Super war

[hellica]

Ok, sorry I misread the first post. I thought the aliens were the threat, not a cult and a supervillain.

The thing is though, that the political analysis still applies. The political target of the Supervillain led enemy is going to be the actual leaders as they are teh driving force behind the movement. The cult on the other hand is like as not to factor into the other idea, the Al Qaeda type "organisation" which is likely decentralised enough that their political heart is difficult to identify, and are as such more likely to be a resilient organisation.

The fact that superhumans are involved here doesnt change the objectives at each stage, but merely the likelihood of operational success. It isn't so much a game changer, as you don't really see any real game changers (most theorists and statesmen have a hard time admitting even airplanes and nuclear weapons as being genuine game changers in warfare). The concern should really just be about the tactical level. But Tactics all come down to the same principle in the end " put as much force in one area and you are more likely to succeed".

[Belial666]

Political considerations only apply when the attacker has a use for you where politics are a factor. But in a case of a war of annihilation -or any other conflict where subjugation/eradication of the enemy is the ultimate goal and the ideological differences are great enough that a diplomatic agreement cannot be reached- targeting leaders is usually counter-productive.

In a major conflict, you seek to do the greatest damage possible, with the fewest options of recovery for the enemy, for the minimum possible expense. If you want to really make your point, you don't bother assassinating an enemy leader where he can become a martyr and other leaders get to be elected. You bomb a few nuclear power plants and let the enemy deal with the massive fallout. You explode a gigaton-level nuke in the Earth's magnetic "shields" over the enemy's country, the resulting EMP frying unshielded devices over half the continent. You unleash a bioweapon tailored for the enemy nation's specific genetic identity on a few major airports.


Regarding the way Supers can change such a war, here's a PL10 paragon of mine;
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=42799&p=923099#p923099

If you take her to a normal battlefield, she's only as powerful as a battleship or so. But why would a Superman-type character (even a relatively low-powered one) allow herself to be engaged via conventional forces at all? She flies to mid-orbit and starts frying enemy sattelites one by one. Within the hour, the enemy's long-range strategic and tactical networks are down.
Then she flies into the stratosphere and begins long-range dismantelement of enemy assets. Even with a Rank 10 speed, a typical paragon or speedster can double-move at Mach 6. There's no current tech projectile weapon that can shoot her at that speed; bullets are at most mach 2, and even anti-air missiles are Mach 5. With Rank 12 speed, she double-moves at Mach 24 so you can just forget about it.
For the real kicker, she picks up big rocks, flies them into orbit then lets them drop onto enemy cities. A rock free-falling for 20 minutes under slightly less than 1 g acceleration will hit at over 5 miles per second. It will impact with the same explosive force as ten times its mass in TNT. So a rock 25 ft across (1000 tons) hits with about the explosive energy of the Hiroshima bomb if it falls from orbit. A typical paragon can lift that much into orbit. This gal can lift 25 thousand tons, resulting in 1/4 megaton impacts. Superman could lift 400 thousand tons -sixteen times as much-, resulting in 4-megaton impacts.





A single Paragon with 1/16 the power of Superman could beat a current world "superpower" country in a day. Now imagine a few dozen of those guys and gals fighting on each side of the war.

[hellica]

Politics is ALWAYS consideration.

how is a war of anihilation different? it is a political goal to annihilate. Not to mention, why the hell would someone actually want to annihilate you? You see practically none in history. A handful of genocides have occured, but generally over a political struggle. Sudan, Rwanda etc were all about control of the administrative infrastructure.

And you point about "why would a superhuman engage normal forces"... Is that important over a war?. A superwar would mean that there is going to be superhumans on each side.... ergo... it balances out. Nothing has changed. The "conventional" forces would likely be sidelined while the supers battled it out, and they can't really avoid each other. The weapons have gone up in terms of entertainment, but strategically things have remained the same.

All I'm saying throughout this is that it isn't a gamechanger to have superhumans. Not really anyway. Someone without superhumans wouldn't be able to beat the other in all likelihood, but thats just like saying the guy with the UAVs has the advantage. Hell, UAvs ae very hard to engage with conventional forces. Like... a couple have ever been shot down. Hell, planes are hard to deal with without other planes or specialist weapons. So is that much different to superhumans being mostly immune to conventional forces?

In a major conflict, you seek to do the greatest damage possible, with the fewest options of recovery for the enemy, for the minimum possible expense. If you want to really make your point, you don't bother assassinating an enemy leader where he can become a martyr and other leaders get to be elected. You bomb a few nuclear power plants and let the enemy deal with the massive fallout. You explode a gigaton-level nuke in the Earth's magnetic "shields" over the enemy's country, the resulting EMP frying unshielded devices over half the continent. You unleash a bioweapon tailored for the enemy nation's specific genetic identity on a few major airports.

You just described here what I was saying. The bit about "making your point" etc shows political awareness. I was saying that whether assasination would work or not would be situational. The situation being the agenda of the enemy and their structure. Their politics. In this case you're arguing it won't make a difference, so you go for something REALLY big. That's calculating the military means necessary for the political end.

The war of annihilaton is a political objective.. You've decided you have need to do it. No one goes wipes out someone else for giggles.

Targettig individual genetic code etc, is politically aware. You're avoiding killing anyone you don't want to. Destroying their electronics is to stop them being able to resist by ***deleted*** up their ability to resist. When you have military superiority you can basically just tell them how it is going to be. You seem to be taking away that I'm saying the increased force of superhumans and powers doesn't make a difference. Im not, I'm saying it doesn't make a difference in the core of what warfare is.

[Belial666]

It all comes down back to cost. War is usually costly. It takes up a ridiculous amount of resources and people to the point that you must cripple your economy and starve your population -let alone losing a good portion of it- in order to beat an equal or near-equal enemy. Without weapons of mass destruction it takes months, even years of war to defeat an equal, sometimes decades. And thus waging war is a political decision due to its huge drawbacks, its effects upon your own country, the money you lose, the political unrest with those that disagree with the war and so on and so forth; you have to consider your goals vs those resources and decide on your course of action.

But suppose you got a hundred superheroes on each side. With mundane weapons being mostly useless against them, the outcome of the war is the outcome of the fight of those heroes. And that fight? It costs nothing to your economy for them to use their powers. It costs you no resources or food or hundreds of thousands of people needing to be sent to fight. And it is still a couple hundred people fighting instead of a couple hundred million; the fight will take minutes, hours, maybe a days. By the time anyone's political leaders have just decided to get together to talk, the war will essentially be won or lost. No time for a media circus, no time for the population to analyze and respond to any government's decision.

And OK, you just won and your supersoldiers rule the high orbitals. Merely bothering to write up the peace treaty, let alone convincing them to sign will take more of a bother, more time, more effort (personal on your government or political) than simply erasing the loser's country. Because hey, having a half dozen paragons pick up big rocks for six hours only costs you one phonecall, a minute of your time to confirm the order and no money whatsoever (except for what you spend for the phonecall) to let 200 nuke-equivalents dropped on the enemy. In a fight with superpowers, it is almost always faster, simpler and cheaper to annihilate the enemy than use any type of diplomacy, let alone occupation, forming a vassal state/protectorate and the like.


So what reason is there not to annihilate the enemy?

[hellica]

But I think you may be looking at the term politics from a different angle than me. You ever done any study of it? I'm not trying to be like "oh, you havent studied so my view is instantly superior to yours" or anything, but I'm thinking the way i view it is a bit different.

My background is in international politics etc and specifically millitary strategy etc.

And from reading alot on the subject for years I've got a view of war that is a bit different from most people.

I'm not talking abuot politics like elections and tax breaks etc. I'm more going from the power politics kind of model.

A group or state goes to war because it wants something. What it wants is defined by the decision makers, your politicians etc. Then the miltary works out how to get it. The use of force has to be in line exactly with the objective in mind. This is the political analysis.
Force itself, the act of violence is required for war to work. War is obviously about kicking the shit out of the other side. But, it' kicking the shit out of the other guy in such a way as to get specifically what you want. You link battles together to disarm the enemy so you can do what you want with them. If they can’t resist you they can be dealt with as you wish.
You can’t really change that part of the equation. It has never been different. Someone is always in charge.
The pure annihilation model is basically, something that isn’t likely to happen except in terms of alien invasion. Which isn’t even the focus of the setting in question anyway. Even annihilation though, the decision to do it at least, is a political question. Would superpeople go off to full scale war without being asked? Probably not, if they did they are supervillains and that really is your standard superhero story. There must be need to do it before anyone undertakes it. Now, this is where your point about war being costly is quite pertinent. But, unless your enemy is apocalyptic in its objective and there is no other way to stop them, you are going to end up with alot of people dead on each side, civilians etc, which is going to be regarded as a cost.
Not to mention, you go to war to annihilate one enemy, and there are more groups out there, are they going to sit by an watch genocide? They are likely to think they may be next. You could find yourself facing down a large coalition of enemies, all with their own super people. The battle ensues, and they enforce their will on you after you’re left defenceless. Therefore, it would be politically not useful to annihilate in MOST situations.
It is only when you’re dealing with aliens etc that it is politically viable to annihilate. That is what I mean by it being based on political context.

I think we’re really saying very similar things, but in different terms.

The vassal state thing aswell, is massively expensive. So that will have enormous administrative costs. That has to be factored in. They will also be really hard to rule. Even with massive power on your part, guerrilla warfare may eventually take its toll. Annihilating the populace if they get out of line will have massive repercussions for you aswell. You will have soldiers refusing to do it, you will have protests back home, lots of things.

Politics always plays into warfare at some point. Alot of what you are saying and claiming isn’t politics is a political decision. Like the vassal state thing, purely political. The decision was in itself made because it is useful to the actor. It is useful as it redistributes power into their hands, but is diffucult as there will be resistance. and annihilating any resistance is likely to have political costs as it is inhumane and your people back home may object.

This was longer and had more good points, but it got deleted ¬_¬ only had some of it copy pasted to a word doc and it logged me out and deleted the rest.

[hellica]

It also cut off the part where I was saying I think you make good points and taht I'm enjoying this debate ¬_¬ I didn't want to come off a total dick.

[Belial666]

Hey, I've lost posts before myself - no worries.


And now I'm getting what you're talking about. You're talking of politics in a broader sense - I was talking of politics as the economical and social decision-making as regards to other humans. Also, I was refering more to the scenarios of the OP and the more usual superhuman-related fiascos.

Alien invasions tend to get excluded from the normal political methods of decision-making like you said but there are hardly the only examples. A supervillain cult that, by definition, follows the commands of a somewhat unhinged person (one of the scenarios the OP mentioned) is not going to react like a human political group (of any sort) is going to. Ditto for the army of cyborgs and robots guided by an inhuman intelligence.
There are also real-world examples where politics and cost-benefit analysis was set aside in favor of ideals, false or otherwise, with terrifyingly irrational (and horrible) results. WWII comes as such an example but there are older such examples, too. In my own country's ancient history for example, the Athenian Alliance (sp?) had the entire male population over 13y. old of an allied city disarmed (as in "their arms cut off") due to the athenean leaders of the time being megalomaniacs that couldn't abide anyone disagreeing with them.

Now, take such examples of politics not applying and consider them in a situation where all the fighting and power in the world is, essentially, at the hands of superhumans that are much further from human in many minds than persons of another color, race or religion. And consider that superhumans might also think the same of humans...

In the end, politics apply in a rational discussion between rational equal humans. Remove the "rational", "equal" or "human" factor and you have something quite different than politics.


PS:
I am only an amateur when it comes to the study of history - I do it as a hobby. So I might not get everything politics-related or war-related. OTOH I am a professional when it comes to physics so I can tell you what is possible in situation X if you have effects Y and Z quite well. The political decision-making might still dictate the final result, but the range of that result? Still up to the nature of things. And superhuman nature is not human nature IMHO.

[hellica]

Well, the superhumans in comics tend to be fairly human tbh.

I have a couple of quibbles about your examples of times when politics weren't a factor. Because to me, those are explicit examples of when politics was a factor.

WW2 was, despite what modern day propaganda likes to tell you, a war based around power politics. the UK and France challenged Germany because they feared their reascent disturbing the delicate balance of power. America got involved later on because they feared a strong Germany and didn't want it affecting them in the future. Japan and Italy were acting in their own interests by jumping on the bandwagon to expand. Japan just kinda miscalculated by picking on America

I'm not saying it was a just war, but the reasons for it were political rather than about being a nice chap.

The Athenian example is an interesting one, but the study of power politics actually originates in the history of the peloponnesian war. Where the Athenians outright state in those situations that it is so they can never be a threat to Athens again. They wiped out an island while politely informing them it wasn't personal, they didn't have any choice.

That's the nature of power politics, you fear everyone else and even if they're to look at the most peaceful and loving people in the world you will never know their thoughts and they are to be considered dangerous.

Tbh, i thought the cult on was the most interesting of the three enemies. A cult would have some form of leadership, and taht means they have some kind of politics (no matter how apocalyptic). I mean, what makes people join it in the first place? The real way you deal with terrorist type groups it to address what makes people join them. We've seen that just killing their soldiers and leaders doesnt usually work well.

Obviously, that doesn't really make for an interesting game, but i'd make reference to it in briefings and in the rules of engagement.

[hellica]

wasn't a just war* ¬_¬

[Doctor Devious]

I wasn't being clear enough then: what I was saying is that to a great extent, the political landscape is the economic landscape. Supers will effect the economy if there are enough of them: that will cause a political change that accommodates, modifies or resists the economic shift. Societal norms will adapt to both economic and political landscapes.

A few ultra-supers will cause no real effect if they don't work 9 to 5 curing all the worlds ills (or causing them).

Millions of low-grade supers will however invalidate much of the usual USA-like background structure. How much and in what ways depends on typical power levels and power types of the "common supers".

Edit: this post starts rather oddly I'll admit: where did page two come from! I must take greater care!

[Belial666]

Oh you're talking millions of supers? PL6 is a tank. PL8 could take on 2 tanks and win. Multiply that by about a million and factor in the weird powers supers can get and the world is going to be quite different...

[hellica]

This is the idea I always took it as. Superpeoples are going to be 6-8 and most people are supers.

With so many on either side, rather than sending your coupla hundred guys to duke it out you get a full on war, just with the superhumans making most tech obsolete. Though, tech would likely improve due to super techs etc.

This makes it little different to other wars really. The weapons have just improved. You;re still talking about standing armies ordered about by a military command which takes its own orders from a political leadership. The aliens etc are probably the same. Though if they're miltaristic their army may be the political leadership aswell. Which in that situation is also likely to be the same for the Earth aswell really.

I reckon though, you'd see fewer massed battles due to the sheer destructive power involved. It may be lower intensity warfare. A decisive battle isn't generally considered a good idea in strategy. There have been plenty in history, but the ideal is (aparently) to wear the enemy down in less risky engagement. That is the principle of guerilla warfare etc. You try and wear down the enemies will to fight. Which applies to fighting alien invaders and the other two groups. Though in the case of the Demon types you're likely to see them being the ones using guerilla tactics.

I'd say you'd be best off making the army work on more of a cell structure, with each team being fairly small, probably similar to the standard kind of xmen team. With a spread of powers for the tactical situation. You'd also try and make sure they were armed like conventional forces aswell though. With assault rifles (or rayguns or whatnot) because yyou may run into a nullifier. Commands could be relayed through both telepathy and radio, as having both gives greater reliability. Oh, and you'd probably want to give each soldier who needed it tech armour. Which brings costs back into it.

One thing to consider with the aliens is... though it is mitigated by paragon types, to destroy a ship in orbit would fill the stratosphere (please correct me if im using the wrong term, I am not too up on my physics) with debris and make spaceflight almost impossible. The worlds governments probably wouldnt like this as it prevents possible colonisation.

I'd assume the aliens would have some method of clearing it if it was intentionally put there though.

[Beleriphon]

One thing to consider with the aliens is... though it is mitigated by paragon types, to destroy a ship in orbit would fill the stratosphere (please correct me if im using the wrong term, I am not too up on my physics) with debris and make spaceflight almost impossible. The worlds governments probably wouldnt like this as it prevents possible colonisation.

I'd assume the aliens would have some method of clearing it if it was intentionally put there though.

That depends on how big the ship is to start with. Right now Earth is being orbitted by tons of space junk and we can reach orbit, and past that, without too much trouble. Filling the thermosphere or exosphere with debris probably wouldn't do much since most would just fall out of orbit and burn up upon entry into the lower atmospheric levels. The major issue that you need to watch out for is radioactive material entering the atmosphere, or material being stuck in the stratosphere where it can block out sun light in a manner similar to a volcanic eruption.

The big thing you need to keep in mind is that you need something pretty darn solid to provide any real measure of preventing anything from exiting Earth's atmosphere. Most stuff that ends up in the atmosphere is going to be small particles that wouldn't actually stop anything except some amount of light from entering, or exiting.

[hellica]

Fair enough. I'm just going off what I've read and been told about concerns of physicists and politicians interested in space. Aparently 80% of teh debris in orbit is from a single satellite and there are concerns about getting more up if more get destroyed.

[hellica]

Though don't get me wrong, I would not be at all surprised if these government types were wildly ill informed.