Super war

[Corebrute23]

Having recently reread the Codex Alera books, I came to an idea. In the book, almost everyone has some degree of super powers (in that case everyone had some kind of elemental control), and there was a huge difference between how they fought and handled themselves and a modern army would, as they had to take into account all these factors.

So I thought, what if an event like an EVO outbreak or Wild Card event, or Marvel comics Earth X occurred? What if every baseline human was either killed or given super powers? And then, what if that effect was just the first wave? What if it signaled the start of an invasion?

I came up with a campaign premise that 9 years ago the world was just like in a Marvel or DC comic book world, with normal and supers, of a variety of origins. Then the event occurs, and all surviving people have the chance to be heroes or villains. But then the aliens block out the sun.

The solar powered non-copyright infringing paragon shot of into the sky to save him, but he also was held back by saving thousands from the alien ships sent to invade. Finally the mother ship exploded in a ball of fire. But the great paragon, had expanded all his energy to do this act, and became a self-perpetuating sun. Each day a person looks into the sky, they can see the greatest sacrifice of earth’s greatest hero.

But there are two new enemies. The world’s greatest mastermind *cough*Dr Doom/Dr Destroyer/etc *cough* chose that moment to fight the world’s greatest malevolent sentient AI *cough* Talos/Ultron/Mechanon etc *cough*. The battle itself is a secret of a history. But the result is common knowledge. The winner cannibalized the loser, and now a new threat exists-a cyborg amalgamation of these two evil villains. And it has decided to ‘share’ it’s new state of existence with the world.

Creating mechanized monstrosities with both genetic engineering and cybernetics, it’s greatest threats is called the NETWORK. Taking the last baseline humans, and keeping them in a sealed area, they have their brains hooked up to a wireless server. These brains control a variety of different autonomous units like a video game, but adults have difficulty moving from one machine to another, without dying. Children lack that issue.

The second enemy is a cult focused on a monstrosity from another dimension. At the time of the outbreak, minor cults and the remnants of larger mystical organizations performed a mass suicide-sacrifice to their god. And it was very pleased. At the end of the war they have a new existence. Spread the word of the unholy one. And kill the disbelievers. With all manner of twisted magic and demons at their beck and call they are a real threat.

Worst of all, the aliens are still around. Every five years they invade again. And the next one is coming up soon.

My question is, presume all remaining supers (villain and hero is no longer a distinction they can afford) join the military. Presume all variety of powers exist, but most are between 6-8 PL, and the all-powerful supers do not exist anymore. How would a completely super powered military actually operate?

Would you send in the first wave incredibly tough soldiers, or super speedsters to get a headstart? Who do we keep in the backrow, the energy blasters or the super geniuses? How does invisibility fit into this? And on a march and pressed for choice, who do you take with you, the bio-kinetic, the precognitive or the plant controller who can keep the army well fed wherever they are?

Basically I want to know how war and military would change (in your opinion) if both sides were super powered or you had all super powered against robots, magic or even aliens? What becomes the most valuable powerset.
Anyone ever done such a campaign before? How did that go?

[Captain Werewolf]

That's actually a *very* interesting question, and one I'm not sure there's an adequate answer to.

You would have to figure out what powers were around, how common they were, and how powerful they were. Military history is full of "game breakers"; horses, the gatling gun, the atom bomb, the fighter jet, steel weapons, the catapult, even castle walls... they all fundamentally changed the way that war worked, and it usually took at least a generation to find the counter-strategy that shut them down.

What's the variety of powers that you're working with? Also, what's the end goal of the warring factions? If they just want to kill everyone else, then offensive power would be the most useful. But If they want the enemy's land, resources, people, buildings, etc., then they'll need less destructive methods.

Right now, armies need food, fuel, training, support, ammunition, supplies, water, machinery, personnel, and technology. For each of those real-life concerns, I can think of at least a dozen superheroes in Marvel and DC who "break" that part of the equation (especially matter manipulators like Firestorm or Metamorpho).

[mrdent12]

In general, there is no one powerset that would dominate. A precog would be great at predicting the enemies moves, but fail at doing anything about them without help if the enemy was a powerhouse or any other super for that matter. Likewise, a powerhouse would demolish quite a few armies, but be floored by a single mentalist without some mental defense. You can also imagine a teleporter being quite powerful as well. The ability to teleport in from who knows where, drop a really powerful bomb, and teleport out is pretty ridiculous. All the powers have their strengths and weaknesses for war use.

I guess the best powerset would be a nullifier. He could nullify the supers of the opposing forces letting his own supers run wild and demolish the opposing force. There really is no right answer though. Even PL 6-8 super heroes can be really deadly. It would all come down to who had the right combination of supers at the right place at the right time.

[mattador]

There really is no right answer though. Even PL 6-8 super heroes can be really deadly. It would all come down to who had the right combination of supers at the right place at the right time.

Agreed. Large-scale war would be overwhelmingly chaotic and unpredictable. Broken down into smaller skirmishes, each individual battle could basically be about figuring out the particular powerset needed to overtake a particular position or leader.

Battlefield 1: Is led by an alien leader that can see the future, and has been able to outflank/outmaneuver every attack upon him. There may be a low-ranking soldier whose only power is Immunity: Precognition, that you need to strap a bomb to and sneak him into the compound.

Battlefield 2: may be a bunch of mimics that copy the powers of attackers. Sneak in someone with a fatal vulnerability to Kryptonite that they don't know about.

Battlefield 3: Might be a temple resistant to teleportation, phasing, remote sensing, astral travel, dimension travel, etc. Only the devout of the cultists are allowed in. So a psychic may have to mental transform a group of soldiers into devout evil cultists. Then a second group has to capture the first group of evil cultists so that they can be debriefed and transformed back (if possible).

Lots of possibilities to work with. Sounds like a daunting project.

[insaniac99]

the super-intelligence would probably be kept in the back making new gear, be long away from the fight.

If there are precogs on both sides, then battles might actually play out as giant games of chess if they are powerful enough, the governments meeting with the precogs competing to deal with millions of variables and playing chess with the battleplans. or they might be sitting back at the base constantly radioing new orders to counter things they see. Low level precogs would be placed with squads to protect from ambushes and snipers.

[NightJim]

Also the most obvious thing is how quickly the powers are accepted into the military. Big Brains would be put to work in R&D practically straight away. Blasters and Bruisers are pretty easy to fit into how military tactics already work.

The other powersets would probably take more time while the startegists got used to the idea of having them about. However, nothing to stop them being assigned to squads, just not part of actual planning for a while.

[Unbeliever]

"Godlike" is a game that takes this as its premise set in WWII. There, "talents" (their names for people w/ powers) are like tanks -- they counter each other. But, that's in part due to the features of their rules. And, also they are still relatively rare, and, further, tend to have narrowly described powers. So, guy who can generate fire from his hands is dangerous, but a well-placed .45 round still kills him. Possibly worth looking into, though, as the world is quite vivid.

[Corebrute23]

This is weird...a superhero wargame.
http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=45184


Maybe I can use this for inspiration about how to arrange battles if i ever do this kind of game.

[Belial666]

Greater Touchsight Ranged, Increased Range 10, Penetrating, Rapid 5, Accurate touch sense.
Molecular Instability: Damage 8, Cloud Area, Secondary Effect, Perception Range, Penetrating, Indirect 4, Subtle 2.

The above power duo only costs 74 points, well within the capabilities of a PL 8 guy. it allows you to do the following;

1) Extend your perception anywhere within 200 million miles or so (anywhere within the inner solar system), regardless of any barriers or attempts at concealment. Immunity does not work vs this effect as it offers no resistance roll.
2) Focus your senses at 100.000 different locations simultaneously without being overwhelmed by the information.
3) Send a really damaging invisible blast with no apparent origin anywhere you can sense, regardless of intervening barriers, that always hits and cannot be dodged, that damages affected targets four times over 4 rounds.


Available tactics with the powerset;

a) Scan the solar system for the enemy leader. Then initiate a blast within his chest cavity.
b) Notice even the fastest teleporting enemy ships long before they arrive. (extended teleport 20 moves you 4 million miles per round so 50 rounds of warning for the fastest possible enemy) Then send explosions inside their reactor chambers or their command bridges.
c) Find enemy production facilities. Then bomb the hell out of them.

[Captain Werewolf]

This is weird...a superhero wargame.
http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=45184


Maybe I can use this for inspiration about how to arrange battles if i ever do this kind of game.

Maybe, but I don't think it's worth the effort. I used to play HC, but got tired of it once I realized how divorced the mechanics were from the characters' skills and tactics in the comics. It's not a bad game, but it's about as close to a simulation of super-powered battle as playing chess with pieces sculpted to look like the Justice League.

[Rabbitman]

For the reasons mentioned earlier, anyone with Affects Others style buffs would probably be cornerstones of any sort of tactical military set-up, if you have a unit of Bricks with a weakness to psychic attacks, put a defensive psychic in the squad to shield the others from mental attacks and vice-versa.

The key to successful strategy in a war with so many variables would probably be mixed units so as to prevent the enemy from effectively nullifying or countering entire chunks of your forces.

[Doctor Devious]

I have a vague memory of a Stephen Donaldson run of books which had at its core the concept that "wham blam" power isn't the same as actual power. The big bad wasn't the big bad as it were - rather a common comic trope; but done well. Politics and being in the right-place-right-time, even economics, had more sway than simple "power".

The snag with an all-supers world is a fundamental one: what happens to society / the economy? This will depend on the range and PL of powers available, but you can see supers invalidating whole industries: mining; power generation; medicine; high-tech; even insurance (minor precogs) and they are history. The last Torchwood had its ups and downs, but even there - with just the one power spread about - the near-collapse of the world ensued. Almost all jobs will become pointless, so what will people do? Will any corporations; the military (are they any different...?); religions; personal wealth and even any sense of nationality still be viable? Will the existence of a tonne of hi-tech plus powers push/require society to have greater mutual understanding, or will the world quickly decay into a multiplicity of robber-baron fiefdoms, as large-scale set-ups become just so easy to bring down? Will a few truly mega powered types take over and install a super-powered cold war where satellites monitor for all power usages of certain types or above certain PLs and 'government' agents appear almost instantly when they do; where certain powers are restricted; where all kids are tested (by restricted-power gov. psi-specialists) for sociopathic tendencies and those with them either weaponised or executed.

And then you've got the aliens and so on too.

Rather a lot to mull over: but I think an attempt to apply such to current-age society will likely end up quite iron-age in style.

[hellica]

Hi, Sorry if this gets like, didactic and preachy but my degree is in War and Strategic studies.

The big thing to think about in any war is that the ultimate point of it all is Political... "war is simply the continuation of politics with the addition of other (violent) means".

So.... When thinking abuot super war, you have think about how viable the use of superpowers are to not just the battlefield, but the psychological effect on the enemy to get them to give in to your political will.

While like, one man can be very powerful, can he ever really make the difference in the face of a fully fledged state? As the guy above me (sorry forgot your name while writing this) cleverly points out, thing like economics etc is probably just as important as genuine hard power. As is culture and willpower.

Look at the war in afghanistan against the taliban and Al Qaeda, a superhero is kinda going to be similar to a predator drone strike, you make a strike, kill a few people, and then it makes little difference. Tactical level success isn't the real best use for a superhuman really. Or at least the tactical success isn't the real important part, it doesn't necessarily win you the war.

The real strategic utility of a superperson (unless we're taking superman level) is probably going to be more for the intimidation factor rather than to perform an actual operational objective. superpeople will have a more dramatic effect on the war by affecting the enemies morale than by performing a tactical mission well. Though of course, a superperson can of course, have a chance of doing something like taking the enemy head of state hostage more easily than troops will, but that isn't really different to sending ground troops in anyway.

I'm sure this has been entirely unhelpful But i just had to write it.

[Belial666]

I kinda disagree with this analysis and a few posts above for several reasons;

Superpowers are innate abilities.
They can't be directly bought, shared or mass-produced. Thus a very great part of various economic systems simply does not apply to them. Also, most superpowers don't need money to use like technology does so the power of their wielders is not based on or affected by economic factors of any sort.
Superpowers negate concepts of society.
Borders are nothing to a teleporter, flier or super-speedster. Secrets are nothing to a psion, empath or farseer. Mortal weapons are irrelevant to a man of steel, energy being or spirit. Identity and surveillance are nothing to the invisible or the shapeshifter. Property is irrelevant to a conjuror or a transmuter. Free will and laws can be casually ignored by a mind-bender.
Superpowers make men unequal.
When a man can perform anything about three times as well as the average human, they become olympic champions, genius scientists, great singers and actors and so on. The least superpowers typically allow a superhuman to perform dozens of times as well as a human. The greatest superpowers allow for thousands of times the difference. If the world already treats exceptional humans very favorably (sometimes to the point of deification), how would it treat the vastly better superhumans? And how would those superhumans view themselves in comparison to humans?

[hellica]

The concern isn't so much how economics etc affects the superpowered so much as how the superpowered affect the political landscape.

I don;t know what kind of level of power is being discussed here, so it's a bit hard to judge.

The question that is probably most important is whether they are powerful enough that force of the state is or is not at threat to them to make them have to serve. Obviously, someone like Superman does not have anything to fear from a state in all likelihood, tbh, he is a singular actor, as powerful as any state.

But that doesn't seem to be the case in discussion, it sounds more like xmen kind of powers, which would be far easier to control and weaponise by a government. Hell, in the face of alien invasion, you would probably have them lining up to fight for you.

But the alien race will be dominated by their own politics. The trick to beating them would be in finding their centre of gravity... the axis on which their agenda/command/structure lies. Someone mentioned a scanner character who could assasinate the alien leader. Now, while probably not exactly counterproductive, the question you have to ask is whether the leader is massively important, or just someone who can be replaced. Obviously, a decision for the GM.

Obviously, taking o ut the leader is something that could be done with conventional forces (not in that situation I admit) and the outcome would be the same. The difference between having superhumans available and unavailable is really just a question of ends and means. The means are greater so more is possible, but at the bottom line, the choices made are going to be based on the same logic. War really never changed in its ultimate "grammar", the only thing that can change is the context.