Vehicles and equipment of the Race: WorldWar in the Balance

[Tom Kalbfus]

Since there releasing all these World War II vehicles books, I was wondering, if we were to recreate the setting for Harry Turtledoves Balance series, we would need equipment and vehicles for the Race, short-statured reptile aliens from Tau Ceti. Basically this group of aliens in Turtledove's novels invade the Earth during World War II, and all the World War II powers, enemies and allies alike must band together to fight them off.

The Race is a Tech Level 8 species and has been that way for millenia, they travel in sleeper ships using reaction drives powered by fission reactors, their technology is a souped up version of our own in many ways, they have no grav vehicles, no jump drives. The Low Berths they have are adapted to their bodies, and may not work on humans. The average lifespan of the race is also longer than that of a human, so trips through the interstellar void that last decades don't bother them as much. The troops ships are enormous and the rotate for gravity. Their invasion force has equipment that is similar to a 21st century army, with drones, guided missiles, electronic warfare, Jet aircraft, and EMP attacks. Unfortunately EMP doesn't work so well against World War II technology, but the Race was slow to pick this up at the time they exploded a nuke in orbit above the city of Chicago.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I have always thought that Traveller was a perfect game for the WorldWar setting.

I agree about your TL assessments and you could use CSC (or Merc2) for the TL8 weapons and there are a lot of vehicles that could be used/designed as well.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I have always thought that Traveller was a perfect game for the WorldWar setting.

I agree about your TL assessments and you could use CSC (or Merc2) for the TL8 weapons and there are a lot of vehicles that could be used/designed as well.

The key thing is the lizards have nothing that is beyond our science as we know it today, technology related to space travel is a bit more advanced, they have giant star ships capable or reaching a significant percentage of the speed of light, they appear to be powered by atomic fission, or perhaps at best a fission initiated fusion process, but they have lots of Uranium and plutonium. Their weapons are similar to the weapons we have today but with the serial numbers filed off. The lizards have equivalent to F22s, helicopters, drones, laser guided missiles, probably stealth bombers and fighters. Their understanding of naval tactics is poor as their home planet called "Home" is mostly dry land, The lizards are used to dealing with primitive races, and when they first surveyed Earth, it was the 11th century, so they expected to deal with opponents wearing plate mail and on horseback, they were not fully prepared to deal with the industrialized powers of World War II. So basically the lizards have limited amounts of advanced military hardware and weapons. The Lizards come from a fairly static society technologically, they are more advanced by the humans of World War II, but those humans are advancing their tech faster than the lizards are prepared to deal with. Lizards have come to understand rapid technological change to be dangerous, they are especially leary of AI computers. The Lizards are all about tradition, they have established ways of fighting in a war, and thus far all of their opponents were so primitive, that their lac of adaptability didn't matter. Probably they needed to be this way to give the humans a plausible chance to defeat them. Basically it is a kind of Asymmetrical warfare, weapons per weapon, the Lizards have superior equipment, but the humans are better at adapting their tactics to deal with the technological gap.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

And there is the Ginger...

 

[locarno24]

Also - almost all their vehicles are based on hydrogen fuel cells, not hydrocarbon engines.
Home, Rabotev and Halless are all much hotter, dryer worlds than Tosev (Earth) and have little free-standing water - and few environmental regions suited for 'laying down' deposits of oil or gas.

They're also very much designed by engineers, not combat veterans - centuries pass between the Race actually fighting a war and they have NEVER fought a war against an equiv-tech adversary other than theoretical wargames - so whilst more sophisticated in tech, they're likely to be less well designed - equally distributed armour rather than a frontal 'glacis plate' like you see in most of the later war tanks, for example.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Also - almost all their vehicles are based on hydrogen fuel cells, not hydrocarbon engines.
Home, Rabotev and Halless are all much hotter, dryer worlds than Tosev (Earth) and have little free-standing water - and few environmental regions suited for 'laying down' deposits of oil or gas.

They're also very much designed by engineers, not combat veterans - centuries pass between the Race actually fighting a war and they have NEVER fought a war against an equiv-tech adversary other than theoretical wargames - so whilst more sophisticated in tech, they're likely to be less well designed - equally distributed armour rather than a frontal 'glacis plate' like you see in most of the later war tanks, for example.

This is their star system

Seems Home actually exists, it is the one on the inner edge of the habitable zone.

 

[Matt Wilson]

I haven't read these books, but now I want to.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I haven't read these books, but now I want to.

You could order it here:
http://www.amazon.com/In-Balance-Alternate-History-Worldwar/dp/0345388526#

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I LOVE Harry Turtledove, but I have to admit that his series tend to drag a bit in the middle.... He does in 5 or 6 books what could/should be done in 3.

Having said that, this series is REALLY good alternate history fiction.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I LOVE Harry Turtledove, but I have to admit that his series tend to drag a bit in the middle.... He does in 5 or 6 books what could/should be done in 3.

Having said that, this series is REALLY good alternate history fiction.

The reason for that is he has multiple story threads run in parallel with multiple POV characters. One thing this does do is present a better mosaic of the war, rather than one character's story. Its much easier to read once he completes a series, so you otherwise read one book and stay tuned while he writes the next one.