Discussion
Topic: Books
So in a lot of space military sci-fi, whenever there's an invading force of some kind, they often advance slowly into "human space", starting at the edges/borders and moving inward. Does this actually make sense in a universe with things like slippage and hyperspace travel?
Road Master
in
Sci Fi Spot
3 comments
Connor Veenstra 🤷♂️ Not sure what slippage is, but I know I’d wanna make a slower entrance into enemy territory. Coming out of hyperspace directly into a planet’s gravity without time to adjust or coming up right next to an enemy ship with no time to survey the battlefield and plan my tactics? Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
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Road Master Slippage is supposed to be slipspace. I got autocorrected.
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Road Master I'm talking about larger scale than that. Take Halo for example. Humans have hundreds of planets, spread across hundreds or even thousands of lightyears of space. The Covenant continuously attacked the outermost planets/systems and gradually worked their way deeper into human space. Instead, would it make more sense to get an idea of the boundaries of human space, then use slipspace to bypass the outer systems that aren't really strategically important and head straight for the much more important inner planets?
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David Rachau The way I've seen it explained when that is the case is that the innermost core worlds are much better defended, and the invaders are either trying to spread the human forces thin enough to break through, or are so alien that they may not even recognize the humans as a threat, and are just going at their own pace, regardless of what humans consider their borders. Or, maybe, they're just doing raids to weaken political support, to get some kind of concessions from the human government, and a full invasion isn't even a goal. I've seen so many different scenarios in the books I've read, that the reasons could be nearly endless. But, realistically, it's a great way to build tension in the narrative. 😁
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Road Master For your 1st point, I could accept that to a point. Hit the border worlds enough time to spread out the forces. But at some point, you would need to capitalize on that. Once you knock down the outer planets and start closing in around the core worlds, you would be consolidating those same forces again.
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Road Master It certainly does that.
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lizard I kinda love how starship troopers subverts this by implying the “bug attack” just be a stray meteor that hit earth, seeing as the bugs are literally across the galaxy
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Road Master I think it may have been more than that. I think it was suggesting that the fascist Earth government did it. "Attack" Earth and, through some heavy handed propaganda, drum up demand and excitement for war. I haven't read the book. But the movie is very much a satire of fascism and hypermilitarism.
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lizard oh yes I agree about how fascist propaganda twisted the narrative in order to warmonger, but I couldn’t remember whether the meteorite was a natural phenomena or if earth attacked itself
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