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A third vote here for Cincinnatus
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Dec 7, 2016 04:34
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Considering how in hindsight we should have conquered them last time, how about Cassandra.
I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.
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Dec 7, 2016 12:10
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... a slow process of smuggling Bulrathi commandos onto Earth had been ongoing for years. Although DNA sniffer technology covered major population centers, the Bulrathi forces maintained their camps in isolated wilderness, away from the sniffers, and thus avoided flagging alerts based on anomalous concentration of Bulrathi on the planet. When they finally struck it was devastating. A convoy of Bulrathi commandos rolled into the legislatural buildings while the legislature was in session in the capital city of Los Angeles, opening fire and slaughtering the bulk of the Republic's top leadership in one blow. Simultaneously, a series of bombs in military bases across the planet detonated, crippling military response to attacks, while raids on several major airports destroyed airplanes on the runways and crippling travel between cities. Although the Bulrathi commandos on Earth were massively outnumbered, they maintained the initiative, and with each strike against Earth's infrastructure they sent the planet's defenders further into chaos, while their attacks against transportation hubs slowly led to an unravelling of the global economy, with major cities being nearly abandoned due to food shortages, space launch facilities crippled, and planetary communications cut at multiple points. It is estimated that the excess civilian death toll has run nearly as high as one billion, although this was coupled with an upward spike in birth rates leading to only a marginal net drop in population. What is undeniable is that Earth was rendered essentially incapable of participating in interstellar society, while those authorities that remained desperately struggled to hunt down the Bulrathi commandos on the planet...
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Dec 7, 2016 22:58
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So, GunnerJ, what do you make of that?
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Dec 7, 2016 22:59
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Holy poo poo they killed a BILLION people, and on the homeworld to boot. That's not something you forgive without at least a few centuries to cool off. Also the kind of thing that makes you way more xenophobic about who you let inside your borders. I can see Earth, hell the entire Sol system, becoming a "humans only" zone after that. Good thing we don't have any major populations of Bulrathi in our empire or holy poo poo the pogroms.
Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 23:41
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Crazycryodude posted:Holy poo poo they killed a BILLION people, and on the homeworld to boot. That's not something you forgive without at least a few centuries to cool off. Also the kind of thing that makes you way more xenophobic about who you let inside your borders. Don't be silly. We're letting everyone inside our borders. In fact, we insist on it.
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Dec 7, 2016 23:45
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Total deaths from WW2 were on the scale of 50 million or so. (more than that, actually, but 50 is a nice round number) One billion people is 20 times that. Our military losses in that space battle, even with the transport fleet included, are a rounding error in that number. Yeah, this is gonna be nasty.
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Dec 7, 2016 23:48
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I don't want to dictate how you write you fluff, Nweiss, and I know you like to keep it pretty optimistic, but drat. Early occupations of Bulrathi worlds won't be pretty, especially if any of the units involved are Earth-based. I'm not exactly asking you to write about Space Einsatzgruppen hunting down anything with fur and thumbs, but this will get nasty.
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Dec 7, 2016 23:50
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Crazycryodude posted:I don't want to dictate how you write you fluff, Nweiss, and I know you like to keep it pretty optimistic, but drat. Early occupations of Bulrathi worlds won't be pretty, especially if any of the units involved are Earth-based. Half of the army as of the end of the last update was from Earth. So, yeah. That thing.
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Dec 7, 2016 23:54
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Crazycryodude posted:I don't want to dictate how you write you fluff, Nweiss, and I know you like to keep it pretty optimistic, but drat. Early occupations of Bulrathi worlds won't be pretty, especially if any of the units involved are Earth-based. I'm not exactly asking you to write about Space Einsatzgruppen hunting down anything with fur and thumbs, but this will get nasty. This war will have the objective of the total destruction of the Bulrathi Empire, and as of this point it's half official in the expeditionary force that 'if they're in the aristocracy, shoot them, then shoot them again to be sure. What do you mean they're surrendering? Just shoot them.' This war will be nasty and degrading to the Human spirit and will probably have everybody involved recoiling in horror once they have time to consider what was done over the course of it. War is Hell, ladies and gentlemen. And now we have a war to the finish between two reasonably evenly-matched interstellar powers. This is not going to be pretty at all. nweismuller fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 23:57
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If humanity recovers from this and takes the fight to the bears, it will take a cool-headed military of legendary proportions to keep things from devolving into xenocide. Calls for retribution after the death of a billion are going to be deafening...
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Dec 8, 2016 00:01
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To be entirely clear, the billion deaths are primarily excess deaths from famine, disease, and infrastructural disruptions on Earth over the course of a decade or so. This does not mean people are going to be any happier about it.
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Dec 8, 2016 00:04
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nweismuller posted:War is Hell, ladies and gentlemen. And now we have a war to the finish between two reasonably evenly-matched interstellar powers. This is not going to be pretty at all. No, no. War is not Hell. War is worse then Hell. Hell only punishes sinners. There are no innocents in Hell. War doesn't give a gently caress. Edit: Still, I expect death tolls unlike any that humanity has ever experienced. They will completely dwarf any war we have ever fought- and that will undeniably have a long-lasting effect on the collective psyche of human civilization.
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Dec 8, 2016 00:03
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeBMwn_eYc
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Dec 8, 2016 00:10
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Are we preparing for Verdun, space edition? e. also, thanks to the fellow travelers who liked Cincinnatus. 
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Dec 8, 2016 00:11
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Cincinnatus is good. I think I'll go for that for the second Peacemaker in the pipeline.
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Dec 8, 2016 00:14
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nweismuller posted:So, GunnerJ, what do you make of that? Jesus Christ  If nothing else, a masterstroke of cutting civilization's tendons like that would lead to knock-off revolts and unrest as any semblance of authority collapses. So I mean, whether you want to just reflavor "fermenting revolution" as this kind of massive sabotage/terror campaign, there's room for actual civil unrest and rebellion as society just breaks the gently caress down. Lacking that though I think it's fair to say that "wild bearmen suddenly rampage out of the woods" was not something Earth's security forces were prepared to handle. 
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Dec 8, 2016 00:19
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So how long till we start getting posts about bears getting put into concentration camps?
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Dec 8, 2016 00:24
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King Doom posted:So how long till we start getting posts about bears getting put into concentration camps? We won't.
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Dec 8, 2016 00:24
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I probably would have gone with something working with existing discontented population if this had happened somewhere else, but a population at 100% morale seems unlikely to actually have meaningful pre-existing grievances to work with. So, for this particular case, a massive terror campaign seemed more likely.
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Dec 8, 2016 00:26
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my dad posted:We won't. This, I hope. It doesn't seem like Nweis's style, for which I'm glad.
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Dec 8, 2016 00:32
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nweismuller posted:I probably would have gone with something working with existing discontented population if this had happened somewhere else, but a population at 100% morale seems unlikely to actually have meaningful pre-existing grievances to work with. So, for this particular case, a massive terror campaign seemed more likely. Yeah that was why I was curious. It just seemed like everything was really chill on Earth so I couldn't figure out wtf alien bear people could incite humans to rebel over. So this is a logical reflavoring although I'd guess that ruthlessly decapitating the source of planetary authority and breaking the back of the whole infrastructure is just making something for people to get pissed off about if you had any interest paying some homage to the actual game mechanics. If not, whatevs, because yikes!
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Dec 8, 2016 00:33
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OK, we are dealing with a huge number of images for the next update, which at least are all uploaded now. Not sure if I'll summon the will to write up the update by tomorrow, so it might run until Sunday before I update.King Doom posted:So how long till we start getting posts about bears getting put into concentration camps? Not going to be doing that. I said that the demands of this war will be nasty and degrading to the Human spirit, not that we're going to turn into cackling monsters. Humanity is at least going to try to hold onto high moral ideals through the course of this game, even if mass war mobilisation and the prosecution of total war brings out the worst in Humanity. E: To actually explicitly discuss some of my own personal views- I believe that war never does not degrade people and bring cruelty, slavishness, power-lust, and any number of vices to the fore in Human nature. In some cases, fighting a war might be the least-bad alternative available, and in that sense, I am not a 'pacifist' per se. That said, to resort to war always destroys both material prosperity and well-being and moral integrity and humaneness in people, and so if it can possibly be avoided, this is best. In this particular game we have been thrust into a position where an extremely terrible war is our best option, and so things are going to suck for some time now. I'm definitely sad that this is the position we're in- I would have far preferred that the Bulrathi let us continue to prosper alongside them, but now the Empire needs to fall to protect ourselves. At least we can fight because it is a regrettable necessity and one where we hope to liberate the people of the Empire, rather than fight as bloodthirsty conquerors with no concern for the innocents harmed by war. I can't bring myself to be a bloodthirsty conqueror or somebody who deliberately commits crimes against civilians even in games. nweismuller fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 02:22
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War. War never changes.
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Dec 8, 2016 05:12
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The war involves commando bears who launched a terrorist operation on Earth that lead to the dissolution of civil society on the capital. That by definition is a change. Unless previous wars involved bear commandos, in which case I stand corrected.
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Dec 8, 2016 05:14
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wedgekree posted:The war involves commando bears who launched a terrorist operation on Earth that lead to the dissolution of civil society on the capital. That by definition is a change. Unless previous wars involved bear commandos, in which case I stand corrected. They were typically used more as cavalry.  Clearly historical.
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Dec 8, 2016 06:36
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Prism posted:They were typically used more as cavalry. I stand corrected. War never changes.
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Dec 8, 2016 08:49
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 Some Bulrathi have regrettable drug addictions.
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Dec 8, 2016 09:16
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That will haunt my dreams for the remainder of the week.
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Dec 8, 2016 09:52
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nweismuller posted:This war will have the objective of the total destruction of the Bulrathi Empire, and as of this point it's half official in the expeditionary force that 'if they're in the aristocracy, shoot them, then shoot them again to be sure. What do you mean they're surrendering? Just shoot them.' This war will be nasty and degrading to the Human spirit and will probably have everybody involved recoiling in horror once they have time to consider what was done over the course of it. Yeah. After an event that was a combination of Pearl Harbor and 9/11, the general mood among humanity is going to be, "When we're done, the Bulrathi language will only be spoken in Hell." That will mellow over the years, and when it comes down to it people will be willing to spare Bulrathi civilians, but the military leadership? The government that ordered that strike? They'll be lucky if they live to stand trial. However, 50 years after the war, you'll find Bulrathi restaurants all over the place on Earth, and nobody will think twice about it. These things do blow over eventually. Case in point: how many times have you eaten sushi in the past month? Did you think about Pearl Harbor at all when you walked into that sushi restaurant? Assuming that it was before December 7th, that is -- you might well have thought about Pearl Harbor if you ordered sushi yesterday / this morning (depending on your time zone). So likewise, eventually the Bulrathi who were born as citizens of the Human Republic (or will it be the Human Empire by that point?) are going to become just another citizen like anyone else. Right now the mood is going to be ugly, but I think I'll start writing up a story about a human soldier, captured by the Bulrathi, going back to Bulra twenty years later on a personal mission of peace and forgiveness (like Louis Zamperini going back to Japan in 1998). Because I'd much rather read about those sorts of stories in an LP like this one. I'll start writing it now, so that I can post it when the LP gets to the right point.
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Dec 8, 2016 12:05
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Tax Refund posted:Yeah. After an event that was a combination of Pearl Harbor and 9/11, the general mood among humanity is going to be, "When we're done, the Bulrathi language will only be spoken in Hell." That will mellow over the years, and when it comes down to it people will be willing to spare Bulrathi civilians, but the military leadership? The government that ordered that strike? They'll be lucky if they live to stand trial. Thank you. Yes. This is indeed precisely what I'd expect after the victory, and I appreciate that somebody 'gets it' as you do.
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Dec 8, 2016 12:25
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nweismuller posted:Not going to be doing that. I said that the demands of this war will be nasty and degrading to the Human spirit, not that we're going to turn into cackling monsters. Humanity is at least going to try to hold onto high moral ideals through the course of this game, even if mass war mobilisation and the prosecution of total war brings out the worst in Humanity. This is something that I think could be used to explain the 1 billion death toll as being partly caused by desperate attempts to stop or slow the Bulrathi raids by human forces (outgunned or caught off-guard). For example, when the Japanese invaded China in the 1930s, some Chinese commanders blew up dams and levees along major rivers to slow them down. The resulting flooding affected millions. Imagine things like this happening on a global scale.
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Dec 8, 2016 14:18
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Kassad posted:This is something that I think could be used to explain the 1 billion death toll as being partly caused by desperate attempts to stop or slow the Bulrathi raids by human forces (outgunned or caught off-guard). For example, when the Japanese invaded China in the 1930s, some Chinese commanders blew up dams and levees along major rivers to slow them down. The resulting flooding affected millions. Imagine things like this happening on a global scale. I don't know about that, from what Nweiss said it was really more commando teams carrying out terror raids, not a literal Bulrathi army big enough to be actually slowed down by such drastic measures. Plus, the Chinese only did poo poo like that because they were desperate and didn't care about the tens of thousands of people downstream who would drown - no matter how desperate Republic security forces get, I really don't see them casually writing off thousands (or with Earth's population density probably millions) of civilians as acceptable losses for stopping the odd commando team. Especially since blowing up your own infrastructure and killing you own civilians is just doing their work for them. E: vvv Also that vvv Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 14:39
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It's amazing how much damage commandos can do when they have a few hundred suitcase tactical nuclear devices squirreled away. Basically the entire process was a series of precision strikes designed to try and collapse infrastructure and civic order.
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Dec 8, 2016 14:41
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True, it's probably too grim for this story. But the bits about abandoned cities and the collapsing economy already sound very grim too. I don't know.
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Dec 8, 2016 14:42
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Crazycryodude posted:I don't know about that, from what Nweiss said it was really more commando teams carrying out terror raids, not a literal Bulrathi army big enough to be actually slowed down by such drastic measures. Plus, the Chinese only did poo poo like that because they were desperate and didn't care about the tens of thousands of people downstream who would drown - no matter how desperate Republic security forces get, I really don't see them casually writing off thousands (or with Earth's population density probably millions) of civilians as acceptable losses for stopping the odd commando team. Especially since blowing up your own infrastructure and killing you own civilians is just doing their work for them. A note on the Yellow River Flood: Not tens of thousands. At least half a million people drowned, and millions more lost their homes. When people wonder why Mao, as batshit crazy as he was, had so much support, it's because Chiang's guys he was up against did poo poo like this. The funny/tragic part? It didn't even slow the Japanese down.
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Dec 8, 2016 14:46
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Re: Pearl Harbor comparison, I get what you're saying and agree on the broad strokes, but this is many orders of magnitude worse. Pearl Harbor was terrible, and it killed ≈0.00088% of the population (1147/133.4 million Americans). And, not that it excuses it, but almost all of Pearl Harbor's victims were military personnel rather than civilians. This isn't even like 9/11, which we all agree was absolutely horrific - and it killed ≈ .00001% of the population. The Bulrathi killed close to a billion people, out of roughly 46 billion humans. That's just short of 2.2% of the entire human race they killed. This isn't Pearl Harbor, it's the 80 biggest cities in America getting nuked tomorrow without a single survivor and then some. It just doesn't compare to anything historical, beyond genocides. Earth specifically came off even worse, close to 8% of the entire population is dead, and the damage probably won't be completely repaired until the next generation at the earliest. Will humanity get over it? Yes, we always do. Hell, we've done worse to each other, and with far less technology than the Bulrathi have. But I don't think we'll be seeing Bulrathi restaurants popping up on Earth in a few decades. A few generations, maybe, a few centuries, definitely. But we won't get over this is a few years like we have with other tragedies. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 15:41
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In any case, the hawks will almost certainly have a fair bit more power than they did before once all this is over, since they will have an example to point to and say "remember when we conquered the bears because they hosed with us? Why don't we just conquer these other people before they can gently caress with us?" and not be dismissed as completely crazy.
I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.
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Dec 8, 2016 16:11
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You're overreacting somewhat. 8% of total population is less than what a lot of countries lost in WW2. It's extremely hosed up and traumatizing (ask me about my family's experience as subhumans in Naziland ), but not exactly something that spontaneously turns you into a raving lunatic. e: vvvv Ya think all the WW2 dead were military? my dad fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 16:16
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| # ? May 13, 2024 23:46 |
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While we have bounced back pretty fast from wars and stuff like that, it's important to remember that the bears hosed around with our civilian population. They blew up cities full of completely innocent people, and that was the first shot they fired in the course of this war. Sure, we're planning on conquering the pants off of them and taking the lives of their elites and leadership as weregild, but that doesn't change the fact that they opened this thing up with terrorism worse than any in our history. Look at 9/11. That was one attack years ago, and it's still having long-lasting after-effects in American culture. Maybe that's because we never really won the war. I don't know. When we conquer Bulrathi Space, how long will their insurgency last? How long will it take for the wounds to close? I don't know. It's looking to be bloody for centuries, at the very least.
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Dec 8, 2016 16:17
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