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Ok, your planet has gotten word that the mechanoids are heading straight for you. How do you propose to slow them down long enough for a viable portion of your population to escape and start over? Or say its a single mothership, stop them dead in their tracks?

My planet is Earth.
We'd be pretty much screwed.

Any lone planet in the Mechanoids setting is as you say Screwed. What I want to talk about is in setting how would one escape destruction. In essence thwarting the mechanoids plans for your races extermination?

NUKES, AND A LOT OF THEM!

FOLLOWED BY MORE NUKES!

So that is one for "Carpet Nuking the mechaniods back to protoplasm"

anyone have any other ideas that might not destroy your ecosystem?

I was not talking about doing it in the atmosphere. Shmesus Christy, that would be suicide, now out past the moon, thats what I am talking about!

Evacuate as many people as possible.

Once the Mechanoid ships are detected, it's already about 60-70% too late. Depending on how far out the incoming planet-chopper fleet is from your planet.

Anything & everything that can hold an atmosphere long enough to get to the nearest 'safe' planet would be retrofitted either with engines or to a vessel capable of hauling it. Calling it a "rag-tag fugitive fleet" would be a gross kindness. Expect casualties from the mass panic of at least 10% of the populace. I point out the mass-evac scenes from the Battlestar Galactica reboot mini-series, but a lot less PG.

Next, those-in-charge put into action Operation: Headlights. Every spare nuke (NOT the ineffective, wimpy ones seen in BSG) is quickly transported to the mid-range point between the incoming fleet & the system, spread out to a minimum-size area to encompase the leading face of the invasion force...& detonated when in range. The hope is that the ensuing energy-discharge (hard-radiation, EMPs, multiple shockwaves, ect.) will at least act as a kind of large-sized "flash-bang". Even if this doesn't work, the Mechanoids will have to adjust their course, even slightly. This buys just a little more time, maybe.

By the time the first heavy-transports are exiting planetary atmosphere, a number of smaller ships never make it skyward. Why? Doomsday-cult fanatics have already started sabotaging ships, "to prevent the disbelievers from spreading their blasphemy to the stars." The only thing that saves the larger ships and about 15% of the smaller vessels of the refugee fleet is an increased security presence after the first handfull of losses. However, the cultists did make a significant dent in the escapees' efforts....out of the 15% of ships lost, most were critical supply (food, medical, water-reclamation/recycling).

At this point, it's every ship for themselves. While most have a good idea where they're going, a few straggle behind when the Mechanoid fleet gets within minimum range (a distance equal to between Earth & our Moon, conservatively). These get picked off by the advance forces. The main force of the Mechanoid invasion sweeps in with impunity. A few fighters are spared, maybe, to pursue the refugees, but the majority of the fleet gets to work cracking the planet for it's core.

First bend over and kiss my you know what goodbye.

The next step is to get a complete list of all spaceships, all of which will be put under military control. The ships will be divided into two groups. The defense fleet and the escape fleet. All civilian ships with FTL go into the escape fleet. Any military cargo or troop ships will join that force.

The defense fleet will be made up of all other military ships and any civilian ships without FTL. If the later does not have weapons then they will be turned into flying bombs. The goal will be to buy as much time as possible for the escape fleet. If that means filling shuttles full of explosives and flying them into Mechanoid ships so be it. If they have space mines or they can be made they will be used, basically every dirty trick will be used to give the escape fleet time. The defense fleet will be ordered to fight till the last ship has escaped with no hope of survivors.

Anyone on the surface will be given access to any available weapons to make taking the planet cost the Mechanoids as much as possible.

Embrace your new Mechanoid rulers and masters... If you're an Octoman or a Pythonian, you'll be just fine.

If you happen to be bipedal... well... sorry. Come to peace with whatever god(s) you believe in and prepare to meet them in person.

NOT BEFORE I NUKE YOU RIGHT ALONG WITH THOSE CHROME PLATED RUST BUCKETS!
NUKES THE CAUSE OF AND ANSWER TO ALL OF OUR MODEREN PROBLEMS!

One big problem with nukes in space. The majority of damage we associate with a nuclear bomb comes from its effect on an atmosphere. In space you will just mainly get a lot of radiation.

Let us not forget EMP which is going to create a lot of problems with the mechinoids electrical systems, you can not shield every system from EMP. The nukes are not intended as a be all, end all to defence against them just a stop gap to allow me enough time to prepair to fight them to the death, a glorious death earned in hard fought combat.

Only get the EMP effect when the nuke is detonated in the upper atmosphere. Its created by gamma radiation knocking electrons loose from atoms in the upper atmosphere. This creates an electromagnetic pulse that mostly travels downward. A nuke detonated in deep space will not create an EMP from my understanding of the subject.

Also would say the Mechanoids are hardened to it anyway since we have the tech to do that and they are way ahead of us.

Then why does NASA and the defense department "shield" communications satallites aginst EMP? Check this out http://empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP ... on-7MB.pdf
chapter 10, and I say nuke em just for the hell of it anyway!


"gotta nuke something"
-Nelson Munce, The Simpsons

1 - buy a gun
2- take out lotsa loans
3 - go nuts on drugs & sex
4 - shoot myself when the mechanoids arrive

The satellites are in orbit (not deep space) so they would still be effected by the pulse. By the time the Mechanoids hit orbit its game over. All you can hope for is to give them a nasty bite before you go down.

You said in a previous post you would hit them out past the moon with the nukes. In that case no EMP for you.

My though is mount several traction drives to a small moon and propell it into the mothership. While they do eat planets i seriously doubt that they can destroy something that big that has been accelerating from the other side of the solar system. Such an impact should be like shooting a vapor filled drum with a 9mm tracer. Or even better use a half dozen and just pepper the mothership. Should that work you have taken out the main punch of the mechanoids. this will also give your refugees a bit more time to escape. Now the mechaniods must have some form of smaller transport craft to get their forces onto a planet...but comparied to something the size of North America they shouldn't be as big a problem. Especially if you hit the mechanoids as the arive in system.

Nice, what if you mounted the traction drives on thousands of astroids, the kind that are capable of killing a planet like earth. I do not know if this would work. But, if it does their defences would be over whelmed by thousands of smaller astroids as they destroy the larger ones, and some are bound to get through their defences which should slow them down a little bit.

and then just for the hell of it you can

NUKE'EM BACK TO THE STONEAGE!

Do everything I possibly can to get my family into the refugee fleet, let the military handle the space fighting while I stock up and prepare for a protracted and ultimately hopless guerilla war against those that would demolish my homeworld.

Now that sounds like a plan to me!

Hey, when the reaper comes you can either run or shake his hand and ask for a job!

A nuke's EMP will have no effect on war machine from a society that's developed the ability to travel in interstellar space. They have to be shielded against solar flares produced by stars, which are more powerfull than anything humans are able to do.

I now know that. However, I still say

Ok the horse is dead and beaten into dogfood, the joke has gotten old. could you please go away so that we can seriously talk about this subject?

Totally depends on your planet's tech level.

I agree with the idea of turning thousands of asteroids into an armada and small moons for ramming...except space is really big and I am unsure how difficult it would be to manuever enough rocks in a close enough range to be able to defeat the Mechanoids ability to dodge / manuever.

If you culture has teleportation tech or powers, I like the idea of t-porting nukes inside the mother ship. A few dozen nukes will probably slow them down and a couple hundred will certainly disable their ship.

Phi-Warpers for the win!

From my position?
Nothing I can do, really.
They're kind of a "kill all you want, we'll make more" enemy that will eat the planet out from under you.

I don't have the kind of pull it would take to try to make an escape spacecraft, and even if I did, there's nowhere to go.

I like this plan.

It's the only workable plan...

true.... or get enough to steal a bugatti then go nuts in that.... 407kph darn it got the wrong one....

Find a way to rapidly mutate humans into a race of sentient sphincters...

...Hey, it has as much of a chance as anything else Earth has got of working...

I'd try to stow away on their ship and keep as low a profile as possible.

Its the mechanoids that have the phi warpers, not us.

If your lucky enough to be a shifter or astral mage/lord, start charging lots for your services. If not, give everything I have to the aforementioned to get me & my family to a safe world.

Otherwise, I'd be trying to sneak on board their ship. If I could make contact with an oracle, other stowaway races on their ship or phi warper while there that would be ideal. If all else fails try to have a bunch of people jury rig a destroyed mechanoid and get inside. Either letting them take me back to be repaired or use it as a disguise to not be killed.

As an astral lord you could do a lot of good evacuating worlds before the mechanoids hit. I'd charge two fees for entrance (1) you worship me as a god & (2) donate all your PPE to enter. A single world might net you up to a billion people, which would make both you and your realm VERY powerful. At least on a small scale, if I remember correctly, in the three galaxies the populations seem to be in the trillions.

Murder Suicide?