Muv-Luv Franchise - Military Tactics, History, & Geo-Politics

[Asuras]

Are the BETA affected by disease? Maybe a bio-bomb?

[Sumeragi]

They're silicon-based. Most likely what applies to earth would so easily apply to them.

[Candyshark]

If BETA so adaptive then trying to defeat them is futile. Basicly bent over and pray it will be fast. Though it does not really go with imagine I got from watching first 2 episodes. More like a rampaging horde of wild animals that stomp everything on the way.

[Asuras]

If I remember right, America has yet to be invaded (or occupied) by BETA during Alternative. I know for sure they are combating them, but where specifically?

[NorthernFallout]

^

Spoiler for not sure if needed but:

The US nuked all Hives that appeared there, IIRC. They nuked Canada to the afterlife when a Hive touched down there. So, in Alternative, they are one of the few nations without BETA within their borders, IIRC, and they are lending their military strength to other nations. As to where exactly I'm not sure.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[LystAP]

Originally Posted by Sumeragi

They're silicon-based. Most likely what applies to earth would so easily apply to them.

Spoiler for Major Muv-Luv Game Spoiler:

Incorrect, the BETA themselves are Carbon-based;

Spoiler for Creators:

It's their creators who are Silicon-based; they're the ones that programmed the BETA to believe that there's no such thing as Carbon-based life.

[Key Board]

Humanity's problem with BETA is they have to fight them with relatively conventional technology

TSFs are really just planes on legs

In your typical mecha show there's usually this plot device magical substance the fuels all the super technology which gives the protagonist faction a fighting chance.

For instance: Trapar Waves in Eureka 7/ Spiral Energy in Gurren Lagann/Solar Furnaces in Gundam 00

In Muvluv this magical substance is element G. However there's very little of it, and it can only be acquired by capturing a hive. But it's nearly impossible to take out a hive, let alone capture it.

What little they have of Element G they use to make G-bombs

If this was a computer game it would be similar to X-Com, except that you can only get Elerium from raiding alien bases.. with crappy human weapons.
And you don't even have reliable laser weapons yet..
and from what Elerium you have now, it's not enough to mass produce plasma riffles for everyone..

..

[NoemiChan]

Originally Posted by Xezexal

Muv Luv Alternative is basically the original novel of starship trooper gone japanese/anime. Hell the politics of the alternative is quite controversial since it talks about politics of the emperor and what not.

This is one thing that confuses about Alternative... What's going on about this Shogun/ Emperor thing? Is the alien invasion made this changes to the politics?

[DezoPenguin]

Originally Posted by GenjiChan

This is one thing that confuses about Alternative... What's going on about this Shogun/ Emperor thing? Is the alien invasion made this changes to the politics?

No, it's just an alternate-history thing; that change (or the lack of change, technically) predates anything having to do with BETA.

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by Sumeragi

They're silicon-based. Most likely what applies to earth would so easily apply to them.

No, they're carbon based. This is a plot point actually.

Bio weapons are still hard to say either way though as it's unclear how exactly beta breeding and biology functions. They seemed to consume flesh and recycle organic matter into new units which implies some level of normal metabloic activty and breeding, but there also stuff about them being "fueled" by the reactor in a Hive and such which implies biology totally unlike anything on earth. Either way DNA research and such was in it's infancy during the 70s and the focus ought to have been rightly placed on improving industry and weapon systems to fight them, not pipe dreams of a super plague. Research should have continued, but it's entirely possible the alien biology simply didn't have a good vector for attack or even that they haven't fully deciphered the BETA genome.

Originally Posted by Silvance

If the BETA are not advancing on the surface, then they dig underground as they invade, and there's no way to tell where they will strike.

Only because the local humans are brain dead and have apparently never heard of a microphone, seismograph, ground penetrating radar, gravity sensors, cosmic rays, or electricity. There is nothing "stealthy" about a tunneling operation that is boring out something big enough to move thousands of creepy crawlies some of them a dozen meters tall in a finite amount of time. Some of these systems would need to deployed in place and would work best as a trip wire, but many could also be easily mounted on a vehicle. In our world there isn't a huge demand for detecting tunnels and indeed allot of the work has only been spurred recently by smuggling tunnels under the US border and a few other highly controlled zones (Israel border for instance).

Obviously though the Muv-Luv would have a pretty damn compelling reason to fund the shit out of these projects, and it's rather hard to buy that they can apparently build an anti-gravity doom fortress, but a method of detecting a hole in the ground evades them. There is really no reason beyond abject stupidity that after thirty years they can't reliably detect large tunneling operations near controlled Terran well in advance of any attack.

Nuclear mines? Depends whether the country in question will want to use such things on their homeland, and follow the example of Russia and China. They can try to lure the small horde there. I highly doubt it'd stop the entire BETA horde since like everyone said, their numbers are just overwhelming unless there's just a few thousands of them or so... The mines will easily kill the BETA, but all of them? VERY unlikely. The mines will be all used up in no time.

There's also no real reason they need to be "mines" in the "buried" sense. They'd only be mines in the sense of a weapon left in the path of the enemy unattended, but they could easily just be standard bombs with a time or remote fuse. Go look up "lay down delivery" Hell I'll save the effort and just quote the wiki stub:

Laydown delivery is a mode of deploying a free-fall nuclear weapon in which the bomb's fall is slowed by parachute so that it actually lands on the ground before detonating. Laydown delivery requires that the weapon's case be reinforced so that it can survive the impact, and generally involves a time-delay fuze to trigger detonation. Laydown mode can be used to increase the effect of the weapon's blast on built-up targets such as submarine pens, or to transmit a shock wave through the ground to attack deeply buried targets. It has the additional advantage of allowing the carrier aircraft to fly very low – in order to avoid enemy defences – and still get away without being destroyed in the detonation. This is particularly important where high-yield nuclear weapons such as the B41 nuclear bomb and B53 nuclear bomb are concerned.

A ground skimming aircraft could rather easily be deployed just ahead of a swarm and deploy the "mines" in it's path.

Nuking the hives is not very effective since the laser class are at the top of the monument, shooting at anything within range. Even if a bomb is dropped and reaches the bottom of the shaft, will it take out everything including the extra branches that stretches really far and deep?

This is an island:

This is an island after a ten megaton explosion

It's completely within our ability to build a bomb five times that size within the weight and and size constraints of say... a TSF inside a drop pod. You'll forgive me if I think a hive is going to just shrug that off.

Spoiler for Muv-Luv Alternative: Objective 21:

Guys, remember Sadogashima? 20 G-Bombs worth of firepower that wiped out the entire island, did it kill all the BETA? Nope. Plenty of them still survived

Spoiler for Silliness:

Which is utterly impossible as a sphere that large originating on the surface would extend downward to tens of kilometers FAR deeper then any BETA hive is ever said to go, and the blast vaporizes an island meaning it's completely impossible for ANY BETA to survive it. (piss ant cannon fire slaughters them) The only possible method of survival would be to be in perhaps the very furthermost outlying drifts, but there wouldn't be any kind of cohesive or threatening force left and without the hive to support it, it could be mopped up.

[NoemiChan]

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

No, it's just an alternate-history thing; that change (or the lack of change, technically) predates anything having to do with BETA.

and I read some post stating that says putting a girl like as the next Shogun, is it possible.?

[DoomRavager]

吉宗鋼紀 ‏@kycow

光線属種はG元素の塊みたいなもん。
だから一定以上の大きさのハイヴできか生産できない。
喀什ケースは緊急処置（ルクスのみ）。
欲かいて対応する時間と余裕を与えたからね。
しかもあいつらハイヴ周辺だと空中からエネルギー取り出せるしやばい。

So apparently, Lasers are normally only produced once a hive reaches above a certain size, because G-elements are needed to produce them. Presumably, said minimum size is the size at which G-elements first start to be manufactured. Their deployment at Kashgar (and therefore consumption of Kashgar's G-element stock) was an emergency measure.
And apparently they can just take energy right out of the air, particularly when around Hives. I guess we chalk that one down to "G-element powered SUPER SCIENCE handwavium".

[Darkmatterx76]

Dunno if I can ask this question of if that would lead to a spoiler but I'll give it a shot.

I thought I remember the general info saying something about a joint project in Alaska between the US and Russia (thx for another show forgetting that theres this country call Canada right there too btw) but from the map that showed the BETA invasion I thought Russia was already overrun? It ep 2 they did say that the mainland had fallen.

[NoemiChan]

Just got run with this picture... And it interested me...

Spoiler for BETA Classes and Comparisons:

Linkz

[potchip]

"TSFs are really just planes on legs".

Hardly. The capabilities of a modern jet fighter is far superior to what's demonstrated so far from TSFs. Gone are the days of dog fights with cannons, jets mostly engage beyond visual range. The only advantage of TSF I can see is it's VTOL capability enable more flexible deployment. TSFs had shocking weapon range, bad survivalbility, limited deployment range and in general doesn't pack enough punch. So I'll simply assume air combat technology, doctrine, and ideas do not exist in the Muv-luv world by setting.

[Marcus H.]

Guys, how much do you think will the story change if the TSFs are not giant mechas?

[NoemiChan]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

Guys, how much do you think will the story change if the TSFs are not giant mechas?

The girls wouldn't have existed.... their parents died weeks after the landings...

[Candyshark]

beh if it takes serious measure that extremely harmful to envoirement just to take out 1 hive I don't any future for humanity. Even if we win fight all we get is barren world which might not be possible to live in.

I don't see how flashy planes will resolve the conflict.

[Marcus H.]

Btw, how much does a TSF cost? Let's compare it to the F-16 Falcon which is about $15M each.

[NoemiChan]

Anyway couldn't they just built mechas that has laser deflecting capabilities? or fight laser with laser.