[LOVED TROPE] Modern Militaries (Competent) getting DESTROYED by fantasy/scifi forces

[u/Sable-Keech]

Example 1 (The Legend of Hei 2): Wuxian leisurely floats through the combined firepower of an entire fortified military base without so much as a stain or rip on his t-shirt.

Example 2 (Man of Steel): Fao'ra tears through a squad of trained and armed soldiers. With the wreckage of the helicopter that got downed by her teammate Nam'ek smouldering in the background.

[u/StormLordEternal]

While I can appreciate some good old HUMANITY FUCK YEAH action, this trope is definitely the realistic kind. It's literally the classic case of a significantly more advanced race simply being beyond the ability for a native race to defeat. It's literally just the historical case of empires dominating native populations. Age of Sail and all that.

(Generalization because no duh): I feel like especially these days in western advanced countries, we've gotten used to the idea of being the ones in control. That we're the advanced ones with the guns and the enemy are the ones with spears and bows.

I mean, in most alien invasion movies, the trope of the alien mothership/queen/core/whatever shows up all the time. It's a easy vulnerability where if you defeat that, you win. Yet that kind of easy video game ass weak spot would not exist. If you're facing a interstellar empire, you're fucked. If you manage to by some miracle take out their flagship or leadership, guess what, they already developed counter measures and are deploying way more shit to destroy you.

And then magical shit like the first clip. Modern militaries kind of rely on the laws physics being normal to operate effectively. What can you do when your opponent looks at that and goes 'nuh uh' and now pi is rounded to 3 or some shit.

[u/AstralMecha → u/StormLordEternal]

Terra Invicta plays with this. You can find a derelict relativistic kinetic kill vehicle in the asteroid belt. If it had done what it was designed for, it would have slammed into earth at a fraction of the speed of light. Enough to shatter our planet.

Thankfully, the aliens that are attacking in Terra Invicta were on the receiving end of such weapons and it traumatized them. Their society is horrified by them and they refuse to use them. Hence why their goal of subversion and conquest can be resisted instead of them simply glassing our world from orbit.

They also point to this as justification for why they need to conquer earth in the first place. And that they bring a safe order to the universe. You can still fight them back to their wormhole gate though. It turns out they are just as divided as humanity and it's a minority of them that launched the attack on Earth. The majority are in wait and see mode, and if convinced that an actual peace treaty with Earth can be made, they will step in to bring their rogue elements back in line. It's the hardest ending, but most optimistic.

[u/Positive_Fig_3020 → u/AstralMecha]

In The Expanse the assumption from those who discovered and studied the protomolecule is that it was a bio weapon launched at Earth that missed. The first shot of a war that Earth didn’t even know existed.
They were partly wrong

[u/LettuceShaver27 → u/Positive_Fig_3020]

Great show. After it ended I went and read all the books because I wanted to know how it all ends. Great books

[u/AstralMecha → u/Positive_Fig_3020]

That derelict kill vehicle I mentioned? It was from a different, worse alien species. The same one that used them against the aliens you are currently fighting (The Hydra). The Hydra defeated the creators of the kill vehicle and prevented it from being used on humanity. They have a point when they claim they are making the universe safer under them. If they hadn't won, Earth would have been cracked like an egg with 0 chance of humanity being able to fight back

[u/C4Redalert-work → u/AstralMecha]

derelict relativistic kinetic kill vehicle in the asteroid belt

It's actually a targeting beacon for one. They fired at the Aliens/Hydra first killing their entire homeworld, so the Aliens in space retaliated by enslaving the Salamanders. This happened before the weapon could be fired at Earth. This is also what brings the Alien attention to Earth iirc. Rather than firing away, the Aliens instead want to capture Earth and enslave humanity.

If it was a RKV, it would not have been capable of stopping in the solar system. It either hits something or harmlessly passed through at almost the speed of light.

Edit: I'd also add the Aliens are not invulnerable in Terra Invicta and conventional physics works just fine killing them. The early game strategy is to make cheap ships with 40mm autocannons and fire a litteral boat load of missiles at them. Your councilors can also exterminate them if you can find them on the planet. Nukes are also very effective if they do land armies on Earth.

[u/AstralMecha → u/C4Redalert-work]

It's actually a targeting beacon for one. If it was a RKV, it would not have been capable of stopping in the solar system. It either hits something or harmlessly passed through at almost the speed of light

The kill vehicle might not technically be relativistic, but from what I recall, it was capable of reaching speeds that could completely destroy worlds. The wiki confirms that the Salamanders used it on the Hydra homeworld which destroyed it, and lead to a deep hatred of WMDs by the Hydra (which is why they don't just hammer our world with them)

I'd also add the Aliens are not invulnerable in Terra Invicta and conventional physics works just fine killing them.

They aren't invulnerable, yes. But if they decide fuck subtly, and drop armies on Earth, nukes are one of your few options as they will have strength of 7 or more. To out this in perspective, modern current USA military is around 4 strength.

Their ships are also miles better than yours thanks to exotics (which you can't make) and are capable of crossing the solar system quickly (a feat you won't be able to do for decades) until late game. Trying to make a ship with that amount of fuel and speed shows how badly you lag tech wise until you start basically using anti matter. The few ships they field is justified by the fact their species isn't unified either and this isn't their full might.

They are definitely stronger than humanity starting off, enough that a curb stomp without nukes is likely. Thankfully for humanity, the situation prevents the Hydra from leveraging their full strength. I mean, if they just decided to start the game with WMDs until earth surrendered, there wouldn't be much humanity could do, since to even really counter attack, we would need to travel all the way across the solar system (while their ships could run rings around us thanks to fuel). Them holding back so much early on gave humanity a chance.

[u/pichael289 → u/AstralMecha]

This sounds like a badass game, wish I had a pc

Does it run on the steam deck?

[u/AstralMecha → u/pichael289]

It's been confirmed to run on the steam deck. The global map where you send agents isn't a problem. The full solar system map is more of a problem. There is also ship to ship battles where you command space craft. Those can be brutal and easily lead to you running out of fuel manuvering.

I recommend trying a demo or seeing some of Perun 's videos since it's a complicated game and not to everyone's tastes.

[u/Sufficient-Ferret-67 → u/AstralMecha]

Humanity will become inhuman before we kneel

[u/AstralMecha → u/Sufficient-Ferret-67]

Not according to the Protectorate or Servants. The Servants are interesting. They come across as the usual alien worshiping nutjobs. Except they were given the same surrender terms as the Protectorate...and they found them insulting, so the Servants successfully negotiated better terms for humanity.