Stupid Alien Designs + Worthless Concepts

[GreyICE]

That works if you are planning on wiping out the entire planet. Not just it's intelligent inhabitants but wild life, plant life and any infrastructure the planet has.

TOS has an Order that glasses a planet if they are that much of a threat.

But if you are planning on invading the planet, preserve the cities or towns and its native people, you are not going to glass the planet.

So you need infantry, armored vehicles and air superiority vehicles.

Viral payloads. Nanotech swarms. Break down people's biology and implant people with sleeper agent codes (really, we have no brain security software, wetware is infinitely vulnerable. People's brains can spaz out and shut them down because of the wrong pattern of lights, imagine what happens when you weaponize those neural glitches). Self-replicating warbots. Fuck, drop a few self replicators that fire missiles at everything that's emitting radio signals, should hit every piece of unshielded electronics on the planet eventually. Or triangulate micrometeorite strikes, a few 0.5 kg bars at 0.9c makes a real splash when you hit key points. You can Brave New World it up to control a populace, targeted drugs to keep people complacent, brainwashing, etc. Or be real dicks, evolve some nasty biotech out of the local flora and fauna, that's almost unlimited potential for horror.

The entire infantry/cavalry/air paradigm is creaking its way towards a grave right now in our modern world, there's no way it makes sense 400 years from now.

Star Trek is a metaphor for our current society, that's why in many ways it plays by the rules of our current society. But in a true society of that tech level, no one is going to play nice and try to roll around in tanks or some shit. Like, there is infinite garbage you can do. Get control of the servers, and just set all the replicators to only work when you pledge allegiance to a particular empire. Pledge, or starve. That's it. Then refine it, give tiers of replicator privilege based on compliance to the system, use mass nanocameras to monitor every aspect of everyone's day, give them housing/job/moving/food privileges based on their dedication. Ten years later, they'd be taking care of themselves and tripping over themselves to announce their dedication to your awesome system.

[McAvoy]

Honestly if you wanted to there are countless modern ways of decimating the populace. We do have pretty advanced biological weapons. We don't use it due to moral reasons.

I can see other powers doing in Trek but I cannot see the Federation doing it. Even when faced with other powers doing it against them.

The only thing I can think of is why Trek powers don't use it due to fear of others doing the same to them. Maybe that the Federation has a high rate of figuring out those sort of things.

Star Trek makes more sense if you treat the starships like sailing ships sailing in frontier areas.

[GreyICE]

Honestly if you wanted to there are countless modern ways of decimating the populace. We do have pretty advanced biological weapons. We don't use it due to moral reasons.

I can see other powers doing in Trek but I cannot see the Federation doing it. Even when faced with other powers doing it against them.

The only thing I can think of is why Trek powers don't use it due to fear of others doing the same to them. Maybe that the Federation has a high rate of figuring out those sort of things.

Star Trek makes more sense if you treat the starships like sailing ships sailing in frontier areas.

Our biological weapons are stone-age levels. Seriously. They're clubs. Not even nice clubs, they're a rock tied to a stick. We take Anthrax and make it spread more and infect people easier. Wee. We splice two things together and think the splice might do what we want. They're terrifying, but they're terrifying like a club made out of antimatter. It's still a fucking club.

We're talking things like a virus that temporarily shuts down conscious motor control for six hours or cuts off all aggressive instincts until it's medically reversed. You can tailor viruses to change how people work on the cellular level, and as we've learned you are in many ways a slave to your biology. You can tailor these things.

Have you ever wondered what the difference between technology and biology is? What the difference is between nanotech robots too small to be seen and the actual living cells you're surrounded with? Not actually that much. Not actually that much at all. We are fumbling around trying to hack them, but when you have the medical technology of the federation (genetic changes and race changes at the biological level, xenobiology integrated with human biology, full body regeneration, etc.) then we can go a lot further. You can have a biological radio. You can have a biological eye. You can grow spy cameras on site from bacterial growths. Or take over electronic systems with selectively conductive bacteria.

The possibility for warfare at that level of tech is nigh endless. Even if we say the federation wants to be nice, many of those things are far more ethical than shooting people. I'd rather take a six hour nap than be shot. A virus that knocks an entire population out for six hours is probably a much nicer way to take over than guns and tanks and air support.

[McAvoy]

Honestly if you wanted to there are countless modern ways of decimating the populace. We do have pretty advanced biological weapons. We don't use it due to moral reasons.

I can see other powers doing in Trek but I cannot see the Federation doing it. Even when faced with other powers doing it against them.

The only thing I can think of is why Trek powers don't use it due to fear of others doing the same to them. Maybe that the Federation has a high rate of figuring out those sort of things.

Star Trek makes more sense if you treat the starships like sailing ships sailing in frontier areas.

Our biological weapons are stone-age levels. Seriously. They're clubs. Not even nice clubs, they're a rock tied to a stick. We take Anthrax and make it spread more and infect people easier. Wee. We splice two things together and think the splice might do what we want. They're terrifying, but they're terrifying like a club made out of antimatter. It's still a fucking club.

We're talking things like a virus that temporarily shuts down conscious motor control for six hours or cuts off all aggressive instincts until it's medically reversed. You can tailor viruses to change how people work on the cellular level, and as we've learned you are in many ways a slave to your biology. You can tailor these things.

Have you ever wondered what the difference between technology and biology is? What the difference is between nanotech robots too small to be seen and the actual living cells you're surrounded with? Not actually that much. Not actually that much at all. We are fumbling around trying to hack them, but when you have the medical technology of the federation (genetic changes and race changes at the biological level, xenobiology integrated with human biology, full body regeneration, etc.) then we can go a lot further. You can have a biological radio. You can have a biological eye. You can grow spy cameras on site from bacterial growths. Or take over electronic systems with selectively conductive bacteria.

The possibility for warfare at that level of tech is nigh endless. Even if we say the federation wants to be nice, many of those things are far more ethical than shooting people. I'd rather take a six hour nap than be shot. A virus that knocks an entire population out for six hours is probably a much nicer way to take over than guns and tanks and air support.

Well that is the difference between science and science fiction. There may be a day where we can do that. For some reason.

But let's be honest we are past the point of just weaponizing a natural made virus or bacteria. We are certainly not at the point the of creating nano bots despite what anti vaxxers think.

[GreyICE]

Well that is the difference between science and science fiction. There may be a day where we can do that. For some reason.

But let's be honest we are past the point of just weaponizing a natural made virus or bacteria. We are certainly not at the point the of creating nano bots despite what anti vaxxers think.

Oh certainly not, but Star Trek is way beyond us technologically. Like viral weapons and shit (or more benignly, using them for gene editing, curing cancer, that sort of thing)? That stuff involves some new discoveries, and some pretty cool engineering methods we're going to have to invent, but it's not really insanely far beyond what we're doing right now. Warp drives? Time Travel? Inertial dampeners? You could hand a cave man a cell phone and he'd have probably figure out how it worked sooner than we'd work out that stuff.