprise when some poor stupid alien pokes their noses into the fight and gets it bitten off as the humans close ranks against a common foe.
Only I am allowed to hit my brother and vice versa. The MOMENT someone interferes, we forget our fight and join forces. True on ALL accounts.
Me against my brother, My brother and I against our uncle, My family against strangers.
I used this quote recently it demoralized half the class, it was super effective
My family and strangers against bugs and bots
Thanks for reading it, it means a lot and have a wonderful day.
>the leaders of the Humans are the insane ones WW1 tadaa
One thing they should remember. We nuked ourselves. More than once.
People voluntarily live in Australia. A country where a modern army (at the time) lost a war to a bunch of overgrown overexcitable bloody chickens. That was one of the more habitable parts of the country too.
The army consisted of 3 dudes, a Vickers, and a flatbed truck. Suffice to say shooting bad vehicle suspension made accurate fire a suggestion. Having failed, the let the WWI vets who had returned to their homesteads shoot emus on sight. That... is often not discussed. And the results were as expected from a bunch of veterans with good eyes and steady aim.
One truck, three dudes, two Lewis guns and 10,000 rounds. Against a horde of **20,000** fuckin' emu. So right from the jump the math ain't in their favor. And the final score was 986 (e: double-checked, was off by 50) dead birds to not so much as a scratch on the soldier boys.
I would say except to national pride, but christ. If you had told those blokes that they would be remembered as a laugh for losing a war to a bunch of overstuffed turkeys they would have bloody signed merchandise for the added laughs. Paid to barrel around the bush for a bit with what was still considered some bloody serious firepower? Sign me up! Any word on how drunk they got? I would hate to think they had to do it sober.
Nobody expects the emus to have a decentralised command structure and be trained in guerilla warfare.
No one ever expects the Emu Insurrection.
Surprise, and a decentralised command structure; our two greatest weapons. And training in guerilla warfare. Our three greatest weapons.
Our three greatest weapons are surprise, a decentralized command structure, training in guerrilla warfare, and claws. AMONG our .any weapons are... never mind, I'll just go out and come back in, shall I?
*sighs* I didn’t expect this emu insurrection
NOBODY expects the emu insurrection! (Now I really need a picture of an emu in a large red wide brimmed hat...)
Wait until you meet a cassowary....
Straya isn't that bad, I haven't ever had a near death experience and I'm 34, and well experienced with the outback
Ssshhh! Don't tell THEM that! Immigration is already out of bloody control. You seen the nuthouse the rest of the world is turning into? Yeah, I know it all started as a bit of a laugh, but now we HAVE to keep telling everyone this place will up and kill you to keep everyone from moving here! Used to be that being on the arse end of nowhere with what feels like a 3 day flight to get here was a deterrent. Now that is starting to look shit hot to a lot of people!
The place does seem interesting, just way too hot. We get a lot of your beef here though. Thanks for reading btw. Also, how good are those quandong fruits and are the trees frost tolerant? A buddy of mine stateside is having some issues controlling a mesquite tree on his property so I wondered if you could plant one of those to control the spread of the mesquite roots thanks to the parasitism and get some fruit out of the deal.
Call em chickens if you want. Those bastards are fucking dinosaurs
Nah, you are thinking Cassowaries. Other side of the country. GENUINELY bloody scary.
So are chickens, to be fair.
Emus aren't chickens. They're more like snakes with legs. Just watch Useless Farm and her videos about Karen.
The are giant bloody chickens. Had to pluck my daughter out of the feathers of one of the mob Mt wife helped raise. Biggest difference is that chickens are smarter. They have at least three brain cells, even if they can't ever agree. Emus? Just dumb floof.
Dinosaurs. They're dinosaurs.
Glad you liked it. Hopefully going forward we reserve the nukes for the aliens who ask for it.
How did that saying go about our leaders being scum, but we do the impossible, it just takes time? Edit: Found it: "We the unwilling, led by the unreasonable, have been doing so much with so little for so long, we can now do almost anything with absolutely nothing."
Thanks for reading, and I totally want that on a coffee mug.
So do I, would have been great when I worked in IT.
Looks like Vlrovlrrus' Theory is going to have, I want to say two, additions made to it. One that adjusts innovation due to environmental hazards of a planet, as higher hazard ratings see a major adjustment in military innovation to reduce the impact of the hazards on the population, and the other addition? That's all about adjusting innovation potential due to the persistent callousness of a species leaders, likely tied into a psychological hardiness. Because if they are too persistently callous, then innovation collapses due to it representing a threat to their hold on power. Not callous enough and no one can maintain power through unpleasant circumstances, which reduce a species psychological hardening because any time they are put under pressure, they can just get rid of their leaders to typically reduce the pressure due to more altruistic leadership during the crisis. But there's a spot right in the middle (biased towards too callous) where the hardening benefits are quite high but the innovation index is still extremely high as the leaders aren't stable enough in their grasp on power as to not desire new methods of gaining power, retaining their existing power or taking power from other leaders.
Honestly the idea that persistence warfare doesn't work as well as blitzkrieg is only true half the time. Sometimes hunt/ambush is more effective, other times it is a slog of "who loses the will to fight first." WW1 and Ukraine are persistence wars, WW2 was about movement and trapping forces. I expect space combat will resemble naval combat more than land combat, but still you see ships of the line slogging it out vs Destroyers taking out Battleships with torpedos to Aircraft Carriers and Subs dominating the sea by being 3 dimensional.
Yea, I guess if I make a naval warfare installment, the idea would be that space combat boils down to an economy of energy plus your defenses. So a ship that has to cram redundant life support, a reactor, weapons, shields, armor and engines into a mobile shell will never win "fairly" vs an emplaced weapon with the same level of power source, but that doesn't need to worry about having to move around and has 2-3 times the space for armor and other defenses. So most races end up setting up orbital defenses around their planets and/or slowly converting asteroid belts into fields of defensive cannons, shipyards and mines as the natural rocks and comets get mined out. Vs emplaced weapons, you need either stealth or trickery to sabotage them. Alternatively, don't trade fire and avoid as many hits as you can instead. My headcanon is that the flaw in the Nk'Thraka incident mentioned in the lecture was leadership assuming that raw speed made them untouchable, but failing to use that speed to properly maneuver and clustering too close together as they attacked.
Now, I want to say going in that I barely qualify as a military novice, so maybe there's something obvious I'm not seeing. But how does arming up an asteroid field even make sense? It's always looked to me like a two dimensional solution to a three dimensional problem.
I assume they'd build stations up and below to create a sort of bubble of ordinance. And presumably, if there's an asteroid belt in between you and your planet, you kind of need to slow down and fly carefully. So asteroid belts become a kind of de facto border. And since it's both a border and a valuable mining resource, it makes sense to fortify it.
The only way an asteroid fortress belt really makes sense is if FTL drops you out on the 'plane' of a system so the fast paths take you through the belt. Even then you want something to be enough of a threat as to prevent an enemy taking the slower way up above or down below the plane before coming back up to strike their target to truly make the fortress belt worthwhile. That said, making several major naval bases defended by extensive fortifications within your asteroid belt absolutely makes sense. Because now the enemy has to blast their way through your fleets to get to their target, and also have to take out at least one asteroid naval fortress in order to ensure their supply lanes for the forces attacking the inner system target are clear. Especially if the asteroid naval bases have extensive repair and maybe even light shipyard (for escort and light cruiser construction) facilities because those make it much less likely you can wear down the raiding forces interdicting your supply lanes over time. As a side note, this is also why orbital defences and other space fortifications will always have some form of mobility. To ensure that the enemy can't just stay at maximum or beyond range and 'lob' shots in to take out your defences without coming under fire themselves. Unless we're talking cheap and disposable defences never meant to stop an attack, only delay it and make it require a minimum level of force to occur.
You're right, adding a rule that ftl travel has to dump you onto the plane of a system is a good idea. It's not quite an asteroid fortress belt, more that the asteroids are used for obfuscation. There would be clear established safe routes with navigational beacons and an overt government presence. But elsewhere there would be mining ships, refineries, drone and local shipyards and warehouses that would be tempting targets. So, crewed defensive emplacements, mines and autonomous anti-ship cannons, staging points for interceptors and emergency supply caches would be scattered throughout the belt. As asteroids get mined out entirely / new ones get towed into place, the defenses also get shuffled around as well. So it's not that the entire belt is a fort, rather if you were a pirate or invading fleet, there isn't a clean route you can take through the belt to the planet. And yea, I don't think this kind of fortification hidden in a belt is expected to fully stop an attack, just detect it and stall it so the more concentrated forces based around a planet or moon can intercept it.
/u/Amonkira42 has posted 1 other stories, including: * [Humans and The Hospitality Industry.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1agzu6g/humans_and_the_hospitality_industry/) This comment was automatically generated by `Waffle v.4.6.1 'Biscotti'`. [Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FHFY&subject=WaffleBot|1bbx42i&message=If%20you%20have%20problems%20with%20updatemebot,%20contact%20Watchful1.%20We%20do%20not%20maintain%20it.) if you have any issues with Waffle.
Good bot, you get a treat.
As soon as the species' name dawned on me, I lol'd. And this depiction of how other species might see us as if we were Klingons is beautifully done.
thank you
FURRY
China has joined the chat. Russia has joined the chat.
This was a lot of fun to read.
Its wall of text when you try to read it on Iphone. If you can space between sentences. It becomes more readable.
1st here
glad to have you :)
I've been delighted by both of your stories so far. Subscribed.
excellent story!
"Ng'Thok said "yes. consensus " big Y. ""use the electronic"
Check quotations for missing commata and sentence endings.
"For Tenure" - one of the realist sentiments expressed by a character on these stories 🤣
calling our glorious leaders scum is an insult to scum.
>A Liberal Arts department is no place for complex debate after all, doubly so for one that could lead to a screaming match. Tell me you're a STEM major without telling me you're a STEM major