sonofccn wrote:Dusted off my old copy of Ender's Game from my closet shelf and thought I'd dig up a few quotes to help flesh up the faction.
page 25 wrote:... We've scraped togather everything mankind could producem afleet that nakes the one they sent against us last time seem like a bunch of kids playing in a swimming pool. We have some new weapons too. But it might not be enough, even so. Because in the eighty years since the last war, they've had as much time to prepare as we have.
General refrence to Ender Humanity's ability to advance as well as a specific citing of the Hergomny surving eight decades with out seeing a Bugger.
They knew the Buggers were still out there. The chaos following victory is IIRC detailed in the newer books, but I can't say I know too much about that at the moment. Afterwards, there's a fairly loose interplanetary government - loose by necessity, as it takes decades to travel from colony to colony.
page 270 wrote:" This was a treasure trove. If they had known we would win the first war, they probably would never have built this place. We learned gravity manipulation because they increased the gravity here. We learned efficent use of stellar energy because they blacked out this planet."
Mazer Rackman commenting on the windfall taking the Bugger controlled asteriod Eros, and its exploitation by the quick study humans.
I'm still not convinced they're likely to get anywhere. First, they need to
get attacked; second, the attackers need to fail; third, the attackers need to leave behind at least one fairly intact ship with an FTL drive to study; fourth, they need to actually engineer the technology. It's a long chain of events required before Hegemon-Earth can even start to compete in the game, and there are a lot of unknowns. I'm not sure of the effective range, maneuverability, or conventional firepower of their ships; that makes them a long shot at best.
They may even be able to fight quite well, but they're largely an unknown.
page 272 wrote: "Dr device muc more powerful. Nuclear weapons after all were weak enough to be used on Earth at one time. The little doctor could never be used on a planet. Still I wished we had one back during the second invasion."
"How does it work?"
"...the field spreads out into in a sphere, but it gets weaker the farther it spreads. Except that where it actually runs into a lot of moleculesm it gets stronger and starts over. The bigger the ship, the bigger the new field."
"so each time the field hits a ship, it sends out a new sphere-"
"and if thier ships are too close togather it can set up a chain reaction that wipes them all out. Then the fields dies down, the molecules come back togather, and where you had a ship, you now have a lump of dirt...
The MD weapon. A self-sustaining, or close to it, chain-reaction style weapon of virtually limitless power. Anti-matter eat your heart out.
page 272 wrote:The little doctor penertrates the shield?"
"As if it wasn't even there...
I don't have even remotely enough knowledge to know if an Ender verse "Escatatic shield" is even remotely similar to the forcefield/shields the UED can generate or which Starfleet could possibly build but I thought it was interesting to bring up regardless.
More later.
Yeah, it's one heck of a weapon.
sonofccn wrote:Jedi Master Spock wrote:Also, the Hegemony will disintegrate without the immediate threat of the Buggers.
Interesting point but would the change of threats from Buggers to alternate human factions be that radical of a change? They kept up the military junta style goverment for several years without hide nor hair of the Buggers following the second invasion and I'm just curious why they couldn't do the same against these new foes.
Without any evidence of them, it would be hard, and I think the way this scenario is laid out, it's likely to be quite some time until they run into anybody.
True but they will invent instant comunication device allowing a single general and his staff direct thier entire war fleet, spread over several star systems if I remember correctly. That should be heard and shoulders above all the other factions long rang comunication which is a plus.
That might actually have come from the Buggers.
Ender Earth also demostrated itself as being quite adapt at salvaging alien technology, most of the really advanced technology they swiped from Bugger hulks from the second invasion, so it isn't out of the realm for a fleet of thier ships to pummel a stray vessel from the other fleets with atomics and back engineer thier propulsion system.
Not impossible, but I think relatively unlikely. Capturing an intact ship is tricky.
Overall yes but Earth ships should still be able to put up a fight and reduced to the same starting resources keeps the Battletech universe from steamrolling Trek as quickly.
I'm not sure it's the same starting resources. Hegemon-Earth has a tightly regulated population and a lot of poverty. SL-Earth is the prosperous capital system of a great realm, with enormous well-developed native industries (especially military industries).
It's not quite the steamrolling that the entire SL could provide, but if they came into contact immediately, I think SL-Earth would win. NX-Earth, however, has the long-term edge: Their technology isn't a dead end. Jump drive may give a
de facto ~1500
c strategic/exploration level speed, but while NX-era warp drive is limited to around ~100
c, warp drive is superior in the long term.
Very, very slow by Trek standards. Light years compared to almost all the other factions. They should began deploying phase cannons and crude forcefields fairly quickly but beyond that I don't think could be pinned down.
Yeah. It's a little hard. TOS Trek is so far ahead of ENT Trek (something underlined in "In a Mirror, Darkly") and a lot of technology can be presumed to have come from the Vulcans, Andorians, and other friendly aliens. In fact, some probably came from less than friendly aliens as well - Klingons, for example, seemed unable to keep a tight hold on their hardware in the ENT series.
Well the fact that despite having a couple of centuries Kropula sector, who spent half of that just returning to the rough tech level which launched them into deep space, and not possesing a raw technological advantage It wouldn't bode well for thier tech advancement rate. Subject to change should the UED ever return of course.
That's not promising at all.
Tech frozen would make it too lopsided towards two of the combatents so I think advancement should be allowed. Of course I am a heavily biased pro-Trek sort of guy so...yeah.
Out of curosity you didn't give an assement on the BSG verse who start out with a far larger industrial base and fleet. I wouldn't bring it up but you went into some detail for all the other factions and I'm just curious to how you think they stack up.
I actually don't know all that much about BSG; I haven't done very much technical analysis on it yet.