warships and troop transports disguised as grapeships

[m.ellis]

The basic premise for a story I'm working on is that a star system is softened up for conquest by saboteurs just prior to the invasion coming thru the wormhole. The attackers are disguised as commercial grapeships, but the pods/shuttles for the battle ships (Jane's Battleships, Jane Nakamura commanding) are autowars, and each pod/shuttle on the troop transports carries a reinforced battalion. I estimate 3200 grapeships to deliver 2.4 million troops to their targets.

I'm assuming everything is running on minimum power to disguise the fact that the troop transports are not the passenger liners they seem to be, and that the "cargo pods" are actually autowars.

Very little bloodshed is involved. The prep work included memetic attacks to reinforce the population's general assumption that it really doesn't matter which group of transapients is running the show. Power and communications stoppages precede the occupation.

Any thoughts, comments, criticisms?





"I remember when the Istanbul Downtown Girls were playing gigs in dumps like Gogo Yubari, and thinking they'd never amount to much. Now they're hit-makers and threatening my place at the top of the charts. I think this is what the Late Antiquity philosoper Toynbee meant by 'resting on one's oars.' Complacency is a bitch."
-- Felix Arabia, pop idol.

[Drashner1]

The main questions that come to mind when I read this are:

1) What role are transapients playing in this?

Your mention of memetic attacks implies that this system is ruled by a transapient and possibly that the attackers are as well. If the attackers are not ruled/protected by a transapient then their attack (and possibly their entire civilization) is doomed from the start if the target system is. Modosophonts cannot offer any kind of credible threat or defense against a transapient and will be summarily crushed if they were to attempt it. But your explanation isn't clear, as I mentioned.

2) What do these 'troops' consist of?

Your description makes it sound like human/biont soldiers would be playing a role in this combat. Biological intelligence has almost no role in any kind of serious (or even just semi-serious) combat in the setting. Machines are equal to or superior in all things to biologicals and that includes fighting. They are faster, stronger, smarter, and not burdened with such useless concepts as mercy, pity, or compassion. This applies across all levels of combat, including modosophont level conflicts. Instead machines are used and the biologicals have no role but to cower and hope that they either live or that the end comes quick.

About the only exceptions to this are heavily augmented, transapient backed special forces units that do specialized stuff - and even they are generally backed up by tons of automated firepower.

3) How is such a tiny number of ships and troops going to deal with local defenses?

Measured against Y11K construction technology, the number of ships and troops you describe here is minuscule. Using a single large asteroid (or a number of smaller ones), a given system could easily produce 'local defense forces' measured in tens or hundreds of billions of warships, each massing a million metric tons or so and armed to the teeth. That's before we get to fixed installations like solar and conversion powered lasers generating multi-petawatt beams and the like. A planetary angelnet could draw on a 100 petawatts of ambient solar power if really motivated. And a planet size solar collector is small construction by Y11k standards.

4) Why is the wormhole going to allow the attacking force through?

Wormhole are thinking entities in their own right in OA, although not always talkative and sometimes quite alien. But they ultimately answer to whatever creates and maintains the Nexus, which is presumably the ruling S6 archai. So, if your attack fleet wants to pass through the gate,they will need it's permission to do so. And why is it going to provide that?

My 2c worth,

Todd

[m.ellis]

The main questions that come to mind when I read this are:

1) What role are transapients playing in this?

Your mention of memetic attacks implies that this system is ruled by a transapient and possibly that the attackers are as well. If the attackers are not ruled/protected by a transapient then their attack (and possibly their entire civilization) is doomed from the start if the target system is. Modosophonts cannot offer any kind of credible threat or defense against a transapient and will be summarily crushed if they were to attempt it. But your explanation isn't clear, as I mentioned.

2) What do these 'troops' consist of?

Your description makes it sound like human/biont soldiers would be playing a role in this combat. Biological intelligence has almost no role in any kind of serious (or even just semi-serious) combat in the setting. Machines are equal to or superior in all things to biologicals and that includes fighting. They are faster, stronger, smarter, and not burdened with such useless concepts as mercy, pity, or compassion. This applies across all levels of combat, including modosophont level conflicts. Instead machines are used and the biologicals have no role but to cower and hope that they either live or that the end comes quick.

About the only exceptions to this are heavily augmented, transapient backed special forces units that do specialized stuff - and even they are generally backed up by tons of automated firepower.

3) How is such a tiny number of ships and troops going to deal with local defenses?

Measured against Y11K construction technology, the number of ships and troops you describe here is minuscule. Using a single large asteroid (or a number of smaller ones), a given system could easily produce 'local defense forces' measured in tens or hundreds of billions of warships, each massing a million metric tons or so and armed to the teeth. That's before we get to fixed installations like solar and conversion powered lasers generating multi-petawatt beams and the like. A planetary angelnet could draw on a 100 petawatts of ambient solar power if really motivated. And a planet size solar collector is small construction by Y11k standards.

4) Why is the wormhole going to allow the attacking force through?

Wormhole are thinking entities in their own right in OA, although not always talkative and sometimes quite alien. But they ultimately answer to whatever creates and maintains the Nexus, which is presumably the ruling S6 archai. So, if your attack fleet wants to pass through the gate,they will need it's permission to do so. And why is it going to provide that?

My 2c worth,

Todd

Thanks for the feedback.
1. There are several transapients with attackers and defenders.

2. 'Vecs and Goo battalions and autowars make up the shock troops, but much of the invasion force is made up of civil affairs and psychological units, military police, etc. It's mostly an occupation force. Very little actual fighting going on. Sort of like Genghis Khan's invasion of Kara-Khitai: agitators convinced the people that they would be better off switching rulers, enabling the Mongols to just march in.

3. I thought the invasion force might be kind of small. I will adjust the numbers, but again, there's not going to be much fighting. Still, the invaders should have much more firepower at their disposal.
I wonder if a defender would have the amount of defensive weapons you outlined on hand, or would the defender order up the stuff if it sensed danger? How prepared might the defense be? How much lead time is required to build stuff as needed?

4. The wormhole mind has to be deceived in order for the invasion to succeed.
However, I did not realize that a S6 archai might be present in the system. I'll have to think about that.

Anyway, thanks again for the feedback.

[Rynn]

I think this could be tweaked a bit to work a few thoughts:

1) Having transapients on either side needs care to write. If you plan on having modosophont characters you need a role for them which might be difficult in the face of ultratech armies and hyperturing memetics.

2) Take into account the angelnet. Even if the population are receptive to the invaders the angelnet is one of the biggest threats. Doesn't matter if you have a lot of boots on the ground, things are going to get explosive if every piece of machinery works against them and the very air turns solid and tries to cut/burn/eat them. A potential role for the transap attackers would be to subvert the angelnet, either using cyber warfare or convincing a defending transap to join them.

3) I wouldn't worry too much about the wormhole or overseeing regional Archai. They may be ok with this sort of limited conflict in certain contexts. Especially if the polity in question is loosely affiliated. Perhaps have a few lines suggesting that both sides have to treat carefully in the weapons and tactics they use to avoid the Archai stepping in against them.

4) What is the justification for invasion?

[Drashner1]

I wonder if a defender would have the amount of defensive weapons you outlined on hand, or would the defender order up the stuff if it sensed danger? How prepared might the defense be? How much lead time is required to build stuff as needed?

Stuff that is potentially needed in a hurry is likely to be built ahead of time and then stockpiled in out of the way (but strategically important) places. Even Y11K tech can't whip up entire battle fleets instantly (well, not usually) and the manufacturing systems for this kind of thing would be primary targets.

We have a thread on the forum that discusses manufacturing, but I don't have time to hunt it down just now. Will try to post it later if no one beats me to it.

4. The wormhole mind has to be deceived in order for the invasion to succeed.
However, I did not realize that a S6 archai might be present in the system. I'll have to think about that.

Oops I didn't explain that well. I wasn't saying that an S6 archai - or even a portion of one - would be present in the system (they spread their minds across millions of solar systems, actually). Rather, I was saying that the Nexus as a whole is owned/controlled by the S6 (even if they generally use S4 and S5 entities to expand and manage it) and so routing a warfleet through the Nexus with the intent of invading somewhere would either need their permission or indifference.

There are recorded instances of wormholes either being closed or refusing passage to vessels in response to war or other issues. But generally the archai don't appear to involve themselves in the day-to-day operations of the system. Basically, your characters would at the least be aware of the possibility of the archai intervening as a concern and have either addressed it as part of their invasion plan or are hoping they won't be stomped on.

Anyway, thanks again for the feedback.

Glad to help

Todd

[m.ellis]

Thanks yet again.

I'll see if I can find the info on manufacturing.

The transapients commanding the invasion force probably kicked the request to use the wormhole up the food-chain. Actually, the trio of archai who rule the region of space in which this story takes place allows fleet movements within the realm. In this period (87th to 90th centuries AT) there's a lot of regional conflicts between various polities in the NoCoZo and Mennefer (as my region is called).

Sidebar: the protagonist of my story isn't with the invaders nor the defenders. She's an information pirate committing commercial espionage when the invasion arrives. When power and communications goes down temporarily, her digital agents become isolated, trapped, and discovered by the new military government. (Go directly to Atonement House, do not pass Go.)

[Rynn]

Not got a lot of time atm so quick post:

I can't find the thread on my phone, I do remember it though. The basic exercise was working out how good an OA factory/shipyard is. A standard assembler/nanofactory is 1m3 and can produce 10kg of product per hour. Using that Todd ran through a number of larger designs.

Just to list one of them:

Imagine a cube-shaped shipyard, 1km wide. The walls are 10m thick, the interior is hollow save for scaffold and robotic arms to fit together the produced material. If we say that 10% of the walls are made of assemblers (the rest being mechanical support, cooling, power, mattercaches etcetera) that gives a total assembler count of 5,880,800. In other words this shipyard can produce 55,808 tonnes of material every hour.

That's an upper limit obviously, physical assembly could slow it down and the 10kg figure is an average. But a million tonne product per day seem likely.

[Drashner1]

Note, btw that what Rynn is describing is modo tech. Transapientech systems would presumably be more capable just on general principles and would also be able to employ self replicating swarms of builders that could spread all over a solar system and build ships in multiple locations at once. Or maybe go into a gas giant atmosphere and replicate such as bubble habs do.

Even with just modo tech, the system initially described could replicate itself and so bootstrap up to really massive production with virtually no Sophont effort required.

Todd

[Rynn]

Don't mean to pile on but one more consideration RE manufacturing: each household in an OA civ is likely to have its own fab for "light" construction of goods. If the civ has one billion people and an average of four people per house then there are 250 million domestic fabs in that civ. At 10kg per hour that means that 55 million tonnes could be produced per day, just from people's homes.

Looking at that another way imagine a military swarm composed of synsects. Individually the synsects are fairly weak: they're the size of a bee (total volume 1cm3), their limbs have tiny claws to disassemble the enemy, they have transceivers and data-proboscis for cyberwarfare, can camouflage and they have a milliwatt laser. Pretty pathetic individually. As a swarm though they are devastating. A room full of these could wipe the floor of any modern military company. If each one is 2.5 grams then the domestic industry alone can produce 22 trillion in a day.

[selden]

Although the POV character and other affected modosophonts probably don't need to know the justification for the invasion, might it be possible that it's "just" a move in a high-level game of strategy among the Archai involved? Assuming no sophonts are actually intended to be injured, would the wormhole AI(s) have to care?

At what point should such gaming conflicts become considered more serious?