SciFi Thread: How would you invade/defend a planet?

[Jesca Dragon]

It's Interplanetary War! How would you land on the enemy planet? How would you defend it?

First, even current technology will be able to detect a large object entering our atmosphere. NASA keeps track of where some 10,000 pieces of debris to protect spacecraft.

Then, if you accept sheilding technology, the same technology you'd use to protect your mile-long Star Destroyer would have to cover at least 64,000,000 times the area and absorb inpacts similar magnitudes more energetic.

And if you think about it, damage caused by asteroid impacts are essentially catapult-level physics. Add a little human ingenuity, and the explosion that killed off the dinosaurs would be contained in a device about the size of a fighter jet.

How I see it is that interplanetary warfare would favor the beseigers: those on the planet would see it coming, but would be helpless to stop it. And that's kinda boring.

What're your thoughts? How would you invade a planet? How would you stop an invasion?

[Maltese_Falcon91]

Jesca Dragon

It's Interplanetary War! How would you land on the enemy planet? How would you defend it?

You know, there was a point in time where I wanted to see if I could make a Master of Orion style 4X game in RPGmaker. I only really got as far as making a random star cluster generator, but that's one of the things I asked myself.

Jesca Dragon

What're your thoughts? How would you invade a planet? How would you stop an invasion?

You'd need to establish space superiority, then use the threat of orbital bombardment to convince the population to surrender.

Most land invasions would have just consisted of regular infantry on a planet protecting ground based missile silos, railgun batteries, shield emitters, power plants, and fighter bases from highly mobile teams of commandos, while the fleet upstairs deals with any enemy ships and orbital weapons installations.

You could have technically taken the planet with just your soldiers, but you'd somehow need to built enough ships to transport a large invasion force, you'd need to keep supplying them with food, munitions, and possibly air while they rampaged through each region of a planet (an Earthsized world had like, ten regions). Once they captured a region, they would have to leave enough soldiers behind to garrison it, otherwise the population would revolt, since each region generated soldiers automatically, and a revolting region could have captured other regions and eventually forced you off the planet.

That was just how I envisioned it. I probably would have cut it down if I ever tried to actually implement all that, though.

[LadySnark]

Well, I think it would kind of come down to who had the best space fleet and how good their weapons systems are, so it could swing either way easily depending on how you set the rival forces up.

Some things:

As you mentioned, they could have tech that would allow them to see them coming, however, just as easily I imagine the enemy force could also have scramblers of some sort that could mess with that tech. They might not be able to prevent the planet from realizing they're coming, but they may be able to mislead them as to how large their force is.

Also, the besiegers are away from home. They only have what they brought with them, whereas the planet they are attacking has the advantage of the homefront. Unless the enemy force has a Death Star or some other planet destroying device, they'd need incredible forces to win a battle against a planet. Of course, it is possible. I'd look at planetary warfare the same way you would at navel warfare. Once the outside fleet makes land and gets a stable foothold on the planet, it'll be that much harder for the planet to defend itself since its forces will begin to divide going after the ships that have docked.

[X of Castigation]

Nuke population centres from millions of kilometres away, and then demand capitulation.

[Jin_of_the_thunder]

I don't have enough information to answer the question. I couldn't invade a planet as of right now with our current technology. its impossible. for me to answer the question I need more information. my strategies would differ depending on my ability, what I'm invading for, what I would encounter on the planet.

[~Vision~in~Violet~]

simple. just camp out far enough away that no instruments or telescopes would spot you, then saturate their atmosphere with fast acting airborne viruses your civilization has immunity to, sent via long distance cluster bombs that no one would see coming.
wait around until everyone had fallen victim and the stench had subsided, then move in and mop up. nasty, but effective. twisted

edit ---> nukes destroy too much infrastructure and valuable resources, plus they leave behind a toxic mess to which no living creatures have immunity.